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Michael Horton has an interesting review in CT of N.T. Wright’s After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters.

Horton is essentially positive about the book’s proposals, and yet mystified at Wright’s repeated caricatures of a rich resource for building on, and supporting, the good points made therein.

An excerpt:

In spite of a few quibbles, I was impressed by this book’s popular presentation of themes that I have come to appreciate in Reformed theology. The eschatological emphasis on cosmic renewal (resurrection, not escape) as the impetus for our lives here and now, the emphasis on the church—in fact, just about everything in After You Believe was a fresh way of exploring many familiar truths.

Hence my surprise at the jarring, frequent caricatures of the Reformation, even when the author articulates long-standing emphases in that tradition.

Here’s the conclusion:

While there are many good biblical-theological studies that make the same points, Wright—ever the master of metaphor and turns of phrase—is especially effective in communicating the richness of the Bible’s eschatological horizon to a wide audience. Nevertheless, his imprecision about the views that he targets for criticism is careless, depriving him—and his readers—of resources and allies for a message that is on so many points a vital and necessary corrective.

HT: Scott Clark

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