N. T. Wright's The Day the Revolution Began: A Few Reflections

Throughout the book I kept writing HOW in the margin. Wright tells us (if you’ll forgive a run-on sentence) that ‘the death of Jesus has opened up a whole new world’ (p. 82) and ‘the death of Jesus launched the revolution’ (p. 83) and ‘by six o’clock on the Friday evening Jesus died, something had changed, and changed radically’ (p. 156) and ‘Jesus believed that through his death this royal power would win the decisive victory’ (p. 183) and that in the crucifixion ‘the covenant was renewed because of the blood that symbolized the utter commitment of God to his people’ (p. 194) and that the crucifixion is ‘the personal expression of [the love of God] all the way to his death’ (p. 201) and that ‘something has happened to dethrone the satan and to enthrone Jesus in its place’ (p. 207) and that ‘a new sort of power will be let loose upon the world, and it will be the power of self-giving love’ (p. 222) and that ‘the cross establishes the kingdom of God through the agency of Jesus’ (p. 256) and that ‘Jesus in himself, and in his death, is the place where the one God meets with his world, bringing heaven and earth together at last’ (p. 336) and that ‘when Jesus died, something happened as a result of which the world was a different place’ (p. 355). We are even told repeatedly that ‘sins are forgiven through the Messiah’s death’ (p. 115). But Wright doesn’t divulge how this worked. Notice how vague and foggy the above statements are.

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