The Day the Revolution Began – N. T. Wright

The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’ Crucifixion –by  N. T. Wright

Summary of Basic Thesis/Argument:

In this work, Wright seeks to answer the question of what happened at the cross when Jesus died that made the world a “different place” (page 39). In Wright’s terms, that was “the day the revolution began” (page 39). Wright contends that Jesus’ followers interpreted Jesus’ death within a larger story whose focus was on bigger questions than simply whether people would now go to heaven when they died (page 40). Instead, Wright situates the death of Jesus within the stories of Israel; as he says, “The Messiah had died for sins in accordance with the Bible” (page 142). Instead of the rather abstract atonement theories that have dominated western Christian thinking, Wright situates Jesus’ death within Israel’s hope for liberation amidst her yearning for forgiveness of sins which would signal the end of her exile. The suffering servant passages of Isaiah point to the means through which Israel’s representative would achieve victory over the powers arrayed against God’s good creation. As a result of Jesus’ death, the world is now “a different place” (page 355). And, as the suffering of Jesus was the means of victory over sin and death, so also is suffering the means of the implementation of that victory (page 355). That implementation will happen through Jesus’ followers living into their calling (page 411).

Analysis:

After his extended introduction (where he raises the issues of “Why the Cross, then and now, and the place of The Cross in Its First Century Setting), Wright begins the first main section of the book by examining the stories of Israel presented in the bible. He begins by stating the problem that humanity faces as described in scripture, a problem of which sin serves as a “telltale symptom” (page 86). Wright states that the problem is humanity’s rejection of her vocation as image bearers of her creator.

Wright then moves to show what saying that “Jesus’ death was in accordance with the Bible” actually means (page 94), and how that phrase can be part of understanding the other phrase “for our sins” (page 94). For Wright, the “clue” to unlocking the meanings of both phrases sits in viewing the stories of Adam and Eve “in parallel” with the stories of Israel and its land (page 94). The stories of Israel, in all their tragic detail, describe the “plight of the human race” (page 94).

Wright goes on to remind us that the hopes of Israel, which included “rescue from exile, the rebuilding of the Temple, [and] the return of YHWH himself” were often spoken of in shorthand as “forgiveness of sins” (page 114). The early church referred to this forgiveness of sins as having occurred “through the Messiah’s death” (page 115). The mechanism for these hopes was the institution of God’s kingdom. Yet, the early church had come to realize that Jesus taught that the inauguration of that kingdom was to be brought about through redemptive suffering. Upon reflecting on Isaiah 40 through 55, the early church was able to locate the story of Jesus into the larger interpretative framework of Israel’s story where God through “divine faithfulness and covenant love” in the work of God’s anointed one (Jesus), had brought redemption that dealt with Israel’s sins and the end of her exile (pages 131-142).

In the second main section of his book, Wright goes on to describe the problem many modern Christians have had in interpreting the death of Jesus. He maintains that the problem is a “three-layered mistake” (page 147). We have “Platonized our eschatology…moralized our anthropology…[and] paganized our soteriology” (page 147). He then moves on to describe how Jesus functions as both the “representative and then substitute for his people, though not in the sense that many have understood those rather abstract categories” (page 148). Wright begins this description by showing how Jesus’ first followers interpreted his death in the context of Passover. For Wright, it is the larger context of Passover that makes all the difference. For Jesus to choose Passover, he was saying that “Freedom [was] now…and Kingdom [was] now” (page 181). “Jesus saw his approaching death in connection with the coming of the kingdom” (page 183). Israelites at that time recognized that they were still in exile due to their subjugation to foreign powers. Sin had not been dealt with. Combining “Passover victory” with “exile-ending ‘forgiveness of sins’…” served to provide Jesus with “the interpretive grid” to explain his coming death to his followers, and from which early church “atonement theology” grew (page 185). Jesus’ understanding of how his “vocation would be fulfilled” in this context included his going “ahead of his people and [taking] upon himself the suffering that would otherwise fall upon them” (page 189). In other words, Jesus functions as the “representative substitute, namely, that the ‘servant,’ the quint-essential Israelite, takes upon himself the fate of the nation, of the world, of ‘the many’” (page 193).

Wright takes great pains to emphasize the importance of the historical story in answering the question of “Why did Jesus die?” (page 198). He draws attention to the fact that each of the four gospels paints a picture of Jesus’ death “not in terms of an angry father lashing out at an innocent and defenseless son, but in terms of someone embodying the love of God himself, acting as the personal expression of that love all the way to his death” (page 201). From within the narrative itself in each gospel, we see “how evil draws itself up to its height so that it can then be defeated by the Messiah” (page 205). Wright goes on to describe the notion of “representative substitution” that is presented in the gospel narratives, as “the one will stand in for the many” (page 211). He shows that “the death of the one on behalf of the many will be the key by which the powers are overthrown, the kingdom of God ushered in…, the covenant renewed, and creation itself restored to its original purpose (page 222).

In the next sections, Wright presents his analysis of both the Pauline treatment of Jesus’ death and general atonement theology in the writings of Paul. Again, Wright shows Paul embedding his reasons for Jesus’ death within the larger story of Israel. The problem that Jesus’ death deals with “is not the general problem of human sin…[but] that God made promises not only to Abraham but through Abraham to the world, and if the promise-bearing people fall under the Deuteronomic curse, as Deuteronomy insists that they will, the promises cannot get out to the wider world. That means then that Jesus, as Israel’s Messiah, bears Israel’s curse in order to undo the consequences of sin and ‘exile’ and so break the power of the ‘present evil age’ once and for all” (page 241). Wright traces the consistent theme presented in Galatians, Corinthians, Philippians, and Colossians, that the innocent Jesus dies the death of the guilty, and through that death the power of the idols has been broken (pages 234 – 260).

When he gets to his examination of Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Wright settles down for a longer stay in the text, in fact, for over 90 pages. As he has done in other books, Wright points out that “Romans is an extremely subtle and careful composition in which four sections…work together like the movements of a symphony” (page 266). However, rather than plowing forward in a straight fashion through the letter, Wright begins by examining Romans 5 through 8, and then backs up to see how what is said in Romans 1 through 4 builds into the arguments presented in the rest of the letter. Wright states that because Jesus chose Passover “as the explanatory setting for what he had to do” the “early church from then on…used Passover as the basic route toward understanding why he died” (page 277). Wright shows how Paul takes this Passover strand of Israel’s story and combines it with the “end-of-exile/dealing with sin” strand, and how these two strands need to be recognized in interpreting the letter, or else our exegesis will result in an abstract, “de-Judaized” story that won’t make sense. Wright indicates that in Romans, Paul describes how God, “through the Torah, in Israel [God had gathered] ‘Sin’ together into one place, so that it could then be condemned” (page 286). Wright states that “Paul does not say that God punished Jesus. He declares that God punished Sin in the flesh of Jesus” (page 287). Wright maintains the importance of rescuing our views of “substitution from its pagan captivity” in order that it “can resume its rightful place at the heart of the Jewish and then the messianic narrative” (pages 287 – 289). He continues to argue strongly that our Platonized and moralized views of atonement have corrupted our perspectives on the atonement, and in particular our reading of Romans.

Wright then backs up and considers the earlier portions of Romans and their connection to the arguments in Romans 5 through 8 as well as Paul’s wider writings. He shows that Jesus as Messiah “is thus the means both of God’s faithfulness to Israel and of the answering faithfulness of Israel to God” (page 297). The question that Paul addresses in Romans 3 “is the double problem of human sin and idolatry, on the one hand, and the divine faithfulness, on the other” (page 314). The Messiah Jesus has offered to God “the Israel-shaped obedience, the ‘faithfulness,’ that was previously lacking” (page 321). The vocation of Israel and all of humanity was to be one of faithful obedience as God’s image bearers. The “place where heaven and earth meet” (page 340). Jesus, as the true Israelite and faithful servant, becomes that location in his incarnation, whereby he is “the place where and the means by which the one God comes to dwell with his people” (page 341). Basically, “Jesus, as Israel’s Messiah, is the place where and the means by which God’s covenant purposes and Israel’s covenant faithfulness meet, merge, and achieve their original object” (page 346).

In the final section of his book, Wright tackles the issue of Christian mission. He states that the “world-changing task of God’s people in the present, rooted in the Messiah’s victorious suffering, has its ultimate depth in prayer, particularly the prayer that comes from the indescribable depths of a sorrow-laden heart…(Romans 8:26-27), (page 372). Where suffering “was the means of victory…so [s]uffering is also the means of its implementation” (page 372). The revolution that began through Jesus must “be implemented through his followers” (page 411). And that implementation will be “cruciform” in shape (page 406) and accomplished through the power of love (pages 382 – 416).

Strengths and Weaknesses:

In my view, the strengths of Wright’s treatment of the subject of Jesus’ death are both obvious and too numerous to warrant mention. As with many of Wright’s other books, I could not possibly recommend this one more highly. Therefore, I will only mention one area in the book that I think is especially helpful, and then offer two minor critiques that express my opinion as to what could have made this book slightly better.

I believe Wright’s most helpful (and unique) contribution to the discussion of the meaning of Jesus’ death centers in his analysis of Romans, and particularly in how he treats Romans chapter 7 and its place within the overall argument of the letter. I think that many exegetes and/or readers of the text get sideways in their thinking when they treat Romans 7 as Paul’s lamentation regarding his own personal sin, rather than seeing the pronouns “I” and “me” functioning as a literary device where Paul expresses solidarity with Israel and her plight, as well as the role of Torah in gathering sin together in order to deal with it once and for all on the cross. I agree with Wright, that “[i]f we want to understand what early Christians meant by ‘he died for our sins,’ this passage will offer the fullest account;” however, if we misread the pronouns, I believe we lose much of the meaning of this text. I think Wright’s analysis, though often difficult to follow, and to an extent more fully explained and expanded upon in his other writings (see his “Climax of the Covenant; Paul and the Faithfulness of God [particularly section #10]; Romans – ), adds tremendously to the discussion of this subject.

In terms of the two minor changes to Wright’s book that I think would bring improvement, it’s my opinion that Wright spends too much time near the beginning of the book beating the dead horse of the fixation of many within Protestantism with going to heaven when they die. Instead, I think he would have been better served bringing up this topic from within the context of his exegesis of scripture as it arose. I believe it would have been fine to introduce the topic briefly at the beginning of the book. But, in my opinion, he spent far too much time at the beginning hammering the issue, and then returning to it when addressing specific passages of scripture.

Secondly, and in my opinion more significantly, I believe the reader would have benefited from Wright engaging with the notion of mimetic scapegoat theory as it relates to atonement theology. In particular, I think readers would have benefited from engagement with the work of Rene’ Girard on mimetic scapegoat theory when Wright presented his views on substitution in atonement theory. In several instances Wright correctly draws our attention to the many pagan influences on our views of substitution in western conceptions of the atonement, but then does not draw out the details of how those pagan perspectives have affected our thinking. Girard’s work does this well. Engaging with the work of Girard, even in a cursory fashion would have helped to flesh out a more full orbed treatment of this sub-issue.