N. T. Wright Quotes
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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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The Biblical vision is not so much concerned with life after death but about life after life after death.
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To open the Bible is to open a window toward Jerusalem, as Daniel did (6:10), no matter where our exile may have taken us.
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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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True worship doesn't put on a show or make a fuss; true worship isn't forced, isn't half-hearted, doesn't keep looking at its watch, doesn't worry what the person in the next pew is doing. True worship is open to God, adoring God, waiting for God, trusting God even in the dark.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Death is the ultimate weapon of the tyrant; resurrection does not make a covenant with death, it overthrows it.
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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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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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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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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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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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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 never been to India and I am not a specialist on Indian culture, and I would not wish to be heard to be taking swipes at a culture which I've never experienced and where I've never lived.
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It is central to Christian living that we should celebrate the goodness of creation, ponder its present brokenness, and, insofar as we can, celebrate in advance the healing of the world, the new creation itself. Art, music, literature, dance, theater, and many other expressions of human delight and wisdom, can all be explored in new ways.