Surprised by Hope, by N.T. Wright

Chapter Eleven

1.  Wright notes, “Purgatory is basically a Roman Catholic doctrine…decisively rejected [outside of Catholicism], on biblical and theological grounds and not merely because of antipathy to particular abuses, at the Reformation.”  Even several notable representatives of Catholicism have rejected it. 

He then makes four points: 

1. The resurrection is still in the future.
2. There is no reason in the New Testament to suppose that there are any category distinctions between different Christians in heaven as they await the resurrection.
   
3. I do not believe in purgatory as a place, a time, or a state.
   
4. That all the Christian departed are in
   substantially the same state, that of restful happiness. 

Take time to review and unpack the complexities of each of these four points.  How does Wright help clarify or confuse your understanding of these points?

2.  Even N. T. Wright finds it difficult to discuss the topic of hell!  He does offer a generous and broad range of reactions to it over the centuries, from both theological and practical viewpoints.  He then identifies three common approaches to hell:

1.  The traditional view is that those who spurn God’s      

     salvation, who refuse to turn from idolatry and wickedness,  

     are held forever in conscious torment.

2.  This account is then opposed by the universalists.

     Sometimes they suggest…that God will be merciful even to

     the utterly abhorrent, to mass murderers and child rapists.

3.  A middle way is offered by the so-called conditionalists.

     They propose “conditional immortality”: those who

     persistently refuse God’s love and his way of life in the

     present world will simply cease to exist.

“Over against these three options, I propose a view that combines what seem to me the strong points of the first and third.”

How does Wright reconcile these?  What view does he propose and how does he support it theologically?

3.  Finally, Wright points this delicate discussion in a different direction…that of human goals and new creation.  “But the most important thing to say at the end of this discussion, and of this section of the book, is that heaven and hell are not, so to speak, what the whole game is about. This is one of the central surprises in the Christian hope. The whole point of my argument so far is that the question of what happens to me after death is not the major, central, framing question that centuries of theological tradition have supposed. The New Testament, true to its Old Testament roots, regularly insists that the major,central, framing question is that of God’s purpose of rescue and re-creation for the whole world, the entire cosmos.

“The destiny of individual human beings must be understood within that context—not simply in the sense that we are only part of a much larger picture but also in the sense that part of the whole point of being saved in the present is so that we can play a vital role (Paul speaks of this role in the shocking terms of being “fellow workers with God”) within that larger picture and purpose.

“The choice before humans would then be framed differently: are you going to worship the creator God and discover thereby what it means to become fully and gloriously human, reflecting his powerful, healing, transformative love into the world? Or are you going to worship the world as it is, boosting your corruptible humanness by gaining power or pleasure from forces within the world but merely contributing thereby to your own dehumanization and the further corruption of the world itself?

What surprises you about Wright’s scope of resurrection here?

How do you understand our common purpose at the resurrection in the renewal of God’s creation?