Surprised By Hope Review (And Review Index)

3.3.08 Article

So many cool guys with beards. Tom Wright. Keith Green. Mi Padre. Jules Winnfield. Jack Torrance. Clubber Lang. Jesus.

N.T. Wright is the man. I have crazy respect for someone who can elucidate such brilliant contextual scholarship on the Bible into accessible writings. You can’t overestimate the influence of Wright’s writing on various movements over the last decade, due in large part to that accessibility.

In his latest book, Surprised by Hope, he is going to piss some people off (that word is in the KJV), and encourage others. The “Left Behind” crowd from my previous post will not like it, but that’s okay. Chapters one and two are an introductory critique of popular, cultural, and historical misconceptions about heaven; such as being far way, distant, and something that has little to do with the present. The first part after that is about the resurrection, and is a synopsis from some of his previous work on the topic. The second part is about what our great hope is as Christians in the future – as he says, this is an explanation of “life after life after death,” and the resurrection of the body. The last part combines the sections on the past and future into what this looks like for the church today.

Just trust me. If you haven’t read N.T. Wright, you should order this book, The Challenge of Jesus, or The New Testament and The People of God.

There are several reviews that I link below, a video interview with him from Nightline, and even two blogs with chapter by chapter summaries. That means you don’t need a full review from me, so I’ll give you some of the quotes that are worth pondering:

This book addresses two questions…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 myth of progress fails because it doesn’t in fact work; because it would never solve evil retrospectively; and because it underestimates the nature and power of evil itself and thus fails to see the vital importance of the cross. God’s no to evil, which then opens the doors to his yes to creation. Only in the Christian story itself – certainly not in the secular stories of modernity – do we find any sense that the problems of the world are solved by a straightforward upward movement into the light but by the creator God going down into the dark to rescue humankind and the world from its plight.

It wasn’t a matter of Christians simply taking over and giving orders in a kind of theocracy where the church could simply tell everyone what to do…and it’s always led to disaster. But neither it is it a mater of the church backing off, letting the world go on its sweet way, and worshiping Jesus in a kind of private sphere. Somehow there is a third option…The method of the kingdom will match the message of the kingdom. The kingdom will come as the church, energized by the Spirit, goes out into the world vulnerable, suffering, praising, praying, misunderstood, misjudged, vindicated, celebrating: always – as Paul puts it in one of his letters – bearing in the body the dying of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed. What happens when you downplay or ignore the ascension? The answer is that the church expands to fill the vacuum. If Jesus is more or less identical with the church – if, that is, talk about Jesus reduced to talk about his presence within his people rather than his standing over from elsewhere as his Lord, then we have created the high road to the worst kind of triumphalism…Only when we grasp and celebrate the fact that Jesus has gone ahead of us into God’s space, God’s new world, and is both already ruling the rebellious present world as its rightful Lord and also interceding for us as the Father’s right hand – when we grasp and celebrate, in other words, what the ascension tells us about Jesus’s continuing human work in the present – are we rescued from a wrong view of world history and equipped for the task of justice in the present.

IMHO, Chapters 12-15 on the kingdom and the church is awesome (and my favorite), because it fleshes out the framework from the previous chapters (and previous works). Quotes really don’t do this section justice, and I end up quoting entire pages. Ha!

Index:

Video of Wright on Nightline

N.T. Wright Homepage

Interview with Wright in Time.

Really good review by Darren King.

Chapter Summaries from Scot McKnight:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14 & 15

Chapter Summaries from Raffi Shahinian:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3 & 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8 & 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 15 Part II

Arthur Boulet review.

Trevin Wax review.

Wyman Richardson review.

Sensual Jesus review Part I, so far.

Bill Reichart review Part I and Part II, so far.

Cheers.

Technorati Tags: Surprised By Hope Review, N.T. Wright

5 Comments

Fred

3.4.08

I’ve read The Challenge of Jesus and The Last Word. If Suprised By Hope is anything like those it will definately be good.

Besides, it’s fun to piss fundamentalists off. :D

Heather

3.4.08

I’m a huge Wright fan (take those adjectives in any order you’d like). So I got my hands on this book ASAP. I haven’t finished it yet–I had to go back to the beginning to write a summary on it for a business my husband and I are starting–but I plan to finish it this week.
Thus far–loving it. This is a passion area of mine. In fact, a while back I blogged on this idea (Unfortunately, the comments were lost to my old blog, but you get the idea.)
Here’s the thing–I’m premil. Yes I am. Which means for me, that though I loosely agree with the interpretation behind the Left Behind series (of which I read the first couple of books), I didn’t like the series for a couple of reasons: wrong focus (I do believe the kingdom of God is active today, and that we’re called to participate in it in physical ways as well as spiritual–after all, how do you really separate the physical from the spiritual?); we don’t know what is metaphor, so are there really grasshopper-horse things invading?, I doubt it (although you never know with God); and three, I’m not exactly sure you could call that good literature.
But here’s the thing about my theology: no matter what I believe about the rapture and tribulation and millinial kingdom, I absolutely believe (and I’m consistent with most educated premillers here) that our future, ultimate hope, the heart of it all, is our physical resurrection when heaven meets earth on a restored, redeemed, re-beautified (because, you know, I needed the alliteration) earth, where we finally see God’s kingdom here to the fullest. I also want to say that because I believe in this physicalness, because I believe that you can’t separate physical from spiritual really, and because (not despite) I believe in a future tribulation, I believe that participating in God’s work includes spiritual and physical healing (not necessarily healing in the pound-the-forehead way–I think you understand what I mean).
What I’m saying is that Wright doesn’t necessarily piss off all premillers (I’m not sure I fit in the “funde” category–I know I don’t want to).
When my husband and I became Anglican, I got excited about the notion that I’m now the same denomination as some of my favorites–namely, Clive and Nick.

Nathanael

3.4.08

I’ve only ever read articles and listened to lectures by Mr. Wright. And I’ve thoroughly enjoyed what I read and heard.
Last night, I picked up “Surprised by Hope.”
I’m in the middle of two books now, so I won’t be able to start it yet. But I followed Scot McKnight’s reviews faithfully, and am really looking forward to reading the book.

Shalom

Nathan Gann

3.4.08

Fred,
I don’t know if it’s fun, but unfortunately it is easy to do. Ha!

Heather,
Just yesterday I was reading a post about the differences between fundamentalists and Evangelicals.
http://www.scriptoriumdaily.com/2008/03/03/what-exactly-is-an-evangelical/

You’re no funde!

I think there are certainly those who have good reasons for being pre-millenial. I first remember reading Craig Blaising on this in a book a few years ago, and have since read some of George Ladd who would not be a dispensationalist about it. I can respect that, and I’m postive Wright does as well as long as they would not take the dangerous route of waiting for it all to go to hell in a hand basket, and obviously you don’t.

But here in the midwest there are churches, both large and small, with large segments who strongly hold to the rapture. So much so, that if a pastor in those churches taught something Wright would hold to…there may be a riot! Maybe not. Ha. But I’ve learned not to broach the subject with many Christians because of their strong reaction to any theological or historical questioning of the rapture. I’m not joking when I say many of them think when you say there is no rapture this means there is no second coming!

I’m wondering if anyone has surveyed the relationship on pre-millenials with say their support for creation care? I wouldn’t want to assume a strawman, since my opinion is based on experience only.

Cheers.

Heather

3.4.08

I think what often happens is the loudest gets the attention.
Although I’m premil, my focus is on the real, ultimate hope. So I don’t talk about the tween things often (I’ve talked about it on this blog more than I have anywhere–you must bring that side out in me!). Which means you may or may not know I’m a premil. What you do know is that I’m passionate about caring for people and caring for the earth because that’s what God’s passionate about. (I know a lot of people like me in that area, but maybe that’s because of my background.)
The identified premillers are those who speak loudly about just that, premil stuff (and the hell in a hand basket stuff). So then a classification is created, and they get to define it (just as the media will sometimes loop all Evangies in with the Religious Right).
But that’s okay.
I just get to say that I’m misunderstood in my own time ;)

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Surprised By Hope Review (And Review Index)

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