N.T. Wright: Heaven Is Not the Final Destination

N.T. Wright argues the church has read the Bible through Plato and that heaven was never meant to be the Christian’s final destination.

The conversation

Is heaven the final destination for Christians?

Wright’s case begins in the Old Testament. He traces two strands of promise: that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, and that God will return to dwell with his people after the exile. The Gospels present Jesus as that returning God, and Acts and Ephesians describe the Spirit filling the church as an advance sign of what God will do with all creation. The break between the testaments that many Christians assume came later, Wright says, when the church fathers drew on Neoplatonism and recast the Old Testament as allegory. Ed pressed on the pastoral question every funeral raises. Wright’s answer: the dead are with the Messiah, in a better place, but that place is a stage on the way to resurrection. 

How does the church care for the world without losing the gospel?

The social gospel and the missio Dei movement both recovered the kingdom of God, and both, Ed argues, did not end well. Wright concedes the history and named a cause: those movements outran their exegesis, and Moltmann explored ahead of biblical scholars who gave him little help. His proposal is to try again with the exegesis in place. He reads justification and justice as one project, and the Sermon on the Mount as God’s agenda for how the kingdom comes, carried out through the ordinary, below-the-radar work of the meek and the broken-hearted. He also named the obstacle he lives with: the Pauline picture of the church as one family stands against the divided reality of Western Protestantism.

From the conversation

“God is going to fill the whole creation with his presence and love. In the present time, he fills individuals and communities, loosely called the church, as an advance sign of what he wants to do with the whole creation.” N.T. Wright

“They never challenged the basic assumption, which was that salvation consists of our souls going to heaven. They just had a different route by which that would happen.” N.T. Wright

“God’s gonna put the whole world right. He puts us right through the Gospel and the Spirit so that we can be part already of his putting right project for the world.” N.T. Wright

“When God wants to sort things out, he doesn’t send in the tanks, he sends in the meek and the broken-hearted and the hungry for justice people.” N.T. Wright

About N.T. Wright

N.T. Wright is a New Testament scholar who teaches at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and previously served as dean of Lichfield Cathedral. His books include Surprised by Hope and the new God’s Homecoming.
 

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