HOW GOD BECAME KING
Getting to the heart of the gospels
By Tom Wright. SPCK. 282 pages. £12.99
ISBN 978 0 281 061 464
The author could well have entitled the book, ‘What the Gospels really say’, following the pattern set by his popular early work on Paul. Believing that we have all ‘misread’ the Gospels (and that includes everyone from the Early Church to the present!), Wright seeks to put us all right. This 11-chapter paperback is a semi-popular version of his academic work intended primarily for preachers, teachers and students.
The book progresses in four stages. It starts by drawing attention to the neglect of the ‘middle bits’ in the Gospels between the birth narratives and Jesus’s death and resurrection, bits that the ancient creeds ignore. Liberal, modernistic, evangelical and Reformed have all failed to appreciate what the record of Jesus’s public career is about.
