Book Review

Hola, readers! I was assigned by my book group to report on the book I'm reading, "Surprised By Hope," by N. T. Wright. It's a fascinating and dense theology, and I've found it ... well ... surprising and hopeful. Here's my take on it:
-------------------------------------------------
LIFE AFTER LIFE AFTER DEATH: A NEW HEAVENS AND A NEW EARTH
(A review of N.T. Wright’s “Surprised By Hope”)

“Everyone who talks about Heaven ain’t goin’ there” says the old hymn. N. T. Wright takes this thought a few miles farther along: he avers that Heaven is not our final destination.

If we really read the Scriptural words of Jesus carefully, I think we have to admit that Wright is right. What did Christ mean when he talked about “a new heavens and a new earth”? What do we think we mean when we recite the credal words, “and He will come again to judge both the living and the dead; and His kingdom will have no end”?

Tom Wright contends that Scripture teaches us that the souls of the just will indeed be allowed to rest from their labors; but that everywhere in the New Testament it is proclaimed that the process doesn’t end with our bodies decayed and our souls resting on a fluffy cloud playing alleluias on a harp for all eternity (BORING!) ...

What we can read tells us that Jesus – the “first fruits” of the promise of eternal life – was raised bodily from death to life, and so shall we be, when he “comes again in glory.” Sleepers will awake, and the new heavens and new earth will be joined – and we shall see God.

If we believe this, Tom says, we can’t buy the image of the Pearly Gates and cloud-beds beyond.
If we believe Jesus when he said the Kingdom is at hand, this sort of negates the idea that we’ll all be transported to a meeting in the air and be carried off like space travellers to a place in the sky.

And here’s the clincher: if we believe Jesus, and understand that “these bones shall rise again,” as the old prophet put it, this puts a whole new light on the work we have to do in the present, on Earth.

The heresy that this world will simply cease to exist in any form, asks this question, then: why would the Spirit renew the face of the Earth? And why would it be important for us to work for the Kingdom to come? -- We could just let pollution and war and all the afflictions of the planet and the universe go on their merry ways; we’re bound for a different world.

But if we believe that “not all shall die; but the trumpet will sound; and we shall be changed, in the wink of an eye,” then it is an important task we have been given, to build up our world for the eternal life to come.

I’ll just end with a direct paragraphal quote from the final chapter of this book:
“The point of 1 Corinthians 13 is not that love is our duty: it is our destiny. It is the language Jesus spoke, and we are called to speak it so that we can converse with him. It is the food we’ll eat in God’s new world, and we must acquire the taste for it here and now. It is the music God has written for all his creatures to sing, and we are called to learn it and practice it now, so as to be ready when the conductor raises his baton. It is the resurrected life, and the resurrected Jesus calls us to begin living it with him and for him right now. Love is at the very heart of the surprise of hope; if we are people who hope as the resurrection encourages us to hope, we will be people enabled to love in a new way. Conversely people who are living by this rule of love will be people who are learning more deeply how to hope.”