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For All God's Worth

For all God's Worth
By Tom Wright
Triangle. 136 pages. £5.99
ISBN 0 281 05045 7

This was a difficult book to review as it contains a number of sermons given on different occasions, and despite the title, does not really have a unifying theme.
The first thing we must acknowledge is our indebtedness to the author, the Dean of Lichfield for his work in the field of apologetics. He is one of the ablest and bravest contenders for the faith, and the evidence for this is to be found in chapter 7, 'No bones about it' - a defence of the resurrection.
The next thing to say is that he writes well, and therefore it must be invigorating to sit under his preaching ministry. He has a fresh and enquiring mind, so there is always something to set one thinking.
However, despite an overall enjoyment of the book, a couple of alarm bells starting ringing. When I was in our university Christian Union, of which Tom Wright subsequently became a very distinguished President, and when he also wrote a book with three other undergraduates championing reformed theology, we were regularly warned of the danger in later life of going 'churchy'. I have to say that I fear the Dean of Lichfield is going that way. Just as when men become bishops it seems that they can hardly ever preach without referring to their episcopal status, so Tom Wright, perhaps because of where the sermons were preached, refers too much to the cathedral setting as though church buildings, cathedrals and even choirs were endued with a special sanctity.
Secondly, some of the results of his very distinguished academic studies unhappily creep into these sermons. In chapter 12, he shrewdly and surely rightly makes the point that Justification by Faith is the great doctrine of Christian unity (whereas it has become the cause of division) but he unnecessarily redefines it in terms of being brought within the covenant, rather than sticking with Luther - and more importantly Paul - in judicial and forensic terms.
There is much to enjoy here and many truths to savour, but I continue to miss from his writings a strong eschatological dimension.

Jonathan Fletcher,
Wimbledon