← Ask NT Wright Anything
Ask NT Wright Anything
Biblical Theology vs Systematic Theology? Romans 7 explained and whether Calvinism is Biblical?
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Mike Bird
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 of faith. I'm Mike Bird from Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia, and I'm joined by Tom
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Tom Wright
Rate from Wickliff hall in Oxford.
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Mike Bird
Tom, have you ever thought about going back in time and changing your career path? Like, instead of being a New Testament person, maybe could you have gone Old Testament? Could you have gone into systematic theology, ethics? Or you're like, oh, no, I'm kind of happy with New Testament. Do you ever think, you know, is there, rather than being nt right, maybe you could have been OT right?
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Tom Wright
Well, actually we christened my younger son Oliver Thomas. So he is OT right. But he is actually a philosophical theologian, not an Old Testament theologian. But we laugh about that.
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Mike Bird
He's not an analytic theologian, is he, Tom? Please tell me he's not an analytic theologian. Oh, thank goodness.
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Tom Wright
He's written about that stuff, but that's not where he is. But no, the reason I chose New Testament as my main course of study was that I wanted to stay in touch with both Old and New Testaments. So I wanted to look for bits of the New Testament which were anchored firmly in the Old Testament, so that I would have to keep on going with both. And that's really what I've spent my life doing. One or two friends did tell me I should be a systematic theologian, and I think that that's because they probably saw in me kind of impetus towards larger scale patterns of things which are not popular in the Biblical Studies Guild. But I've always just had this strong sense that, no, the New Testament was my home territory and that's where I should stay. I do remember I have grieved over the divide between the disciplines that I've watched happen more and more in the last. Well, in, in my lifetime.
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Mike Bird
Yeah, I remember Marcus Bokmuhle said about your work, some people can't see the forest for the trees. Whereas Tom Wright deals with the. It deals in the ecology of intergalactic ecosystems. Which is to say that you, you do the details, but you, you also, you know, do big picture stuff. And Bob Webb. Bob Webb said, Tom, Tom paints with a thick BR canvas. That's how he described your work. Well, yeah, yeah.
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Tom Wright
I mean, I suppose just to comment on that, I got very frustrated when I was a young New Testament scholar at the way in which lots of articles and indeed commentaries would be sort of tunnel vision. Simply looking at this little bit here and trying to tidy it up and looking up the Greek roots or the Hebrew background or whatever. And then as though that's all there was to do without ever stopping and saying, but hang on, this then means. And casting the net much more widely. And then the systematic theologians were coming at it from the other point of view entirely because we have this great theory or because Augustine or Aquinas, therefore, this must be what this bit of the Bible means. And I would say, hang on, that doesn't do it either. You can't just run that way. So anyway,
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Mike Bird
yeah, I try to dabble in a bit of New Testament, bit of theology and a bit of church history to be the Renaissance man as. As much as I can. But the reason I'm opening this, Tom, is not just a bit of random banter is because we've got three really good questions here and they all kind of do relate to where you're coming from in terms of a, a system, an approach, and a method. So we've got questions on biblical theology versus systematic theology. Who is the eye in Romans 7, and a question about tulip and Calvinism. So our first question is from Grace Carter from St. Augustine in Florida. Sounds like a great name for a place. St. Augustine's this is a question about should we prefer biblical or systematic theology. Okay, now this is what Grace asks. Hello, Tom and Mike. I love reading your books and listening to the podcast. Thank you for sharing your love of God and your love of studying scripture with the world. Could you chat a little about biblical theology versus systematic theology and when it is appropriate to use each? Now, Tom, I think it's very interesting that Grace is from St. Augustine because in some ways St. Augustine was someone who was trying to do that. I mean, St. Augustine, the great North African theologian, you know, from, from Hippo, he did some exegetical works. He wrote on hermeneutics. He also did a lot of Christian doctrine. So he kind of was trying to do all three I think you and I would, you know, raise a few questions about how good he may have been at each one. But do you have any initial thoughts about when you do biblical theology and when you do systematics? Because I want to come back to this and I want to talk about the new perspective on Paul as a good case point as to what happens when these things get a little bit mixed up.
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Tom Wright
Yeah, my goodness. I mean, this is a huge and important question. And one of the things that I was frustrated by when I moved from being in full time church work in 2010 back into the university world and discovered that biblical studies and systematic theology had moved further apart while I wasn't looking, as it were, in the 20 years that I'd spent in full time church work. I mean, I was keeping up with it a bit, but not, I now realize, as much as I might have done. And during that time, the fashion in systematic theology was very much to go back to the Fathers and the medievals. And when I was studying, we didn't really touch the medievals that much reasons for that. But since then there's been a revival of the study of Aquinas and lots of other people in that period. And often when I have been at conferences with different disciplines, engaging with one another, I have expressed frustration that we're not actually dealing with the biblical text itself in what it actually says and means in its original context. And I have met puzzled looks on the faces of systematic theologians who have said that Augustine and Aquinas were great biblical readers. Their biblical commentaries are amazing. So when we're reading Aquinas, we are reading the Bible. We're grateful to God for giving Aquinas such wonderful insights into it. And to me, that's just all wrong. Christianity is a historical faith. It's rooted in God's action in Jesus, who was one man living in one part of the world at one particular point in time. And that picks up the whole basically Hebraic Old Testament, if you like, view that God the Creator has acted very specifically through Abraham and his family and through the story of Abraham's family. And that that has now reached an extraordinary and shocking and dramatic conclusion and turnaround through the messianic events of Jesus and his announcement of the kingdom and his death and resurrection and ascension. And obviously systematic theology picks up those topics and says, now we will arrange them. We will explain the threefold office that Jesus is prophet, priest and king, or something like that. I want to say, well, yes, that's fine, I can see how that works. But you're actually not now talking about the historical launch of God's kingdom on earth as in heaven, and so on and so on. So I have found that again and again the systematicians will come up with tremendous schemes, and often I will see great insights and I will learn much. I mean, I've read most of Barthes Church dogmatics. I've never quite finished it, but I've read most of it. And again and again I think, wow, well said, that was a great point. But now let's anchor it. And I think Barthes would have agreed, because Barthes, the older he got, the more he was saying that theology is basically exegesis, exegesis and more exegesis. And I don't think all modern systematicians have taken that seriously at all. So I do think that there has to be a to and fro. But actually Christianity consists of statements about what the living God has done in and through actual historical events. So that, for instance, I've met many systematic theologians who will say, well, basically theology for us starts with the Council of nicaea in the 4th century. The early fathers had some debates about this and that, and they sorted them out. And so we start with the Nicene statements of faith, and then we move a century later and we get Chalcedon, the great council, all about how Jesus is truly divine and truly human, et cetera, et cetera. And a line which comes back to me again and again from the late, great Henry Chadwick, who was an Oxford and Cambridge theologian and who I was privileged to know when I was very young. Henry Chadwick says that however much you agree with what the Nicene Creed says and with what the Chalcedonian definition says, if you started with God of God, light of light, very God of very God, or if you started with all those complicated statements in Chalcedon about truly God and truly man, without division and without confusion, et cetera, fine. But you would never be able to work back from those statements to anything remotely like the picture of this savvy, scary, friendly, funny, threatening, worrying young man striding through the streets of Galilee in the first third of the first century. You would never be able to think back to Jesus. And it's Jesus that counts, I want to say. And if the Nicene Creed, et cetera was what we really needed, then Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were wasting their time because they spend most of their time on the material between Jesus conception and birth and his suffering and death. Was that all irrelevant? And the answer is, sadly, for many theologians it has been irrelevant. And so what they've done again and again is to construct systems while parking the history somewhere off on the side. And one of the reasons that I say I believe in the authority of scripture over against all human traditions is that I think we have to go back and do business with the actual history. What happened? What did it mean at the time? Not simply what can we make of it later on? Now the task of systematicians has often been said to be the translation of Christian faith into the philosophical and cultural language of the day, so that we can explain to our interlocutors who may be puzzled by it just what's going on. I'm all in favour of translating into as many different idioms and themes and so on as we can. The danger is that we get lost, or rather we lose the historical once for allness. And it's that unique event of what happened in and through Jesus which actually should be shaping us all the way through. And so let's let a thousand flowers bloom, if you like. If people feel they need to go and study how all that stuff in the 7th or 9th or 15th century really worked and what those debates were, that's great, but don't fail to come back and say, but what were Matthew, Mark, Luke and John really all about? What does it mean that God's kingdom was launched on earth as in heaven? And how does that relate obviously to the rest of the New Testament and so on? So I'm speaking as a biblical scholar, but I'm speaking as a biblical scholar who has lots and lots of systematic theology friends. And so this is part of an ongoing conversation. But I would say last point, many theologians don't seem to realize that the Bible as a whole, including the Old Testament, has its own metaphysic, its own worldview, its own total theology. It isn't just a rag bag of useful one liners which you can pluck out in order to fit into a philosophical scheme that you have made a thousand years later or whatever through Platonism or some other great, great philosophy. And so I want to say let's remind ourselves of how the actual biblical worldview works, theologically, metaphysically and so on. And then wouldn't it be nice to think that there could be some rapprochement, some coming back together, some people who would actually try to hold biblical studies and theology together. So Mike, that's probably your vocation actually, Mike, so I'll hand that over to you.
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Mike Bird
Well, it is something I do try to do, although people can assess how successful I am, I mean, I can Think of a very good concrete instance where you do get biblical scholars and systematic theologians with their. With their systems and their frameworks, talking past each other. And probably a good example to that would be some of the theological responses or negative critiques about the new perspective on Paul. And this was a sort of a way of reading Paul that's meant to be more in line with how, you know, with what Paul was doing in the first century. And so there was a Protestant tradition of reading Galatians where Judaism and Jewish Christians were effectively just a cipher for a battle with medieval Catholicism. And so you could assume that the, the battles that, you know, Martin Luther and others had with the framework of medieval Catholicism was kind of read back into Galatians almost allegorically and effectively. They're reading Galatians and I think, to a degree, Romans. And the question behind their mind or the question driving them is, what must I do to be saved? I mean, that's what everything in Galatians is. Am I saved by what I believe and where I saved by what I do? Whether. Whereas the question that Paul is wrestling with is really, do Gentiles have to become Jews in order to be followers of Jesus? I mean, that's the question. That's. That's what Galatians is about. It's not dealing with medieval Catholicism. But when you read, you know, some of the critiques that theologians would make of the new perspective on of Paul, often it was kind of like, hang on. But that's. That's not what Martin Luther said. Now, I think Martin Luther did have a lot of great insights, I'm happy to say, but you can't just read Galatians as an allegory of a struggle with medieval Catholicism because, you know, if you read it in its context, Paul's not dealing with that. And I think that's an example where going back to the sources, which is what real Protestantism about it was ad fontes back to the sources. That's where it happens. Thinking back to those debates of the new perspective, particularly in the late 90s and early noughties, do you recollect, Tom, some of those sort of differences coming out with theologians and biblical scholars and their differences over reading Paul?
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Tom Wright
Absolutely. And those debates which were and have continued in a way to be quite exciting, they did grow out of people whose faith had been so thoroughly formed within the Protestant tradition of saying, as you say, how can I be sure that God has loved me and accepted me, etc. And the answer is, I can't be sure of that. By my performance, excuse me, by my performance of moral good works or ritual or whatever. But if I just trust in Jesus, then phew, I know all is well, et cetera, et cetera. And see, I want to say, if that's the question you're asking, well, that's not a bad answer to give it. But when you then come to Galatians, that wasn't the question Paul was asking. And Galatians is a test case for me because I wrote quite a long commentary on Galatians just five or six years ago, published by Eerdmans. And working through that text, I forced myself to read some recent writers who still were standing in that old Reformation tradition. And I found to my sorrow, really, because some of these were people I really respected and liked, that when it came to the verses in Galatians which actually made it clear that Paul was talking about, are Gentile Christians allowed to sit down and eat at the same table as Jewish Christians? That's what Paul was talking about. When they came to passages that made that clear, they simply skated over them or allegorized them out or, or sort of pushed them to one side. And I thought, well, that's the crucial thing. As an exegetes, I've always been on the lookout for that, that when somebody says this is what the passage is basically about, and then you discover that one or two verses have sort of dropped off to the side somewhere. Hang on, what happens if we put those back in? And so, yeah, again and again, the new perspective at its best was an appeal for historical reading of the text. The now, of course, some people under the flag of new perspective have actually used that as a way of saying, therefore we can relativize Paul's message entirely. Or therefore Paul has one way of salvation for Jews and another way of salvation for Gentiles. I mean, that's not what Ed Sanders was saying, one of the chief architects of the new perspective. But that's how some people have taken it. And there have been many other odd understandings. And some new perspective writers have indeed, and this was the char from the theologians have indeed reduced soteriology. How I get saved to sociology. How can we describe the community? But the fact remains that in Galatians, Paul is dealing with how does this community work when Peter and the others are in Antioch and they're eating with Gentile Christians and then some people come from James and Peter separates them. This is not because there's an implicit argument going on about how I get to heaven. It's because Gentiles are dirty idolater, and we shouldn't be sitting down to eat with them. And Paul says, if you say that about your brothers and sisters in Christ, you don't believe in the cross. And so the idea that you either have an old Protestant faith, which is based on faith and the crucifixion of Jesus, or you have a bit of sociological mumbo jumbo that's completely wrong for Paul, it's because of the work of the cross that all who believe in Jesus belong at the same table. That is actually an enormously important message for today's ecumenical scene as much as for today's theology or exegesis. So that, yes, this has been one particular battleground, and it's very frustrating that a lot of people who've written about it don't seem to me quite to grasp where the main nuances are, which is why I and you and others have been writing, still trying to make things clear, trying to do the exegesis, and no doubt that that will continue.
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Mike Bird
Yeah, well, we're doing our best to, you know, bring that together to do, you know, good biblical exegesis. That will be in the interest of the theologians. But anyway, I think that. I think that was a great section. I think that's one of the. One of the best sections we've done on this program in. In recent times. But we're going to move to a second question, and this one. This one will be a little bit less controversial. It's about Romans 7. Nothing to see here. Tom, this is from Art Cusaro in Pittsburgh. And Art says, you know, first and foremost, thank you both for how you have blessed me in my walk in faith. Repo stamens in Romans 7:15-25. This is about the, you know, who will save me from this body of death? You know, the things I want to do. I don't do that sort of a thing. It appears that he is commenting on the universal continuance prevalence of sin after redemption through Christ. But he may also be alluding to his personal thorn in the flesh. Or is it both? Do we know anything more specific about what the thorn in the flesh may have been? God bless you both. Well, I think we have to point out to Art that the thorn in the flesh is something from the Corinthian letters. I don't think we should be reading it into Romans 7. So I've got to kind of put that to the side. But. But Art alludes to the idea that in Romans 7, Paul is talking about the universal continuance and prevalence of sin after a person has been redeemed in Christ. I think, Tom, you and I would probably contest that reading that Romans 7 is not talking about a Christian. This is particularly from verses 7 to 25, I think you and I would say this is not the normal Christian life. This is not Paul talking about his own life as a believer in Christ. That something else is going on here. Can you explain to Art what you think is going on in Romans 7, Tom?
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Tom Wright
Wow. Wow. Romans 7 was always one of the fascinating debating points when I was actually a student, an undergraduate, before I even started theology, when I was doing philosophy and ancient history, because in the fellowship that I belonged to when I was an undergraduate in Oxford, there were some people who were saying that Romans 7 describes the normal Christian life and we should expect to be struggling with sin and sometimes failing and needing to come back. And there were other people very emphatically who were saying, no, no, no. Romans 7 describes an early period when you may have been converted, but haven't yet actually allowed the Holy Spirit full reign in your life. And you need to move from Romans 7 into Romans 8, where it all gets sorted out. And so that was one of the earliest exegetical and theological and very deeply personal and pastoral questions that I wrestled with 55 years ago. And then when I did my doctorate on Romans for the first half of my doctoral work for two or three years, I continued to argue with my supervisor, George Caird, that Paul was describing, at least in verses 14 to 25, the normal Christian life. And that was made easier for me because Jimmy Dunn in his commentary and Charles in his commentary had both taken that line. And I was standing on their shoulders and saying, you know, these are great scholars, and I'm simply following down the line they're taking. But then there came a time, and it's one of those moments I knew exactly where I was and when it was. It was a snowy day. I was in Cambridge. I went for a long walk one morning with my head full of Roman 7. I went round and round the snowy back streets of Cambridge, trying to figure it all out. And I came back home and I sat down and I wrote pages and pages and pages in my notebook. And at the end of the day, I thought, I've been getting it wrong. I have to change my mind. And I produced a very different argument. But that isn't the. That sends us back to the question. This whole section of Romans is not about ordinary Christian spirituality. It's about many, many other things. It's about God's purpose through the one man, Jesus Christ, to renew creation. And what happens when people are caught up in that themselves? And one of the really clever things that Paul does in Romans 6, 7, 8 is to talk about the new Exodus. Think about Romans 6, where baptism coming through the water makes the slaves free. What happens after you cross the Red Sea is you arrive at Mount Sinai where you're given the law. And the law is a very good thing, but it condemns Israel. Deuteronomy 26, 7, 8, 9. And yet Deuteronomy 30 says there will come a time of redemption, et cetera. And in so Romans 7, I see as the Sinai experience of the people of God. And then Romans 8 is about being led by the Spirit to the inheritance, which is like the children of Israel being led through the wilderness to the promised land. So once you've seen that big picture, all sorts of other things start to look a bit different. And I would say to Art and anyone else listening, please take care as you're reading Romans 7, 7, 20, 25, because what really matters is the sequence of questions and answers. You have a question in verse seven, is the law sin? And he says, certainly not da, da, da, da, da. And that ends up with a conclusion in verse 12. So the law is holy and the commandment is holy and just and good. Then there's another question. So was it the good thing that brought death to me? No, it was sin. It was all sins for false. And then verses 14 and following are explaining what he said in verse 13. We haven't got time, sadly, to read it all through, but I and Mike and many others have written about this. I have written about it recently in my book into the Heart of Romans, which, though it's about Romans 8, necessarily has an earlier section on Romans 7, and you could find more there, as well as in various other articles and so on that I've written. But then I think the key thing that's happening then is that Paul is talking about, if you like, the experience of Israel under the law. He's telling the story that, the sacred story of those who come out of Egypt with Moses and they're given Torah and they know that Torah is this wonderful thing. But then, as the prophets themselves say again and again and again, Israel is trying to keep the law and failing. You know, who are the two greatest kings? Well, David and Solomon. Well, were they a success? Well, up to a point. And then crash, morally, culturally, et cetera. They get it horribly wrong. And the end of that getting it wrong. And this is very much in line with the prophets and Jeremiah and so on, is they are sent into exile. And one of the key terms for exile in the Greek translation of the New Testament is the word that Paul uses in verse 23. I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and taking me captive. Zontami. Now the Eichmalotos root is all about being in exile, prisoners of war, etc. I think what Paul is doing here is telling the story of Israel, Israel receiving the law, verses 7 to 12, Israel trying to live under the law, verses 13 to 20 and then verse 21. This then is what I find about the law. Not this is what I find about following Jesus. This is what I find about the law that it seems to bifurcate. And it bifurcates according to the fact that Israel is the people of God, but Israel is also a people in Adam. Exactly the same as the point he makes in chapter five, verses 12 to 21. And so that's then the problem that has to be dealt with. And it's more, I wouldn't like to say, a salvation historical perspective, though some might characterize it as that. But it's telling the story large like this, rather than individual. So then the last question. Why then does he say I? Doesn't this make it look as if it's his own autobiography? This is his own experience? No, that's not the point. I think what he's doing is, as indeed in Galatians 2, when he says I through the law, died to the law. At no point does Paul want to look over to the Judaic people and say they, because he, Paul, has been there and is one of them. So he won't say they. He wants to say I, I have lived this life, I have been there, I have been part of this. So it is my problem. And I'm not simply sneering or commenting on their failure. This is part of the strange dark story of the people of God. And then of course, we lead straight into Romans 8. There is therefore now no condemnation for those in Messiah Jesus because the Messiah and the Spirit have done what Torah couldn't do, which is a pat on the back for Torah. Torah wanted to do this, but couldn't achieve it because the people it was working with were infused with Adamic sin. So that's how I read it. Now there's much, much more I could say. I think I've been talking for about nine minutes, but I could talk about this all day. And indeed I sometimes do so, well,
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Mike Bird
that's nine golden minutes on Romans 7. I mean, the thing I always tell people, people is the person, the eye in Romans 7 is a slave to sin. But in Romans 6, Paul says we're no longer slaves to sin. Also, the guy in Romans 7 doesn't have the Holy Spirit, but you have it in Romans 5 and in, you know, Romans 8. So that's why I would say materially. But I think the narrative that you've put it in, Tom, provides a much bigger picture to understand it rather than where do I see my own reflection in this text?
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Tom Wright
Yeah, yeah. My teacher George Caird used to make the same points to me as you've just made when I was thumping the tub for Cranfield and Dunn. And he would say, yes, Tom butt, dun, dun, dun, dun. And so we used to wrestle with this. And the position I finally came out with was not exactly the position that he had, but was something which I probably wouldn't have got to had he not been pressing me on.
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Mike Bird
Well, we're going to take a break, but when we come back, we're going to look at the question of Calvinism and whether Tom has been watering his tulips recently. All that in a moment.
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Mike Bird
Welcome back. Our third and final question for today is about the Calvinistic acrostic tulip, which stands for total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, iron, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints. And this is our question from Alston Hildreth in Mobile, usa. And Alston gives us this question. As I understand it, Reformed theology embraces the acrostic tulip. Do you agree with this? Cutting to the core, this implies that a person is saved through regeneration as a unilateral action by God. The result is a person is given saving faith in Christ as a result and had absolutely no, no choice, as they are totally depraved. You could say that this regenerative action by God requires him to profess Christ, love God, etc. Because it's irresistible. So the real truth is that a person is not saved through faith in Christ. The truth is that a person is saved by this unilateral, regenerative, determinative action by God. And faith or belief in Christ is an effect of this action. I find this to be a horrible misrepresentation or mischaracterization of God and the Scriptures. When viewed comprehensively, what we are left with is sons and daughters of God who became such with no choice on their own part. And the rest of mankind is left with no choice to escape damnation. And that's a question from Alston. Yeah, I think Alston worries that the Calvinistic system is too deterministic and it doesn't have any space for human agency, human choice, human decision. Now, I, I do like me some Calvin, Tom. I've got to be honest, I do love me some Calvin. And. Yeah, but I don't know if I would put it that way, but I could certainly appreciate what he's responding to. Tom, do you keep tulips in your garden or do you cultivate theologically? Are you into the Calvinistic system? What would you say to Alston about his question?
- [34:57]
Tom Wright
There's an old saying about somebody in Ireland who asked somebody how to get to Dublin. And the old man responded, if I was going to Dublin, I wouldn't be starting from here. And, you know, that's a lovely Irish way of saying, actually that's the wrong question. And I really do want to say, with all due respect, this is the wrong question. And I would want to say, if we are faced with a Choice in the 16th century between medieval Catholicism, Martin Luther, Huldrix, Zwingli and John Calvin, then of those, John Calvin stands out as being a remarkable writer, a remarkable preacher, a man of faith, etc, etc. So if you had to choose down those lines, then ultimately I would have to say Calvin. My problem is maybe twofold. One, that those people, they are all asking the question of how can I be sure that I'm going to heaven when I die? Which is the medieval question, and in particular, and Calvin was very concerned about this, will I have to go through purgatory on the way? And if not, what happens to my body, myself, between bodily death and bodily resurrection? What happens to my real self? If you like, does it go to sleep? That was the first treatise that Calvin wrote on psychopenicia. But then that's one thing that they're doing. They're responding to the medieval questions. But then Calvin particularly is responding from within a Platonic framework. And I'm not an expert on Calvin. I did study him a long time ago in college and I've read bits of him since. But I am assured by those who know Calvin better than I do that Calvin was actually quite a dyed in the wall plate in itself. And that's for me a severe problem with simply respecting him as an exegete. Because did he really believe in the fact that the material world was a kind of a shabby place and it may have been made by God, but ultimately we'd be taken somewhere else? And in particular, I'm not sure that Calvin really has any room for a full biblical theology of what it means to be human. And somebody pointed out to me recently, and again, this isn't my field and I stand under correction, but I think this is right, that Calvin's view of the risen and ascended Jesus, Jesus of course, as a fully human being now at the right hand of God in heaven, because the risen Jesus is fully human and the ascended Jesus is fully bodily human. But in Calvin's thought about the ascension, there is apparently, so I'm told, nowhere an exposition of what it means that Jesus is human. In other words, that Jesus is taking human responsibility for the world according to passages like Psalm 8 and so on. I think that downplaying of Jesus humanness goes in my mind. And again, I might be wrong, I'm not a Calvin expert, but it goes in my mind with a downplaying of the human response, if you like, response to grace and what Mike was saying before that. Actually if we push it all upstairs and say it's all God's decision and he just determines how it's going to be, then you do end up with a God who, as many people have said, who it's impossible to worship because he seems just like a capricious tyrant. And again, that result of a kind of logic versus Christian instinct about what God is really like, that false antithesis is the result of asking the wrong question in the wrong way. And I would say, please, let's respect the reformer's aim, which was to go back to Scripture itself to answer the medieval questions. But let's encourage the reformers and those who stand in their wake actually to read Scripture itself and see what questions Scripture was asking. Because the question of how does the framework work and how do we put together this logical sequence of we're all totally depraved and unlimited election, et cetera. This is the result of bringing a philosophical scheme to the text and insisting that it should be talking about this means of getting my soul to heaven and that it should be doing so logically and coherently. And I want to say let's try asking the biblical questions and see where we get with that. That's only a partial answer, but it's probably as good as I can do as myself. Not a Calvin specialist, and I haven't had time to go and read up Calvin on hearing this question.
- [39:57]
Mike Bird
Yeah, well, it's always fun to read Calvin. I always learn stuff. But again, he's living in a slightly different world, got different concerns, different problems he's trying to solve with different tools. But I told my I think we need to do a bonus episode on Calvinism versus Armenianism. That would be a fun bonus episode. We'll see how we go. We'll see. We go. But I'm going to put that on my to do list. But in our next episode, we're going to cover some juicy topics. The gospel to the ends of the earth, you know, what happens when I don't feel the transforming power of the Holy Spirit and, you know, the prospect of facing eternity without your children. I mean, these are the things we're going to wrestle with next week. In the interim, keep sending us your questions. Go to askantyright.com and maybe, just maybe, Tom will answer your question on this show. Until then, go through the back catalog, go check out some of our previous episodes, have a bit of a browse, bit of a binge. And if you have a little bit of extra time, check out the other shows in the Premier network, like unbelievable CS Lewis. You can go to the YouTube channel, subscribe. That way you'll never miss out on any of the great stuff put out by Premiere. Well, until next time, it's goodbye from
- [41:15]
Tom Wright
me, Mike Bird, and goodbye from me, Tom Wright.
- [41:19]
Mike Bird
And we look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Ask NT Write Anything.