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Title: Surprised by Scripture

Subtitle: Engaging Contemporary Issues

Author: N. T. Wright

Narrator: James Langton

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-03-14

Publisher: HarperAudio

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 136 votes

Genres: Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

Publisher's Summary:

Bishop, Bible scholar, and best-selling author N. T. Wright here provides a series of case studies on how to apply the Bible to the pressing issues of today. Among the topics Wright addresses are the intersection of religion and science, why women should be allowed to be ordained, what we get wrong and how we can do better when Christians engage in politics, why the Christian belief in heaven means we should be at the forefront of the environmental movement, and many more.

Wright fearlessly wades through the difficult issues facing us. Listeners will find new models for understanding how to affirm the Bible in today's world as well as encouragement and renewed energy for deepening our faith and engaging with the culture around us.

Members Reviews:

Previously published chapters compiled to a book

I am an unabashed fan of NT Wright. I have read most of his popular level books (except the commentary series) and a few of his more academic oriented books. I appreciate his focus on calling people to a fresh look at scripture and his ability to take scripture seriously while maintaining real academic quality.

But on the whole I was disappointed by this book. It is a re-working of articles that have previously appeared elsewhere. Most of them were commissioned by US journals or from chapters in books that were for US audiences, so as a Brit, he is most of the time consciously writing for the North American Evangelical audience.

His basic arguments, like most of Wright, is that given historical realities of the original writers and audience, we modern readers tend to be missing the intended point of the original writers.

As with most Wright he needs to go through a fairly long narrative to be able to help the reader understand his point. And I think that is why his full length book treatments are better than these shorter issue based chapters.

The problem is not so much the individual chapters, but that in almost every case, he has a better response in a full length books (and he frequently tells the reader that there is more to the story if you want to pick up another one of his books.) So his first three chapters on science and religion, the historical Adam and the resurrection were all better handled by his book Scripture and the Authority of God.

The fourth chapter, The Biblical Case for Ordaining Women, is actually one of the two issues in the book that was new to me (although he says he has brought up several of the issues before in his commentary series.)

The fifth chapter is theoretically about environmentalism, but is really a short version of his Surprised by Hope book about eschatology.

The sixth chapter is the only chapter that I think might be better as a chapter than the book. Wright's Evil and the Justice of God was decent, but in this chapter he does a better job of summarizing by saying, we cannot solve the problem of evil. Instead, God has chosen to give us scripture, not as a way to intellectually solve the problem of evil, but as a way to remind us that God is with us through difficult times.

Several of the later chapters are more political and this is where likely a number of bad reviews will focus. Wright have a very good defence of why a scriptural church is a political church. And Wright also is theologically consistent with his politics. The problem for many readers is that those politics do not match well with our US political systems.