A Picture of Something That's Made
A Huge Impact on Your Life Recently
About a year ago I read N.T. Wright's "Surprised By Hope." It's basically about eschatology, the "last things" (as they've been called) in Christian theology. The insights given on the ascension and lordship of Jesus, the 2nd coming, the resurrection of the dead, all of these were fantastic. He's extremely conservative when it comes to his "end time" chronology, basically adhering to the major tenets of Christian thought without becoming bogged down in millennialist undertows. The "life-changing" aspect of the book, however, comes in the second half. In the first half (if I remember correctly) he espouses doctrine. In the second half, he puts this doctrine into practice. It's the tension between orthodoxy and orthoproxy, and he pulls off this tension quite well. Of course I'm oversimplifying the book's outline, but nevertheless, he brought Vos' "Now but Not Yet" understanding of christology into the realm of history, and he locates our Christian living--both individually and communally--within this framework. Reading this book has helped me, in varying degrees, to live an "eschatologically-focused" life. It's given new meaning to the terms "hope," "endurance," "faith," and "love." It's impact on my life isn't seen so much in how I approach different elements of theology but how I perceive my life and those things that happen in my life. My entire approach to life itself, my entire approach to myself period, has been drastically altered by this fascinating book.
No comments:
Post a Comment