Tom Wright (5:28)

Yeah, this is a very poignant description of a very unpleasant and difficult situation, and I wouldn't minimize that for a minute. I think actually what I'm hearing is partly about the loss of a child not yet born, but more actually about unanswered prayer, about particularly heartfelt, desperate prayer, which then doesn't get the result that was wanted or envisaged. And as I've often said on this podcast, I can't be a pastor at long range. Somebody asking questions with this kind of intensity needs to find a wise, sensitive, prayerful pastor locally to whom they can go and with whom they can weep and read together and talk together and walk the next bit of the journey linking arms. That's part of the pastoral office. And you and I can do a little bit of that in this, in a podcast, but we can't actually be pastors to this dear man who obviously needs that sort of intimate help. And the first thing to say is, yes, the more we know about pregnancy and the more we know about family life, the more it is quite clear that though the woman is of course, massively involved, totally involved, also the father, if the father is still in the right relationship with the wife and with potentially an as yet unborn child, the father too will go through the equivalent grief. Obviously not the physical grief of there being somebody died literally inside them, but within the marriage bond, somebody has died within that bond. And that is an extraordinary moment. I've hardly ever heard sermons on this, though I imagine in every congregation beyond a certain tiny size, there will be some people who've experienced this, and it would be consoling to have some pastoral wisdom on it from the pulpit. I do know from firsthand experience of the strange things that happen when a life has been conceived but then does not come to birth, that there are kind of waves of emotion and belonging which radiate out from even the tiniest, as yet unborn child, and embracing those who are part of that family group so that they will pick up resonances of that. I don't have good language for this, but I know that it's a reality, and I know that it's a reality which can then be brought into the presence of God. And like Mary and Martha saying, lord, if only you've been here. Now, of course, in the story of John 11, which I've just referred to, Jesus does raise Lazarus. But there are many, many, many people in the Gospels who had lost loved ones who were experiencing grief. And by no means all of them did Jesus come and instantly deal with what was being experienced. I know as well that it's not only that passage in Matthew 7 about supposing you ask for a fish, will you give him a scorpion? It's those amazing promises in John 14, 15 and 16. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you. And those are very striking and very specific promises. My own personal experience of them has been that quite often when you actually claim those promises and pray for something, something that constitutes an answer, not necessarily exactly what you thought may well happen Equally, there are times when you pray earnestly for something. It's as though God will use, if I can put it like this, the energy of that prayer in a different direction to provide something else which is actually where those prayers are going. I want to say very emphatically, no prayer is wasted. It may seem like we were shouting into a void and there was no answer. But in the long, strange providence of God, no prayer is wasted. And the groaning of all creation. This is Romans 8, which we share as we groan, because we are still in the body, unredeemed, as yet waiting for the resurrection with all that that means in terms of the puzzles and pains and horrors of some things that happen in family life, et cetera, we are groaning, and the Spirit is groaning within us, and the Father is listening to what the Spirit is saying. And I would say, as I've had to say to people close to me and sometimes even to myself, when you seem to be in this dark, dark place, then all you can do is to trust that the Spirit is groaning within you. And the fascinating thing about that verse in Romans 8 is that the Spirit is groaning wordlessly. In other words, sometimes are so awful that the third person of the Trinity doesn't have words to say how bad it is. But the Father knows and is hearing the mind of the Spirit. And I find that it's not sort of instantly healing. It's not, oh, well, that's all right then. But there is a kind of a strange, dark comfort in the middle of that, which is about somehow God knows about this, and God is holding onto it within the overall grief of all creation, and so transposing our shock and horror and sorrow into God's care for the suffering and grief of all his creation. I think that helps us to get a sense of perspective on it and perhaps then a sense also of perseverance, that we are to see that as a call simply to faithful prayer. Prayer in the dark, prayer like the book of Job, Job shaking his fist at God. But at least unlike Job's comforters who are talking about God, Job is talking to God. And eventually God does respond, even though not in the way that Job was imagining. So this is a real toughie. But I think that is part of the mystery of prayer, that sometimes we are led to pray through pain in a way which will then resonate out perhaps into the wider world of which we are a part. There are many people we pass in the street or see in church who are suffering extraordinary grief and pain, and we are at least linking arms with them spiritually in our prayer and holding onto them. So I would recommend a one on one pastoral carer, but also regularly revisit the psalms because the psalms again and again come back to the hey Lord, what's going on here stuff. And that's one of the sure ways through.

Mike Bird (12:49)

Yeah. Something I would recommend for for Matt as well is a great little book by Eric Schumacher called Biblical Comfort for Men Grieving Miscarriage. That is a great book. I wish it was written decades ago. And that's a book I frequently give to friends, students, parishioners when they're going through a tragedy like this. So there we go. I'm at our prayers remain with you for your comfort at this time. But we're going to change topics a bit. We're going to move on to the subject of the Lord's Supper and the Eucharist. And Tom, here we have not one, not two, but three questions came in, all on this theme. And our first question is from Tinuke Siani, I think, or Shawnee from Melbourne, Australia. Yay, Melbourne. And he asks, can you explain the theology of the Eucharist, explaining the differences between the denominations? That's a little bit hard. That could take several hours. Then we've got a question from Taylor Marbury of Brandon, Mississippi. And Taylor asks, I read your biography of Paul a couple of years ago and found it very useful. Since then I've been listening to this podcast and found it very insightful. You recently discussed the real presence in the Eucharist and I have a related question. What does it mean to take the Eucharist or Communion in an unworthy manner, as in 1 Corinthians 11:27? I recently observed communion with my 4 year old, my child. I realized that she didn't fully understand what she was doing, but I tried to use it as a teaching point and she tried to listen and learn respectfully. My father gave me a hard time saying she isn't supposed to have it until she expresses proper faith. But we seem to allow infant baptism or circumcision prior to the child being able to express faith. Why is the Eucharist any different? Thanks, Taylor. And then from Jenny Elliot, during the prayer of consecration during Holy Communion, the priest repeats Jesus words as written on the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper. He Jesus took bread and broke it and said, this is my body given for you. Eat it in remembrance of me. And likewise, after the supper he took the cup and blessed it and said, this is my blood shed for you. Drink it in remembrance of me. Why why does it mean? And why is it important to eat the consecrated bread and drink the wine? And how are Christians nourished by the sacrament? Is it simply an act of commemorating Jesus death and resurrection, or is there much more going on? So, Tom, a lot there. What are the different views of the Lord's Supper? Can children receive communion? And what are the benefits of partaking the Lord's Supper? Is it just a symbolic meal? What is going on? What were your answer to our three questions?

Tom Wright (15:58)

Tom wow, these are great questions, and I'm delighted that they come up in the context of our shared work because they are really pretty important. And if I can speak reverently, it's quite like a wise, deeply loving married couple who are aware that their intimate relationship, their sexual relationship, has many dimensions to it and isn't just about a short time of pleasure, but is actually expressing something about who they are as a couple and that the rest of their life together as a couple comes into this moment and flows out from this moment, et cetera. I would say the same, and many theologians have said this, this isn't just me, that the sacramental life of the church is like the intimacy between the risen Lord and his people and should be approached with the same sense, both of delight and of awe, that such a thing should. And of course, for a full theology of this, you need to track back to the Passover. In the ancient Israelite world, Jesus was very deliberately taking a quasi Passover meal. We could debate exactly what sort of a Passover meal it was, but Jesus was doing this at Passover, and that wasn't an accident. He'd come to Jerusalem at that time because what he was doing was launching the new covenant, which was picking up from the covenant which God had made with his people when he brought them out of Egypt. And saying this now is the reality. Jeremiah promised a new covenant, not like the original one, because now it was going to affect the whole person, the heart as well, et cetera. And Jesus is saying, that's what's going on now. But more than that, he was talking about himself, not just pointing away from himself, but pointing to himself. This is my body, this is my blood. But that is extraordinary. And if anyone was tempted to be skeptical about the words of Jesus and whether Jesus really said them, it seems to me highly unlikely that anyone in the early church would have ever invented those words. So that the prayer of consecration in the church's liturgies does go back to this extraordinary sense of Jesus vocation, that he was among his first followers as the one who was embodying the. The return of Israel's God to his people, as had long been promised the return of Yahweh to Zion. The gospel writers are very clear about this, with all the setup about John the Baptist and the fulfillment of Malachi 3 and Isaiah 40, etc. When we're looking at the story of Jesus, we are looking at the story of Israel's God returning to Zion. And this is where it's all going, this meal which explains Jesus death. And I've said many times, when Jesus wanted to explain to his followers what his forthcoming death was about, he didn't give them a theory, he gave them a meal. Because the meal transcends theory. To talk about it, to produce a theory about it, is like producing theory about music. You know, clever people write program notes for a symphony concert. But actually the program notes are often much harder to understand than the music itself. And the music itself in this case, is the sharing of the bread and the wine and the doing so too, together as a body, even if it's when two or three, or whether it's 200, 300, 1000, whatever. So from that point of view, all sorts of divergences take place. And we shouldn't be surprised at that, because the death of Jesus is the moment when heaven and earth come rushing together and God comes into our midst to take the wickedness of the world onto himself and deal with it in order to make the way through into new creation, new life, new covenant. We shouldn't be surprised that that has been very controversial with theories of the atonement, et cetera. And we shouldn't be surprised that the meal which Jesus gave us as the clue to what his cross was gonna mean has also been a matter of controversy. And it's got muddled up with different philosophical and cultural assumptions and so on. And the history of the church and the different denominations has reflected that. Now, famously, we can't possibly lay out the whole medieval theology here, but famously in the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas and others took the philosophy of the Greek writer Aristotle, who made a distinction between substance and accidents. Those are philosophical terms with the substance being the kind of inner core of something, whatever it is, which we don't normally see or touch or smell. But it's the kind of. We have to imagine that there is an inner core that's the substance, and the accidents are the outward things. What's it taste of, what's it smell like, what's it feel like, how heavy is it? Et cetera. And so Aquinas didn't say that the accidents change the bread, still looks, feels, tastes like bread, but that the substance, there's an inner core, and that has changed. I don't find that Aristotelian theory very helpful. And it's clear that by the 16th century, when the Protestant Reformation happened, many ordinary worshipers in European Christianity didn't really understand the difference between substance and accidents and had developed a kind of folk religion in which the priest at the altar muttered and mumbled various things and did certain manual acts, and that this magically changed the bread as a whole into Jesus as a whole. And then all that follows from that in terms of devotional practices about genuflecting or whatever. Now, the Protestant reformers, in rejecting that imagined construct, often went to the other extreme of saying, it's just a symbol, it's just a pointer, it's just a memorial. It just reminds us. We do this because it reminds us of Jesus dying for us. Well, it does remind us of Jesus dying for us, but I want to say it's much more than that. And the much more doesn't take you back to Aristotle. It takes you back to the whole gospel message of new creation. I may have said this before in podcasts, I'm honestly not sure, but in my new book, God's Homecoming, I have a whole chapter on the sacraments and how we can understand sacramental life in these terms. That God is doing new creation. It is launched with Jesus and his resurrection body by the Spirit. It is already at work in the world, and one day it will be complete. And I have come to see that when we receive the bread and the wine, it is, as it were, a gift from God's future. That in God's future creation, which has already been launched in Jesus, all will be renewed, restored. God will be all in all, and we are given this advance. Foretaste that it's rather like in the stories of the children of Israel in the desert. The spies go into the promised Land, and they come back with these amazing grapes that they have cut from the valley of Eshcol. And the children of Israel, even while they're in the wilderness, are tasting the fruit of the Promised land. I find that a much more helpful image that we are tasting in advance the reality of our ultimate relationship with Jesus. Now, that's one way of doing it. There may well be other ways. But I understand that different denominations are worried about misinterpretations, and so they move back in the other direction, or worried about a less full interpretation so they swing back towards the medievals or whatever. It would be wonderful if we could all learn to think more first century about this. In other words, more like a first century Judean would have done to hear what Jesus is saying and then to experience that sense of new creation coming forward from God's ultimate future to meet us in the present. Now that brings us to the very important question about children and eating and drinking unworthily. I remember being in church when one of my children was, I think, three, and when communion was being passed round, we had to tell her to keep her hands down because she wasn't supposed to have it. I and I vividly remember her saying, but why can't I have it? I love Jesus too. And I remember in that moment realizing that there was no way that I as an adult could say, no, no, no, dear, you don't love Jesus. You have to wait till you're older. Because when we know about Jesus, one of the things we know is he loved little children and he loved having them around and sat them on his lap and he prayed for them and with them, and no doubt joked and laughed and teased them, et cetera, et cetera. And he said, unless you become like little children, you won't be part of my family, part of my new way of being human. And I also remember a long time ago, a cousin of mine, he and his wife were about to have a baby, and they were early, middle life, it was quite a late wedding and quite a late childbearing. And they asked me before the first child was born, how old does a child have to be before they are aware of God? And I think they were expecting me to say maybe 7, 8, 9. And I said, oh, about 10 minutes. And they looked at me very surprised. And I said, when you have a child at the breast, the natural focus of the child's eyes is on the mother's eyes. And you establish a very intimate relationship very, very early in that child. Obviously, ideally, it doesn't always happen because there may be difficulties with the birth or with feeding or whatever. I said, wouldn't it be extraordinary if our heavenly f Father wasn't able to establish a relationship with his newborn children right off? And so I have long been an advocate of preparing young children to receive communion, not in huge theological theory, but teaching them about coming together and meeting Jesus in this strange but very powerful way and then educating them obviously in the Christian faith. And this isn't a bit of magic. This is about the richly human welcome of children into the people of God. And I'm glad that more and more families are doing that. But no doubt controversy will continue. But let's do it together and let's prayerfully seek ways of sharing this extraordinary meal across denominations, because that's one of the things that goes with this. In Galatians 2, Paul is insistent that all those who believe in Jesus belong at the same table. And I would say that's true trans ethnically and it's true across the ages, the very old, the very young and the ordinary middle aged altogether. That's what it should be all about.

Mike Bird (27:30)

Great. Well, Tinyiko, Taylor and Jenny, I hope Tom has answered your question in the fulsome way that you'll benefit from. We're going to take a break, but don't go too far away because when we get back we're going to discuss how much of the history or how many of the historical characters in the Bible are actually historical. Back after this break.

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Mike Bird (29:16)

And welcome back. We're continuing on with this episode, answering your questions that you've sent in for Tom to answer. Tom, we've got a good one here. It's from Catherine Wu and she wants to know, you know, did all these biblical characters we read about really exist? Here's what she says. Were major characters in the Bible such as Job and Jonah and even David and Solomon, etc, real human beings? Or were they written as amalgamations of real people? Or are they purely metaphorical? Now Tom, I think this is a good question, because there can be a lot of confusion as to which parts of the Bible are historical. I mean, there's some periods of biblical history, there's just not a lot of external records and archaeology about. We've got the, you know, the accounts in the, you know, the Hebrew Bible. But a lot of it really is a bit of a mystery. I mean, we, we don't have the, the tools and the sources there to confirm a lot of things. And there's also the issue of genre as well. So, Tom, how about we do this? I'll give you the name of a character and you tell me whether you think they were historical or not and. Or more importantly, if they weren't historical, would it matter? Okay, so let's start off with a relatively easy one. Job. Was there historical Job, or is Job poetry a story, a morality tale? If there was no historical Job, is the Book of Job still true?

Tom Wright (30:51)

Yeah, it's a great question. I don't have a particular view on Job. I'm not a Job specialist. I don't know when the Book of Job was written. Many people think it was written in the post exilic period. Just as the children of Israel or the Judaites who'd come back from Babylon were wrestling with the question that they had lost everything in the truth, losing the temple, et cetera. How were they then ever going to trust God again? It may have come out of that period, I don't know. There is one reference in the Book of Ezekiel, interestingly, which refers to Job as a righteous man. Now again, Ezekiel could just be referring to a folk tale about a character called Job, and he may well be a summary of, you know, what people imagine when they think about a great hero. And that's perfectly possible. I don't think there's anything in the Book of Job which forces me to say no. Actually, there was this chap, and he did have three friends and he did have all these sons and daughters. And then the cycle was, as it says. It looks to me very much like either whether you call it a morality tale or a folk tale to make a particular point, and certainly all the speeches and so on, they're wonderful Hebrew poetry. It's actually speaking as somebody for whom Hebrew is not my first language. I find some of it quite difficult. There's lots of odd vocabulary. It's clearly written in a high register. And I don't imagine for a moment that these three friends were sitting on the ground spouting this kind of Hebrew poetry all the time. It's clearly been written up almost like a Shakespeare play. Play, but like a Shakespeare play. Interestingly, did Hamlet really exist? Possibly not. Did Richard III really exist? You bet he did. But the way Shakespeare's put words into Richard III's mouth is to make a particular point and so on. So it may be asking the wrong question as to whether they really existed and it can become rather reductionist. But. But move on to other characters and we'll see.

Mike Bird (33:06)

Okay, Jonah, mostly historical Jonah. And if there wasn't a historical Jonah, does the lesson of Jonah still persist?

Tom Wright (33:16)

Yeah, I mean, again, the way that the book of Jonah is written up is very much like a folk tale. Here's this chap, he runs away, he's thrown to the sea, a great fish swallows him. He goes back to Nineveh, starts preaching and all this stuff happens. And he sits under the gourd tree and gets cross with God for nothing, destroying Nineveh. You know, it's a great story. Jesus refers to Jonah as someone to whom at least the fish bit actually happened. And the men of Nineveh repenting actually happened. Now it could be that you could say that when Jesus says that, he's referring to the well known folktale, like as I hinted, somebody in today's world referring to Hamlet or Macbeth or King Lear or somebody who's a well known character in the literary history of our country and our culture. I don't think that would matter hugely. It would, you know, I have tended to take. Take Jesus reference to Jonah as reference to somebody whom Jesus at least thought was a real person.

Mike Bird (34:22)

Yeah. Okay. Well, here's another one. Maybe this is a bit easier, a bit, a bit more straightforward. Moses. Was there historical Moses? Do we need historical Moses?

Tom Wright (34:34)

I'm sure there was a historical Moses. I mean, it would be very, I was going to say it would be very difficult to invent somebody like that. Now people with clever minds can often imagine motives for somebody writing a particular story in a particular way. I think we do have a historical Moses. I think there really was such a person. I think we know quite a bit about him. Again, that doesn't mean that stories weren't written up later. People do have this odd vision of history, as though history is simply a photographic reproduction or a video camera reproduction of everything that happened to a particular person or whatever. All history is a matter of selection and arrangement. And obviously when you look at Matthew, Mark, Luke. Sorry, obviously. Now when you look at Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and numbers, somebody has edited and arranged all this in a very sophisticated and Clever way. It was not a video cam of what you'd have seen if you were with the children of Israel coming out of Egypt, but that there was a historical Moses, I have no doubt.

Mike Bird (35:41)

I think the real question is, did he sound more like Charlton Heston or like Val Kilmer? You know, if you know the Ten Commandments and the Prince of Egypt movies.

Tom Wright (35:53)

The text says that Moses was very meek, which is an interesting thing. I mean, Moses could get cross with people, but he was basically meek. It's a very interesting word to use for somebody who's a great leader, that he was not pushy, he was not arrogant. He'd learned that lesson early on. And I mean, that to me is a mark of historicity right there. Why would the writer say that if you're constructing this picture of this great leader who's taken the children of Israel out of Egypt? I think that's a historical, historical memory. All right.

Mike Bird (36:27)

Okay, last one, Tom. And I think this is the main event. What about Adam? Was there a historical Adam? Do we need a historical Adam?

Tom Wright (36:38)

I am not an expert on this. I'm aware that some people have written whole books, tomes, articles about this.

Mike Bird (36:46)

A lot of books.

Tom Wright (36:47)

Yeah, a lot of books. When I've been discussing this with friends like Francis COLLINS in the BioLogos foundation, the way that I have approached this is to say, listen, in Genesis, the call of Abraham is an intensification of the commands to Adam. Adam is told, be fruitful, multiply, and here's this garden, look after it. Abraham is told, I will make you fruitful and multiply you exceedingly, and I will give you actually the nations. Ultimately I'll give you this land, but then that is extended in your seed. All the families of the earth will be blessed. Now, the way that I'm inclined to see an original human pair, let's put it like that, is to say that undoubtedly from all the historical evidence we've got, there were what we might call hominids, human like creatures, and we might even call them proto humans for many generations, perhaps for many thousands of years before the time we're now talking about, but that just as God called Abraham and Sarah and said, now I've got a special purpose for you, so it seems to me perfectly reasonable to suppose that God would say to one pair of proto hominids, whatever we're going to call them, come with me, I've got a special purpose for you. I'm now going to enable you to reflect my image into the world and reflect the praises of creation. Back to me. And your purpose will be to bring the, at the moment, rather random and chaotic world under my saving sovereign stewardship. So that, it seems to me, is a way of saying that if there was an original Adam and Eve, that would be what it was all about. Not, I mean, what we're getting away from, of course, is any idea of seven periods of 24 hours. That's certainly not what Genesis 1 is trying to communicate. Genesis 1 is a very careful, layered, ancient Middle Eastern story. It's not a 19th century, okay, this what happened in the first period of 24 hours, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, you can tell that that's so because the first thing God does is create light. And he does so quite some time before he's created the sun and the moon. So when, you know, we're not actually sure how all that fits together, but I think to say that there's a long period of gestation and development and God bringing about a creature to whom he can now say, like he said to Abraham and Sarah later on, now I've got a special purpose for you. This is going to be a surprise, but here's what I'm calling you to do. And I think everything else then follows from that. Beyond that, I would say I've got a lot of books on the shelf back there, some of which talk about this in much more detail than I can. And so there is stuff to be said beyond what I've just said.

Mike Bird (39:48)

Indeed. Well, I think we'll call it a day there, Tom. In our next episode, we're going to answer questions on can I attend a Catholic Church? Jews vs. Judean in Bible translation, and why did Paul circumcise Timothy but not Titus? All that coming up on our next episode. Now, Tom, I know you were recently in Seattle. Did you have a good time?

Tom Wright (40:14)

Yeah, it was great. I was at Seattle Pacific University and met with friends and colleagues there. And yeah, we had some good discussion. I did a couple of lectures, seminar, et cetera. And yeah, I've always enjoyed Seattle. It does rain a lot, but that's okay, too. And I also, I met a very old friend, some viewers listeners may know, Peter Rogers, who is a retired Anglican priest who I knew when we were both studying here in Oxford in the 1970s, and he's living there in retirement. And we were able to meet up for the first time for six years and have a good meal together. And that was a delight. So, yeah, it's a good place. I've always enjoyed Seattle.

Mike Bird (40:53)

Did you get a Starbucks coffee there because Seattle is the headquarters of Starbucks.

Tom Wright (40:58)

No, actually, this time I didn't. The older I get, the less I want coffee. One a day is probably enough. I might have one with breakfast, but I can't do it too much. So I kind of wave at Starbucks like I wave at the other things going on in Seattle and think, good on you, go for it. But maybe not for me at the moment.

Mike Bird (41:17)

Well, I'd like our listeners to know for the price of a Starbucks coffee or even a Nero coffee, if you're in London, you can subscribe to our premium episodes and get an extra episode every week. Support the program, support the great work at Premier Media. So, yeah, if, you know, maybe you should forego that one coffee a day and you'll be able to get for the same price, premium episodes every week. I think, I think that's a much better use of money rather than, you know, spending it on these black beans. But that's just me. Well, that's, that's all we have time for. We'll see you for our next episode of Ask NT Wright. Anything until then. I'm Mike Bird.

Tom Wright (42:03)

I'm Tom Wright.

Mike Bird (42:04)

Take care and God bless.