← Ask NT Wright Anything
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- [00:01]
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Tom Wright
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Mike Bird
Hmm.
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Tom Wright
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Mike Bird
Hello and welcome to the Ask Nt Write Anything Podcast, the show where we try to answer your questions on Jesus, the Bible and the life of faith. I'm Mike Bird from Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia, and I'm here with the very namesake of the show, none other.
- [02:11]
Tom Wright
Than Tom Wright from Oxford. Hello.
- [02:15]
Mike Bird
I can tell you there's no Ask NT Wright anything without Tom Wright being here. And I'm glad you're here, Tom, because we've got some good questions again this week. Questions about best Old Testament passages, remarriage and the new creation. And what about Jewish believers in Jesus? These are some juicy questions. We have a question from Steve Bell in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I love that place. Great town, he says. Tom, I know you have published a translation of the New Testament and you highly regard the prophets Isaiah and Daniel and the Psalms, Deuteronomy and Genesis So, Tom, when can we expect your translation of the Old Testament scrolls, which Jesus most often quoted? I would love an NT. Right, top 10 Old Testament Scrolls or passages. I think he means sitting next to the New Testament by NT Wright. In short, when can we see OT Wright sitting next to NT? Right on my shelf. Tom, do you have any plans to translate the Old Testament sometime soon? Maybe. Maybe over Christmas between courses of meal courses?
- [03:31]
Tom Wright
I am always amused when people devise extra books for me to write. I would have thought I'd actually done quite enough already. I do have a few in the pipeline, but alas, an Old Testament translation is not one of them. Though I have to say, when can we see an OT Wright sitting alongside NT Wright? Come to any family gathering we've got, because my youngest son is called Oliver Thomas. Right, so he's OT Wright, but sadly he's become a philosophical theologian, not an Old Testament theologian. So at the moment that's not gonna happen either. But the obvious answer is that though I do read Hebrew, I'm not as good with Hebrew as I am with Greek. And I've spent my life basically teaching the New Testament. And though I've constantly drawn in the way the New Testament uses the great texts from Israel scriptures, I do not claim to be the sort of Hebraist could sit down and simply translate through. And if I did, a lot of what was masquerading as translation would be my memory of either the King James Version or the RSV or one of the great translations that I'm familiar with. I might have the odd fresh insight here and there, but I'd be nothing compared with the real serious linguists. The proper answer is, of course, that John Goldingate, who taught for 10 years at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena and is now back in this country actually in Oxford, though our paths don't cross very. John Goldingay did a complete Old Testament for Everyone, which is an extraordinary achievement. I mean, when I did the New Testament for Everyone, those volumes which I see sitting on my shelf there, I thought that was quite a labor. But then to do the whole Old Testament like that with his own translation is extraordinary. And John's Old Testament and my New Testament are published together as the Bible for Everyone. This was published by SPCK a few years ago. John's translation is quite idiosyncratic in the sense that he defamiliarizes so many bits and pieces by translating or rendering Hebrew names in a sort of a Hebrew lookalike so that Jerusalem comes out as Yerushalmi and that sort of thing, so that it's much. And Joshua would be Yeshua and so on and so on. So that it's actually a great way of juggling us out of the familiar assumptions that we make that we sort of feel familiar with the Old Testament if we're regular Bible readers. And John's translation will no, actually think a bit more about this and come at it from this angle. And I find it whenever I'm working on an Old Testament text, I go back to John along with other things, just to make sure that I'm not letting myself sail away too comfortably with this. So no immediate plans, but obviously, as far as I'm concerned, the Scriptures of Israel are the foundation upon which Jesus and the New Testament then sit.
- [06:25]
Mike Bird
Yeah. Well, you do have a book coming out on Isaiah 40:55.
- [06:30]
Tom Wright
Well, I'm doing some lectures on Isaiah 40 to 55 this summer. I did an earlier version at Wycliffe last autumn and God willing, those lectures will turn into a book. That is what the publishers already have in mind. Isaiah 40:55 has always been a favorite passage of mine, ever since I was quite young. And though it's still. It's an enormous, extraordinary poem. I liken it to T.S. eliot's Four Quartets. It goes through different movements and different things, but all gradually builds up to an extraordinary explosive climax in which we can see so much of the Gospel as we know it from the New Testament reflected. So yes, that is a favorite passage, but I'm not trying to translate it.
- [07:15]
Mike Bird
Okay, that's good to hear. But do you think there is, is there one passage from the Old Testament you wish Christians had lodged in their mind, you know, in their day to day life. I mean, for me, I think of something like Psalm 110 because that was the most popular Old Testament passage in the New Testament. I wish more Christians knew Psalm 110.
- [07:36]
Tom Wright
Psalm 110 would be interesting because of course it involves some quite violent work on behalf of the Anointed One who goes around smashing up people's heads and so on. That bit doesn't get quoted in the New Testament for some reason, which is an interesting thing in itself. I mean, it depends where people are coming from. Somebody in a previous episode mentioned Psalm 23. Psalm 23 is a great place to start, a great sort of anchor. The Lord is my shepherd and takes us through all sorts of bits of the human experience in all sorts of ways. I would love people just to know Genesis 1 and 2. The sense of a good creation with humans placed in this good creation in order to be God's vicegerents in his way world. That is the starting point of all biblical theology. Of course there's much more to be said, but actually there's an awful lot of the Gospel in those chapters as well as kind of proto history.
- [08:31]
Mike Bird
Okay, well hopefully that answers the question. And if you want to see OT Wright, talk to Tom's son Oliver. Our next question, in fact, it's two questions on the same topic. It's about remarriage and the new creation. So our question here comes from Shunsuke Yoshimura in Japan, who says this hi Tom and Mike, I have a question about remarriage, but not really about whether the Bible allows it or not. My question is at the moment a hypothetical question, but it will become a question that I or my wife will have to face someday. My main concern would be whether I would even want to get remarried, considering the new heavens and new earth where I would be reunited with my wife again. Will our relationship be much different than it is now? If yes, then how? If no, then wouldn't remarriage be awkward? I'm also wondering if the difference of the meaning of marriage in biblical times and the meaning of marriage nowadays would give some insight into looking at this question biblically. Thank you for your if everything you do, guys, sincerely shouldn't and then, similar to that, we have a question from Jason P. Who asks, how important do you think gender is post human death? Given that male and female were both in God's image, it almost seems that God is both genders. So why or why not? Might it be a problem for folks to be trans?
- [10:06]
Tom Wright
Oh my goodness. That's a bit of a twist in the tale. Let me first have a go at the general remarriage one. This Obviously you can relate to the passage in the gospels in Matthew 22, 2333 and the parallels to that in Mark and Luke. That's in Mark 12 and Luke 20, where the Sadducees come and ask Jesus the question about supposing we have this man and his wife and the man dies, so the brother, according to the Levirid law of marriage, as in Deuteronomy 25 and so on, the brother marries the widow and then he dies, and then the next brother down and then he dies, et cetera, et cetera, they all die childless. And then so they ask triumphantly the question in the resurrection, whose wife will she be? Because they were all married to one in this serial situation. And Jesus says, you got it wrong. That's not what the new creation is like. He said in the new creation they neither marry nor are given in marriage. And at one point he says they're like. He doesn't say they will be angels, they're like angels in heaven. In other words, in the new creation we will have got beyond death itself, so there is no need to reproduce. And so that it is quite possible to imagine that there will be no equivalent in the new creation of sexual activity such as we know it in the present creation. Because the desire to propagate is partly because I think it was Freud said sex is laughing in the face of death, that sex is a way of saying despite death, we are in favor of life. That's why it's so powerful. It's the life impulse, if you like. But when God has already given people the full new life, which is out the other side of death, which is now immortal, there will be no need for propagation. And hence I think Jesus is assuming that the desire to propagate comes out as the desire for sexual relations simply won't be there anymore. Now, the early fathers did used to debate this question as to whether there will be sexual relations in the new creation. CS Lewis says at one point that asking will there be sex in I think he says in heaven. But I would say in the new creation he says, that's like if you explain to a small child that sex is the greatest pleasure known to adults, the small child may ask possibly if you ate chocolates at the same time. In other words, the only way that this child can conceive of the greatest pleasure possible is that chocolate must be in there somewhere. To which the answer is, well, it might be, but that's not actually essential. And so I think the sense that in the new creation so many things will be radically different and we will, insofar as we want anything at all, we will want different things. And our wants will flow from creative self giving love completely and purely, rather than the kind of mixed impulses which lead to propagation in the present time. So that I think that we also have to remember that for most people in most periods of history, life expectancy was short. Most periods of history, many, many people have died in their teens, in their twenties, in their thirt. So the idea of a marriage which lasts for 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years, this was completely beyond the imagination of most people in Jesus day or most periods in history until very, very recently. So many people then simply did get remarried. That was an ordinary course of events. The marriage vows say till death do us part. They don't say, but of course I will still be spiritually married to you forever and ever. It may well be that there are some widows and widowers who really do still feel that they are absolutely bonded with this dear person that they've loved and lost forever. And some people don't get remarried for that reason, even if they're easily young enough to, because they just think nothing could ever take this person's place. And I understand and respect that. But I also understand, I mean, a good friend of mine, not long ago, his wife had Parkinson's disease. Then she got Alzheimer's and she died. And they were in, I think, their early or middle 60s. And to his astonishment and to the astonishment of his friends, within a few years he had met somebody completely different and they'd fallen in love and he got married to her. And we didn't all say, oh, but you're still spiritually married to that first wife. It was a sense of, wow, this is a whole new thing. And we still give thanks to God for that old relationship, but we celebrate this new one. And whatever the new creation is going to be like. I don't think there's any question that that will be in the words our correspondent. That would be awkward because I think the new creation will be a time of celebration at all sorts of levels and that any awkwardness, such as there would be if you remarried now and then the second spouse met the first one, that awkwardness just doesn't seem to occur. So that's my answer to the first one. Mike, you may want to comment on that before we move on to the second bit of that, about the importance of.
- [15:27]
Mike Bird
I think you've covered it very, very well that there's discontinuities in the new creation and normal marital life does not carry over to the new creation. Whatever intimacies there are between human beings, forms of friendship and, and partnership and reigning with Christ, it doesn't extend to the normal marital relationships. The second one's a little bit more juicy. It's based on the idea that, you know, since human beings in the image of God, can you simply collapse all the genders together? Although I think it's important that sex and gender are not, strictly speaking, the same thing. Sex is your. Is your biological function, the procreative sense, while gender is the way societies try to regulate relationships between the genders. But that'd be keen to hear your thoughts there, Tom.
- [16:19]
Tom Wright
Yeah, I mean, that distinction between sex and gender is a very modern one, though people might well claim that it's rooted in older bits of culture, which might be fair enough. I mean, you might see that in some of Shakespeare's plays with all the gender bending that goes on there, et cetera. So there are complicated issues there. But the question about God being both genders, I think I would say God is beyond gender.
- [16:45]
Mike Bird
God doesn't have a body for a start, so.
- [16:47]
Tom Wright
Well, no, quite. Although incarnation is human in the person of Jesus, who is. Who is male. But the idea of the created good of male and female. Paul picks this up in Ephesians 5, where the coming together of male and female in marriage corresponds in the overall argument of Ephesians to the coming together of heaven and earth in chapter one and to the coming together of Jew and gentile in chapter two. It's very interesting in the sweep of how Ephesians works, Paul says, the man leaving his father and mother and cleaving to his wife, and the two becoming one. He says, I read this in terms of Christ and the church, even though it is a great mystery. So I think Paul would say, beware. Don't start tinkering with the goodness of God's creation. God made humans male and female. He didn't make them in a fluid indeterminacy. And that that goodness of creation stands underneath a great deal of Christian ethics to this day. So if we then say, yes, God the Creator is beyond gender, but he makes gendered or sexed human beings, then the idea of being transgender, obviously there is a very, very tiny minority of people who, through what we might loosely call birth defects, are actually indeterminate in terms of their sex when they're born. I have known one or two families where that has happened, and that's a serious problem which has to be treated as such. But what we now, in terms of the whole trans thing, is somebody who, though quite clearly biologically male or female, feels that really, really inverted commas. They are in the other. They've been born in the wrong body or whatever. And I think that needs to be addressed at the level of the goodness of creation. And then in terms of recognizing that humans get very muddled about many things. We all do, but that in particular the idea of being born into the wrong body and is most likely to be something which culturally has become accepted and even in some quarters valued simply because we have prioritized who I feel I really am over the question of the person that God has actually made me. And that is a major cultural and theological problem at the moment, which isn't easily addressed by saying well, God's beyond gender, so it doesn't matter.
- [19:22]
Mike Bird
Yeah, I think there is a problem where we in a hierarchy of values, we preference an ephemeral sense of identity over empirical biological reality. I mean there's always of addressing people who feel like they don't fit into gender stereotypes. And there's some psychological things perhaps going on too. But when you're saying my own self creation, what I will to be is more important than the givenness of my body, that's always going to lead to very, very bad outcomes in the end.
- [19:57]
Tom Wright
I totally agree and I think you and I'd be on the same page there. But I like the way you put that, Mike. I think it's really important.
- [20:07]
Mike Bird
Okay, well, don't go away. We're going to be back in a moment with a question about the place of Jewish believers in God saving purposes.
- [20:19]
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- [21:56]
Mike Bird
And welcome back. We're here at Ask Anti Write Anything answering your questions. And today we have one from Jonathan B. From the usa and he's got a question about the place of Jewish believers in God's saving purposes. This is what Jonathan asks. I have a question regarding ethnic Israel as God's special or treasured possession. And some people saying that there seems to be something specific to them some special extra something for Jewish believers I remember loving God ever since I was a child, talking to him and singing praise songs while I played. And he has shown me things and promised me things and spoken to me in various ways ever since I was a child. That seems to not be normal to most people. I share that with my mom, who also has pretty much a parallel experience to me. Then I hear scholars and pastors talking about there still being some extra special something for ethnic Israeli believers over Gentiles. As Christians we have worked tirelessly to end slavery and bigotry, and yet somehow we're to believe that God has some extra love and extra blessings for believers who come from an ethnic Israeli background. We're told by Paul in Romans 2:11 that God shows no favoritism and Acts 10:34 that God doesn't show partiality. And yet there still seems to be a view that they will be given more love, gifts, blessings, etc. Over us Gentiles who didn't get to choose the families that we were born into. How do I square this? As someone who struggles to feel love and like I have been slighted my entire life, it doesn't make me feel any better to feel like God gives extra love or blessings to Jewish believers over Gentiles. I didn't ask to be born Gentile. Was I cursed by God before I was born because he doesn't love me as much. I just struggle with these sorts of things and I wonder if God is fair. Well Tom, over to you. Does God have an extra special love for the Jews and as non Jews should, we feel slighted by that?
- [24:08]
Tom Wright
Yeah, I think the short answer to this question is read the letter to the Romans carefully, prayerfully, on your knees, humbly waiting to hear what God is saying. The letter to the Romans is actually very beautifully balanced on these as on many other issues. And it's difficult to say all that has to be said without repeating the whole letter. But yes, to Jonathan, you are absolutely right. In Romans 2, Paul is emphatic that God shows no favoritism. And that line about to the Jew first and also the Greek. I've never heard Jewish believers celebrating or giving each other high fives over that. And actually in the Greek original, Paul is very careful to make it clear that Jews and Gentiles are actually now standing on equal ground. But he's addressing people in Rome who, as we discover in chapter 11, many of the church are now Gentile Christians who are themselves being tempted to look down their noses at the large synagogue community In Rome. I mean, by the time Paul is writing, there are maybe 150 Christians in Rome at the most. Mike, I don't know if you'd agree with that, but give or take something like that. But there are probably at least 10,000 Jewish people in Rome, and there are several synagogues, and some of these synagogues will be quite well off, and the people there will be reasonably up in society because the Jews had had to leave Rome under the reign of Claudius a few years before. But when Nero became emperor in 54 AD and Paul is writing after that, then the Jewish people had come back to Rome and had reestablished themselves. So there's a large Jewish presence in Rome and a tiny Christian presence. How easy then for the Gentile Christians to say, oh, well, God has written them off. God doesn't want anything more to do with them. And so in that context, Paul is writing Romans 9 in particular to say, no, you Gentile Christians, you can't do that. Because actually that corresponds to the mistakes that Paul himself knows that he himself had made in Romans 10:1 4 when he talks about, he says, my desire and prayer to God for them, that is for unbelieving Jews, is that they may be saved. I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but it is not according to knowledge. Being ignorant of God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they have not submitted to God's righteousness. And Paul is talking about his own former self there. And so he grieves over those Jews who have not become believers, and he prays that they will become believers. And then he says to the Gentiles, once you understand that, you will see that just because you are now believers, that doesn't make you super special. And if you think you are, you're committing the same mistake that I and others had made from the Jewish point of view. So it's a very delicate balance. And certainly insofar as what's going on, and I have not met Jewish believers who behave in the way that Jonathan is talking about here. But insofar as people like that are doing, it may be a way of saying that you Gentile Christians have looked down your noses at us Jews all this time, but actually we were always God's special people, and now we're coming back to our inheritance. And in a sense that's a normal, natural understanding, but it's a very dangerous one. And there are of course, many political and social tensions there, both in America and in the Middle East. And without getting into all of that I would say look at the balance in Romans, God shows no partiality. Chapter two the end of Chapter two, Paul says dramatically. He says, actually, if somebody from a Jewish background fails to be following the Torah like they should, then their circumcision, their Jewishness, becomes uncircumcision. And meanwhile, if somebody from a Gentile background is actually by the Spirit doing what the Law requires, then they are the real Eudaoi. It's a very dramatic thing. Paul says the true Jew. He doesn't even say true Jew. He just says the Jew or Judais is the one who is the one inwardly. So there are many, many complex issues there. And scholars are still debating about whether Paul really thought that Jews had to become Christians or not, and so on and so forth. But clearly for Paul, what's in the middle is Jesus is Israel's Messiah. But Israel's Messiah, having been crucified and raised from the dead, is the Lord for all people. And as he says in Galatians 2, describing the way he has had to come as a devout Jew, I, through the law, died to the law that I might live to God. I am crucified with the Messiah. Nevertheless, I live. But not I, it's the Messiah who lives in me. So Paul's identity is no longer I the Jew, though he can still say that, but I the Messiah's man. And then you discover that all these Gentiles who have believed they are Messiah people as well. And so that's the balance that we've somehow got to struggle to keep.
- [29:24]
Mike Bird
That's well put, Tom. And alas, that is all we have time for today. But thank you for sending us your questions. We love receiving them. There's always so many good ones. Some hairy ones, some tricky ones, some very pastoral and personal ones as well. And before we go, may I remind you that you can find some other episodes in our back catalog where you can find some great discussions, great questions that have been posed to Tom. So don't forget to check out our back catalog. Well, that's it for today from the Ask nt Write Anything podcast. I'm Mike Bird.
- [30:01]
Tom Wright
I'm joined with I'm Tom Wright. Good to see you.
- [30:05]
Mike Bird
And we'll see you for the next episode of Ask nt Write Anything. Until then, God.
- [30:16]
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