Surprised by Hope
Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
This book addresses two questions that have often been dealt with entirely separately but that, 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 "getting to heaven", of a salvation that is essentially away from this world, the two questions are bound to appear as unrelated. Indeed, some insist angrily that to ask the second one at all is to ignore the first one, which is the really important one. This in turn makes some others get angry when people talk of resurrection, as if this might draw attention away from the really important and pressing matters of contemporary social concern. But if the Christian hope is for God's new creation, for "new heavens and new earth," and if 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. - N.T. Wright (p. 5)
Technorati Tags: new creation, NT Wright, Surprised by Hope
wow!!! That book sounds like it's going to be really good. I need to finish Simply Christian first...
Do you have it already, Amazon says that it was published like 3 days ago!?!? Or is that just a blurb that you grabbed from somewhere?
I've said this before on here, but NT Wright repeatedly BLOWS ME AWAY every time I read/hear something new from him. Amazing stuff; truly groundbreaking and eye-opening for me.
Posted by curtis klope on February 8, 2008 09:51 AMI'm already on chapter 3 - slower than normal for me, but it's been a busy week. ;)
I preordered, so it was in the mail on Tuesday and at my door on Wednesday. I think there's an amazon distro center in Philly as that's not the first time that's happened.
I will definitely be posting more on this.
Posted by ScottB on February 10, 2008 11:25 PMI've just purchased _Surprised by Hope_. At first glance, it contains Wright's understanding of eschatology in a fairly digestible package.
If it's as good as I anticipate, I'll be using it as a resource for lectures (for undergrads); it's popular-level enough to be a textbook, although that's not how I plan to use it (for now.)
Posted by PLStepp on March 5, 2008 01:29 PMI just finished it this week. It's fantastic. It's going to be my best book of 2008 - I can't imagine another book coming out in the next ten months that is half as good. It's one of those books that will rearrange the way you think, not just about eschatology, but about the whole of scripture.
For me, it's a tack that I've been on for some time, and speaking personally, I didn't find a lot of new ground in the sense of brand new things to think about. But it puts in writing, in one coherent package, basically everything of substance that I was thinking and writing about last year. And for someone who hasn't been tracking in that direction, it will present a radically new picture of the gospel and the telos of scripture. Fantastic stuff.
Posted by ScottB on March 8, 2008 11:04 PM