Surprised by Hope
Fittingly for Easter, I’m currently reading N.T. Wright’s ‘Surprised by Hope – Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church.‘ If, like me, you have enjoyed some of Wright’s other books, then this may be the one you have been waiting for him to write. Drawing heavily on his previous scholarly works (especially his magnum opus, The Resurrection of the Son of God (RSG)) 
he outlines what the New Testament teaches about the Christian future hope, both for us as individual Christians and for the world as a whole. In contrast to this he examines several errors which the world and the church often hold about this hope, principally that of our souls going to an eternal ’spiritual’ heavenly abode immediately after we die rather than a final physical bodily resurrection at the return of Christ at which time the heavens and the earth will be recreated. He examines the doctrine of the second coming, and how various segments of the church have made the mistake of reading this in either an overly metaphorical (ie some ‘liberal’ Christians) or an excessively literal fashion (eg. fundamentalist dispensationalism ala Left Behind) – Wright contends that Jesus will indeed return, but not in order to rescue his followers from a doomed world, but rather to restore and renew his creation. Hence how we act on this Earth and how we treat it do matter incredibly as it is not just a sinking ship that we will eventually escape from or leave behind.
Central to this work (as indeed it seems to be to all of Wright’s theology) is the fact of Easter. Jesus did indeed physically rise from the dead, and this fact is both the firstfruits of, and the power behind, the ultimate renewal of all creation. And in the same way that Jesus was resurrected, with a transformed physical body, we Christians can look forward to being resurrected at his return. Wright reiterates his compelling arguments from RSG that a physical resurrection of Jesus is the best historical explanation for the development of the early church. For anyone who doesn’t want to tackle that massive book, this one gives a good summary of it’s main points and it’s critique of much ‘historical Jesus’ scholarship.
I still have the second half of the book to go, but already I’ve found this book incredibly enjoyable, easy to read, and stimulating. As I said this is the book that I’ve been waiting for from Wright, bringing together themese hinted at throughout his other works. I look foward to being challenged by the second half of the book where he moves on to the practical implications of this sort of biblical future hope for us as Christians and as a Church living and working in our world today. Awesome stuff.
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