Tom Wright (23:52)
Well, yeah. This is obviously, as you know well, a very complicated question and does require close attention not only to Romans chapters 9 through 11, particularly the beginning of 9 and the end 11 actually, but also to certain passages in Galatians and in First Corinthians and elsewhere where the same topic is on the edge, and also other passages in Romans like Romans 2:25 29, which is very germane. I'm not sure we can cover all of that in a short space of answer to one question. It may be something we would need to discuss at more length at some stage. But I do want to be quite clear, that we would reject, and I'm sure you and I would agree on this, we would reject any interpretation which said that. Well, Christianity may have started off as a Jewish movement, but then the Gentiles came in. So the Gentiles have replaced the Jews, and now Christianity is a Gentile phenomenon, not really Jewish. That's replacement theology, which is often deemed to be supersession. And I and many others have argued strongly against that or anything like it, as an interpretation of Paul, although many people still regard certainly my views, and perhaps yours, as implicitly supersessionist. But that's partly because at the moment, there's a strong push in certain circles to say that actually believing in Jesus may be one religious option for those who like to take that up, but there might well be other religious options. So that, for instance, if somebody is a loyal Jew today and a practicing faithful Jew, then why would they need to convert to Christianity? And so then you have a scenario where Jews can stay as Jews, presumably keeping Torah in some way, shape or form, and then Gentiles become Christians, which actually plays back into the idea that Christianity is just quite different from Judaism altogether. There's a scholar called Jacob Kner who's now gone to his rest, but who said that Christianity and Judaism are different people talking about different things to different people. And that was a way of saying, we're just so different. We'll live over there, you live over there. We'll wave at each other from time to time, but we don't need really to engage now. St. Paul would have been horrified. The question that I would ask is, why is St. Paul in tears at the beginning of chapter nine of Romans? And why in particular at the beginning of chapter 10, is he urgent in prayer that his Judean contemporaries might believe the Gospel and so be saved? Because that middle section of Romans 9, 11, chapter 10, verses 1 to, well, 1:13 is all about people coming to faith and how faith in Jesus as Messiah, as Kyrios, as Lord, and as being raised from the dead is the fulfillment of the new Covenant promise in Deuteronomy 30. I mean, it's a dense and complicated argument, very dense. But Paul is tracking with the whole of the Pentateuch through this whole section. And here he's in Deuteronomy and is pointing ahead to the climax of chapter 11, which then picks up from. So this is getting technical, but it's a great question which picks up from chapter nine, verse six, where Paul says, okay, we're faced with the fact that most of my fellow Judeans have not believed. But that isn't because God's word has failed. It's because there always were two different meanings of the word Israel. Not all who are of Israel are in fact Israel. He says that very clearly in chapter 9, verse 6B. So we've got this distinction already made and we wait to see how he's going to unpack it. And it gradually becomes clear that, yes, there is a remnant. The thing, though, that when I read what Andrew Brown says here about God's purpose in electing a remnant ultimately leading to Christ, that's not actually the remnant that Paul is talking about in chapter 11 there he's talking about, because Andrew's meaning the remnant, a narrower band of Judeans with Jesus as the final representative. Whereas in Romans 11, Paul, Paul is talking about a remnant which is people like himself who are Judeans who have accepted Jesus as Messiah. And he says if there's some, there will be more. So he says this is just the beginning. So it isn't a shrinking remnant, it's rather, yes, God has called actually many Judeans. All the early disciples were Judeans. And if he can do that, he can and will call more. Because here's the thing, thing which is so important for the reading of the whole thing. The situation in Rome is that the Judeans had been expelled from Rome by Claudius. We don't assume they all disappeared, but lots of them did. When Claudius died in AD 54, Nero became emperor, Claudius's edict was rescinded and the Judeans came back from all over, from Corinth, from Ephesus, wherever they got. Yeah, yeah, lots and lots and lots of people. And the Church, meanwhile in Rome numbered maybe, I don't know, 150, 200 people, probably in four, five or six different house churches in different parts of the city, keeping different cultural norms and being suspicious of one another. So the church is a tiny minority, whereas there are thousands and thousands of Judeans and there's several well established synagogues and so on. And Paul is faced with the possibility that Christians in Rome will look at the Judeans in their powerful position and think, well, God has cut them off, there's no hope for them. And Paul does not want them to draw that conclusion. He doesn't say exactly what God is going to do. He basically says, let's leave it up to God. If God wants to save more, then he will. But the means by which he does that will be through the Gospel. And one of the key verses there is chapter 11, verse 23. And they, that's Judeans. If they do not remain in unbelief, they can be grafted back in. There are so many who want to say, well, the Judeans are fine as they are, they don't need to come to Christian faith. But Paul says, no, they can be grafted in, but they mustn't remain in unbelief. In other words, they need to come to what Paul would regard as true Christian faith. And then you get the all Israel will be saved. In verse 26 of chapter 11, which I'm convinced with the other passage around goes very closely with chapter nine, verse six where you have a distinction between the Israel, which is all the Jews at the time, and then this very specific all Israel, which then I think, and I've argued and convinced some colleagues, not all, actually, by that Paul includes ethnic Gentiles as well. And the basis for that is partly the end of Galatians, where he talks about the Israel of God, but Also partly Romans 2, 25:29, where he talks about the Jew is the one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart in the spirit, and not in the letter. And he does that in order to say that if Judeans have failed and have not been the people God wanted them to be, then it's entirely okay for God to call others to be his people, even if they're not ethnically Judean. So it's a huge exegetical mare's nest. I and others and you, we've spent a long time thrashing it through. I've summarized it, I think there as best I can. You may want to add a nuance and so on.
