I have finished the book by N.T. Wright, “Surprised By Hope“ and want to share some insights from the book. I first want to state that I will not be going chapter by chapter through this book because I think that anyone who reads my blog should go out and pick this book up to read for themselves. This book will truly challenge you. With that said, I am not supporting or endorsing his views (that doesn’t mean I think he is wrong or that he is right) but feel that this book when read to grasp his main point will challenge you how to live now in light of the resurrection.
The resurrection of our bodies is the point of the book. Wright sees that there has been a gross error in the church by focusing on heaven as our final resting place when the New Testament puts the majority of its focus on a Christian being resurrected just like Jesus. Wright does not deny that there is an intermediate state, he just doesn’t feel that it is necessary for him to define what that is when our Christian hope is in “life after life after death.” For Wright the goal of our hope is to start bringing heaven to earth, with the final consummation of that being Christ’s return (new creation).
Wright believes that when the church (and Christians) sees that our hope is in a bodily resurrection in which we will spend eternity living as transformed bodily humans in a transformed (new) creation[1]. Therefore, he believes that the resurrection is the key to how we live in the world today, playing a part in bringing about the new creation now. He believes that Christians have been left with the task of bringing heaven to earth[2].[ii] For Wright believes that if we hold to a view that salvation is all about us going to heaven we will tend to view this world as unimportant and therefore miss our purpose. Wright sees that salvation is more than just getting a person in a “right relationship” with God.
I know this is a very broad picture of the book, but I hope that it intrigues enough to pick it up and read it for yourself. There are some points in the book that I am still thinking about as Wright really challenge my theology on some things. As for the big picture, I agree with him that resurrection of believers is a huge theological point that is not taught or preached today in churches because we have replaced it with the goal of salvation being heaven.
If you have read my blog for more than a couple weeks, you know that this fits in with what I am working on for my thesis. This doesn’t mean that I (or he) rejects the fact that when a person dies before Christ’s return that they don’t go somewhere (heaven), but that our hope is not tied to some out of body, existential, soulish existence, instead our hope is that we will defeat death just as Jesus did because we will be raised from the dead. He ends the book with two chapters of application which in and of itself is reason enough to read this book.
This book has and will play a role in my thesis. If you do read the book, I would like to hear what you thought. It challenged me and I hope it challenges you.
[1] Wright never speaks that this current world will be completely destroyed, but speaks of the idea that our current world (i.e. God’s creation) will in a sense be transformed. That means that all evil will be purged or removed from this creation and everything that is good will remain.
[2] He has an amazing chapter (6) where he discusses his idea of heaven in the book that I just can’t try to summarize. You must read it for yourself.
Still, the earth is a small place, no matter how good God can make it. There’ll we’ll be, in our resurrected bodies that will never die again, powerful creatures like God intended Adam to be in the first place (at the very least), royalty, blood-bought children of God and married to Jesus. I’d hate the think of being stuck here. I want to see the other planets.