John Baw at the Wild Ox Blog posted about a book he just finished reading. I’m going to have to get it.
The book is “Surprised by Hope” by Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham in the Church of England. John cautions, “This book contains a little to offend just about everyone form the Pope to the most Reformed of Evangelical Protestants.” In fact, John says the author talks about praying for the dead. BUT there’s a lot of good stuff in there, apparently.
John goes on to say,
In this book Tom Wright attempts to show that the ultimate hope for the Christian is not to die and go to Heaven, and that this planet is not just waiting to be thrown off a cliff at the last judgement. He advances an altogether more biblically grounded understanding of our future hope which is, surprising for many, not at all about “going to Heaven when you die” but rather about being a co-heir with Christ in a new Heaven and a new Earth. This concept comes as a shocker to many within Evangelical Christianity. This shocker naturally changes everything. His explanation of Heaven as another present dimension to life here and now is also extremely useful as well as certain implications of, for example, Jesus being in Heaven in a material and bodily form right now, and not in a non-material state floating somewhere in the by-and-by as most Christians believe.
That’s been my rallying cry for several years now… of COURSE we should be concerned about the by and by – eternity’s a very long time! but we lose SO MUCH of what God intends for us by ONLY being concerned about the by and by!
NT Wright is one who denies that Christ’s righteousness is in any way imputed to us by way of the cross. John Piper has been involved in a gracious critique of his views, JI Packer has spoken out too, and the post-modern Steve Chalke found support in Wright’s work for his own view of the penal substitutionary atonement as ‘cosmic child abuse.’ It was such a hoohaa that the Evangelical Alliance got involved in 2005. Be careful with this one, Kathi, and keep your discernment switched on if you get it – he goes out of his way to subtly undermine the core of the Gospel, as if he’s found the ‘secret’ of the Gospel that the church has fudged for all of its history. He’s not wrong on everything but there’s enough there to make me personally decide to keep clear. Check out Adrian Warnock’s blog from Feb 07 about this.
Bah. Where are all the GOOD guys?
There are indeed some out there, but they tend not to have the novelty of attracting those with itching ears. It’s getting increasingly murky out there, and the old assumptions that all evangelicals are fundamentally sound no longer hold water. I tend to stick with the ones preaching the good oldfashioned Gospel message, even though I disagree with the non-charismatic ones on the gifts issue. There’s enough strong meat in that to keep me occupied for the rest of my time here.
Heaven as a present dimension to life in the here and now works for me. Joseph Campbell said that the apocalypse is a private one: the world is ending and a new one is being born for someone all the time. I’m aware that Campbell is problematic in a few ways, but I do like that observation, and I think that heaven can work the same way.
There’s allot to be said for simply getting back to the Gospel. For some reason it seems too hard for some people