Mark Seifrid takes aim at Tom Wright's biblical meta-narrative

In 'The Narrative of Scripture and Justification by Faith: A Still Fresher Reading of Paul' Mark Seifrid says:

The narrative approach can be in its own way just as radically systematic as any doctrinal outline. It is worth reminding ourselves that just as the Scripture has not been given to us as a dogmatic outline, neither has it been given to us as a single, unified story. It is a collection of narratives, which not only complement one another, but also overlap and stand in tension with one another. There are two accounts of creation in Genesis, two accounts of the Davidic monarchy, four Gospels. The psalms tell and retell the story of Israel in ways that are sometimes remarkably different from one another. More significant than the variations in perspective, and often lying behind these variations are the differing ways in which God encounters his people. We no longer live in Eden, yet God’s quiet governance and preservation of the present world preserves the traces of Eden in it. In this fallen world, however, human beings encounter the God who works not only life and blessing, but also death and destruction, and that not in predictable retribution of evil, but seemingly without reason or cause (cf. Isa 45:7; 1 Sam 2:6).

It is strange that in the same essay Mark Seifrid then seems to criticise Tom Wright's for 'three interrelated tensions in Wright’s reading of Scripture':

1) the tension that we already have touched upon between conditionality and unconditionality within the promise to Abraham as Wright construes it; which leads, secondly, 2) to the central and fundamental tension between the purpose of God for Israel in the gift of Torah and God’s saving work in Christ; and finally 3) the instructive tension between the exclusivity of the gift of Torah to Israel and the universality of God’s saving purpose.'

Still I think its fair to ask whether...

One may therefore reasonably ask whether the implicit narrative which Wright proposes is present at all. Reading between the lines has its weaknesses and dangers.