According to the Bible, good Christians do *not* go to heaven! Instead, there’s something much better in store for us. Find out what through my book review of Wright’s The Day the Revolution Began.
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N.T. Wright, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion (New York: HarperOne, 2016), pp. 440. (Buy the book here)
At first, I wasn’t going to buy and read this book. After all, I already own (and have read) 11 N.T. Wright books. But then I read an interview Wright did with Christianity Today about this book.
In the interview, Wright stated that modern Christians have:
- Platonized our Eschatology (End Time Stuff) – “We have swapped our biblical heritage of new heavens and new earth for a form of Platonism (‘going to heaven’—which you find in the first century in Plutarch, not in Paul!).”
- Moralized our Anthropology (People Stuff) – “We have swapped the biblical vocation of humans (to be ‘a kingdom and priests’) for a moral contract in which the most important thing is whether or not we’ve passed the moral exam, and if we haven’t what can be done about it.”
- Paganized our Soteriology (Salvation Stuff) – “We have therefore swapped the rich biblical account of what Jesus’ death achieved for a slimmed-down version which can easily be heard to say that an angry God took out his bad temper on his own Son . . . which is the sort of thing a pagan religion might say.”
OK, that got me. I had to read more. So off I went and bought the book.
The typical view of medieval and modern Christianity – called the “works contract” by Wright – is that people have failed the moral exam (i.e. we are bad people) thus making God angry, and we need to be punished for it. But, somehow Jesus got in the way and took our punishment for us. Now we can sit back, believe in Jesus, and go to a disembodied heaven when we die (pg. 38).
Absolutely not, says Wright. In fact, that view isn’t biblical at all!
What Wright does is place Jesus and the cross back into the overall Old Testament story.
In sum, it goes like this:
Humans had a dual vocation. We were to be a “royal priesthood.” Our priestly vocation was to sum up creation’s praises and reflect it back to God. (For Orthodox Christians, this is why Liturgy is so important. In fact, we say at every Liturgy, “Offering Your own from Your own, on behalf of all and for all.”) Our royal vocation was to reflect God’s kingly rule into the world – be good stewards of earth. All this, says Wright, is what it means to be created in the “image” (image-bearers) of God
But, we rejected this vocation. Instead, we “…turned away from the living God to worship idols; …this results in giving to idols – ‘forces’ within creation – a power over humans and the world that was rightfully that of genuine humans; and …this leads to a slavery, which is ultimately the rule of death itself…” (pg. 86).
In Orthodox lingo, we would say we are enslaved to the “Passions” (money, sex, power itself), which are our modern idols. This is our sin: “…worshipping and serving anything in the place of the one true God” (pg. 102). And this is what throws us off track and into exile and death.
“…Paul saw Israel’s history standing under the rubric of Deuteronomy 26-32. The covenant always envisaged blessings and curses, and the curses, the result of disobedience, ended in exile. …Only after that would there come a great divine act of liberation and transformation through which the covenant would be renewed. Only then would the divine plan for the whole creation – the covenant plan through Israel for the world – be put into effect.” (pg. 281)
After the exile from Eden, God starts to put things right again starting with Abraham. “God promised Abraham to save the world through Israel…” (pg. 347). But things go wrong. Israel itself falls from grace and gets exiled (Egypt, then Assyria and Babylon, and then occupation by Persia and Rome).
At one point, in comes the Mosaic Law, but it doesn’t function as you think. Using St. Paul’s letters, Wright argues that, “The law was given, [Paul] argues boldly, in order to draw ‘Sin’ on to one point, so that it could be condemned there once and for all. The story of ‘Israel under the Torah’ was designed, he says, in order to accumulate sin, to heap it up into one place – and simultaneously to lead to Israel’s representative, the Messiah.” (pg. 282)
With sin now “accumulated” in one place, it can be dealt with by the Messiah, who guides us out of exile through a new “exodus.” Wright says it’s no accident that the Messiah’s death takes place during Passover.
On the cross, Jesus had a showdown with the evil powers. He was like a soldier going into battle – but the way he fights back is surprising. He lets them do their worst to him, and, in the end, Jesus comes up victorious. We Orthodox would say that the Messiah “trampled down death by death” and frees us from our idolatry. This is Pascha or, as they say in English, a new and holy Passover.
On the cross, Jesus deals with sin because that’s what sent us into exile and death. By dealing with sin, he frees us to again be covenant people and regain our true vocation: the royal priesthood.
On the cross, Jesus declares God to be King and we enter into the Promised Land – new creation.
“To put it another way, Paul has told the long, sad story [in Romans] of Israel and arrived at last at the ‘slavery’ of ‘exile’ as in Deuteronomy 28. Israel needed a fresh start, such as described in Deuteronomy 30, which Paul quotes in exactly this sense in Romans 10. But for that, as the prophets insisted, Israel’s sins needed to be dealt with so that ‘exile’ could be undone. Paul has now shown, through the complex but carefully consistent narrative he has told, how this joins up with the larger expectation of the ‘new Exodus.’ At the heart of this conjoined double story, he has told the story of the Messiah, the one who represents Israel and who therefore becomes the ‘place’ where Sin does its worst. …. It gathered itself together and finally unleashed its full fury upon him. That is the story the gospels were telling.” (pg. 288)
But Christ wins, so all this, “…leads to the ultimate new creation, when the present creation, groaning in travail, will be set free from its slavery to corruption and decay, ‘to enjoy the freedom that comes when God’s children are glorified. That is the ultimate ‘glory,’ the ‘royal’ role for which humans were made and for which…they are redeemed. … The work of the cross is not designed to rescue humans from creation, but to rescue them for creation.” (pg. 290)
So, returning to where we began – eschatology, anthropology, and soteriology – Wright argues the biblical vision is like this:
- Eschatology – We don’t “go to heaven when we die,” but the cross has ushered in “new creation.” This includes physical bodily resurrection (transformed, glorified bodies) and the realization of a “new heaven” and “new earth” (Revelation 21).
- Anthropology – Life isn’t just a moral contract with God. We were created to be a royal priesthood (I Peter 2:9), to sum-up creation’s praises and reflect God’s rule into the world. Our sin was one of idolatry – handing over our authority over creation to the powers of creation. Christ destroys these powers so that we are free to once again pick up our true vocation.
- Soteriology – Christ’s death doesn’t appease an angry God (that’s what pagan sacrifices did) so we can “go to heaven.” Instead, he “tramples down death by death” so that we can be a part of God’s new age, which was launched when Jesus rose from the dead and awaits it’s final completion when he returns. Until then, Christians are called to bring God’s redeeming love into the world. This, now, is our mission.
Wright argues all of this very brilliantly.
After laying all this out, he delves into the four gospels, the letters of Paul (including Romans), and he explains how Scripture expounds all this. Yes, he says, this is the Biblical understanding of Jesus and the cross.
In the last section, Wright brings it all home and shows how this directly impacts our lives in the here and now.
So, I highly recommend this book. In many ways, I found it embodies the title of this blog: Rediscovering Christianity!
P.S. Come this Sunday and sum up creation’s praises and be transformed through the Eucharist so you can reflect God’s rule into the world!
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