2nd August 2026

Summer Holiday Reads: The Day the Revolution Began - Tom Wright

I begin with two words of introduction. First, I am realising that the books I have been reading over the past few months probably don't count as books you'd choose to read on the beach. This, from Tom Wright, contains as anyone who's encountered the works of Tom Wright will expect, a lot of theology. Second, a brief claim to fame: for a couple of short years, I taught Tom Wright's daughter in Sunday School!

Anyway, on to the book. On the first page of his first chapter, Wright notes that, by six o'clock on the evening of the first Good Friday, something had happened that had changed the world, that, whether or not we believe in Jesus, his crucifixion is one of the pivotal moments in human history. Depictions of the crucifixion are found in art, music and literature across cultures; we remember and re-enact it along with millions of others in church Sunday by Sunday, whenever we celebrate Holy Communion.

But what does the cross mean? And why did Jesus have to die? What was God doing in that moment of apparent failure which couldn't be done any other way. Taking as a key text "The Messiah died for ours ins in accordance with Scripture", Wright shows how theologians and disciples have wrestled with this question throughout the last 2000 years. In the first section of the book, he sets the crucifixion in its first century context. He goes on in the second section to demonstrate how the Hebrew Scriptures (our Old Testament) were all pointing towards this moment. Finally, in the third section, he demonstrates how the New Testament writers came to understand the death of Jesus and what it meant.

Throughout the book, Wright takes on (with some fierceness) the notion that "Jesus died so that I could go to heaven". For Wright, this notion owes more to the philosophy of Plato, who thought along with many of the Classical philosophers that the highest aim was to leave behind our compromised physical bodies for a spiritual life, than to any Judaeo-Christian thought. For Wright, the great revolution accomplished by the death and bodily resurrection of Jesus was to launch God's new creation, a place where our bodies will be renewed and restored as God always intended them to be. And not just our bodies - the earth itself.

This is a complex book, dealing in 400 pages with the biggest of all subjects. There will be sections which we need to read more than once in order to follow the nuance of Wright's argument. But if you want to be overawed once more by the magnitude of Jesus' work on the cross, if you want to be excited by God's work within creation, if you want to be filled with hope for all that is to come, then this book is for you.

Although, be warned: there are some contemporary worship songs that you will never be able to hear or sing in the same way again once Wright has finished with them!