SPCK - N T Wright
Simply Good News - Surprised by God
Simply Good News - Surprised by God
by SPCK - N T Wright
Surprised by God The word God is a heavy, clunky little syllable. It drops like a lead weight into otherwise cheerful conversations. It sticks in the throat like a lump of undercooked dumpling. It comes up over the horizon like a sudden cloud, blotting out the sun. The very sound…
Simply Good News - Getting the Balance Right
Simply Good News - Getting the Balance Right
by SPCK - N T Wright
Getting the Balance Right The good news, then, is good news about the present as well as the past and the future. Despite the secular claim that all real advances in the world are the result of secular modernism, and despite the barrage of hostility launched against the church by…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 13 - Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 13 - Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 13 Year B Twelve months of Sundays Hands up those who took one look at this week’s Old Testament lesson and gave it a wide berth. All right; now hands up those who seized upon it as a chance to preach on How Not To Commit Immorality. Full marks to the lectionary for includ…
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 12 - Year B
Twelve Months of Sundays Year B - Proper 12 - Year B
by SPCK - N T Wright
Proper 12 Year B Think of the Lord’s Prayer while reading Ephesians 3. Paul prays to the Father, from whom all fatherhood ‘in heaven and on earth’ is named, that he will give us . . . all things in Christ, because to him belong the power and the glory for ever, Amen. Perhaps this…
Simply Good News - Good News - For You Personally
Simply Good News - Good News - For You Personally
by SPCK - N T Wright
Good News – for You Personally If the good news really is what it says, there is all the room in the world for delighted celebration of the gospel in the life of every child, woman, and man. To miss this element – to think of Christianity without this deeply personal aspect – is …
Simply Good News - Good News - For the World?
Simply Good News - Good News - For the World?
by SPCK - N T Wright
Good News – for the World? If the good news really is what it says, there is all the room in the world for delighted celebration of the gospel in the life of every child, woman, and man. To miss this element – to think of Christianity without this deeply personal aspect – is like…
Simply Good News - The Problem with Progress
Simply Good News - The Problem with Progress
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Problem with Progress Doctrine – isn’t that a strong, almost Christian word for a philosophical teaching? Yes, and that is exactly how progress is used. I spoke two chapters ago about the way the scientific discoveries and political innovations of the eighteenth century gave …
Simply Good News - Wrong Future, Wrong Present
Simply Good News - Wrong Future, Wrong Present
by SPCK - N T Wright
Wrong Future, Wrong Present Like the good news about what has happened in the past, the good news about what will happen in the future has proved hard to grasp. There is a powerful reason for this, which I shall come to in a moment. For now, let’s just note some of the other less…
Simply Good News - Resurrection as the Beginning of a New World
Simply Good News - Resurrection as the Beginning of a New World
by SPCK - N T Wright
Saving the World How do we know all this? How can we know all this? How is all this not simply a pious dream, a fantasy, a utopia that we all enjoy but know is a mirage? The answer is simple. Jesus was raised from the dead. This is, of course, the second half of the classic summa…
Simply Good News - Saving the World
Simply Good News - Saving the World
by SPCK - N T Wright
Saving the World But how does the good news of the death and resurrection of Jesus and the good news that this was for our sins and in accordance with the scriptures turn out to be the good news of the new creation? How are these things joined together? The answer is simple – and…
Simply Good News - Rethinking Heaven
Simply Good News - Rethinking Heaven
by SPCK - N T Wright
Rethinking Heaven If Jesus’s first followers spoke about the good news of what had just happened, what did they think would happen in the future as a result? Here we face a major problem. For many generations in the modern church, followers of Jesus in many parts of the world hav…
Simply Good News - The Competing Gospel of the Modern World
Simply Good News - The Competing Gospel of the Modern World
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Competing Gospel of the Modern World The first problem, we recall, is that the church has colluded with the legacy of the Middle Ages, proposing going to heaven as the ultimate goal and an angry God as the problem to get around. The second is that modern culture has operated …
Simply Good News - The Competing Gospels of Rationalism and Romanticism
Simply Good News - The Competing Gospels of Rationalism and Romanticism
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Competing Gospels of Rationalism and Romanticism The second problem has infected both the church and the world for the last two or three hundred years at least. Again, this is not the place to explain how all the complicated ideas in modern European and American thought came …
Simply Good News - Turning the Good News into Bad News
Simply Good News - Turning the Good News into Bad News
by SPCK - N T Wright
Turning the Good News into Bad News The first of these, then, has to do with the popular view of what Christianity is all about – and when I say the popular view, I mean the view of most people inside the church as well as outside. Most people in the Western world think of Christ…
Simply Good News - A Different Kind of Kingdom
Simply Good News - A Different Kind of Kingdom
by SPCK - N T Wright
A Different Kind of Kingdom Americans often tell me this. ‘We used to have kings,’ they say, ‘but we gave them up. You British understand these things; we don’t.’ This is a misunderstanding. The constitutional monarchy we have today in the United Kingdom is quite different from a…
Simply Good News - Can we Trust the Gospels?
Simply Good News - Can we Trust the Gospels?
by SPCK - N T Wright
Can we Trust the Gospels? Let’s start with the obvious problem. Can we trust the Gospels? Answering that properly would take another whole book, and indeed I’ve written one or two on that topic. Despite a continuing chorus of scepticism, I and many other scholars who have studied…
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