Tom Wright

Part of the frustration of that is that there are many, many devout Bible readers who have missed the point of the story, which is that humans are the crown of God’s creation designed to reflect God’s stewardship into the world and designed to reflect the praises of creation back to the creator. And you can see this. Psalm 8 sums it up perfectly. “What are humans? You made them little lower than the angels to crown them with glory and honor, putting all things in subjection under their feet.” This is the human vocation. Guess what? When the New Testament quotes Psalm 8, it’s talking about the human vocation which Jesus has modeled to the uttermost, and into which by the spirit and the gospel, we ourselves are invited. biologos.org/podcast-episod…

Does God ever repent? And what does “ekklesia” really mean? Dive into the meaning of key biblical terms with @profntwright & @mbird12. #FaithQuestions #BiblicalGreek #AskNTWrightAnything #Podcast premierunbelievable.com/ask-nt-wright-…

What happened to the lost tribes of Israel? Tom Wright unpacks history, restoration, and why it matters for Christians today. #LostTribes #AskNTWright #BibleQuestions @mbird12 premierunbelievable.com/ask-nt-wright-…

The gospel writers saw the events concerning Jesus, particularly his kingdom-inaugurating life, death, and resurrection, not just as isolated events to which remote prophets might have distantly pointed. They saw those events as bringing the long story of Israel to its proper goal, even though that long story had apparently become lost, stuck, and all but forgotten. But, you may say, what’s the point of telling the story of Jesus as the climax of the story of Israel? What relevance has that got to the rest of the human race and to the wider world? Here we touch on another point of foundational importance for the whole of early Christian thought and life. Understand this point, and you will understand almost everything. In Israel’s scriptures, 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. The call of Abraham is the answer to the sin of Adam. Israel’s story is thus the microcosm and beating heart of the world’s story, but also its ultimate saving energy. What God does for Israel is what God is doing in relation to the whole world. That is what it meant to be Israel, to be the people who, for better and worse, carried the destiny of the world on their shoulders. Grasp that, and you have a pathway into the heart of the New Testament. -How God Became King

In this conversation, N.T. Wright joins Belle and Justin to speak of 'God's Homecoming', arguably one of the most forgotten elements of the Christian worldview. Listen to/watch the full episode wherever you get your podcasts, simply search for 'Re-Enchanting'. 🎧

It would not, then, be much of a caricature to say that orthodoxy, as represented by much popular preaching and writing, has had no clear idea of the purpose of Jesus’ ministry. For many conservative theologians it would have been sufficient if Jesus had been born of a virgin (at any time in human history, and perhaps from any race), lived a sinless life, died a sacrificial death, and risen again three days later. (In some instances the main significance of this would be the conclusion: the Bible is all true.) The fact that, in the midst of these events, Jesus actually said and did certain things, which included giving wonderful moral teaching and annoying some of his contemporaries, functions within this sort of orthodox scheme merely as a convenience. Jesus becomes a composite figure, a cross between Socrates defeating the Sophists and Luther standing up against the Papists. His ministry and his death are thus loosely connected. The force of this is lost, though, when the matter is thought through. If the main purpose of Jesus’ ministry was to die on the cross, as the outworking of an abstracted atonement-theology, it starts to look as though he simply took on the establishment in order to get himself crucified, so that the abstract sacrificial theology could be put into effect. This makes both ministry and death look like sheer contrivance. -Jesus and the Victory of God

Is “soul” the same as “spirit”? @profntwright & @mbird12 unpack biblical words and why getting them right matters for our faith. #BibleWords #NTWright #SoulAndSpirit premierunbelievable.com/ask-nt-wright-…

Is apostolic succession essential for a faithful church - or does faithfulness go deeper? Plus: Did Jesus ever make mistakes? @profntwright @mbird12 #NTWrightPodcast #ChurchUnity #BigQuestions premierunbelievable.com/ask-nt-wright-…

The resurrection of Jesus offers itself not as a very odd event within the world as it is, but the utterly characteristic, prototypical and foundational event within the world as it has begun to be. It is not an absurd event within the old world, but the symbol and starting-point of the new world. ntwrightpage.com/2026/04/23/can…

God and Science: Francis Collins and N T Wright in Conversation / Oxford Pastorate oxfordpastorate.org/index.php?p=ev…

Why does Paul circumcise Timothy but not Titus? @profntwright & @mbird12 unpack puzzling Bible moments, translation choices, and what they mean for us today. #NTWrightPodcast #BibleQuestions #ApostlePaul premierunbelievable.com/ask-nt-wright-…

History, I therefore suggest, requires humility, patience, penitence and love. Just because we want to think clearly, that doesn't mean we can escape the methodological demands of Christian virtue. To cash these out: it requires humility, to understand the thoughts of people who thought differently from ourselves; patience, to go on working with the data and resist premature conclusions; penitence, to acknowledge that our traditions may have distorted original meanings and that we have preferred the distortions to the originals; and love, in that genuine history, like all genuine knowledge, involves the delighted affirmation of realities and events outside ourselves, and thoughts different from our own. -History and Eschatology baylorpress.com/9781481309622/…

Hey, Ask N.T. Wright Anything now has its own dedicated YouTube channel. Please subscribe and hit that notifications bell to not miss out on some great stuff like ... the story of how Martin Lloyd Jones once tried to persuade Tom to give up Anglicanism (forthcoming)!!! youtube.com/channel/UCNmtv…

In this bonus episode of Ask NT Wright Anything, we continue our journey through Ephesians, focusing on Ephesians 4:11–13 and Paul’s vision of the Church being built up through apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. Are all Christians meant to be evangelists, or are some gifts more specific to particular people? The conversation then turns to a bigger question: do apostles and prophets still exist today? open.spotify.com/episode/4iofOg…

A serious Christian will realize that sin comes not in the thing itself, but in its wrong use; not in a part of God’s good creation, but in the attempt to use that good creation as though it were our toy, or our trash. -Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Discipleship

For seven years I was College Chaplain and Worcester College, Oxford. Each year I used to see the first year undergraduates individually for a few minutes, to welcome them to the college and make a first acquaintance. Most were happy to meet me; but many commented, often with slight embarrassment, “You won’t be seeing much of me; you see, I don’t believe in god.” I developed stock response: “Oh, that’s interesting; which god is it you don’t believe in?” This used to surprise them; they mostly regarded the word “God” as a univocal, always meaning the same thing. So they would stumble out a few phrases about the god they said they did not believe in: a being who lived up the in the sky, looking down disapprovingly at the world, occasionally “intervening” to do miracles, sending bad people to hell while allowing good people to share his heaven. Again, I had a stock response for this very common statement of “spy-in-the-sky” theology: “Well, I’m not surprised you don’t believe in that god. I don’t believe in that god either.” ntwrightpage.com/2016/07/12/jes…

Can Protestants attend Catholic churches? @profntwright explores Christian unity, denominational lines, and what really matters for following Jesus. #AskNTWright #ChurchUnity #FaithQuestions @mbird12 premierunbelievable.com/ask-nt-wright-…

Perhaps the sharpest contrast is that the "works of the flesh" are all looking inward: they are all "about me." Sexual immorality uses another person to gratify one's own desires. Idolatry and sorcery are attempts to manipulate the world into the shape I would like it to be. Hostility, anger, and party spirit are all about me and my friends squaring off against some other group. Drunkenness enables me to sink into a private world, and though the wild parties may give an appearance of "togetherness," they are hollow at the core, a glossy parody of real friendship. By contrast, most of the "fruit of the Spirit" is explicitly outward facing: love, obviously, then great-heartedness, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness. Not only do these require other people if they are to be practiced (as we saw, Christian virtue differs at this point from the lonely Aristotelian kind), they are specifically looking out into the wider world and community. They are, in the technical language, exocentric: they orient the person toward others. The three others, "joy," "peace," and "self-control," would probably be seen by Paul as likewise corporate. Joy can no doubt be private, but it longs to be shared and is thereby multiplied. The inner harmony implied by "peace" is not, for Paul, something that can collapse into private self-satisfaction; it manifests itself in the genuinely like-minded fellowship of which he speaks so often, as for instance in Philippians 2:1-5. "God has called you in peace," he says of marital harmony (1 Cor 7:15). And, as for self-control–well, it is one thing to keep one's passions and moods on a tight leash when alone, but it is quite another to restrain them when other people around are acting in ways that provoke the sleeping dragon. –Galatians eerdmans.com/9780802825605/…

It is no accident that the first quality, within this list of the (singular) fruit of the Spirit, is "love," as in 5:13 and the decisive 5:14. That echo tells us one of the most important things here, as in Romans 8: the Spirit, given at Pentecost, the feast of the giving of Torah, fulfills what Torah wanted to do but could not, here specifically the command of Leviticus 19:18. That is what Paul was saying back in 3:21: if Torah could have given life, it would have done so. And "life" looks like this: love, joy, peace, and the rest, as opposed to the deadly feel of the previous catalogue. These are all humanizing qualities, or perhaps we should say, rehumanizing characteristics. We could sharpen that up still further: they are not simply qualities or characteristics that just happen along. They are not, for instance, simply the natural outflowing of (what we call) a sunny temperament. When Paul speaks of these qualities as "fruit," there is an easy tendency in modern moralism to suppose that they happen "naturally" as opposed to artificially; in other words, that people should just want to be like that and shouldn't have to try too hard. That way lie various kinds of existentialism and also the fashionable cult of "spontaneity." The normal implication is that if you have to work at something, it can't really be authentic. But that misses the point, and it certainly isn't implied by Paul's language of "fruit." After all, a fruit tree needs to be planted and watered, tended and pruned, protected against the elements and various kinds of disease, and defended against attack from predators both animal and vegetable. These qualities are, in short, virtues: things you have to think through, work at, cultivate, and practice. -Galatians eerdmans.com/9780802825605/…