Christianity Is Not About Going to Heaven — N.T. Wright Talks Salvation, Power, and God's Transethnic Church (Video Q&A)
The theologian argues Western believers have missed the core of the gospel and explains why a "monochrome" church is a sign of defeat.
For decades, New Testament scholar N.T. Wright has challenged some of Western Christianity’s most deeply held assumptions — especially the belief that the ultimate goal of salvation is escaping earth for heaven. In his latest book, God’s Homecoming: The Forgotten Promise of Future Renewal, Wright revisits that claim, arguing that the Bible tells a far more expansive and demanding story: God’s intention has always been not to abandon creation, but to renew it and dwell within it.
Wright, a retired Anglican bishop and a leading Pauline scholar, first unsettled popular Christian eschatology with Surprised by Hope nearly two decades ago. That book questioned common ideas about the rapture, the afterlife, and various aspects of eschatology. In God’s Homecoming, Wright presses those arguments further, tracing God’s promise of new creation from Genesis to Revelation and insisting that the coming together of heaven and earth — rather than human escape from the world — stands at the heart of the gospel.
In the edited conversation that follows, Wright speaks with Managing Editor Nicola A. Menzie about what he believes Western Christians have gotten wrong about salvation, how an “escapist” faith has weakened evangelism, why Jesus’ vision of power subverts modern political Christianity, and how the church’s diversity functions as a visible sign of God’s victory over the powers.
