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-title: Does resurrection doctrine give us unique reasons to work for justice?
-description: >-
-  Tom Wright claims that the only Christian grounds for striving for justice now
-  is in resurrection doctrine. I'm not convinced.
-pubDate: 2025-05-04
----
-
-I've been reading Tom Wright's _Surprised By Hope_, defending his orthodox view
-on resurrection. One of his key claims is that only by accepting the orthodox
-position on resurrection can Christians justify striving for justice on earth.
-
-To argue this, he needs to first show that resurrection doctrine does justify
-striving for justice on earth, and secondly that the available alternatives fail
-to do so. Firstly, the positive argument.
-
-## Does resurrection give us reasons to work for justice?
-
-Wright's argument depends on his view on what God's ultimate future will look
-like: the present creation will not be abandoned, destroyed, or replaced, but
-physically transformed into the new creation.
-
-He argues that our work now has value, because, at the time when God transforms
-the old world into the new, he will incorporate the outcomes of our good works
-into the new creation, like an architect incorporating the works of many
-stonemasons into a great cathedral.
-
-He argues this on the basis of 1 Cor 15. I found it a struggle to find a good
-justification for Wright's view in chapter 15 alone, but I did find some crucial
-context in chapter 3, just before he begins the first of his many exhortations
-to the Corinthians. It would be best to read the whole chapter, but here is
-verses 11-15:
-
-> For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is
-> Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly
-> stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because
-> the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire
-> will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives,
-> the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer
-> loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the
-> flames.
-
-This at least implies that the outcome of all our work will persist at least
-until the time of judgement, when it will undergo testing, and those that pass
-the test will enjoy a reward. You could read this as being like a quality check,
-with God dishing out benefits to those that pass his assessment. But you could
-read it in another way, more favourable to Wright. The works will be proven, and
-the ones that withstand the process will themselves generate a benefit. You
-could think of it like baking: when you put a cake in the oven, you prove
-whether or not you got the recipe right; if not, it goes in the bin, and if you
-did get it right, you get to enjoy the cake. So I agree that 1 Cor provides a
-reason to think that the outcome of our works will somehow persist until the
-time of judgement.
-
-However, Wright doesn't just think that our works will persist until the time of
-judgement, he also believes that they will at that time be transformed and then
-incorporated into the new creation. 1 Cor doesn't directly justify this view. It
-is, at least, coherent. Baking a cake in the oven transforms the dough.
-
-So it seems reasonable to me to use 1 Cor to justify Wright's view that our
-works will be transformed into the new Creation. However, that's before
-considering any counter-arguments, and I have two which concern me.
-
-One is that, as Ecclesiastes points out, the profits of our work will be laid to
-waste by time. We don't know when God is going to bring about the new creation.
-It could be tomorrow, and we should be behaving today in light of that
-possibility - but of all the available possibilities, most of them are in the
-distant future, so we should expect on average that there will be a long
-interval between my deeds today and the judgement of them. Since time lays waste
-to all our endeavours, we should expect that the profits of our work will have
-vanished long before the judgement. Therefore, it would be unreasonable to work
-for justice in the hope that our work will persist until the time of judgement
-in order to be incorporated into the new creation, as Wright argues we should
-do.
-
-This first problem is probably the most important, but it's vulnerable to some
-counter-arguments, which rather miss the point. So I'm going to move on to my
-second problem, which is more niche, but which I think holds stronger against
-counter-arguments.
-
-In 1845, the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror left Britain on an expedition to explore
-the Northwest Passage. In July 1845, they were spotted by whalers in Baffin Bay.
-None of the sailors were ever seen alive again by Europeans. Both ships became
-locked into ice in September 1846, and probably never sailed again. In April
-1848, the remaining crew began a desperate 250-mile march to the nearest
-European outpost. It is almost certain that all of them died.
-
-Now, suppose that one of those sailors, between 1846 and 1848, did something
-good. Maybe a major act of heroism, or maybe a small, kind word. I think it's
-reasonable to suppose that someone, at some time, did something good.
-
-All the profits of that good act have now completely perished. They are not
-recorded in the small records the sailors left behind. None of the sailors who
-benefited lived to pass on the benefits. None survived to pass on the light of
-justice to the next generation.
-
-At the time of judgement, then, there will be no remnant of this good act for
-God to test, transform and incorporate into his new creation.
-
-Does this mean that the good act was wasted? Was it only worth a shot just in
-case, despite all the odds, the sailors made it home again?
-
-I think this is a cruel conclusion: but it seems to be where Wright must go.
-
-If it is implausible that the profits of all our good works will make it through
-to the time of judgement, then we have to accept that 1 Cor 3 is true only in
-some metaphorical sense, not that our works will literally persist in order to
-be tested. And if that is true, then the premise of Wright's argument is false:
-our work will not necessarily be incorporated into the new creation, so that
-cannot generate reasons for working for justice now.
-
-I am not convinced by Wright's positive argument. I would like to consider
-alternative interpretations of 1 Cor. This is what Wright goes on to do.
-
-## Do alternative views give us reason to work for justice?
-
-The first view which Wright considers is the gnostic view that resurrection is
-just an afterlife in heaven. He argues that this does not generate reasons for
-working for justice now, but his argument is really the converse of the argument
-in favour of his own view, which I've already considered above, so I'll move on.
-
-The other alternative Wright considers is what he calls 'evolutionary optimism'.
-You might also call this 'progressivism'. By this he means the view that the new
-creation will be made the Church gradually building upon its own works,
-generation after generation, approaching and eventually achieving God's perfect
-standard by its works. This is the Victorian optimism which is still a powerful
-force in our politics: that history is building upon itself, and progressing
-from barbarism to civilisation, from brutishness to beauty, from tragedy to
-justice.
-
-He argues that this view, too, does not give us reasons to work for justice now.
-His argument is intriguing: if our work for justice is condemned to only ever be
-partially successful, then we have no reason to do it. In fact, contra the
-evolutionary optimist, no amount of hard work on our part will ever achieve
-perfect justice, and therefore if bringing in the new creation is all about our
-works, we have no reason to strive for justice.
-
-I'm intrigued by the premise that if we know that our work will at best be
-partially successful, then we have no reason to do it.
-
-This isn't how we ordinarily think: typically, if I think attempting to go to
-the gym twice a week is going to be partially successful, I would say that this
-generates a reason for me to go to the gym.
-
-But I sense there may be an interesting meta-ethical thesis here: perhaps what
-we ordinarily call 'partial success' is in fact a mistake, papering over what is
-in fact simply a failure.
-
-There's an obvious error theory: we had to create the concept of the 'partial
-success' in order to generate reasons in the world as it appears, the world as
-described in Ecclesiastes as 'vanity', where the best-laid plans of mice and men
-gang aft agley, and all our works crumble into the dust eventually. In order to
-think we had reasons at all, we needed to invent the concept of the 'partial
-success'.
-
-But is there a good argument for the view that there is no such thing as a
-partial success?
-
-In 1915, the HMS Endurance, under the command of Captain Ernest Shackleton,
-became stuck fast in Antarctic pack ice in the Weddell Sea. In the face of
-extraordinary challenges, Shackleton vowed to bring all his sailors back to the
-UK alive: and in one of the most famous exploits of Antarctic exploration, he
-succeeded.
-
-It would have been wrong, had Shackleton vowed only to bring back _most_ of his
-sailors. We know that he would have been able to bring _all_ of them back,
-because he in fact did so. To strive for less would have been negligent.
-
-This is to illustrate a general principle: we ought to strive for the best that
-we are able.
-
-Grant that necessarily, no particular justice is inevitable. It follows that
-necessarily, it is possible to prevent all injustice. Therefore, perfect justice
-is achievable.
-
-And yet we _know_ that we will not achieve perfect justice. It's way too hard.
-
-It does seem that I've proven a contradiction: both that perfect justice is
-possible and that it is impossible. I expect these are two different kinds of
-modality. I'm not too bothered to carefully distinguish them, as long we agree
-that these two things can both be true in some sense. By analogy, consider that,
-if you can run a mile in so many seconds, you can run it in a second less; that,
-by sorites, it follows that you can run a mile in a minute; and that you
-obviously cannot run a mile in a minute: it is too hard. Perfect justice is
-perhaps a little like this: it is achievable in the sense that it is physically
-possible for us to achieve it, but unachievable in the sense that it's way too
-hard.
-
-So, since perfect justice is in some sense achievable, it follows that we ought
-to strive for it. But since we know we will not achieve perfect justice, it
-follows that we cannot have a reason to strive for it: we cannot genuinely
-strive for what we know we cannot do. Therefore, if you reject that God will
-work to transform our world of vanity into something fundamentally different
-where perfect justice is not only genuinely achievable but actually realised,
-then you will be stuck in this hopeless tension, where you both must bring about
-perfect justice, and have no reason to do it, because you have no hope of
-success.
-
-Where from here? I would really like to find alternative interpretations of 1 Cor,
-and weigh them up against Wright's interpretation. It may be that, whatever the
-counter-arguments, Wright's view is the strongest available. It may not.