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Religion Quotes by N.T. Wright

68 Religion quotes by N.T. Wright

All Religion quotes N.T. Wright’s page

Jesus' death is a puzzle that even his followers struggled to understand, according to the quotes. The writings also speak about a spirituality that mixes awe of God's greatness with a feeling of his close, personal presence. They say that Scripture works like a story‑training ground, helping people hear patterns and learn lessons.

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“resurrection doesn’t mean escaping from the world; it means mission to the world based on Jesus’s lordship over the world. Already”

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

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“if it is true that Jesus ultimately fits no known pattern within the first century,51 it is more or less bound to…

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“Jesus as a “teacher” is much safer than Jesus as the gospels actually present him.”

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“Theology, after all, was made for the sake of the church, not the church for theology.”

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“The point [of the gospels] is not whether Jesus is God, but what God is doing in and through Jesus. What is…

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“Belief in the bodily resurrection includes the belief that what is done in the present in the body, by the power of…

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“If you believe in resurrection, you believe that the living God will put his world to rights and that if God wants…

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“We have reduced the kingdom of God to private piety, the victory of the cross to comfort for the conscience, and Easter…

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“There is a danger in Christians supposing that they simply have to be flaky, awkward, against the government all the time, continually…

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“In the same way many Christians--whole generations of them, sometimes entire denominations--have in their possession a book which will do a thousand…

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“Conservatives have said that Jesus was bodily raised, while liberals have denied it, but neither group has seen the bodily resurrection as…

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“We read scripture in order to be refreshed in our memory and understanding of the story within which we ourselves are actors,…

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“what we notice in Mark 10 is something which seems to operate in a different dimension. For a start, it is a…

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“having a hard enough time explaining to his disciples that he had to die; they never really grasped that at all, and…

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“But over against this downplaying or mocking we also see, from the earliest documents of the New Testament right on through the…

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“In particular, they seem to have interpreted Jesus’s crucifixion within a much bigger—and perhaps more dangerous—story than simply the question of whether…

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“In other words, the Bible isn't there simply to be an accurate reference point for people who want to look things up…

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“The resurrection isn’t just a surprise happy ending for one person; it is instead the turning point for everything else. It is…

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“Because the early Christians believed that resurrection had begun with Jesus and would be completed in the great final resurrection on the…

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“how new that way is will now emerge. But for the moment we need to examine our own answers to the question.…

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“This means we can already rule out the revisionist positions on Jesus’s resurrection that have been offered by so many writers in…

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“In my own academic field, it is much easier to get a doctorate in biblical studies if you do a relentlessly left-brain…

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“At the same time, we may not as a culture be fond of old-fashioned supernaturalism, but we certainly like spirituality in whatever…

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“But here is the puzzle—the ultimate puzzle of Jesus. This puzzle boils down to two questions. First, why would anyone say this…

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“As with Isaiah’s vision in the Temple, and many other scenes both biblical and modern, Peter’s change from fisherman to shepherd comes…

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“When Jesus tells the healed leper to go and show himself to the priest and to make the offering Moses commanded for…

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“If you are to shape your world in following Christ, you are called, prayerfully, to discern where in your discipline the human…

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“At the end, he insists in both cases on secrecy. He’s reached the point where it’s vital that word doesn’t leak out.…

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“But as soon as we grasp this—and I appreciate it takes quite a bit of latching onto for people who have spent…

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“We have lived for too long with the arts as the pretty bit around the edge with the reality as a non-artistic…

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“Many devout Christians accepted that unbiblical cosmology, opting for a detached spirituality (a heavenly-mindedness with a questionable earthly use) and an escapist…

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“All of this suggests that Mark’s gospel, with Jesus himself as the great Character who stands behind it, is inviting us to…

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“To many, "The Bible is a form of verbal wallpaper, pleasant enough in the background, but he stop thinking about it after…

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“When you place the four emerging “canonical” gospels alongside the Jesus documents that others had written, again and again it appears that…

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“The point is that the resurrection, if it had occurred, would undermine not only the Enlightenment’s vision of a split world but…

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“when we turn to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John we discover that they at least think it’s important to retell the history…

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“the gospel, in the New Testament, is the good news that God (the world’s creator) is at last becoming king and that…

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“For far too long now Christians have told the story of Jesus as if it hooked up not with the story of…

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“Paul is the classic example of the early Christian who has woven resurrection so thoroughly into his thinking and practice that if…

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More by N.T. Wright

“This means that the church, the followers of Jesus Christ, live in the bright interval between Easter and the final great consummation. Let's make…

“The very mention of crucifixion was taboo in polite Roman circles, since it was the lowest form of capital punishment, reserved for slaves and…

“Sunday, kept as a commemoration of Easter ever since that event itself (a quite remarkable phenomenon when you come to think about it), is…

“The point of trying to understand the cross better is not so that we can congratulate ourselves for having solved an intellectual crossword puzzle,…

“there is no such thing as a god’s-eye view (by which would be meant a Deist god’s-eye view) available to human beings, a point…

“The “goal” is not “heaven,” but a renewed human vocation within God’s renewed creation. This is what every biblical book from Genesis on is…

“having a hard enough time explaining to his disciples that he had to die; they never really grasped that at all, and they certainly…

“If we are talking about the victory over evil and the launch of new creation, it won’t make much sense unless we are working…

“The personal message of Good Friday, expressed in so many hymns and prayers which draw on the tradition of the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 53)…

“To recognize that the Psalms call us to pray and sing at the intersections of the times--of our time and God's time, of the…

“Successful resistance to temptation may result in an increase of moral muscle, but that is because one is going to need it. A temptation…

“Blessings on the poor in spirit! The kingdom of heaven is yours” (Matt. 5:3) doesn’t mean, “You will go to heaven when you die.”…

“As C. S. Lewis regularly remarked, the chronological snobbery of the modern age (i.e. the assumption that anything that comes after around 1750 is…

“The kingdom of God is, at its heart, about God’s sovereignty sweeping the world with love and power, so that human beings, each made…

“pre-Christian Judaism, including the disciples during Jesus’s lifetime, never envisaged the death of the Messiah. That is why they never thought of his resurrection,…