Mike Bird (9:46)

Yeah, I'll never forget reading that book of yours, what St. Paul really said, where you said that Paul was saying that God had done for one man in the middle of history what the Jews thought he was going to do for all people at the end of history. And, you know, that's what created a little bit of confusion with, you know, with resurrection. Oh, I mean, you find the same thing in John's Gospel. Where was it John 11, where, you know, Jesus is trying to comfort. I think it's, I think it's, I think it's, it's Martha, I think.

Tom Wright (10:19)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike Bird (10:19)

Where he says to her, you know, your brother will rise again. And she says, I know he will rise on the last day. And then she says, no, but I am the resurrection life, whoever believes in me, you know, we'll have, you know, eternal life. There's both a life to be gained in the present, but there's also the not yet and the, the great resurrection. And what Lazarus gets is more of a, a miraculous resuscitation rather than the resurrection for which Jesus is the first fruits and foretaste. But I mean, I think there are so many questions we could have on resurrection. You know, you've got the individual stories, the resurrection appearances, that real strange one at the end of Ma Matthew's gospel about when people came out of the tombs. There's a lot of things people might want to ask. If you've got any other questions about resurrections, plural, what it means in light of the Bible storyline, you should definitely let us know. Go to askantirite.com and yeah, hit us up with your resurrection questions because I think we've got a whole bunch of good material to draw on that people may have a few curious questions about. So if you've got some of those curious questions, hit us up on the show. But we need to move on to our next topic, which is a right ripper. But before we do that, Tom, we're going to take a brief break.

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Mike Bird (13:19)

Well, welcome back. We're going to continue with our Q and A with Tom where we put to Tom some really hairy questions and then he normally gives them. A haircut would be the best way to describe it. Something nice and arty rather than just a blade one all over. But we've got a question. A great question from Syriza Rodriguez, it's about church leadership. And so Ritza asks, what was the role of an apostle? Were they elders, pastors, or preachers? I think this is a good question, because the role of an apostle, it seems to include a lot of different things. Sometimes I think the. The distinctions between these roles are a little bit different. Like, what's the difference between a pastor and a teacher? What is the difference between a prophet and a teacher? Because sometimes in the New Testament, these roles kind of get put together in very close position. Like in the church in Antioch, you have prophets and teachers and Ephesians 4, they all kind of get linked and maybe they kind of overlap a bit. But, Tom, when it comes to an apostle, is it all that different to an elder pastor or preacher?

Tom Wright (14:35)

Yeah, I think the word apostle already in the New Testament time was able to be used in different senses. And in Luke's Gospel, when Jesus calls the twelve, he sends them out. And the word apostle in Greek means ones who are sent out. But then when Paul is talking about his own apostleship and having to defend his own status as an apostle, as he does in various places, particularly in the Corinthian letters, then for him, apostle clearly means somebody who has seen the risen Jesus. At the beginning of 1 Corinthians 9, he says, am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus, my Lord? Now, the Corinthians had had many different spiritual experiences, probably too many for their own good sometimes. And they had plenty of elders and pastors and teachers and prophets and speakers in tongues and goodness knows what. But they didn't in their community have anyone who had seen Jesus raised from the dead. And so Paul is differentiating himself from the Corinthian church at that point. Then in the second letter, he gets into the question of who is a false apostle and who is a true apostle. And how would you know? That's a whole other. But certainly in the New Testament, there seems to be a fluidity of role. And I come from a church which has had bishops and priests and deacons, and basically that's it. And then various lay officers, like church wardens and sidesmen and that sort of thing. But those are sort of ad hoc. Nobody has claimed that you get church wardens in the New Testament, although some people would align the role of deacon with that sort of job, although it might be church treasurer or it might be all sorts of things. But what we have in the New Testament is a few lists of people doing things. You mentioned in the church in Antioch, there are prophets and Teachers and so on. That's in Acts 13. But in Ephesians 4, there is this list which Paul rattles off, which is like, but not the same as the list which he rattles off in 1 Corinthians 12. Now, if Paul had had in mind a very clear order that some people are this, some people are that, some people are the other, and evermore shall be so, that would have shown up pretty clearly. But it doesn't in either of those places or in the other passages, like say, 1 Peter, where different roles are mentioned. And my take would be this, that these words that we have, like pastor, evangelist, prophet, teacher, these are fluid roles that can morph into one another. And you can see this laid out for us in the book of Acts, because in the book of Acts, in chapter six, there is a major problem in the early church. Interestingly, the first real social problem that they had in the early church was when the widows from different ethnic contexts. Actually, it was linguistic ethnic contexts, some Aramaic speaking and some Greek speaking, they were being differentiated against one another in terms of the distribution of food every day, because the church was now living as an extended family, which means, what do families do together? They eat together. So the church was looking after widows who didn't have people to provide for them. And there was a problem about how that was being done. So the apostles say, we know what our job is. Our job is the word of God and prayer. We've got to be people who are teaching and expounding scripture. We've got to be people who are regularly praying for, interceding for the whole church, leading the church in worship and prayer. Therefore, it isn't our job to be organizing the food distribution. So they pray and they choose these seven, who we then subsequently call deacons, among whom are Stephen and Philip. Now. So they lay hands on them and they're getting on with them. They're doing their jobs. Almost at once, Stephen emerges as the church's leading apologist. Hang on, Stephen, you're supposed to be a deacon. You're supposed to be ministering food to widows who are being. And Stephen says, well, God seems to be giving me this gift. And I find myself in controversy with people who are saying that Jesus can't be the Messiah. And I think I can see where the nub of the issue is. So I'm going to debate them. And he does, and he gets martyred for his purposes. Now, that wasn't in the job description of the deacon in Acts chapter six. And then likewise, Philip, once there is persecution after the death of Stephen, they all scatter, except for the apostles who stay in Jerusalem. And Philip, you're supposed to be looking after the widows. Well, but God calls Philip somehow to go and be an evangelist in Samaria. Well, that's extraordinary. We didn't know Samaria was going to have this stuff. But then no sooner has he done that and that's all been ratified, then Philip suddenly gets picked up by the Holy Spirit and sent off to the desert road going down through Gaza, where he sees somebody coming by in a chariot, and he goes and meets him and he explains what Isaiah 53 is all about, because the chap just happens conveniently to be reading it now. Again, that's not in the job description of a deacon. So when I read those stories, I'm reminded of what my life was like when I was bishop, when one of the things I did regularly was to lay hands on people and pray for the Holy Spirit to come upon them and equ. Equip them. That was the normal thing we did in the service we call confirmation or then in ordination, when people were to be deacons or priests in the church, then ditto, you lay hands on them and pray for God's Spirit to do whatever he's going to do through them. And I've had the experience then of meeting people who I've laid hands on and prayed for, who said to me a year or two later, e Bishop, if I'd known what God was going to do in my life, once you'd said prayers for me, for the Holy Spirit to come upon me, I'm not sure I'd have been up for that in the first place. And so it says to me that God wants people to be teachers, God wants people to be evangelists, pastors, et cetera. These roles overlap. Paul himself was most, if not all of those things. He was certainly an apostle, he was certainly a teacher, one of the greatest ever. He was certainly an evangelist, announcing to people that Jesus is Lord. He was certainly a pastor. Look at his speech to the Ephesian elders in Acts, where he says, night and day I went from house to house, exhorting and warning you with tears. That's the work of a pastor. So if Paul can do all those things, then God may well want this person to do one or two of those things. And then as they learn and grow and develop, that might change. So this is a warning against any rigid categorization which says, hey, stay in your lane. You weren't called to do that. The answer is God, the Holy Spirit. The Spirit blows where it wills and you hear the sound of it, but you don't know whether it's coming from or where it's going to. So it is with everyone who is born and gifted of the Spirit. So it seems to me the church. Church does need elders. That's people who are the sort of solid, sensible people who have been around a while and know what's what and understand some of the dynamics and have a maturity to them. It needs pastors who will go and get alongside people. It badly needs teachers. One of the main things in the early church that they taught people to do was to read so that they could read the Scriptures, because an awful lot of converts would be from backgrounds where they weren't particularly literate. So there's a teaching role, the teaching of Scripture, the teaching of the Christian way of life, and these merge into one another. And the whole church has these whole ministries. And the ministries are meant to support one another and to contribute to the unity of the church. The danger with pigeonholing people and saying, you stay in your lane and I'll stay in mine, is that it tends then to pull the church apart. And people go with this person because they like him or her as a pastor with that person because they like their teaching. No, the aim, as in Ephesians 4, is God gives many minutes ministries to serve the unity and mission of the whole church.

Mike Bird (22:33)

Well, that's fantastic, Tom. I mean, I. As you were saying that, I had so many other questions about the nature of the priesthood. Like when Paul talks about the priestly service of proclaiming the gospel. What's the function of elders today? I mean, there is one final question I've got, I've got to hit you up with, and that is your view, view on apostolic succession. What is apostolic succession? Because as Anglicans, we kind of live between two worlds. The sort of, the. Some elements of the medieval tradition, the classic Christian tradition, but also we are. We are Protestants as well. Is the apostolicity. Is apostolic succession the way we hand on the apostolic message to our congregation into the ordinance and to, you know, priests and deacons? Is that our apostolic succession or. Or is it more of a genealogy of ordination where people laid hands on you and you became a deacon, a priest, a bishop, and then you've laid hands on other people as deacons, priests, and they've become bishops and then they'll go on and lay hands? So what is apostolic succession? What's your understanding of that?

Tom Wright (23:46)

I think again and again there are all sorts of good things which God has given to the church, which then can get corrupted or can become parodies of themselves. And the idea that as long as somebody's laid hands on you, who had hands laid on them, and in a chain going back, supposedly, to the apostles, as long as that's happened, then these people are priests, whatever, that's in real danger of then becoming a casual thing, like you see in many parts of the medieval church and on in different parts now, where once somebody's had hands laid on them, then they can more or less do what they like. But they are now stamped with this indelible character that goes back to a Latin phrase. And the danger with that, of course, is complacency and corruption. And we know only too well that both of those can and do happen. But the reason why apostolic succession in some way or other matters is because with every generation there is a tendency, a temptation, to think we're the ones who've got it right. And these old people in church, they don't know what's going on. So we're doing something quite new. And there's a danger now with church planting and with new churches springing up that haven't got any connection, connection with anything historic, that they think that God is doing a totally new thing. And those funny buildings down the road that call themselves churches, they're really not part of the same deal at all. And sometimes when those movements happen, then people do happen to bump into people in part of the older or mainline churches or whatever, and discover they seem to be lovers of Jesus as well. They seem to be saying their prayers as well. They are invoking the power of the Holy Spirit as well, kind of, what's not to like? And that's when we are reminded that actually the church is part of the people of God, from Abraham stretching forwards to God's new creation. And actually the unity of the church, as I hesitate to use the words either organization or institution, because both of those smack of the hardening of the arteries and the corruption, et cetera. But the continuity of the people of God from generation to generation absolutely matters. The church does not invent itself. With every generation, the church is rooted, rooted in Jesus himself, in the Scriptures, in the first witnesses. And then it celebrates the work, as we said in a previous question of the great fathers in the first five or six centuries. It celebrates great teachers from all contexts and learns from them and thanks God for them, and doesn't imagine that it can be freestanding and going out on its own. So I think that's what apostolic succession really, really means. And the Church of England, as you say, or the Anglican Communion, is in an interesting position because whereas some of the Protestant churches in the 16th century were very clear that they were breaking any sense of physical continuity with the older Roman churches, the Anglican Church began with bishops who had themselves been consecrated as bishops within the Roman Catholic Church. Even though some of them, like Cranmer and Ridley and Latimer just down the road from where I'm sitting, were actually burnt at the stake by the authorities at the time, nevertheless, they were in the historic succession. And so for me, apostolic succession is part of the fact that history matters. History is not, oh well, who cares what happened last generation or 10 generations ago? No, Psalm 90 still is really, really important. Lord, Thou has been our refuge from one generation to another. And there is that sense of things being passed on. And there are formal ways of doing that by being ordained by somebody who themselves ordained. There are informal ways of doing that by being taught by people who were clearly soaked in the older traditions, etc. Not to say there aren't new things to happen. God is always doing new things. But beware of the idea that we can be reinventing it just from scratch, as though what went before doesn't matter. So, yeah, there are pitfalls with a kind of wooden theory of apostolic succession or, or what people used to call the pipeline theory of grace, that God just pours grace into a drainpipe and it goes on down and we happen to be at the bottom of it. Stephen Neill once said to me, there is no such thing as grace. Grace isn't a thing. There is a gracious God, but it's a God who works in and through history. And the continuity of history matters, as well as the rejuvenating power of the Spirit in every generation.

Mike Bird (28:26)

Okay, fascinating. I think this could lead to some very good follow up about, you know, what it means to be an app, you know, one holy, catholic and apostolic church. And if people have got questions on that again, we'd love to hear them. And you can drop those questions@askantyright.com well, that's all we've got time for this week, Tom. It's been great to engage you on these questions of the apostles and resurrection. I mean, this is, you know, this is typical of some of the great stuff we get to cover on this podcast. And we still have more good stuff to come because people keep sending us really good questions. So next time when we're back, we'll be answering more questions, we'll be hearing more from Tom on that. Take care until then. And we look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Ask nt Write Anything.