← Ask NT Wright Anything
Ask NT Wright Anything
Can you lose Salvation? Why do churches keep splitting? What is covenant theology?
00:35:47
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- [00:03]
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Mike Bird
Well, hello and welcome to another episode of Ask nt Write Anything, the program where we answer your questions about Jesus, the the Bible and the life of faith. I'm Mike Bird from Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia, and I'm joined, of course.
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Tom Wright
By I'm Tom Wright from Oxford in England.
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Mike Bird
Tom, always a pleasure to see you. And always a pleasure too, to connect with our listeners who have such a good array of questions. And today we've got four questions, big ones. We've got questions about denominational splits, about covenant theology, about the sacraments, which is a big deal if you're in the Salvation army because they don't really have sacraments, and then whether it's possible to lose your salvation. Our first question comes from Jared Matthews in Anderson in the United States. This is what Jared asks. He says, in what circumstances should a church or denomination split and how should that be navigated I am part of the Anglican Church of North America. And while I agree with the reason for splitting from the Episcopal Church, I can't help but be heartbroken at the fact that the Anglican Church is divided in America now. Tom, you've had a lot to do with discussions about the Anglican Church of North America and the Episcopal Church and how that relates to the wider Anglican Communion. You were doing a lot of work in this area during your time when you were a bishop and jet setting around the world trying to heal some of these rifts. Tom, how do you answer Jared's question?
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Tom Wright
It's a great question. And it isn't of course, only the Anglican or Church of England or Episcopal Church in America, where my wife and I currently have our real home, which is in the western islands of Scotland. There are sadly, several different varieties of Presbyterianism. There is the Church of Scotland, but then there are various movements that broke away from the the Church of Scotland at various stages over the last two or three hundred years. And in some cases there were particular social forces that the Church of Scotland was seen as the landowner's church and the ordinary working people felt that they really didn't belong and that they were being bullied by it. So they set up on their own. It's more complicated than that, but that was part of it. And then much more recently there have been decisions taken by the General assembly of the Church of Scotland in Edinburgh, which people in various parts of the country, actually in Glasgow as well, not just the Isles, the Highlands and Islands really believed meant that they were ruling themselves out from being considered a proper church, because they were doing things which in their view were unbiblical. Therefore they were standing outside the whole great tradition, the Westminster Confession tradition, if you like, which Presbyterianism had officially held to up until that point. So it isn't just an internal fight among Anglicans. And of course, when you look at what seems like a monolithic church, maybe Rome or the Greek Orthodox Church, when you actually look inside, you'll see that there's all sorts of quite remarkable distinctions and divisions within it and people jostling this way and that. And I mean there are huge divisions between the different Catholic orders, between the Jesuits and the Dominicans, for instance, which have been very serious head to head classes, although they both will give allegiance, at least officially, to the Pope, et cetera. So it's not just an Anglican problem, it's not just a Protestant problem. At the heart of it, of course, lies the question of some sort of church discipline and identity, that the churches from the beginning are who they are because they owe allegiance to and belong to Jesus Christ. And that's the absolute criterion. And then there are questions already in the New Testament itself as to what it means to belong in, to belong to Jesus Christ. So that we find Paul making it very clear in certain of his letters that if you are in Christ, then there are certain styles of behavior which are simply inappropriate. And for Paul, that means discipline. Paul is very clear that there are many things which Christians are allowed to disagree on and encouraged to have fellowship with one another even while they're disagreeing. Romans 14 and 15 is all about that. But there are other passages in which it very clear that certain styles of behavior are simply out of order. It isn't just about, and people assume it's all about sexual morality, but it really isn't just about that. If you read Ephesians 4 and 5, there's a whole long list, things like kindness, gentleness, graciousness, humility, et cetera. These are not optional extras for special super Christians. These are what Christians ought to be all the time. And if a church leader sees that there's a group or an individual and who are not behaving in that way, then they need gently but clearly to be told, hey, when we're en Christo, when we're Messiah people, that isn't how we behave. So for many styles of life where there would be no controversy, whether it was child abuse or whatever, we would say there is no place for this in the church. And if anyone thinks that the rule of tolerance applies in such a way that you can get away with either child abuse or with not paying your workers a proper wage or whatever, then you need to be told, sorry, in Christ there is no place for that. In other words, the church is supposed to be modeling the new way of being human. And part of the new way of being human in the New Testament is to be able to think things through, to reason things out, to go back to first principles, and to say, even if it may be countercultural, even if it may not be what our friends and neighbors down the street would like us to do or behave, then nevertheless, if this is what it means to be in Christ, so be it. So I can envisage the possibility of a perfectly legitimate split, but I wouldn't then say this is an actual split. I would say that, which is a very dangerous and difficult thing to say, that there is a true path and some people are wandering away from it. The problem comes when the people who are wandering away seem to be in the majority. That was, of course, what was faced by athanasius in the 4th century, where it looked as though a majority of Christians in some part of the world were Arians. And part of the great debate between Athanasius and Arius was then really about which way is the church gonna go? And they made the decision for Nicaea. Now, that was difficult and controversial at the time. There are difficult, controversial decisions maybe in every generation. But we've gotta be clear that this isn't about individual personalities. It isn't about quirky sub interpretations on small matters. It's about major issues and all splitting of the Church is tragic. The unity of the Church is a major, major New Testament imperative. So I grieve with brothers and sisters in America. If I was in America at the moment, I'm not sure that I know who I would want to be regularly worshiping with. And that's a very difficult thing which I face each time I go to America. And I have many friends on all sides of these different questions. But it seems to me there are clear standards. Read First Corinthians, it's very obvious that, say in chapter five, Paul doesn't say, well, some of us approve of incest and some of us don't. So let not the one who does judge, the one who doesn't. Let's all just get along. He says, no, sorry, incest is not part of the new way of being human. If somebody thinks it is, sorry, there is no place in the Christian fellowship for such a person. And obviously there are lots of other things that go with that. In 1 Corinthians 5 and 6 as well.
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Mike Bird
Well, Thomas, as fellow Anglicans, we've been involved in these somewhat torrid debates, which is difficult because we can have friends who are in the Episcopal Church or the Anglican Church of North Americ. Two options I've seen put forward to heal this. One is the idea of an Anglican Covenant, which would be kind of like a contract or a basis that every province would have to subscribe to in order to be part of the Anglican Communion. The other option is that we empower the Archbishop of Canterbury to become more like a papal figure who has a far more magisterial authority over various wings of the church. Do you see those two options as a way forward? Either an Anglican Covenant, an Anglican Pope, or can you imagine a third way of finding unity within the Anglican Communion?
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Tom Wright
It's very difficult. I mean, 20 years ago, I was very much involved, as some listeners may know, with the report that was commissioned for the Anglican community called the Windsor Report. And that was because of events in North America which had broken the fellowship of Anglicans around the world. There were many bishops and others in other parts of the world than America and Britain who just thought, if this is the way you're going, we can't be part of it. And we explored the idea of a covenant. The trouble was that the Church of England itself, when it came to the vote, the Church of England decided it didn't want to go that route, partly because some people had argued that the Covenant was too restrictive, that it was going to be used to bully people into submission in a kind of a small minded way. I think that was a smear campaign. I don't think that was what the Covenant was going to be all about at all. However, once the Church of England had said we're not going to go that way, that was a synodical decision, then it's very hard to say, well, the rest of the Anglican world should do it, but we in England aren't going to. And that has all sorts of spin offs in terms of what sort of a church is this, that's based in Canterbury, et cetera. The idea of the Archbishop becoming more like a Pope, most archbishops would say that's the last thing they want. It's a hard enough job as it is without taking on that burden. So what the Windsor Report tried to develop was this sort of four so called instruments of unity, with the Archbishop being one, the every ten year Lambeth Conference being another, the Anglican Consultative Council which includes lay people as well as clergy from each of the provinces, and then the meeting of the primates, that is the archbishops of each of the provinces. And there was a sort of sense that we've got four there. It's rather like in the early Church they had the great sees of Alexandria, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Rome, I've missed one out. But the great seas. And the idea was if the archbishops in those great sees can agree, then basically the Church can hold together. And this was supposed to be a way of holding Anglicans together again. That's very difficult. In the 2008 Lambeth Conference. The Lambeth Conference really didn't decide anything. The priming hadn't really agreed on their line. The Anglican Consultative Council didn't come up with a clear statement. It was left to the Archbishop himself, Rowan Williams, to kind of hold the thing together in 2008. And since then that's been a really, really difficult job. And that's still something we're wrestling with. So we are praying for more light, for more wisdom on that. And if that's so about Anglicans, what it's like for Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, et cetera. I wouldn't like to say, of course, Baptists are very independent. They tend to see each church, church as its own pope. And I don't think that's me being rude about baptism. I think that's what many Baptists would say of themselves. So I do think this is a thing we should urgently address because to repeat, unity is not an option in the New Testament. It is again and again insisted on by Jesus and Paul and everybody else.
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Mike Bird
Yeah, I mean, it's always a great topic. I had the pleasure of editing a book on this with Brian Rosner, a book published by Lexham, which is part of Logos. So if you go to logos.com nd and search mending a Fractured Church, the whole book was about this very topic, about, you know, when is the time to leave and when do you stay and fight? But Tom, let's change tack. Let's go from church splits to whole systems of biblical interpretation. We've got a really good question from Jonathan Booth in Newcastle, and it's this. He says, hi, Tom and Mike. I just can't get my head around Covenant theology and how it disputes dispensationalism and if there's any other major theologies to examine when reading the Bible, Internet searches and YouTube videos confuse me more. I'm hoping Tom can help me figure it out. And if it makes any difference, I'm Anglican. Well, thank you, Jonathan. I'm Anglican as well, and I get confused with debates about Covenant theology and dispensationalism as well. Tom, do you have any sort of knowledge or exposure to a system of theology called dispensationalism?
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Tom Wright
Yeah, I ran into dispensationalism for the first time in my life when I got engaged to the lady who is 54 years later, still my wife, because her father, my late father in law, was very much a dispensationalist who had a Scofield reference Bible and had studied it intensively and knew exactly all the details about when the rapture was supposed to happen and the Jews going back to their land in 1948 and all sorts of other things. And I learned a lot from him. He was a very devout man and a great Bible student and a good lay preacher as well, bless him. But I found myself less and less likely to be convinced by the specifics of the dispensationalist worldview. And I discovered that part of the reason that he had been taught as a young man that this system was the way you had to go was that the alternative in his part of the English church when he was growing up was the movement called the British Israel movement, the idea that the British were actually the 10 lost tribes or some variation on that. And so in order to ward off British Israelitism, you had to be a dispensationalist, and that would give you a true way. And so many movements have grown up in the church by reaction against something which is perceived to be wrong. People lurch off in another direction without realizing that they're all within a larger and possibly less than perfect and less than complete system within which the they're reacting. I spoke in a previous episode about the way in which the reformers were reacting against the medieval teaching which said that in order to get to heaven, you had to go through purgatory, and they wanted to say no in order to get to heaven. We don't go through purgatory, not realizing that the Bible is saying it's not about our souls going to heaven, it's about God coming down to dwell with us. And so that the dwelling of God is with humans, as in Revelation 21. In other words, it's possible to have a right reaction within a wrong scheme. Now, I'm not sure that could name to you all the different ways in which dispensationalism and covenant theology clash with one another, except to say that covenant theology traditionally goes back to a reading of the covenants that God makes with Adam, with Abraham, with David, with Moses, of course, and in some theologians, with lots of other people as well. And then there's, of course, the new covenant predicted in Jeremiah 31 and then activated through Jesus. So some people see this great sequence step by step by step, all these different covenants, which is then quite different from the dispensationalists who say that, well, Israel was supposed to react to Jesus preaching, but they didn't. So God put the whole system on hold, and now we're waiting for the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies in a whole new way. If I had to choose between those two, I would be a covenant theologian all the way down the line. Like, if I had to choose between Luther and Calvin, I would choose Calvin. But I don't actually want to to be pushed into that dilemma. I want to say that the Bible itself regularly challenges these schemes and systems because they're attempts by people later on to form some kind of coherent whole. But often without regard to what the biblical writers were actually talking about. And I've spent my life. And Mike, you've spent your life trying to articulate what the New Testament itself is actually saying within its 1st century Judean context and addressed to the Greco Roman world of the day. And again and again, when we go back to that, we find that these big floppy systems saying A plus B plus C, therefore whatever, they may catch something of the flavor of some bits, but they don't do the whole job. So going back and continually working on a full biblical theology over against those systems, I would see that as the mandatory thing. By the way, there is. We may have mentioned it on this show before. There's a recent book by a guy called Hurrell called the Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism. It's just out not long ago, which is a splendid expose of how dispensationalism came about. It's a very odd, strange story, a very quirky, dark bit of church history. But now it seems that dispensationalism has really run its course in terms of an academic attempt to explain the Bible. And it lingers on simply like the grin on the Cheshire cat in the form of popular movements about the Rapture or the late great planet Earth or left behind, or, heaven help us, support for the present state of Israel, whatever it wants to do and so on. Those are really important sort of sub themes. But I would say back from all of those systems. Back to. It sounds very traditional, doesn't it? Back to the Bible itself, which is a much larger and more more interesting book, I think, than any of those systems would allow for.
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Mike Bird
I think it was Charles Simeon who said that people can be more systematic in their approaches than the Bible itself, but people do want to find a way to make everything line up and be nice and neat. And Covenant theology finds the unity of the Bible in various covenants, both ones mentioned and ones they postulate. Whereas dispensational theology looks for that unity in the distinction between the church and Israel. And focusing on the various discontinuities between the Old and the New Covenant.
- [20:37]
Tom Wright
Yeah, that's good. Yeah. But I mean, trying to understand the unity of the Bible is a constant and proper preoccupation. But we all need to watch out lest we be fobbed off too quickly with schemes that don't reflect the way people were actually thinking and writing in the first century.
- [20:57]
Mike Bird
Well, thanks for your question there, Jonathan. We're going to take a break now and when we come back, we're going to talk about sacraments and whether you can lose your salvation.
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- [22:50]
Mike Bird
Well. Welcome back and we've got a question question from a Salvation army officer, Jacob Howin from Wangari in New Zealand, and he says this Kia ora Tom and Mike, I am a Salvation army officer in Whangare, New Zealand, our northernmost city. I've listened to your teaching and read many of your books, which have been a great help in my own ministry, particularly your work through the COVID pandemic, which often helped me provide considered answers to the questions of my congregation and community. My question comes out of previous podcasts around different denominations and their differences, etc. In the salvation army, we do not practice the sacraments of communion or baptism in our services. This is due to a belief that all of life can be sacramental and also from a history of trying to counter those who partook in a ritual without actually changing at all how they live day to day day. I'm simply interested in your thoughts on our position in the Salvation army based on other responses I've read or heard of yours in the past, placing special emphasis Particularly on the Eucharist. Sorry for the lengthy message to get to that question. Thanks in advance. Jacob Howen, Captain, Salvation Army Tom, this has had a question I've often had when I've had Salvation army students, and they're such lovely people. I really do love my Salvation army students. They've got a great heart, they love the Bible, they love mission. But yeah, we do have some good little questions about the sacraments. And I've always set them to work writing out their own articulation of their view. I mean, Tom, what do you have to say to Jacob here?
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Tom Wright
I'm not an expert on the current thinking in salvationism. My understanding historically is that when the Salvation army began, it was quite clear that they did not intend to be a church, they wanted to be a parachurch ministry. And therefore, therefore, precisely because they wanted to be a parachurch ministry, they wouldn't have communion and baptism, lest they be thought to be setting up a church. Now, of course, what's happened is that that movement, which in so many ways is typical of the best of 19th and early 20th century evangelicalism in Britain and then around the world, is very keen on working with and for the poor, is very keen on teaching people about. About the Bible and about the fact that God loves them and about the fact that Jesus died for them. All of those things are absolutely wonderful. And I thank God for their work and especially for reminding the larger established churches that ministry among and for the poor is absolutely at the heart of the Gospel. And actually, I would say in ministering to the poor, that is one of the places where the salvationists really are being sacramental. And I think the idea that all of life is sacramental. Exactly right. But actually this is the point at which the extreme apparent low church salvationist joins up with the extreme high church, Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, because for somebody like Alexander Schmemann in his book the World as Sacrament, of course, all of life is sacramental. And that goes with the view that I've been trying to articulate for a long time now, that actually God, in making the world, creates a world which he wants to come and share with his human creatures. God wants heaven and earth to be one, and has put into his earth the bit which is now given to us all sorts of signs and signals that we are in fact already shot through with the life of heaven, and that there are many ways in which that can become a reality. And so I would say to the salvationist, when you are ministering to the poor, you are doing the same sort of thing that Jesus was criticized for in Luke 15. Why is this man eating with publicans and sinners and all the rest of it? And Jesus tells those three stories about the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son, or should we say the two lost sons. And each time Jesus point is this, they're having a party in heaven because people are repenting. So we should be having a party on earth as well to join in with heaven. That's the point of all of life being sacramental, that the party which we have now is a way of heaven and earth coming together because people who are at the bottom of the pile and are no doubt sinful, et cetera, et cetera, are being welcomed into God's forg love. I think every salvationist would resonate with that. But at that point I want to say, isn't it interesting that that sequence of parties which Luke has running right through the gospel with 15 being a highlight, ends up with the party? If it is a party on the road to Emmaus where Jesus breaks the bread and they recognize him, and you could say it ends up in the Last Supper where Jesus says do this in remembrance of me. In other words, I fully understand the reaction against the kind nominal churchgoingness which says because we've turned up to a communion service or because we were baptized or christened as a child, therefore there's nothing more to do, that we don't have to worry about our commitment. But it seems to me that's rather cutting off your nose to spite your face. And as I say, I think that historically the salvationist does begin with the sense of we're not actually a church. So then I don't know how the transition happened to now being effectively a church. But I want to say the salvationists are doing something which the rest of the church should jolly well learn from, particularly their ministry among the poorest of the poor. Thank God for that insight. Please, could we just work towards saying that we will learn from you how to minister among the poor. And maybe as part of that heaven plus earth reality, you might be prepared to see that maybe the signs that Jesus himself endorsed for precisely heaven and earth coming together, which is what sacraments are all about, they should be part of your tradition as well. Now, both of those would require a certain amount of repentance and realignment. But it seems to me if you really mean what you say about the whole world being a sacrament, then just as you have the close up and personal signs of that in your work among the poor, so many of us would Say that's what's going on when we meet to break bread together and when the whole church celebrates who it is in Christ and his death and resurrection by baptizing new members. So you might expect that that will be one time around the tracks, but that's how I would do it.
- [29:35]
Mike Bird
Yeah, I agree, Tom. There's so much wonderful stuff in the Salvation army, the great work they do. They're probably the most popular or publicly well liked denomination in Australia because of their great social work. But what I always have to say to my Salvation army friends is that the Jesus who told you to go out and serve and to love others and to look after the poor is the same Jesus who said, go and baptize all nations. And the named Jesus who said, you know, do this in remembrance of me. But, yeah, great conversations to be had with Salvation army friends. Thank you very much. Thank you very much to Jacob for that question. But we've got a final one for today, Tom from Derek Heath in Manchester of the United Kingdom, where he asks, what does Hebrews 6 mean? It is impossible for those who have fallen away to be brought back back. This passage is haunting me. Please define falling away. Thank you. Well, I mean, Hebrews 6 is a doozy of a passage, you know, that it's impossible to restore, you know, those who fall away from the faith. What's your thoughts on that?
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Tom Wright
Yeah, obviously this is a difficult passage, especially if you've been taught, say, the letter to the Romans in a particular way which emphasizes that once you have come to faith, then you. You have the assurance that ultimately you will be raised from the dead, et cetera. Then you read Hebrews and you say, oh, my goodness, what's going on here? And I want to align that actually with 1 Corinthians, chapter 10, where Paul, like Hebrews, gives some pretty severe warnings. And I think what we see already in 1 Corinthians is a lot of people coming into the church officially being baptized and sharing in the Lord's Supper, the Eucharist, but who are not actually on board with the fundamental message of Jesus. That was a problem in Corinth because Christianity became legal in Corinth. It was the first place it did become legal in the Roman world because the Roman governor in Acts 18 said, this is simply a variety of Judaism and Judaism is legal. So get on with it, guys. But then the result of that was, open door, we're having a party. And suddenly Christianity in Corinth is the new exciting religion on the block. So a lot of people are flooding in without really understanding what's going on. And Paul says, let the one who thinks that they stand take heed lest they fall. Watch out, because you too may be under judgment. Just like when the children of Israel came out of Egypt, a lot of them didn't really believe about going into the promised land and so on, and they were overthrown in the wilderness. So Hebrews and 1 Corinthians kind of come together and some people have explored maybe there was some synergy between the different groups to whom those letters are addressed. That doesn't explain everything, but I think it puts us in a position where we can say maybe they weren't thinking in the sort of systematic way that some reformed expositors of Romans might think about. Well now I'm saved because I've said a prayer, because I've had faith, therefore I cannot possibly lose my salvation. I want to say, hang on, hang on, hang on. I forget who it was I read many years ago, years ago, who said, of course when we are ministering to people and working with them, we want to be as generous and welcoming as possible and as encouraging as possible. But there is always one person in the world who it doesn't do to be too welcoming and encouraging about, and that's myself. That Hebrews is very clear reading of Psalm 95 that God says to the children of Israel in the desert, watch out, because if you don't believe, you may not enter my rest. And so the question always comes, we look in the mirror, however long we've been a Christian and we say, am I fooling myself? Have I actually. Yeah, gone through all the hoops, said all the right things but actually this is all just self serving nonsense and I think that's how I would read it. So in other words, don't be pushed into saying either or. You've either got Romans or you've got Hebrews. It seems to me there is a larger whole here which is about the whole life of faith. And as in Corinth, there may well be the danger, particularly under persecution, that some people will fall away. That's why there was a big debate about this between Augustine and the Donatists. It was very much the Donatists saying, no, no, no, these people fell away, we can't have them back in the church. And Augustine's saying, well, not so fast actually. And so it would be worth going back to that controversy if you're bothered about Hebrews 6 and reading up how Augustine dealt with that. I'm not an expert on that, but it's clear that this is a problem which the time of Augustine and which hasn't gone away.
- [34:27]
Mike Bird
Yes, Hebrews 6 very tricky passage. It always comes up in my discussions in New Testament studies with students where everyone wants to know can you lose your salvation? Thanks for that answer Tom and thank you for the question Derek. And hey, if you've got a question that you'd like Tom to answer, send it to us. Go to askntright.com fill out the form, send it through and maybe your question will end up on the show. Otherwise don't forget in the premiere Unbelievable network. There's a number of great shows you can check out. Go and have a look at the website, find some other podcasts or programs that you might like to listen to. Otherwise it's goodbye from me Mike Bird.
- [35:15]
Tom Wright
And goodbye from me Tom Wright.
- [35:17]
Mike Bird
And we look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Ask nt Write Anything.