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Christ and Creation: Exploring the Paradox

Christ and Creation: Exploring the Paradox By N.T. Wright When we say that all things are made in and through and for Jesus the Messiah, this is the Jesus we must be talking about. There is no other. He is the same yesterday and today and forever. This means we should at least try to […]

Palm Sunday: Jesus Rides into the Perfect Storm

Palm Sunday: Jesus Rides into the Perfect Storm N.T. Wright The crowd went wild as they got nearer. This was the moment they had been waiting for. All the old songs came flooding back, and they were singing, chanting, cheering and laughing. At last, their dreams were going to come true. Read the whole thing […]

Saving the World, Revealing the Glory: Atonement Then and Now

Saving the World, Revealing the Glory: Atonement Then and Now N.T. Wright The deft artistry and fathomless theology of John’s Gospel is powerfully displayed in the footwashing scene in chapter 13. In a few strokes of the pen we are offered a tableau intimate and touching, on the one hand, and scary and dangerous, on […]

Updated Publications List

Publications As at February 2017 Books (more scholarly works marked with *)   2016   Advent for Everyone: A Journey through Matthew. London: SPCK; Louisville: Westminster John Knox 2016   The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’ Crucifixion. San Francisco: HarperOne; London: SPCK 2016   God in Public. London: SPCK 2016   Justification: God’s Plan and […]

Historical Paul and ‘Systematic Theology’

  Historical Paul and ‘Systematic Theology’ To Start a Discussion [A version of this article is published as ‘Historical Paul and “Systematic Theology”: To Start a Discussion’, pages 147-164 in Biblical Theology, ed. M. W. Elliott. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2016.] Theology Graduate Seminar, February 5 2014 Prof N T Wright Introduction Once upon […]

What Is Marriage For?

What is Marriage For? Tracing God’s Plan From Genesis to Revelation N. T. Wright One of the fascinating things about the Bible as we now have it – as you know, it was written over rather a long period of time – is that it begins and ends with the coming together of heaven and […]

The Royal Revolution: Fresh Perspectives on the Cross

The Royal Revolution: Fresh Perspectives on the Cross N. T. Wright DD FRSE, University of St Andrews Calvin College January Series January 24, 2017 Thank you so much for your welcome. It is always good to be back at Calvin and to have the honour once again of being part of the prestigious January Series. […]

The Royal Law

The Royal Law James 2.1-13 A sermon at Central Presbyterian Church, New York City January 29 2017 N.T. Wright, University of St Andrews   It’s a great treat to be back here again and to sense that I am among friends both old and new. And it’s good for me, after some years of intensive […]

Saving the World, Revealing the Glory: Atonement Then and Now

Saving the World, Revealing the Glory: Atonement Then and Now Rt. Revd. Prof. N T Wright DD FRSE St Mellitus’ College, London October 17 2016   The deft artistry and fathomless theology of John’s gospel is powerfully displayed in the footwashing scene in chapter 13. In a few strokes of the pen we are offered […]

The Dangerous Vocations: Church, Media and Public Life in a Post-Rational World

The Dangerous Vocations: Church, Media and Public Life in a Post-Rational World Church’s Media Network Conference RSA, London, 20 October 2016 Prof N T Wright, University of St Andrews I have two brief preliminary points, three somewhat fuller comments about the developments that have taken place in my adult lifetime, and then – my main […]

N.T. Wright at Perkins

Tom Wright will be speaking at the Perkins School of Theology at SMU on November 15-17. The discussions will be related to his book, Simply Good News: Why the Gospel is News and What Makes it Good.  For more information, please visit the conference website.  

Wouldn’t You Love to Know? Towards a Christian View of Reality

Wouldn’t You Love to Know? Towards a Christian View of Reality Grasping the Nettle: Glasgow, September 1 2016 Rt Revd Prof N T Wright, St Andrews We live in a strange world, and things one group of people take for granted can be quite opaque to another. I’ve heard it said that in Germany everything […]

NT Wright to Join Missio Alliance

N.T. Wright, preeminent scholar, author, and Bishop is just one in the amazing line up of presenters at Awakenings: The Mission of the Spirit as the Life of the Church, taking place April 27-29, 2017 in Alexandria, Virginia. Awakenings: NT Wright to Join Missio Alliance for the 2017 North American Gathering  

Righteousness

(Originally published in New Dictionary of Theology. David F. Wright, Sinclair B. Ferguson, J.I. Packer (eds), 590-592. IVP. Reproduced by permission of the author.)

Righteousness. The basic meaning of ‘righteousness’ and its cognates in the Bible derives from the Hebrew sedeq, which was usually translated in the LXX as dikaiosynē. It thus denotes not so much the abstract idea of justice or virtue, as right standing and consequent right behaviour, within a community. English translates this semantic field with two different roots: ‘right’, ‘righteous’, and ‘righteousness’ and ‘just’, ‘justice’, ‘justify’ and ‘justification’. In Heb. and Gk., however, these ideas all belong together linguistically and theologically.

The Lord’s Prayer as a Paradigm of Christian Prayer

(Originally published in Into God’s Presence: Prayer in the New Testament, ed. R.L. Longenecker. 2001, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 132-54.  Reproduced by permission of the author.) N. T. WRIGHT “AS OUR SAVIOR CHRIST hath commanded and taught us, we are bold to say: ‘Our Father. . . .’”  So runs the old liturgical formula, stressing the […]

Women’s Service in the Church: The Biblical Basis 

a conference paper for the Symposium, ‘Men, Women and the Church’ St John’s College, Durham, September 4 2004 by the Bishop of Durham, Dr N. T. Wright I am very grateful to the organisers for inviting me to address this important conference, and only sorry that because of other duties I have been unable to […]

New Perspectives on Paul

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 […]

Farewell to the Rapture

(N.T. Wright, Bible Review, August 2001.  Reproduced by permission of the author) Little did Paul know how his colorful metaphors for Jesus’ second coming would be misunderstood two millennia later. The American obsession with the second coming of Jesus — especially with distorted interpretations of it — continues unabated.  Seen from my side of the […]

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 […]

The Letter to the Galatians: Exegesis and Theology

(Originally published in Between Two Horizons: Spanning New Testament Studies and Systematic Theology Joel B. Green and Max Turner, eds., 2000, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 205–36. Reproduced by permission of the author.) N. T. WRIGHT The dense and dramatic argument of Galatians excites and baffles by turns.  Sometimes perceived as a flamboyant younger sister of the […]

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 […]

Rethinking the Tradition

[20] Rethinking the Tradition Originally published in For All the Saints? Remembering the Christian Departed. 2003 London: SPCK; Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse. Original pagination is retained in bold italicized numbers. Reproduced by permission of the author. Resurrection still future I begin at the end. The bodily resurrection is still in the future for everyone except Jesus. […]

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 […]

Imagining the Kingdom: Mission and Theology in Early Christianity

University of St Andrews St Mary’s College (Faculty of Divinity) Inaugural Lecture by the Right Reverend Professor N. T. Wright Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity 5.15 pm, October 26 2011 The four gospels stand magisterially at the head of the canon and the centre of early Christianity. They are remarkable documents. If […]

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?