Marginal Christianity

In Part Two (chs.4-7) of How God Became King N. T. Wright takes us on a tour of his understanding of the biblical story. He uses the image of a quadraphonic sound system with each of its four speakers representing the four key elements that must be properly blended together to properly play on the in the system. Expounding each of these key elements is Wright’s burden in the section. A summary of these elements in terms of his four-speaker sound system looks like this: 1st Speaker: Gospels tell story of Jesus as climax of Israel’s story (off/too low) 2nd Speaker: Gospels tell story of Jesus as story of Israel’s God coming in human forms (too high) 3rd Speaker: Gospels tell the story of Jesus as story of launching of God’s great renewal movement (too high) 4th Speaker: “the story of the kingdom of God clashing with the kingdom of Caesar.” (off) Wright has already claimed that we have misread (or not really read at all) the gospels. Here he details why he believes this...

In this, his follow-up to Simply Jesus, Tom Wright offers perhaps his most important contribution to understanding Jesus and the Bible to date. His thesis is that we have forgotten what the gospels are really about and created answers to their purpose that may contain some elements of truth but fundamentally distort and obscure their true intent. Because these are the foundational stories on which Christianity is built this is no idle charge – it cuts right to the heart of everything we hold true and real! In Part One (chs.1-3), Wright analyzes how and why we have gone in reading the gospels. Other ideas and influences have so colored our reading of them that we have in effect, according to our author, not really read the gospels at all! The church’s creeds are a key element in our un-reading of the gospels. A quick look at either the Apostles’ or Nicene Creeds show that Jesus’ life is notable by its absence. They jump from Jesus’ virginal conception to his suffering and de...