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N.T. Wright Quotes

Nicholas Thomas Wright is a leading British New Testament scholar, Pauline theologian, and retired Anglican bishop. In academia, he is published as N. T. Wright, but is otherwise known as Tom Wright. Between 2003 and his retirement in 2010, he was the Bishop of Durham. He then became Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St Mary’s College in the University of St Andrews in Scotland.

He writes prolifically about theology, Christian life, and the relationship of these two things. He advocates a biblical re-evaluation of and fresh approach to theological matters such as justification, women's ordination, and popular Christian views about life after death. He has also criticised the idea of a literal Rapture. The author of over seventy books, Wright is highly regarded in academic and theological circles primarily for his "Christian Origins and the Question of God" series. The third volume, The Resurrection of the Son of God, is considered by many pastors and theologians to be a seminal Christian work on the resurrection of the historical Jesus, while the most recently released fourth volume, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, is hailed as Wright's magnum opus.

✵ 1. December 1948   •   Other names نيكولاس رايت
N.T. Wright photo
N.T. Wright: 15   quotes 9   likes

Famous N.T. Wright Quotes

“You become like what you worship. When you gaze in awe, admiration, and wonder at something or someone, you begin to take on something of the character of the object of your worship.”

N.T. Wright

Source: Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense

“Easter was when Hope in person surprised the whole world by coming forward from the future into the present.”

N.T. Wright

Source: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

“[Arguments about God are] like pointing a flashlight toward the sky to see if the sun is shining.”

N.T. Wright

Source: Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (2006)

“Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about.”

N.T. Wright

Source: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

“Heaven is important, but its not the end of the world”

N.T. Wright

“Logic cannot comprehend love; so much the worse for logic.”

N.T. Wright

Source: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

“When we begin to glimpse the reality of God, the natural reaction is to worship him. Not to have that reaction is a fairly sure sign that we haven't yet really understood who he is or what he's done.”

N.T. Wright

Source: Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense

“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.”

N.T. Wright

Source: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

“At no point do the resurrection narratives in the four Gospels say, "Jesus has been raised, therefore we are all going to heaven." It says that Christ is coming here, to join together the heavens and the Earth in an act of new creation.”

N.T. Wright

as interviewed by David Van Biema, "Christians Wrong About Heaven, Says Bishop," Time Magazine, Feb. 07, 2008 http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1710844,00.html

N.T. Wright Quotes about God

“God's plan is not to abandon this world, the world which he said was "very good." Rather, he intends to remake it. And when he does he will raise all his people to new bodily life to live in it. That is the promise of the Christian gospel.”

N.T. Wright

Source: Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense

“Someone who is determinedly trying to show God how good he or she is is likely to become an insufferable prig.”

N.T. Wright

Source: After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters

“Those in whom the Spirit comes to live are God's new Temple. They are, individually and corporately, places where heaven and earth meet.”

N.T. Wright

Source: Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense

“the work of salvation, in its full sense, is (1) about whole human beings, not merely souls; (2) about the present, not simply the future; and (3) about what God does through us, not merely what God does in and for us.”

N.T. Wright

“The point of following Jesus isn't simply so that we can be sure of going to a better place than than this after we die. Our future beyond death is enormously important, but the nature of the Christian hope is such that it plays back into the present life. We're called, here and now, to be instruments of God's new creation, the world-put-to-rights which has already been launched by Jesus and of which Jesus's followers are supposed to be not simply beneficiaries but also agents.”

N.T. Wright

Source: Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (2006), p. xi

“Our task as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to a world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to a world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to a world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion…The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics and theology and even--heaven help us--Biblical studies, a worldview that will mount the historically-rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading the way…with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and true wisdom. I believe if we face the question, "if not now, then when?" if we are grasped by this vision we may also hear the question, "if not us, then who?"”

N.T. Wright

And if the gospel of Jesus is not the key to this task, then what is?
The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is (2000)

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