Wright’s Surprised by Hope continues to delight me, putting into words ideas that were mere, shapeless bubbles in my mind. Take this passage, for instance:
If Thomas represents an epistemology of faith, which transcends but also includes historical and scientific knowing, we might suggest that Paul represents at this point an epistemology of hope. In 1 Corinthians 15 he sketches his argument that there will be a future resurrection as part of God’s new creation, the redemption of the entire cosmos as in Romans 8. Hope, for the Christians, is not wishful thinking or blind optimism. It is a mode of knowing, a mode within which new things are possible, options are not shut down, new creation can happen.
– N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope, page 72.
Yes! This is *exactly* what stories ought to do. We wholeheartedly affirm that “Christ did not come to abolish, but to fulfill the law.” But do we have any idea what it really looks like?
Fulfillment is not simply filling in the right typological dots, checking off all the appropriate stories. Fulfillment is a bursting forth, eucatastrophe, an unthinkable happening that all at once becomes the norm.
And it’s also why Hellboy rules. (More on that later.)