Tom Wright
Bishop of Durham
First published in Great Britain in 2007
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge
36 Causton Street
London SW1P 4ST
Copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2007
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Unless otherwise stated, biblical quotations are either the author’s own translation or are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Every effort has been made to seek permission to use copyright material reproduced in this book. The publisher apologizes for those cases where permission might not have been sought and, if notified, will formally seek permission at the earliest opportunity.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-0-281-05617-0
Stephen Neill, George Caird and Charlie Moule, teachers, scholars, pastors and friends, in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead
1 All dressed up and no place to go?
2. Confusion about hope: the wider world
1. Christian confusion about hope
4. Wider implications of confusion
3 Early Christian hope in its historical setting
2. Resurrection and life after death in ancient paganism and Judaism
3. The surprising character of early Christian hope
5 Cosmic future: progress or despair?
2. Option 1: evolutionary optimism
6 What the whole world’s waiting for
2. Fundamental structures of hope
5. Citizens of heaven—colonizing the earth
8. The marriage of heaven and earth
7 Jesus, heaven and new creation
2. What about the ‘second coming’?
2. Coming, appearing, revealing, royal presence
10 The redemption of our bodies
2. Resurrection: life after ‘life after death’
4. Resurrection: later debates
5. Rethinking resurrection today: who, where, what, why, when and how
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About Surprised by HopeWhat do Christians hope for? To leave this wicked world and go to ‘heaven’? For the ‘kingdom of God’ to grow gradually on earth? What do we mean by the ‘resurrection of the body’, and how does that fit with the popular image of sitting on clouds playing harps? And how does all this affect the way we live in the here and now? Tom Wright, one of our leading theologians, addresses these questions in this provocative and wide-ranging new book. He outlines the present confusion about future hope in both church and world. Then, having explained why Christians believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus himself, he explores the biblical hope for ‘new heavens and new earth’, and shows how the ‘second coming’ of Jesus, and the eventual resurrection, belong within that larger picture, together with the intermediate hope for ‘heaven’. 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’ 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. |
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