For All the Saints? [Paperback]

This is a very enjoyable, readable, and short book. Wright sets out to discuss what happens to us when we die, and does so naturally from an Anglican perspective. The central theme is 'where are they now', and he examines New Testament, Roman Catholic, and Anglican teachings on death. He discussed whether it's right to pray for the dead, the traditional Catholic teaching on purgatory.

Some might his style and arguments shocking, but I found them refreshing. How many bishops would write in all seriousness:
"...the sort of hymn you are likely to find sung at All Souls' commemorations these days is probably a piece of woolly Victoriana, hinting at purgatory without really coming out and saying it - which is what the entire commemoration, in its current Anglican mode, does at every point."

But Wright doesn't just knock the Anglo-Catholic tradition: "The traditional hope, as articulated in the New Testament, is that if you die today you won't be in a gloomy gathering in some dismal and perhaps painful waiting room [...] You will be with Christ in paradise."

It's a short book, and perhaps the RRP of £9.99 is a little too much. But it's also immensely readable, tightly focussed, and well argued from beginning to end. I didn't find it as controversial as I had expected, but Wright recognises areas of controversy in his own argument.

The trigger for the book is shown on p47:
"The last two churches where I have worked have organised a "Commemoration of All Souls" each 2 November. After attending several of these annual evenets, I got to the point a few years ago where I decided that, in conscience, I could do so no longer. The commemoration makes all the wrong points. Worse: its very existence pulls All Saints' itself out of shape."

This is a timely book. Tom Wright is here attempting to slice through a lot of the sloppy thinking underlying Anglican practice around All Souls Day. It's timely because All Souls services are becoming ever more popular in the Church of England and there are real theological problems with them.
Essentially, his argument is this:
a. every Christian, alive or dead, is a saint. It is wrong to create a category of "saints" through canonisation or whatever.
b. All Saints Day should be about all Christians, not just the beatified few.
c. Therefore, one or other of All Saints Day and All Souls Day should be made redundant. Because they are about the same thing.
d. The celebration for this festival should emphasise Christian hope not despair (symbolised by black altar frontals etc.)
(In the book, he also deals with a couple of sub-issues. First, there is a diatribe against the Kingdom season and the dating of the Festival of Christ the King to just before Advent. This is largely convincing.
Second, there is quite a lot on 'purgatory', which pervades a lot of the arguments around this. And while he is against it, he's not against praying for the dead per se.)

Certainly, this is a worthwhile book. Wright draws well on the New Testament to substantiate his arguments, with his typically strong command of books like Revelation and Hebrews which many of us dip into all too tentatively.
And there's a sense in which his basic 4 point argument is correct. Moreover, he's also right to say that a lot of Anglican practice here is a slurry of sentiment ungrounded in theological clarity.

Yet where I take issue is that actually he's not so theologically clear himself.
This is most clear in the section on hell (p41-46)
First, he derides the univeralist cause (which "turns on God having all the time in the world, after the death of unbelievers, to go on putting the gospel to them from different angles until at last they accept it") because it allows people to defer decisions into the future.
Yet then he picks up on Romans 5 and 8:
"This (great promise of salvation) doesn't sound like a small group of people snatched away to salvation while the great majority faces destruction."
He follows with a classic fudge sentence: "Somehow we have to hold all this together without cutting any knots."
He continue: the Bible is against universalism: in Revelation 21 there are 'idolators' on the outside. But he's also against too limited a net for salvation: in Revelation 22, there's a river of life and a tree of life for the healing of the nations. (p43)
Again, he sticks in a classic liberal fallback:
"There are mysteries here which should not be reduced to simplistic formulae."
Finally, he adds "The question of who should be saved is ultimately up to God and God alone."

So, if you actually push his arguments to their conclusion, what he seems really to be saying is that somewhere between 50 and 90% of England's population are likely to be saved at the last day. But that somewhere between 10 and 50% are likely to hold fast to their evil ways and refuse the Gospel.

Of course, he would rile at numbers being presented. And fair enough. But I suspect that deep within, that's what he really thinks. And, God knows, he may be right. But you can't criticise people for slurry type vague argument only to do the very same yourself. At least, universalists and penal substitution salvationists have a clear view, a view that they can hold with conviction not out of sentiment but because it ultimately makes sense of their interpretation of the Gospel.

At this point, I ought to 'come out'. I actually have deep sympathy with him in this chapter on hell. In fact, I think it's a balanced and nuanced bit of writing. The problem is "heaven" and "praying for the dead" is a complex subject about which we can pronounce little with certainty. It's not just 'sentimentality' which makes us hesitant in our pronouncements: it's a genuine theological difficulty. Hence, The Arminian/ Calvinistic predestination controversy which basically continues unabated in many churches.

But once you've admitted that actually it's a bit harder to make clearcut pronouncements, then doesn't that mean that it's harder to be so prescriptive about what should or shouldn't make up the liturgical practice of All Saints/ All Souls?

And surely you can celebrate the Saints (meaning those the church has recognised as particularly "holy") on All Saints Day and give due honour to their inspiring relationship with God, without also taking on the caricature he presents of the Saints being in the Kings' court as opposed to the rest of us being in the outer circle.

So, in summary, this is a really worthwhile book. It's short, it's in clear language unlike the over-academic stuff that fills so many theological books, and it will help you think about what really goes on at All Saints and All Souls. But as a rallying cry to get rid of one or other of the festivals, it hasn't ultimately convinced me.

N.T. Wright, recently appointed Anglican bishop of Durham, has had a distinguished academic and writing career as well, having taught at both Oxford and Cambridge, and being a frequent lecturer at Ivy League schools in America. He has authored theology texts, bible commentaries and histories, as well as devotional texts. This slim volume incorporates a bit of each of these types of literature, looking at the way Anglican tradition has treated our memory and understanding of the departed (the saints and others), as well as his own views on what a more biblically-based understanding would look like.

The text of this book grew out of lectures and sermons Wright delivered while canon theologian of Westminster Abbey. As part of his development of the subject, Wright explores the theology present in various hymns sung by Anglicans, particularly those around All Saints Day, the first of November. Wright admits the divisions that exist in Anglican polity, the tension between catholic and protestant sensibilities, and the problems with trying to come up with once-and-for-all formulations. In his first chapter, Wright looks at the development of ideas from the medieval times, including purgatory, limbo and other such doctrines not explicitly found in scripture. He concludes with different ways one may question such traditions, deciding for himself the best course of action to be a 'fresh reading of the New Testament' and recognition of more modern developments affecting the church.

Wright's second chapter lays out some of his ideas. He dismisses the idea of universal salvation (saying that, despite the fact that he was congratulated once upon a time for being a universal salvation-ist, he is not) as being the modern-day replacement for the idea of purgatory, and is often meaningless in its construct. Wright takes the bible seriously about heaven and hell without attaching too much literalism to the descriptions of the bible. Perhaps the most intriguing idea was the sense that humanity bearing the image of God is as much a vocation as it is a part of our being -- we are called to be Christlike, being in the image of God here understood as something we do as much as it is something we are.

Wright's third chapter will most likely appeal only to Anglicans -- it deals with liturgical issues surrounding All Saints and All Souls commemorations. The fourth chapter similarly deals the the 'Kingdom season', another liturgical/calendrical issue for Anglicans. The short conclusion, however, has a wonderful and brief discussion of how and why we continue to pray for the departed, if the idea of purgatory is no longer what it was. Wright's discussion of Professor Sir Norman Anderson and his unexpected argument in favour of the continued practice is a gem.

For Anglicans, this is a very worthwhile book. For other Christians, parts will have direct impact and interest, and the rest will demonstrate how other faithful Christians practice prayer and remembrance. At a mere 76 pages, this is a quick but valuable read.