How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels

NT Wright again, blazes another trail to illuminate the darkness contemporary religion has thrown us to. It continually amazes me as to why he seems to be the only clear thinking ecclesiastic scholar on the planet, and I do not mean this sarcastically. Wright's ability to see scripture through the eyes of the author is a gift we all need to use to our advantage if we truly want to understand what scripture is trying to tell us. Not with contemporary political or economic agendas weaving their own twist on the story, but what the author intended for us to know. Wright's evaluation of the true message of the gospels is succinct and devoid of any denominational exegesis. It is the story of the establishment of the Kingdom of God by Christ's obedience to the Father's will. It is not a story of what is to come at some future time, a story which most mainline Christians and skeptics alike have misinterpreted, but represents what happened in the now of then. Everytime I read one of Wright's books, scripture becomes more clear and meaningful for me. This is a book to add to one's library of required readings.

I will never forget the day in Bible college that our professor began class with a simple question: What is the gospel? Letting the query hang for a moment, he then asked us to write out the essence of the good news in one sentence – no more, no less. After we had written our answers, the professor collected them and read them aloud to the class. Though the answers varied in particulars, most tended to share certain words or phrases in common: salvation, atonement, eternal life, and so on. A trend among the students was obvious: we all basically thought that the gospel had mainly to do with the death of Jesus and the pay-off for us, our eternal salvation. How stunned all of us were when our professor reacquainted us with what the Bible actually says about the gospel.It is a similar problem to which N.T. Wright attends in his latest book, How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels. The problem is this: for many of us, we have forgotten what the four gospels are all about. For the church, this forgetfulness has at times led to a partial excising of the stories about the life of Jesus and the particular message he preached from popular and institutional piety in preference of emphases on his divinity or atoning death. The great creeds of the Christian tradition are here culpable, Wright says, though he in no way wishes to diminish their worth or dismiss their use. For the academy of biblical studies, on the other hand, the forgetfulness has led to an over-emphasis on the “social gospel” of Jesus ministry and the ethics it assumes and implies and a dismissal of the elements of the Jesus story which are more theological and doctrinal.The two extremes are equally problematic, for both emphasize and de-emphasize elements of the gospel when, really, the gospel should not be so disarticulated at all. Rather, Wright says, the gospel ought to be taken whole, inclusive of all its constitutive parts. The divinity, social teachings, and death of Jesus are parts of the gospel story, but just as individual parts alone do not comprise a whole body, neither do single elements over-emphasized capture the whole of the gospel story. In order to properly understand and appreciate the gospels, Wright says, we must reclaim what they are all about: the story of Jesus and the Kingdom of God. In part two Wright argues that the story of the gospels can only be properly appreciated when cast in the light of four key and recursive motifs: (1) the gospel story as culmination of the story of Israel; (2) the gospel story as the story of Israel’s God; (3) the gospel story as reconstitution and launching of God’s people; and (4) the gospel story as the clash of the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of Caesar. These elements, like four surround-sound speakers playing different parts of the same song, have been variously silenced and emphasized throughout the church and the academy. To fully appreciate the whole gospel song, however, a balance must be struck. To this end, Wright argues extensively and successfully through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and in them locates the four pieces being played by each of the four “speakers.” At the end of part two, Wright introduces a final interpretive key that marries the story of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John with the story of the Exodus and further shows how thoroughly biblical his “four speaker” interpretation of the gospels truly is. When the gospels are read with the grain of the Exodus, we find that Israel’s story is culminated in Jesus as a final, ultimate liberation from the powers of sin and death. In the stories of the gospel and Exodus, Israel’s God is revealed and “goes with them on their journey” (151) – a robust theology of the incarnation, indeed! Likewise, as God’s people journey onward with God, they are renewed and given the vocation to be a light and a blessing to the nations. Finally, the gospel story reflects the clash of kingdoms in God’s deliverance of God’s people from the clutches and bondage of the empire: whether from Pharaoh or Caesar, God is in the business of freeing his people. In the latter third of How God became King, Wright produces the most compelling element of his argument by connecting the cross of Christ to the Kingdom of God by way of the same four-fold scheme. In this way Wright successfully articulates how the cross makes sense as the culmination of Israel, the self-revelation and salvation of God, the foundational ethic of the church and its life, and the decisive victory of God over the powers of empire. At the end of the book, an apologetic is given for the usefulness of the historic creeds despite their deficiencies as a means of telling and celebrating the story of God in the communal worship of the church. In all, How God Became King is an excellent book sure to be appreciated by many audiences. Those who have never read the gospels with an eye for the Kingdom of God will be presented a cohesive New Testament theology of God’s reign and their faith will be all the better for it. Appended to the text is a list of suggested sources for further reading which include both ‘popular’ and ‘scholarly’ works sure to lead readers further in their newfound appreciation for the forgotten story of the gospels. Though scholars and students of the academy will not likely find any new material or much engagement with the ‘higher criticisms,’ what they will be happy to encounter is a scholar who writes as if the material he engages actually matters for the church and the world it lives in. As is typical of his work, Wright has again done the church a great favor in presenting the gospel story as the story of God and his kingdom on earth.(Originally published in the Englewood Review of Books.)

Book title: How God Became KingAuthor: Tom WrightPublishing information (place, publisher, year): New York, HarperCollins, 2012Number of pages: 278When we talk about Jesus we leave out most of the story. We talk about the virgin birth. We mention that he had a ministry that lasted three years (but that isn’t really essential in most of our conversations). We talk about his death on a cross and, of course, the resurrection. He went to heaven and is coming back.There you go. That’s all you really need to know to believe the right stuff and go to heaven. Is there anything else we need to talk about?“Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all seem to think it’s hugely important that they tell us a great deal about what Jesus did between the time of his birth and the time of his death,” writes author Tom Wright. So much of what we believe and shape our thought about Jesus are creeds. “The gospels were all about God becoming king, but creeds are focused on Jesus being God.”This book focuses on Jesus inaugurating God’s kingdom. The public ministry of Jesus is told through four different narratives by four different voices all telling about the glory of God revealed in Jesus.“When the church leaves out bits of its core teaching, it will inevitably overinflate other bits of it core teaching,” Wright says. How that plays out in practice and teaching is “churchgoers treat the gospels as the optional chips and dip” to snack on before a big plate of steak, potatoes and Pauline theology are served up. It’s as if the only nourishment a growing boy needs is a healthy diet of Paul. Our appetite for Jesus has been spoiled.Here are some of of Wright’s main points: Don’t look for theories about Jesus, pay attention to the story! Live in the story of Jesus and allow it to shift the ground you’re standing on. The church’s life and mission need to be rooted in the historical accomplishments of Jesus. The gospels are far from “ordinary”.Wright, as usual, makes a compelling argument. His style is respectful and tactful and forces the reader to think about the implications of Jesus being king here and now rather than some day way off in a hard-to-imagine future. He argues that we’ve mis-read the gospels. But even worse, we’ve made them “ordinary.” That’s a trap that results in living an ordinary life. And that is a long way from what God intends for us as his image bearers.This is definitely a book I’d recommend. Wright writes for audiences that range from academic to common (like me). This book is great for the regular church grower seeking to take their understanding of the mission of Jesus and the church to a deeper level. Wright helps you imagine that you can really live the life Jesus intended for you to live.

This book has a quite interesting message. It gives some answers to those people (as myself) that are used to hear the bible on pieces but was looking for the message as a whole. The aim behind every pieces…“(…)That is to say, when Jesus died on the cross he was winning the victory over “the rulers and authorities” who have carved up this world in their own violent and destructive way. The establishment of God’s kingdom means the dethroning of the world’s kingdoms, not in order to replace them with another one of basically the same sort (one that makes its way through superior force of arms), but in order to replace it with one whose power is the power of the servant and whose strength is the strength of love.Jesus, after all, has come to Jerusalem and found the Temple no longer to be the place where heaven and earth do business, but the place where mammon and violence are reigning unchecked, colluding with Caesar’s rule. Jesus himself, the evangelists are saying, is now the place where heaven and earth come together, and the event in which this happens supremely is the crucifixion itself. The cross is to be the victory of the “son of man,” the Messiah, over the monsters; the victory of God’s kingdom over the world’s kingdoms; the victory of God himself over all the powers, human and suprahuman, that have usurped God’s rule over the world. Theocracy, genuine Israel-style theocracy, will occur only when the other “lords” have been overthrown.…Jesus’s death and resurrection have constituted him as, already, the one who has “all authority in heaven and on earth” (28:18). It is the church’s widespread and long-lasting failure to realize that this was what Matthew and the others were talking about that has left the door open to many generations of misleading readings and consequent puzzles.The best hypothesis is that all four gospel writers believed that with his crucifixion Jesus of Nazareth had indeed been enthroned, however paradoxically, as Israel’s Messiah and that, with that event, Israel’s God had established his kingdom on earth as in heaven.“Five stars for sure

"The LORD is King forever and ever ..." (Psalms 10: 16). The title itself is misleading and questioning God's eternal sovereignty. Wright doesn't need to declare God's Kingship - He is eternal and so is His Kingship and Sovereignty - not as Wright thinks out of his deluded mind. Wright can convince the world easily with his swelling words. In the first chapter, "the missing middle" (a reference to the life and teachings of Jesus), he is trying to show as to how the creeds (apostolic, nicene, etc.) has missed the life and work of Jesus. He thinks that the creeds were meant to summarize the bible / the four gospels, and not that the creeds were developed to address a particular heresy at a particular time in the history of the church. He says, "the Gospels were all about God 'becoming' king, but the creeds are focused on Jesus being God." As far as God's Kingship is concerned, it was one of the theme even in the Old Testament and not that "God 'became' a king after the birth of or via Jesus."It's totally mis-leading and not worth reading.

Excellent! A chance for many evangelicals and Orthodox Christians to deconstruct and reconstruct what they think about the Gospels. Required reading!

Excellent summary of the central message of the New Testament

Libro bellissimo che tutti dovrebbero leggere.Con una splendida similitudine di un impianto audio da calibrare, raddrizza le conoscenze sul modo in cui bisogna leggere i vangeli.