History and Eschatology: Jesus and the Promise of Natural Theology

N. T. Wright is the former Bishop of Durham and is Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of St Andrews. He is the author of more than eighty books, including The Paul Debate: Critical Questions for Understanding the Apostle.

This is a 'radically redefined, "natural theology"'--the dawn of new creation, 'the ultimate reality in the world is the self-giving God revealed in Jesus.' This book is heavy reading. But it opens new visions and new hope!

Wright has won laurels both as a populariser and as an author of weightier studies. This falls into the latter category, but is, none the less, accessible as an essay in natural theology with far-reaching consequences.

Readers with the stamina to work their way through Wright's theoretical vision articulated here will be challenged and enriched.

History and Eschatology is a lively and wide-ranging discussion that invites us to see Jesus himself in a different light by better acquainting ourselves with the first-century Jewish world. Genuine historical study challenges not only what we thought we knew but how we know it. The crucifixion of the subsequently resurrected Jesus, as solid an event as any in the "natural" world, turns out to meet, in unexpected and suggestive ways, the puzzles of the ultimate questions asked by every culture. At the same time, these events open up vistas of the eschatological promise held out to the entire natural order. The result is a larger vision, both of "natural theology" and of Jesus himself, than either the academy or the church has normally expected.

More than many of its kind, this is a readable, preachable, shareable book.

Careful attention to the perspectives of this formidable, highly influential figure in contemporary biblical scholarship always repays the effort.

Wright’s contribution is bold, adventurously written, and provocative. He asserts that natural theology has no compelling reason to abstain from considering the content of Christian revelation.... Wright offers daring judgments on a dizzying array of persons, events, and intellectual movements in History and Eschatology.