On Earth as in Heaven: Daily Wisdom for Twenty-First Century Christians collects short readings from N.T. Wright, published by HarperOne in March 2022, around 400 pages.
The thing to know before you buy
This is not new writing. It is a compilation of excerpts pulled from Wright’s existing books and arranged as daily readings. If you already own Simply Christian, Surprised by Hope, or the For Everyone commentaries, you have read a good portion of this material before in its original context.
That is not a knock on the book. Compilations are a legitimate format and this one is well chosen. But our old review presented it as a fresh collection of meditations, and a reader who owns a shelf of Wright would have been annoyed to find out otherwise after paying for it.
How it is organized
The readings are arranged around the church year, following the seasons of the Christian calendar rather than running January to December. If you have never used a devotional built that way, the sequence will feel unfamiliar at first. You can still start at any point without being lost.
Our previous review said each entry includes discussion questions and reflection prompts. It does not. These are readings, not a workbook. If you want a devotional with built-in questions for a men’s group, this is the wrong book.
Who Wright is, and one honest note
N.T. Wright is a New Testament scholar and a retired Anglican bishop of Durham. He is one of the most widely read biblical scholars alive, and he is also associated with what is called the New Perspective on Paul, a reading of Paul’s letters that a number of evangelicals contest, particularly on how justification works.
That debate is real and it is worth knowing about. It is also mostly absent from this book, which is devotional rather than technical. Wright affirms the historic Christian confession: the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the authority of Scripture, salvation through Christ. Readers who want to weigh the justification question should go to his academic work, not to a daily reading collection.
Where we land
Worth it if you have read little or no Wright and want an accessible way in. Skip it if your shelf already has three or four of his titles, because you would be buying the same paragraphs a second time. His prose is clear and unhurried, which is the main reason the format works at all.
On Earth as in Heaven by N.T. Wright on Amazon