NT Wright, or Tom Wright, is a former Bishop of Durham and a prolific writer whose work on the New Testament has transformed discussion about Paul, the Gospels and issues like the Resurrection, Justification and the Kingdom of God. He has many fans, and his share of critics too. His latest book, The Day the Revolution Began (SPCK, £19.99), is about the Crucifixion.
Christian Today visited him at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, where we discussed the problem of evil, the power of love, and how many have missed out on what the Cross is all about.
In his book Wright is out to challenge caricatures and misconceptions of what Jesus did on the Cross. It is rooted in his earlier works, such as Surprised by Hope, where he challenged views of salvation which prioritised an individual's escape from earth to an otherworldly 'heaven'.
Speaking to Christian Today, he says: "If we're really saying that the Christian hope is about not going to heaven but new heaven and new earth and new people within that, then doesn't this make the traditional accounts that we give of what the cross achieved look rather different?"
Wright wants to expands people's vision. "The more I then read the New Testament, the more I think, my goodness, there is explosive stuff here which is much bigger and wider than simply 'I've been very bad, God was going to punish me but he punished Jesus instead so now it's alright and I can go to heaven, can't I.'"
This is a caricature - perhaps few preachers would put the Cross in quite those terms - and yet Wright feels that this is yet what many people hear when the gospel is presented, and what many non-Christians can only see as absurd. So, he says: "Now of course the word of the cross is foolishness to the world, but let's make sure it's the right foolishness and not the wrong foolishness."
Wright gives the example of the 'Romans Road', where preachers take Romans 1-4 to as a source for a simple but ultimately narrow formula for the atonement, which draws more influence from pagan ideas about the satisfaction of divine wrath, than what Paul or Jesus talked about. "Instead of 'For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son', you end up saying that 'God so hated the world that he killed his son'...why do people hear that?" In a world full of violence and abuse, many people see this picture and assume that God himself is just as cruel and violent.
Wright isn't denying that "Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures" (it's what his book is all about) but he wants to make sure we know what that really means.
Wright highlights the sinister origins of the Cross as a horrific means of torture. "Crucifixion was a means of social and political control...the cross was a way of saying Caesar and Caesar's empire run this world, and this is what happens if you get in our way...Jesus grew up in the shadow of the cross." So, for Jesus' disciples to say: "'I'm going to tell you about someone who was crucified and is the Lord of the world'...this is utterly crazy".
And yet it was the defining symbol of the early Church. "The early Christians find in the fact of the cross a symbol which says that the God who made the world is with you in the midst of the mess of the world."
Instead of abstract formulas, Wright wants to focus on how Jesus himself understood his death. "When Jesus wanted to explain to his followers what his death was going to mean, he didn't give them a theory, he gave them a meal." The most helpful context for understanding the Cross is thus Passover, the festival where the Jewish people celebrated their Exodus: Yahweh's defeat of the evil powers (Pharoah) and Israel's freedom from slavery. The Cross marked a new Exodus from new powers.
What about forgiveness of sin? The Jewish people longed for this too, not in an abstract moralistic sense, but rather as something that signalled the end of exile, freedom from their idolatry, and Israel's freedom to again be a blessing to the entire world.
Sin is not simply wrongdoing. "We hear the word 'sin' as simply doing naughty things...it's much more organic than that, its the failure to be genuinely human," Wright says. It is rooted in an idolatry that worships anything other than God. In our idolatry, we give power to our idols, and thus we are enslaved. Ironically then, we create our own enemies.
"How are we rescued from that? On the cross we see very starkly who the true God actually is, and we are drawn to worship the true God as having been revealed in utter self-giving love in Jesus. That worship displaces the idolatry which was the root cause of sin." And this, then, is how the evil powers of the world are defeated.
But if the emphasis is not on divine satisfaction, why is sacrifice necessary to defeat evil? "Why doesn't God just send in the tanks?" Wright asks. His answer is: "Because he's not that sort of God...God comes to take the weight of evil on himself."
Wright's work has provoked controversy in the past, including one spat about Justification with John Piper. How does he manage public conflict as a Christian? "I hope that I and others have tried to model good Christian disagreement."
This is a particularly difficult in America, says Wright: "People very easily demonise one another, it gets bound up with culture wars: you only say that because you're one of those stupid liberals, you only say that because you're one of those wicked fundamentalists – the wells have been poisoned."
Wright praises a recent review of his book from Michael Horton at The Gospel Coalition. Horton and Wright have often disagreed, and still do and yet, says Wright: "He is very gracious, bending over backwards to be as positive as he can be. This is how to do it."
Good research means he sometimes has to disagree with his own ideas as well. He notes humbly: "Probably a quarter of what I say is less than fully true...I know that in my personal life I make many mistakes, and I don't expect my intellectual life to be more perfect than that."
Engaging this issue hasn't been easy: Wright describes the personal process of writing this book as "intellectually strenuous but also spiritually strenuous". He speaks of one dark winter abounding in various difficulties, where only prayer got him through. "There is a sense that this is a dangerous place to be. If you want an easy life as a theologian don't write about the cross, because it is costly." He sums it up: "The closer you get to Jesus and the cross, the closer you get to Jesus and the cross."
How does he summarise the cross? "It is a story of love." He pauses, then quotes Dante: "Go back to Dante: 'The love that moves sun and the other stars, this is the love in creation, the love that says let there be, let there be a world that is other than myself, love which is so powerful that won't let creation go'...that has to be at the heart of it."
So, he says: "It isn't just that when Jesus died he made it possible for you to have your sins forgiven and go to heaven...by 6pm on Good Friday the world was a different place. The power that had distorted, defaced, and is destroying the world has in principle been defeated, the resurrection proves that but it was achieved on Good Friday. To celebrate that at a more deep level than we've tended to, I think, is a wonderful challenge."
