Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, The Resurrection, And The Mission Of The Church

The early Christians believed neither in evolutionary optimism nor in “souls in transit” Platonism. Instead, they held that “God was going to do for the whole cosmos what he had done for Jesus at Easter” (93). This form of Christian hope is spelled out in the letters of Paul and the book of Revelation. This view rested on three assumptions, or “fundamental structures of hope” (93). The first assumption is the goodness of creation, which holds that God is good and embodies love and that he expressed this love in creation, which is separate from God. Human beings reflect the image of God as stewards of creation, but they are not themselves divine. Thus, there are limitations to creation and humanity—limitations such as physical death and decay that point to a future world. The second assumption concerns the nature of evil. Since God and creation are good, and human beings are the image of God, then evil consists of human beings abusing their freedom as stewards of creation, treating created things as idols instead of worshiping God, who is the source of all things. The result is spiritual death, a “second dimension” to the physical death that was always part of the good creation. Finally, Christian hope resides in the plan of redemption. Given the nature of evil, the solution to the problem of evil consists of “a newly embodied life” characterized by goodness and virtue (96). This is expressed in the “long-term plan” narrated in the Bible, from God’s choice of Israel as the people who would bear his message to the saving life of Jesus. The coming of Jesus was “the moment all creation had been waiting for” (96).

Christian hope is expressed in the New Testament in terms of six main images or themes. St. Paul uses images of seedtime and harvest to speak of Jesus as the “first fruits” of God’s creation, “the first to rise from the dead” (98), who will enable us to rise as well. Another idea is the victorious battle, with God “establishing his kingdom by subduing all possible enemies” (99). St. Paul also speaks of Christians as being “citizens of heaven,” referencing how Jesus will transform us, body and soul, to be like him, a transformation that will affect all life on earth. Another key idea is that God will be all in all. According to Paul, “The world is created but incomplete” (102); God’s final victory will happen in the future, at the end of time, when he will “fill all creation with his own presence and love” (101). Drawing on images of the human life cycle, the coming of God’s new creation will be like a painful but ultimately glorious childbirth from the womb of the original creation. Finally, the New Testament refers to the marriage of heaven and earth. Jesus comes to humanity like a groom coming to meet his bride. This union will bring about a “marriage” between the human and divine dimensions of reality. This means that humans have a definite role to play in preparing themselves for Jesus’ coming and extending his love and glory to all creation.

The belief that Jesus ascended into heaven after being raised from the dead is a “central and vital” element in Christianity, not an afterthought. However, understanding the ascension requires us to adopt an unaccustomed, relational view of reality. Heaven and earth are not two separate places but rather two dimensions of reality that “interlock and intersect” (116). Heaven is “God’s space,” and earth is “our space.” That Jesus is in heaven means that he has left the human realm, yet he is available everywhere because he is not subject to human limitations. He is separate from and above the world, yet he is in charge of and acting as an authority over the world. Thus, the ascension involves a mystery and tension between presence and absence. When we believe in the ascension, many problems are solved, including the human drive toward pride (including the institutional pride of the church), self-aggrandizement, and anxiety about solving all the world’s problems.

The New Testament texts also declare that Jesus will return to earth to make his rule complete (the second coming). This eschatology (See: Index of Terms) is a controversial and much-misunderstood element of Christian belief. One wing of North American Protestantism has based an entire belief system around the question of the second coming, expressed as “the Rapture”; at the other extreme, liberal churches downplay it, deny it, or reinterpret it as “a general hope for world renewal” (120). Wright states his view as an alternative to these two extremes. Following his close study of early Christian texts, he stakes his claim that the second coming will involve the “radical healing” of the “present space-time universe” (122).

One of the lessons of the ascension and the second coming is that while Jesus is now absent, one day he will be present again. The second coming involves two elements: coming again and judgment, which are covered in Chapter 8 and Chapter 9, respectively.

Although Wright stakes the claim that Jesus himself never taught about his second coming, the belief was rooted in early Christianity by the writings of Paul in particular. Starting from a background of Jewish apocalyptic theology, Paul used the Greek term Parousia (See: Index of Terms) for the second coming, applying a word that had an established meaning in pagan culture to denote Jesus’ eventual royal presence to the whole world. For Paul, this Parousia would demonstrate that Jesus (not Caesar or the secular power) was the true lord of the world.

From the earliest Christian period, there was a belief that Jesus, at the second coming, would appear as judge. This was rooted in the Jewish belief that God would bring judgment and justice to the world at the end of time. Although the belief in a judging God became unfashionable in the era of liberal optimism, Wright holds that this is an enormously positive doctrine: It means that God will restore justice, right all wrongs, and put tyrants and evildoers in their place.

The idea of the Messiah as judge is rooted in a prophesy in Daniel 7, and early Christians saw Jesus as the “son of man” who suffers, is vindicated, and then, in turn, judges the world in justice. In the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks of the right of the Son of Man to judge, given to him by the Father. Paul further developed the idea of Jesus as a divinely appointed judge in his speech at the Areopagus. Although Paul preached that Christians are justified by faith in the present life, he also believed that they would be judged in the future life on the basis of deeds or works. The fact that Jesus himself suffered, could sympathize with human beings, and loved sinners meant that his judgments would be merciful as well as just.

Wright asserts that the second coming has great relevance for us today in three ways. First, it implies that Jesus is other than the world and the church and yet present to both. Second, it gives a definite shape and balance to the Christian worldview, implying a story with decisive closure. Finally, it liberates us from the opposite illusions that we need to build God’s kingdom all by ourselves or that we “can’t do anything until Jesus comes again” (143). This liberation can give us “clarity and realism in our political discourse” (144). The idea that Jesus is the Lord and ruler of the world is an antidote both to thinking that political leaders are the answer to all our problems and to a political disengagement that gives up on finding solutions to problems. Wright makes a plea to Christians to act in the world politically in a way informed by their faith.

Wright holds that bodily resurrection is the key Christian belief about the afterlife—one that can lead to “lively and creative Christian work within the present world” (148). In the view of the early Christians, life after death was a two-stage process: First, immediately after death, there was a period of “rest and tranquility” in which the soul would be “with Jesus.” Then, at the end of time, there would be the resurrection, in which the soul would receive a new bodily existence from God. “Heaven” in the New Testament is a “reverent way of speaking about God,” and it refers to the place where “God’s purposes for the future are stored up” so that they may become a reality later on earth (151). The word “soul” refers not to a disembodied inner part of the human being but to the “real you” that “will one day receive […] salvation in full bodily form” (152).

In the two letters to the Corinthians, Paul outlines many aspects of the bodily resurrection. Some members of the congregation in Corinth were denying the bodily resurrection, and Paul sought to correct these misunderstandings. Paul declares that God will replace our present, transitory bodies with new, glorious bodies that are not subject to decay and death. The contrast is not between a present physical existence and a future spiritual existence but between a transitory and imperfect body affected by corruption and a future glorious, perfect body that is informed by God’s spirit. Our new resurrection bodies will allow us to be judged by God at the end of time.

Like Paul, the early church fathers stressed bodily resurrection in the face of Gnostic pressures to abandon this belief. Writers like Tertullian and Origen brought greater refinement to the debate by defining how the resurrection body would relate to our present body. The bodily resurrection continued to be affirmed by medieval theologians up to and including Thomas Aquinas. However, popular Christian piety was gradually turning toward a view of the afterlife that emphasized three states: heaven, hell, and purgatory.

Wright’s final section addresses key elements in the early Christian view of resurrection that are relevant today. According to writers from the evangelists to C. S. Lewis, the resurrection body will be like the present body but “more real” and without its present limitations. It will have passed “beyond death”—immortal—in the sense of “no longer being subject to sickness, injury, decay, and death itself” (160). Our new bodies will enable us to “rule wisely over God’s new world” (161). Indeed, the new life will include a host of new activities and works, and all our interests and work in the present life will be included and elevated in the future life. The new life will be a reward for our good deeds in this life—not in the sense of “one-for-one payment” (162), but rather in the sense of the intrinsic reward that comes from working hard at something out of love.

In this chapter, Wright offers a critique and analysis of the doctrine of purgatory and proposes a different way of viewing the structure of the afterlife. In medieval Christendom, the church was conceived as consisting of three parts: the church triumphant (those in heaven), the church militant (those “fighting the good fight” on earth [165]), and the church expectant (those in purgatory; See: Index of Terms). The idea of purgatory, which is essentially a Roman Catholic doctrine, gained popularity in the late Middle Ages. It solved the problem of what happens to those who are still morally imperfect but not guilty of serious sin after they die. The doctrine of purgatory led to the sale of indulgences that provided a pretext for the Protestant Reformation. However, in more recent times, the idea of a purgatory-like state after death—in which the human being continues their “journey” toward God—has become popular in several Christian denominations.

Wright argues that this development is unnecessary and argues against the idea of purgatory. His argument rests on three points. First, the resurrection is a corporate event in the future, not what happens to individuals immediately after they die. Second, the New Testament offers no basis for supposing that there are “category distinctions between different Christians in heaven as they await the resurrection” (169). Third, the doctrine of purgatory was “a late Western innovation, without biblical support” (170). Even some Roman Catholic theologians are now reframing the doctrine in light of scripture. Indeed, death itself is the event that “purges” sin away from the human being. Wright stakes the claim that the doctrine of purgatory was embraced because it effectively describes our present condition in earthly life. Wright, therefore, stakes another claim that the afterlife before the resurrection consists of only two states, not three: heaven (or paradise) and hell.

Next, Wright addresses the difficult topic of hell. The word in the Bible translated as “hell” is Gehenna, which referred to a garbage heap outside Jerusalem. It denoted not a place that people go to after they die, but rather a state that would befall human beings in this life if they did not repent. Only by extension can the concept be applied to something that happens to people after they die, and this does happen on a metaphorical level in certain parables in the gospels. However, Jesus’ teaching does not offer any “fresh detail” on this dimension of hell, and the rest of the New Testament and the early Christian writers do not treat it as a major topic. From this, Wright concludes that hell is a mystery and that we should avoid two extremes: judging who is or isn’t “going to hell” on the one hand and being cheerfully certain that hell is empty on the other. The latter view, known as universalism, was popular with liberal Christianity for a long time, but the tide turned as people became aware of the depth of tragedy in the 20th century, such as the Holocaust and Hiroshima. Theologians and the public at large now recognize that moral judgment is necessary as a serious response to the reality of evil and sin. Anything less is a “massive denial of reality” (180).

Wright proposes a way to “restate the doctrine of final judgment” (180). First, he outlines three existing options. First, there is the traditional view: Those who reject God’s salvation are “held forever in conscious torment” (180). Second, there is universalism: God will keep giving evil people a chance at repentance until they “finally give in to the offer of his love” (181). Finally, there is the idea of conditional immortality: Those who reject God’s salvation will simply cease to exist in the next life (a view also known as annihilationism). In other words, God will simply not confer the gift of immortality on them. Wright proposes his own speculative view: Those who persist in evil and in behavior that dehumanizes them and others will effectively become ex-human beings “beyond hope but also beyond pity” (182). Wright expresses this possibility with caution, stressing that hell is still a dark mystery but one that seems to demand at least a speculative answer given “the sober realities of this world” (183).

To conclude, Wright also stresses that we must leave room for the fact that “God is always the God of surprises” and that the Christian message is ultimately about hope and God’s renewal of creation (184). Indeed, Wright makes a final claim, based on his reasonings in the book up to this point: Perhaps the question of the fate of individuals after death is less important than the fate of God’s creation as a whole and the role that human beings can play in this.