← Ask NT Wright Anything
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- [00:02]
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Mike Bird
Hello and welcome to the Ask NT Write Anything podcast, the show where we look at Jesus, the Bible and the life of faith, answering your questions on those areas. I'm Mike Bird from Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia, and of course I'm joined.
- [01:28]
Tom Wright
By I'm Tom Wright from Oxford in England.
- [01:32]
Mike Bird
Tom, we've got the questions coming this week. We have a plethora of questions in the areas of Christian nationalism. Man, that keeps coming up. Christian nationalism, question about the Bible, how could it be the word of God and the word of people? And a very juicy one on penal substitutionary atonement. That's a big, juicy topic. So let's get into our first question. The first one is from Simon Brook, and this is what he says. Tom, I live in the USA and am heartbroken and shocked that a majority of the evangelicals here support a Christian nationalism that seems antithetical to Christ's teachings. What has happened and what can be done best? Simon Brook Tom, you've been visiting America a fair bit last year and this year as well, and you've done a number of events where this sort of thing has been the topic of the day, where people are increasingly asking you with theological answers to these political questions.
- [02:42]
Tom Wright
What's your response to Silent yeah, it's a great question and I do meet this question a lot. I have obviously visited the United States many, many times over the last 60 years, and I've actually lived there a couple of times when I've had sabbaticals here and there. And if it isn't too much of a cliche, some of my best friends are Americans. So I am in touch with quite a lot that's going on there. And I have to say that right now the news from America makes headlines in Britain more than our own local political. Our own local political stuff looks quite flat by comparison with all the same in Australia. And we're all kind of watching. It's like an extraordinary blend of, oh, this might affect us. And in fact, it already does affect us in a variety of ways, with tariffs and the value of the dollar and all that. But also it's like watching a strange movie where you're not quite sure what crazy things the characters are going to get up to next. And so all of that's buzzing on at the moment. And I'm very much aware that many people who think of themselves as American evangelicals have been almost unquestioning Trump supporters from way back, sometimes from, oh, long before his first election to the presidency. And I think there are many things there which people in Britain certainly, and perhaps elsewhere outside America, don't really understand about the American subcultures and why the culture wars have gone on in the way they have. For the quick. Well, not that quick guide, read James Davison Hunter's original book on culture wars from nearly 30 years ago and his recent one, Democracy and Solidarity, which analyzes in great detail how in America certain things became both thinkable and then seemingly mandatory. I think one of the things to say right off the top is that the word evangelical means something different when you cross over the Atlantic in Britain. Evangelical basically means what it meant when I was a kid, which was somebody who believes firmly in the authority of scripture and the supremacy and authority of Scripture, and somebody who believes firmly in the death of Jesus, Jesus Christ in our place on our behalf, to save us from our sins. Those were the defining characteristics of an evangelical. And it's interesting that those who preached that most fervently when I was young, people like John Stott, also combined that with a strong sense of social justice and a passion for the poor and a passion for work in the Third World and for education and medicine and so on. So there was no incompatibility between being that sort of an evangelical and being what would today be seen as a dangerously half left, at least agenda, maybe on the way to being a WOKE agenda, so called. And so people looking from a point of view where the WOKE agenda has been riding roughshod over all kinds of things for a long time, have looked to a sort of traditional evangelicalism as a bastion against that. Obviously, in America, the issue of abortion has been a major one. There are many Christians, both evangelical and Roman Catholic, who for whom abortion has been the defining issue so basically, Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election when she said she was gonna extend abortion rights, so called. And when it was clear that people were saying, okay, then we cannot possibly vote for you, so we've gotta go vote for the other guy to keep you out. And that has kind of gone on from there with some of the key issues to do with the so called woke agenda, whether it's about gay rights or trans rights or whatever, and all about the silly pronouns and so on, and the whole business of equality and diversity and so on and inclusion, that that's been seen as a shibboleth of the left and people don't like it. So here is Trump saying, we're gonna do it differently. Thank you very much. The problem is that these are not the only alternatives. That there has to be more than one, indeed middle way or different way between the woke agenda on the one hand and Christian nationalism or Trumpism on the other. And there are all sorts of ways there where, Mike, as you and I have written in our joint book, Jesus and the Powers, where the wisdom would go with a kind of liberal social democracy. Liberal not in the sense of throwing out all old values, but in the sense of being open to having a community in which we respect and value all human beings as what they are and who they. They are, but without, in other words, imposing one set of values or religions on the whole community while allowing for freedom of expression and particularly of critique. Because the critique needs to come at different angles. There are some things about the American left that I want to critique strongly, some things about the American right that I want to critique strongly. At the moment, it seems impossible to do that, and we need to go back and rethink the whole thing. And I would say to anyone who thinks thinks of themselves as an American evangelical, please actually study what the Bible actually says about politics, about power, about people, about the church's task to critique, to hold the mirror up to power, et cetera. But in order to understand where all this came from, there's several different strands. There was a book recently published on the history of dispensationalism in America that has been enormously important in a way that hasn't been true in most other parts of the world, with the idea that because we have this particular view of the end times and of the Rapture and of what's gonna happen with Armageddon and the state of Israel and so on, there are different views within that, but broadly, that whole agenda has been seen to be, well, America is God's bastion to support Israel and to make the world the place where, when Jesus comes again, all will be well. And that I see as one misunderstanding on top of another, on top of another. And their biblical misunderstandings, these are traditional ways of misreading Scripture. And we need to deconstruct that in order to reconstruct a wise Christian biblical understanding which can take on the excesses, particularly of the idea that any one nation today could be a Christian nation, therefore needing to be propped up in that way. That way lies ruin. That's a way that different societies have tried to go in times past, and it's been designed. So look at the history of what calls itself evangelicalism, and look at how it's been shaped by different American cultural movements, which then see Donald Trump as the natural heir to their particular way of doing things. And then let's apply to all sides the critique of the gospel itself. This could run and run, but that's where I would start. Mike, you probably got some insights on this as well. I'm sure you have.
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Mike Bird
Yeah. I mean, the thing I would want to emphasize is all politics is subliminal theology. Whenever we do politics, there is an implicit theology of what is the ultimate power. Does it rest in God? Does it rest in the sword? Does it rest in the dictates of the proletariat? Or wherever you think it goes. All politics has a theological component, and we've got to make sure that our own theology can never be twisted and contorted, that it can go in such a direction that it can support evil. And, you know, I mean, I understand why a lot of people voted for Trump. I've met, you know, Uber drivers who were either black or Hispanic Americans. They voted for Trump. And I understand the reasons why. It's a disenfranchisement with the establishment and even with the center left. But I just find it frustrating that even when Trump is doing something that I think is on policy matters, right, he seems to do it in the most aggressive and nasty way possible. And that's just what I find baffling. He has this need to turn friends into enemies, to satisfy some sort of need to be the guy swinging the biggest stick around. And instead of being a leader through friendship and partnership, it's the exercise of power through threats, intimidation, and grievance, which is not going to be conducive to. To a good civil order in America or a good international order. So I think Christians should test all things, hold onto that, which is true, whether that's coming for Trump or any other political actor in the United States.
- [11:23]
Tom Wright
Absolutely. I'm obviously totally with you.
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Mike Bird
Well, hopefully that answers your question, Simon. But now, Tom, we've got another question on the Bible. So we're getting away from politics going to the Bible. This is from Honest Rodriguez, and he's got this question. He says, Dear Professor Wright, I deeply appreciate your work and the way you engage with theology and scripture. I have a question that has been on my mind regarding the way Christians refer to the Bible as the Word of God. Having grown up in the evangelical tradition, I am fully aware, I fully affirm that Scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit. However, I also recognize that the Bible contains words spoken by different people, including humans, adversaries, even misguided voices, not just direct statements from God. Given this, I wonder whether it is theologically precise or even helpful to refer to the Bible as the Word of God. Additionally, I find it concerning when this phrase is used in ways that can be manipulative, where people present their interpretations or specific passages as God's Word in order to silence others or to assert authority over them. While I believe Scripture carries divine wisdom and inspiration, I also see the potential danger in treating every word within it as a direct statement from God without a context. I would love to hear your thoughts on why Christians use this phrase and whether you believe it is correct or the best way to describe Scripture. How do you see the relationship between Jesus as the Word made flesh and the Bible as the inspired witness to God's revelation? Thank you for your time and insight. Best regards, Honest Rodriguez. That's. Well, Tom, that's a loaded question. There's a few there. Is the Bible God's word, or is it merely people's own words about God? Then you've got the danger. When people preach the authority of the text, they mean the authority of their own interpretation. And where do we put Jesus in relation to the Bible? Do we believe in the Bible the same way we believe in Jesus? There's a lot there to unpack.
- [13:48]
Tom Wright
Those are super questions, and thank you very much. Onus and the way you draw it together at the end is really the nub of it. What's the relationship between Jesus as the Word made flesh and the Bible as the witness? Is that the phrase you want, the witness to God's revelation? Lots of theologians have spoken like that, but we have to be careful in case we take, say, Jeremiah saying thus says the Lord, and translate that down into simply thus says Jeremiah. In other words, it's a kind of a lesser thing. A lot of the Bible Claims to be prophecy. Now, prophecy was a difficult concept in the Old Testament world. I think it's a difficult concept in the New Testament world because people were aware in the Old Testament of false prophecy and of the need to test prophets and to see whether in fact they're genuine or not and so on. That's jumping into the middle of the question. I wanna say, go to the end of Matthew 28. And there the risen Jesus says to the disciples, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples. He doesn't say, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to the books. You chaps are gonna go off and write now. So already we've got the Bible itself bearing w to Jesus saying about his own authority. But the Bible is the book through which we read this. Now, there's a problem in the back of this, which is that for many generations and in many different Christian traditions, people have kind of assumed that if God is doing something, then humans can't have anything to do with it. Or if humans do have something to do with it, it isn't really God doing it. And that's a misunderstanding of what it means to be made in the image of God, that right from the beginning in Genesis 1 and 2, God creates humans in order to work in the world through humans. That's how God intends things to be. Now, I would say that there's an implicit doctrine of the Trinity behind that, that God creates humans in his own image so that he can himself become part of his own creation by becoming human and then by breathing his own spirit into human nostrils so that it's through his own guiding and leading that humans do the human things. So we've tended to say, oh, if it's the word of God, then it can't be the word of humans. Or if we discover that, oh, Jeremiah has a particular tone of voice, or Paul seemed to have had indigestion when he wrote this bit or whatever, therefore it can't be the word of God anymore. And I think Jeremiah would say, no, no, take it in large and you'll see that Jeremiah's laments, Jeremiah's prophecies in a time of distress. They are part of the groaning of all creation, part of the groaning of all Israel. And Paul would say, put the picture together. Romans 8. These are part of the groan of God himself, the God who by the Spirit inspires prophecy. So we need to problematize the either or of Is it the word of God or is it the human word? And Then granted that there are many complexities and puzzles and problems about the Bible, one of which would be, take the book of Job. If you open the book of Job at random, you could have a whole chapter and you say, this is the word of the Lord. And then you discover, oh no, this is what one of Job's so called comforters said. And then the text taken as a whole refutes what that particular person was saying. So you can have whole entire chapters of the Bible which are, if you like speech in character, the speech is put into the mouths of people who the text will then tell us are mistaken and out of line. And that goes on in a variety of ways. So the more I have studied the Bible, particularly I'm a New Testament scholar, as Mike himself is, the more I have seen the different characteristics of, say, Luke or the author of Hebrews or the book of Revelation. These are very different books written by very different people. And each of the four Gospels is a very different product in a different style and so on. Does that mean that somehow they're not the word of God? No, it means that Jesus has delegated his authority through the Spirit to the apostles who are able to explain his story. And what it means, how it links up with and fulfills the story of Israel, how it launches the new creation for Jew and Gentile alike, how it invites people to take part in that. So that then when we think of it dynamically like that, the Word of God is a power which is going out and doing things. It isn't something which we can put on a workbench and analyze it and say, well, this is the word of God. But that bit was written by later redactors, so we can discount that or whatever. People have become a bit too analytic about that kind of thing. And I think I want to say most emphatically the whole Bible read as a whole, and each book read as a whole, and each larger argument or psalm or whatever read as a whole. That is word from God for God's people. It doesn't absolve us from the task of interpreting and understanding it. You know, there are many of the Psalms which it looks as though they're advocating the coming king to do violence to the nations. But in the New Testament, the coming king, as indeed in some other Psalms, is the one who brings peace and justice and hope to the nations. How do we put that together? Only within a whole reading of the whole Scripture. So yes, Christians do refer to the Bible as the Word of God, but that is actually a bit misleading. Because all authority belongs to God. God has delegated it according to Jesus himself, to Jesus. Insofar as the Bible possesses authority, it is God's authority through Jesus, through the Holy Spirit speaking in and through the Scriptures which were written by human beings, sometimes completely unaware perhaps, that what they were writing was going to be part of the Holy Book. But often, I think, more aware than we might imagine that what they were doing did carry God's authority. Paul says at one point, if anyone is speaking by the Spirit, they must acknowledge that what I'm writing, I'm writing with God's authority. People sometimes say the New Testament writers didn't think they were writing Scripture. Well, in some ways I think they did. Anyone who starts a book within the beginning, echoing Genesis 1 is making a huge claim. And when they then tell the story of creation and new creation, it looks as though John's Gospel, I'm talking about, of course, it looks as though they are writing in such a way as to guide the church into the world where the old creation has done its worst, God has dealt with it, and now a new creation is being launched. So I think we need to problematize both the concept of the word of God and the either or of God or humans. When we do that, we find a rich world into which the Bible invites us and says, come on, this is your world. If you're a Jesus follower, this book belongs to you. Get on and soak yourself in it and soak it in your personality as well. And then pray for wisdom, both to understand it and particularly to live by it.
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Mike Bird
That's good advice, Tom. Tomorrow at chapel at Ridley College, I'm preaching on Acts 20, Paul's farewell speech to the Ephesian elders at Miletus, where he talks about how he testified to the Gospel of God's grace. And he said before the church, the whole council of God. So that's a good way of summarying up a certain type of teaching ministry. You're not teaching on the teachings of other people. You're setting forth the plan and purposes of God as we have them in Holy Scripture. That's a good way to take it away.
- [21:27]
Tom Wright
That's great.
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Mike Bird
Well, we're going to have a break, and when we come back, we're going to be back with a ripper of a question on penal substitutionary atonement. So don't go too far away. We'll be back after these messages.
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- [24:07]
Mike Bird
And we are back at Time. One topic of perennial debate is the meaning of Jesus's death, the atonement. And there's a particular model of atonement that's very popular in evangelical churches called penal substitutionary atonement. And some people really, really like it and some people really, really hate it. And we have a very good question today from a lady called Rachel Stanton and she asked this Professor Wright, I am blessed with a precious nine year old granddaughter and am the only one giving her relig. We read Bible stories and pray together and I've helped her memorize the 23rd Psalm and the Beatitudes. I often talk to her about Jesus. Wonderful plan to set all things right and how we can be Part of it. I'm unsure though, how to communicate the concept of substitutionary atonement. I want to present orthodox Christianity, but I just can't bring myself to tell a nine year old girl that she deserves the horrific violent punishment Jesus received. Is there a better way to teach this doctrine to children? Oh my. Well, I mean, this has got a lot in it. How do you teach basic theology to children? How do you do that as a responsible parent? Tom, what's your word for Rachel?
- [25:31]
Tom Wright
Well, I very much understand that having had four children and now six grandchildren and having written a children's Bible, I'm very much alive to the shape of that question and particularly to the dynamic which actually goes out beyond nine year olds as well, that many people who take the Alpha course say, well, one week we had this person tell us we're all terrible sinners and we deserve to burn forever in hell. And we just about got our heads around that. And then we went back the next week and said, well, God had done that to Jesus instead, so that's all right. And they don't really understand what on earth is going on. And the biblical basis for saying it like that seems to be a bit slim and does seem to be ignoring some other bits which are there. I would say before any misunderstandings occur, there is a biblical doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement, if you want to see where it is. Romans 8:1:4 is definitely about the death of Jesus as penal and as substitutionary and as atoning. But Romans 8:1:4 means what it means within the context of Romans 7 and 8, which is not the context of the usual presentation, which is, I'm a wicked sinner, my soul needs to get to heaven, but it can't because of my sin. Therefore Jesus comes along and takes my place, and now it's all right. That is the wrong narrative, however popular it has been, and it's at that level of what is the big narrative and how does the death of Jesus fit into that big narrative? That's the key thing. We need to take several steps back. And I would go to two places in particular. One is Jesus saying in John chapter 12, as he looks ahead with awe and anxiety in the text, looks ahead to his own death and says, now is the judgment of this world. Now is the ruler of this world cast out, and if I'm lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself. In other words, Jesus sees his coming death as the victory over the dark powers. But then as John's Gospel goes forward, the way this victory is accomplished is by Jesus taking the place of saying, barabbas, Barabbas goes free. And John says, barabbas was a robber. He was a laestes in Greek. And it's as though we've got a victory through substitution woven into the narrative of the text. We have similar things in Matthew, Mark and Luke as well. But then the other thing to remember is that when Jesus wanted to explain to his followers what his death was all about, he didn't give them a theory, he gave them a meal. The meal, the breaking of bread, the pouring of wine, the sense of somehow Jesus death profiting me the way that food and drink profit me. And somehow Jesus coming to be my source of life, despite the fact of all the things that have gone wrong in my life and my world. This is, if you like, the grid of interpretation that Jesus wanted to give to his people. And it was a Passover meal, which is about God rescuing his people from wicked. Now we can then expand that to say, well, sometimes we collude with the wicked oppression, sometimes we find ourselves to be part of that, and God rescues us from the wickedness inside our own selves. So that I want to have the victory motif, the exodus motif, front and center. The problem comes that that whole narrative of how does my soul get to heaven? Is the wrong question. That was a medieval question. The great 16th century reformers, in emphasizing penal substit, were trying to say, actually, we do not have to go through purgatory. We do not have to worry about that God has saved us by punishing Jesus. The trouble is, when you really then push that, you distort several passages of scripture. And as I say in my book, the Day the Revolution Began, we have Platonized our eschatology, that is to say, the idea of a soul going to heaven as the ultimate summum bonum, instead of having God coming to dwell in the new heavens and new earth. Therefore, we have moralized the way we look at humans, our anthropology, by saying that the only thing that matters is God setting me a moral exam which I fail, and then what's he gonna do? And the results of doing it like that is that we have actually turned our view of salvation and how God achieves it into the pagan model. Because it's in the old Greek myths that you find angry gods demanding that somebody be killed so that a battle can be won or the wind will bl in the right direction or whatever it is. And there's a real danger in colluding with that. So I have argued strongly against that, some people have misunderstood my arguments as though they are saying that there isn't such a thing as penal substitution. There is, but it occurs within the context of God's victory over evil. God defeats evil on the cross, and the way he does it is by Jesus taking all the evil, including evil, that has welled up inside ourselves and drawing it onto himself. And I would say to anyone teaching a nun or anyone the story of the Bible, read the story of the Gospels and see how all the evil in the world seems to concentrate. Jesus announces the kingdom of God and immediately there are people plotting against him. There are wicked people screaming at him in the synagogue. There are all sorts of things, bad things happening. It's as though he's like a magnet that draws all that evil, all that sludge, all that nasty stuff in the world onto himself and he dies under the weight of that in order that new creation can happen and that we grateful sinners can then find our way into that new creation. So that's how I would do it. It's a difficult, huge topic, but I hope that that's a way that would make sense even for a small child Jesus. The story of Jesus being about all the evil in the world and of course God himself coming in the person of his son. This is not God doing it to somebody else. It is God himself coming. That's why you need the doctrine of the TR in order to make sense of any theory of atonement, that God himself takes the evil of the world onto himself in order to deal with it and make new creation out the other side.
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Mike Bird
Yeah, I think you're right, Tom. Penal substitutionary atonement is something that is in essence correct, but if you view it transactionally, it can easily be distorted or abused. And so it's got to be told within a biblical theology framework of, you know, creation fallen and renewed, the Exodus, the sacrificial system we get from the Old Testament, and of course the great victory that comes in the kingdom of God and the person of Christ. That said, I mean, the one thing that was going through my mind was, what do you think of CS CS Lewis? The tales of Narnia, the story of Aslan, who takes the penalty of Edmund upon himself. Do you find that, Is that a good analogy to share with kids? Take them to a bit of lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? Or is there something still lacking with good old CS Lewis?
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Tom Wright
I think 9 year olds, 10 year olds can get hold of the lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. They can understand something of that. It is dangerous if one simply says there it is. That's what the atonement is all about. Because quite apart from anything else, I think it's Edmund in the story. He's the one who's betrayed them. And so Aslan takes his punishment about Peter and Susan and Lucy, the other three children. Did they not do anything wrong? I mean, so it's only one flash of insight, but it does have a sense of the horror and darkness which I think is right there in the text. I mean, Lewis is very good, as it were, on getting a Gethsemane scene into that picture, but you can't construct a whole theology out of that book, nor, I think, would Lewis want you to.
- [33:38]
Mike Bird
That's fair enough. Fair enough. Well, we hope that answers your question, Rachel. That's all we have time for today. But remember, we really do want to hear more questions. And that penal substitutionary one, that's not going to go away. I think we'll cover that again maybe in a bonus episode where we can go down really deep into that topic. I think we'll definitely get our teeth into into that question one day tomorrow. But anyway, I'm Mike Bird and you've.
- [34:05]
Tom Wright
Been joined with and I'm Tom Wright.
- [34:08]
Mike Bird
And you've been listening to the Ask NT Wright Anything podcast. God bless you and we look forward to seeing you on the next episode.
- [34:39]
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