Simply Christian by N T Wright – A Review

Many of you will have read C. S. Lewis’ book Mere Christianity. In it this former atheist attempts to make the case for what he called “Mere Christianity” – that is for Christianity itself, as opposed to one of the different “brands” of Christianity.

N. T. Wright, a bishop in the Church of England, attempts to do for the 21st century what C. S. Lewis did for the 20th century in SIMPLY CHRISTIAN: Why Christianity Makes Sense.

An email correspondent recently forwarded information to me about Veritas, a program that began on the campus of Harvard University as a response by a group of students, faculty, and ministers to an emptiness on campus, namely the lack of attention to such ultimate questions as, “What does it mean to be human? Why is there evil and suffering?” Veritas brings outstanding speakers to campuses throughout the USA and around the world.

One of the speakers there (c. a 50 minute lecture plus a part 2 with Questions/Answers) was N. T. Wright speaking about his book at Georgetown University in 2006. I found it very interesting and challenging. You can hear this author lecturing about his book here.

In Part I of this book he explores what he calls “the echo of an unseen voice.” Like C. S. Lewis, he points to the universal desire for justice or fairness, for spirituality, for relationships, and for beauty. Wright sees these as echoes of the voice of the unseen God.

Part II challenges his readers to consider the Judaeo-Christian God. The Hebrew Bible shows this Creator-God is transcendent. That is, He is something other than the cosmos He formed. Thus the Pantheist view of everything being god is false. Yet, The Transcendent God lives among us with both grief and joy, thus contradicting the Deist’s view that God is not involved in ordinary human affairs. The Christian view adds to this that in Jesus the transcendent God came among us in human flesh. The work of Jesus on earth was not just to be an example for us to follow, nor did He come to teach us how to escape earth and go to heaven. He did not just give us more information about God.

What Jesus did was to throw open the door of our prison – and when He did, we discovered that His is the voice behind the echo we heard faintly through our yearnings for justice, spirituality, relationships, and beauty. In His death and resurrection, which Wright believes is a real event in time-space, Jesus launched the New Creation. This is the redemption, not just of individuals, but of the heavens and earth into the New Creation and the “New Heavens and the New Earth.”

Part III of his book addresses our task as Christians on the earth. Worship, he says, is the living center of our task, “since you become like what you worship.” We bear the image of God by virtue of Creation. Through worship and spiritual transformation, we reflect that image into a world that has forgotten what it was created to be. He also spoke of the authority of the Bible as mediating the authority of the God who gave it. He emphasized the Church, quoting Wesley who said, “If God is our Father, the Church is our mother.” We are unable to do the task God has given us alone. We need the help of fellow-travelers.

Even now, we are to be partners together with God in hastening the coming of the fullness of the New Creation when the earth will be full of the glory of God. He spoke briefly about how we need to take seriously both ethics and the radical evil that is in the world. We, he says, are not here just to prepare to go to heaven. We are here to promote the furtherance of God’s kingdom here on earth – that God’s will may be done on earth as it done in heaven in the here and now. All of this is as we are awaiting the glory of the New Heavens and the New Earth.

This is not a conventional approach, but he is attracting a lot of attention in Evangelical circles. I found his presentation thought-provoking and providing a balance between “this-worldly” and “other-worldly” views of Christianity. It is worth the hour it will take to listen to his presentation.