by N. T. Wright
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Product Description
With every earthquake and war, understanding the nature of evil and our response to it becomes more urgent. Evil is no longer the concern just of ministers and theologians but also of politicians and the media. We hear of child abuse, ethnic cleansing, AIDS, torture and terrorism, and rightfully we are shocked. But, N. T. Wright says, we should not be surprised. For too long we have naively believed in the modern idea of human progress. In contrast, postmodern thinkers have rightly argued that evil is real, powerful and important, but they give no real clue as to what we should do about it. In fact, evil is more serious than either our culture or our theology has supposed. How then might Jesus' death be the culmination of the Old Testament solution to evil but on a wider and deeper scale than most imagine? Can we possibly envision a world in which we are delivered from evil? How might we work toward such a future through prayer and justice in the present? These are the powerful and pressing themes that N. T. Wright addresses in this book that is at once timely and timeless.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Refreshing take on problem of evil, 2008-09-01
What was great about this book is that I had to stop and reread some chapters. I really liked Wright's approach to evil. It is not just the philosophers mystery, but it is something that we all face each and every day in all sorts of ways and shapes. I had always thought that the best approach to dealing with the problem of evil was that of a classical apologist. How can a person define what is evil without defining what is good? A classic moral argument leading to God's existence and tolerance of evil for the greater good. Throw that in there with John Piper's comment that God ordains evil and you are left with God looking like He is playing both sides. There is both a strong and a weak point to this.
Wright begins with the Scriptures. He makes the point that though a Theist has grounds to defend a theistic deity, that deity is not necessarily God revealed in Jesus Christ. I think that he is right, in the sense that the Christian story is one where God combats evil through the affirmation that Creation is good and He is recreating it and preparing us to live in the world as He sees it.
He says that evil is a mystery, we do not know it's origin. We do not know whether God ordained it or not, but we do know God is using it and allows it and will ultimately have victory over it. The question of the origin of evil the Scriptures are not concerned about, only that God is dealing with evil on His terms.
The ultimate solution to evil is the Cross and the Victory of God. There is a lot of controversy over Wright's view of the atonement. I thought that He did a good job here when he said that the cross is about Christus Victor, and the atonement theories all represent aspects of that victory. In some mysterious way, Jesus' death and Resurrection won a victory against evil. A victory we appropriate through forgiveness.
Forgiveness is not forgetting, tolerating, or ignoring evil. It is naming it, saying that it is wrong and then living as God's people in the new world order. Forgiveness and reconciliation is a chapter I need to reread as I struggle in forgiving others and forgiving myself. I thought this was an interesting and artistic way of dealing with the problem of evil, one where evil was not at the center, but the victory of God.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Must-read transitional work, 2008-07-24
There are very few scholars whose work I wait to be released. Among them thus far in my young scholarly career are Marcus Borg, Garry Wills, Mark Noll and NT Wright, authors whose scholarship is prolific, deeply personal and exhaustively researched.
This books represents a transition on Wright's work from Christological scholarship toward a theology of the cross. Although admittedly more on the level of popular reading, it is a must-read for anyone interested in the debate over the current wave of Christian leaders set on reclaiming faith from the Religious Right in favor a service-based Kingdom theology that focuses less on going to heaven and more on the hope and activity of making heaven a present and temporal reality.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
 Disappointing Book from Tom Wright, 2008-06-27
For those unfamiliar with the autor, Tom Wright has some interesting (not exactly orthodox / Biblically sound) theology that makes his more academic books generally a good read.
However, as one of his "pop" books, this one seems to be laden with Western European anti-war commentary that comes across as politically motivated, not Biblically-based.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Profound Insight, 2008-02-08
NT's book approaches the subject in a different way than anything I have read. His insights are myriad and profound. I appreciate his commitment to a thoroughly biblical understanding, tempered by a deep understanding of history and culture.
5 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
 The shadow of a fallen world, 2007-12-09
Well I have mixed emotions regarding this book. In many accounts it has been a disappointment. The author is an anglican bishop in Britian, so his somewhat leftist bent is understandable.
I particularly was disappointed by his assertion that wars even with smart bombs are evil. He argues instead that we should respond to evil (what he acknowledges to be a powerful force, one in which was responsible for the holocaust) with negotiation and never war which kills civilians even when things like smartbombs are introduced and even if the cause is just. (Page 125).
I was also offended by the assertion that western governments should forgive debt in Africa (sorry the economists are right, living in the black is important and isn't taught by bailing people out when they live in the red...). On a related note the idea that western governments should try to specially protect people that live in disaster prone areas, also disturbed me (people who live in disaster prone areas are responsible for that choice).
On the theological side, I took issue with the idea that all the suffering endured in this world will be resolved/nullified when God creates a new heavens and new earth. I believe that people can forgive others of the suffering they unfairly endured, however the opportunites that were unfairly taken away as a result (the opportunity of a child/young adult to become mature adults, find their calling/career, have children) will still be fact. This is why I made "the shadow of a fallen world" my title.
I thought the call to mature forgivenesss was very good aspect of the book. In particular, the call of the church to confront believers that are in sin, first individually, then as a group, as a church and then remove them from fellowship if they persist... is an something that the western church needs desperately to teach more about and to embrace.
Although, let me also state that forgiveness and confrontation about sin while good inside Christian fellowship and our relationships with other people doesn't help in a situation like the Israel/Palestine conflict in which both sides believe that the land of Canaan is their by divine right. Sorry, forgiveness is next to irrelevant when you believe that you own something by divine right.
Summing things up, the author spent most of the book critical of stereotypical right-wing and left-wing approaches to address evil, but didn't offer very much in regards to practically confronting and correcting evil in anything but a church setting.
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