N. T. Wright and a Book for Both Bedside Tables

What books are sitting on your bedside table?

About 10 years ago I had an opportunity to meet New Testament scholar and Anglican bishop the Right Rev. Dr. N. T. Wright. We shook hands. Although it was spontaneous, I knew instantly what I wanted to say to him. It went something like this:

N.T. Wright is an especially gifted communicator
who writes for the academy and the church
(Photo: C Imes)

"It's an honor to meet you, Dr. Wright. My husband and I would like to thank you. You are nearly the only writer who has the distinction of appearing on both of our bedside tables."

I was in seminary at the time. I spent my days reading books like his Jesus and the Victory of God. My husband, on the other hand, did not gravitate towards non-fiction, and certainly not academic books. But he picked up a copy of Wright's Simply Christian and loved it. What a gift to have found a respected scholar who also had the ability to connect with wider audiences, beyond the academy! Wright gave us things to talk about as a couple that connected our worlds. That was just what we needed.

I can think of two other biblical scholars whose books my husband and I have both read and enjoyed: Sandra L. Richter and Christopher J. H. Wright. Scholars like Wright, Wright, and Richter are my models. They know their stuff academically, but they also take the time to communicate in an accessible way for the church at large.

That's what makes me so excited about my new book release. I've done the scholarly research, defended the dissertation, and published it as well as other articles on related subjects. But this new book is totally down-to-earth. Our 17-year-old daughter read the entire manuscript of Bearing God's Name before we sent it off to the publisher so that we could get rid of all the words she didn't know.

This one's for the church. It's for men and women and teens and grandparents who struggle to know what to do with the Old Testament. It's for people who want to obey Scripture but aren't sure where to start. It's for new

Academic and Accessible books by C.J.H. Wright
and Sandra Richter (Photo: C Imes)

Christians as well as Christians who've been around the block a few times and still feel like they're missing something. It's for Earl, who hasn't read a book since high school other than a welding manual. It's for Marilyn, who kindly tried to read my dissertation and just got frustrated. It's for my parents, who have cheered me on for decades and now can finally benefit from all the hard work. It's for my former students, who can re-experience Torah class and share it with their families.

My published dissertation along with my new 
book, Bearing God's Name, which is an
accessible book that presents what I learned
(Photo: C Imes)

Bearing God's Name doesn't officially release until December 10th, but I'm already getting messages from readers almost every day who say that it's making a difference in their lives.

Not sure which book to choose for your bedside table? Here's a comparison:

If you're married and anything like my husband and me, you might need to pick up one of each.

Book Review: Chris Wright's "Old Testament in 7 Sentences"

This is a very sneaky book.

Choosing just seven sentences to summarize the Old Testament would be a challenge for anyone, but for someone who has spent his entire career deeply immersed in the Old Testament it's almost painful! Which parts can be left out? How can decades of study and teaching be captured in a brief and accessible way? Christopher J. H. Wright is no newbie when it comes to the Old Testament. He has written commentaries on Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Deuteronomy, and Exodus as well as numerous books on OT ethics, preaching, and the mission of the people of God. Wright is just the right person write this book. (Did you see what I did there?)

Christopher J. H. Wright is a giant in Old Testament studies.
Just a few of his many books are pictured here.
(Photo: C Imes, at the Regent College bookstore)

So what makes this book sneaky? Wright acknowledges the difficulty of an endeavor like this. Based only on the table of contents, I made a list of all the things "missing" from the book, important moments in Israel's history and key aspects of biblical theology (image of God, covenant formula, the character of God in Exodus 34, Israel's failure to keep covenant, exile, etc). By the end of the book, Wright had covered everything on my list. Back to my point, Wright has managed to sneak a massive amount of biblical theology in this slim volume. He may have chosen just seven sentences, but attached to each one is a wealth of insight into surrounding texts. His book is a wonderful antidote to Old Testament illiteracy (not to mention Andy Stanley's exhortation to "unhitch" from the Bible Jesus read). It would make a great choice for a Bible Survey course or an adult Bible study. Discussion questions for each chapter are found in the back of the book.

So why would I spend my time reading a basic introduction to the Old Testament when I already have PhD in the subject? I'm always on the lookout for solid resources to recommend. This book in particular piqued my interest because Wright wrote the foreword to my new book. I'm a big fan of his work. He and I agree that the Old Testament law is a gift, and that the exodus demonstrates God's character. We agree that our destiny is not a disembodied existence, but that God plans to renew this world and restore the beauty of creation (see page 27). We share a passion to help believers discover the psalms as way of bringing all of who we are into God's presence (see page 149). Frankly, we agree on just about everything. If you flip through my copy of the book, here's what you'll find in the margin: stars, "exactly," "right," "cool," and "YES!"

Where do you read #ivpress? I brought Wright's book
 along this summer on a 6-hour hike at Lake Louise
in Banff National Park. (Photo: C Imes)

I'm grateful to InterVarsity Press for providing a review copy. It's no surprise to me that this was an outstanding read. Wright's The Old Testament in Seven Sentences: A Small Introduction to a Vast Topic delivers what it promises -- a small book with wide-ranging insights. Light enough to bring on a travel adventure . . . inspiring enough to want to read it when you're there.

Foreword by Christopher J. H. Wright!

I'm so grateful that Dr. Christopher J. H. Wright agreed to write the foreword for my new book, Bearing God's Name: Why Sinai Still Matters (IVP). 

Chris Wright is the author of my all-time favorite book, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible's Grand Narrative (IVP) as well as many other helpful books on the Old Testament, including the just-released The Old Testament in Seven Sentences (IVP), which I plan to read soon. Wright has a special gift for making scholarship accessible to the church, and he's devoted his entire career to cultivating biblical scholarship around the globe. One book I've recommended countless times is The God I Don't Understand:Reflections on Tough Questions of Faith (Zondervan).

Wright's IVP author page gives an impressive list of published works and ministry roles:

Christopher J. H. Wright (PhD, Cambridge) is international ministries director of the Langham Partnership, providing literature, scholarships, and preaching training for pastors in Majority World churches and seminaries. He has written many books including commentaries on Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Ezekiel, The Mission of God, Cultivating the Fruit of the Spirit, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God, and Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament. An ordained priest in the Church of England, Chris spent five years teaching the Old Testament at Union Biblical Seminary in India, and thirteen years as academic dean and then principal of All Nations Christian College, an international training center for cross-cultural mission in England. He was chair of the Lausanne Theology Working Group from 2005-2011 and the chief architect of The Cape Town Commitment from the Third Lausanne Congress, 2010.

When I first read The Mission of God, I was beginning my doctoral work on the concept of bearing Yahweh's name under the supervision of Dr. Daniel Block at Wheaton College. I found that Wright had already zeroed in on this biblical theme and explained it beautifully, but he had not connected the wider theme with the command "not to bear the LORD's name in vain" (Exodus 20:7). I'm delighted that Wright found my interpretation convincing, and that he was willing to let this project bear his name as well. It's an honor to have his partnership in introducing my new book to the world!

prostitutes, polygamy, and other gnarly things in the Old Testament

The Old Testament is full of fodder for questions. Gnarly questions about violence and sexual deviancy and deception and war. Every year new books are released that try to wrestle with these questions from a Christian point of view. Here are a few examples from recent years, most of them focused on violence in the Old Testament:

• The God I Don't Understand: Reflections on Tough Questions of Faith by Christopher J. H. Wright (Zondervan, 2008)
• Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God by Paul Copan (Baker, 2011)
• God Behaving Badly: Is the God of the Old Testament Angry, Sexist and Racist? by David T. Lamb (IVP, 2011)
• The Violence of Scripture: Overcoming the Old Testament's Troubling Legacy by Eric A. Seibert (Fortress, 2012)
• The Morality of God in the Old Testament: Christian Answers to Hard Questions by Gregory K. Beale (P&R Publishing, 2013)
• Did God Really Command Genocide? Coming to Terms with the Justic of God by Paul Copan & Matt Flannagan (Baker, 2014)
• The Skeletons in God's Closet: The Mercy of Hell, the Surprise of Judgment, the Hope of Holy War by Joshua Ryan Butler (Thomas Nelson, 2014)
• Tough Questions about God and His Actions in the Old Testament by Walter Kaiser Jr. (Kregel, 2015)
• Wrestling with the Violence of God: Soundings in the Old Testament by J. Blair Wilgus & M. Daniel Carroll R. (Eisenbrauns, 2015)

Last year David Lamb added a second book of his own to this collection: Prostitutes and Polygamists: A Look at Love, Old Testament Style (Zondervan, 2015). I was asked to review it for Themelios, the digital journal of The Gospel Coalition. My review went live yesterday.

I hesitated to accept. The book struck me as edgy and irreverently playful on a subject matter that deserves steady and non-sensational reflection. Frankly, I didn't seem to fit the target audience. But the editor had reasons to ask me (my gender, my cross-cultural experience, and my background in Old Testament ethics), so in the end I agreed to write a review. You can read it here. You might find it to be just the thing for the college group at your church, but I hope my review will help guide your group discussions in order to avoid some of the potential pitfalls of Lamb's approach.

While I have your attention, I'll put in a plug for two books I like better. Wright's book, listed first above, is an outstanding yet accessible introduction to tough issues involving suffering and evil, the Canaanites, the cross, and the end of the world. (His more scholarly tome, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God, is also well worth reading, if your attention span can last nearly 500 pages.) Paul Copan's book, listed second above, comes highly recommended as well. I haven't read the whole thing yet, but I find his approach much more satisfying than Lamb's.


If you're wrestling with some of these tough questions, please know that there are answers. From our vantage point we may never be fully satisfied with the ways that the Old Testament narrates the story of Israel's faith. It's too foreign and too far in the distant past to make perfect sense to us. But if we apply ourselves diligently to the text of Scripture and broaden our understanding of its ancient context, we can come a long way toward making sense of the Old Testament. It's a journey worth making!

rethinking heaven

What if most of what you've ever believed about heaven wasn't true? What then?

Three and a half years ago I wrote a blog post in which I suggested that this was the case. You've never seen that post, because I got cold feet, deciding it was too controversial and not worth the risk.

Since then, a growing chorus of evangelical scholars has been calling us back to a more biblical view of the afterlife (for example, Old Testament scholar C. J. H. Wright and New Testament Scholar N. T. Wright -- and how can you argue with someone who is always "Wright"?). And none has articulated it more clearly and thoroughly than biblical theologian J. Richard Middleton. In fact, his book won the Word Guild Award for the Best Book in Biblical Studies in 2014, and was selected as the Baker gift book of the year for the Institute for Biblical Research annual lecture.

Middleton says we're not going to heaven for eternity. The Bible doesn't teach that. He is not even sure that we go to heaven in the meantime, while we're waiting for Christ's return. His careful reading of passages demonstrates why.

The future that awaits us is not a disembodied existence, with mainly harps and clouds. It includes food and drink, culture and government, creativity and fulfillment. It is in fact much like Spirit-filled life today, minus the sorrow. When Jesus returns we'll walk with him right here on this earth, transformed as part of the (re)new(ed) creation. Jesus' resurrected body is the "firstfruits" of this new creation, affirming the inherent value of the created earth and giving us hope that it can be re-made to overcome the effects of sin and death.

An idea like "heaven" isn't going to die overnight, especially given its well-entrenched history stretching all the way back to Plato. We can hardly talk about salvation without talking about heaven. Middleton's book aims to change that.

Middleton boldly says,

"Not only is the term 'heaven' never used in Scripture for the eternal destiny of the redeemed, but also continued use of 'heaven' to name the Christian eschatological hope may well divert our attention from the legitimate expectation for the present transformation of our earthly life to conform to God's purposes. Indeed, to focus our expectation on an otherworldly salvation has the potential to dissipate our resistance to societal evil and the dedication needed to work for the redemptive transformation of this world. Therefore, for reasons exegetical, theological, and ethical, I have come to repent of using the term 'heaven' to describe the future God has in store for the faithful. It is my hope that readers of this book would, after thoughtful consideration, join me in this repentance." (237, emphasis mine)

Now that's worth pondering. For a long time.

Middleton also says,

"In the present, as the church lives between the times, those being renewed in the imago Dei are called to instantiate an embodied culture or social reality alternative to the violent and deathly formations and practices that dominate the world. By this conformity to Christ—the paradigm image of God—the church manifests God's rule and participates in God's mission to flood the world with the divine presence. In its concrete communal life the church as the body of Christ is called to witness to the promised future of a new heaven and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells (2 Peter 3:13)." (175, emphasis mine)

It is striking how often this same point is now being made by respected evangelical scholars. It is a truth whose time has come, and which requires us to re-think carefully how we articulate the gospel. If Jesus didn't die for us "so that we can go to heaven when we die," then why did he die?

Watch out, church. If our generation can truly grasp this, the transforming power of the gospel will be released in profound ways, right here in our midst.

my basket of questions

By the time you read this I will have had my last PhD seminar meeting on Old Testament Ethics with Dr. Block, in which we faced one of the toughest issues in the whole Bible: God's command for Israel to exterminate the Canaanites. It's a dark part of biblical history, and one that is very difficult to reconcile with the LOVE of God and His desire for His people to bless all nations. One of the books we read in preparation for class is Christopher J. H. Wright's the God i Don't Understand: reflections on Tough Questions of faith. Wright's blend of authenticity and faith is truly refreshing. Look at how he starts one of his chapters:

"In chapter 4 we looked at some common approaches to the problem of the conquest of Canaan, but we found that none of them is really satisfactory. What are we to say then? Is there any 'solution'?"

"I have wrestled with this problem for many years as a teacher of the Old Testament, and I am coming to the view that no such 'solution' will be forthcoming. There is something about this part of our Bible that I have to include in my basket of things I don't understand about God and his ways." (page 86, emphasis mine)

Wright goes on to offer three helpful frameworks for understanding the slaughter of the Canaanites. His explanation is the best I've read on the subject. But he offers more than answers. He models a life of faith in scholarship—a life of faith seeking understanding. Wright is committed to the God of the Bible and to the truth of the Bible, but he doesn't insist on having everything wrapped up in tidy little boxes. God is not tidy like that. He is awe-some and mighty, and he doesn't fit in anybody's box.

And so, instead of a box, Wright has a basket. In his basket are all the things he wants to ask God about someday. These things have the potential to derail his faith. They have done so for many others. But Wright refuses to let gaps in his understanding prevent him from surrendering to the God whose ways are beyond ours. This does not make his Christianity into a blind leap, though. Yes, there are gaps, but Wright chooses to stake his faith on what he does know about God—His unbounded love for us, His victory over sin and death, and the hope of His coming to make all things right again. 

I have a basket, too—a place for questions I can't wait to ask Jesus in person someday. The more I study, the more my basket fills up. Where did Satan come from? How are we supposed to read Genesis 1? Why didn't the Old Testament outlaw slavery? What did Paul really mean in 1 Timothy 2:12? What's the deal with head coverings? Who wrote the Pentateuch . . . and when? Why is the Song of Songs in the Bible? Is Job a true story or an epic poem? Is Jonah a true story or a parable? How extensive was the flood? Can a true believer reject the faith? If God can bring healing, why doesn't he? What about those who die without hearing about Jesus? I carry these questions and many more in my basket. But none of these questions changes the fact that I've been transformed by the love of God, poured out through the sacrifice of his Son, Jesus, on my behalf. I've learned to live without certainty in some areas because God's grace is sure.

How about you? Is your faith stalled by questions you cannot answer? I think Wright wants us to go forward with what we know of God, and hold our questions in a basket. These questions are important, and they should not simply be abandoned, but some of them may turn out to be unanswerable on this side of eternity. Our finite minds can only grasp so much. It would be a pity to insist on complete knowledge, when we aren't wired to be able to handle it all anyway.

So we bring our questions along for the ride. Perhaps the answers will become clear over time, and perhaps not, but either way we will not miss out on the adventure of faith.

Tuesday Tidbit: on going to earth when we die

From Christopher H. J. Wright, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God:

"The consistent biblical hope, from Genesis to Revelation is that God should do something with the earth so that we can once again dwell upon it in 'rest', in sabbath peace, with him. The Bible speaks predominantly of the need for God to come here, not of the wish for us to go somewhere else. This earth is to be the place of God's judgment, and also the place of God's saving power" (154).

Are you going to heaven earth when you die?

a 'wordle' of my blog ... (www.wordle.net)

what good is the old testament?

I'm reading a great book, and just came across a paragraph that captures so well the value of the Old Testament.  Christopher Wright, in his Old Testament Ethics for the People of God, says this:

"When the human race chose to rebel against God and fell into disobedience, arrogance, strife and violence, God's response was not simply to rescue individuals for some disembodied existence at a safe distance from the doomed planet.  Rather, God chose to call into existence a community on earth and in history that would be different, and through whom he would eventually bring the blessing of redemption to humanity as a whole.  Even in its origins in the book of Genesis, this community was given an ethical agenda.  In a world going the way of Sodom they were to walk in the way of the LORD, by doing righteousness and justice.  The way of the LORD was made clear to them through his great acts in their history - especially the exodus.  This community was further shaped by the law God gave them at Sinai, and by the other great traditions of their faith - prophets, wisdom writers, psalmists, historians and so on.  The purpose of all this was not merely for Israel's sake alone, or merely to keep God happy.  Rather, Israel as a society was intended from the start to to be a paradigm or model to the nations, a showcase of the way God longs for human society as a whole to operate.  We are not only justified, therefore; we are indeed expected to make use of the social patterns, structures and laws of Old Testament Israel to help us in our thinking and choosing in the realm of social ethics in our own world." (73-74)

Christopher Wright is one of the few scholars who have focused on the ethical value of the Old Testament for us today.  His work is a joy to read!  He emphasizes again and again that Israel's election was not proof that they were better than anybody else, but that they were meant to be a model for the nations of the character of Yahweh, the God who called them.  The nations were supposed to be able to look at Israel to find out what Yahweh was like.  Israel's history is littered with failures, but one Jewish man who carried out this mission flawlessly is still alive today.  (You can read about him in the New Testament.) I look forward to spending the next three years of my life digging into these truths!