N. T. Wright: The closer you get to the truth, the clearer becomes the...

God has committed himself, ever since creation, to working through his creatures--in particular, through his image-bearing human beings--but they have all let Him down.

N. T. Wright

creation committed humans

The natural/supernatural distinction itself, and the near-equation of 'supernatural' with 'superstition', are scarecrows that Enlightenment thought has erected in its fields to frighten away anyone following the historical argument where it leads. It is high time the birds learned to take no notice.

N. T. Wright

enlightenment historical bird

True worship doesn't keep looking at its watch.

N. T. Wright

true-worship worship watches

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

N. T. Wright

scripture guides tradition

The Holy Spirit in enabling the already-justified believers to live with moral energy and will so that they really do please God again and again.

N. T. Wright

enabling energy spirit

Scripture is, at its heart, the great story that we sing in order not just to learn it with our heads but to become part of it through and through, the story that in turn becomes part of us.

N. T. Wright

stories heart order

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 God's dimension, all the time. The question we ought to be asking is how best we might join in.

N. T. Wright

triumph heaven jesus

It is a matter of glimpsing that in God's new creation, of which Jesus's resurrection is the start, all that was good in the original creation is reaffirmed. All that has corrupted and defaced it--including many things which are woven so tightly in to the fabric of the world as we know it that we can't imagine being without them--will be done away. Learning to live as a Christian is learning to live as a renewed human being, anticipating the eventual new creation in and with a world which is still longing and groaning for that final redemption.

N. T. Wright

woven christian jesus

One of the reasons we do history, in fact, is because it acts as a brake, a control, on our otherwise unbridled enthusiasm for our own ideas.

N. T. Wright

enthusiasm facts ideas

I have always taken the view that sometimes war may be justified, as police action can be justified, to protect the weak and vulnerable (a major preoccupation in scripture). But this is an old and difficult question and very wise people take different views.

N. T. Wright

taken wise war

God build’s God’s kingdom. But God ordered this world in such a way that His own work within that world takes place through the human beings that reflect His image. That is central to the notion of being made in God’s image. He has enlisted us to act as His stewards in the project of creation. So the objection about us trying to build God’s kingdom by our own efforts, though it seems humble and pious, can actually be a way of hiding from responsibility, of keeping one’s head well down when the boss is looking for volunteers.

N. T. Wright

volunteer responsibility humble

I grew up in a church-going family, a very sort of ordinary, middle-of-the-road Anglican family where nobody really talked about personal Christian experience. It was just sort of assumed like an awful lot of things in the 1950's were just sort of taken for granted.

N. T. Wright

church taken christian

In the United States at present the 'culture wars' of the last thirty years have now produced a horrid stand-off which compels you all into a binary either/or with all kinds of spin-offs. This is deeply unhealthy. The trouble is that the way the system is set up in order to get in and try to change it you have to be (a) a millionaire, (b) someone who can work inside the system long-term, (c) someone prepared to make deals and compromises... Which does rule out the vast majority of committed Christians.

N. T. Wright

christian war order

Worship is humble and glad, worship forgets itself in remembering God; worship celebrates the truth as God's truth, not its own.

N. T. Wright

remembering-god worship humble

Justice never means "treating everybody the same way", but "treating people appropriately".

N. T. Wright

justice mean people

Love is not just tolerance. It's not just distant appreciation. It's a warm sense of, 'I am enjoying the fact that you are you.'

N. T. Wright

tolerance appreciation love

problematic within post-Reformation dogmatics. Is faith something I `do' to earn God's favour, and, if not, what role does it play? Once we release Paul's justification-language from the burden of having to describe `how someone becomes a Christian', however, this is simply no longer a problem. There is no danger of imagining that Christian faith is after all a surrogate `work', let alone a substitute form of moral righteousness. Faith is the badge of covenant membership, not something someone `performs' as a kind of initiation test.

N. T. Wright

membership christian play

Good Christian liturgy is friendship in action, love taking thought, the covenant relationship between God and his people not simply discovered and celebrated like the sudden meeting of friends, exciting and worthwhile though that is, but thought through and relished, planned and prepared -- an ultimately better way for the relationship to grow and at the same time a way of demonstrating what the relationship is all about.

N. T. Wright

covenant christian people

When people with power see things happen of which they disapprove, they drop bombs and send in tanks. When people without power see things happen of which they disapprove, they smash store windows, blow themselves up in crowded places, and fly planes into buildings. The fact that both methods have proved remarkably unsuccessful at changing things doesn't stop people from going on in the same way.

N. T. Wright

blow people way

All history involves selection, and it is always human beings who do the selecting.

N. T. Wright

selection human-beings humans

The closer you get to the truth, the clearer becomes the beauty, and the more you will find worship welling up within you. That's why theology and worship belong together.