How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels, by N.T. Wright (HarperOne, 2012). My rating: 5 of 5.
You have heard the Gospels read aloud most Sundays of your life. You know the parables, the miracles and the Passion. But if someone asked what Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are trying to say as whole books, you might reach for a short answer about Jesus being God and dying so we can go to heaven. Wright thinks that answer, true as far as it goes, misses the main point. This book is a fresh way to hear the Gospel read at the Eucharist.
What the book covers
Wright, a New Testament scholar and former Bishop of Durham, starts with an odd fact. The creeds pass over Jesus’s public life entirely, moving directly between his birth and his death. Over time, he argues, the church has read the Gospels to fit that frame. The Gospels themselves tell a larger story. In Jesus, Israel’s God comes back in person and becomes king of the whole world, on earth as in heaven, and the cross is where that kingship is won.
Wright works through five common but partial answers to why the Gospels tell Jesus’s public life, then lays out four themes he hears running through all four books together.
What stayed with me
Two truths, one crowded out. Wright puts it this way: “The gospels were all about God becoming king, but the creeds are focused on Jesus being God.” He affirms the creeds. His worry is that one true thing has pushed another out of view.
Heaven coming to earth. “The “kingdom of heaven” is not about people going to heaven. It is about the rule of heaven coming to earth.” His illustration stays with me. It is like getting a letter in which the president invites himself to your home and misreading it as an invitation to the White House. Eternal life, in the same way, means the life of the age to come, the renewal of this world, not an escape from it.
The cross as a throne. James and John ask to sit at Jesus’s right and left in his glory. Mark later places two bandits there, on either side of the cross. Add the crown of thorns and the title nailed above him, and the Passion reads as an enthronement. The resurrection then shows that the victory was already won.
Kingdom and cross together. Wright refuses to set the cross against the kingdom, or substitution against representation. Jesus dies for us as Israel’s representative Messiah, in the pattern of Isaiah 53, and those put right by the cross are sent to put things right in the world.
The Temple and the Table. The Temple was where heaven and earth met. In the Gospels, Jesus takes over that role, the torn veil marks the change, and the Last Supper becomes a new-Temple moment.
A few notes
Wright’s claim that the creeds left a gap is deliberately provocative. The creeds were written to answer specific errors, and the church year fills in Jesus’s public ministry Sunday by Sunday, so read it as his critique. His reading of the Son of Man’s coming as pointing to the cross and resurrection is debated, and many scholars still read some of those sayings as pointing to a future return, as the creed affirms. I have also left aside his brief comments on present-day politics. One small slip: Bonhoeffer’s dissertation was titled Sanctorum Communio.
Who should read it
Preachers, lectors, seminarians, and anyone who senses there is more in the Gospels than they have heard. Wright notes that most Christians have never read a whole Gospel straight through. Mark takes about two hours to read aloud, and this book will help you hear it.
Quotes are short excerpts credited to the author. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. The price you pay does not change. I read this book on my own, and no one asked me or paid me to review it. My faith writing reflects my own views, not those of my parish or diocese. See Disclosures.