This is the latest offering from
N.T. Wright, the current Bishop of Durham in England. Subtitled 'why
Christianity makes sense', it is a brilliant layout of the faith for seekers,
doubters and anyone needing a good solid grounding in how the story all fits
together. Written in the mould of C.S. Lewis, I recommend it wholeheartedly.
Wright is one of the world’s foremost, if not the foremost,
New Testament scholar. He has written many books and articles on Jesus, the
Gospels and Paul. Perhaps his best known and greatest work has been ‘The
Resurrection of the Son of God’, a book that Dr. Ben Witherington describes as
‘magisterial’ in its thoroughness of the accounts of the resurrection and of
the beliefs of people of the time about the idea of resurrection.
Interestingly, Wright has been viewed as being quite conservative in his
outlook. However, if being conservative means believing in the physical
resurrection of Jesus and believing that the Gospels are an account of what
actually happened in history, then I am happy to be on the same side as Wright.
In this book, Wright explains, in a
way that is refreshing for our post-modern understanding of life, the deep
cries of the human heart for justice, our sense of beauty, our need for
relationship and our deep desire for a sense of spirituality. It is these
observations about life that Wright says point us to something greater than
ourselves. ‘Rumours of another world’ is another way you might like to put it,
to quote the title of one of Philip Yancey’s books. As Wright himself says, “I
want you to try seeing yourself as part of the picture that we've painted. Or
try humming one of the parts of this symphony that we're writing, and see if it
doesn't make an awful lot of sense while nonetheless being very challenging”.
Throughout the book, Wright
describes how the Christian gospel fulfils all of these deep-seated human
longings. He does this by unfolding the story of the Bible and telling the
story of salvation history as revealed to us over many generations.
As one of the reviews on the back
cover of the book states, this offering from Wright is destined to become a
classic. C.S. Lewis’ ‘Mere Christianity’, written in 1952, went down as a
classic apologetic of faith and the common sense of the Christian gospel and
how it all fits together. To say that ‘Simply Christian’ will be remembered in
a similar way in 50 years time is a big call, but one that could well be
justified.
However, this is not a simple
apologetics book in the mould of a Josh McDowell, in which certain evidences
are put forward to show why Christianity is true. This is a book written for
the 21st century.
If you are a doubter, a seeker, a
new believer, or an old believer who wants to be reminded again of why you
believe this stuff, you couldn’t do much better than reading ‘Simply
Christian’. It is easy to read and, like the gospel it proclaims, it makes a
whole lot of sense.
by Nils von Kalm