Delivered at the Tenth Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference Introduction I am grateful for the invitation to this conference, and for the sensitive way in which the organisers responded to my comments on the initial outline of the programme. I am aware that fresh interpretations of Paul, including my own, have caused controversy in evangelical circles, and […]
Jesus and the Identity of God
Originally published in Ex Auditu 1998, 14, 42–56. Reproduced by permission of the author. To address the subject of the theological significance of the earthly Jesus I take as my topic the central question of Jesus and God. The question must be approached from both sides. First, in what sense, if any, can we meaningfully use the word “god” to […]
Jesus’ Resurrection and Christian Origins
Originally published in Gregorianum, 2002, 83/4, 615–635. Reproduced by permission of the author. Introduction The question of Jesus’ resurrection continues to haunt the thinking and writing of many scholars. I shall not debate in detail with them here; there are other places for that. I want instead to sketch, in broad strokes, a historical argument about what happened three days […]
The Historical Jesus and Christian Theology
Originally published in Sewanee Theological Review 39, 1996. Reproduced by permission of author. he quest for the historical Jesus began as a protest against traditional Christian dogma, but when the supposedly ‘‘neutral” historians peered into the well, all they saw was a featureless Jesus. Even when scholars decided that other biblical figures—John the Baptist, the evangelists, […]
Paul and Caesar: A New Reading of Romans
(Originally published in A Royal Priesthood: The Use of the Bible Ethically and Politically, ed. C. Bartholemew, 2002, Carlisle: Paternoster, 173–193. Reproduced by permission of the author.) Introduction We have moved away quite rapidly in recent years from the old split, which was assumed by and built into the fabric of Western biblical studies, between ‘religion’ […]
Communion and Koinonia: Pauline Reflections on Tolerance and Boundaries
A paper given at the Future of Anglicanism Conference, Oxford, 2002. Introduction: Paul’s Context From the very beginning, the church was faced with the problem of different cultures coming together. Even in the earliest days, when all Christians were Jews, there were Greek-speaking Jews and Hebrew (or Aramaic-) speaking Jews, and problems arose between them. Even during the […]
How Can the Bible Be Authoritative?
Originally published in Vox Evangelica 1991, 21, 7–32. Reproduced by permission of the author.
The question before us, then, is: how can the Bible be authoritative? This way of putting it carries deliberately, two different though related meanings, and I shall look at them in turn. First, how can there be such a thing as an authoritative book? What sort of a claim are we making about a book when we say that it is ‘authoritative’? Second, by what means can the Bible actually exercise its authority? How is it to be used so that its authority becomes effective?
Publications List
2014 Paul and his Recent Interpreters 2013 Creation, Power and Truth Paul and the Faithfulness of God Pauline Perspectives The Case for the Psalms: Why They Are Essential New Testament Wisdom for Everyone 2012 Twelve Months of Sundays, Years A, B & C: Biblical Meditations on the Christian Year Lent for Everyone: Mark New Testament […]
About N. T. Wright
N. T. Wright grew up in the north-east of England and studied Classics and Theology at Oxford, where he was ordained in 1975 and took his doctorate (on St Paul) in 1981, having served as a college chaplain, and taught New Testament, in both Oxford and Cambridge. He was Assistant Professor of New Testament at McGill […]
Paul and His Recent Interpreters
This companion volume to N. T. Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God and Pauline Perspectives is essential reading for all with a serious interest in Paul, the interpretation of his letters, his appropriation by subsequent thinkers, and his continuing significance today. In the course of this masterly survey, Wright asks searching questions of all of the major contributors […]
Speaking of Good and Evil
Originally published in Bible Review. Reproduced by permission of the author. How can we gain a biblical understanding of the social and political events of our day? How should we speak of God? Theologians have struggled for years with this question, wondering whether God should be described metaphorically, literally or, perhaps, some other way altogether. In recent weeks, […]
Surprised by N. T. Wright
Interview by Jason Byassee The Bible scholar’s goal is to massively revise the way we talk about the Christian faith. By many accounts, he’s already succeeded. People who are asked to write about N. T. Wright may find they quickly run out of superlatives. He is the most prolific biblical scholar in a generation. Some […]
Videos and Discussion Guides from Fortress Press
Here are three 30-minute videos that will allow you to bring N. T. Wright directly to the students in your classroom. To assist your students, each video is accompanied by a discussion guide. To view the videos, visit Fortress Press.
Paul and the Faithfulness of God
This highly anticipated two-part fourth volume in N.T. Wright’s magisterial series, Christian Origins and the Question of God, is destined to become the standard reference point on the subject for all serious students of the Bible and theology. The mature summation of a lifetime’s study, this landmark volume pays a rich tribute to the breadth and […]
Pauline Perspectives: Essays on Paul 1978–2013
This companion volume to Paul and the Faithfulness of God and Paul and His Recent Interpreters brings together N.T. Wright’s most important articles on Paul and his letters over the last three decades. The book begins with Wright’s auspicious essay of 1978, when as a young, aspiring scholar, he gave the annual Tyndale lecture in Cambridge, and proposed, for […]
Interview with N. T. Wright on Paul and the Faithfulness of God
Interview by Michael F. Bird This is a 25-minute interview Michael F. Bird did with N. T. Wright about his forthcoming book, Paul and the Faithfulness of God. To view the video, visit Patheos.
N. T. Wright Wants to Save the Best Worship Songs
Interview by Andrew Byers The scholar urges the church to stop neglecting Jesus’ prayer book. N. T. Wright wants to see today’s media-saturated church shaped anew by a form of worship and prayer that has shaped the people of God for centuries. In The Case for the Psalms: Why They Are Essential (HarperOne) the churchman […]
With Justification
Book Review: Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision Reviewed by Ben Witherington It is never an easy thing to write a rebuttal book if you are genuinely a Christian person. You keep hoping that people will stop misunderstanding what you have said and written, will think better of ad hominem attacks, and you keep trying the ‘turn […]
Kingdom Come: The Public Meaning of the Gospels
In his new book, The Great Awakening, Jim Wallis describes how as a young man growing up in an evangelical church, he never heard a sermon on the Sermon on the Mount. That telling personal observation reflects a phenomenon about which I have been increasingly concerned: that much evangelical Christianity on both sides of the Atlantic […]
New Testament Scholarship and Christian Discipleship
The Moule Memorial Lecture. Originally delivered on Thursday, June 5, 2008. Introduction Thank you for your welcome, and for the invitation to give this lecture, which of course makes me both sad and proud. Sad because Charlie’s death last autumn was not only a defining moment, the end of an era, but for me, as […]
Reason to Be Cheerful
When I was an undergraduate, I read a book called Clarity Is Not Enough. It challenged the prevailing linguistic philosophy which said less and less with more and more precision. Yes, we have to think and speak accurately, otherwise we go round in circles, but philosophy must be about something – life, meaning, ethics, truth. […]
Shipwreck and Kingdom: Acts and the Anglican Communion
Closing address to the meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council When I heard that you had been studying Acts in your time together, my mind went, for some reason, to acronyms. I imagined myself coming to address the Anglican Communion Theological Society, or perhaps the Anglican Council for Tea and Sympathy, which goodness knows you […]
Paul in Different Perspectives
Delivered at Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church (Monroe, Louisiana) Lecture 1: Starting Points and Opening Reflections Introduction Thank you for your warm welcome and generous hospitality. It is an enormous pleasure for Maggie and myself to be here in Monroe for the first time. I am particularly grateful to those who have worked very hard to […]
N.T. Wright: Anglican Report Is ‘Fireproofing the House’
Interview by Douglas LeBlanc Top theologian on Lambeth Commission talks about what happened behind the scenes, whether the report should have been tougher, and why it’s critical of some conservative bishops. N.T. Wright is the rare sort of theologian who attracts respect from both conservatives and liberals. He became Bishop of Durham in 2003, and for the […]
Freedom and Framework, Spirit and Truth: Recovering Biblical Worship.
Originally published in Studia Liturgica 2002, 32, 176–195. Reproduced by permission of the author. Introduction “Biblical worship” is a huge topic, and one on which I am not really qualified. I am neither a liturgist, nor a liturgiologist. I am simply a New Testament scholar working in a community whose daily life is structured around public and corporate worship, […]
Five Gospels but No Gospel: Jesus and the the Seminary
Originally published in Authenticating the Activities of Jesus, ed. Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Evans, Leiden: Brill, 1999, 83–120. Reproduced by permission of the author. Looking for Jesus People have been looking for Jesus for a long time, but never quite like this. The “Quest of the Historical Jesus” has been proceeding, in fits and starts, […]
Paul’s Gospel and Caesar’s Empire
Written in Reflections, vol. 2, 1998 If Paul’s answer to Caesar is the empire of Jesus, what is an empire under the rule of this new lord? How does Paul’s gospel line up with Caesar’s empire? I am honoured to be lecturing in this famous institution, and my wife and I are deeply grateful for the […]
The Most Dangerous Baby
How an infant in a cow shed overturns the brute force of Caesar. By the time Jesus was born, Augustus had already been monarch for a quarter of a century. King of kings, he ruled from Gibraltar to Jerusalem and from Britain to the Black Sea. He had done what no one had done for […]
Jesus, Israel and the Cross
Originally published in SBL 1985 Seminar Papers, pp. 75–95. Reproduced by permission of the author. I Like naughty children whispering after a command to silence, and then, greatly daring, talking openly and with increasing volume, New Testament scholars, so long forbidden to talk about Jesus of Nazareth, have begun in the last decade to do so […]
Justification: The Biblical Basis and Its Relevance for Contemporary Evangelicalism
Excerpt from The Great Acquittal: Justification by Faith and Current Christian Thought. Reproduced by permission of the author. Introduction: The Shape of the Doctrine Imagine asking a jeweller to describe a watchspring. He might simply talk about the spring itself: he might demonstrate how it was related to the rest of the mechanism: he might even […]