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B
And welcome to the Ask Anti Right Anything podcast. I'm Mike Bird from Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia.
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And I'm Tom Wright from Oxford in England.
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And we're here to answer your questions about the Bible, Christian faith, and the little things that might be annoying you or raising your curiosity when it comes to the life of faith. And today, Tom, we've got some absolutely amazing questions. These are really good questions. These are real humdingers. We've got a question about transgender. We've got a question about deconstruction and being on the verge of abandoning your faith and whether Jesus was wrong about the end of the world. Well, let's dive into our first question, which is a big one and it's very topical for the new cycle we live in. It's from William first, who is from Canada. And it's this. Hi Tom, I am a transgender man, female transition to male and a lover of Christ. I came out when I was very young and transitioned early on in my life. All that to say I am fully transitioned. There's not much left that distinguishes me from your average born male. I came to Christ after having Gone through all the hormone surgery and living as a man for 10 years. Often when I hear people who were transgender, then became a Christian, it's a story of them de transitioning to be their natural born gender. It seems these people are almost always at the beginning steps of their transition and can easily, so to speak, revert back. So my question is, what would the Bible have to say about someone? In my case, I feel that if I was following God when I was younger, I probably would have tried my best to suppress the feelings that I was born in the wrong body and seek counseling. I have no desire to detransition. In fact, it would feel very weird to me. I'm about as male as you can get. I love hockey trucks, I lift weights, and I'm going to serve in the military. Those things don't necessarily make you a man, but I hope it helps you paint a picture. I feel like from this point, all I can do is serve God as the person I am now with all my heart, soul and mind. However, I can't always wonder in the back of my mind if I am sinning every day by continuing to live my life the way I am. I also often wonder if I am allowed to get married. I dream of finding a wife and starting a family rooted in faith, but I fear that I would be sinning for that. If I married a woman, would that be seen as a same sex relationship? Since I am biologically female? Any advice and comments would be lovely. Thanks. P.S. i have a lovely church family and my pastors know I am transgender. Well, Tom, that's a, that's a very real story, and we're very grateful to William for opening up and sharing his story with us. And I mean, this is one of the big issues of our day about transgender care, transgender rights. And, you know, when I come to this topic, Tom, I think, you know, biology is very complex. A lot of things can go wrong with our biology. Things can also go wrong with our psychology. And the link between them can also be very, very complicated. And you can understand in a confused world where there's all sorts of ideas of sexual fluidity and, and we're now defining ourselves by an identity rather than our body. It's easy for someone to get fused or to experience something like gender dysphoria. And although 80% of adolescents grow out of gender dysphoria, there's 20% who don't. And yet, look, there's the danger of people being transitioned too early. That's been a very big issue in the uk and in the UK and other places, I think they've stopped giving puberty blockers to teenagers. But what about that 20% of people who persist in their gender dysphoria, who transition and don't regret it, and then go on and at some point become a Christian tomorrow? What do you have to say to a situation like this?
- [06:15]
A
Wow. I totally agree. This is right on point for where a certain swathe of our culture is right now. Though I have to say this has been curious because 20 years ago it would be unthinkable that we would have had this question. Obviously there have been people who have transitioned a lot earlier than that, but it's only become a great cause celebre in the last generation or so. And I think that's been on the back of other issues, like all the so called gay debate, et cetera, where people have gotten used to thinking in terms of never mind what my body is or how I was physically born, what matters is who I feel deeply within myself I really am. And that distinction between what my body is and what I really am is then sometimes talked about in terms of the hypothetical distinction between sex and gender. That whole discourse is very new. And we have to remind ourselves that this is not something for which the older manuals of theology, ethics, et cetera, would have prepared us. I think people in the ancient world knew perfectly well that there were cases of what we might call gender dysphoria. People who felt that they were actually would rather have been the opposite sex to what they are. But of course, in terms of surgery, et cetera, that option wasn't available until comparatively recently. So all of that to say as well. I, as a pastor, and I was a student pastor for many years, as well as being a theology teacher, I have met many, many different sorts of things that people present you with when you're a pastor. I have never actually had anyone come into my office and say, actually I'm transgender, or I think I'm transgender, or I have transitioned or whatever. I've never had that. So I've not had the personal experience of walking with somebody through a particular phase like that in their journey. So what I'm going to say is cautious and very much aware that there are enormous sensitivities around this issue. And that as well, there are people who are capitalizing on the discomfort of some people in order to make, as it were, political points, and some who would say that all gender is entirely fluid and you can make up from one day to the next who you want to be and how you should behave. Whereas this person writing to us here is quite clear they're Christian and they're even asking the question, would it be okay to think of getting married? Now, I want to say with that and with many other issues around here, I'm glad to hear that your pastor in your church knows who you are, what's happened to you, knows your journey, because pastoral support and wise encouragement and discernment from the people around you is absolutely vital. We've said it many times on this show, I cannot be somebody's pastor at long range. I can't do it online. You have to be in the room with somebody, prepared to weep with them, prepared to give them a hug, prepared to pray with them, and then prepared to go with them on their journey. And so I can't obviously do that. I am struck, though, by the distinction, if you like, between biology and feelings, because quite clearly, females have XX chromosomes, males have XY chromosomes. So I'm assuming that our correspondent still simply has XX and hasn't somehow, through hormone treatment, acquired a Y chromosome. I may be wrong, but I don't think that's an option. Much of the debate about the transgender issue in my country and in America and elsewhere has been about people transitioning the other way, about people born male who want to become female. And that has shown up, particularly when it's men who are then put into women's prisons. And we've had cases of that in Scotland where men who have not even had surgery are then put in a prison with vulnerable women. And the women naturally, I think completely naturally, feel very much at risk about that. Or when it's people who are born male and still have male characteristics, competing in women's sports and winning all the medals, and the women thinking, well, why did I bother even turning up? So those are the kind of spin off issues. But having the way that we've had it presented now, somebody born female transitioning to become male, I don't understand. I'm not a scientist, I don't understand the biology of how that works. I don't know what exactly it is that the hormone therapy does, though I'm assured by people who do know about that, that the hormone therapy has to be continued, otherwise the body may revert to what its chromosomes are telling it it is. I don't know how true that is, how much that is. So. So all sorts of questions then about marriage. I do not know what would happen in such a marriage or how that would work. Again, the local pastoral advice would be absolutely vital. I think, though, with many situations, and I have counseled people in all sorts of situations where their life has become very muddled and confused and different relationships and different things that they never meant to get into. But here they are now and again and again. I want to say, as with Jesus in the Gospels, God meets us where we are and loves us as we are. That's absolutely vital. God doesn't say, well, I can't have anything to do with you because of X, Y and Z that's happened in the background. Or God doesn't say, well, of course I'll look after you, but you're going to have to do A, B and C from now on. That's not how grace works. Grace enfolds us in the love of God. Then when we are enfolded and know that God is with us, then God may want to say to us, perhaps through a wise pastor, through our own voice of conscience or in prayer or whatever. Now, there are certain ways forward that you now need to travel. And that's not to say, oh, you're wicked, oh, you're a sinner, you shouldn't be doing this, that or the other. It's to say, well, where we are now is quite complicated. And let's see how we can move forward step by step, knowing that the God of grace and love is with you. And the fact that we say the God of grace and love is with you doesn't mean therefore everything that anyone might do before this moment of crisis is all right and perfectly okay. This is not an anything goes question. But then whenever we talk about grace, you always meet that if it's by grace, does that mean it doesn't matter what I do? Yes, it does matter. God wants you to be a genuine, fully flourishing human being. No doubt all of us, as Mike said in his intro, all of us have muddle bits in our psyche, perhaps muddle bits in our bodies. And again, God doesn't say, I can't do anything with you because you're in such a muddle or a mess. God says, let me come and work within that. Let my spirit breathe new life into the person that you now are and go on breathing that new life and direct you in the way that you should go. So the question really becomes, can God love and accept somebody in this condition? I want to say absolutely yes. If Jesus was to walk into a room where all these sinners are gathered and the Pharisees are saying, you shouldn't go and eat with those people, Jesus says, yes, the angels are having a Party upstairs. We're having a party downstairs. Thank you very much. That's basic to the Gospel and all that it's about. But as with zacchaeus, in Luke 19, Zacchaeus comes out after Jesus has had lunch with him, despite the sneers of the Pharisees. And Zacchaeus says, now look what I'm now doing. I'm a changed man. I'm gonna be different from now on. Sometimes that encounter with Jesus does transform. Sometimes that transformation is very slow and very subt. Sometimes it's quite vivid and instantaneous. But as I say, I'm not saying that there needs to be a transformation in this particular person's case. I'm saying that pastoral help on hand, wise, discerning, prayerful pastoral help is the vital thing to find the way forward. It will not be easy, but I do believe that there will be a way forward. And it's a way of love and a way of grace and a way of affirmation. Not necessarily that everything that's been done is exactly what God wanted, but that God is affirming that there is a way forward. And that living as you are right now doesn't mean you're living in sin. There may be other sin in your life. Who knows? It would be a shame if your concentration on gender identity meant that you stop thinking about all the other ways which Christian discipleship is supposed to play out. So go with it. Go with your pastor. Go with the love of God surrounding you in Jesus and the Holy Spirit breathing in and through you in all that lies ahead.
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B
You know, Tom, it's in. In light of questions like these, where you have people wrestling with gender identity, transgender issue, and then you've got things like transhumanism. You know, can we upload our consciousness to a hard drive? When does an AI become a salient entity or sentient entity, I should say. You know, this makes me think that anthropology really is the biggest issue of our day. And I wonder if we need an ecumenical council of anthropology, you know, something like Nicaea, but dealing with human personhood, dealing with sex. Because on topics like these, we want to affirm the goodness of creation. God did create us as male and female, and we can only be human beings as male and female. But of course, we know we live in a fallen world. There are intersex conditions, you know, where people have some sort of reproductive anomaly. There are people who can also experience things like gender dysphoria. I mean, some people may feel like they don't match up to various gender stereotypes. They don't match the male stereotype, they don't match up to the female stereotype, and they get confused. There are people who have transitioned and then regretted it, but others for whom their, their dysphoria, their sense of angst and anxiety has been healed by transition. It's. It's one of the hardest issues of our age. And I think we need to recover a very robust account of what it means to be human, what it means to be human in Christ, if we're going to be able to answer these questions. I mean, did you have any thoughts broadly, Tom, about anthropology and how that might help us to tackle some of the big questions of today with transgender or even.
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A
Yes, I don't have any huge thoughts about that. But I do agree with you that for much of church tradition, the question of being human and what precisely that means has not really been on the agenda. It's just been assumed that we all know what humans are. So there we are. And particularly we haven't really explored in the way that I think we should what it means to be God reflectors, in other words, to be made in the image of God. Obviously, many theologians have had a stab at that one written stuff about does it mean this? Does it mean that. I am completely with those who say that in Genesis 1, this is a picture. Genesis 1 is a picture of a temple, a heaven plus earth space, with an image at its heart. And that we have to understand the image which is human beings at the heart of creation, in terms of the function of an image within a temple, which is to reflect the presence of the God into the world and reflect the praises of the world back to the God, whichever it is. But in this case, the. Its heaven and earth is the whole temple, and human beings are the only appropriate image. And that affects what we think about Jesus. And then out beyond that, it affects what we think about who human beings are called to be and then enabled to be in Jesus and in the power of the Spirit. And I mean, it's very interesting that many theologians have not really reflected on the fact that the risen and ascended Jesus remains human and that his humanness is a vital part of who he still is. So important, so important we have the allusion to Psalm 8. What are humans that you're mindful of them, you've made them little lower than the angels to crown them with glory and honor, putting all things in subjection under their feet. The lordship of Jesus over the cosmos is not because he's God, it's because he's the true human. I mean, you can't get a razor blade between those. But basically this is the human role which Jesus has taken up. And so the question really needs to be posed to us. How do we become more fully human together? Granted, we are all flawed and failed. And so wherever we're coming from, in terms of our original chromosomal kit or in terms of who we deeply feel we either are or want to be, that's where we should be aiming. How do we reflect the Creator God into his world? Those go on being difficult and pastorally sensitive questions.
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Yeah. Well, thank you for your question, William. Thank you for sharing with us out of great vulnerability. We're going to take a break now and when we come back, we're going to talk about deconstruction and whether Jesus was wrong about the end of the world. So we'll be back in a sec.
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Foreign.
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Welcome back. And we are dealing with your questions at Ask NT Write anything. We've got a question from Rob Conaway from Columbus in the United States, and he's asking us about the topic of reconstruction and deconstruction and trying to get back to the essence of Christianity. And this is what Rob asks. I can see the attraction of the deconstruction movement. American Christianity especially seems to have become politicized and trivialized. As a pastor and historian, how would you recommend recovering the essence of Christianity? I'm not naively asking how to be a first century Christian. I'm asking how to let the Holy Spirit use 1st century and history to guide us how to live. Now I'm asking about reconstruction, not deconstruction. Now, Tom, I gave you a little bit of a briefing earlier about the whole context of deconstruction in the United States. And people are wondering, you know, whether they've really grown up with a real authentic religion of Jesus or whether their religion was just a facade for the culture wars and for certain political affinities within the American tribal context. Tom, what do you have to say say about this? What do you have to say about people who are thinking about deconstructing their faith and can they go back and retrieve a type of essence of Christianity?
- [21:53]
A
Yeah, thanks for that. And I very much recognize this. And I suspect that a question like that ought to make people like me reflect on my own background and upbringing, because as a typical middle class, middle of the road Anglican, Englishman, it's very easy to imagine that my sort of setting is ordinary Christianity and that everything else is divergent this way or that, which is of course absurd. CS Lewis has a story about some old chap he knew who was going on about how the English weather was the best and the English food was the best, and the English girls were the prettiest, and this, that and the other. And Lewis said to this old man, but surely, sir, every country thinks that its climate is finest, that its hills are lovelies, landscape is more beautiful than anywhere else. And this old man said, yes, but in England it's true. And there's a sort of sense of, okay, we need to laugh at ourselves. And because the form of Christianity with which I grew up was very much the established Church of England, and there were bishops in the House of Lords and my grandfather was an archdeacon, and this was how it worked. Everybody knew where we were socially, culturally, et cetera. Now that's more or less gone from much of the Church of England, I'm reasonably happy to say, but I, I think it reminds us that we are all culturally situated and that all cultures probably mess up bits of the gospel or don't get the whole thing. And indeed, ever since the European enlightenment of the 18th century, there have been ways in which I would say British Christianity has colluded with the split level world of the Enlightenment and has said, despite the bishops in the House of Lords, that actually we're spiritual people talking about heaven and praying and going to heaven rather than anything to do with politics and this worldly realities. I now see that that is a complete mistake and that we need to figure out how to put back together what should never have been separated. So in a sense, we are all, or ought to be all in the business of saying, yes, okay, God has met me where I am in this culture. There are some problems about this. How do we address those wisely, biblically, prayerfully, spiritually, et cetera. And so I don't want to say, oh, what a shame about those poor benighted Americans who were tangled up in their culture wars. We, of course have no such problems. I want to say, no, we're all in this together, and different degrees and types and so on and again and again. I mean, I believe in that great old Latin phrase, Ecclesia cattolica semper reformanda. The Catholic Church always to be Reformed Catholic, meaning worldwide, the worldwide church, but never resting on its laurels, always saying, okay, Lord, where are we now? What do we have to repent of? What should we be reforming? What needs to change in order that we can faithfully serve you in this generation? And granted that all by way of preamble, I know plenty about the American church scene. I go to America quite a bit. Many of my best friends come from a variety of different American churches. And I know plenty of people with the kind of question that is coming to us here where they have been taught a very specific line and that unless you believe this, you're probably not saved, you're going to hell. Here's a list of false teachers that you should ignore. You'll probably find my name on some of those lists. And here are the true truths that you should embrace, and then you'll be all right. And many, many people in the rising generation have been beaten up with this stuff. And they think, but hang on. When I read what so and so was writing, or when I heard a sermon about this, it actually made a lot of sense. And that explained those bits of the Bible which preacher regularly doesn't explain. And I've had people email me and say, can you help me with this verse? Because when I asked my regular preacher about it, he said, you shouldn't ask questions like that. That shows you haven't really got faith. Now that kind of bullying pseudo pastoral practice has no place in the church. When people have questions, they need to be addressed as they are. One of my favorite little passages in the resurrection narratives is when Thomas comes with his questions. Unless I see the mark of the nails and put my hand into the of the spear, I'm not going to believe. Jesus does not say straight off, thomas, you're a hopeless unbeliever. Away with you, Thomas, he teases him later on, it would have been better if you'd believed without seeing. But Jesus says, welcome, be my guest. Here are my hands, here's my side. In other words, when we've got questions, Jesus welcomes those questions and wants to address them. And wise pastors and preachers should know that and be prepared to sit with the questioner and find out what, what's actually going on. And especially in some parts of America. I know, for instance, you'll be at a high school and your teachers will say, of course, your church probably teaches that the world was made in six days. But we now know that actually evolution means thus and so, and it's all wrong. And some teachers will take pride in demolishing the faith of vulnerable students. And those vulnerable students ought to be then given the tools to be able to address difficult questions like that and that. So right across the board with all the different kinds of questions that you're likely to meet. So I think every generation needs to go through some sort of process of Re evaluation. I wouldn't necessarily call it deconstruction, though sometimes it may feel like that. Because if you've grown up in a subculture where everybody believes this and nobody questions this, and so on, and then you've got some sneaking uncertainties about it, especially when you're learning local subculture of the church is bound up with severe political issues, as many parts of America is finding right now, then it's right for people to say, wait a minute, I need some time out. I need to be able to pray through this. I need to be able to look at other writings about these passages and compare one biblical text with another and maybe come to a new mind. Sometimes, sadly, that may mean that they're either no longer welcome in the church where they grew up or that they feel that they at the moment, can't easily worship there. And then there may be a case, wisely, humbly, and it's usually at a certain cost for regular worship somewhere else, somewhere with people who are likewise on a journey. The danger about saying, well, I'm leaving that because we're all on a journey and we're off in this direction, is that some of the other bits of the journey that some other people are taking may not be healthy, may not take you to good places. So again, we need discernment. And of course, as we keep saying on this show, discernment is where it's at. There is no one size fits all for many of the questions that we meet. Of course there is a one size fits all in terms of God the Father, Son and Spirit, rescuing us by grace, through faith, et cetera. But for so many of the issues that we run into, there's a sense of, hang on, we can do better than this. We can think around this one from another point of view. And then the main thing is, don't let go of Jesus. Jesus doesn't want to let go of you. Don't let go of Jesus. Take those Gospels day by day, read them, pray them, meet Jesus in them. Take the Psalms, which were Jesus own prayer book. Pray the Psalms day by day. Don't be put off by the fact that some of them are puzzling and you don't know quite what this or that verse means. Allow that river of prayer, which was Jesus river of prayer, to flow through you and allow the presence of Jesus himself, as you see him in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, to be a presence in your life. And then those will take you in the right direction. Even if it isn't what your immediate subculture might be suggesting.
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B
Tom, let me put it to you like this. Tell me if this makes sense. What if I said to you the first person to deconstruct their faith was the Apostle Paul, because after he met Jesus, he then spent 15 years in Arabia trying to put his faith back together. You know, what was he out in the desert trying to figure out? Because, I mean, his whole Pharisaic faith kind of in a sense fell apart. Because if Jesus was not a rogue messianic claimant, you know, a deceiver, who, who, who's leading the nation astray. If he really was the Lord of Glory, then Paul really had to rethink everything. Had to rethink monotheism, covenant, faithfulness, the Torah, everything. I mean, do you think Paul may have had his own deconstruction experience?
- [31:03]
A
I'm sure that's true, though. By the way, I don. He spent 15 years in Arabia. He went to Arabia and then went back to Damascus. And he then went. He went to Jerusalem, but they packed him off to Tarsus. He was too hot to handle. And I think those extra silent years were spent back home in Tarsus trying unsuccessfully to convince his family that Jesus was the Messiah. And we can see the sorrow of that coming through in Romans 9 and so on. Anyway, that's an interesting biographical twist and turn, but certainly, as I've said, every time I've had to expound Paul's conversion, I've said in the moment when Paul sees Jesus and realizes this is the Jesus who I've been chasing after his followers and he is now revealed to me as the Lord of Glory. Everything in Paul's life is simultaneously fulfilled and shattered. And those two together are an absolutely extraordinary moment. Everything about the hope of Israel. The hope of Israel has been fulfilled because the Messiah has been raised from the dead. The hope of Israel has been destroyed because the Messiah turns out to be this crucified, apparent blasphemer. How does that work? So, yes, Paul himself goes then through this awesome process where still on his travels, he turns up to synagogue and tells them about Jesus, even though he knows he's likely to get beaten up. And he does, and he keeps going back, even though it keeps happening. So there is something there about loyalty to the tradition. Though of course, our churches where we have grown up are significantly different theologically from going to a Judaic synagogue in the diaspora, etc.
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B
Okay, well, that's the way Paul was the first one to have to rethink through his faith in a radical way. A lot of baggage Tested, I would.
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A
Want to say, actually, Peter is probably ahead of Paul on this one.
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B
Okay, yeah, that's true. That is true.
- [33:02]
A
Go and tell my brothers and Peter that I'm risen from the dead. Peter is going to have to do some hard thinking. And we see that going on in John 21. Simon, son of John, do you love me? But I think the hard thinking is happening all the time. The great thing about that is that we can see that it is thinking, thinking. It's not just going with a flow of emotion. It's actually, okay, we've got to figure this one out. And part of the challenge always is to grow up. Paul says, I don't want you to be babies in your thinking. Be babies when it comes to evil, but in your thinking, I want you to be grown ups. And that's part of the challenge. When people find that they're out of sorts with the church where they've grown up, they now need to grow up in their thinking. Dangerous but vital.
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B
That's a great way to put it. Sometimes deconstruction is necessary if you're going to have a closer walk with Jesus.
- [33:56]
A
Yeah, yeah.
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B
Okay. Well, we've got one more question for today. And this question is from Jim Bartright. And his question relates to Matthew 16:28, which I think I'll read your translation, Tom, from the New Testament for everyone. Translation, it says, I'm telling you the truth. Some of those standing here will not taste death until they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom. And what Jim asks is, why isn't Matthew 16:28 a false prophecy? Jesus says some of his followers wouldn't die before his second coming, and yet they are all dead and he hasn't returned. So for some, some people, they think that Jesus was wrong about the end of the world, that he said that the kingdom of God was going to come or the Son of Man would come. It didn't happen. Ergo, Jesus was wrong about the end times. Now I've got a dog in this fight, Tom. Because I wrote my undergraduate thesis not on the Matthew inverse, but on the verse in the Gospel of Mark, Mark 9:1, which says, There are those, some of those standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power. I surveyed all the, all the options. Did this refer to the transfiguration? Did this refer to the Second Coming? Did this refer to Pentecost? But I was convinced by a number of scholars and I think you might even be one of them who was hinting that way. That the kingdom of God coming with power in fact is a tacit reference to the cross. Because the context of this passage, certainly in Mark's Gospel, I think also in Matthew, is it situated after the Passion predictions, where Jesus has told his disciples to take up their cross and follow him. But he promises them if they do that, then they will see the kingdom of God come in power. Tom, what are your thoughts on this? On this, I think a very enigmatic verse, one of the hard sayings of Jesus.
- [36:04]
A
Yeah, thanks, Mike. And I didn't realize you'd done your undergrad essay on that. I remember being puzzled by this when I was a student and I was enormously helped eventually by my own subsequent teacher, George Caird, who was my postgraduate teacher. Though we didn't talk about this issue face to face, I simply discovered it in his writings because he and I were working on Paul quite single mindedly. And so Caird pointed me in what I take to be the right direction and I would say pretty clearly right across the New Testament, the idea of the launching of the kingdom of God, the powerful launching of the kingdom of God has to do with not just Jesus death, but with the whole complex of his death, resurrection and ascension. And it's very interesting. In an article that I published a few years ago, an academic article, I asked this question, supposing we took that quotation from Matthew 16, and supposing we said to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, has that happened yet? Is that going to happen? So what? And many people have thought that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were still expecting that Jesus would return any minute and it would be the end of the world. If we actually ask them, what do they think about it? Well, I go a few chapters later in Matthew, right at the end of Matthew's gospel, Matthew 28, when Jesus meets the risen Jesus meets the disciples on the mountain in Galilee, and Jesus says to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples. Now what's that got to do with the saying in Matthew 16? The answer is that phrase that I just read is a direct allusion to Daniel chapter seven, which is the passage about the Son of Man being exalted to a place of kingly authority over the rest of the world. In other words, according to Matthew, the risen Jesus says that Daniel passage has now been fulfilled. And here there's a problem, because the idea of the Son of Man coming in his kingdom has routinely been taken by many Christian interpreters as the Son of Man coming from heaven to earth. But if we take it back to Daniel 7, and the old rule is the best, that when we've got an allusion to the Old Testament, we should look first at what the context in the Old Testament is about. It's quite clear that the Son of Man is coming from earth to heaven in Vindication to be seated beside the ancient of days. And the early church regularly talks about Jesus being at the right hand of the Father, which is an allusion Both to Daniel 7 and also to Psalm 110. Two favorite passages for the early church. And I then notice there's two other passages, one in Matthew, one in Luke, which are really quite significant pointers in the same direction. Because when the high priest asks Jesus in his night hearing, are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One? Jesus in Matthew 26:64 says, you've said it. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven. In other words, this isn't one day, at some point over the next 40 years, Caiaphas, you will see me coming back. It means. Means that from right now, you're about to see events which will show that I am actually enthroned as Lord of the world. And likewise In Luke chapter 22, in Luke chapter 22, verse 69, Jesus says it's the same line, but translated into Greek slightly differently. From this moment on, aportunion in Greek, the Son of man will be sitting at the right hand of the power of God. In other words, for both Matthew and Luke, and I think this is very clear at the beginning of Acts as well, the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus constitutes him as the sovereign Lord of the world. That is the reality to which the line in Mark 9:1 and its parallels in Matthew and Luke is referring. So that when Paul at the beginning of Romans quotes this saying, if it is a saying, or maybe he's just writing it straight off, it means the same thing that the Gospel is about, about Jesus, the Son of David, who was designated Son of God in power through the resurrection of the dead, Jesus, Messiah, our Lord, through Whom we've received grace and apostleship, to bring about the obedience of faith among all the nations for the sake of his name, which is a way of saying the resurrection of Jesus constitutes him as the true Lord of the world. Now, it's not only in some fundamentalist circles which have been very fixated on the second coming of Jesus. And when's that going to happen? It's not Only there that this problem has arisen. It's also in the liberal scholarship of the late 19th, early 20th century, where famously Albert Schweitzer made a huge thing about this, about the so called delay of the parousia, and that then developed among other scholars over the course of the 20th century, so that it became simply a commonplace in New Testament scholarship. Oh well, we know Jesus is wrong about the end of the world, so maybe he's wrong about lots of other things as well. And I have tracked that scholarship and the biblical roots of it in my book History and Eschatology, particularly in relation to why Schweitzer wanted to make that argument and why some people wanted to run with it after Schweitzer's death. But it seems to me if we're asking the early Christians themselves, what's your reading of Mark 9:1 and its parallels, it's very clear this is the total complex of the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus and the gift of the Spirit. And that's why in Acts 1, when the disciples say, lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? Jesus answer is not no, no, no, but you've got a job. In the meantime, Jesus answer is yes, but it's not going to look like what you thought it would. It will be about you going out to announce me as Lord in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth.
- [42:38]
B
I think that that's a good way to put it, Tom, because it means to answer that question about the coming of the Son of man, man. Rather than try map it with 1 Thessalonians 4 or Revelation 19, we should look at the Old Testament intertext that it's alluding to, which is largely Daniel 7:13 and Psalm 110, verse 1, which are both about a figure being enthroned beside God, which is what the Messiah's destiny was to be to have all authority, power and glory on behalf of God the Father, and to exercise it as both the representative of God and the representative of the saints of the Most High. To use Daniel like language, I think once you make that connection, it begins to make a lot more sense.
- [43:21]
A
Yeah, absolutely. And it's also, of course, the fulfillment of Genesis 1 in terms of this is the human being through whom God is ruling the world as he always intended. There's huge debates about how does God run things, how does God do things, and do humans have to help God or not? Or does that mean that God isn't fully sovereign? And the answer is from the very beginning, there's a trinity shape to creation. God the Father wants to rule the world through the human being because he always intends to become human in the person of the Son. That's a whole other set of questions, but actually it's very germane to this because as that theme has been forgotten, so other misunderstandings have come in to take its place.
- [44:10]
B
Well, that is all we have time for today. But remember, we want to answer more of your questions about the Bible, about Jesus and the life of faith. And you can lodge your questions@askantewright.com where you can very easily fill out some forms, put in some information, and your question will get to us in our next episode. We've got some great stuff coming up. We're going to tackle a very sensitive topic, a very difficult topic that's one of suicide. I know that's going to be very difficult for a great many people since suicide is such a tragedy. But I think it's the one of that we do have to grapple with and we do have a question about it. And also we're going to have a look at baptism and whether the Trinity is biblical. So we look forward to seeing you on the next episode. When you join us on Ask NT Write Anything. I'm Mike Bird.
- [45:04]
A
And I'm Tom Wright.
- [45:06]
B
God bless you and we'll see you in the future.