"If we really engage with the Bible in this serious way we will find, I believe, that we will be set free from what verges on small-scale evangelical paranoia about scripture. We won’t be forced into awkward corners about whether scripture is exactly this or exactly that. Of course the Bible is inspired, and if you’re using it like this there won’t be any question in your mind that the Bible is inspired. But, you will be set free to explore ways of articulating beliefs which do not fall into the old rationalist traps of 18th or 19th or 20th centuries.
Further, you will discover that the Bible will not let you down. You will be paying attention to it rather than sitting in judgment over it—not coming to it with preconceived notions of what this or that passage has to mean if it is to be true. You will discover that God is speaking new truth through it. I take it as a method in my biblical studies that if I turn a corner and find myself saying, ‘Well, in that case, that verse is wrong’ that I must have turned a wrong corner somewhere. But that does not mean that I impose what I think is right onto that bit of the Bible, either. It means, instead, that I am forced to live with that text uncomfortably, sometimes literally for years, until suddenly I come round a different corner and discover that the verse makes a lot of sense; sense that I wouldn’t have got if I had insisted on imposing my initial view on it from day one. "
N.T. Wright on Scripture and the Authority of God, Part 6
biologos.org/blog/scripture-and-the-authority-of-god-part-1
"Paul’s Theology of Baptism
Romans 6 is quite remarkable, when you think about it. Within twenty-five years of the crucifixion, Paul had already worked out this astonishingly deep and detailed theology of what it means to go through the waters of baptism, linking it to the Exodus, to creation, to new creation, and in particular to Jesus’ own death and resurrection.
Therefore, says Paul, the spectacular Good Friday and Easter at the heart of the Christian story—Jesus’ dying and rising—happened to us in baptism. Paul doesn’t hold back here: he doesn’t hedge and say “as if.” He simply says, You died with Christ in baptism and you were raised with him through the waters into the new life of belonging to Jesus.
Because of this problem, many people in the last few hundred years have decided only to baptize people who are absolutely sure of their faith. But even where people are only baptized upon a very serious adult profession of faith, things can—and sometimes do—go horribly wrong. So I don’t think such a policy actually solves the problem."
N. T. Wright on Word and Sacraments: Baptism
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www.reformedworship.org/article/december-2008/n-t-wright
“‘Justification’ in the first century was not about how someone might establish a relationship with God. It was about God’s eschatological definition, both future and present, of who was, in fact, a member of his people. In Sanders’ terms, it was not so much about ‘getting in,’ or indeed about ‘staying in,’ as about ‘how you could tell who was in.’ In standard Christian theological language, it wasn’t so much about soteriology as about ecclesiology; not so much about salvation as about the church.”1
“Despite a long tradition to the contrary, the problem Paul addresses in Galatians is not the question of how precisely someone becomes a Christian, or attains to a relationship with God ... On anyone’s reading, but especially within its first-century context, it [i.e., the problem] has to do quite obviously with the question of how you define the people of God: are they to be defined by the badges of Jewish race, or in some other way?”2
“What Paul means by justification, in this context, should therefore be clear. It is not ‘how you become a Christian,’ so much as ‘how you can tell who is a member of the covenant family.’”
N.T. WRIGHT ON JUSTIFICATION
by Charles E. Hill
www.thirdmill.org/files/english/html/nt/NT.h.Hill.Wright...
Hope that helps!
