I'd especially appreciate Steve's perspective, as I believe he assumes an actual physical literal rapture "in the air."
HOMILETICS: Speaking of what are you talking about … [laughs] could you explain what you mean when you refer to the “Gnosticism” of the religious right?
WRIGHT: Oh yes! Like all varieties of Gnosticism, it doesn’t press all the buttons, but it certainly presses some. The religious right has routinely lived with quite a radical dualism of “this world is not my home, we’re just a-passin’ through,” we got to get to heaven, that’s what it’s all about. If you believe in heaven and hell, you’re a real Christian; if you don’t, you’re not. They believe in salvation by grace, which is not a Gnostic belief because the Gnostic believes that he or she is a spark of light as they are in the present, and they don’t need grace for that, so that’s a major disjunction.
But then, there is this idea that the world is just really so much rubbish, this is just a silly old world, God is going to throw in the trash can. We’re going to be raptured up to heaven and then there will be a great Armageddon and the sooner the better.
HOMILETICS: So eschatology is a big part of this?
WRIGHT: Eschatology is a very big part of it.
HOMILETICS: Very popular.
WRIGHT: Very popular, but it’s an eschatology of the wrong kind of judgment. It’s a judgment of smash, bang, you’re finished. As opposed to the judgment you find in the Bible, where, if you read the Psalms, the animals and the trees of the fields are going to clap their hands because Yahweh is coming to judge the world. In other words, Yahweh is coming to sort it out!
HOMILETICS: So when you use the word “judgment,” you’re reminding us that judgment is really the good news.
WRIGHT: Judgment is part of the good news. Judgment is the other end of the story that begins with the good creation. Then the “putting to right” of creation in the New Creation. That’s absolutely critical. It’s possible for people to think they’re orthodox because they’ve ticked the right boxes. Creation: Yeah, I’m a creationist. Judgment: Yeah, I believe all those guys are going to get their comeuppance, et cetera. And they tick the right boxes but they mean the wrong things by them.
Q. I want to come back just for a moment to your comments about Left Behind because I read somewhere you said, but the evangelical complaint complains about your writing on this. And you say, “Sorry, I want to read these Biblically and traditionally.” And you were referring to the fact that you do think there is a whole kind of theology of end times which is not consistent with the context in the first century and the texts that we have from Jesus.
A. Oh yes, absolutely. This has been blown out of all proportion. And actually the whole rapture thing is based on a misreading of two verses in I Thessalonians 4 which are not about a literal snatching up into the sky. You know, I said something about this is an article in one of the magazines a couple of years ago. And among the many angry letters they got canceling subscriptions was one person who said, “How does Mr. Wright think he’s going to get to heaven if he doesn’t get raptured?” And I said to some American Christians that I was with shortly after that, “Are there really people in this culture who think that heaven is a location within our space/time/universe which is a few miles up in the air somewhere?” And I was told, yes, there really are people who really do believe that. And I mean, we’re dealing there with such massive unintelligence not to realize that God’s space and our space interact much more interestingly than that, that you know, you just wonder how on earth you’re ever going to get through.
Q What is your interpretation of the words attributed to Jesus about the second coming? Is it possible that all the apocalyptic warnings (as well as the idea of the Rapture) were necessary only in the earlier years of Christianity?
A Many of Jesus' sayings about the future have been misinterpreted (see Chapter 8 of my book Jesus and the Victory of God). The "rapture" is a misunderstanding of Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4, a misunderstanding which then is projected onto Mark, Revelation, and other passages. The sayings of Jesus that have been misinterpreted include ones like Luke 13:3: "unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." These are clearly warnings about a coming military destruction (swords in the Temple, falling stonework, etc.), but are often taken as a description of burning in hell after death. Of course, there may be a further application (what older theologians called a sensus plenior,a "fuller meaning") to a doctrine of hell; but if we don't get the first level of meaning right, it's dangerous to guess at second ones.
The other classic misunderstanding is the persistent view that "the Son of Man coming on the clouds" is a prophecy of Jesus' downward flight in returning to earth from heaven at the second coming. In saying this, I am not denying a second coming; I am only denying that these texts refer to it. In Daniel 7, which is clearly referred to in passages such as Mark 13:26 and 14:62, "one like a Son of man" "comes" to the Ancient of Days. The "coming" is an upward movement of exaltation, not a downward movement of return to earth.
I am worried at the ways in which so many North American Christians are wedded to particular views of the second coming and find this so dominant a question, while other central and vital areas of Christian, and Gospel, thinking are marginalized.
Not meaning to sound flippant but almost all of us will not be in the rapture (if there is one) therefore since we can die at any moment that s/b motivation enough.
