Posts tagged Books

I am currently reading N.T. Wright’s book, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, HarperOne, 2008. In this post I will cover the first two chapters. I think this is appropriate blog material, especially in relation to conVerge because of the books content and because we should try to edify the Body. If all I ever talk about is what I think, then I severely limit the opportunity I give God in my sphere of influence. I will also post comments on Scripture in the same way. As always, feel free to comment/critique.

Chapter 1:

On page 5, Wright asks a good question of the Church: “What hope is there for communities that have lost their way, their way of life, their coherence, their hope.” What he is referring to is our watered down doctrine of resurrection and the life everlasting. This idea is important since, as we have discussed in conVerge groups, everything is spiritual, and thus everything matters. The foundation of this idea is that this life matters, and perhaps in a sense that is more powerful than even we think. Wright challenges contemporary rumblings and comments on the future state, saying that we get it wrong when we think that the body will be separated from the “soul”, if we even know what a soul is, and when we think of heaven as separated from earth. “As long as we see Christian hope in terms of ‘going to heaven,’ of a salvation that is essentially away from this world, the two questions are bound to appear as unrelated.” (5) What two questions? Well, these two questions: What is the ultimate Christian hope? and What hope is there for change, rescue, transformation, new possibilities within the world in the present?

These are two very important questions indeed, and I think certainly rings true that our expectation of the ultimate future of Christianity affects our ideas of resurrection, which in turn affects our ideas expectations of Christian life on earth, and what we are created for. Thus, we might be struggling to understand the significance of our lives right now because we misunderstand the Christian hope for the future. Wright gives some good examples in this chapter and the next about how we often believe wrong things about heaven and resurrection. Many of these examples are cases where beliefs from other religions like Buddhism and Hinduism, even paganism, have slipped into Christianity. The idea that when we go to heaven we will just be souls, no bodies, is seemingly a thought-child of Plato’s philosophy. Now, this is not to say that we can commit the genetic fallacy and condemn an idea merely because we can find a pagan who holds it. The reason this is wrong is because the bible speaks of bodily resurrection. This is a simple answer, but the problem with our wrong beliefs does not seem to be some complex misunderstanding, but rather seems to stem from a blatant ignorance of Scripture.

Chapter 2

In this chapter Wright continues in the same vein as chapter one, speaking additionally about how we are confused over the eschatological language we use when speaking of resurrection and heaven. Think about how we speak of Jesus saving our souls, as though our souls are a separate part of our person which needs salvation separate from, and almost because of, our bodies. Indeed, some Platonic ideas even say that our bodies are precisely the evil that salvation is saving us from, so that what makes heaven heavenly is the mere fact that it is all spirit, no body. Also, Wright speaks of how even the word, “heaven”, when used simply as a general term form the here-after can be misleading. First, Wright comments that there is a mediate place that we go to directly after death where we await the final resurrection, at the second coming. This place, called paradise in scripture, is a sort of waiting room for the saints where we wait or sleep in peace until the greater day of resurrection. When this great day of resurrection comes, it is not, as some might visualize, Jesus calling us to some invisible stairway to heaven up in the sky, but rather heaven comes down to earth in the reunification of the heavens and the earth, the New Earth/New Creation, also, and perhaps most properly called New Jerusalem. Thus, there is a heaven “up in the sky” (not sure if spatial directions, like up for heaven, and down for hell, really indicate a simple direction, but is probably more metaphorical), but it is not the final place of our existence with Jesus. Heaven actually exists now, is the dwelling place of the father. In the last days, this realm will be unified with the New Earth, which is just as real and physical as the ground you sit on now. Why then call it ‘heaven’ at all? “It is simply assumed that the word heaven is the appropriate term for the ultimate destination, the final home, and that language of resurrection, and of the new earth as well as the new heavens, must somehow be fitted into that.” (19) Rather, Wright suggests, we should call the final destination “new heaven and new Earth”, or if you’re into the whole brevity thing, “New Jerusalem”.

These insights seem to me extremely important to our vision for what life/church is for. “What we say about death and resurrection gives shape and color to everything else. If we are not careful, we will offer merely a ‘hope’ that is no longer a surprise, no longer able to transform lives and communities in the present, no longer generated by the resurrection of Jesus himself and looking forward to the promised new heavens and new earth.” (25) Just as our conVerge community has been profoundly changed by a reflection on the Great Co-Mission of Jesus and the Church, so might we also be greatly encouraged and challenged by a reflection on the resurrection and the Lords’ Prayer when it says: “Thy kingdom come, on earth as is in heaven.” Rather than resigning to entropy, the idea that everything is inevitably getting worse and worse, perhaps we should make room for hope for the present world. “Our task in the present…is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second.” (30)