N. T. Wright Quotations

The whole point of the kingdom of God is Jesus has come to bear witness to the true truth, which is nonviolent. When God wants to take charge of the world, he doesn't send in the tanks. He sends in the poor and the meek.

Love is not just tolerance. It's not just distant appreciation. It's a warm sense of, 'I am enjoying the fact that you are you.'

One of the things I find depressing about some of the upper echelons of Anglicanism on both sides of the Atlantic is that it's sort of taken for granted that we all basically know what's in the Bible, and so we just glance at a few verses for devotional purposes and then get on to the real business.

The imminent demise of the church has been predicted since the middle of the 18th century. This is the regular secular mantra if churchgoing declines. I could take you to plenty of churches that are full to bursting and new churches being built.

Heard in full sound, the Gospels tell about the establishment of a theocracy, and portray what theocracy looks like with Jesus as king.

The Bible is the book of my life. It's the book I live with, the book I live by, the book I want to die by.

I'm not a universalist, and the way I talk about final loss is this: People worship idols - money, whatever. Their humanness gets reshaped around the idol - you become like what you worship. That's one of the basic spiritual laws.

Almost all the early Christian Fathers were opposed to the death penalty, even though it was of course standard practice across the ancient world.

You can't reconcile being pro-life on abortion and pro-death on the death penalty.

Western Christians have imagined that, at the end of the day, God is going to throw the present space-time universe into a trashcan and we'll be sitting on clouds playing harps. The ultimate future that we're promised is much more interesting than that. It's new heavens and a new Earth with new bodies to live in.

Far too many people, especially within evangelicalism, think that the individual is all that matters, and that the corporate dimension is a distraction or diversion. Of course Christianity is deeply personal for every single Christian; nobody gets lost in the kingdom of God. But you can't play that off against the corporate dimension.

The question of Heaven, the question of what happens after death, is one which a lot of people in our culture try to put off as long as they can, but sooner or later it suddenly swings round and looks them in the eye.

People have been told so often that resurrection is just a metaphor, and means Jesus died and was glorified - in other words, he went to Heaven, whatever that means. And they've never realized that the word 'resurrection' simply didn't mean that.

I didn't write much until I turned 40. Up until then I felt constrained by a sense of the discipline of New Testament studies and a sense of the ruling elite in theology and biblical studies.

While some who downplay Christ's divinity have imagined Jesus as a great social worker 'being kind to old ladies, small dogs and little children,' orthodox Christianity has not wanted Jesus to have a political message.

Most of the things that really matter require faith. 'How do I know that my wife loves me?' 'How do I know that Mozart's 'Jupiter Symphony' is sublime and beautiful?' There are all sorts of things which come at a more lowly level than that - 'How do I know that two plus two equals four?' There are different layers, different types of knowing.

To get overprotective about particular readings of the Bible is always in danger of idolatry.

I think future generations will say the late 20th century and the early 21st century was a time of great convulsions and upheavals.

A 'conservative believer' must be someone who believes that Jesus was truly human as well as truly divine.

Within orthodoxy, there is always a danger of faith collapsing into fear.

I work in a very tough area of Britain. There is not much hope sociologically where I live and work, they're all sorts of conditions of poverty and deprivation and so on, I really do believe that the message of the kingdom of God is for places like this.

It's very easy for a church just to slide along from week to week, taking it for granted that we do our services like this and that, and we celebrate the sacraments like this and that.

Of course there are people who think of 'heaven' as a kind of pie-in-the-sky dream of an afterlife to make the thought of dying less awful. No doubt that's a problem as old as the human race.

From where many of us in the U.K. sit, American politics is hopelessly polarized. All kinds of issues get bundled up into two great heaps. The rest of the world, today and across the centuries, simply doesn't see things in this horribly oversimplified way.

Looking back to the earlier centuries of the church, most of the great teachers were also bishops and vice versa. It's only fairly recently that the church has had this great divide.

I'm fortunate in that I've grown up in a worshipping tradition which is quite rich musically (and music is very important to me) and has a wonderful resource of hymns from all sorts of different parts of the Church... and to go to church and be able to sing that stuff and listen to a Bach motet or indeed some charismatic choruses.

There's a great deal about Roman Catholicism that I basically disagree with. For instance, the doctrine of Mary which... I have studied that stuff and I simply don't think that has any mileage at all biblically, theologically, and I've got some friends who are very disappointed that I say that.

The gospel is not itself about you are this sort of a person and this can happen to you. That's the result of the gospel rather than the gospel itself.

I'm very eclectic, musically as in other things! But also to frame the hearing and knowing of Scripture within a context of worship, which is what Anglican liturgy does, just seems to me such a very complete and compelling thing.

I'm a people person. I like being with people. So I like being a teacher, and so on.

The Holy Spirit in enabling the already-justified believers to live with moral energy and will so that they really do please God again and again.

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.

First-hand acquaintance with the actual texts is always the best way.

If you ask people in England where does Tom Wright sit on the theological spectrum, they say, "Well he's an evangelical of course," as though, come on, get used to it.

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!"

It seems to me that since the Middle Ages (it's not a Reformation thing), all that stuff about Jews and Gentiles coming together in Christ was just screened out.

Indian leaders are saying, "You don't understand our caste system. It's really a lovely thing. People are very happy about it and so on." I don't think that's quite fair.

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.

I knew that I had to be a preacher. I had to be a minister, which was a puzzle to me because my dad was a businessman. It was a family company and I assumed that I would take it on from him.

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.

When you're writing theology, you have to say everything all the time, otherwise people think you've deliberately missed something out.

From my student days I found him a compelling and fascinating, though often puzzling, figure. It's a lifelong fascination now and I don't expect that to stop! His vision of God, God's faithfulness, God's purposes and so on is so much bigger and richer than almost any subsequent Christian thinker has ever managed. In addition, I have always loved ancient history, especially the history of the early Roman empire, and of course Paul fits right into that.

I am also very excited by the way in which we can see Paul wrestling not only with his Jewish world and its scriptures but also, by clear implication, with philosophical and political issues that were 'out there' at the time. The thing is that for Paul this is all part of the same larger, whole vision of God and God's purposes. Watching how everything comes together is an intellectual treat of the first order - as well as a spiritual and practical challenge to me personally and to the church...

Since all human governments, like all human individuals, are subject to temptation, especially the temptation to use this God-given role for their own ends, there must be clear and wise critique, and holding to account.

I came to Paul at quite an early age, having already studied Plato and Aristotle; and I found Paul easily their intellectual equal, though he was handling these amazing questions about God, Jesus, Israel, faith and so on. He continues to be an amazingly stimulating thinker, especially when we try to understand the flow of thought in letter after letter rather than just combing him for a few verses on 'our favourite topics', which, sadly, some Christian teachers do just as some journalists and broadcasters do!

When it became clear that in fact my father was saying, "It will be interesting to see what you want to do when you grow up," I realized that there was no pressure on that front. And I remember huge relief: Hey, I can go and do what I really know I have to do!

Funny but, for me, the Bible was a hobby before it was a serious study. It was the thing I'd sneak off and do on the side, feeling rather guilty because I wasn't doing my real school homework or whatever... and never thinking I would make it a life's work.

All human governments are intended by God to do justice and mercy - to look after, in particular, the needs of the poor and disadvantaged.

Justice and beauty are central to God's new world and should be central to our work. Together they frame the good news of Jesus.

Paul's vision, though, is starting small, with actual communities in which reconciliation and justice has to be practiced - like the rich/poor distinction in the Corinthian church, for instance, or the projected reconciliation between Philemon and Onesimus. But he clearly believes (Ephesians 3) that communities like this send a signal to the wider world that Jesus is Lord - which is aimed at then the whole world coming into line.

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.

Many Christians in the evangelical tradition use words like "conversion," "regeneration," "justification," "born-again," etc. all as more or less synonyms to mean "becoming a Christian from cold." In the classic Reformed tradition, the word "justification" is much more fine-tuned than that and has to do with a verdict which is pronounced, rather than with something happening to you in terms of actually being born again. So that I'm actually much closer to some classic Reformed writing on this than some people perhaps realize.

God is the Creator God, he doesn't want to say, "Okay, creation was very good, but I'm scrapping it." He wants to say, "Creation is so good that I'm going to rescue it."

The phrase "spiritual journey" is one that I've only become familiar with comparatively recently. We wouldn't have put it like that when I was a kid.

I grew up in a church-going family, a very sort of ordinary, middle-of-the-road Anglican family where nobody really talked about personal Christian experience. It was just sort of assumed like an awful lot of things in the 1950's were just sort of taken for granted.

Having lots of members of my family who were in ministry in one form or another, I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that at quite an early age, I was very, very conscious personally of the love of God.

I remember one particular moment (I don't actually know how old I was, but I guess around 7 or something like that) when I remember actually weeping. I was by myself in a room in the house, and I was just crying because I realized how much Jesus loved me.

I guess, as an Anglican, there's always room to move, which can be a dangerous thing, but also a very healthy thing, because bits of the great biblical tradition which you haven't fully plugged into before you've got the space to grow into... not least, the sacraments.

When I was at seminary in my early twenties, one of my teachers said to me, "You're going to have to decide. Either you're going to be an academic or you're going to be a pastor. You can't be both." I remember thinking, Rats! I want to be both! Why are you telling me I can't do these two things?And so I have kind of oscillated to and always wanted to do both.

It's partly that I'm an extrovert and that I like being with people. If you shut me up in a library with nothing else around for weeks on end, I'd go mad! I have to sort of go out...

We have to train ourselves to use words accurately. And there's so much loose Christian talk, for which I've no doubt been as guilty as any.

If you believe in the Bible, you've got to do business with it and not just screen it out.

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.

I accept the historical challenge, and with that, I accept the essentially Christian position that God always has more light to break out of his holy Word.

Right answers to difficult questions are better than wrong answers to difficult questions.

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.

Fortunately, Paul is much more interesting than most of his interpreters, myself included.

My aim has been to expound Scripture and to expound Scripture in such a way that I do not set one Scripture over against another.

The power of the gospel lies[...] in the powerful announcement that God is God, that Jesus is Lord, that the powers of evil have been defeated, that God's new world has begun.

The very metaphor Paul chooses for this decisive moment in his argument shows that what he has in mind is not the unmaking of creation or simply its steady development, but the drastic and dramatic birth of new creation from the womb of the old.

Such debates [about the nature of Scripture], in my view, distract attention from the real point of what the Bible is there for. Squabbling over particular definitions of the qualities of the Bible is like a married couple squabbling over which of them loves the children more, when they should be getting on with bringing them up and setting them a good example. The Bible is there to enable God's people to be equipped to do God's work in God's world, not to give them an excuse to sit back smugly, knowing they possess all God's truth.

Good Christian liturgy is friendship in action, love taking thought, the covenant relationship between God and his people not simply discovered and celebrated like the sudden meeting of friends, exciting and worthwhile though that is, but thought through and relished, planned and prepared -- an ultimately better way for the relationship to grow and at the same time a way of demonstrating what the relationship is all about.

The logic of cross and resurrection, of the new creation which gives shape to all truly Christian living, points in a different direction. And one of the central names for that direction is joy: the joy of relationships healed as well as enhanced, the joy of belonging to the new creation, of finding not what we already had but what god was longing to give us.

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.

I am convinced that when we bring our griefs and sorrows within the story of God's own grief and sorrow, and allow them to be held there, God is able to bring healing to us ans new possibilities to our lives. That is, of course, what Good Friday and Easter are all about

What Jesus did was not a mere example of something else, not a mere manifestation of some larger truth; it was itself the climactic event and fact of cosmic history. From then on everything is differentthe End came forward into the present in Jesus the Messiah

the word 'justification' has itself had a chequered career over the course of many centuries of debate. As the major historian of the doctrine has noted, the word has long since ceased to mean, in ecclesial debates, what it meant for Paul himself - which is confusing, since the debates have gone on referring to Paul as though he was in fact talking about what they want to talk about. It is as though the greengrocer treated you to a long discussion of how onions are grown, and how best to cook with them, when what you had asked was how much he would charge for three of them.

The call of the gospel is for the church to implement the victory of God in the world through suffering love.

Genesis 1...was designed to reflect God, both to reflect God back to God in worship and to reflect God into the rest of creation in stewardship.

Hope comes as a surprise, at several levels at once.

Part of Christian belief is to find out what's true about Jesus and let that challenge our culture.

God build’s God’s kingdom. But God ordered this world in such a way that His own work within that world takes place through the human beings that reflect His image. That is central to the notion of being made in God’s image. He has enlisted us to act as His stewards in the project of creation. So the objection about us trying to build God’s kingdom by our own efforts, though it seems humble and pious, can actually be a way of hiding from responsibility, of keeping one’s head well down when the boss is looking for volunteers.

For now we see the beauty of God through a glass, darkly, but then face to face; now we appreciate only in part, but then we shall affirm and appreciate God, even as the living God has affirmed and appreciated us. So now our tasks are worship, mission, and management, these three; but the greatest of these is worship.

But if Christians don’t get Jesus right, what chance is there that other people will bother much with him?

Art is love creating the new world and justice is love rolling up its sleeves to heal the old one.

True worship doesn't keep looking at its watch.

Blessed are the pure in heart; how will people believe that, unless we ourselves are worshipping the living God until our own hearts are set on fire and scorched through with his purity?

Jesus of Nazareth ushers in not simply a new religious possibility, not simply a new ethic or a new way of salvation, but a new creation.

Worship is humble and glad, worship forgets itself in remembering God; worship celebrates the truth as God's truth, not its own.

As we are set free by that love from our own pride and fear, our own greed and arrogance, so we are free in our turn to be agents of reconciliation and hope, or healing and love.

...we will arrange for 'religion' to become a small subdepartment of ordinary life; it will be quite safe - harmless, in fact - with church life carefully separated off from everything else in the world, whether politics, art, sex, economics, or whatever.

Christian holiness consists not of trying as hard as we can to be good but of learning to live in the new world created by Easter, the new world we publicly entered in our baptism. There are many parts of the world we can't do anything about except pray. But there is one part of the world, one part of physical reality, that we can do something about, and that is the creature each of us call "myself.

We have traditionally thought of knowing in terms of subject and object and have struggled to attain objectivity by detaching our subjectivity. It can't be done, and one of the achievements of postmodernity is to demonstrate that. What we are called to, and what in the resurrection we are equipped for, is a knowing in which we are involved as subjects but as self-giving, not as self-seeking, subjects: in other words, a knowing that is a form of love.

The natural/supernatural distinction itself, and the near-equation of 'supernatural' with 'superstition', are scarecrows that Enlightenment thought has erected in its fields to frighten away anyone following the historical argument where it leads. It is high time the birds learned to take no notice.

For the Deist ... prayer is calling across a void to a distant deity. This lofty figure may or may not be listening. He, or it, may or may not be inclined, or even able, to do very much about us and our world, even if he (or it) wanted to ... all you can do is send off a message, like a marooned sailor scribbling a note and putting it in a bottle, on the off-chance that someone out there might pick it up. That kind of prayer takes a good deal of faith and hope. But it isn't Christian prayer.

Deism, historically, produces atheism. First you make God a landlord, then an absent landlord, then he becomes simply absent.

Tolerance is a cheap, low-grade parody of love. Tolerance is not a great virtue to aspire to. Love is much tougher and harder.

The resurrection gives you a sense of what God wants to do for the whole world....

I feel about John's gospel like I feel about my wife; I love her very much, but I wouldn't claim to understand her.

To pray 'your kingdom come' at Jesus' bidding meant to align oneself with his kingdom movement.