Tom Wright is unquestionably one of the most influential NT scholars of our generation. It’s hard to overestimate the influence he has had on the Church’s understanding of Jesus and Paul.

But what makes this great man tick? We asked you what you’d like to know about the man behind the theology. As a result, we ended up asking him everything from what his favourite childhood book was, to how he manages his work/life balance, through to which three people he’d most like to invite to dinner!

Image provided by University of St Andrews. Used with permission.

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BOOKS

Simply Jesus: Who he Was, What he Did, Why it Matters

Simply Christian

Simply Good News: Why The Gospel Is News And What Makes It Good

QUOTES

“There is a myth of objectivity. Nobody knows anything objectively. There is no such thing as a point of view which is nobody’s point of view. If we try to get a ‘God’s-eye-view’ of anything or anyone, that is a basically promethean – i.e. an atheistic – thing: ‘God can get out of the way. I am going to know this objectively.’ Only God does that. The rest of us have to engage. That’s why the primary mode of knowing is love. And love is both deeply subjective and – if it’s love – deeply objective in the sense that the thing or person or whatever it is that I love, I am valuing as they are, but I’m valuing from my point of view.”

“As human beings, we function best in the big narrative – and the Bible gives us that. The problem in so many churches is that people only get the Bible this little verse here, that little passage there. There are many churches which assume that they are ‘biblical’ because they stand in a broad evangelical tradition, but they’re not either teaching the Bible themselves or teaching people how to learn the Bible. And that’s really, really worrying. It’s as though we’re running on empty. Or to change the metaphor, it’s like those cartoons where somebody walks out off the edge of a cliff and until they look down, they don’t realize. Then: whoops!”