For All the Saints? Remembering the Christian Departed

by N. T. Wright

Publisher:

SPCK

, 2003

Overview

"We have been drifting into a muddle and a mess, putting together bits and pieces of traditions, ideas, and practices in the hope that they will make sense. They don't. There may be times when a typical Anglican fudge is a pleasant, chewy sort of thing, but this isn't one of them. It's time to think and speak clearly, and act decisively." With these robust words Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, throws down a challenge to current liturgy and practice surrounding All Saints' and All Souls' Days, and sets out to clarify our thinking about what happens to people after they die. Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, what it means to pray for the dead, what—and who—are the saints, are all addressed in this invigorating and rigorously argued book.

Product Details

• Title: For All the Saints? Remembering the Christian Departed
• Author: N. T. Wright
• Publisher: Morehouse
• Publication Date: 2004
• Pages: 76

About N. T. Wright

Nicholas Tom Wright, commonly known as N. T. Wright or Tom Wright, is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St. Andrews University. Previously, he was the bishop of Durham. He has researched, taught, and lectured on the New Testament at McGill, Oxford, and Cambridge Universities, and has been named by Christianity Today a top theologian. He is best known for his scholarly contributions to the historical study of Jesus and the New Perspective on Paul. His work interacts with the positions of James Dunn, E. P. Sanders, Marcus Borg, and Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Wright has written and lectured extensively around the world, authoring more than forty books and numerous articles in scholarly journals and popular periodicals. He is best known for his Christian Origins and the Question of God Series, of which three of the anticipated six volumes are finished.

Sample Pages from the Print Edition

Contents

Top Highlights

“‘Going to heaven when you die’ is not held out in the New Testament as the main goal. The main goal is to be bodily raised into the transformed, glorious likeness of Jesus Christ. If we want to speak of ‘going to heaven when we die’, we should be clear that this represents the first, and far less important, stage of a two-stage process.” (Page 21)

“John Polkinghorne offering a contemporary way of saying what needs to be said: God will download our software on to his hardware, until the day comes when he gives us new hardware on which to run our own software once more.” (Page 72)

“‘Paradise’ is not the final destination; it is a beautiful resting place on the way there.” (Page 24)

“May the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace and rise in glory.’” (Page 76)

“Purgatory is a Roman Catholic doctrine pure and simple.” (Page 5)

Product Details

• Title: For All the Saints? Remembering the Christian Departed
• Author: N. T. Wright
• Publisher: SPCK
• Print Publication Date: 2003
• Logos Release Date: 2011
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subjects: Future life › Christianity; All Souls’ Day; All Saints’ Day
• ISBNs: 9780281056200, 028105620X
• Resource ID: LLS:FORALLSAINTS
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T00:02:13Z

About N. T. Wright

Nicholas Thomas “Tom” Wright (1948–) is a New Testament scholar, Pauline theologian, and Anglican bishop and currently Research Professor Emeritus of New Testament and Early Christianity at St. Mary's College in the University of St Andrews and Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. Christianity Today named him one of today's top theologians. 

Wright was born in Morpeth, Northumberland, and recounts an awareness of God's presence from a young age—and that relationship with God ever since is reflected in his life and work. He's a prolific author; one of his most popular books, Surprised by Hope, frames the resurrection of the dead as the appropriate hope for all believers rather than an overemphasis on just "going to heaven when you die." He's among the leading theologians in the New Perspective on Paul debate. Wright has several honorary doctoral degrees, and in 2014, the British Academy awarded him the Burkitt Medal "in recognition of special service to biblical studies." In 2015, he was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Wright served as chaplain at Cambridge from 1978 to 1981, then as assistant professor of New Testament language and literature at McGill University in Montreal. Before becoming a chaplain, tutor, lecturer, and fellow at Oxford in 1986, Wright served as dean of Lichfield Cathedral, canon theologian of Westminster Abbey, and the bishop of Durham from 2003–10. In addition to the entire New Testament for Everyone Series, some of N. T. Wright's books include The New Testament in Its World: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians, Who Was Jesus, The New Testament and the People of God, God and the Pandemic, Evil and the Justice of God, Surprised by Hope, and Simply Christian. He coauthored Jesus the Final Days with Craig A. Evans.