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Books - Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
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Rating:  -
It has often been said that Christianity stands or falls on its doctrine of Justification by faith. In fact it as Martin Luther who said that (surprise surprise). I would offer a hearty Amen to that statement. But a better statement woud be, I would say, is that Christianity stands or falls on the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Recently I got a copy of N.T. Wright's "Surprised by Hope" and it blew me away. I've always been skeptical of Wright but there was very little occasion for it this time. Taking on the subject of death, heaven, resurrection and everything associated with that is not easy task but Wright does it so well. His experience with death mirrors my own. The only funeral I've attended was my Grandmothers when I was 20. Apart from that one time I have had very little contact with death. I suspect this may be the case for many. In the west we are seldom confronted with the sheer ugliness of death compared with someone in Africa or other parts of the third world where life carries a lot less currency.
I'd just like to highlight a few key points from this book that impacted me. First off, the Christian hope is not to go to heaven when we die. If we die before Jesus returns then we do go to heaven or paradise whatever you'd like to call it, but it is not our final resting place. Its an intermediate state. Our hope is for a new heaven and new earth. A renewed and very physical existence. Our life will be as continious and discontinous with our present life as Jesus was before and after the resurrection. While this may not strike anyone as odd the outworking of this truth certainly does. When we think of heaven as our final destination what happens on earth seems to matter very little. Indeed there is a sharp wedge driven between life now and life then. We become heavenly minded to the extent that we are no longer any earthly good. This kind of theology runs aground on two major Biblical grounds from where I can see, and there are possibly a lot more.
Firstly, if we are just supposed to go to heaven when we die to be disembodied spirits, then why on earth did Jesus perform any miracles? Why did he not simply announce that we needed to answer a few questions, pray a simple prayer and be sure of going to heaven? Miracles become pointless if there is no resurrection. But they do have a point and some meaning for those who receive them. They are signposts that point toward a future time when our bodies will be perfected, they will no longer be subject to disease, decay and death. They are signs of eternity breaking into the present. Signs that the worlds creator God has become Lord of all Creation as Wright says. Secondly this theology runs aground (and this is biggest one in my opinion) when it comes to what Christ accomplished on the cross. We speak of death as a defeated enemy, the one that Jesus defeated with his work on the cross. But if there is no resurrection then death has actually won the battle. In effect we are colluding with death and settling for a disembodied existence instead of a fully resurrected and glorified new body. I can't make sense of Jesus' victory over death any other way.
The second major area I was impacted was Easter. As Wright argues we seem to have got our celebrations around the wrong way. Personally I've felt this too. By the time it comes to Easter we seem to celebrate very little. But take Easter away from the Bible and we lose the entire New Testament. The Gospels become pointless stories of a good man who taught a nice way to behave, the Epistles cease to exist. The communities formed around the dying and rising of Christ, not because they liked each other (often inspite of that). Take out the resurrection and Paul had no communities to write to. Wright believes we need a greater emphasis on Easter in the Church. Indeed we should celebrate it a lot more than Christmas. We should treat it as the crowning moment in all of Christendom. Without it there is no Christianity.
Lastly this book helped me to get a handle on the big picture. We are not saved as souls but as wholes. Salvation is a bigger answer to the cosmic problem of sin. It helped me to make sense of creation in light of eternity and to see it as something very good made by an incredibly good God, but deeply flawed by sin. Funny enough this also helped me make sense of Lloyd Jones' book "Preaching and Preachers". Lloyd Jones insists that the Church is the only organisation that can tell man about his deepest need, to be reconciled to God. The pulpit is not the place preach social justice as a means to an end, but to preach the Gospel. I realise that this kind of thinking offends some people who see this as justification for being passive bystanders while the world goes to pot. Some say that for evil to prosper good men must do nothing and that is quite true. But I don't think that Lloyd Jones and Wright are diametricaly opposed. Both would argue that social justice is a neccessary part of the Gospel, but both would stress that there needs to be a reason for that action. Without the Gospel we lose our hope and thus our reason for that action. When we gather together at Church to hear the Gospel proclaimed it fills us afresh to get out into the world and proclaim "Jesus is Lord"!
The Gospel message is the power of God unto salvation as Paul writes in Romans, and that is the only true and lasting power for any social action or reform. If we don't preach the Gospel we end up with the "Social Gospel". Without preaching it the Church becomes like any other political agency and this is what I think Lloyd Jones was carefully arguing against. He wasn't against social justice. Some might think that Wright is a social reformer, but he is doing so very biblically in a way that I'm sure Lloyd Jones would have approved. Wherever the Gospel message goes it brings life, hope, reconciliation, forgiveness, and peace. It does so with a power that we struggle to comprehend. A power that is made manifest in weakness, brokeness and foolishness. But that power that appears foolish to some is the same power that raised Jesus from the dead.
Lately I can see a change in myself. When someone preaches about Jesus my heart sings. When someone talks about the Holy Spirit I feel His presence. When someone talks about the Love of Father for the world I am moved with reverence and awe. As I type this I am more aware of the presence of God. I feel that each day the Lord is remaking me in His image. Slowly and surely I am becoming more like Jesus. Wright was right. The Resurrection brings about a new way of knowing, a new epistemology, that uses our five senses but at times transcends them. I wish I could explain it with better words, but I lose myself in the language of Love.
You don't have to agree with everything in this book. Sometimes Wrights "New Perspective" comes up especially with justification "on the whole life lived". I don't agree but thats a debate for another time. As one review put it, the wheat in this book far outweighs the chaff. You just have to read this book, its a must for any Christian.
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After education mostly at Oxford, in 1975 Wright became a junior research fellow at Merton College, Oxford and later also later junior chaplain. From 1978 to 1981 he was a fellow and Chaplain at Downing College, Cambridge. After this, he served as assistant professor of New Testament Studies at McGill University, Montreal, then as Chaplain, Fellow and Tutor at Worcester College and lecturer in New Testament in the University of Oxford. He moved from Oxford to be Dean of Lichfield Cathedral and then Canon Theologian of Westminster Abbey. In 2003, he became the Anglican Bishop of Durham. On 4 August 2006 he was appointed to the Court of Ecclesiastical Causes Reserved for a period of five years.
He is a prodigious author, whose sentiments resonate with E.P. Sanders and the New Perspective on Paul. His views on hell and on justification are matters of some controversy. However, he is a writer whose breadth, brilliance, and clarity demand respect and always, a hearing.
His purpose is to mobilize readers around a Christian hope long neglected and misshapen--the new creation resurrection hope secured and begun in the resurrection of Yeshua, the Messiah. This in turn forms a solid and transformational foundation for Christian practice and politics. Chapter 1 considers what the Christian hope is, and how this contributes to the transformation of the world. This hope is not the hope of heaven, but of life after life after death, embodied immortality in a renewed heavens and renewed earth. Chapter 2 surveys the confusion and misinformation clinging to the issue of heaven and hell. This confusion is perpetuated and reflected in hymnody, in how funerals are conducted, etc. It has real-life implications for how we live, how we relate to our bodies, and to matters such as social justice, the arts, and personal holiness. Chapter 3 examines why the resurrection is crucial for Christian faith, and why it is not another way of saying "life after death," but deals rather with life after life after death, "life after death" being our sojourn, however short or long, in the intermediate state known as heaven/paradise while awaiting our real destination, resurrection as eternal citizens of a renewed heavens and a renewed earth. He explores the kinship the NT shares with Judaism in its view of resurrection, and seven ways in which the NT parts from Jewish assumptions. He demonstrates that all of these differences are only explainable on the basis of the historic fact of Jesus' resurrection, which alone forms a credible basis for the boldness with which early Christians stood up to the might of Imperial Rome.
In Chapter 4, Wright examines four strange features of Gospel resurrection accounts which lend credibility to Messiah's resurrection. In addition, he shows it to be clear that the tomb was empty and that the apostolic band had so encountered Yeshua as to convince them that he had conquered death, entering into a new, and unprecedented realm of life. He considers and refutes contrary arguments, and finishes the chapter discussing epistemology, and the interconnection between the resurrection of Yeshua and the new creation.
Chapter 5 examines what God's purpose is for the cosmos, exploring evolutionary optimism and a souls-in-transit mindset (spiritual life as a continuing journey). He favors a third option, the resurrection of Messiah as the trigger and foretaste of the renewal of the entire cosmos, to be explored in Chapter 6. In this chapter he examines presuppositions and concepts that illumine what the NT means by resurrection: the goodness of creation, the nature of evil, the plan of redemption, seedtime and harvest with Christ as the first fruits, victorious battle, citizens of heaven colonizing the earth, God as all in all, the New Birth, and the marriage of heaven and earth: in short, the new creation. In Chapter 7, Wright presents the Ascension as a vital aspect of the Christian message, defeating residual platonic assumptions and reminding the Church that she does not circumscribe the limits of Christ's presence. The Ascension is also essential to a correct assessment of the Trinity. Heaven is not out there, but a different kind of space, matter and time coexistent with our own, more like a parallel dimension.
Chapter Eight contests dispensational/premillennial concepts of Christ's coming in the clouds to rapture his people. The focus of the parousia is Messiah's arriving royal Presence, and his people going out to meet him in order to welcome him/escort him back to their own territory. At the Second Coming Christ does not come to take us away but to join us. Chapter 9 reminds us that he comes as Judge. Here, Wright discusses the pedigree of the idea of God and Messiah as Judge. Judgment is not a negative, but a positive reality, and according to deeds. Jesus' coming is transformational, bringing redemption's story to a conclusion, calling us meanwhile to build for a coming Kingdom which is greater than we can imagine. In Chapter Ten, Wright deals with the redemption of our bodies, laying a basic picture of the bodily resurrection as taught in the Newer Testament and by the Church Fathers. He reviews Col 3:1-4, Romans 8:9-11, John 5, touching upon other passages as well, indicating how heaven is not our final resting place. Focuses especially on 1 Cor 15, and the who, what, where, why, when, and how of bodily resurrection. From such a perspective, we see heaven as an intermediate state.
Chapter 11, "Purgatory, Paradise, Hell," clarifies the meanings, distinctions, and histories of usage of these terms. Chapter 12 explores the on the ground, whole life implications of new creation perspective. Jesus' death, resurrection, and ascension are the essential means for saving and deputizing his people for the work of the kingdom which he modeled as recorded in the gospels, foreshadowing the new creation. This perspective reintegrates the gospels and the epistles. Chapter 13 shows how new creation eschatology leads to a transformation of justice, beauty and evangelism. As we reflect the justice and beauty of the new creation and the tensions between the coming age and the present age, our evangelism becomes both attractive and credible. Evangelism is recruiting other people to the life that has found us, which we embody, however imperfectly.
Chapter 14 considers a hope-shaped mission. The resurrection of Yeshua was the center of apostolic witness, as demonstrated through a survey of the gospels, Acts and the Pauline corpus. Our witness should and can be empowered by a resurrection perspective as well. In Chapter 15 Wright explores how we might transform our concepts and practice in relation to space, time and matter, suggesting adaptations in worship, calendar, and sacramental understanding in view of new creation realities. He makes suggestions about collaboration without compromise, and how our relationship to prayer, scripture, and love is transformed through a new creation perspective. He concludes with an Appendix contrasting sermons advocating an ultra-right traditional view of the resurrection on the one hand, and an ultra-left view of the resurrection on the other, demonstrating how the new creation resurrection perspective is superior to both.
The book is a brilliant, compelling read, of crucial importance to Christian/Messianic Jewish spirituality and theologizing, providing a strong foundation for the kind of new creation eschatology necessary to undergird the New Messianic Jewish Agenda, an eschatological perspective anticipating Israel's differentiated destiny at the end of days, which perspective has no place in the kind of one size fits all homogeneity imagined in some eschatological schemas. I find little to differ with in this book, although his concept of perdition, as people being reduced to a subhuman status through their servitude to sin (reminiscent of Gollum in the Fellowship of the Rings), to be interesting but not yet convincing. This is a thorough treatment of the matters it addresses and will become a must read for many of the people I teach and mentor in Messianic Jewish spirituality and missiology. As nothing else I have encountered in the past forty five years, this book connected me to the resurrection as a matter of supreme importance not simply apologetically, but experientially and formationally. Bravo, no, bravissimo!
Rating: -
This is the best theological (not to mention eschatological) book I've read in a long, long time--a very valuable contribution to today's great conversation. Bishop Wright has written some very weighty, well researched and documented works on understanding the scriptures and the Person of Christ from a first-century perspective; more as the early Christians and Church fathers would have understood than we typically do with our postmodern spin. *Surprised by Hope* is a concise culmination of this: an excellent summary of thirty-some years of Wright's research.
Lest anyone should be scared off by the subtitle, "Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church," the book is not calling for innovation or novelty in any way; rather its rethinking is merely a call for today's Christians to harken back to the way early Christians saw it. Heaven is not to be seen as some great pie-in-the-sky place that all God's people will one day escape to; we should instead look forward to the future marriage of heaven and earth as the ultimate state of God's kingdom. Christ's resurrection is not just some great one-time miracle God did to demonstrate His power, but the inaugural sign of an entirely new age, which Christ now rules and in which Christ is (presently) putting all the cosmos under His lordship. The Church's mission is not simply to save souls one person at a time while the world all around us veers into abysmal despair, but to transform the world all around us into glorious subjection to the King of kings and Lord of lords. This is the way the early Christians saw it. Indeed, these were the threats Caesar inferred. We need to see things this way again too. The "rethinking," then, is really more a return.
Rating: -
For three months in the summer of 2004, I labored through N.T. Wright's massive book, The Resurrection of the Son of God - an important work for anyone interested in the historical evidence for the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Resurrection of the Son of God significantly deepened my appreciation for Easter. Wright's research bolstered my confidence in the historicity of the New Testament accounts, but more than that, it helped me to understand why the Resurrection was necessary and why it is so important to Christian theology.
Needless to say, I was happy to discover that Wright was working on an edited, popular-level supplement to The Resurrection of the Son of God. Fast forward to 2008. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church has been released, a sequel of sorts to Simply Christian. (And yes, the allusions to C.S. Lewis' works Mere Christianity and Surprised by Joy are an intentional advertising gimmick, although readers quickly discover that the comparisons to Lewis do have some merit.)
In Surprised by Hope, Wright attempts to do three things. First, he exposes current Christianity's muddled views of the afterlife by taking us through the historical evidence for and the theological explanation of Jesus' resurrection. Second, he answers questions regarding eschatology that necessarily arise from his Resurrection theology - showing how his eschatological framework best fits the New Testament witness. Third, he shows how the Christian's future hope of resurrection forms the foundation for current social action, evangelism, and spirituality.
For those familiar with Wright's previous work on the resurrection, Surprised by Hope will not surprise you (no pun intended). For years now, Wright has been advocating a return to a more biblical, more creation-centered, more Jewish understanding of the future hope of new heavens and new earth. Other theologians have been speaking up about this subject too, in hopes that a more robust view of heaven will reenergize our Kingdom efforts on earth. (Michael Wittmer's Heaven Is a Place on Earth and Randy Alcorn's textbook-styled Heaven come to mind.)
But Surprised by Hope stands out in the amount of material that Wright is able to incorporate into a single volume and in the moving way in which he makes his case. This book carries an emotional resonance rarely encountered among works of theology. At times, Wright's description of the Christian hope so moved me that I found myself wiping away tears.
Surprised by Hope contains many paradoxes, which is what we have come to expect from a theologian like Wright. Here are a few examples:
Wright argues forcefully for Christ's bodily resurrection (to the "Amens" of his conservative readers), but then shows why that must necessarily inform our view of the Christian's future hope (and the picture is significantly different [i.e. grander!] than what conservatives have generally taught).
He devotes significant space to eschatology, firmly disagreeing with the Preterist position, while admitting that Jesus' prophecies concerned the Fall of Jerusalem.
Dispensationalists will not countenance his interpretation of Revelation or Daniel, and yet Amillennialists will be surprised by his refusal to spiritualize the Kingdom in ways that detract from an earthy application.
Reformed readers will have trouble with Wright's "New Perspective on Paul" that surfaces in a couple of places, and yet they will applaud his Kuyperian stance on the lordship of Christ over all creation.
Roman Catholics will disagree with Wright's decisive rejection of purgatory and praying to the saints, but some Protestants may be equally puzzled about Wright leaving room for Christians to pray for the dead (not for their salvation, mind you, but only for their rest!)
Traditionalists will be glad to see Wright rejecting universalism and affirming the existence of hell, and yet, Wright's innovative view of hell (in terms of dehumanization) is more akin to C.S. Lewis than to anything clearly taught in Scripture. (Wright's view serves as middle way between annihilationism and the traditional view of eternal torment.)
Pastors would do well to read the final chapters of Surprised by Hope. Wright gives food for thought on the nature of mission work and evangelism. He also offers practical advice on reinvigorating our anemic Easter celebrations.
Surprised by Hope will be one of Wright's most widely-read books. Though readers should proceed with caution regarding some of Wright's proposals, the wheat in this book far outweighs the chaff.
Rating: -
I have read the much larger and more detailed Resurrection of the Son of God, Wright's scholarly version of this book. Now he has written much the same book in a more casual form. It is more accessible but still accurate, still fascinating, still Wright. Perhaps I should be surprised that one man can do both, but I'm not, because it's Wright, and he's done it before.
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