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 A Must Read Nov 02, 2009
In this wonderful read, N. T. Wright paints a theological picture of a present day hope reality. Heaven has often been explained through the years as a futuristic reward but Surprised by Hope offers an eschatological redemption that was, and is, and that will come. This is a must read to help anyone better shape their theology.
A Refocused Hope Oct 14, 2009
I have been reading and listening to N.T. Wright for a few years now. During the 40 days of lent earlier this year, I read through his massive work on the resurrection: The Resurrection of the Son of God. I have also read Simply Christian and listened to a few lectures on the resurrection. I was familiar with Wright's position on Christian hope, but Surprised by Hope was the book that I so wanted to read so I could capture Wright's complete vision of our future. I began reading it a little more than a month ago to prepare for a message I was preaching on death and the afterlife. I thought that I would skim through the book to help with the sermon, but once I started, I could not stop until I finished and I wasn't disappointed. Surprised by Hope concluded a two-year process of reshaping my vision of the future, particularly related to heaven and bodily resurrection. I cannot think of a book that has more impacted me than this one.
I have been a Christian for nearly 20 years and a pastor for 10. During my years in the church prior to full-time ministry, I cannot recall a message being preached on bodily resurrection. I can remember numerous messages on heaven, and of course, the rapture of the church, but none on the resurrection of the dead. Over the last few years, I had been teaching on bodily resurrection in the context of divine healing. How is it that God can make a covenant of healing with his people and yet choose, at times, not to immediately answer prayers for healing? Answer: bodily resurrection. All of God's promises to heal the sick will be fulfilled at the return of Christ when the dead in Christ shall be raised and given a new physical body. Nevertheless, I had a far too limited few of the resurrection. I still saw the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus as the means by which we could go to heaven when we die. Heaven was my hope. The resurrection of the dead was an awkward aside to the majesty of eternal life in heaven. Wright has helped me rethink that concept in the light of clear biblical teaching. He has given me a refocused hope.
My wife has one of those expensive digital cameras with multiple lenses. With her camera you can focus on an object that is near to you and make the background fuzzy. You can also refocus the camera to make objects in the foreground blurry and objects in the background clear. Surprised by Hope has helped to refocus my hope beyond heaven and onto our ultimate destination, eternal life on a new earth, in a new resurrected body. Wright explains: "Instead of talking vaguely about heaven and then trying to fit the language of resurrection into that, we should talk with biblical precision about the resurrection and reorganize our language about heaven around that. What is more, as I shall show in the final part of this book, when we do this we discover and excellent foundation, not, as some suppose, for an escapist or quietist piety (that belongs more with the traditional and misleading language about heaven), but for lively and creative Christian work within the present world."(148)
Does this mean that we do not go to heaven when we die, if we die in faith? Certainly not. Wright is not taking heaven away from us. It is not that we don't "go to heaven" when we die. Rather, "going to heaven when we die" is not the point. It is not the message of Jesus or the Apostles. The New Testament says very little about going to heaven when you die, but we evangelicals have made it the great goal of the Christian experience. One of the largest evangelical denominations in the United States even notes in their statement of faith concerning "Last Things" that "The righteous in their resurrected and glorified bodies will receive their reward and will dwell forever in Heaven with the Lord." They correctly included the resurrection of the body, but where is the recreation of the new heavens and the new earth? Is this the goal to enjoy God forever in heaven or on the earth?
This refocused hope changes everything for me.
If our future hope is new creation (a resurrected body and the recreation of the earth) then what we do in the body matters. What we do with the earth matters. It is not that Jesus is returning to whisk away the Christians and destroy the earth with fire, so that we can live with him forever in a non-physical heaven. God's creation is good and our human bodies are good and so we should be good stewards of the earth and our physical bodies. When we bury our dead, and I do agree with Wright that we should carry on the tradition of burying our dead and not cremating them, we should bury them in the hope of the resurrection. We should proclaim that death (and disease) has been defeated by the resurrection of Jesus and one day, we too will stand victorious over death...at the resurrection. We should enjoy the goodness of God's creation and experience his invisible attributes stamped on his good creation. We should work to keep our air, streams, and land clear of pollution. All of those things matter, if indeed our hope is resurrection and new creation.
N.T. Wright has written with clarity and persuasion and Surprised by Hope has become a catalyst in refocusing my hope based on teachings of Scripture.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Heaven after Death? Sep 27, 2009
[from dust jacket] 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.
[from me] I read this book because I had heard so much about N.T. Wright and his important place among today's Christian theologians. I had heard him labeled a heretic by people who said he denied something about Jesus's resurrection, so I decided to learn for myself. Out of all his books, I figured SURPRISED BY HOPE would give me the clearest glimpse into his orthodoxy surrounding the work of Jesus and the future of his church and kingdom.
N.T. Wright's writing is clear (almost entirely throughout), and his message is profound for the Western Christianity that believes that Jesus followers are going to leave these filthy bodies behind and leave for an eternity in heaven. His message, instead, takes Romans, 1 Corinthians, Revelation and the rest of scripture to show that, instead, our physical bodies will be restored and completed, this physical world will be healed and renewed, and heaven will descend to earth to finally fulfill God's kingdom here on Earth.
This is radically crucial to how Jesus followers live their lives. If we are living like this world will be destroyed and we'll be taken out of here to a disembodied heaven, then Jesus didn't really have to die and rise from the dead. Why conquer physical death if we're all going to be spirits forever?!
So this is an important book and message and comes with my highest recommendation. To put it in his words, "Every act of love, every deed done in Christ and by the Spirit, every work of true creativity--doing justice, making peace, healing families, resisting temptation, seeking and winning true freedom--is an earthly event in a long history of things the implement Jesus's own resurrection and anticipate the final new creation and act as signposts of hope, point back to the first and on to the second . . ."
And so no one gets confused, Wright is not proposing a 2nd round of the Social Gospel. On the contrary, he is highlighting the much more simple/complex message of the Gospel that the Western Church needs to relearn and relive.
--- Reviewed by Jonathan Stephens
A Call to Action Sep 23, 2009
Surprised by Hope details the bodily form of the resurrection, not only of Jesus, but for us also. It takes the reader through the scriptures helping to show that there is a body after resurrection rather than some undefinable spiritual form. It may not be in this dimension but it does have mass and occupy space. It will be exactly as you are know but youthful, healthy, and eternal.
More than this though, Surprised by Hope is a call to arms. It reminds us that there is work to be done here on earth perfecting God's kingdom that was established at the crucifixion of Jesus. It tells us that rather than waiting on Jesus to return to make all things good, it is the duty of all Christians to exert their authority on society for the good of God's kingdom.
Reading this book will motivate you to get out there and get God's work done. Great book.
3 of 5 found the following review helpful:
 Good Scholarship, Bad Theology Sep 05, 2009
In this book Wright plays two roles: Bible scholar and theologian. As a Bible scholar Wright is unsurpassed; he clearly has a thorough command of New Testament Greek and is meticulous in his exegesis. As a theologian, however, Wright is in beyond his depth, and so a good book of Bible scholarship alas becomes transformed into a mediocre work on theology.
Wright's main thesis is that contrary to popular understanding even among most Christians, the Bible does not teach a nonmaterial life in heaven after death on earth. The popular understanding is based on mistranslations of key passages and on the influence of Plato (the major bad guy according to Wright) on Christian theology. What the Bible teaches is not a spiritualized heaven but rather a period of dormancy followed by a general resurrection, resulting in a transformation of life right here on earth. Jesus was the "first fruits" of this resurrection, the first to experience it, and we will join him in our own resurrection bodies when he comes once again to establish the "new heaven and new earth."
Our resurrection bodies will be physical, but "incorruptible." Jesus' resurrection body was physical. It used the materials of his old, earthly body - which is why the tomb was empty - but it became a new type of transformed physical body. Wright's exegesis of 1 Corinthians 15 is convincing: Paul did not mean to say that the old body is "physical" while the new one is "spiritual." Rather, a close examination of the original Greek yields the insight that the old body was animated by the human soul, whereas the new one will be animated by the spirit of God.
Understanding the eschatological future as a transformed life on earth rather than a disembodied life in heaven gives meaning to our present earthly condition. We have the incentive to start working right now for this new heaven and new earth, since everything we create, art or music or charitable and loving acts, will find its way into the new creation. Wright sees the alternative as a Platonic dualism between a bad earth and a good heaven, in which the former is not transformed but depreciated and discarded.
To demonstrate his thesis, Wright resorts to circular reasoning (see page 59). Wright says that the empty tomb and the subsequent sightings of Jesus explain (imply) the disciples' faith in the bodily resurrection ("Put them together [the empty tomb and the sightings]... and they provide a complete and coherent explanation for the rise of the early Christian belief"). He also says that the disciples' faith explains (implies) the empty tomb and the sightings ("In order to explain historically how all the early Christians came to the belief they held, that Jesus had been raised, we have to say at least this: that the tomb was empty, except for some graveclothes, and that they really did see and talk with someone who gave every appearance of being a solidly physical Jesus"). Indeed, on the same page Wright says that the empty tomb and the sightings are both sufficient AND necessary conditions for the early Christian belief - a classic tautology. The events explain the belief, and the belief explains the events. What all of this really amounts to is using faith to explain faith. Wright begins from a position of faith, so not surprisingly that is where he ends. The reported events - the empty tomb and the sightings of Jesus - are part of resurrection faith, are precisely what is up for question in the debate about resurrection faith, and cannot be used to prove that faith.
Wright is probably correct that his interpretation of the meaning of the text itself is closer to first century theology and to what Paul thought (though I am not convinced to what Christ thought). Certain passages in Paul (especially 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 8) do make more sense when understood in terms of a general resurrection to come rather than a nonphysical heaven. But even so, Paul remains ambiguous. Wright unfortunately fails to provide a satisfying explanation of 2 Corinthians 5,8: "For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.... We would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord." He is also not convincing on 1 Corinthians 15:50, "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God." For the sake of argument let's brush aside these difficulties and concede Wright's interpretation of Paul. As a theologian Wright presents this interpretation as a theology for our own time, and here he leaves too many questions unanswered.
Wright insists that our new existence will be physical, indeed even more solid than our present one. At the same time, it will be permanent and incorruptible. This of course would require a completely different set of physical laws. What kind of organic physical substance could be immune to decay? And if there could be such a thing, consider: Will there be room for everyone? Will there be sex in this new creation? Wright doesn't say. If there will be sex and reproduction continuing into endless time on a physical earth, it won't be long before we run out of room for all these people. In order for them all to coexist, we would need something very much like a spiritual heaven. All right, then, will reproduction cease? What is human physical existence without sex and reproduction? Will the human race just stagnate at some fixed point, with people resurrecting and remaining at the age they had at death? These are not idle questions. Positing a physical new creation invites them. Unfortunately, Wright ignores them.
Wright also fails to explain how our old bodies can be transformed if they have already decomposed into nothing. Jesus was fortunate in that he resurrected before his body decayed, so that his new body could be formed from his old one. But what about those who have long been buried? What about those who have been cremated? Paul, who expected the general resurrection quickly, would of course not have been concerned with such things. But if we today are to take the general resurrection seriously, we cannot avoid them. Wright dismisses as "silly" the question of the Sadducees concerning which of a woman's several husbands will be hers in the resurrection. But the question is serious indeed if the resurrection is physical, is of this earth, and if like me, one has had more than one good marriage.
What of existence itself in this new creation? Wright (in interviews) criticizes an eternal heaven as a boring place where people would have nothing but to sing hymns and play harps all day. But what more would there be to do in a new physical world where problems and suffering have been overcome and there is nothing left to fix? Sing hymns and play harps all day? Or maybe go to the movies? Even more than a spiritualized heaven, a transformed earthly existence leaves open the question of entertainment and boredom.
Although so careful and conservative a biblical exegete, as a theologian Wright does not hesitate to entertain wild speculations of his own, such as theorizing that people who have consistently chosen evil will not participate in the new creation but will instead become transformed into subhuman beings. How does he know this? Certainly not from biblical exegesis.
Wright calls New Testament theology "inaugurated eschatology," saying the new creation has already begun with the resurrection of Jesus, but though he tries to tackle the obvious difficult question, he fails to answer it. In what sense can we say there has been a radical change, that Jesus' reign on earth is already realized, if the atrocities the world has witnessed since the time of Jesus have far surpassed anything that happened before? The question becomes particularly acute since Wright maintains it is this very earth that Jesus' reign will transform. Wright does not seem to appreciate that the first-century theological milieu must necessarily be very different from our own. "Inaugurated eschatology" cannot mean to us what it meant to first-century believers who expected Jesus' second coming in their own lifetime, who like Paul considered themselves "we who are left alive until the coming of the Lord" (1 Thessalonians 4:15).
Wright believes that only an eschatological transformation of this earth can provide us the incentive to work now to try to fix what is wrong - if we looked forward to a spiritualized heaven, we would only want to leave the present world behind. This is actually not true. Gnostic dualism is not the only alternative to a general resurrection. Even while on this physical plane we can have a sense of the good that is eternal, and a desire to actualize the eternal in our temporal existence. Wright finds the incentive to do good works in the belief that we will see their fruits in the new creation. I believe that we are called to do good works for the love of goodness itself, and that this is our highest incentive. That is why we do not get on this earth a clear sense of eternal reward and punishment - God wants love, not fear or desire, to become our motivation.
While Wright is definitely correct about first century theology and very possibly correct about Paul, with Jesus things may have been quite different. A case can be made that Jesus took the symbols of his time - light, darkness, Kingdom of God, resurrection - and radically reinterpreted them. Jesus does not talk about the Kingdom as something literal and physical - he talks about it in parables, challenging the prevailing notions. "The Kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed... in fact, the Kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:20,21) - this certainly does not point towards a transformed earth that will be obvious to all. "Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes" (Matthew 6:20) - this does not look forward to another physical existence, but to Eternal Life. Wright's major theological problem is that he lacks a sense of the eternal. Wright sees the only alternative to material existence in a dualistic, nonmaterial reality totally detached from this world. He correctly attributes this to Platonism or Gnosticism. However, Wright fails to consider the Christian idea of eternity intertwined with our temporal world and present in every moment. For Wright, salvation occurs in an everlasting temporal existence, a projection of the best of this world into incorruptible form and endless time.
Eternity is most eloquently described in the theology of Paul Tillich, in my view the greatest Christian theologian. It is a different "order of existence," which cannot be described in terms of time and space. It is not parallel to or separate from our present existence, but intimately involved with it. The eternal is always present. We can be aware of it even now - that is the purpose of prayer, and that is the blessing of grace. In the eternal abides the goodness that is permanent and indestructible, the greatest expression of which is love. Eternal Life is not a continuation of our physical existence, but rather a state in which the negative will at last be separated from our essence (this is the final judgment). We cannot fully know it, we cannot grasp it intellectually, and there is very little we can say about it. But we can sense it in moments of what we call awe or the experience of the holy.
Because it interprets the symbol of resurrection so literally, Wright's vision, when taken seriously, leads to a series of absurdities. We've considered some of them already. Here are more: Would people in their resurrected bodies still need to eat? One would think not, since the food one eats is broken down and eventually destroyed and eliminated, and since the absence of nutrition produces sickness and even death. Yes, in Luke's Gospel the resurrected Jesus eats a piece of fish. But this is the kind of trouble we get into when we take these symbols at face value. In the resurrected world, why should the lion lie down with the lamb but the fish still be destroyed? And if the resurrected body still needs fish, then it would still be subject to the ailments that result when food sources are not available. You may say that in the new world food sources will always be available - but if the body still needs them, it is not very different from the earthly body. If a man still eats a fish, then animals too can be expected still to eat each other, and we are back to the old fallen predatory world. But if there will no longer be any need for food, then we are well on our way to a kind of nonmaterial existence.
In our present world, temporality and impermanence are inseparable. It is the nature of matter itself that everything occupying time and space eventually decays and perishes. A new resurrection world could not simply be a transformation of this earth alone. The nature of the whole universe would have to change; matter as we know it could not exist. The universe itself would become a different place, so it is doubtful that speaking of a transformation of "this" earth has any real meaning. It would have to be a truly new world - and perhaps even a spiritual one. "Nonmaterial" means only the negation of what is material. "Spiritual" means much more than that, but beyond this we can say very little.
Eternity is not endless time. "Incorruptible matter" is a contradiction in terms. Wright seems to want the "new earth" to be an idealized version of life as we know it. This is probably what many hoped for in Jesus' time, but I believe Jesus wanted to direct our attention beyond it. As Tillich would put it, Wright has committed the error of transforming "resurrection" from a symbol to a concept. As a symbol, "resurrection" is actually much richer and more powerful than Wright's literal interpretation.
I have given John Piper's flawed book criticizing Wright one star. I am giving this book two stars because Wright is at least twice as good as Piper. But if Wright had left this a book of Bible scholarship, he could have earned five.
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