Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 66:4 (Dec 2023)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

JETS 65:4 (December 2023) p. 771

Book Reviews

The Great Story and the Great Commission: Participating in the Biblical Drama of Mission. By Christopher J. H. Wright. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2023, 156 pp., $23.99 paper.

Christopher J. H. Wright has a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He taught OT at Union Biblical Seminary in India for five years and was academic dean and then principal of All Nations Christian College for thirteen years. Wright is the author of several books, including Old Testament Ethics for the People of God, The Mission of God, The Mission of God’s People, Knowing God through the Old Testament, and commentaries on Exodus, Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Ezekiel. In this latest book, Wright builds on some of his previous work regarding the mission of God and his people, not to mention his years of experience as a scholar and professor, and gives the evangelical church and the Christian academic world a wonderful and insightful treatment of the whole mission of God as revealed in Scripture. The theme of Wright’s book might be best summarized with his statements: “The church as a whole exists for the sake of God’s mission” (p. 143) and “It is not so much that God has a mission for the church, as that God has the church for his mission” (p. 143).

Wright’s book is a passionate explanation of the biblical understanding of God’s mission and our need to conform to it and, even better, to participate in that great story. Wright points out that the grand story of God recorded in Scripture is dynamic and a call for us to see ourselves in it. Distilled in the Great Commission, as Wright sees it, are the seven acts of this great drama, and that commission mandates the church to be co-workers with God under the lordship of Christ.

Wright focuses on the term “missional hermeneutics,” an approach that reads the Scripture as one vast story, or meganarrative, that communicates God’s mission. That mission is to bring all things in heaven and in earth into unity under Christ, reconciling them through the blood of his cross. In fulfilling his mission, God will transform creation broken by sin into the new creation in which there is no more sin.

In chapter 1, Wright gives the reader his definition and perspective of this missional hermeneutic. He proposes and explains how the Bible can be viewed as the record, the product, and the tool of God’s mission. In chapter 2, Wright clarifies how the great story of Scripture can be broken down into seven acts. This chapter includes a helpful figure that illustrates the seven acts, each with an image explicating the act. The acts include Creation, Rebellion, Promise, Christ, Mission, Judgment, and the New Creation.

Chapter 3 explains w...