Anglican pastor NT Wright has stirred up headlines after addressing what he considered to be a misunderstanding of the word “glory.” Wright was speaking at “The Fresh Challenge of Romans,” a four-day conference at Park Cities Baptist Church, which focused on a deep-dive of Romans 5. Here, Wright pointed to what he believed to be misinterpretation being about leaving the world behind. Wright, however, said the passage had more to do with vocation and living in the world. He pointed at Romans 5:2, which states, “[Jesus Christ] By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” “Let’s be quite clear: glory does not mean going to Heaven. It means becoming fully human, to share God’s redemptive rule,” said Wright, connecting it to Psalm 8 where humans are described as “a little lower than the heavenly beings.”

Wright also referred to St. Irenaeus of Lyons’s treatise Against Heresies, which stated that the glory of God is a “human being fully alive.”  “God places His image bearers into His creation, to be His agents in making this world flourish. That is their glorious task. That is who they’re supposed to be,” said Wright. He pushed against a worldview that sees life on earth as just an obstacle to get to heaven and stated that humanity lived for God is glory to God. “Being human is not a bad shabby old thing. We make it that, but being human is itself the way in which God wants to be reflected into His created order,” he said.

Wright is known for trying to encourage out-of-the-box thinking, particularly through his scholarship of Paul’s writings. That has, however, gotten him into trouble. His book, What Saint Paul Really Said offered a thought-provoking look at what he called the “New Perspective on Paul.” Yet, while he stated he was only offering an expanded way of understanding Paul’s writings, critics warned that his new way would push out certain Protestant confessionals, such as sola fide or the idea that salvation comes through faith alone. Wright was also criticized when he seemed to suggest that Adam and Eve were “human-like creatures” and that Jonah was a “folk tale.” He made the comments during his “Ask NT Wright Anything” podcast and was swiftly criticized by those who take a literal historical perspective of the Bible. During another episode of his podcast, he waffled on a question of abortion that quickly earned him the ire of apologists like Ken Ham. “Dr. Wright was asked a question about abortion on his Ask NT Wright Anything podcast (I wrote last year about the terrible answer he gave on that program to a question about science and the Bible),” wrote Ham. “And his answer was biblically and theologically atrocious! But that’s not surprising because I find that when a person compromises Genesis with outside beliefs (like evolution/millions of years), it has a detrimental effect on other areas such as we see here regarding his answer on abortion.”