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Sam
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Mike Bird
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Tom Wright
This.
Mike Bird
Episode is brought to you by LifeLoking between two factor authentication, strong passwords and a VPN. You try to be in control of how your info is protected, but many other places also have it and they might not be as careful. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast for 40% off terms. Apply foreign hello and welcome to another episode of Ask NT Wright Anything, the program where we look at Jesus, the Bible, the life of faith, as Tom Wright answers your questions. I'm the co host, Mike Bird and.
Tom Wright
I'm joined by Tom Wright from the.
Mike Bird
Far North Scotland and we've got some great questions. Again this week we're covering some pretty good topics, topics as diverse as resurrection, discipleship and the very gender of God. Our first question comes from Mark Lee in Lincoln in the United States and Mark asks dear Doctors Bird and Wright, thank you for this podcast. Years ago I listened to the Greer Herd forum with Tom and John Dominic Crossan and read the book based on that exchange. In the appendix to the book, Crossan raised the question of whether the bodily Resurrection mattered as a historical reality or. Or whether seeing it as a metaphor is enough. He seemed to be saying that even he granted that your case for a bodily resurrection is valid. So what? In other words, the value lies in how it communicates a vision of God who interacts with the world. Have you written a response to that appendix? Directly or indirectly? In some ways I suspect I have a sense of your response. I have read the Christian Origins and Question of God series, although I'm not sure I have done so well. Perhaps I am missing the forest for the trees. Your defense of the bodily resurrection is not simply that of a metaphor that's clear and convincing. Crosson's appendix raises a different issue. It seems to me that belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus is the running stitch of the faith. Pull it and the hope of a coherent worldview unravels. Tom, what do you think of that? I mean, can we think of the resurrection as a mere metaphor? Did Jesus rise into the Kerygma, as some New Testament theologians once said? Can we think of the Resurrection like the musical God spell, that God's cause lives on?
Tom Wright
What do you think, Tom, historically and theologically? No, we can't. That doesn't work. I remember that exchange with Crosson and I remember listening to Crosson and thinking that's fascinating because he was a highly educated young Roman Catholic scholar, priest, monk, teacher. And yet his view of the resurrection seemed to be that if it happened, this was just a kind of weird miracle of God saying, well done, you did a good job on the cross. So we have a special favor for you, namely you get to come back to life. And I remember Crossing saying, but what's that got to do with anybody or anything else? And I suddenly had this vision of a whole world of teaching that he must have lived in, in which the cross was so central and so vital in terms of the kind of Catholic spirituality that he'd had, that why would you need the resurrection? That it was just a kind of an add on. And there are many, many Christians, including many devout Christians, many who say they believe in the bodily resurrection. Cause that's what the Bible says. And they're committed to believing what the Bible says, but who don't actually understand the kind of inner logic of it. And I would say to this interlocutor, please do read Resurrection of the Son of God again, because I think it comes out very clearly there. But also please read the chapter on the resurrection in my book and eschatology, that's chapter six of history and eschatology where I take this a stage further and where, if I remember rightly, I begin with quoting what Tom Torrance says in his book on the Resurrection about his last conversation with the great Swiss theologian Karl Barth. Karl Barth and he were talking about resurrection. Barthes was an old man and knew he hadn't long to live. And Barth leant forward and said, wolveshanden leibliche auverstehum understand well, bodily resurrection. And I remember thinking, well, yes, of course, but why did it take part all his life to feel that now he needed to emphasize that? And the answer was that the mood in theology for so long in Europe and in Germany and in Britain as well, had been to see resurrection as a kind of weird miracle on top of everything else. The everything else being a basic spirituality, a belief in redemption through the cross, and particularly a belief in going to heaven when you die. Because the point about the resurrection, as Paul is very clear, is that it is about new creation. It is about Jesus as it were, taking the whole creational project with him into death and the grave, and then with his resurrection, launching the project of new creation of which his own physical body is precisely the beginning as well as the driving animating force. And then by his spirit, very clear in John chapter 20 that the risen Jesus breathes his spirit on his followers so that they can be people of new creation, new creation in themselves, and bring us of new creation into the world. And it seems to me once you put that bit of the puzzle into place, then our questioner is right. Everything else does go with that. And if you take it away, well, what are you left with? You're left with a sense of the presence of God, with some sort of spirituality, with maybe gratitude because Jesus died for your sins in some sense, et cetera, but without what is absolutely vital in the New Testament, which something has happened as a result of which the world is a different place. Take away the resurrection, you don't have that. I would just add this one extra thing. Historically speaking, we know of many Judean movements in the 100, 200 years either side of the Jesus life and death and resurrection. Many of them ended with. They were revolutionary or messianic or prophetic movements. Many of them, perhaps most of them, ended with the death of their founder. In some cases, like in the war 66 to 70 A.D. the Romans then conquered Jerusalem and they took the man that they thought was king of the Jews and they took him off to Rome in Titus procession and he was executed at the end of that. It was a Kind of a formal ritual way of saying that's the end of the Judean hopes of kingdom, et cetera, et cetera. And I imagine historically, supposing a day or two later, some of that person's followers, if there were any left, which there probably weren't, had said to themselves, oh, maybe his cause lives on. Then they would have said, well, maybe the revolution could be restarted. A bit dangerous, but still. But what they wouldn't say is he's been raised from the dead. Because that wasn't what resurrection meant. If you wanted to say his cause lives on, well, sing some psalms, say some prayers, keep up your hopes, get some followers, start a new movement, but don't go around saying he's been raised from the dead, because that's just obviously not the case. So the word resurrection never meant spiritual survival at that period. It was never about John Brown's body lies a mouldering in the grave while his soul goes marching on. That's basically some form of Platonism. And what you have here is the Judaic hope rooted in the ancient Israelite belief in the goodness of creation. Here's the central point. The resurrection is the reaffirmation of the goodness of God's created world and of God's determination to put his world right. Resurrection is what you get when you've got the doctrine of creation and the doctrine of God's justice or judgment, that is to say, putting things right when they meet together. Now, here's the odd thing. I knew Crosson quite well. I haven't seen him now for a few years because of COVID and so on, but I got to know him over a period of about 20 years. And he was passionate about two things, about the goodness of the human body and of creation and about the importance of justice. And I used to say to him, dom, if you put those together, then what you get is resurrection. The goodness of creation plus God's desire to put the world right. That is what is launched at Easter Day. So that's the basic aim.
Mike Bird
Yeah, I mean, to say that the resurrection is meaningful. You don't need to reduce it to a mere metaphor. I mean, that would be robbing it. Whether it's Jesus becomes the kerygma or God's cause lives on. But whether it's the skeptic or even a Bible believing person can often struggle to have that narrative of how the resurrection plugs into the biblical story and launches an entire worldview. I do have to say, though, I think it was Barth the Younger was much Better on this. Marcus Barth, the son of Karl Barth, he wrote a good little book called Raised for Our Acquittal, where he was trying to do, within the Barthian system, make the resurrection a bit more meaningful. Yeah, but it is a blind spot for a lot of Christians because for many, it just is life after death.
Tom Wright
And I think part of the problem then is the use of the word metaphor, which our question arose and which you rightly reverted to. People use the word metaphor to mean not real. That's actually a misuse of language. Anyone who is tempted to go that route, I would say please read George Caird's book, the Language and Imagery of the Bible. Because, of course, in the Bible, the idea of resurrection is often used metaphorically. For instance, in Ezekiel 37, the vision of the valley of dry bones and the bodies coming back to life. And then the prophets is told, this is all about the whole house of Israel who's in exile and are gonna be raised up from the death of exile to go back to their land. So their resurrection is metaphor, to be sure. But that doesn't mean that it can't be seen as something which actually happened. The metaphor, as it were, came out of its cage. So we have to be very careful about using the word metaphor as though it's either it really happened or it's simply a metaphor. There's actually no such thing as mere metaphors, or there shouldn't be. Metaphors are more important than that. But that takes us into the whole area, linguistic philosophy, really, which we probably better not slide down into.
Mike Bird
Well, we've been talking about resurrection and the life lived, which is a good segue to our next question, which is about discipleship. We have a question from a friend in New Zealand who wants to ask us about how Jesus calls people to prioritize loyalties and how we deal with people who seem to exist in sin. He says this. If a Christian prioritizes other things, money, fame, family, nation before God, and they never see the need to repent, would Jesus consider him or her as a follower? And we have the example of Nazi officers, or even those followers of Jesus who laid down palm branches when Jesus arrived and later in the week were joining the crowd who were yelling, crucify him. Maybe because they feared Roman political persecution. Does a person have to have a genuine faith for salvation? Can someone just cling to John 3:16 on the day of Judgment? As if discipleship is not really an issue. Thanks and love to hear your thoughts.
Tom Wright
Wow. It's a good question. But the first Thing that occurs to me is that all of us are on this journey at some stage or another. That is to say, there may be in our midst some people who have attained total discipleship, sort of total holiness and perfection of life. I confess that when I look in the mirror, I certainly don't see somebody of that caliber. And most of the people I live with, including devout good Christians, would still quickly say of themselves, but I'm really falling short on this one, or I really haven't got that sorted out, et cetera, et cetera. And so the whole thing for me comes back again and again to, lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. That is the characteristic prayer of, I think, the wise Christian, coupled with the assurance from Romans 8 there is no condemnation for those who are in Messiah Jesus. But of course, Paul does go on in Romans 8 all the way through to talk about putting to death the deeds of the body. And I'm not gonna say there's a sliding scale where some things that we might do are completely beyond the pale and show that we really haven't got to the first stage in discipleship. And some other things we might show that, well, we're getting it wrong, but we're still on the way somewhere. But there is something of that feeling that the classic Christian rhythm of life is, as you find in most good liturgies, speaking as an ordinary Anglican, that you have confession of sin and you have the assurance of forgiveness. But the assurance of forgiveness comes with. By the way, we hope you're sincere in when you're confessing this. And I take great comfort from the fact that when Jesus gave his followers the prayer which they would characteristically say, the Lord's Prayer, right in the middle of that prayer, is, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. The whole movement is about forgiveness. That's what Christianity is all about. The whole movement is about God starting something new and saying, the old can be left behind now leave it behind and come with me. And insofar as bits of the old way still cling to us, and Paul talks about that as well, and Jesus warns about that we have to go on as a regular, daily, weekly, monthly, annual discipline, saying, actually, I'm still coming down on this one, so I need to do some work there. I need to say some prayers. I need to perhaps to get some counseling. I need help there, but I'm basically going in this direction. But part of our trouble, as with the worrying reference to the Nazi guard, and of course, there were many tales about that of Nazi guards in the death camps who would be cheerfully killing Jews and others during the day and then go to church on Sunday and sing hymns and say their prayers and play games with their children and so on, is that actually this is a whole cultural thing that is possible for an entire culture to be deceived and to think that it's basically doing God's will when there's a massive, huge problem which ought to be addressed. So I think those things are really difficult because stepping outside your culture and getting some critical distance on it and saying, oh my goodness, we're rushing in the wrong way at the moment and somehow somebody's got to stand up and say, no, let's go back the other way, whether it's a Dietrich Bonhoeffer or whoever, but that at the same time, individually we need to be prepared to say that. And when we're recording this, it happens to be still in the middle of Lent. And part of the point of Lent in the Church of England anyway, where I find myself is as a time of reflection and penitence, to have a good look at what's going on. So that when we then come to Good Friday, we are prepared to do that kind of large scale repentance, but and receive God's new life afresh on Easter Day. I think of Daniel in Daniel chapter 9, praying after 70 years of Jerusalem's destruction, praying that great prayer of repentance, and the angel coming and saying, yeah, it's okay, God's purpose is being worked out, things are going to be done. But there's a sense, when there's a sense of needing not just the daily and individual turning away from sin and having one's conscience sharpened up a bit more, but actually culturally and as a family and as a church, looking at the larger picture and seeing what's going on. So then the question, the final question is, we are not God. We are not the judge. God is God. God is the judge. Who knows? On the last day when the secrets of all hearts are disclosed, there may be many people who at the moment seem to be just drifting and muddled and so on, who actually have been following as hard as they can such light as they have had. And there are many people for whom the light of the gospel has been blackened out by bad things that have happened to them in the church, or bad things that Christians have done to them or in their sight or whatever. And goodness, if God isn't gonna be merciful to them, then we're all in deep trouble. So it's not a matter of there's an absolute standard and these people seem to be still falling short of this and this and this. Whereas we pat ourselves on the back and say, of course we're all right. Let the one who thinks they stand take heed lest they fall, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10. So those are the sorts of issues which we need to work our way around.
Mike Bird
Well, that's a good way to put it, Tom. Yeah, discipleship is very hard. It's one of those things we have to wrestle with. You don't want a shallow discipleship, but we can rest in the mercy of God. This is probably a good point for a break, but don't go too far. We have an excellent question coming up. Is God male? If you want to hear the answer to that question, then come back after the break.
Sam
I just wanted to quickly remind you that this podcast is part of the ministry of Premier Insight. And as we close out our financial year, we've been offered a $10,000 matching grant that will double your gift today. And right now, that's an incredible blessing as we're needing $65,000 before the end of our financial year on June 30th. This show depends fully on the generosity of friends like you. So I'm asking you to give your very best gift right now to meet this $65,000 need, knowing your gift will be doubled. You can give now@premierinsight.org give. That's premierinsight.org give. Thank you.
Mike Bird
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Tom Wright
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Mike Bird
Welcome back. We've now got an excellent question from a friend in Minneapolis in the USA who asks a question about God and gender. This is what we've been asked. I'VE heard theologians I respect say that since the trinitarian God is not male or female, using male pronouns to refer to God is inappropriate. So they end up avoiding pronouns and say things like God's own self. But given that Jesus was incarnate in a male body and he referred to God as Father as a primary metaphor, it seems okay to me to refer to God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit as He for ease of communication, even while I understand that God is fundamentally different and outside of human categories and limits. What is your take on this issue of using pronouns to talk about God, Tom? I have to confess that this is an issue I discuss every year with students when we do a basic doctrine of God. And I give them a quote from a feminist theologian, Mary Daly, who said, if God is male, then the male is God. So there's a fair bit of stuff at stake in this question. So what's your take on God and gender?
Tom Wright
Yeah, it is, of course, a vast question which has bubbled up during the course of my lifetime. I mean, when I was first studying, I don't think anyone really was raising this. Possibly some young feminists in the 60s were, but I was completely blissfully unaware of it. Of course, God is beyond gender. That's one of the first things to say. The God, the Holy Trinity is the vast mystery, though also personal. And when we then have within the Holy Trinity, we have Jesus, who was and is emphatically male then, and Jesus, as you say, referring to God as Father, then we have to say, hang on, there are various things going on here which our present culture isn't helping us with, because our present culture has been very male dominated until maybe 50, 60, 70 years ago in ways that really have been shaken up quite a bit. I think through the 20th century, through all the men went off to fight in the First World War from Britain anyway. And often the women were left doing jobs like driving tractors on farms and so on, which before had been male jobs. And that kind of created a world of new possibilities. And then there was the suffragette movement for women voting and so on. And we have come an extraordinary long journey in 100 years that Western culture hadn't done for a very long time, if ever. Although we should be aware of the rhetoric which says that in the ancient world women were always subservient and kept down, et cetera, because there are plenty of very lively, very up and about women in the New Testament and in that world, as we know from historical sources. I mean, think of Phoebe, who's an independent businesswoman, who's taking Paul's letter to Rome from Corinth, and so on and so on. So there are all sorts of issues clustering around that. But yes, to this extent, Mary Daly is right that some people using male pronouns for God then do thinking of them as the people I'm talking about as male themselves, then do give themselves heirs and imply that therefore, basically we men are in charge here. And you only have to read Ephesians 5 to see how Paul reverses that. Actually, the job of the husband vis a vis the wife is to take the role of Christ giving himself for the Church. And there is a huge self giving about that. And indeed the idea of God being known as the self giving God is very central to the New Testament in a way that redefines the kind of arrogant, older image of the male. So I think in the New Testament already we have language about God as father. But who is this father? He isn't this angry, bullying, domineering, typically male God. He is a God of compassion, a God of mercy, a God of gentleness. And that, of course, is rooted in passages in the Old Testament, though the Old Testament covers so much that there are images of God as a mother giving birth. And the word for compassion goes back to the Hebrew root for the womb, that God is like a mother whose womb is crying out for her children, etc. So all of that's going on, which makes wise theologians say, look, God is beyond gender. But it is not inappropriate to use the language of fatherhood for God. But at the same time, there were some early theologians, particularly in the Syriac Christian tradition, who recognized that the word for Spirit in Syriac and as in Hebrew, is, linguistically speaking, a feminine word. Now, we in English don't have masculine and feminine nouns like, say, German or French do. But, you know, because in German and French, everything, whether it's a tree or ship or whatever, has a gender of some sort. And so that genderedness is built into those languages in ways that it scarcely is in English. Although some people who know about the seafaring world still refer to a ship as she, which is an interesting idea. We could trace that through. But anyway, the point is this. From Romans 8 onwards, there are times when the Holy Spirit seems to play almost a feminine role. In Romans 8, it's very clear that the Spirit groans in travail within us, as we groan within the groaning of all creation. And that feminine image of God, the Holy Spirit groaning and God the Father hearing what the Spirit is saying, and the people in whose hearts the Spirit is groaning, then being formed into the pattern of Christ himself. That extraordinary sequence of thought in Romans 8 does imply that there is something transcending the whole thing about God, and that God, as it were, covers all possible bases, and that actually what we think of as male and female are simply pointers to larger, more mysterious realities, which are all present and more besides in the Holy Trinity. So I can well understand that in a world where there's been male dominance, not least male dominance in ministry, where women are told, go and make the tea and otherwise sit down and shut up and stay out of the way, then many women are saying, you know, that's just brutal. And if in that context you're using male language about God to say that, then that's a perversion and a distortion which has to be named and shamed. But at the same time, just as we shouldn't give up the idea of the kingdom of God because there have been wicked kings, as there were in Jesus days, He knew perfectly well the Herods, Caesar, et cetera. Jesus didn't stop talking about God as king. Likewise, just because there are wicked and abusive fathers, that doesn't stop us reclaiming the wise idea of fatherhood that we have in various parts of the Old Testament. As a father has compassion on his children, so is the Lord merciful towards those who fear him. He knows of what we are made, remembers that we're dust. That's the Father as the Compassionate one. And if we were able to trace that through into the New Testament, we would see that reinforced again and again. So I think rather than say because we're aware of bullying male dominance, we should stop calling God Father. I would say, no, let's look at what the Bible actually says about God. And in that light, let us challenge our own thinking and practice about how we play such gender roles as either our psychology or our culture is pushing us towards. I'd love to know what you say in your class as well.
Mike Bird
Oh, well, I do a number of things. Well, one thing I do is I point out that the gender of the Holy Spirit changes on the language you speak. It's, you know, ruach is feminine in Greek, pneuma is neuter, and in Latin, spiritos is masculine. So that the gender of the spirit changes on the language you're speaking. I always say, look, yeah, there is some very bad predatory patriarch is. But I also ask my students, does anyone here actually like their dad? And, you know, most of the students put their like, I do, rather like my dad. I say, well, if there's something good of your earthly father, then there's something. Something infinitely good about your Heavenly Father. But I do have a case study for you, Tom, and I want to get your opinion on this. In Brisbane, where I used to live, there was a Catholic church that was a little bit more progressive and edgy and. And they were doing baptisms not in the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They wanted to get away of the gendered language. So they were baptizing people in the name of the Creator, the Redeemer and the Renewer. And when a new bishop came in and found out what was going on, he said, well, we're not having any of that. And he told the priest that all the baptisms you've done for the last 10 years are invalid.
Tom Wright
And.
Mike Bird
And you have to contact everyone and tell them that they're not communicant Catholics. They have to be re baptized because we don't baptize in the name of divine functions. We baptize in the name of divine names, gendered though they may be. So, Tom, if you were the Bishop of Brisbane and. Or the bishop. If you happened to be the Bishop of Durham at some point and someone was baptizing in the name of Creator, Redeemer and Renewer, would you declare all the baptisms void and make them go back and do it again? Or would you say, well, it's not ideal, don't do it again, but we'll let it slide. I mean, is gendered language essential for baptism?
Tom Wright
Yeah, yeah. That's fascinating. I mean, perhaps this is a typical Anglican response rather than a Roman Catholic response, but I would say that we believe in the validity of the intention. I was once present at a baptism in which for some reason the priest who was doing the baptism just got the wrong phrase in his head. And he was baptizing several children and he did it for each one. Instead of saying, in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, he just missed out the Son. He said, in the name of the Father and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. And I remember sitting there thinking, you can't do that. This is appalling what's happened to Jesus. And he just was. It's one of those things where, as sometimes happens, he was clearly completely unaware of what he just said. And when it was pointed out to him afterwards, he was horrified, appalled. But we didn't say, actually, you need to go back and do all those again, because the law of intention, he intended to baptize them in the name of The Trinity. And so, well, that was regarded as okay. Now, I actually faced a very similar question when I was Bishop of Durham, because while I was Bishop of Durham, they celebrated the 10th anniversary of the first time that women had been ordained to the priesthood. That was in 1994. And in 2004, it was the 10th anniversary. And they invited Bishop David Jenkins, my predecessor but one, to come back and preach the sermon, which he did, quite an emotional sermon as well, to celebrate women's ministry. Now. But the women who had concocted the whole service, which was a big Eucharist, the cathedral was packed, had scripted the final blessing, which was in the name of the Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier. Blessing of God Almighty. Creator. No, the blessing of God, Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier. And I looked at that before the service, and I said, I can't do that. That's not trinitarian. Because, as you say, that's about the functions of God. And actually, each member of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit, does each of those things, if you check it out. So it's not a trinitarian blessing. So I said to the dean, what am I going to do about this? And he said, well, you're the bishop. You can do what you like. And I said, well, the service is already printed. And one of the things I hate about when people are doing liturgy is if there's a printed liturgy, somebody doing something different, because it makes the congregation at once think, what's going on? Why is he doing that rather than thinking about the words? So I compromised, and I said, in the name of blessing God Almighty, I said, I think the blessing of God Almighty, the holy and undivided Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier. And so we'd had the holy and undivided Trinity, and then, yes, all those activities are ascribed to God. David Jenkins was standing at the back of the church with the dean. And apparently when I did that, David Jenkins muttered to the dean, I'm glad somebody else is fed up with all that stupid nonsense. Actually, he didn't use the word stupid. He used something slightly less ecclesiastical. But the point was, David was a good theologian to this point, that he knew that that was not a trinitarian thing. And he saw that what I was doing was back to the Trinity. So I think we have to be very careful, and especially when we're talking about God. You can't just muck around and invent things. You know, God is God, and we are humans struggling to get our heads and our hearts around who God is. So that did occur to me and that was the line that I took.
Mike Bird
At the time that was probably a good thing to do. That was good Episcopal wisdom, Tom, not being offensive but correcting an obvious error.
Tom Wright
Thank you.
Mike Bird
Well, that is all we have time for today. We hope you've enjoyed that episode. And don't forget to check out our our sponsors, Logos, who produce some excellent Bible software. You can go to logos.com NT to get a really good trial. Also, you might want to check out the back catalog because we've had some really good episodes in previous seasons of the show. And as always, send us your questions@askntierright.com and we'd love to hear from you. So until next time, it's goodbye from.
Tom Wright
Me, Mike Bird and goodbye from me.
Mike Bird
Tom Wright and we'll see you on the Ask Anti Write Anything podcast.
Sam
Sam.
Podcast Information:
The episode begins with Mike Bird introducing the podcast’s purpose—to explore NT Wright’s theology by addressing listeners’ questions. The primary focus of this episode revolves around the gender of God, sparked by a question from a listener in Minneapolis.
Timestamp: [02:07] – [10:18]
The discussion opens with a question from Mark Lee in Lincoln, USA, regarding the significance of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Mark references an exchange between NT Wright and John Dominic Crossan from the Greer Herd forum, where Crossan posits that the resurrection might be more metaphorical than historical.
Key Points:
Historical and Theological Importance: Tom Wright firmly asserts that the resurrection cannot be merely metaphorical. He emphasizes that understanding the bodily resurrection is crucial for grasping the New Testament’s vision of God interacting with the world.
“No, we can't. That doesn't work.” – Tom Wright [04:02]
Resurrection as New Creation: Wright explains that the resurrection signifies God's commitment to new creation, not just a spiritual continuation. It reaffirms the goodness of creation and God's determination to restore it.
“Resurrection is the reaffirmation of the goodness of God's created world and of God's determination to put his world right.” – Tom Wright [07:15]
Historical Context: Wright contrasts the resurrection belief with other Judean movements that ended with their founders' deaths, highlighting that resurrection was distinct in its implication for ongoing creation and transformation.
“The word resurrection never meant spiritual survival at that period. It was never about... something which has happened as a result of which the world is a different place.” – Tom Wright [09:45]
Timestamp: [12:15] – [18:58]
A listener from New Zealand raises concerns about discipleship, specifically regarding Christians who prioritize secular pursuits over their faith and whether genuine repentance is necessary for salvation.
Key Points:
Journey of Faith: Tom Wright acknowledges that discipleship is an ongoing journey for all believers, none being perfect.
“All of us are on this journey at some stage or another.” – Tom Wright [12:45]
Confession and Assurance: Emphasis on the importance of regular confession of sins and assurance of forgiveness as central to Christian life.
“The classic Christian rhythm of life is... confession of sin and you have the assurance of forgiveness.” – Tom Wright [14:30]
Cultural Influence on Faith: Wright discusses how cultural factors, such as the behavior of Nazi officers, demonstrate the complexity of genuine faith and discipleship.
“Stepping outside your culture and getting some critical distance... someone has to stand up and say, no, let's go back the other way.” – Tom Wright [17:00]
Timestamp: [21:16] – [35:45]
The core of the episode addresses the listener’s concern about using male pronouns for God amidst contemporary understandings of gender.
Key Points:
God Beyond Gender: Wright begins by affirming that God transcends human gender categories.
“God is beyond gender. That's one of the first things to say.” – Tom Wright [22:45]
Cultural Context of Language: He explains how historical and linguistic contexts influence the portrayal of God, noting that terms like "Father" carry deep theological and relational meanings beyond mere gender attribution.
“If you were able to trace that through into the New Testament, we would see that reinforced again and again.” – Tom Wright [28:30]
Feminine Aspects of the Holy Spirit: Wright highlights that the Holy Spirit is depicted with feminine imagery in scriptures, such as the Spirit groaning in Romans 8, challenging the notion that God is exclusively male.
“The Spirit groans in travail within us... that implies something transcending the whole thing about God.” – Tom Wright [29:53]
Practical Implications in Liturgy: Discussing specific liturgical practices, Wright shares personal experiences where non-traditional language for God’s roles was contested, emphasizing the importance of maintaining theological integrity.
“We believe in the validity of the intention... That's trinitarian.” – Tom Wright [31:10]
Balancing Tradition and Inclusivity: Wright navigates the tension between traditional language and contemporary calls for gender-neutral terms, advocating for a nuanced approach that honors biblical descriptions while addressing cultural sensitivities.
“Let us look at what the Bible actually says about God. And in that light, let us challenge our own thinking and practice.” – Tom Wright [28:15]
Case Study on Baptism Language: Mike Bird presents a scenario where a church attempted to use non-gendered terms in baptismal rites, leading to conflict with ecclesiastical authorities. Wright responds by underscoring the importance of correct Trinitarian invocation over linguistic innovation.
“You can't just muck around and invent things. God is God...” – Tom Wright [31:54]
In wrapping up, Mike Bird and Tom Wright reiterate the complexities surrounding the discussion of God’s gender. They emphasize the importance of understanding theological foundations while engaging thoughtfully with contemporary issues.
Notable Quote:
“God is known as the self-giving God... redefining the kind of arrogant, older image of the male.” – Tom Wright [25:50]
The episode concludes with an encouragement for listeners to continue exploring these profound theological questions and to engage with the broader community for deeper understanding.
Listeners are invited to subscribe for bonus episodes and to engage with the podcast by submitting their questions for future discussions. The episode underscores the ongoing journey of faith and understanding in grappling with complex theological issues.
Notable Quotes with Timestamps:
This episode provides a thoughtful exploration of the intersection between theology, language, and contemporary cultural understandings of gender, guided by Tom Wright’s scholarly insights and Mike Bird’s facilitation.