Why do we celebrate Easter? Lost among the colored eggs and chocolate candies is Easter's bold, almost unbelievable claim: Jesus has risen from the dead, and now everything is different. Historian, biblical scholar and bestselling author N. T. Wright, in this excerpt from The Challenge of Jesus, takes a step back from the hoopla surrounding Easter to look at it in its earliest context, where we see a band of followers discovering the fulfillment of all the promises God had made to their people over the centuries, and pronouncing a new era that unsettled their friends and scandalized their oppressors. That era extends to our day, where to celebrate Easter is to receive an invitation to live as though God is among us, making everything new.
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N.T. Wright is Bishop of Durham and was formerly Canon Theologian of Westminster Abbey and dean of Lichfield Cathedral. He taught New Testament studies for twenty years at Cambridge, McGill and Oxford Universities. Wright's full-scale works The New Testament and the People of God, Jesus and the Victory of God, and The Resurrection of the Son of God are part of a projected six-volume series entitled Christian Origins and the Question of God. Among his many other published works are The Original Jesus, What Saint Paul Really Said and The Climax of the Covenant. He is also coauthor with Marcus Borg of The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions and the volume on Colossians and Philemon in The Tyndale New Testament Commentary series.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not New Thoughts from Wright - Small Gift Book,
By MasterAP (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Challenge of Easter (Paperback)
This is a small gift book just in time for Easter. There isn't anything new from the author; the publisher has just tossed in a few bits from his earlier book, The Challenge of Jesus.
However, seeing as this is N.T. Wright, the words are still worth the 20 minutes it will take you to read one chapter of The Challenge of Easter. This is not for fans of the Left Behind series (ie popcorn easy reading). N.T. Wright uses his vast experience and puts them to words. You would be wise to spend at least one day in consuming this book. Even 64 pages are mind-stretching when you're reading Wright's work.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Succinct Defense of the Resurrection of Christ,
This review is from: The Challenge of Easter (Paperback)
One of the apologist's tasks is to defend the Resurrection of Christ and refute irrational unbelief--or any other kind of anti-Christian thought, for that matter. Today this task is obligatory because of the attacks against Christian theism from the combative contemporary atheists.
Since Christianity began, Christian scholars have proclaimed and defended the historicity and the soteriological necessity of Jesus Christ rising from the dead. In "The Challenge of Easter" the brilliant Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright delivers an outstanding summary of his massive volume on the truth of the Ressurection. The foremost expert on the Resurrection of Christ provides: - A readable summary of the impact of Christ coming back to life - Evidence for Christ rising from the grave - The true meaning of the doctrine of Jesus Christ returning to life. This work is concise, uplifting, and written with a quantity of theological language for the believer and makes a fine gift for the non-believer. This is a marvelous, yet brief (64 pages), introduction to the topic and may lead the reader to purchase Bishop Wright's comprehensive work on the subject or Gary Habermas' books on the Resurrection. Also seeGod Does Exist!: Defending the faith using presuppositional apologetics, evidence, and the impossibility of the contrary
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Centrality of the Resurrection,
By
This review is from: The Challenge of Easter (Paperback)
The resurrection is absolutely central to the Christian faith. As Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:17-19, "and if Christ is not raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied." Understandably then, both Christ's historical resurrection and the resurrection hope of all believers are routinely targeted by Satan and the powers of this world.
In The Challenge of Easter (excerpted from the 1999 book The Challenge of Jesus), N.T. Wright, Anglican Bishop of Durham, U.K., offers a succinct rebuttal of popular attacks on the resurrection and articulates an apology of its primacy and power from biblical, historical, and cultural contexts and exhorts believers to live out the hope of the living Christ. Wright points out that the Church from its earliest days was a "resurrection movement," and that the recurring biblical phrases "the kingdom of God" and "the resurrection of the dead" were key components of the first century Jewish worldview which would never have been understood by that audience to mean a merely "spiritual" experience. He shows that Christ's resurrection inaugurated the reality of the kingdom in time and space, something the apostles clearly understood as the starting point for their entire ministry. Though at times a controversial figure (a discussion beyond the scope of this review), Wright demonstrates a passion for this truth that all believers should take to heart. He reminds the reader that the fact of the resurrection undercuts both the false hope of realizing the kingdom of God through human effort alone and the misdirection of simply waiting for God to someday return and take care of it all on His own. In his words, Christ laid the foundation of the coming kingdom through the resurrection, commissioned us to build on that as we follow Him in proclaiming the victory to a fallen world, and will return in glory to complete the work. Challenge of Easter is an accessible yet scholarly take on this key issue that is ideal for solidifying this fundamental truth for new believers, expositing it for skeptical seekers, or devotional meditation to recall it to our hearts and minds and challenge us again to living it out boldly.
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