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Before we get into today's podcast, I want to offer you a powerful free resource. Many Christians have been taught that the goal of our faith is to simply leave earth and go up to heaven. But what if that's not the full story? In his remarkable book God's Homecoming, N.T. wright traces the sweeping biblical promise that God is not abandoning this world, he is renewing it. From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture tells the story not of us going up to God, but of God coming down to dwell with us. We're offering you a free digital excerpt so you can explore this hope filled vision for yourself. Download it today@premierinsight.org resources that's premierinsight.org resources and now, here's today's podcast.
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Mike Bird
Hello and welcome to another episode of Ask nt Write Anything, the program where we try to 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
Tom Wright
Wright from Wycliffe hall in Oxford.
Mike Bird
Now, Tom, I got paid a very good visit from the book fairy. The book fairy came and visited me. I got a copy of my own book, what Christians Ought to Believe. That was great from the publisher, but I also got something special, the latest Tom Wright book, God's Homecoming.
Tom Wright
Good, good.
Mike Bird
Well, first edition and let me say the it was.
Tom Wright
I've got the American edition here.
Mike Bird
You've got it there. Well, there we go for the camera. And I can say it was not Overhyped. If anything, I think it was under hyped. Okay, there was a little bit of hype. I think I may have contributed to that hype, but it was hype worthy. I have to tell you, this is a great successor to your volume, Surprised by Hope. And I mean, the one thing I noticed, Tom, it's, it's. I won't say it's a systematic theology, but it's almost like a biblical theology where you're talking constantly about the Old and the New Testament and how they work together, but then you talk about a lot of other stuff as well, like the Christian tradition about mission, evangelism, baptism of the sacrament. So this is probably the most, I think, integrated book you've ever written in sense. That brings a lot of different threads. Like, I know you've done books like Simply Christian and others where you, you know, you kind of summarize elements of the Christian life and all those, those sorts of things that you, you do to introduce people to Christianity. But this is a, a kind of an nt. Right. Biblical theology that I've, I've really, I've only just started reading it, but I've really enjoyed it. And I think people who like surprised by Hope will definitely like that one. Was, was that your intention with the BookTube?
Tom Wright
Well, well, I mean, yes, it sort of grew gradually. It was one of those things that was, was sort of making its way really, over the last decade. I, I had hoped that to have finished it all several years ago, but then the pandemic got in the way and then I got sick and I had my knee operation, one thing or another, so it all got delayed. And it's a great relief to have it out at last, but yet I was just leafing through it because I've been doing some book launches for it in America and I'm doing one actually in Oxford this evening as well. And thinking exactly what you said, this is more of a total biblical theology than I'd really realized. But I mean, that's part of the point, that part of the underlying message is that Bible, Genesis to Revelation, tells a single story, not two stories, the first large chunk of which is about sort of land and family and all that stuff and about law. And then the second half of which is forget all that stuff because we're going to heaven. That's how so many Christians, including myself growing up, had come to see the Bible. So then the Old Testament is just a book of allegories about what then the New Testament is going to tell us is reality. And I will say, absolutely not. The going to heaven stuff is a later invention wished onto Christianity really, from the 3rd and 4th century onwards and has misled us in all sorts of ways for which the Bible is the proper antidote. So I'm hoping it will encourage people to see the Bible as a whole and as a genuinely authoritative book for the Christian understanding of Christian life. So I could say more about it, but. But on another occasion, perhaps when you, when you've read a bit further, you may have some questions.
Mike Bird
Oh, no doubt, no doubt. I'm getting the impression Jesus good, Plato bad. That's what I figured out so far. That's what I figured out so far. Yeah. But Tom, I think we'll have to do a bonus episode on this where we'll go into your own approach to biblical theology and how that kind of lands and gets teased out in a book like this. But that'll be down the track. But anyway, we've got three great questions. Questions today. Why did Jesus turn water into wine? Should certain hymns be ripped out of our hymn books? And did Paul tinker and change Jesus's message? So let's get into it. We've got our first question from. And let me say it again. So let's get into it. We've got our first question from Andrew Jackson. I can't say Jackson, sorry. This will be take three on that. Well, let's get into it. Let's get into our first question from Andrew Jackson of Lincoln, New Zealand. And here's his question. In John 2:6, when Jesus turns water into wine, the author specifically mentions the jars being used, usually for ceremonial cleansing. Is there any significance to these jars and something we should be hyperlinking to? Is there any riff off of Jesus later using wine to represent his blood, which cleanses us via his death and resurrection? Would love your wisdom and insight on this. Love the podcast and your content. Now, I have to say here, Tom, Andrew's from New Zealand and they really do produce some great wines over there. I mean, I'm. I'm a natural rival of New Zealand and cricket and rugby. But I gotta admit, I. My brothers and sisters across the pond, across the Tasman, they make some good wine. And the verse that Andrew is referring to is from John 2:6, which in the New Testament for everyone. Translation says six stone water jars were standing there ready for use in the Jewish purification rights. Each held about 20 or 30 gallons. So, Tom, what is the deal with the water into wine? And does it mean the water of Judaism has been changed into the New wine of Christianity and we've now got the best wine and we can pour the old water away. What's going on here, Tom?
Tom Wright
There's all sorts of things as usual in John. I mean, people who have studied the Gospel of John more than me will tell you that in the history of the church, virtually every line in the Gospel of John has had double, treble, quadruple meanings invented for it or read out of it or wished into it. And so we have to be both celebrating that and a bit careful about being sure that we know what the significance of this or that or the other was. I do think that the whole of that water into wine scene, which John sees as the sign revealing Jesus glory, that's in verse 11. This was the beginning of the signs which Jesus did, and he displayed his glory and his disciples believed in him. When you take those signs going on through John's Gospel, and people have debated how many there really are, I think it's seven. And I think it all climaxes with Jesus crucifixion, which in John is the place where God's glory is displayed, because that's the place where God's love is displayed. So all of them are building up to that. Therefore, it wouldn't surprise me that if in this story as well, there are hints of the ultimate display of glory, and therefore, if it is about purification, then Jesus death obviously is the means of purification. In John chapter 7, when Jesus is talking about the spirit and he there talks about rivers of living water. So you've got that water theme as well. And John's comment on what Jesus said is he was talking about the Spirit which was not yet given. Given in square brackets, not in the Greek, was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified. In other words, if the spirit is going to be given, people need to be purified for that to happen. Now here we've got the jars of water and it's all, you know, you can't make one single picture out of all these images. You have to let them resonate with each other like an extraordinary symphonic piece of music or a great piece of visual art. Just allow the different shapes and colors to strike you as a whole and then inspect them individually and so on. But so I would say yes, John, in describing this extraordinary deed of Jesus, is doing a whole number of things, one of which is pointing ahead to the ultimate purification which Jesus will offer. But that doesn't mean Judaism good, Judaism bad, Jesus good, far from it. The whole of John's gospel is a way of tracking through the great stories in Israel's scriptures and saying, now at last we see where it was all going. This is not the cancellation of the Judean way of life and the introduction of a quite different thing. This is a way of saying right from the beginning. I mean, John's Gospel begins with an evocation of Genesis 1 in the beginning and continues with all sorts of echoes of Genesis, Exodus, Isaiah, the Psalms, and so on and so forth. So what we see here is part of that overall trend and part. Also part of this glorious image which you have in John's gospel in spades, of Jesus as the true temple. And the temple is the place where heaven and earth meet, and this sense of heaven and earth coming together so that now earth is shot through with the life of heaven, for which then the changing of water into wine, you can still drink it, but it's now going to do a whole lot more to you than the water did. That has its own symbolic resonance. And we could explore that. Indeed. I remember an article by Martin Hengel 40 years or so ago in which he spent, I don't know, 50 or 60 pages going through in great detail what all this meant. So we could explore it at much more length. But I do think I agree with the question of that. Verse 6 is a pointer to the larger purification theme, which is what is going to be accomplished on the cross.
Mike Bird
Yeah, the purification that comes through Jesus here, making his followers clean through his word and through his death. Amazing stuff. Well, let's move on to our second question. This is from Benjamin Kaufman of New York City, and it's about. Maybe we should edit or prune our collection of hymns and choruses. Here's what Benjamin asks. He says, since we want to teach a bodily resurrection and the renewal of the world we know in the coming age, rather than the idea that when we die we go to heaven as disembodied spirits. Should we revise some of our hymns? Should we sing when God's been here 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun, We've no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun. I mean, should we edit some of these hymns to make them less Platonic, more in keeping with Paul's actual eschatology in view of the end times, where he says, should we sing, bless all the dear children in thy tender care and fit us for a new new earth to. To live with thee there? Which I think sounds like a big improvement yet, Tom, I can relate to this because some of the old hymns, they're Spiritual classics, but every now and again there'll be one little verse that spoke powerfully to people in the, you know, 18th or 19th century, but the biblical theology behind it wasn't quite cutting edge, if you ask me. Or. Or else we get these, you know, terrible songs that are very emotive, you know, very catchy, like, you know, Jesus, you're terrific. For you, I'd swim the Pacific. Yeah, baby, yeah, baby, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, that kind of thing that sometimes comes across the air waves or even on the odd worship band. Tom, do you have a. Do you have a hit list of hymns we need to talk about, get rid of, or maybe need a serious edit, sit down and have a heart to heart with Charles Wesley or someone else?
Tom Wright
Yeah, absolutely. When I was Bishop of Durham, I used to imagine, as I went through one service after another in the various churches in the diocese that I would visit and preside services at. I used to imagine that one day I would make up a list of all the hymns that are fit to sing, at least when the bishop's going to be there, and then all the hymns that aren't fit to sing or all the hymns with a verse five, which you need to change like this, because, yeah, the hymns are not inspired scripture. The hymns can be very helpful, certainly. I, as a young Anglican growing up, I was nurtured by those hymns. Many of them are things I love. If I'm awake in the middle of the night, I often use the psalms to pray with as I'm lying there half asleep. But often I will use one or other of the great hymns that I've known since I was a boy. And they can be real vehicles of wonderful Christian expression. Of course, we mustn't forget that hymns have always been edited and chopped around. If you look carefully at footnotes in some of the more serious hymn books, you'll see that there was a Latin original. And if you check out the Latin original, if you can find it, you'll find often that some things were just a bit different. And some things there were three or four extra verses which have somehow got missed out in the Victorian editions or whatever it may be. So. And actually, if you get a Victorian hymn book, there'll be all sorts of stuff in there which has now been happily dropped from sight by more updated 20th century or 21st century hymn books. At the same time, I mean, as an aside, I do worry about the present fad of quote, worship songs, unquote, really, partly because we're in danger of. Many churches are in danger of losing touch with some of the great Christian classics of the older hymns. I was in a seminar recently in America and I wanted to quote a line from the hymn Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, which is a very well known hymn where I come from. And I said to the assembled company who were mostly lead pastors in newer recently planted churches, but men, mostly men, but not all in their 30s and 40s, I said, now you know the hymn Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, and they look totally blank. And I said, oh, wait a minute, you don't sing that at all? Nope, never heard of it. And I thought, oh my goodness, we're in danger of really losing out. So it's not just we need to amend some of the ones that are there, we need to recover some of the ones that are currently in danger of being lost. And it's partly about the style of singing that some of the praise band stuff doesn't really encourage. Full throated, full hearted singing together congregationally like some of the older hymns did. It's perfectly possible to write such things. It's just we're not seeing so many of them in some of the newer churches right now. So I do have a problem about that. But I mean, let me give you an example. You mentioned kindly before my new book, which this is the American edition, God's Homecoming. And there are various places where I do nudge various points like this, and one of them is a Wesley hymn on page 126, 127. I criticize the last verse of that famous hymn, Love Divine, All Loves Excelling, because it finishes up changed from glory into glory Till in heaven we take our place Till we cast our crowns before thee Lost in wonder, love and praise. Now that's a scene from Revelation 4 and 5, which isn't in Revelation, a scene about our ultimate future. It's a scene from the present life of the present heavenly world where this worship is going on all the time while we are carrying on with our work here on earth. And the irony of that is that the first two verses of that hymn, as I quote them here, are all about God coming to dwell with us, not us going to dwell with God. Love Divine, all loves Excelling Joy of heaven to earth come down and so on and so on, line after line after line. Come Almighty to deliver Suddenly return and never, never more Thy temples leave. This is wonderful stuff. But then in the last verse, Wesley absolutely blows it. And there are many, many hymns and you quoted a couple of them there that do exactly this. I mean, that Christmas Carol Away in a Manger and fit us for heaven to live with you there. Yes. I've often just thought we need to have a different way of saying that. And there are many others and people will be able to think of them where it's often the last verse that lets you down. There's one which ends like, and I. I remember loving this as a boy. It's an evening hymn. Son of my soul, Thou Savior dear, it is not night if thou be near. It's a lovely evening hymn, but it ends come near and bless us when we wake Ere through the world our way we take and then till in the ocean of thy love we lose ourselves in heaven above. At a certain point, I suddenly realized that's Buddhism, that's not Christianity. Being a drop swallowed up in the ocean is emphatically not the promise of new heavens and new earth and resurrect. So I want to say be bold about this and sit down prayerfully with three or four worship leaders in your church and say, please, can we think through some of this stuff that we're unthinkingly singing? Because actually this is how a lot of people learn some of their basic theology and we need to help them to get it right. Now, we could go on swapping things in all directions, but I think I've said enough to say, yes, we do need to be careful about the hymns we sing and the worship songs that we sing and make sure that we are continually watching ourselves in the mirror. Hang on, where did this come from? Is this just a 19th century translation of something medieval which was much better in the first place, or what? We need to be aware of that, as I say, for the sake of the health, the spiritual, mental, emotional health of all those who are singing these great things.
Mike Bird
Maybe. Tom, your book God's Homecoming needs a companion hymn book with hymns selected or redacted by yourself to make them worthy for people who are looking for the day when God is all in all and we praise God and we engage in new labors in the new heavens and the new earth. Maybe that could be a. A good little companion for God's homecoming. Hymns for God's Homecoming Ancillary book?
Tom Wright
Well, possibly, but I mean, before then, I would. To help people who are in the worship leader kind of mode at the moment, where the only things you're seeing are things that were written between, say, 1990 and 2010 with maybe one or two subsequent ones, and all of them very samey, and all of them theologically harping on the same two or three points again and again and again. I want to say go back to the old hymn books, look and see some of them you'll find enormously good, and your people will love to sing them. Because a good sing is therapeutic on several levels. You know, Augustine said to sing is to pray twice. And often a good sing draws things out of you, almost literally. It's your breath which is involved, which is a profoundly Christian experience, to have your whole breath being taken up by the praise of God. So we need to be working on this and not assume that any one tradition has got it right.
Mike Bird
Well, Tom, maybe you and I need to go to Nashville for a Christian worship conference. That'd be a lot of fun. We'll hang out with the country music and gospel stars of Nashville, and we'll lay down some epic tunes, get some. Get some classic hymns out. I'd come to that. I'd come to that. Well, anyway, Tom, we're gonna. We're gonna take a break here, everyone. We're gonna take a break, but don't go too far, because when we get back, we're gonna look at a question about whether Paul changed and corrupted the pure gospel of Jesus. All that in a moment. What if Engaging scripture could be both deeply informed and beautifully accessible? With the Filament Bible app, your print Bible becomes a rich interactive study experience. Simply scan the page number and Filament opens thousands of expertly crafted notes, devotional reflections, interactive maps and videos, plus audio scripture to help you explore the text with greater insight and context. It's a seamless way to go deeper into God's word, wherever you are. Learn more at Filament Bibles.
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Tom Wright
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Mike Bird
Welcome back and we're continuing to answer your questions about Jesus, the Bible and the life of faith. Now we have a question from Danielle Phillips of Florida about whether Paul got Jesus wrong and Daniel writes this. I've read some liberal scholars who say that Jesus and Paul did not advocate the same message. They compare Jesus Sermon on the Mount, which seems to be about works and having your righteousness surpass that of the Pharisees or else you will not enter the kingdom. Compare that with Paul's idea of salvation by grace alone. They view Paul as loosey goosey and Jesus as upholding traditional Jewish ideas of the time. They claim Paul took Jesus's message to new places that Jesus never intended and Paul invented something new. And Daniel asked, do you have any thoughts and rebuttals of this? Thank you. Well Tom, this is an old chestnut, isn't it? You know that Paul was the real inventor of Christianity. He departed and abandoned the message of Jesus about the kingdom of God or the love of God and the brotherhood of man or whatever it is. And he developed something completely different religiously. He was maybe influenced by Hellenistic philosophy or he just had a more cosmopolitan message for the gentile world. What do you have to say to Daniela and this question about Paul as a so called new founder of Christianity and these differences purportedly with Jesus?
Tom Wright
Yeah, it is, as you say, a perennial question and it's interesting. The way that it's been asked in this case is very much along the lines of a strict reformational reading of Paul as in justification by grace through faith. And then you look back at Jesus and you say, well hang on, he was teaching people how to live a good life, how to behave themselves, how to keep the law truly from the heart and so on, as though Paul would have said, no, no, that's works we shouldn't be doing that. That's one way, but not the only way in which people have polarized Jesus and Paul. Sometimes it's been, well, Jesus was talking about the kingdom of God and then Paul was fussing about all these technical dogmatic issues and so on. And you can see in the history of scholarship, different people taking different Jesus versus Paul stances. And some people have written whole books on Jesus and Paul. How do they go together? And you and I have contributed in our own way to that literature. What I would say is this. The primary relationship between Jesus and Paul is like the relationship between, between the composer of a symphony and the conductor who gets the orchestra to play it. Now, if the conductor starts rewriting bits of the symphony, then the conductor is no longer conducting the actual symphony, but doing something out on his own. That would really be quite a serious derogation of duty, as it were. And the point is that neither Jesus nor Paul are there to teach a system. Jesus is launching the kingdom of God on earth as in heaven. Paul is enabling communities to live within that, to experience it for themselves, to develop it in their own context. Those are two quite different motifs, quite different operations, quite different vocations. Paul is not called to launch the kingdom of God. Jesus has already done that. If Paul tried to do it, he would be saying Jesus wasn't so important. And indeed, there have have been some Protestant theologians, Protestant scholars in the last century or two, who have said, well, Paul was the real teacher of the truth. And so what we've got in the Gospels is not so much Jesus himself, but scattered reflections from the early church and lots of invented sayings. I mean, that was Bultmann's position. Of course. I once, many years ago here in Oxford, heard Gunther Bornkam, who was the next generation after Bultmann, do a lecture on the Sermon on the Mount. And he faced this question, oh, well, supposing, has Matthew invented this in order to smuggle in works by the back door? And he basically managed to sanitize the Sermon on the Mount from within that system. And to say, no, Matthew is opposing Jewish legalists on the one hand and then Christian libertines on the other. And I remember sitting there thinking, legalists and libertines. This sounds very much like Martin Luther opposing Catholics on the one hand and the radical Reformation on the other. And I was never able to take born cam quite so seriously after that. It was simply a reading of the 16th century into the 20th and pretending it was about the 1st century. And I just don't think that's the way to do it. So I think once we understand the difference of vocation, the launching of the kingdom through his own powerful works and his teaching of this is what God becoming king really looks like, which includes a community that doesn't just keep the commandments outwardly, but actually learns to keep them inwardly. You see that right through the Gospels, you know when Jesus says, it isn't what goes into you that defiles you, it's what comes out of you that defiles you, because what comes out of you is murder and theft and adultery and goodness knows what. And so what really matters then is the state of the heart. That's common to Jesus teaching all the way through. And he's not saying that in order to say, therefore, you've got to screw up your courage to the sticking point and make sure that your heart is really going to produce the right stuff, saying, you need a heart transplant. And by the way, I've got exactly that for you. So Jesus is constantly challenging people to discover God's gift of the new heart and all that follows from it by following him and by learning his way. And Jesus constantly says, when he heals people, your faith has saved you. And I can see Paul in the background saying, absolutely right on. But the point then about justification by faith, and you and I have written a lot about this, the point about justification by faith is not that faith is something that I do as a substitute for works, it's that when God looks at the church composed of Judean and Gentile, male and female, slave and free, barbarian, Scythian, you name it, the thing which marks people out as Jesus followers is that they believe that Jesus is Lord, confess him as Lord, and believe that God raised him from the dead. So justification by faith is a way of saying, this is how you know where the church really is and who the church really is. And so we mistake, and the whole Protestant tradition has mistaken the idea of justification by faith for saying, no, don't need to worry about works. God's not bothered about that stuff. All you need to do is believe. And that has been the source of a great many problems in the church. And you and I know that when we, we have said things like that, other people have come down on us like a ton of bricks and say, no, you're destroying the gospel. And the answer is no. The gospel is Jesus is Lord. God raised him from the dead. In him by the Spirit there is a new people. And the one badge that counts for this new people is the Jesus shaped Faith of those who come into this family, not whether they were Judean or Gentile and so on, which is where the works comes in.
Mike Bird
Yeah, I think that's exactly right, Tom. I've been either within or beside certain types of Christianity, certain churches and theologies that saw the center of everything in Paul to the point that Jesus was like Paul's own John the Baptist. We love Jesus because he led us to Paul. And Paul is where all the action happens. And the Gospels are just, okay, you've got the. You've got the subject of Paul's atonement, torment, theology, and some great Sunday school stories, you know, some moralizing stories, how to get saved and how to have a bit of. A bit of, you know, Christianized law. But, you know, the passage I come to when I think about the continuity between Jesus and Paul is Romans 15, which I think is the real climax of Romans. And when Paul is describing the grand scheme, the panoramic vision of his own mission and ministry, he starts off by referring to how the Messiah became a servant of the circumcised to confirm the promises given to the patriarch so that the Gentiles would glorify God for his mercy. And Paul draws a big link between his Gentile converts, the current churches, his own ministry, what Jesus was doing, you know, to Israel, to all the Judeans, and what God promised. The patriarchy sort of lines them up and say, this is part of the one story and mission. It's not like Jesus and Paul are part A, part B, or two separate things or theologies that exist in parallel. They're part of the one big story.
Tom Wright
Yeah, yeah, no, I totally agree. And I think one of the real advances in our day is that Romans 12 to 16 is making a comeback. I mean, you know Scott McKnight's book, Reading Romans backwards.
Mike Bird
Yes.
Tom Wright
Others in that style. In other words, don't just assume that the first eight chapters give you, this is how to get saved and go to heaven. And then there's some footnotes. Actually. Romans 13:14, 15:16, particularly the central bit from 14:1 through to 15:13 is absolutely vital. And I totally agree that chapter 15, verse 8 is really 8 and 9 is really as good a summary of what Paul thought his whole mission was about as we're likely to get. And it begins with the work of Jesus, as you say, and it ends with the Gentile mission. So.
Mike Bird
Well, that big scheme is a good note for us to end on today. In our next episode, we'll be covering grief in loss during a pregnancy where is Jesus in the Eucharist of the Lord's Supper? And did all of the biblical characters really exist? Now, Tom, I've got to ask you, have you ever been stranded in an airport for a long period of time?
Tom Wright
Yes.
Mike Bird
Have you ever wished you had something uplifting, informative and edifying to listen to?
Tom Wright
Normally when I've been stranded in airports, I haven't been in listening to mode. I have hoped that I would have a good long book in my bag which I could read. And no, it is a very frustrating thing.
Mike Bird
Well, I've got to tell you something, Tom. Millennials and General Z, they're not reading books. They're listening to podcasts and watching their YouTube and their tick tocks and their nanograms or whatever else is they're into. And for those people, they might want to check out the back catalog of episodes. So yeah, you do get your new episode of Ask Anti Write anything every week, but you go back and binge all of the previous episodes. Or you could check out some of the good programs from Premiere, like Unbelievable and the CS Lewis Podcast. I mean, I was on the Unbelievable podcast. I was debating Doug Wilson about Christian nationalism, and that was epic. We had quite a lot of ideas we exchanged. There was a very free and frank exchange of ideas, all cordial and gentle, but it was a very big exchange of ideas. Well, that's what you can see on Premier's other programs. Don't forget to send us your questions too@askantewright.com and until our next episode, it's goodbye from me, Mike Bird, and goodbye
Tom Wright
from me, Tom Wright.
Mike Bird
God bless you and take care. Of.
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Tom Wright
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Ask NT Wright Anything – Episode Summary
Episode Title: Why did Jesus turn water into wine? Did Paul invent Christianity? Are Christian hymns wrong? NT Wright Explains
Date: March 30, 2026
Host: Mike Bird
Guest: NT Wright (Tom Wright)
Produced by: Premier Unbelievable
In this engaging episode, Mike Bird and renowned biblical scholar NT Wright tackle three major listener questions: the symbolic meaning of Jesus turning water into wine in John 2, whether traditional Christian hymns should be revised for theological accuracy, and the perennial debate over whether the apostle Paul “invented” Christianity or distorted Jesus’s message. As always, the episode is laced with humor, practical wisdom, honest reflection, and Tom's deep biblical insight, offering listeners both challenge and encouragement in their faith and understanding.
Discussion:
Memorable Quote:
“The going to heaven stuff is a later invention wished onto Christianity really, from the 3rd and 4th century onwards and has misled us in all sorts of ways for which the Bible is the proper antidote.”
— NT Wright (04:33)
From Andrew Jackson, Lincoln, NZ
Discussion:
Notable Quotes:
“You can't make one single picture out of all these images. You have to let them resonate with each other like an extraordinary symphonic piece of music...”
— NT Wright (10:04)
“The whole of John's gospel is a way of tracking through the great stories in Israel's scriptures and saying, now at last we see where it was all going. This is not the cancellation of the Judean way of life and the introduction of a quite different thing...”
— NT Wright (11:08)
Timestamp:
From Benjamin Kaufman, NYC
Discussion:
Memorable Quotes:
“The hymns are not inspired scripture. The hymns can be very helpful... But, actually, if you get a Victorian hymn book, there'll be all sorts of stuff in there which has now been happily dropped from sight by more updated hymn books...”
— NT Wright (14:45)
“The irony of that is that the first two verses of that hymn... are all about God coming to dwell with us, not us going to dwell with God... But then in the last verse, Wesley absolutely blows it.”
— NT Wright (19:40)
Timestamps:
From Danielle Phillips, Florida
Discussion:
Notable Quotes:
“The primary relationship between Jesus and Paul is like the relationship between the composer of a symphony and the conductor who gets the orchestra to play it... Neither Jesus nor Paul are there to teach a system. Jesus is launching the kingdom of God on earth as in heaven. Paul is enabling communities to live within that...”
— NT Wright (27:18)
“The gospel is Jesus is Lord. God raised him from the dead. In him by the Spirit there is a new people... not whether they were Judean or Gentile and so on, which is where the works comes in.”
— NT Wright (32:28)
Timestamps:
Throughout, Mike and Tom converse in a warm, witty, and theologically rich manner, blending accessible explanations and deep scholarship. They challenge conventional thinking on scripture, worship, and tradition, while inviting the listener to a more integrated, holistic Christian faith.
This episode delivers a thoughtful journey through three pressing questions at the intersection of theology, scripture, and church tradition. NT Wright’s signature “big story” approach reframes familiar debates, calls for deeper engagement with both Bible and worship, and affirms the continuity of God’s saving work from Genesis to Revelation, through Jesus—and yes, through Paul too.
For more episodes, questions, or extra resources, check out askntwright.com or Premier Unbelievable podcasts.