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A review by blackheath
Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church by N.T. Wright
2.0
First, Wright's insistence on bodily resurrection, rather than "going to heaven" as the goal of the Christian is important. I'm not sure it needs to be repeated ad nauseum for over 300 pages (I've been slogging through this thing for over a month), but it matters, and if you're interested in the subject, this book is as good a place to start as any. Unless you're a Catholic. The minor swipe at Marian theology (nothing big - just a snide comment, really) is one thing. Attacking the idea of purgatory by claiming that Roman Catholic theologians have been walking it back of late is another. He cites only two Catholic theologians (Karl Rahner and Joseph Ratzinger aka Pope Benedict XVI) and quotes so little of them, and with virtually no context, that his assertion comes off as desperate, wishful thinking. Still, if you didn't know any better, Wright might actually convince you that the Pope reversed the Church's teachings on purgatory, and that there's an army of Catholic theologians in agreement. Of course it's complete nonsense. In fact, the quote Wright uses to prove that Benedict has rethought purgatory looks like nothing more than Benedict suggesting that time in the afterlife doesn't work the same as time in the world we know. It's not radical and it certainly doesn't reject the concept of purgatory.
At this point in the book (about halfway through), having dispensed of purgatory in less than a page, Wright breezily announces that once we've dropped purgatory we can move ahead and understand what he's going to explain to us next (presumably, over, and over and over again) (did I mention that he's really, really repetitive?). Since just dropping a major tenet of my faith - particularly on the basis of such laughably thin evidence - is impossible for me as a Catholic, I'm done. If he's willing to be so dishonest about this, who knows what other evidence he's manufacturing to prove his points. There's some good stuff here if you're patient, but even at the halfway point it seems twice as long as it needs to be, and the anti-Catholic nonsense is obnoxious.
At this point in the book (about halfway through), having dispensed of purgatory in less than a page, Wright breezily announces that once we've dropped purgatory we can move ahead and understand what he's going to explain to us next (presumably, over, and over and over again) (did I mention that he's really, really repetitive?). Since just dropping a major tenet of my faith - particularly on the basis of such laughably thin evidence - is impossible for me as a Catholic, I'm done. If he's willing to be so dishonest about this, who knows what other evidence he's manufacturing to prove his points. There's some good stuff here if you're patient, but even at the halfway point it seems twice as long as it needs to be, and the anti-Catholic nonsense is obnoxious.