← Ask NT Wright Anything
Ask NT Wright Anything
Bonus Episode: Tom Wright remembers Richard B. Hays - The Scholar Who Changed How We Read Paul
00:27:49
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- [00:01]
Podcast Host
Before we dive into today's episode, I wanted to let you know that this month marks five years since Premier Insight was launched, bringing you this and many other podcasts designed to deepen your faith. Since 2020, God has used this ministry to reach millions with over 20 million downloads of Premiere Insight content, including one longtime atheist who shared I find this show and its guests deeply engaging as I continue on my personal faith journey. This ministry is completely reliant on the support of friends like you. That's why on this anniversary month, we're asking you to take just a moment and provide whatever gift is possible to keep this ministry going strong. If you believe this kind of ministry is needed and that more people need to be reached with this content, then I'm asking you to respond with a gift today. Just visit premierinsight.org ntright that's premierinsight.org ntritetoday thank you for your generosity. Now let's get into today's episode.
- [01:09]
Tom Wright
I'm NFL linebacker TJ Watt and this is my personal best. YPB by Abercrombie is the activewear I'm always wearing. That's why I reached out to co design their latest drop. I worked with designers to create high performance activewear that holds up to my toughest workouts. Shop YPB by Abercrombie in store, online and in the app because your personal best is greater than anything.
- [01:41]
Podcast Host
When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th and never miss a meme or milestone.
- [01:59]
Tom Wright
All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone.
- [02:04]
Podcast Host
Learn more@WhatsApp.com the Ask nt Write Anything.
- [02:18]
Mike Bird
Podcast well, hello and welcome to a bonus episode of Ask nt Write Anything. These are the episodes where we dig down deeper into some really excellent topics and Tom and I discuss things or bounce ideas off each other. And we do it in such a way that we hope will inform and edify how our growing audience so Tom, it's great to be with you. You're looking very tan, very relaxed, like a man who's enjoying a British summer.
- [02:54]
Tom Wright
Well, a Scottish summer, yes. And up here in the north of Scotland it's been a delight. And some sunny days and some rainy days, but wonderful views and so on. So yeah, I've been enjoying it.
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Mike Bird
Yeah, from my memory about Scottish summers, they normally Land on a Tuesday from memory.
- [03:12]
Tom Wright
We've had a few good Tuesdays. Yeah, that's true.
- [03:15]
Mike Bird
But, Tom, one thing we want to discuss today is the scholarship of a fantastic New Testament scholar and a dear friend of yours now of blessed memory, and that is Richard B. Hayes, lifelong Methodist churchman, a very celebrated New Testament scholar in his own right, wrote some great works. I think you wrote a eulogy or a celebration of him for Christianity Today. And he's someone who kind of tracked through life with you on a number of ways, and you kind of interacted with him at numerous points. Tom, could you tell our audience, for those who don't know, who was Richard Hayes?
- [04:00]
Tom Wright
Yeah. Richard and I were born in the same year in 1948. He was about six months older than me, and. And he studied at Yale, where he read literature particularly, and became acquainted with philosophy at the same time, and then went to do a doctorate in Biblical studies in New Testament at Emory University in the Southern States in Georgia, and then got successive professorships, junior professorship at Yale, and he was there when I first met him in 1983, and then he moved to the senior chair at Duke Divinity School, and that's where he stayed for the rest of his career. We used to laugh about this, because Richard, I think in all the years that I knew him, which was about 40 years, I think, he and his wife Judy lived in precisely two houses, one in Yale and one in Durham, North Carolina, while Maggie and I are currently in our 18th house in 54 years of marriage. And so Richard used to come and stay with us in our different places, and. Oh, you're here now. Okay, I see. So we used to laugh about that. But Richard and I encountered one another first at the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting in Dallas in 1983, when he gave a paper on Romans 4:1, in which he took a line of thought which I'd never thought of before. And he and I had both been studying Romans in parallel, but without knowing each other in the 1970s. And it was one of those papers where I listened to the first line, and I'll talk about this later if you think it's appropriate. I listened to the first line or two of the paper, and I thought, oh, my goodness, never thought of reading chapter four, verse one. Like that might just work, but then you might have problems further down the line. And I then sat back for the next half hour and listened to the paper, and sure enough, it all worked. And there was then a question at the end of the line. And when he was done I went and introduced myself and before long we were sitting in the restaurant having a drink and with our Greek New Testaments on the table and saying, but what about this? And how does that work with Galatians and all that sort of thing that New Testament's got us love to do? And really that's how our friendship began and that's how it continued for. For the next 40 years.
- [06:20]
Mike Bird
Yeah, I mean, that's a good little thing he does in Romans 4, because normally it says, what did Abraham, our forefather discover according to the flesh? Where I think Richard says, no, it should be translated, have we found Abraham to be our forefather according to the flesh? I mean, that's my memory of it.
- [06:37]
Tom Wright
And I think that's right, because the chapter begins with the Greek phrase which means, what shall we say? And Richard pointed out that in the other places where Paul says, what then shall we say there is a question mark there? I mean, the early Greek manuscripts don't have punctuation, but we assume a question. And then Paul goes on to say something which he's going to disagree with, like at the beginning of Romans 6, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Or of course not. So now, if you put a question mark after what shall we say? You then make the next statement, have we found Abraham to be our forefather according to the flesh? And then the implied answer is no, Abraham is then the father of us all, Jewish believer and Gentile believer alike. And it's interesting that versions of scripture translations and so on, that take the traditional reading, what shall we say that Abraham found then have difficulty in verse 16 and verse 17 of the chapter, because that doesn't really follow from that reading of Romans. Whereas if you say this whole chapter is about who really are the children of Abraham.
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Mike Bird
Exactly.
- [07:57]
Tom Wright
Abraham, the father of us all, then verses 16 and 17 click into place. And that's one of those things which happens in exegesis where you think, ah, yes, this was awkward before. Now it makes all this sense, which then means that maybe that was the right way to read it. Now, I have written about this, you have no doubt written about it. Richard and I had planned, had he not sadly contracted a very nasty form of cancer which he fought off for seven years, bless him. But we had always dreamt that one day we would go and do a joint session at SBL, looking at Romans 4, 40 years on, as it were, and seeing how the scholarship has gone, because most commentators have not really understood what Richard and I, because I followed him and developed his thought and changed it a little bit here and there. Very few have understood what it was that we were actually saying. And so the traditional interpretations have just rumbled on their way. And I think somebody needs to do a survey of those and see how the whole thing has played out. So this is a typical sort of conversation that biblical scholars have. But it's nice because it starts off with a fine tuned exegetical point about one verse and one line in one verse, but then it broadens right out so that the key things that Richard's work consisted of in those early days was his rejection of a kind of easygoing Protestantism in which because I have said a prayer, because I have come to faith, then God has now accepted me, which then just turns faith into a work, something I do in order to, and I've heard preachers expound this, that God looks at Abraham and he says, ah, at last, here's somebody who believes. That's what I've been wanting all along. And Abraham's faith then becomes a work which Richard rejected partly because Richard was basically at his heart in the Barthian mode, a reformed theologian, as opposed to a Lutheran, which was part of his rejection of Rudolf Bultmann, of course. And so this then was the platform on which Richard's first great exposition and theory was constructed. That when Paul talks about Pistis Christu faith or faithfulness of the Messiah, he doesn't primarily mean our faith in the Messiah, he means the faithfulness of the Messiah that the Messiah has been faithful to God's saving plan. And that has been very controversial. But whereas before Richard wrote that was very much a minority opinion, I think now it would be regarded as certainly a mainstream opinion, if not the majority opinion. And now you've written on this. I know.
- [10:52]
Mike Bird
Oh yeah, I did a whole book on this because I couldn't make up my mind. Is it faith in Christ or the faithfulness of Christ or is it kind of the, the faith that is through Christ? There's a whole bunch of exegetical options. But Richard was very important, I think, in bringing this up because before that it was kind of like an, it was treated as an idiosyncratic reading, exactly, of, of Paul's letters. And. And yet Richard showed how it works energetically, exegetically, and it works theologically. And you can see how the Messiah's own faithfulness then becomes the sort of missing ingredient as to how people are saved. So it's not just am I saved by what I believe or am I Saved by what I do. No, I'm saved by the Messiah, who is faithful to his Messianic vocation, even to the point of death on the cross. And I'm then kind of engrafted into that. So I have you. I have union with the Messiah, who has exercised his vocation and being the Passover Lamb, the one who gave. Who loved me and gave himself for me. And, you know, a good thing to do is to read Galatians 2:20 and read it with the subjective genitive reading, which say, I've been crucified with Christ and no longer live the life. I live in the body. I live by the faithfulness of the Son of God. I think the only translation today that renders it like that, I think, think is the common English Bible. But that's one I like. So that's one of my favorite translations.
- [12:24]
Tom Wright
Yes, I'm fascinated by that. And certainly Galatians 2 is one of the key passages where that comes out. I should just remind you, Mike, of my own translation of Galatians 2:20 and the life I do still live in the flesh. I live within the faithfulness of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. So I hope you will endorse that as well as the one Wholeheartedly.
- [12:50]
Mike Bird
Wholeheartedly. But Richard, he did some great stuff in Pauline studies. He did a very good commentary on Galatians in the New Interpreter's Bible that I really liked. He's got a short little 1 Corinthians volume. But I guess one of the things he was very well known for is New Testament ethics. And. And I think his book, the Moral Vision of the New Testament, is one of the best books of New Testament ethics that's ever been written. Many people, Many people like that. And, you know, even in the areas where I might disagree with him a bit from memory, I don't think he was a big fan of just war theory. I think.
- [13:29]
Tom Wright
No, he really wasn't. Richard. Richard was a pacifist from way back, and he and I used to debate that from time to time because I found myself in one of the many jobs that I've done when I was dean of Litchfield. I found myself as the honorary chaplain to the Staffordshire Regiment. And I had to go and say prayers before a bunch of the regiment went off to Northern Ireland to do their tour of duty. And that sort of thing. I remember discussing with Richard, what should I do? Should I resign from that? Should I slant my prayers in such a way as to say, I wish you didn't have to do this in the first place or what. And we never really resolved that because I've never been a pacifist. I mean, there is a danger in Christians being so in love with just war theory that in the famous words of Stanley Hauerwas about some theologian or other, he never saw a war he didn't like, and we don't want to go there. But life is, I think, a little bit more complicated than the pacifist position makes out. But of course, on the way to the moral vision, which I agree with you, when it came out, Lee Keck, who was then dean in Yale, Lee Keck did a blurb for it saying that this book is without peer and without rival. And he was absolutely right. Nobody else was trying to do this big vision of new creation, new covenant, resurrection, all applied to, sorry, cross resurrection, new creation, all applied to the big moral questions of the day. And of course, Richard got into trouble with people because they didn't like his views on this or that. But it was an attempt to say, let's just actually think big about this. And I think it was partly having made the move that we discussed a moment ago and said that, no, being justified isn't about saying, I don't need to do anything. All I have to do is say a prayer that releases the possibility that actually the moral vision, a vision of what God's world for our lives looks like, is not a matter of me trying to impress God. It's a matter of because I am living within the faithfulness of the Son of God, then how does this life play out? And of course, the New Testament is full of all sorts of things which we have called ethics, but which are in fact simply common coin of how to live one's life. But in the middle of all of that, and en route to the moral vision, he had already done the other thing which is probably what he's most famous for, which is introducing the idea of echoes of Scripture and his book Echoes of Scripture in the letters of Paul in the late 1980s and then 30 years later, echoes of Scripture in the Gospels. These are extraordinary because I don't think anyone was doing this kind of thing before. And I think it actually grew out of his reading of Romans 3, which I think was right at the beginning, where in Romans 3, Paul quotes from Psalm 143. He says, in your sight shall no flesh be justified. And then he goes on to talk about the righteousness of God. And so if you go back to Psalm 143, the righteousness of God in that passage which he's just quoted is not our righteousness, which is imputed or reckoned or imparted or anything else to us. It's God's own faithfulness to the covenant. And that's very clear in the Psalms, in Isaiah, et cetera. And so Richard was saying, we've got to learn. What he discovered was being called metalepsis, which is a figure of speech, which is that when you quote one small bit from a more extended text, it actually brings with it all the rest of that text, at least into consideration. Doesn't mean that we're agreeing with everything in that original text, but it means that we have to see that text in the light of the surrounding passage. There are many, many good examples of this, and Richard's work is full of them. One of my favorites is in 2nd Corinthians 4, where Paul says, I have the same spirit of faith as the one who said, I believed, and so I spoke. So we believed and so we speak. And I remember for years thinking, well, it's pretty blindingly obvious, of course, if you believe that, you speak that and vice versa. But when you go back to the passage which is being quoted, the Septuagint of Psalm 115, verse 1, and the Hebrew text behind that, it's all about the sufferer who accepts his suffering in the presence of God and sees God working through that to bring about something else. And that is precisely what 2 Corinthians 4 is all about. And so Paul is pulling out one verse from that Paul, bringing with it the whole sequence of the Psalm at that point. And so this was a whole revelation to me and to really all my generation. And it's hard now to imagine a world in which people weren't prepared to ask that question. But if you go back to commentaries written in the 60s and 70s, including some very devout and good commentaries, there's just no sense that that's what's going on when Paul is quoting Scripture. And of course, this then is part of the big thing which Richard was so concerned about, which is really his reformed tradition coming through. Despite being a Methodist, which isn't traditionally a combination, that God has not changed his mind, that there is one purpose of God, and that God's purpose is fulfilled in the Messiah, rather than God saying, no, the past was the past, we're now doing something totally new. So we're retrieving the great narratives of Scripture, and we do that through the lens of these little individual verses, which then tease us into saying, go Back to that whole passage in Genesis, go back to that whole paragraph in the Psalms or Isaiah, and you'll see that the whole of that is now fulfilled in the Gospel. Of course, Paul, writing his letters, might well have wanted to quote much longer passages, but he very seldom does that. If you're writing letters at the length that Paul was doing, you just don't have the space to give full quotations for every passage you're referring to. So he's writing out of a situation of knowing Israel's scriptures very well. As I say, the great emphasis then is God is faithful to his purposes. All the promises of God find their yes in the Messiah. And so this idea, which some people have just seen as a quirky literary trick, as it were, of referring to one line and meaning the whole passage, it's not a literary trick. It's a deep theological commitment to seeing Scripture as a whole.
- [20:34]
Mike Bird
Yeah, I enjoyed that book, the Echoes of Scripture and in Paul. But there was one consequence of that book that made me drive my. Pull my hair out. That's because I kept getting applications for PhDs of people who wanted to write the use of the Old Testament in Romans. I had like in about a two year period, I remember having six people wanting to do Isaiah in Romans. I said, guys, this one is done. This is done. And Ross Wagner did a bit on this. We're done. Find something else. Gospel of Matthew, I don't know, you know, ethics and Hebrews origins, reception of the Gospel of John. We've got to find something else. But I just had so many people who had read that book, Echoes of Scripture and Paul, and then wanted to do something similar in their PhD studies and it was like, please stop. I was weary, Tom, I was weary. I have to say I'm not surprised.
- [21:30]
Tom Wright
But actually when we then move forward to his more recent Echoes book, the Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels, which is an extraordinary piece of work and you and I know the history of that, that he'd been working on it on and off and done preliminary lectures here and there. But then he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the summer of 2015. I still remember taking the phone call from Richard with horror to discover that he'd just had the diagnosis. And it was a terrible moment where we prayed together on the phone and he thought at that stage that he might have five or six months to live and that he'd be dead by Christmas. Now, amazingly, and through prayer and through brilliant medical attention, he was able to have chemotherapy. They shrank the tumor and they were able to operate in November, and they got it out. And I visited him not long after that and was astonished at how well he was doing. And then the publishers, who had determined they were going to rush this book through in time for Richard to hold a copy before he died, they were able, astonishingly, to slow down that process and say, okay, we'll now spend a bit more time proofreading, and so on. But echoes of Scripture in the Gospels, it's particularly emphasizing that when you look at the way that Matthew, Mark and Luke and John all use the Old Testament, they all, without exception, are telling us through their use of Scripture that Jesus is the God of Israel in person, in human form, which is just. That's as revolutionary as anything else Richard ever did, because you and I were taught, and most people were taught, that John gave you an incarnational view of Jesus, but that Matthew, Mark, and Luke just gave you the human Jesus. And some people have said, particularly Luke's, Jesus is very human. He's not really divine at all. And Richard showed exactly the opposite. And we are still waiting 10 years down the track for that to have its full effect in the New Testament studies world, because people are so wedded to the older view. But when I wrote a review article on that and then discussed it with Richard, I totally agreed with what he was doing. But that was just the beginning. Because when you look at the use of Scripture in the Gospels, there are many other themes, and particularly Richard really bracketed out the question of the interpretation of Jesus death, which is extraordinary in a way, because that is where the narrative of the Gospel is going throughout the Gospel stories, and it uses the Old Testament to make that journey. But Richard was kind of bracketing that out as though he could almost take it for granted that he was going for the big one, which is that the character we're looking at in this text is the God of Israel in person. And I just think that's one of those things which is yet to make its impact, as indeed I think his moral vision is, and still making its impact. So, though there were many disagreements that we had, I think there is an extraordinary line of thought which hopefully another generation will take on and develop.
- [24:47]
Mike Bird
Okay, well, I think, Tom, we're just about out of time. If you had to recommend one good little book by our late friend Richard, what. Which one do you think it would be? If someone said, what's a good little Richard Hayes sampler I should get into?
- [25:03]
Tom Wright
There's a book which is really a collection of essays, but it functions as a coherent book. And that is his book, the Conversion of the Imagination, which that phrase was the title of a lecture he did on First Corinthians some years ago. But he then worked into an article which then became the theme for the book. And this was really his whole story and song, that our Western imaginations have got shrunken into particular ways of looking at things, and our imaginations need to be converted. Richard was a literary scholar. He loved his poetry. He loved his. His plays and his drama, etc. And this was all about the opening of the imagination so that we might just see and glimpse things beyond what our present culture, including our present church culture, was telling us we might be able to see. So I think that would be a key part of Richard's legacy. Praying and working for the opening of the imagination to see how Scripture works, to see that God does not change his mind, that in the faithfulness of the Messiah, all has been accomplished and is being accomplished.
- [26:15]
Mike Bird
Yeah. The book I would probably recommend is his one on figural Christology, which is a short. Which is the short book about the use of the Old Testament in the Christology of the evangelists or how they use the Old Testament to articulate who Jesus is. I mean, he's got that really big, thick book on the same one, but you've got a good little one. Probably that or his Galatians commentary are the ones that I would go to.
- [26:38]
Tom Wright
Yeah. The Galatians commentary in the New Interpreter's Bible is a great piece. I remember when the New Interpreter's Bible was being set up, Richard and I discovered that he'd been given Galatians and I'd been given Romans. And we kind of looked at each other and we said, so you and I get the chance to set the agenda for the preachers of the next generation. And we kind of. Yes, I'm not sure we've done that, but it was an exciting moment.
- [27:01]
Mike Bird
Both good entries in that series. Well, that's all we have time for today. We are so grateful for our premium subscribers for joining us. We thank you for your support for the show and importantly for Premier as well, who has a really good digital ministry in the 21st century. But don't go too far because we'll have another episode in a week or so where we're going to look at Jesus and the law. So stay tuned for that one. There'll be another episode for our bonus subscribers, so take care and God bless. I'm Mike Bird.
- [27:34]
Tom Wright
And I'm Tom Wright.
- [27:35]
Mike Bird
Take care until then. And Doug Limu and I always tell you to customize your car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. But now we want you to feel it. Cue the emu music.
- [27:52]
Tom Wright
Limu. Save yourself money today. Increase your wealth. Customize and save. We save. That may have been too much feeling.
- [28:04]
Mike Bird
Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com savings. Very underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates.
- [28:11]
Tom Wright
Excludes Massachusetts.