← Ask NT Wright Anything
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- [00:01]
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- [01:55]
Mike Bird
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Ask Anti Write Anything podcast. The show where we try to answer your questions about Jesus, the Bible and the life of faith. I'm Mike Bird from Ridley College and.
- [02:09]
Tom Wright
I'm, of course with Tom Wright from Oxford.
- [02:12]
Mike Bird
Now, Tom, we have a question this week from someone in Ohio. Now, I don't know whether you know this about me, Tom, but I have a rare medical condition that means I can't visit Ohio. I have a rare medical condition called folio. Have you heard of it?
- [02:30]
Tom Wright
No.
- [02:31]
Mike Bird
It stands for fear of living in Ohio. I keep having this recurring dream that I'm playing in the Cincinnati Open and my left arm doesn't work. It's a recurring nightmare. No, I've never. I've never been to Ohio. I'm sure it's a lovely place. But I do have another condition called folib, which is fear of living in Birmingham.
- [02:54]
Tom Wright
Well, I can understand that, too.
- [02:56]
Mike Bird
That's the British Birmingham not the Alabama one. Well, anyway, well, this week we've got some great questions about the nature of faith. Peter the rock and the virgin birth. So let's get into our first question from Kenny Leathers from Mason, Ohio, and he asked this. It's about precision in the faith, he says. Tom, thank you so much for this podcast. It seems in the US that many Reformed thinkers are very critical of many denominations and that don't believe in faith alone. And once saved, always saved theology. When I read the Gospel, the message is very simple. What exactly does a person have to believe and do to be a believer? What was required in the few centuries after Jesus, death and resurrection? And what is required now? Does becoming a believer require such precision of thought that it can negate good intentions? Thank you, Tom. I think this is a good question because how much do you need to know and believe in order to be saved? Do you need to believe in the Trinity? Do you need to have a fully worked out view of justification by faith and works? Do you need to know that before God we're simul justus et peccator? I mean, how much Latin do you know in order to be saved? Because there's a lot of technical theology terms. And, you know, if you asked me when I first became a Christian to explain the Trinity, I would have probably committed several heresies and maybe even vented a few more along the way. So what does someone need to know or believe? Or how precise do we need to be in our beliefs in order to be saved? I think that's a good question from Kenny.
- [04:42]
Tom Wright
It's in all sorts of ways. It's a good question and people do often raise it. Of course, it presupposes all sorts of things about just, are we being saved from, and what are we being saved for? And I wanna say right up front, if by the phrase being saved you mean going to heaven when you die, your soul going to heaven when you die, then I wanna say go back to the Bible and read it better. Because the Bible is not about our souls going to heaven. It's about God making new heavens and new earth and abolishing death forever and the conquest of death, as in 1 Corinthians 15 or Revelation 21:22 or Romans 8. And that's what salvation is all about. When there will be a new world in which death itself will be no more. As John Donne says in his famous poem, death be not proud. So let's get that out of the way first, because often the questions that people raise about once saved Always saved, et cetera, have as their assumed background, how do I get to heaven when I die? And I want to say it's just misleading to go that route. And it will mess up some bits of the discussion later on down the line. Now, ideally, one should write an entire book on soteriology, the nature of salvation. In order to answer this rather complicated question, I want to begin by something which I heard several years ago from a wise, older theologian, John Wenham. When I was a student and John was doing a talk here in Oxford and he did a talk on the atonement, and he laid out for about an hour all the different theories of atonement and their biblical roots and how they work together and what Jesus believed about his death and how you interpret certain passages in Paul, and on and on and on. It was all beautiful, wonderfully patterned thing. And at the end in the Q and A, somebody stuck up a hand and said, Dr. Wenham, how much of all this do I have to believe to be a Christian? And John Wenham smiled and said, very little. It's something about God reaching out to you in love through Jesus and saying, you are welcome because of what happened to Jesus. That's the basis. If you've got that, then you've got everything you need. Now, of course, hopefully you will grow in knowledge and wisdom. When Paul writes to whether it's in Philippians chapter 1 or Ephesians chapter 1, or frequently in his letters, Paul, he talks about people growing and advancing in faith and knowledge and discernment and understanding. And he doesn't say that this is something you've got to do in order then to be sure that you're saved. It's now that you are in Christ, now that you have been baptized, now that you have come to faith, now you need to grow in faith and understanding. Another obvious starting point would be Romans 10, where Paul gives a summary and says, somebody believes with the heart and so is justified, and confesses with the lips and so is saved. There's an interesting balance there. The belief in the heart is the key thing. And for Paul, what he's talking about is how do we know that we're part of the promised family of Abraham? God promised Abraham a family through whom the whole world will be blessed. How do we know that we're part of that family? This is the question of Galatians 3 or Romans 4. And the answer is not because you were born to be a Judean or born to be anything else for that matter, but because through the Gospel God has produced in Your heart, that sense which says yes to Jesus being Lord, and yes to God having raised him from the dead. And then the confession with the lips, which is probably the baptismal formula. Jesus is Lord in the very early church, that if one says that out loud in public and gets baptized, then you are part of the family. Now, of course, there are places like 1 Corinthians 10, where Paul says, okay, you've been baptized, you've come to the Lord's table, but remember the Israelites who came out of Egypt with Moses. They ate and drank, they came through the water, but God wasn't pleased with all of them because. And so there is both, as in Romans 3 and 4 and 6 to 8, a sense of, if you are part of this team, then you are secure forever and ever and will be raised from the dead. And then a sense, as he says, various points in the letters, test yourselves. The end of 2 Corinthians, test yourself to see if it's real. Because hypocrisy is always possible. Self deception is always possible. It's not something that should make one neurotic. And I know some people do tip over in that direction. Oh dear. Am I really saved? How do I know? I look in the mirror. Is this real faith I see staring back at me?
- [09:42]
Mike Bird
Anxiety and insurance?
- [09:44]
Tom Wright
Exactly. Paul would say that that's not the point. You get out there each day and having said your prayers, go and live in the name of Jesus for the sake of the church and the world and the benefit of your neighbors, et cetera, and you will find, as Jesus says, that stuff will happen. There'll be signs which will follow. You will find God at your side, nudging you, helping you, et cetera, giving you all the assurance you need at the moment. And if what you want is a sort of passport where you can look it up every day and say, there we are, I'm saved. Isn't that wonderful? Then that's probably a bit inward looking. It's probably the wrong thing. So from time to time, test yourselves. But the key thing is belief that Jesus is Lord, that God raised him from the dead, and that public confession in baptism, those are the marks. But then, as I say, test yourselves from time to time. Let the one who thinks that they stand take heed lest they fall. 1 Corinthians 10. So all of this is Paul, but obviously also in Hebrews and so on and many places where we see that same balance of. Of. Yes, but be clear and check it out. Does that make sense? Mike, do you want to Add something to that.
- [11:01]
Mike Bird
I think it does. I would only add to that, Tom, a sense of trust. It's like I don't have a fully worked out theology of God. I don't know every event and every detail in Jesus's life and teaching, but I believe what Jesus has done is enough to save me. And I cast myself upon him and I pray like a line in the Psalms, I am yours, save me, which communicates something of who Jesus is as the representative of God, a savior, and you throw yourself at his mercy. And I like the idea of entrusting yourself to the faithfulness of Jesus.
- [11:45]
Tom Wright
Yeah, that's lovely.
- [11:46]
Mike Bird
That's. That's what I think the nature of faith is. And yeah, like when I first became a Christian, I did not have all my theology worked out. You could, you could argue. I'm still working out now. And some might. Yeah, some might protest for both of us, we're not doing a very good job of it. But yeah, I think you. You've get that confession. That Romans 10 passage, I think really is crucial, Tom. I think that's probably the best definition of faith in the New Testament. And I think you alluded to. Was it Acts 16, the story of Lydia, how the Lord opened her heart to believe the message. And I think that's probably the best description we have in the New Testament for kind of what happens at conversion. Well, let's move on to our next question. This comes from a listener from down under in Australia, and it's about Peter the rock. And this is the question with regard to Matthew 16:18. Is Peter the rock only because of his faith in Jesus? Peter recognizes Jesus as the Christ, the son of the living God, which Jesus says was revealed to Peter by God the Father. Where the rock may be a reference to Peter's faith. Jesus says, on this rock I will build my church. So it is in fact Jesus who will build the church or upon the faith of Peter. Peter has only the keys of the kingdom of heaven because of the strength of his faith in Jesus. Does this matter? Should I be careful in how I say the creed in the church of presuming they're about the Holy Catholic Church? Well, this is a good question, Tom, and this is a bit of a sort of a touchstone, a point of contention between Protestants and Catholics. What is the rock? Is the rock Peter and the Latin Church, the Roman Church? Is. Is Peter himself the rock or is the rock Peter's confession of faith that Jesus is the son of God? So this will very. This could very much divide over Catholic and Protestant lines. Tom, what, what are your thoughts on Peter's confession?
- [13:57]
Tom Wright
Yeah, I don't know, Mike. If you remember, there was a Swiss scholar who died not long ago called Ulrich Lutz, Uli Lutz, who wrote a big three volume commentary on Matthew. And I remember, oh, more than 30 years ago now at a meeting of the Society of New Testament Studies in Milan, where the Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, who was himself a New Testament scholar, was playing host to the whole conference. And Lutz did a paper on this passage in Matthew 16 with the Cardinal archbishop sitting in the front row. So we were all kind of eager to see what he was going to do. And the main thing that was the takeaway from that was that until the Counter Reformation movement In the late 16th century, nobody had thought to say that Peter himself was the rock. That this was something. I mean, we can check it out in Lutz's commentary, which is very full, big three volume thing. And most of us had assumed that this was there in part of Roman Catholic theology from very early centuries. According to Lutz, not so. This was a polemical reading over against the first 50 years of Protestantism, people saying, no, no, no, let's search the Scripture. Ah, well, hang on here, we got in Matthew 16, so maybe, so maybe that means that Peter was the rock and so God has built his church on Peter. Now if any listener wants to write in and say, but there's this seventh century text or this fourth century text or whatever, then that would be lovely to see, but check out Lutz's commentary on the passage first because I think you'll see that there. So that kind of frees the thing up to think that for 15 centuries nobody had read it the way that now many traditional Roman Catholics have tried to read it as part of their sense that the Roman Church is the only true one and it was built on Peter himself. And of course that itself is ambiguous because it's not clear in the New Testament that Peter really was the founder of the church in Rome. It's perfectly possible that he was among the early Christians who went to Rome and preached the Gospel, though the text, nowhere in the first century texts do we have anyone actually saying that when Peter disappears from the story in the book of Acts after his strange getting out of prison in Acts 12, Luke just says he went away to another place, which may be a way of saying, I'm just not gonna tell you that he went to Rome, because that might mess up the whole story too much at the moment. But so we really don't know. And I think then this puts the weight back on the confession of faith. Or rather, not so much the confession of faith, but the fact which the faith is confessing, namely that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of the living God. That's the rock on which the church is built. So when we find in Paul that the church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Messiah Jesus himself as the cornerstone, then I'm not saying that Paul, in writing Ephesians, knew this passage in Matthew 16. Perfectly possible he knew some similar traditions. But that seems to me, what's going on, that Jesus himself is the rock, the cornerstone. And after all, earlier on in Matthew's Gospel, we have the wise man building his house on the rock. And for Jesus in Matthew chapter seven, the rock, there is anyone who hears these words of mine and does them. And then that points right on to the end of the book, Matthew 28, about teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you, et cetera. That is that composite Jesus as Messiah, son of the living God, Jesus as the one who shows us the way. This is the rock on which the church is built. Now, thank God for Peter and his work and his faith and his martyrdom and all the rest of it coming back from a position of shame and denial, et cetera, and being wonderfully restored. So I'm not dissing Peter at all. I'm just saying let's be careful, lest in our eagerness to be ecumenically minded and be nice to our Roman Catholic friends down the road, that we actually go in a direction which until comparatively recently, was not something that people had taken up.
- [18:23]
Mike Bird
Okay, that's good. I have my own Ulrich Lewes story. I was once walking down Aberdeen, and this was during a conference, and someone started adjusting my collar, and it was Professor Lewis himself. This is a recurring problem I have. Wherever I go around the world, people adjust my collar for me. I think I have problems dressing myself, and people around me just feel this need to help me be presentably attired. This story is very irrelevant because I don't know whether you read the news, but King Charles, King Charles III recently prayed with Pope Leo xiv, and that got a lot of press. And, you know, the issue is, how do you think of that? You think of that as Christians coming together to pray. Because I've also seen people saying this was a betrayal of the Reformation. In fact, we're gonna. We're gonna do a bonus episode on this very topic of Charles and Pope Leo XIV praying. So if you want to know more about this topic, become a subscriber to our bonus episodes. You'll you get great content like that. Well, this is probably a good time to take a break, but don't go too far because when we get back we're going to talk virgin birth, all that. Still to come.
- [19:47]
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- [20:16]
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- [21:16]
Mike Bird
Welcome back. I hope you're all doing well. My collar is suitably absent, nothing there for anyone to straighten. But we've got a question from Joshua Hendricks in Colorado Springs of the usa. This is what Joshua asked Tom, thank you for your work. It has been tremendously helpful in shaping my theological understanding. Reading How God Became King was a turning point for me. I mean, I agree Tom, that's a cracker lacking good book. And since then I've read several of your other books which have deepened my appreciation for the historical and scriptural context of Jesus life and ministry. One aspect I am still wrestling with is the significance of the virgin birth. Your work has shown me how intentional God is with various events, characteristics and sayings of Jesus far beyond what is often emphasized in typical Protestant interpretations. Given that Jesus is the faithful Israelite who represents humanity, why was it so important that he be born of a virgin. I recall you mentioning in interviews that from your studies, there was little to no Jewish expectation that the Messiah would be born of a virgin, despite passages like Isaiah 7, 14. Does part of Jesus nature rest on the fact that he was conceived by the Spirit as well as born of Mary? I can see how many elements in the New Testament are rich with meaning and theological significance. But. But I feel like I'm missing a deeper understanding of why the virgin birth is necessary within God's overarching plan. Tom, was it necessary for Jesus to be born of a virgin? Because, you know, I think of the birth of Samuel. There's other miraculous healings of great people being born into the world. I mean, did he need to be born of a virgin? Is this based on some bad exegesis of Isaiah 7? Why do we have to have the virgin birth?
- [23:21]
Tom Wright
Yeah, the question underneath this question is basically looking at everything from God's point of view. Why would you want to do that? And I'm always suspicious of the attempt to get, as it were, behind God's intentionality and say, now if you were God, you would of course want to do it like this. Because again and again, what the Bible does is simply tell you stories about what God's done and what God's got up to. Sometimes we can see into the background and see, oh, my goodness, yes, this makes sense, because. But many times people want to know, why did God do this or that or the other? It's rather like the Book of Job, what's going on? Why is God allowing this or whatever. And again and again, in the Bible and in real life, in my experience, we are not told why. We are told, wait, be faithful, believe, carry on. You know, all will be well. But you're not necessarily gonna get the answer to this right off the top. Obviously, many theologians have wrestled with this question and have come back with some very intricate theories about grace, that Jesus is the embodiment of the grace of God and therefore the idea of his conception in Mary's womb being an act of pure grace. I mean, as it says, as the angel says to Mary In Luke chapter 2, verse 35, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the one who is to be born of you will be called Holy, the Son of God. Now, we've got several Jewish texts of the time which speak about a Son of God, referring back not least to Psalm 2, where God says, you are my Son. This day have I begotten you. But as you said, none of those texts that we're aware of, somebody might dig another one up in the sands of Jordan, who knows? But we haven't got such a thing. None of those. Say, of course, he will have to be born of a virgin because of either theological reasons or because of a reading of Isaiah 7:14. And you're quite right that Isaiah 7:14 has this Hebrew word alma, which is often translated young woman. Now, whereas the Hebrew word bethulah is the more normal word for virgin. At the same time, if you check out the Hebrew concordance and look up all the occurrences of alma, you'll see again and again and again that these are young women who have not known a man, et cetera. So it's perfectly reasonable to read the text in the way that was done, that way. But what one has to say is that when Matthew in chapter one quotes that verse, he is not standing in a long tradition of Jewish exegesis. It looks as though, I mean, some people have said, oh, well, he invents this story in order to fulfill the scripture. But we don't have a long Jewish tradition of people saying, how's this scripture going to be fulfilled? And Matthew then saying, I'll show you how. Rather, it looks as though Matthew is aware of something very strange about the circumstances of Jesus conception and birth. And he is maybe struggling a bit, but finds this, this verse in order to say, well, it is at least in line with this, just like in the genealogy of Jesus, he also includes several other strange and unexpected births. Obviously the birth of Isaac when Abraham and Sarah were way past the age, et cetera, that was itself extraordinary. But then you have Tamar, you have Ruth, you have the lady in Jericho. Sorry, I'm just losing names here. Rahab, of course, Tamar, Rahab and Ruth, all of whom come into this genealogy strangely, as though to say God is doing all kinds of odd things here. Don't be surprised if when push comes to shove, the ultimate one is a very odd thing as well. But then I think we need to remind ourselves that if we didn't have Matthew chapter one, and if we didn't have Luke chapter two, we would not know anything about this at all. John does have one passage where the Judeans say to Jesus, we weren't born on the wrong side of the blanket, we were not born of fornication. Which sounds as though there's been a rumor around that something was very odd about Jesus birth. And people have been whispering and gossiping and maybe this, and who knows that Et cetera. Likewise Mark, though I suspect that the beginning of Mark's Gospel may be lost. But we don't have anything in Mark about virginal conception. We don't have anything in Paul. Paul says Jesus was born of a woman, born under the law, but he doesn't say born of a woman who by the way was a virgin. So Hebrews doesn't, Revelation doesn't, one, Peter doesn't. So I wanna say if it was that load bearing, I think we would have seen the whole question much more magnified in the New Testament you could take out the story of Jesus conception and birth and you'd leave a hole at the beginning of Matthew and Luke. But the rest of the story would. Whereas if you took out say the crucifixion or the resurrection, game over. There is no story of Jesus if we're short of that. So it's really worth saying that because since the 18th century, with the deist skepticism that's been around in Western culture, people have honed in on the miraculous, of which the two obvious examples would be the virgin birth and the resurrection. I once heard Ed Sanders do a talk where he said, and that people seem awfully concerned about Mary's womb and Jesus. And it got a little sort of ripple of laughter from sniggering people at the back. But you know, why those two? And the answer is because Christianity is still trying to address the deist skepticism, the sort of post Hume skepticism of the 18th century. But if we're thinking New Testamently, then let's just ramp down the heat a bit here. Not to say it's not important, cause it is important, it's there in Matthew and Luke. But I want to say they tell us enough to make us curious and to make us want to ask the kind of questions that the correspondent asks. I don't think they tell us nearly enough in just the two or three verses that we have there to enable us to say now if I was God and I wanted to become incarnate, of course it would have to be through a pure virgin. And let's get clear from our minds any suggestion that the act of physical intercourse is somehow sinful. So Jesus had to be born without the sinful act of intercourse. And therefore let's also get rid of the medieval theory that Mary herself was sinless, which is one of those classic examples of people taking a dogma and then saying, well if that was so, then that would probably be so. And that would probably be so.
- [30:26]
Mike Bird
Filling dogma upon dogma.
- [30:27]
Tom Wright
Yeah, exactly. And how Far back do you go? And so that, by the way, is the theory called the Immaculate Conception, which is not about Jesus virgin birth, it's about Mary's conception of birth. And different theories have been advanced about that. And it's all people saying, if I was God, it would be appropriate to do this or that. Therefore, if it was appropriate, obviously that's what God did. And I would say, hang on, don't let's go so fast. Let's see what the text actually says. So it seems to me that having said all of that, I'm with those theologians who've said this is basically about grace. It's about God coming into the world, taking the initiative in the most dramatic way, and taking the initiative so that it's God's doing from start to finish. And I actually read Luke 2:35 in terms of the whole Trinity being in operation here. The Holy Spirit will come upon you. The power of the Most High will overshadow you. Father and Spirit together come together and enable Mary to be Theotokos, the one, the God bearer, the one who carries the incarnate Son in her womb. People talk about inviting Jesus into your life. Well, Mary had Jesus in her life, in her body, from that moment of conception. And I think rather than speculate why precisely God had to do that, we should rather stand in awe of this extraordinary claim. And let's just rule out one thing as well. People have often said, oh, there were pagan myths about virgin births, about Roman emperors whose parentage was different or whatever.
- [32:14]
Mike Bird
Impregnated by a God. Sorry, impregnated by a God like Alexander or Augustus.
- [32:21]
Tom Wright
Exactly. Now, this is precisely what we don't find in Matthew and Luke. They are not trying to make the birth of Jesus like the birth of pagan emperors. And indeed, if they were, they would have deconstructed a lot of what they're doing, which is to say that this happens from within the great story of Abraham and his family, rather than borrowing cheerfully from this or that earlier myth. And again, lots of arguments one could advance about that. And I and others, probably you too, Mike, have written those up in various places. But so I would just be aware of trying to say, why did God do this if we haven't actually been told more than what's in those two or three verses.
- [33:06]
Mike Bird
Yeah, that's a great way of putting it, Tom. What I really like in the virgin birth story is it indicates that Jesus, his origin story, if you like, it's rooted in the Trinity and it's by sheer grace. Yeah, that's what I think. That's why I think it's in there. Okay. The other thing about the virgin birth is we've got to remember it wasn't necessary for Jesus to be sinless. And I think that idea did affect a lot of the medieval tradition. Like you can't have the son of God born of sexual congress because, you know, that's a horrible, icky thing and, and sinful and like that. And I think the whole thing about, you know, keeping Mary two steps away from it was based on the idea that you, you. That it was all about keeping Jesus free from the passing on of sin. But we know that we get our DNA not just from our, you know, our Father, we also get it a lot from our mother as well. One interesting historical fact I want to add. If you went To Rome in 150 A.D, there were three teachers in Rome. Justin Martyr, who believed that Jesus was born of a virgin. There was Marcion, who believed Jesus just kind of beamed down from heaven a la Star Trek. And then there was Valentinus, who was a Gnostic teacher who believed that Jesus passed through Mary like water through a pipe, but he didn't take on any of her humanity. So in the 150s in Rome, you see different groups wrestling with the origins of Jesus. Some people uncomfortable with the virgin birth and having to create an alternative to the virgin birth because they can't handle Jesus being born of, of, of flesh, of, you know, being human in a way that I think they would argue that the more heretical or heterodox views would suggest that Jesus did not have the same humanity as us. He was a. He was a different specious species. He was more divine than human. He didn't take on anything from Mary, whereas we know that Jesus's humanity very much comes from Mary. And so I think that's what's very much at stake here. It's a new creative work. It's about the Trinity, all those good things. A friend of mine's done a very good book on the Trinity, not the Trinity on the virgin birth recently, Ryan Putman. I can double check that now if I just go off to the Bodleian for a brief moment.
- [35:49]
Tom Wright
It's funny, there you are in Melbourne, going off to the Bodleian on your screen. Whereas for me, going off to The Bodleian is 200 yards down the road.
- [35:59]
Mike Bird
Yeah, that's the age we live in. Yes. Conceived by the Holy Spirit, the virgin birth in scripture and theology. So big shout out to my friend Ryan Putman. That's A good little book people might want to try if they're wrestling with this topic. Well, anyway, I think that's.
- [36:15]
Tom Wright
Could we make one more point that some people in the Roman Catholic tradition have then emphasized that Mary remained a virgin through Jesus birth and that therefore Mary did not have either did not have a normal marital relationship with Joseph, nor did she have those other children who are listed quite clearly in Mark chapter six. I see this as a classic example, as we said before, of something which is growing out of a dogma, that if we believe this dogma then we have to believe that she stayed a virgin forever. And I think that's a classic bit of medieval imagination. Again being frightened of having Mary having anything to do with. With bodily processes like sexual intercourse, let alone having children herself. In other words, I think it's completely unnecessary. And I have seen Roman Catholic theologians and exegetes basically nonplussed by Mark chapter six, which really does make it look as though Mary is the mother not only of Jesus, but also of all these others like James and Justus and Judah and Simon and so on. And what are you gonna do about that? And simp simply to say, well, they must be children of Joseph by a former marriage or they must be cousins or something that looks like special pleading right from the start. So I think let's stick with the text and be clear particularly that we don't need to have those medieval hang ups and that Jesus being born of a virgin was not, as you say, part of what it took for him to be sinless. He was sinless according to the New Testament, but not because of that. And those who say that he was sinless are not quoting or appealing to the virginal conception in order to make that point.
- [38:08]
Mike Bird
That would make a great episode, Tom, a great bonus episode. Did Mary remain a virgin after Jesus was born? Well, I think we'll have to plow the depths of that topic some other time, but we are out of time for today. In our next episode we're going to look at church models, certain words from the Lord's Prayer and a little bit on new age religion. That's what we'll have coming up for you in our next episode. Until then, I'm Mike Bird from Ridley College.
- [38:43]
Tom Wright
And I'm Tom Wright from Oxford.
- [38:45]
Mike Bird
Thanks for listening and we look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Ask N.T. wright. Anything.
- [39:16]
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