Renowned New Testament scholar N.T. Wright has spent decades challenging what he sees as one of the most persistent misconceptions in Western Christianity: our understanding of heaven and our ultimate destiny. In his latest work, "God's Homecoming: The Forgotten Promise of Future Renewal," Wright argues that the Church has fundamentally misunderstood the direction of God's redemptive plan. Rather than us going up to heaven, Wright insists, the biblical vision is of God coming down to us.
The Problem with Our Current Vision
According to Wright, most Western Christians have absorbed a Greek philosophical view of the afterlife rather than the Hebrew biblical vision. This leads to what he calls two fundamental errors that distort our understanding of Christian hope and mission.
The first error is the belief that Jesus will return primarily "to take people away" to heaven - what Wright describes as an "emergency extraction" model of salvation. This view imagines that the material world is ultimately doomed and that salvation means escaping from it to a purely spiritual realm.
The second error treats Jesus' lordship as something that won't be fully realized until His second coming. This perspective suggests that Jesus "hasn't really come home" yet and that His kingdom is entirely future rather than a present reality breaking into our world.
"The biblical vision is not about evacuation from this world, but about the renewal and transformation of this world," Wright explains. "God's plan has always been about heaven coming to earth, not earth going to heaven."
Wright argues that these misconceptions have practical consequences for how Christians live and understand their mission. If the goal is simply to get to heaven when we die, then engagement with earthly concerns - justice, creation care, cultural transformation - becomes secondary at best.
Recovering the Biblical Vision
Wright's corrective draws heavily from the book of Revelation, particularly the vision in chapters 21-22 of the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven to earth. This image, he argues, represents the true climax of the biblical story: not the removal of God's people from creation, but the joining of heaven and earth in a renewed cosmos.
This vision includes several key elements that Wright believes the Western Church has forgotten or minimized:
Bodily Resurrection: Rather than the soul's escape to heaven, Christian hope centers on the resurrection of the body and life in a renewed physical creation. This makes our current bodily existence significant rather than something to be escaped.
Cosmic Renewal: God's plan includes the transformation of all creation, not just the salvation of individual souls. This means Christians should care about environmental stewardship, social justice, and cultural engagement as aspects of participating in God's renewal project.
Present Kingdom: Jesus' resurrection and ascension mean that His kingdom has already begun, not that it's entirely future. Christians are called to live now as citizens of this kingdom, working to manifest its values in the present world.
The Intermediate State vs. Final Hope
Wright is careful to distinguish between what happens immediately after death (the intermediate state) and the ultimate Christian hope (resurrection and new creation). He doesn't deny that believers who die are "with the Lord" in some sense, as Paul describes in Philippians 1:23. However, he argues that this intermediate state is not the final goal of Christian hope.
"Being with Jesus after death is wonderful," Wright acknowledges, "but it's not the end of the story. The end of the story is resurrection life in God's renewed creation, with heaven and earth joined together in ways we can barely imagine."
This distinction helps address common concerns about Wright's teaching. He's not denying the reality of life after death or the believer's immediate hope in Christ. Rather, he's insisting that this intermediate state points toward something even greater: the resurrection and the renewal of all things.
Historical Roots of the Problem
How did Western Christianity develop what Wright sees as a distorted view of heaven? The roots go back centuries to the influence of Platonic philosophy, which emphasized the superiority of the spiritual over the material and the soul over the body.
This Greek philosophical framework gradually influenced Christian thinking, leading to an emphasis on the soul's escape from the material world rather than the Hebrew vision of God's presence filling and transforming the physical creation. Medieval Christianity, while maintaining important biblical elements, often reflected this Platonic influence in its understanding of the afterlife.
The Protestant Reformation recovered many biblical insights but didn't fully address this particular misconception. Even evangelical Christianity, with its strong emphasis on biblical authority, often unconsciously absorbed Greek philosophical assumptions about the nature of salvation and eternal life.
Implications for Christian Living
If Wright is correct about the biblical vision, what does this mean for how Christians should live and think about their faith? Several practical implications emerge:
Engagement vs. Escapism: Rather than viewing earthly concerns as distractions from spiritual focus, Christians should see engagement with justice, beauty, relationships, and creation care as aspects of participating in God's kingdom work.
Hope for Creation: Environmental stewardship becomes not just a matter of good citizenship but a theological imperative rooted in God's plan to renew rather than destroy the created order.
Present Kingdom Living: Christians are called to live now according to the values of God's kingdom, working for justice, peace, and healing in anticipation of the full manifestation of that kingdom.
Bodily Significance: Physical life, including sexuality, work, art, and material existence, has eternal significance rather than being merely temporary necessities to endure before spiritual escape.
Addressing Common Concerns
Wright's teaching has generated considerable discussion and some criticism within evangelical circles. Critics worry that emphasizing earthly engagement might diminish the urgency of evangelism or the importance of personal salvation.
Wright responds that his vision actually enhances rather than diminishes these concerns. If God's plan is to renew the entire creation, then sharing the gospel becomes even more urgent - not just to rescue souls from hell, but to invite people to participate in God's transformative work in the world.
Similarly, Wright argues that personal salvation becomes more significant, not less, when understood within the context of God's cosmic renewal project. Individual transformation is important precisely because transformed people are called to be agents of God's renewal in the world.
The Early Church's Understanding
Wright frequently points to the early church's understanding of resurrection as evidence for his interpretation. The first Christians' emphasis on bodily resurrection was revolutionary in their cultural context, where Greek and Roman philosophy generally viewed the body as a prison for the soul.
The Christian insistence on resurrection, Wright argues, demonstrated their belief that God's plan involved the transformation rather than the abandonment of material creation. This understanding motivated their engagement with social issues and their hope for justice and renewal in this world.
Worship and Liturgy
Wright's vision also has implications for Christian worship and liturgical practice. Rather than focusing primarily on escape from this world, worship should celebrate God's presence and work in creation while anticipating the full manifestation of His kingdom.
This doesn't mean abandoning traditional elements of worship, but it might mean recovering aspects of the biblical vision that have been minimized in Western Christianity. Prayers for justice, creation care, and cultural transformation become not optional additions but essential expressions of Christian hope.
A Vision Worth Recovering
Whether or not one accepts all aspects of Wright's interpretation, his work challenges Christians to examine their fundamental assumptions about salvation, eternity, and the purpose of creation. If the biblical vision is indeed about God's homecoming to earth rather than our evacuation to heaven, it dramatically reshapes how we understand our calling as Christians.
This vision offers hope not just for individual believers but for the entire creation - hope that suffering will be healed, injustice will be overcome, and beauty will be restored in ways that surpass our current experience. It's a vision that calls Christians to engagement rather than escapism, to transformation rather than mere endurance.
As Wright concludes his latest work, "God's homecoming is not just future promise but present reality beginning to break into our world wherever people align themselves with Jesus' kingdom. The question is whether we'll join the homecoming or continue waiting for evacuation."
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