Broken Signposts: How Christianity Makes Sense of the World
N.T. Wright
HarperOne (2020). 208 pp.
Book Review
N.T. Wright’s latest book outlines seven themes, or “signposts,” that point to the reality of God, and that only find fulfillment and clarity in Jesus Christ.
The book, Broken Signposts, draws upon work done earlier by Wright in Simply Christian (2006), and in his recently published Gifford Lectures, History and Eschatology (2019). In this work, Wright focuses on seven themes: Justice, Love, Spirituality, Beauty, Freedom, Truth, and Power, and connects each one with the portrait of Jesus found in John’s Gospel. The result is a beautifully written, rhetorically persuasive, and devotionally rich work of biblical and theological apologetics.
Wright himself might not categorize the book as an “apologetic” work in any technical sense. But it does make a case for God, and especially for Jesus, as the One who makes sense of all our deepest human longings. In some ways, this kind of book is N.T. Wright at his pastoral best. The work is clearly held up by many years of deep biblical scholarship, and one does learn a lot about how to properly read John’s Gospel, but it is the captivating vision of God articulated in these pages that make for the real benefit for the reader. The work also encourages an inspiring confidence in God’s truth, and in Jesus as the One who reveals that truth most fully. The book would work well as a series of sermons, with one sermon focused on each signpost/theme. Such a series would encourage believers to take seriously the universal impulses one feels in living a human life, to recognize how these longings are only ever broken in our fallen world, but also to see Jesus as the one who embodies the truth to which each signposts points. I recommend the book both for personal devotional reading, and for study by church leaders in order to teach the contents.
The basic argument of the book is that all people either feel, hope for, have some instinct for, or think important the seven signposts Wright has identified. These are universal impulses that tell us something about what it means to be human. One doesn’t have to be particularly religious. One doesn’t have to be western or eastern, modern or post-modern to recognize these things. We all seem to naturally have some interest in them. However, Wright argues, we can never get them quite right. Love turns selfish, Justice is denied, beauty is defaced, freedom is taken, truth is skewed, and power is abused, and so on. The Bible seems to affirm and refer to all of these in one way or other. Perhaps surprisingly, the Gospel of John tackles many of these themes with reference to Jesus himself. Wright finds, in a close reading of John, the deeper truth about all of these themes, and points to Jesus as God’s answer to how we should think about them. Indeed, Wright calls them “signposts” because they point to something beyond themselves. Left to ourselves, we can never find what exactly they point to, or how to get them just right. But God, in and through Jesus Christ, has revealed the true meaning of Justice, Love, Power, and the rest. These “echoes of a voice” are from the Lord and point to Christ and the Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is important here. For Wright, Jesus doesn’t only, or merely, reveal the truth about these signposts. Jesus also sends His Spirit to indwell His disciples so that they can begin to rightly embody these things, in the power of the Spirit. This shows that the new creation has already begun, that God is at work in the church and world, and all Christians are called to live out this true, renewed, human vocation of bearing God’s image in the world. When one finds the answer to these longings and hopes in Jesus, and when one receives the life-giving, image-renewing power of the Spirit, one can begin to work for the Kingdom of God, coming on earth as in heaven. This is the true human vocation, according to Wright.
Wright could have written a book just on the signposts, and pointed to Jesus in some general way as the theological answer to our problem (never getting these things right). But the book is made even more persuasive (and beautiful) by frequent engagement with John’s Gospel. Not only does every chapter engage some part of the story of Jesus in John, the book includes short interlude chapters wherein Wright gives some further guidance on how to read and understand the fourth Gospel. At first, one might be skeptical that each of these themes is genuinely or truly addressed in John’s Gospel. Perhaps it seems like Wright is trying to force them into his reading of the text? Does John really intend to speak to our current questions about these things? Wright has argued persuasively that they are indeed there in the text. Perhaps not in the exact form that a contemporary person would ask. But the essential ideas are truly present enough to draw the sincere reader toward a better understanding of each theme. Just when one thinks he’s going to force the issue, and try to make John or Jesus say something they never intended, one will be surprised at how well it all works. And new depth is given to our reading in the process. In many ways, Wright models for us how to bring contemporary questions to the biblical text, and find fresh insight in the teaching and work of Jesus.
Wright believes that the Christ event is what makes sense of the world. If that is so, then we ought to find the answer for all human and earthly longings, struggles, and questions in that event. In this book, Wright has pointed us to the gospel as the place to discern what we ought to think and feel about justice, love, spirituality, beauty, freedom, truth, and power. As he writes,
The story of Jesus thus offers a new framework for understanding the world—the framework of victory over corruption and death itself and the launching of the new creation. The old questions were the right ones to ask. They indicate a deep human sense that the world is not, after all, as it was meant to be. That intuition is correct. That is why the signposts appear broken. John tells us what the creator God has done, is doing, and will do, through his Son and his Spirit, to put things right. The signposts, duly straightened out, will then provide us with the template for our Spirit-led mission, sent into the world as the Father had sent the Son (192).
This work is one that all evangelicals, indeed, all Christians can appreciate. Even if someone thinks Wright is wrong about Paul, or Justification, or the Atonement (or whatever), readers will likely not find anything in this book to dispute. It is solidly biblical, philosophical, and practical. A beautiful gift for anyone needing encouragement that Jesus is always the way, the truth, and the life – no matter when or where we may live, nor the challenges we face in our present cultures.
Jonathan Huggins is the College Chaplain at Berry College in Rome, GA. He earned graduate degrees from Wheaton College Graduate School, Reformed Theological Seminary, and received his PhD in Theology from the University of Stellenbosch. He is an ordained Priest in the Anglican Church in North America and a member of the St. Peter Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
