N.T. Wright is interviewed about his new book, “Surprised by Hope“. Here are just a few of the many insights Wright offers in this video.
(@11:38) — … since the enlightenment Western culture had been so left-brain dominated that we’ve forgotten about music, art, imagery, etc. But that’s the stuff the right brain does which is supposed to give us the larger framework within which the details make sense.
(@15:40) Are heaven (where God resides) and earth far apart? No, they are co-dimensional — “God’s dimension of present reality. Heaven and earth are not millions of miles apart — that is Epicureanism and that is endemic in modern culture… In the Bible, heaven and earth [represent] the temple and the Torah. When you’re in the Temple or when you’re reading or hearing or studying the Torah, God and humans [are coming] together.”
(@18:00) Wright discusses judgment, specifically who doesn’t get to heaven.
“I’m just [paraphrasing] what Paul says in Romans 2, if someone persistently says to God, ‘I don’t want you, I don’t want to reflect your love in the world, I don’t want to reflect your wise stewardship over the world, I want to do my own thing, I want to embrace death, I want to use death for my own purposes, etc. — which it what tyrants do. It’s what, classically, people who make a lot of money and don’t care about people they trample on the way; it’s what people do who mess with other people’s lives… If you [continue to say not to God] what you’re doing is basically dehumanizing yourself by [rejecting the image of God].