← Ask NT Wright Anything
Ask NT Wright Anything
More than marriage, how to find a true biblical lens and what's Tom's next book?
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Before we begin today's show, I have some important news to share with you. Premier Insight's financial year ends on June 30, and it's vital we close a final funding gap of $94,000 by that date. The great news is generous friends of the ministry have offered a new $5,000 matching grant which will double your gift today up to that amount. That's why I wanted to take just a moment before we get into today's podcast to ask for your help. If you would, please take a moment today to give your best gift@premierinsight.org ntrite that's premierinsight.org ntrite thank you for understanding how important your gift is today and for giving generously. And now it's time for today's podcast.
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Hello and welcome to the Ask NT Write Anything Podcast, the program where we try to answer your questions about Jesus, the Bible and the life of faith. I'm Mike Bird from Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia, joined with Tom Wright from
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Wycliffe hall in Oxford.
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Now, Tom, I've just got back from Nashville where I had, I had dinner with one of the listeners to the show. You know, Pastor Brad. It was great. Which is proof if you listen to the program long enough, I may literally come to your town and invite you to take me out for dinner. You know, I am willing to do that because that's how dedicated we are to our fans. But, Tom, I had a great time in Nashville. You ever been to Nashville, Tom?
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I have. I've been a few times. Yeah. I've even performed with the guitar at the Rabbit Room.
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So did you go to one of those honky tonks?
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Not actually a honky tonk. That's a different sort of club. I don't know what category to put it in, but I had to Google it.
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I wasn't sure. My, my intuition was that a honky tonk was about white men who like to play with Tonka trucks. Turns out, not even close. Not even close. It's basically a pub that does live music. So you, you're playing some live music there, Tom. You're getting your honky tonk on.
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B
Yeah, I mean, I, I think of honky tonk as an old fashioned clunky piano, but I was playing the guitar anyway. That's my, my secret past or my hidden second life.
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A
It's an interesting city. It's an interesting city, but a lot of, a lot of good Christian churches there. And I really enjoyed conn many people in and around Nashville. But Tom, this week we've got some great questions. We get so many good questions, questions about, you know, man and women together, how to find a biblical lens, and one about your future book projects. So our first question today is from Channa Ulm from Wellington, New Zealand. And this is a question about, you know, what man and women together means for how we think of unity in the human condition. And Channer asked this. I've been reading simply Jesus. Good to hear Cracking Good book and have a question about a statement in the book on page 102. Tom says the coming together of man and woman is the sign of the belonging together of heaven and earth themselves. I find this very interesting. Could you please explain what you mean and point to the biblical basis for your statement? Thanks so much. Now, if I understand Channa correctly, Channa is trying to follow you in marriage of a metaphor of unity, of humanity, of heaven and earth coming together. But you could also argue that marriage is not eternal. Marriage is an earthly Temporary thing. There isn't marriage in the new heavens and new earth in the know, everlasting life. So given the temporary nature of marriage, how, how does it fit as a metaphor for the bringing together of the, of these two things? What, what do you see in marriage, Tom, that is a great image, a metaphor or an analogy for the unity that the, the. The cosmic rendezvous between heaven and earth?
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B
Right. That's a great question. I, I'm. I'm sorely tempted to say just give me two minutes and I'll go and check with my wife and see what she says further, but I think she would just roll her eyes and give me an interesting but not necessarily relevant answer. For me, this comes out of several biblical texts, or rather the convergence of several biblical texts. I mean, the way I have come to read Genesis 1 over the years is that God is creating in Genesis 1 Heaven and Earth as a single bipartite reality. And then there are all sorts of other things in the good creation which kind of go together like the sea and the dry land and so on. They belong side by side, but they are meant to go together within God's creation. But then the climax of the story in Genesis 1 is of course, the creation of man and woman in God's image, together in God's image. And I see that as a kind of sequence, which I'm encouraged to see it like that because in Revelation 21, when we get the new heavens and the new earth, the controlling image of the new heavens and the new earth is the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven as a bride adorned for her husband, where Jesus the lamb is the bridegroom and the church is the bride, which then sends you back to passages like Ephesians 5, where Paul quotes from Genesis 2 about a man leaving his father and mother and cleaving to his wife and then becoming one flesh. And Paul says, yeah, this is a great mystery. The way I'm reading it is about Christ and the church, which is like pointing ahead to Revelation 21, if you like. And so I'm seeing there a sense that the biblical writers themselves are seeing this parallelism. But of course, the point about putting up a signpost is that it isn't the reality, it's pointing to the reality. And I think you see this in John's Gospel as well, where the first miracle that Jesus does, the first sign Jesus does In John chapter 2, is of the changing of water into wine in order to stop a wedding party going horribly wrong and to get it back, not just on the right track. But even better than that, you know, you have kept the good wine until now. And so much of John's Gospel is about the coming together of heaven and earth. And so when the first sign of that is Jesus at a wedding and doing something spectacular to make the party go, I see all these kind of converging. And so this isn't something you can then read back and say, therefore marriage has to be forever, and if you're married to this person now, you will be married to them in the age to come. No, Jesus says himself that in the new age, in the great renewal, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage. That doesn't mean we won't have a special relationship with people to whom we have been very. With whom we've been very close. We just don't know that kind of thing. That's pure speculation, at least. May not be pure, but it's certainly speculation. But my point is that marriage in the present is one of those signposts which says the coming together of these compatible yet enormously unalike to the man and the woman who are different in so many ways and yet drawn to one another in so many ways. This is a signal of God's intention for heaven and earth. Now, when you then get the reality, the coming together of heaven and earth, then you don't need the signposts anymore. And it seems to me that's part of what's going on here. But I think, therefore we can look at the present reality of marriage and thank God for it and celebrate it in that it is a signpost and must be treated wisely as such. Not that it's an absolute, but that it's one of the great good things about creation through which God is pointing. And this is why, for me, it's always a tragedy when a marriage fails or splits up, because that sends a signal to the wider community of dissolution, of, you know, that the great project of bringing together the Unalikes isn't working anymore. And so, you know, for me, marriage and marriage guidance and so on are part of the ministry of the church in all sorts of ways, pointing to the ultimate new creation. I hope that makes sense.
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I think it does. And as you're speaking, Tom, my mind was trying to flick through the number of marriage metaphors there are in the New Testament. Of course, you've got the Song of Songs, which is perhaps the. The ultimate metaphor, and that's always been open to ecclesial interpretations. I'm thinking about the Book of Hosea, about, you know, Hosea's relationship with go. There's the wedding, supper of the lamb, there's the church as the bridegroom of Christ. I mean there is a lot of the bride of.
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B
The bride of Christ.
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Sorry, the bride of Christ. That would be a little bit weird. Bridegroom of Christ, the bride of Christ, of course. So there's a lot of wedding and marriage metaphors used in both Old and New Testaments, which goes to show it really is a fantastic way of communicating something and, and probably along the lines of what you've said, Tom.
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Yeah, yeah, good. No, I mean most cultures have found ways of celebrating weddings, including some very diverse cultures, but it's as though humans know in their bones that there's something good about this, something to celebrate. Some, of course, something about the renewal of life or the producing of more new life. There are all sorts of other spin off questions that could go off sideways from that, but I think this is pretty basic to the whole vision of the Bible.
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Yeah, well, the new creation, the ultimate wedding, the ultimate bringing together of heaven and earth. Well, we've got a second question, Tom, from Nathan Stevens in Nottingham of the United Kingdom. This is about finding a biblical lens. Now this is a fairly long question, but I actually think it's quite good and it touches upon some of the issues that I know, myself and several of my students wrestle with. And this is what Nathan asks. He says, dear Tom and Mike, I would be interested in hearing your take on how Christians who take the Bible seriously navigate the worldview through which we read and interpret the Bible. Born in the 1970s UK, raised in a secular post 1960s family, I came to faith later in life. I am a layperson who seeks to put Jesus as Lord in every area of my life. I am increasingly aware that the modern liberal, secular, humanist, multicultural worldview that I was raised with powerfully influences how I read and interpret Scripture. So many of my preconceptions that I take for granted as a Christian and biblically based are actually historically culturally conditioned. Through your work, I am aware that so many of the church's historical creeds and controversies owe much to the cultural historical lenses through which they read scripture. This is inevitable. My question is how do I develop a better lens through which to read scripture and learn to read culture through a biblical lens? But which lens? The 1000 BC worldview? 2nd century BC, 1st century AD, Second Temple, early or late Middle Age, Medieval reformation or modern 21st century postmodern lens? When I try to bring my faith to look at modern hot topics like abortion or Euthanasia, illegal immigration, the creation of a modern multi ethnic cultural religious United Kingdom or calls for a new multi ethnic kingdom to be established by 21st century Benedict or Boniface. Options I see historical cultural worldviews used to support or oppose. I can't help but think think the modern Church of England has adopted a modernist worldview whole cloth and this conflicts with its Reformation birth. Same for all the denominations which I have interacted with, including contemporary free churches. I recognize I am a thoroughly small l liberal, but I don't want this to be an idol. I guess the early church faced the same issues incorporating pagan, Platonic, Aristotelian worldview from Gentiles into a Hebrew early church. But. But I don't want the cultural assumptions I was raised with to dominate how I read and how I categorize my young children who are 10, 7 and 3 in the faith. Apology for the unfocused question, but hopefully you get the gist. Any wisdom Gratefully received. Yours, Nathan from Nottingham. Tom, I actually think this is a great question because if you say I want to interpret the Bible through a biblical lens, do you mean like 8th century Isaiah, you know, 4th century Zechariah, 1st century Romans? What about the Reformation? What about the Anglican divines of Richard Hooker? And one of the things I do with my students when I teach theology, I do show them how in every period of theology, local cultural philosophical factors shape how people do philosophy. Whether it's the Neoplatonism of Augustine, where it's the Aristotle and philosophy of Aquinas, whether it's the new humanism of Calvin, you know, it's like philosophical and cultural influences are unescapable and yet we tend to think that we're immune from it. Like there's no cultural influence in us. I recently heard the African New Testament scholar Elizabeth Maburu say quite comically, I found this funny because it was true. Like, you know, people write a book about, you know, an Arab commentary on the New Testament or an Asian commentary on the New Testament or an African commentary on the New Testament. But when white people do a commentary on the New Testament, they just call it New Testament commentary. I mean, no adjective required. Like, you know, what they do is nation bespoke. But when I do it, it's just normal that we don't understand how the culture and the influence also lives in us. So Tom, given Nathan's I think very good question. How do we get a biblical lens? Can we escape philosophical and cultural influence? Can we minimize its influence? Whence do we get a good Biblical lens from Tom.
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Wow. Wow. It's great, Mike. I think the answer is you and I ought to find some way of teaching a joint course at some great college or university and invite Nathan to come and be part of that course. Because this is a great. And it's a complex question because we're actually meaning different things by worldview. I think when I have spelt out what I mean by worldview, which I've done in various places, I think in terms of this is a method of kind of a critical analysis of the way people think in a particular culture which is composed of story and symbol and praxis and questions. And you can track that across widely different cultures. Now you could say that my analysis of that into those four is itself culturally conditioned. And that would no doubt be true. But then the question is how do we find in the middle of the swirling seas of all these different worldviews and assumptions, we can get intellectually seasick with that. And we need a kind of a fixed point. And I would say the fixed point is history, and particularly first century history and particularly getting to know who Jesus himself really was and working out from there. Now, of course, the books that were written about Jesus at the time and books that are written about Jesus ever since, including ones that you and I have written, these are all themselves the products of particular cultures. That doesn't mean that they're wrong or unhelpful. Rather like your point about African or Arabian or whatever commentaries on the New Testament as opposed to ordinary ones by white Anglo Saxon Protestants. Ha ha. Then these enculturated angles of vision are part of God's rich panoply good creation. And part of the point is we need to listen to one another and hear the different voices in order then to discern, not just to have a cacophony, a kind of a hyperpluralism in which we just got every instrument in the orchestra playing its own tune in its own way. That doesn't do anybody any good.
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But that's the quotes modern answer. Just go play own instrument your own way.
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I know.
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And it can be. And rejoice in the incoherence.
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Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, there is a time. And the rejoicing in incoherence is a way of protesting against somebody else's heavy handed coherence. We're all going to mean exactly this, thank you very much. So really we're constantly struggling to say if we are supposed to be any sort of orchestra, what is the music and how are we to play it. So I would say this is the thing about history, that history is a real knowledge about the past, whether it's 8th century BC or 1st century AD or 16th century or whatever. And we've constantly got to be checking back to and fro, you know, long time ago, C.S. lewis wrote an introduction to a new translation of Athanasius book on the Incarnation.
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It's very good.
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In Lewis's introduction, he has a whole thing about the point of reading old books. And he said the thing about old books is that they make mistakes, but they don't make our mistakes. And so when we read them, we can say, oh yes, of course, Athanasius probably got that wrong. But oh my goodness, look at this. He really is sitting in judgment there on things that we take for granted. And so that's the call to all of us, to read books from other cultures and other periods, and especially not least to read books from the great theologians from different eras, not so that we will agree with them all, but so that we will recognize that our own views too are time conditioned. And that's fine. We are not meant to be timeless creatures. We are created as creatures in time and in culture, and that's fine. But the history of Jesus and the historical search for how to understand the first century, I think that's part of what is meant when Paul says when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son and sent forth his Spirit. Something about the fullness of time in Jesus and then being able to look out from that, not exactly a fixed point, as though it's a rather boring one dimensional thing, but, but at least the given starting point, from which when we look at, say you cited the Neoplaton Platonism of Augustine, we'll say, well, you know, some wonderful stuff there, but also some things which led the church off in a, I would say, a direction which was not ultimately compatible with the Gospels, and so on and so forth. And I think part of the problem then has been, and we've said this before before that because some moments in church history, such as the 16th century Reformation, have been so important and have so shaped the way people think. People have then tended to imagine that the main thing is to agree with either Luther or Calvin or Cranmer or Hooker or whoever it is, and let's forget all that stuff that went before, and we simply can't do that because they too were particularly time conditioned and leading in particular philosophical and cultural directions. So I find myself in a constant, lifelong and often delighted quest to understand the four Gospels better and better and better. To understand Jesus himself. Please, God, better and better. Let Jesus understand me better and better. So that I will then on a fairly regular basis find myself saying, oh my goodness, I have always assumed that A and B and C. And now I see that actually it's X and Y and a bit of P and Q and goodness knows what. And that's been both exciting and daunting for me. I've had to. It makes me want to go back and rewrite books that I wrote 30 years ago because I now want to say, actually I think we should read that a bit differently. So I think we're all on that quest and the only danger would be if we think that there will be one final overall statement which will then not be culturally conditioned and which we'll be able to say, there it is, that's what we have to conform to. Well, even the Bible doesn't read like that. And so I would say we do need, when reading Genesis to understand the worldview of the ancient Middle east and beyond such as we can. John Walton and others have done an amazing job on that, of course. And when reading, I don't know, Zechariah or Malachi, we have to understand what the cultural and theological pressures were when the so called post exilic period was wrestling with the question, we've come back from exile, but the world is still not redeemed. Who are we? And we're not in that situation. But if we're going to learn from those books, we have to be in dialogue with the situation as it really was and not abstract the words from that and then kind of transport them across as though they were without a context. So I hope that's clear. I mean, Nathan's question went all over the map and I've rather gone all over the map in my answer.
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No, it's good. Yeah, it's great. Tommy, give me flashbacks to reading the New Testament and the People of God. You know, one of the first book on the Christian origins of the Questions of God series. Because there's a good book in that, there's a good section in that where you talk about a critical realist epistemology. Because on the one hand you've got the modernist view that says, oh look, we can have a God's eye view of reality. You know, just get the methodology right, put in the data, trump it out and you get, you know, infallible facts will come out of your machine. And we found out those infallible facts were not morally neutral and they weren't even, even factual. Some of the time. And then there's the postmodern view that says when you read the Bible, you're just staring into a mirror and you're so freighted with your own assumptions that the Bible is just a mirror. The only thing you see in the Bible is what you reflect into it. And I liked your book, the New Testament and the People of God and also Kevin Van Hoots book. Is there a meaning in this text? Because I think it tries to get through the twin dilemmas of the modernist and the postmodernist view. And I think you're right. It's the historical question that does haunt us because people of all cultures and all ages living in a Jesus haunted world, they want to know who is is Jesus. And I think that is a question that transcends languages, cultures and times. And we're all drawn to that. And I think there are enough commonalities in human experience where we can do things together. We can transcend our own locations, our own particularity, and arrive at a knowledge of the truth. But I think what helps is we need to talk to other people from other cultures to miss our blind spot. Now, Tom, you and I have probably had the pleasure of talking to numerous Americans, and there's some sort of, some great things in America. I mean, you know, Honky tonks, Chick Fil A, love it all. I really do love it. But there are some things my American friends sort of lean in towards and makes me go, huh, that's Christians and other places around the world, they don't have that problem. And that's why sometimes I think you need a global community to help you do that. But I think between that common intuition to want to know who is Jesus regardless of your location, and the idea that if we talk to other people outside our community, outside our bubble, we can have our assumptions challenged and that's how we can grow. So I don't think we can boast of a God's eye view of the Bible, but I don't think we're destined just to treat the biblical text as if it's just a mirror where all we see is our own reflection.
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And I'm intrigued that Nathan does rattle off this list of the different biblical periods and then early or late medieval Reformation or modern or postmodern or whatever. Because in a sense, what he's asking for is encyclopedic awareness of all the different cultural contexts from within which people have written about, well, about God, the world, reality, and of course, Jesus. Now we're all striving towards that. Every time I go in Blackwell's Bookshop, which is a wonderful bookshop in the middle of Oxford, I think, oh, I really want to read that book because that would help me understand what's going on in the 14th century. Oh, my goodness, look at this one. That's a really great book on the 19th century. And I realize the I'm too old to read all these books that I'd like to. But that's why actually there is this thing called the Body of Christ where we learn from one another and are prepared to stand on each other's shoulders and sometimes tell each other to move over a bit so we can stand a bit better on their shoulders or whatever it may be. But in other words, this is not something any one of us can do solo. It's far too big for that. Even somebody like Rowan Williams, I don't think, can see the whole picture all the time, though he has an amazingly capacious mind. But making the effort means that we are saying to ourselves, I really want to read Calvin or Aquinas or whoever it is, but I want to know what was going on in Geneva in the mid 16th century that made Calvin want to put it like that, want to frame it like that and to express it like that. And when we know that, that doesn't mean we don't have to pay any attention to him. It means, ah, I see. That's why he was concerned to emphasize that. Now am I concerned to emphasize that? And if so, what are the forces on me which make me want to do that? So it's an exercise in self awareness, really. Which doesn't mean we collapse into postmodernity at all. But that's the danger then. But if we're doing that, it's a constant, hopefully delightful exercise in listening to one another, listening to the past, and constantly coming back as a worshiping Christian and kneeling at the foot of the cross and saying, somehow in ways that are too big for me to totally grasp or express, this is the heart of all reality, and I need to find my reality at this point.
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Yeah, well, Nathan, I hope that's helped you out with your desire to attain a more biblical lens to understand the world history and the life of faith. We're going to take a break, but when we come back, we're going to talk to Tom about his forthcoming writing projects. All on that in a moment. Tom, I keep getting questions from people who assume I'm something of your literary secretary, as if, like, you're Paul and I'm Tertius. And you're dictating Romans, and I'm just at a keyboard, you know, like typing it all up as you speak it. Now, I don't mind. I don't. I don't mind. I don't mind. I just find it a little odd. But people always say, look, Mike, what's the next thing that Tom's got coming out? What's. What's the next big thing? So people are always interested on. On what's coming out. Is there more books in the Christian origins and questions of God? Is that anytime soon? What about that Philippians commentary in the International Critical Commentary series? What's going on, Tom? Do you want to give some of our listeners, some of your readers, you know, a little bit of a hint about maybe what's in the pipeline and what they can expect coming out from. From Tom Wright in the next, you know, year or two?
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B
Well, yeah, I'm grateful for these questions because they do show an interest in me and my work, which is always very gratifying, but also they make me feel a bit guilty. Now, I shouldn't really feel guilty because I have quite a lot of books on the shelf with my name on the COVID and I sometimes look at them and think, where did they all come from? But yes, for long time now, for 30 years, I've been wanting to do that big series to finish it off. And when I began it, I didn't realize it was going to involve a big book on the Gospels or a big book on the early Christians and the mission of God. Those are the two remaining books which are more or less in my head. The trouble is that I certainly am not intending to write a book on the scale of Paul and the faithfulness of God or even the resurrection of the Son of God. Those are massive projects, and they take the kind of energy I had in my 40s, 50s, and early 60s, which, to be honest, now in my late 70s, I just don't have that kind of energy or time. But what I would like to do, and please God, I might be spared to do this, is to do something significantly shorter, saying on the Gospels, it would be like this. If all that I think we know about the early church and especially about Jesus, is really more or less true, then why did Matthew, Mark, Luke and John decide to write it up? Like, I mean, there's nothing written in the stars, as it were, from AD0 which says there are going to be people writing books like this. They're innovating a genre and developing it and mutating it as they go along, why did they do it like this? And what were they particularly trying to do? And that's a very interesting question, which is like the old question that Bultmann and the form critics were asking from a quite different perspective. I mean, they were saying, why are they developing Christian traditions in this fashion and trying to locate that within the life of the early church? Now, it seems to me, when we come back and look, from the way I see it, then there are all sorts of very different questions, but they're still good questions because these are great books. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And simply to see them as transcripts of the life of Jesus just won't do. I mean, no history is that so. I really do want to write that book. And then the last book in the series, please God, I would love to be able to finish this. Of course, I might actually simply delegate it to you, Mike, so that when I'm gone to my rest, you can say, actually, Tom was going to do this, but I have a better plan, so feel free if that's how it goes. But it goes like this. I started off thinking that the end of this series would be a New Testament theology, that is to say, the end of writing about Jesus and Paul and the other early Christians. Then it would be a matter of summing up all the theological points that were coming out. And I realized at a certain point, these books are not written in order to give people a set of true ideas to hold in their heads. True ideas matter, but they matter because they are the scaffolding for the real thing, which is the mission of the church. So to read the New Testament as a whole, as it flows out into and sustains and develops and shapes and controls the mission of the church, that's a much more interesting question to me. And I think, actually, yeah, in a world where mission still means, for many people, telling people about Jesus so they can go to heaven, I want to say no. The mission of the church is about beauty and justice. It's about life and love and hope. It's about new life for people here and now, pointing to the ultimate new creation. How do these writings then mean that? So if I had nothing else to do for the next couple of years, I would love to write those two books. Now I'm doing all sorts of things as well. The Philippians commentary is still smoldering along in the background, and I've got a colleague helping me with that. And I would love to think, I would like to have written that, even though it's a huge project, of course, even though it's only four chapters in Philippines. But I haven't given up on that yet. It may sooner or later give up on me. We shall see. But I have a quite different project which I've got a kind of twinkle in my eye about and which I've done some. You may have heard me talk about this before, which would be called something like 50 things I wish I'd known 50 years ago. As I look back to my time in seminary and so on, there are lots of things I simply didn't know and hadn't heard of and which we weren't talking about, which I now think are hugely important. Important. I mean, the theme of exile would be an obvious example. And one of people to whom I've talked about this have said, hey, that's a really interesting book. I'd like to read that. And so it's kind of quasi autobiographical, but picking up things that I've done, so watch out for that. There are various other things in the pipeline which I'm scratching around, working on. I had a long chat with my publishing agent just the other day and we mapped out various possibilities. But I think I'll keep some of that under wraps until we get.
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A little bit of secrecy is a good thing, Tom. A little bit of sick. Keep them. Keep them guessing and wanting for more. But yeah. Was it Stephen, Neil, Tom, who said, mission is the mother of all theology? Was that Steve and Neil?
- [35:26]
B
It might well be. It's the sort of thing he would have said. I don't remember hearing that. But it's quite possible as the church finds itself impelled to go out into the world, it finds itself for that reason compelled to address the question, which God are we talking about? How do we talk coherently about this God? How do we explain who God is, who Jesus is, who the Holy Spirit is to the people that we're saying, this is the Jesus way, because mission is really living the Jesus way and inviting other people to come and join the same project, the project which is ultimately aimed at new creation. I was doing some lectures on Romans 12:16 recently, and it dawned on me that Nowhere in Romans 12:16 does Paul say, now here we are. You're supposed to go and knock on the next door people's window and say, this is why you should believe in Jesus. In other words, he's not telling them to do what we think of as personal evangelism. He's showing them how to live as Jesus followers in a puzzled and hostile world. And Paul knows perfectly well you don't have to do that too long before people either start throwing rocks at you or start saying, that's interesting. We never thought you could live like that. What's this all about? So the main thing is the large scale life of the people of God in Christ and then working out into the world as a sign of hope, a sign that there is a different way to be human and that following Jesus is the key to it.
- [36:56]
A
Yeah. Well, for those listeners and readers of Tom Silk, I hope we've given you a little bit of a taste, a teaser of what Tom has coming out. If you want to listen to Tom and I discussing his new book, God's Homecoming, then you need to sign up for those bonus episodes because that's where Tom and I will be going through various chapters of his latest book and, and trying to figure out what it means for the church today and what are the things we need to wrestle with as we think about the day when God will be all in all. But Tom, that's all we have time for today. But in our next episode, we're going to talk about other Bibles, like the Bibles of the Catholic Church, the Ethiopian Church. Then we're going to talk about Catholics and justification by faith and then finally the third Temple of the Apocalypse. I'm looking forward to that one. Until then, I need to remind people if you've got questions you want Tom to ask, go to askntirite.com but if there's something on this show that you think, oh man, that was amazing. I wish that friend of mine could hear this. Then go to our own YouTube channel, which is ntright on YouTube. Subscribe there and send the link to your friend and that'll help us grow the channel. That'll help us get the word out, answer more and more people's questions and encourage them in the life of faith. Otherwise, it's goodbye from me, Mike Bird,
- [38:33]
B
and goodbye from me, Tom Wright.
- [38:35]
A
And we'll see you on the next episode of Ask NT Wright Anything. Until then, God bless you and take care of.