"The Day the Revolution Began" - Wright or wrong? (8)

Chapter 6

Another positive chapter. Things are getting better! The focus is on two main themes, the presence of God, and the forgiveness of sins, with the former receiving the greater attention. God’s plan has always been that He dwells with Him, we live in fellowship with Him, and He achieves His purposes through us. This applied to Abraham, to Israel, to Jesus (of course) and to the church. Again, I wholeheartedly agree with the “much more than going to heaven” thesis. We have a wonderful and glorious purpose in Christ, as individuals and as the church. Wright also intertwines this with the essential need for forgiveness in order for this plan to be realised, though he does not say how the forgiveness is achieved. He does point out that forgiveness and the presence of God go together.

So, I am now enjoying the book a lot more, and Wright is drawing attention to, and painting a picture of the greatness of God’s purpose, and showing how this purpose is a consistent theme throughout the Bible. I am at the moment wondering if the outcome of the book will be that it is excellent in portraying the consequences of the cross, but weak on how the cross achieves or enables those purposes. We shall see.

Chapter 7

A strangely unsatisfying chapter. Wright looks as Isaiah 53, emphasising its place in the whole of Isaiah 40-55, and indeed 40-66 (and as someone who believes in the unity of Isaiah, I would say 1-66). He points out the surprise that suffering should be the means to salvation, and that it is God Himself who suffers. There is also quite a bit of stuff on Maccabees. Now Maccabees is non-canonical, and was not recognised as canonical by Israel, Also, I am not familiar with Maccabees, so may be that is why I did not find those parts particularly enlightening.

The end point seems to be that the essential forgiveness of sins is achieved through the suffering of the cross. This is true, and does not contradict the penal substitution approach to the cross, nor does it necessarily affirm it.

For me the main effect of this chapter is to make me think chapters 1-4 are a mistake. In them Wright has attacked (albeit gently!) the ideas of punishment, and said some things about wrath, and that sin is more than just doing bad things. Fair enough, but these were presented in such a way that he seemed to be arguing against the traditional evangelical/reformed view of the cross. Now I, and I am sure many other, thinking evangelicals will react against this, as I did somewhat at length. Now I am looking for justification of Wright’s views, does he think the cross entials punishment or not? So as this chapter was focused on Isaiah 53 I was keenly looking for his answers to the questions he had raised, and I found very little. Maybe I should have been looking for something else, but if so the tone of chapters 1-4 have helped to sidetrack me from the real issue. So maybe in chapters 1-4 Wright was dealing with popular misconceptions. In which case, fair enough, but let’s be honest. The people who may have these misconceptions on sin, wrath etc are unlikely to read this book. Hence my thoughts that chapters 1-4 are a mistake.