Professor Wright has given us all a precious gift by “reminding” us and, more importantly, by explaining to us in persuasive detail that Jesus on Easter did not pass into some vague spiritual netherworld, but rather rose bodily from the dead. The resurrection, Dr. Wright correctly proclaims, represents the defeat of death and the inauguration of a new and transformed cosmos, both of heaven and earth, in which those who believe in him, each of us, will likewise be resurrected in a transformed and incorruptible body through the inworking of God’s Spirit. That is the surprising hope of the Resurrection. It is not the Platonic notion of souls mercifully freed from the corruption of the body quietly slipping away into some disembodied bliss; nor is it the common modern notion of many Christians that when we die, we go to heaven. Both those visions are simply another form of death. They represent death in a different set of clothes. The Resurrection defeats death and inaugurates a reworked, renewed and transformed creation, a creation which includes both heaven and earth and all those who trust in Christ. It is not God giving up on his once “good” creation, but rather God bestowing upon this broken and corrupt world, that is, broken and corrupted by our sinful behavior, a fundamental makeover, a makeover that began with Jesus rising bodily from the dead.
Professor Wright’s other main point is that we believers are not mere bystanders in this transformed creation but, like the Apostle Paul, it is our job to joyfully build up the Kingdom of God inaugurated by Christ in the present world in anticipation of this final reckoning when God will set everything right, both in heaven and on earth. Professor Wright makes the incisive and stunning point that everything that we do, or engage with, here on earth that is touched by the Spirit, God will raise up and transform in this revitalized creation. Here we can look to Jesus’s own words as recorded in John 6:37 and 39. Unfortunately, most translations of these passages fail fully to reflect the grand nature of Jesus’s promise, since they imply that Jesus is only referring here to human beings. See, for instance, the NIV version of verse 37: “All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.” The Greek, however, does not read “all those,” but rather “everything”: Πᾶν ὃ δίδωσίν μοι ὁ πατὴρ πρὸς ἐμὲ ἥξει. The phrase Πᾶν ὃ is decidedly in the neuter form. John 6:39 is even more blunt in this regard: τοῦτο δέ ἐστιν τὸ θέλημα τοῦ πέμψαντός με, ἵνα πᾶν ὃ δέδωκέν μοι μὴ ἀπολέσω ἐξ αὐτοῦ ἀλλὰ ἀναστήσω αὐτὸ [ἐν] τῇ ἐσχάτῃ ἡμέρᾳ. The New American Standard Bible gets it right: “And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that of everything that He has given Me I will lose nothing, but will raise it up on the last day.” Compare the unfortunate NIV translation of this same verse: “And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.”
In any case, what does this strange idea of Christ raising up on the last day everything given to him by the Father mean for us believers in “practical” terms? It means, for instance, that the beloved old, chipped, and dented fiddle that you play Christmas Carols on for a few nights each December in your room when no one else is around to listen, and which you do for your own enjoyment since you loved these carols as a child when they were sung in church, that very broken down fiddle God will raise up renewed and transformed when he reworks and transforms the old creation into the new heaven and earth. Whether you will be able to play the violin any better, I cannot say, but at least you’ll have plenty of time to learn, perhaps with angels as your teachers. It means that the little garden the elderly lady next door tended with such care every Sunday after returning home from church will likewise be transformed into a paradise of vegetation for her and others to enjoy in the new heaven and the new earth. You get the point. Everything you do in this life in God’s name does not end here, but will be given new and incorruptible materiality in the restored heaven and earth. That is why what we do here in the present broken world, as Dr. Wright perceptibly observes, no matter how humble the labor, should be done joyfully, because it is indeed a joyful work, a joyful labor that will be fully revealed in all its glory when God makes everything new and sets everything right.
I could and probably should stop here, but I have a further point or two to make, modest points perhaps, but something that I believe completes the joyous picture Dr. Wright has painted for us. As I read the book it struck me that the good Professor sold himself and the themes that he so skillfully developed just a little short. The hope that he presents to us is even grander than the one he lays out. Let me explain.
This issue first caught my attention when on page 41, when referring to the repentant thief on the Cross (Luke 23:39-43), he writes: “When Jesus tells the brigand that he will join him in paradise that very day, paradise clearly cannot be their ultimate destination, as Luke’s next chapter makes clear [where Luke describes the women from Galilee finding the empty tomb, the walk to Emmaus, the appearance to the disciples, and the ascension of Jesus]. Paradise is, rather, the blissful garden where God’s people rest prior to the resurrection.” The Professor goes on to note that when “Paul says that his desire is to ‘depart and be with Christ, which is far better’ [Phil. 1:23], he is indeed thinking of a blissful life with the Lord immediately after death, but this is only the prelude to the resurrection itself.”
Dr. Wright further develops this notion of a temporary resting place later in the book, page 150:
“What does Jesus mean when he declares that there are ‘many dwelling places’ in the father’s house (John 14:2)? This has regularly been taken, not least when used in the context of bereavement, to mean that the dead (or at least dead Christians) will simply go to heaven permanently rather than being raised again subsequently to new bodily life. But the word for ‘dwelling places’ here, monai, is regularly used in ancient Greek not for a final resting place but for a temporary halt on a journey that will take you somewhere else in the long run.”
One might object here that the Professor displays a somewhat restricted view of God’s reworked cosmos, which is after all, we can assume, a very big place, a place that the resurrected might like to explore at their leisure. In other words, what Jesus means by a dwelling place may denote something far grander and more “spacious,” and more eternal, than what we in our broken world would normally imagine. Indeed, the fluidity in God’s transformed world between temporary and permanent lodgings may be far more advanced and mobile than that which exists even in our age of relatively inexpensive and abundant air and other modes of travel.
Dr. Wright goes on to describe (page 150) this “paradise” as “not a final destination but the blissful garden, the parkland of rest and tranquility, where the dead are refreshed as they await the dawn of the new day.” This lovely, at least on its surface, description, however, strikes me as distressingly close to the Platonic notion of the blissfully disembodied state where the spirits slip away after their bodies die, a notion of resurrection which the Professor throughout his book has taken great pains to discredit. Dr. Wright then goes on to observe that Jesus did not rise on Good Friday but rather on Easter, and that this delay of a couple days somehow makes a great difference to where the thief, who in a way is a precursor for all of us believing sinners, will end up immediately following his death.
Another, and perhaps more potent, objection to the Professor’s vision of our immediate post-death landing place comes quickly to mind. If our thief is required to spend time in this “parkland of rest and tranquility,” it may be a rather extended sentence if I might use that rather provocative word. Earlier, on page 115, Dr. Wright notes that “when the Bible speaks of heaven and earth it is not talking about two localities related to each other within the same space-time continuum or about a nonphysical world contrasted with a physical one but about two different kinds of what we call space, two different kinds of what we call matter, and also quite possibly (though this does not necessarily follow from the other two) two different kinds of what we call time.” When theologians start mentioning a space-time continuum in such detail, I sit up and take notice. In any event, our repentant thief, if Professor Wright is correct, is still to this day apparently on the old system of time, our system of time, even though he is no longer in his old body, and not yet in his new one, and still awaiting his resurrection into a new, incorruptible body. That is a long time to spend in one place, even if it is a “parkland of rest and tranquility,” and even if he is “with Christ” in some sense. How much rest does a disembodied spirit need, and wouldn’t his time with Christ be much more joyful and productive if he were in his new body, his resurrected body?
More to the point, however, while our friend the thief is lounging about in this blissful garden, he is not by definition contributing to the new reworked cosmos, which, as we have noted, includes not only earth, but heaven too. See Rev. 21:1(NIV): “Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth,’ for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.” This period of prolonged inactivity is in stark contrast with what we in this present world are expected to do in response to Christ’s resurrection, which Dr. Wright sets forth in some detail with reference to Paul’s stated hope for his Corinthian readers, page 192: “Therefore, since you have such a great hope, sit back and relax because you know God’s got a great future in store for you? No. Instead, he [Paul in 1 Cor. 15:58] says, ‘Therefore, my beloved ones, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.’…What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it.”
But here you might object that our thief, and we too when we get there, no longer have a body, and we are no longer on the earth anyway, so what can we do to advance God’s kingdom? The answer is that there is plenty of work to be done in heaven, as it too will be remade in God’s renewal of his creation. Why then would Christ not resurrect our bodies immediately upon death, or maybe a few days after (remember our friend the thief), so that we can get to work on our heavenly tasks? I am not being facetious here. Compare Palm 113: 5-6 (NIV): “Who is like the LORD our God, the One who sits enthroned on high, who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth?” It seems as if the heavens can use some hardy, resurrected human bodies to prepare the way for their eventual renewal, just as the earth requires such efforts from us in the here and now. Perhaps that is exactly what Christ has already done for those of his followers who have passed on in the last couple thousand years. See Matt. 24:31 (NIV), where in Christ’s description of the Second Coming, we read this: “And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.” This suggests the notion of many active, resurrected bodies exploring the heavens, not mere spirits residing for a time in some “blissful garden.” This is also what Paul is referring to in 1 Thess. 4:16 in his description of Christ’s coming when he notes that “the dead in Christ will rise first,” (NIV). The “dead in Christ” are those who have physically died in their earthly bodies but who now occupy “God’s space” in heaven. As Professor Wright explains on page 135 (more fully discussed below): “Of course, when he ‘appears’ he will be ‘present.’ But the point of stressing ‘appearing ‘ here is that, though in one sense it will seem to us that he is ‘coming,’ he will in fact be ‘appearing’ right where he presently is, not a long way away with our own space-time world but in his own world, God’s world, the world we call heaven.” As Christ thus “appears,” so also will “his elect” gathered “from one end of the heavens to the other.”
Not only is this period of tranquil repose, as suggested by Professor Wright, a rather long time for our repentant thief to wait around before receiving his new body, but under this rather complicated view of eschatology the final judgment awaits him as well. Even if he is sure that the verdict in his case will be a favorable one, not because of his own doing, of course, but because of Christ’s saving work on his behalf, still this final tribunal does not seem like a desirable place to spend even a brief afternoon in its rather intimidating confines. See Rev. 20:14-15 (NIV): “Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.” Note that this is where the devil and his angels are already raging in bitter fury and torment, Rev. 20:10 (NIV): “And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.”
This does not present a pleasant picture, certainly not the kind of image one might expect to see on one’s blissful heavenly journey. Why, then, does Professor Wright argue that dead believers cannot immediately upon the death of their earthly bodies receive their final, eternal bodies? He maintains that it can only happen upon the completion of the age when the transformed heaven and earth are reunited at the second coming, page 162: “The new is the transformation, not merely the replacement, of the old. And since the old is quite obviously not yet transformed, the resurrection, its central feature, cannot yet have happened. Time matters; it was part of the original good creation.” Indeed, time does matter, and one might suppose that Christ would not want his redeemed followers wasting it in some garden of bliss, even if it is a “paradise.”
I should note here that there is substantial disagreement among scholars, which Professor Wright duly notes in his book on page 152, fn. 21, over when the redeemed saints “put on” their heavenly bodies, that is, their resurrected, bodies. See, for example, II Corinthians 1-7: Volume 1, ICC, Thrall, Margaret, T&T Clark, (2005) 391: “In Phil. 1.23, moreover, departure from this life appears to be followed immediately by existence with Christ. Whether Paul thought of this form of existence as bodiless, or whether he supposed that the believer would be clothed with the resurrection body is a further debatable question.” Compare World Biblical Commentary, Volume 49, 2 Corinthians, Martin, Ralph P., Word Books Publisher, Waco Texas (1986) 97: “We do not know for sure what was Paul’s reason for including 5:2-4 in the epistle. Is Paul speaking of the Christian taking on the spiritual body at death or at the Parousia? Or does the Christan ‘already’ have this body? Furthermore, does the idea behind ‘being naked’ suggest an intermediate state (the period between the death of a Christian and the putting on of the spiritual body at Parousia) or does this suggest the concept of judgment as depicted in the Old Testament? There is no consensus as to the purpose for Paul’s writing of 5:2-4….”
What support does Professor Wright offer for the notion that the dead must wait for the second coming and the full restoration of creation before they can receive their resurrected bodies? On page 162, he cites Rev. 6:9-11, which upon the opening of the fifth seal describes those martyred because of their testimony for the word of God crying out for justice on the earth. The passage goes on to relate how they are given white robes and told to wait a little while until the martyrdom of their fellow saints is complete. Nowhere do we read that they are disembodied. Indeed, later in Rev. 7:9-17, we read of the incalculable multitude from every nation standing before the throne in white robes praising God, who are described as those who have come out of the great tribulation and washed their robes in the blood of the lamb. While Rev. 6:9 describes the martyrs referred to there as τὰς ψυχὰς, which some might translate as “souls,” implying disembodied beings, a glance at A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. By W. Bauer. Trans. and rev. by W.F. Arndt, F.W. Gingrich, and F.W Danker. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, (1979), 893 reveals that “it is often impossible to draw hard and fast lines between the meanings of this many-sided word.” According to this renowned lexical source, the word’s primary definition is, nonetheless, life in its “external, physical aspects.”
Professor Wright also cites for support 2 Cor. 5:10. It should be noted here that if the majority view of this passage is correct, the good Professor might have a strong point. However, as this article demonstrates (you can find this full exegetical article here), the majority rendering of this passage is profoundly incorrect both grammatically and conceptually. Dr. Wright should not be faulted for failing to spot this problem, since all the leading commentators with one or two notable exceptions completely missed it as well. For a more general, and far less lengthy, discussion of this passage, see the introduction to the article (here), and the brief postscript (here), along with the various reader comments, which raise a number of interesting issues as well.
The correct view of 2 Cor. 5:10, and up until now at least the decidedly minority view, is that the final judgment of believers is a bodily judgment carried out by Christ in this earthly life, that is, in the here and now, and that upon the believer’s death, there is no more judgment in any comprehensive sense. The believer is saved by faith while his or her physical death represents (See Soma in Biblical Theology, with emphasis on Pauline Anthropology, Gundry, Robert H., Cambridge University Press (1976) 50) “the lingering effect of sin even in the believer. But it [the Soma] will also be resurrected. That is the ultimate end, a major proof of its worth and necessity to wholeness of human being, and the reason for its sanctification now.” Here lies a hint of what judgment before Christ means for the believer under 2 Cor. 5:10. It is the daily interaction between Christ and his followers, whether his followers are consciously aware of it or not, guiding them to a richer and more fulfilling, though perhaps at times uncomfortable and, for a short time, even painful (1 Peter 4:12-13 and 2 Cor. 4:17-18) existence in this world, and also preparing them and cleansing them for the world to come.
I pause here for a brief digression. Many of us are rather intimidated at the notion of judgment, especially divine judgment. That is why I found a passage from the Psalms rather interesting and comforting. It confirms my notion that the judgment of believers represents the daily interaction between us and Christ (though we are not always conscious of it) by which he enriches our lives and prepares us for eternity. I will quote first from the Septuagint (why I chose the ancient Greek text over modern translations will soon become apparent). Psalm 24: 9 LXX (Psalm 25:9 in the English translations) reads: ὁδηγήσει πραεῖς ἐν κρίσει, διδάξει πραεῖς ὁδοὺς αὐτοῦ. Here is a sampling of modern translations: (NIV) “He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way;” (NLT) “He leads the humble in doing right, teaching them his way;” and (ESV) “He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way.” Now, for a more literal translation, compare the KJV: “The meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way.”
The main difference that I see is that in the modern translations, God leads us in “doing right,” while in the KJV we read that God guides the meek “in judgment.” The message of both translation models is sound. God does indeed lead us believers in doing right and guides us in judgment. Indeed, how could God lead us in doing right without judgment? Judgment is how God distinguishes the paths we should take from those we should avoid. Thus, judgment and righteousness are inextricably linked. But here lies, I believe, the main lesson. God’s judgment of those who trust in him is about guidance and instruction in what God wants for us, both in this life and the next. It is not about condemnation or punishment. Therefore, when we read about the judgment of believers in scripture, for example in 2 Cor. 5:10, we should be glad that our God is a God of judgment, rather than a God who lets those who trust in him flounder about in their own flawed notions and devices.
Back to the main topic. It should be noted that Professor Wright correctly observes (page 154) that Paul’s “point is that we must all appear before the judgment seat of the Messiah’ (2 Corinthians 5:10), and for that we shall need bodies.” That is certainly true, and here on earth we have those bodies. We need not await our resurrected bodies for this judgment to take place. Indeed, there is a certain logic to the divine evaluation of Christ-followers taking place while the risen Lord may graciously interact with them in this life when they still enjoy the opportunity to alter their behavior, rather than waiting until after they have put off this “earthly tent” (2 Cor. 5:1) when repentance may no longer be available to them. Compare Revelation 2 and 3, where the risen Christ crisply pointed out some of the strengths and weaknesses of his followers among the various churches of that time, while in some cases urging them in no uncertain terms to promptly alter their conduct. See also A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle of St Paul to the Corinthians, The International Critical Commentary, Plummer, Alfred, Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark (1956), x1ii: “It may be said of his [Paul’s] theology generally, that there is no system in it….This is specially true of what is commonly spoken of as his ‘Eschatology.’…’Paul did not write de novissimis….One must be prepared for a surging hither and thither of great thoughts, feelings, and exultations….” Thus, when we read Paul’s thoughts on the resurrection and the final judgment, we should not read them narrowly as Professor Wright points out, but rather as signposts (page 132):
“We must remind ourselves yet once more that all Christian language about the future is a set of signposts pointing into a mist. Signposts don’t normally provide you with advance photographs of what you’ll find at the end of the road, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t pointing in the right direction. They are telling you the truth, the particular sort of truth that can be told about the future.”
Professor Wright is constantly citing as support for his views what the early Christians believed on various topics. Here, however, there is strong evidence that early Christians regarded judgment as a bodily process conducted here on the earth. See, for example, The Apostolic Fathers, Greek Texts and English Translations, edited and translated by Holmes, Michael W., Baker Academic (3rd ed) 2007, 2 Clement, 9, 148,150, where this unknown preacher in the first known, recorded Christian sermon outside the New Testament described God’s judgment as undertaken in the body, and provided to boot sound, concise theological justification for his views:
“And let none of you say that this flesh is not judged and does not rise again. 2 Think about this: In what state were you saved? In what state did you recover your sight, if it was not while you were in the flesh? 3 We must, therefore, guard the flesh as a temple of God. 4 For just as you were called in the flesh, so you will come in the flesh. 5 If Christ, the Lord who saved us, became flesh (even though he was originally spirit) and in that state called us, so also we will receive our reward in this flesh.”
However, Dr. Wright’s main supporting text for his notion of a delayed resurrection for Christ’s followers, and the one he cites first (page 162), is 1 Cor. 15:23 (NIV), where Paul directly addresses the timing of the resurrection of the body, that is, the phenomenon in which all those in Christ “will be made alive”: “But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him.” Here, it is useful to look at the Greek text, which provides: ἕκαστος δὲ ἐν τῷ ἰδίῳ τάγματι· ἀπαρχὴ Χριστός, ἔπειτα οἱ τοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐν τῇ παρουσίᾳ αὐτοῦ. The key word here is παρουσίᾳ. Professor Wright discusses this term at some length on pages 128 to 136 with reference to his views on the so-called Rapture. As he explains it, the term meant to ancient Greek readers either “presence” or “appearing or coming.” The dictionary appended to the UBS Greek text (UBS5) defines the term to mean “coming, arrival; presence” and notes that it springs from the root word εἰμί, that is, “I am.” Dr. Wright sums up his views regarding the scriptural use of the term in this way, page 135:
“Of course, when he ‘appears’ he will be ‘present.’ But the point of stressing ‘appearing ‘ here is that, though in one sense it will seem to us that he is ‘coming,’ he will in fact be ‘appearing’ right where he presently is, not a long way away with our own space-time world but in his own world, God’s world, the world we call heaven. …One day the two worlds will be integrated completely and be fully visible to one another, producing the transformation of which both Paul and John speak.”
Professor Wright thus concludes that it is highly doubtful that the resurrection of believers can happen immediately upon death for this reason, again quoting 1 Cor. 15:23 at page 162: “Paul says that if Christ is the first fruits, those who belong to him will be raised “at his coming” [that is, at his παρουσίᾳ], which clearly hasn’t happened yet.”
Here, I first want to make clear, absolutely clear in fact (with the same insistence that Dickens, for example, made clear early on in A Christmas Carol that Marley was dead, a fact of which there could be no doubt, as dead as a doornail), that I do not believe that the second coming has already happened. I am not a heretic. I am not a Preterist, partial or otherwise. My second point is that Christ’s words matter. Jesus, unlike those of us who claim to be his followers, was not given to loose talk. His words had and continue to have power. Compare John 6:63 (NIV): “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life.”
I now would like to direct the reader to the description of the transfiguration of Jesus as it is set out in Matthew 16:28-17:13. NO, this is not the beginning of some abstract, circuitous argument. This text is directly pertinent to the matter at issue. The passage starts with this stunning prediction by Jesus (NIV): “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” The Greek word here for “coming” is the participle of the word meaning “to come” or ἐρχόμενον. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, Metzger, Bruce M., United Bible Societies (Corrected Edition, 1975) p. 54, describes its use here as one of “concomitant circumstances (sociative ἐν)” with the following prepositional phrase, in other words the coming of Jesus “in his Kingdom,” ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ αὐτοῦ. Interestingly, ἐρχόμενον is the same Greek word that Jesus uses to describe his “coming,” in this case his second coming, in Matthew 24:30.
Immediately after Jesus alerts his disciples that they will soon see his “coming” (ἐρχόμενον) in his Kingdom, Matthew records Jesus’s transfiguration. Matthew 17:1-13. The transfiguration of Jesus is not his second coming, of course, but is it enough to trigger the precondition to the quickening (“all will be made alive;” in the Greek, ἐν τῷ Χριστῷ πάντες ζῳοποιηθήσονται) of believers set forth later by Paul in 1 Cor. 15:23, that is, “at his coming,” or at his παρουσίᾳ? In Professor Wright’s own words, page 135, we read that “though in one sense it will seem to us that he is ‘coming,’ he will in fact be ‘appearing’ right where he presently is, not a long way away with our own space-time world but in his own world, God’s world, the world we call heaven.” Again, in the Professor’s own words, page 135: “One day the two worlds will be integrated completely and be fully visible to one another, producing the transformation of which both Paul and John speak.”
Thus, we can conclude that on the mountain when Jesus was transfigured for this snippet of time, our time, the two worlds were completely integrated. The three disciples, all mortal inhabitants of this broken world, witnessed the event. Jesus, transfigured, carried on a conversation with Moses and Elijah, long dead but now very much alive and apparently quite well informed about the goings on in their former homeland. God, the Father, was present in “the cloud.” The disciples heard the divine voice coming from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”
The precondition of which the Professor speaks has thus already occurred in part, that is, the integration of the two worlds, human and divine, though it will only fully occur in all its glory when Christ comes again. It seems to me enough, however, to trigger the bodily resurrection of believers under Paul’s test set out in 1 Cor. 15:23, that is, “at his coming.” Jesus was effectively setting the stage for his disciples and other believers to rapidly follow him into “God’s space” as resurrected beings, rather than waiting around for the “end of the age.” The fact that this did not conform to the ancient Jewish belief in the general resurrection of all on the last day (see here in John 11:24 what Martha said to Jesus regarding her brother Lazarus (NIV), “‘Yes,’ Martha said, ‘he will rise when everyone else rises, at the last day'”) should not trouble us. It is an example of what the translators of the King James version of 2 Cor. 11:3 correctly described as “the simplicity that is in Christ,” which in Greek reads τῆς ἁπλότητος τῆς εἰς τὸν Χριστόν. Much to Martha’s delight and surprise, Jesus went ahead and raised up Lazarus with dispatch. In other words, Jesus’s response to Martha’s disbelief was uncomplicated, direct and immediate, just as it is and will be with his followers upon their physical death.
Here is what Professor Wright has to say about the miracle of transfiguration (page 234), this time from Mark’s account, Mark 9:1-13: “The resurrection completes the inauguration of God’s kingdom. In Mark’s perspective, it is at least part of what Jesus meant when he said that some standing with him would not taste death before they saw the kingdom of God come with power.” The other part of what Jesus meant is that the resurrection of his followers need not wait until the completion of the age when a reordered and renewed heaven and earth are reunited, but can proceed according to the pattern which Jesus himself established—resurrection occurring upon one’s physical death. Jesus is the “first fruit” of a bodily resurrection, and the rest of us follow him ἐν τῇ παρουσίᾳ αὐτοῦ, 1 Cor. 15:23, which for this purpose has already taken place in the transfiguration.
One other modest point. In Professor Wright’s brief and admittedly uncomfortable discussion of Hell, he postulates (page 182) that through the sin of idolatry we humans can become so de-humanized that we become creatures who after death, “by their own effective choice, [are] beings that once were human but now are not, creatures that have ceased to bear the divine image at all.” While idolatry is one of the many sins that we all commit, I believe it is important to point out that our behavior, no matter how wicked, does not deprive us of the possibility of redemption, forgiveness, and salvation. Compare Isaiah 64:6: “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.” The only thing that can do that is the final and complete refusal to recognize our need for a savior, that is, our need for Christ, no doubt the unforgivable sin. Compare John 3:18 (NIV): “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”
I will thus suggest a modest change to the timeline of resurrection proposed by Dr. Wright, page 151: “Resurrection [is] a way of talking about a new bodily life after whatever state of existence one might enter immediately upon death. It [is], in other words, life after life after death.” Rather, I would submit, resurrection is life after life, a fully transformed bodily existence in an ultimately fully transformed cosmos, a life in which we are saved by faith and all comprehensive judgment of our earthly behavior is mercifully behind us. As far as 1 Cor. 3:11-16 is concerned, where Paul discusses the survival of the believer’s earthly work on behalf of the Gospel, to the extent there is any, it strikes me that this limited evaluation hardly bears any resemblance to the far more gritty and comprehensive review of one’s daily behavior suggested by the language of judgment in 2 Cor. 5:10, whether one adopts the traditional translation or the alternative reading proposed here. Indeed, the Christ-follower in this limited evaluation of his or her efforts on behalf of the Gospel is saved in any event, but that believer’s works may not endure, that is, if they are “burned up.” 1 Cor. 3:15 (NIV).
Here, I will add perhaps another modest point. Professor Wright spends much of the first portion of his book lamenting the fact that Christians today lack a proper understanding of the weighty topic of “life after death,” and of the related issues of resurrection, judgment and the second coming, page 6:
“I am convinced that most people, including most practicing Christians, are muddled and misguided on this topic, and that this muddle produces quite serious mistakes in our thinking, our praying, our liturgies, our practice, and perhaps particularly our mission to the world. …Often people assume that Christians are simply committed to a belief in ‘life after death’ in the most general terms and have no idea how the more specific notions of resurrection, judgment, the second coming of Jesus, and so on fit together and make any sense—let alone how they relate to the urgent concerns of today’s real world.”
I could not agree more. Perhaps a partial cause for this confusion is the complicated eschatological construct that theologians and other scholars over the years have devised, no doubt with the best of intentions, about what happens to us when we die, and specifically the notion of judgment, and particularly with respect to the judgment of each person “according to what they had done” Rev. 20:13 (NIV). This intimidating and rather scary apocalyptic scene of judgment (generally referred to as the judgment before the Great White Throne) seems to remain a point of some concern even for believers to this day, even though we are constantly reassured that we are saved not by works, but by faith. Here again, I commend readers to the much more straightforward notion of divine judgment laid out in the full exegetical article on 2 Cor. 5:10 and accompanying notes referred to earlier. Just as a warning to those who are so inclined about what you are about to plunge into, this revised view of judgment is predicated on a correct reading of the difficult passage, both formally (that is, the grammar and syntax) and conceptually of 2 Cor. 5:10, specifically the subordinate clause, ἵνα κομίσηται ἕκαστος τὰ διὰ τοῦ σώματος πρὸς ἃ ἔπραξεν.
As far as non-believers, their final judgment, probably also in bodily form, really does await the time of the second coming and the completion of the current age when they will stand before the Great White Throne, all of which is chillingly set out in Rev. 20:11-15. It is useful to observe that this judgment has not been imposed on them. It is the judgment venue and timing that they have effectively chosen for themselves by rejecting Christ and any need for a savior, and instead relying for their justification on their own merits. God in his mercy has provided a suitable and fair forum for them to make their case.
Perhaps then, there is still a chance of salvation for some even before the Great White Throne. See, e.g., Matt. 10:42 (NIV): “And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward.” There is no indication that the persons providing the cup of cold water are themselves believers, and what is their reward for this small act of charity to a Christ-follower, a reward that Christ tells us they cannot lose? Could it be salvation?
I end here with a short quote from Dr. Wright’s book with which, I assume, we can all agree, and which may well pertain to some of the arguments advanced in this brief critique, as well as to some of the theories developed in the book itself, page 184, “God is always the God of surprises.”
Further Reading by Tom Peters on The Two Cities website:
“Do Near-Death Experiences Conflict with the Biblical Notion of the Final Judgment?”
“Postscript to an Article on the Judgment Seat of Christ in 2 Corinthians 5:10”
“The Judgment Seat of Christ Revisited (2 Corinthians 5.10) – Full Exegetical Article”
“Prelude To An Article On The Judgment Seat Of Christ In 2 Corinthians 5:10”
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