On May 11th Homebrewed Christianity posted a podcast interview with N.T. Wright.  It seems like most interviews with Wright these days typically treat the same issues, but this one was somewhat exceptional, maybe because of its broader scope and/or maybe because the blog is a little less concerned with the issues evangelicals are presently quibbling about.  But if you want a primer on Wright’s thought this is a good one nonetheless.  Very enjoyable.  Here are several significant(?) quotes:

“Bart [Ehrman] is quite an angry man.”

“I do think that the Gospels intended to refer—and succeeded in referring—to Jesus himself and not simply to the community’s faith about Jesus.” (on Barthian heritage)

“If you are a theologian that believes you ought to wait for the biblical scholars to sort stuff out before you can then use their material in your own work, then you might sometimes feel like you have to wait forever.”

“The bible doesn’t use the phrase afterlife—that’s a modern term.  Let’s talk about the robust Christian hope.”

“The role of postmodernity is to preach the doctrine of the fall to arrogant modernity.”

“If we read the gospels and say our prayers, we should be able to do it.” (on how to move into a post-postmodern world)

“The unity of the church for him [Paul] is a symbolic thing as well as an actual thing.  It is the symbol which says, this is is the new humanity—don’t accept any cheap, man-made substitutes.”

“If you imagine a church that stops doing theology, you are imagining a church that is about to split.”

And here he recalls a quote by Crossan which he considers to have been a subtle, though friendly, jab at Wright’s journey in biblical studies.

“If you read Paul first you’ll read Jesus wrong; if you read Jesus first you’ll read Paul differently.” John Dominic Crossan