N.T. Wright's "Surprised by Hope": The Pirate Review, Day 1
As frequent visitors to this blog will be well aware, I have always had the utmost respect for N.T. Wright and had considered him not only the foremost Christian scholar working today, but someone who genuinely possessed the desire to see the Gospel of Jesus Christ put to fresh and powerful application in the world today, and to that end has worked to "abolish the law with its commandments and ordinances, that He might create in Himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it."
That was all before I learned that this wretched man had the audacity to authorize his newest book, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, to be released in the U.K. some two months earlier than in the U.S.! I guess all that talk about ecumenism, the unity of God's people, etc., what just a bunch of hot air, eh, good Bishop?
Well, I've never been one to let the dastardly schemes of such blatant nationalists as Dr. Wright stand in my way. By counter-intelligence-style planning and a blatant disregard for a number of principalities-and-powers-based international publishing treaties, I, a United States citizen, have jeopardized my very freedoms and liberties by ordering and receiving a copy of the U.K. version of the book, a full week before it's U.S. release, from Amazon.com.uk. Ha!
So before I get picked up by the secret, shadowy enforcement leg of the New World Order and get sent to a cold, deserted outpost of Antarctica to live out the rest of my days, I will, for the next few days/weeks, be posting The Complete, Unauthorized Pirate Review of "Surprised by Hope."
I anticipate going a chapter or two at a time, giving a brief summary of Wright's thoughts and maybe throwing in a few riffs off of what he says. I covet your prayers to help me outwit the authorities until this mission is complete.
Part I: Setting the Scene
Chapter 1
All Dressed Up and No Place to Go?
In this Chapter, Wright poses the two questions he will address throughout the book and a summarized answer to those questions:
"This book addresses two questions which have often been dealt with entirely separately but which, I passionately believe, belong tightly together. First, what is the ultimate Christian hope? Second, what hope is there for change, rescue, transformation, new possibilities within the world in the present? And the main answer can be put like this. As long as we see 'Christian hope' in terms of 'going to heaven,' of a 'salvation' which is essentially away from this world, the two questions are bound to appear unrelated...But if the 'Christian hope' is for God's new creation, for 'new heavens and new earth'--and of that hope has already come to life in Jesus of Nazareth--then there is every reason to join the two questions together. And if that is so, we find that answering the one is also answering the other."
The relevance of these questions is duly emphasized:
"[This is not] a matter of simply of sorting out what to believe about someone who has died, or about one's own probable post-mortem destiny, important though both of those are. It's a matter of thinking straight about God and his purposes for the cosmos, and about what God is doing right now, already, as part of those purposes."
Wright then goes on to chronicle some of the samplings of societal/cultural/religious beliefs about our post-mortem destinies, both overt and implied, by examining the writings of people as diverse as the anthropologist Nigel Barley, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Rudyard Kipling, Shakespeare, and P.B. Shelley. He concludes the chapter by chronicling three primary categories of non-Christian belief about our post-mortem destinies: Annihilation, Reincarnation in its various forms, and Spiritualism.
As this first chapter is more an overview/setting-the-stage kind of thing, and extremely familiar to us N.T. Wright buffs, I really can't think of much to say vis-a-vis thoughts on the subject. I assume that as Wright develops these themes in the chapters to come, I'll have more in the form of commentary/thoughts. But please, feel free to chime in on the introductory stuff.
Just make sure your firewalls are up.
Grace and Peace,
Raffi
Hey Raffi
Thanks for stopping by my blog. I'd love to have you as part of the conversation on my blog. I'm actually doing my review/interaction as part of an independent study for one of my (last) seminary classes. So, the more interaction I can have, the more beneficial it will be for me.
Blessings to you!
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