Wright's book on resurrection.

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Product Description

For years Christians have been asking, "If you died tonight, do you know where you would go?" It turns out that many believers have been giving the wrong answer. It is not heaven.

Award-winning author N. T. Wright outlines the present confusion about a Christian's future hope and shows how it is deeply intertwined with how we live today. Wright, who is one of today's premier Bible scholars, asserts that Christianity's most distinctive idea is bodily resurrection. He provides a magisterial defense for a literal resurrection of Jesus and shows how this became the cornerstone for the Christian community's hope in the bodily resurrection of all people at the end of the age. Wright then explores our expectation of "new heavens and a new earth," revealing what happens to the dead until then and what will happen with the "second coming" of Jesus. For many, including many Christians, all this will come as a great surprise.

Wright convincingly argues that what we believe about life after death directly affects what we believe about life before death. For if God intends to renew the whole creation—and if this has already begun in Jesus's resurrection—the church cannot stop at "saving souls" but must anticipate the eventual renewal by working for God's kingdom in the wider world, bringing healing and hope in the present life.

Lively and accessible, this book will surprise and excite all who are interested in the meaning of life, not only after death but before it.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1164 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-01
• Released on: 2008-02-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

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.
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Review
"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

"Wright’s unwavering faith in the resurrection is quite evident as he defends the Easter narratives on historical and theological grounds." -- America Magazine

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

His conclusions are both simple and world-shaking -- Library Journal

From the Back Cover
For years Christians have been asking, “If you died tonight, do you know where you would go?” It turns out Christians have been giving the wrong answer. It is not heaven.

One of today’s premier Bible scholars and award-winning author N.T. Wright outlines the present confusion about a Christian’s future hope and shows how it is deeply intertwined with how we live today. Wright shows that Christianity’s most distinctive idea is bodily resurrection. First, he provides a magisterial defense of a literal resurrection of Jesus himself. This became the cornerstone for the Christian community’s hope in the bodily resurrection of all people at the end of the age. Next Wright explores our expectation of “new heavens and new earth,” showing what happens to the dead until then and what will happen with the “second coming” of Jesus. For many, including many Christians, all this will come as a great surprise.

Wright convincingly argues that what we believe about life after death directly affects what we believe about life before death. For if God intends to renew the whole creation - and if this has already begun in Jesus’s resurrection - the church cannot stop at “saving souls” but must anticipate the eventual renewal by working for God’s kingdom in the wider world, bringing healing and hope in the present life.

Lively and accessible, this book will surprise and excite all who are interested in the meaning of life, not only after death but, before it.

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Customer Reviews

Never Surprised by Brilliance
I have read the much larger and more detailed Resurrection of the Son of God, Wright's scholarly version of this book. Now he has written much the same book in a more casual form. It is more accessible but still accurate, still fascinating, still Wright. Perhaps I should be surprised that one man can do both, but I'm not, because it's Wright, and he's done it before.

OK...but
Right off I would say that it is impossible for someone as prolific as Wright to have each book be successful. Having read several of his other works, I did hear some of the same music in this one. The initial two-thirds of the book aren't really much good. That being said, those portions on the Resurrection of Christ as ordering the mission of the Church were very good, although I think Bright's work "The Kingdom of God" is a much better work. You might also see "Royal Priesthood?" To his credit, Wright is trying to convince people--and perhaps those within his own confession--that traditional ideas about the resurrection really are not New Testament ideas. I don't think he succeeds. Finally, I hate footnotes that refer to other works by the same author; Wright's work is full of these. I doubt very much that Wright's ideas in this work are so ground-breaking that he is only able to cite himself. I do think that Wright would be better served to publish less as his work is starting to sound redundant.

Premise & Contents Unscriptural and Extra-biblical
After reading this, extreme disappointment.

No need to rethink heaven, hell, Gospel, Judgment, Salvation from God's Wrath, Resurrection, Great Commission, Restoration of Davidic Monarchy by His Majesty King Jesus the First.

Desperate need on part of author to re-read the Bible with a new optometrist: The Holy Spirit and a Large Print Version.

Sola Scriptura Satis: Scripture alone is sufficient without baggage of rabbinic 1st century judaism scholarship informed by 21st century revisionism.

Please examine Peter's and Paul's sermons in Acts carefully to refute all the author's premises and departures from Biblical Gospel.

PICO - Preclusions In Conclusions Out.