In Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, N. T. Wright challenges us to rethink our notions of heaven and the implications of the doctrine of heaven for the entire Christian faith.
In Chapter Eight Wright takes up the issue of the Second Coming. He writes that “Jesus’s appearing will be, for those of us who have known and loved him here, like meeting face-to-face someone we have only known by letter, telephone, or perhaps e-mail.”
Wright tackles two issues: 1) that Jesus will come again, and 2) that Jesus will come as judge (this issue is taken up in Chapter 9). Regarding the former, Wright proposes that when Jesus spoke of “the son of man coming on the clouds” this was not a reference to Jesus’ second coming, but to his first coming. Jesus was using Dan. 7 to refer to the vindication he would receive after the suffering of the crucifixion. Thus, this had nothing to do with the Second Coming. In addition, when Jesus told the parable of a king/master who goes away and then returns, it was a parable about the time of the exile and God returning to Israel. It was not about Jesus’ Second Coming. Instead, it was ultimately about Jesus’ first coming and how Jesus’ ministry was the fulfillment of God’s ultimate return to Israel.
It is Paul’s letters where we find incontrovertible texts regarding Jesus’ return. Paul often used the word “parousia” which Wright believes ought to be translated not “coming” but “presence.” The contrast is not “leaving” and “coming” but “presence” and “absence.” Wright shows that “parousia” was used in the Greco-Roman world to 1) speak of the supernatural presence of a god (in spirit) and 2) the visit of a king/emperor to a colony or province. Thus, when used of Jesus, “parousia” carried the idea that now Jesus is “near in spirit but absent in body” but that “one day he would be present in body” as well as in spirit. It also carried the idea that Jesus, the absent but ruling emperor, will one day appear and rule in person.
Wright spends considerable space explaining 1 Thess. 4:16-17 and arguing that the scene is not so much Christians leaving the earth at the resurrection and then going to live with Jesus in some other distant locale. Instead, the scene is one of Christians being raised from the dead, meeting Jesus in the air, and then escorting Jesus back to earth as he reigns on a new heaven/new earth (in the same way that the citizens of a colony would meet a visiting emperor at some distance from the city and then escort him back into the city). “The point is that, having gone out to meet their returning Lord, they will escort him royally into his domain, that is, back to the place they have come from.”
