How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels

Short Review: This book is primarily concerned with the gospels as priority in teaching us about who Jesus is (as opposed to primarily learning about Jesus through the creeds). Wright wants us to know that the part between Jesus' birth and death was important to the whole incarnation and mission of Jesus (and concentrating on the creedal presentation, it tends to be skipped over.)

Wright uses a central metaphor of four speakers that have to be tuned and balanced to get the whole message of the gospel. He suggests that currently, there is a distortion of the gospel because two of the speakers are too loud, one is too quiet and one is unplugged and stored away in an attic.

Click through to the full review if you want more detail on the message of the book. But I think he did make the case for me that we need both creed and gospel in our catechesis. The gospels have to be giving priority to help us see Jesus as King. The creeds help give boundaries to help us know that we are not distorting our reading of the gospels.

As always, Wright uses too much hyperbole about how we have ‘completely lost' the message of the gospel and lots of repetition between this and his other books. But the general content is helpful and well worth reading.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/god-became-king/