Broken Signposts by N.T. Wright is out NOW! The book is based on our course Themes in the Gospel of John. You can enroll for only $49.99 (half-off) until Oct. 11.

N.T. Wright Introduces His Book: Broken Signposts from David Seemuth on Vimeo.

You may remember that there’s an old legend about two philosophers in ancient Greece who had opposite reactions to the world each day.

When the first one got up and looked out of his front door. He burst out laughing the world was so full of amazing curious and delightful things. But each day when the second one got up and looked out of his door, he burst into tears. The world was so full of sorrow and tragedy of beauty trampled upon and virtue unrewarded life spoiled now, they were both right that’s what this book is about but their laughter and their tears are not the end of the story.

When I wrote simply Christian 15 years ago, I began with four things that all humans know are important important but puzzling. I named them as Justice, Spirituality, Relationships and Beauty. We all know they matter but we all mess them up. It’s only when we start to tell the story of the God revealed in Jesus, the God active by the spirit of Jesus that things start to make sense after all and we start to be able to find our way back into those four.

In this new book, I’ve added three more to the list Freedom, Truth and Power. This follows the seventh chapter of my more academic book, History and Eschatology, which came out not long ago.

The point about all these seven is that they seem to be signposts pointing to some great truth about life. But as we approach them, It turns out the signposts are all broken.

Justice is denied. Spirituality sometimes seems me a fantasy. Relationships turn sour, and so on and so on. Truth collapses into fake news.

But the question then of what is the meaning of life and how can we tell hinges on whether we just laugh or whether we just cry or whether we search for deeper meanings. And it’s this book what I’ve done is to read through John’s gospel in relation to each one of those seven.

John is one of the all-time favorite books in the Christian Bible and I find that it addresses all those seven in ways that many readers of John might never have imagined. And that many people who reflect on Justice and relationships and beauty and so on might never have imagined either.

So that’s what this book is all about.

It’s about the meaning of life.

It’s about John’s gospel, and I hope you will find it both stimulating and provocative to thought and to prayer and to life.

Thank you.

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Prof. N.T. Wright is currently Research Professor Emeritus of New Testament and Early Christianity at St Mary’s College in the University of St Andrews and Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.