N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. (Review written by Scott McKnight)
For more than a decade or so Bishop Tom Wright has been making comments,
dropping suggestions, and prompting the curiosity of his many readers about
what he thinks about “heaven.” Now he comes forth with a book that I think may
well be one of Tom’s most significant books ever.
Tom, as many of you know, has written the best book we now have on the
resurrection (Resurrection
of the Son of God
) and one its highlights is its exploration of a theology of resurrection
instead of just focusing on proving the resurrection. Now, out of that spade work of history and
exegesis Tom turns toward the Church’s theology of resurrection and its
significance for life and mission. This is the proper order, and it gives the
book in this series an integrity not all books have.
The overemphasis of evangelical Christians and both Roman Catholics and Eastern
Orthodox on “heaven” as well as the evangelical obsession with things like the
rapture have led now to a vacuum of solid thinking on what the Bible says about
the future, about life after death, about resurrection and about how a biblical
hopes shapes how we live now. How often
are you hearing a biblical message of hope, a biblical study of resurrection,
etc, in your community of faith? How often is it nearly always tied to “going
to heaven”? Is a hope for our immediate future wishful thinking or is it
profoundly biblical?
The book has three parts: setting the scene, God’s future plans, and Hope
in practice. The first part sketches what folks think today and three chapters on
what resurrection and the afterlife is all about in the Christian tradition. Part
two deals with the cosmic scope of biblical hope before it turns to
personal hope. Part three deals with how hope shapes Christian mission.
Two questions shape this book: First, what is the ultimate Christian hope? And, second,
what hope is there for change, rescue, transformation, new possibilities within
the world in the present? Wright
knows that many think it is all about going to heaven that, therefore, the
second question doesn’t really matter. This
is profoundly unbiblical and this book is dedicated to exposing why. “But if the Christian hope is for God’s
new creation, for ‘new heavens and new earth,’ and if that hope has already
come to life in Jesus of Nazareth, then
there is every reason to join the two questions together” (5).
There is confusion everywhere. To
begin with, the world’s religions aren’t remotely similar when it comes to
future hope. Muslims, Orthodox Jews,
Buddhists and Christians. Three views
shape much of what goes in the world today:
1. Annihilation.
2. Reincarnation in all kinds of
forms and shapes.
3. Spiritual
A key word for Tom Wright in his book Surprised
by Hope:
is “muddle.” That word best describes how so many Christians think about
life after death and resurrection and the like.
Wright aims to end the muddle.
Somehow Christians have oscillated between death as a vile enemy and a
welcome friend. He knows “heaven” is not
understood properly by most Christians and then he enters into more of the
muddle.
lHymns - he picks on John Keble’s “Till in the ocean of love we lose ourselves in
heaven above.” And John Henry Newman’s reference to a previous life with angels
and the blatant Platonism of “Abide with Me” in “Heaven’s morning breaks, and
earth’s vain shadows flee.”
lThe Christian Year - he picks on some Christmas hymns (”It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” and
“Away in a Manger”) and then suggests Christmas has become too central with no
energy left for the most important event of Easter.
lFunerals- he enters here into issues with cremation and how many conceive it. I like this:“if someone came to these funeral
services with no idea of the classic Jewish and Christian teaching on the
subject, the funeral services would do little to enlighten them and plenty to
mislead them or confirm them in their existing muddle” (25). “Frankly, what we have at the moment isn’t,
as the old liturgies used to say, ‘the sure and certain hope of the
resurrection of the dead’ but the vague and fuzzy optimism that somehow things
may work out in the end” (25).
The robust Christian doctrine ties together work in this world with the
Life to Come.Now this teaser to what is to come: “Scripture, in fact, teaches
things about the future life that most Christians, and almost all
non-Christians, have never heard of” (27).
Wright begins with
a wonderful tale about Wittgenstein, Popper, and all those in the room that
night when the poker was pulled out and everything fell apart. This is, Tom says, an analogy to the
resurrection accounts. We might not know all that happened, but by
golly something happened.What was it? "Resurrection" is what
Christians called it. And it is
precisely here that Wright brings his whole book into a clean and crisp
summary.
lFor the pagan world, there was
no such thing as resurrection. There
were those who wanted a body but couldn’t get it and those who didn’t want a
body after death (Homer and Plato). Resurrection
meant, not life after death, but a bodily
life after a life after death. Resurrection
meant bodies. So, when Christians said
Jesus was raised “they were not talking about Jesus’ soul going into heavenly
bliss” (37).
lIn the Jewish world, there was
some variety. Sadducees — no resurrection;
Pharisees — yes. But, what united those
who believed in it was that it would all happen at once, to everyone, and it
was bodily.
When Jesus began talking about his own resurrection his disciples were
muddled — they didn’t know what he meant by just his rising. Resurrection was general, for all, not just
for one. So, when Jesus was crucified it
all fell apart: “they had backed the wrong horse” (40).
Now one of Tom’s innovations: heaven refers not to eternal life but to the
place of postmortem existence — Paradise is the same. Heaven is the temporary stage after death before resurrection. There is a two-step process: death and heaven, and then second a new bodily
existence in a remade world.
Into this world Christians make seven
innovations:
1. There is no spectrum of belief
among Christians; they believed the same.
2. Resurrection moves from the
circumference of Jewish belief to the center.
3. The body will be a transformed
body.
4. Resurrection has split into two:
first Jesus and then the saints.
5. Collaboration: God has called us into working with him to
implement the achievement of Jesus.
6. Metaphorically, resurrection got
connected to baptism (death, burial, resurrection) and ethics (raised to new
ethical life).
7. Connected to Messiahship, to
which it had not previously been connected.
Chapter 4 - “the strange story of Easter.”
The lack of consensus in the Gospel accounts … what do these differences
indicate? “Indeed, they are a reasonable indication that something remarkable
happened, so remarkable that the first witnesses were bewildered into telling
different stories about it” (53).In other
words, the confusion indicates a lack of collusion.How do you deal with the
variations in the Gospel accounts: one young man, two young men, one angel or
two angels?
Four strange elements:
1. The strange silence of the Bible in the resurrection accounts. No reflection like this: “See here, this fulfills
Isaiah; and see there, that’s Hosea.” None of this.
2. The strange presence of women as the principal witnesses.
3. The strange portrait of Jesus himself. Thus,
“… the one thing you would expect to find is the risen Jesus shining like a
star” (55).
4. The strange absence of the future Christian hope. Nothing about “So, then, we too will be
raised” or “See now, you needn’t fear.”
Here is where Tom’s prose got me: “But this is like what you get when
different artists paint portraits of the same person. This painting is certainly a Rembrandt; that
is indubitably a Holbein. The touch of
the individual artist is unmistakable. And
the yet the sitter is fully recognizable” (57).
Before Tom Wright discusses the future for the individual he goes where the
Bible goes: first the corporate and then the individual. In chapter 5 of Surprised
by Hope
he examines two ideas that shape how even many Christians think of the
future. He’s not afraid to say that
these are not in fact Christian hopes; they
are myths.
Too many Christians have packaged Enlightenment individualism and theories
of progress with Platonic dualism and soulishness to form a theory of heaven
that is far from what the NT teaches.
lThe first myth is “evolutionary
optimism.” The myth of progress. He
digresses into political rhetoric and affirms me in my crankiness about the eschatology of politics: “… the
politicians are still trying to whip up enthusiasm for their versions of this
myth — it’s the only discourse they know, poor things — while the rest of us
have moved on” (81). This utopian dream
is parody of the Christian hope. This
myth of progress is instead a “goal that will emerge from within rather than
being a new gift from elsewhere” (82).
What’s the problem: Wright says “The real problem with the myth of progress
is … that it cannot deal with evil” (85).
“The world is in fact still a sad and wicked place, not a happy upward
progress toward the light” (86). This
myth doesn’t work; it can’t solve evil’s problems retrospectively; it underestimates
the nature and power of evil and thus “fails to see the vital importance of the
cross” (87). Let the reader hear me out:
without an atonement there is no Jesus
kingdom and no Christian hope.
The solution to evil in this world — and here I’m summarizing Wright — is
not to try harder or to work at education more; the solution is otherwise. (Only then does education make sense.)
lThe second myth is “souls in
transit”. Here Wright connects the
spiritual soulishness with Hinduism, Platonism, Gnostics, etc. The
goal is to get rid of this body.For these “creation itself is the fall”
(89). “Basically, if you move away from
materialistic optimism but without embracing Judaism or Christianity, you are
quite likely to end up with some kind of Gnosticism” (89).Complete nonmateriality is not a Christian hope.
In chapter 6 Wright sketches a view of the future that avoids the
disastrous inability of evolution to deal with sin and the mistaken notion that
we need to get out of this world to be what we were designed to be. What then does that future look like?“The
early Christians did not believe in progress.” “But neither did they believe
that the world was getting worse and worse” (93). So, these two options, one found in the
optimists among liberals and the other among the pessimists among evangelicals
(and firing so much of how many understand eschatology).
Three themes converge in Christian hope:
1. The goodness of creation (dualist
mistake).
2. The nature of evil (evolution’s
mistake).
3. The plan of redemption - the
Christian alternative to the above.
These three stories converge in the Story of Jesus Christ who is Incarnate
(theme 1), goes down into death all the way down (theme 2) and is raised from
the dead (theme 1-3!).
Six themes in the NT are neither evolutionary/myth of progress nor dualist:
1. Seedtime and harvest
2. Victorious battle
3. Citizens of heaven
4. God will be all in all
5. New birth
6. Marriage of heaven and earth
Some see the ascension in flat-footed literalness while others see the
ascension as little more than a clever metaphor for the ongoing presence of
Jesus. Wright sees it as entrance into heaven, and place and state more real
than our reality.
Wright here says what he thinks heaven is and this will be the most talked
about feature of this book: heaven is, he says, not a different location than
earth in the same space-time continuum, but instead a different dimension (right
now) of God’s good creation. The One in
Heaven is simultaneously present everywhere and elsewhere. Heaven is, he suggests, the “CEO’s office” or
the “control room for earth” (111). It
is not so much a place to which we go but a place from which Jesus will return
for the New Heavens and New Earth.
Ascension theology affirms embodied existence, a new existence, and that
Jesus is Lord over All.The quote of the book: “At no point in the Gospels or
Acts does anyone say anything remotely like, ‘Jesus has gone into heaven, so
let’s be sure we can follow him.’ They say, rather, ‘Jesus is in heaven, ruling
the whole world, and he will one day return to make that rule complete’” (117).
Then he discusses the Second Coming.
Two problems: American evangelicals are obsessed by the doctrine, and
have gotten it muddled, and mainliners have done their dead-level best to avoid
the doctrine, and are likewise muddled.
Does Tom Wright believe in the Second Coming? That question has been asked
since Tom wrote his exceptional book on Jesus called Jesus
and the Victory of God
. Here’s what Tom says. “Let me say it emphatically … the second
coming has not yet occurred.” Tom denies he is a preterist. “Jesus,” he says about our future, “will be
personally present, the dead will be raised, and the living Christians will be
transformed” (133).
So, Tom does believe in the Second Coming, but it doesn’t mean what many
think it means:
1. The Son of Man “coming” refers to
Jesus’ vindication before the Ancient of Days along with the saints.
2. The King returning refers, not to
Jesus’ return, but to God returning to Zion.
These two views created confusion about Tom’s views. He is
speaking here of what Jesus taught.
3. The rest of the NT teaches the
presence and appearing of Jesus, but this does not mean he will descend on
clouds from the heavens and light atop the Temple in Jerusalem.
4. Parousia means not “coming” but
“presence,” in both a divine, saving presence and a royal presence.
5. The “rapture” text in 1 Thess 4
is a metaphor for the Presence/Appearing of Christ and the greeting of Christ
by his followers — the Church — who, as a colony’s citizens did, will leave the
city to greet the Emperor. They are the
same as 1 Cor 15:23-27, 51-54 and Phil 3:20-21.
Here’s a conclusion: “The promise is not that Jesus will simply reappear
within the present world order, but that when heaven and earth are joined
together in the new way God has promised, then he will appear to us — and we
will appear to him, and to one another, in our own true identity” (135).
Thus, “in the great renewal of the world that Easter itself foreshadowed,
Jesus himself will be personally present and will be the agent and model of the
transformation that will happen both to the whole world and also to believers”
(136).
How central — and this is my question — is the final judgment to the gospel
itself?
1. To begin with, the coming Judge
“is the central feature of another … belief: that there will indeed be a
judgment in which the creator God will set the world right once and for all”
(137). In a world of systemic injustice
… this is the “best news there can be.”
2. Wright thinks — something he
doesn’t develop — Jesus’ messiahship preceded belief in Jesus’ being the coming
judge. Why? Judging is inherent to
Messiah in Judaism.
3. Here Wright delves into judgment
by works and justification by faith — and the former is at the end while the
latter in the now as a preemptory act on God to bring forward the final
judgment into the now. There is, then,
no clash between judgment by works and justification by faith — and I think
Wright could have explained himself more in this section.
The final judgment is brought into the present by Christians in
justification by faith, in the Eucharist, in the gift of the Holy Spirit.
4. A subtle theme here is that the
final judgment is good news — it is the act of God to put the wicked in place
and the oppressed in a better place and, overall, to put the world to rights.
5. What are the practical benefits
of the coming judge?
a. The world will be transformed,
proving both the literal fundamentalist and cosmic Christ inadequate.
b. A proper shape and balance is
brought into the Christian worldview.
c. Releases us from the idea of
building the kingdom and from despair that nothing can be done.
Big question: “What would happen if we were to take seriously our stated
belief that Jesus Christ is already the Lord of the world and that at his name,
one day, every knee would bow?” (144)
What is the future hope for the individual? What does Tom Wright, in Surprised
by Hope
, mean by the “redemption of our bodies”? and “a new type of bodily
existence” (147). This is the burden of
this book.
In essence, he believes in a two-stage
postmortem journey- into heaven (presence of God) and then resurrection for
the new heavens and new earth. Resurrection,
in one of Tom’s most innovative expressions, is “life after life after death.”
He could add “embodied life after life after death.” Here it is, from Phil
3:20-21: “he Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who, by the power that enables him to bring
everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they
will be like his glorious body.” That’s the hope many are surprised by.
The “many mansions” of John 14 refer to Paradise, the intermediate state. “A temporary halt on the journey” (150).
Heaven is where “God’s purposes for the future are stored up” (151). So, in commenting on 1 Peter 1 about things
being stored in heaven for us, Wright says they are not stored so we can go
there and get them, but they are being kept there and God will bring them to
reality on earth: If, he says to a friend, “I’ve kept some beer in the fridge
for you,” he does not mean that the friend has to climb into the fridge to get
the beer … he’ll fetch them and give them to the friend.
1 Cor 15 is about a present kind of body vs. a future kind of body, a corruptible
physicality vs. an incorruptible
physicality.
Who? All people.
Where? On the new earth.
What? A more solid, more real
body.
Why? To reign.
When? After the intermediate
state, when Christ “appears.”
How? A new creation, by the
Spirit.
Traditionally, the Church has believed in the church triumphant (saints in
glory), church militant (present, on earth), and the church expectant
(purgatory). This leads Wright to a
study of purgatory. Dante, Aquinas, and
Newman represent tradition; Rahner and Pope Benedict XVI have each modified
that view, with the Pope virtually severing purgatory from the intermediate
state; and the liberal views waver between worrying about arrogance and
universalism.
Wright doesn’t believe in purgatory:
1. Resurrection is still future.
2. No category difference in NT
between saints.
3. Bodily death is the punishment
for sin; once one dies, all punishment is over.
The present life is purgatory.
Leads to Paradise: communion of saints etc.. We can pray for them, but no evidence we
should pray to them, that they pray for us, and this:“Explicit invocation of
saints may be, in fact — I do not say it always is, but it may be — a step
toward that semipaganism of which the Reformers were rightly afraid” (173).So,
he believes in the Church triumphant and militant.
What about hell? Gehenna is the image of the burning pit and then the
threat of what Rome would do to those who resisted his message. That event, of course, anticipates some final
judgment.
And here Wright squares up with an orthodox view with his own slight twist:
1. Judgment is necessary.
2. Some choose dehumanization.
3. For those who do, the
dehumanization will lead to loss of the image of God.
The major framing issues for
all of this teaching is God’s new creation of the cosmos.
Chp 12 in Tom Wright’s Surprised
by Hope
is a major change: we move from “what it said” to “what it says,” from
text to mission. Is this only about
tidying up our understanding of what happens after we die? Or does it matter?
Wright says it matters. Deeply.
Easter focuses on the resurrection of Jesus being hope for us after death;
Easter should, Wright is saying, transform mission in the present world
(without denying a proper perception of life after death). A better perception of our hope transforms
how we live in this world.
1 Cor 15:58, Paul’s statement of the consequences of resurrection, says
this: “Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm.
Let nothing move you. Always give
yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in
the Lord is not in vain.” The consequence
of resurrection is the realization that our labor lasts.
What we do now, Wright argues, lasts into the future — from embodiment now
to embodiment then.
Salvation is discussed at length: again, he makes his points with language
that evokes: “We are not saved as souls but as wholes” (199). Salvation is whole salvation, bodies included. Why? Because God’s ultimate design is new
earthly. Life before death is threatened
if we don’t have a better view of life after death. We are charged to participate with God in
this salvation work on earth.
Kingdom of God is understood along similar lines — earthly and bodily.
I’ve got some questions beginning to percolate as I get into the end of
this book:
1. What is the difference between
Wright’s new heaven and new earth and a millennial hope?
2. What are the differences between
life now on earth and life then on the new earth? Is that difference just about
the same as the old distinction between life now on earth and life then in
heaven?
3. Has Wright overdrawn the Platonic
view of salvation? As salvation so we can go to heaven?
4. Do those who believe in that
older view really discount earthly existence now that much? Sure, some of the
stereotyped Dispensationalists do, but how many theologians think like this?
Isn’t the real pocket of this older view the uninformed lay person?
5. How does Tom understand 2 Peter 3:7? “By the same word the
present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of
judgment and destruction of ungodly men.”
Chp 13 in Tom Wright’s Surprised
by Hope
explores building the kingdom and does so by showing that his view of
resurrection reshapes justice, beauty, and evangelism.Overall, a vigorous
embodied resurrection leads to a life now dedicated to building the kingdom since
it is in continuity with the final state.
1. Justice: his target here,
consistent with a decade long set of talks, is economic disparity that must be
put to rights. He explores how his views
give new shape to this with four points:
a. The debates about global economic
injustice echo the debates about slavery.
b. Liberals marginalize the Bible
and therefore the only source they have for the fight.
c. Conservatives have reinforced
dominance by capitalism.
d. Resurrection is not simply God’s
supernatural otherworldliness but thisworldliness.
3. Evangelism. Here he brings out issues that many have
asked about:
a. The gospel is that God is God,
Jesus is lord, and the powers have been defeated.
b. If a church … a tell expression …
lives up to the gospel the message is demonstrated as true.
c. Individuals respond through
conversion, regeneration, “entering into Christ” … and such a person is a
“living, breathing little bit of ‘new creation’” (228).
d. This means a Christian does not
say no to the world, cannot be isolated from the church, and behavior is
integral to being a Christian.
The last chapter addresses Easter and creation redeemed and mission and
spirituality. There are many interesting
and suggestive thoughts here, including thoughts about time and space. There are also thoughts about new birth and
baptism, eucharist, prayer, Scripture, holiness, and love.
