THE BEGINNING OF GOD SETTING EVERYTHING RIGHT AGAIN

'..with the resurrection of Jesus God's new world has begun; in other words, his being raised from the dead is the start, the paradigm case, the foundation, the beginning, of that great setting-right which God will do for the whole cosmos at the end. The risen body of Jesus is the one bit of the physical universe that has already been "set right", Jesus is therefore the one through whom everything else will be "set right".'

Tom Wright, Acts for Everyone: Part 2 Chapters 13-28, p.93. 

THE POWER OF THE SYMBOLIC

'...symbolic actions are among the most powerful things in the world...'
Tom Wright, The Meal Jesus Gave Us: Understanding Holy Communion, p.59.

BEAUTY IS ELUSIVE

'The beauty of the natural world is, at best, the echo of a voice, not the voice itself. And if we try to pin it down - literally, in the case of a butterfly-collector - we find that the key thing itself, the elusive beauty which keeps us always looking further, is precisely what you lose when the pin goes in. Beauty is here, but it is not here. It is this - this bird, this song, this sunset - but it is not this.' 

Tom Wright, Simply Christianity, p.38. 

GOD & SUFFERING

'Somehow, in a way we are inclined to find offensive, God has to get his boots muddy and, it seems, to get his hands bloody, to put the world back to rights. If we declare, as so many have done, that we would rather it not be so, we face a counter question: Which bit of dry, clean ground are we standing on that we should pronounce on the matter with such certainty?' 

Tom Wright in J Todd Billings, Rejoicing in Lament, p.87. 

DON'T BE TRUE TO YOURSELF

'If you are true to "yourself", you will end up a complete mess. The challenge is to take the "self" you find within, and to choose wisely which impulses and desires to follow, and which ones to resist.' 

Tom Wright in Brian S Rosner, Known by God: A Biblical Theology of Personal Identity, p.25. 

THE SACRAMENTS

'...to reject, marginalize, trivialize or be suspicious of the sacraments (and quasi-sacramental acts such as lighting a candle, bowing, washing feet, raising hands in the air, crossing oneself etc.) on the grounds that such things can  be superstitious or idolatrous, or that some people might suppose that by doing them they are putting God in their debt, is like rejecting sexual relations in marriage on the grounds that it's the same act that, in other circumstances, constitutes immorality.' 

Tom Wright, Surprised by Hope, p.275. 

BIBLE READING

'To open the Bible is to open a window toward Jerusalem, as Daniel did (6.1)) no matter where our exile might have taken us.' 

Tom Wright, Virtue Reborn, p.224. 

HOLINESS & JUSTICE

'The church has been divided between those who cultivate their personal holiness but do nothing about working for justice in the world and those who are passionate for justice but regard personal holiness as an unnecessary distraction from that task. This division has been solidified by the church's unfortunate habit of adopting from our surrounding culture the unhelpful packages of "left-wing" and "right-wing" prejudices, the former speaking of "justice" and meaning "libertarianism" and the latter speaking of "holiness" and meaning "dualism." All this must be firmly pushed to one side. What we need is integration.' 

Tom Wright, Virtue Reborn, p.214. 

THE CHURCH

'The challenge to live as a single body is the challenge to live as the New Human. When the Spirit of Jesus the Messiah comes to dwell in Christians, individually and corporately, this happens so that they can be - all together - the place where his genuinely human life actually and physically continues within the life of the present world.' 

Tom Wright, Virtue Reborn, p.184. 

DISCIPLESHIP

'There is an old saying: Give someone a fish and you feed them for a day; teach someone to fish and you feed them for life. Paul's normal practice, in teaching his converts, is the latter. His version of the saying seems to be: Give people a command for a particular situation, and you help them to live appropriately for a day; teach them to think Christianly about behavior, and they will be able to navigate by themselves into areas where you haven't give any specific instructions.' 

Tom Wright, Virtue Reborn, p.171. 

LOVE

'The English word "love" is trying to do so many different jobs at the same time that someone really ought to sit down with it and teach it how to delegate.' 

Tom Wright, Virtue Reborn, p.p.157. 

ETHICS TODAY

'One of the ironies in the story of Western theology during my lifetime has been the way in which the"liberal" tradition, which used to pride itself above all on clear, rational thinking, has quietly been taken over by emotivism, not least in the area of ethics. Meanwhile, the "conservative" tradition, which used to pride itself on carefully articulated ethical as well as doctrinal stances, has often been so worried about the danger of "work-righteousness" that it has turned a blind eye to the nature of moral understanding and effort upon which Paul is doing his best to insist, and has effectively ruled out virtue before it begins, lest people should suppose themselves to be contributing to their own salvation. No wonder that, when we try to debate key issues, we find ourselves in a dialogue of the deaf.' 

Tom Wright, Virtue Reborn, p.138.  

JESUS VS.PAUL

'Christians, particularly in the Western world, have for a long time been divided between "epistles people" and "gospels people." The "epistles people" have thought of Christianity primarily in terms of Jesus's death and resurrection "saving us from our sins." The "gospels people" have thought primarily about in terms of following Jesus in feeding the hungry, helping the poor, and so on. The "epistles people" have found it difficult to give a clear account of what was going on in Jesus's kingdom-announcement and his call to his followers to be "perfect." The "gospels people" - or perhaps we should say the "beginning-of-the-gospels people," since the line of thought they embrace usually screens out the last few chapters - have often found it difficult to explain why the Jesus who was doing those remarkable things had to die, and die so soon. They have often found it difficult, in consequence, to relate to the central themes of Pauline theology. 

This either/or split does no justice, in fact, to either the epistles or the gospels. Still less does it do justice to Jesus himself.' 

Tom Wright, Virtue Reborn, p.96. 

FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT

'Jesus is in fact inviting his hearers to something much more radical: an anticipation of what we might call eschatalogical authenticity. Yes, there will be a time when God's people will serve and love him, and live out the genuine humanness of what the ancient Law had spoken, "naturally" and from the heart. But this will be a God-given "second nature," a new way of being human. And you can begin to practice this now, difficult though it will be, because Jesus is here, inaugurating God's kingdom. It won't happen "automatically," precisely because God wants you to be, as we might put it, humans rather than puppets. You will have to think about it, to struggle with it, to pray for grace and strength; but this is at least now within reach. You can't collapse the whole question of "how to believe" into the command "It must come naturally; otherwise it isn't authentic." Jesus puts it the other way around: he says, in effect, "Follow me, and the authenticity will begin to happen." The authenticity that really matters is living in accordance with the genuine human being God is calling you to become. What the ancient Law really wanted - genuine human life, reflecting God's glory into the world - will start to appear.' 

Tom Wright, Virtue Reborn, p.93. 

HUMANKIND & GOD

'The dreams we have that refuse to die - dreams of freedom and beauty, of order and love, dreams that we can make a real difference in the world - come into their own when we put them within a framework of belief in a God who made the world and is going to sort it out once and for all, and wants to involve human beings in that process.' 

Tom Wright, Virtue Reborn, p.xi. 

THE CROSS

'His death was not simply the messy bit that enables our sins to be forgiven but can then be forgotten. The cross is the surest, truest, and deepest window on the very heart and character of the living and loving God...And when therefore we speak...of shaping our world, we do not - we dare not - simply treat the cross as the thing that saves us us "personally" but which can be left behind when we get on with the job. The task of shaping our world is best understood as the redemptive task of bringing the achievement of the cross to bear on the world, and in that task the methods, as well as the message, must be cross-shaped through and through.' 

Tom Wright in James KA Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, p.164. 

FORGIVENESS

'Every time you forgive someone else...you pass on a drop of water out of the bucketful that God has already given you.' 

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone: Part 2, p.39. 

RESURRECTION

'Proposing that Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead was just as controversial nineteen hundred years ago as it is today. The discovery that dead people stayed dead was not first made by the philosophers of the Enlightenment. The historian who wishes to make such a proposal is therefore compelled to challenge a basic and fundamental assumption - not only, as it is sometimes suggested, the position of eighteenth-century scepticism, or the "scientific" worldview" as opposed to a "pre-scientific worldview", but also of almost all ancient and modern peoples outside the Jewish and Christian traditions.'

Tom Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, p.10.

GOSPEL MOTIVATION

'Tell someone to do something, and you change their life - for a day; tell someone a story and you change their life.'

Tom Wright in Michael R Emlet, CrossTalk: Where Life & Scripture Meet, in p.62.

EASTER

'Easter week itself ought not to be the time when all the clergy sigh with relief and go on holiday. It ought to be an eight-day festival, with champagne served after morning prayer or even before, with loads of Alleluias and extra hymns and spectacular anthems. Is it any wonder people find it hard to believe in the resurrection of Jesus if we don't throw our hats in the air?'

Tom Wright, Surprised by Hope, p.268.