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Response to N. T. Wright REZA SHAH-KAZEMI This brief response to Professor Wright’s essay centers on his statement: ‘‘It has been assumed in Western Christianity that the ultimate aim is to leave this present world and to ‘go to heaven.’’’ Wright claims this is a simplification of the ‘‘two-stage postmortem reality,’’ which, he rightly says, is also expressed in classical Islamic theology. However, there is no contradiction in Islamic or, I would argue, Christian theology between asserting the reality of the resurrection of the body at the end of this cycle of time and affirming the belief that, at death, the sanctified soul goes to heaven immediately. Dying and going to heaven is indeed our ultimate aim, whether we are Muslim or Christian . We may therefore take Jesus at his word when he promises the good thief: ‘‘Today thou shalt be with me in Paradise’’ (Luke 23:43). Similarly, we can take literally the many promises of the Prophet Muh .ammad regarding the immediacy of entry into heaven for martyrs and saints upon physical death; and one can interpret the following important h .adı̄ths to mean that the heavenly or hellish state begins immediately upon death for every soul: ‘‘Death is the Resurrection : whoever dies, his resurrection has come.’’ ‘‘The grave is either one of the chasms of hell or one of the Gardens of heaven.’’1 By no means would I deny the resurrection of the body at the Final Hour. Rather, I would argue, on the one hand, that the ‘‘grave’’ signifies a trajectory that leads, for the majority, to Judgment at the Final Hour, and, on the other, that Heaven can be conceived not simply as a ‘‘place’’ awaiting us at the end of some chronological continuum but as a dimension of being that exists in a mode of time transcending terrestrial temporality, a location transcending terrestrial space, and partaking of a substance scarcely imaginable for the human mind. ‘‘My Kingdom is not of this world’’ (John 18:36) because ‘‘the Kingdom of God is within you’’ (Luke 17:21). Heaven can thus be conceived as both transcending the world metaphysically and penetrating the world ontologically. The Qur’ān refers not only to the saved (‘‘those of the right hand’’) and the damned (‘‘those of the left hand’’) but also to the ‘‘foremost,’’ al-sābiqūn, who 19 20 Surveys are brought nigh to God, al-muqarrabūn (56:8–14). The implication here is that the generality of saved souls do have to wait until the general resurrection and final judgment before attaining the plenary paradisal condition—prefigured to some degree by their already heavenly condition in the ‘‘grave,’’ the intermediary state or barzakh; but the ‘‘foremost’’ can be considered to be granted the divine ‘‘nearness’’ in Paradise immediately upon death, in a celestial mode of duration outside of the framework of terrestrial time, in a spiritual body appropriate to its celestial ambiance. The Prophet—together with all the prophets—is understood to be in this state, here and now, contrary to what is stated by Wright in relation to Moses, who is deemed to be not in Paradise but still awaiting the day when he will be bodily raised. On a related note, I wonder whether Wright’s focus on Jesus’s resurrection and its eschatological implications deflects our attention away from Jesus’s own teachings on the deepest mysteries of the human condition and, therefore, human destiny, the theme of our seminar. In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells his disciples that if they keep to his teachings, they shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make them free (8:31–32). This ultimate truth, or what is called in Islam the h . aqı̄qa, is a spiritual truth that can save us here and now—not only in the Hereafter. The question I would pose to Wright is this: does not the stress on the bodily resurrection in the Kingdom, in an indeterminable future, diminish our capacity to assimilate the burning actuality and irresistible immediacy of the spiritual kingdom, accessible here and now? In other words, is a fully consummated soteriology not being overshadowed by an anticipated eschatology? My reading of the New Testament focuses far more on the Gospels than on the letters of St. Paul—on what in Muslim terms would be called the risāla, or revealed message of Jesus himself. I would argue that it is from the point of view opened...

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