N. T. Wright Quotes
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Paul believed, in fact, that Jesus had gone through death and out the other side. Jesus had gone into a new mode of physicality, for which there was no precedent and of which there was, as yet, no other example.
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Christmas is God lighting a candle; and you don't light a candle in a room that's already full of sunlight. You light a candle in a room that's so murky that the candle, when lit, reveals just how bad things really are.
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When we learn to read the story of Jesus and see it as the story of the love of God, doing for us what we could not do for ourselves--that insight produces, again and again, a sense of astonished gratitude which is very near the heart of authentic Christian experience.
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God has committed himself, ever since creation, to working through his creatures--in particular, through his image-bearing human beings--but they have all let Him down.
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Certainly Paul shares the view of the Old Testament prophets that God will one day flood the world with justice and joy - and that this has begun to be fulfilled in the resurrection of Jesus.
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Those in whom the Spirit comes to live are God's new Temple. They are, individually and corporately, places where heaven and earth meet.
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One of the things I really respect about Doug Moo is that he is constantly grappling with the text. Where he hears the text saying something which is not what his tradition would have said, he will go with the text. I won't always agree with his exegesis, but there is a relentless scholarly honesty about him which I really tip my hat off to.
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We British say "to put the world to rights." I've discovered that that's not the way Americans say it and people scratch their heads and say, "Funny... what does he mean by that?" It means to fix the thing, to make it all better again.
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Christ's resurrection doesn't mean escaping from the world; it means mission to the world based on Jesus's lordship over the world.
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The New Testament picks up from the Old the theme that God intends, in the end, to put the whole creation to rights.
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Part of the problem about authenticity is that virtues aren't the only things that are habit forming: the more someone behaves in a way that is damaging to self or to others, the more "natural" it will both seem and actually be. Spontaneity, left to itself, can begin by excusing bad behavior and end by congratulating vice.
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The Christian is prepared to say, 'I don't like the sound of this, ... but if this is what it really means, I'm going to have to pray for grace and strength to get that into my heart and be shaped by it.'
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What we have at the moment isn't as the old liturgies used to say, 'the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead,' but a vague and fuzzy optimism that somehow things may work out in the end.
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It is faith alone that justifies, but faith that justifies can never be alone, though one is justified by faith alone, the faith which justifies is never in fact alone.
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Hope is what you get when you suddenly realize that a different worldview is possible, a worldview in which the rich, the powerful, and the unscrupulous do not after all have the last word. The same worldview shift that is demanded by the resurrection of Jesus is the shift that will enable us to transform the world.
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What we are seeing in America is the creaky old age of an eighteenth-century settlement, deemed at the time to be the new flowering of humankind-come-of-age (the 'Enlightenment') and so deemed to be above revision. At this point the urgent need is for prayer and prophecy.
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Death is the ultimate weapon of the tyrant; resurrection does not make a covenant with death, it overthrows it.
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Learning to live as a Christian is learning to live as a renewed human being, anticipating the eventual new creation in and with a world which is still longing and groaning for that final redemption.
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I have met many Roman Catholic theologians who will emphasize as much as any good Protestant preacher that everything comes from the love and grace of God.
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For me, actually, being a bishop in a bishopric where there's an academic tradition gives me this fascinating, challenging, but open invitation to say, "We want you to be a scholar. We want you to go on doing this. But do it as a bishop!"
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I am an advocate of one form of the New Perspective. But there are as many new perspectives as there are people writing about it.
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When Jerusalem is destroyed, and Jesus' people escape from the ruin just in time, that will be YHWH becoming king, bringing about the liberation of his true covenant people, the true return from exile, the beginning of the new world order
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The point of justice and mercy anyway is not ‘they deserve it’ but ‘this is the way God’s world should be’, and we are called to do those things that truly anticipate the way God’s world WILL be.
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Often people see doctrines as a checklist. Here are the following nineteen truths which you've got to believe to be a good sound Christian.