Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters Author: N. T. Wright | Language: English | ISBN:
B004V9MQW6 | Format: EPUB
Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters Description
In Simply Jesus, bestselling author and leading Bible scholar N.T. Wright summarizes 200 years of modern Biblical scholarship and models how Christians can best retell the story of Jesus today. In a style similar to C.S. Lewis’s popular works, Wright breaks down the barriers that prevent Christians from fully engaging with the story of Jesus. For believers confronting the challenge of connecting with their faith today, and for readers of Timothy Keller’s The Reason for God, Wright’s Simply Jesus offers a provocative new picture of how to understand who Jesus was and how Christians should relate to him today.
- File Size: 440 KB
- Print Length: 256 pages
- Publisher: HarperOne (October 25, 2011)
- Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
- Language: English
- ASIN: B004V9MQW6
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #23,942 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #8
in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Bible Study & Reference > New Testament > Biography - #34
in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Bible Study & Reference > New Testament > Jesus, the Gospels & Acts - #42
in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Biographies
- #8
in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Bible Study & Reference > New Testament > Biography - #34
in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Bible Study & Reference > New Testament > Jesus, the Gospels & Acts - #42
in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Biographies
N.T. Wright's latest book, "Simply Jesus," claims to be a new vision of who Jesus is and what He did. Ultimately, the book is what it claims. It's a sometimes brilliant and inspiring re-presentation of who Jesus is and what He came to do. But unfortunately, Wright doesn't make this clear until the end of Chapter 11. A good summary of Wright's major theme is this sentence from Chapter 11: "The gospels are not about `how Jesus turned out to be God.' They are about how God became king on earth as in heaven." Put another way: the Good News of Jesus Christ has to do with much more than people simply escaping earth for heaven.
Wright develops this theme throughout and does, indeed, offer a fresh and invigorating vision of Jesus Christ. But the book is marred by the fact that Wright's best and most important ideas aren't clear until so late in the book that they would be easy to miss. In fact, I would highly recommend reading Chapters 11, 13, 14, and 15 first so that the rest of the book may be more profitable! Because of the wonderful, challenging insights in the final few chapters, I give the book 4 stars, despite a very slow and not particularly refreshing beginning.
Chapter 1 is very slow going and doesn't do much to present Jesus in a new light or help us to see Him any better. In Chapter 2, Wright presents 3 puzzles understanding Jesus represents: Jesus' world is foreign to us; Jesus' God is strange to us; and Jesus spoke and acted as if he was in charge. Chapter 2 wasn't particularly insightful.
Chapter 3 discusses what Wright terms the distortions of skepticism and conservatism. He's wrong, however, to put the two on the same level; one proceeds from faith and is an honest attempt to accept the Christ of the Gospels - the other isn't.
I'll never forget what it was like having my mind blown. I thought that twenty years of growing up in the church and an undergraduate degree in Christian ministry with a heavy emphasis on biblical text had given me a pretty good grasp of the Bible, particularly the New Testament. Then I was assigned N.T. Wright's The New Testament and the People of God for my first graduate class, "Advanced Introduction to the New Testament." It only took a couple pages and my mind was blown. Wright revolutionized my understanding of the Jewishness of Jesus, turned upside down my ideas about the Pharisees, and opened my eyes to the gospel's rightful place within the story of God and God's people, Israel. So began my journey with Wright that has played a pivotal role in my overarching journey of faith and ministry.
It is thus with great anticipation that I approach each new contribution to Wright's canon. I don't so much expect to have my mind blown again; before I was navigating scripture with a completely different map than Wright, now I think I'm looking at and using the same map. However, I do expect to have my understanding refined, my eyes opened to things I've previously overlooked, and some of my conclusions challenged. Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters has done precisely that.
Cutting through the fog that destroys communication between skeptics and conservatives and mapping with clarity a way through the challenging terrain of historic complexity, Wright lays out the contest that is underlying, overlaying, and surrounding any conversation about Jesus: Roman aspirations for dominance, Jewish longings for liberation, and God's intention of establishing God's kingdom on earth as in heaven.
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