Matthew Wright’s Reviews > Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church > Status Update
Matthew Wright
is on page 184 of 332
heaven and hell are not, so to speak, what the whole game is about.
The whole point of my argument so far is that the question of what happens to me after death is not the major, central, framing question that centuries of theological tradition have supposed.
the major, central, framing question is that of God's purpose of rescue and re-creation for the whole world, the entire cosmos.
— 2 hours, 36 min ago
The whole point of my argument so far is that the question of what happens to me after death is not the major, central, framing question that centuries of theological tradition have supposed.
the major, central, framing question is that of God's purpose of rescue and re-creation for the whole world, the entire cosmos.
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Matthew’s Previous Updates
Matthew Wright
is on page 185 of 332
What the gospel of Jesus revealed, however, was that the purposes of God were reaching out to a different question: how is God going to rescue the world through Israel and thereby rescue Israel itself as part of the process but not as the point of it all?
— 2 hours, 35 min ago
Matthew Wright
is on page 185 of 332
Or are you going to worship the world as it is, boosting your corruptible humanness by gaining power or pleasure from forces within the world but merely contributing thereby to your own dehumanization and the further corruption of the world itself?
— 2 hours, 36 min ago
Matthew Wright
is on page 185 of 332
The choice betore humans would then be framed differently: are you going to worship the creator God and discover thereby what it means to become fully and gloriously human, reflecting his powerful, healing, transformative love into the world?
— 2 hours, 36 min ago
Matthew Wright
is on page 185 of 332
The question ought to be, How will God's new creation come? and then, How will we humans contribute to that renewal of creation and to the fresh projects that the creator God will launch in his new world?
— 2 hours, 36 min ago
Matthew Wright
is on page 179 of 332
When human beings give their heartfelt allegiance to and worship that which is not God, they progressively cease to reflect the image of God. One of the primary laws of human life is that you become like what you worship; what's more, you reflect what you worship not only back to the object itself but also outward to the world around.
— 2 hours, 37 min ago
Matthew Wright
is on page 178 of 332
there must be "exclusion" before there can be "embrace": evil must be identified, named, and dealt with before there can be rec-onciliation.
— 2 hours, 38 min ago
Matthew Wright
is on page 176 of 332
The two parables that appear to address this question directly are, we should remember, parables, not actual descriptions of the afterlife.
— 18 hours, 38 min ago
Matthew Wright
is on page 175 of 332
The most common New Testament word sometimes translated by hell is Gehenna. Gehenna was a place, not just an idea: it was the rubbish heap outside the southwest corner of the old city of Jerusalem.
— 18 hours, 39 min ago
Matthew Wright
is on page 172 of 332
Paul makes it clear here and elsewhere that it's the present life that is meant to function as a purgatory. The sufferings of the present time, not of some postmortem state, are the valley through which we have to pass in order to reach the glorious future.
— 18 hours, 39 min ago