Symposium Draft. Do not reproduce without the author's permission.

John Wesley and N.T. Wright in Dialogue

Chadwick L. Short
On Holy Week of 2007 N.T. Wright, Anglican Bishop of Durham stood before the
congregation of the Church of the Ascension in Easington Colliery and delivered a series of
messages on finding hope in the resurrection.1 Some 250 years earlier, John Wesley regularly
traveled through this same region as part of a sweeping circuit throughout England. And, like
Wright, Wesley often addressed the colliers who lived there and worked in the coal mines of the
region. Who knows? Perhaps Wesley during his lifetime brought a message of hope to the
forbears of those addressed by Wright in 2007.
A number of similarities may be observed when comparing Wright and Wesley. Both
took education at Oxford: Wesley receiving his Bachelors degree in 1724 and his Masters in
1727; Wright receiving his Bachelor of Arts from Exeter College, Oxford in 1971 and a second
BA in Theology in 1973. As Wesley was ordained in the Anglican Church, so is Wright: Wesley
in 1725; Wright in 1975. As Wesley was a devoted student of Holy Scripture O give me that
book! so is Wright. His 2005 work entitled, The Last Word is a cogent appeal for the church
to embrace the authority of Scripture.2 And last, but certainly not least, as Wesley was a
controversial figure in his day, even within the church, so Wright is in ours.
Perhaps the greatest source of controversy is Wrights understanding of justification in
Paul. One figure on the other side of the controversy from Wright is John Piper, Pastor for
preaching at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Piper has also taught at
Bethel Seminary in Saint Paul, and is a leading voice in contemporary Reformed Theology.

N. T. Wright, Christians at the Cross: Finding Hope in the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus (Ijamsville,
MD: The Word Among Us Press, 2007).
2
N. T. Wright, The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture, 1st ed.
(New York: Harper San Francisco, 2005).

Chad Short page 2

In response to Wrights perspective on the writings of Paul, in particular Wrights understanding
of justification in Paul, Piper has written a volume entitled, The Future of Justification: A
Response to N.T. Wright.3 This reality alone that Wright has attracted critical attention from a
leading Reformed voice should pique the interest of those who embrace a Wesleyan view.
And so, as one whose interest has been piqued by Wright, I offer some reflections a
dialogue if you will between two Oxford-educated Anglican clergymen separated by two and
half centuries, but united in their passion for their Lord, and for the authority of the Christian
Scriptures, and of primary concern for this paper, in their hope in the resurrection and its
implications for Christian faith and practice.
There is no question that the resurrection of Christ is central to the Christian gospel. Paul,
in 1 Corinthians 15 wrote, For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that
Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised
on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the
twelve.

Because this central doctrine has come under scrutiny and even attack, both from

within the church and from without, Bishop Wright has taken great care to present a thorough
defense of the resurrection. On this topic, Wright has written at great length in his 800 page tour
de force entitled, The Resurrection of the Son of God.

At a more popular level, Wright has

addressed the resurrection of Christ in Surprised by Hope, 6 and The Challenge of Jesus. 7
The Resurrection of the Son of God is an especially thorough treatment of the resurrection
of Christ, in which Wright explores the gospel accounts, the Pauline corpus (giving special
3

John Piper, The Future of Justification : A Response to N.T. Wright (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2007).
1 Corinthians 15:3-5, The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2007).
5
N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (London: SPCK, 2003).
6
N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York:
HarperOne, 2008).
7
N. T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity
Press, 1999).
4

Chad Short page 3

attention to 1 Corinthians 15), other New Testament writers, and post-biblical writers such as
Tertullian, Irenaeus and Justin Martyr. After presenting the canonical evidence for the
resurrection of Christ, Wright appeals to the realities of history: The church emerged against all
odds. How do we explain it other than by the resurrection, which is the only explanation the
church itself offered? This is essentially the question asked by Cambridge scholar Charles Moule
a generation earlier: If the coming into existence of the Nazarenes, a phenomenon undeniably
attested by the New Testament, rips a great hole in history, a hole the size and shape of the
resurrection, what does the secular historian propose to stop it up with? 8
It is remarkable, and a great service to the church, that Wright has provided such an
exhaustive and accessible defense of Christs resurrection. It may be equally remarkable, from
our twentieth century perspective at least, that nowhere in the writings of John Wesley do we
find anything like this.
In addition to the exhaustive study of the scriptural evidence, Wright offers a careful
analysis of what resurrection meant in second temple Judaism. He explores the apocryphal
writings such as 2 Maccabees and the Wisdom of Solomon, Josephus, and the beliefs of the
Essenes and the Pharisees.9 With this analysis Wright demonstrates that the apostles, in declaring
that Christ had been resurrected, and the New Testament writers, in writing that Christ had been
resurrected, could only have meant one thing: bodily resurrection. According to Wright,
Though there was a range of belief about life after death, the word resurrection was only used to
describe reembodiment, not the state of disembodied bliss. Resurrection was not a general word
for life after death or for going to be with God in some general sense. It was the word for

Quoted in Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus (Grand
Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1998), 344.
9
See Wright, Resurrection, pp. 129-206

Chad Short page 4

what happened when God created newly embodied human beings after whatever intermediate
state there might be.10
Always sensitive to the historical context in which the Christian Scriptures arose, Wright
has noted that the Christian understanding of the resurrection is based on Jewish understanding,
although it modifies that understanding in significant ways.

11

One such modification is that

while Jewish belief of the time held that the resurrection was a singular future event, the early
Christian resurrection belief is that the resurrection, as an event, has split into two. 12 The early
church believed that at some future point, there would be a general resurrection, as did a
significant portion of first century Judaism. To this belief, however, the church added that in
advance of the general resurrection, one man, Jesus Christ, had gone through death and out the
other side, that in this case, resurrection had already taken place. Thus, for Christians, the
resurrection becomes a two part event. Following the lead of Wright, this paper shall consider
the resurrection as a two-part event. First, we shall give attention to the resurrection of Christ,
and second, to our resurrection. Being a proper British gentleman, I am certain that Bishop
Wright would defer to his Oxford colleague from a previous century. So we begin with Wesley.
There is no doubt that Wesley viewed the resurrection of Christ as central to the gospel
he preached. In his Letter on Preaching Christ, Wesley wrote, I mean by preaching the
gospel, preaching the love of God to sinners, preaching the life, death, resurrection, and
intercession of Christ, with all the blessings which, in consequence thereof, are freely given to
true believers.

10

13

In an address to the University at Oxford, Wesley lamented that one who

Wright, The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is, 134 (italics in the original).
Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, 40.
12
Ibid., 44.
13
John Wesley, The Works of John Wesley (Compact Disc Edition)(Providence House Publishers, 1995,
accessed).Letter on Preaching Christ, December 20, 1751, emphasis added. Please note that all references to the
works of Wesley are from this edition. I apologize for the precise lack of page numbers, etc.
11

Chad Short page 5

preached the resurrection of Christ was considered a setter forth of new doctrines. He felt as
though the people of his day were saying, Thou bringest strange things to our ears we would
know what these things mean . . . Still, despite such a reception, Wesley preached the
resurrection. In his sermon Salvation by Faith, a sermon he would have preached regularly,
Wesley explained that saving faith as that which acknowledges his death as the only sufficient
means of redeeming man from eternal death, and his resurrection as the restoration of us all to
life and immortality; inasmuch as he was delivered for our sins, and rose again for our
justification.14
Clearly, it is not that Wesley did not believe in the resurrection that he did not offer a
defense of it. Rather, Wesley seems to have taken the resurrection of Christ as a given, as a
starting point, and his concern is rather to proclaim the resurrection and to urge his audiences to
trust in it, and to encourage Christians to live in the power of it. He often spoke or wrote of
being children of the resurrection15 and of knowing Christ and the power of his resurrection.
In Satans Devices, he posed the question, Are you made conformable to the death of Christ,
and do you know the power of us resurrection?16 Knowing the power of the resurrection was for
Wesley one way of talking about the transforming power of Christ that enables the believer to
walk in holiness. It may be helpful to characterize Wesleys stance toward the resurrection of
Christ as one of pastoral concern. He is concerned with the implications of Christs resurrection
for present practice in the church. He demonstrates little, if any, concern for presenting a
reasoned defence for the veracity of Christs resurrection as a real, historical event.

14

John Wesley, Salvation by Faith (emphasis added). See also Wesleys sermon The Lord Our Righteousness
See for example, Wesleys Journal, Sunday October 6, 1766; Sunday, August 2, 1767; Friday, September 2, 1768
16
John Wesley, Satans Devices. See also Gods Love to Fallen Man and The Imperfection of Human
Knowledge.
15

Chad Short page 6

We can only guess at the reasons Wesley chose not to engage in a defence of this sort.
We know that Wesley was more concerned with evangelizing unbelievers, discipling believers
and working for social reform than he was with setting forth a systematic presentation of his
beliefs; that is to say, we know that in practice he was more a practitioner than an academic
(though he certainly had the capacity to excel in the academy). Perhaps Wesleys choice not to
present a reasoned defence of Christs resurrection also had to do with the cultural, social and
intellectual milieu in which he labored. Although the Enlightenment project was well underway
by Wesleys time, the authority and reliability of the Christian Scriptures had not yet come under
the sort of scrutiny as they did in the twentieth century, and now in the twenty-first. There was
no Nietzschean skepticism interpreting all truth claims as the will to power. There was no
Darwinian theory calling into question the whole narrative of Scripture. There was no Marxist
critique of religion as the opium of the people.
Wesley surely encountered skepticism and ignorance regarding Scripture, but not of the
same kind and not to the same degree that is commonplace in twenty-first century North
America. This context seems to call for a more reasoned presentation of the resurrection. What
Wright helps us, and those we would instruct, to see is that belief in the resurrection of Christ is
not unreasonable, that there is good historical evidence for it, and that the resurrection is, in fact,
the best explanation for the amazing rise of the church against all odds in the first century. In
this, Wright is surely an ally. Wright is also an ally when it comes to more pastoral concerns.
The third major section of Surprised by Hope, entitled, Hope in Practice: Resurrection and the
Mission of the Church, addresses such concerns.17 As Wesleyans we may be surprised to find
that in this section the Anglican bishop even addresses the subject of holiness and that in a
positive way! For Wright, as for Wesley, holiness is an outflow of the resurrection of Christ:
17

Wright, Surprised, pp. 187-289.

Chad Short page 7

Holiness. This is what Paul hammers away at in the early chapters of 1 Corinthians, and
its because they dont understand the resurrection that the Corinthians are having
difficulty with it. What you do with your body in the present matters, he insists, because
God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. Glorify God in your body
because one day God will glorify the body itself.18
Within this section of Surprised by Hope there is a wealth of material geared toward
practical application, toward understanding the mission of the church in light of the resurrection.
There is concern for both personal and social holiness. Here Wright also addresses the
importance of the Kingdom, connecting the resurrection with holiness and with the Kingdom.
Howard Snyder has suggested that the Kingdom may be an area where Wesley would have done
well to expand his understanding. He writes, Wesleys understanding of the Kingdom of God
did not give sufficient weight and meaning to the work and witness of the church in the temporal
order.19 It is here that Wesleyans may find Wright to be a valuable resource in developing a
fuller view of the connection between the Kingdom of God and the work and witness of the
church in the present.
So for the first part of the resurrection question the resurrection of Christ Wrights
work is invaluable, both in terms of the reasoned defence he offers, and in terms of the
implications of the resurrection for the believer.
Moving on to the second part of the resurrection question, the resurrection of believers,
both Wesley and Wright weigh in with important contributions. Wesley seems to have made the
resurrection a regular part of his preaching. In his journal, he records, In the afternoon we came
to Leeds. I preached on, I am the Resurrection and the Life; afterwards spent a solemn hour
with the society, and commended them to the grace of God.20 And elsewhere in his journal, I

18

Surprised, p. 283.
Howard Snyder, The Radical Wesley and Patterns for Church Renewal (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock
Publishers, 1980), 160.
20
Wesleys Journal. Tuesday, October 17, 1749.
19

Chad Short page 8

preached at Trewalder about noon, on, I am the Resurrection and the Life. Many were
dissolved into gracious tears, and many filled with strong consolation.21
Wesley seems to have been particularly fond of Jesus words in Luke 20:34. Neither can
they die any more; but are the children of God, being children of the resurrection. His journal
records on five occasions that he preached from this text. For example, I preached in PrincesStreet at eight, in Kingswood at two, and at five near the new Square. The last especially was an
acceptable time; particularly while I was explaining, Neither can they die any more; but are the
children of God, being children of the resurrection.22 His sermon On the Holy Spirit also
contains a reference to this passage. There, as he explained regarding the Kingdom of God as
mentioned above, the identity of believers as children of the resurrection is something Wesley
understood to be revealed at the end of the world. His journal sheds additional light on this,
where he quotes with approval, a letter written by a Mr. Grimshaw:
They are sweetly reposed in Abraham's bosom. They dwell in His presence who hath
redeemed them; where there is fulness of joy, and pleasures for evermore. They are
waiting the joyful morning of the resurrection, when their vile bodies shall be made like
unto his glorious body, shall be re-united to their souls, shall receive the joyful sentence,
and inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world. 23
Conversely, Wesley shows his disapproval toward a former colleague. In his journal
entry dated December 22 1747, Wesley recounts writing a letter to a Mr. H in which he
chastised him for falling away from the Society. About the same time you left off going to
church, as well as to the sacrament . . . From this time also you began to espouse and teach many
uncommon opinions: As, that there is no resurrection of the body. . .24

21

Wesleys Journal. Monday, August 27, 1750.

Wesleys Journal: September 28, 1766.
23
Wesleys journal quoting Grimshaws letter dated January 9, 1760.
24
Letter to Mr. H dated December 22, 1747.
22

Chad Short page 9

For Wesley, the coming resurrection of the believer is surely a physical event. We never
get the slightest inkling from Wesley that he views the resurrection as some sort of spiritual
phenomenon. He clearly viewed the resurrection of the dead as a decidedly physical event. (Or
did he? More on this later.) Here Wright and Wesley are in agreement. And so, in regard to their
views on the resurrection of Christ, and their views on the resurrection of believers, Wesley and
Wright have walked thus far together. Although at the outset, I made it my aim to explore these
two facets of the resurrection, there are yet two more facets to consider, and it remains to be seen
whether Wright and Wesley can walk in agreement any further.
The third question when considering the larger issue of resurrection has to do with what
happens to believers in the interim period between the resurrection of Christ, and the general
resurrection. The fourth question has then to do with the final home of believers after the
resurrection.
In response to the third question, we can look to Wesleys sermon The Trouble and Rest
of Good Men. The Scriptures give us no account of the place where the souls of the just
remain from death to the resurrection; but we have an account of their state . . . In short, Wesley
taught that there was some sort of interim state between death and resurrection, a state of
conscious happiness for the righteous.
Wright continues to walk with Wesley at this point. Paraphrasing, he employs a helpful
metaphor from British Particle Physicist and Theologian John Polkinghorne: God will
download our software onto his hardware until the time when he gives us new hardware to run
the software again.25 In substantial agreement with Wesley, Wright expresses his view that all
the Christian departed are in substantially the same state, that of restful happiness.26

25
26

Surprised, p. 163
Surprised, p. 171.

Chad Short page 10

As to the fourth question, the ultimate home of the resurrected believer, it may be that we
find our two Oxford-educated Anglican clergymen separated not only by two and a half
centuries, but also by their respective understandings of Scripture. Again, the Bishop defers to
his elder colleague. In his sermon, What is Man? Wesley answers the question, But what am
I? He writes, Unquestionably I am something distinct from my body. . . . For when my body
dies, I shall not die: I shall exist as really as I did before. . . . I undoubtedly consist both of soul
and body: And so I shall again, after the resurrection, to all eternity.27
Thus far, there is no argument from the Bishop. He similarly writes,
Resurrection itself then appears as what the word always meant, whether (like the ancient
pagans) people disbelieved it or whether (like many ancient Jews) they affirmed it. It
wasnt a way of talking about life after death. It was a way of talking about a new bodily
life after whatever state of existence one might enter immediately upon death. It was, in
other words, life after life after death.28
It is with the next step however, that we may find a slight parting of ways. In his sermon,
On the Resurrection of the Dead, Wesley said, We look for another house, eternal in the
heavens, that we shall not always be confined here . . .29 He writes just a bit further down, of a
perfect happiness which all good men shall enjoy in the other world. From these two references
alone it is difficult to determine exactly what Wesley meant. Does he envision resurrected
believers existing in the realm we commonly refer to as heaven? And what does he mean by
the other world? Yet a bit further down, Wesley writes, Our bodies shall be raised spiritual
bodies. . . . So that, as by a natural body we understand one fitted for this lower, sensible world,
for this earthly state, so a spiritual body is one that is suited to a spiritual state, to an invisible
world, to the life of angels.30

27

Wesley, What is Man; See also On the Resurrection of the Dead, Section I, point 2.
Surprised, p. 151.
29
Wesley, On the Resurrection of the Dead, Section II.
30
On the Resurrection, Section II, point 4.
28

Chad Short page 11

What the other two references left in doubt, this passage clarifies. For Wesley, the
resurrection procures for the just a spiritual body, that is to say, a body suited to a spiritual
state of existence, in the realm we normally refer to as heaven. Wright allows that passages
such as 1 Peter 1, where the Apostle speaks of a salvation that is being kept in heaven for you,
may seem to suggest something like this, that is to say, something other than bodily resurrection.
Wright comments: heaven is the place where Gods purposes for the future are stored up. It
isnt where they are meant to stay so that one would need to go to heaven to enjoy them; it is
where they are kept safe against the day when they will become a reality on earth. And then,
employing an illustration that Wesley himself may well have appreciated more than twenty-first
century Wesleyans, Wright sheds additional light. If I say to a friend, Ive kept some beer in
the fridge for you, that doesnt mean that he has to climb into the fridge in order to dink the
beer.31
If I read Wesley correctly, this is the point at which he and the Bishop begin to part ways.
Their difference in understanding hinges on the meaning of spiritual body in 1 Corinthians
15:44. Wesley, again, seems to understand the resurrection body as one that is suited to a
spiritual state of existence. Wright disagrees with this understanding of the spiritual body,
insisting that Paul is speaking of a new mode of physicality.32 Wright argues his case based on
the meaning of two words in 1 Corinthians 15. He notes first that the word psychikos, does not
in any case mean anything like physical in our sense. For Greek speakers of Pauls day, the
psyche, from which the word derives, means the soul, not the body. Wright then explains at
length:

31
32

Surprised, pp. 151-152

Ibid., p. 154.

Chad Short page 12

But the deeper, underlying point is that adjectives of this type, Greek adjectives ending in
ikos, describe not the material out of which things are made but the power of energy
that animates them. It is the difference between asking, on the one hand, Is this a
wooden ship or an iron ship? (the material from which it is made) and asking, on the
other, Is this a steamship or a sailing ship? (the energy that powers it). Paul is talking
about the present body, which is animated by the normal human psyche (the life force we
all possess here and how, which gets us through the present life but is ultimately
powerless against illness, injury, decay, and death), and the future body, which is
animated by Gods pneuma, Gods breath of new life, the energizing power of Gods new
creation.33
And it is precisely Gods new creation for which the resurrection body is suited. Wrights
point, expressed and emphasized in different ways and in different places, is that resurrection is a
physical event that results in a physical body, albeit an incorruptible physicality as compared to
our current corruptible physicality.34 And the new incorruptible physicality is meant to occupy a
renewed creation. Wright reminds us, The created order, which God has begun to redeem in the
resurrection of Jesus, is a world in which heaven and earth are designed not to be separated but
to come together. In that coming together, the very good that God spoke over creation at the
beginning will be enhanced, not abolished.35
Let us remember that our story ends not with the destruction of Gods good creation, but
with the vision of a new heaven and a new earth, and with the holy city, new Jerusalem,
coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And with

a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will

dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.36
Our story ends, with a river the river of life and with a tree the tree of life whose leaves
33

Ibid., pp. 155-156. Wright adds here: The contrast, again, is not between what we call physical and what we call
nonphysical but between corruptible physicality, on the one hand, and incorruptible physicality, on the other. . . .
For Paul, the bodily resurrection does not leave us saying, So thats all right; we shall go, at the last, to join Jesus in
a nonbodily, Platonic heaven, but, So, then, since the person you are and the world God has made will be
gloriously reaffirmed in Gods eventual future, you must be steadfast, immovable, always a bonging in the Lords
work, because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.
34
Italicized terms are Wrights terms. See Surprised p. 156
35
Surprised, p. 259
36
Revelation 21:1-3

Chad Short page 13

are for the healing of the nations. All of these: rivers, trees, leaves, nations, are physical,
tangible realities in Gods renewal of creation.
Like Wright, Wesley recognizes the original goodness of Gods creation. The original
state of even the brute creation (the animals) he views as paradisiacal and perfectly happy,
and understands that they too were immortal. Yet, he also notes the effects of sin on the brute
creation. Since man rebelled against his Maker, in what a state is all animated nature! Well
might the Apostle say of this: The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain until
now. This directly refers to the brute creation.37
Wesley goes on to describe in some detail the ways in which the brute creation will be
redeemed. Wesley does not, however, address the question of where the redeemed animals will
enjoy their redeemed state. Wright, on the other hand, does not directly address the redemption
of the animals, although they are there under the broad category of the created order. He does,
however, imply that as part of the renewed creation, they will be present in the new heavens and
the new earth. If we put Wesley and Wright together, we have a redeemed brute creation
enjoying an even more blessed state than in the original creation, taking part in Gods new
creation, in the now-rejoined and renewed heavens and earth.
Though our theological forbear and the Bishop disagree at a point or two, we need not
view these as irreconcilable differences. Rather, I believe, Wright provides us with fresh fuel,
twenty-first century fuel, for a vigorous and deep Wesleyan understanding and practice of
holiness.

37

Wesley, The General Deliverance, Section I, Point 6

Chad Short page 14

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Books, 2007.
Snyder, Howard. The Radical Wesley and Patterns for Church Renewal. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf
and Stock Publishers, 1980.
Strobel, Lee. The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for
Jesus. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1998.
Wesley, John. The Works of John Wesley (Compact Disc Edition) Franklin, TN: Providence
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Wright, N. T. The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is. Downers Grove,
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________. The Resurrection of the Son of God. London: SPCK, 2003.
________. The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of
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________. Christians at the Cross: Finding Hope in the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of
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________. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the
Church. New York: HarperOne, 2008.