Wright - How God Became King - Как Бог стал Царем - Райт

В этой последней книге Тома Райта рассматривается вопрос: Какова актуальность "средней части" Евангелий (от рождения до распятия Иисуса) то, что мы понимаем под «Евангелием» - прощение грехов, Иисус умирает, чтобы мы могли быть прощены?

 

Harper Collins Publishers, 2012. - 282 р.

ISBN 978-0 -0 6-173057-3
 

This book, the latest to appear from pen of Tom Wright, addresses a question which has probably quietly disturbed most of us at some point: What is the relevance of the ‘middle part’ of the gospels (between the birth and crucifixion of Jesus) to what we understand to be ‘the gospel’ – forgiveness of sins, Jesus dying in our place so that we could be forgiven?

 

Wright surveys some of the questions asked of 'the gospels' in relation to 'the gospel'. Are they to provide proof texts for 'the gospel', such as Jesus “gave his life as a ransom for many" – Matthew 20:28. Are they just a ‘backstory’ to the death and resurrection of Jesus? Or are they mainly to demonstrate that God exists, and that Jesus was and is this God? What was the purpose of the three years earthly ministry of Jesus?

 

Tom Wright – How God Became King – Getting to the Heart of the Gospels

Bill Johnson and Bethel may have one answer: that the gospels show Jesus training his disciples to go out and ‘do the stuff’, which we are to continue doing. But we might ask, why are we to do this, and what relationship does it bear to ‘the gospel’ itself, other than a kind of ‘pre-evangelism’, for warming things up so that people will become more receptive to the actual message? Tom Wright has another answer, which may be important to add to the Bethel picture, as a response to the ‘why?’ of Bethel’s ‘how’.

 

Wright asks how we have handled the ‘missing middle’ of the gospels, and after the introductory questions of Part I, he looks at the gospels as genuine biographies, as being sequels to an essential prequel – the story of Israel, then provides six ways in which the church has given an incomplete or an inadequate message, which has either almost entirely done without the need for ‘the middle’, or reduced it to a bland compendium of moral teaching.