← Ask NT Wright Anything
Ask NT Wright Anything
Are Catholics saved? Is the Bible missing books? And will there be a third temple?
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Before we begin today's show, I have some important news to share with you. Premier Insight's financial year ends on June 30, and it's vital we close a final funding gap of $94,000 by that date. The great news is generous friends of the ministry have offered a new $5,000 matching grant which will double your gift today up to that amount. That's why I wanted to take just a moment before we get into today's podcast to ask for your help. If you would please take a moment today to give your best gift@premierinsight.org ntrite that's premierinsight.org ntrite thank you for understanding how important your gift is today and for giving generously. And now it's time for today's podcast.
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Hello and welcome to the Ask nt Write Anything podcast, the program where we answer your questions about Jesus, the Bible and the life of faith. I'm Mike Bird from Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia, joined by Tom Rate from
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Wycliffe hall in Oxford.
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A
Tom, it's great to be with you, but I want to begin by asking you, Tom, do you remember the first Bible you ever got?
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B
Actually, I do, yes. And I think I wrote about this in the preface to the Big Book on Paul, because it was Coronation Day, June 2, 1953, and I was. How old was I? Four and a half. And I just learned to read. And my parents gave me and my sister, who's a year older than me, each a coronation Bible, a little chunky King James version of the Bible with a crown on the front. And I remember my sister and me staring at this extraordinary object and thinking, now what do we do? And I remember we went through and sat on the bedroom floor and looked through and found the shortest book that we could, which was the Letter to Philemon. We actually read Philemon to one another on the morning of the coronation, which may sound weird. So, yeah, I grew up with The King James. And then I graduated onto the RSV in my teens and went forward from that.
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Okay.
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I mean, the first Bible I got, I mean, I was like 20, not 4. And it was a NIV. I remember they had, it had a distinct pink cover.
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Right.
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Which was an odd color for me to pick since I don't like the color pink. Yeah, but I had a pink niv. I loved it. And then I graduated onto a niv study Bible. And those were my, my first two Bibles, which I, I hold hold with great fondness and affection. The reason I'm asking this, Tom, is we've got some questions today and they're, they're a bit obviously all about the Bible at some way. But one question, our first question is about other Bibles because not all Bibles are the same. Some Bibles even have more books or less books than other Bibles because there's different understandings of the canon. And so today we're going to talk about these other Bibles, Catholics and justification. Then we're going to finish off Tom with us a question about the Third Temple and the Apocalypse. We'll get on to that. But our first question is from Bill Johnson in Wilsonville, usa, and this is about, you know, which Bible this is. What he asks, is the Ethiopian Bible the best and a legitimate Bible? Also, was the King James Bible written because the King feared rebellion from his people if they read it? There seems to be so much negative things being said about Bible translations that most in the west we read Are the negative claims. Are they a legitimate cause for concern? I think he means they're people critiquing Bible translations. I'm seeing more and more about the books that are not in our Western translations, like the Book of one Enoch or the four Books of Maccabees. Should this be a real concern? By the way, I love the podcast. I watch them frequently and have started purchasing anti right books. Thank you for what you're doing. Well, Bill, I think you've got the message. You're watching the show, you're buying the books. What more could we ask of a listener and fan than that? Tom, this is a good question because, you know, if you look at the Protestant Bible, where we have an older New Testament, our Catholic friends have what's called a, an apocrypha or a judo canonical section. Then you've got the Ethiopian Bible, which they do have in there. In their complete canon, they have one Enoch and the Book of Jubilees. But the other thing I've noticed, if you go back to some ancient Christian manuscripts, Some of the big codices, some of them will include at the end, almost like an appendix, things like the shepherd of Hamas, you know, which is a early second century Christian writing. And we do have to ask the question, what is the biblical canon? Because the Bible did not come from heaven. Written in ye olde English, the words of Jesus in red Scofield footnotes bound in leather with a table of contents with God telling us which books should be in the Bible. So, Tom, is there one proper biblical canon, or is the biblical canon only a vague consensus of the books the Church should be reading?
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I don't think it's a vague consensus. I think we can home in on the main central planks of the structure, as it were, because actually, all Christians of different contexts, whatever, would say that the Pentateuch, of course, is the beginning. The great prophets, of course, are the middle of the Old Testament. The Psalms, of course, are the early church's prayer book, hymn book, and should be ours as well. And then they would say the four Gospels are, of course, the heart of the message. They're what we read in church in order to find ourselves once again in the presence of the Lord. The epistles are, of course, the great early teaching and so on. So when we're talking about, oh, dear, can we be quite sure about the Bible, the answer is no question about the big solid things in the middle. And actually, if you spent your life just reading those, that'd be fine. I think what we have to remember is that ever since the Reformation, the Protestant Reformation, there's been pressure on Protestants because if you take away the absolute authority of the Pope, as they did in the 16th century, then where are you gonna find absolute authority? And so they start casting around and trying to produce theories about what the Bible is, which will replace the kind of supreme authority of the Pope. And that puts a pressure on then deciding which books are in the Bible and which aren't. And then that gets muddled up with other issues. So that, for instance, in the books of the Maccabees, you've got that strange story about the soldiers who, having died, were found to have had pagan idols under their clothes. And then the remaining Judeans are saying, oh, my goodness, these were heroes of the faith, they fought the good fight. So too bad they had these pagan idols. We better go and offer sacrifice for them, because the resurrection is coming and we want them to share in that as well. And so then many Roman Catholics, 1000 years later would say, ah, there you are, Maccabees. It's in the canon because it proves purgatory. Now, actually, it doesn't prove purgatory. Even if it was in the canon, it wouldn't prove that. And I've written about that in one or two places. But that's just an example of how then it gets bundled up with the wrong issues, as though, oh, my goodness, if we give this particular book a big tick and say, yes, that's in, then we're going to be committed to this or that dogma. And really, that's not a healthy procedure. From start to finish, that's not a healthy procedure. Let me put it like this. As an ancient historian, I want all the documents I can get. I don't make an initial decision about whether they're canonical or not. I want every scrap of evidence from the first century. I want every coin where we can see an inscription on it. I want the bits of carved stone which tell us what people were thinking and how they were making public proclamations. Not because it's all canonical and going to be authoritative, but because that's the great hinterland within which the Bible means what means. And I mean, for instance, there's a coin. Gerd Tyson wrote about this a generation ago. There's a coin found in Galilee around the time of Jesus which has a Galilean reed on it, a picture of a reed waggling in the wind. And it's a symbol of Herod. Herod was not allowed to put his own portrait on the coin because of Jewish sensibilities. So he has this symbol. And only when we see that that's Herod's chosen symbol on his coins do we understand what Jesus says when he says, what? Did you go out to the wilderness to see a reed waggling in the wind? No, maybe not. It's an oblique reference to Herod. Without that coin, we wouldn't know that. Now, does that mean, oh, my goodness, this coin is canonical? Cause it helps us understand a saying of Jesus? No, of course, not all study of the ancient world helps the study of the actual Bible, particularly the meaning of words and the meaning of symbols and so on. I think we also have to recognize that the question of different versions, different translations, has been actually with the Church for a long time. There was a polyglot Bible produced in the Middle Ages, which had the Latin text, the Vulgate, Jerome's Vulgate, printed as a column in the middle. And it had the Hebrew Old Testament, the parallel on the one side, and the Septuagint Old Testament on the Other. And there was one medieval monk, I think it was, who likened this to Christ being crucified between the two thieves. Cause you have the true Latin text, that's obviously the real thing. And then you have the wicked Jews over there and the wicked Greeks over there. So this game of which version are we going with? Has been with us for a long time. And basically it's a distraction. And people can go down rabbit holes, and those are quite fun rabbit holes in their way. And we may learn a few things on the way, but then we've got to come back and say, go back to the main substance of it, because that's where it matters. Now, in terms of the Book of Enoch, the Maccabees and Jubilees and so on, those books are really helpful for understanding how many Judeans in the period of Jesus or just before were thinking like the Qumran texts, the Dead Sea Scrolls. They are enormously helpful for understanding how some of Jesus rough contemporaries were reading the Old Testament. They're not canonical, but my goodness, they shed a flood of light on the canon and so on. So I think part of the problem has been that many Christians who have grown up in perhaps quite a narrow context think there's just the Bible, that's it, and there's nothing else for miles in any direction. It's just this thing called the Bible which comes. And the answer is no. The Bible was itself culturally conditioned, of course, it was written in the languages of the time and within the cultural and symbolic world of the time. And let's get used to that and then say, thank you, Lord, for these particular books, because they are the ones which breathe life at us. Whereas I would be inclined to challenge people who want to say, let's have say, Jubilees in the. Do you really want to read the Book of Jubilees out in church? How will you preach on that? What would that look like? And it's like, likewise, you mentioned the shepherd of Hermas. And people have said, well, what about the other Gospels? What about the Gospel of Thomas, what about the Gospel of Mary, et cetera. And part of the answer to that is usually just go and read those and see. And of course, some people in our generation have done so and have said, oh, these are really exciting, the agnostic texts. And that maybe was the original early version of Christianity. Now that has dyed death of a thousand qualifications. I don't think you find nearly so many people going for that these days, though. The American penchant for Gnosticism means that there are always some American scholars who want to say that some of these Gnostic texts were the original form of Christianity. That's simply a spin off from the older Bultmannian view of the New Testament, that it's all part of. Of thinking through of Gnosticism, which really historically doesn't work. So I want to say, don't allow these questions to put you off reading the basic big books that everybody agrees are at the middle of the canon. Let's have a discussion about Jubilees. Let's go and look at the Ethiopic canon, whatever it is. But the idea of is it a legitimate Bible? And it's kind of the wrong question to ask. It's legitimate as part of the historical hinterland, but should it be used for the teaching of the Church? I would say no. And it's interesting, in the Anglican tradition, which is mine and yours, Mike, the 13 and a half articles, it says that those other books, the Apocrypha books like the Maccabees and the Wisdom of Solomon and Ben Sira and so on, we read those for instruction, not least in morals, but we don't build doctrine on them. And that's an interesting reflection. Just like I would read writings of Irenaeus or Tertullian or somebody for instruction and training in morals, But I wouldn't say they should be part of the canon.
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I think that's right, Tom. The church reached a consensus very early on, what are the main books? And then they. People did kind of wonder about the book of Revelation a bit strange. Second Peter's pretty good, Greek for a fisherman, and, you know, maybe the Didache and the chapter of Hamas. They're pretty good. But it became certainly clear that there was a. An emerging consensus that crystallizes in the 4th century and thereafter. Yeah, you do get the question about what about those books that have a Jewish origin, but they're not in the Hebrew Bible, you know, but still were used by Jewish communities in the Hellenistic world and then, you know, in Ethiopia. Ethiopia. I think that Bible is. It's something of a outlier because, you know, Jubilees and one Enoch, you know, people aren't incorporating that into their text all over the world, even though the Epistle of Jude quotes one Enoch, the,
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The Book of Watches.
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So I think you can say that there is a very pretty clear canonical census, even if there's one or two little, how can I put it, Fuzzy edges here and there that people want to, you know, probe and question.
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Yeah. And I think the other half of that question, we perhaps won't spend as long on this about the King James Bible the King James Bible was an attempt by King James to unite the Kingdom and the Church by having a solid authorized version as opposed to all the other ones that were running around and people were experimenting with different English translations. Though a lot of the King James versions, including some of its livelier bits, goes back to William Tyndale and they used Tyndale and others. But it's also slightly more stately. Tyndale is a bit more earthy, down to earth and the King James English is a bit donnish. It's a bit sort of upper crust, prim and proper, if you know what I mean. It is a bit. And I don't think that after long after King James, people were saying this is inspired. We've got to go with it. It's the only one. By the way, as we were talking I reached up to a shelf and pulled down I have found this is my original Coronation Bible from 1953 and here it still is with lots of scribbles and notes because I took us off to school with me and so on. Falling apart as all good Bibles should be, but still serviceable.
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Good to hear. Well Tom, we've got a second question and this is from Sam Schumach of Sydney, Australia, that's about Catholics and the doctrine of justification. And this is what Sam asks. Hi Tom and Mike, your show is one of my go to's on the train. Always appreciate your insightful and encouraging perspectives. I'm at loggerheads with a good friend who takes the doctrine of justification by faith alone to imply that true Roman Catholic faith, with all of its requirements to keep the sacraments, to avoid mortal sin, to maintain a state of grace, cannot be saving faith? This is because it necessarily entails, trusting, at least partly in our own achievements for our right understanding before God. In other words, supposedly true faith means relying entirely on Christ for our justification. So how can one be justified if they accept a teaching contrary to justification by faith alone? Personally, I wonder whether the biblical picture of faith is quite so precise and whether the doctrine of sola fidei has such a black and white implication as my friends argues. I've heard you both adopt a more open stance toward our shared faith in Christ with Catholics, while wanting to keep some Catholic doctrines at arm's length. I also appreciate your idea that the 16th century debates were addressing the wrong questions. I wonder where you'd go with the particular line of reasoning my friend is adopting. Do you think it's plausible that an authentic faith which I see as quite simple and deeply relational can exist while subscribing to or even preaching a muddled soteriology. That's the doctrine of salvation. Appreciate any thoughts or recommended reading? Well, Tom, I mean, my, my intuition here is, you know, I'm not Catholic. You know, I'm not into, you know, Hail Mary, full of grace. I don't mind a little bit of the Pope on his social commentary, but I'm don't want to have my church ordered by the guy in the pointy white hat. So, you know, I'm a Protestant for good reason. But I think there is a category error made by Sam's friend because we're justified by faith. We're not justified by believing in justification by faith. And a lot of people, I think, make that mistake as if you're justified by believing in justification by faith, which is a real kind of odd thing. The question we need to ask of any person, be they Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, is do they trust the Lord Jesus for salvation? Now, they may think what we have to do in response varies, but do they see themselves as clinging to Christ for their salvation? What are your thoughts, Tom?
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Yeah, well, if you hadn't said it, I would have done that. We are justified by believing in Jesus Christ, not by believing in justification by faith. That question actually was raised in the late 16th century. Richard Hooker, in his controversies, deals with it because at the time there were Puritan theologians who were saying that for the previous centuries, before the 16th century, when the whole world or Western world was Roman Catholic, they were none of them saved. They couldn't have been saved because they didn't believe in justification by faith. And Hooker comes back with exactly the argument that you've used, no, we are justified by believing in Jesus. And Hooker looks back on the medieval church and says, well, they were muddled about many things. And I would add, as no doubt we all are to a lesser or greater extent. But when push came to shove, they would look at an image of Jesus or a crucifix or whatever it was, they would attend Mass and the story of Jesus, the fact of Jesus, the death of Jesus, was the thing that they were basically relying on. Now, they may also have been relying on other things, either genuinely or not, but Jesus was at the heart of it. And so Hooker says, basically, they're okay. They may be muddled, but they're okay. And it's really important, I think, to say there is such a thing as a muddled, genuine Christian. And which is just as well, because again, I suspect we all are to a lesser or greater extent. So I think Sam's summary of his friend's view has several kind of buzzwords which go with a particular modern, reformed or similar way of looking at everything. Where our right standing before God is the question I want to say right standing before God is really important. Romans 5:1. Since we're justified by faith, we have access to this grace in which we stand and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. But Paul's doctrine of justification by faith is not simply about the abstract question of where is my standing with God? As we know from Romans 3, as we know from Galatians 2 and 3, as we know from every time he's talking about justification by faith, it's also about how God is creating the single family of Judean and Gentile together. Because the one thing that characterizes them all is not circumcision, not the food laws, not the Sabbaths. But they believe in Jesus, and the faithfulness of Jesus to God is reflected in their faithfulness to God as revealed in Jesus. And that then is about community, definition. It's not simply about, am I going to heaven or not? And the question about requirements and our own achievements. That's a very 16th century or indeed modern Protestant way of looking at it. Because all Christian faith has requirements. There's a huge danger sometimes, and I've heard people say this again and again, that young people say they go off to a Christian camp and somebody tells them, you need to say this prayer now. And then when you've prayed this prayer, don't ever think that anything you can do can add to that. You are now saved, you are now going to heaven. And so a lot of young people go off and they think, it really doesn't matter how I live, doesn't matter what I do. All these silly old moral rules that I've heard from elsewhere, they're obviously irrelevant. I've said this prayer, I'm going to heaven. That's all that counts. That is devastatingly wrong. Romans 8 is quite clear. If you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. Paul, does that mean we're adding our own achievements on top of it? No, of course it doesn't. It means that you've misunderstood how justification works. It brings you into this place where you are part of God's family. And then, because this is the new humanity, this is how the new humanity is supposed to live as genuine humans and not as failed and Floundering humans as the rest of the world has been, and the requirements to keep sacraments, I understand exactly where that's coming from because when I was a very young Christian, I did sometimes worry about that, are we supposed to do this stuff with the bread and the wine and so on, or is not that a human good work to earn God's favor?
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But.
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And I used to go back to 1 Corinthians 11 and say, well, Paul seems to think we ought to do it, so that's probably good enough as often as we eat the bread and drink the cup and so on. But now I would say the idea that doing the sacramental actions would in any way class as achievements to earn God's favor, there are several layers of misunderstanding there which need to be unpicked. And the best way to do that actually is to study Paul a bit more deeply. And Mike, you and I have both tried in our different way to help people in doing that. And so that, yes, the biblical picture of faith is a very big and capacious thing. And I remember one time when there was a joint statement by the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church on justification. And this was published. And people in my area, this is 20 years ago, and I was 25 years ago. I was living in Oxford then, as I am now. The churches in this area wanted to have an Anglican and a Roman Catholic theologian talking to their church groups about this. And I went round with Father Ted Yarnold, who was the head of Campion hall, the Jesuit Institute. And the very first place we went to, we agreed that Ted would speak first. And Ted said, let's be quite clear what's going on here. We none of us think that anything we can do can put us right with God. We all agree that we are right with God if we are simply because of what God has done in Jesus and on the cross. And I remember thinking, well, we might as well go home then, because as an Anglican, I want to shake hands on that and say right now, there's some details we could talk about. But Mike, I know that and you would make this point. Many modern Roman Catholics would be perfectly happy to say everything that I've just said. Jesus is the center. His death is the thing that makes it all happen. And that our part is to trust in that. What justification by faith does, if you believe in justification by faith, it gives you assurance. It does give you salvation, as straight up as it were. It gives you the assurance because you look back and you say, no, I believe in Jesus as Lord. I believe that God raised him from the dead. According to St. Paul, that means I am part of God's people. But the way that assurance works is not just in my head and my heart feeling that God is with me. Assurance works because the community of the people of God, which we call the church, the embraces me and I am part of them. And their welcome of me is part of God's way of saying, you are part of my family. That's why justification by faith goes with that idea of the Judean and the Gentile and everyone else who believes welcoming one another. We've somehow got to think bigger than we've normally done. And I hope that Sam is able to have a wise discussion with his friend and not to escape from the sharp edges, but in order to put the whole question into a larger framework.
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Yeah, I mean, the other thing I think Sam could do is find a commentary on Romans written by a Catholic scholar like Joseph Fitzmayer or Brendan Byrne, Raymond Brown or, you know, Frank Maloney, great biblical scholars that Tom and I are both familiar with. And if you took a quote out of them and then mixed them in with some John Calvin quotes and ask him to pick one, which one's written by a Catholic, I mean, that would be a little bit of a naughty thing, but it would, it would show that it's a little bit more complex than, you know, reform good, Catholic bad. Because the Catholic Church is not the same as it was in the Council of Trent. A lot more things, there's been a lot more dialogue going happen. It's not just a react. An anti Protestant reactionary movement. You can find some Catholic theologians who can sound very Protestant in their theology at times.
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Yeah, sure. And indeed the late Pope Benedict, in some of his writings, some people actually quite seriously said, you know, I think he's a crypto evangelical at heart. So there's all sorts of convergences and I thank God for that and for my fellowship with Roman Catholics. When I was growing up, this was an absolute. No, no. You know, the Catholics had a church at the other end of the town and we were at this end and we just didn't know them at all. But now, thankfully, that has all changed and a sign of that would be the number of Roman Catholic churches, certainly in my country, where you'll find a big sign outside saying, want to find the meaning of life? Come and join the Alpha course. And that would have been unthinkable a generation ago, two generations ago, but so we live in exciting times and we have to pray for wise creative relationships with anyone who names the name of Jesus. Because this is the point. In Galatians 2. The key thing that Paul is arguing is that all those who believe in Jesus belong at the same table, no matter what their background. Now if we could just get that straight and there'd be some interesting discussions to be had about shared communion with Roman Catholics, but there's an awful lot who would thoroughly agree with that. That's what justification by faith was all about. Because these people believe in Jesus, we got to eat together and if we don't, we don't really believe our own message.
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Yeah, well that's a good point to end. I'm hoping that answers the question for our good friend Sam there. We're going to take a break and when we come back, we're going to talk about the third Temple of the Apocalypse. You do not want to miss out on that. Back in a month
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on July 3rd,
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our neighbors are coming over.
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Accept the invite. Hi, come in to the film critics are calling the funniest film of the year. We want to propose to you that
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we share an experience together.
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Say thank you Joe.
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Thank you. Very flattering. Starring Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton. We feel a bass strong connection with you.
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If we were proceeding with this.
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Yeah, how would this shake down the Invite? In cinemas July 3 starting or growing
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C
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A
Tom, we've got a really good question here from Kimberly Bruton of Conroe, Texas. It's about the third Temple. And this is what Kimberly asks. She says dispensationalism's bent toward a third temple is taken as a holy prescription, a certainty. Could it be that there will be a third temple built but for God's purpose of being a stumbling block for tribulation Jews? Could it be right that there will be a third temple, but that it will be used by the Messiah to test the tribulation Jews faith? Now, people have got to understand that this is a question about a particular species of end times theology in some schemes of what's called dispensationalism, which is a particular way of understanding the unities of the Bible or their discontinuity, and has a particular perspective on on how the end times work. That during a tribulation, so the church is raptured out of the world. And for the people who left, the Jews build a temple. Either during a tribulation, a time when the world is ruled by an Antichrist figure, or maybe during a literal millennium, there's going to be a temple. What will be the purpose of that temple? Will they have sacrifices in it? A friend of mine, Brian Roslyn, you know Brian, Tom, one Corinthians expert, he once attended a preaching convention where the speaker gave 10 sermons on the role of the temple during the tribulation. So the idea there'll be a great tribulation, there'll be a temple, and what will be the function of that temple during the tribulation? Now Tom, do you think there's some category errors here, that they're just getting the whole tribulation millennium end times thing wrong? Will there be a third temple? Should Christians support it? I mean, what do you think of this question about the idea of there being a third temple built in the future and should Christians get behind it?
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B
Oh my goodness. There's the old famous saying about somebody asking an Irishman the way to Dublin and the Irishman responding, if I was going to Dublin, I wouldn't start from here, which isn't terribly helpful. Although it may actually tell you something about what you're trying to do. And really, ever since I first heard the idea of the building of a Third Temple, I've been puzzled as to where it comes from. And then the more I found out about dispensationalism and varieties, et cetera, the more I find myself shaking my head and saying every step in this argument is built on a multiple series of misunderstandings. Actually, I first met the idea of a third temple when I was living in Jerusalem in 1989, and I was working on my book, Jesus and the Victory of God. And I was living right beside St. George's Cathedral, just north of the Damascus Gate. And while I was there, there was a group of Americans, I think, American dispensationalist Christians, who were helping to anoint a particular foundation stone down in the Wadi Kidron, down just below the great Temple Mount. And they were going to come in procession, in solemn procession up to the Temple Mount and were expecting the gates to open miraculously or the walls to fall down or something, and they were going to make this the foundation stone of the Third Temple. And of course, the Israeli police turned them back, and there may have been some tear gas or rubber bullets or whatever, because it was a bit of a thing. Well, there's often plenty of that. This was during the Intifada time and so on. But I remember thinking, why would you want to do that? Have you not read the letter to the Hebrews in which Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice and there is not to be a further sacrificial system because Jesus has brought all that to a head? And then in particular, the more I've discovered about Temple theology, in John and Paul particularly, and then actually back in the teaching of Jesus himself, the more it becomes clear that all those Old Testament prophecies about the rebuilding of the Temple, the New Testament writers see them all as fulfilled in Jesus and the Spirit without remainder. Paul says, all the promises of God find their yes in him. 2 Corinthians.
- [37:47]
A
Exactly.
- [37:47]
B
And when we look at the Temple language in John, John says the word became flesh and tabernacled in our midst. And the Greek for tabernacled is Eschenosen, which goes with the Greek, which means tent or tabernacle. The word became flesh and pitched his tent among us, and we gazed upon his Glo. John there is channeling the whole line of thought from Exodus 40 and from 1 Kings 8, the tabernacle and the Temple, and saying it's all now fulfilled in Jesus. If you want a Third Temple, it is Jesus himself. And then Jesus breathes on his followers and infuses them with his own spirit. And in the book of Acts, Acts chapter two has that glorious scene where the house is filled with the rushing mighty wind and the disciples are filled with the Spirit and the words for wind and spirit are the same. And it's Luke's way of describing the New Testament fulfillment of the glory of God filling the tabernacle in the wilderness, or the glory of God filling the temple in Jerusalem in Exodus 40 and 1 Kings 8, as I said. And so when you've got that plus all Paul's language about you are the temple of the living God and the church of Jews and Gentiles coming together and this church grows into a holy temple in the Lord, then why are we looking for a third physical temple in Jerusalem? Isn't that as it were, turning the biblical clock back? And this goes with all sorts of other misunderstandings which have grown up, not least because of the over individualism of Protestantism. Ever since some rereadings of the 16th century theology, particularly in the 19th century, it's all been about me and my salvation and me and how I get to heaven, et cetera. And then there's been a vacuum, a vacuum about the corporate identity of the people of God and a vacuum about God's claim on the whole creation. Because according to the New Testament, and obviously this is controversial, but it can be backed up in detail, the whole world is now God's holy land. And to imagine that you can now go back and recreate Jerusalem physically as a new holy city with a third temple in it, I think the early Christians would say that's a blasphemous nonsense. It's pulling away from the uniqueness and final achievement of Jesus and the Spirit. So I think insofar as standard dispensationalism needs a third temple, whether it's within the tribulation or not. And the idea of tribulation Jews is itself a wrinkle within the dispensationalist scheme, as you know, Mike, then this is all simply one misunderstanding built on top of another, and it really needs to be swept away. It's not wise, it's not helpful, it's not biblical, and it can lead to a total concentration on things which are not what Christianity is all about. Now, I'm speaking quite strongly, but I've come really to think that this has to be said, that the whole dispensationalist movement has led a whole swathe, particularly in America, where it's been rampant, down a blind alley and it's not a good place to be.
- [41:14]
A
Yeah, I mean, I feel like saying somewhat flippantly like, like, bro, do you even Hebrews, you know, have you not read the book of Hebrews? Because there's a whole book about, you know, Jesus is the greater temple, or even Jesus says, you know, one greater than the temple is here. So why do you want another temple when you've got Jesus? But I have, I have read some literature where people talk about, you know, let's bulldoze the Al Aqsa mosque, you know, on the Temple Mount and rebuild the temple. And there are Israeli groups and Christian groups who would be up for that. And which is my time. I've, I've scheduled a question on this very topic for our bonus episode. You know, if they did, if an Israeli government did try to, you know, flatten the Temple Mount and, you know, be, you know, begin building a new temple, Christian response, because that mean that would anger a lot of Muslims, it
- [42:06]
B
would anger a lot of danger a lot of Muslims for all sorts of reasons. And, well, it would have different resonances in the Orthodox Jewish community to how it would have in some Christian communities. But basically that whole project is a category mistake. And if there are Israeli groups who want to do it, they should be discouraged because that is not going to be the way of finding peace in the Middle East. I agree. They might say, I don't care. We've just got to do this or that. And that gets us into all sorts of other issues which would be out with what we're doing right now.
- [42:45]
A
Exactly. Exactly. Well, that's all we have time for today. In our next episode, we're going to look at Jesus and God's wrath. What's the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, and what are we to make of some of the violent parts of holy Scripture? Now, if you want your question asked on this program, then go to askantyright.com and, and you can send us your question. And we are positively eager to receive them. And if you also like not only listening but watching this program, well, go to our YouTube channel, skntright. Go there, subscribe, punch the bell, and you can watch, listen, share with friends. It'll help us grow the channel and share the good news of what we're doing here with others. Otherwise, it's goodbye from me, Mike Bird.
- [43:40]
B
Goodbye from me, Tom Wright.
- [43:42]
A
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