The Faith and History of Jesus Presented to Us as a Challenge

books:


	• The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is N. T. Wright InterVarsity Press, 1999 - 202 pages average customer review:based on 38 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Good stuff, if slightly disappointing...

N.T. Wright was a name that was unfamiliar to me as recently as a few years ago, but I have increasingly heard references to him lately, especially since I started seminary last year. He is obviously a very well-respected and popular author. I've read several of his articles in the last year, and I have greatly appreciated what he had to say. With that context, I had great expectations for "The Challenge of Jesus," the first of his books that I have actually read. Those expectations were met in large part, with a few caveats.

The strength of the book is Wright's ability to challenge some preconceived notions of evangelical orthodoxy without being condescending or smug. He is a well-regarded academic who writes for a popular audience, and he manages to wrestle with complex intellectual questions without distancing himself from the reader.

The most challenging point that I read in this book was his suggestion that Jesus did not necessarily know the entirety of his divine nature while he lived on earth as a first-century Jew. Orthodox Christian theology seems to articulate that Jesus was completely aware of his fully-man, fully-God nature, but Wright claims otherwise. Though I did not find his argument for this point to be entirely convincing, it's certainly a question worth further consideration.

Most compellingly, Wright argues that the vigorous historical pursuit of the life and mission of Jesus of Nazareth is essential for the church and for individual Christians to formulate a robust understanding of who He was and is. For any Christians who think that historical research about Jesus is irrelevant, this book eliminates that all-too-common notion.

My biggest complaint about the book relates to its origin. Apparently, Wright gave a series of lectures, which were then reformatted and polished into this book form. The process can obviously work, as C.S. Lewis demonstrated with "Mere Christianity." But the problem is that Wright makes comment after comment about the reality that he does not have time or space to address a particular point. That approach has one effect on the listener during verbal communication, who invariably does not want to sit and listen to a speaker talk for hours and hours. But for a reader who has committed to read a book of this import, it was frustrating to continually get the sense that this work was vastly incomplete. Of course, it is essential for any scholar who is writing to a popular audience to omit tremendous volumes of background information, which would otherwise be overwhelming. But that does not mean that the author needs to reiterate that the really important stuff has actually been extracted from the text for space constraints.

Ultimately, I thought that this book was very good, if not outstanding. I found Wright's style to be sufficiently engaging that I hope to read more of his work. And I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to wrestle with the questions about the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth.

for more information click here

The Faith and History of Jesus Presented to Us as a Challenge

I've been a fan of N.T. Wright ever since I read his book The Meaning of Jesus:Two Visions" which he co-authored with Marcus Borg. I came across this book about half a year ago. I still haven't understood all of the implications which can be gleamed from this very clear account of what Jesus and God and the history of Israel are all about.
Wright speaks of Jesus as the unique one off achievement of God in the history of the world. Jesus as the messiah who inaugurated the new creation and forgave the world of sin.
This book is based on a series of lectures Wright gave for an InterVarsity press conference in 1999. They can be listened to on his unofficial page: [...]

The book is persuasive, though I will leave its description to other reviewers who have done a very nice job of summing it up. I highly recommend this book as a way to step into Wright's larger series on Christian Origins and the Question of God. I am about to read the first work in this series, "The New Testament and the People of God." If the Challenge of Jesus is just a taste then I suspect the fuller treatment of the themes found in its pages will be rewarding.

Very compelling scholarship and historically accurate account of Jesus

for more information click here

Jesus of Faith and History

Wright's look at Jesus comes from the eyes of the Jewish expectation of the Messiah. He attempts to answer the questions: Was Jesus the foretold Messiah? How did Jesus accomplish that end? How did he radically move from the expectations of what the Messiah was to do?

So Necessary

Wright is a model for the Pastor-Theologian. Not only are his words grounded in a most solid foundation, not only do they quickly challenge our theology (in a healthy way) but they are accessible by most intermediate readers.

Thank you Bishop Wright!

greatest book on jesus i've ever read

seriously, i haven't read any of the other reviews but there is no book that compares to this one. for some reason before i started reading it i decided that i would hi-lite the "wow" moments. that was a big mistake. everything got hi-lited. wright opens up scripture the way i wish i would've discovered when i was in college.

too many christians today read scripture through biased lenses. instead of taking from scripture they end up reading too much into it.

wright adds great insight.

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Today a renewed and vigorous scholarly quest for the historical Jesus is underway. In the midst of well publicized and controversial books on Jesus, N. T. Wright's lectures and writings have been widely recognized for providing a fresh, provocative and historically credible portrait.Out of his own commitment to both historical scholarship and Christian ministry, Wright challenges us to roll up our sleeves and take seriously the study of the historical Jesus. He writes, "Many Christians have been, frankly, sloppy in their thinking and talking about Jesus, and hence, sadly, in their praying and in their practice of discipleship. We cannot assume that by saying the word Jesus, still less the word Christ, we are automatically in touch with the real Jesus who walked and talked in first-century Palestine. . . . Only by hard, historical work can we move toward a fuller comprehension of what the Gospels themselves were trying to say."The Challenge of Jesus poses a double-edged challenge: to grow in our understanding of the historical Jesus within the Palestinian world of the first century, and to follow Jesus more faithfully into the postmodern world of the twenty-first century.

for more information click here

hot