Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense

Setting himself the task of authoring a modern-day apologetic, N. T. Wright offers Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (2006) as a contemporary treatment of the same ground covered by C. S. Lewis in his classic Mere Christianity, published in 1952. Simply Christian attempts to lay out as clearly and simply as possible the fundamental manner in which Christianity makes sense, and why it is capable of answering the most important questions that the human heart can conceive. As the author claims in the opening pages of the work, the human desires for justice, truth, beauty, and love are innate and created by God, drawing us out of ourselves and towards something transcendent. When we stop to ponder this reality and seek answers to these great questions, we find the most satisfying solution in the religion of Christianity and the person of Jesus Christ. N. T. Wright is a world-renowned scholar and theologian and the author of dozens of books on the Bible and Christian teaching. This study guide uses the 2006 HarperCollins digital edition.

Summary

Simply Christian is a book that attempts “to describe what Christianity is all about, both to commend it to those outside the faith and to explain it to those inside” (ix). The book itself is divided into three parts that deal with the traces of divinity that we find in the created world (Part 1: Echoes of a Voice), the nature of the God who brought the world into existence (Part 2: Staring at the Sun), and the manner in which human beings are called to respond to God and to the world into which God’s love has been poured (Part 3: Reflecting the Image).

Part 1 begins by laying out four different echoes in the world around us that point to something outside the bounds of natural human experience and thus hint at the existence of something (or someone) transcendent: the quest for justice, the longing for beauty, the thirst for the spiritual, and the desire for interpersonal relationship. When we seek justice that doesn’t seem to exist, all does not seem well with the world, and we instinctively feel that something is wrong or missing. When we experience beauty, it brings us outside of ourselves and we feel as though we are only seeing part of a glorious whole that must exist somewhere. The greatest experience we can have within the created world is the experience of love and interpersonal communion with another, and these disparate longings find their culmination in the reality that we call God—specifically, the God that Christianity proclaims is the source of all reality and is, in his essence, pure love.

Part 2 dives into the explicit nature of the Christian claims concerning God, the world, and the plan of salvation that involved the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity in the man Jesus Christ. The Bible records the history of the people of Israel from their beginnings in the Exodus from Egypt all the way up to Jesus’s entrance as the long-awaited messiah that Israel’s sacred texts had foretold. As the royal servant messiah, Jesus puts things to right and satisfies the justice that we seek, pouring out his very self in a gift of self-offering in order to demonstrate the great love that God has for the world. This act allows humans to participate in the inner life of God: Redeemed from sin, we are able to experience life to the fullest, as that which draws us to God simultaneously allows for the more perfect fulfillment of all that is most human in us. To be alive in Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit, is to be fully alive as a human being created in the image and likeness of God and called to eternal life in communion with God and the righteous.

Part 3 begins by speaking of right worship, the natural response of a free and intelligent creature to the unmerited gift of life and love offered by the creator of all things. Not only is worship the appropriate response to infinite love, but it also allows us to act in concert with others in the communion that we call the Church: the people of God united by the Holy Spirit and ordered to mission and evangelization, inviting any and all to the same love. Heaven and earth are united in the person of Christ, and it is through Christ that human beings receive access to both the supernatural and a more fully human, earthly life. The Christian life repudiates the claim that some could be “so heavenly minded they’re no earthly good,” for the Christian lifestyle requires that one eye be fixed on heaven and the other on earth in order for true love to flourish. Love of God and love of neighbor go hand in hand. Christianity proclaims that one day there will be a new heaven and a new earth, but the power of grace allows us to begin that life here and now as a foretaste of this future glory.