The Day the Revolution Began: A Book Reflection

What's so special about Good Friday? Much has been written in Christian literature and scholarship about this day when Jesus was crucified. A recent, fresh take by prolific New Testament scholar N. T. Wright is that this day was even more of a pivot point in Judeo-Christian thought than previously realized. In this week's post, it is my pleasure to walk you through the key points of Wright's argument in a book reflection on The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus' Crucifixion. As a reminder, here's the general outline of this post: I will . . .

1. Contextualize the author's writings as a whole (bibliography)
2. Bring the author's major ideas to the present day
3. Comment on major sections of the book, or important chapters, depending on organization

N. T. Wright's Bibliography

Check out this post from a few months ago for Wright's bibliography so far. Some time ago, I learned the reason he frequently includes the name of a specific location (e.g., a castle in a particular part of England). Apparently, his writing style is to spend 1-2 weeks doing nothing but writing a first draft of the entire book from that specific location, then revise it more at leisure elsewhere. How can he write so quickly? Well, he spent the first ~20 years of his career soaking up knowledge through reading.

Revolution is classified as a popular-level book. These books of his are usually under 250 pages and include end notes rather than footnotes. They are aimed at a wider audience than his academic-level books, but do a good job summarizing the content from the academic (500-800 page) works.

Wright's Major Ideas in Revolution

If you read a few of the one-star Amazon reviews of the book at the link above, you'll see some common comments coming up. These often relate to his principles of interpretation, the concept of building a scholarly argument (albeit in a popular-level book), and a misperception of the role of history and culture of the Scriptural texts in the proper understanding thereof. It's fairly common for people with an American Evangelical-influenced background to misunderstand Wright's British Anglican perspective. 

To that point, what things should one understand when trying to read this particular book?

• All areas of theology need to tie together--worldview is important as a coherent whole. For example, eschatology should not go into its own little box, mentally separated from other areas.
• Wright's big focus on history as it illuminates philosophy. Because he takes a historical mindset, this means that he recognizes and emphasizes how important it is to enter into the mental world of the Biblical writers. As Old Testament scholar John Walton has so eloquently said, Scripture "is for us, not to us". (Are you a first-century resident of Galatia? I didn't think so.)
• His intent isn't to revolutionize, but rather to provide a 5-degree correction, of conventional Protestant theology at points.
• Because of the approach he takes in explaining and exploring passages from various sources, some find him overly meandering, and others easily quote him out of context (leading to such claims as that he and John Stott disagree with each other on meaningful points, where in fact they do not). I would caution, however, against over-indulging one's preference for oversimplification of complex ideas. Take the time to read and understand what Wright says.

Book Walk-Through

Since Wright does tend to repeat his own themes across books, this walk-through will be a bit shorter than some of my earlier posts about Wright's work. That said, I found interesting quotes and steps in his argument in each of the 15 chapters of this average-length (for him) book.

Part 1: Introduction

In chapter 1, Wright notes that Rome crucified people all the time, and thus asks the questions of why (1) early Christians and (2) people today so impacted by the story of Jesus' death by crucifixion. Because Jesus died in history, the historical context must be considered along with the theological.

In chapter 2, we see an abbreviated historical background of crucifixion in the first-century Jewish-Roman world. Another, longer source is Martin Hengel's The Cross of the Son of God. On page 24 we find the central thrust of Wright's methodology, right before a brief survey of theories of atonement: "The aim, as in all theological and biblical exploration, is not to replace love with knowledge. Rather, it is to keep love focused upon its true object."

My biggest takeaway from chapter 3 is a pointed quote from page 51: "To understand any event in history, you must put it firmly into that history and not rest content with what later generations have said about it." The rest of the chapter explores three concentric layers of context of the Crucifixion with preliminary notes about the meanings derived.

Part 2: Stories of Israel (Scriptural basis)

Chapter 4 contextualizes the covenant aspect of the Cross within the New Perspective understanding as contrasted with a works-righteousness conceptualization. "Vocation" in the chapter refers to "calling." On pp. 77-78 is a summary claim he expands on later in the chapter: "I am suggesting that in the Bible humans are created in order to live as worshipping stewards within God's heaven-and-earth reality, rather than as beings who, by moral perfection, qualify to leave 'earth' and go to 'heaven' instead."

In chapter 5, he traces the creation-exile-return story with allusions going back to Genesis 1-2. The strength of this chapter is its emphasis on the entire story (metanarrative) over the fragmentation that often occurs with theological exploration.

Chapter 6 covers a lot of ground. In Israel, people conceptualized God's presence as being house-bound, while He communicated it more as family-bound (e.g., Psalms). Here's a summary on p. 113: 

"Modern Christians need to be reminded regularly that Jews in this period did not perceive themselves to be living within a story of an angry moralistic God who threatened people that he would send them to hell if they displeased him. Nor were they hoping that, if somehow they could make all things all right, they would go to a place called 'heaven' and be with God forever. Some ancient pagans thoughts like that; most ancient Jews did not."

Chapter 7 notes that, in Jewish thought, "Messiah" and "suffering" were rarely paired. Messiah was more commonly thought of as a victorious military commander. Non-Jews were promised an exodus like the Jews. Isaiah and Psalms came close but didn't quite tie the 3 themes together before Jesus' time.

Part 3: Rescue function of the Cross

I love this quote in chapter 8, the first of this longest section of the book (p. 146):

"In much popular modern Christian thought we have made a three-layered mistake. We have Platonized our eschatology (substituting 'souls going to heaven' for the promised new creation) and have therefore moralized our anthropology (substituting a qualifying examination of moral performance for the biblical notion of the human vocation), with the result that we have paganized our soteriology, our understanding of 'salvation' (substituting the idea of 'God killing Jesus to satisfy his wrath' for the genuinely biblical notions we are about to explore)."

Chapter 9 asks and answers why Jesus chose the Passover as the time to finish His explanation to His disciples about what He thought of His own death and resurrection. Essentially, the stories attached to Passover shed light on parallels between Israel's story and Jesus' story.

Chapter 10 has several key takeaways:

• The phrase "kingdom of heaven" does not actually imply "us going to heaven" but rather "God's rule from heaven" (His natural dimension).
• The phrase "It is finished" relates more to vocation/creation than to any specific atonement theory.
• Page 200: "In particular, all four gospels tell the story of Jesus as one of Israel's God returning at last. This theme, so often ignored in the past, has come to the fore in recent scholarly analysis." Then he goes through how each Evangelist approaches the story.

Chapters 11-13 explore how Paul's writings treat the crucifixion. Paul's overall perspective is that the death of Jesus is the means by which the goal of redemption (not "heaven") was obtained. Galatians is about unity (one family in the Messiah). Corinthians has bits and pieces about the cross, with ties to Passover. Philippians 2:6-11 centers on the crucifixion-as-victory-and-kingdom-establishment. Colossians 2:13-15 is intentionally ironic, addressing the victory aspect.

Wright needed two (long!) chapters to discuss Romans, specifically the aspects of the Exodus, Passover, and atonement. Chapters 5-8 relate to the new Exodus (and chapter 8 is one of Wright's favorite passages of the whole New Testament). Chapter 3 is meant to be more than the "Romans Road" and thus chapter 4 is given more weight here than it usually has in non-New-Perspective interpretation. It's important to recognize while reading dense Romans that Paul had extensive training in formal argumentation and compactly expressing himself. It's not necessarily a book of systematic theology.

Chapters 14 and 15, in typical Wright fashion, discuss what we're to do as Christians in the body of Christ with all this information. We are to be primarily image-bearers (see his books Surprised by Hope and Surprised by Scripture). This should translate to a church whose boundaries extend into the public square. Why? The Cross has achieved both freedom for the world to serve God, and the call of Christians to reflect Christ.

What are your thoughts on this post? Feel free to share in the comments!