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- [00:03]
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- [01:42]
Mike Bird
Hello and welcome to the Ask nt Write Anything podcast, the program where we try to answer your questions about Jesus, the Bible and the life of faith. I'm Mike Bird from Ridley College and I'm joined of course by Tom Wright.
- [01:57]
Tom Wright
From Oxford in England.
- [01:58]
Mike Bird
Now Tom, I believe you've been in Switzerland. I hope the politics was neutral and the chocolate was delicious.
- [02:05]
Tom Wright
Yeah, both of the above were true. Problem was, it was so hot that one could hardly think about politics and that the chocolate was always likely to.
- [02:13]
Mike Bird
Melt as as happens in Switzerland in summer. Now, were you in the German part, the French part, or the Italian part?
- [02:20]
Tom Wright
Well, actually a combination of German and French. I was in Fribourg, which is just along from Bern and up from Geneva. So language on the street could have been German, could have been French. It goes either way. And that was fun. I'm so impressed with the Swiss ability to translate. I preached on the Sunday in one of the big churches in Biel, actually, where I've been before, and I actually preached in English. I thought about trying to do it in German but there was an expert translator beside me. But they were also people who were in simultaneous translation into Swiss German, as opposed to High German, and also into Ukrainian because they have quite a lot of Ukrainian refugees in that church. So it's a whole different experience when all that stuff is going on.
- [03:10]
Mike Bird
I bet. I bet. Well, it sounds great. What also is great is the questions we have for you this week, Tom. We've got questions about different Did Jesus know he was God? Contemplative spiritual practices, and also about sacred places. So let's kick off. We've got a question from Bill Coombe in Dubai about did Jesus know he was God? Bill asks. I do not think that Jesus knew he was divine in the same way that we know we are cold or hot, happy or sad, male or female. It was more like a kind of knowledge we associate with vocation. Now that's a quotation from simply Christian. Your own words there, Tom. And he asks. Tom notes this plus the paragraph that follows brings us to again quoting you the borders of language as well as theology. Reading this was simultaneously thought provoking and unsettling for me. It would be helpful to have Tom unpack it a bit further. Now I can say, tom, I've had the exact same question asked to me about your writings. People have said to me, does Tom think that Jesus really believed he was God, or did Jesus believe he was God in the same way that someone might feel they are called to the priesthood? Or in the same way they might think they're in love with someone? And some people wonder whether the knowledge of being God that you attribute to Jesus isn't a little bit too light and indecisive? Or should Jesus have known he was God in the same way that he knows he's a human being? Tom, in what way, in what sense did Jesus understand his divine identity and his divine vocation?
- [05:03]
Tom Wright
Wow. This could be the subject for a string of seminars. Indeed, just recently in Oxford, there was a paper given at a seminar on did Jesus know he was divine? Which was kind of amusing because when my son, who was at the seminar, came home and said at supper what the seminar had been about, his son, my grandson, hadn't met the word divine before, except in one context, which was when he was with my wife, his grandmother, making a delicious dessert. And my wife's comment on the delicious dessert was, that's divine. And so Leo, who was then, I don't know, seven I think this was the only meaning he knew of divine. So when Oliver, my son, came home and said, we were discussing, did Jesus know he was divine? And Leo said, wait, did Jesus know he was yummy? And of course the whole family just cracks up. No, Leo, that's not so what are we talking about? But as often with children, the follow up question really gets you to the heart of things. I struggled with this a lot when I was working on Jesus and the victory of God, which is 30 years ago now, because I was very much aware that for many people, particularly in more conservative Christian circles, the word God is a kind of a given. And often it goes with a sort of the moral therapeutic deism, which some sociologists have said is the default mode of much Western Christianity. That the idea of the omnipotent being in the sky who runs everything and does everything, et cetera, et cetera, did Jesus know he was that being? And I've heard people talk about Jesus self consciousness in terms of that being, as though actually Jesus is just pretending to be human. He's pretending to be hungry or thirsty and maybe even goes through the motions of being killed on the cross, even though actually he knows perfectly well it's gonna be all right, et cetera, et cetera. Now, when I read the New Testament, I do not see that. I see this human being, Jesus, weeping at the tomb of his friends, saying, my soul is troubled. Should I say, save me from this hour in paroxysms of anguish on the ground in Gethsemane have I come the wrong way? And then on the cross saying, my God, why did you abandon me? So somehow I have to fit that biblical datum into the same total package as when I say in the Nicene Creed, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, and being one in being with the Father, et cetera. All of which I believe, but in a sense, it's a lifetime's hard won wrestling with who Jesus really was and simply short circuiting that by saying, yeah, Jesus knew he was God. Meaning by that, the God that Western culture assumes is God. I mean, actually, you could equally turn the question around the other way and say, did God know he was Jesus? And. And obviously that would be hugely paradoxical, but it would kind of joggle the hearer into thinking, wait a minute. Because of course, as in Pauline Christology, say Philippians 2, so in the Gospels themselves, what we are seeing is, as it were, the redefinition of the very word God. So that I want to say, yes, Jesus did know he was God, but he meant something quite different by that from what we might mean. Instinctively mean in modern Western world by the word God. And you can see this say at the beginning of the Gospels when Mark quotes from Malachi and Isaiah, the Lord whom you seek shall suddenly come to his temple. He will send his messenger before your face. And then the Isaiah passage from Isaiah, chapter 40, about the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Now, Malachi and Isaiah are both talking about what it will look like when Yahweh, Israel's God, returns to Zion. And it's very clear. But what Mark does is he quotes those two and then shows us Jesus coming for baptism. And it's as though he's saying, you need a whole other lens in your spectacles, guys, because you think you're waiting for Israel's God. And you might expect him to return like the whirling wheels of the chariot in Ezekiel, because Ezekiel 43 says he'll come back looking like he did in Ezekiel, chapter one, et cetera, et cetera. But actually, let me tell you what it looks like when God comes back. It looks like a young Jewish prophet turning up for baptism at the Jordan. And then same thing in Luke 19, when Jesus talks about, you didn't know the day of your visitation. What does it look like when God comes back? It looks like a young Jewish prophet riding down the Mount of Olives in tears, denouncing Jerusalem, and then going off to celebrate a meal with his friends and going off to die on a cross. So what we are seeing is the redefinition of the word God. So we can't simply say, did Jesus know he was God? Where we know in advance what the word God means. And then we're saying, did Jesus know he was that rather, the whole New Testament is saying in different ways, look hard at Jesus and see that everything he did and said was a reinterpretation of what the word God actually means. Now, that's why I've talked about about this in terms of vocation, because I'm not sure that most of Jesus contemporaries were thinking like Jesus was, that maybe God will come back in some quite different way. And especially this is about the humility and the vulnerability of God, the God who comes to die on the cross. That is almost unthinkable in the 1st century and in the 21st century. So as long as we're prepared to say Jesus is constantly offering, and the early church in worshipping Jesus is constantly offering a redefinition of the word God, then I'm very happy to say, yes, Jesus did. But because it is such a radical redefinition. It is a risk. It is a matter of vocation. Jesus must have known again and again throughout his life, and especially going to the cross, that he might just be deluded, that it is failed messiahs who end up on crosses and so on. Hence, my God, why did you abandon me? But of course, Psalm 22, which is there quoted, begins with My God. And somehow we have to get our heads and our hearts around that. And actually so much of this comes down to when we kneel at the foot of the cross, when we gaze in awe at the empty tomb and thank God for the resurrection of Jesus. Maybe we start to see who God really is. And until we see that, we can't simply trivialize or short circuit the thing by saying, did Jesus know he was God? As though God is unknown already. And we're fitting Jesus into that last point. John 1 John says, no one has ever seen God, the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, he has revealed him. And the Greek there is Exegesito. He's provided an exegesis of him. In other words, if you think you can have a picture of God, fit Jesus into it, think again, hold on to possibilities about who God might be and redesign them around this man.
- [12:22]
Mike Bird
I think that's a good answer, Tom, because like you said, we start with the idea, well, we all know what we mean by God. Now let's try to figure out who Jesus is and let's see if the two things can be reconciled. We are saying, no, it's Jesus is redefining what we mean by God. He's the one who reveals God. He's a visitation of God. He is fulfilling the promise of Yahweh returning to Zion, which you get in that Luke 19:44 passage about the day of visitation. I think it's important to emphasize when you talk about vocation, I don't think you're talking about like a live action role playing, as if he is playing the part of God like an actor on a play, but he is doing it in the sense of embodying and enacting what God is towards his people. Now, I think when you put it in that sense, a lot of the concerns that Bill and others that I've heard begin to dissipate. And the other thing that strikes me is I've been reading a lot of 2nd century Christian literature recently, and Christians are always attempting to show how they are pious, they are religious, but they don't believe in Gods in the Same way that their Greco Roman contemporaries do. Whether that's the gods of poetry, whether it's the gods of the state, whether it's the gods of mere philosophy. They're saying, you know, our God is the Jewish God, the one God of creation and covenant, and we believe that Jesus is his Son, and Son means he shares in whatever is true of God the Father. So that led them to a type of sort of incipient trinitarianism as well as part of their redefinition of God.
- [14:10]
Tom Wright
Yeah, yeah. And I would say, in a sense, incipient trinitarianism. I think the Trinity is already there in the earliest writings of the New testament. In Galatians 4, Paul says, when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son and then he sent the Spirit of the Son. And Paul says if you don't get on board with that, you're going back to paganism. So it's either you're going back to some sort of paganism or. Or you have a triple way of understanding who this God is and how he works in the world. And I think all that happens with the third and fourth century Fathers is that they translate what's already very clear in the New Testament into other and often sadly, non Hebraic thought categories. But that's a whole other story.
- [14:54]
Mike Bird
Oh, that is indeed. That is indeed another story. Well, Bill, I hope I've. Well, we've answered your question on that one. Let's move on to our second question. Tom, this is about contemplative spiritual practices. And we've got two questions that dovetail together wonderfully. We've got a question from Reece Matthews in Lexington, Kentucky, and from Shaq Haggar in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So the first question from Rhys is this. Hello, Dr. Bird and Dr. Wright. My question is about contemplative prayer. Do you think it's an acceptable Christian practice? I've seen how people connect it to the Old Testament term meditate and Paul's use of legid. Philippians 4 for consider and phroneo, which means to think in Colossians 3. But it's never deliberately commanded in Scripture. I find myself getting anxious and easily distracted when reading large portions of the Bible and praying or doing the daily office. But doing things like the Anglican rosary or praying the Jesus prayer are quite helpful. What do you think? Do I need to change or is my daily practice acceptable to God? So that's the first question from Rhys. Then there's a second one from Shaq who says, I'm a young pastor who loves Jesus and I come from a rigid performance based spiritual formation. Over the years, Christian contemplative practices have been a space of deep healing and transformation for me. Now, as I step into the role of a spiritual director, I want to faithfully shepherd others in ways that are both biblically sound and deeply restorative. My heart is to create spaces of refuge for those who are weary and wounded by religious rigidity. But I never want to lead anyone astray. I want to remain faithful to Scripture while also tending to the real hurts and questions and people carry. In today's world, where people encounter a variety of spiritual influences such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Zen, Eastern meditation techniques, New Age spirituality, even the confusion of cults, how can I wisely and effectively integrate contemplative practices rooted in Scripture while ensuring that we remain anchored on Jesus? I'd love to hear your wisdom on on this. Tom. What do you think about contemplative spiritual practices? I mean, do you have any contemplative spiritual practice in your own life? Do you have any views on things like Ignatian exercises, daily office? Do you use the Anglican Rosary for instance? Tom, what would you say to Rhys and Shaq?
- [17:39]
Tom Wright
I confess that like the disciples of John at Ephesus who had not even heard that there was a Holy Spirit, I had not even heard that there was an Anglican African Rosary until I read this question. I think one of the things that I've come to realize over many years, and I've been ordained for nearly 50 years now and was a practicing Christian for many years before that, is that not only are we all different as human beings with different inner workings of our psyche, if that's what you want to use, different mental furniture, but also we change over time. And what's suitable for a teenager may not be suitable for a 20 or 30s. And what's suitable for somebody in sort of early maturity of life in 20s and 30s may well not be suitable when they're 50, 60, 70. So I think we need to lighten up rather than say here is what you all should do all the time, just get on with it. I mean, for me, daily Bible reading and prayer has been a habit of life since I was about 12 years old. And my type of daily Bible reading and my type of praying has shifted over time. Because I got ordained as an Anglican priest, I came into a tradition which I was already comfortable with, of what you might call the daily office in the old prayer book, morning prayer and evening prayer, and quite often compline, as well as the night prayer and I actually find the rhythm of morning prayer and compline easier because my day often gets quite confusing and it isn't as easy to carve out time for a full evening prayer. Although if there is an evensong somewhere close by, I will happily go and phew, sort of sigh of relief at that point in the day anyway. But the idea of saying we all ought to do this or that, I think is very disturbing because the more you know about personality types, the more what is right for somebody might well drive somebody else mad. Now, I know that people have written whole books about, say, the Myers Briggs type, personality type indicator and how different types of spirituality will be easy for you if you're this type or that type. Now, I wouldn't want to overplay that hand because I think it is only a rough and ready tool. But it's a way of saying some people naturally approach everything in life, including their relationship with God, in very much an organized thinking, logical fashion. They may well find that a daily office with 17 different colored markers sticking out of their Bible or prayer book is exactly the way to keep them anchored for other people. That will drive them nuts and they need to be told. Just take one story from Scripture, sit with it, wait till you've got really still listen to what Jesus is saying in this story. Wait to see what he says to you. This is much more like an Ignatian meditation. And I have used both those techniques at different. I don't like the word techniques. Both those practices at various stages and in various combinations. And there are many, many other styles and practices as well. And I have known people, whether in monasteries and convents, people who are given to a life of prayer many, many hours of every day, of every week, and they will describe things that are going on in that world. And they in some ways, by their prayers sustain those of us who are more active, who leap on the bicycle and go off to do a lecture or whatever. So I would want to be completely open while at the same time recognizing that that openness does have its limits. The questioner Shaq here points out, of course, the world is full of different spiritual influences, Hinduism, Buddhism, et cetera. And I want to say yes, and they're not all 100% wrong. The danger is if we think only something which is very explicitly and sort of published as a Christian thing will do, and everything else is going to lead you astray. Because Paul says in a couple of places in acts, that God has not left himself without witness in the wider world. And when we see Cornelius in Acts 10 and 11, he's somebody who comes right from the outside and yet recognizes something about the God of Israel and prays to him. And when Peter comes and meets him, he says, clearly God is not mocked by this. God knows perfectly well who you are and who you have been. And now you. Here is the gospel of Jesus. In other words, he doesn't say to Cornelius, so it sounds like you've got a good spiritual practice going. Just carry on and don't worry about this. No, you have now got to the point where you might just be ready for the message of Jesus, so that there is always the Jesus focus, which is at the center. That's one of the reasons that I personally have often used the Jesus prayer or some variety of it. And there are different ways of doing that. But part of the point of the Jesus prayer, it's rather like the conference I've just been at. There were some of the brothers from Taize who were there, and who in the morning and evening and noonday, noontime prayer, were leading us. In some of their songs, which are quite repetitive, some people worry about that repetition, and if it gets tedious or if it becomes too much of a thing, then one might want to leave it. But actually, some of those songs, by the third or fourth time, you are actually going deeper into something. You are becoming stiller. The music and the words are enabling you to have a sense of the presence of God in a way which some modern worship songs basically don't always. And so I want to say many styles for many occasions, for many people, let a thousand flowers bloom as long as Jesus is right there in the middle of the garden. And as long as quite explicitly, explicitly, we are invoking the Holy Spirit in order to praise the God and Father of Jesus. How that then happens will depend on so many different factors. And I want to say, lighten up, guys, it's okay. But ideally, get yourself a spiritual director who will enable you to articulate from year to year who you are. And then, especially if you're training to be a spiritual director yourself, of course you ought yourself to have spiritual direction. It's no good setting up on your own without that framework. But obviously, nothing that I or Mike can say at the moment will exactly meet the personal needs of Rhys or Shaq or anyone else. So anyone who's asking these questions should seek out a wise spiritual guide in your church or perhaps in the local community. But always Jesus at the center, invoke the Spirit to the glory of God the Father, and then see what Patterns are going to emerge for who you are right now and who you will be in 5, 10, 15 years time.
- [24:55]
Mike Bird
Yeah, I think that's good. I mean, different people will gravitate towards different practices. Whether that's, you know, listening to the Bible while you're doing Pilates, listening to Christian music while jogging, doing the morning office Ignatian spiritual exercises, praying the Jesus prayer. There are so many different things you can do and maybe it's good to, you know, seek out and try some of the different practices available, explore different things from, I know, Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal traditions. Some of the things that people do to be spiritually refreshed and rejuvenated. And as long as it's trinitarian, it's brings you back to the feet of Jesus, it's going to be to your benefit. Yeah, that's probably a good way to put it, Tom.
- [25:39]
Tom Wright
I totally agree, Mike. You mentioned at one point when we were talking about this before about views of yoga. I know very little about yoga and frankly I am too old and creaky to start now. I do, however, believe strongly but frustratedly in the practice of kneeling for prayer. Many Christians in my tradition kind of gave up kneeling about 20 years ago. It used to be in the Anglican Church everyone would kneel both to pray and to receive the Eucharist. And then people started just staying seated, like many free churches do. But actually sitting down is the one posture which is not adopted in the Bible or in the early church for prayer. Kneeling, standing flat on your face, all those are fine, but sitting not. But Eugene Peterson has a lovely passage somewhere about kneeling that when I'm kneeling, I am not in control of the world anymore. I am resigning any sense that I'm manipulating anything. I am humble and open. My problem is that since I had my knee operation, I simply physically can't kneel for more than 15 or 20 seconds without it becoming so uncomfortable that I can't concentrate on anything, certainly not on prayer. So I actually, I'm joking to somebody that I'm an Anglo Catholic soul in an evangelical body just at the moment, but to each their own. But don't forget how much kneeling is urged in Scripture itself.
- [27:17]
Mike Bird
That's, that's a great way to put it, Tom. We don't do, we don't do yoga. That's a Hindu thing. But we do do kneeling, standing and prostrations in prayer. Well, we're going to take a break and when we come back we're going to look at the topic of sacred places. Are some places filled with God's spirit and presence in a special way? Or is God's presence now fully democratized and available everywhere? That's what we're going to tackle after these words.
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Tom Wright
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- [29:25]
Mike Bird
Well, welcome back everyone. We've now got a question from from Trevor Betts in Belfast, Ireland about sacred places. And Trevor asked this I'm trying to understand the presence of God more fully. In the Old Testament we see God's presence on people in a tabernacle bush, temple, cloud fire, etc. In the New Testament he refers to Acts 7:48 and 17:24. It seems clear God no longer lives in buildings made by people, as people are the temple of God and that he is in the midst of us. And even when two or three gather in his name, I can also see that God is omnipresent. Is it then possible for God's presence to be In a building or other place, even when empty, when there are no Christians around, carriers of his presence? Or is it just an empty building that Christians, the real temple, use? Do we just sense his presence in a place according to our expectations? For example, I could go to a mountain and sense God's presence if I am thinking consciously or unconsciously that way. But could also sense a great loss if I look at the same hills and mourn all the deforestation. Should we talk about holy sacred places in the sense of God's presence residing there? For example, in a monastery where people have taken prayed for centuries? I've heard people talk about thin places. Is there a New Testament theology for this? On the other hand, is it possible for even for evil demons to be present in a place? Or is that only possible because they are not omnipresent? Many thanks for your wisdom you continually give to the world. Tom, I think this is a great question. Do we believe in holy places? Is somewhere like Westminster Abbey, the Holy Sepulcher, the Vatican, Lake Zurich? You know, you're in Switzerland recently. Are there holy places where we encounter God in a special way, where God's presence is made manifest? Or is it, you know, like in the gospels, when the curtain in the temple is torn, does that mean God's presence is no longer limited to a space like a temple and it's now encountered everywhere throughout the world? Because, you know, in Acts 7, which Trevor refers to, Stephen's speech there emphasizes the mobile presence of God. So, Tom, what do you think about sacred spaces and places? Do these places really exist? And if there is, could you give us a list of your top five?
- [32:08]
Tom Wright
Yeah, it's a great question and I want to say very emphatically a both and at this point, point and okay, that's a typical Anglican thing to do. But I grew up in the northeast of England, and in the northeast of England there's a little offshore island called Holy island or Lindisfarne. My grandfather was actually archdeacon of Lindisfarne. He didn't live on the island, but that was the name of his archdeaconry in the north, for the far northeast of England. And Lindisfarne is a place of pilgrimage and has been for many centuries. People have gone there. It's tidal, so that you can walk across the sands at low tide and then you have to watch out because the tide comes in very fast and it's cut off for half the day. And people have gone there to pray. That's where Cuthbert was and it's the place from which the early monks evangelized the northeast of England in the very early days. And when I was growing up, knowing about all that story, I had no theology of sacred space at all. And when I went to Lindisfarne, I had no sense of specialness about the presence of God there. Because for me, knowing God was a very personal matter when I was reading the Bible, saying my own prayers, and perhaps singing hymns in church. But that was because I was singing those hymns or the psalms or maybe listening to a sermon, not because I was in a special place called a church. And indeed, in my teens, I was pretty anti buildings. And if anyone suggested sometimes you see an inscription above the church door saying, this is none other than the house of God and this is the gate of heaven. And I would think, no, that's absolutely wrong. We don't come into church in order to be in the gate of heaven. So I was very opposed to any such idea of sacred space as a dangerous kind of delusion I then kept. In my 20s and 30s, I kept encountering sacred space unexpectedly. One of my first awarenesses of this. Perhaps there's a story worth repeating. My oldest son was at a school in Montreal where we then lived, which had bought an old redundant united church across the street from the school and had turned it into the school hall where they did musical events, they did prize givings, they did all of that stuff. And that had been going on for some years. It hadn't only just happened. And one time my wife and I went to a concert. My son, I think, was playing the clarinet in a little jazz group or something like that. And. And as we walked into the church, I felt very strongly the presence of God as a loving, warm, but also somehow quizzical presence. And I sat there listening to this crazy schoolboy jazz concert, et cetera, thinking, does anyone else have this sense that God is actually in this place? And it was a redundant church, it was not in use as a church. People didn't go there to pray anymore. But I had a sense of the memory of a place and that I had no theory for why that would work. But then having spotted that, I was then on the alert for similar things. And then subsequently, many, many times I've had the same experience. And the way I look at it is this. Yes, now God doesn't live in the temple in Jerusalem in a kind of unique way, so that you've got to go there to meet him. God can meet you. You can meet God anywhere, anytime. The burning bush is a kind of a symbol of that Moses was not expecting that, but it came and met him. And God meets us in all sorts of ways. However, the purpose of God is not to take us away from the world of space, time and matter, off to some super spiritual place where all of that is irrelevant. The purpose of God is, as it were, to colonize the world of space, time and matter, so that when people pray in a building or a place over time, then that place can and does carry a memory, a possibility, because it's, as it were, a little hint, a foretaste of the time when the whole earth shall be full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. And I really do believe that this is why people speak of thin places. People say that about the island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland. And certainly the first time I went to Iona, I have that sense again very strongly. This is a place where people have come for generation after generation and prayed and worshiped and have gone home, changed, refreshed, etc. Why does God like islands? Well, I'm not sure, of course, it was safety in the days of paganism. You could escape the pagan marauding hordes, etc. But I think it goes beyond that. So it's really about a sacred place as a foretaste of and a pointer to God's eventual claim on the whole world. So it isn't a retreat from the world. It's like a small sacred bridgehead into the world. You mentioned Westminster Abbey. One time when I was working there, we had a guest who came, who had a teenage daughter who was doing a school project on some of the old kings and queens of England, some of whom are buried in Westminster Abbey. So this friend of ours said, could she and the daughter go and inspect and sort of transcribe things that were written on one of the key tombs, the tomb of Edward the Confessor. And so I took them in, showed them where it was, and when they came back, the lady, our friend, was in tears because as her daughter had been just doing her schoolwork, she had been overwhelmed by a sense of the presence and love of God in that place where people have been saying their prayers for a thousand years. And we were surprised, but we weren't surprised, as it were, that that sort of thing happens. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The first time I went in there, I spent most of Good Friday 1989, in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. And it was a hugely profound experience for me. A sense of the proximity to the place where it all happened, the death and resurrection of Jesus. And wave upon wave of that came over me. So in terms of favorites, I don't know, there are many churches, chapels, ancient and modern, north, south, east, west, which have been sacred spaces for me. I don't think they take the place for a minute of the personal encounter with God in Christ, which could be on a mountainside, in a shopping center, lying in bed or walking around the house, could be anywhere. But they do enable us to have that sense of actually God wants to fill the whole world. And sometimes what we get is a foretaste of what that's going to be like, or just a little foretaste.
- [39:09]
Mike Bird
Yeah, that's great, Tom. I mean, there's been places I've visited where I felt something similar. When I visited Turkey last year, we went to the Hagia Sophia, which is now on mosque. We also went to the Hagia Irene, where the Nicene Creed received its final resign at the Council of Constantinople. And I would say I had a sense of awe at the sacred history of the place. I don't know whether I would say that this was a sense of divine presence, but certainly a belief that that God had been here and God had done things here. That was the sense I had from being in the Hagia Sophia and the Hagia Irena. But I think we've got to get the second half of that question, Tom, the other side of it. Are there dark and demonic places? Are there places where we can feel a sense of evil? I've had numerous friends of mine say they would never enter into a mosque because they believe it is a demonic place. Now, there's a whole bunch of questions there about Christianity vis a vis Islam, but in the same way that there are thin places, do you believe the world might even have dark places?
- [40:22]
Tom Wright
Yeah, I think so. I think where people persistently worship the dark gods of money, sex, power, violence, et cetera, et cetera, those places can carry that memory. I remember when I was once helping to lead a cruise in the Mediterranean and we were stopping off at ancient classical sites. We got to, I think it was Susse in Tunisia, and we went to the amphitheater and we were shown in to where people had been kept waiting before being brought out to be mauled by lions or whatever. And I had a strong sense of darkness in there, and not just, oh, my goodness, this was not a good place to be, but just a strong sense that this place is bad and you just need to get out. So you make the sign of the cross or whatever, you say your prayers, you invoke the cleansing of the Holy Spirit and you leave as soon as you can. So, yes, I mean, that's perhaps an extreme example. I have sometimes, in ordinary life, in ordinary work, had a sense in a house or a room. All is not well here. I'm not quite sure why, but something is amiss. And I don't regard myself as being hugely sort of spiritually perceptive. There are some people I've known, one or two who are, as it were, bloodhounds. They know perfectly well when they go into a room or a house or a street, even what has happened in some particular location, whether it's a murder or a suicide particularly, or some horrible act of violence and which has left a stain, a memory on a place. So that does happen. And then we do need to have the pastoral wisdom to know who is able to go and say the appropriate prayers, if that's the right thing to do. But sometimes, sadly, the two can overlap. Some of the great big cathedrals and shrines can themselves become very dark if people, people, because they're in this great place, can easily distort that and use it as a means of their own power or prestige or whatever it may be, or use it as a way, a manipulative way of gaining money or sex or whatever for themselves. And so the great spiritual places have also got the capacity to go sour, to go wrong. And I think this is where wisdom and humility to say there's a lot of stuff going on out there which we don't always understand, but just that's why it's important to stay rooted in the invoking of Jesus, the prayer for the Holy Spirit, and making sure that wherever we are, we can say, whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. If that feels impossible in a place, then get out if you're in a place and say, yes, being here, we can do this to the glory of God, Glory of God and to the praise of Jesus and in the power of the Spirit, then that's probably okay.
- [43:23]
Mike Bird
Well, Tom, I'm glad to hear that you didn't have that feeling of darkness when visiting the House of Lords or the House of Commons. That would have been very concerning indeed if you had that feeling there.
- [43:34]
Tom Wright
Lots of muddles going on there, but I didn't have a sense of darkness in the Lord's note.
- [43:38]
Mike Bird
Just as well. Just as well. Well, that's all we have time for today. But remember, you, you can send in your questions, just go to askntyrite.com, fill out the form, and who knows, maybe we'll be able to get your question on the show. Also, we have a number of bonus episodes coming out. Literally, for the price of a bad coffee. You can sign up and you can get great content as Tom and I go through the Book of Acts and various theological controversies. Otherwise, it's farewell from me, Mike Bird.
- [44:15]
Tom Wright
And goodbye from me, Tom Wright.
- [44:17]
Mike Bird
We look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Ask N.T. wright.
- [44:21]
Tom Wright
Anything.