Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, The Resurrection, And The Mission Of The Church

There is great confusion in the contemporary world and church about the nature of future hope, but in the early Christians, we find a clear and consistent guide about these matters. While modernity tends to put the individual first, Wright proposes that we start instead from the Bible’s vision of the renewal of creation as a whole, thus establishing the big picture from which our individual “dramas” find their meaning.

Wright examines two “popular options” for explaining the nature of the future world: evolutionary optimism and souls in transit. Evolutionary optimism, or the “myth of progress,” posits that humanity is “marching toward a utopia” or that history is “accelerating toward a wonderful goal” (82). This view is “enormously powerful” in our culture, especially in the world of politics and advertising. It is a “parody of the Christian vision” because it combines the belief in the kingdom of God with a belief in human perfectibility through science and technology (82), borrowing from the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin. Many Christian thinkers “went along for the ride” of evolutionary optimism (83). One of the most famous was the French theologian Teilhard de Chardin, who believed that humanity and the cosmos, guided by “the divine spirit,” are steadily evolving toward a state of perfection.