Surprised by Hope
Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
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In Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, top-selling author and Anglican bishop, N.T. Wright tackles the biblical foundations of Christian hope and shows how most Christians get it wrong. We do not “go to” heaven; we are resurrected and heaven comes down to earth—a difference that makes all of the difference to how we live on earth as part of the mission of the Church.
Following N.T. Wright’s resonant exploration of a life of faith in Simply Christian, the award-winning author whom Newsweek calls “the world’s leading New Testament scholar” takes on one of the most central topics in biblical theology, a matter of life, death, spirituality, and survival for everyone living in the world today.
In this paradigm-shifting book, Wright reveals:
The Biblical View of Heaven: Why the popular idea of “going to heaven” is a profound misunderstanding of Christian eschatology.Resurrection of the Dead: How the promise of a new, physical body in a renewed creation—not an escaped soul—is the Bible’s central hope.The Second Coming of Jesus: A clear-eyed look at what the New Testament actually says about Christ’s return and the final judgment.Hope for the Present World: How a correct understanding of our future hope energizes the mission of the Church to work for justice and renewal today.
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Wright, one of the greatest, and certainly most prolific, Bible scholars in the world, will touch a nerve with this book. What happens when we die? How should we think about heaven, hell, purgatory and eternal life? Wright critiques the views of heaven that have become regnant in Western culture, especially the assumption of the continuance of the soul after death in a sort of blissful non-bodily existence. This is simply not Christian teaching, Wright insists. The New Testament's clear witness is to the resurrection of the body, not the migration of the soul. And not right away, but only when Jesus returns in judgment and glory. The "paradise," the experience of being "with Christ" spoken of occasionally in the scriptures, is a period of waiting for this return. But Christian teaching of life after death should really be an emphasis on "life after life after death"-the resurrection of the body, which is also the ground for all faithful political action, as the last part of this book argues. Wright's prose is as accessible as it is learned-an increasingly rare combination. No one can doubt his erudition or the greatness of the churchmanship of the Anglican Bishop of Durham. One wonders, however, at the regular citation of his own previous work. And no other scholar can get away so cleanly with continuing to propagate the "hellenization thesis," by which the early church is eventually polluted by contaminating Greek philosophical influence.
