For years Christians have been asking, ''If you died tonight, do you know where you would go?'' It turns out that many believers have been giving the wrong answer. It is not heaven.
Award-winning author N. T. Wright outlines the present confusion about a Christian's future hope and shows how it is deeply intertwined with how we live today. Wright, who is one of today's premier Bible scholars, asserts that Christianity's most distinctive idea is bodily resurrection. He provides a magisterial defense for a literal resurrection of Jesus and shows how this became the cornerstone for the Christian community's hope in the bodily resurrection of all people at the end of the age. Wright then explores our expectation of ''new heavens and a new earth,'' revealing what happens to the dead until then and what will happen with the ''second coming'' of Jesus. For many, including many Christians, all this will come as a great surprise.
Wright convincingly argues that what we believe about life after death directly affects what we believe about life before death. For if God intends to renew the whole creation—and if this has already begun in Jesus's resurrection—the church cannot stop at ''saving souls'' but must anticipate the eventual renewal by working for God's kingdom in the wider world, bringing healing and hope in the present life.
Lively and accessible, this book will surprise and excite all who are interested in the meaning of life, not only after death but before it.
What Others Say
A thought-provoking review of what heaven and the resurrection are all about
I am smart enough to know that certain topics can go over my head. In-depth Cristology and certainly most of textual criticism are beyond me. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church is an academic work so heavy that is will instantly turn off lay people. Tom Wright always seeks to be more C.S. Lewis than Raymond Brown, however his book is in a tradition that would make both the former apologist and later scholar proud.
The crux of Surprised by Hope is that conventional wisdom has the purpose of Heaven, Easter and the mission of Christianity all wrong. We are not good Christians so that ultimately we can end up in some far-away land called heaven. Rather, Wright expertly argues ... Read More
Pleasantly suprised
From the blurb:
For years Christians have been asking "If you died tonight, do you know where you would go?" It turns out many believers have been giving the wrong answer. It is not heaven.
For those of you unfamiliar with N. T. Wright, he is the coolest old, bald Anglican since C. S. Lewis. In fact he is even balder than Clive Staples. He is also, much more significantly, the current Bishop of Durham, and one the foremost New Testament scholars in the world. This volume, Surprised By Hope, was published this year, so is a very recent addition to the literature. In my opinion, it is a very good one.
The subtitle of Surprised By Hope is `Rethinkin Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church'. Wright ... Read More
A Brilliant Distillation of Wright's Insights into Christian Eschatology
I bought Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church as a companion in my observance of Advent this year as it revisits the issue of Christian hope. It has been Wright's passionate call for the church to recover a biblically robust eschatology which the Western Church has generally reduced to either an escapist view of heaven or an evolutionary paradigm of human progress. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church is a distillation of his brilliant and massive research of the resurrection of Jesus and how that is connected to God's work in renewing the cosmos.
Ironically I first came across this idea from the Jehovah's witnesses who pointed to me the beatitude 'Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth' - that God was not in the business of destroying the world but renewing it. However, Wright ... Read More
Still waiting for this to arrive--the 2nd time it's been ordered
Why do you ask for a review when I am still waiting for the shipment? This is the 2nd time I have ordered Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, so I hope this one actually arrives. The first one never came.
Turned my Theology Upside-Down!
Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church has quickly jumped to the top of my list of life-shaping, world-view defining books. N.T. Wright is noted as a very well-respected scholar and cited as the foremost expert in 1st Century Jewish Christianity and it shows. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church reveals how influenced Western Christianity is by Greek philosophy that stands in stark contrast to the Jewish belief systems that shaped the early Christians. Wright uses the scriptures to support everything that he postulates, but he offers as well the original context that only a first century scholar can bring. I found over and over that the original first century context radically changed the intended meaning of New Testament texts. In addition, he points out some very clear, direct scripture regarding the belief ... Read More
