"Hi Pete, a quick and all too brief response as I’m dashing off to London, then Leeds, then London again. I have written about salvation in many places, but recently in Surprised by Hope, particularly the final section. The trouble with the question of course is that it throws the weight in the wrong direction, like asking ‘what can we do to make sure the sun rises tomorrow?’, to which the answer is, ‘you can’t do anything, it will do it itself’. Not an exact parallel of course otherwise I might be a universalist, but you get the point. Salvation is God’s work from start to finish. But actually part of the point is ‘what do you mean by “saved”?’ Since most people think ‘going to heaven when I die’, that likewise gets off on the wrong foot. Start with what we’re promised in Christ – resurrection into God’s new heaven and new earth – and a lot of other questions will come up in a better light. Happy reading/thinking/praying/preaching."
Tom Wright
Simply Christian
I recently finished N.T. Wright’s book Simply Christian and found it a very good read. With this book Wright manages to update on two previous books: Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and Basic Christianity by John Stott (both classics). Together with those two Wright’s book rounds out a sort of literary trinity on what it means to be a Christian.
I should say that unlike the fiirst two books Wright’s book, while still accessible to the outsider, is aimed staunchly at the church (not unlike a letter of Paul). Like much of his writing Wright offers a great deal of course correction in his content. In one way or another he touches on many topics including salvation, atonement, anger, small group ministry, interpretation, creation, inspiration, worship and easily a dozen others. All of these themes revolve around the thematic fulcrum of justice, spirituality, relationship and beauty. These are good lenses to look at Christianity through and are useful to Wright in highlighting points of relevance and value like our common understanding of Heaven and life after death for instance (an area where he offers "course correction").
Wright is a rare individual who combines the talents of an artist, pastor, leader and scholar. With this in mind you should know that although the book is well written and reasonably short (240 pages) it assumes one of two things: a thorough vocabulary or a willingness to broaden it through extra reading alongside this book.
One area people may be concerned about (although I am not as yet) is Wright’s perspective on the doctrine of justification a.k.a. "the divine act whereby God makes humans, who are sinful and therefore worthy of condemnation, acceptable before a God who is holy and rightous." (Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms). Specifically within the doctrine pastor and author John Piper takes issue with how he sees Wright deal with the concept of God’s imputed righteousness. In fact Piper has taken so great an issue with Wright’s perspective he has written an entire book entitled The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright. Piper offers the book free for download as a pdf file here: http://www.desiringgod.org/media/pdf/books_bfj/books_bfj.pdf . Take advantage of this download while you can because I’m not sure whether his publisher is aware. I have not read it yet because I am backlogged in my reading…I have six books from a friend sitting on my floor as well as Wright’s book Evil & the Justice of God which I need to read in prep for a class I’ll be teaching. If you read the Piper book let me know what you think.
Anyhow, all that to say Wright is a great writer (no pun intended) who puts a thorough and thoughtful heart into everything he does. I have appreciated his perspective this far and look forward to further reading. I would recommend this book to you.
Further to the issue of justification above I have had some correspondance with Wright regarding salvation and how he would interpret the verse from Acts 16:30-31 "what must I do to be saved?" More specifically I asked him the same question via e-mail – below is the brief response:
Harnessing Chaos 