← Ask NT Wright Anything
Ask NT Wright Anything
S2E14 Sin, Sex, and Salvation? NT Wright on Contraception, the Cross, and the Church
00:49:31
Loading summary
Transcript37 lines
- [00:00]
Mike Bird
Ask NT Write Anything is sponsored by Logos. Start going deeper in the Bible with a free trial@logos.com NT.
- [00:09]
Tom Wright
Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void? Well, with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers. You can even target buyers by job title, industry, company seniority, skills. Wait, did I say job title yet? Get started today and see how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. We'll even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign. Get started at LinkedIn.com results. Terms and conditions apply.
- [00:40]
Jevon
Hi, this is Jevon, your blinds.com design consultant. Oh wow, a real person.
- [00:45]
Mike Bird
Yep.
- [00:45]
Jevon
I'm here to help with everything from selecting the perfect window treatments to.
- [00:49]
Tom Wright
Well, I've got a complicated project.
- [00:52]
Jevon
No problem. I can even help schedule a professional measuring install. We can also send you samples fast and free.
- [00:57]
Mike Bird
Hmm.
- [00:57]
Tom Wright
I just might have to do more.
- [00:59]
Jevon
Whatever you need.
- [01:00]
Tom Wright
So the first room we're looking at.
- [01:01]
Jevon
Is for shopblinds.com now save up to 40% sitewide. Blinds.com rules and restrictions may apply.
- [01:09]
Mike Bird
Write Anything podcast. Well, hello and welcome to the Ask nt Write Anything podcast. I am the co host, Mike Bird from Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia, and I'm joined, as always, by Tom Wright.
- [01:23]
Jevon
From Oxford in England.
- [01:25]
Mike Bird
And we're here to answer your questions, which you've sent us. And Tom, people keep sending us such great questions. Really enjoying this. Some of them make me think. Some of them are ones I know I've definitely heard before. But every now and again we get a pretty juicy one and we've got a. We've got a juicy one. First up, first on, we have a listener from Abadur who asks about contraception. He says, I never thought about contraception with a theological view until my brother, who was a Catholic Catholic, challenged me on the topic. Having looked deep into this, I find the view that using contraception is a sin more compelling. Despite searching, I have not been able to find much out there that is pro contraception. I am wondering, what are your views? And he lists some of the points against contraception. He says, my understanding is that until about a hundred years ago, all Christians saw using contraception as wrong. It is purposely disabling an aspect of your body's design in using contraception. It is like saying God did a poor job in making humans. Tom, is. Is this a question that you've got any thoughts about? I mean, I know this. This was a big issue, I think in the 1920s maybe in the Church of England, where they. I think they finally did sort of endorse contraception, which kind of meant a break from the Catholic or the Anglo Catholic tradition. But, Tom, have you, have you thought this one through?
- [03:01]
Jevon
Basically, it's not something that I've had to think too much about because my church, ever since I, long before I was born, had made a clear decision and there was no question about it. And I think there's two things which we have to bear in mind here in terms of background issues. One is that until very recently, with the rise of modern, modern medicine, many, many children died in infancy. Many couples would have four or five or six or more children, quite expecting that some of them might well die in infancy. And there are many families that one knows of, if you read the history as recently as the 18th and 19th century, where they might have 10 children of whom only two would survive. So the sense that you might prevent yourself having children, this was not a sensible thing to do because we wanted to have children, if only look after us in our old age. But it's something couples naturally wanted. And so the thought of preventing that for most people, certainly in the Western world, and I suspect many other parts of the world as well, this would just be foolish. Like, why would you do that? And that's a really important thing, that it's only with the rise of modern medicine that you get to the point where if you had as many children as in theory, you might. I mean, if you get married in your early 20s, you might be fertile well into your 40s. You could be having a child every year. Actually, my grandfather, who was born in the late 19th century, he was one of 15 children, of whom 13 survived, grew up and had children themselves. So that this country is full of my second and third cousins, most of whom I don't even know about, but that would be rare in those days. Often people had big families and then, as I say, many of them died, or one bout of whooping cough could take off half of your children overnight. So that's all as it were, going on in the background. But then in the 20th century, I think part of the opposition to contraception comes not from a kind of Catholic natural law argument saying this is how God made us, and we assume God did a good job, therefore we've got to let it happen. But from the quite natural reaction of many people seeing that the easy access to contraception, and especially with the birth control pill, which became so controversial in the 1970s, 60s, with Big Roman Catholic debates about it, Et cetera, that this was a way of justifying what most people saw as immorality, as sex outside marriage, on the grounds that for many people, when young people were being taught about how to control your sexual instincts, they were taught it's only in marriage, because otherwise you'll start having children out of wedlock. And that isn't just a social stigma, it's also a major social problem in that when children are born out of wedlock, who is going to care for them? And often, as we know to this day, it's often the mother who is left to care. The father goes off with somebody else or goes off somewhere else. And one of the real curses of today's modern Western society is the number of fatherless families and children who grow up without a father on site. And many people would say, well, that's what you get, because once you make contraception easily accessible, people think, well, it doesn't matter if we have sex outside marriage. And then, of course, people become careless and children are born anyway. So there's all of that going on in the background. And part of the argument there bumps into all the arguments about abortion, which are so controversial in many parts of the world, and understandably so, where what you've got is people who are really worried about unbridled sexual expression on the one hand, and then other people trying to control people on the other. So you've got, if you like, Venus and Mars fighting it out. Venus the sexual or erotic impulse, saying, we've got to do what we've got to do, and Mars the force, the war force, saying, we're going to control, we're going to stop you doing what you want to do. And that's not a healthy place to be. So I want to take a step right back from there and say there is wisdom in saying now that we have modern medicine which enables most children conceived in the Western world to be born healthy, to live and grow. It then raises a new question, rather like the advent of nuclear weapons raises a new question in just war theory. We hadn't faced this one before. We are now in a situation in terms of families where it is wise for most parents most of the time to say, how many children is it wise for us to have? How many could we provide for granted, our economic, economic situation, et cetera? And so that then the advent of contraception enables families to say, actually, two children is as much as we could possibly look after, bring up, et cetera, or four, or in some cases, six, whatever it is. My wife and I have Four children. That was a conscious and delighted decision. I'm not sure how we would have coped if we had any more. But. So these are questions which have actually changed over the last two centuries. So saying that the use of contraception, this is a new idea that the churches or some churches have come into. Well, yes, because it's a new situation. And the idea that saying using contraception is like saying God did a poor job making us humans. Well, actually, when God made humans and gave humans this delightful impulse for one another, be fruitful and multiply, that's the first command in the Bible. And as C.S. lewis says in one of his books, ordinary healthy young people and teenager or early 20s, if they gave expression to every sexual impulse they have, a healthy young man could quite easily populate a middle sized village in short order. So all Christian traditions have to recognize that there is a need to regulate the human beings that we are, that we are all called to restraint in some way or other. And that's not saying God did a bad saying. God wants humans to flourish and abound, to be fruitful and multiply, to reflect his glory into the world. But part of that is taking responsibility for the results of our own actions. And so, as I say back to what I said before, the new situation that we're in in the last hundred, two hundred years with the rise of modern medicine calls for new possibilities. The fact that those new possibilities can be used for ill, not for good, doesn't mean that they aren't real options that Christians should be able take up. That is my position. I know it's not the position of all people, though I also know that many of my Roman Catholic friends have struggled with this one, and it was a major issue in the 60s. And a book like David Lodge's novel, how Far can you go? Or his other novel, the British Museum, is falling down very much about Catholics wrestling with what the Church seemed to be teaching and saying how come all these celibate men are teaching us married couples what we can and shouldn't do. And so there are all sorts of issues there which the Roman Catholic Church has to face and which. Which all Christians face in their own way. But it's a particular problem within the Roman Catholic Church in the last generation.
- [10:59]
Mike Bird
Yeah, I agree, Tom. I mean, I don't believe in the Catholic view that the purpose of sex is purely procreative.
- [11:06]
Jevon
Right.
- [11:06]
Mike Bird
But contraception has enabled a more widespread cultural promiscuity.
- [11:11]
Jevon
Yeah.
- [11:12]
Mike Bird
Which does end badly.
- [11:14]
Jevon
Yeah.
- [11:14]
Mike Bird
And I've met over, you know, I've Worked with prison chaplains and they tell me three quarters of the guys in prison came from homes either with an absent father or no father. And that, that's, that's the sociology. But I think you could say that contraception enables us to have more care and control on, on the families that we do have, have. And yeah, I mean, like you, I've got four. I've got four kids as well. And that, that was definitely the limit for us. Yeah, I mean, we have to go from a Sedan to a Tarago, you know, when. With the fourth one came along. So, you know, we can, we can understand that. But, Tom, we've got another great question. This is from Richard Hindley in Barnsley of South Yorkshire, the hometown, I should add, of none other than Hudson Taylor. And this is what Richard asks. He says, does it matter if there are things in the Gospels that didn't really happen? I've been challenged by a couple of skeptics recently on the historicity of the birth of Jesus in Luke and the Wise Men in Matthew. Both times I kind of bogged down and whether these things really happened. And I spent most of my time debating how late or early the Gospels were written, whether they made stuff up to make everything fit, etc. Rather than about who Jesus was and is, Lord of Heaven and Earth. I know it's essential to understand that Jesus was a real person and that he was really crucified and rose from the dead. But beyond that, does it matter whether everything in the Gospels happened like the writers said or that they might have embellished some of it? How can I avoid getting bogged down in this with my skeptical friends in the future and a focus on Jesus? When I listen to this, it reminds me of a quote from Lord of the Rings where one of the characters said, even the best of stories needs a little bit of embellishment. So maybe that's, maybe that's a Lord of the Ring answer. But Tom, you're not, you're not the great Tolkien. But I, I know you've got some thoughts on this.
- [13:22]
Jevon
Yes, I think one of the first things to say is that in ancient history and when we're talking about Jes, we are talking about the first century ad, which is part of what academics refer to as ancient history. In ancient history, there are many, many, many things of which we have one report and one report only. If you read the great Roman historians like Tacitus or Suetonius or Cassius Dio and people like that. If you read the great Greek historians like Herodotus, and Thucydides. There are many, many incidents which they record and nobody el. And if there is no archaeological evidence to back them up, then you could toss a coin and say, well, did this happen or didn't it? Well, so and so says it, but it's the only source we have. However, most ancient historians will want to have a positive view and say that the task of history is to say, granted everything we know about that period, granted everything we know about this writer, is it more likely that. That these events did take place roughly like that, or less likely? And it's always open to a skeptic to say, no, there probably wasn't a second Messenian war in the seventh century B.C. or actually, I think there probably was. And then things remain open until new archaeological evidence comes along or whatever. The trouble with the Gospels is that many, many Christians have a high view of the Bible, as I myself do. But some people interpret that high view as meaning that single thing that the Gospels say must be precisely as the same as what you'd have if you'd had a video camera there. Which then does become tricky at certain points. When you find, for instance, that Luke. I'm thinking of Luke 21 and the way that Luke 21 is so close to Mark 13. And yet some of the key things that Jesus says in Mark 13 come out a bit differently in Luke. The obvious example is when in Mark and Matthew, Jesus says, when you see the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not. And then they add, let the reader understand, then the one who's in Judea should flee to the hills, etc. At that point Luke has when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies. Now did Jesus say, when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies? No, I think he referred to the abomination of desolation from Daniel, chapter nine. What has Luke done? Luke knows perfectly well that his readers, his gentile readers, simply won't be readers who can understand like Mark and Matthew say they want to. So Luke has cashed it out. He's translated it into language that his audience will understand. That's one obvious particular point. Another one from a closely adjacent passage in the Gospels would be on the night when Peter denies knowing Jesus. And then the rooster or the cock crows, and Jesus turns and looks at Peter and Peter remembers the word that Jesus had said before. The cock crows, you will deny me three times. If you get the four Gospels and try to line up exactly what Peter said, exactly when the cock crowed, exactly that sequence of events, you will find it very difficult. Why? Because they're making it up? Because they're playing fast and loose with the facts? Not at all, because it was a very confused evening. All sorts of things were going on and different stories were told about it quickly afterwards. And the Gospels don't try to tidy that up. Does that mean that Peter never existed or that the cock never crowed at all? Or that Peter never denied Jesus? No, it means it was a highly confused and difficult time. And what we're seeing is different, different immediate oral traditions about what happened. Does that matter? No, not a bit. And I want to say the same thing about the wise men and about the shepherds and so on. Luke is the only one who tells us about the shepherds. Matthew's the only one who tells us about the magi. Does that mean these things didn't happen? Of course not. They are highly probable once you grant certain things about the God of Israel, about his calling to his people, about who Jesus was and is now. I do want to say, say skeptics love to go for the things in the birth narratives, partly because Christians have, in the time past, sometimes overemphasized the conception and birth of Jesus, as though the virginal conception and then this extraordinary birth was the only thing that really mattered about Jesus. And sometimes that's been a displacement activity to take the focus off what really matters, which is the kingdom of God coming on earth as in heaven. In fact, in my business in New Testament scholarship, often a lot of the energy has gone into trying to discern the different sources of the Gospels or the different forms that the early tradition took. And often these have been displacement activities so that as scholars, we wouldn't have to think about the claims of God being king on earth as in heaven, and the claim which Jesus makes after his resurrection that all authority in heaven and on earth is now his. And I would say to the skeptics, we can argue till the cows come home about whether those shepherds did what it says or whether they're really were wise men from the east. Though nothing is more likely than there would be stargazers saying something strange is going on here. Let's investigate. These are perfectly plausible scenarios, granted the history and culture of the times, but don't get fascinated by those to the exclusion of the central message of the kingdom, the central fact of Jesus, crucifixion, the central declaration of his resurrection. Obviously we can argue how we know that something so totally improbable as the resurrection of Jesus would happen. But it's easy then to get drawn down into the skeptical arguments and to try to justify them, or to lean on a theory of biblical inspiration and say, well, the Bible is the word of God, so it must be true. That can often be a way out. The idea of the Bible being the word of God and reliable is a vital thing for Christian discipleship. It's not something you can use in an argument with skeptics. So for the argument with skeptics, let's go for the big one. Jesus really did exist. He really did announce God's kingdom on earth as in heaven. He really did die with the intention of making that happen. Now go figure that one out. And then all the signs are, despite the total improbability that he really did rise again. Now let's deal with those big issues and not get sidetracked by the little ones.
- [20:20]
Mike Bird
Tommy, that's so fascinating. I find the way that the questions or doubts or skeptical complaints get lodged, they seem to assume it's either black and white. Do we have in the Gospels either history or the faith of the early church? And the fact is we have the. The history of Jesus told by people who did believe in him. And trying to separate fact and faith in the Gospels is like trying to separate, you know, red and blue from the color purple. Purple. They're both in there. And the Gospels do give us fact and faith, you know, history and hermeneutics, authenticity and artistry. And I always get very, very sort of, you know, bemused when people say, well, of course, we know that the evangelists have largely shaped and influenced the story of Jesus, but no one seems to ask the question, well, who influenced the evangelists? Yes, they've told the story in a certain way they want to influence, but who influenced them? And, and let's think that the evangelists are still playing out the trajectory of Jesus. They are still simply riding the wave, hearing the echo of the voice of Jesus that has led to the origins and the emergence of the whole of the. Of the church. And that's why they've written the books. They have, because they are shaped by the impact of Jesus.
- [21:45]
Jevon
Absolutely. And the idea that there could be a neutral, uninterrupted.
- [21:49]
Phil Cross
This episode is brought to you by Logos. I have been using Logos for years. Whether I'm preparing a lecture for class, working on my latest book, or doing some sermon preparation, I never do it without Logos because it gives me an instant digital research assistant right in my very hand. Whether I want to check out various Bible translations, the Dead Sea Scrolls in English or Hebrew or look at various Christian writings like the Apocrypha, or if I simply want a platform to read theological books and commentaries, Logos is the number one place to do it. It is the necessary digital tool for doing Bible study and sermon preparation today. I don't know how you can do this without Logos, so make sure you go check out their new offering where you've got plans starting at $9.99 per month. So visit logos.comnt to get started for free with an exclusive extended free trial. That's logos.com NT start your adventure in the world of digital Bible resources today.
- [23:08]
Jevon
Interpreted history is simply wrong. Any historian knows perfectly well that all history involves selection and arrange and a particular shaping. Just like when I come home from a day at work and my wife says, so how was your day? I don't give her a random selection of every last thing that happened, every corner. I turned on my bicycle every time somebody made a cup of coffee. I select and arrange, not because I want to deceive her, but because I don't want to bore her. And the only time you get unselected and unarranged things is when you've got a very small child just gabbling along. Or maybe somebody who is incapacitated because they're drunk or whatever, who is just rambling Almost all human discourse involves selection and arrangement. The great historians of the past I've mentioned Herodotus, Thucydides, Tacitus, Suetonius. They all had very definite agendas and they had reasons why they selected and shaped things the way they did. It's always interesting to ask why Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John selected, arranged, and shaped things the way they did. But that doesn't mean either that they made it up or that there wasn't something which that from which they were selecting and arranging.
- [24:20]
Mike Bird
Thanks for, Tom. I find I find questions from the Gospels fascinating, and I'd love to hear more questions from people about the Gospels, about the interpretation, history, theology, how they understand them. That'd be great. And remember, you can send us your Questions@askantry.com. this is a good time to take a break, but don't go too far because our next questions are going to be about political call, idolatry, and why can't God just forgive sinners? Why does Jesus have to die in order to forgive people? That's what we'll have for you after the break. And we are back on the Ask nt Write Anything podcast, and we've got a great question from Phil Cross in Edmond, Oklahoma. Now, Tom, we probably try to avoid politics because we don't want to upset people any more than we normally naturally do with our answers. But this is a political question and I do think it's a necessary one and we can't shy away from it. We should answer it. And this is what Phil asks. He says near the end of the last new episode, you had an American guest on who strongly implied you couldn't be a Christian if you didn't vote for Donald Trump. As an American Christian, I see this as political idolatry and it is everywhere in the American church. Have I been reading the Bible wrong or did I miss something that makes this maga ism align with biblical Christianity. I feel lost trying to defend a faith that seems to be promoting ideas and individuals that are the antithesis basis of what I have read in the Bible. Tom, what do you think about Phil's question? Is magarism a type of idolatry? Is there a proper political party that maybe we should be voting for? Or is it more complex than that?
- [26:28]
Jevon
I fear it's much more complex than that. And that's part of the problem that in many countries today, and certainly in America, things have been oversimplified into one or the other. That is partly because of the two party system. We in Britain have basically a two party system with some other lively parties around the edge that wish we could make it a three or four party system, but they haven't got to that point yet. So I know what it's like to look at one political party and say I really don't believe we should do that, therefore I have to vote for the other side. What's happened in America, and I speak as somebody who goes to America usually five or six times a year, and I've lived in America at certain times, if it isn't a cliche to say it, some of my best friends are Americans. I have a real concern for the American people, for the American church, and I grieve over the polarization which Phil in his question highlights so well. And I know from going around and preaching in different churches and talking to people and keeping my ears open just how much angst is out there and how so many people feel they've been pushed and pushed and pushed in one direction and it really is time to go back in the other direction or whichever it may be. And I know particularly that many people in ordinary churches up and down the country have felt bombarded by the ideas that have come at them from, they might say, the left wing intelligentsia in the universities or whatever, whether it's about sexual or ethnic identities, whatever it may be that people think we've had so much of that we've been bombarded with it. Here is somebody standing up for us who will say, let's get back to how we always used to see the world. And they think, phew, let's do that. Whereas other people look at the present president, Donald Trump, and they say his character, his personality are so antithetical to what we always thought Christianity was about. How can you possibly vote for him? And there are all sorts of ironies running this way and that about right wing commentators or politicians who were terribly hard on Bill Clinton a generation ago because of his lifestyle. And they said, oh, you know, we've got to have leaders who are above moral criticism. And then we had Barack Obama, who seems to have had a pretty blameless family and personal life, but many on the right didn't like him for all sorts of other reasons. So there's all sorts of things going on there. I would recommend I've mentioned it before. The new book by the great social commentator James Davison Hunter of the University of Virginia. His new book, Democracy and Solidarity, traces the cultural history of america from the 18th century to the present to show the cultural roots of this present standoff. And before we get too eager to throw mud this way or that, it's really important to see how those cultural impulses have been playing out and pushing people in one direction or another. It's important so that we understand our own instant reactions. It's important so that we understand how there can be people who see things so very differently from ourselves. The danger, as James Davison Hunter points out, is that particularly in America, but in Western democracy as a whole, the system is in danger of getting hollowed out, leaving us with a nihilism where the, as Nietzsche was right about this, where the only thing that's left is power. That lot have grabbed power and have elbowed us out of the way. So we're going to grab power back and elbow them out of the way. And that is not the way to create a harmonious society. And if one is then tempted to say, well, harmonious society, we blowed those people are just wrong, then let's watch out, because we could be pulling down the house on top of ourselves instead of saying, how can we struggle to live together as a single country, as a large extended family? That's the real challenge right now. So that quite aside from the number of different issues which are presenting in the present American situation, I want to say to my dear American friends, as James Hunter wants to say, how can we stress again the unum e pluribus unum? How can we be one society made up out of many different societies? And here I think the church has really missed a trick because we have allowed ourselves to become so fragmented that we are not setting an example to the world, showing the world how to live together with differences and how to discuss differences wisely. And that's a real problem. So it isn't just the church looking at the political world and saying what a mess that is. The church should look at itself and say, how do we do this differentiated unity business? And I well understand that Phil might feel lost trying to defend a faith that are promoting ideals and individuals that are the antithesis of what's there in the Bible. As I think many of us have sensed that for some little while. Of course, we in Britain don't have a leg to stand on because we've been totally muddled the last many years and we've voted in one Prime Minister and another, and then we've switched parties and done this and that this is actually normal for Britain to muddle through. And that isn't necessarily a great way to be. But when we look across the Atlantic and see the huge swings of cultural this way and that, we worry that this is going to be damaging to the American people themselves and damaging to America's relationships with other nations around as well. And we are in a very dangerous time of world history. What we need is stability in the world order and not attacking friends as though we can get away with this, we can get away with that. We need all of us to work together globally. Globally as well as in individual countries. I hope and pray that my dear beloved American friends will be able to find ways of doing that.
- [32:58]
Mike Bird
Yeah, I tend to think that all isms tend to start off trying to fix a problem. Whether that's Marxism, magarism, progressivism, conservatism, they're all starting out with trying to solve a problem. But if you follow them too hard, too far, without any qualifications, you always end up just lusting for power for the sake of power. And, you know, some things can't be answered in multiple choice. You know, life is far too complex than that. But speaking of friends under threat, we have a question from Canada. We have a question from Peter Charlo in Winnipeg in Canada, and he's got a good question about like, you know, the judgment of God and salvation. This is, this is what Peter asks. He says the gospel message as I have often heard it seems to begin with the assumption that we are all sinners and that Jesus had to die for us to be saved. But why is this so? In a healthy family? When younger children behave badly, their parents don't require the death penalty from them for their sins. If those children are sincerely sorry for their behavior. Behavior Their parents, then forgive them. And they certainly don't punish their eldest brother on their behalf. If we are sincerely so sorry for our sins, why cannot God, who knows our hearts, simply forgive us? Why the need for someone else to die on our behalf? How is it just to require the death of the innocent on behalf of the guilty? And if that death is required, why the horrible suffering? Even the slaughterhouses of this world have laws governing the humane treatment of animals. Why put his son through one of the most painful and agonizing deaths imaginable? How is this merciful? We are told that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. But why? Why cannot God simply forgive us without all the suffering and sacrifice advice? Well, that is a good question, Tom. Now, if it's up to me, I would go straight to the Chronicles of Narnia and do a little bit of Aslan theology. Feels up to me. But I suspect you might have a different way of answering the question, Tom.
- [35:21]
Jevon
Well, the Narnia theology isn't bad, although I'm not sure that Lewis quite ties all the ends together on. On Atonement and at the end of the line, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It's a great scene, but, you know, it's pointing in the right direction. And I'm speaking as somebody who lives just down the street from where C.S. lewis lived when he was a fellow of Magdalen College here in Oxford. So I feel, yeah, the influence of Lewis coming down the street at me. There's a real problem here that for the last many hundred years Western theology as a whole has basically, and put it in shorthand, has moralized are anthropology, that is to say, has seen the thing to be said about human beings as to whether they are moral creatures or not, with then the question of salvation or not hinging on that. And that's partly because we have had a view of salvation, which is of our souls going to heaven to be with God. Oh dear. But our souls are sinful, so they can't get to be with God. So now what's to be done? In other words, we have, as I say in my book, the Day the Revolution Began. We have Platonized our eschatology, our vision of Future, the soul going to heaven. And therefore we've moralized our anthropology. That is, we've talked about humans in terms of are they morally perfect or not, and if not, what's going to have to happen before they can get to heaven. And therefore we have paganized our soteriology. And that's what Peter is objecting to. We've done this pagan thing of imagining an angry God who just needs to kill somebody, doesn't much matter who it is. And we find many stories like that in the ancient pagan myths. Think of Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter so that the winds would blow in the right way, so that the fleet could get to Troy to fight the Great War and so on. There are many stories of that kind. And there's a danger always that Christians fall back into that trap. Much better to start with a different point. Not to say the gospel begins with the news that we're all sinners. But the gospel begins with the Creator God taking a heaven plus earth world and calling humans to be his image bearers, standing at that uncomfortable and dangerous junction of heaven and earth, called to reflect the wisdom of God into the world and the praises of the world back to God. That's what humans were made for. And when humans rebel against that, what they do is they allow dark forces within the world, which was supposed to be serving God's purposes. But when humans worship part of the creation rather than the creator, then they give to those parts of the creation a power over them. The classic ones being Mars, mammon, Aphrodite, war, money, sex. We give those gods or goddesses, not that they really are gods or goddesses, but they're forces within God's world. We give them power over us and that's what then causes us to go astray and to sin. So simply saying I'm a sinner, God needs to punish somebody. Fortunately, God punished Jesus, so now I'm okay. That isn't actually addressing the deepest problem in the New Testament. What has to be done is that the principalities and powers who have usurped God's rule over the world, or Jesus rule over the world, they need to be dealt with. But the way that that has to happen is for the human sin which gave those powers their power, that has to be dealt with. So the New Testament central thesis on this, and this is not what you hear in many churches, alas, is what you might summarize as victory through substitution. God wins the victory over the powers by Jesus taking the sin of the sinners upon himself and thereby robbing the principalities and powers of their power over the world. You see this specially in John's Gospel, but it's also in Paul and it's also by implication in Matthew, Mark and Luke and elsewhere. John's Gospel has Jesus saying before he goes to the cross, now is the judgment of this world. Now the ruler of this world is cast out. In other words, the world has been taken over by a dark power and Jesus death is going to defeat that dark power. But how does that happen in John's Gospel? John brings it into sharp focus with people like Barabbas when the crowd ask for Barabbas rather than Jesus, and John says, now Barabbas was a robber. In other words, Jesus is dying the death of the sinner, and that's how the powers are robbed of their power. This is a much bigger, more complex, perhaps darker idea than the rather simplistic idea that, oh well, these people have done bad things, so God has to punish them, but fortunately he punishes Jesus instead. And it's all about God in the person of His Son, coming to the place where the dark powers are doing and have done their worst. When Jesus is arrested in Luke's Gospel, he says, this is your hour and the power of darkness. And the darkness is what causes that terrible moment of Jesus in Gethsemane and then on the cross itself. This is not simply about. It's certainly not at all about a vindictive God wanting to put Jesus through a really hard time in order to forgive people. It's about the dark victory that is won over the dark powers. That quote from the letter to the Hebrews, which Peter quotes at the end about, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. That quote mustn't be taken out of context as though, well, God wants blood, and as long as he's getting some, we're going to have forgiveness. It's a very specific reference to the Levitical system, which is about how God makes provision for people to come into his presence. The sacrificial system is about God wanting to establish his presence on earth with human beings coming to be with Him. But for that to happen, they need to be cleansed. And the blood is the cleansing agent, the detergent, if you like, which enables. Enables God to stay with his people and enables people to come and be with Him. So these are huge, complex issues, but let's not oversimplify them in the way that, sadly, the Western church has so often done. We need to remind ourselves the aim of the whole thing is for the new heavens and new earth with renewed rescued image bearers, being genuinely human in the, the presence of God. God in his mercy has come in the person of his Son to take the weight of the world's evil upon himself in order to defeat the powers and to welcome us into fellowship with himself.
- [42:40]
Mike Bird
You know, Tom, I think you've touched upon what I think is the, one of the number one problems we have in Western theology. We think everything, we think of salvation in terms of guilt or immortal innocence. It's like, how can, how can a guilty person be forgiven? Why do you need some sort of penalty? But if you get away from that binary and think, well, maybe the problem is bigger, maybe the problem is rebellion, corruption, death. This is why I love the, the Eastern tradition. That's been some of the things I've discovered in the last 20 years. They're not like the Latins focusing on different words for righteousness and, and different, you know, six different types of guilt use could have that, that they see the main problem as the introduction of death and corruption and Jesus's death and resurrection as the solution. I think if we, if we all spend a week in Mount Athos, you know, reading some, maybe a little bit of John Chrysostom, maybe a little bit of Gregory of, of Nazianzus and Basil of Caesarea, I think we would get around our blindsidedness and real. Realize these sort of debates are really just missing the forest for the trees.
- [43:54]
Jevon
Yeah, I, I very much agree though. The Greek fathers have their problems, but they're not our problems. Indeed, I mean, CS Lewis said this about Athanasius. The reason we read old books is not because they get everything right, but because they're not making the same mistakes that we're making. And I think I remember Rowan Williams once saying that one of the major differences between east and west is that the Eastern church never had an Anselm figure. It was Anselm who, in his book Codaeus, why did God become Man? Who introduced a lot of the ideas. He'd got some of them from Augustine as well. But that brought into Western theology certain patterns of thought which as you say, lead to this maybe almost an over intellectualization both of the problem and of the remedy. I remember one time being curiously in the Sistine Chapel, sitting next to a Greek archimandrite who looked up at the great paintings all around and he said, this bit I understand the stories of Jesus. This bit I understand the stories of Moses. Then he pointed at the great Last Judgment scene and said, I just don't understand that that's not how we do eschatology in the East. At which point the Great Procession came in and the conversation stopped and I never got to say to him, so how do you do that bit? And I've often found it difficult to get my Greek Orthodox friends really to explain to me how certain bits of their theology fit together. But these are great questions and we should be wrestling with them and not being drawn down into the trivializations that have so often happened.
- [45:31]
Mike Bird
Well, you know, Tom, if we have any Greek Orthodox listeners out there or anyone from the Orthodox tradition generally, we'd love to hear a question from you. If you got something you want to ask us about or if any other people have questions about the Orthodox Church, maybe we can try answer as the best to the knowledge that Tom and have and I have with our somewhat limited ecumenical repertoire. But yeah, we'd love more questions on that or pretty much anything. But that is all we have time for today. Don't forget to follow the show on social media through Premier Christian Radio and all of its digital ministries. It's been great spending time with you. I'm Mike Bird and I've been joined.
- [46:13]
Jevon
By by Tom Wright.
- [46:15]
Mike Bird
And we'll see you again on the next episode of Ask NT Wright.