The latest Mere Fidelity podcast has just been posted: Surprised by N.T. Wright. Within it, Derek Rishmawy, Andrew Wilson, Matt Lee Anderson, and I share some of our thoughts and opinions on the work of N.T. Wright. Do take a listen.
Next week, we continue our discussion of the themes of Oliver O’Donovan’s Begotten or Made?, which we plan to tackle alternating weeks over the summer months.
Alastair's Adversaria 
1. I would disagree with Wilson that Wright is particularly good as a popular writer, at least in many of his works. I would describe his style as often overly garrulous and verbose.
2. I would also disagree that Simply Christian is a good introduction to Wright. It’s deficiencies as an introduction to Christianity are manifest, and it does not present Wright’s distinctive themes in a particularly engaging or accessible way.
3. I would strongly agree that many of the things Wright emphasizes have never actually been lost in conservative Protestant circles. If you seriously engage with the Bible these themes inevitably come up.
On your first point, it really depends on the work, I think. A number of people without a theological background have told me how helpful Wright has been for them in his more popular works and how much they enjoyed his style. However, the writing style of his popular works definitely is overrated (and I agree that Simply Christian isn’t his best). His more academic writings are considerably better and still quite accessible for most educated readers.
I’m about 20 minutes in (I’m not a big podcast guy, but I’m impressed with you guys), and here’s my first comment:
With regard to his historical statements – I’ve started to find that by and large, as far as the big picture goes, he’s generally right about a lot of things. For example, he critiques the enlightenment roughly once every other sentence, and for a while I got pretty tired and started dismissing it as a caricature. But then I started to read actual enlightenment literature as well as works about the enlightenment, and I have to say, a lot of his critiques and even a lot of his caricatures stand.