Quotes by N.T. Wright

The author extols the power of having significant portions of Gods Word read in public worship with the following analogy. He says that by reading a few short verses, we are like someone glimpsing nature through window from across the room. But by taking in more lengthy passages of Scripture, we are like someone who, intrigue, gets right next to the window to take in more of the view that it offers, basking in more of the arc of the whole the whole narrative.

The Bible is the story so far in the true novel that God is still writing.

To many, The Bible is a form of verbal wallpaper, pleasant enough in the background, but he stop thinking about it after you have lived in the house for a few weeks.

Traditions tell us where we have come from. Scripture itself is a better guide as to where we should now be going.

Virtue is what happens when someone has made a thousand small choices requiring effort and concentration to do something which is good and right, but which doesnt come naturally. And then, on the thousand and first time, when it really matters, they find that they do whats required automatically. Virtue is what happens when wise and courageous choices become second nature.

Forget happiness. You were called to a throne. How will you prepare for it? That is the question of virtue, Christian style.

Successful resistance to temptation may result in an increase of moral muscle, but that is because one is going to need it. A temptation resisted may become more, not less, fierce.

Virtue is what happens when habitual choices have been wise.

The future goal is the thing which produces character in the present.

To recognize that the Psalms call us to pray and sing at the intersections of the times--of our time and Gods time, of the then, and the now, and the not yet--is to understand how those emotions are to be held within the rhythm of a life lived in Gods presence.

Our confidence in the future restorative justice of God may even give us confidence to do justice ourselves in the present. We are called then, to stretch out the arms of our minds and hearts and to find ourselves Christ shaped, cross shaped, at the intersection of the past present and future of God’s time and our own time. This is a place of intense pain and intense joy, the sort that perhaps only music or poetry can express or embody.

We have lived for too long in a world, and tragically in a Church, where the wills and affections of human beings are regarded as sacrosanct as they stand, where God is required to command what we already love, and to promise what we already desire.

The debate that has been conducted in terms of creation versus evolution has gotten caught up with all kinds of other debates, and this has provided a singularly unhelpful backdrop to the would-be serious discussion of other parts of the Bible.

The power of the bleeding love of God is stronger than the power of Caesar, of the law, of Mars, Mammon, Aphrodite and the rest. This is the point that Paul grasped. And that is the reason for the Colossians gratitude. The battle has been won.

Tell someone to do something, and you change their life–for a day; tell someone a story and you change their life.

We applaud patience, but prefer it to be a virtue that others possess.

[re: I Corinthians 15:34,58] The present life of the church, in other words, is not about soul-making, the attempt to produce or train disembodied beings for a future disembodied life. It is about working with fully human beings who will be reembodied at the last, after the model of the Messiah.

That is what worship is all about. It is the glad shout of praise that arises to God the creator and God the rescuer from the creation that recognizes its maker, the creation that acknowledges the triumph of Jesus the Lamb. That is the worship that is going on in heaven, in Gods dimension, all the time. The question we ought to be asking is how best we might join in.

Human is a kind of midway creature, reflecting God into the world, and reflecting the world back to God.

Christian spirituality combines a sense of the awe and majesty of God with a sense of His intimate presence.