Nicholas T. Wright

N. Thomas Wright

Anglican Bishop of Durham, England

Nicholas Thomas Wright is Anglican Bishop of Durham, England. The "On Faith" panelist taught New Testament studies for 20 years at Cambridge, McGill and Oxford Universities before becoming Dean of Lichfeld in 1994. He was named Canon Theologian of Westminster Abbey in 2000, and consecrated bishop in 2003. He has written hundreds of articles and more than 40 books, including Judas and the Gospel of Jesus (2006) and Evil and the Justice of God (2006). He has served as Visiting Professor at numerous institutions including Harvard Divinity School, Gregorian University in Rome and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Dr Wright holds four degrees, including a divinity doctorate from Oxford University, and honorary degrees from several universities and colleges. Close.

N. Thomas Wright

Anglican Bishop of Durham, England

Nicholas Thomas Wright is Anglican Bishop of Durham, England. The "On Faith" panelist taught New Testament studies for 20 years at Cambridge, McGill and Oxford Universities before becoming Dean of Lichfeld in 1994. He was named Canon Theologian of Westminster Abbey in 2000, and consecrated bishop in 2003. more »

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The Sinful Pride of the Post-Modern World

This is rather like those questions where you're invited to 'pick your all-time favorite baseball/cricket/football team' where everybody knows it's just a cheerful but meaningless exercise... and of course in classic theology teachers have emphasized that all the seven deadlies are variations on dysfunctional humanity, humanity being less than it was made to be, humans failing to worship the living creator God and so failing to reflect his image into the world.

That's why the seven deadlies tend to reinforce one another. In our case in the western world I think pride is obviously a major failing: the massive implicit pride in our western achievements, technology, science etc., which somehow give us license to imagine that we are also superior in our worldview, our 'developed' moralities etc., and in many other ways too.

That way, our pride in being western post-enlightenment humans (or indeed our pride in having attained the degree of sophistication to call ourselves post-modernists!) gives us the further license to make up our own rules or non-rules or anti-rules, including the greed that says we can and must do what we like with the world, the planet, with other people's ecosystems, other people's bodies, and the hubris that says since it's all for our benefit anyway the aim of the game is to 'die young as late as possible', whereas I notice that for many generations of Christians the aim would have been to be killed for a mature faith as early as possible...

Anyway, scattered thoughts in response to a scattering question!

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