THE CHALLENGE OF JESUS: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is, by N. T. Wright, InterVarsity Press, 1999, Pp. 294. (BT303.2W75).

N. T. Wright, was formerly professor at Cambridge and Oxford, and has served as Cannon Theologian of Westminster Abbey. THE CHALLENGE OF JESUS is one of several works in our collection by Wright, including John Dominic Crossen and N. T. Wright in dialogue in THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS.

Wright says he has lived his adult life with one foot in the church and the other in the academy, often misunderstood by both sides of the divide. "I live in a world where Christian devotion and evangelical piety have been highly suspicious of and sometimes implacably opposed to serious historical work on the New Testament, and vice versa…This has resulted in some fellow-historians calling me a fundamentalist and some fellow-believers calling me a compromised pseudo-liberal. The irony does not make it any less painful." Pp. 191-192. He believes the quest for the historical Jesus is necessary but he is critical of skeptical scholarship.

Wright's goal is to help the reader grow in understanding the first century historical Jesus within the Palestinian world, and at the same time, follow Jesus more faithfully into the postmodern world of the twenty-first century. How do you witness to the Gospel? "I am reminded of St. Francis's instructions to his followers as he sent them out: preach the gospel by all means possible, he said, and if it's really necessary you could even use words." P. 168.

… The Library Committee