Overview
There have been few books that have stirred me as much as N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope. Perhaps because it looks at one of the central questions: what is the meaning of life? And answers it in ways that I believe Wright hoped would surprise most readers and spur them to action.
Wright opens the book with two key questions: What is the ultimate Christian hope?
And, what hope is there for change, rescue, transformation, new possibilities within the world in the present? (1) As long as we see Christian hope “in terms of ‘going to heaven,’ of a salvation that is essentially away from this world, the two questions are bound to appear as unrelated,” he says. But, if the Christian hope is “for God’s new creation, for ‘new heavens and new earth,’ and if that hope has already come to life in Jesus of Nazareth,” then Wright says, we have every reason to join the two questions together.(2)
Setting the Scene
Wright believes most Christians are confused and misguided regarding thoughts about life after death, resurrection, judgment and Jesus’ second coming. In fact, Wright believes much of our thinking, praying, liturgies, practice and mission to the world is misinformed.(3) So he takes us back to the beginning to the understanding of resurrection and life after death in ancient paganism, Judaism, and the early Christian church. He shows seven significant ways that the Jewish resurrection hope was modified. And then he examines the four gospel renditions of Easter.
Easter is indeed the pivotal event in history. Two things ring true: Jesus’ tomb was indeed empty and the disciples really did encounter a living Jesus.(4) “Far and away the best historical explanation is that Jesus of Nazareth, having been thoroughly dead and buried, really was raised to life on the third day with a renewed body (not a mere ‘resuscitated corpse,’ as people sometimes dismissively say), a new kind of physical body, which left an empty tomb behind it because it had used up the material of Jesus’s original body and which possessed new properties that nobody had expected or imagined by that generated significant mutations in the thinking of those who encountered it.” (5) This is so important because Jesus brings a new creation. Believing in the bodily resurrection of Jesus is a matter of rediscovering hope in the twenty-first century. “Hope is what you get when you suddenly realize that a different worldview is possible.” (6)
God’s Future Plan
With the foundation laid of the significance of the bodily resurrection of Jesus and the start of this new creation, Wright moves on to the second section of his book and looks at the biblical vision of the future world. The early Christians believed that God was going to do for the whole creation what he had done for Jesus on Easter. (7)
This message of hope is found throughout the writings of Paul and Revelation. We can see three themes of this hope emerge: the goodness of creation, the nature of evil, and the plan of redemption.
According to Wright, the world was created good but incomplete. When all the rebellion has been defeated and the creation can respond freely and gladly to the creator and his love, the Creator will fill his creation with himself so that it can be simultaneously independent (other than God) and flooded with God’s own life. (8)
“This new heaven and new earth will replace the old and the living God will dwell with and among his people and the redeemed people will be agents of his love going out in new ways, to accomplish new creative tasks, to celebrate and extend the glory of his love.” (9)
Evil is created, according to Wright, in the rebellious idolatry by which humans worship and honor the creation rather than the creator. The result is that “the cosmos is out of joint.” (10) This sense of things being out of joint gets entangled with the decay necessary within the “good-but-incomplete” creation and creates what we have termed “natural evil” but may be signs of the final “shaking” of heaven and earth that prophets knew were necessary for God’s new world to be born. (11)
Redemption, according to Wright, is God “liberating what has come to be enslaved” and involves a newly embodied life. “ (12) It is an action that Jesus took when he came from heaven to earth to change the present situation and state of his people. Death is the last enemy. The final accomplishment of God’s great design is to defeat and abolish death forever, which can only mean “the rescue of creation from its present plight of decay.” (13) It is not that we go to heaven, it’s that heaven comes to us. Paul says we are “citizens” of heaven, Jesus will come from heaven to earth to change the situation and state of his people. And he will do this within the context of the transformation of the whole cosmos. (14)
Jesus’s resurrection was the beginning of this new life. The final redemption will be the moment when heaven and earth are joined together at last in a magnified version of God’s creative energy revealed at Easter (15) Heaven and earth will be joined together in a new way and Jesus will appear to us and we will appear to him and to each other in our true identity.
What happens between our earthly death and that time? The Bible is unclear. Wright describes it as a time of restful happiness, (16) a place where those who have died are held in the conscious love of God and presence of Jesus.
We have mistakenly made salvation about being saved from this world and looking forward to being away in heaven, but that is not what God meant it to be. Our goal is not to leave this world and enter heaven (which Wright points out is hardly biblical) but to be transformed here and to work for transformation of the creation. Part of the whole point of being saved in the present is so that we can play a vital role (Paul uses the term “fellow workers with God”), within the larger picture and purpose….our questions needs to be: How will God’s new creation come? How will we humans contribute to that renewal of creation and to the fresh projects that the creator God will launch in his new world? (17)
Just as God rephrased and expanded Israel’s question of “how is God going to rescue us?” to “how is God going to rescue the world through Israel and thereby rescue Israel itself as part of the process…?”, perhaps we are to move our thinking beyond who is God going to take to heaven and how is he going to do that to the question of how is God going to “redeem and renew his creation through human beings and how [is he] going to rescue those humans themselves as part of the process but not the whole point of it all.” (18)
Hope in Practice
And so what do we do? In the final section of his book, Wright gives us some practical application. We are not to be complacent. We are to realize that we have a purpose and our work matters. We have a role in God’s redemption of his creation. “When God saves people in this life, by working through his Spirit to bring them to faith and by leading them to follow Jesus in discipleship, prayer, holiness, hope and love, such people are designed…to be a sign and foretaste of what God wants to do for the entire cosmos. What’s more, such people are not just to be a sign and foretaste of that ultimate salvation: they are to be part of the means by which God makes this happen in both the present and the future.” (19)
What we do now matters. It is preparing God’s kingdom and us for God’s kingdom. Every act of love, kindness, gratitude’ every work of creativity that is inspired by the love of God and delight of his creation, including art and music; every minute helping the forgotten or overlooked; every act of care and nurture; every prayer, teaching, sharing the good news, building up of the church, act that honors the name of Jesus—all of this will find its way into God’s new creation one day through the resurrection power of God. (20)
Conclusion
And so this book attempts to reflect the Lord’s prayer, particularly “thy kingdom come, on earth as in heaven.” In Wright’s perspective, this prayer was answered at the first Easter and will be answered fully when heaven and hearth are joined in the new Jerusalem. (21) Our task in the present time is to “live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and foretaste of the second.” (22)
1) N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008), 5.
2) Ibid, 5.
3) Ibid, 6.
4) Ibid, 58.
5) Ibid, 63-64.
6) Ibid, 75.
7) Ibid, 93.
Ibid, 102.
9) Ibid, 105-106.
10) Ibid, 95.
11) Ibid, 95.
12) Ibid, 96.
13) Ibid, 105.
14) Ibid, 100.
15) Ibid, 123.
16) Ibid, 171.
17) Ibid, 184-185.
18) Ibid, 185.
19) Ibid, 200.
20) Ibid, 208.
21) Ibid, 30.
22) Ibid, 27.