Many people, faced with the challenge to work for God’s kingdom in the present, will at once object. “Doesn’t that sound,” they will ask, “as though you’re trying to build God’s kingdom by your own efforts?” Well, if it does sound like that, I’m sorry. It wasn’t meant like that. Perhaps some further clarification is […]

The post #038 – Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright (Pt 13 – Building for the Kingdom) [Podcast] appeared first on Adventures in Grace.

We have now reached the point where we must ask: So what? Is all this talk about God’s ultimate future, about “life after life after death,” simply a matter of tidying up our beliefs about what will happen in the very end, or does it have any practical consequences here and now? Is it simply […]

The post #037 – Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright (Pt 12 – Rethinking Salvation) [Podcast] appeared first on Adventures in Grace.

Before the sixteenth century most Western Christians thought of the church as divided into three parts. First there was the church triumphant, consisting of the saints, the holy souls, who had already arrived at the beatific vision of God. Officially they were still awaiting the final resurrection, but increasingly that wasn’t emphasized, and in many […]

The post #036 – Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright (Pt 11 – Purgatory and Hell) [Podcast] appeared first on Adventures in Grace.

As we saw in the first two chapters, there is no agreement in the church today about what happens to people when they die. Not surprisingly, therefore, there is also confusion in the wider, non-Christian world not only about the fate of the dead but also about what Christians are supposed to believe on the […]

The post #035 – Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright (Pt 10 – Bodily Resurrection) [Podcast] appeared first on Adventures in Grace.

The second coming of Jesus … or better the “presencing” of Jesus physically back in our time/space … has greatly confused the modern church.  Two episodes ago, we sketched the big picture of cosmic redemption that the New Testament invites us to make our own. God will redeem the whole universe; Jesus’ resurrection is the beginning […]

The post #034 – Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright (Pt 9 – Second Coming) [Podcast] appeared first on Adventures in Grace.

Belief that Jesus of Nazareth has been raised from the dead is closely linked in the New Testament with the belief that he has been taken into heaven, where, in the words of the psalm, he has been seated at the right hand of God. In fact, some kind of belief in Jesus’s ascension has […]

The post #033 – Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright (Pt 8 – Ascension) [Podcast] appeared first on Adventures in Grace.

On this episode, we want to do another deep-dive into the issue of “resurrection.”  I recently uncovered a rare-TV episode by N.T. Wright where he talks at length about resurrection. I play an edited version of this show in the podcast.  You can also watch the entire show in the links below. Click to Listen […]

The post #032 – Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright (Pt 7 – Resurrection Special) [Podcast] appeared first on Adventures in Grace.

The early Christians did not believe in progress. They did not think the world was getting better and better under its own steam—or even under the steady influence of God. They knew God had to do something fresh to put it to rights. But neither did they believe that the world was getting worse and worse […]

The post #031 – Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright (Pt 6 – New Creation) [Podcast] appeared first on Adventures in Grace.

When we look at the contemporary world and church, we discover great confusion about future hope but that when we look at the early Christians, we find not just faith but a very precise and specific faith, both about Jesus and his resurrection and about the future life that God had promised to all his […]

The post #030 – Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright (Pt 5 – Optimism and Negativity) [Podcast] appeared first on Adventures in Grace.

If the disciples simply saw, or thought they saw, someone they took to be Jesus, that would not by itself have generated the stories we have. Everyone in the ancient world took it for granted that people sometimes had strange experiences involving encounters with the dead, particularly the recently dead. They knew at least as […]

The post #029 – Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright (Pt 4 – Resurrection) [Podcast] appeared first on Adventures in Grace.