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

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2007

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface-Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Appendix

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Salvation’s Effect on Both Body and Soul

Wright insists strongly on the point that Jesus’ resurrection was a bodily event. The gospels present the risen Jesus as having a solid, tangible body, as eating fish, and as assuring his disciples that he is not a ghost. After his resurrection, Jesus appears like any other human being, as is clear from Mary Magdalene mistaking him for a gardener and from him joining a group of disciples unrecognized on the road to Emmaus; Jesus inviting Thomas to feel his wounds so as to verify his identity underscores this point. At the same time, Jesus’ body appears to be able to transcend earthly limitations of space and time such that there has been an enhancement as well as a restoration.

The corporeal nature of the resurrection has important consequences for our lives. That Jesus’ body was raised intact—and, indeed, with new powers—is, for Wright, an affirmation of the worth of the body as a unique creation of God. It fosters a hope for the renewal of creation, including material reality. The book of Genesis declares that God looked at his creation and found it good, and the resurrection assures us that this good creation will not be destroyed forever. Importantly, ancient peoples agreed that resurrection (whether they actually believed in it or not) would involve a resuscitation of the body, so the idea of resurrection was distinct from mere survival. This common understanding allows the Jewish and early Christian affirmation of resurrection to stand out all the more strongly.

All of this affects our idea of salvation since salvation—defined as the rescue from sin and its consequences—and resurrection are closely intertwined. Instead of pertaining only to the nonmaterial part of the person, salvation consists of “being raised to life in God’s new heaven and new earth” (198). In his public life, Jesus provided an image of what salvation is like. He healed people’s physical ailments and forgave their sins, thus addressing his actions to both their bodies and their souls. By saving people from various evils, he was “doing, close up, in the present what he was promising long-term, in the future” (192). In other words, he was showing that we can enjoy, in the present, the “renewal of creation which is God’s ultimate purpose” and can “become colleagues and partners in that larger project” (192). This leads naturally to The Necessity for Christians to Help Shape the Present World.

The Necessity for Christians to Help Shape the Present World

One of the lessons of Jesus’ resurrection, in Wright’s analysis, is that God’s kingdom is breaking into the world in the present. In rising from the dead, Jesus showed that God’s future kingdom is starting now. Although God is in charge of building his kingdom, he has “enlisted us to act as his stewards in the project of creation” (207). This implies that Christians have a responsibility to influence the present world in light of God’s future world.

Wright asserts the value of using one’s specific vocation as a means of building up God’s kingdom because “what you do in the present […] will last into God’s future” (193). For Wright, this mission includes a commitment to justice, beauty, and the spreading of the Christian faith itself through evangelization. All these activities become sources of “hope” that lift people up from dehumanizing circumstances, making them aware that they are creatures made in the image of God. More specifically, Wright presents justice and beauty as laying the foundation for evangelization, in which the specific beliefs of Christianity are taught.

Although it has forbidding connotations, evangelization is essentially an invitation to “join the party” and discover “an astonishing destiny in God’s future, and a vocation in the present” (227). The recipient of this new hope becomes “a living, breathing little bit of ‘new creation’” (228), anticipating the future world in the midst of this one—emphasizing Life as a Three-Stage Journey. What we do here and now, Wright stresses, will last for all eternity and have repercussions that we can only dimly perceive now: “[W]hat we do in Christ and by the Spirit in the present is not wasted. It will last all the way into God’s new world. In fact, it will be enhanced there” (208-09).

For Wright, to deny the significance of present-day reality is to lapse into a nonbiblical, Platonic attitude of “escapism.” Such an attitude is ultimately defeatist, allowing the strong to oppress the innocent and evil to go unchecked. For Christians to withdraw from engaging with the world in light of their faith is nothing less than an abdication of responsibility and their God-given vocation. In particular, Wright identifies this attitude with those who are indifferent to social issues like debt relief, insisting that the church should merely preach the gospel. To claim that we can do nothing at all to change the world for the better is at the opposite extreme of claiming that we can build God’s kingdom all by ourselves such that we have no need for God.

Life as a Three-Stage Journey

Platonism viewed earthly life as illusory and future life as an escape from illusion and renunciation of the present world. By contrast, according to biblical belief, there is a continuity between this world and the future world that God will create. As Wright states, “[T]he early Christians hold firmly to a two-step belief about the future: first, death and whatever lies immediately beyond; second, a new bodily existence in a newly remade world” (41). Wright stresses that “[t]his belief is as Jewish as you can get” and that it differs sharply from pagan worldviews, including Platonism (41).

Thus, for Jews and early Christians, there are three stages to life as a whole: our earthly life, a period of rest and refreshment for God’s people after they die (which we may call heaven), and a bodily resurrection at the end of time. One of Wright’s main purposes in the book is to oppose the idea that heaven is our final goal and that the Christian life consists of simply passively waiting for this future state. Instead, the future life will be the direct result of how we actively engage in the present life.

Thus, our present life (“life before death,” in Wright’s scheme) is important: It is “the essential, vital time, place, and matter into which God’s future purposes have already broken” (197). Our life on earth has a dynamic character, as we actively cooperate with God to bring about his future world. All of this speaks to The Necessity for Christians to Help Shape the Present World as well as Salvation’s Effect on Both Body and Soul. While it is true that we will need to renounce things like sin that separate us from God, we must not “say no” to God’s creation, characterized by Wright as the world of space, time, and matter. Indeed, these dimensions of reality will be elevated and enhanced in the future world, not destroyed or transcended.

For Wright, then, Christianity is a religion that affirms the validity of the present world. Orthodox Christian belief, shorn of Platonic accretions, insists on the goodness of creation and makes a stark distinction between creation and sin. According to this conception, sin is a rebellion against the good order of creation, an order that God will restore in the next world. The next world, then, will not be an escape from space, time, and matter but a new creation in which material reality will be in some way transformed and enhanced—as suggested in Jesus’ resurrected body—and cleansed from the corruptions of sin and death.