Faith, belief, and the fall of Jerusalem: what are we missing?

Summary

Title: Faith, Belief, and the Fall of Jerusalem: What Are We Missing?

Podcast: Ask NT Wright Anything
Hosts: Mike Bird and Tom Wright
Release Date: August 3, 2025

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Introduction

In this insightful episode of Ask NT Wright Anything, hosts Mike Bird and renowned theologian Tom Wright tackle complex questions surrounding biblical faith, the nature of salvation, and the interpretation of prophetic texts in the New Testament. The discussion delves deep into how faith is understood within the New Testament, the continuity between Old and New Testament views on salvation, and the interpretation of the Olivet Discourse concerning the Second Coming of Jesus versus the fall of Jerusalem.

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Understanding Biblical Faith vs. Mere Belief

Question from Ryan Hudson, Roanoke, Texas ([02:03]):
Ryan challenges the common Christian conflation of faith with mere belief, suggesting that New Testament faith entails a robust, life-encompassing fidelity rather than just intellectual assent. He seeks guidance on discussing these nuanced theological distinctions without being perceived as distorting the gospel.

Tom Wright’s Response ([04:50]):
Tom Wright emphasizes that the Greek term for faith, pistis, encompasses much more than belief—it includes trust, reliability, and integrity. He explains that for Paul, justification by faith is not about works but about trusting in God's promises fulfilled through Jesus Christ. This faith is deeply rooted in allegiance to Jesus, marking genuine membership in the "people of God." Wright warns against misinterpretations that equate faith solely with intellectual belief, clarifying that such misunderstandings do not introduce salvation by works but rather misrepresent the biblical narrative.

Notable Quote:
"For Paul, faith is a way of saying the ground is even at the foot of the cross... those who believe in Jesus, crucified and risen... are the markers of the church." ([04:50])

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Merging Old and New Testament Views on Salvation

Question from Jaden Johnson, Wichita Falls, USA ([13:31]):
Jaden expresses concern about reconciling the Old Testament's portrayal of salvation—often seen as deliverance from worldly circumstances—with the New Testament's focus on salvation through Christ. He fears that believers may be anachronistically imposing New Testament concepts onto the Old Testament.

Tom Wright’s Response ([17:15]):
Wright argues for a comprehensive reading of the Bible, asserting that the New Testament fulfills Old Testament promises of salvation both in worldly and spiritual dimensions. He critiques the Western tradition for segregating the two testaments, leading to a fragmented understanding where Old Testament salvation is viewed as purely earthly and New Testament salvation as purely heavenly. According to Wright, this separation is a product of later theological developments, such as Neoplatonism, which overshadowed the original, holistic biblical theology of salvation encompassing God's care for creation.

Notable Quote:
"The real break comes in the third and fourth and fifth centuries... when Neoplatonism... takes over... but the Bible is the whole Bible, and the New Testament rests firmly on the foundations." ([17:15])

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The Olivet Discourse: Second Coming or Fall of Jerusalem?

Questions from Drew Leonard, Elizabethan, Tennessee, USA and Ryan Cataldo:
Drew and Ryan inquire whether Jesus explicitly speaks of His Second Coming in the Gospels or if this understanding is a later imposition by Gospel writers. They are particularly interested in distinguishing passages that refer to the future Second Coming from those that predict the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, challenging doctrines like full preterism.

Tom Wright’s Response ([27:27]):
Wright posits that the Olivet Discourse in Mark 13 and Luke 21 primarily predicts the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem in 70 CE, rather than the Second Coming of Jesus. He references Jesus' discourse with Caiaphas, interpreting the "coming on the clouds" as a metaphor for His vindication and exaltation, aligning with Daniel 7's prophetic imagery. Wright argues that traditional interpretations separating immediate fulfillment (destruction of the Temple) from future events (Second Coming) obscure the intended message of these passages.

Mike Bird’s Contribution ([34:49]):
Echoing Wright’s analysis, Bird explains that in the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus ties the destruction of Jerusalem directly to His teachings, emphasizing that the discourse is centered on the Temple’s impending fall rather than a distant Second Coming. He highlights the use of phrases like "from now on" to indicate contemporaneous events rather than future apocalyptic occurrences.

Notable Quote:
"When Jesus says to Caiaphas, you will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds... it means you will see the fulfillment of Daniel 7 when I am vindicated." ([27:27])

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Conclusion

Mike Bird and Tom Wright conclude the episode by advocating for a nuanced and contextually grounded interpretation of biblical texts. They emphasize the importance of understanding the original intent of Scripture, free from later theological distortions, to grasp the full scope of biblical teachings on faith and salvation.

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This episode provides a profound exploration of how faith is intricately tied to trust and allegiance in the New Testament, the seamless continuity between the Old and New Testament understandings of salvation, and a reevaluation of prophetic passages concerning Jesus' return. For listeners seeking a deeper theological insight, Mike Bird and Tom Wright offer clarity and thoughtful analysis grounded in biblical scholarship.

Notable Final Quote:
"We need to re-examine traditional interpretations... advocating for a return to the scriptural context to understand faith and salvation comprehensively." ([39:16])

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For more in-depth discussions and theological insights, subscribe to bonus episodes at https://askntwright.supportingcast.fm.

Transcript

[Podcast Host]

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[Mike Bird]

Hello and welcome to the Ask nt Write Anything podcast, the program where we look at Jesus, the the Bible and the life of faith. I'm your co host Mike Bird from Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia, and I'm.

[Tom Wright]

Here as ever with Tom Wright from Oxford in England.

[Mike Bird]

Tom, it's always great to be with you going through the many questions people have, the good, the hard, the hairy, the ones that even make us think. And we've got another batch of very good questions this week covering the nature of biblical faith. Is salvation different in the Old Testament and the New Testament? And do the Gospels predict the second coming of Jesus, or is that just found in the epistles and the Book of Revelation? So we've got so much we got to get into this week and let's do it. Our first question from Ryan Hudson of Roanoke, Texas. I hope I said that correctly. Ryan's question. I think this is a good one, he says. I am regularly taken aback that Christians tend to conflate faith with belief in the New Testament so that salvation by faith comes to mean salvation by belief or even salvation by intellectual assent. I am no Greek scholar, but it seems to me that the New Testament word faith is not just belief, but a more robust faithfulness that extends to every aspects of one's life. However, when I have asked these questions to church leaders, I have been firmly denied any discussion of this on the grounds that it introduces salvation by works. I believe in a doctrine of salvation by faith, but I want to be sure it's a doctrine of salvation by biblical faith. I believe this distinction may be vastly important, especially in American evangelical churches. So how might I wisely and humbly engage these questions with fellow Christians who are afraid that my perspective distorts the gospel? Well, Ryan, I think this is a great question. This very week I've seen people offering negative reviews of a book by Matt Bates about salvation and the gospel, because Matt Bates, I think you might know his work. Tom likes to talk about faith as a type of allegiance. Ah, yes. See, Tom's got Matt Bates books Beyond the Salvation Wars. You're, you're welcome, Matt, for that free promo that you're getting from us. Our pleasure, our pleasure. But it's a good question, you know, what is the meaning of faith? Does faith mean mere belief? Now, this is a topic that comes up in the New Testament. It's there in James, chapter two. Even Paul gets into it as well. Tom, what do you have to say to Ryan about debates and the meaning of a biblical faith?

[Tom Wright]

Yeah, it's a great question. Unfortunately, there are several ways in which this important question is colored by debates that have taken place over the last few hundred years and debates that are still taking place in America, particularly at the moment among several churches where these are quite hot issues to be discussed and people are nervously defending this or attacking that or warding off something they perceive or have been taught is wrong. So several things to say right up front. One is that when people talk about faith, often in our so called secular age, in the Western world of the last 200 years or so, faith means really any religious belief, any awareness of some kind of divine presence, rather than the flat secular world in which there is nothing, nothing else, that we are kind of alone in the cosmos. So that when people from the secular world find suddenly a faith, and for some people they would say, well, for me it's a Muslim faith or a Hindu faith or whatever, then lots of people are inclined to say, oh, well, faith is a good thing. So you've got that sort of faith and that's just fine. So you can be saved by that faith that's a complete misunderstanding in terms of where the Bible is coming from. When people came to believe in Jesus Christ in the first century, the early believers, many of them were people like the apostles and people like Paul himself, who had been devout Jews, devout Judeans, believing in the God of creation and covenant, believing in the Scriptures, believing in the promises of God, et cetera. And for them, coming to faith in Jesus was suddenly the realization that this God, in whom they had always believed, to whom they had always prayed, had done an extraordinary new thing that they hadn't seen coming, but that was perceived to be the fulfillment of script. And so there the faith had a very specific content. And I think we have to be careful. There are several kind of footnotes I want to put into Ryan's spiel here. We have to be careful about this phrase being salvation by faith. That phrase does occur in Ephesians 2:10. By grace you are saved through faith. But normally for Paul, and I think Ephesians 2 is a kind of a shorthand there, normally for Paul, it's about being justified by faith. And justification doesn't mean, alas, what the 16th century and subsequently really wanted it to mean. The 16th century reformers were responding to ideas in the Middle Ages and trying to reconfigure stuff within the narrative of the day, which was how my soul gets to heaven, that is not the biblical narrative. So then another piece of the puzzle to put into place before we go any further is that the Greek for faith is pistis, and the root pistis, or the cognate verb pistuo, etc. Means not just faith as we might say it, but it means trust, trustworthiness, reliability, integrity, and so on. There's been a lot of work done on this. And in the classical world of the day, the word pistis and the other words in other languages that would correspond to it have that much wider range of meaning. So that it is all then about for Paul, about the reliability of God and his promises and our trust in God and his promises and our then being reliable and trustworthy in terms of being the recipient of these promises. But then faith for the New Testament then does, for Paul then does have this very emphatic, Jesus focused context and meaning. You see this in the Gospels as well, when somebody comes and says, lord, will you heal me or my servant or whoever? And Jesus often says, your faith has saved you. What is their faith? Their faith is to see that in Jesus, Israel's God is at work, to do what he'd always promised, namely to let the blind people see and the deaf people hear, and so on. So that faith has a Jesus shaped context. And for Paul, you see this in for instance, the end of Romans 4, where he talks about Abraham, Abraham believing in the God who raises the dead, and Paul saying, yes, and for us, we believe in the God who raised Jesus from the dead, who was put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification. So that faith has this Jesus shaped cognitive context. Likewise in Romans 10, when he describes faith as saying that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead. These are the kind of minimal faith commitments. But when we ask Paul to spell that out a bit, he's perfectly happy. He can quite a lot more about the Messiah, died for our sins, was buried, was raised on the third day. That too is the central content of faith. But here we have to recognize that something else going on as well. And the debates to which Ryan refers, and I think the debates to which Matt Bates refers, are really all about the different levels and stages of Christian experience by which people who didn't initially believe in Jesus come to a position where they do believe in Jesus and are assured of ultimate salv. And I want to say that for Paul, the main thrust of justification in Galatians 2 and 3 and 4, in Romans 3 and 4, in Romans 9 and 10, particularly 10, and in Ephesians 2, not least, these are about how we know who are members of the people of God. And the answer is, you do not. The badge of your membership in the people of God is nothing to do with your ethnic or moral background or the things that you do to demonstrate your ethnic or moral background. It is that those who believe in Jesus, crucified and risen in the God of Israel, sending his son Jesus to die and rise again. These are the marks of the church. And for Paul, that is absolutely paramount because he's battling against people who say, well, these Gentiles may have come to faith in Jesus, but obviously they're at a different level from Jewish believers, so they need to get circumcised and then they'll really be part of the people of God. And Paul says those are among the works, circumcision, the food laws and the Sabbath, which demonstrate Jewish ethnic identity. But what demonstrates identity in the one single people of God renewed, the people of God ad, if you like, is this faith in the God who raised Jesus, who was put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification. So a lot of the difficulty has nothing to do with introducing salvation by works Many people are puzzled about this and many people get very cross about it and say, oh, beware of that new perspective. It'll lead you into works righteousness. That's a complete misunderstanding. It's a different set of issues. And when you study what Paul is doing in Galatians, in Romans and in the other passages like Ephesians, which refer to the same set of issues, it is about how we know in the present who the people of God are now. They are the people who will be vindicated in the future by being raised from the dead. That's very clear in Romans particularly. But in the moment, justification is God's declaration that these people are part of the family of Abraham. How has that come about? Because even though they're all sinners, the death of Jesus has dealt with their sin, Jewish as well as Gentile. Therefore, justification by faith for Paul is a way of saying the ground is even at the foot of the cross. Now let's celebrate our membership in that justification family and let's hold onto this faith, both in its affective content, that is my personal deep knowledge of Jesus as being here for me and with me, and in its intellectual content, in the sense that I believe that God raised Jesus from the dead and I then give him my allegiance as the Lord of the world. Those are the things which mark us out as the followers of Jesus and which therefore mark us out as the people who by the Holy Spirit will one day be raised from the dead. Complicated answer, complicated question. I just think we need to reset. We need to hit control, alt, delete on the whole question of justification, especially in America right now. Go back to the Bible itself and see how different it can be.

[Mike Bird]

Well, if that's the case, Tom, that the biblical word for faith, pistis and pistuo, is far more richer and deeper than mere belief and ascent. It includes things like faith, working through love, stewardship, fidelity to God. Should we at least on some occasions use that word allegiance? You used that word before. And if we're having faith towards Jesus as Lord, should we conceive of this as a type of allegiance that then puts on obligations of us to behave in certain ways, at least on some occasions use that type of language.

[Tom Wright]

Oh, yes, to be sure. And there's much, much more that could be said and that you and I have both written books about this. But certainly allegiance is a good word. It's I am going to be loyal to Jesus, and because I am loyal to Jesus, I have to be living in the way I have to be a beatitude person. I have to be a Sermon on the Mount person. All the other things that Jesus is saying about this is what the kingdom of God is supp to be looking like. That's the sort of person I have to be. And this is nothing whatever to do with being saved by works. Basically the worry about salvation by works comes from the 16th century where Luther and Calvin and their colleagues quite rightly looked at the medieval church and saw this kind of ladder of merit that you could acquire. And they said, no, absolutely not. God loves you, believe in Jesus, you're part of the family, your sins are forgiven. That's it. And of course I, I totally affirm that. But that question about how you get to heaven and how what you do in the present relates to that needs to be recalibrated in terms of an entire biblical theology of new creation.

[Mike Bird]

That's exactly right. Well, I mean, we could talk more about the nature of faith. And we have another question that does talk about this a little bit. It's from Jaden Johnson in Wichita Falls in the United States. And this is about the continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament on things like salvation. And this is what he says. Hey Tom, I absolutely love the team up with Mike Bird this season. I'm glad too. Glad I finally got some love in there as well. He says, I'm currently reading the New Testament in its world and it is such a great resource. My question is this. How do we merge the Old Testament view of salvation with the New Testament understanding of being saved through Christ? I often hear phrases like David and the other prophets were saved because they refer to God's salvation, like in the Psalms, when in context they were just being delivered from real time, non spiritual circumstances. It seems like believers I know are inappropriately reading New Testament ideas and terms into the Old Testament in an anachronistic way. Thank you both for your amazing scholarship and gifts to the body of Christ. Well, thank you, Jaden, for such warm language, but that is a good question, Tom. Do we expect Old Testament saints, believers to be proto Christians? And you know, if the New Testament is based on the Old Testament, should our idea of salvation at least have some continuity with what you find in the Old? And let's face it, I mean, salvation in the book of Isaiah or Malachi or the Epistle of Jude and the Gospel of John, they're not always saying the same thing about what people are saved from. So is it possible to have a single comprehensive idea of salvation?

[Tom Wright]

It's a great question and thanks, Jayden. And I think maybe 40 or 50 years ago, I would have been exactly where you are, looking at the way the Old Testament used the language of salvation and saying to myself, yes, yes, yes, but that is all very this worldly. And it's all about the family and the land and the people of Israel being saved from the Romans or the Syrians or the Persians or whoever. But of course, we have a different theology of salvation, namely the New Testament one about going to heaven. And over the years, this is the big change that has come upon my reading and many other people's reading of the whole Bible, that the whole Bible is the whole Bible and the New Testament rests firmly on the foundations which are there in the Old Testament. So I want to put the question the other way around. You're saying, well, are we not inappropriately reading New Testament ideas and terms into the Old Testament? I want to say, no, we're inappropriately failing to read the Old Testament language of God's care for the whole world and his people in the New Testament. And so we have imported much later, 3rd, 4th, 5th and subsequent century Platonic language into the New Testament. And so what we've resulted in is a situation where most Western Christians, and I know this because I lived this life, think that the Old Testament has this, this worldly salvation. Then the New Testament has an otherworldly salvation, and then the early church takes it away from there. And then all that you're left with in the Old Testament is some typology, some patterns, some miscellaneous reading strategies, getting something spiritual out of this Old Testament book, which doesn't seem to be so very spiritual after all. And I want to say that's entirely the wrong way around. The real break comes in the third and fourth and fifth centuries and then on into the high Middle Ages when the arrival of Neoplatonism particularly, and the idea of the lonely soul making its way up to God in heaven, that becomes gradually, gradually, gradually taking over in the early church from the very. This worldly view in the New Testament. I remember being rock back on my heels as a student when I read in a passage in Luke about Jesus saying, your faith has saved you when he's just healed somebody physically. And I was thinking, oh dear, Luke seems to think that salvation has got something to do with bodies. And I just see Luke saying, well, of course salvation has got something to do with bodies, because salvation is about the goodness of God's creation and God's rescue of the good creation from decay, from illness, from suffering, and ultimately from death itself. So that I want to say we need to reread the whole thing differently because of course there is a transition from Old to New Testament, but particularly that transition is about the Old Testament seen as the prototype where this land is the image for God's claim on the whole world. And this people is the image for God's claim on all peoples. And what we see in the New Testament in precisely the Gentile mission is the fulfillment of the promises to Abraham and David. And through Isaiah and the Psalms about one day there will come a time when God does for Israel what he's going to do for Israel. Then the whole world will come in on the blessing and that won't be, oh, then the whole world will discover that what matters is going to heaven when you die and we can forget this world. No, the whole world needs to hear the transformative news of Jesus and his new creation. So that I wanna say the inappropriateness is the whole Western tradition where we've screened out what is basically the Old Testament stuff. Because face it, those promises in Isaiah and Malachi and so on are precisely the promises with which Mark's Gospel, for instance, opens. These are the things which were promised and now they've arrived in Jesus. And when Jesus is faced with John the Baptist's question in Matthew chapter 11, are you the one who is to come or should we look for another? Jesus says, just check out Isaiah 30, tell me what you're looking at on the street here. And then you'll see that actually this is what God always said he would do. And it's in our Western language, very visible, worldly, very physical. Of course, the resurrection inaugurates a new physicality, a transformed world. It isn't just making the present world slightly better, healing a few people here and there, it's a prop. But those are the advanced signs of the new creation in which the Old Testament will be fulfilled through the great actions which center the New Testament.

[Mike Bird]

Yeah, I think it's important to maintain that promise fulfillment perspective that helps you get a proper understanding of the continuities there is between the Old and the New. Because the New Testament is the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises on salvation. Well, that's probably a good, good point to take a break on, but don't go away because we've got a good question, a couple of good questions on a topic I love. Does the Olivet Discourse of Mark 13 refer to the Second Coming or to the destruction of Jerusalem? That's what we're going to tackle after the break.

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[Tom Wright]

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[Mike Bird]

Well, welcome back and you're listening to the Ask and to your Write Anything podcast. Let's get into a question about Jesus and the Gospels. Did Jesus ever speak explicitly of his second coming? That's the question we're tackling. We've got a question here from Drew Leonard from Elizabethan in Tennessee in the usa. And Drew asks, does Jesus in the Gospels ever speak of a second coming event that is yet in our future? Or do the writers Matthew, Mark, Luke and John impose this later understanding onto such a text? Is there a difference between the Synoptics and John's Gospel in this regard? In the Gospels, is Jesus exclusively concerned with the fall of Jerusalem as the impending judgment? Or are there texts where an end time kind of event is in view by Jesus? Now, next to Drew's question, we have a very similar one from Ryan Cataldo who asks which New Testament texts in your view clearly refer to the future second coming rather than the events of 70 CE and how do they challenge full preterism? For those who don't know, preterism is the view that a lot of the promises about Jesus's return were already fulfilled in the first century. And Ryan asks, which text do you think refer to the Second Coming and not simply to Jerusalem's fall in 70 CE? And on what basis do you make that distinction, given all the apocalyptic language in the New Testament can seem to apply to the events surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple? Now, Tom, I like this question because I've been teaching on the Gospel of Luke at Ridley College. I've got a wonderful group of students in my Luke class, and we got to Luke 21, and I set before them the view that Luke 21, the Olivet discourse, is pretty much concerned, I think, exclusively with the events of 70 AD and the sacking of Jerusalem and the destruction of. Of the Temple. And I think the same goes in Mark's Gospel. I think things might be a tad more complex with Matthew, since Matthew's got, you know, a lot more material in there. But when I think of the Olivet discourse, I think of 70 AD not the return of Jesus, the return of Jesus. I would go to 1 Thessalonians or the Book of Revelation, those sorts of places.

[Tom Wright]

But.

[Mike Bird]

But, Tom, your view of Mark 13 has been a thing where people have just rolled their eyes and said, look, I was with NT Wright until he got to Mark 13, until he got to Luke 21. Because some people just cannot imagine that the Olivet discourse is about anything other than the second coming. Tom, can you explain your view of the Olivet discourse and what Jesus words there mean?

[Tom Wright]

Yeah, thanks, Mike. And I'd love to be a fly on the wall in your Luke 21 class. And basically you and I are very much on the same page there. And it seems to me I'm here with my own teacher, George Caird. I didn't agree with George about everything, but in his commentary on Luke, it's one of those books which it's quite short, but a lot of wisdom packed into the short pages and paragraphs. And Caird says of Luke 21 that it's quite clear that this whole chapter is about the fall of Jerusalem. And it's also clear that Luke did not invent this. In other words, that Luke is tracking with Mark 13 and Luke is from time to time explaining bits of Mark 13 because his readers may not get it. For instance, when in Mark 13 we have when you see the abomination of desolation standing where it should not. Brackets let the reader understand. Luke knows that his readers won't understand that, so he cashes it out. When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies. And it makes sense, because in Matthew, in Mark and in Luke, the discourse begins with Jesus saying, yep, you see all these stones, the temple, the whole lot's going to come down. And the disciples saying, when is this going to happen and how will we know? So reading the chapter as a whole and assuming that the Gospel writers are not stupid in their editorial practices, that's the question at the beginning, and that's what we should expect the answer to be. Of course, in Matthew we also have the secondary question. And the question then is, is it the same question put differently, or is it a different question? What will be the signs of your coming and the close of the age? The trouble with the word coming is that in English, coming tends to mean arrival from elsewhere. But in Greek the verb can mean coming or. And I remember ages ago when I was teaching one time at Regent College, Vancouver, and I expounded this passage in terms of the Son of Man coming on the clouds upwards, not downwards. That's the crucial thing. And an angry young man, turned out to be a Baptist, came up to me afterwards and said, in my Bible it says he's coming. And I said, sorry, the Greek is a cominon, which could mean coming or going. And he said, well, now I don't know whether I'm coming or going. And I said, fine, that's a good place to be. Now let's talk about the actual text. And. And there I would say the crucial thing is how to read Daniel chapter 7, because Jesus is emphatically referring to Daniel 7 when the Son of Man is coming on the clouds, and in Daniel 7 he is coming, being exalted to sit on the throne beside the ancient of days. And it's quite clear in the Gospels that when they allude to that passage in Daniel, this is about Jesus exaltation in Matthew 28, the final scene, about Jesus saying, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. That is a direct echo of Daniel chapter 7, where the son of man is the one who is now enthroned as lord. So Daniel 7 becomes a kind of catch all for Jesus being vindicated and exalted. So when Jesus says to Caiaphas, you will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds and, and sitting at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven doesn't mean that Caiaphas will one day look out of the window and see Jesus floating downwards on a cloud. It means you will see the fulfillment of Daniel 7 when I am vindicated. And it's Jesus way of biblically saying God will vindicate me, which then cashes out as resurrection and ascension. And also since that whole discourse with Caiaphas, which is very close up with Mark 13 is about Jesus promise that he would destroy the temple and rebuild it, and that's what's getting him into trouble. Jesus saying about his own vindication goes with his prediction of the destruction of the temple. We have, in normal western readings we've separated those out as though they're two quite different things, but they're not so much of the gospel as in John's Gospel is about Jesus as the new temple. He spoke of the temple, temple of his body. Jesus is the temple. And when Jesus is vindicated, the temple is under judgment. So the destruction of the temple is the sign of the vindication of Jesus as a true prophet, as the Messiah, as the one who brought heaven and earth together as the temple was supposed to do. So all that to say, yes, it's possible that in Matthew 24 and particularly 25 there are longer range visions. This is how prophecy often, often works, that you've got an immediate fulfillment, which is the close up thing. And then because of the way the language works, it can refer to something else much further out. In addition, I'm reminded of the house where my wife and I are moving part of the time in the Outer Hebrides. We can see an island the other side of the bay. But if you look through binoculars, you can see another mountain peeping up behind. And so we could say, yeah, we got a great view of Tarancee, the island the other side of the bay. But actually if you look closely, there's something else beyond. Sometimes I think particularly in Matthew, you get that feeling. And for instance in Matthew 19, when Jesus is assuring the disciples that all will be well with them in the new creation, Jesus says in the new creation, in the palingenesia, in the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on the throne of his glory, in other words, Jesus envisages the time when he is ascended and then this leading to the opening up of the whole new creation, both in the present and in the future. And of course in John's Gospel, right at the very end we have Jesus saying to Peter, apropos, the beloved disciple, if it is my will that he remains until I come, what is that to you? You follow me. So there are Those little hints. But face it, Jesus disciples during his lifetime, they hadn't even got their heads round his assurance that he was going to be killed, never mind that he was going to be raised from the dead. The idea that he would still be trying to explain that while saying, oh, and by the way, one day I'll be back as well, that just makes little sense to me. Anyway, so, so. But the idea that it was all finished with AD 70, in a sense it's the right mistake to make because AD 70 was decisive and climactic. But that then opens up a new world in which the promises in the Thessalonian letters and many other passages and in Acts 1, this same Jesus will come as you saw him go. And Philippians 3, from heaven we await the Savior, the Lord, the King, Jesus. These promises are yet to be fulfilled. And A.D. 70 was Jesus vindication. But the final day of full new creation, new heavens and new earth is yet to come. Mike, I hope that agrees with what you've been telling your students.

[Mike Bird]

It agrees. And I hope my Luke class is listening because the approach I took Tom was very similar. I start off with Jesus before Caiaphas. So this is like, like Mark 14:62 and its parallels in Luke 22 and Matthew 27 where Caiaphas asked Jesus, are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One? And Jesus says, I am. And you will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with the much glory with the angels. And what's important if you read this synoptically, if you put the Mark and Version and the Matthew and Luke together. So you get out your Logos Bible software and, and get out the synopsis and put them all together. It's interesting. In Matthew and Luke, Jesus says to Caiaphas, from now on, you will see. Now that phrase from now on really messes with people's heads. He's like, hang on. But I thought this was a second coming prediction. How can Jesus say from now on, you'll see, because we're involved in the very process this of Jesus's exaltation. When Caiaphas gets Jesus up on a cross, that's not his defeat. That is the beginning of the exaltation of the Messiah, what John calls his very glory. Now in light of that, then I go back, I point out that the disciples begin the whole thing by asking a question. You know, what beautiful stones, what a wonderful temple we have. And Jesus says, you know, all this lot, no, not one stone is going to be left one another. And Jesus doesn't Change topic. Talking about his second coming. The whole discourse is then about the temple. And the clue of that is the this generation has to be the one he's talking to. Because there's no point saying this generation who is alive will be the generation who sees it, because that's a tautology. He's talking about this generation. And Mark in particular, particular brackets it off with a reference to the fig tree, which is another prophetic portent about the temple's destruction. Now, I'm still having arguments with my students about this, and every week I'm out there going, this generation or which part of from now on did you not understand? So there's a few students who are still holdouts. I'm praying for them that they will have their minds enlightened. But a few are still steadfast that this has to be in some way a second coming text.

[Tom Wright]

Yeah. And it's a fascinating moment, actually, because at this point, the older liberalism of people like Albert Schweitzer, who said that Jesus and his followers expected the end of the world, joins forces with the fundamentalism that says we are waiting for the Rapture and the Second Coming and all that's those end times theories. And they kind of reinforce one another. But Schweitzer simply got it wrong. Wrong. He was channeling Nietzsche and Wagner all about the end of the world, and so wanted to see end of the world ideas in the New Testament. And Schweitzer was using some of the apocalyptic texts like 4th Ezra and Tubaruch, but he didn't try to understand what they would have meant within the first century Judean world. He was just assuming that this was about the end of everything, because that was the philosophical world that Schweitzer inhabited from Schopenhauer through Nietzsche and as I say, in Wagner's operas, which Schweitzer absolutely loved. And that has led a whole generation astray, a whole century of scholarship astray. And many people have wanted to think that Schweitzer was right because that means, oh well, Jesus was wrong about that. So he was probably wrong about quite a lot of other things as well. And that's been a very popular theme. And that has kind of accidentally joined forces round the back with the fundamentalists who say, oh, the second coming is the big thing. And so that's what we're waiting for now. And somehow we have to dismantle those double misunderstandings in order to let the true kingdom message through the middle.

[Mike Bird]

Exactly. So while Mark 3 may not be about the end of the world. Alas, this is the end of our episode. You've been joining us at Ask nt Write Anything. Hey look, Premiere puts out some great other shows, so don't forget the unbelievable podcast and other great things as well. Check out their other material elsewhere. So it's Farewell from us. I'm Mike Bird at Ridley College and.

[Tom Wright]

It'S farewell from I'm Tom Wright in.

[Mike Bird]

Oxford and we wish you every blessing and we'll see you on the next episode of Ask Anti Wright.

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