Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
HarperOne (2016), 448 pages
Description
The renowned scholar, Anglican bishop, and bestselling author widely considered to be the heir to C. S. Lewis contemplates the central event at the heart of the Christian faith -- Jesus' crucifixion -- arguing that the Protestant Reformation did not go far enough in transforming our understanding of its meaning. In The Day the Revolution Began, N. T. Wright once again challenges commonly held Christian beliefs as he did in his acclaimed Surprised by Hope. Demonstrating the rigorous intellect and breathtaking knowledge that have long defined his work, Wright argues that Jesus' death on the cross was not only to absolve us of our sins; it was actually the beginning of a revolution commissioning the Christian faithful to a new vocation -- a royal priesthood responsible for restoring and reconciling all of God's creation. Wright argues that Jesus' crucifixion must be understood within the much larger story of God's purposes to bring heaven and earth together. The Day the Revolution Began offers a grand picture of Jesus' sacrifice and its full significance for the Christian faith, inspiring believers with a renewed sense of mission, purpose, and hope, and reminding them of the crucial role the Christian faith must play in protecting and shaping the future of the world.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member pmackey
The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of the Crucifixion is an invigorating exploration of the meaning of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Wright maintains that for far too long Christians have mistakenly focused on “going to heaven.” He offers a paradigmatic shift: The
Wright maintains Christianity’s current focus on getting to heaven was heavily influenced by Neo-Platonism and urges us to lose the paganized idea of an angry God looming over humanity intent on blood. By reducing the Christian message to “Jesus died for my sins so that I can go to heaven” the mission of the church becomes a matter of explaining to people that Christ died for them and urging them to believe this so they, too, can go to heaven. While true, it is limiting and distorts the good news. Wright maintains that Christians are called to live out our human vocation of priest-kings in the Kingdom of God. With this paradigmatic shift the Christian mission becomes implementing the victory that Jesus won on the cross. Wright reminds us the priest-kings vocation was originally given to Adam and Eve, then to Abraham, the Jews, and finally, to the followers of Christ.
Wright offers up the refreshing alternative of the Jewish vision of a loving, generous Creator God who gives his very self for the redemption of the world. He maintains that when we see the victory of Jesus in relation to the biblical Passover tradition, reshaped by the Jewish longing for redemption from bondage in Egypt and Babylon, the crucifixion and resurrection become a liberating event within history that offers a complete new way of being in fully human. We become, in fact, rescued humans who have become what we were created to be -- a royal priesthood with a vocation of implementing the Kingdom of God.
The current Christian focus on “getting to heaven” and “do you know where you’d be if you died tonight…” misses the larger picture by focusing on one detail. While true, focusing on that point distorts what should be central to Christians. We must live the royal priesthood vocation to implement the Kingdom of God.
I highly recommend The Day the Revolution Began as a timely message for Christians. Keep your Bible handy because this is an excellent, detailed study of the meaning of the resurrection. Looking up the referenced verses greatly added to the reading experience. I highly recommend this book to Bible study groups and individuals seeking a richer, holistic understanding of God’s love and the Christian mission.
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goal of the Christian life is to fully dwell as a royal priesthood in the reality of the Kingdom of God inaugurated in Christ’s resurrection. Wright maintains Christianity’s current focus on getting to heaven was heavily influenced by Neo-Platonism and urges us to lose the paganized idea of an angry God looming over humanity intent on blood. By reducing the Christian message to “Jesus died for my sins so that I can go to heaven” the mission of the church becomes a matter of explaining to people that Christ died for them and urging them to believe this so they, too, can go to heaven. While true, it is limiting and distorts the good news. Wright maintains that Christians are called to live out our human vocation of priest-kings in the Kingdom of God. With this paradigmatic shift the Christian mission becomes implementing the victory that Jesus won on the cross. Wright reminds us the priest-kings vocation was originally given to Adam and Eve, then to Abraham, the Jews, and finally, to the followers of Christ.
Wright offers up the refreshing alternative of the Jewish vision of a loving, generous Creator God who gives his very self for the redemption of the world. He maintains that when we see the victory of Jesus in relation to the biblical Passover tradition, reshaped by the Jewish longing for redemption from bondage in Egypt and Babylon, the crucifixion and resurrection become a liberating event within history that offers a complete new way of being in fully human. We become, in fact, rescued humans who have become what we were created to be -- a royal priesthood with a vocation of implementing the Kingdom of God.
The current Christian focus on “getting to heaven” and “do you know where you’d be if you died tonight…” misses the larger picture by focusing on one detail. While true, focusing on that point distorts what should be central to Christians. We must live the royal priesthood vocation to implement the Kingdom of God.
I highly recommend The Day the Revolution Began as a timely message for Christians. Keep your Bible handy because this is an excellent, detailed study of the meaning of the resurrection. Looking up the referenced verses greatly added to the reading experience. I highly recommend this book to Bible study groups and individuals seeking a richer, holistic understanding of God’s love and the Christian mission.
Show Less
LibraryThing member deusvitae
Wright applies his take on the "new perspective" on Paul as it relates to understanding what Jesus is accomplishing with His death on the cross.
This is a more "reactive" work from Wright than one normally encounters: he is attempting, in his mind, to correct the over-emphasis on penal
He then goes through a careful analysis of the use of terms surrounding atonement in Second Temple Judaism, and makes much of how Jesus dies at Passover, and thus frames the atonement as a New Exodus/Passover movement. He does well at understanding Paul in covenant terms, going through a detailed analysis of Pauline literature to demonstrate how contextually Paul is very much thinking and writing in covenantal terms, explaining how God has redeemed Israel in Jesus and provided a means for Gentiles to be included among the people of God, as opposed to the Protestant/Reformed emphasis on right standing based on faith versus a works covenant. He artfully demonstrates the point as to restore humans to relationship with God to be image bearers and vocation as God's workers, having been freed from their enslavement to idolatry, as opposed to a more moralistic and escapist view present in much of Christian soteriology and eschatology. He envisions "forgiveness of sins" in terms of "return from exile," thus "reconciliation"; the sacrificial language is understood more in terms of Passover than Leviticus, and seen as Jesus taking upon Himself "Sin" as a kind of power and defeating it on the cross. Throughout he strives to point out the points of continuity throughout the old and new covenant in explaining what Jesus does on the cross - how it is a fulfillment of hope and promise, a re-centering of Torah and Temple around Jesus, and thus the Kingdom in His name. Thus the "revolution": the liberation of mankind, the Jew first but also the Greek, from the powers enslaving them, allowing Christians to live as part of God's new creation.
There's a lot to like here. Wright's portrayal, on the whole, is more consistent with the explicit themes in the Gospels and the NT than what passes for Protestant PSA soteriology. The story is generally told well.
I had the benefit of hearing the Pepperdine lectures which led to this work, and that may color my understanding, but he never comes out and fully denies PSA or the basic logic of sacrifice, but he maddeningly does not give any ground on the issue explicitly in the book. His posture seems a bit too polemic: it is a bit of an overreaction, even if understandable and a bit justified. I would have appreciated a bit more exploration into the deep logic of sacrifice and dying for sin, because I find that to also be part of the issue that Wright correctly identifies as the abhorrence modern man feels at the prospect of the Son of God dying a brutal death "for us." I cannot escape the deep logic of blood for blood, life for life in Leviticus 17, and Wright doesn't argue against it here. There's no deep consideration of why it took a death to overcome the force of sin and evil, and how that death could have atoning properties for anyone else. I grant that PSA warps Isaiah 53 et al, but Isaiah 53 still has someone else suffering for us, wounded for our transgressions, and why this is necessary was plainly evident to everyone in the first century but not so today.
While there's much to like here, of all of what Wright has written, it seems the most incomplete. Perhaps it's because it's a first step in an idea, as he himself admits - in writing this, he felt compelled to modify some of his existing positions. His explanation about the problems of idolatry - very much there in Romans 1, no doubt - are given a level of prominence that is just as not explicit in Paul as is what he critiques about PSA. I would also want to see where what Wright is suggesting has some currency in the Christian tradition, especially from early patristic authors. I guess the argument could be advanced that since the church became so thoroughly Gentile so quickly, and overly concerned about Ebionism, that it very quickly became a bit too Marcionite in its understanding of salvation; nevertheless, it would remain quite concerning if this formulation of the story, however compelling, only exists because it has been excavated through contextual historical application almost 2,000 years later. Possible? Sure. But for something as major as the conceptualization of the atonement as anchored in the fulfillment of what God promised to Israel, you'd like to see some evidence of it from before.
As to what else feels incomplete, it's hard to say exactly, because if it could be said, it would be a productive line of expanding or building upon what is established here. Perhaps that feeling of incompleteness comes from being unduly influenced by standard Protestant conceptions of justification. Nevertheless, it does seem that to make any sense of the need for sacrifice, that God is demanding satisfaction of justice in some way. It's artful to have God punish Sin in order to manifest justice, and there's a lot to commend that, but again, why through death?
Definitely worth consideration, but also hopefully just a beginning for a productive line of thought.
This is a more "reactive" work from Wright than one normally encounters: he is attempting, in his mind, to correct the over-emphasis on penal
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substitutionary atonement (PSA) in Evangelical theology, and to challenge the way the theology of the cross normally props up a more Platonic, escapist eschatology. He caricatures the standard PSA formulation as "God so hated the world that He punished His Son," and finds it to be more pagan than Christian. He then goes through a careful analysis of the use of terms surrounding atonement in Second Temple Judaism, and makes much of how Jesus dies at Passover, and thus frames the atonement as a New Exodus/Passover movement. He does well at understanding Paul in covenant terms, going through a detailed analysis of Pauline literature to demonstrate how contextually Paul is very much thinking and writing in covenantal terms, explaining how God has redeemed Israel in Jesus and provided a means for Gentiles to be included among the people of God, as opposed to the Protestant/Reformed emphasis on right standing based on faith versus a works covenant. He artfully demonstrates the point as to restore humans to relationship with God to be image bearers and vocation as God's workers, having been freed from their enslavement to idolatry, as opposed to a more moralistic and escapist view present in much of Christian soteriology and eschatology. He envisions "forgiveness of sins" in terms of "return from exile," thus "reconciliation"; the sacrificial language is understood more in terms of Passover than Leviticus, and seen as Jesus taking upon Himself "Sin" as a kind of power and defeating it on the cross. Throughout he strives to point out the points of continuity throughout the old and new covenant in explaining what Jesus does on the cross - how it is a fulfillment of hope and promise, a re-centering of Torah and Temple around Jesus, and thus the Kingdom in His name. Thus the "revolution": the liberation of mankind, the Jew first but also the Greek, from the powers enslaving them, allowing Christians to live as part of God's new creation.
There's a lot to like here. Wright's portrayal, on the whole, is more consistent with the explicit themes in the Gospels and the NT than what passes for Protestant PSA soteriology. The story is generally told well.
I had the benefit of hearing the Pepperdine lectures which led to this work, and that may color my understanding, but he never comes out and fully denies PSA or the basic logic of sacrifice, but he maddeningly does not give any ground on the issue explicitly in the book. His posture seems a bit too polemic: it is a bit of an overreaction, even if understandable and a bit justified. I would have appreciated a bit more exploration into the deep logic of sacrifice and dying for sin, because I find that to also be part of the issue that Wright correctly identifies as the abhorrence modern man feels at the prospect of the Son of God dying a brutal death "for us." I cannot escape the deep logic of blood for blood, life for life in Leviticus 17, and Wright doesn't argue against it here. There's no deep consideration of why it took a death to overcome the force of sin and evil, and how that death could have atoning properties for anyone else. I grant that PSA warps Isaiah 53 et al, but Isaiah 53 still has someone else suffering for us, wounded for our transgressions, and why this is necessary was plainly evident to everyone in the first century but not so today.
While there's much to like here, of all of what Wright has written, it seems the most incomplete. Perhaps it's because it's a first step in an idea, as he himself admits - in writing this, he felt compelled to modify some of his existing positions. His explanation about the problems of idolatry - very much there in Romans 1, no doubt - are given a level of prominence that is just as not explicit in Paul as is what he critiques about PSA. I would also want to see where what Wright is suggesting has some currency in the Christian tradition, especially from early patristic authors. I guess the argument could be advanced that since the church became so thoroughly Gentile so quickly, and overly concerned about Ebionism, that it very quickly became a bit too Marcionite in its understanding of salvation; nevertheless, it would remain quite concerning if this formulation of the story, however compelling, only exists because it has been excavated through contextual historical application almost 2,000 years later. Possible? Sure. But for something as major as the conceptualization of the atonement as anchored in the fulfillment of what God promised to Israel, you'd like to see some evidence of it from before.
As to what else feels incomplete, it's hard to say exactly, because if it could be said, it would be a productive line of expanding or building upon what is established here. Perhaps that feeling of incompleteness comes from being unduly influenced by standard Protestant conceptions of justification. Nevertheless, it does seem that to make any sense of the need for sacrifice, that God is demanding satisfaction of justice in some way. It's artful to have God punish Sin in order to manifest justice, and there's a lot to commend that, but again, why through death?
Definitely worth consideration, but also hopefully just a beginning for a productive line of thought.
Show Less
Language
Original language
English
Physical description
448 p.; 6 inches
ISBN
0062334387 / 9780062334381