by N.T. Wright
HarperOne. New York. 240 pages
As with any controversial author who has written scores of books, readers must be choosey. With N.T. Wright, a New Testament scholar and former Anglican Bishop, a dauntless reader might plunge directly into his multi-volume “Christian Origins and the Question of God.” For the more wary and time-pressed, however, there are a number of good popular alternatives that would serve as better entrées to his work. “Surprised by Hope” is probably the best systematic introduction to his thought, but “Simply Jesus” or “How God Became King” would do too.
“Surprised by Scripture,” a collection of 12 papers and addresses, is a good choice as well for the uninitiated because it covers, from a variety of angles, the issues that most concern this prolific and protean author. Also helpful from an American perspective is that eight of the chapters were originally addressed to U.S. audiences and so reflect our special concerns.
Wright’s bête noir, introduced in the first chapter and reappearing in several others, is Epicureanism. A worldview he believes to have been foundational for the Enlightenment, Epicureanism posits that God is absent from the physical universe and lives somewhere up above, utterly detached from affairs on earth. As a philosophy it has been embraced by thinkers as diverse as Machiavelli, Hobbes and Jefferson, and it is subtly reinforced in modern democratic cultures by notions such as the separation of church and state. In the 18th century it was seen as a liberating idea but, Wright wryly notes, has had mixed results in the long run, giving us a science that has produced both penicillin and Hiroshima.
Christians, he explains, have been complicit in this “split-level Epicurean worldview” in that we have often presented the gospel as an escape from the grimness of this world to an ethereal heaven above — a view epitomized in John Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” What Wright wants to announce with fireworks and floodlights is that it was never God’s intention to abandon this world, but to redeem it. In his view, the mistaken belief that the Christian endgame is to get to heaven is based on a Gnostic dualism. Yes, we are to look forward to a new heaven and a new earth, but these will be both continuous and discontinuous with the present age. In effect, the old will give birth to the new.
With this clearly in mind, the New Testament can be read in new and startling ways. The Gospels, for example, can be seen as God in public challenging the powers that be and presenting a this-world alternative to them; and Paul’s letter to the Romans (chapters 1-8) can be seen as a theology climaxing not in personal salvation — the traditional view of Protestant scholars from Luther on — but in the renewal of the whole creation. Along the way, Wright shows how his grand insight relates to a number of vexing issues: the historical Adam, the ordination of women, resurrection, ecology, eschatology, theodicy and the church’s public vocation.
While many of Wright’s other books are more methodically argued, the breadth and profundity of his reinterpretation of Scripture benefits from being presented in a few broad strokes. The resulting big picture can indeed be surprising, even breathtaking.
MICHAEL PARKER is director of graduate studies and professor of church history at Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo, Egypt.
