Guest Blogger: Bishop N.T. "Tom" Wright

While not having the privilege of knowing Father Christian personally, there was a fortunate vacancy in my diary between a engagement to address to telemarketers in Mumbai, and an invitation to preside at the opening of an envelope in Helsinki, so rather than return to Durham I was delighted to be able to help out here by standing in for a Biblical Scholar with a even larger balance in their frequent-flyer point account than my own. Although I’m better at ending every paragraph with a short rhetorical statement.

But perhaps instead you think my real forte is opening new paragraphs with a similarly succinct rhetorical question? That too is a possibility, but the real issue before us should be ‘What did Paul think?’ On one level that’s irrelevant, because what matters far more within the framework of a contemporary biblical paradigm is that people read my latest best-selling exegetical reconstruction of what I think, yet verse 12 clearly indicates we are to understand this in terms of the Deuteronomic milleau permeating first century neo-hellenism.

Paul didn’t write nearly as many books as I have. Not that it makes him any less important, you should understand, but the heraldic imperative implicit to his work draws extempore transliterators to the conundrum of post-exile Israel. Hence I begin where Romans begins – with the Gospel. Would you like me to sign that for you?

This, then, is the extant dynamic framework. Ministry begins in the comfortable end of an aeroplane, wherein the propositional sense of the initiative may be considered substantive. The Reverend Doctor Troll, and indeed, the fabric of the post-GAFCON schematic itself, understands this. I, for one am in support, albeit with palpable qualifications. Not that these can be felt in any ontological-determinative way. There’s simply no need for that.

The Ordo Salvatus has always incorporated the selling of books. Promotional tours comprise an a priori element of the existential application of this process, one we see reflected in Paul’s own journeys. Venditio iter itineris is an expression not normally encountered in Classical Latin scholarship, and which can be loosely translated as meaning “sales trip”. To do so, however, is to detract from the gravitas paramount to this vocation, the purpose of which is in turn to detract from baser obligations of the Episcopacy per se to support the clergy of my diocese in their ipso facto obligation to drag unwilling parishioners through the church door each Sunday.

Like me, Father Christian teaches the Bible. Although I believe he does so in a language people actually speak.