See a video interview with Tom Wright concerning his new book 'Surprised by Hope' (SPCK). He contrasts the biblical vision of the new heavens and the new earth with the American fundamentalist myth of 'The Rapture' of the 'Left Behind' series of novels and films.

The interview was in Auckland Castle, County Durham and the video was put on the Think Christian site on 3 March 2008.

Any comments?

I was raised with the 'American fundamentalist' myth, which as far as I know owes its dispensational framework to someone on this side of the pond by the name of J. N. Darby.  We as missionaries in Mexico even inflicted the myth on unsuspecting villagers via some bizarre films called 'Thief in the Night', in which suburbanites in Iowa get 'raptured' secretly just before a 7-year Great Tribulation.  I was too young to know whether the viewers took it as anything more than a piece of science fiction. 

In all fairness, I think it needs to be pointed out that, according to that scheme, after the 'rapture', which is followed by seven years up in heaven (if you were saved you were spared the Tribulation), believers get to come back to earth to reign with Christ for 1,000 years.  So earth isn't exactly scrapped and thrown into the garbage heap.  To be sure, there were (and are) notions here and there that the life to come is non-physical, but the sheer idea that we saints were coming back to earth to reign for the millenium certainly impressed on me some sort of idea that the world was good, and that to enjoy the earth (at least for that period) I was going to need my body.  From there the hope was in heaven and earth made new, so even then creation was seen as good. 

So I'm not convinced that Tom Wright is saying anything especially new, even if it's timely, and right on, to the extent that we're often inclined to think of resurrection (and ascension!) in purely spiritual terms, and of time/matter as something ultimately to free ourselves from. 

Maybe what I'm trying to say is this: it's easy to pick on 'American fundamentalists'.  What happens when Tom Wright's message gets garbled as it is popularized and dumbed down, so that Jesus' 'return' comes to mean that he will one day emerge from among us, i.e. 'from below', or that the 'new earth' will be so continuous with this one that there will be no cataclysmic end of history as we know it (enter some recycled view of human progress).  Such an interpreation wouldn't be out of the question, and could actually be made to sound quite sophisticated. 

Steve Griffin

No, I'm sure Tom Wright isn't saying anything new (in this report anyway) but what's important is that it's stuff that needs to be re-stated from time to time.

For instance, I know of various "new" churches in this country who have uncritically adopted American-written doctrinal bases that contain all this pre-mill stuff. It has a bearing on the way Christians appoach so many issues: ecology, Israel-Palestine just to name a couple.

But for me the most important implication is that if it's Christ's intention to return, set up a temporal kingdom, re-institute sacrifice etc, then what is the meaning of the Cross and resurrection?

John,

By 'all this premill stuff' I take it you mean dispensationalist premill stuff, because there's another, ancient/historic type of premillennialism that has a lot of integrity, doesn't expect Jesus to reinstitute temple sacrifices, yet lends theological significance to national israel in a way that replacement theology and/or Augustinian amillennialism doesn't (as far as I can tell).  There are consequences for the political meaning of Christianity either way, and we need more reflection on all of this I think.  Tom Wright is right to get it back on the agenda. 

Thanks for the discussion.

Steve

Does anyone know what Tom Wright makes of 2 Peter 3:10-13?

for what it's worth, here's what i make of 1 peter. jesus, and those who followed for a century or so, lived in an age of apocalyptic belief. we don't.

I wonder what insight we have regarding things to come that Jesus didn't have, Liddon.  Thanks for your input. 

I think David's question is a good one.  I see that Tom Wright rejects panentheism in Simply Christian, and so presumably also the process-type of approach to Jesus' coming in glory.  On the other hand, he stresses Jesus' presence in the here and now, and pictures his coming as from behind a veil, after which creation will be renewed, the dead raised, etc.  In The Meaning of Jesus he rejects the image of Jesus coming 'as an invasion from outside', and prefers 'Jesus' royal presence within God's new creation'. 

I think this is all very helpful in stressing continuity between this world and the next, and the need to be proper stewards of creation.  But I'm also guided by theological readings (and I confess I don't know NTW's serious works) that stress Jesus' absence (take D. Farrow's Ascension and Ecclesia), and seek to understand presence within that framework.  That's why I'm not sure what Tom Wright means when he says that one day Jesus will be personally present.  Is he not already, by his Spirit? 

I guess it really does come down to a difference in thinking of the manner of Jesus' presence in the here and now, as we find out when we study Wright's eucharistic theology.  Given Jesus' real absence as a first principle, I think his final return must be exactly that, and must be cataclysmic, as reflected in 2 Peter 3.  The fact that a Marcus Borg can't 'imagine' that kind of return shouldn't trouble us too much, because our imagination can only take us so far.  The implications of the alternative -- Jesus will emerge/appear 'from below', anti-cataclysmically -- would seem to be that we'll need someone to inform us that he has come back, say in Jerusalem.

Or maybe in Davao City, in the Philippines, where a certain Pastor Quiboloy says that he is God's Son, since Jesus ascended not to the Father, but as the Father, and so needed a body to inhabit on earth.  He just happens to have picked Apollo Quiboloy.

and thank you for your question, steve. how about the fact that we know something about the nature of the universe and that we understand the origins of the texts in the old testament? jesus was ignorant of both of these, i think we can agree.

Steve.

Just to confirm ... "pre-mill stuff" is my shorthand for the Darby-Scofield system. One of the editions of Scofield says the offer of the kingdom, having been rejected by the Jews of Jesus' day, meant it was postponed. Ergo ... the church isn't part of God's original plan.

I agree, Liddon, that through his 'self-emptying' Jesus learned as any other human being.  But he also learned what the Father revealed to him, whether directly, or instrumentally, as he heard and discussed Scripture in the synagogue, 'as was his custom'.  That would have included insight into things yet to come.  Can we agree that what he taught his disciples in this regard (and of course in any other) was not simply conditioned by his time/culture? 

_Can we agree that what he taught his disciples in this regard (and of course in any other) was not simply conditioned by his time/culture?_

No, I won't. Any insights that move a culture on have to be found from within it, and from it mixing with others when that happens.

'Any insights that move a culture on have to be found from within it, and from it mixing with others when that happens'.

I didn't expect you to agree, Adrian (although if it would be great, and a blessing to many, if you did).  I know we've tossed this ball back and forth before, but I still have to ask: To which culture, or mix of cultures, is your insight limited?