Are we “on a pilgrimage to heaven,” or are we preparing a worthy place for God to dwell? In his new book, N.T. Wright argues that postmortem destiny is not central to the New Testament’s message. The good news that Jesus came to proclaim does not concern an “afterlife” as popularly understood, but rather the coming of the kingdom of God into the world.
God’s Homecoming: The Forgotten Promise of Future Renewal, by N.T. Wright (352 pages, HarperOne, 2025)
I owe a lot to the writings of Anglican theologian and Bible scholar N.T. Wright, and particularly to his illuminating discussions of the resurrection, the kingdom of God, and the theology of the Cross. Speaking as a Roman Catholic, I have learned more about these topics from Wright than from any Catholic author, aside from those (like Bishop Barron) who have obviously been influenced by him. In his newest volume, Wright hits many of the familiar notes heard in his previous work, but framed in a new way. The book is a sequel to Surprised by Hope, Wright’s stunning look at the resurrection. In that book Wright insisted on the bodily and eschatological dimension of Christ’s rising from the dead. Here he drives home the centrality of the idea of homecoming in the salvation narrative: not our homecoming in an otherworldly “heaven,” but rather God’s homecoming among us.
Wright’s books are always mind-blowing in the best sense of the word, overturning our ingrained assumptions and making us see things in a new light. This book is no exception, although those who have followed Wright’s previous works will find a steady building of themes and ideas.
Wright has long been a strong critic of what he sees as the dilution of the Christian message, particularly on a popular level, by the influence of Platonism. One can infer, from Wright’s argument in this book, that the idea of the “Platonic ascent” has corrupted our sense of the biblical narrative, turning our entire eschatology upside down.
Briefly, the form of Platonic philosophy known as Neoplatonism, which influenced Christian thinkers like St. Augustine, proposed the soul’s journey as an ascent from the material and sensible to the spiritual and eternal, culminating in a transcendent union with God.
The problem is that this philosophically based “going up to God” or “going to heaven” idea is the diametric opposite of what scripture teaches about our destiny. In the Bible we find, with rare exceptions, not language about people going to heaven to be with God, but language about God returning to or visiting his people. During Israel’s sorrowful exile, the prophets consoled her with promises that God would one day fill his abandoned Temple again, would one day return triumphantly as king, and that his glory would “fill the whole earth.” In back of all of these promises of return is the assurance of God’s enduring presence in the world: the burning bush, the pillar of cloud, the tabernacle in the desert, and the Temple.
These themes of the Old Testament are carried over and fulfilled in the New. Jesus is described as Emmanuel, “God with us.” The last of the prophets, he was also more than a prophet, for in him God was returning in person. Jesus tells parables about the arrival of the bridegroom to the wedding feast and the return of the householder to reward his faithful servants—images of his future coming. After Jesus’ ascension, we witness the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the newborn Church. The Holy Spirit’s descent is a “down payment” for Jesus’ final return, ushering in the Book of Revelation’s ultimate vision: that God will make his permanent dwelling with humanity, “and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them” (Rev. 21:3).
These are all images of homecoming. Wright sums up the “master narrative” of the Bible in these terms: “God is coming back at last. And he is coming back to be king.”
True, one does occasionally find a scattered reference to a “going to heaven” idea in early Christian writings. For example, St. Irenaeus says the following in The Apostolic Preaching: “believers in Him [Jesus] ascend to heaven, since His Passion is our ascension on high.” Interestingly, though, Irenaeus immediately follows this with language about the Son of God “speaking with mankind” and “being amongst them.” Irenaeus was acutely aware of the dangers of Gnosticism: of an otherworldly escapism that saw humanity’s true home as being in another place altogether. He wanted to counteract the Gnostics’ disdain for the body and the material creation by stressing that Jesus came in the flesh and dwelt among us. And behind that narrative is the biblical idea of the goodness of creation and God’s continuing involvement with it.
Sadly, the Gnostic idea could be said to have won out on the popular level. It comes out especially at funerals, where mourners like to declare that the deceased went “home to heaven,” “home to God,” or just “went home,” without any mention of the eventual bodily resurrection or new creation. Even worse is the text of the well-known hymn: “This world is not my home; I’m just a-passing through.” Well, the world in its present fallen state may be a mess, but God certainly intends to redeem it and make his home here with us.
Even so great a Christian thinker as C.S. Lewis shows inconsistency here, at times (as in The Great Divorce) offering beautiful accounts of new creation, at others serving up a version of the “souls going home to heaven” narrative.
This problem transcends Catholic/Protestant debates; it is endemic to Western Christianity in general. Wright’s overall point, and it is very well taken, is that postmortem destiny is not central to the New Testament’s message. The good news that Jesus came to proclaim does not concern an “afterlife” as popularly understood, but rather the coming of the kingdom of God into the world. It is not “life after death” but what Wright has cleverly called “life after life after death”!
It is hard to argue with Wright that Heaven–Hell theology (with which Catholics include Purgatory) has preoccupied us far too much in the Christian West, causing us to neglect of the theology of the kingdom and of new creation. The motif of divine homecoming ties together many of these strands of Christian belief, harmonizing beautifully with the notion of Jesus, the bridegroom, espoused to his church, his bride.
At one time I imagined that N.T. Wright’s initials must stand for “New Testament” (they stand for “Nicholas Thomas”). With God’s Homecoming he has hit another one out of the ballpark: a book deeply informative, crammed with biblical learning, and genuinely helpful for the average believer. It is also a thought-provoking book that will challenge many of our complacent assumptions.
I fear that some will not want to hear his insights, as our popular religious language is deeply ingrained. Our flagrant misuse/abuse of the word “heaven” (which in the Bible never refers to our goal and destination) is just the beginning. As Wright tirelessly insists, “heaven” (shamayim in Hebrew, rendered in Greek as ouranos) is the Bible’s name for God’s domain that is destined to interact with earth, or the domain of human beings. It is essentially keyed to new creation, or the accomplishment of God’s redemptive plan. Accommodating these ideas may require that we freshen up our language a bit, emphasizing God’s homecoming and our welcoming of him as central motifs in our faith where they had previously been marginal ideas at best.
If there is a “master narrative” or “master message” to Wright’s book itself, it is a plea to return to the biblical worldview. All too often Christian thought, at least in the West, has taken Greek-philosophical categories as a starting point and then tried to shoehorn Jesus and his good news into them. This, Wright argues, is sure to lead us astray and distort the Christian message, and in fact has done so time and again. We will only understand Jesus by placing him in his first-century Judean context. This isn’t to deny that philosophical inquiry can complement our journey—but we must first root ourselves in the scriptures and their world.
Going back to scriptures, back to the gospels, is a project to which many in the Catholic world, more specifically, have been calling us: among others, Pope Benedict XVI and, among English-speaking scholars, Bishop Robert Barron, Dr. Scott Hahn, and Dr. Brant Pitre. Their work is very much consonant with and complementary to Wright’s.
Like all of Wright’s books, this one is not just for theologians but is of vital importance to all of us. Are we “on a pilgrimage to heaven,” or are we preparing a worthy place for God to dwell? The distinction is far more than an academic one. It just might affect the way we live our lives. N.T. Wright makes a persuasive case for readjusting our eschatological vision.
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