Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense

by N.T. Wright

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Edition: Hardcover

Publication Date: March 01, 2006

Publisher: HarperSanFrancisco

ISBN: 0060507152

Amazon.com Sales Rank: 3854

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Why do we expect justice? Why do we crave spirituality? Why are we attracted to beauty? Why are relationships often so painful? And how will the world be made right? These are not simply perennial questions all generations must struggle with, but, according to N. T. Wright, are the very echoes of a voice we dimly perceive but deeply long to hear. In fact, these questions take us to the heart of who God is and what He wants from us.

For two thousand years, Christianity has claimed to solve these mysteries, and this renowned biblical scholar and Anglican bishop shows that it still can today. Not since C. S. Lewis's classic summary of the faith, Mere Christianity, has such a wise and thorough scholar taken the time to explain to anyone who wants to know what Christianity really is and how it is practiced. Wright makes the case for Christian faith from the ground up, assuming that the reader has no knowledge of (and perhaps even some aversion to) religion in general and Christianity in particular.

Simply Christian walks the reader through the Christian faith step by step and question by question. With simple yet exciting and accessible prose, Wright challenges skeptics by offering explanations for even the toughest doubt-filled dilemmas, leaving believers with a reason for renewed faith. For anyone who wants to travel beyond the controversies that can obscure what the Christian faith really stands for, this simple book is the perfect vehicle for that journey.




Reviews

Cloud-stuff, sadly . . . Cloud-stuff -	Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense Review


Clouds look solid from a distance, but when you get up close you see that they are wispy, hazy. So it is, sadly, with the Old and New Testaments. There is simply no convincing archaeological evidence for the events it proclaims--the Exodus, Solomon's temple, the historical existence of David. Even the well-known Josephus passage about Jesus is now accepted by many scholars (maybe most) as being totally made-up, or certainly modified greatly by some Christian forger. So what does this have to do with Wright's book? For centuries, Christian ministers have said that their religion is based on real events, and a real communication from God. It is different from philosophy, they said, because philosophy is based on the vanity of human reasoning, and has no historical realities to bolster it. Well, their religion is not based on real events, any more than the legends of King Arthur are based on real events. There appears to be an historical core reality to both King Arthur and biblical events, but both have been embellished, sometimes heavily. The supposedly solid ground under the Bible is spongy marshland. Can't God do better than this? What are we left with--doctrines established on myths? History turned into fable, much as St. Nicholas was turned into Santa Claus, with his elves and reindeer; or Arturius into King Arthur with his Camelot, noble knights, and the mysterious, Druidic Merlin? Tom touches on the subject of biblical interpretation, but he touches it very lightly. He does not go into all the events that really did not occur as traditionally accepted, and which would seem, to me, to affect the veracity of the whole scheme. That is why I am puzzled that he accepts "resurrection" literally. He does not stop with heaven; he says that God wants to re-unite people with their bodies in some future resurrection, and reclaim creation in the name of justice and beauty. First: Paul is the earliest account we have of the resurrection of Jesus, and to him it was a highly individualistic event. There were no bodies to be felt, no appearings and disappearings--he saw a light, and heard a voice. Those around him, he says, saw the light and did not hear the voice, or heard the voice and did not see the light, depending on which account you read. But Paul's mystical vision concurs with the original mysterious ending of the book of Mark, which simply has a "young man" proclaim, to frightened women, that Jesus has arisen (there are no bodily encounters, angels rolling away tombstones, soldiers guarding the tomb, a gardener who is really the risen Jesus, etc. . . . and the women leave, still frightened). Second: If Tom accepts the doctrine of resurrection literally, why not accept the Garden of Eden literally? What about the earthquake and darkness at the crucifixion, and the tearing of the temple curtain (for which surely there would be historical evidence, but sadly there is not.) What about the mysterious zombies that arose out of their graves at the crucifixion (Matt. 27: 52, 53. Only Matthew mentions this curious event). Third: If God is so powerful, and acts in such ways, where is the evidence of it today? People are starved for such evidence. If the Spirit actually changes, heals and empowers people, I simply don't see it. Preachers like Tom will tell you to look at what the Church accomplished in South Africa, preventing bloodshed after apartheid was abandoned. Good enough, but what about South Africa today? If that is the work of the Holy Spirit--no thanks! Is the Holy Spirit or the church preventing the slaughter of the White farmers, or the rapes of the Black girls and even babies? Out of the frying pan and into . . . another frying pan. Ditto for the American and German Christians who tore each other to bits in the two World Wars. People are starved for bread, but it must be the bread of truth. Tom seems like a good man, and I wish him well, but I have eaten of the fruit of the tree of biblical knowledge, so I cannot enter his sanctuary, even though I support many of his moral positions.

Simly Christian -	Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense Review


We used this book in a study group at church. It was well received by the group and produced lots of discussion. N. T. Wright writes in a very interesting style.

Wright Wrocks -	Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense Review


Author: N.T. Wright New York, HarperCollins, 2006 Number of pages: 240 This book, according to Wright, is written to describe Christianity to those outside the faith and to explain Christianity to those inside that faith. The only book I can compare it to is the classic Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Wright's book is easier to read, however. Wright arranges all of his sub-points around these four main controlling topics: Justice, Spirituality, Relationships, and Beauty. The emphasis of this book is that Christianity runs deep within a person and effects every part of a persons life; it changes the way a person sees the world (as God's New Creation) and his or her own participation in the world (building for God's Kingdom here on earth). This book is intended for audiences that have serious questions about Christianity whether in the faith or not in the faith. Serious readers will come away from this book educated, encouraged and exhorted all at once and energized to build for God's Kingdom. This is a great read. Wright has a way of making hard to understand spiritual concepts accessible. This would make a good for just you or your whole book study group.

What Is Christianity? -	Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense Review


I deliberately chose to read the two books I am writing about in parallel, more-or-less simultaneously, so as to better be able to reflect on the similarities and contrasts between them. Both are written by authors who are bishops in the Anglican/Episcopal church. One is John Selby Spong's A New Christianity for a New World, while the other is Tom Wright's Simply Christian. Already from their book covers one can get a sense of their different approaches and perspectives. Spong's book is subtitled Why Traditional Faith is Dying and How a New Faith is Being Born, while Wright's is subtitled Why Christianity Makes Sense (the latter being even more starkly in opposition to the title of another of Spong's books, Why Christianity Must Change or Die). Let me say from the outset that both books reflect a profound spirituality and a deep concern on each author's part to be a Christian and relate this to the world they live in. Spong's book reflects most clearly the modern experience, of becoming aware of the fallibility of tradition and Scripture, of finding that in light of science and reason one cannot simply repeat the same old language in the same old way. Spong is deeply passionate about avoid idolatry, and already in the preface he emphasizes that "To suggest that God and one's own understanding of God are the same is not only to stop growing, it is to die to the quest to truth" (p.xviii). Theism clearly developed, from animism through polytheism and beyond, and so why should one stop at the notion of a God who is a being among others and combines all the possible polytheistic deities into one? (see p.49). We also ought to be suspicious, he warns, when the concept of God we are defending is that of a being whose primary concern is to care for us human beings in our little corner of the planet/galaxy/universe (p.61). Spong states many times throughout the book that he is seeking to continue the work of John A. T. Robinson, whose small but powerful book Honest to God raised the questions Spong also addresses regarding the meaning of God - Spong's aim is like that of Robinson, Tillich and Bonhoffer, namely to rethink our image of God as not merely a being but as Being itself. Spong states confidently that "Hysterical fundamentalism is not the way into the future; it is the last gasp of the past" (p.54). Although Spong denies interpreting Jesus as merely a teacher in the manner of classic Liberal Protestantism (pp.147-148), most of the time his approach seems to be precisely that of classic Liberal Protestantism. He believes that the mythical and even the theistic components of the Christian message were additions to it and can be stripped away to reveal a core that will speak to us today. If only he listened to Schweitzer, whose unveiling of the historical figure of Jesus as an apocalyptic preacher who was mistaken about the end of the world brought the original quest for the historical Jesus to a close, and to Bultmann who courageously acknowledged that the mythological is part and parcel of the Gospel, and we must find ways of interpreting the myths themselves in meaningful ways today if we wish to preserve and promote the Christian faith (p.102). While Spong is clearly what might be called an "old fashioned modernist", Wright speaks more to the postmodern experience, and although his name is never mentioned, it is clear that the postliberal thought of George Lindbeck and narrative theology is at least part of the framework he is working within (p.190). Wright takes an appreciative stance towards not only Christianity but theism, although his theism in which heaven and earth are separate but overlap might also fit the panentheism he mentions but dismisses (pp.58-59,61,128), since he is willing to state that God is not a being in our world (p.56). But Wright's powerfully eloquent prose seeks to tell the Christian story rather than rewrite it. But this does not mean that Wright allows certain conservative and fundamentalist readings of the Bible to dominate - far from it. Wright only rarely addresses such views directly in the sense of discussing concepts like Biblical inerrancy (pp.182-184), but throughout he is seeking to offer a portrait of what it means to be a Christian that challenges fundamentalism and other viewpoints he considers problematic by using the resources provided by the Christian tradition. In other words, the language that Spong finds no longer meaningful, Wright finds meaningful and where necessary he wants to rehabilitate key terms rather than discard them (see e.g. pp.123-124). And so, for example, Wright does not discuss the divinity of Christ, for example, in terms of modernist rationalism: since God is the light in which we see, according to Wright, rather than something we look for, it would make little sense to do so. Yet he offers ways of thinking about the portrait of Jesus in the New Testament that challenges certain understandings that are commonplace in churches today, such as when he suggests that the divinity of Christ is not so much something he possessed and was aware of as a vocation to which he was called (pp.118-119). Such an interpretation is in many ways every bit as radically in contrast to certain conservative Christian assumptions as Spong's, but Wright's radical challenge draws from the Bible rather than drawing from contemporary disdain for the Bible in certain circles. While Spong writes for those who view Christianity from the standpoint of modernist skepticism (and shares that skepticism), Wright is addressing postmodernists who are disillusioned with attempts to bracket out spirituality and to regard reason and science as all-encompassing and all-powerful. There is an interesting contrast between stories each tells. Spong tells at one point of a deeply moving sermon preached by a student, in which floodwaters begin to rise and threaten to destroy a town, but because of a desire to cling to all the familiar things there, the inhabitants do not flee when they have the chance. The floodwaters are the creeds and other antiquated elements of Christianity that are making it a place impossible for rational people to inhabit. Its language has become meaningless, its patriarchy has become offensive, and yet when we know we should leave these things behind the voice of comfort whispers to us to just leave things as they are (pp.234-236). Wright also, coincidentally, tells a story about rising waters and a town. In a land where there is a rational (and apparently benevolent) dictator, in response to erratic and at times dangerous springs of water in the area, the whole thing is paved over, so that the inhabitants can get their water through pipes and a system. But eventually the paved-over springs burst forth and break through. This is intended to illustrate the way in which spirituality, stifled and marginalized in the Enlightenment era, is now bursting forth again (pp.17-20). People are thirsty. They are not now always seeking to quench that thirst in a meaningful way, but they are tired of having these aspects of existence paved over and ignored as well. This is the essence of postmodernism, the rediscovery in a Ricoeurian second na�vet� that there was something valuable in the things the "Age of Reason" set aside as mere superstition. How does one live within the Christian tradition? This is the question both books are attempting to address, although both leave certain fundamental questions to the side at times. Spong's book is the less satisfying in terms of his understanding of what Biblical stories mean and how to interpret them. It is not surprising that some of the best work in bridging the old and the new in a way that takes the old seriously - whether that of N. T. Wright, John A. T. Robinson, or Rudolf Bultmann - was carried out by people who had expertise in New Testament studies. At times Spong's claims (such as that the New Testament documents are merely stories composed to follow and coincide with lectionary readings) are so far from the mainstream that it makes it hard to take his other statements with which I am sympathetic seriously. I find more helpful the approach of Keith Ward, who seeks to acknowledge both that Christianity provides a rich wealth of positive resources that can have a positive role in our faith and our world today, while also acknowledging that there are things that we simply cannot accept and continue to pass on today. Both Spong and Wright acknowledge this, in different ways. Spong wants a radical change that rewrites Christianity, while Wright wants a radical change that rediscovers precisely those emphases that much contemporary Christianity misses. Often, both are hoping to see the church move in the same basic direction, in spite of these different approaches. Wright acknowledges that, for example, when people today latch on to Celtic Christianity and Celtic spirituality as a way of quenching a thirst with waters from these classic ancient sources, few if any of them really want to follow the practices of St. Cuthbert, who stood praying while standing up to his waist in the sea (at Lindisfarne or Holy Island in Northumbria, in the northeast of England - I lived in that area for a number of years and can confirm that the water really is very cold, although it is also a wonderful place that anyone who has the chance ought to visit). Seeking to appreciate and even inhabit a tradition does not mean simply repeating it. Wright has a helpful treatment of authority, in which he suggests that the authority of the Bible and Christian tradition is like the authority of earlier chapters in a novel: characters do not simply repeat things they do in earlier chapters, but their actions in subsequent parts of the story carry forward the directions and impetuses of what went before. There is surely an extent to which the different visions of Spong and Wright reflect their different national contexts. England has been through the process of secularization, and in spite of its institutional church is in many respects post-Christian. Wright is thus truly addressing an audience that, having had tradition and superstition thoroughly shaken to the ground by the critical thunderstorm of rational inquiry, is ready to go back and see if anything in the rubble can and ought to be saved. America, on the other hand, still seems to be in the heat of modernity's final (or maybe not so final) thrashes of life, as the religion and science discussions (for example) continue to be carried out in the context of an Enlightenment framework, by rationalists and fundamentalists who are both working with the assumptions of modernity. It is striking that Richard Dawkins' writings tend to be most critical of American forms of Christianity and its fundamentalism and young-earth creationism. There is a danger when modernity is given postmodernity before it is ready. If one embraces the postmodern before modernity has had its full impact, it can represent a return to na�vet� rather than a second na�vet�. It can be an attempt to avoid the critical power of rational inquiry rather than to see what remains beside and beyond it. Both Wright and Spong agree that Christianity ought not to be ultimately about some things one believes but about living in the context of a story that shapes our lives (Spong p.243; Wright p.240). Spong's aim is the admirable one of having his grandchildren be able to say "God is real to me, and Jesus is my doorway into this reality" (p.246). But I'll let Wright have the last word, "The church, for all its faults, is at its heart the community of those who are trying to follow Jesus, and in whose company those who are starting to explore these things for themselves may find help, encouragement, and wisdom. As we might say to someone starting to enjoy music: don't just listen to it, find an instrument and an orchestra and join in" (p.240). - James F. McGrath, author of The Burial of Jesus: History and Faith. This review originally appeared on the Exploring Our Matrix blog.

Difficult to Read -	Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense Review


I am a writer of 25 years, and have TRIED to read this book twice now. I was drawn to it by the praises of the reviews, referring to those printed on the back cover. After reading the book, I would say they were more strokes for the effort, not the content. It is absurd for Anne Rice to compare this to C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. There are some books I can't put down because they flow with such clarity and synchronicity, like driving down a smooth highway without impedance. I'm sure N.T. Wright is a wonderful soul, however his writing style is nothing short of a labor to trudge through. His discombobulated thinking is likened to an unattended road, broken, covered with holes and debris that causes the whole journey to careen aggressively left, then right. He will write eight fluffed up paragraphs, whose point could be made aptly in one. The illustrations were often abstract thoughts force fitted into a series of run on sentences. Some of the illustrations I would even call bizarre and completely out of place. I found this book very difficult to read, a burden even, which stifles the process of gleaning any value if present. It is difficult to prosper on a journey if the conveyance employed is thwarted by mechanical distractions. I am sorry, this review probably will step on the toes of his fan base. I will give the book two stars for his impact on those of the faith.

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Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense by by N.T. Wright

							January 9, 2009


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