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From Publishers Weekly
Wright, one of the greatest, and certainly most prolific, Bible scholars in the world, will touch a nerve with this book. What happens when we die? How should we think about heaven, hell, purgatory and eternal life? Wright critiques the views of heaven that have become regnant in Western culture, especially the assumption of the continuance of the soul after death in a sort of blissful non-bodily existence. This is simply not Christian teaching, Wright insists. The New Testament's clear witness is to the resurrection of the body, not the migration of the soul. And not right away, but only when Jesus returns in judgment and glory. The "paradise," the experience of being "with Christ" spoken of occasionally in the scriptures, is a period of waiting for this return. But Christian teaching of life after death should really be an emphasis on "life after life after death"-the resurrection of the body, which is also the ground for all faithful political action, as the last part of this book argues. Wright's prose is as accessible as it is learned-an increasingly rare combination. No one can doubt his erudition or the greatness of the churchmanship of the Anglican Bishop of Durham. One wonders, however, at the regular citation of his own previous work. And no other scholar can get away so cleanly with continuing to propagate the "hellenization thesis," by which the early church is eventually polluted by contaminating Greek philosophical influence.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
“In calling Christians to an epistemology of love and a re-emphasis of the Easter season, Wright knocked it out of the park.” (Beliefnet (A "Top Religious Book of the Year") )
This book will be widely read because it stirs together Scripture, tradition, art and world affairs with pleasing metaphors and public courage. (The Dallas Morning News )
“Wright’s unwavering faith in the resurrection is quite evident as he defends the Easter narratives on historical and theological grounds.” (America Magazine )
His conclusions are both simple and world-shaking (Library Journal )
A crystal-clear, powerful course-correction for all of us--Christian or otherwise. If you want to know what Easter is about, get yourself a copy of Surprised by Hope and hunker down for the read of a lifetime....literally. (Phyllis Tickle, Beliefnet.com )
“N.T. Wright can write. . . when it comes to questions of Christ’s resurrection and what that means, no one is more persuasive. Wright’s new book, Surprised by Hope, builds on C.S. Lewis’ succinct defense of the faith and takes it to a new level.” (World Magazine )
“This book is N.T. Wright at his finest.” (Rob Bell, author of Velvet Elvis )
This book will be widely read because it stirs together Scripture, tradition, art and world affairs with pleasing metaphors and public courage. (The Dallas Morning News )
“Wright’s unwavering faith in the resurrection is quite evident as he defends the Easter narratives on historical and theological grounds.” (America Magazine )
His conclusions are both simple and world-shaking (Library Journal )
A crystal-clear, powerful course-correction for all of us--Christian or otherwise. If you want to know what Easter is about, get yourself a copy of Surprised by Hope and hunker down for the read of a lifetime....literally. (Phyllis Tickle, Beliefnet.com )
“N.T. Wright can write. . . when it comes to questions of Christ’s resurrection and what that means, no one is more persuasive. Wright’s new book, Surprised by Hope, builds on C.S. Lewis’ succinct defense of the faith and takes it to a new level.” (World Magazine )
“This book is N.T. Wright at his finest.” (Rob Bell, author of Velvet Elvis )
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Most helpful customer reviews
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Excellent Summary of Wright's Longer Works,
By
This review is from: Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (Hardcover)
Wright seems very faithful to the whole Christian community in that he choses to make his theological works available to both the expert and the simple parishioner/church-goer. This work seems distilled from larger works such as "The Resurrection of the Son of God", and brings his messages of hope for this world and redemption to the average reader.
The book is well written, and references his larger works so those interested in pursuing ideas further may easily find Wright's more in-depth treatments of various subjects. Some reader's seemed to take offense at Wright's attempt to make his theological insights practical and govern how we live. Some might take offense when he links certain dispensationalist concepts and non-ecologically sound policies? I believe some of his statements are made in the more prophetic tradition, in the wake of John the Baptist and the Hebrew prophets, whose messages were very political.... and thus unpopular. If his statements rankle and irritate, then maybe it is the spirit of God trying to get our attention. We should at the least carefully discern Wright's ideas to determine if they are biblical, and not allow our politics/patriotism to a priori dismiss them.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Surprising Hope,
This review is from: Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (Hardcover)
This book surprised me by infusing me with new hope based on Jesus' resurrection as lived by the first Christians. The book clarifies centuries old misconceptions about death, heaven, resurrection and the mission of the church. Along the way, Bishop Wright clearly explains why history establishes the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and what that means for the world and for us.
The book is also Wright's attempt to find a way out of the theological swamp the mainline churches are mired in with Conservatives and Liberals fighting each other. As such, it is brilliant work which takes the Lord's prayer and applies it to the mission and work of the church. The ending is not only a surprising hope, there is also surprising power for those who care to reach out and take it up.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Reestablishing the relevance of Resurrection for the broad public,
By
This review is from: Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (Hardcover)
N. T. Wright is a brilliant scholar and theologian, and his series of books on early Christianity has become somewhat of a gold standard in terms of breath and scope of topics and themes that were explored. Those books use the most exhaustive critical methods and most up to date historical scholarship in order to establish the credibility and persuasiveness of the events that shaped the early Christianity, and especially to support the traditional view of those events. The most important of these events is certainly the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the book that exhaustively deals with is The Resurrection of the Son of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, Vol. 3). The only "problem" with that book is that it is too long and scholarly for a general reader, and thus it may not reach as wide of an audience as would be desirable. This is partly the issue that "Surprised by Hope" tries to address. It reiterates some of the main points of "The Resurrection" and presents them in readable and accessible form. It makes the main arguments far more succinctly, but also more forcefully. The chief one of those, in my opinion, is that Christianity is not mainly or even primarily concerned with "life after death," but rather with "life after life after death." This is the point that most Christians and non-Christians routinely get wrong. What is at stake, according to Wright, is that by misunderstanding what resurrection and Christian hope are all about we are much less equipped to give a strong defense of that hope and make that hope relevant for our daily life. It prevents us from living the kind of life that would fully reflect our Christian vocation in the World.
The second part of the book deals with the issues that Wright thinks would benefit from our deeper understanding of resurrection and Christian hope. He has some of his own pet issues that he believes should receive top priority in our concern for the World, like the alleviation of poverty in the global south. He tries to make the connection between our belief in the future resurrection and our action on these issues, but the connection is not always as clear as he might have hoped for. This is particularly the case with some issues of lesser importance, and towards the end of the book Wright employs more of rhetoric than strong concrete arguments. The book becomes a bit too preachy for my taste, but that shouldn't be too surprising: after all, it was written by a bishop. However, even with these shortcoming this is an extremely well written book that provokes Christians to seriously rethink their most fundamental assumptions and reappropriate the message of Christian hope for the 21st century.
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