A Good Book on Scriptural Analysis of Some of the "Last Things"

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	• Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church N. T. Wright HarperOne, 2008 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 21 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Surprised by Hope

I loved N.T. Wright's newest book, Surprised by Hope. He explores the meat of the Christian hope, what he calls the after-afterlife.

Wright addresses the misconceptions (a.k.a. bad theology) that's infiltrated not just the world (i.e. reincarnation), but also Christianity (i.e. when we all get to heaven).

The belief in Jesus' physical resurrection is on the line here, folks. If you believe in Jesus' physical resurrection, if you believe that he is the firstfruits, than you have to believe that we do will experience that physical resurrection. The whole earth (which now groans) will experience it.

Wright turns the gospel message upside-down. No, he turns how we talk about the gospel message upside-down. It begins with an overarching story--God's plan of redemption for all of creation. Within that, individual salvation fits.

He then talks about why it's important in the here and now, in areas such as justice, art, and evangelism (are you getting a feel for why I'm passionate about this?). He's hard on all sides. Somehow Wright is one of the few people who can point out the faults of everyone specifically (moderns, you're doing this; postmoderns, you're doing this; liberals, you're doing this; conservatives, you're doing this) and still be liked by all parties. Personally, I'm a dispensationalist (which means, in my view, that Wright and I may disagree on some middle stuff, but we absolutely agree on the end, we absolutely agree that this end is the important part, and we absolutely agree on our present course of action). Wright's hard on dispensationalist (and for good reason). I will say that he has a generalized and limited view on dispensationalist. Maybe he understands more but for simplicity's sake boils it down. Maybe he only hear's the loudest dispensationalist (with whom I probably don't agree). But that's beside the point to me.

The point is, Jesus' resurrection leads to the resurrection (redemption) of the world, and somehow our participation in God's kingdom work in the present contributes to that (although it doesn't bring it about--God brings it about).

I recommend this book for a solid look at eschatology and its integral part to our daily theology.

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A great read

Yet again, NT Wright has written a provocative, mind stretching book that awakens for me a much more realistic resurrection hope for the people of God. It is easily readable but still deeply rooted in firm biblical traditions. His linking heaven and the resurrection with the mission of the church on earth raises the earthy role of the church to dizzying heights. Wonderful! Refreshing! Missionally inspiring!

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Resurrection Fuels Mission

This book can be summarized in three words: "Resurrection fuels mission." The resurrection of Jesus is the beginning of God's new creation, God's renewal of all things. Believers draw hope from this for their mission of establishing justice, nourishing beauty and declaring Jesus as Lord of all.

Wright's arguments will challenge people on the left and the right:

For the religious liberal who says the resurrection is an inspiring tale, Wright responds that without a bodily resurrection the event was useless because it had no connection to our world of space, time and matter.

For the religious conservative who tends toward a private pietism, Wright says God's program of new creation, anticipated in the resurrection of Jesus, prods believers to tireless effort in mending the present creation from the damage of injustice and sin.

My only critique is that toward the end the book felt like a movie that's a half an hour too long. But that's probably inevitable in tackling large topics--resurrection, mission, eschatology--in one volume.

More than any other I've read recently, this book is causing me to reflect on what the salvation Christians believe in is all about.

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A Good Book on Scriptural Analysis of Some of the "Last Things"

"Surprised by Hope" is a good book when N. T. Wright expounds on biblical sources of revelation as to what happens to believing Christians after death. Our mainstream view of heaven as a place of eternal incorporeal bliss, he says, is mistaken. What we call "heaven" is only a short intermediate stage, before the Second Coming, and the resurrection of all who have believed, who will then be fully new creations, and live in the earthly Kingdom of God. His long discussion of this issue is revelatory, and extremely important. This book is well written and (I think) orthodox in its statements on the bodily resurrection of Jesus; the Ascension; the new creation;the first fruits; the resurrection of the dead and the Kingdom of God. His views on Final Judgment, hell, purgatory and the importance of the writings of most of the Church Fathers and theology developed during the long history of Christianity are confusing; sometimes garbled; often summary; overly speculative and in a few places incorrect. For one thing, Karl Rahner, S.J. was not a conservative theologian! The fact that Wright seems not to countenance even the possibility of any revelation of the Holy Spirit in the Church after, maybe, Origen or Tertullian seems a bit short sighted, and is probably intentional. The fact that his briefest of references to Thomas Aquinas are essentially dismissive is one of the problems with the later half of this book. On theological matters Wright is no Aquinas. On a number of major theological questions, Wright allows his own speculative mind to run free, leading to a number of dubious conclusions based on modernist sentiments, while at the same time he seems to criticize Aquinas and others for the same thing (engaging in speculation, while being men of their own time). The orthodox Christian will feel the need to part company with Wright on a number of topics including his belief that for most people, there are no real consequences of their sin, once death occurs. The only issue is whether the person who dies in sin has in his life consistently and contumaciously chosen the fundamental option (not his phrase, but that's what he means) to reject God and do evil, such a person's got a real problem Wright believes, but Wright is sure it's not the fires of hell. All other unrepentant sinners not brazen enough to full reject God, whose lives were not holy or good, but not all that bad either, go directly to the heavenly hotel as full-fledged saints, equal in glory and majesty to the Virgin Mary and all the martyrs. So in a sense there is no Divine Justice that must be appeased, and hope of Wright's type flows without a thought for guilt or recourse to the unrepentant of many stripes. A final judgment: Wright is excellent when he stays within his element: scriptural scholarship; but theology in the lager sense is not his strong suit. This is a good book on the issue of life-after-life-after-death, which he writes about very convincingly.

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Traditional Orthodoxy and Eschatology

Surprised by Hope by Bishop N. T. Wright is a defense of the traditional eschatology of the mainstream church. Wright is quite eloquent and I always learn something when I read his books. This one is no exception. Here Wright journeys through the good, the bad, and the ugly landscape of current eschatology and compares it with his take on the beliefs of the early Christian believers. From time to time on this journey he ventures briefly onto more progressive roads-less-travelled, but (frustratingly for me!) he always retreats back into the safe haven of traditional orthodoxy. Wright does envision a future with hope - a hope based squarely in the resurrection of Christ - but he comes short of embracing the radical hope of a complete and ultimate cosmic renewal and unity in Christ, saying, "One cannot forever whistle 'There's a wideness in God's mercy' in the darkness of Hiroshima..." (p. 180). Those who still espouse that particular "wideness" will be disappointed by Wright's theory of hell: one in which sinners are stripped of their humanity and become "beings that were once human but now are not" who are "beyond hope" and "beyond pity" existing forever in "an ex-human state... no longer [exciting] in themselves or others the natural sympathy some feel even for the hardened criminal" (p. 182-183). This, despite the book's title, is not the kind of hope that entails the glorious vision of God as "all in all".

There are hints of Jurgen Moltmann in Wright's thoughts and concepts, but the hope which surprises him is not nearly as startling and comprehensive as that put forth by Moltmann. Consider this from Moltmann's The Coming of God: "True hope must be universal, because its healing future embraces every individual and the whole universe. If we were to surrender hope for as much as one single creature, for us God would not be God." (p. 132). The parts of the book that reflected Moltmann were the most enjoyable to me.

Let me also add that one of my concerns in this book is Wright's caricature of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. It is either a caricature or Wright does not fully understand Teilhard. Chardin comes across in this book as something of a secular progressive who was looking starry-eyed into a glorious future accomplished by a godless evolution alone. This is simply not what Teilhard taught or believed.

Having mentioned a couple of my concerns, let me happily say that there are some great concepts and paragraphs throughout the book - too many for me to quote here. But I will indulge you with one on the subject of what Wright calls collaborative eschatology: "Because the early Christians believed that resurrection had begun with Jesus and would be completed in the great final resurrection on the last day, they believed that God had called them to work with him, in the power of the Spirit, to implement the achievement of Jesus and thereby to anticipate the final resurrection, in personal and political life, in mission and holiness. It was not merely that God had inaugurated the 'end'; if Jesus, the Messiah, was the End in person, God's-future-arrived-in-the-present, then those who belonged to Jesus and followed him and were empowered by his Spirit were charged with transforming the present, as far as they were able, in light of that future" (Page 46).

My take on the book is that it is very well written, it is a joy to read, and it will be especially appreciated by those who want to see an outstanding apologetic on orthodox amillennialism from a perspective they may not have encountered before.

As an even more hopeful companion to this volume, I would highly recommend William H. Willimon's newest book, Who Will Be Saved? (ISBN-10: 0687651190).

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

For years Christians have been asking, "If you died tonight, do you know where you would go?" It turns out that many believers have been giving the wrong answer. It is not heaven.

Award-winning author N. T. Wright outlines the present confusion about a Christian's future hope and shows how it is deeply intertwined with how we live today. Wright, who is one of today's premier Bible scholars, asserts that Christianity's most distinctive idea is bodily resurrection. He provides a magisterial defense for a literal resurrection of Jesus and shows how this became the cornerstone for the Christian community's hope in the bodily resurrection of all people at the end of the age. Wright then explores our expectation of "new heavens and a new earth," revealing what happens to the dead until then and what will happen with the "second coming" of Jesus. For many, including many Christians, all this will come as a great surprise.

Wright convincingly argues that what we believe about life after death directly affects what we believe about life before death. For if God intends to renew the whole creation?and if this has already begun in Jesus's resurrection?the church cannot stop at "saving souls" but must anticipate the eventual renewal by working for God's kingdom in the wider world, bringing healing and hope in the present life.

Lively and accessible, this book will surprise and excite all who are interested in the meaning of life, not only after death but before it.

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