Next Book

We have finished Surprised by Hope - good job everyone; I really enjoyed reading it and the discussions we had! It has definitely changed my thoughts on heaven and the resurrection - I find myself listening to songs and thinking, "that's not right! This earth really is our home!" :-)

Our next book is The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This is definitely a Christian classic so I'm excited about it! Our first meeting will be April 29th at the Langfords!

Like a signpost pointing into a mist.......

Taken when we were in NW Iowa at the beginning of March - made me think of N.T. Wright :-)

Heaven to Earth Blog Series

A friend (Grant Shipman, for those who know him) posted a link to this blog post on Facebook - it's about Hell and is very similar to N.T. Wright's view, and he even references Surprised by Hope a few times.

He also has a video link to N.T. talking about Hell:



The blog post was off a 3-part series that this guy had previously written, which is on the resurrection and also similar to Surprised by Hope - it's pretty good.

Enjoy!

Chapter 1-2 summary

Chapter 1 begins with various scenes of death from around the world.  Wright tells us that this book will ultimately be about 2 questions:  1. "What is the ultimate Christian hope?"  2. "What hope is there for change, rescue, transformation, new possibilities within the world in present?"

On page 5 he says: As long as we see Christian hope in terms of 'going to heaven,' of a salvation that is essentially away from this world, the two questions will appear unrelated.  Wright believes these questions are joined together, in that properly answering one, answers the other as well.  Perhaps the Christian hope is rather different than what the world, or even many Christians, have come to expect.

The rest of Chapter 1 is spent exploring the confusion the world has about death and the afterlife.  As a conclusion, he leads into chapter 2 by stating that most people don't understand what orthodox Christian belief is on the issue, and specifically have no idea what is meant by the word resurrection.

Chapter 2 explores the confusion within Christianity around death and the hope of life thereafter.  There are two views of death within Christendom...  "Christian thought has oscillated between seeing death as a vile enemy and a welcome friend."   This chapter focuses heavily on the idea of what it means to conquer death.  This is an idea that we see later on throughout the book, and it is absolutely critical to Wright paradigm.

Wright challenges the Platonism present in modern day Christianity.  So the paradigm he's challenging is this:  We are immortal souls who are hindered and held back by our corrupted flesh.  Implicit in this worldview is that flesh and matter (at least as we know it) are essentially evil, and when we finally throw off the flesh completely we can finally become that which we were meant to be, namely a disembodied soul.  Within this paradigm, death becomes a friend, as it is death that brings us to fulfillment.

While this may be a pleasant thought to some, and it isn't necessarily internally contradictory, Wright emphatically tells us that this is not the Christian hope, nor even a parody of it.  Essential to the Christian hope is that death will be defeated, which is why defining death as a friend denies the problem, and thus denies the need for Christian hope in the world at all.  

I'm not going to go into detail in how he further describes the Christian confusion on the topic.  I feel the above is his central argument, along with a continual pointing toward resurrection, and criticism of the idea of heaven = disembodied souls.

Evangelism videos

A couple of funny videos regarding some of our conversations.








Source

Assignment: chapters 1-3

Chapters 1-3 are the assigned reading.  (don't worry, chapter 1 is really short).  I'll facilitate discussion for this week.