How God Became King

How God Became King

Tom Wright’s central thesis in this wonderfully accessible yet highly authoritative work is that the church has for centuries been distracted from reflecting on the reality of Christ’s life by Pauline theology on the one hand and the Christian creeds on the other. We know why Jesus was born, why he died and why he rose from the dead, but none of this theology answers why Jesus’ actual life comprised the events that it did. ‘We have all forgotten what the four gospels are about’, Wright claims.
As someone brought up on the Social Gospel with its emphasis on Jesus’ ushering in of the Kingdom of God through his life’s actions, I am not quite convinced that Wright’s assertion reflects the church as a whole. However, Wright’s thesis may reflect a welcome development in evangelical thinking, in which a dependence on faith rooted in doctrinal agreement is replaced by one more rooted in social engagement. Perhaps in this book Wright is inviting us to observe his own theological journey slowly evolving?
At the heart of Wright’s argument is one that is – in broad terms – very familiar to readers of more liberal theologians like Crossan, Wink or even Spong: the story of Jesus is ‘the story of the kingdom of God clashing with the kingdom of Caesar’ to quote Wright (p127). Wright’s juxtaposition of kingdom and cross is arguably not new, but it is refreshing to read it from a leading and very influential evangelical theologian.
Tom Wright is a remarkable thinker and writer whose prodigious output is shaping a generation of Christians. His many admirers will undoubtedly gulp down this book; those more hesitant about him would do well to do the same.

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