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The Challenge of Easter

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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.

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

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.

This book is excerpted from Wright's The Challenge of Jesus. I read it during Easter week, and found it quite thought-provoking. It is, in fact, a very good introduction to Wright's writing.

Firstly, Wright's theme of the Kingdom of God comes out in this book. Wright sees New Testament Christianity as being "Jewish no-king-but God theology - with Jesus in the middle" (p. 12). He emphasises how the Jewish concept of the Kingdom of God concerned public events ("The end of Israel's exile, the overthrow of the pagan empire and the exaltation of Israel, and the return of YHWH to Zion to judge and save") and is thus much more than a new spiritual experience or sense of forgiveness.

Secondly, we see here Wright as an apologist for the physical resurrection of Jesus. He takes issue with Barbara Thiering (who says that Jesus was crucified, but did not die on the cross, p. 8) and Dominic Crossan (who does not believe that Jesus was buried, p. 22). This sort of defence is greatly expanded in Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God.

Thirdly, Wright draws some fascinating parallels between the gospel accounts and the creation narratives in Genesis. He notes that Jesus was crucified on the sixth day of the week, which corresponds to God's completion of creation (p. 33) and he was rose on the first day of the week, which inaugurates a new creation. He then says, "Mary goes to the tomb while it's still dark and in the morning light she meets Jesus in the garden. She thinks he is the gardener, and in one important sense he indeed is" (p. 34.)

Fourthly, this book contains an example of all that for which Wright gets criticised - puzzling statements of dubious orthodoxy. He says on p. 59 that Jesus did not know he was God, if by "know" we meant what the Enlightenment meant. Now, this statement is incomprehensible to me, but whatever Wright means by this, it would seem that a lot of people will be left confused as to what he is saying.

So perhaps this book has the best and worst of Wright. But like C. S. Lewis, I often find doctrinal books more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and this was a useful book to read in Eastertide.

This is a 'snapshot' of Easter apologetics. Wright is articulate and responsible in his scholarship, and this well-written little book explains the wonder of Easter in such a way that believers and non-believers can both gain a lot.

In Luke's gospel we see the angel Gabriel announcing to Mary that she would become the mother of Jesus. Not long afterwards, Mary visited her relative Elizabeth, who was six months pregnant with the child that would become John the Baptist. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, Scripture tells us that the baby leaped in her womb. Being suddenly filled with the Spirit, she exclaims, "Behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy" (Luke 1:44 ESV). Someone might rightly wonder what this prelude to the Christmas story has to do with The Challenge of Easter by N. T. Wright?

Obviously, without the birth of Christ there would be no Easter story, but that is not my reason for reminding us of the joy surrounding two historic births. As I read this slim volume, and especially as I progressed into the practical applications of Christ's resurrection, which Wright rightly sees as the beginning of God's new order--along with the crucifixion, a pivotal event in history--my spirit like the baby in the womb was leaping for joy.

Why is it that reading N. T. Wright can make me leap for joy on the inside? Let me use his own words where he describes our work as Christians to provide somewhat of an answer: "Your task is to find the symbolic ways of doing things differently, planting flags in hostile soil, setting up signposts that say there is a different way to be human. And when people are puzzled at what you are doing, find ways--fresh ways--of telling the story of the return of the human race from its exile, and use those stories as your explanation." In his books, Wright models this idea of expressing the truth in fresh ways. This, along with a winsome blend of wit, wisdom and his expansive views when I sometimes fail to see the big picture, is what I find so endearing about his writing.

In this book, it all starts with a look at the resurrection as a historical problem. Wright shows that from the beginning Christianity was not just a kingdom of God but a resurrection movement. He then goes into Paul's theology of the resurrection as a two-stage movement: "The Messiah first, then finally the resurrection of all those who belong to the Messiah." From there he moves to the gospel accounts where "John tells us quite plainly Easter day is the first day of the week.... Easter day is the first day of God's new creation. Easter morning was the birthday of God's new world."

The last two sections deal with the practical outworking of it all. Being in the middle of "the beginning of the End and the end of the End, should enable us to come to terms with our vocation to be for the world what Jesus was for Israel, and in the power of the Spirit to forgive and retain sins.... We are like the musicians called to play and sing the unique and once-only-written musical score."

Wright concludes by unpacking what it means to be "kingdom-announcers" and "crossbearers" as we model a new way of being human. Concerning the latter my spirit rejoiced at these words: "God forgive us that we have imagined true humanness, after the Enlightenment model, to mean being successful, having it all together, having all the answers, never making mistakes, striding through the world as though we owned it."

In answer to the challenges of our day, he shares a beautiful way forward: "The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics and theology and even, heaven help us, biblical studies, a worldview that will mount the historically rooted challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading the way into the postpost-modern world with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and true wisdom."

This book is excerpted and adapted from The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is.

Thinking about this book reminds me of a popular worship song that includes the thought that nothing is the same; everything has changed. Christ is risen! A new order has dawned. The path of those who through faith in Christ have become God's children grows brighter and brighter till it reaches the full light of day. When I hear about Christ, the resurrection and all that entails, especially when it is expressed in fresh ways, my spirit leaps for joy.

This book is a short 62-pg. review of what it means to be a Christian today. Starting with a response to the "Da Vinci Code" genre of revisionist mythology surrounding Jesus, Wright argues persuasively as a historian that the Christian movement is based on solid historical events of believers who suffered and died for spreading the news that Jesus did die and did rise from the dead, and they were eyewitnesses. "We had better learn to take seriously the witness of the entire early church, that Jesus of Nazareth was raised bodily to a new sort of life, three days after his execution." (p. 31)

The ongoing challenge of Easter is for individual Christians to follow Christ's commission to take this message to the world, to become the ripple effects spreading ever outward expressing God's redemptive work to the world in our various vocations. Often this will mean that we suffer the anguish of being "out of step" with the world in our daily struggles between what is and what we are called to be. I found a very beneficial discussion of personal vocation in the concluding chapters of this book, which coincidentally spoke to me during personal career deliberations.

This book is drawn from condensed material in Wright's THE CHALLENGE OF JESUS, and can be read in an hour or so. I also plan to seek out the longer work and read that also. But for something you can read profitably in an afternoon, it is hard to beat this capsule summary of such important material.

"The Challenge of Easter" was written by a New Testament historian who's also a bishop (in the Eastern Orthodox Church, I think). This book is more for professing Christians than unbelievers. The author assumed the reader would agree with him and so didn't give much actual evidence to back up his claims.

He mainly focused on how the Jewish disciples of Jesus would have viewed his resurrection and how they would have understood the phrase "the kingdom of God." Referring to the Bible (mainly 1 Corinthians 15), he showed that they really were claiming that Jesus died, came to life again, and had a physical body after his resurrection. He had some ideas that I've never heard before but appear to be Bible-based, so it made me think. The writing was also a bit formal and got technical at times.

The last chapter didn't make much sense to me and most of it didn't seem related to the Resurrection. It seemed to be about how we can apply the early Christian understanding of the kingdom of God to our lives today. He may have been referring to some Catholic teachings, as he clearly did so once without explaining what he meant. Since I'm a Protestant, this may have been the source of my confusion. However, I do know that some of what he said in this chapter went counter to clear teachings of the Bible.

People interested in Jewish messianic expectations in Jesus time would probably find reading this book worthwhile. Otherwise, "More Than a Carpenter" by Josh & Sean McDowell covered much of this same information in a more thorough, easy to understand fashion, so I'd recommend reading that instead.


(I won this book in a giveaway by another book blogger.)

Reviewed by Debbie from ChristFocus Book Club
(christfocusbookclub. blogspot. com)