Quotes from NT Wright

Thus, whether on the large scale — where Jesus as Messiah stands in for Israel, and hence (because of Israel's representative status in God's purposes) for the world — or on the small scale, with individual moments, the point is rammed home by all four gospels. It is not either 'victory' or 'substitution'. The victory is won by Jesus dying the death of the unrighteous.

When it comes to the whole Bible, I believe we should not only be reading right through the Bible individually at least once a year — for clergy I'd say twice a year at least, and perhaps the gospels four times a year, and if this means reworking your personal schedules then fine, do it — but that we should make it possible for our congregations to try creative experiments for how to experience the whole Bible.

We must remind ourselves yet once more that all Christian language about the future is a set of signposts pointing into a mist.

Mission, in its widest as well as its more focused senses, is what the church is there for.

The vine-dresser is never closer to the vine, taking more thought over its long-term health and productivity, than when he has the knife in his hand. JOHN

The Creator works in a thousand ways, but one central way is through people—people who think, who pray, who make difficult decisions, who work hard, especially in prayer. That is part of what it means to be image-bearers. The question of divine action and human action is seldom a zero-sum game. If the worlds of heaven and earth have rushed together in Jesus and the spirit, one should expect different layers of explanation to reside together, to reinforce one another.

The Bible is part of God's answer to the ancient human quest for justice, spirituality, relationship, and beauty. Read it and see.

Because of the cross, the world as a whole is free to give allegiance to the God who made it.

Follow me, Jesus said to the first disciples; because in him the living God was doing a new thing, and the list of 'wonderful news' is part of his invitation, part of his summons, part of his way of saying that God is at work in a fresh way and the this is what it looks like. Jesus is beginning a new era for God's people and God's world.

heaven is the place where God's purposes for the future are stored up. It isn't where they are meant to stay so that one would need to go to heaven to enjoy them; it is where they are kept safe against the day when they will become a reality on earth.

Monotheism and election, taken together, demand eschatology. Creational/covenantal monotheism, taken together with the tension between election and exile, demands resurrection and a new world.

From the earliest writings we have, it was seen as the direct and necessary result of the creator God overthrowing on the cross the powers that had kept the nations captive. Up to now the nations had been enslaved; the cross had opened the gates to freedom.