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Home > Resources > Resource Review - Simply Christian by N.T. Wright
Resource Review - Simply Christian by N.T. Wright
submitted by Robert Campbell
Simply Christian
by N. T. Wright
As a minister, I’ve always been on the lookout for a book that would function as a timely and accessible introduction to Christianity, a book that I could recommend to someone who has had little background in the church and with the Bible and who would like to know more, or that I could recommend to someone who has lived with all kinds of Christian conversation, teaching, and preaching and would like to have a framework that pulls it all together. N. T. Wright, who is currently the Anglican Bishop of Durham, England, has written such a book in Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense.
Wright tells the Christian story by showing how it addresses longings that all people share. These are described in four chapters in Part One as a hunger for justice in a world put to rights, a hunger for a spirituality that transcends the bleak landscape of modern secularism and puts us in touch with the Creator, a hunger for community marked by relationships of trust and love, and a hunger for beauty that is true and enduring. Wright interprets these hungers, these longings, as “echoes of a voice” which he believes to be the voice of God. He then sets out to tell the story of God according to the Christian tradition, a story which he believes makes sense of these longings and points to their fulfillment.
In Part Two he unfolds the Christian story that emerges in scripture. Reading his chapter on God, one can understand why the concept, “echoes of a voice”, means so much to him. It arises from his conviction that God is both different from and accessible to us. He rejects two commonly held worldviews about God and earth that he believes lead to dead ends. One is the pantheist view that God’s space and our space are essentially the same—God is everywhere and everywhere is God—a worldview in which an echo of what is other is unneeded. The other is the deist view that God’s space and our space are firmly set apart and a very long way from each other—God certainly wouldn’t be involved in our world beyond having set it in operation—a worldview in which an echo is impossible. Rather, Wright puts forward the view held within classic Judaism and Christianity that while God’s space—heaven—and our space—earth—are not the same, yet they are not impassably apart, but overlap and interlock in different ways, so that God makes God’s presence known, seen, and heard within the sphere of the earth in such actions that might be expected to leave echoes, echoes of a voice. God’s action in Christ would be the richest source of these.
Before coming to the chapter on Jesus, Wright thankfully produces one on Israel. Thus, there is no possibility of detaching the story of Jesus from the story of God’s people over the centuries that established the context for his coming. Any reader of Wright is bound to gain an appreciation of the Hebrew scriptures of the Old Testament and to turn to them with anticipation.
There are two chapters on Jesus, one focused on his ministry, marked by his proclamation of the kingdom of God, the other focused on the events of the cross and resurrection. For Wright, both are a necessary part of the story. He does not allow a detachment of the saving work of the cross completed in the resurrection from the socially challenging teaching of the kingdom, manifested in parable, miracle, and healings, or vice versa. Each helps explain and define the other and there is no having one without the other.
Wright’s chapters on the Spirit are helpfully concrete. Consider these sentences:
The Spirit is given to begin the work of making God’s future real in the present. That is the first, and perhaps the most important, point to grasp about the work of this strange personal power for which so many images are used. Just as the resurrection of Jesus opened up the unexpected world of God’s new creation, so the Spirit comes to us from that new world, the world waiting to be born, the word in which, according to the old prophets, peace and justice will flourish and the wolf and lamb will lie down side by side. (p.124)
Having thus located the Spirit within the context of God’s promises and Jesus’ activity, it is not surprising that, when Wright comes to speak of Christian spirituality, he does not confine himself to speaking about experiencing “the intimate presence of God”, though that is part of it, but goes on to show how such spirituality will involve a measure of suffering, for it is built upon the life and work of Jesus and thus shares his suffering for the sake of the creation’s renewal.
Part Three focuses on the community which consciously seeks to hear the echoes of a voice, namely, the church, and contains chapters on the church’s activities—worship, prayer, Bible reading and interpretation—all of which make sense for a people called “to live at the overlap of both heaven and earth—the earth that has yet to be redeemed as one day it will be—and of God’s future and this world’s present.” (p.161)
Throughout his presentation, Wright helps us to see that our role as followers of Christ is to be agents, heralds, and stewards of the new day that is dawning, the one promised in Christ’s resurrection and that will come in fullness, the day when earth and heaven will be one.
Incidentally, Wright is helpful on a number of issues that seem to trouble the church these days. Against those who are always trying to articulate alternative readings of Christ’s resurrection, he provides firm arguments in its defence. Against those scholars who seem to be very suspicious of the early church and who think the real Jesus lies behind and not within the biblical text we have from it, he speaks convincingly of the reliability of the New Testament text. Against those who want to exalt metaphorical over literal readings of the biblical text, he gives several pages to showing how these two terms are often misused, thus leading to interpretive dead ends, and shows a new way forward that would have us reading the Bible the way first-century Jews and Christians might have.
Tom Wright is both a biblical scholar of the first rank and a pastor and preacher who faces parishioners from a pulpit on Sundays. This book combines both his theological and communicative strengths. The language is tailored to the ordinary person who is prepared to do a bit of thinking.
Simply Christian will reward anyone, either curious about the faith or anxious to understand it more deeply, who makes the effort to read it. It was published in 2006 by Harper San Francisco and can be purchased at McNally Robinson’s or at Hull’s or on the internet from your favourite provider.
Robert Campbell is ministry personnel at Westminster United Church in Winnipeg.
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Posted: October 14, 2009
Expires: never
category: Resources (AVEL and Print)
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