N.T. Wright's "Surprised by Hope": The Pirate Review, Day 4
One day until the official U.S. release of Surprised by Hope. Peace is in sight. The bright horizon looms...
Or would they prosecute retroactively!? Of course they would! What's done is done. The powers have been besmirched! They must have their revenge!! Oh, God!!
Sorry. Anyways...
The polar opposite of the myth of progress is the "myth of souls in transit," the view that the world is essentially evil and that the goal is to escape from it, in some pure, spiritual form, to another place, another kind of Utopia in a separate realm altogether. This variation of Platonism, according to Wright, is far more prevalent in would-be-mainstream Christianity in the modern Western world than is the myth of progress. Wright chronicles the early infestation of orthodox Christianity by this Platonic offshoot in the form of gnosticism, which has made a huge comeback of late, a la The Da Vinci Code, et al. The problem, of course, with this erroneous view of the world is that its proponents are all too content to dismiss the problems of the world because, after all, God is going to one day eradicate the whole thing and send us all off to a better place. While Wright doesn't yet begin to address the central problem with the Christian strain of this myth, knowing what I know about Wright, I think he would (will?) say that it is fundamentally wrong because it denies the classic Judeo-Christian view of the creator God, the God who made the universe and declared it "very good."
Chapter 5 sets the stage for the gist of what is to come. After discussing the two prevailing myths, Chapter 6 will get into what Wright claims is the proper understanding of God's purposes for the world, and how the Gospel of Jesus Christ fits into that model.
Stay tuned. Things are about to get interesting.
Grace and Peace,
Raffi
Or would they prosecute retroactively!? Of course they would! What's done is done. The powers have been besmirched! They must have their revenge!! Oh, God!!
Sorry. Anyways...
Chapter 5
Cosmic Future: Progress or Despair?
In this Chapter, Wright examines the two dominant but polar-opposite views about the destiny of the universe. One is the "myth of progress," the view that the universe is steadily progressing toward an ultimate Utopia. Wright chronicles the development of this view as starting from the Renaissance, gaining steam during the Enlightenment, and hitting its peak with Charles Darwin (not by Darwin himself, but but by those who latched on to his hypotheses and applied it to areas well beyond the narrow biological sphere which they belonged). The problem with the myth of progress, according to Wright, is that it cannot deal with Evil: it cannot stop it, it cannot deal with it retroactively (even if Utopia were to some day arive), and it underestimates its nature and power.
The polar opposite of the myth of progress is the "myth of souls in transit," the view that the world is essentially evil and that the goal is to escape from it, in some pure, spiritual form, to another place, another kind of Utopia in a separate realm altogether. This variation of Platonism, according to Wright, is far more prevalent in would-be-mainstream Christianity in the modern Western world than is the myth of progress. Wright chronicles the early infestation of orthodox Christianity by this Platonic offshoot in the form of gnosticism, which has made a huge comeback of late, a la The Da Vinci Code, et al. The problem, of course, with this erroneous view of the world is that its proponents are all too content to dismiss the problems of the world because, after all, God is going to one day eradicate the whole thing and send us all off to a better place. While Wright doesn't yet begin to address the central problem with the Christian strain of this myth, knowing what I know about Wright, I think he would (will?) say that it is fundamentally wrong because it denies the classic Judeo-Christian view of the creator God, the God who made the universe and declared it "very good."
Chapter 5 sets the stage for the gist of what is to come. After discussing the two prevailing myths, Chapter 6 will get into what Wright claims is the proper understanding of God's purposes for the world, and how the Gospel of Jesus Christ fits into that model.
Stay tuned. Things are about to get interesting.
Grace and Peace,
Raffi
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