N.T. Wright ABC RELIGION AND ETHICS 17 MAY 2011
SEE ALSO
- Related Story: Can we believe in the resurrection?N T WRIGHT 22 APR 2011
- Related Story: Critical Solidarity between Faith and EnlightenmentROWAN WILLIAMS 13 DEC 2010
- Related Story: Stephen Hawking, God and the role of scienceALISTER MCGRATH 14 SEP 2010
- Related Story: Science, belief and the question of proofALISTER MCGRATH 15 SEP 2010
- Related Story: Naming GodSTANLEY HAUERWAS 24 SEP 2010
- Related Story: Intimations of another realityALISTER MCGRATH 7 DEC 2010
- Related Story: There is nothing blind about faithALISTER MCGRATH 14 FEB 2011
- Related Story: Has science killed God?ALISTER MCGRATH 17 MAR 2011
Of course there are people who think of “heaven” as a kind of pie-in-the-sky dream of an afterlife to make the thought of dying less awful. No doubt that’s a problem as old as the human race.
But in the Bible “heaven” isn’t “the place where people go when they die.” In the Bible heaven is God’s space while earth – or, if you like, “the cosmos” or “creation” – is our space.
And the Bible makes it clear that the two overlap and interlock. For the ancient Jews, the place where this happened was the temple; for the Christians, the place where this happened was Jesus himself, and then, astonishingly, the persons of Christians because they, too, were “temples” of God’s own spirit.
Hawking is working with a very low-grade and sub-biblical view of “going to heaven.” Of course, if faced with the fully Christian two-stage view of what happens after death – first, a time “with Christ” in “heaven” or “paradise,” and then, when God renews the whole creation, bodily resurrection – he would no doubt dismiss that as incredible.
But I wonder if he has ever even stopped to look properly, with his high-octane intellect, at the evidence for Jesus and the resurrection? I doubt it – most people in England haven’t. Until he has, his opinion about all this is worth about the same as mine on nuclear physics – namely, not much.
As for the creation being self-caused: I wonder if he realises that he is simply repeating a version of ancient Epicureanism? That the gods are out of the picture, a long way away, so the world, human life and so on has to get on under its own steam.
This is hardly a “conclusion” from his study of the evidence; it’s simply a well known worldview shared by most post-Enlightenment westerners. It is the worldview which enables secular democracy to consider itself an absolute, despite its numerous and rather obvious failings right now.
The depressing thing is that Hawking doesn’t seem to realize this and so hasn’t even stopped to think that there might be quite sophisticated critiques of Epicureanism, ancient and modern, which he should work through. Not least the Christian one, which again focuses on Jesus.
Of course, the old set-up of the “science and religion” debate was itself deeply influenced by this same worldview, and needs realigning.
In fact, the ancient Christians would have been shocked to see their worldview labelled as a “religion.” It was a philosophy, a politics, a culture, a vocation … the category of “religion” is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Formerly Anglican Bishop of Durham, in 2010 the Rt Revd Dr N.T. Wright was appointed to a Chair in New Testament and Early Christianity in the School of Divinity at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. He is one of the world’s most distinguished and influential New Testament scholars. Among his many books areThe New Testament and the People of God (1992), Jesus and the Victory of God (1996), The Resurrection of the Son of God (2003), Surprised by Hope (2007) and Virtue Reborn (2010).
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