Quotes from NT Wright

Perhaps, indeed, that is what "holy scripture" really is — not a calm, serene list of truths to be learned or commands to be obeyed, but a jagged book that forces you to grow up in your thinking as you grapple with it.

Jews may face martyrdom (not least because they refuse to privatize their faith), but they are committed to being good [162] citizens even under a regime at best penultimate and at worst blasphemous.

In Genesis, and indeed for much of the Old Testament, the controlling image for death is exile. Adam and Eve were told that they would die on the day they ate the fruit; what actually happened was that they were

The four gospels, again in their very different ways, are all written to tell the story of Jesus as the story of Israel, and the story of Israel's God, reaching their proper climax, so as thereby to tell the story of how Israel's God becomes king of the whole world.

Paul is talking about the present body, which is animated by the normal human psych? (the life force we all possess here and now, which gets us through the present life but is ultimately powerless against illness, injury, decay, and death), and the future body, which is animated by God's pneuma, God's breath of new life, the energizing power of God's new creation. This

expelled from the garden.

Paul's powerful, spirit-driven proclamation of Jesus as "son of God" can hardly be called "preaching," if by "preaching" we mean the sort of thing that goes on in churches week by week in our world. This was a public announcement, like a medieval herald or town crier walking through the streets with a bell, calling people to attention and declaring that a new king had been placed on the throne.

our confidence is not in the solidity of Western culture or the basic goodness of modern democracy. Our confidence is in Jesus and him alone.

has happened before—literally, with the ending of the slave trade and the subsequent freeing of the slaves—and it needs to happen again. And happen it will, because the victory of the cross is real, and the power of the Spirit to implement that victory is real as well.

Combining apocalyptic visions of God's coming kingdom, and public service within the present one, appears shocking to the Enlightenment mindset.

the reason Israel's story matters is that the creator of the world has chosen and called Israel to be the people through whom he will redeem the world.

Holiness is multidimensional.