Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Mere Joy

I kept hearing NT Wright's name in different places and added him to my mental author's to read list. Reading his quotes in Colossians Remixed pushed him up the list. I picked Simply Christian as the my first NT Wright book, getting his over view of the faith seemed like a good place to start.

Many of the articles I found on the book make the comparison to CS Lewis's classic Mere Christianity. The comparison makes sense, in that it is an over view of what it means to be Christian, without getting into denominational/paradigm divides. His approach though is much closer to CS Lewis's retelling of his conversion Surprised by Joy, where Lewis talks about the sign posts that lead him to faith. Where Lewis has sign posts Wright hears echoes: desire for justice, quest for spirituality, hunger for relationships, and love of beauty. He then surveys the stories of Israel and the Gospels showing how they clarify the echoes allowing us to hear the original voice of the speaker calling us to join in a great narrative. It took a while for me to warm up to the book, the first four chapters on the echoes are hardly original. But after that Wright does a wonderful job of looking at God's on going redemptive narrative.

Not sure what my net NT Wright book will be, offer recomendations in the comments, but He's definitely on my 'to read more of' list.

- Peace

2 comments:

kris said...

Have you checked out his unofficial site: www.ntwrightpage.com It contains a lot of good articles and audio.

Dave King said...

That's cool. Thanks :)

- Peace