I think I left Australia at the wrong time. Not only am I missing the Commonwealth Games, but Tom Wright is visiting there too. Here’s what he’s been saying:

• ‘We Protestants belittle Paul, the Catholics have marginalised him, the Jews are afraid of him, let’s just get together and read the man again, and we’ll find that he’ll lead us all forward.’
• ‘Now if you say that the body of Jesus stayed in the tomb, and that the disciples were aware of a spiritual presence of Jesus somewhere, then what you’re saying is this is just a local variation on a new kind of spirituality. It’s certainly not a new creation. The point about the resurrection is not that it’s an isolated, odd miracle, in which God does strange conjuring tricks with bones – as one of my distinguished predecessors in Durham once said. The point about Christianity is that it’s the moment when, through Jesus, the creator God launches the project of new creation and says, ‘OK, guys, come on in.’’
• ‘The whole Bultmannian movement 100 years ago towards demythologisation was simply a misapprehension. Early Christianity was not like that, it really was rooted in what real people said, that their memories were incidents they’d taken part in.’
• ‘Trying to get the message of the New Testament without the Old Testament is trying to make a tree stand up without a root system. Many Christians ignore the Old Testament and profit still from the fact that this tree is still flowering and bearing fruit. But in fact if you try cutting off that root system, you’ll find the tree falls down dead pretty soon.’

To read more, go to

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/relrpt/stories/s1591836.htm.

There’s also info there about where he’ll be speaking. So if you’re in OZ, get along and hear him. No excuses … not even watching the Games.