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A review by glendonrfrank
Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church by N.T. Wright
4.0
I've finally returned to this one! By which I mean I still technically have a chapter or so to go but, I wanted to log it because my thoughts are pretty well made.
I first read Surprised by Hope in the first year of my undergrad and really did not enjoy it. For the life of me, I can not articulate to you why that was. I managed to dig up the paper I wrote on the book, and while it's not an overly negative review, there is a lot of passive-aggressive distancing between 18-year-old me and Wright's views. I distinctly at one point recall looking up Wright online and determining (almost assuredly from angry fundamentalists) that Wright was a heretic. But it wasn't like I held really tightly to a literalist spiritual view of heaven at that point? I really don't know what I was so angry about. The best I can tell is that I was really thrown off by Wright's diction, which is a valid criticism, but apparently, then I was very heated about a guy using long sentences. Alas, I basically haven't been able to stop thinking about the core themes of this book since reading it some six years ago and it's slowly crept through my entire worldview until I just had to go and give it another shot. I don't know if that's a credit to Wright's compelling argumentation or the mentors I've had along the way, but either way, this felt something like a homecoming.
To be clear, this is a very good book. Wright covers his bases thoroughly and makes sure every point is well-researched and well-supported. His structure lends itself well to his study, moving from the resurrection itself to the direct consequences of that resurrection to the missional consequences. Wright compellingly insists upon the necessity of physical restoration as a bedrock to the New Testament believers, demonstrating how combatting the dualism of modern spiritualism creates a stunning new view on life. If matter matters, then the things we do on Earth and the way we engage in society on Earth has fundamental importance. As my own views on the world have changed in the past six years, this has gone from a vaguely comforting notion to a radicalizing maxim. I think at 18, the idea that the Christian's goal was "New Earth" and not "Heaven" was a fun way of splitting hairs and correcting people at dinner parties (did I go to dinner parties at 18?). Now, as Wright correctly argues, it is transformative. Not only does it create an afterlife that is actually attractive, rather than abstractly harmonious, it also creates a reason to live. A reason to fight for justice and order and goodness and rightness in our present world.
The central criticism I have of Wright's work does go back to my 18-year-old self's frustrations, which is that this isn't exactly an approachable work. Wright is definitely writing to theologians, and while there's nothing wrong with that, it does make me sad because this is *the* definitive book about these issues and I find it hard to recommend to the youth I regularly come across who ought to read it. I appreciate Wright's work a hell of a lot more after six years of studying poetry and Biblical exegesis; but I think even if I myself were to hand it over to the Me at 18 years old, he would still give up halfway through in frustrating and begin skimming to the end. The joke's on him, I suppose, because six years later I can't find a whole lot to disagree with Wright on.
I first read Surprised by Hope in the first year of my undergrad and really did not enjoy it. For the life of me, I can not articulate to you why that was. I managed to dig up the paper I wrote on the book, and while it's not an overly negative review, there is a lot of passive-aggressive distancing between 18-year-old me and Wright's views. I distinctly at one point recall looking up Wright online and determining (almost assuredly from angry fundamentalists) that Wright was a heretic. But it wasn't like I held really tightly to a literalist spiritual view of heaven at that point? I really don't know what I was so angry about. The best I can tell is that I was really thrown off by Wright's diction, which is a valid criticism, but apparently, then I was very heated about a guy using long sentences. Alas, I basically haven't been able to stop thinking about the core themes of this book since reading it some six years ago and it's slowly crept through my entire worldview until I just had to go and give it another shot. I don't know if that's a credit to Wright's compelling argumentation or the mentors I've had along the way, but either way, this felt something like a homecoming.
To be clear, this is a very good book. Wright covers his bases thoroughly and makes sure every point is well-researched and well-supported. His structure lends itself well to his study, moving from the resurrection itself to the direct consequences of that resurrection to the missional consequences. Wright compellingly insists upon the necessity of physical restoration as a bedrock to the New Testament believers, demonstrating how combatting the dualism of modern spiritualism creates a stunning new view on life. If matter matters, then the things we do on Earth and the way we engage in society on Earth has fundamental importance. As my own views on the world have changed in the past six years, this has gone from a vaguely comforting notion to a radicalizing maxim. I think at 18, the idea that the Christian's goal was "New Earth" and not "Heaven" was a fun way of splitting hairs and correcting people at dinner parties (did I go to dinner parties at 18?). Now, as Wright correctly argues, it is transformative. Not only does it create an afterlife that is actually attractive, rather than abstractly harmonious, it also creates a reason to live. A reason to fight for justice and order and goodness and rightness in our present world.
The central criticism I have of Wright's work does go back to my 18-year-old self's frustrations, which is that this isn't exactly an approachable work. Wright is definitely writing to theologians, and while there's nothing wrong with that, it does make me sad because this is *the* definitive book about these issues and I find it hard to recommend to the youth I regularly come across who ought to read it. I appreciate Wright's work a hell of a lot more after six years of studying poetry and Biblical exegesis; but I think even if I myself were to hand it over to the Me at 18 years old, he would still give up halfway through in frustrating and begin skimming to the end. The joke's on him, I suppose, because six years later I can't find a whole lot to disagree with Wright on.