← Ask NT Wright Anything
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- [00:01]
John Lennox
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- [01:00]
Mike Bird
Will that be cash or credit? Credit. 4 Galaxy S25 Ultra the AI companion that does the heavy lifting. So you can do you get yours@samsung.com compatible select apps requires Google Gemini account. Results may vary based on input. Check responses for accuracy the Ask NT Write Anything Podcast hello and welcome to the Ask nt Write Anything podcast. I'm Mike Bird from Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia, and I'm of course joined.
- [01:28]
Tom Wright
With Tom Wright from Oxford in England. Hello.
- [01:33]
Mike Bird
Well, Tom, it's great to be with you and to have our listeners. And once more, we've got a couple of good questions this week covering everything from patristic exegesis, the church fathers in the Bible, and whether the apostle Paul was really an apostle. So let's go to our first question. This is from Joshua Grieve or perhaps Greva. I don't know. Apologies to Josh if I'm not pronouncing that right, but he's interested in biblical interpretation and the early church, and this is what he asks. Could you discuss the role and significance of the church fathers, you know, patristics in biblical exegesis? How might their perspectives complement or contrast with contemporary evangelical approaches, especially in relation to sola scriptura versus a more orthodox or historical approach to scripture? So Tom, how do the church fathers stand up in the exegetical metrics compared to contemporary evangelical and scholarly interpreters? Good question from Joshua.
- [02:41]
Tom Wright
Yes, great question. Thanks Joshua. Though it gets a little complicated towards the end of your question because you talk about the contrast with contemporary evangelical approaches in relation to solar scripture versus more orthodox or historical approach. Now, I'm not sure whether Orthodox was a capital O there, meaning as in Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox, or whether it just means in the great tradition of the Nicene Creed and the Chalcedonian definition and then the historical approach, which many would see as actually conflicting with a Nicene or Chalcedonian approach. So let's just try and line those things up. In the second century you've got people like Ignatius of Antioch and then Justin Martyr and then ultimately Irenaeus and then on to Tertullian and people like that who are aware of the great scriptural body of knowledge which is available and wrestling with it and trying to make sense of it, not least in connection with the flow of thought of their times and the life of the Church under persecution from Rome and all the rest of it. And as they are doing that, as far at least as Irenaeus and Tertullian, they are broadly speaking, very much thinking within the Judaic tradition, which is going back to the Hebrew Bible, the tradition of creation and new creation, of God rescuing humans in order that the whole creation might be rescued. Then in the third century you start to get with people like Origen and Clement of Alexandria, you start to get a Platonic strand coming into the Church which says, actually the main thing about this is that Jesus is showing us the way whereby our souls can be saved so that we will leave this world and go and be with God in heaven and and perhaps even see God. The so called beatific vision, as it's called in later Latin tradition. Now these two systems contrast quite sharply. Peter Brown, the great church historian, has recently written a book called the Ransom of the Soul in which he's mapped out how those two ways of doing it fell out in terms of the church of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th centuries, not least interestingly in relation to how the hope for the ultimate life that we are promised went. The Church's attitude to money, that's a whole other topic which I'm not going to get into. But it's very interesting how Brown shows how they go together. But the point is this, that if you read the Bible as being a textbook for how your soul gets to heaven, then there's all sorts of things going on, especially in the Old Testament, which don't seem directly relevant because the Old Testament basically isn't talking about going to heaven or about the soul for that matter. It's talking about the God of creation who's called the family of Abraham, and their long twists and turns to bring about the redemption of his creation through the arrival of his Messiah and the gift of his Spirit. And the New Testament joins exactly in that stream. But Then if you're in the third or fourth century and you think this text must really be about going to heaven, then the way that you cope with that from origin onwards is by allegory. And so you do with the Old Testament what Philo of Alexandria, in roughly contemporary with St. Paul, did with his Old Testament, which was to interpret it as an allegory for the great spiritual truths. Interestingly, Philo there was copying, or at least on the same track as philosophers like Plutarch, who were doing that with the great Homeric epics, because they were looking back at the Greek traditions for what the gods were getting up to on Mount Olympus, or intervening with wars and that sort of thing, or having affairs with other gods or goddesses or humans or whatever. And Plutarch, as himself a pagan priest, was shocked at the thought that the gods would really behave like this. So he allegorized his Old Testament, that is Homer and the other early poets, in order to say, they're really teaching you about virtue and about the truths of the spirit and about the truths of the soul. So Philo is doing with the Jewish tradition what Plutarch is doing with the Hellenistic or Greek tradition. And Origen, and many, many of the early fathers beyond that at least flirt with the same kind of interpretation. Now, because they are rooted in the Bible themselves, they know perfectly well that the Bible climaxes in Jesus resurrection and in the promise of resurrection. So Origen does believe in resurrection. He hasn't, as it were, spiritualized that away, though that's always a temptation for people in that period, especially in the Gnostic movements. But then all the way on through Augustine, who was him in all sorts of ways, still quite a Platonist, and many other fathers of that period, you have the sense that they are doing their best to take the biblical truth and express it in the language and philosophy of their day. But as has been pointed out again and again, if you look at what they do say in the Nicene Creed or in the Chalcedonian definition, where you get this definition of Jesus as fully divine and fully human. You can look at the portrait of Jesus, Jesus himself, in those great documents, the creed and the definitions, and you would never be able to deduce from those pictures of Jesus the Jesus that we've actually got in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, where he is this very vividly portrayed human being who is funny and friendly and sharp and demanding and shrewd and a great storyteller, et cetera. You'd never have known that. And I can't help Feeling that when you look at the patristic world and the theories of Christology of who Jesus was that are developed there, you have a sense that though they obviously know the stories in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, they read them in their liturgies all the time. There's a disconnect going on. And from that point of view, I want to say that history matters and that going back to trying to understand what the Gospels mean in terms of the real world of the first half of the first century A.D. with all the turmoil in Judea and Galilee, with Roman rule and with different cultural influences and so on, this is where we've got to go. I would say that's a historical approach to Scripture. And part of the problem then, with the evangelical view of Sola scriptura is that it has tended to do with its Protestant and evangelical traditions what the early Fathers were doing with their Platonic view of the soul, namely, that the people who were fussing about sola scriptura from the 16th century to the present have often had a very definite soteriology in mind where sinners who need to go to heaven, so how are we going to get saved from our sin, et cetera, et cetera. And then sola Scriptura is brought in to say, here's a scriptural proof text for this point. Here's a scriptural proof text for that point. You can see this classically in, say, the Westminster Confession, where the Westminster Confession has all these doctrinal points with footnotes which are simply Biblical references, but they're biblical references taken out of context because the Bible itself is not giving you the framework of thought that the Westminster Confession was giving you. And so, from my point of view, I have always tried to take the Bible as seriously as I can. That is one of my core commitments for my whole life is to say, the Bible is the book God wants us to have. Now let's do business with it and see what happens. But I have found again and again that the Bible tells a story and issues an invitation which is subtly different both from what, say, the Greek Fathers from the third century onwards were doing and from what much of the Protestant and evangelical tradition has been doing, particularly in terms of the going to heaven narrative, because the Bible is telling the story of God coming to be with us. Now, that is much more revolutionary, actually, than simply saying, let's look at the orthodox view, let's look at the father's view, etc. Etc. In other words, I honor the Fathers because they were doing business with a very difficult text and they were doing so often under the threat of persecution and determined to hold the Church together when it was in danger of falling apart, with Antioch and Alexandria disagreeing about this and that. And they go back to exegesis and say, scripture is where we've got to be and stay. But I would say to them, just as they might want to say to me, yeah, but there's depths in Scripture which you're not yet plumbing. Please go back and let's reread and so on. Now I have to say, the allegorical exegesis that may have done for some people in the third and fourth and fifth centuries, the danger with allegory is that it can spin out of control. So the medieval church were quite clear that you only build an allegory on what is actually the literal sense. The problem then is that the literal sense of Scripture doesn't always actually say what the medieval church thought it said. So we are constantly in a dialogue. And as a would be orthodox Christian, I want to say the original meaning of Scripture matters, but I don't imagine that I can just take a flying leap back to the first century as though nothing has happened in between. And I honor those, the great exegetes. I mean, Calvin was a great exegete, even though I disagree with several aspects of his theology. So I want to learn from all these people, but I want to critique them in terms of the original sense. And the mantra that I've developed over the years, and Mike, you may have heard me say this before, is we must stop giving 19th century answers to 16th century questions and start giving 21st century answers to 1st century questions. And as we do that, we are in dialogue with the great teachers of old, the people who have prayed these texts and loved these texts and transcribed and commented on these texts before us. We honor that. And they would say to us now, please go on doing it and do it even better than we did. And if we need correction, so be it. That's what I think sola scriptura really means.
- [13:08]
Mike Bird
Yeah, I mean, I've read a bit of Church Fathers, and every now and again you'll read something go, man, that is so strange. That is an odd thing to say. And it may be a weird bit of allegory or a very peculiar like, you know, what's all these exhortations about the virgins and the. Or this sort of. Or all these, you know, the constant calls to asceticism and celibacy you've got. So there are can be some weird things going on, but you do Find some gems, you know. And I remember reading Irenaeus for the first time, his demonstration of apostolic preaching, his against heresies, or the first time I read Athanasius on the Incarnation, I, I felt like I was reading the high point of a great tradition. But like all mountains, there's a few loose rocks, there's a few little cliffs you can fall down, some places where the paths are scenic and majestic and other places where you think you've been, you've been led into a cave or onto a false crest. It's. Yeah, like, like, I think you've got to look at the, the patristic tradition critically. I think that's the way the Church fathers would want to be viewed. They would not want to see themselves as a surrogate or replacement for scripture.
- [14:22]
Tom Wright
Luther and Calvin would say, the point is we're going back to the Bible. And if somebody had said, so you're founding a church called Lutheran or Calvinist, they would say, no, that's not what we're doing at all. We're telling you, read the Bible and get that straight. And I think they would both have said, if that means that you are critiquing us as well, so be it, because the Bible is what matters. Let me just say one thing which is an important point. C.S. lewis wrote an introduction for a new translation of Athanasius book on the Incarnation. And it's a lovely little introduction where he says the reason we read the old books is not because they don't make mistakes, it's because they don't make our mistakes and that we make mistakes in many ways when we read the old books. There are some things which are very strange, but they are getting some things right which we might be in danger of getting wrong. And I think that's a salutary lesson, whichever period we're reading.
- [15:17]
Mike Bird
Yeah, I think that's probably a good way to put it. That's a good way to put it. We should appreciate the fathers, the Church fathers on their own terms, but don't expect you're going to get everything there and, and don't expect them to be infallible.
- [15:28]
Tom Wright
Yeah, absolutely.
- [15:31]
Mike Bird
Well, that's probably a good point for us to take a break. We're going to come back and we're going to have another question about whether the Apostle Paul was really an apostle. So stay with us. We'll be back in a moment for more on Ask nt Write Anything.
- [15:52]
John Lennox
Perhaps you've noticed that culture is becoming increasingly antagonistic to Christian faith, especially in the public square. As Christians, you And I can struggle with how to live out our faith in a society that's so hostile to faith. That's why John Lennox's incredibly relevant book, against the Flow, is truly a work for our times. It explores the story of Daniel and how four Hebrew boys maintained their faith in an age of relativism. I'm excited to say that this month against the Flow is our special thanks to you for your gift to help keep this program and so many other resources coming to you with brilliant content from apologists like John Lennox. It's true that this program is only made possible by the generosity of listeners like you, so I encourage you to give by going to premierinsight.org give. That's premierinsight.org give. And please do remember to request your copy of against the Flow. Thank you for your generosity.
- [16:49]
Tom Wright
Foreign.
- [16:58]
Mike Bird
Okay, we are back. Now, Tom, we've got a question here from Andrew Ratcliffe. This is a question about the Apostle Paul. He asked, can you do on the show a defense of Paul? Some ministries are now claiming Paul was a false apostle, leading many believers astray. Now, I have to point out here, the other day I put up a video of the APostle Paul on YouTube and the first comment I got, and Tom, this baffled me, is the first comment was someone saying the apostle Paul was a false apostle. And I'm just like, that's weird. I mean, is this like an Islamic view? Is this some kind of progressive view that, you know, Jesus taught a gospel of love and Paul was an evil bigot? You know, I don't know what this ministry is. Who are these people going around saying Paul was not an apostle? Because the last time I checked, Romans, Paul introduces himself as an apostle of God or in Galatian, apostle, not of men, but of God and Christ Jesus. So I have absolutely no idea, but like, within 24 hours. So I've seen someone actually post this on a YouTube. So, Andrew, thank you for your question. Very timely. I would love to know who are these people who are denying the apostle Paul was an apostle. But, Tom, why? Maybe we should ask, what is an apostle and in what sense was Paul an apostle? Maybe that's the real question we should be answering.
- [18:37]
Tom Wright
Maybe that may be part of it. But I think the thing which puzzled me about Andrew Radcliffe's question was where he says some ministries now claim that Paul was a false apost. I mean, I've met this again and again, but not through ministries. Sounds as though it's a whole slew of people who are preaching from the pulpit that Paul was wrong But I have met it. I remember when I started working at Worcester College in Oxford, one of the senior fellows who used to come to the college chapel fairly frequently, but described himself as basically an agnostic. He asked me what I'd done my doctoral research on, And I said, St. Paul. And his instant answer was, oh, St. Paul, a very wicked man. And that shocked me in the way that what you just said obviously shocked you. Where is that coming from? And I think there. There was an older English view which goes back to people like von Harnack in Germany, but it came through into English liberalism that Jesus taught a simple religion of loving God and loving your neighbor, and that's what we're all supposed to do. And that Paul came along with his weird theories, his funny ideas, and some people would say his odd Jewish ideas, or other people would say his odd pagan ideas and muddled the whole thing up. People have gone both directions, which implies that neither are right, actually, that people are flailing around trying to say, I like Jesus, but I just don't understand Paul. CS Lewis said once that when people start attacking Paul, it's like when people politically start attacking the chief minister. You know, that what they really want to do is to attack the king, but they're a bit shy of that at the moment. So Lewis was warning against people using Paul as a soft target first. And of course, Paul is difficult. I have spent my adult life trying to get my head around him or trying to get his head around me, and I've often found myself thinking I was just about understanding some particular bit of Paul. And then suddenly it's as though he leaps up and runs around the room and says, ha, you can't catch me because I'm also saying this. And he's constantly challenging us. And I found an exhilarating journey throughout my life. So I'm not saying Paul is easy and straightforward, but part of the difficulty is that if you say, well, Paul's gospel was, you've got to be justified by faith, then you look in the Gospels and there's hardly anywhere where Jesus even mentions that topic. Or if you say, well, Jesus message was the kingdom of God is coming, you look at Paul and he only mentions that two or three or four times, and it doesn't seem to be central at all. So people say, oh, well, so Paul's gospel is not really in Jesus gospel at all, or vice versa. And I prefer Jesus. So I suspect that may be what's going on. Now, the illustration which I've developed to describe the relationship between Jesus and Paul, which then helps us understand what an apostle is, is that it's like the relationship between the person who composes a piece of music and then the person who conducts it. The composer is the one who actually crafts the whole thing, and that's unique. And if the conductor comes along and says, I don't like this movement, let's write something else instead, or, that's the wrong chord there. Let's put something else in its place, then they are not being faithful to the composer's original intention. However, the conductor has to enable the orchestra to understand from inside how to play this music, which is a very different task from the task of composing it. Jesus has written the music, Paul is teaching people to play it, and those are two quite separate tasks. Now, not all illustrations work that well, but that's not a bad one. But then, so what does an apostle mean? The word apostle is used in different ways in the early church, but for Paul, as we know from 1st Corinthians 9, an apostle is an eyewitness of the resurrection. There are clearly some people who Paul knows and loves and works with who are like him, apostles. And that seems to mean clearly they too saw the risen Jesus with their own eyes, as he claims he did on the road to Damascus. And there are lots of other people with whom Paul works. You can see a great list of them in Romans 16 who are not named as apostles. They're faithful servants of Jesus. Timothy, Paul's colleague, is not an apostle. He didn't see the risen Jesus, but he is Paul's beloved fellow worker and a fellow servant in the Gospel of the Messiah. And so for Paul, there's quite a restrictive sense of apostle. This becomes tricky today because in some of the newer churches, people talk about so and so being an apostle. I think I'm right in saying that some of the newer African churches, they have leaders who are referred to as apostles. And people have sometimes referred to this or that saint as the apostle to the Slavs, or the apostle to the Norwegians, or the apostle to this or that, meaning the one who first brought the Gospel there, whether or not they were actually people who had seen the risen Jesus, which, because it happened much later, they probably weren't. So the word has had a slippery history. And I think basically the word apostle means somebody who is sent. But for Paul, it's somebody who is sent by Jesus himself, through Jesus showing himself to them as having been raised from the dead. So then when we say, was Paul a false apostle? You know, he might claim to be an apostle, as you rightly quoted. But was he a false apostle? Well, the phrase false apostle is one that Paul himself himself uses about certain people in Corinth who are teaching the church and claiming to be apostles but don't exhibit any of what Paul calls the signs of an apostle. And the signs of an apostle are not striding through the world and the Church being hugely successful all the time, but rather suffering, being beaten up, being shipwrecked, being stoned, etc. Etc. Etc. Paul lists those in chapter 11 of 2 Corinthians. Corinthians in order to say, so you want proof of my apostolic ministry, do you? Well, here is the proof, because it's the pattern of Jesus the Messiah being worked out through a human ministry. That's what counts. So the question of whether Paul was a true apostle or a false apostle goes back to the very first century. So we shouldn't, I suppose, be surprised that it comes again and again, and particularly because people do find Paul difficult to understand because he is making demands, as any great writer does. And again, I go back to musical illustrations. Many of the greatest pieces of music when they were first written, the people who first saw them said, this is unplayable. This is absolutely impossible. You know, they said that to Beethoven with the ninth Symphony. They said it to Rachmaninoff with, I think, his second Piano concerto. They've said it, I think, to Brahms's Violin concerto. And yet once people realize what's going on, oh my goodness, this is amazing music. And we're going to struggle and get it right and eventually play it and, and celebrate it. And I think that's what we have to do with Paul. Yes, he's difficult. Yes, you have to knuckle your brows and get on with it. But he is the true apostle. He did see Jesus as Lord, and he has interpreted what Jesus meant by the kingdom of God in terms of the Messianic Gospel of Jesus. And the justification by faith follows within that, as Jesus is going to put the whole world right in the end and in the present. He puts people right so that they can be part of that putting right project for the world. That is how the notion of the kingdom of God announced by Jesus comes straight through into Paul as the gospel summons. He is a true apostle.
- [26:32]
Mike Bird
Yeah, it reminds me of Jimmy Dunn's book on the Apostle Paul. And he was tempted to call it St. Paul, but he said the Protestant in him just couldn't bear to call Paul a saint. So he called it, you know, you know, Paul the Apostle, or Something like that, yeah. Well, that's good. Well, I mean, Andrew, if you're listening, I would love to know who these ministries are who are saying Paul's in a false suppressor, whether that's. Is that Islam? Is it progressive Christianity, some oneness Pentecostals, or some type of messianic Judaism? Because, yeah, that popped up on my radar the other day somewhat randomly, but I'd love to hear about it. But alas, we are out of time. That brings us to the close of another episode of Ask Anti Write Anything. We hope you're enjoying this. I'm having a lot of fun. You having fun, Dom?
- [27:22]
Tom Wright
Yeah, absolutely.
- [27:24]
Mike Bird
So we want to have more fun. So please send in your questions to askanti write.com. we want to hear from you. We want to hear from your questions. What are the things that are bugging you? What are the things you want to know? Particularly things that will enrich and strengthen people in their faith and Christian life. Until next time, God bless you all. Take care and we'll see you for another episode of Ask NT Write Anything. You've been listening to the Ask nt Write Anything podcast. Let other people know about this show by rating and reviewing it in your podcast provider.