becoming

N.T. Wright will come to Toronto as one of the keynote speakers on the 2nd annual Refresh! conference which will be held from May 9-12 2006. The theme of the conference is Ministry in the Power of the Holy Spirit (Romans 8)

From the conference website:

The Holy Spirit was once called the “quiet member of the Trinity,” and so has been the Spirit’s profile in the history of theology. But by contrast the contemporary scene is flush with competing accounts of the Spirit’s work, whether in the depths of the psyche, in political activism, or in renewal movements. Paul treats life in the Spirit in Romans 8 in the richest context: the freedom of prayer to the triune God, the groaning of all creation, the Christian’s hope of glory, and our confident battle with the powers of the world. What would it look like for us as Christians, lay and ordained, to develop a rich doctrine of the Spirit for ministry at the present time? Both guest lecturers and members of the Wycliffe faculty will help to answer this question in the second annual Refresh! conference.

You can find the conference schedule here. General information can be found here and the Conference program here. Registration has started as well.

If time allows, I will attend the evening plenary on May 10 ("Creation Renewed") and 11 ("The Spirit's Powerful Groaning"). 

Anyone interested?

P.S. Wright did speak about "The Holy Spirit in the Church" last year at the fulcrum conference. Another related talk was his 2000 Charles Gore Lectures entitled, "Coming Home to St Paul? Reading Romans a Hundred Years after Charles Gore", which he laid out the structure and thought-process behind Romans. And of course you can always refer to his NIB commentary on Romans if you have THAT much time.

Via Mark Goodacre's NT Gateway:

The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan And N.T. Wright in Dialogue

Paperback: 220 pages
Publisher: Fortress Press (January 1, 2006)

 
The book is based on the inaugural Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum at New Orleans Seminary held on March 11, 2005 where N.T. Wright and John Dominic Crossan were the featured speakers. Wright, an Anglical evangelical scholar, defended the literal, bodily resurrection of Jesus, while Crossan, a professor emeritus at DePaul University, set forth a metaphorical interpretation of the resurrection.

What Is This Word? by Bishop Tom Wright of Durham 

…The genuine Christmas story is far more subversive, far more powerful, far more dangerous, than all the coded or decoded ramblings of scrolls and paintings and secret gospels. The church rightly rejected all those as it took the message of God-inside-out into Caesar’s world, the world where what counted was not how clever you were with your spiritual interiority but how loyal you were to King Jesus when faced with lions in the amphitheatre or being burned at the stake. As Matthew saw, the true Christmas story was what made Herod shiver in his shoes; as Luke saw, it was the birth of Jesus that upended the world of Caesar Augustus. This truth is far more dangerous, not least because it was dangerous for God, the God who turned himself inside out to become one of us. That’s why the conspiracy theories are so popular: they give you the thrill of apparently knowing secrets without any corresponding cost or challenge. They debunk the truth and leave Caesar secure on his throne. The real secret, the secret we celebrate here this morning, the secret of God-inside-out, demands my soul, my life, my total loyalty. O come, let us adore him.

–Bishop Tom Wright, God Inside Out.

In the beginning, God created someone that can write a book faster than you can read. Then He created a list of bloggers that can post summaries and reflections faster than you even aware that the book is actually out!

This is crazy.

Scot McKnight recent review on N.T. Wright new book The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture

From the look of it, it seems to be very much in line with what Wright already laid out in NTPG and his earlier article How can the Bible be Authoritative? This book is targeted for lay person. 

Here is another review from Last Homely House. 

The good fellow at opensourcetheology have done us a great favor by laying out a good roadmap for N.T. Wright's first 3 volumes of his Christian Origins and the Question of God project.

Before you saved enough $ to buy the actual books, I encourage you to read them first. In fact, even after you bought the books, I still encourage you to read them before engaging the text itself.

…. um, I am having a déjà vu — did I blog this before?