Hey Dave, I like your spirit and don’t expect to change your view either. Though I don’t see why you think I’d have to “really believe” exegetical discussion will produce a “unanimous” consensus," to think it has unavoidable value. I find trying to understand why two real thinkers reach different conclusions is in itself worthwhile. (Btw, I got a few days, but then will be less accessible, heading north to take a Galatians class with Durham’s John Barclay at British Columbia’s Regent College; he took his Ph.D. under Wright, but has sharply criticized some of his NP interpretations.)
Some of our differences seem to involve ascribing differnt meanings to terms, but 90+% of what you point out, I already assume, and needs no reaction. I do agree that Jesus’ words can be difficult, but assume that they were recorded with the intent of conveying important things, and I suspect that much difficulty, even when he seems especially plain, is that we’d prefer different ideas from his!
We have similar views of the Bible’s nature, and I agree on your basic idea that some “Biblical insights” are ‘truer,’ or should be more controlling than others. So clarifying where we differ is a challenge. (I do suspect, esp. with those of your formulation, that I bring a greater instinct that it is reasonable to look harder for more continuity between the OT, Jesus, Paul, and the Gospel, as well as between how we observe that God apparently administers our experience in this life’s realm, with what we may reasonably expect in the next.)
I don’t think the main difference is that I found your exegesis/etymology faulty or unhelpful. My problem was feeling that you too easily then deduce that other texts cannot be affirmed together with your cited preferred ones. Here you contrast, Jesus is the “object” that is determinative, not “the Biblical witness.” I don’t see why those must so disassociated. What do I know about your controlling ‘object’ apart from the Bible’s input? I would rather say, Jesus is the decisive focus such that after understanding him from the Bible’s story, He then is the key to rightly approaching the whole. But the Bible remains indispensable to defining what Jesus is about. (Whereas when you define needed “common ground” as the future Parousia, you then seem seem to agree that we have no available present basis for discussion.)
Arguing etymologically that Biblical ‘justice’ can’t be punitive seems to ignore the more decisive data: does the Bible itself reveal explicitly that the real issues debated here of ‘punishment,’ conditions, requirements, etc are in fact central to its’ view of how God deals with us. You then seem to conclude that God put us in our unavoidable punishing conditions of bondage and decay, so that Jesus could now responsibly “take upon himself the full consequences” of all such wrongs inflicted. My questions are, do you have any sense of why a loving Jesus would put us through such pain in the meanwhile? And what convinces you that Jesus has so exhausted all possible consequences?