N.T. Wright



N. T. Wright (born 1 December 1948) is a New Testament scholar and former Bishop of Durham in the Church of England. He has published academic works such as The New Testament and The People of God, Jesus and The Victory of God, and The Resurrection of the Son of God, along with writings aimed at a more popular readership, such as What St Paul Really Said and Simply Christian.

Quotes

 * Our culture is very interested in life after death, but the New Testament is much more interested in ...life after life after death...
 * as interviewed by David Van Biema, "Christians Wrong About Heaven, Says Bishop," Time Magazine, Feb. 07, 2008
 * 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.
 * as interviewed by David Van Biema, "Christians Wrong About Heaven, Says Bishop," Time Magazine, Feb. 07, 2008

The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is (2000)

 * Hardcovered. InterVarsity Pr., 1999 / SPCK, 2000


 * 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?" And if the gospel of Jesus is not the key to this task, then what is?

Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (2006)

 * Harper Collins, 2006


 * 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.
 * p. xi


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