Reflections on The Great Emergence

Phyllis Tickle’s book The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why is a relevant book to read because it speaks of an issue that the church is currently facing. This issue is, in part, the idea of a postmodern church. While this issue is relevant, Tickle does a rather poor job executing the conversation. She brings up a lot of good points, but she does not do a good job overall. One obvious example is simply in the conversational way she presents her ideas. While this makes for an easy read, this also allowed for many grammatical errors. A conversational-style approach can be very helpful, but Tickle was not entirely successful in her attempt. Also, she claims to be a scholar, and yet she does not give any real sources in her bibliography. Most of her footnotes are simply extra comments or ideas that she had. There is little evidence of extensive research.

The emergent and the emerging church are the focus of this book, but Tickle does more than simply speak of the shape the church is taking in the present day. She also speaks of how the church has been formed and shaped since it was conceived. Tickle claims that every five hundred years or so the church has what one might call a rummage sale of sorts where the church takes into consideration where it is heading and what it thinks should be kept as far as beliefs and practices are concerned and what should be thrown out. The author states that there have been four “greats” that have coincided with this rummage sale. The first was Gregory the Great who kept the church from dividing itself completely and led the way for the next five hundred years of church history. While this first example works for Tickle’s five hundred year cycle, it could easily be argued that other events in church history were just as important, or perhaps even more important, than this example. It seems as though she decided to talk about Gregory the Great simply because he fit into her five hundred year pattern. The second period she mentions is The Great Schism in which the church split in a way because of differing theological views. The church split between the East and the West. The third was The Great Reformation in which the Protestant church was formed because of the mishandling of the church by the Catholics, which led in part to the age of enlightenment where science was exalted, but also where the Bible tended to be seen as the sole authority of Christianity. The fourth is what some are now calling The Great Emergence in which the postmodern church has clashed with the modern church. Fundamentalism is on its way out as a postmodern generation takes control of the church. While this book is very fascinating and brings up a number of different relevant issues regarding the church of today as well as the past, its author is not a trained historian and is an independent researcher. This could indicate some lack of credibility to the book. However, Tickle seems to have done at least some research and she does indeed speak words of insight and truth concerning the situation the church is facing today.

Tickle begins her book by discussing the “rummage sale” idea of how the church reconfigures itself every five hundred years or so. This reconfiguration occurs most often because of Christianity becoming established in a certain way that may not necessarily be the best way for Christianity to exist. The church becomes institutional to such an extent that the church does not know why they believe what they believe, or the beliefs of the church have come to include various ideas that are not central to the church. These beliefs can creep towards the center of the church’s core-beliefs without even being necessary to the faith at all. A number of people within the church begin to recognize that the church has come to believe in things that are not necessary to the faith, and yet many believe that these things are necessary to the faith. Those who recognize that the church has taken a hold of many unnecessary and even wrong beliefs begin to take a stand, saying what they believe to be the true and pure purpose of the church. This can cause conflicts within the church, because those who hold onto these unnecessary and even wrong beliefs truly think that these things are central to what being a Christian is all about. So the church begins to split over these certain issues.

Tickle gives examples from the past two thousand years of the different rummage sales that have taken place within the church. She shows how the most significant ones occur approximately every five hundred years and she gives the examples of Gregory the Great, The Great Schism, The Great Reformation, and then concludes that we are due for another rummage sale in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She refers to this present rummage sale as The Great Emergence. It is interesting to note, however, that the idea of the church realigning itself every five hundred years actually goes further back than the existence of the church. Christianity emerged out of Judaism and within Judaism there is also seen this idea. The most obvious example of this would be five hundred years before Gregory the Great in the occurrence of the founding of Christianity. In this event, the Jews became split between those who were Christ-followers and those who did not believe Jesus to be the Messiah. This event concurred with the destruction of the second Jerusalem temple by the Romans. Five hundred years before these events occurred is seen the destruction of the first temple by the Babylonians which led to a new way of thinking within Judaism as portrayed in the Babylonian exile and the Second Temple period. Five hundred years before the re-alignment of thought caused by the Babylonian exile is seen the establishment of the monarchy in Israel in which Jewish theology changed in the transition from the rule of the judges to the rule of the kings. So Tickle concludes that this concept of a religious “rummage sale” is not limited to Christianity. She also points out that it was during these times before the rise of Christianity in which human thought in general began to change among other groups of people, not just those of the Judeo-Christian traditions. She uses Plato and other Greek philosophers as examples of how people across the world tend to go through five hundred year cycles where they sort through the things they believe in order to see what should be kept and what should be discarded. This transitional time period in the centuries before Christ is referred to as “The Great Transformation.” [1] Tickle’s conclusion is that all of humanity tends to readjust the way they perceive the world about every five hundred years. They examine what they believe to be true about the world, embracing that which rings true to them and throwing out whatever no longer fits. This interpretation of history, however, appears to be rather subjective in that Tickle appears to be reading her own ideas into history. Even her own theory of five hundred year cycles falls apart when she tries to apply it to humanity as a whole because when she speaks of the Greeks she acknowledges that these patterns did not follow five hundred year cycles among them.

Tickle goes on to ask the question of how The Great Emergence came into existence and concludes that the best way to go about studying The Great Emergence and how it is coming into being is by studying the last great rummage sale of the church, The Great Reformation, and how it came into existence. She then proceeds to describe how The Great Reformation came to be. She points out how during the time leading up to The Great Reformation there was a great deal of conflict already within the church. Papal authority had been split between two separate Popes – one, French and one Italian. Eventually, a third pope was added to the mix, all three warring against each other. This event and other disheartening events are what led to the reformation of the church which is most often associated with Martin Luther and his nailing of his Theses to the door of Wittenberg’s church. At this time, people were beginning to recognize that these three Popes and the church leadership as a whole were not true to the spirit of the church itself, or at least the spirit they felt the church was supposed to have. A number of people, including Martin Luther, tried to reform the church in order to bring it back to the way it was supposed to be. Enough people jumped on with this thought of reforming the church that Rome panicked and fought against them. This event is what led to the dividing split of the church between the Protestants and the Catholics. Tickle points out that something similar to this is occurring and will continue to occur within The Great Emergence of today. There are enough people today who recognize how the church is not always as it should be, and they are seeking to reform the church into the way they believe it ought to be, or the way they believe the Holy Spirit intended it to be. However, like the Catholic church of the Reformation, there are many within the church of today who believe that the church ought to continue in the way that it has the past two hundred years. These people will continue to fight and will continue to break themselves off from those others in the church who do not agree with their way of “doing church.”

One of the key battles between the Protestants and the Catholics of The Great Reformation was over authority. The Popes claimed to have ultimate authority over church beliefs and doctrine, while the Protestants established the idea of the priesthood of all believers, claiming that Scripture alone was the sole authority of the church and that all individual believers had the right to interpret Scripture personally by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Protestants also believed that the Pope was indeed capable of making errors. Not only were the Popes capable of this, but they had done so.

Social reformation also took place during the time of the Protestant Reformation. City-states began to emerge and feudalism began to be done away with. Tickle refers to these important changes, saying, “The processes which began and solidified in the decades surrounding the Great Reformation became our new common illusion, our new shared imagination as Westerners about how the world works and how the elements of human life are to be ordered.” [2] The way people looked at and perceived the world around them was changing during this time period, and this change is seen in the way people understood the function of the church. The Great Reformation and the changes it brought about are deeply connected with the other changes seen during this time. Tickle continues, “There is […] a very good reason why most general lectures about the Great Reformation today commence with the […] observation that as a hinge time, it was characterized by the rise of capitalism, of the middle class, of the nation-state, and finally of Protestantism.” 2 This list of ideals have come to be associated with the Christian way of life over the past couple of hundred years, as though these things that are a part of Western life are also foundationally Christian. It is against this way of thinking that the Emerging Church has come to speak. While the Catholics of the Reformation believed that the Pope had ultimate authority of the church and was infallible in what he spoke regarding Scripture, doctrine, and the church, the church of today has embraced such Western thoughts of capitalism, the middle-class, and the nation-state as though these were all Christian and necessary beliefs of the church. The Great Emergence is then a questioning of this positioning of these Western ideals as also Christian ideals. The Emerging Church is not necessarily opposed to these “ideals” at all times, but it is opposed to these “ideals” if they are imposed upon the greater Christian population. The church must not be associated with certain Western opinions which are not center to the Christian faith. Capitalism, the middle-class, the nation-state, and even Protestantism itself may not in fact be central to Christianity as it was intended to be lived. The Sola Scriptura concept of the Reformation may in fact be a limited perspective because authority may be found in other places as well.

With The Great Reformation, power also came to be associated more so with wealth and money. Those who were rich had the power. The balance of power has shifted again during this time of The Great Emergence. Money has become less of a factor as far as power is concerned. The new power of today’s world is that of information. Those who have knowledge, have power. Also, just as The Great Reformation was influenced by the technology of the time, so also The Great Emergence has been influenced by the technology of this time. The Great Reformation was able to come into being because of such inventions as Gutenberg’s movable-type printing press. The Great Emergence has been able to come into existence because of the invention of the internet and the World Wide Web. Both the printing press and the internet served as a means of drawing people together through the bond of shared knowledge. The difference is that in Gutenberg’s time, it was those who had money who could be heard by the masses. In this time of the internet, virtually everyone who wishes to be heard may be heard regardless of their economic status.

The time since The Great Reformation has been very modern in its approach to the way it perceives the world. Within The Great Emergence is the idea that modernism is not a necessary part of Christianity. Those who are in support of The Great Emergence or at least in the re-shaping of the way the church thinks about certain things tend to be more postmodern in their understanding of the way the world works. Some of the influences upon the way this generation views the world are in fact rooted in some of the ideas formed during the time of The Great Reformation. One of these contributing factors has been the founding of scientific thought and reasoning. It is ironic then that the advance of science was one of the main contributors to the re-thinking of Sola Scriptura. Charles Darwin’s writings on biological evolution and Sigmund Freud’s understandings of dreams and psychology helped to pave the way for new ways of understanding the world, the way the world works, and the ways in which people interact with the world in which they live. Tickle also says that one of the most important breakthroughs in scientific history which altered the course of church history came with Einstein and his “special theory of relativity.” It came to be recognized by the scientific community and eventually the general public that there were certain things about the universe and the way it worked that simply did not make sense or that went against the way people from a modernist perspective had tended to view the universe. Along with Einstein’s theory came Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle which stated that one may study the speed and position of something, but it becomes very difficult for one to study both the speed and the position of something at the same time. [3] The idea given was that the act of observing actually changes the thing being observed. When applied to everyday life and Christianity specifically, this idea sounds very postmodern. This is because it indicates that the truth of something depends upon the one observing, which would mean that truth could vary from person to person. With this specific application to Einstein’s special theory of relativity began to emerge the idea of relative truth and the uncertainty of everything. Many truths could in theory be possible.

Also through science came the uncovering of such documents as the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as the Quest for the Historical Jesus. Through the studies of ancient documents, the church found itself wanting to know from where its faith had come. Also, Pentecostalism came into being and influenced the church in another way. One of the ways it influenced the church was in its emphasis upon the Holy Spirit. It was believed by the Pentecostals that whatever the Holy Spirit personally said to an individual outweighed whatever Scripture said. Also, spirituality came to be emphasized in culture more than Christian spirituality in particular. Tickle points to Alcoholics Anonymous as an example of this, where recovery comes through the help of a “higher power,” and not necessarily the Christian God. Another key influencer which led culture to emerge from modernism into postmodernism was the “drug age” of the 1960 and 1970s. People who experimented with drugs were opening themselves up to new ways of viewing and experiencing the world. People began to believe in other or alternate realities.

Towards the end of her book, Tickle brings out a number of diagrams in order to show which groups of which the church of today is made up, and to show where these different groups within the church are heading and how they interact with each other. She uses research which supports the idea of the church as a whole being divided into four separate groups in a quadrilateral of sorts. These four separate groups are referred to as Liturgicals, Social Justice Christians, Renewalists, and Conservatives. [4] The Social Justice Christians were originally called “Mainline” Christians, and the Conservatives were originally known as “Fundamentalists,” but it was thought that these names were no longer reflective of the groups. [5] These different groups originally had distinct denominations contained within them. The liturgicals, for example, were mainly Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and a number of Lutherans. However, it has come to pass that these different categories are no longer limited to certain denominations. It is coming to be seen more and more that certain denominations are no longer limited to certain kinds of people. Liturgicals, Social Justice Christians, Renewalists, and Conservatives can be found in nearly every denomination. Many groups within the church have begun to join together even as many have split apart. The distinctions between many denominations have begun to blur because this generation is discovering that Christians as a whole have more similarities with each other than they do differences.

Near the close of her book, Tickle describes Emergents as people who are not afraid of paradox. [6]They are postmodern, and are opened to truths which appear to be outside of the realm of possibility. They are distrustful of meta-narratives because they are based upon “humanity’s human thinking and explaining.” 6 They believe in narrative though, because narrative is a reflection of the heart of humanity. She says that the future church as shaped by the Emergents will be one that has sought to go back to the way the church was intended to be. The church will be “de- Hellenized” and will most likely appear be something very Jewish in its origins since the original church was Jewish. She says, “[The Great Emergence] will rewrite Christian theology – and thereby North American culture – into something far more Jewish, more paradoxical, more narrative, and more mystical than anything the Church has had for the last seventeen or eighteen hundred years.” [7] Many of the beliefs that the church has had since the Reformation and even since the time of The Great Schism may be subject to change. This will all be done, however, in order to make the church purer than it is now. This will be done in order to bring the church back to the way it was originally intended to be, without the contamination of Western systems of belief.

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[1] p. 31.

[2] p. 51.

[3] p. 79.

[4] p. 126.

[5] pp. 126-7.

[6] pp. 160.

[7] pp. 162.

Knowing Jesus through the Old Testament

In Christopher Wright’s book Knowing Jesus through the Old Testament he presents the concept of Jesus as Messiah. The two main issues he addresses are that of the Old Testament passages that refer to the Messiah and how the New Testament writers saw Jesus in the Scriptures, as well as the issue of Jesus’ own views on the role of the Messiah and how he fit in this role. The idea of Jesus as Messiah or Christ is not uncommon among Christians, but Wright shows how the concept of Jesus as Messiah actually has a much deeper meaning than what we generally think of today. Wright shows that the Gospels are filled with language indicating the nature of Jesus as that of Messiah. The Gospels and the other writings of the New Testament constantly refer back to Old Testament passages in their attempt to show that Jesus truly was the Messiah of Israel. Matthew’s gospel begins with the genealogy of Jesus. While this at first may seem like a boring passage simply showing that Jesus had a long human ancestry, this text goes deeper than that. It is a summary of the people of Israel and their history, saying that the history of Israel may be summed up completely in Jesus himself (34).

This genealogy begins with the person of Abraham and lists off fourteen generations until the time of King David, followed by fourteen more generations to the period of the exile, and finally fourteen more generations until we get to the birth of Jesus. Here, the genealogy ends. It begins with Abraham because of the Abrahamic Covenant (3). In the book of Genesis, God made a covenant with Abraham saying that he would have a son, and that the descendants of this son would be great and numerous. God also promised that through Abraham’s seed all nations would be blessed. This was the role of Israel as Abraham’s descendants (4). They were to be a blessing and light to all the nations of the world, showing them the way back to God. However, Israel failed in its mission repeatedly. The second major stop in this history of Israel is with King David. God made a covenant to David as well, promising him that he would never fail to have an heir or a descendant of his sitting on the throne, fulfilling the role of king (5). This promise remained true until Israel reached the next major event, the exile to Babylon. Here, it looked as though God’s promise had failed and that he had given up all hope for Israel and its redemptive role in the world. However, the people of Judah returned from exile. The genealogy lists another fourteen generations from this time until the time of Jesus’ birth. The expectation at the time of the restoration of Judah is that the King of Judah, the one of David’s line would be restored to the throne. The history of Israel is then summed up with Jesus because Jesus is not only the one who will restore the Davidic dynasty in himself as the eternal king, but he will also fulfill the Abrahamic Covenant by becoming a blessing to all nations of the earth as Abraham’s seed. The Davidic Covenant became linked with the Abrahamic Covenant at some point after the time of David (5). This can be seen in the language of Psalm 72 where the understanding has become that the ruler who sits on David’s throne will fulfill a particular kind of role, one in which all nations on earth would be blessed through him (6).

In Matthew’s gospel there is an emphasis upon the fact that the fulfillment of Jesus as Messiah is not just something that is only for the Jews, but for Gentiles as well. (5)  This is seen in the list of women who are briefly mentioned in Jesus’ genealogy. All of these were foreign women, most of whom bore children by questionable means. Yet, these are the people Matthew chose to include in his genealogy – Tamar, who bore twins by her father-in-law; Ruth, a Moabitess supposedly descended from an incestuous relationship; Rahab, a foreigner and a prostitute; Bath-Sheba, a foreigner who committed adultery with King David (4-5). Matthew did this on purpose. He wanted to show that even Jesus, the ultimate Jew, had Gentile blood in his veins, just as King David. The Davidic King must represent all nations so that all will be blessed. Also, Matthew gives very specific groups of fourteen in his genealogy, even leaving certain generations out, and altogether ignoring the generations before the time of Abraham (6). He did this because of the numerical significance with the groups of numbers being divisible by seven, an important number, and with Jesus being placed at the conclusion of all these sevens, showing that he is the ultimate completion of Israel and Israel’s purpose (7).

Another one of Wright’s main points is that of Jesus’ own perception of himself and his purpose. The writers of the New Testament go out of their way to show that Jesus is indeed the Messiah or the anointed one and that he is the true and final fulfillment of Israel, summing up the Law and the Prophets, and that Jesus is Israel’s true Davidic king. The Gospel writers use various passages from the Old Testament to show that the Old Testament predicted his coming and what he would do. Modern exegetes may find some of these uses of Old Testament passages by the Gospel writers to be taken out of context. An example would be the passage in Isaiah 7 where King Ahaz is told by the prophet that a “virgin” (LXX) with give birth to a son and he will be called Emmanuel, God with us. Matthew uses this passage, along with others, for his own purposes. This passage may not have been talking about Jesus, but about the circumstances of King Ahaz’s time. However, what Matthew did was not necessarily wrong. Yes, he takes these verses out of context and applies them to his own story of Jesus’ birth, but in Matthew’s understanding he was recognizing the similarities between what God had done in the past and what he had done most recently in Jesus. Matthew believed that what took place in the past had significance not only for the past, but for what had happened in Jesus in his own time (58).

The gospel writers use much language to describe Jesus as the fulfillment of the Davidic King of the Old Testament promises.  However, Jesus does not really use this kind of language when he is referring to himself throughout the gospels. Wright says that Jesus more thoroughly identifies himself with the Son of Man as referenced in the book of the prophet Daniel, especially in chapter 7, as well as the Suffering Servant as portrayed in the book of Isaiah, especially in chapter 53 (148-58). However, the Son of Man in Daniel does not seem to very well portray the picture of Christ in the gospels even though Jesus referred to himself as “son of man” (153). He identifies the most with the Suffering Servant (154). In Jesus’ time, the passages in Daniel and Isaiah and some elsewhere had come to be seen for the most part as referring to the coming of the Messiah in Israel’s history. Jesus seemed to agree with this conclusion and, seeing himself fulfilling these roles. However, Jesus’ view of himself also differed considerably from others in that many believed that when the Messiah would come, he would overthrow the Romans and Jesus did not intend to do this (138). He identified much more with the Suffering Servant who would carry the sins of his people upon himself. With this understanding, Jesus would go to the cross and die, dashing the hopes of many of his followers who did not understand the nature of the Suffering Servant and how to reconcile this picture with that of the all-powerful Son of Man. While this may have dashed the hopes of many, Jesus truly does fulfill the expectations of both the Suffering Servant and the Son of Man in both his death and his resurrection.

At the time I was reading this book, I was also reading Scot McKnight’s King Jesus Gospel for Prof. Robertson’s evangelism class. These two books had some very similar things to say about the role of Jesus as Messiah, so I kept getting the two books mixed up. However, having looked back upon this book, I believe that it is superior to McKnight’s book. McKnight got caught up on his own pet peeves about the church and this served as the basis of his look at Jesus as Messiah. Wright looks at Jesus as Messiah on a much more academic level. Wright is also does a much more thorough job when looking at the history of Israel He goes into the details of the texts, and this is something that I appreciate. I think that often when people try to take a serious look at these texts they wind up talking too much about what they personally have gotten out of the texts. While this is certainly a valid thing to do, it becomes tiresome after the third or fourth rant. Wright, however, does an excellent job in presenting the facts and details of the passages he uses without getting caught up too much in his own opinions. While his opinions are obviously present, he gives fair treatment of various perspectives and possibilities without being too quick to jump to conclusions.

Something I enjoyed about Wright’s book was that he provided a fairly thorough look at the various scriptures of the Old Testament that refer to the concept of the Messiah as well as looking at the various kinds of covenants and their contexts within the Old Testament (77-101). Wright’s book was a helpful resource for my paper on Psalm 72 because of his conversation on these covenants. I was previously aware of the Davidic and Abrahamic covenants coming into play with Psalm 72, but after looking at surrounding psalms I saw how these two covenants are not the only ones to which the psalmist refers back. The psalms speak of Mosaic and Noahic covenants as well. I enjoyed examining Psalm 72 further, using Wright as a reference and guide, to see if this particular psalm contained hints at other covenants besides those of David and Abraham.

Another thing I appreciated with Wright’s book was the issue of Jesus’ human identity in his recognition of his role as Messiah. I find it fascinating to think about how Jesus first learned that he was the Messiah. I think we often do not think about this because we assume that because Jesus was God he of course knew it all along. Yet, I appreciate learning more about how the Jews had come to view the Messiah during Jesus’ lifetime and how they thought that the one who would be Messiah would not necessarily know until God revealed it to them at some point in their life. Wright made me wonder when Jesus might have realized this for himself as well as getting me to think about many other thought-provoking issues and concepts.

Surprised By Hope

Surprised by Hope by N. T. Wright was an intriguing read. I appreciated his articulation of many things I have wondered about in regard to the faith and to eschatology. I tend to agree for the most part with his understanding of the Kingdom of God and how God’s kingdom is present now in this present reality as well as present in the future reality. I agree with his understanding of Christianity, especially in contrast with the popular notions of Christian theology portrayed in much of the United States and the western world. I believe, like Wright, that most people do not understand much of anything about the Christian hope, mistaking it for a detached sort of hope in going to heaven when we die without much thought into the here and now ramifications of salvation and the hope it brings for the present and well as the future and how both of those realities overlap and interact with each other.

In the first chapter of his book he speaks of the distorted views of death that people tend to have. He speaks of the tragedies of the Oklahoma City bombing, the death of Princess Diana, 9-11, Hurricane Katrina, and the earthquakes in Pakistan, among other things. He says that these events are indications that all is not right in the world. They point to the evilness of death and its presence in the world in these various forms, through mass murder, destruction, disaster, and tragedy. In the context of these horrific events, Wright asks the question, “What is the ultimate Christian hope?” How does one respond to death if they live out the Christian hope, and how does one respond if they do not have or understand the Christian hope, and above all, what is the Christian hope? He seems to believe that the Christian hope firmly stands in its belief that God is going to make a new heavens and a new earth and that the old order of things will be done away with, so that there will no longer be tragedy, sin, and death. Everything will be redeemed, and God has already set out in bringing the whole of creation, including people, into full redemption.

He says that people are generally confused about death. This is evident in the way people, even Christians, respond to death. Christians tend to believe that Christianity is mostly about belief in life after death, but there is much more to Christianity than this notion. This idea is distinguishing enough from many other religious traditions. People, including many Christians, do not have a proper understanding nor a proper hope in the resurrection of the dead and what the life everlasting truly indicates. Many believe that people live on in heaven and that this is the goal of all believers. Others believe that the memory of someone who has died lives on through other people, or even through the breakdown of the body to become life-giving properties for other plants and animals. Other people believe that the soul exists in a way in which it is absorbed by the rest of creation and that ultimately we will all be reunited in the sense that we will all be absorbed into one giant cosmic thing, whatever that means. Others believe that there is not life after death, and that death marks the end of human existence. Most people seem to have no hope in what orthodox Christianity teaches about the resurrection of the body, either denying the full extent of the reality that their loved one has truly been separated from them in death, or else believing that death is some sort of good thing that will take us to heaven where we will finally be done with the shackles of physical being.

In the second chapter of his book, Wright more fully investigates the distorted images that people have about the Christian hope. He says that Platonism has distorted it by saying that the soul, and not the body, is eternal and is therefore all that really matters, leading Christians to partake in an escapist belief. People also believe that heaven is only some sort of other-worldly kind of spiritual place where people sit on clouds and play harps. People also believe that heaven does not really exist as a physical place. Heaven is within us, and as long as we remember those we love they will live on in heaven and in our memories. Heaven is more of a fairy tale than anything else, like a blissful dream of some kind. People have also come to believe less in the reality of hell. Also, a rise in the belief of some kind of purgatorial existence after death has taken shape. Some people believe that heaven has nothing to do with this life and do not live in the hope of the resurrection, believing that while on this earth they are stuck in sin and cannot do anything about it, so they believe that in purgatory they will finally be made free from sin so they can go be with God or whatever happens after death. People have lost the hope of the resurrection and the redemption of creation in the present sense as well as the future sense. Both are real, but not recognized. God’s redemption will make everything new, and is already at work this present life. People mostly seem to think that the goal is to get to heaven some day after death. All eschatological thought then functions under the notion that God is going to destroy the world and take us to heaven so that we can get out of this mess. Christ’s return is not seen as the complete restoration of the created order in which we now play a part, but is rather the point at which Christ takes us “home to heaven” so he can damn the rest of his creation. In summary, Wright says people are generally confused, not understanding at all the implications of Christ’s incarnation, much less his resurrection and what that means for us.

Chapter three describes the “early Christian hope in its historical setting.” Wright discusses the views of the resurrection and of life after death in the ancient world among the Jews and the pagans. The pagans believed that death was all-powerful and that everyone would have to die. People either wanted to have a new body in the future but believed they could not really have one or they believed that existence away from the body was far better and hoped that they would live on in a soul-existence after death. The Jews, however, at the time Christianity began believed in a resurrection of the body. This is something quite different from any of the pagan beliefs. This is the context in which the Gospels claim that Jesus had risen form the dead, in the context of bodily resurrection. The early Christians recognized Jesus’ resurrection as being something new and unseen before. They had not expected it, though they had looked for a general resurrection of the dead at a future date, the “last day.”

Resurrection was also linked at this point to the vision of the Messiah as reflected in much of the apocalyptic apocryphal literature between the time of the exile and the time of Jesus. When Jesus was killed, all hope in him ushering in the final age where the dead would be raised was lost. The Messiah could not be killed if he was truly the one to bring in the age of life, even though Jesus had said that he would be killed. However, Jesus’ resurrection brought to light a whole new way of viewing the resurrection of the dead and created the entire framework and basis of Christianity which emerged at this time. Christianity is focused on the resurrection. Early Christianity was based on Judaism and did not focus too much on life after death, but the resurrection reshaped Christianity to be focused almost entirely on the resurrection. Resurrection before this was “important, but not that important.” Christianity ended up separating from Second Temple Judaism because of its focus on the resurrection. Judaism had always been somewhat vague as to what the resurrected form would be like, but Christianity claimed that the resurrected body would be a remade body, a transformed body. Christians also split the resurrection into two in contrast to Judaism. The first resurrection being seen in Christ through whom we may also be resurrected to life, but also a second resurrection in which all of the dead would be raised in physical bodies once again. The Christians also believed that God had called them to work with him towards this later resurrection in restoring the world in preparation for God’s ultimate redemption of all creation. This power was given to Christians through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. God now lived in us. Also, within Judaism resurrection passages were often rightly interpreted as being metaphorical in nature and were not actually speaking of a bodily resurrection, but more so of God’s restoration of Israel from captivity. Many passages could easily be interpreted that way, though not all. Christianity, though, spoke mostly of resurrection in the literal sense, both of a literal raising of Christ and of a literal raising of humanity from the grave. The view of the Messiah also changed with the birth of Christianity. Judaism had seen the Messiah as the powerful victor over Israel’s enemies who would establish his kingdom. They did not think he would be killed by Israel’s enemies. This was a stumbling block for the Jews, but was the foundation of the hope of Christianity and why the resurrection of Christ was so important to them.

Wright then goes on to point out the many flaws in the arguments people have come up with to refute the historicity of the resurrection of Christ. Some say that the early disciples were not willing to give up their view of Jesus as Messiah even after he was killed, but that is not what the text indicates. The texts portray them as feeling a sense of disillusionment with their former beliefs of Jesus as Messiah. They had given up on him when he died. They were hurt and confused by this, but they did not cling to a belief that he was still the Messiah until after he had risen. Some have also argued that Christ’s resurrection is a misunderstanding of what the disciples were describing. They were actually saying that Jesus had been exalted and taken up to heaven when he died. However, this is not consistent with their Judaism, which said that the dead, including martyrs, would be raised and glorified at a later time, not presently. Some also say that the disciples could have felt a sense of Jesus’ presence still with them after he died and so claimed that he was still alive or living again. However, the disciples did not claim this. They claimed that Jesus had been resurrected from the grave in bodily form and that he had appeared to them. If they had been filled with joy and their hearts had been strangely warmed by a feeling of Christ’s presence among them, then they would not have reacted by saying that Jesus had emerged from his grave. They would have sung a psalm or something along those lines and would not have made such wild and disrespectful claims about the body of the deceased. Also, some say that the disciples had visions or dreams that Jesus appeared to them, which happens to people who have experienced the loss of someone close. However, this assumes that the disciples were unaware that people had dreams and visions and interpreted these dreams as actual events. Dreaming, as most people do, about their recently deceased friend, would not lead them to claim that he had been risen form the dead, much less that he was the Messiah.

The fourth chapter continues Wright’s points on the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. He uses the actual stories from the Gospels now to show that they do not appear to be late inventions, but perhaps the earliest written forms of the Christian tradition. He says that while other parts of the Gospels rely heavily upon the Hebrew Scriptures to support what they say about Jesus, the resurrection stories do not. Also, the four Gospels all describe the resurrection in quite different ways and are at the same time theologically consistent. Also, it is women who are portrayed as the principle witnesses of the resurrection. It seems unlikely that the disciples would have said that the women were the primary witnesses to the event if they had fabricated the story themselves. Also, if the disciples were trying to prove that Jesus had been resurrected in bodily form, it would not make sense for them to describe Jesus in ways that make him seem like a ghost at times, such as when he walks through walls, while at other times, he is acting like a physical person, as when he is eating fish. Also, in the Gospels Jesus’ resurrection is never linked to the future resurrection as it is in the rest of the New Testament, indicating that these stories are likely from the earliest of Christian traditions.

Other arguments that Wright gives to support the historicity of the resurrection are that Jesus’ tomb was never made into a martyr’s shrine, as was often the case with martyrs; also, the early church suddenly began to meet on the first day of the week instead of on the Sabbath; and the disciples were willing to die, and did die, for their claims about Christ’s resurrection, which seems unlikely if they had made it up. Wright claims that people today have been influenced by enlightenment thinking which claims that miracles do not happen, so they tend to view the resurrection as implausible. However, the people of today have also rejected much of this thought in order to investigate a lot of eastern forms of spirituality and mysticism. Ironically, they will put up with that sort of thing, but revert back to an Enlightenment view whenever it comes to something related to Christ’s resurrection or miracles related to Christianity. He goes on to say that the belief in Christ is not one that rejects history and science, nor is it one that is in its own sphere and apart from them, but it is faith claiming events “within history, demanding evidence that demands an explanation from the scientist.”

In Chapter five, Wright discusses the cosmic future and the different views people have on this. He says that many are focused on the individual and what God has in store for the individual in the cosmic future, but he says that he prefers to think of creation as a whole first before narrowing down redemption and resurrection to the individual. His point is that there is much more to resurrection than just in a personal sense. The whole of creation will be restored, and the individual is a part of that creation who will take part along with others in the redemptive process, both in restoring and being restored. Wright says that there are generally two misunderstandings about the Cosmic Future, “evolutionary optimism” and “souls in transit.” They are both often mistaken for Christianity. The first lends itself to the myth of optimism and believes that all of creation is working towards bettering itself and is slowly moving towards a perfect state. The second idea believes that we are only here temporarily, and that eventually we will be removed from the limitations of our bodily existence and live on in freedom as eternal souls. The first view is too optimistic in the natural order of the world, and the second is too pessimistic. The first one fails to understand the need of Christ’s redemption for the created order or recognize that “moral progress” has failed to bring us to “utopia.” Christ does not continue the betterment of the world, he recreates it. The second idea sees this world as beyond redemption, which is also foreign to Christianity. This world is not to be done away with, but rescued from its bondage to decay.

In chapter six Wright says that the early Christians did not believe that the world was getting better over time, nor did they believe that the world was getting worse over time. “They believed that God was going to do for the whole cosmos what he had done for Jesus at Easter.” The early Christians recognized the goodness of creation, the nature of evil, and the plan of redemption. Wright says that there are six themes in the New Testament writings that are laid out in relationship to this. The first is “seedtime and harvest,” which is based on the resurrection of Jesus being the “first fruits” of the resurrection of all people. Because of Christ’s resurrection, we also may be resurrected. The second is “the victorious battle,” in which the entire cosmos must submit to Christ, even death itself, so that Christ may make everything new. The third is “citizens of heaven, colonizing the earth,” which meant that we would not depart into heaven, but that Christ will come from heaven to earth to transform everything and we will serve under him. The fourth is “God will be all in all,” which means that “God intends to fill all creation with his own presence and love.” The fifth is “new birth,” which speaks to how the whole creation is waiting to be freed from bondage and that when the children of God are revealed or resurrected the whole earth and the created order itself will be resurrected or renewed as well. The sixth is “the marriage of heaven and earth,” which describes the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven as a bride adorned for her husband. This is the opposite of what a lot of Christians think, where they are brought up to heaven to meet God there. Heaven and earth are not opposed to one another, and they are not two different ideas conveying the same message. They are like male and female, who are made to be joined together.

Wright begins the seventh chapter by talking about the ascension. He makes the point that the resurrection and the ascension should not be viewed as the same thing. When we speak of the ascension, we do not speak of Christ dying and then being raised from the dead by being taken up into heaven, nor we do we speak of Christ dying and going to heaven as though that were his resurrection. Both say the same thing and both are wrong. Wright says that the ascension is also not just a strange idea that was added later, and he says that ascension is a vital feature of Christian belief and that without it things begin to go wrong. Some have insisted upon pure literalism to say that Jesus vertically took-off into the clouds. However, this creates some issues because it suggests that heaven is literally somewhere in the clouds within the earth’s atmosphere. Also, it indicates that heaven lies directly above the exact spot where Jesus took-off, but since the earth is round he would be perceived by people on the other side of the world as descending upside down, and the positioning of heaven in this way limits its relation to the earth by the spherical qualities of a globe, where one cannot tell the difference between up and down. Some have also interpreted the ascension where he disappears into the clouds to mean that when he died he disappeared, but that his spiritual presence lives on in us. Wright says that literalism and skepticism both lead us astray here, and that theologians who take the ascension seriously have viewed heaven and earth not as being two different locations within the time-space continuum, but “two different dimensions of God’s good creation.” He also says that the one who is in heaven may at the same time be anywhere and everywhere on earth, so that Jesus is accessible to everyone in every location on earth. He further says that Jesus did not stop being human after his death. He remained human and exists as a human right now in heaven, where he reigns in both heaven and earth in the present as well as in the future. The church is evidence of his reign on the earth, but the church should not be confused with Christ himself. This has happened in history with “triumphalism” and has always led to disasters of one kind or another. Also, it is by the Holy Spirit and the sacraments that Jesus is present with us now. Wright goes on to say:

“when the Bible speaks of heaven and earth it is not talking about two localities related to each other within the same time-space continuum or about a nonphysical world contrasted with a physical one but about two different kinds of what we call space, two different kinds of what we call matter, and also quite possibly (though this does not necessarily follow from the other two) two different kinds of what we call time. We post-Enlightenment Westerners are such wretched flatlanders. Although New Age thinkers, and indeed quite a lot of contemporary novelists, are quite capable of taking us into other parallel worlds, spaces, and times, we retreat into our rationalistic closed-system universe as soon as we think about Jesus” (115).

Wright also says that the Eastern Orthodox church views heaven as the inner sanctuary and the earth as the outer portions of the temple. The ascension leads us to believe that “God’s space and ours…are, though very different, not far away from one another” (116). He says that God’s space and ours interlock in many different ways, but that they are also separate right now for a time. One day, though, when Christ returns, the two will be joined together as in marriage.

After this, Wright speaks in more detail of the second coming of Christ. He says that most mainstream Christians confess to believe this but they do not have a clue as to what it means. In his discussion on the second coming Wright says that this has to do with the outcome and such of the individual person in the context of the renewal of the entire cosmos. When God renews the cosmos, he says, Jesus will be at the very center of this. He notes that the second coming has become a hot topic among a number of different evangelical groups, mainly fundamentalist ones. These groups tend to believe that we are now living in what they call the “end times.” They believe that Jesus will come back in the midst of certain geo-political events and will take all the Christians away, leaving the world to fend for itself for a little while. Wright believes that this obsession with an inappropriate interpretation of the second coming of Jesus is a problem. He says that this type of interpretation leads one to believe that Christ’s return must only be able to happen under certain conditions and that it also leads one to think that there is no point in making any effort to better the environment in which we now live because it is only going to get destroyed anyway. On the other side of the spectrum are the post-Enlightenment liberals who find it embarrassing that anyone would believe in a literal second coming of Christ and especially a day of judgment. The second coming sounds too much like an outdated supernaturalism and the judgment makes God sound too wrathful for their taste. He also points out that ironically many people these days have become increasingly interested in mysticism and the supernatural, but that people tend to avoid those things if they have anything to do with Christianity.

With chapter eight, Wright says that Christ will indeed return. However, he points out that his return seems to indicate that he is absent at the present. Wright says that Christ is not absent even though he has not yet returned, and points back to his previous explanations of the ascension. He says that people often misinterpret what the Bible means when it says that Christ will come on the clouds. The Son of Man passages, which hearken back to Daniel, are not speaking of Christ descending from heaven to earth, but of his ascent into heaven or entering into God’s space. Christ’s words were justified by his ascension. This was the sign showing that what he had predicted would happen in the future to Jerusalem would indeed happen. By his ascension, his words were vindicated. Many Christians think that in the future Christ will come down from heaven and we will rise up from the earth and meet him at the halfway point. Wright also says that Jesus did not really teach about his second coming, but that this does not mean that it is not true or that it will not happen. The rest of the New Testament does teach about the second coming of Christ. I am not sure I agree with Wright on this point. I feel as though Christ does address his return at places, such as with the verse, “But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” among some others. I do agree, though, that Paul’s letters are much clearer than the Gospels in the issue of Christ’s second coming. Wright talks about the concept of parousia in the New Testament and how this reflected the idea of Christ still being present in spirit but not in body at the current time. It refers to a sort of interim period between when Christ was present in the body in the past and when Christ will be present in the body in the future. Further, Paul wished to show that Christ was the true king both now and in the future, as opposed to Caesar who was a sham. Wright says that the passage which talks about Christ’s descent and our ascent to meet him in the air are three different word-pictures from the Old Testament all wrapped up into one in order to convey his eschatological theme. Wright also takes a jab at rapture theology here, saying that it is Gnostic in its origins. Wright ends this chapter by stating that Christ’s ascending as well as his appearing were both fundamental elements of Christian belief right from the get-go.

In chapter nine, Wright says that at his appearing Christ will play the special role of judge. If God is a good God then he must be a God of judgment when faced with a “world full of exploitation and wickedness.” The nineteenth century embraced a sort of optimism about the human condition believing mankind to be progressing into a glorious state, but the twentieth century was a great hindrance to that optimism with all of its war and destruction. Some people say that who we are on the inside is all that that matters and that we do not need to be held accountable for what is on the outside, but this is contrary to New Testament belief which indicates that we will be judged for everything about us, both the outside and the inside, and that Jesus will be the judge of both our thoughts and our actions. With Christ’s coming everything will be judged. This means that when he comes everything must be transformed. Death and decay will be overcome and God will be “all in all” as the entire cosmos undergoes a transformation. With this realization, the church should not think that it can bring about this change all on its own and it should not think that it cannot do anything at all until Christ comes back and makes everything right again. The church has an active role in the parousia, one that is not absent from Christ.

In chapter ten, Wright focuses on the redemption of our bodies. He says that Paul writes that we are promised a new bodily existence. This is the “fulfillment and redemption of our present bodily life.” Wright says that the resurrection of the body was an integral part of Christian belief from the start but that overtime it became unpopular among many segments of the church because of different ideas to which they had held that did not seem to agree with the idea of a bodily resurrection. Much of the church came to believe that upon death, one either went immediately to heaven or to hell in a “one-stage postmortem journey” that sometimes included an intermediate purgatory and sometimes did not. Wright believes that this idea of heaven and hell has helped to lead to an escapist theology among Christians who see the goal of this life to be to go to heaven when they die. Wright refers to something he calls “life after life after death,” saying that we do not simply go to heaven or hell when we die and that is all that happens. There is a restoration of the created order that takes place. Yes, we live on after we die, but our bodily existence upon the recreated or renewed earth will come at a later time after we have died. This is what the resurrection is. It is about heaven coming to earth and creation, including us, being restored even after we have died and gone to be with the Lord. The resurrection is not just a spiritual resurrection when we go to heaven. The Gospels and the rest of the New Testament make this clear. Another thing to point out is that when the Bible uses the word heaven it is often referring to God in reverent language. So the idea of going to heaven is really the idea of going to be in God’s presence, which does not start when we die, but here and now. Wright refers back to C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce when trying to describe what the future body will be like, saying that it will be fuller, more real, more complete, than what we have now. We will not be ghosts at the resurrection, but we will be less ghostlike than we are now. However, Wright is hesitant to go as far as Lewis went in his interpretation. Lewis tended to think that the present reality was only a shadow or copy of what was to come, which is a bit too Platonic for Wright, who believes that the present reality will be redeemed.

Chapter eleven is on purgatory, paradise, and hell. He says that “purgatory is basically a Roman catholic doctrine.” The Eastern Orthodox church and most Protestant churches have rejected it. Purgatory seems to allow for more people to be able to enter into heaven than would have entered without it. However, this is not exactly how purgatory was supposed to function. It is not a universalistic kind of idea. Only Christians – no non-believers – went to purgatory. It was for those who had not become holy enough to enter the presence of God and needed further refinement after death even after experiencing salvation in this life. Some people believe that purgatory allows for us to do whatever we please in this life because we will have another go at it later, but this is not how this doctrine was supposed to function. The idea some have is that whatever journey we were on in this life when we died will continue on after we die. Wright does not agree with this universalistic sort of interpretation. Wright says that the reason ideas such as purgatory worked was that they were allegorical of the present life. In this life we are refined and purified, and this often through suffering. It is “a projection from the present onto the future.”

Wright concludes that all of the “Christian departed” are at rest in the presence of God. This is what we may refer to as paradise. It is not, however, to be confused with the later resurrection of the body. In speaking of paradise, people often refer to the thief on the cross to whom Jesus said, “Today you shall be with me in paradise.” People often interpret this to mean that when the thief died he was with Jesus in paradise, or in heaven. However, this also seems to contradict the traditional church belief that Christ descended into hades when he died and then ascended from the grave on the third day. The question then is why would Jesus say that he would be in paradise? Wright says that the answer lies in the context of the statement of the thief. The thief asks Jesus to remember him when he comes into his kingdom, thinking that the kingdom is only a future reality, but Jesus corrects him and reassures him by telling him that the kingdom is not just in the future, but it is present. This is why he says “today you will be with me in paradise.” He is indicating the present reality of the “not yet” which is made present through himself. In speaking of hell, Wright points out that several times when Jesus refers to hell, he uses the word “Gehenna,” which was the trash dump, where waste was burned outside of the city. He is using a picture that the people are familiar with in order to speak of a greater truth. There are a number of people who have become bothered by the images of hell they have been given so they prefer to become Universalists, wondering how a loving God could send someone to a place of eternal fire and torment. The picture that Jesus uses is one to say that “unless you repent in this life you are going to burn in the next.” However, the focus is on repentance in this life, and not on a future hell. This idea of reaching a place that is beyond all pity and all hope in the next life is firmly connected to this life and whether one repents or not. Wright again falls upon Lewis’s The Great Divorce, saying that in the end those who are beyond all hope are the ones to whom God says “Thy will be done.” Wright concludes that damnation and hell are things that reflect who we have chosen to be. He wonders if in being damned we have reached the point of becoming sub-human or ex-human. He says that those things that we allow to define us in this life are things that will define us in the next. If we allow ourselves to be controlled by bitterness, sensuality, or power then we will become these very attributes and eventually cease to be in the image of God entirely and we will no longer be truly human at least in the sense that we were intended to be. This is damnation.

In chapter twelve, Wright begins his discussion of the role of the church in the kingdom of God. He shows that the point of Jesus’ resurrection was that we may also be resurrected and that the entire cosmos may be resurrected or restored. The church plays an active role in the redemption that God will bring and even now is already bringing into the created order. Paul says that if Christ’s resurrection does not bring about our own resurrection then “we are to be pitied above all men,” for “if there is no resurrection of the dead then not even Christ was raised,” and if Christ was not raised then the Christian faith is pointless. Also, in speaking of the kingdom of God, Wright says that whatever you do now carries on into the future – into God’s future. This is how the church participates in God’s redemption.

Wright then discusses the meaning of salvation. Salvation means to be rescued from something, and in Christian belief this something is death. Yet, people still die. If being rescued from death means that we will live on as souls after our bodies have decayed this does not mean that we have been rescued from death. It simply means that we have died. If we are to be truly rescued from death then our bodies which have died must be rescued. This is what salvation is – the rescue of both body and soul. In the Gospels Jesus’ healing miracles are associated with salvation, indicating that salvation also has to do with the healing of the body at some point. At this point, Wright summarizes everything he has covered thus far by saying: “the work of salvation, in its full sense, is (1) about whole human beings, not merely souls; (2) about the present, not simply the future; and (3) about what God does through us, not merely what God does in and for us” (200). Wright reiterates at the end of this chapter the idea that kingdom of God is breaking into the present, on earth as it is in heaven.

Chapter thirteen continues the idea of “building for the kingdom.” Wright points out first of all that it is God who builds the kingdom, but that God works with his creation in such a way that he uses us as instruments in his work. Secondly, “we need to distinguish between the final kingdom and the present anticipations of it” (208). The kingdom has been inaugurated and we are participating in the coming kingdom, but ultimately only God can bring about the final restoration, the creation of the new heavens and the new earth. “The work we do in the present, then, gains its full significance from the eventual design in which it is meant to belong” (211). Wright also speaks of the topic of justice, saying that he does not mean to over-emphasize social justice, but that our sense of justice or our understanding of justice ought to be the result of our recognition of our living in between the time of Christ’s death and resurrection and the time of his appearing. Wright also seeks to point out that we must also avoid dualism which leaves us with no concern for social justice at all. Wright also mentions that in Jesus’ time, resurrection was a bit of a radical idea. It seemed to be rather a late-comer on the scene in the history of the Old Testament. The resurrection doctrine was revolutionary and “spoke of God’s determination to bring about the new Exodus” (214). After speaking for a while on the dangers of a poor eschatology and how that can lead to a flawed sense of justice, such as was seen in Nazism, he talks about beauty. His view is that beauty is almost just as important as spirituality and justice. God’s intent is to restore the beauty of his creation. He also talks about evangelism and says that if we are helping to bring about the work of new creation then we seek to “bring advance signs of God’s eventual new world into being in the present” (225). This can be seen in evangelism. Evangelism can be a difficult word for some people because it produces images of televangelists and political evangelicalism, but that is not really what evangelism looks like. Evangelism proclaims that “God is God, that Jesus is Lord, that the powers of evil, corruption, and death itself have been defeated, and that God’s new world has begun…” (227). A private relationship with Jesus is not the only thing that matters, which is how some have interpreted evangelism. This is not a private and merely personal thing.

In chapter fourteen, Wright provides justification from the biblical texts to support what he claims the mission of the church should be. He provides thorough examples from the Gospels, from Acts, and from Paul’s letters. In the Gospels the picture made is that Jesus is risen from the dead just as he said he would be. The idea of Jesus being raised and showing that there really is life after death is not indicated at all, but rather, according to Mark, Jesus has been raised, so his disciples should hurry up and go see him – he is waiting for them in Galilee. What Jesus was referring to when he said some would not taste death until they saw the kingdom coming in power was his resurrection. His resurrection “completes the inauguration of God’s kingdom” (234). The resurrection is not just a miracle intended to show just how powerful God is when he wants to be, nor is it telling us by visible means that there is a life waiting for us in heaven after we die. The resurrection is about God’s kingdom being established on earth as it is in heaven, and in this kingdom death is eventually abolished forever. According to Matthew, “resurrection doesn’t mean escaping from the world; it means mission to the world based on Jesus’s lordship over the world” (235). According to Luke, the resurrection provides a whole new way of telling the story of God and Israel and God and the world. On the road to Emmaus, the two men recognize how Jesus’ death was a horrible tragedy in the grand scheme of things. They had believed that he was the Messiah, and then it all blew up in their faces. Jesus then shows them a new way of looking at the Law and the Prophets, indicating that the truth about himself was already there, but had just not been recognized or understood yet. Yet through his death and resurrection the whole of Scripture and of history may be looked at in a new light, a brighter and clearer light. In John the disciples go fishing and catch nothing until Jesus helps them. After this, Jesus tells Peter to shepherd his sheep. The fishing may be understood as representing what they had been doing all along as Jews. The shepherding, however, shows a new way of work that relates to the newly inaugurated kingdom.

In Acts 1-12 Jesus is proclaimed by the disciples to be the risen Messiah, as they are mainly preaching to the Jews at this point. When Paul preaches to the Greeks, he also proclaims Jesus to be Messiah, saying that Jesus’ resurrection brings resurrection to all believers. He preaches this in the Areopagus and the people cannot believe that someone could be raised from the dead. In the very place where it was announced by Apollo through drama six hundred years prior that there was no hope at all for a resurrection of the dead, Paul proclaims the resurrection boldly. Paul goes on preaching this in his letters, saying that through Christ’s resurrection we will all be raised, and not only us, but the entire creation will be restored.

In chapter fifteen, Wright continues to talk about what the mission of the church should be, this time from a more future-oriented perspective. He begins by emphasizing the celebration of Easter, and that being not just once a year, but every first day of the week as the early church did. They met every Sunday of every week in addition to meeting with each other additionally throughout the week in order to celebrate the anniversary of our Lord’s resurrection, what we would call Easter. Easter is then not only an annual celebration, but a weekly, and even a daily one. The hope of Easter should live on in us throughout all the year. Wright says that we should be attempting to celebrate Easter in new creative ways as Easter is a sign of new creation: “in art, literature, children’s games, poetry, music, dance, festivals, bells, special concerts, anything that comes to mind” (256). I agree with him very much on this matter. I am a bit miffed at times by our people’s lack of genuine enthusiasm for Easter. Easter should not be viewed as the end of a forty day gloomy fast.

Wright also discusses what will happen to space, time, and matter as a result of the restoration of all things. In discussing space, he refers back to Celtic tradition which believed in “thin places” or places where the distance between heaven and earth was minimal. With the renewal of space, the distance between heaven and earth is done away with because heaven and earth have become one. He also says that time itself is focused upon Christ. Every time we date something, we still date it in regard to its placement in time in reference to the time of Christ. Every Sunday we go to church is also an indication of the renewal of time. Sunday is the eighth day of creation, where God begins to restore all things to himself. The renewal of matter can also be seen beginning to take place in the sacraments. Here we have the presence of God himself in created matter, just as Christ was made a sacrifice for us by becoming earthly matter in the hope that matter would be renewed, so that Eucharist works in similar way as the presence of God incarnate, God made into flesh to restore flesh. When we take the Eucharist we are identifying ourselves with Christ just as Christ identified himself with us. We remember his death and suffering and resurrection and we anticipate his appearing where he will restore all things so that God will at last be all in all. This is all practiced in our mission to the world, in love, prayer, scripture, and holiness. All of these things are signs of the renewal that Christ brings to us now and in the future. This is the hope of the world that we must bring unto the farthest reaches. Christ works through us to bring hope and healing to the world, and just as he has inaugurated this mission, so will he also bring this mission to completeness.

Comparison of Collins and Maddox on their Interpretation of the Theology of John Wesley

In his book Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology Randy Maddox presents his views on the theology of John Wesley. One idea that he presents throughout his book is the idea that the theology of John Wesley changed over time. Throughout his life his theology was developing, so at one point in his life Wesley may have believed a certain way about one thing only to change his mind at a later point in time. This is an important concept to keep in mind as one reads through Maddox’s book. Another important thing to keep in mind while reading Maddox’s view of Wesley’s theology is that his take on what Wesley has to say is shaped by his own personal theology. The theology of Maddox is one that places important emphasis upon something that he refers to as “responsible grace,” from which the title of his book receives its name. The phrase “responsible grace” is a play on the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer who spoke of the Church issuing out what he called “cheap grace.” Bonhoeffer’s issue with the church was that it had become lax when it came to sin. Believers could claim the grace of God and yet feel free to indulge in whatever sin they chose to so long as they came back to the church for forgiveness. “Responsible grace” is the opposite of this. It shows that while it is true that the grace of God is a free gift, it is not something to be abused or misused. It is God’s work, but we have work to do as well. The idea that we play a part in our own salvation is one of the key ideas that Maddox presents in his interpretation of Wesley’s theology.

Maddox’s book must be compared to another book on the theology of John Wesley. This second book is written by Kenneth Collins is titled The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace. Like Maddox, Collins is influenced by his own theology as he attempts to present the theology of Wesley. Collins does not focus on the issue of “responsible grace” as Maddox does. Rather than placing much emphasis upon the part that we play in our own salvation, Collins focuses more on the idea that grace is a gift of God, something that we receive because of the unconditional love of God. He does not say that we are not responsible for anything, but he does emphasize that we cannot do anything on our own without the grace of God working in us. Collins and Maddox both offer differing views on the theology of John Wesley.

Chapter one of Maddox’s book is on human knowledge of God and discusses the revelation of God to the world as an act of grace. Maddox presents what he believes to be Wesley’s views on both the universal revelation of God and the Christian revelation. Maddox writes that “Wesley was convinced that no one had access to God apart from the gracious restoration of Divine self-revelation” (29). He believed that by grace God has revealed himself to us, and that even by natural revelation of God, we are still subject to the grace of God because it is only by the grace of God that we naturally able to conceive of God. Maddox goes on to say that Wesley “also believed that this restoration took place in a continuum of progressively more definitive expressions, beginning with a basic knowledge that was universally available and reaching definitive expression in Christ” (29). This means that while by the grace of God we may receive a general knowledge of God through natural revelation, this natural revelation should only be viewed as the beginning of a process leading to Christian revelation which would then require a response from the individual on whether or not to embrace this Christian revelation. This leads to question of what the fate of those who have not received the Christian revelation would be. Maddox says that Wesley rejected any idea of another chance for people after death. Wesley believed both in the justice of God and in the universal love of God. Wesley said that this was all up to the “mercy of God, who is the God of heathens as well as of Christians” (33). He believed that it was not for us to say that those who had not been given a chance in this life would be excluded from heaven. Wesley recognized the dilemma of what God’s response would be to those who had not received the revelation of Christ. He saw the problem of a God who condemns those who had not been given a chance and a God who receives all who have not received Christ. Maddox says that later in life Wesley believed that God would judge all people by the amount of light they had received and how they had responded to it.

Collins also affirms Wesley’s belief in natural revelation, saying that Wesley believed that salvation began with prevenient grace, and that mankind devoid of the grace of God at work would be unable to even conceive of God. All natural revelation is a result of God’s grace. Collins quotes Wesley, saying, “It is undeniable, that he has fixed in man, in every man, his umpire, conscience; an inward judge, which passes sentence both on his passions and actions, either approving them or condemning them” (77-8).

Maddox also refers to the “Wesleyan quadrilateral,” saying that Wesley used scripture, reason, tradition, and experience to determine that which was theologically sound doctrine. Maddox also says that Wesley tended to favor a combination of scripture and reason. He used these two elements of the quadrilateral most often. Collins did not seem to be interested in discussing the Wesleyan quadrilateral in his book.

Maddox and Collins both speak of Wesley’s views on the attributes of God. Collins lists the essential attributes of God as being love, holiness, eternity, omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence. He believes that the most important of these to Wesley however was the attribute of love. Collins agrees with Mildred Bangs Wynkoop that in order to truly be Wesleyan “the love of God must be at the heart of this enterprise” (20). Collins seeks to prove this by quoting Wesley from the later years of his life, saying, “But, blessed be God…we know there is nothing deeper, there is nothing better in heaven or earth, than love! There cannot be, unless there were something higher than the God of love!” (20). Collins also writes that Wesley seems to have perceived the holiness of God and the love of God to be at tension with each other at times.

Maddox says that Wesley describes both the natural attributes of God as well as the moral attributes of God. He says, “By ‘natural attributes,’ Wesley meant those characteristics that are definitive of the Divine nature; without these characteristics, God would not be God” (51). Maddox says that Wesley believed that God was “spirit” and but this did not mean that God did not have affections, as some claimed. Wesley did not believe that God’s sovereignty was jeopardized by His ability to love and perhaps be changed in one way or another by this love. According to Maddox, Wesley also believed that God is eternal, omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. As far as God’s moral attributes are concerned, Maddox claims that Wesley believed “that God’s moral attributes converge in two central virtues: justice and goodness (or love)” (53).

Collins and Maddox both discuss Wesley’s view on predestination. Collins writes, “One of the more important corollaries of the biblical truth that the foreknowledge of God is not determinative is the grace-infused freedom of humanity” (29). Wesley was very much against the Calvinist ideas of election, believing that while God had fore-knowledge He did choose before the creation of the world a select few to be saved and everyone else to be damned. Wesley believed that the Calvinist interpretations of the Scripture on these points put “the integrity of the gospel” at stake. Collins quotes Wesley, saying, “Wesley believed that the doctrine of predestination, as held by some of his contemporaries, ‘directly tends to destroy that holiness which is the end of all the ordinances of God.’” (31).

Maddox also discusses Wesley’s views on predestination. According to Maddox, the main issue that Calvinists have with Wesleyanism is that they believe Wesleyanism to have too high of a level of optimism at what mankind has the potential to become in this life. Calvinists believe that everyone sins in thought, word, and deed every day of their lives, regardless of whether or not they have the Spirit of God within them. Calvinists saw Wesley’s view of holiness as being too optimistic. Yes, those who had been saved would eventually become completely holy, but this would only be after death. Wesley believed that holiness was a possibility in this life, and only after one died and went to heaven. The issue that Wesley had with the Calvinists was a different one. Maddox presents before us the idea that “the fundamental difference between Wesley and his Calvinist opponents really lies more in their respective understanding of the nature of God than in their evaluation of the human situation” (56). Wesley believed that the Calvinists believed in an inappropriate understanding of the nature of God. He saw their view of predestination to be in conflict with the most important attribute of God, His love. Wesley simply could not believe in a loving and just God who would send his own creation to hell for no apparent reason other than that he could. He believed that God’s love extended to all, and not just a few. Wesley believed that the election of God was something that was dependent upon salvation. Election followed salvation.

Maddox also talks about Wesley’s belief in Original Sin. In this section of his book he presents two different Wesleyan beliefs on the nature of sin, the first being that of original sin, and the second being the idea of “inbeing sin.” Original sin is inherited from our first parents who sinned. With this idea is the belief that because of this original sin all of mankind is subject sin or born in sin so that they cannot help but turn away from God. Inbeing sin is the idea that sin is an individual choice that we all make. This does not necessarily mean that original sin does not exist, but it does mean that we are responsible for the sins that we choose to commit. Maddox again, as he does throughout his book, makes a point that the theology of John Wesley gradually changed over time. Maddox says that over time Wesley became more and more uncomfortable with the idea of original sin, but that he never stopped believing in the truth of this doctrine. Maddox says that the reason Wesley became uncomfortable overtime with the idea of original sin was not because he did not believe in it, but because he struggled with the idea of a person being judged for a sin they did not commit. Maddox writes, “Wesley’s growing uncomfortableness with the notion of inherited guilt was not due to any doubt about universal human sinfulness, but rather was an expression of his life-long conviction that God deals responsibly with each individual” (75).

Collins also discusses Wesley’s views on Original Sin. Collins claims that Wesley believes God created all of the creation good, but humanity sinned and caused all of creation to fall into disrepair. Because humanity sinned then, it has been stuck in sin ever since. Wesley believed that the primary sin of humanity was not pride, pride was the sin of the devil, but in having a distorted relationship with God. The emphasis of this is again on the love of God. Sin is the absence of the reception of God’s love. Collins shows how Wesley was always a firm believer in the doctrine of Original Sin and in Total Depravity. Collins writes, “Wesley declared that all who deny this vital doctrine, for whatever reason and with whatever justifications, ‘are but heathens still.’” (65). While Maddox attempts to show that Wesley had a least a few similar beliefs as the Eastern Church, Collins shows just how different Wesley’s theology was from that of the Eastern Church, particularly when it came to idea of Original Sin. However, Collins points out that Wesley also differed from the Western Church in his understanding of grace.

Both Collins and Maddox bring up the concept of prevenient grace in their books. Collins writes that there are two aspects of prevenient grace for Wesley. The first is that prevenient grace comes before both justifying and sanctifying grace. The second is in Wesley’s belief that all grace is prevenient grace because all grace is initiated by God. In speaking of Wesley’s understanding of grace, Collins shows how Wesley believed in co-operant grace, meaning that we ourselves have some responsibility when it comes to our own salvation. We work with God. However, Collins is also quick to point out that Wesley also believed in free grace, meaning that even what would be referred to as co-operant grace was a result of the free grace of God.

In Maddox’s discussion on prevenient grace he says that Wesley believed that prevenient grace was only the first step in the process of restoring grace. Prevenient always has the larger picture in mind. As far as the idea of co-operant grace is concerned, Maddox says he prefers to call this “responsible grace.” He also writes, “In short, Wesley did indeed affirm a role for meaningful human participation in salvation. However, he always maintained that this role was grounded in God’s gracious empowering, not our inherent abilities” (92).

A discussion of Wesley’s theology would not be complete without bringing up the doctrine of entire sanctification. Amazingly enough, Maddox seems to a certain extent avoid talking about entire sanctification, while Collins speaks quite a bit about this. This again is due to their own theologies influencing them as they write about John Wesley’s theology. Maddox seems to be more prone to the idea of salvation and sanctification as a process in the life of the believer. However, Maddox does discuss the ideas of “final justification” and “sanctification proper” in relation to “first justification” and “the New Birth.” Maddox admits that Wesley believed that Holy Spirit empowered the believer prior to salvation to fulfill the tasks required of the holy life of the believer. However, Maddox still emphasizes his idea of “responsible grace,” saying, “[Wesley] was simply insisting that God’s gracious empowering acceptance enhances rather than replaces our responsive and responsible growth in holiness” (171-2).

Collins says that Wesley saw holiness as the end of religion. He does not hesitate to say that Wesley believed in the idea of Christian perfection. However, he also point out how Wesley believed that there was a sanctification process that led up to Christian perfection. Collins also says that Wesley believed that humans were incapable of being absolutely perfect. As long as they were alive, believers would live with infirmities. He writes, “Those who are perfected in love are still subject to ignorance and mistakes, a condition that is inseparable from their finiteness” (299). Wesley also believed that there was no state of grace from which a believer could not fall. Wesley believed that those who had been made perfect in love had not lost their ability to sin, but had lost their desire to sin. Collins shows how Wesley believed that those who had been made perfect in love received the power from the Holy Spirit to longer be subject to willful sins. In this sense, then, one who no longer sinned willfully because their desire to sin had been removed truly had by God’s grace been made perfect.



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Works Cited

Maddox, Randy L. Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology. (Nashville:
Kingwood Books, 1994).

Collins, Kenneth J. The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace.
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007).