Christopher J. H. Wright is an author who never disappoints. Though he has written commentaries, theological works, and Bible studies, this book on the mission of God now available in paperback is likely his most influential. In fact, his specialty on the mission of God elevates all those other books that he has written, but this one is where he makes his grand case that the narrative of the Bible has mission as its overarching theme. You will likely agree when you take in what he has said.

This book succeeds on so many levels that you might debate where to put it on your shelves. There's the obvious choice of your mission section, but then you may wonder if it should be among your Bible theology or even Bible survey sections. Finally, it could hold its head high among titles in your deeper theology section too. That is not to say the book is unfocused, but that its explanation of the broad sweep of the Bible gets the job done from all those various vantage points.

The book is divided into four parts: the Bible and mission, the God of mission, the people of mission, and the arena of mission. As you can see, that begins in championing mission as the proper hermeneutic, continues to see God's hand in mission, followed by the final two parts looking at the Bible from beginning to end and seeing how it sticks without wavering to God on mission. At over 500 pages, it is never shallow nor possessing omissions while never bogging into minutia either.

I've always felt that Wright could hold his own with any scholar while outpacing most of them on spirituality. You will see that here. This book will be the top of its class on this subject for decades to come and no Bible student should be without it.

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the bible is so much more than a collection of "verses" to help us be moral, get along in our daily endeavors or to "get saved". The bible is a grand collection of literature that all share fundamental themes having to do with God and his creation, from the fall in Genesis when sin disrupted everything in Gods creation, and then all the way to the someday renewed fallen creation (Rom 8:18-25; 2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1-5), the bible is all about God's dealings with, and interventions into this fallen world, to reclaim it, renew it, and heal it. Wrights book takes a magisterial look at this, and probes the biblical content, laying bare what this means from a biblical perspective. He grabs hold of the bibles own thematic categories and shows what and how those meant originally in its own historical, theological and literary context, and then draws out the implications of that for the wider overarching biblical

context of creation in relation to a God at work to redeem and "save" it. a solid and wholistical study of the "good news".

This book exceeded my expectations. If you want to see the "big picture" of what God is doing in history and how this is His mission and ours, you will not be disappointed. A grand narrative indeed. This book will be a treasure for those who want to see how the 66 books of the Bible fit together. A commendable work by an terrific scholar.

Superb! Nothing quite like it! This is a serious heavy weight study of what the Bible is all about. This book is amazing in it's breadth of scope and total grasp of biblical content. The author grasps the intent of God's plan of redemption in scripture like few others have. Must, must reading for serious Bible students. I would give it 6 stars if that was an option. Maybe a bit too advanced for complete beginners though.

In The Mission of God Chris Wright articulates his view that the Bible not only provides fuel for lighting and maintaining a vision for mission, but that God's mission can and should be used as a hermeneutical "key that unlocks the whole grand narrative of the canon of Scripture." His concern is not so much to identify "The Biblical Basis of Mission" as "The Missional Basis of the Bible", since all Scripture was written to witness to the mission of God. This missional reading traces the contours of biblical theology by developing themes that highlight God's mission as revealed from Genesis through Revelation. The book reads largely as an OT theology of mission, showing how themes first encountered there are developed in the NT. Wright has produced an important book that should be read by missionaries, biblical scholars, pastors and others who desire to understand God's mission and their place in it. By developing OT themes about God and his people, Wright puts to rest common notions that mission is a NT phenomenon. While the emphasis on the OT provides material that is not available elsewhere, it may limit the use of the book in missions classrooms unless supplemented by readings on missiological themes primarily developed in the NT. The same emphasis means that the book could be a welcomed addition to a class on biblical theology, as it successfully models how key OT themes can be traced into the NT.