A bag of "Wright'

For Garwood (enjoy)

Here are some excerpts from theologian and former bishop of _____ [somewhere in England] N.T. Wright. (does N.T. stand for New Testament?)

These first quotes deal with the place of story in the human life.

“This runs contrary to the popular belief that a story is there to ‘illustrate’ some point or other which can in principle be stated without recourse to the clumsy vehicle of a narrative. Stories are often wrongly regarded as a poor person’s substitute for the ‘real thing’, which is to be found either in some abstract truth or in statements about ‘bare facts’." (p.38)

“Closer to home, stories are used in personal and domestic discourse not merely to provide information about events which have taken place, but to embody and hence reinforce, or perhaps to modify, a shared worldview within a family, an office, a club or a college. Stories thus provide a vital framework for experiencing the world. They also provide a means by which views of the world may be challenged.” (p.39)

“When we examine how stories work in relation to other stories, we find that human beings tell stories because this is how we perceive, and indeed relate to, the world. What we see close up, in a multitude of little incidents whether isolated or (more likely) interrelated, we make sense of by drawing on story-forms already more or less known to us and placing the information within them.” (p.40)

“The reason why stories come into conflict with each other is that worldviews, and the stories which characterize them, are in principle normative: that is, they claim to make sense of the whole of reality.” (p.41)

N.T. Wright’s The New Testament and the People of God (Fortress Press, 1992)

THE BEAUTY OF GOD

I want to speak about worship; and that means I want to talk about God, and
about the beauty of God. If we are to worship God truly, it is not enough to
think of God’s greatness and majesty, his power and sovereignty, his holiness
and absolute otherness. That’s all enormously important, as part of the
story. But we wouldn’t ordinarily use the word "beauty" to refer to any of
that. I want to suggest to you . . . that our ordinary experiences of beauty
are given to us to provide a clue, a starting-point, a signpost, from which
we move on to recognize, to glimpse, to be overwhelmed by, to adore, and so
to worship, not just the majesty, but the beauty of God himself. And, just as
we don’t often use the word "worship" in connection with beauty in the natur al world, so we don’t very often use the word "beauty" in connection with
God. That is our loss, and I suggest we set about making it good.

— N. T. Wright, FOR ALL GOD’S WORTH: True worship and the calling of the church. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997) p. 6.

MY favorite N.T. Wright quote.. It is an explanation of the logical inconsistency of relativism. He makes a powerful side point on how ideas about the facts changes how we see them.

"Even the relativist (who believes that everybody's point of view on everything is equally valid even though apparently incompatible) is obedient to an underlying story about reality which comes into explicit conflict with most other stories, which speak of reality as in the last analysis a seamless web, open in principle to experience and discussion."

N T Wright, The New Testament People of God, (Minneapolis, Fortress press, 1992), 41.

So True, We all reason along the lines and by the definitions given us by our worldview. In short, the self "kant" be an indifferent observe. No human has the capacity for absolute epistemological objectivity. Nor are all things subject to the tyranny of relativism for reality has an objective ground, [pause for dramatic effect] in God.[that's the stuff]. Reality is objectively real for it is created and viewed by God (remember Genesis chapter uno, and God looked and saw it was good.) God views reality as it is, in its self, for his sake. Glory be to the one who validates our search for empirical understanding of our world.