← Ask NT Wright Anything
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, everyone, Mike Bird here. Just a quick heads up that we've got something special for our Ask nt Write Anything subscribers. It's our Halloween special bonus episode where Tom and I talk about all things spooky, spiritual and biblical, from ghosts in the afterlife to what Christians should make of Halloween. If you've not yet taken the plunge, become a subscriber today on Apple Podcasts or by heading to the bonus tab@askntirright.com if you put in the code add 10, you will get 10% off your ask NT Write Anything subscription.
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B
Come on over.
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A
We cannot wait to see you there.
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B
Hello and welcome to the Ask nt Write Anything podcast, the program where we look at Jesus, the Bible, and the life of faith. Faith answering your questions. I'm Mike Bird from Ridley College and.
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C
I'm joined by Tom Wright from Oxford.
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B
Tom, great to be with you again.
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C
Thank you. And you.
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B
Now, I've been noticing that we get a lot of people giving us comments on our YouTube channel, Tom. I imagine you don't, Tom, but I love to go through and see the feedback so I can gauge what people are enjoying. And I'm glad to say people are definitely enjoying the show.
- [01:26]
C
That's great. Well done. I know I tend not to read comments on anything if I can avoid it, unless I suspect that I'm being scammed or something, in which case I'll go squirreling away to see if other people are saying, I think this is a scam, but hopefully this isn't a scam. And certainly your presence, Mike, is a delight, as always.
- [01:43]
B
Anyway, we've got some good questions this week. I mean, this is. It's a doozy to start off with. Should we pray for Satan then about, you know, what is paradise in the New Testament and what does it mean to live a life of purification? So our first question is from a friend in the USA who asked this. If Satan has free will, should we pray for his repentance? If Satan doesn't have free will, doesn't that mean God created evil? Well, I mean, this is interesting. Like, if. If God is not the author of evil, then how can God be the creator of Satan? Is Satan a fallen being? We should pray for their redemption? You know, what is. There's so much here is, is Satan even a person? Is it a cosmic power? Is it simply a name for the. The shade of evil in the universe? Is Satan even redeemable? I mean, these are big questions. Tom, what's your response? What's your answer?
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C
To our very interested listener, it's a Fascinating question. I fear it's generated partly by the long years of sort of sub Christian mythology in which Satan becomes personified and plays a role. I mean, if you were to read Paradise Lost, you learn a great deal about Satan, some 17th century view of Satan and what he got up to and why he was thrown down and what happened downstairs and all the rest of it, which is very interesting and lurid stuff. But I think it leads us, well astray, which the philosophical arguments that our questioner there puts, I think don't help either, because the question does Satan or does he not have free will? Implies that Satan is a personal being of some sort. Now, in my own work, as Mike, you will know and my readers will know, I treat the word satanas in the New Testament as a common noun, the accuser. So I talk about the Satan and I refer to this as it rather than he, because I'm aware that there's something very strange about the whole force and dynamic of evil in God's good creation. I mean, if you are a robust creational monotheist and if you're a biblical Christian, you should be, then you believe that the good God made the good world and God saw all that he had made and it was very good. Now, the old chestnut as to where did the snake come from in the garden? I do not have a good answer for that. I know various theologians who've advanced this and that and the other theory about that. My dear friend Michael Lloyd, who's my colleague here in Oxford and is more of an authority on the backstory of these speculations and about the possibility of a pre cosmic fall, that there were, as in Milton, et cetera, angels who God had created before he created the world as we know it. And that among those angels there were those who said, we don't like what's going on here and that there was a rebellion even at that stage. CS Lewis flirts with that a bit in the Narnia Chronicles where he's wrestling with this. But I think that the key thing to say is that the idea of evil is, technically speaking, philosophically speaking, absurd in that it shouldn't have a logical place within the structure. If you try to construct a worldview in which we have this and that and the other, and oh yes, there is this thing called evil and that kind of fits that belongs over there. And then something has gone horribly wrong. I remember a colleague of mine in Oxford years ago when we were setting the final honor school exam for the theology finals in Oxford. One of the questions that this colleague came up with was, would it be immoral to try to solve the problem of evil? And I remember being teased by that and quizzing him. The colleague in question, by the way, had the name of Rowan Williams. Might not surprise.
- [06:00]
B
You know, he dabbles in theology a bit.
- [06:03]
C
Well, quite. And of course, the point was this. If you say, well, we'll solve the problem of evil by saying, yes, this is how God has ordered the world. We've got this and we've got that and the other, and then here is the place where evil lives, then what you have done is to make God the author of evil, which would itself be a blasphemous nonsense. So the point is that evil is an intruder. It doesn't have a logical place within the structure. So that to ask questions about, a, is this thing personal? And B, if it is, does it have free will? I think is to impose much later philosophical questions onto the whole discussion. So I'm much more inclined to go with theologians like the late Walter Winck, who talk about the way in which human. Humans are given responsibility under God for the world. But humans abdicate that responsibility by worshiping and serving powers that are not God, and so then giving to those powers the thrones, authorities, dominions and powers, et cetera, giving them the power which ought to be ours as humans. And the idolatrous powers then say, thank you very much, and they then lord it over the world in a variety of ways. And that's part of what's going on when in Colossians 2, Paul says Jesus disarmed the principalities and powers, made a public example of them on the cross, so that we need to factor in all of those things rather than stand back from it and imagine a nicely ordered cosmology in which there might be this figure called Satan who just happens to be there. And the question is, do we pray for him or not? It seems to me that the idea that. That the Satan, the accuser, is a being for whom one could then pray, even to get to that question, I think, shows that we've taken a wrong turn somewhere. The Satan is the great accuser that comes all the way through to the Book of Revelation. And from time to time, the Satan leads human beings to become accusers. Classically, in John 13, the Satan entered Judas. What does that mean? Doesn't mean that he just became demon possessed in some kind of random way. It meant, quite specifically, Judas went to the chief priests and said, let me hand you over to him. Judas became the accuser. And there is that accusing force which comes through and that is satanic, not necessarily in the sense that the person has been taken over completely by the dark side, or whatever you're gonna call it. But whenever we see that, then it isn't a matter of praying that this being or whatever it is should be converted or saved or whatever. It's a matter of praying, deliver us from evil. There are dark powers still at work, and we believe that the cross has already. Jesus on the cross has already defeated them and that we need then to pray for the implementation of that defeat in the world. Not hypothesizing a mythical being and then speculating about whether we should pray for it.
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B
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a tension in that. We're told that all things, all the spiritual powers will be reconciled or pacified, but we're also told in Revelation that, you know, Satan will be thrown into the lake of fire. So is it the case of some of the rebellious powers are either quarantined permanently or annihilated, but other powers are reconciled and pacified in some sense? Do you think there's. Out of that spiritual rebellion, there's sort of two types of pacification?
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C
Yeah, I'm not sure I would want to be as analytic as that about it. I think I would want to say about the bit towards the end of Revelation that this very vivid image of the Satan being thrown into the lake of fire is a way of saying, among many other things, there will be no snake in the new garden, you know, when the new heavens and the new earth are created. Any question of a bit of residual evil sneaking across from the old into this new and disrupting it again? No, that's just not gonna be the case. Now, of course, the book of Revelation uses all this wonderful, glorious, lurid, apocalyptic language.
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B
Dragons and everything.
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C
Exactly. So we have to be very careful about imagining a literal lake of fire and a being called Satan, who you could see and identify being dropped into it. Now, God can do whatever God can do. That's fine. But it seems to me that that's the real point of it, is to say there will be no snake in the new garden.
- [10:53]
B
Okay, well, there we go. Hopefully we've answered your question there to our American Inquirer. We've got another question from Mary Bentz in Bethancourt in France. This is about paradise. Marie asks. I listened to N.T. wright and M. Bird about the afterlife and misunderstandings of heaven. That there is no such thing as souls getting to some place in heaven after death. That instead the kingdom of God would come to us on earth. However, in Luke 23:43, Jesus on the cross replied to the criminal, truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise. And Maria, what does today mean in the first place? About a timeless place, as would be paradise. And how do you understand the quoting of this passage? Where are saints going after death? Thank you. Well, that's a good question. I mean, what is the meaning of the word paradise and how is it used in the New Testament? Tom, over to you.
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C
Wow. Wow. The question of the meaning of the word paradise, but also, as our question says, the meaning of the word today there. So let's just start by saying that paradise is not of itself a Hebrew word. It's a Persian, an old Persian word. And literally it would refer to a beautiful garden, a place where people and in the Middle east, this would be very important, would go, which would be a place of streams and pools of water, a refreshing, delightful place with flowers and shrubs and trees, a place where you could go and rest and be refreshed. So the purpose of paradise is the refreshing and so on. And I think that's very clear in this particular passage, Luke 23:43, and in the couple of other passages in the New Testament where it occurs. We'll perhaps get to those in a moment. But I think the real nub of the question is to do with what do we say about life after death. And if we believe, as the New Testament teaches most clearly, in the ultimate resurrection of the body into the new heavens and new earth, then what about the in between times? I've actually just read recently a book by a colleague in America where he's talking about resurrection, but then it all comes down to going to heaven when you die. Just written back to him this last week and said, I like what you say about resurrection, but you haven't actually worked it through in terms of if you're gonna have a risen body, where is this risen body gonna be? Because you just assimilate it to the Western, basically Platonic tradition of my soul going to heaven. And the word resurrection is not an odd metaphor for my soul going to heaven. The word resurrection is about a new creation, new, what we would call physical only, I would say more than transphysical. Like Jesus, risen body. It certainly was physical, but it was more than that. Was able to inhabit heaven and earth simultaneously. And we're talking about a new creation like that. And clearly that hasn't happened yet. One of the great New Testament passages about the new creation is Romans 8, when Paul says, At the moment we're groaning because we're waiting for the time when the whole creation will be set free from its slavery to decay to obtain the freedom which comes when God's children are glorified. Now, clearly, as we look around the world, that has not happened yet. So according to the biblical view of life after death and then life after life after death, then we are waiting for that ultimate resurrection. And according to 1 Corinthians 15, 20, 28, so are all those who have followed Jesus in their lifetime and are now at rest. They are waiting, waiting for that time. 1 Thessalonians 4 talks about this as well, though that passage gets badly misunderstood by those who think that the rapture stuff is intended literally, which it certainly isn't. So then paradise becomes in this passage in Luke 23, a word to denote the resting period between bodily death and bodily resurrection. Now it's very interesting here because the brigand on the cross next to Jesus says, jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom or come into your kingdom, rather implying there may be some future moment when you will actually either return as king or set up a new sort of kingdom. And presumably that's not gonna be just now because you and I are both being cruelly tortured, et cetera. So Jesus today is actually a direct answer to his when you come in your kingdom. In other words, don't worry about that future event, whatever it is. Let me tell you about today, right now, and then the promise today, right now is that Jesus and this brigand will be together in this beautiful, restful pre resurrection place.
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B
Yeah, that's the thing. That's the thing, yeah.
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C
And, and of course, as we know, Jesus isn't there very long because couple of days later he's back out again, and the empty tomb and the astonished women and the two on the road to Emmaus, et cetera, et cetera. So insofar as Jesus and the brigand are together in paradise, that's very nice. But it's. I mean, we somehow have to say that Jesus, as it were, leaves him there while Jesus is raised from the dead and goes about his business. But the other thing to be said is that, and I've argued this by the way, is coming shortly in a book which is coming out in February 2026, called God's Homecoming, where I've explored the notion of what's going on. When Paul says, for instance in Colossians 3, you have died and your life is hidden with the Messiah in God. And when the Messiah who is your life appears Then you will appear with him in glory. We're talking about an intermediate state about which we know that this means being with Jesus in or in the nearer presence of God. And it seems to me that the key thing to remember there is the work of the Holy Spirit, that when the Holy Spirit has worked in and indwelt a person in this present life, the Holy Spirit is not gonna say, at bodily death, oh, well, that was an interesting experiment. We'll now leave them to their own devices until the resurrection. We're told that it's the Spirit who will raise us from the dead. So it seems to me that the Spirit, having indwelt somebody, continues to hold that person in the presence of Jesus in the glory of God, until the time when that Spirit will give them the new body that they're promised. So that it seems to me that in the great Christian tradition, the idea of the soul, which is basically a Platonic idea very popular in the ancient world, has ousted the biblical idea of the Spirit, and that the Spirit provides the continuity. And the continuity consists of our being with Jesus and ultimately in God ahead of the time when we will be raised from the dead. So seems to be the other references to paradise in 2 Corinthians 12 and then Revelation 2 can be read in that same way. But this is, I think, the way to take Luke 23. I hope that's all clear. These are huge but really rather important issues, not least because most Westerners imagine that the point of Christianity is for my soul to go to heaven. Our questioner shows that they've understood that actually it's not that easy, that in the Bible it's about God's kingdom coming on earth, as in heaven. So where will we be in between our bodily death and bodily resurrection? The answer is in the Spirit, with the Messiah in God.
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B
I think that's exactly right. And paradise here is not referring to the final new creation. It's the sense of consolation and comfort we have when our life is hidden with Christ. But it's very much part of the not yet.
- [19:21]
C
Yes, and it's interesting that one of the great church fathers, Tertullian, who is sometimes quoted by later theologians as though he supported the idea of a purgatory. Tertullian certainly didn't support the idea of a purgatory. Tertullian was a North African, and when he uses the Latin word, a lawyer.
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B
He was a lawyer. He wasn't a bishop. He wasn't a bishop.
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C
Sorry, sorry. A North African lawyer. Yeah, I'm getting past myself. There. Tertullian, when he speaks about the refrigerium, he's not talking about a place of punishment or cleaning up or anything. If you're a North African lawyer, then the idea of a nice, cool, refreshing place, what could be nicer than that? So for Tertullian, that's the intermediate state. It's a place where we are rested and refreshed until the time comes. There's much more to say about that, but that's the nub of it.
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B
I like that word refrigerium. I think I need to use it more in daily conversation. Yeah, that'd be a good idea.
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C
Well, especially if you go up north from Melbourne to Brisbane and places like.
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B
That where it does get well, there is Surfers Paradise. And I have to say, in spring, that is pretty close to what I think paradise is like. Nice, warm day on the beach, plenty of sun. It's great. It's great. Well, we're going to take a break and when we come back, we're going to look at what it means to live a life of purification. We'll be back in a moment.
- [20:51]
A
Hey everyone, Mike Bird here. Just a quick heads up that we've got something a little special brewing for our Ask NT Write Anything subscribers. It's our Halloween special bonus episode where Tom and I talk about all things spooky, spiritual and biblical, from ghosts in the afterlife to what Christians should make of Halloween. If you're a subscriber, the episode's waiting for you right now. Just head on over to your regular podcast feed. And if you've not yet taken the plunge, then why not become a subscriber today? It's easy and you get access to all of our bonus content ad free listening. So subscribe today on Apple Podcasts or by heading to the bonus tab@askntirright.com and there's more. If you put in the code add 10, you will get 10% off your Ask NTWriteAnything subscription.
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B
So come on over.
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A
We cannot wait to see you there.
- [22:01]
D
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- [22:38]
B
Welcome back. And we have our final question from the week from Lauren Bennett in Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania. She's got a question about the life of purification and being pruned, if you like. As someone who grew up terrified of God's judgment, your reframing of the power of the cross has been helpful for me. This paraphrase summary may not be 100% correct, but I think you suggest that the cross saved us not from what God was going to do to us, but from what sin and darkness were going to do to us. But at the same time, God will judge creation and will cut out sin when he purifies and redeems creation, not to punish, but to purify and redeem. But that work of purification happens to all of us, even if we follow Jesus, right? But if we follow Jesus, then he has already begun that work of purifying us as we continue to lay ourselves down before him in love and trust. It is a bit confusing to understand. So, Tom, if I understand Lauren's question as she's posed it, it's Is purification something that happens to the unbelieving world? Are they purified ahead of a final judgment, a kind of pruning? Or is purification simply a normal part of the Christian life? Or is it something that happens to everyone, whether they're Christian or not? Where does this idea of purification fit into God's purpose plans, the Christian life, and even the final judgment of God?
- [24:13]
C
It's a great question, and I think it's made more confusing by the fact that many of us were brought up as Christians to believe very firmly in a traditional doctrine of justification by faith. That is to say that once we have believed the gospel, we are saved by God forever and ever. And that then people are taught, and I was taught, that you don't have to do any good works thereafter, because if you were to do that, that would be like trying to contribute to your own justification or salvation by your own effort. In other words, denying God's grace. It would be like, as I remember one preacher said, taking a ladder into a lift, an elevator, in order that while the lift was going up, you could do some climbing yourself on the side. And you know, who would bother to do that? Now, for me, and I think for many who were taught that in our younger days, then this becomes quite a challenge. A challenge personally, a challenge biblically personally, because there are many times when we still fall into sin and then we think, should I have done that? But if I try hard not to do that, whatever it was, does that mean I'm justifying myself by my works? That's just a muddle. The answer is no. We are called to holiness and purification, and those two are very close to one another in meaning. But then as well, in the Bible itself, including in one of the classic texts about justification and salvation, namely the Letter to the Romans, you can't read Romans 6 and Romans 8 without realizing there is a huge challenge to purity and to purification. Paul says, if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live, but if you live according to the flesh, you will die. And that's Romans 8, which, as I say, is regularly quoted in terms of, isn't it wonderful? We're all now. If we're in Christ, we're now saved for all eternity. So what's this stuff doing in Romans 8, 5, 6, 7, 8, and then 12 through to 17. And the answer is that the two go inseparably together. Because if we belong to Christ, if we are indwelt by the Spirit, then we are being shaped and formed according to his likeness, not in order that we might be accepted by God, certainly not in order that we might avoid ultimate punishment, but in order that by grace we can be made fit for the presence of God. The letter to the Hebrews talks about holiness without which no one will see the Lord. And that's quite a challenge. This idea, of course, goes back to the whole temple imagery, or the temple reality and imagery in the Old Testament, that in order to come into the presence of God, the priests had to purify themselves and had to make sure that they were not bringing anything which reminded anything of death. Death is the ultimate kind of impurity. And anything, whether it's sin or sickness or whatever, you do not bring death into the holy place so that you purify yourself. You go through the necessary washing in order that you can be pure before God. Now, in the New Testament, that comes through in terms, for instance, in 1 John 3, those who have this hope purify themselves as he is pure. And as I say that, this is nothing to do with trying to make myself good enough for God. It's that God has done this great work in Christ and by the Spirit, and that enables me to live a life in which I have to choose again and again and sometimes painfully, to live in the way that Jesus wants, rather than in the way that my old self, which is heading for bodily death, would want. So I think that's where I would start. Mike, I'm not sure if I'm missing some elements there. Can you come in and supplement? I don't know.
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B
Yeah, I think you've got at what Lauren is saying. It's like where purification fits into especially the Christian life and the whole, if you like, the pruning of the created order to get it ready to become this beautiful new creation that it is. You know, I keep thinking as you were speaking, I was reminded of various passages from Hebrews and also from the Gospel of John where, you know, Jesus talks about how, you know, people need to be pruned and, you know, they need the. The bad branches need to be cut off. Which at one levels or other terrifying or scary analogy, but there is a sense in which the Christian life, we do need to have a bit of pruning either done to us or a bit of self pruning, as it were.
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C
Yeah. Yes. John 15, the vine and the branches. Curiously, that happened to come up in my regular reading this morning. And I remember preaching on that some while ago, many years ago, and a wise old preacher who was in the congregation came up to me afterwards and said, you need to remind yourself that when somebody is pruning the vine, that person is never closer to the vine than when carefully pruning it. In other words, if you sense God is saying something here in your life needs to be cut out, and please, I want your cooperation in doing this. This doesn't mean God is angry with us or distant or remote. It may be because God is coming very close to us and saying gently but firmly, this has got to go. And I think as well, I'm not a great gardener. We've moved house so often that I've never had the opportunity really to develop any gardening skills. But I do know about rose bushes that you prune the stems which are in danger of curling back into the rose bush and making the whole thing a bit muddled. And you allow to thrive the ones which are outward facing, facing out to the light and the air. And there's something quite profound about that. I think that there are many things in our lives which are really just all tying back in on themselves, twisted and twisted, when we are called to be exocentric, called to be looking out into the light and air of God's world and so on. Now, this show could run and run. It's an image which one could develop in a variety of ways. But I think that idea of every branch that already does bear fruit, God prunes that it may bear more fruit. And Jesus uses, or John quoting Jesus uses the word for purity there that the word for Jesus says every branch in mind that bears fruit bears no fruit, he takes it away. And every branch that does bear fruit. And the Greek word is he cleanses it. And the word for cleanse and the word for prune are basically the same. So that's the process of purification, but the point is not as a punishment, but so that we can bear more fruit.
- [31:33]
B
Well, that's probably a good note for us to end on today. You know, find ways that you can consecrate yourself to God, cultivate spirituality, and maybe even engage in a bit of pruning, which is the sign of your closeness to God. Well, that's all we have time for today on this episode of Ask NT Write Anything. In our next episode, we're going to look at the topics of who Goes to Hell, the authorship of the Book of Hebrews, and we're even going to touch upon the Apocrypha. But don't forget, there are a lot of great programs in the premier Christian media network. I mean, go on to their YouTube page, go to Unbelievable. And you can see the shows they've got there. They've got unbelievable, the CS Lewis podcast. They've got great interviews with Alastair McGrath and John Lennox. It's really good. And Tom Wright is pasted all over the place. It is terrific. So go there. Otherwise, we look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Ask NT Wright Anything. I'm Mike Bird.
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C
And I'm Tom Wright.
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B
So we'll see you then. So God bless Sa.