I’m sympathetic to much of what you’re saying. But I wonder whether if replacing one dogma (“narrow and neurotic epistemology”) with another (“critical realism”) is the right way to go? Why not just critique the narrow neurotic stuff and leave room at the table for those of us who have read Frei or Lindbeck (on the one hand) or Rorty and Hegel (on the other)? Wright’s critical realism still relies on a correspondence theory of truth, though chastened and a bit more sophisticated than most. But he still (1) Maintains a distinction between the knower and the known, and (2) doesn’t adequately account for the crucial epistemological role of the community of interpretation (the church) in the present day. The existence and nature of the church justifies Christian claims about Jesus’ resurrection (if anything does).

I love the interpretive story that Wright tells, and it does give a coherence to the biblical story that is compelling in many regards. But when he goes methodological, we find the weakest aspect of his project, and the end of Resurrection of Son of God is no more than a slightly updated rehash of Evidence that Demands a Verdict. The naivety is the belief that attention to the historical record will justify Christian convictions. To the non-Christian historian, that is ludicrous. The burden of epistemological justification can lie nowhere but on the shoulders of the community charged with faithfully witnessing to God’s reign. If Wright would have left out the methodology, he would have left room for that. Now I’m not saying any of this to argue anyone out of Wright’s critical realism. It’s not a bad epistemology. But I think there are other ones that deserve a hearing, and it just seems like a bad place to strive for consensus.