Introduction

I recently finished listening to an audio version of N.T. Wright's Simply Christian.  The book held my attention strongly, despite the fact that I listened to most of it on a four hour drive to the airport when my body was really confused about whether it was supposed to be awake or asleep.

I can add little to the rave reviews the book has already received from many quarters, such as Anne Rice's comments on the dust jacket: "Simply Christian goes beyond C.S. Lewis' great classic Mere Christianity.  N.T. Wright is simply crucial; his writing can transform one's life.  This will become a classic."

The comparison with Mere Christianity is apt, but worth exploring.  As Rice said, Wright goes beyond what Lewis did in significant ways.  Lewis effectively and winsomely presented an argument for the existence of God and expanded from there to smoothly cover the Christian understanding of redemption, the Trinity, the Church, and Christian life.  Wright touches on many of the same subjects, but takes several to a much greater depth than Lewis did.  The differences are not surprising.  Lewis was a layman and a philosopher; Wright is a bishop and a theologian.  Lewis was writing to an audience that was largely modern in mindset, and not totally alienated from religion; Wright's readers are post-modern and highly skeptical of "organized religion" (even within the Church).  For this reason, Wright starts more broadly and goes deeper on certain points than Lewis did.

The whole book is excellent, but one theme which he repeats over and over again is so crucial to the malaise of Western Christianity (both within and outside of the Church) that I'm going to summarize it here.

The Core of the Book

As soon as he begins to talk about God in chapter 5, Wright takes a step back and lays a foundation by talking about worldviews.  He identifies three different general approaches to thinking about God and the universe which have existed throughout human history and continue to exist today.  The choice of which worldview I identify with will determine much of what I am able to accept and understand of Christianity; and the extent to which I allow assumptions of one of the false "options" below to be active in me is the extent to which my understanding and application of Christian doctrine will be skewed.

Wright presents these three basic worldviews as "Option 1", "Option 2", and "Option 3".

Option 1: Pantheism

In what Wright calls Option 1, the relationship between God and the universe is that God and the universe are the same thing.  God is everything and everything is God.  This, he says, is more or less what the ancient Stoics believed.  The prescription for life that comes from such a belief is that all that humanity can do is simply learn to like the way things are.  If God is the world, then obviously the world is exactly the way its supposed to be. 

In pantheism then, Adaptation to reality is the definition of human excellence.  And of course, if adaptation to "the way things are" is the goal, then surely suicide is the quickest and surest means to completely adapt oneself to the way things are.  After all, human beings continually strive with their environment to some degree as long as they are alive.

Fortunately, the numerous people who today are more or less pantheists (C.S. Lewis described pantheism as the default human religion in Miracles) are not at all consistent in practicing their "faith."  If they were, they would call the preference for justice rather than oppression - or relationship rather than isolation, or beauty rather than ugliness - all illusion and get on with the proper Stoic thing to do by killing themselves.

Option 2: Deism

Option 2 in Wright's scheme is the view that God and the universe are utterly different and distant from each other.  In fact, God is so far from the universe that it is difficult to imagine that He could really have anything to do with it.  This was the view of the ancient Epicureans, and it has filtered down to the present time through the idea of Deism, which is sometimes described as "a watchmaker God who put the universe together, wound it up, and then left it alone to run down."

Deism excludes miracles because it holds that God has caused the universe to run by finely tuned "laws of Nature" and now there is no reason for Him to ever interfere with them - in fact, it would be somehow aesthetically inappropriate for Him to do so.

Though Wright does not stress this point, I think that the difference between Deism and "Option 3" below requires careful study.  Many Christians have actually been raised with a great deal of Deistic assumptions about reality, and therefore still live as though God were very distant and all but impossible to reach.  Though we know God supposedly became a Man and hears our prayers all the time, the idea that He would actually do something here and now seems somehow unbelievable.  After all, isn't everything controlled by the "laws of Nature"  that God put in place billions of years ago?  As Wright puts it in chapter 12, prayer under Option 2 is rather like putting a message in a bottle and sending it out to sea in hopes that perhaps Someone, Somewhere, may find it.  Does that sound at all like your prayer life?  I know there are days when it feels that way to me...

Option 3: The Biblical Worldview

Although I believe Wright often refers to Option 3 as "the Christian worldview," I think it's probably more appropriate to call it the Biblical worldview - the view of reality which God first revealed to the Jews.  All too often in Church history, it has been confused Greek philosophy, with the result that "Christianity" has ended up having strong overtones of Option 2.  We must remember that the worldview of the Bible is not one that has ever arisen naturally - no human being would know about it if God had not revealed it.

In option 3, God and His created universe are intimately related, but distinct.  In fact, there is a vast amount of activity that takes place in the invisible, spiritual realm that affects and interacts with the visible, physical world.  In the Bible, angels appear and give messages from God, Satan afflicts Job, demons possess people, God miraculously heals and judges, and prophets see visions and are even caught up into the Throne Room of God and see Him directly.  And of course, in the ultimate brain-buster for Greek philosophy, God Himself became a human being and lived on the earth for 33 years.

To the pantheist, this last - the Incarnation - is sheer nonsense - the statement that "God became Man" translates to "Everything became part of Itself."  To the Deist, although the Incarnation may be theoretically acknowledged as possible, it seems improbable to the point of incredulity - why would the God who had so perfectly ordered and ordained His creation interfere with it in such a childish way?  And what, once He was here, would He - who is utterly different from us - say to us?

To the Christian - at least the Christian whose world is truly defined by "Option 3" - the Incarnation is still a spectacular and awe-inspiring event.  But it is not incomprehensible.  From the very beginning, the God who created all things and yet was distinct from them has been intimately involved with what He made.  Invisibly, He sustains and orchestrates, but He also visibly calls and teaches and warns and judges and delivers.  The idea that the God who delivered Israel from Egypt and descended to Mount Sinai in darkness and fire could ascend the hill of Golgotha and die on a cross to deliver the world from sin is not a non-sequitur.  In fact, it is precisely what He had told His prophets over and over again - YHWH will save His people.

These insights, which Wright stresses over and over again throughout his book, have profound significance for both those with spiritual questions outside the Church and those who struggle to live a spiritual life inside the Church.  If this were the only topic in Simply Christian, the book would still easily be worth the read.

Open Questions for me

There are still a few areas of Wright's theology on which I'm not sold.  He talks about Jesus' self-identity as a kind of "calling" - that Jesus, in the course of many years of study and prayer, may have grown gradually into the awareness that He was uniquely one with Yahweh - called to be and do for Israel and the world what only God could do, and He proceeded to act out this vocation in the course of His ministry.  I find this hard to square with numerous verses which seem to show Jesus having a much greater awareness of His divinity - even memories of eternity past.  This is especially true in John's Gospel, as when He said, "now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began."  (John 17:5)

Finally, in terms of eschatology, I haven't read enough of the details of Wright's theology to know exactly what he thinks, but it seems to me that the stress always falls on what we are to be doing now, through the Holy Spirit, to make the world the kind of place that God desires it to be.  Now, I wholeheartedly agree that the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost has profoundly shifted human history and that the Church has got a job to do in proclaiming the Kingdom of God - both in word and in deed.  But if emphasis is placed entirely on what we are to do now and not on what God is going to do when Jesus comes again, then I think we have wandered from the teaching of the Apostles.  Peter actually goes so far as to call Christians to "rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." (1 Peter 1:13)  As I said, however, I do not know enough of Wright's eschatology to do more than attack a straw man, so I will leave the topic there.

In summary, I will say again that Simply Christian should be on every Christian's reading list.  It should also be an excellent place to start for those who are not Christians and yet are for some reason reading this blog!