Kim Gentes

After You Believe - NT WrightLike all NT Wright books, "After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters" tackles a specific topic or area with an aim to provide scriptural and historical context as a foundation for the author's theological and philosophical positions on the topic. Wright always does his research and this book is no exception. "After You Believe" tackles the topic of character by looking at the ancient Aristotelian concept of virtue and how it was reimagined and reformed by the theology and practice of both Jesus and Paul.

The book is a treatise exploring a Christian virtue ethic in which the believer takes on the assumptions of character transformation through gradual surrender to God's kingdom concepts of worship and mission. More specifically, this is not a book about the "how-to's" of Christian practice.

What you find here is NT Wright continuing his conversation about how not only our theology, but our practice, must anticipate the full appearing of kingdom of God in it's action. That is to say, Wright's vision of a Christian virtue ethic is based on eschatology (where we are headed) and how full human flourishing occurs as we make the journey there, beginning in this world, not the next.

"After You Believe" is a subtle side-swipe of the standard "spiritual disciplines" talk that has come through in many popular Christian books. Wright has little patience for "self-help" Christian concepts, and debunks the "God-less do-gooding" as much as he deconstructs the popular notion of "cheap grace" - both of which he considers errant parodies of true Christlikeness. In fact, this book nods at Aristotle's astute observations of virtue, and yet, explains that Jesus and Paul answered the ancient Greek notion of virtue with the true answer to human flourishing - love-fueled Christlike character.

NT Wright has done with "After You Believe" what he has done with many other New Testament topics- re-addresses them in light of his creational theology that puts God's goal of rescuing humanity from it's sin stained condition and restoring the future of our created intention through Christ's work on the cross and the Holy Spirit's presence with the church through the ages.  This book is vivid, powerful and readable. But it is not simple. It requires you take seriously the concepts he brings to bear in his other books (though he leave you enough overview in this book, even if you haven't read the others).

The purpose of this book is pragmatic (explaining to Christians what they are to do in this life, while waiting for the glorious eternity in the next), but it has a powerful, perhaps eternal intent- to get us walking towards the future in the area of our character, long before the future fully arrives.

It is an excellent book on, as Wright puts it "how to think about what to do". Get it. Read it.  You will not be disappointed. A great book from a great thinker about a topic that is of great importance to all Christians.

Amazon Link: http://amzn.to/1sgmqsU

Review by Kim Gentes

Many of the works I have chosen to review have been deeper theological writings, some of which have been by revered biblical scholar, N.T. Wright. His work as both a historian and theologian has colored his books with a particularly powerful edge. Because of his scholarly bent, when thinking about a general book outlining Christianity and its claims to those outside of the faith (or new to it), I wouldn't have thought to consider a book by Wright. However, "Simply Christian" is just that. It is a book that presents the Christian faith in a clear and understandable format to any who might be interested.

Within its pages, Wright poses a thoughtful progression that examines the human experience to point to an unspoken awareness in ourselves, and our world, of something missing. Wright's "echoes of a voice" elements are justice, spirituality, relationship and beauty– all things which tell us that the universe (and our place in it) are meant for something different than we have come to. But more than a sense of lack, they point to something that exists that we can't name. And in his development of what that is, he names it. The Jewish God, YHWH.

Wright's use of these arguments and specific components (especially justice and beauty) echo clearly the arguments of CS Lewis' writings in both Mere Christianity (which uses moral code/justice) and his sermon/writing The Weight of Glory (which uses beauty and love). I mention Lewis and Wright in the same context, because their parallel books seem to be aimed at the same thing, and both writers are up to the task. Simply Christian, however, is a much more historical and technical exploration of how the world and context of Jewish monotheism brought about the person of Jesus, and how Jesus turned out to be not only the answer for Jewish religious hopes, but also the ultimate "Lord" of the entire human race.

Wright's basic premise is this– God created a good world, but man rebelled from him. God has set out on a plan to rescue his rebelled creation and that plan has come to embodiment in God himself coming to earth in the person of Jesus. Jesus announced this rescue plan of re-creation (putting the creation to rights) and now invites all people into that rescue– not only for their own sakes, but to join in as part of the solution. That solution is called the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is the realm/dimension of God's love and reign invading and reclaiming man and the earth for God's purposes. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, God continues to work through all those who join in (Christians) and through the church– the gathered Body of Christ.

As best as I can, that is how I would summarize Wright's preposition in Simply Christian. The problem with doing such a summary, however, is that I risk infraction of any number of logical, practical or theological arguments because, simply put, just as life is not simple, Christianity isn't either. And boiling Christian faith down to a few short lines of innocuous (and fairly un-actionable) statement is precisely what Wright avoids by taking on all the salient points in life-breathing detail. I want to make that point because this book is not "Simple Christianity", as if everything intelligent about it could be reduced to a set of polarized truisms. In fact, the author puts to use his own varied, and sometimes extended, metaphors throughout the book to help us grasp the nuance of key concepts and moving narrative of the story of God, creation, man, Jesus, and eventually, the church.

Simply Christian is a very well written book, but it also has significant historical and rhetorical ammunition in its muzzle. The author banters through classical references (Plato, Epicurus, Lucretius), extensive Jewish back-story (all the relevant biblical narrative, as well as apocryphal and historic characters such as Judas Maccabaeus, Simeon ben Kosiba), 1^st century Roman world (Caesar, the rise of Rome as a world empire), and plenty of 18^th to 21^st century (Nietzsche, Hitler, Oscar Wilde, 9/11 attacks) references as well. He does all of this as a way of providing proper context and flow to the presentation being made. It is all excellent, but it is not going to feel "simple" to say a 7^th grade student. Wright continues to be in good company, however, as Lewis' regular references to literary or classical world touch-points would likewise be foreign to many readers.

That said, Simply Christian is an excellent book with mountains of good points and very few detractions. The delightful surprises I found are the excellent highlighting he does in correcting the dozens of common misconceptions that people (Christians and non-Christians alike) have of what being Christian really means. His theological stature here helps immensely, as he grasps at "truisms" and debunks them cleanly. Playing with language and logic, he clarifies many incorrect and unhelpful misunderstandings of who Jesus is, what he said and (not the least important) what happens after we die.

Because the truth and explanation of Christianity is not ultimately "simple" (in terms of boiling it down to one-liners that can be defended), this book is not either. However, in the scope sense, it is a well-written exposition and recommendation on what it means to be Simply Christian.

Amazon Link: http://amzn.to/12WHEkd

Review by Kim Gentes

NT Wright has two kinds of primary writing that I am aware of- the scholarly tomes debating and explaining nuances of his theological positions to other academics (such as Jesus and the Victory of God) and the short but complete books meant for summary and concision of a topic for use by pastors and lay people (such as Simply Christian). When I first got my paperback of "Paul: In Fresh Perspective" I assumed it would be a book in the second style- pastoral, easily read and without the dense pressure of theological details. I was right, and wrong.

In this book, Wright definitely is aiming to speak concisely and clearly about a deeply complex set of issues. And in that, the author succeeds marvelously. The book is easy to follow, well structured and moves clearly from point to point, in a building progression. But the book does not "boil down" the points of Pauline theology into a few clichéd notes. Instead Wright grasps with the breadth of not just our perspectives, but with Paul's. In doing so he turns the understanding of Paul's theology away from our context and into Paul's 1st century, monotheistic, Jewish worldview intersecting with the Greek philosophical underpinnings which were itself pounding its ideologies onto the imperial Roman world.

Wright compresses Paul's world into seventeen deft pages of introduction that orients the reader for the journey to discovering- what was Paul really saying about Jesus, the Spirit, Israel, salvation and God. It would be hard to stack together a work that collapses so many controversial theological pivot points as Wright has done here. But he has done it, and done it without sounding defensive, contradictory or condescending. More than that- he has done it convincingly.

The meat of the book is divided into two main parts. The first part deals primarily with the themes that Wright sees in both Paul and the first century Jewish world- creation & covenant, Messiah and apocalyptic, and gospel and empire. Wright lays these themes out for us to grasp the narrative into which Jesus came and from which Paul is now speaking.

The second part of the book deals with resultant conclusions that the work of Jesus now makes within the context of the themes discussed in the previous section. Wright paints the "fresh perspective" across the primary topics of God (monotheism), God's people (election), and God's future (eschatology). The author wraps up this section by looking pointedly at Paul's personal and specific work, and some specific theological hot-points that Wright moves to clarify via more redefinitions of context.

In both of these sections Wright is taking on the task of, as he puts it, thinking Paul's thoughts after him. This is important to realize as a major mechanism employed by the author because the primary assumption he starts with on all of Paul's work (on every subject Paul presents) is that the apostle himself is actually redefining all of the major components of the Jewish theology and narrative around their fulfillment in and through the work of Jesus, his life, vocation, death on the cross and resurrection. The entire force of Wright's arguments are based on his belief that Paul was taking his Jewish monotheistic narrative, redefining it in Jesus as the Christ, and representing it to both Jews and Gentiles alike who found themselves within the context of the Hellenistic world of Roman imperialism.

For example, a snapshot of this is his statement that God was becoming king in the person of Jesus, and the impact of this on the new people of God (the church) meant that Jesus was now king and not Caesar. The shock waves of these kinds of statements are expounded in the Pauline context and purposefully extirpated from our own. The intersection of culture, politics, and religion that we would segment in the 21st century is brought to light as an inappropriate revisionist viewpoint founded in our modern enlightenment worldview. Wright is careful to return to such nuances when necessary, hoping to remind the reader that Paul (and his 1st century world) would not have seen these things the way we do, and thus we must read Paul with his lenses on, not ours. My review would be in danger of becoming more lengthy than the source being reviewed if I tried to quote and support in any level of detail, but perhaps this will whet your appetite to dig into this breathtaking work by this brilliant scholar.

After having read a few other of Wright's books, I was surprised at how short, yet dense this book was. At about 175 pages, this book holds a profound amount of content. In fact, I am now on my fifth reading of the book in the last 12 days, simply because it took me that many repetitions to draw out some of the details, only after I could hold together the main points after a couple of readings. Each page, each paragraph is thick with explanation and exploration. Yet, it is not written as a cryptic scholarly "thesis" with a standard 30% footnote margin at the bottom. This book is very readable, and the words do not require a dictionary to read. But Wright has written this book so well, so densely that it does require digestion time- or like me, re-reading multiple times.

Of interest to the "Pauline" debaters and scholars is Wright's approach to the doctrine of "justification". I would only say this- if you haven't actually read this book, please don't try to attack its premise on this topic. I understand the desire for many to do so, since the point of justification by faith is so seminal to reformed theology and does (by some accounts) go back as far as Augustine. Wright's keen mind, his work as a historian and his equal desire to translate the 1st century message for our 21st century minds in a way that would allow us to understand his theories make all of this possible and accessible even if juxtaposed to what we've been polarized to believe.

An excellent book, incredibly well-written, with powerful (and fresh) perspectives on key Christian thinking.

Amazon Link: http://amzn.to/17pAy9R

Review by Kim Gentes

The central character of all Christendom is, of course, the person of Jesus. Yet, across even the Christian community there is much conjecture about some of the main tenants of the faith. An understanding of who Jesus is, why he came and what he accomplished are essential. Historian and theologian N.T. Wright approaches this subject as both a scholar and pastoral leader by combining the major points of his thesis from "Jesus & the Victory of God" (a complex scholarly graduate-level book) and the summarizing of "The Challenge of Jesus" (a much smaller book for local churches). Wright attacks the questions that people have about Jesus as a real, historical figure and the claims which Christians often take as "normal" for the faithful. But rather than deep technical renderings of logic and argument (such as his repudiations of others such as Dominic Crossnan in "Jesus & the Victory of God"), Wright focuses simply on explaining most of his reasoning from the scriptures themselves and drawing the backdrop from his work in history.

Wright does a brilliant job of explaining what he considers is the "real Jesus", one based on the historical context of the social, political and religious forces at work in the time of Jesus on earth. He does this primarily by explaining the three main forces driving the context for the narrative of the Gospels. The first force is the Roman empire and its dominating political and military control that crushes down on the middle east and the people of Israel. The second force is the ethos and history of the Jews, especially as it has been galvanized by the Maccabean dynasty, whose rebellious origins are the archetype for a series of nationalistic uprisings meant to free the Jews from a stream of dominating overlords (including the Greeks/Persians, Egyptians, Syrians, Parthians and Romans). The last great force is the self-critical voice of the prophetic tradition of the Jewish prophets. Wright explains each of these "forces" as a type of storm system which come together in the time and story of Jesus appearance to contribute to a kind of "perfect storm". Jesus positions his message- the kingdom of God- as the singular clear response to this perfect storm.

It is in the midst of this meteorological metaphor that Wright explains Jesus vocation with this brilliant language:

And with that, the sea is lashed into a frenzy; the wind makes the waves dance like wild things; and Jesus himself strides out into the middle of it all, into the very eye of the storm, announcing that the time is fulfilled, that God’s kingdom is now at hand. He commands his hearers to give up their other dreams and to trust his instead. This, at its simplest, is what Jesus was all about.1

What I love about this book is that the author is very clearly speaking to "everyman" here, and yet he still takes the opportunity to teach valuable history and theology.  This book is poignantly underpinned by Wright's foundational understanding of Jesus as the herald announcing, enacting and resetting our definition of God as the new king progressively taking over earth. Jesus reconstitutes the sacred symbols of temple and time around himself, which is the ultimate repudiation of Jewish religious systems and leaders- which is what leads to his death. Wright also makes it clear that Jesus was calling for a complete revolution and was himself a revolutionary leader in every aspect of the word- except military. Jesus announcement of a "new kingdom" could not, and would not, be seen as non-political, and the degree to which it was reinforced the Roman engagement (along with the Jewish leader's angst) in Christ's eventual crucifixion. The author doesn't say that it is only political, but that Jesus was calling for a new king in charge- God himself- in every aspect of cultural, familial and political sphere. 

The final, short section of the book deals with the results of Jesus claims as they are played out in the lives of his disciples and the early church.

I very much enjoyed this book by N.T. Wright. I feel it has more accessibility than many of his books, and obviously that is the intent here. He succeeds. It is also a very convincing coalescence of several of his themes presented in other books (the aforementioned, as well as "How God Became King"). He does this through his well paced metaphor (perfect storm) without descending into the depths of critical historical argumentation.

Amazon Link: http://amzn.to/16KZMgH

I highly recommend this book.

Review by Kim Gentes

1. Wright, N. T. (2011-10-25). Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters (p. 56). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. 

What Wright does with this book is bring us more clearly into the world of the historical first century Jew who became the central character of human history, namely Jesus Christ. Instead of interpreting the Jesus from our modern or post-modern contexts, Wright takes us into the world of prophetic Messianic writings, temple symbols and worship, political and nationalistic pursuits that enraptured the Jewish culture during the time of Jesus of Nazareth.  In "The Challenge of Jesus" Wright explains Jesus as the a person primarily driven through vocation, to fulfill his calls as Israel's Messiah, the hope and son of David and ultimately the light of the world. Wright sees Jesus as fully aware of his mission to be the Messianic figure that not only fulfills the prophetic writings, but actually displaces many of the essential symbols of his Jewish heritage (Sabbath, Temple, Torah and more). In this act of becoming the king of the Jews through claim, he seeks to become the replacement for the main functions of the Jewish Temple as well, taking on himself the activity of forgiveness of sins, worship, community and celebration.  Likewise Jesus articulates in himself a replacement for the Sabbath and the Torah wherein Jesus becomes the embodied Word of God and the sabbath rest for man.

Wright attempts to communicate that Jesus certainly thought of himself as messiah and vocationally as the son of Abba, doing His will on earth, though he doesn't go so far as to say Jesus knows himself to be God omniscient under human skin.  And this is good, because it requires us to spin 180 degrees around and back up 2000 years into the question and see it from the historical perspective looking forward from the first century on, rather than backward from the 21st century looking back two millennium.  Our aspect, though strange at first, takes on much brighter inspection on the life of Jesus and the often misunderstood meanderings of the first  century church. What Wright proposes is a thoroughly eschatological viewpoint of the Christ story and of early church history- one in which the hopes of Israel are so completely fulfilled in Jesus that its abrupt and contrasting arrival is violently opposed by many of the  effected parties who would have their positions and power challenged if what Jesus said was true: the Pharisees, the Sanhedrin, the Romans, the Teachers of the Law, the revolutionary Zionists and almost any power-based organization.  But through the death and resurrection of Jesus, He becomes the vindicated Messiah and the long waited Savior of Israel.  But He does so by surprising them in doing this as both completely man and as God-in-the-flesh, dwelling among humans as the new fully human way to live.

Of minor complaint in reading this book is that Wright does a disservice in his work that puts off the reader to consider the writer perhaps less interested in the text than the reader is. He reflects, not once or twice but literally a dozen or more times on the fact that he will not take much time or space to support a theory or two in depth. Presumably he has better things to do than fill the book with back-story, recounted data and textual references, but the student and reader isn't convinced. In the end, this constant reminding that he does serves to weaken the text left intact in the manuscript. I'd even much rather he said that he deals with this all in detail in another volume. He says this occasionally, though not enough to convince the reader that they are either a novice who will get those details if they keep going or an idiot if they haven't read all the historical documents he takes us for having needed to fully explain his point. I recognize that this book is an attempt to articulate the content of "Jesus and the Victory of God" (his scholarly account of this same topic), but Wright would have kept the thing clear if he didn't try to constantly complain about having to right such a "boiled down" version - he should have made his point a couple of times then stopped.

What conclusively and profoundly is pointed out by Wright in this book is the concept of Jesus fitting well into the narrative of Jewish history- what he calls the “meta-narrative”. This particular label provides a stark rendering of how to conceive of the life of Jesus inside the great story. Not just a story for his time, but for the ancient peoples and for us today, as for those yet to come.  Jesus did not “hi-jack” the story line of humanity, interjecting a bit of God to help us get along. In Wrights “Challenge”, Jesus becomes the pivotal character, at the pivotal time, on the pivotal issues. All of which helps us understand much better how to orient ourselves to the truth about God, humanity and our particular part in it.  How we fit in is becomes a more clear rendering within of the meta-narrative. It forces us to consider starting at and with Jesus perspective and point in time rather than a selfish modern (or post-modern) rant effusing arrogantly over top of past generations, by interpreting our place and time as having more particular influence upon a clear reading of the meanings of Jesus, His life, the gospel story, the New Testament and even the entire human history.

One important sub-plot of this meta-narrative was the theme of Exodus, which reverberated through Jewish tradition. Jesus came to fulfill, in the Jewish, story the exodus out of the captivity of sin into the promises land.  This was likely the prime story recounted and in the mind of his hearers.  But since Jesus did not fulfill this with Israel as a political or military triumph, leaders and people as a whole missed the point of Jesus “revolution”. Nevertheless, Jesus acts were the true exodus, not just for Israel, but the whole world, bringing about the engagement of the Kingdom of God on earth. The King was here, and the activity of walking people out of Egypt via the exodus into their land of forgiveness of sin was here.  The fulfillment of Christ across this story was the thoroughly Jewish rendering of God’s salvation come to earth.

Amazon Book Link: http://amzn.to/HwNNeV

Review by Kim Gentes