← Ask NT Wright Anything
Ask NT Wright Anything
Can I attend Catholic church? Jews vs Judeans in translation? Why did Paul circumcise Timothy but not Titus?
00:41:11
Loading summary
Transcript32 lines
- [00:00]
A
Before we get into today's episode, I want to share a timely free resource with you. When you look at the headlines, war, instability, constant talk about the end times, it's easy to feel anxious or unsure what to think. But the Bible offers a better way. Our short guide, Watchful, Not End Times, the Second Coming and How to Read the News with Biblical Hope will help you understand what Scripture really says about the end times so you can live with clarity, hope and confidence instead of fear. You'll discover how to read the news through the lens of scripture, avoid speculation and stay grounded in God's bigger story. Download your free copy today@premierinsight.org resources. That's PremierInsight.org resources.
- [00:55]
B
Hello and welcome to this episode of Ask NT Write Anything, 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, and I'm joined with Tom
- [01:11]
C
Wright from Wycliffe hall in Oxford.
- [01:14]
B
It's fair to say, Tom, there's no Ask NT Write Anything program without you. You know, we can't sub in. We can't sub in someone else like a Chris Wright or a Craig Keener. As good as they all are, those chaps
- [01:29]
C
might be able to do it with AI for all I know. You could probably generate an image of me talking about the Bible.
- [01:36]
B
Yeah, but I would end up writing the script so it would look like you, but you'd be saying the things I say and eventually people would think this is a bit.
- [01:44]
C
Susan, that's possible. I did once. I had to do a short lecture on something and I went on to AI, which I don't normally do, and I said, Write me a 20 minute lecture in the style of N.T. wright on this topic, whatever it was. And goodness me, it wasn't bad. It was a bit boring here and there. Maybe that, maybe that wasn't the style of N.T. wright.
- [02:10]
B
Maybe it was too accurate.
- [02:13]
C
But it was the sort of sorts of things that I would say, which is worrying. There we are.
- [02:18]
B
Well, there's a lot of content on the net it can draw from to synthesize.
- [02:22]
C
Absolutely.
- [02:23]
B
Yeah.
- [02:23]
C
Absolutely.
- [02:23]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Well, we, we should, we should maybe do some episodes not using AI, but maybe about AI and what that means. Yeah, well, in fact, while we're on the topic of AI, I read an article, there was a secular article saying human beings have always created tools to subdue their environment and AI is just the latest tool. And it sounded a lot like a secular interpretation of the creation mandate that Adam and Eve were given to rule over creation. So there's some interesting stuff. There's some crazy stuff happening in this part of the world as well. But hey, that must be for a bonus episode today. Tom, we've got questions on can a good Protestant attend a Catholic church? How do we translate the word yayudayoi in the New Testament? Is it Jew or Judean? And why did Paul circumcise Timothy but not Titus? So our first question is from John Griffin of Atlanta and he's got a question about Protestants and the Catholic Church. And this is what John writes to us. Dear Tom, from a theological perspective, would it be all right for a Reformed Protestant to attend the local Catholic parish? Finding a place to worship is quite a challenge where I live. From my understanding, there are mainly three types of Protestant churches in my area. The first are the megachurch types that seem to be more of a self help group. The second and third are heavily influenced by American politics with the right wing viewing anything non Christian as woke and trying to undermine the church and the left wing reinterpreting scripture to justify various sinful lifestyles. I feel like I'm caught in the middle. I visited the Catholic parish and it was refreshing to see that everything was centered around Jesus. I'm just a bit worried about the obvious differences between Catholic and Protestant beliefs such as justification, Mary, the saints, eucharistic adoration. Any advice you could offer would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for all you do. Tom, what would you say to John? Is he betraying the Reformation? People like Nicholas Ridley?
- [04:41]
C
Mike I first met this question about attending churches across the street as it were, the other way around, because one of my best friends when I was about 10 or 11 or 12 at school was from a Roman Catholic family. And one time he came back to spend the afternoon evening with my family and we got the bus together. And the normal way that I would walk home would be through the churchyard of the church where my family regularly worshiped on Sunday mornings. And my friend being a Roman Catholic said, can we go a different way? And he had been firmly told not only should he not go into a Protestant Anglican church, he shouldn't even go into the churchyard. And so we have come a long way in 70 years and thank God for that long distance that we've traveled. So things are changing, things are shifting. And I think when you have that list of puzzles which your correspondent, our correspondent named, then I think on several of them there are ways in which Anglicans and Roman Catholics and other Protestants and Roman Catholics have found common ground and found that they can actually find a way of saying what has to be said which isn't going head on against one another. Now there are some areas in which I would find that that hasn't happened yet, and certainly the Marian dogmas might be among them. But in terms of justification, I mean, Hans Kung wrote a book a generation ago on justification in which he basically expounded the doctrine in such a way that you could bring together Catholic and Protestant within it. And you and I have done a lot of work on Paul and justification, much of which would be to say that the debates in the late medieval and Reformation period actually have distorted quite a lot of what Paul was really writing about. And I know that's put the frighteners on some of my traditional Protestant friends, particularly in America. It's quite clear that there are still significant differences between traditional Roman Catholics and traditional mainstream Protestants of whatever sort. And the obvious example might be views of Mary about her perpetual virginity, about the Immaculate Conception, which is about how Mary herself was conceived, not about the Virgin birth, and then also about her bodily assumption, which is like several of these other things, a medieval theory. And also you might say, what about the doctrine of purgatory? Although there are some Protestants like CS Lewis actually who believed in some kind of post mortem cleanup. But those I think can be dealt with. And I would say, please, there are many, many wise, prayerful Roman Catholics who don't regard those things as absolute deal breakers and who do want to emphasize the love of God in Christ by the Spirit working through the Gospel in and the challenge of living as a believing, praying community within the Western world with all its difficulties and challenges at the moment, a great example, having mentioned my Roman Catholic friend from 60 years, 70 years ago who was told not to go through the churchyard. A long time after that I was in that same town and I'd parked the car by the Roman Catholic church at one end of the town and saw a huge poster advertising the Alpha Course and saying, you want to know the meaning of life? We're running the Alpha Course. Come on Tuesday nights or whatever it was that was the Roman Catholic Church. I then walked up the street to that same Anglican church that my friend had been told he shouldn't go through the churchyard of. And the sign board was completely blank. And I'm afraid that the then rector, this is several years ago now, had completely lost the plot and was not interested in putting out a message to the people who are part passing by on the street and I thought, how have things developed over the years that we've got to that point that the Catholics were saying, come to us, Alpha course, Jesus, Holy Spirit, all of that stuff, and the Anglican Church wasn't saying anything. So I mean, we live in strange times. And I think this does get mixed up with culture and with sorts of political and similar issues. And there are many, and I think this is particularly so in North America where the, the culture wars, so called, have actually resulted in all sorts of tensions which spill over into the life of the church and which need to be parsed out in terms of what are we really worried about here, what's really going on? And if somebody says, oh, it's a matter of salvation. Well, hang on, let's just be clear. What does justification really mean in the New Testament? What's the context of it? How does that play out? And so on and so forth. Now, of course, if somebody is looking for a place where they can worship, where they can feel reasonably at home, I'm not sure that we ought ever to feel totally at home in any church, because no churches are perfect and we all ought to feel slightly uncomfortable at some points. But then it might well be that actually worshiping in a Roman Catholic church might be a better way than being bounced this way and that by different types of Protestantism, ultra conservative or ultra liberal, or having that megachurch thing, which is more like a Saturday night TV show, it just happens to be a Sunday morning instead. And I well understand being in a town where those are the options. One might well feel that actually worshiping with the Roman Catholics is the right thing to do. I would hope and pray that somehow the different movements might be able at least to talk with one another, at least to pray with one another. It's one of the sorrows that I have when I go to towns in my own country, but then especially in the States, to think that there's a church there and there's a church there and there's a church all on the same street. And when I talk to people from those churches, they don't know one another at all, they don't have contact, they're not meeting regularly to pray or read the Bible with them. Why not? Does it not matter? And if the answer is because we're real Christians and they aren't, then I shudder at that. And that's how all sorts of nonsense has been perpetrated. Doesn't mean that there aren't important doctrinal issues. There are. Please, as far as we can, let's address them together. Because if we simply split off each time. Then we become the kind of disunited church to whom nobody outside the favored few would want to listen at all. And part of the point of the church is to witness together to the glory of God in Christ. That's why Paul says in a passage you and I have quoted before, Romans 15, the aim is that you may with one heart and voice, glorify God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's what we should be aiming at all the time. And if being with the Roman Catholics sometimes, and being with others other times and trying to bring them together, if that helps towards that goal whole, then so be it. Bring it on.
- [12:16]
B
That's some wonderful vision, Tom. Well, let's change the topic from evangelicals, Protestants and Catholics to a bit of Bible translation. We've got a good question from Brandon Queen of Louisville, and he's got some questions about, you know, how do we talk about the Jews and Jewish people in the New Testament? And this is what he says. Hello, Mike and Tom, especially Tom. Tom, I've noticed that recently you have been using the word Judean instead of Jews. Am I perceiving this correctly? If so, can you share the reason for this shift? I'm familiar with Jason Staples work and I'm curious if you have come to similar conclusions as he regarding Jewish Israelite identity. Thanks for all that you do. Now, for those who don't know about the work of Jason Staples, he's a great scholar who's written a couple of books on Paul, and he argues that. That the word Israel and Jews, they're not. They're not interchangeable. They're talking about two different things. Usually Paul talks about Israel either in the sense of the sort of spiritual heritage of the Jews, the sort of, you know, united Israel, or the future restored state when Gentiles and Judeans and others get together. But Tom, I can actually read a passage here from your own translation of the Gospel of John from, from the New Testament for everyone. And you do. You do sort of zig and zag between both words. So in John 1:19, you say, this is the evidence John gave when the Judeans sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, who are you? But then later in chapter four, you translate it like this. This is Jesus saying to the woman at the well, you worship what you don't know. We worship what we do know. Salvation, you see, is indeed from the Jews. So here we've got the Greek word Yehuda, but it can be translated Jews and Judeans. Now, Tom, what is the Difference. And why is this becoming a little bit of an issue that's even creeping into Bible translations such as yours?
- [14:32]
C
Wow. Yeah, I'm a little cross to hear that quote from chapter four of John because I thought I had worked right through the. Yeah, here it is. John 4:22. Salvation, you see, is indeed from the Jews. Because I think, taking John's gospel, that eudaoi does mean Judeans, though I suspect there may be a shade of difference there. Okay, here's how it goes. I think you and I have become used to talking about pre exilic Israel as the Israelites, or words to that effect, not the Jews, because eudaoi technically refers to people who come from Judea, which is the area around Jerusalem. As Steve Mason argues in his remarkable history of the Jewish War, the way that people thought of geography in the ancient world was not in terms of a country with fixed borders. That might happen to be the case particularly if there was a major mountain range or river or something. But countries tended to be a city with its hinterland and the people who lived there. And then there would be a bit of space before you ran into the hinterland of the next city in a world which was much less joined up and much more open and underpopulated than ours is. But here's then the thing. In John's Gospel particularly, and this is where I first really ran into it, there are many passages which talk about the Jews this, the Jews that the Jews then said to Jesus. And it seems clear that if we understand it in terms of the Jews ethnically, as a racial characteristic, then we've got John polarizing the Jews over against Jesus and the disciples, which makes no sense at all. I mean, in John 20, the doors of the upper room on the first day of the week are locked for fear of Ho yodaioi. Now, the disciples are all Judeans in the sense, okay, they come from Galilee, but they are part of that ethnic group. So are they afraid of themselves? No, they're afraid of the Judai in the sense of the Jerusalemites. It's like when in John 11, Jesus says, We're going back to Jerusalem now. And the disciples are grumbling, hey, they were after you last time, after your blood. How's that going to work? They say, when we were there before, Ho yodaioi were trying to kill you. And when they arrive in Bethany and Jesus meets Mary and Martha, we find that some of Ho yodaioi had come out to Bethany to console Mary and Martha about their brother's death. Now, that makes no sense, if they're all basically what we would call Jewish people. It makes a lot of sense if hoedaio means the people in and around Jerusalem. And of course there's an outpost in Galilee because of historical circumstances. So I decided a long time ago that in terms of John's Gospel particularly, it was better to talk about the Judeans. In other words, this is a geographical term, not an ethnic term. Of course, there may well be times in the ancient world when those two do move this way and that. But in terms of our reading of John, if we polarize and say the Jews are the ones who are out to kill Jesus or his disciples, and so Jesus and his disciples are quite different from the Jews we do get in our modern hearing an anti Jewish read of John, which I think is utterly ridiculous. John's gospel is soaked in the Old Testament, it's soaked in the scriptures of Israel, it's soaked in the hope of Israel. And when it's talking about the death and resurrection of Jesus, these mean what they mean in terms of the entire Israelite and Judean tradition. So I have. Then I started doing that with John's Gospel a long time ago. And that passage in chapter four is a little tricky because it could be a wider statement about salvation is from the Jews more generally. I think I need to revisit that though. But in general, this was a way of saying, please don't read John as anti Jewish, let alone anti Semitic. Anti Semitic is of course a very modern term coming from a time when particularly Darwinian evolutionary theories about the different development of different races was coming in. So, oh, those are from a different race, so we will dump on them, whatever. So antisemitism comes in that way and it's kind of on the back of the residual European anti Judaism. But then, so it's then a way of saying what we in the modern world mean when we say the word Jew or Jewish may well not be the same as what people in the first century meant when they said ho yudaioi. So it's a way of keeping our contemporary language and first century language just a little bit at arm's length. Not to say that it's not ultimately the same family, but to say that if we read the New Testament and say the Jews this, the Jews that, the Jews the other, then that can fuel what people in today's world may say and think about the synagogue just down the road or about the present state of Israel or whatever. In other words, we don't want to have these worlds colliding and resulting in wickedness or muddle or just bad thinking and behavior. So that's why I did it. And I was comforted in doing it because several writers and I haven't read staples. But the great historian Tom Holland has a whole note at the beginning of one of his books, I think it may be Dominion, where he explains, just as I have done, about the difference between a 1st century geographical term and a 20th century, possibly ethnic or racial term, and how we need to be quite careful about keeping them apart. In other words, when the Romans were fighting against Ho Judai in the period 66 to 70, to think that they were fighting the Jews in any sense that we would use that phrase now is simply a massive and dangerous anachronism. So it's really a way of avoiding the implications of that anachronism. And I realize some people may find that awkward, I have to say, by the way, it's quite a difficult agenda to follow through. In my new book, God's Homecoming, I say in the preface, I'm going to use Ho Yoda, the Judeans. And then a few pages in, somebody pointed out to me the other day, I use the word Jew again just when I said I wouldn't. And I've. I've already told the publishers for the second printing, we need to change that.
- [21:45]
B
Yeah, it is hard. Well, Tom, my mind goes back and forth out of this because I think, you know, the people of Judea, like it was the Judeans, not all the Jews of the world, you know, whom Jesus was ministering to. And he, you know, it was the representatives of the Judeans that, you know, petitioned the Romans to put Jesus to death, not all the Jews. So we definitely take the point about avoiding anti Semitism and anti Jewish sentiment. But the thing that gives me pause for doubt is that Judean as a translation focuses on geography. Whereas you could argue that there were people who identified as Yudaio who had never set foot in Judea. So, like people in Galilee or people of the Jews in the, in the Diaspora who lived in Ephesus or Corinth. So they were among the. Yeah, you die. But what they shared then was ethnicity and shared custom, even a religious culture, but they didn't have a geographical connection. And the other issue, if you were a non Jew, let's say you were an Arab or a Greek or Assyrian, if you were living in, in Judea, you wouldn't be called a Judean because although you're living in the area, you'd probably be called a Greek or Assyrian or an Arab or a Nabatean or something. So it's just my mind goes back and forth on it. So I think there is something definitely right about the term Judean, but I still think it's. It's hard to capture the mixture of geography, ethnicity and religious culture that are alcohol bound together. And maybe inconsistency is a good thing because we're trying to, you know, capture all three at the same time.
- [23:32]
C
That's right. And I think alerting people in our own day to the fact that there is at least a problem there to be addressed is really important because of this business of people just reading it as the Jews. And then, you know, the medieval slur, which went on and on and on through into the 20th century, the Jews killed Jesus. So school children in New York running into schoolchildren from the synagogue school across the street would say, you're Christ killers. And, you know, that's just terrible and shocking and horrible. I was, as I said, very much helped by Steve Mason's book, A History of the Jewish War, and he calls it the Jewish War, not the Judean War, because he has a whole section on how different peoples thought of themselves, identified themselves and so on. And interestingly, I think he would say that if an Athenian was living in Jerusalem, for whatever reason, they would still be known as an Athenaeos. You know, that would be their country of origin. And a Roman would still be, you know, these Romans, they're Hoi, Romaioi or whatever, even if geographically they're now living somewhere else. So that there is fluidity there. And of course, in Paul's day, in Jesus day, travel around the Mediterranean world was quite easy, comparatively speaking. And so people did move this way and that. But I think in the same way you would get, you know, there were Judean communities in Spain, and I think Steve Mason would say they would still be identified as Judai in the synagogue there. They wouldn't, you know, because their mother city was Jerusalem. And even if they'd never been there and their families had never been there, that was still really where they belonged. And so, yeah, there is fluidity, and we do well to be alert to that fluidity, but particularly to avoid language, which quite accidentally, in terms of the scholarship tips people's minds, as they hear it, towards some kind of contemporary. Oh, the Jews this or the Jews that slur, which obviously we all want to avoid.
- [25:54]
B
Yeah. Let me just finish off by saying two things. We actually have the problem the other way. The Greek word ethne can be translated ethnically as Gentiles geographically as nations and religiously as pagans. And you'll find a lot of English translations will translate that one word in three different ways, either gentiles, nations or pagans, kind of depending on what's been accented in the context. So it's not just with Jews and Judeans, even for the non Jewish world. There's. How do you describe them from a Jewish point of view?
- [26:28]
C
From a Jewish point of view or indeed from a Christian point of view. Yeah, quite.
- [26:32]
B
Exactly. Exactly. The other thing I want to note is that if people are really interested in this, there was a great online debate at the Marginalia Review of Books, where they got a bunch of scholars, Christian and Jewish, discussing how to translate these terms, how to avoid the sort of, you know, anti Jewish, anti Semitic connotations you've suggested, Tom. But also what's the best way to render it? It actually was a really good discussion, but we'll, we'll leave that topic there and we'll come back to something completely different after the break. Why did Paul circumcise Timothy but not Titus? Oh, wait, this seems to be almost the same question, but we'll be back in a moment covering that Hot Topic. Well, welcome back. We've got one final question for this episode from Joshua Effins of Huxley, and he wants to know, why did Paul circumcise Timothy but not Titus? So this is what he asks, what's up with Paul circumcising Timothy in Acts 16? In Acts 15, the Council of Jerusalem decided it was unnecessary for salvation. At the end of Galatians, Paul states that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision matters. Also, Paul goes on about how he does not work for man's approval or to boast that he boasts in nothing but the cross of Jesus. Then in Acts 16, he circumcises Timothy because of the Jews there. It's no wonder the Galatians thought he was teaching circumcision because the local Jews were around when he circumcised Timothy. Is there some reason Timothy couldn't travel with Paul if he was uncircumcised? Does it have something to do with Timothy's Jewish heritage on his mother's side? Thank you for your time with answering questions and your life spent studying Scripture. It's a great service to the body of Christ.
- [28:31]
C
Christ.
- [28:32]
B
Now, Tom, I've got to say, I think we've got a good point here made by Josh. You know, sometimes Paul is like a line in the sand has been drawn you shall not pass, you shall not force people like Titus to become Judeans in order to be followers of Jesus. Jesus. But other times Paul's like, yeah, we'll circumcise Timothy, not a problem, no skin off my nose. So they go ahead and do it. Doesn't matter, it's fine, great, he's got a Jewish mother anyway, no biggie. What is, is Paul flip flopping on this? Sometimes he's dead set against it, other times he's blase. Is he inconsistent? Is Paul muddled? Is Paul the source of confusion that even the Galatians seem to have had on the topic? Tom, what would you say to Joshua on this question?
- [29:28]
C
Yeah, great question. Of course, Acts 16 comes after Acts 15 and I think after the writing of Galatians as well. So the trouble in Galatians I don't think is post Timothy, I think it's pre Timothy. But dating aside, I think we have here an example of what Paul says as a matter of principle, ironically in 1 Corinthians 9, that he becomes all things things to all people, that he might by all means save some. And that ironically is a principle which says, I'm going to move from this to that depending on who I'm talking to. And so people did accuse him of inconsistency. And we can see that at the start of 2 Corinthians as well when he says, people accuse us of chopping and changing our plans. And clearly Paul was used to this kind of attack and counter attack. I think it's relatively straightforward. Take Titus first, because I think that comes before, because we find the reference to Titus in Galatians where Paul takes Titus with him, I think quite deliberately when he and Barnabas go up to Jerusalem, which I think is the same visit from Antioch as we find in Acts, where they hear that there's going to be a famine. And the church in Antioch think, what do we do with this famine? And the answer is, who's going to be most at risk? What are we going to do to help? The answer is the church in Jerusalem are going to be at serious risk because they have sold their property, they're impoverished, they're beleaguered because most of the Judeans around hate them because they're the peace party, et cetera, et cetera. So we're going to send some money to help them. So they send Paul and Barnabas, no problem. These are both bona fide Judeans, but they take Titus as well. Now, whether Paul did that deliberately in order to force an issue, it would Be hard to say. I mean, Paul was quite capable of forcing issues if he wanted to. But the point is that Titus is a Greek, Greek through and through, father and mother. He's ethnically, he's an ethnos. That is, he's in that language, a pagan. As we were saying in answer to another question, he's not a pagan anymore because he's a believer in Jesus. He's been baptized. He's part of the body of Christ. And so Paul's whole point in having Titus with him is that if this is a test case, here's the answer. Titus does not need to be circumcised because neither circumcision nor uncircumcision matters. What matters is new creation, as you quote from the end of Galatians 6. And so the point that Paul is then making to the Galatians, that's in southern Turkey, who were serially confused about this for all sorts of reasons which you and I have discussed in other occasions. The point that he's making is here we were in Jerusalem with the pillar apostles, the people who are holding up the temple which is the new creation now. And they raised no objections to Titus being part of the fellowship, because that's the question at issue. Does a Christian Gentile have to become a Judean in order to be a member of the body of Christ? And the answer is no. When they were unbelievers, when they were pagans, then they were sinners, they were idolaters, they were, in the Greek term, hamartoloi, people in sin. But Paul's whole point is, hey, the doctrine of the death of Jesus is that Jesus, by his death, dealt with sin. Therefore, when a pagan comes to faith in Jesus, the crucified and risen Lord, and is baptized, that person is a sinner no longer. Therefore, if you are saying that they've got to be circumcised to share fellowship with you, then you don't really believe in the cross. Now, this is one of the things which, as you and I know, is germane to the whole debate about the new perspective on Paul and so on. I've come to the view that for Paul, it really is about the validity of the cross as the thing, which means that a Christian Gentile is a sinner no longer and therefore is welcome at the table. So the key thing about Titus is, no, he mustn't be circumcised because that would be a denial of the meaning of the cross in that context. In that context. Now, Paul then wants to go and engage in further missionary work further west, further northwest, going up through Turkey, etc. Etc. Paul's whole stated modus operandi is to the Judean first and also to the Greek, Romans 1. How are you going to do that? The answer is you go first to the synagogue community. And we can see in Acts what he does when he's there. The synagogue community, given half a chance, he will explain to them, you tell the whole story from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, through Moses, through David, through the prophets, et cetera, ending up with Jesus, the Messiah. My dear fellow Israelites, to you, this promise of salvation has come. Now, if there's a member of the party who the people in the synagogue suspect is not actually a genuine Judean, then they're going to be very suspicious of this traveling bunch who've just come into town and telling them this funny stuff about somebody called Jesus. So I think it is purely in the service of the mission that because the mission has to be to the Judean first, Paul wants to put no obstacle in anybody's way. As he says in Corinthians, in order to make sure the Gospel can get through, the first hearing has got to be in the synagogue. So for himself and Silas and Timothy, they are going to be people who are bona fide accepted in the synagogue, even though then of course, once they tell them what they've come about, some people in the synagogue are going to want to kick them out. But Paul would rather they were kicked out because of the message about Jesus rather than because they've got somebody traveling under false colors. Even though Paul would say no, they're actually welcome. The question of whether they're welcome is a second order question following on from who is Jesus? What's his death all about? If we haven't even got to that point yet, then when we go to the synagogue, we don't want to have barriers put up before we've even announced the message. So it seems to me completely different case. Our trouble is, as modern readers, we tend to put this on a different plane. Instead of thinking historically about the different things, we want to think about principles. So should somebody get circumcised or shouldn't they? Oh, my goodness. Paul seems to be inconsistent. Well, there is a kind of inconsistency there, but it's the kind which falls within the larger consistency of the logic of Paul's mission. And I think that's exactly what he's talking about in the famous passage at the end of 1 Corinthians 9 as well.
- [36:37]
B
Yeah, I think that's right, Tom. I think Paul can lay down the truth of the gospel very clearly like he does in Galatians 2. You know, you got to walk towards the truth of the gospel.
- [36:46]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [36:47]
B
That. That, you know, Gentiles don't have to become Jews in order to be followers of Jesus. But there's also the reality of a messy world and sometimes for missional expediency. And Timothy did have a Jewish mother, and Jewish ancestry was normally communicated via. So it made a lot more sense for the sake of the purpose of mission that Paul would do that with Timothy. And that was, like you said, you know, being all things to all people. So he might save some.
- [37:16]
C
Yeah.
- [37:17]
B
But there we are. Well, I think that's all we've got time for today. If you've got a question you'd like to have Tom answer it, go to askntright.com and send us your question. There's nothing we want more than to receive them and hopefully answer them on this very program. And if you find yourself on a long drive, or maybe you're waiting an airport in Seattle, or you've got a long train journey from London to Edinburgh, or maybe you're driving from North Carolina to South Carolina and you want to listen to some good stuff, check out some of the other programs from the Premiere network, like the CS Lewis podcast, the program. Unbelievable. And if you're watching this show on YouTube, please hit that subscribe button and punch that bell as well. That's all it is for today from Tom and I. So it's goodbye from me, Mike Bird,
- [38:16]
C
and goodbye from me, Tom Wright.
- [38:18]
B
And we'll see you again on the next episode of Ask Anti. Write anything. Until then, take care and God bless.