← Ask NT Wright Anything
Ask NT Wright Anything
Is abortion ever justified? Can Lucifer be forgiven? NT Wright answers your questions
00:36:47
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Mike Bird
Hello and welcome to the Ask nt Write Anything podcast, the show where we answer your questions about Jesus, the Bible and and the life of faith. I'm Mike Bird from Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia.
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Tom Wright
And I'm Tom Wright from Oxford in England.
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Mike Bird
And we're going to keep answering your questions because you've sent us some fantastic ones and no lack of controversy either, Tom and our first one, I think, is exactly in the controversy fold. This is a question about the difficult subject of abortion. Now, this question comes from Sarah Mercer of Germany, land of my birth. Tom I was born in Germany, and this is the topic why should Christians defend life from the moment of conception? Why should Christians oppose abortion and stand up for the protection of unborn life? As a Christian, I was taught that abortion is a sin regardless of the stage of pregnancy because it violates the fifth commandment you shall not murder. But here is my struggle. Although I have heard this argumentation many times, it somehow doesn't feel intuitive to me. Why do we believe that it is murder to abort, especially at an early stage of pregnancy, when the fetus is not even formed, the heart is not beating yet, etc. It seems very abstract to me to say that from the moment of conception, when only two cells have met, there is life that is just as valuable as any human being on ear. As a student, I am sometimes confronted with this issue, for example, when I come across demonstrations for women's rights on campus. And I always find it difficult because I know that as a Christian, I should be against Abortion. But as I said, I often don't feel that intuitively. Also there are these difficult ethical questions, such as what about cases where the pregnancy is a result of rape or cases where a decision has to be made whether the mother or the unborn child should be saved. I would be grateful if you could help me to better understand the Christian reasoning on this issue. And Tom, I think we have to agree this is a difficult issue. There's a whole bunch of ethical things we've got to kind of navigate our way around. It's not a black and white issue because you do have things like ectopic pregnancies and what do you do in cases of incest that leads to pregnancy and stuff like that. So, Tom, do you have anything you want to share with Sarah?
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Tom Wright
Yeah, yeah. It is obviously hugely sensitive and difficult and I know it's become a political hot potato as well as an ethical hot potato, particularly in America for some reason. I suspect this partly has to do with the fact that in the 50s, 60s and 70s, when the so called sexual revolution was happening and people were casting off older restraint, many people said, well, it doesn't matter if we have sex outside marriage, because if we conceive a child, we can always have an abortion. In other words, the reaction against abortion was partly to do with the reaction against people having sex with multiple partners whenever they wanted and not caring. Because we can always sort that out with an abortion, can't we? And I think many, many people, including many devout Christians from then on just thought abortion that's to do with the breakdown of family standards, with the breakdown of traditional Christian values as a whole. It became a symbol of that amoral society that was suddenly springing up, particularly in the 60s. Now, I understand that reaction, but then when it's presented as you are killing, you are murdering an unborn child, I think we do have to be very, very careful. And I've had personal experience of this with a close family member where soon after the couple discovered that they were pregnant or the wife was pregnant, then it also became apparent that the wife had been accidentally exposed to German measles, rubella. Now, as we know that exposure to German measles can result in serious deformities in the womb, et cetera, et cetera. And the GP in that case, who was a Christian, devout Christian gp, said, we are going to do the tests and if she has been exposed to rubella, if there's a threat of serious defamation or whatever, then we will recommend termination. And I remember my heart in my mouth When I heard that and thinking, do I really agree with that? But at the time, it was absolutely clear for the mental health, never mind anything else, of the mother and the potential father as well, that this was the way to go. In fact, all was well. The rubella had not actually done what it sometimes might do. And that child was born perfectly healthy and has grown up now, et cetera. This was a long time ago. But that made me very sensitive about the fact that there are many, many cases where it is about the mother's health versus the health of the child or whatever. And particularly that, as you cited in cases of rape or in cases of incest, there may be a very, very strong argument for saying this ought never to have happened. And with sorrow, because we do not want to do this in principle, but with sorrow and a bit of shame, the best thing to do is as soon as possible to terminate this pregnancy. Now, I've seen the debates, I've read books about the debates as to at what point it's okay or at what point it becomes not okay. And I know that in my own country people have pushed for the legislation to be allowed to say right up to the moment before the woman is ready to give birth, that if they decide for whatever reason on an abortion, then that's okay. And that I find not only wrong, but repulsive. Because if you wait till the child's been born and then say, well, we didn't really want a girl this time, so we'll just get rid of her, then that would be a criminal act, and quite rightly so. That would be murder, and it would be a pagan thing. This is something we must never forget that in the ancient world, people regularly, when they had a child they didn't want, especially if it was a girl, they left that poor child out for the wolves or the gypsies or whoever to take and do with what what they wanted. The early Judeans didn't do that. The early Christians didn't do that because they valued every human being. Likewise, there were techniques of abortion in the ancient world. In fact, quite often when a woman was pregnant and the father didn't want that woman to be pregnant, the father might insist that the woman should have an abortion, which in those days was possible, but often very dangerous. They would take certain drugs or have certain medical, rather invasive medical procedures. And it makes me shudder at the thought of it. In other words, all that sort of thing went on in the ancient pagan world. And the Judeans and the Christians wouldn't have anything to do with It. Thank you very much. And I think that shows us the way that in principle, this is not something which we should welcome. It is not something which we should collude with. At the same time, there may be certain exceptions of which severe deformity might be one, of which certainly incest and rape would be others. And in those cases, I would say the sooner the better, because at a certain point, and I am not medically qualified to say at what point I would draw a line, then this is a viable human being that should then be cherished. And I know from experience with my own children before they were born, of being aware, that they were aware in the womb of noises, of pressure, of all sorts of things. And that the more we know about psychology, the more it really does appear that some of the impressions which are given to this child in the womb will re. Emerge as their children and as they grow up. So we're not just talking about some inert lump of matter which we can just get rid of as we please. So the whole debate about the woman's rights, it's very difficult. It's very hard for a man to talk about this. And indeed, one of the problems has been, particularly in the Roman Catholic Church. Church when women particularly, say, a girl who's been raped or who's had incest committed on her, then discovering that unmarried men from the Catholic hierarchy are telling her what she can and can't do, you know, as people now say, the optics of that are pretty bad. That's part of the same system of male bullying which we have to avoid like the plague. However, having said that, I do think that that that sense of respect for God's creation in all its rich variety is the primary starting point. Even if we then have to say with sorrow and a certain sense of this is the least worst option in this situation, that there may be some cases of exceptions. That's about as far as I can get at the moment. And as I say, I'm very much aware of just how sensitive this topic is politically, sociologically, as well as ethically.
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Mike Bird
I think that's a good way to put it, Tom. Christians and Jews have traditionally been pro life. I mean, that's why we normally reject the death penalty. That's why we oppose, you know, euthanizing our grandparents the minute they start losing the keys to the car. This is why we don't like the idea of, you know, doing horrible procedures that will hurt human beings. And in some jurisdictions, it's horrible to think they're even talking about infanticide. Because people have pointed out, I mean, if you're going to have abortion all the way up to birth, how does going six inches down the birth canal really change anything legally? So it seems so arbitrary. And I think there are some philosophers, like, you know, Peter Singer, who is one among many who have argued for the legitimacy not just of late term abortion, but even infanticide, which for me really is a symbol of moving from a Christian age back to a neo pagan world. But Tommy, like you said. Yeah, it really is a difficult topic. And we can't assume that this is a black and white answer when every case is going to be somehow different.
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Tom Wright
Sure.
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Mike Bird
We've got another question, Tom. This is from Timothy Smith from New Pulse in the United States, and he's got a pretty good question. Does God forgive Lucifer, you know, the devil in the end? And here he's thinking largely of Colossians 3:11. And Tim asks us, I have been pondering this question for a while. That is, does God forgive Lucifer in the end? Colossians 3 seems to say at the end of verse 11 that Christ is all and in all. Does that include Lucifer and fallen angels? Does God go the extra mile and live out his absoluteness this way? Does the destruction of Satan mean the destruction of his will or the destruction of his person? Thank you so much. Blessings to you. Tim. I think this is about the doctrine of reconciliation. Does it include the reconciliation of the spiritual powers, even the devil? Tom, what are your thoughts on this? How far does this reconciliation go?
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Tom Wright
Yeah, the first thing to say is that this is clearly not what Colossians 3:11 is about. Paul is talking about the unity of the church across the different ethnic boundaries. He says that there is no Jew or Greek. There is no circumcised and uncircumcised barbarian, Scythian slave or free, but Christ is all and in all. In other words, he's talking about the Church and about the fact that we're all part of the same family, which is an outlandish, scandalous doctrine in the first century. But he's not there talking about the powers. Indeed, in the previous chapter in Colossians 2, Paul speaks of the powers being defeated on the cross. And then if we work back to Colossians 1, which might have been actually a more. More germane passage, he talks about all things in heaven and earth being reconciled, that Christ through the cross has reconciled all things to himself. Things in heaven, all things on earth. That does rather imply that if we want to think in terms of angels and archangels and Spiritual powers. And by the way, I don't think Paul has a definite idea of there's this sort of power and that sort of power and the other sort of power. I don't think he could give you a sort of filing cabinet analysis of what these different powers are. He just knows that there are forces out there in the world which are in the world made by God, but they sometimes have rebelled against God. Paul does seem to be saying in the new creation all the forces that were part of God's good creation will in fact be brought back into a new harmony. So that's quite a striking thing to say in Colossians 1, 1820. But when it comes to the language about the Satan or the devil, I am very, very wary of giving to that entity sense of full on personality. If you're not careful you end up with the devil and God being kind of equal and opposite where you get some systems of a dualism in which there is this creature called the devil and maybe not even a creature, maybe an equal sort of being to God and then we're in this sort of battle being joined. I don't think that's, that's how the New Testament sees it. Yes, sometimes there is very explicit language Jesus saying get behind me Satan. And the temptations appear in Jesus vision in Matthew 4 or Luke 4 as an actual figure of some sort whispering ideas into Jesus head. But I think any 1st century Jew would know that that language talking about this as though this is a full on being or even a person may be simply figurative Viv language for something which is a bit more insidious, a bit more shadowy. Because part of the point of those passages in the temptation narrative is that temptation does not present itself in the form of a funny little figure with horns and hooves and so on saying now Tom, why don't you do this? Or perhaps you should do that. Rather temptation arises from things that seem to occur to us naturally. Oh maybe I should do this now, maybe I could do that. And it's only gradually as we grow as Christians when we realize this is a temptation. I'm being whispered at by some shadowy force and I don't want to dignify that force with the idea of full personhood. That's why in my translations and in my commentaries I have referred to the Satan as it rather than him. And I've talked about the Satan with a small S or sometimes the Devil with a small D as a way of saying sometimes the shadowy forces do seem to gather themselves into one which is saying do this now, or why don't you go and do that? Or why don't you avoid going to church today or whatever it might be. And so sometimes that's how it appears, and we can personify this force. But then I don't think there is a being equal and opposite to God or even equal and opposite to Jesus that would then need to be reconciled. That idea, of course, goes back to Origen at the start of the third century, who did think that since God intended to be all in all, that would include the reconciliation of everything, including the devil. But I want to say to Origen, hang on, hang on, hang on. Your idea of this great monistic scheme as God's ultimate ideal is pushing far too far in all sorts of directions. And certainly at this point, I'm prepared to go much more with the book of Revelation, which sees all the negative forces as being thrown into this pit of fire, which is a very vivid way of saying God will root out from his eventual new world everything that causes corruption, sin, death, tears, the lot. So I think, though I understand the question, I think it's actually going way beyond where Scripture would teach us to go and is leading us to a rather odd conclusion.
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Mike Bird
Would it be fair to say, Tom, that in the end all the powers, including the Satan, they're either going to be reconciled, pacified, or destroyed? Would that be a good summary of what's going on there?
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Tom Wright
Absolutely. And the destruction of anti God. I mean, the point about the Satan is that the Satan is opposed to the goodness of God's creation and to the rescue and redemption of God's good creation. So if God is rescuing and redeeming creation, then the force that is against it is being destroyed. Ipso facto, that's part. Part of what's happening.
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Mike Bird
Okay, well, that's probably a good point for us to go and take a break. But don't go away too far, because when we come back, we're going to wrestle with the similarities and the differences between Romans 8 and Galatians 4, two of the most important parts of the Pauline corpus. So we'll be back after this break. This episode is brought to you by Logos.
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Tom Wright
Eyes, exhale, feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today.
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Tom Wright
And breathe.
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Mike Bird
Well, welcome back. Our next question comes from Frank O' Keefe from Sydney, Australia, where the Vegemite is fresh and the kangaroo roams free. And he's got a few questions there. I'll focus on the main one he asks. Hi, Tom, my name is Franco Keefe, and you and Richard Hayes now of blessed memory, my two favorite Bible scholars. There are many questions I'd like to ask you, but we're going to limit him to this one here. He says, I was listening to one of your classes on Galatians that was delivered at McGill via Regent Audio. In your lecture on Galatians 4, you mentioned that there are parallels between Galatians 4 and Romans 8. Could you please expand on how Romans 8 is sort of like an extrapolation of Romans 4. Now, Tom, you've got a very big book on Romans 8 called into the Heart of Romans, which is a great book. It's a wonderful exposition of that chapter. You've also got a commentary on Galatians as well. So you've spent a bit of time in these two epic chapters of the Pauline corpus. What do you see going on here? Is Romans 8 just an expanded version of Galatians 4? Is Paul changing his mind on something? What's the relationship between these two exciting texts from Paul's letters?
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Tom Wright
It's a great question and really one of my favorite things in all the world is to spend time grubbing around in Paul's letters and trying to make sense of complicated bits and so on. And for years when I was a young Pauline scholar in the 1970s, I was reading scholars, Americans, Germans as well as British and some French who were saying, well, of course Paul seems to have changed his mind because in Galatians he is so opposed to the law. And in Romans he seems to be saying, actually the law is quite a good thing and gets fulfilled. So clearly something's happened. Paul's taking a different line entirely. And I used to be puzzled about that. And I remember the people that I was reading and trying to make sense of how the line of thought runs from Romans 7 into Romans 8 and how the line of thought runs from Galatians 3 into Galatians 4 and seeing all sorts of things going on and where I am now. And as you've referred to, my most recent things are the big commentary on Galatians published by Eerdmans and then that sort of middle sized book on Romans 8 Into the Heart of Romans. And I would say to questioners, please do read those, because those are kind of an update on anything that I did 20 years ago, as with my commentary on Romans or 30 plus years ago, as in lectures that I did when I was at McGill in Montreal. So. So I think the first thing to say is this. We're not talking in the abstract about the law as simply a system of morals, with the question being what happens if we do or don't keep it and how does God rescue us? And people who've taken it like that have said, well, in Galatians Paul says that the law gets abolished, so you don't need to worry about it anymore. But in Romans he seems to be saying something more subtle about the law being somehow fulfilled and that it's fulfilled in the spirit and so on. So that there seems to be a shift. And I want to say, hang on, think about the situation that's going on in Galatians. Paul is really worried that the recent converts in what we now call Southern Turkey are in danger of wanting to get circumcised. Why? Well, that's complicated. But it looks as though in this community in southern Galatia, in southern Turkey, in Galatia, that's the cities that. That Paul visited in Acts 13 and 14, people have become Christians. But then as a result, they have started up this community which is claiming the right, which traditionally the Judeans, the Jews, had, had the right not to have to worship the local gods. That's only hinted at here and there, but those hints are pretty deafening when we think of the situation of people in a place like southern Turkey where everybody goes and worships the gods. That's what you do. That's how society works. You go on these pilgrimages or processions and you offer sacrifice. And the new God on the block is Caesar. Caesar and Rome. The imperial cult is very important. Now, the Jews from early on, certainly from the time of Julius Caesar a century earlier, had had a free pass on this one because everybody knew that the Jews were different. They don't worship the gods. So we sneer at them, we don't really like them, but okay, we'll live and let live. It's a complic complicated situation. Not all cities took that as seriously as some. But in principle, this was what I have called a kind of irreligio licita. People talk about religio licita, that's the permitted religion. But actually for the Jews it was that they were permitted not to worship the gods. Now the trick is this. Suddenly there's a whole lot of people who are not Judeans, who are not Jews by ancestry, but who have joined this group with people who are Jewish who are saying, we're not going to worship the gods. And if people say, well, come on, you've got to do it or bad things are going to happen to our city. No, no, no. We are part of this family of Abraham now, and Abraham's descendants, the Jews have never worshiped your gods. And we're part of that family now. And you can imagine the magistrates, the local teachers and leaders in the community saying to the leaders of the synagogue, who are these funny people? I said, well, I don't know. There was some odd bloke called Paul who came into town and told us about somebody called Jesus. And some of these pagans said they believed it. And so now they're claiming that they're part of a community that doesn't have to worship the gods. To which the answer is, you better get those people circumcised. So that they really look like Jews. Otherwise we're going to have a major social revolution on our hands. Now that is the issue in Galatia. As a result, Paul needs to say to the Christians in Galatia, look, God's purpose has been fulfilled in Christ. Therefore the Mosaic dispensation, which was a good thing, has done what it was meant to do. It has resulted in the death and resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Spirit. So now there is a new creation in which there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, because all are one in Messiah Jesus. So you don't go and work, worship the local gods and you don't have to get circumcised in order to prove that you're part of the Jewish community, the children of Abraham. Because end of Galatians 3 if you belong to the Messiah, you are Abraham's seed, heirs according to promise. So it looks to our post Reformation eyes as though Galatians is against the law, because we have stopped reading Galatians in its real historical situation. As soon as you see that historical situation, of course Paul has to say don't go back to the law, because that is to go back to the previous stage in God's purposes where if you are trying to keep the law, you end up in exile as Deuteronomy said you would. And there's all sorts of stuff about Galatians 3 which has to be said there. So Galatians looks as if it's anti law, but that is an abstract way of reading it over against the real life three dimensional historical situation. Now in Romans it's quite different. In Romans, as we know from chapters nine to eleven, Paul is faced with a community in Rome where lots of Gentiles have become Christians, where Claudius has expelled the Judeans from Rome because they are rioting. Now presumably not all Jews actually left town, but lots did. And now suddenly with the death of Claudius in AD 54, Nero has come to the throne and all Claudius edicts are being rescinded and a lot of Judeans are coming back to Rome. And the Gentile Christians in Rome are being tempted to look down their noses and say, oh, these Jews, we know that God has written them off. And oh, of course there were some Jews to start off with, like Paul himself, but that was just a launching pad. And now this Christianity thing is basically a Gentile phenomenon. And so Paul is building up to his argument in Romans 11, which is to say, don't you go that route, don't you look down on the physical family of Abraham, because God still remembers the covenant with Abraham. God has not written them off, so you better not try and do so either. So the whole argument of Romans is much bigger than that, but it's going in that direction. So Galatians is saying, watch out, don't go to the Jewish Torah because that's taking you back into the slavery which Deuteronomy warned you about. Rather go with the Messiah and the Spirit, and you'll find that everything that the law was wanting to do is fulfilled, as he says in Galatians 5, 6. But in Romans he's saying, look, the law, the Jewish law was a good thing, now fulfilled. Yes, there are problems about it, as in Romans 7, but that's dealt with in Christ and the spirit in Romans 8. And now if you're that sort of people, do not think that you have to look down at the physical children of Abraham as though they're a lesser breed and now they're written off. So Galatians is going in one direction, Romans is going in the other, but they are both operating with the same basic theological kit with this difference. I could go on about this all day, but let me just say this one thing more. In Galatians, when Paul is talking about justification, he is talking covenant language. He's talking about the promises to Abraham and how they are fulfilled in Christ. He is not using law court language. Many people knowing that in Romans Paul does use law court language, have read that back into Galatians. But if all we had was Galatians, you wouldn't know that all that law court stuff was going on. It's all about membership in Abraham's covenant family in Romans. From very early on, Romans 2 and 3, Paul introduces the extra dimension of the law court language. And because of that coming together in Romans 8 with the covenant language, Romans 8 becomes really quite complicated because there is therefore now no condemnation for those in Messiah Jesus. This is already the law court language and then Paul's explanation of that. So we have to be careful to follow the actual train of thought in both letters. Now, now there's much, much, much more we could say. But that, I think is a start indeed.
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Mike Bird
I mean, Tom, that was a great exposition of, you know, two very dense passages. I mean, tell me, how does this sound like a summary? In Galatians 4, Paul says that the Torah points to life and righteousness, but does not provide them because they are apprehended in Christ. And in Romans 8, Paul is arguing that the law itself is fulfilled by Christ and the life and the spirit that enables us to resist the flesh and gives us all and more than the law could ever do. Would that be a good way of juxtaposing those two chapters?
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Tom Wright
Yes, ish. Yes ish. Except that I think we do have to be careful about using the word righteousness in relation to Galatians, because the Greek word dikaizune there is so closely tied in its various appearances to that whole question of who is a member of the people of God and who are the family of Abraham. And if we use the word righteousness, our minds, trained by the Reformation debates can easily flick back into that law court scenario, which is more an ethical sense. That's Romans, not Galatians. It's not that one is right and one is wrong. It's a very rich, densely built up, layered argument.
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Mike Bird
Okay, well, Frank, I hope you enjoyed that exposition of Galatians 4 and Romans 8. Sadly, that's all we have time for today, but keep sending us your questions@askntright.com if you've got questions about Jesus, the Bible and the life of faith, we would love to hear them. Let me also remind you there's a great number of other programs available through Premier Network, including the Great show Unbelievable. So have a look at that as well in your spare time time. But until next time, I'm Mike Bird.
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Tom Wright
And I'm Tom Wright.
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Mike Bird
You've been listening to Ask NT Wright Anything and we'll see you for the next episode. Take care and God bless. Until then, Sam.