Quotes from Christopher Wright

To argue that because Old Testament law does not prescribe explicit penalties related to infringement of its economic legislation, therefore modern civil authorities are excluded from any form of intervention in the economic marketplace betrays both the inadequacy of theonomism's preoccupation with penalties and also, in my view, its ideological bias towards unfettered, free-market economic capitalism.

Science, according to Kuhn, has not actually followed the classic myth of steady evolution of accumulating theories based on deeper and deeper probing of the evidence. Rather, science has sometimes made huge transitions as one paradigm, which may have stood for centuries, is found to be inadequate and crashes to the ground, to be replaced by another.

This means we do not ignore the particularity of biblical commands (and apply them to our own day as if they were timeless universals). Nor are we paralysed by their particularity (and thus unable to apply them to our day at all). We rejoice in their particularity because it shows us how the will of God was expressed in their context, and we take them as our paradigm for our own ethical construction.21

the same apostle Paul was sure that if the church in Corinth would worship God aright, any unbeliever who came into their meeting would "fall down and worship God, exclaiming, 'God is really among you' " (1 Cor. 14:25). That's missional praise.

It is important to understand that Paul is not just using Abraham as an illustration of the gospel or of his teaching about justification by grace through faith. No, Abraham is the beginning of the gospel.

Our psalmists were not Judaizers, nor were they Calvinists, Arminians, Theonomists, Dispensationalists, Legalists or Antinomians. They were worshipping believers, members of a people who knew themselves to be in a unique covenant relationship with the LORD their God, redeemed by God's saving grace, and privileged to have been given a land to live in and a law to live by. Let us, then, do our best to understand and appreciate the law through their eyes.

It is surely very ironic and tragic if those who speak most loudly about the gifts of the Spirit are themselves failing to show much of the fruit of the Spirit.

the economic sphere is like a thermometer that reveals both the temperature of the theological relationship between God and Israel (angle A), and also the extent to which Israel was conforming to the social shape required of them in consistency with their status as God's redeemed people (angle B).

It is instructive (and sometimes properly humbling) to give thought to that great stream of tradition within which we stand, rather than fondly imagine we are the first generation to face the challenge the Old Testament sets before us as Christians.

So then, we must not read Lamentations without the rest of the Bible. But equally, we should not read the rest of the Bible without Lamentations (as Christians have habitually tended to do).

The exodus was not a movement from slavery to freedom, but from slavery to covenant. Redemption was for relationship with the redeemer, to serve his interests and his purposes in the world.