110+ N. T. Wright Quotes On Resurrection, Heaven And Prayer

N. T. Wright is the current Bishop of Durham, a position he has held since 2003. He is an Anglican theologian and a former professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of St Andrews. He is also a prolific author, having written over seventy books on Christian theology and history. Following is our collection on famous quotes by N. T. Wright on resurrection, heaven, prayer.

Top 10 N. T. Wright Quotes

1. Our culture is so fixated on dying and going to heaven when the whole Scripture is about heaven coming to earth.
2. 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.
3. You become like what you worship
4. The cross is the surest, truest and deepest window on the very heart and character of the living and loving God.
5. When we begin to glimpse the reality of God, the natural reaction is to worship him. Not to have that reaction is a fairly sure sign that we haven't yet really understood who he is or what he's done.
6. Those in whom the Spirit comes to live are God's new Temple. They are, individually and corporately, places where heaven and earth meet.
7. The point of justice and mercy anyway is not ‘they deserve it’ but ‘this is the way God’s world should be’, and we are called to do those things that truly anticipate the way God’s world WILL be.
8. The rule of love, I say again, is not an optional extra. It is the very essence of what we [Christians] are about
9. Hope, for the Christian, is not wishful thinking or mere blind optimism. It is a mode of knowing, a mode within which new things are possible, options are not shut down, new creation can happen.
10. It's partly that I'm an extrovert and that I like being with people. If you shut me up in a library with nothing else around for weeks on end, I'd go mad! I have to sort of go out.

N. T. Wright Short Quotes

• Arguments about God are like pointing a flashlight toward the sky to see if the sun is shining.
• You can't reconcile being pro-life on abortion and pro-death on the death penalty.
• It's not great faith you need; it is faith in a great God.
• To get overprotective about particular readings of the Bible is always in danger of idolatry.
• All Christian language about the future is a set of signposts pointing into a mist.
• True worship doesn't keep looking at its watch.
• If you're a Christian you're just a shadow of your future self.
• Right answers to difficult questions are better than wrong answers to difficult questions.
• First-hand acquaintance with the actual texts is always the best way.
• To pray 'your kingdom come' at Jesus' bidding meant to align oneself with his kingdom movement.

N. T. Wright Quotes About Resurrection

Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about. — N. T. Wright

Easter was when Hope in person surprised the whole world by coming forward from the future into the present. — N. T. Wright

The message of Easter is that God's new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you're now invited to belong to it. — N. T. Wright

In the New Testament outside the Gospels and the beginning of Acts, again and again, the fact of Jesus’ resurrection is closely linked to our own ultimate resurrection, which isn’t life after death – it’s life after life after death. — N. T. Wright

Whatever life after death is, being with Christ which is far better, being in Paradise like the thief, etc, the many rooms where we go immediately... that is the temporary place. The ultimate life after life after death is the resurrection in God's new world. — N. T. Wright

Death is the ultimate weapon of the tyrant; resurrection does not make a covenant with death, it overthrows it. — N. T. Wright

Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project. — N. T. Wright

Christ's resurrection doesn't mean escaping from the world; it means mission to the world based on Jesus's lordship over the world. — N. T. Wright

Certainly Paul shares the view of the Old Testament prophets that God will one day flood the world with justice and joy - and that this has begun to be fulfilled in the resurrection of Jesus. — N. T. Wright

What we have at the moment isn't as the old liturgies used to say, 'the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead,' but a vague and fuzzy optimism that somehow things may work out in the end. — N. T. Wright

N. T. Wright Quotes About Heaven

Jesus' death was seen by Jesus himself ... as the ultimate means by which God's kingdom was established. The crucifixion was the shocking answer to the prayer that God's kingdom would come on earth as in heaven. — N. T. Wright

Heaven is important, but its not the end of the world. — N. T. Wright

Of course there are people who think of 'heaven' as a kind of pie-in-the-sky dream of an afterlife to make the thought of dying less awful. No doubt that's a problem as old as the human race. — N. T. Wright

People have been told so often that resurrection is just a metaphor, and means Jesus died and was glorified - in other words, he went to Heaven, whatever that means. And they've never realized that the word 'resurrection' simply didn't mean that. — N. T. Wright

The question of Heaven, the question of what happens after death, is one which a lot of people in our culture try to put off as long as they can, but sooner or later it suddenly swings round and looks them in the eye. — N. T. Wright

N. T. Wright Quotes About Hope

It is faith that looks up at the creator God and knows him to be the God of love. And it is faith that looks out at the world with the longing to bring that love to bear in healing reconciliation, and hope. — N. T. Wright

As we are set free by that love from our own pride and fear, our own greed and arrogance, so we are free in our turn to be agents of reconciliation and hope, or healing and love. — N. T. Wright

I work in a very tough area of Britain. There is not much hope sociologically where I live and work, they're all sorts of conditions of poverty and deprivation and so on, I really do believe that the message of the kingdom of God is for places like this. — N. T. Wright

Hope comes as a surprise, at several levels at once. — N. T. Wright

N. T. Wright Quotes About Theological

There's a great deal about Roman Catholicism that I basically disagree with. For instance, the doctrine of Mary which... I have studied that stuff and I simply don't think that has any mileage at all biblically, theologically, and I've got some friends who are very disappointed that I say that. — N. T. Wright

When you're writing theology, you have to say everything all the time, otherwise people think you've deliberately missed something out. — N. T. Wright

If you ask people in England where does Tom Wright sit on the theological spectrum, they say, "Well he's an evangelical of course," as though, come on, get used to it. — N. T. Wright

I didn't write much until I turned 40. Up until then I felt constrained by a sense of the discipline of New Testament studies and a sense of the ruling elite in theology and biblical studies. — N. T. Wright

[Albert] Schweitzer thus carved out his own path through the first half of this century, a lonely and learned giant amidst the hordes of noisy and shallow theological pygmies. — N. T. Wright

N. T. Wright Famous Quotes And Sayings

If you want to know who God is, look at Jesus. If you want to know what it means to be human, look at Jesus. If you want to know what love is, look at Jesus. If you want to know what grief is, look at Jesus. And go on looking until you’re not just a spectator, but you’re actually part of the drama which has him as the central character. — N. T. Wright

From where many of us in the U.K. sit, American politics is hopelessly polarized. All kinds of issues get bundled up into two great heaps. The rest of the world, today and across the centuries, simply doesn't see things in this horribly oversimplified way. — N. T. Wright

Our task as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to a world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to a world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to a world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion. — N. T. Wright

The whole point of the kingdom of God is Jesus has come to bear witness to the true truth, which is nonviolent. When God wants to take charge of the world, he doesn't send in the tanks. He sends in the poor and the meek. — N. T. Wright

God is the one who satisfies the passion for justice, the longing for spirituality, the hunger for relationship, the yearning for beauty. And God, the true God, is the God we see in Jesus of Nazareth, Israel's Messiah, the world's true Lord. — N. T. Wright

True worship doesn't put on a show or make a fuss; true worship isn't forced, isn't half-hearted, doesn't keep looking at its watch, doesn't worry what the person in the next pew is doing. True worship is open to God, adoring God, waiting for God, trusting God even in the dark. — N. T. Wright

Christmas is God lighting a candle; and you don't light a candle in a room that's already full of sunlight. You light a candle in a room that's so murky that the candle, when lit, reveals just how bad things really are. — N. T. Wright

Hope is what you get when you suddenly realize that a different worldview is possible, a worldview in which the rich, the powerful, and the unscrupulous do not after all have the last word. The same worldview shift that is demanded by the resurrection of Jesus is the shift that will enable us to transform the world. — N. T. Wright

Tolerance is a cheap, low-grade parody of love. Tolerance is not a great virtue to aspire to. Love is much tougher and harder. — N. T. Wright

When Jesus wanted to explain to his disciples what his death was all about, he didn't give them a theory, he gave them a meal. — N. T. Wright

Jesus himself, as the gospel story goes on to its dramatic conclusion, lives out the same message of the Sermon on the Mount: he is the light of the world, he is the salt of the earth, he loves his enemies and gives his life for them, he is lifted up on a hill so that the world can see. — N. T. Wright

While some who downplay Christ's divinity have imagined Jesus as a great social worker 'being kind to old ladies, small dogs and little children,' orthodox Christianity has not wanted Jesus to have a political message. — N. T. Wright

Someone who is determinedly trying to show God how good he or she is is likely to become an insufferable prig. — N. T. Wright

Christian living means dying with Christ and rising again. That, as we saw, is part of the meaning of baptism, the starting point of the Christian pilgrimage. — N. T. Wright

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

The resurrection is not an isolated supernatural oddity proving how powerful, if apparently arbitrary, God can be when he wants to. Nor is it at all a way of showing that there is indeed a heaven awaiting us after death. It is the decisive event demonstrating that God’s kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven. — N. T. Wright

Deism, historically, produces atheism. First you make God a landlord, then an absent landlord, then he becomes simply absent. — N. T. Wright

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

It is central to Christian living that we should celebrate the goodness of creation, ponder its present brokenness, and, insofar as we can, celebrate in advance the healing of the world, the new creation itself. Art, music, literature, dance, theater, and many other expressions of human delight and wisdom, can all be explored in new ways. — N. T. Wright

If you have never felt or known the sheer power and strength of God's love, take another look at Jesus dying on the cross. — N. T. Wright

Worship is love on its knees before the beloved; just as mission is love on its feet to serve the beloved — N. T. Wright

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

Made for spirituality, we wallow in introspection. Made for joy, we settle for pleasure. Made for justice, we clamor for vengeance. — N. T. Wright

I really don't care too much what the different later Christian traditions say. My aim is to be faithful to Scripture. — N. T. Wright

To open the Bible is to open a window toward Jerusalem, as Daniel did (6:10), no matter where our exile may have taken us. — N. T. Wright

I am convinced that when we bring our griefs and sorrows within the story of God's own grief and sorrow, and allow them to be held there, God is able to bring healing to us and new possibilities to our lives. That is, of course, what Good Friday and Easter are all about. — N. T. Wright

When Jesus's followers asked him to teach them to pray, he didn't tell them to divide into focus groups and look deep within their own hearts. — N. T. Wright

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

One of the things I really respect about Doug Moo is that he is constantly grappling with the text. Where he hears the text saying something which is not what his tradition would have said, he will go with the text. I won't always agree with his exegesis, but there is a relentless scholarly honesty about him which I really tip my hat off to. — N. T. Wright

Heard in full sound, the Gospels tell about the establishment of a theocracy, and portray what theocracy looks like with Jesus as king. — N. T. Wright

The resurrection completes the inauguration of God's kingdom. . . . It is the decisive event demonstrating thet God's kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven." "The message of Easter is that God's new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you're now invited to belong to it. — N. T. Wright

the work of salvation, in its full sense, is (1) about whole human beings, not merely souls; (2) about the present, not simply the future; and (3) about what God does through us, not merely what God does in and for us. — N. T. Wright

Part of the problem about authenticity is that virtues aren't the only things that are habit forming: the more someone behaves in a way that is damaging to self or to others, the more "natural" it will both seem and actually be. Spontaneity, left to itself, can begin by excusing bad behavior and end by congratulating vice. — N. T. Wright

I remember one particular moment (I don't actually know how old I was, but I guess around 7 or something like that) when I remember actually weeping. I was by myself in a room in the house, and I was just crying because I realized how much Jesus loved me. — N. T. Wright

The word "salvation" denotes rescue. Rescue? What from? Well, of course, ultimately death. And since it is sin that colludes with the forces of evil and decay, sin leads to death. So we are rescued from sin and death. — N. T. Wright

When Jerusalem is destroyed, and Jesus' people escape from the ruin just in time, that will be YHWH becoming king, bringing about the liberation of his true covenant people, the true return from exile, the beginning of the new world order — N. T. Wright

I'm not a universalist, and the way I talk about final loss is this: People worship idols - money, whatever. Their humanness gets reshaped around the idol - you become like what you worship. That's one of the basic spiritual laws. — N. T. Wright

By all means write new songs. Each generation must do that. But to neglect the church's original hymnbook is, to put it bluntly, crazy — N. T. Wright

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

God is the Creator God, he doesn't want to say, "Okay, creation was very good, but I'm scrapping it." He wants to say, "Creation is so good that I'm going to rescue it." — N. T. Wright

Jesus, to be sure, often spent long times alone in prayer. But he was also deeply at home where there was a party, a kingdom party, a celebration of the fact that God was at last taking charge. — N. T. Wright

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

The kingdom that Jesus preached and lived was all about a glorious, uproarious, absurd generosity. — N. T. Wright

But if Christians don’t get Jesus right, what chance is there that other people will bother much with him? — N. T. Wright

I have never been to India and I am not a specialist on Indian culture, and I would not wish to be heard to be taking swipes at a culture which I've never experienced and where I've never lived. — N. T. Wright

The Biblical vision is not so much concerned with life after death but about life after life after death. — N. T. Wright

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

Many of the questions we ask God can't be answered directly, not because God doesn't know the answers but because our questions don't make sense. As C.S. Lewis once pointed out, many of our questions are, from God's point of view, rather like someone asking, "Is yellow square or round?" or "How many hours are there is a mile? — N. T. Wright

Justice and beauty are central to God's new world and should be central to our work. Together they frame the good news of Jesus. — N. T. Wright

Paul's vision, though, is starting small, with actual communities in which reconciliation and justice has to be practiced - like the rich/poor distinction in the Corinthian church, for instance, or the projected reconciliation between Philemon and Onesimus. But he clearly believes (Ephesians 3) that communities like this send a signal to the wider world that Jesus is Lord - which is aimed at then the whole world coming into line. — N. T. Wright

Within orthodoxy, there is always a danger of faith collapsing into fear. — N. T. Wright

The only sure rule is to remember that the Bible is indeed God's gift to the church, to equip that church for its work in the world, and that serious study of it can and should become one of the places where, and the means by which, heaven and earth interlock and God's future purposes arrive in the present. — N. T. Wright

Christian holiness consists not of trying as hard as we can to be good but of learning to live in the new world created by Easter, the new world we publicly entered in our baptism. There are many parts of the world we can't do anything about except pray. But there is one part of the world, one part of physical reality, that we can do something about, and that is the creature each of us call "myself. — N. T. Wright

Rest you well, beloved Jesus, Caesar’s Lord and Israel’s King, In the brooding of the Spirit, in the darkness of the spring — N. T. Wright

Almost all the early Christian Fathers were opposed to the death penalty, even though it was of course standard practice across the ancient world. — N. T. Wright

If you don't have properly constituted civic authorities you will encourage vigilantism and solo efforts at retributive justice - which is anarchy, and God doesn't want his world to be anarchic. — N. T. Wright

Jesus doesn't give an explanation for the pain and sorrow of the world. He comes where the pain is most acute and takes it upon himself. Jesus doesn't explain why there is suffering, illness, and death in the world. He brings healing and hope. He doesn't allow the problem of evil to be the subject of a seminar. He allows evil to do its worst to him. He exhausts it, drains its power, and emerges with new life. — N. T. Wright

If you read 1 John you'll see that love of God and neighbour are very closely tied together. Partly this is because all humans are made in God's image, so that when you love another human you are loving someone who is reflecting God himself. Of course there is a distinction but the minute you try to drive a wedge between the two things start to fall apart. — N. T. Wright

What we are seeing in America is the creaky old age of an eighteenth-century settlement, deemed at the time to be the new flowering of humankind-come-of-age (the 'Enlightenment') and so deemed to be above revision. At this point the urgent need is for prayer and prophecy. — N. T. Wright

...we will arrange for 'religion' to become a small subdepartment of ordinary life; it will be quite safe - harmless, in fact - with church life carefully separated off from everything else in the world, whether politics, art, sex, economics, or whatever. — N. T. Wright

For Paul 'righteousness' and 'justice' are the same word, as they were in Hebrew. Paul clearly believes that helping the poor is a central and ongoing part of Christian commitment, precisely because in Jesus Christ God has unveiled and launched his plan for the rescue, redemption and renewal of the whole creation. Justification and justice go very closely together. — N. T. Wright

You become like what you worship. When you gaze in awe, admiration, and wonder at something or someone, you begin to take on something of the character of the object of your worship. — N. T. Wright

But the voice goes on, calling us, beckoning us, luring us to think that there might be such a thing as justice, as the world being put to rights, even though we find it so elusive. We're like moths trying to fly to the moon. We all know there's something called justice, but we can't quite get to it. — N. T. Wright

What many people today assume Christianity to be is basically Plutarch plus Jesus. — N. T. Wright

God's plan is not to abandon this world, the world which he said was "very good." Rather, he intends to remake it. And when he does he will raise all his people to new bodily life to live in it. That is the promise of the Christian gospel. — N. T. Wright

When it became clear that in fact my father was saying, "It will be interesting to see what you want to do when you grow up," I realized that there was no pressure on that front. And I remember huge relief: Hey, I can go and do what I really know I have to do! — N. T. Wright

Worship will never end; whether there be buildings, they will crumble; whether there be committees, they will fall asleep; whether there be budgets, they will add up to nothing. For we build for the present age, we discuss for the present age, and we pay for the present age; but when the age to come is here, the present age will be done away. — N. T. Wright

I feel about John's gospel like I feel about my wife; I love her very much, but I wouldn't claim to understand her. — N. T. Wright

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

Fortunately, Paul is much more interesting than most of his interpreters, myself included. — N. T. Wright

Wherever St. Paul went, there was a riot. Wherever I go, they serve tea. — N. T. Wright

Jesus of Nazareth ushers in not simply a new religious possibility, not simply a new ethic or a new way of salvation, but a new creation. — N. T. Wright

Indian leaders are saying, "You don't understand our caste system. It's really a lovely thing. People are very happy about it and so on." I don't think that's quite fair. — N. T. Wright

For now we see the beauty of God through a glass, darkly, but then face to face; now we appreciate only in part, but then we shall affirm and appreciate God, even as the living God has affirmed and appreciated us. So now our tasks are worship, mission, and management, these three; but the greatest of these is worship. — N. T. Wright

I guess, as an Anglican, there's always room to move, which can be a dangerous thing, but also a very healthy thing, because bits of the great biblical tradition which you haven't fully plugged into before you've got the space to grow into... not least, the sacraments. — N. T. Wright

Life Lessons by N. T. Wright

1. The work of N. T. Wright emphasizes the importance of understanding the Bible in its historical and cultural context in order to properly interpret its meaning.
2. Wright's work also emphasizes the need to consider the implications of the Bible for contemporary life, rather than simply focusing on the text as a historical document.
3. His work also highlights the importance of engaging with the Bible in a thoughtful and reflective manner, rather than simply accepting its teachings without question.