{"id":274,"date":"2007-12-13T01:01:40","date_gmt":"2007-12-13T01:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/markdroberts\/2007\/12\/a-review-of-simply-christian-by-nt-wright-section-1.html"},"modified":"2007-12-13T01:01:40","modified_gmt":"2007-12-13T01:01:40","slug":"a-review-of-simply-christian-by-nt-wright-section-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/2007\/12\/a-review-of-simply-christian-by-nt-wright-section-1.html","title":{"rendered":"A Review of Simply Christian by N.T. Wright (Section 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the series: Considering N.T. Wright
\n<\/em>Permalink for this post<\/a> \/ Permalink for this series<\/a>
\nAs I mentioned a couple of posts ago, when N.T. Wright was at Laity Lodge, he based his teaching on his book Simply Christian<\/a><\/em>, with connections made to several passages from Acts of the Apostles. Before I finish up this mini-series on N.T. Wright, I thought it would be helpful to put up a brief review of Simply Christian<\/em>.
\nThis book tries to do for our generation what C.S. Lewis did for his generation in Mere Christianity<\/a><\/em>. That book laid out in readable, engaging terms what Christianity was all about. It spoke powerfully to the modern reader, whether Christian or not.
\n\"Wright-Simply-Christian\"<\/a>Following Lewis, Simply Christian<\/em> is an attempt to describe Christianity for today’s reader, for today’s postmodern reader. thus it follows quite a different course than Lewis’s, though with several sensible overlaps because, after all, their basic subject matter is the same. Wright describes his purpose this way:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0My aim has been to describe what Christianity is all about, both to commend it to those outside the faith and to explain it to those inside. This is a massive task, and I make no pretense of having covered everything, or even of having faced all the questions some might expect in a book of this sort. (p. ix)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you’re not familiar with Simply Christian<\/em>, and if you’ve done some reading in Christian apologetics (the genre in which Simply Christian most naturally fits), you may be surprised by Wright’s approach. He doesn’t start with proofs. In fact, he doesn’t even try to prove anything in Simply Christian<\/em>: neither the existence of God, nor the deity of Christ, nor any of the things apologists often try to prove. The subtitle of Simply Christian<\/em> is Why Christianity Makes Sense<\/em>. Wright does not seek to prove that Christianity is true, only that it makes sense, especially to people in today’s world.
\nWright begins with what he calls “the echoes of a voice.” These echoes are the longing for justice, the quest for spirituality, the hunger for relationships, and the delight in beauty. We hear these echoes in our hearts, Wright contends, and they suggest that something, or perhaps Someone, first spoke that of which we hear echoes. The fact that we long for justice, desire spirituality, and so forth doesn’t prove that there is a first speaker. But it does point us in the direction of God, indeed, the God of the Bible.
\nFor example, Wright focuses first on our longing for justice. He wonders where this comes from:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0How does it happen that, on the one hand, we all share not just a sense that there is such a thing as justice, but a passion for it, a deep longing that things should be put to rights, a sense of out-of-jointness that goes on nagging and gnawing and sometimes screaming at us \u2013 and yet, on the other hand, after millennia of human struggle and searching and love and longing and hatred and hope and fussing and philosophizing, we still can’t seem to get much closer to it than people did in the most ancient societies we can discover? (p. 6)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Among several possible answers to this question, Wright proposes:<\/p>\n

Or we can say, if we like, that the reason we have these dreams [of justice], the reason we have a sense of memory of the echo of a voice, is that there is someone speaking to us, whispering in our inner ear \u2013 someone who cares very much about this present world and our present selves, and who has made us and the world for a purpose which will indeed involve justice, things being put to rights, ourselves<\/em> being put to rights, the world being rescued at last. (p. 9)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When I first read Simply Christian<\/a><\/em> a couple of years ago, my response to Wright’s first chapter on justice was: Brilliant! There is a longing for justice in people today, even if this longing takes different and sometimes contradictory forms. Some may long for laws that protect unborn children, while others long for guaranteed freedoms for women. Wright does not argue that the content of our longing for justice necessarily tells us what justice really is. Rather, his point is that the fact that we have such longing constitutes the echo of a voice, of God’s voice, in fact.
\nBy beginning with justice, rather than with the existence of God or the evidence for the resurrection, Wright is connecting with people in today’s world. His is a powerful beginning, on that ultimately points to the God revealed in Scripture and the gospel of God’s salvation in Jesus Christ.
\nI’ll have more to say about this in my next post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the series: Considering N.T. Wright Permalink for this post \/ Permalink for this series As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, when N.T. Wright was at Laity Lodge, he based his teaching on his book Simply Christian, with connections made to several passages from Acts of the Apostles. Before I finish up this…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":214,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-n-t-wright"],"yoast_head":"\nA Review of Simply Christian by N.T. Wright (Section 1) - Mark D. Roberts<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/2007\/12\/a-review-of-simply-christian-by-nt-wright-section-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Review of Simply Christian by N.T. Wright (Section 1) - Mark D. Roberts\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the series: Considering N.T. Wright Permalink for this post \/ Permalink for this series As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, when N.T. Wright was at Laity Lodge, he based his teaching on his book Simply Christian, with connections made to several passages from Acts of the Apostles. Before I finish up this…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/2007\/12\/a-review-of-simply-christian-by-nt-wright-section-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Mark D. Roberts\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-12-13T01:01:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark D. Roberts\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A Review of Simply Christian by N.T. Wright (Section 1) - Mark D. Roberts","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/2007\/12\/a-review-of-simply-christian-by-nt-wright-section-1.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"A Review of Simply Christian by N.T. Wright (Section 1) - Mark D. Roberts","og_description":"In the series: Considering N.T. Wright Permalink for this post \/ Permalink for this series As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, when N.T. Wright was at Laity Lodge, he based his teaching on his book Simply Christian, with connections made to several passages from Acts of the Apostles. Before I finish up this…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/2007\/12\/a-review-of-simply-christian-by-nt-wright-section-1.html","og_site_name":"Mark D. Roberts","article_published_time":"2007-12-13T01:01:40+00:00","author":"Mark D. Roberts","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/2007\/12\/a-review-of-simply-christian-by-nt-wright-section-1.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/2007\/12\/a-review-of-simply-christian-by-nt-wright-section-1.html","name":"A Review of Simply Christian by N.T. Wright (Section 1) - Mark D. Roberts","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-12-13T01:01:40+00:00","dateModified":"2007-12-13T01:01:40+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/#\/schema\/person\/1ff094a57b7e41f534434b1723df3d73"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/2007\/12\/a-review-of-simply-christian-by-nt-wright-section-1.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/2007\/12\/a-review-of-simply-christian-by-nt-wright-section-1.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/2007\/12\/a-review-of-simply-christian-by-nt-wright-section-1.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"A Review of Simply Christian by N.T. Wright (Section 1)"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/","name":"Mark D. Roberts","description":"Mark D. Roberts: Thoughtfully Christian Reflections on Jesus, the Church, and the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/#\/schema\/person\/1ff094a57b7e41f534434b1723df3d73","name":"Mark D. Roberts","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/f2d\/f2ddf5f080861f66ea230384f9d1bab2x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/f2d\/f2ddf5f080861f66ea230384f9d1bab2x96.jpg","caption":"Mark D. Roberts"},"description":"The Rev. Dr. Mark D. Roberts is a pastor, author, retreat leader, speaker, and blogger. Since October 2007 he has been the Senior Director and Scholar-in-Residence for Laity Lodge, a multifaceted ministry in the Hill Country of Texas. Before coming to Laity Lodge, he was for sixteen years the Senior Pastor of Irvine Presbyterian Church in Irvine, California (a city in Orange County about forty miles south of Los Angeles). Before his time at Irvine Pres, Mark served on the staff of the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood as Associate Pastor of Education. (Thanks to Janel Pahl for taking the photo to the right.) Mark studied at Harvard University, receiving a B.A. in Philosophy, an M.A. in the Study of Religion, and a Ph.D. in New Testament and Christian Origins. He has taught classes in New Testament for Fuller Theological Seminary and San Francisco Theological Seminary. Mark has written several books, including No Holds Barred: Wrestling with God in Prayer (WaterBrook, 2005), Dare to Be True (WaterBrook, 2003), Jesus Revealed (WaterBrook, 2002), After \"I Believe\" (Baker, 2002), and Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther (Word, 1993). His most recent book is Can We Trust the Gospels? Investigating the Reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (Crossway, 2007). He is currently working on a commentary on Ephesians that will be published by Zondervan in 2014. Mark writes a devotional for The High Calling of Our Daily Work, a website associated with Laity Lodge. His \"Daily Reflections\" can be viewed online or sent as a daily email. If you wish to receive this email, just visit TheHighCalling.org and sign up. Mark serves on the editorial board of Worship Leader magazine, where he publishes articles and reviews, including his regular column \"Lyrical Poetry.\" Additionally, he has published dozens of articles in leading magazines and journals. He often speaks for churches and other Christian groups, and has been interviewed on over seventy-five radio programs nationwide. Mark is married to Linda, who is a Marriage and Family Therapist, a Spiritual Director, and a retreat speaker. They have two children, Nathan and Kara.For Publicity Photos and Bio Statements for Mark, please check here. Mark's Dossier Professional History: Senior Director and Scholar-in Residence, Laity Lodge, October 2007 to present. Senior Pastor Irvine Presbyterian Church, June 1991 to September 2007 Adjunct Assistant Professor Fuller Theological Seminary, 1994 to 2007. Courses: New Testament Theology and Exegesis. Adjunct Instructor San Francisco Theological Seminary, 1995 to 2001. Courses: New Testament Greek and Exegesis Associate Pastor of Education First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood, 1987-1991 Teaching Fellow Harvard University, 1980-1983 Education: Ph.D. in the Study of Religion. Harvard University, 1992. Area: New Testament and Christian Origins M.A. in the Study of Religion Harvard University, 1984. A.B. magna cum laude in Philosophy Harvard University, 1979. Phi Beta Kappa; Danforth Fellowship Books: Can We Trust the Gospels? Investigating the Reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Crossway, 2007 No Holds Barred: Wrestling with God in Prayer. WaterBrook, 2005 Dare to Be True: Living in the Freedom of Complete Honesty. WaterBrook, 2003. Jesus Revealed: Know Him Better to Love Him Better. WaterBrook, 2002. After \"I Believe\": Experiencing Authentic Christian Living. Baker, 2002. Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther in the Communicator's Commentary Series. Word, 1993. Contacting Mark: You can reach Mark at: E-mail: mark@markdroberts.com mroberts@laitylodge.org Phone: Laity Lodge: (830) 792-1216 Address: Laity Lodge 719 Earl Garrett Kerrville, TX 78028","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/author\/mroberts"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/214"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/markdroberts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}