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 Nine Wright addresses Jesus, the Coming Judge. This is the second of a two-chapter examination of the Second Coming. Wright argues that judgment as it relates to the Second Coming is a good thing: “The word judgmentcarries negative overtones for a good many people in our liberal and postliberal world. We need to remind ourselves that throughout the Bible, not least in the Psalms, God’s coming judgment is a good thing, something to be celebrated, longed for, yearned over…In a world of systematic injustice, bullying, violence, arrogance, and oppression, the thought that there might come a day when the wicked are firmly put in their place and the poor and weak are given their due is the best news there can be.”
Wright focuses on three elements of judgment and the Second Coming:
- Judgment and Second Coming remind us that Jesus stands apart from the church and the world even while being present in spirit. He will one day confront the world (and the church) in person.
- Unlike Stoic, Platonic, Hindu, and Buddhist worldviews, the judgment and Second Coming show the Christian worldview as one in which there is not an endless cycle or meaningless repetition but one in which there is a beginning, middle, and definite end to the story.
- In between scension and parousia the church is set free “both from the self-driven energy that imagines it has to build God’s kingdom all by itself and from the despair that supposes it can’t do anything until Jesus comes again.”
