A Review of N.T. Wright's The Challenge of Jesus

This will be a chapter-by-chapter review of N.T. Wright's book The Challenge of Jesus. Wright is a prolific Anglican theologian. The core of the book comes from a series of lectures he gave in the late 1990s concerning a wide array of topics pertaining to Jesus, such as how radical his message was, the evidence for his resurrection, and how Christians should follow Jesus in the world today.

My general reaction to this book was positive, though I no doubt had disagreements (some of these will be highlighted in the content that follows). Wright endorses positions I do not hold, such as his views surrounding Pauline theology of justification by faith, but he is well within the bounds of orthodoxy and has produced much edifying content over the years.

All references are to the book. The page numbers are approximate and based off of a digital edition of the text.

Chapter 1 - The Challenge of Studying Jesus

In Chapter 1, Wright discusses the importance and challenges of studying the historical Jesus. Indeed, as he says, "I regard the continuing historical quest for Jesus as a necessary part of ongoing Christian discipleship." (15) He gives four reasons that make it "imperative":
1) "We shall only discover who the true and living God actually is if we take the risk of looking at Jesus himself. That is why contemporary debates about Jesus are so important; they are also debates about God himself." (17)
2) Loyalty to Scripture. "For me the dynamic of a commitment to Scripture is not 'we believe the Bible, so there is nothing more to be learned' but rather 'we believe the Bible, so we had better discover all the things in it to which our traditions, including our "protestant" or "evangelical" traditions, which have supposed themselves to be "biblical" but are sometimes demonstrably not, have made us blind.'" (17)
3) The Christian imperative to truth. Wright puts it boldly "Christians must not be afraid of truth." (17) He points out that this is the attitude of the reductionists, but says that that this is not his agenda. He intends to "go deeper into the meaning" (17) of Christian doctrines and come to a greater understanding of them within their original setting.
4) The Christian commitment to mission. "The skeptics can and must be answered," says Wright, "and when we do so we will not merely reaffirm the traditions of the church, whether Protestant, Catholic, evangelical or whatever." (18) This is crucially important for the church today in winning intellectually-minded people to its fold.

Wright then pivots into a brief historical discussion of the study of the historical Jesus. He focuses on the Enlightenment, highlighting the intellectual development thereof and the splintering of the scholarly landscape into polarized extremes. "Jesus was almost bound to appear as the teacher of either liberal timeless truths or conservative timeless truths." (22) He goes on to say, "I believe, then, that within the multiple tasks to which God is calling the church in our own generation, there remains the necessary task of addressing the Enlightenment's question as to who precisely Jesus was and what precisely he accomplished." (22)

The next section contains a discussion of new opportunities in the quest. Wright highlights the tools we have now that make it easier than ever to study Jesus in the setting of first-century Judaism, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls. He argues that seminarians, pastors, and even non-specialists should take the quest seriously.

"It is because we believe we are called to be the people of God for the world that we must take the full historical task with utter seriousness. Study all the evidence; think through all the arguments... If human maturity is evidenced by delayed gratification, one sign of Christian maturity may be a readiness to hear the argument through to the end, not short-circuiting it in the interests of a quick-fix spirituality or missiology. Patience is as much a virtue in history and theology as it is anywhere else." (29-30)

Chapter 2 - The Challenge of the Kingdom

In Chapter 2, Wright sets out to address the question "What did Jesus mean when he said the kingdom of God was at hand?" (32)

He analyzes what "the kingdom of God" would mean in the context of first-century Judaism. He explains: "The Jews of Jesus' day, as is well-known, were living under foreign rule and had been for several centuries. The worst thing about that was not the high taxation, the alien laws, the brutality of oppression and so on, awful though that often was. The worst thing was that the foreigners were pagan. If Israel was truly God's people, why were the pagans ruling over her?" (33)

He explains that the Jews had three options for dealing with this conflict:
1) Quietist: "Separate yourself from the wicked world and wait for God to do whatever God is going to do." (34)
2) Compromise: "Build yourself fortresses and palaces, get along with your political bosses as well as you can, do as well out of it as you can and hope that God will validate it somehow." (34)
3) Zealot: "Say your prayers, sharpen your swords, make yourselves holy to fight a war, and God will give you a military victory that will also be the theological victory of good over evil, of God over the hordes of darkness, of the Son of Man over the monsters." (34)

Wright argues that Jesus was none of the above—"he went back to Israel's Scriptures and found there another kingdom-model, equally Jewish if not more so... The kingdom of God, he said, is at hand." (34) In other words, God was going to have mercy on Israel and the whole world through Jesus.

He asserts, "Jews of Jesus' day did not, by and large, expect that the space-time universe was going to come to a stop. They did expect that God was going to act so dramatically within the space-time universe, as he had before at key moments like the Exodus, that the only appropriate language would be the language of a world taken apart and reborn." (35)

Wright moves on to discuss the thrust of Jesus' messages from three different angles: the end of exile, the call of the renewed people, and disaster and vindication.

The End of Exile

Wright discusses two parables that he argues can be freshly understood when read within their historical context. The first is the parable of the sower. He argues that the parable has two Old Testament roots: the prophetic language used of Israel's return of exile (e.g. Jeremiah's discourse on God sowing the Israelites in their own land) and the apocalyptic storytelling found elsewhere in the Hebrew Scriptures. For the latter he references Daniel 2. In short, "The kingdom of God, the return from exile, the great climax of Israel's history, is here, Jesus is saying, though it does not look like you thought it would." (37)

The second parable is of the prodigal son. "A story about a scoundrel young son who goes off into a far pagan country and is then astonishlingly welcomed back home is—of course!—the story of exile and restoration... The parable was not a general illustration of the timeless truth of God's forgiveness for the sinner, though of course it can be translated into that. It was a sharp-edged, context-specific message about what was happening in Jesus' ministry." (38)

Wright argues that both of these parables teach general theological truths as well as specific things about the kingdom of Israel and the return from exile. 

The Call of the Renewed People 

Wright offers an analysis of Jesus' call to "repent and believe", arguing that we need to understand it within the context of first-century Judaism. He offers a particularly interesting example from Josephus to illustrate what the phrase meant in that context.

As a young military commander, Josephus was tasked with persuading the Galileans against brazenly revolting against Rome, telling them that they should instead trust the Jewish leaders to come up with a better plan. "So when he confronted the rebel leader, he says that he told him to give up his own agenda and to trust him, Josephus, instead. And the word he uses are remarkably familiar to readers of the Gospels: he told the brigand leader to 'repent and believe in me'." (40) In other words, Josephus was telling the rebel leader to stop trying to bring about the desired outcome on your own. There's a better plan; you just have to wait. Wright comments: "Even if we end up suggesting that Jesus meant more than Josephus did—that there were indeed religious and theological dimensions to his invitation—we cannot suppose that he meant less. He was telling his hearers to give up their agendas and to trust him for his way of being Israel, his way of bringing the kingdom, his kingdom-agenda." (40)

At the end of this section, Wright comments regarding the reliability of the Gospels that Jesus' lack of emphasis on reaching the Gentiles is "an interesting sign" (43) that the Gospel authors were concerned about the reliability of the sayings about Jesus. This is an example of restraint on the part of the Gospel authors. While no individual example of restraint shows much, the combined strength of numerous examples is a good piece of evidence for the reliability of the Gospels.

Disaster and Vindication

In this section Wright addresses some of the claims that Jesus thought the world would end in his lifetime. With regard to the Olivet discourse, he says "... it is to be read, I suggest, as a prediction not of the end of the world but of the fall of Jerusalem. The critical thing, here and elsewhere, is to understand how apocalyptic language works." (45)

Ultimately, Wright concludes that Jesus did not think the world would end in his lifetime. For topical reasons, he doesn't provide a full treatment of the various verses and historical observations used in support of this view. Some of these matters have been addressed by others on this blog. See here, for example.

Chapter 3 - The Challenge of the Symbols

Chapter 3 contains a discussion of various symbols of Judaism that received new meaning through the person of Jesus as well as new symbols of the in-breaking kingdom of God.

The Symbols of Judaism 

The Sabbath. Wright comments, "All the signs are that Jesus behaved with sovereign freedom toward the sabbath." He discusses the various attitudes Jesus displayed toward the Sabbath, emphasizing that Luke's gospel argues "the sabbath was the most appropriate day for healing to take place". (54) In Jesus' ministry, therefore, he is indicating that Israel's sabbath has come.

Nation and land. Wright discusses how many of Jesus' sayings seemed to undermine the honor the Jews placed on their nation and land. Jesus repeatedly teaches that the kingdom of God is more important than the nation and land of the Jews.

Temple. The primary symbol of Judaism is the Temple, and Wright spends much more time discussing this than the other signs. He emphasizes that Jesus' attitude toward the Temple was not one of trivial disaffection: "His deepest belief regarding the Temple was eschatological: the time had come for God to judge the entire institution." (57) He then discusses Jesus' purpose in cleansing the temple, ultimately arguing that Jesus was, in a sense, acting out the Temple's destruction. I'm generally skeptical of these arguments that try and enter the mind of Jesus, declaring what his intent was in what he did. Wright's proposal has an aura of plausibility to it, however, even if we accept that Jesus' purpose in cleansing the temple was most likely multifaceted. 

The Symbols of the Kingdom 

Land and people. Wright argues that Jesus chose specific locations, such as the Temple or the Mount of Olives, for purposes of "symbolic geography" (60) when he was delivering a teaching. He also argues that Jesus' healings are to be seen as symbolic of the reconstitution of Israel. He summarizes the "messianic rule" from Qumran (1QSa) as "There the blind, the lame, the deaf and the dumb were excluded from membership in the community of God's restored people." (60) In other words, healing was a prerequisite for entry into the kingdom of God, so Jesus' healing people was symbolic of the beginning of the kingdom.

Family. "Through his actions and words Jesus was calling into being a people with a new identity, a new family." (61)

Torah. Wright notes the correlation between forgiveness and the Exile. The Exile was viewed as punishment for Israel's sins, and so forgiveness was inextricably linked with the return from Exile. "If Jesus' table-fellowship replaced the food laws, his demand of forgiveness was part of his definition of the new family, the new people of God. In other words, it was part of his redefined symbolic Torah." (62)

Temple. Wright notes some indications throughout Jesus' ministry on God being present outside of the Temple in the same way he would be inside of it, thus establishing a new system by which Israel could relate to God. He references the Jewish practice of fasting as shown in Mark 2:18-22. Since fasting was a result of the Exile, Wright argues, the fact that Jesus' disciples didn't fast symbolized the end of the Exile.

Wright closes the chapter by concluding that we can definitively say that Jesus regarded the kingdom of God as happening in the present but continuing on into the future. (64)

Chapter 4 - The Crucified Messiah

Chapter 4 is a discussion of the fact that the Messiah was crucified—an unexpected turn—and its ramifications for the grand turning point of history.

After cautioning us about our inability to discern the psychological disposition of an ancient individual, Wright comments, "What we can in principle do as historians, however, is to study someone's awareness of vocation... We can examine their actions and sayings and can work back with a fair degree of certainty to their aims and intentions. This is not to psychoanalyze them. It is to do what historians normally do." (67)

He goes on to say, "The messianic agenda aimed, through these things, to do for Israel what Israel's prophets had declared would be done: to rescue Israel and to bring God's justice to the world. Part of asking, 'Did Jesus think he was the Messiah?' is to ask, 'Did he in any sense intend to accomplish these tasks?'" (67) Wright argues that the resurrection alone would not convince the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah; there had to be some expectation or sense that he was that before he died. Having said this, Wright launches into an examination of the life of Jesus for characteristics of Messiahship.

A primary piece of evidence cited for Jesus' messianic actions is how he pronounced judgment on the Temple. He also cites some of Jesus' parables, such as the parable of the wicked tenants, as evidencing Messiahship.

After discussing various other events in Jesus' career that are best viewed through this lens, Wright concludes the section by saying "[Jesus] came to accomplish Israel's rescue, to bring God's justice to the world." (72)

He comments later, "I propose, in other words, that we can credibly reconstruct a mindset in which a first-century Jew would come to believe that YHWH would act through the suffering of a particular individual in whom Israel's sufferings were focused; that this suffering would carry redemptive significance; and that this individual would be himself. And I propose that we can plausibly suggest that this was the mindset of Jesus himself." (78) This fits with some of Wright's comments elsewhere (see Chapter 5) about Jesus' lack of knowledge of his own deity. This is not a subject I have studied at length, but while Wright's position is certainly striking, I don't regard it as particularly problematic given a robust model of the incarnation.

With regard to how Jesus understood this mission, Wright comments, "He would thereby do for Israel what Israel could not do for herself. He would fulfill Israel's vocation that she should be the servant people, the light of the world. This, I suggest, was how Jesus understood his messianic vocation." (79)

In the conclusion of the chapter, Wright says that "some critical scholars have chided me with claiming to know more than we can and with projecting back into Jesus' mind all sorts of things that we cannot be sure were ever there." (81) As this is a criticism I had as well, I was curious to see how he would respond.

Wright responds by saying "the best historical hypothesis is the one that with appropriate simplicity explains the data before us... since so many details of this picture are not the same as the early church's atonement-theology... a very strong case can in fact be made out." (82) He says that "all the signs are that Jesus did indeed make this particular construal of the overarching narrative and apply it to himself" (82) and thus we are justified in believing that this is how Jesus thought of himself. Again, I find Wright's proposal plausible but not demonstrable with any degree of certainty. Though it does provide a beautiful picture of the grand metanarrative and Jesus' understanding of his place in it, a healthy skepticism is warranted.

Wright summarizes the chapter with an allusion to practical application, a matter he discusses more fully in Chapters 7 and 8: "The cross is the surest, truest and deepest window on the very heart and character of the living and loving God; the more we learn about the cross in all its historical and theological dimensions, the more we discover about the One in whose image we are made and hence about our own vocation to be the cross-bearing people, the people in whose lives and service the living God is made known." (83)

Chapter 5 - Jesus & God

In this chapter Wright addresses the questions "Was Jesus God?" and "Did Jesus know he was God?". He begins by explaining the ambiguity surrounding those questions: "There are, then, plenty of 'gods' currently on offer. But do any of them have anything to do with Jesus? It is vital that in our generation we enquire once more: to what, or rather whom, does the word god truly refer? And if as Christians we bring together Jesus and God in some kind of identity, what sort of an answer does that provide to our question?" (87)

Wright spends a few pages discussing Jewish monotheism and various concepts of the word "God" in first-century Judaism. He concludes by saying "Jewish monotheism was much more complicated than was supposed by those who said so glibly that since Jews were monotheists they could not conceive of a human being as divine." (94)

With this out of the way, the chapter discusses early Christian views of Jesus and God. Wright comments "All the signs are that the earliest Christians very quickly came to the startling conclusion that they were under obligation, without ceasing to be Jewish monotheists to worship Jesus." (94) As evidence of this high Christology, he cites 1 Corinthians 8.1-6, Philippians 2.5-11, Galatians 4.1-7, and Colossians 1.15-20.

Wright asks where the early Christians got the idea that they should elevate Jesus this highly. After heading off some "false trails" (e.g., that the Messiah was already conceived of as divine before Jesus came, or that the resurrection established Jesus' divinity), he moves back to the life and teaching of Jesus, asking "What signs are there within his own agenda and vocation that these trains of thought originated with him rather than being wished on him by the early church?" (98)

Wright emphasizes the conflict between Jesus and the Temple. The Temple is where God came to be with humanity, but Jesus was now the embodiment of God. "for Jesus to upstage the Temple, to take on its role and function and to legitimate this with Davidic claims, meant that Jesus was claiming that he rather than the Temple was the place where and the means by which the living God was present with Israel." (98) In support of Jesus' divine self-identity, Wright also emphasizes Jesus' authority over the Jewish Scripture and his understanding that he could issue a new version of the Torah.

Further on in the chapter, Wright argues that Jesus' parables about a master returning to see how his servants were getting along with things they were supposed to do is not a reference to the second coming: "Even granted that Jesus' hearers did not always grasp what he said, it strains probability a long way to think of him attempting to explain to people who had not grasped the fact of his imminent death that there would follow an indeterminate period after which he would 'return' in some spectacular fashion for which nothing in their tradition had prepared them." (103) Rather, he argues that they're symbolic of Jesus' final coming to Jerusalem before his crucifixion: "the return of YHWH to Zion" (104). 

Wright is skeptical that Jesus viewed himself as the second person of the Trinity and argues that we should cautious about assuming a particular view of God and then assuming that Jesus must have been just like that: "Focus, instead, on a young Jewish prophet telling a story about YHWH returning to Zion as judge and redeemer, and then embodying it by riding into the city in tears, symbolizing the Temple's destruction and celebrating the final exodus." (108) Again, this is an interesting proposal, but I lack the expertise to comment further on it.

The chapter thus closes: "When we see, as Paul says, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and when we rediscover the length and breadth of what that phrase means, we see and discover this not for our own benefit but so that the glory may shine in us and through us, to bring light and life to the world that still waits in darkness and the shadow of death." (109)

Chapter 6 - The Challenge of Easter

Chapter 6 contains a brief but substantive discussion of the resurrection.

Wright begins by discussing several popular but misguided attempts to explain away the resurrection, such as the swoon theory. "As has been shown often enough, the Romans knew how to kill people, and the reappearance of a battered and exhausted Jesus would hardly be likely to suggest to his followers something for which they were certainly not prepared, namely, that he had gone through death and out the other side." (113) 

He then comments on the Pauline distinction between resurrection and exaltation: "Paul argues that all Christians will be raised as Jesus was raised, but he does not suppose that they will thereby share the unique divine sonship that, in the same letter, he attributes to Jesus. Already in Paul, in fact, we see the clear distinction between 'resurrection'—a newly embodied life after death—and 'exaltation' or 'enthronement' a distinction that some scholars have suggested only enters the tradition with Luke." (115) In other words, Jesus' resurrection and exaltation were separate events. Wright comments further on this when he discusses 1 Corinthians 15.

Wright then proposes a historical argument about what happened on Easter, consisting of three stages with four steps each. He suggests that we need to view Christianity as a kingdom-of-God movement, a resurrection movement, and a messianic movement.

A kingdom-of-God movement
1. Early Christianity was a kingdom-of-god movement.
"Already by the time of Paul the phrase 'kingdom of God' had become more or less a shorthand for the movement, its way of life and its raison-d'être." (116)

2. "Kingdom of God" had specific meanings in Judaism.
The kingdom of God meant the return of Israel from exile and the accomplishment of God's purposes for it. "If you had said to some first-century Jews 'the kingdom of God is here' and had explained yourself by speaking of a new spiritual experience, a new sense of forgiveness, an exciting reordering of your private religious interiority, they might well have said that they were glad you had had this experience, but why did you refer to it as the kingdom of God?" (116)

3. These specific meanings had not come to pass.
"Israel was not liberated; the Temple was not rebuilt; looking wider, it was obvious that evil, injustice pain and death were still on the rampage." (117)

4. Therefore, there must be some reason why the Jews came to believe that the kingdom of God had arrived.
Wright argues that there must have been some reason for the Jews to come to these conclusions.

A resurrection movement
1. There were many different Jewish views about the afterlife.
Wright explains various views such as "ultimate nonphysical bliss" (118), the resurrection of the righteous, or no afterlife at all (as espoused by the Sadducees). He comments, "Though there was a range of belief about life after death, the word resurrection was only used to describe reembodiment, not the state of disembodied bliss." (118) I fear this is a bit of an oversimplification—there were other conceptions of resurrection at the time. However, a physical reembodiment was one of the most common, and thus factors into the background knowledge for what Jesus' resurrection was believed to be.

2. The temporary disembodiment preceding bodily resurrection could not be referred to as resurrection.
Wright links the Jewish understanding of "resurrection" to the return of Israel from exile. He argues that first-century Jews would have thought of resurrection as a package of embodiment and the dawning of the new age.

3. The new age, as traditionally conceived, had not come.
The general resurrection hadn't occurred yet. Wright cites Acts 4:2 ("...being greatly disturbed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.") as evidence that the resurrection from the dead had already occurred. "They behaved, in other words, as though the new age had already arrived." (120)

4. There must be a reason the Jews came to believe Jesus was raised from the dead.
Again, Wright argues we must postulate a reason for this shift in Jewish beliefs.

A messianic movement
1. The early church continued to believe that Jesus was the Messiah, even after his death.
Jesus was called the Messiah well after his death. See, for example, Matthew 1.1. Wright argued in Chapter 4 that belief in the resurrection wouldn't have led the Christians to think Jesus was the Messiah; thus, there must have been some precedent for it in his words and teaching. 

2. There were clear expectations in Judaism for what the Messiah would accomplish.
"Jewish expectations of a Messiah, as we have seen often enough, focused on defeating the pagans, rebuilding the Temple and bringing God's justice to the world." (121)

3. Jesus did not fulfill these.
Obviously, the Roman empire was still very much intact after Jesus died, Israel hadn't been restored to its own land, and the world hadn't seen God's justice. Yet, the early church continued to affirm Jesus as the Messiah.

4. Therefore, we must explain why the early Christians continued to believe this.
Again, we must offer an explanation for this peculiar affirmation.

1 Corinthians 15
Wright pivots into a discussion of 1 Corinthians 15. He asserts that Paul's experience was different than the others: "We trace a clear sense that Paul knew that what had happened to him was precisely not like what had happened to the others." (124) He also argues that Paul's experience couldn't have merely been an inward spiritual illumination: "When he says 'last of all,' he means that what one might call the ordinary Christian experience of knowing the risen Jesus within the life of the church, of prayer and faith and the sacraments, was not the same sort of thing that had happened to him." (124) These are helpful observations that help answer some objections to Paul's use of the creed in 1 Corinthians 15. Discussion of some of these issues can be found here.

Wright then argues from linguistics that Paul believed in a physical resurrection, and concludes the section by discussing Paul's distinction between resurrection and exaltation: "1 Corinthians 15 clearly gives the lie to this. The exaltation of Jesus is clearly distinguished from the resurrection. Of course, since the risen Jesus is the same person as the exalted Lord and since his resurrection is the prior condition for his exaltation, there is close continuity between the two. Where his argument requires it (as, for instance, in Phil 2.5-11), Paul is quite capable of referring only to the exaltation, not to the resurrection. But in this passage where he sets the matter out more fully than anywhere else, the two are aligned without confusion and distinguished without dislocation." (127) I'm not entirely sure where Wright would draw the distinction between resurrection and exaltation in 1 Corinthians 15 and would have appreciated a further explication of his position.

Wright then offers a brief critique of the hallucination theory: "If one had described such an experience to a first-century Jew, and even if such a person had been entused to the extent of experiencing something similar himself or herself, it would never have convinced them that the age to come had burst into the present time, that it was now time for the Gentiles to hear the good news, that the kingdom was really here, that Jesus was after all the Messiah." (130) While this assertion requires nuance, the radical shift that so many Jews came to embrace is certainly a fact in need of an explanation.

A concluding quote: "I believe, therefore, that the only way forward for us as historians is to grasp the nettle, recognizing that we are of course here at the borders of language, of philosophy, of history and of theology. We had better learn to take seriously the witness of the entire early church, that Jesus of Nazareth was raised bodily to a new sort of life, three days after his execution." (130)

Chapter 7 - Walking to Emmaus in a Postmodern World

In this particularly touching chapter, Wright discusses what it looks like to display Christ in a postmodern world. He briefly discusses several cultural trends and modern outlooks on knowledge, truth, and the self, but spends the bulk of the chapter discussing the resurrection appearance on the Emmaus road through the lens of Psalms 42 and 43.

"The Hebrew Scriptures thus offered to Jesus and his contemporaries a story in search of an ending. Jesus' followers had thought the ending was going to happen with Jesus. And it clearly had not. How had they thought it would happen? The pattern of messianic and prophetic movements in the centuries either side of Jesus tells a fairly clear story. The method was quite simple: holiness, zeal for God and the law, and military revolt. The holy remnant with God on their side would defeat the pagan hordes. Thus it had always been in Scripture; thus, they believed, it would be when the great climax came, when Israel's God would become King of all the world." (141)

In light of this, Wright argues that the crucifixion would have been interpreted as the end of all hope that Jesus was the Messiah, and thus spark the discussion on the road to Emmaus.

But, Wright comments, "Suppose the reason the key would not fit the lock was because they were trying the wrong door. Suppose Jesus' execution was not the clear disproof of his messianic vocation but its confirmation and climax. Suppose the cross was not one more example of the triumph of paganism over God's people but was actually God's means of defeating evil once and for all. Suppose this was, after all, how the exile was designed to end, how sins were to be forgiven, how the kingdom was to come. Suppose this was what God's light and truth looked like coming unexpectedly to lead his people back into his presence." (143)

Wright then moves into a discussion concerning various details in Luke's narrative that could be symbolic, such as the breaking of bread and the fact that this is the eighth meal reported in Luke's Gospel (e.g., the first after the initial seven, symbolizing the start of the new creation week). I'm generally unconvinced by such speculative arguments, and these were no exception, but they were nonetheless interesting to hear.

The chapter ends with a discussion on how to apply this to living out Christ in our own culture. Wright puts a heavy emphasis on the actions of Christians, saying "I am reminded of St. Francis's instructions to his followers as he sent them out: preach the gospel by all means possible, he said, and if it's really necessary you could even use words." (148) I wholeheartedly agree with this: a Christian should be able to communicate the Gospel through their actions. As Wright says, "We must therefore get used to a mission that includes living the true Christian praxis. Christian praxis consists in the love of God in Christ being poured out in us and through us." (148)

Chapter 8 - The Light of the World

In this chapter, Wright elaborates on Chapter 7 and suggests some more practical applications. He repeatedly emphasizes the new world brought in by the resurrection of Jesus: "Then on Easter morning it is the first day of the week. Creation is complete; new creation can now begin." (156)

Wright then discusses some ways he thinks Christians have misunderstood the relationship between this world and the world that is to come: "Some have so emphasized the discontinuity between the present world and our work in it on the one hand and the future world that God will make on the other that they suppose God will simply throw the present world in the trash can and leave us in a totally different sphere altogether... On the other hand, some have so emphasized the continuity between the present world and the coming new world that they have imagined we can actually build the kingdom of God by our own hard work." (158)

This is certainly a refreshing perspective, standing in contrast to those peddled by individuals of other eschatological positions, such as premillennial futurism. Wright would argue that we are living in the period between the beginning of the kingdom of God and the final establishing thereof, and thus it is not befitting for Christians to neglect caring for the world.

He elaborates further: "We do not have to achieve what Jesus achieved; we cannot, and even to suppose that we might imitate him in that way would be to deny that he achieved what in fact he did. Rather—and this is absolutely crucial to understanding what is going on—our task is to implement his unique achievement. We are like the musicians called to play and sing the unique and once-only-written musical score. We don't have to write it again, but we have to play it." (158)

After developing this point for a while, Wright discusses of what exactly our present task consists. He claims, "Our task is now to build the house, to tend the garden, to play the score. The human race has been in exile; exiled from the garden, shut out of the house, bombarded with noise instead of music. Our task is to announce in deed and word that the exile is over, to enact the symbols that speak of healing and forgiveness, to act boldly in God's world in the power of the Spirit." (163)

One of Wright's points throughout this chapter is that it doesn't much matter whether your discipline is something like ministry or something like mathematics: "You are called, prayerfully, to discern where in your discipline the human project is showing signs of exile and humbly and boldly to act symbolically in ways that declare that the powers have been defeated, that the kingdom has come in Jesus the Jewish Messiah, that the new way of being human has been unveiled, and to be prepared to tell the story that explains what these symbols are all about." (164)

Wright argues that Christians should be at the forefront of solving world difficulties, giving some practical examples of what this might look like. This is a part of mending the world and declaring that the exile is over. I agree with him here as well. Christians shouldn't sit back and let others tackle these issues, hoping that Jesus will return soon and whisk us away from every current difficulty. Rather, if we truly believe that Jesus ended the exile and ushered in the kingdom of God, if we truly believe that we are to proclaim the Gospel not just in words but also in deeds, we need to roll up our sleeves and do the work ourselves.

"The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics and theology and even, heaven help us, biblical studies, a worldview that will mount the historically rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading the way into the post-postmodern world with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and true wisdom." (171)

Conclusion

Though I had my disagreements with Wright, these were small, and in no way detracted from the overall quality of the work. It is worth reading slowly to comprehend the points that Wright is making.

Given the shortness of this book (around 200 pages) and the profound ideas developed therein, I would highly recommend it to all Christians interested in proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, especially those wondering what this looks like on a practical level.