← Ask NT Wright Anything
Ask NT Wright Anything
What was John the Baptist doing when he baptised Jews before Jesus’ ministry began?
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Mike Bird
Hello and welcome to another episode of Ask nt Write Anything the program where we answer your questions about Jesus, the Bible and the life of faith. I'm Mike Bird from Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia and I'm joined by Tom.
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Tom Wright
Rach from Wycliffe hall in Oxford.
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Mike Bird
Tom, it's great to be with you. We've got some really good questions this week. Here's my favorite question we received from a listener in Guatemala from Zona 13 who asks come visit Guatemala. Which I need to point out is not really a question. But I actually did do a bit of a search on leading Guatemala podcasts, particularly Christian podcasts. And the leading Guatemala Christian podcasts are Access Church Guatemala Radio, Maria Guatemala and Union Church of Guatemala Sunday sermons. And I regret to say Tom, we don't rank very high in the Guatemala Christianity podcast ratings, but I think we can make some good progress there.
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Tom Wright
We can go.
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Mike Bird
So I say access Church Guatemala. We're coming for you. We're coming for you. Coming for you like a falcon in a dive. More seriously, Tom, this week we've got questions about lay people and the Spirit, Jewish baptism and the 39 articles. So our first question is from Halle Linning in Olympia, usa, and she's got a question about laypeople and the Holy Spirit. And Haley asks. Hi Tom. I am a lifelong non denominational evangelical, recently turned Anglican.
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Tom Wright
Huzzah.
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Mike Bird
I have found the liturgy, the sacred treatment of the Eucharist to be incredibly rich and beautiful, but it is very different from the tradition I grew up in. And I find the hardest thing to wrap my brain around. What has the Holy orders, the structure of bishops, priests and deacons versus the laity. I understand there is a sacramental power thought to be imparted to those who are ordained into the Holy Orders, but I have a hard time understanding what the implications are then for lay people. Does that mean lay people have less of the Holy Spirit or less access to the Holy Spirit's power? Is there a helpful way to understand this without thinking of it as a hierarchy or of super Christians versus regular Christians? Thank you so much for all your work. It has blessed me immeasurably. Now, Tom, you've been ordained as a deacon, priest and bishop. Yes, I've been ordained to the orders of deacon and priest and I am wearing purple if there's any vacant diocese in England that need filling, like, I don't know, recently in London, the church plan. I'm getting off topic, but as ordained people do, we have like premium levels of spirit infilling that the ordinary lay people don't have. Are you and me, have we got more Holy Spirit in our can than these mere plebs of lay people walking around? So tell us, is the Holy Spirit in all people or do ordained people have a little extra Holy Spirit in their life?
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Tom Wright
I think thinking of it in terms of how much of the Holy Spirit you have or whatever really isn't helpful. In terms of the way that the New Testament at least speaks about the ministries in God's church, we should say right off the top that the word laity is the Greek word Laos, which simply means people. And we're all Laos. We're all part of the people of God so that you don't stop being a laity person when you become a priest or a deacon or a Bishop, you simply get a specialized set of prayers said over you, a specialized vocation, a specialized role within the church which is recognized by the church. I remember when I was first ordained and sometimes when I would be leading Bible studies in a group that I was part of, sometimes I would put on a cassock to do that, and people would say, why do you put on a cassock? And I would say, because I'm not doing this. Quay Tom Wright, who's just jumped up and thought he might have some good ideas, there are people who've been praying for me and have trained me and have prayerfully set me aside and said, now look, Tom Wright, you are to represent the body of Christ here. You are to be a leader within that group. And you don't do this as you, whoever you are with your bright ideas, you do it as an authorized representative of the church. And I think that idea of the authorized representative is awesome. I mean, I take that very seriously that when people see me or hear me preach or see me leading worship, they know that this is, as I say, not just somebody who's jumped up and thought it might be a good idea, but somebody to whom the church has given specific instructions. We want you to do this, to be our representative, our leader, the one who does this, that and the other. And all of this occurs under that rubric from Mark, chapter 10, where Jesus says, if you want to be great, you must be the servant. If you want to be number one, you've got to be the slave of all, because the Son of Man didn't come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. And then Jesus exemplifies that in the foot washing and he says, now I want you to do what I've just done. In other words, ministry is not about a hierarchy of levels where you get more and more and more of the Holy Spirit the higher you get. Rather, it's about what you might call almost a lower archy, that ultimately the calling is to be foot washers, is to be servants, is to be people who do the odd menial tasks, is to be the people who are there to serve others. So when you then see in some of the lengthy passages about ministry in, say, Ephesians 4, you see all these different offices. And Paul is quite emphatic that the point of all these offices is to enable the church as a whole to grow in unity and to grow into the measure of the stature of the fullness of the Messiah. In other words, the Holy Spirit indwells The church as a whole and people who are called to service, to serve the church in particular ways, particular times and particular reasons, we pray that they will have the Holy Spirit for the office and work to which they're called. In fact, part of the ordination charge is when hands are laid on, you receive the Holy Spirit for the office and work of a deacon or a priest or whatever it may be. And so it's more. There's this job. You're gonna need the Holy Spirit to guide and direct you in doing it. But the minute that somebody said, oh, I've got more of the Holy Spirit, isn't that fun? No, that's not how it work works. That's just kind of a trivial misunderstanding. I can see how it could happen that people could think like that. But I think as well, I remember again when I was young being struck by this, that there were some people who were very much in the circles where I moved who are very much opposed to the idea of ordination at all, that it's a disastrous division between clergy and laity. But I noticed that the people who tended to bang on about that were people who themselves were small c Charismatic, that they were the sort of people who would walk into a room and light the place, place up, because they just had that personality gift. And so it was easy for them because they were always going to be leaders. They were always going to be people to whom others would look. And God can take that gift and use it. But I knew many others who God clearly was calling to holy orders who were not like that at all, who were maybe introverts who were thoughtful, who were quiet, who you would never see at the center of an excited knot of people, but they would be padding around doing the work of the Gospel in all sorts of way. And I came to believe that they particularly needed to have that service, that special set of prayers to assure them that, yes, they were and are called by God. Just because they're not bouncy charismatics doesn't mean that they haven't got the Holy Spirit. So God chooses people of all sorts and equips them for the work to which they're called. Not for something else, not to puff them up, but to be servants of the church.
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Mike Bird
Yeah, Tom, I'd add to that two things. I don't think the giving of the Holy Spirit is like the British Airways frequent flyer program, where there's ruby, sapphire and emerald. I think because Paul says in 1 Corinthians, have we not all received the same spirit and the same spirit expresses itself differently, but it's the same spirit on the one people. And I also think it's interesting in the book of Acts that when God wants a new work to be done, he doesn't necessarily pick the apostles. He picks someone like a Stephen or a Philip or even a certain Saul of Tarsus who do receive the Spirit, but they've got their own particular ministry. And you could argue that Philip and Stephen are deacons, they're not apostles. They're part of this tier of ministry that's there to serve the needs of God's people. So I don't think that there is a clergy laity distinction when it comes to the Holy Spirit. But I mean the whole anti ordination thing, I've come across that before. I'll never forget a famous quote from FF Bruce. Someone asked him what he thought of women's ordination. He replied by saying, well, don't care much for ordination.
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Tom Wright
Yes, quite.
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Mike Bird
He was a lifelong Plymouth brother. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Plymouth Brethren chap. But I think it's important for people to be who believe they are called to have that calling discerned to them by legitimate authorities. Otherwise you end up with some guy with a bad Hebrew Tattoo and a YouTube channel just ranting on all sorts of crazy things. I think you need to be trained, you need to be discerned, you need to be mentored rather than just say, I've got the Holy Spirit blowing in my sails. And please like subscribe and share. By the way, if you're watching this, please like subscribe and share. But when Tom do it, we do it. Non ironically, but right.
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Tom Wright
No, it's a great point because sadly, as a bishop, I have met people who were convinced that they were God's gift for the church and the next generation. And the more one would talk and listen and watch and the more others would talk and listen and watch people who knew them, the more I'd think, well, we're somehow going to have to explain to this person that they probably do not have, for all sorts of reasons, the particular calling to be clergy, whatever. There are others who have no desire to be clergy, whatever, but whose friends gather round and say, and look, actually we can discern that God really is calling you to this. And then eventually they say, oh, all right. And they go off and talk to somebody in the diocesan hierarchy and the bishop is absolutely delighted to ordain them. So it works in many different ways. But what you say is exactly right. There's the one Spirit, there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism. And we are all given the one same spirit to drink.
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Mike Bird
Great. Well, hopefully that answers your question, Hallie. Our next question comes from Bruce Duffer of Edmond, Oklahoma, who's got a question about the baptism of John the Baptist. John the Baptist, otherwise, as we call him in Australia, Jack the Dipper. In the Book of Matthew early on, it depicts John the Baptist baptizing Jews because Jesus hadn't begun his public ministry yet. What religious tradition are Jews following here? What did baptism mean before the ministry of Jesus? So on the safe assumption that John the Baptist's baptism was not an outward display of an inward reality, as is very common to say in Christian circles, what was John the baptism's baptism about? Why was John gone to baptizing?
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Tom Wright
Yeah, yeah, it's a great question, but I think the way that Bruce puts that question about what religious tradition are the Jews following here? I don't think they're following a religious tradition. It's possible that there were some who were doing the same sort of thing as we find not too far from where John was baptizing in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Qumran community. And they have ritual washings, they have ritual bathing, which does go back to the Torah or different interpretations of the Torah that depending on the circumstances, etcetera, People have different ways of immersing themselves for regular hygiene purposes, but also for ritual hygiene purposes. I don't myself think that's what John was about, because he didn't need to go to the Jordan to do that. People made bathing pools, mikveh for that purpose in different places. If you and I sometimes put it to students like this, do you think that John just woke up one morning and said, I really rather fancy splashing some people in the Jordan to see what happens? I don't think so. My sense is that John's vocation from early on was to be a new Exodus person, that what so many of his contemporaries were waiting for was what the prophets had promised, which was new Exodus. You can go back to Isaiah, you can go back to Malachi, you can go back to many passages. And they're drawing on the book of Exodus to say we need it to happen again. Now, what happened at the Exodus? God brought them through the Red Sea, from slavery to freedom. And particularly God brought them through the river Jordan into the Promised Land. And so we've got various movements, which we know of through Josephus, of people who lead followers down to the Jordan to say, this is what God is doing. Follow me. And the walls of Jerusalem will fall down and the Romans will Disappear, and everything in the garden will be lovely. I'm summarizing and paraphrasing, you understand. But John belongs in that mix. And it seems to me what he is saying is this is the time for God to become king. That will involve Israel at present, Judean people at present doing what Deuteronomy 30 says you got to do, which is to turn back to the Lord, and then he will turn back to you. And the way to do that is to come and go through this symbolic new Exodus where you are confessing your sins. I mean, it isn't just an outward ritual, it's confessing your sins precisely as in Deuteronomy 30. Yes, we've sinned. Yes, we got it wrong. Yes, we've been in exile all this time because really our ancestors sinned and we joined in. But now we want to be the people of God's new Exodus. So insofar as there's a religious tradition, it's the ancient history of Israel. And so I think before the ministry of Jesus, baptism meant it's time for God to become king. And when he does, it'll be a sort of new exodus. So no surprises that when Jesus comes along, it's not very long, just two or three years before he decides to go to Jerusalem and do the confrontation which precipitates his own death. And he chooses Passover as the moment to do that. Jesus, too, is totally a new Exodus person. We're reliving that story, and John the Baptist is getting him ready. And Jesus says now is the time.
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Mike Bird
That's very well put, Tom. I like that of putting the background to John's baptism not in the context of Christian baptism or the individual encounter with Christ, but the whole story. The great hope for Israel's end of exile, this new Exodus, this renewal that's starting almost like a new conquest that's being launched on the Jordan. I think that's the right coordinates to understand John the Baptist's baptism. Well, we're going to take a break there, but when we come back, we're going to talk about the 39 articles of the Church of England and whether any of those articles need to be thrown out or do we need to write a few new ones? So we'll be back in a moment talking about that. Well, the holidays have come and gone once again, but if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift. Well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless.
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Mike Bird
Welcome back. Our Next question is from Patrick Jones of Northport, USA, and he's got a question about the 39 articles, and he asks if you could update, tweak or correct or further clarify any of the 39 articles, which would you work on and what would you do with them? Should there be some additional articles added Now, Tom? I mean, the 39 articles are the standard part of the confession of the worldwide Anglican Communion. They have a sort of confessional function in the early church.
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Tom Wright
Early Anglican Church, in the early Anglican Church.
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Mike Bird
Although these days people know of them, they don't really know about them. Is there anything in the 39 articles that you think like that turkey's got to go. I mean, that one has outlived its use by date that's no longer fit for purpose. Or do we need to add some articles? If we had a new Anglican Reformation led by yourself, Tom, and you came up with a new prayer book and a new series of articles, this could be your next book project, Tom, or next project Reform the Worldwide Anglican Church. If you had to add some articles or take some out, are there any things that would be particularly on your mind?
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Tom Wright
The thought of me being in such a position is really quite scary because my name is Thomas, and the Thomas who really did more to create liturgy and so on was Thomas Cranmer. And look what happened to him just along the road from where I live. He met his end in a very unpleasant way. Now, I was thinking about this when I saw this question coming in from Patrick, because many years ago I was on the Church of England Doctrine Commission in the late 70s and early 80s, and we were talking about how we state doctrine in the Church of England. And so the 39 articles inevitably came up and I was landed on, for whatever reason, to write quite a long article in the book that we produced about the 39 articles and their origin. And I was, in those days, we're talking late 70s here, I was really pretty defensive about them because there were some in the broadly liberal movement who really wanted to say, say it's time for one last heave, get rid of these stupid things. Because of course, what people don't realize is that when clergy start a new parish ministry, one of the things which technically they should do, but now this has been watered down, is to the phrase was read themselves in, by reading in public the 39 articles as a way of saying this is what we're all about and this is what you can expect from me. I've seen that done. I've heard it done with new ministries I think increasingly people, devout Anglicans of various sorts, have come to believe that that's simply the wrong way of going about it. I mean, you mentioned the confessional status, and certainly some people have treated the Articles as if they have a sort of confessional status. But I would want to stress one of the first things, that the Articles are not the sort of Anglican equivalent of the Westminster Confession, nor are they an Anglican equivalent of the decrees of the Council of Trent. They're actually quite brief, and they are determined to focus on issues which were contentious at the time.
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Mike Bird
Exactly.
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Tom Wright
That's part of the problem. When my friend Oliver O' Donovan wrote a book on the 39 articles, its subtitle was A Conversation with Tudor Christianity. And I think that's right, that we honor what went on with the early Reformers like Tyndale and Frith and so on, who were there in Henry's day and who both met their end at the stake in the 1530s. But then in the reign of Edward, and then after Mary's reign, when Elizabeth came to the throne, then there was a sense of, we've got to get this thing together. We're in danger of having an ongoing civil war. And of course, there was one within less than a century, and it wasn't exactly over this, but it was over cognate issues, or at least that was part of how it was presented. So the Articles were doing a job at the time, which was to try to hold not just the Church, but the nation together. And I respect that, because if the alternative is chaos and war and everything being pulled apart, then, well, let's try and hold things together. Just like the Council of Nicaea, which we're commemorating this year, was an attempt on the part of the Emperor to hold the empire together by holding the Church together and not letting it fall apart. And that raises all sorts of questions as well. So, granted that when I read through the Articles, and there's a great many where I say, yep, no problem. Yes, no problem. I mean, there's a list of the books of the Bible. No problem. And there's one on the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, is of one substance, majesty and glory, with the Father and the Son, very and eternal God. God, absolutely. If you want to raise that question, that's not a bad answer. I mean, the filioque clause, the proceeding from the Father and the Son was added by Rome, which is what caused.
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Mike Bird
Which has been in the news recently.
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Tom Wright
Which has been news recently, because the Pope and the Ecumenical Patriarch Met and apparently said the Nicene Creed together, but without that clause concession on the part of Rome. So there's interesting stuff going on, but then lots of other things that there are the three creeds. And you see, I would want to say here we have. This is article 8, the three creeds, Nicene, Athanasius Creed, and the Apostles Creed ought thoroughly to be received and believed. Now, I wanna say Nicene and apostles, broadly, yes. They don't do the whole job that the New Testament does. The Athanasius Creed, I very seldom heard that used. And when I have, I've shuddered a bit because really, it's not written by Athanasius for a start. But that's neither here nor there.
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Mike Bird
The 5th century Latin read well, yeah, but it's.
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Tom Wright
But it's very. In the wrong sense, I think, dogmatic in the way it lays things out and the way it says, unless you absolutely believe all this, there's no way you're gonna be saved. And I wanna say, I know a lot of people who I really, truly believe are saved, who would just be perplexed and puzzled by 3/4 of the Athanasian Creed. But then the ones about sin and salvation, I understand where they're coming from, but I wouldn't put it like that. So that the article 12 on justification and good works, and then 13 on works before justification, 14 works of supererogation, those relate to late medieval questions which the Reformers had to deal with. And I want to say, on the basis of what I hope is good Pauline scholarship, citing yourself and myself and our friends, etc. This is not actually how the New Testament puts it. I've said many times, and I think it relates to this, we must stop giving 19th century answers to 16th century questions and start giving 21st century answers to 1st century questions. And sometimes that means saying to our 16th century forebears, you did a great job. Faced with your questions that you had to address, something like that is where you should be, and thank you that you were, and that that did hold things together. But as we now see in a larger picture, larger reading of the New Testament and the Gospels and so on, that might not be the best way, the most helpful, the most biblical way. Now, the great thing about the Articles is that they insist that they are not the supreme authority and that Scripture is the supreme authority. Now, as long as we're saying that, that's fine. So the Articles basically say this and that and the other, as may be proved by most certain warrant of Holy Scripture. And I want to say Fine, let's go back to Holy Scripture and be constantly doing business with that. And if en route we find that some of the articles are things we wouldn't say, like that people often talk about Article 17 on predestination and election. Yes, and I would say that's a 16th century answer to a question which goes back at least to Augustine. But I don't think it reflects what St. Paul was talking about in the key passages which are regularly cited, et cetera, et cetera. But there's plenty of other things which are quite straightforward. The cup of the Lord is not to be denied to the lay people. That was direct against the Roman Catholics, who only gave the laity, the ordinary people, the bread rather than the wine. Probably originally for hygienic reasons, but then it kind of acquired theological rationale on the way through. And so several of these things, and the book of homilies listing the homilies that are to be read in church, we can probably improve on those. It would be nice from time to have some of Thomas Cranmer's homilies being read in church. But I'm not sure that's what we ought to be doing Sunday by Sunday. So I honor the articles. I honor those who did them for what they did, how they did it, and the the role of Queen Elizabeth I in seeking to find a way of unifying the church and so holding the kingdom together at the risk of it all breaking apart again. But if we were starting from scratch, it's rather like the British Constitution as a whole. We have an unwritten constitution. And most of us, I think, would say if we were starting from scratch, we probably wouldn't do it like that. But this is where we've come from. So we're part of a historical continuum. Let's have a conversation with the people who did that over the historical gap. And as we do that, we learn from them. But we also find ourselves called to do things quite differently. Even the question of whether we should have articles of religion at all, or whether we should do that sort of job in a different way, that's the real underlying question.
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Mike Bird
I agree, Tom. The 39 articles were a useful and necessary tool to answer big questions. Disputes dividing the English churches in the 16th century, they've had certain utilities. But as the centuries go by, they become less and less relevant to what's being discussed today. And if we rely on them too much, it does become a kind of petrified Christianity, because we're not stuck in those debates anymore. And I'm one aspect of being reformed is to be semper reformanda always reforming. So it's not just remaining rooted in the past, although we certainly tip our hat to the wisdom of our foremothers and foremothers in the faith. But there's a sense and we have to keep on reforming and keep on expressing that faith in light of our gospel convictions and commitment to Scripture and the Lord Jesus. Otherwise we're going to be stuck just refighting the old debates over and over without engaging, you know, the. The dumpster fire in our front yard, as it were.
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Tom Wright
Yeah, yes, quite. Just a little footnote on that. I remember when I was Bishop of Durham, there were one or two clergy in my diocese who after one particular decision of General Synod in London, they wrote to me and were demanding that I should publish something rebuking the people who'd made that decision. I can't even now remember what the decision was and that I should make a statement or that we should now all or get people sign a rejection of something or an affirmation of something. And I remember discussing with the then Bishop of London, Richard Charters, about this. And Richard said, basically, this is a wrong model of authority. We believe that all authority is from God. It's exercised through Jesus Christ who says, all authority has been given to me. It's exercised in the power of the Holy Spirit. It's given to us through the Holy Scriptures themselves. And then we read the Holy Scriptures and we are aware of and take very strong account of the great creeds and the early traditions of the church. And then further down the track there are things like the articles, and further down the track there are other things. But some petition that somebody wrote a few weeks ago is so lowly down on that scale as to be negligible. Let's preach the central things and work out the meaning of that. Rather than having to say we need another article about this, we need another official teaching on the other.
- [34:43]
Mike Bird
Well, there we go, Tom. I now fear that after people watch this episode, they're going to be Anglican podcasts and YouTube shows around the world saying breaking news. Tom wright denounces the 39 articles. I hope people hear that's not what Tom said. He just thinks their utility may be diminished. Maybe there is a law of diminishing returns in some of the articles that we have today. But anyway, that's our time up for today. But Tom, something I want to tell our listeners and viewers about is the other great podcast put out from premiere. Obviously we are their flagship podcast. I think that goes without saying, but there's really good stuff. There's unbelievable. There's CS Lewis. And if you go to the Premier YouTube page, you can find so many other good programs as well. Hope our listeners and viewers will check them out. But that's enough from us for today. I'm Mike Bird.
- [35:39]
Tom Wright
And I'm Tom Wright.
- [35:40]
Mike Bird
Until next time. God bless you all.
- [35:58]
Tom Wright
Sam.