Ask N.T. Wright

Rachel Held Evans has been hosting a great interview series on her blog. Today she posted N.T. Wright's response to six crowd-sourced questions. That he even agreed to do this is remarkable and speaks volumes about Rachel's site and audience.

Wright gives a fair treatment to a question about the relationship between the world today and the biblical “New Heaven and New Earth,” as well as gender equality in the church. He sidesteps the questions about open theism and sexuality.

His attitude toward political and theological division in churches is refreshing and constructive:

Beware of ‘camps’.

In the U.S. especially these are usually and worryingly tied in to the various political either/or positions which the rest of the world does not recognise. Anyone with their wits about them who reads scripture and prays and is genuinely humble will see that many of the issues which push people into ‘camps’ - especially but not only in the U.S. - are distortions in both directions caused by trying to get a quick fix on a doctrinal or ethical issue, squashing it into the small categories of one particular culture. Read Philippians 2.1-11 again and again. And Ephesians 4.1-16 as well.