parables of a prodigal world

We've covered a lot of ground with Parts I and II of Surprised by Hope , and Part III is going to be the magnificent climax where all that has been leading, the "So What?" moment. So before I delve into it, I think this is a good place for a little intermission, where we might all ask ourselves how our own muddled views about the ultimate Christian hope, about salvation, have shaped our own personal stories, or are still doing so today. For me, I've touched upon the subject in the first few pages of Chapter Three of my book, Parables of a Prodigal Son: The Theologically Grounded Testimony of an Ordinary Scoundrel . Having chronicled my 2-year abandonment of my family as a direct result of my then atheist/humanistic worldview, and my reconciliation with them as a direct result of God's grace as communicated to me in and through my wife, Chapter 3 starts with a brief description of the "muddled views" with which I began my new "born again" life. ...

Chapter 11 Purgatory, Paradise, Hell Having completed his argument about the specific Christian hope of bodily resurection within the larger scope of the promise of new heavens and new earth, with the person of Jesus Christ at the center, and before turning to the relevance of that hope for the world today, Wright tackles the question of the intermediary state: "Where are the dead right now?" Purgatory Wright first discusses the concept of Purgatory, a Roman Catholic doctrine that emerged during the middle ages and which held that many souls that were not yet ready for heaven but also did not merit hell were in a state of further purification, to be helped along by prayer, mass, and (eventually) the purchase of indulgences, which was the primary catalyst for the Protestant Reformation. The official presentation of the doctrine today is a "quite a climbdown" from the traditional view as propounded by Aquinas and Dante, but the notion is still around in some forms and...

Chapters 10 The Redemption of Our Bodies Chapter 10 constitutes essentially an 18-page summary of Wright's 740-page scholarly masterpiece, The Resurrection of the Son of God . Inasmuch as this post is a summary of that summary, please don't make the mistake of assuming the points/issues raised here are the complete story. This post is kind of like doctrine: its an attempt to fit a long, complex story into a tight, portable package. Never mistake the package for the wealth of stuff contained within it. Given the unanimous witness of the NT regarding the promise of the bodily resurrection of God's people, Wright questions how the issue could have become as muddled as it is today. The popular modern understanding of the ultimate Christian hope in a one-stage post-mortem journey (going to heaven or going to hell), and the attempts of some to squeeze the concept of bodily resurrection within that picture, are both serious distortions, according to Wright. The NT talks very litt...