NT Wright on Evil and the Justice of God

This is a short book on a big topic, only 109 pages. NT Wright gives his usual and expectedly thorough treatment of an important theme, evil, and its relation to the justice of God.

Beginning as a set of five lectures and then finding their place in a tv programme, this extended examination of this subject is well worth reading.

The challenge of evil is to be faced by our Christian living, our prayer and holy living in a world troubled by evil. Wright challenges Christians to imagine the Kingdom in which evil is no more and then to live as though it were already so. This is a creative use of imagination which I think will stretch many, but is worth the effort.
The chapter on forgiveness is very challenging, forgiveness set us free to live without the burden of evil and removes the bitterness of evil from our communities. Wright expands forgiveness beyond the inter-personal to our forgiveness as a nation of the unpayable debts of other nations, or the forgiveness of terrorists.

Two interesting points in passing.
"Within the larger cannonical context it ought to be clear that re-emphasizing the doctrine of creation is indeed the foundation of all biblical answers to questions about who God is and what he is doing." (page 41)
Whether in response to the strident atheism of Dawkins and others, or for some other reason, I sense that there is a lack of confidence in our confession of God as Creator. We must stand firm here, not least for the reason given by Wright. The constant refernecing of God as Creator in Scripture is not insignificant. Having created and declared it to be good, God is now at work renewing and redeeming creation for his own glory. Our salvation in Christ is connected to God being creator in ways that those trying to be Christian but denying creation do not yet appreciate.

"Indeed, we might even say that the gospel writers were telling their whole story so as to explain why the resurrection happened to make it clear that this was not simply an odd, isolated bizarre miracle, but rather the proper and appropriate result of Jesus' entire, and successful, confrontation with evil." (pages 55-56)
If we read the gospels with the question, 'Why did the resurrection happen?' at the front of our thinking, what difference does this make to the story we read? Is this God ushering in new creation (2 Cor 5:17) after judgment had fallen upon the old creation and the evil that rampaged through it?

As I say, a really good book and well worth reading.