Through the Eyes of N.T. Wright Quotes

“As Wright has repeated so often, “We must stop giving nineteenth-century answers to sixteenth-century questions and try to give twenty-first-century answers to first-century questions.”
― Derek Vreeland, Through the Eyes of N.T. Wright: A Reader's Guide to Paul and the Faithfulness of God

“Election is a matter of vocation, not specifically salvation.”
― Derek Vreeland, Through the Eyes of N.T. Wright: A Reader's Guide to Paul and the Faithfulness of God

“As Wright has repeated so often, “We must stop giving nineteenth-century answers to sixteenth-century questions and try to give twenty-first-century answers to first-century questions.” [”
― Derek Vreeland, Through the Eyes of N.T. Wright: A Reader's Guide to Paul and the Faithfulness of God

“These reconciled communities were to be a prototype of what is to come, demonstrating to the world what it looked like to be reconciled to one another and to the God of all creation. Paul saw his ministry of reconciliation and the ministry of the church as temple-building and not soul-saving. His mission was to build the communities as mini-temples where the Spirit of Yahweh would dwell. Individuals experienced the Spirit, but each individual reconciled to God, indwelt by God’s Spirit, living in God’s new world, served as a signpost to a larger truth, namely the faithfulness of God demonstrated in his people for his world.”
― Derek Vreeland, Through the Eyes of N.T. Wright: A Reader's Guide to Paul and the Faithfulness of God

“The gospel for Paul was the announcement that the God of Israel has been faithful to his covenant by fulfilling his promises through Jesus the Messiah and the coming of the Spirit. The gospel was not how to get saved from sin or how to be justified or how to have a personal relationship with God. The gospel was, and is, the royal announcement of what God has done in and through Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection.”
― Derek Vreeland, Through the Eyes of N.T. Wright: A Reader's Guide to Paul and the Faithfulness of God

“The cross symbolized the way to proclaim the kingdom through suffering and not conquest. The triumph over sin and death was put on display by the resurrection where the Messiah was vindicated and made Lord and King. The lordship of Jesus the Messiah stood as a subversive symbol for Jews and Gentiles, calling them to abandon their traditions and imperial loyalties to become the new, holy, and distinct people of the Messiah.”
― Derek Vreeland, Through the Eyes of N.T. Wright: A Reader's Guide to Paul and the Faithfulness of God

“The central symbol of Paul’s newly formed world, the ekklesia, the Messiah’s body, is nothing short of a new version of the human race.”
― Derek Vreeland, Through the Eyes of N.T. Wright: A Reader's Guide to Paul and the Faithfulness of God

“Paul’s preaching challenged pagan people with a new and different life made possible by Jesus the crucified and risen Jewish Messiah.”
― Derek Vreeland, Through the Eyes of N.T. Wright: A Reader's Guide to Paul and the Faithfulness of God

“Attempting to grapple with Paul’s theology without knowledge of his worldview is a sure way of misunderstanding him.”
― Derek Vreeland, Through the Eyes of N.T. Wright: A Reader's Guide to Paul and the Faithfulness of God

“Love in this baptized community was not an emotion but a practice and thus symbol-in-action, celebrated in the Eucharist and lived out in the partnership of the lives of the family of God.”
― Derek Vreeland, Through the Eyes of N.T. Wright: A Reader's Guide to Paul and the Faithfulness of God

“Followers of Jesus the Messiah, both Jews and Gentiles, did so as an act of worshipping the one God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as seen in their prayers, reading of scripture, and the practice of communion. Baptism as a symbol of initiation into the body of Messiah represented a new exodus for the people of God, a rite of passage into the Messiah-family.”
― Derek Vreeland, Through the Eyes of N.T. Wright: A Reader's Guide to Paul and the Faithfulness of God

“Israel’s purpose was to bear God’s image and tend to God’s world, a direct echo of Adam’s purpose. Adam was given a garden; Israel was given land. Adam received commands; Israel received commands. Adam disobeyed and was exiled; Israel disobeyed and was exiled. The God of Israel came in the person of the Messiah and the Spirit to do what Adam and Israel could not do. In this sense, Jesus and the Spirit did not replace Israel, but fulfilled Israel’s vocation.”
― Derek Vreeland, Through the Eyes of N.T. Wright: A Reader's Guide to Paul and the Faithfulness of God