17 Wanted: New Categories

Chapter Four
HISTORY AND THE FIRST CENTURY
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD
(iii) Wanted: New Categories

What we find, in short, is that the epistemological tools of our age seem inadequate for the data
before us. One of the present ironies, typical of movements within the fashions of scholarship, is
that some philosophers are today moving away from materialism, or even a moderate realism, and
back towards idealism, just as the theologians, kept prisoner for so long in idealist strongholds, are
finally rejoicing to discover some form of realism. These debates may serve to keep checks and
balances alive within a discipline. But I suspect that the idealist–realist distinction is itself ultimately
misleading; and swings from one to the other are not much help in terms of an actual historical
investigation such as ours…

Taken from THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD by NT Wright