This asks some very fundamental questions of Christian understanding of the Bible..
"Many Christians in the West, N. T. Wright believes, have a fundamental misunderstanding of the very goal of their faith.
Instead of seeing Christianity as the story of God renewing the whole cosmos — Heaven and Earth united — they have been taught to think of salvation primarily as a private escape plan: the soul departing for Heaven when the body dies...
The result, according to the 77-year-old New Testament scholar, Pauline theologian and Anglican bishop, is not just a skewed theology of the afterlife, but a distorted understanding of everything from End Times prophecy to spiritual warfare.
"The problem is that most Western Christians today think that the whole point of Christianity is for our souls to go to Heaven when we die, whereas the New Testament concentrates on God coming to dwell with us," Wright told The Christian Post in an interview about his latest book, The Vision of Ephesians: The Task of the Church and the Glory of God.
"The direction of travel is wrong, and the result is wrong, and the intermediate stages are wrong."
That misdirection has shaped how generations of believers have read and misunderstood Scripture, according to Wright. In the ancient world into which Christianity emerged, the idea of the soul floating away into Heaven was already common, he said.
"These were the people we now call the middle Platonists, people like Philo of Alexandria, or Plutarch. … They talk happily about their souls going to Heaven. The early Christians really don't," Wright said.
Instead, the New Testament proclaims something vastly different; not human departure to Heaven, but divine arrival on Earth.
The former bishop of Durham pointed to the final chapters of Revelation, where "the dwelling of God is with humans," and Ephesians 1:10, where Paul says God's eternal purpose is "to sum up in the Messiah all things in heaven and on earth."
"But you'd have thought that God's plan from the beginning was to enable us to leave Earth and go to a place called Heaven instead," Wright said. "That's simply not what Ephesians, or indeed, the rest of the New Testament, is all about."
The misunderstanding extends even into Bible translations, he emphasized. The Greek word "psuche," often rendered "soul," is rooted in the Hebrew "nephesh," which does not denote an immortal, disembodied essence but the whole living person.
"A nefesh is one's whole self; a better translation will be 'person,'" Wright explained. Passages that have fueled Platonic readings, such as Jesus telling the thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in Paradise," are frequently oversimplified.
"Jesus is going to be back in a couple of days' time … because He's going to be raised from the dead," Wright said. "There are many passages which routinely get misread."
What has occurred, he believes, is a "Western vision" that has shrouded biblical Christianity with Greek philosophy...." NT Wright: Why Western Christians have misread Heaven | Church & ministry
"Many Christians in the West, N. T. Wright believes, have a fundamental misunderstanding of the very goal of their faith.
Instead of seeing Christianity as the story of God renewing the whole cosmos — Heaven and Earth united — they have been taught to think of salvation primarily as a private escape plan: the soul departing for Heaven when the body dies...
The result, according to the 77-year-old New Testament scholar, Pauline theologian and Anglican bishop, is not just a skewed theology of the afterlife, but a distorted understanding of everything from End Times prophecy to spiritual warfare.
"The problem is that most Western Christians today think that the whole point of Christianity is for our souls to go to Heaven when we die, whereas the New Testament concentrates on God coming to dwell with us," Wright told The Christian Post in an interview about his latest book, The Vision of Ephesians: The Task of the Church and the Glory of God.
"The direction of travel is wrong, and the result is wrong, and the intermediate stages are wrong."
That misdirection has shaped how generations of believers have read and misunderstood Scripture, according to Wright. In the ancient world into which Christianity emerged, the idea of the soul floating away into Heaven was already common, he said.
"These were the people we now call the middle Platonists, people like Philo of Alexandria, or Plutarch. … They talk happily about their souls going to Heaven. The early Christians really don't," Wright said.
Instead, the New Testament proclaims something vastly different; not human departure to Heaven, but divine arrival on Earth.
The former bishop of Durham pointed to the final chapters of Revelation, where "the dwelling of God is with humans," and Ephesians 1:10, where Paul says God's eternal purpose is "to sum up in the Messiah all things in heaven and on earth."
"But you'd have thought that God's plan from the beginning was to enable us to leave Earth and go to a place called Heaven instead," Wright said. "That's simply not what Ephesians, or indeed, the rest of the New Testament, is all about."
The misunderstanding extends even into Bible translations, he emphasized. The Greek word "psuche," often rendered "soul," is rooted in the Hebrew "nephesh," which does not denote an immortal, disembodied essence but the whole living person.
"A nefesh is one's whole self; a better translation will be 'person,'" Wright explained. Passages that have fueled Platonic readings, such as Jesus telling the thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in Paradise," are frequently oversimplified.
"Jesus is going to be back in a couple of days' time … because He's going to be raised from the dead," Wright said. "There are many passages which routinely get misread."
What has occurred, he believes, is a "Western vision" that has shrouded biblical Christianity with Greek philosophy...." NT Wright: Why Western Christians have misread Heaven | Church & ministry
