N.T. Wright

Quotes

• “Now love doesn't stop at death - or if it does, it's a pretty poor sort of love! In fact, grief could almost be defined ...”
• “Put it this way: if your idea of God, if your idea of the salvation offered in Christ, is vague or remote, your idea of ...”
• “We have to grow into Scripture, like a young boy inheriting his older brother's clothes and flopping around in them, but...”
• “Virtue is what happens when someone has made a thousand small choices requiring effort and concentration to do something...”
• “The author compares rationalism and much of organized religion do a dictator who paves over natural springs in order to ...”
• “That is what worship is all about. It is the glad shout of praise that arises to God the creator and God the rescuer fro...”
• “The myth of purgatory is an allegory, a projection, from the present on to the future. This is why purgatory appeals to ...”
• “Unless a person can give reasons, there is, literally, no reason why anyone else should take that person seriously. But ...”
• “Part of the problem about authenticity is that virtues aren't the only things that are habit forming: the more someone b...”
• “Scripture trains us to listen to and learn from stories of all kinds, inside the sacred text and outside, and to discern...”
• “The only sure rule is to remember that the Bible is indeed God's gift to the church, to equip that church for its work i...”
• “[re: I Corinthians 15:34,58] "The present life of the church, in other words, is not about "soul-making," the attempt to...”
• “The church is often called a killjoy for protesting against sexual license. But the real killing of joy comes with the g...”
• “Stripped of its arrogance, its desire to make off with half of the patrimony and never be seen again, history belongs at...”
• “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 f...”
• “To recognize that the Psalms call us to pray and sing at the intersections of the times--of our time and God's time, of ...”
• “The author chuckles at the resistance to using a prepared, written liturgy in prayer. He compares it to being unwilling ...”
• “We have lived for too long in a world, and tragically in a Church, where the wills and affections of human beings are re...”
• “The debate that has been conducted in terms of "creation versus evolution" has gotten caught up with all kinds of other ...”
• “The power of the bleeding love of God is stronger than the power of Caesar, of the law, of Mars, Mammon, Aphrodite and t...”
• “Financial crashes happen precisely because the people who remember the last one have either died or retired and thus are...”
• “For Christians it's always a love game ... that He is love itself ... Indeed, some have suggested that one way of unders...”
• “The "word" did not "offer itself" in a take-it-or-leave-it fashion, any more than Caesar's heralds would have said, "If ...”
• “It is not about "life after death" as such. Rather, it's a way of talking about being bodily alive again after a period ...”
• “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 ...”
• “After defending the value of prepared prayers, the author cautions against over-reliance on them. Just as David could no...”
• “the work of salvation, in its full sense, is (1) about whole human beings, not merely souls; (2) about the present, not ...”
• “Human was simultaneously the bearer of God's wise rule into the world, and also the creature who would bring the loyalty...”
• “Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to coloniz...”
• “Setting the stage for the Tower of Babel, the author says that, while humanity had a mission to reflect God, it had been...”
• “Successful resistance to temptation may result in an increase of moral muscle, but that is because one is going to need ...”
• “To many, "The Bible is a form of verbal wallpaper, pleasant enough in the background, but he stop thinking about it afte...”
• “What Paul understands by holiness or sanctification (is) the learning in the present of the habits which anticipate the ...”
• “Those in whom the Spirit comes to live are God's new Temple. They are, individually and corporately, places where heaven...”
• “Forget happiness. You were called to a throne. How will you prepare for it? That is the question of virtue, Christian st...”
• “Author says writing about Jesus is difficult because it is like writing about a friend "who is still liable to surprise ...”
• “Traditions tell us where we have come from. Scripture itself is a better guide as to where we should now be going.”
• “Tell someone to do something, and you change their life–for a day; tell someone a story and you change their life.”
• “Someone who is determinedly trying to show God how good he or she is is likely to become an insufferable prig.”
• “The Bible is the story so far in the true novel that God is still writing.”
• “We applaud patience, but prefer it to be a virtue that others possess.”
• “The future goal is the thing which produces character in the present.”
• “Virtue is what happens when habitual choices have been wise.”