Tom Wright (3:22)

Yeah, I suppose I first really bumped my nose against this question when I was writing a commentary on Colossians many years ago. Like 45 years ago is the first biblical commentary I wrote. And in Colossians 1:15, Jesus is the image of God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him all things were created in heaven and earth, whether things visible or invisible, thrones, lordships, rulers and authorities, they were all created through him and for him. And I remember being very puzzled by just what were all these beings, and then being aware that, yeah, there were some passages in the Old Testament that seemed to imply that there are creatures, beings who are certainly not human, but certainly not actually God or even Jesus or pre incarnate version of Jesus, but are sort of part of the kit, part of the divine counsel. And that takes you. Probably the best known passage is the beginning of the Book of Job where God is having a council meeting. And we think of a prime minister sitting around the table with his cabinet or her cabinet. And here are all the different beings that look after different aspects of God's world, as indeed we find with angelic activity. Like, you know, when God sends the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary and when, when the same angel turns up to talk to Zechariah. And Zechariah says, how do I know this? I imagine Gabriel putting his hands on his hips and saying, look here, I'm Gabriel, I stand in God's presence and don't mess with me kind of thing. He's much gentler with Mary, but there is this sense of beings who stand in God's presence and who may be given jobs to do. And one of those jobs, oh no, in the Book of Job very specifically, is the director of public prosecutions. And the Hebrew word for that is Satan, the accuser. That there is one of these creatures whose job is to see who's misbehaving and to accuse them before God. And so the whole of the Book of Job flows out from that, that God has this conversation with the accuser. And the accuser says, well, there's this guy Job, sorry, God says, have you considered my servant Job. And the accuser says, well, you watch what will happen when I do certain things to him. And that's how the book of Job gets underway. Though the book of Job as a whole, I should say, is every bit as strange and dark in its way as the idea of the heavenly council itself is. But that's not the only passage. As a passage I'm quite fond of. I remember preaching on it some years ago, First Kings 22, when the kings of Israel and Judah get together and they are going to fight against Syria or against Aram as it was called. So they want to join together and they want to ask their prophets if this will be successful. And most of the court prophets say, yes, go up to Ramoth, Gilead and triumph. And then there's one. And they say, we better listen to this guy as well. And this is Micaiah Ben Imlach. And Micaiah says, initially he goes along with the others and says, yeah, it's going to be a success, just go to battle. But then the King of Judah says, you better be telling me the truth. And Micaiah says, I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains like sheep that have no shepherd. And the Lord said, let them all go. In other words, there's gonna be the death of a king, the sheep which have no shepherd, and this is gonna be Ahab. And then one of the other prophets says, how do you know this, Micaiah? And Micaiah says, I saw the Lord sitting on his throne with all the host of heaven standing beside him to the right and the left. And the Lord said, who will entice Ahab to go up and fall at Ramoth, Gilead? And different spirits said different things. And then one of them said, I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And God says, okay, you go and. And that's how it works. So you could say that this is a vivid pictorial way of saying God decides to do this. But actually it's a way of saying, I think within the Hebrew mindset, the one God who rules the whole world, he has all sorts of non human intelligences and operations and powers at his disposal. And he can tell them what to do and inquire of them and so on. And this is very mysterious. But it also fits all the way Back to Genesis 1, where God says, let us make humans in our image, which some see as a hint at a trinitarian doctrine. But some people say, no, this is the divine council and God deciding what's going to be done. And then the other passage would be Psalm 82, where God stands in the council of the gods and holds them to account and says, you are misbehaving, and you may be gods, but you're going to die like humans and fall like one of the princes because you're not running the world the way I wanted you to run it. Then the other passage, which is a favorite of mine, is Isaiah 40, where God says, comfort, comfort my people. Who's he talking to? Not initially to the prophet. He is talking to a member of the heavenly court who is going to then commission the prophet to speak the words of comfort to Israel. But then we have these different voices. A voice says, cry. And I say, what shall I cr. Who is this? This is one of these heavenly beings coming to the prophet to say, you're going to have to cry out, what shall I cry? All flesh is as grass. And so on. And that echoes Isaiah 6, where, when Isaiah has his vision of Yahweh in the temple in Jerusalem, Isaiah says, woe is me, for I'm undone. And the Seraphs, the seraphim, who are flying around the throne singing, holy, holy, holy. One of them comes to Isaiah with, he's picked up a coal from the fire. With tongs, he touches Isaiah's lips and purifies him so that he can be the bearer of God's word. So that we've got this sense of God having at his disposal all these different types of beings for which we don't have good language. And the ancient Hebrews I don't think had good language, but it is a way of saying life is actually much more mysterious than the old sort of vaguely deist systems of the 17th or 18th century might have imagined, with just, there's God up there, there's us down here, end of conversation. No, there is God, the one true God. But God has at his disposal all sorts of means of getting things done, and God uses those wisely to further his purposes. Now, granted all of that, then when some of these powers go wrong and we have what in the tradition is called fallen angels, we get into the whole, which you find in Milton's Paradise Lost, which spells it out much more vividly, then God will deal with them appropriately when the time comes. But it's a way of saying, we humans live in a much more complicated cosmos than we might normally imagine, so let's just get used to that. But recognizing that as we are worshiping the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, we are joining in with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven were all praising God together. So the life of praise is enhanced by knowing we are sharing in this worship. The life of discipleship is made more wary because we're aware that there are different forces, different powers which might lead us astray and which we need to pray about in terms of protection. So that's a kind of a starter kit for the heavenly court. One could take it in many other ways, and there have been many theologians who've done that, but that's the basic biblical root of it.

Mike Bird (11:34)

Yeah, that's a good exposition of the key texts that talk about this heavenly court or this heavenly council. I think it's important to emphasize that these beings, they're called, you know, gods or princes or angels, they're not a threat to monotheism. Because Yahweh is species unique. No one is in his league, which is why I think someone like Philo of Alexandria calls them subordinate powers. So it's not like one of them could easily sub in from like Yahweh and dethrone him and usurp him and take him his place. I mean, no one is in Yahweh's league. I mean, that's the, the impression you get from the vision in Isaiah and Ezekiel. They're just something so majestic and powerful and, and holy about him. The, the other spiritual powers are not in his league. So that, that's probably the one thing I would take away because I have heard people worried that the divine council is somehow an affront to monotheism. And it means the Hebrews would, you know, just basically polytheists, but with one favorite God, which is not the case at all.

Tom Wright (12:40)

Yeah, and I think that that is. I agree that's a problem people have with monotheism. But in the first century Judean world, monotheism was over against paganism, where you've got Zeus and all his merry men and women, all the pagans, and also over against the dualism that you find, though it's very shadowy. The evidence in places like Iran, where you've got a good God and a bad God squaring off against one another, monotheism is a way of avoiding both of those. It isn't a numerical analysis of the inner being of the one God. And the other thing I suppose we need to say is that in the New Testament, the language used about Jesus is much more than simply Jesus being a great angel or whatever. Indeed, the letter to the Hebrews is very clear, clear that Jesus is different from that. Some have tried to say that The Christ hymn in Philippians 2 is making Jesus out into being a kind of a senior member of the heavenly court. But it seems to me that for all sorts of reasons, that that's. That's quite wrong. So, again, we need to differentiate genuine biblical monotheism and trinitarian monotheism from that idea of the heavenly court.

Mike Bird (13:52)

Yeah. Well, let's change tack, Tom. Let's go from the divine council to the nature of the resurrection body. We've got a question from Megan Bohun from Dayton in the United States, and she's asking about does 1 Corinthians 15 teach that only Christians will receive an immortal, imperishable body, or will all people be raised with this nature at the final resurrection as taught in the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions? So I mean, to expound that further, she's asking, is the bodily nature of resurrection, 1 Corinthians 15, for Christians, or is it for all human beings? Are Christians gifted, immortal, and imperishable and incorruptible bodies by being born again in Christ, or are those who reject Christ also raised into this immortal and incorruptible bodily nature at the general resurrection? Which is something that seems to be more in line with the Catholic and Orthodox traditions? So, yeah. Is it just Christians who are resurrected, or is it all people who will be resurrected at the final day?

Tom Wright (15:01)

Yeah, it's a great question. And when I was writing my rather big book on the resurrection, the Resurrection of the Son of God, which I noticed I was doing 22 years ago, can you believe it's that long? It was published in 2003. I was aware that there's one issue in the New Testament which is not really resolved, and it is precisely this one. Because in John's Gospel, Jesus says in chapter five, verses 28 and 29, don't be surprised, because the hour is coming in which all those in the tomb will hear his voice. And they will come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, those who've done evil to the resurrection of judgment. Chryseis judgment. Now, in Paul, if you didn't have that bit of John, you could say that for Paul, it's simply that resurrection is God's gift to those who are in the Messiah, who are indwelt by the Spirit. That's very clear in Romans 8. It's very clear in 1 Corinthians 15, and I think especially in Romans 8, because if Paul says, if you don't have the Spirit, then you don't belong to the Messiah. But if the Spirit dwells within you, then the one who raised Messiah Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit who dwells in you. And that new resurrection life, as in 1 Corinthians 15, will be an immortal life, an immortal physicality. We tend to think of immortality in terms of a disembodied soul, but that's quite wrong. Paul is talking about a physicality like that of the risen Jesus which has gone through death and out the other side into a mode of being which can no longer suffer pain or attack or death itself. However, when we factor the John 5 passage in, we get to the line that some of the early fathers took in the second and third centuries when they were wrestling with this. And some of them said things like, well, the wicked have sinned in the body and so they must be punished in the body. And a text like John 5:29 would match that exactly that. Actually, God's world is a heaven plus earth world, and those who have behaved in a corrupt, anti world, anti good creation fashion, they must be given bodies in order that they may be punished appropriately. Now, because we only have that one line in John 5, I'm not sure that I would build a huge amount on that. But it's a way of saying, if we only had Paul, you might think that it is only Christians, only those who are in Christ indwelt by the Spirit, who are going to be raised at all. But from that line in John 5, which of course reflects the passage in Daniel chapter 12, verse 2. So something quite similar we have to say. It looks as though there will be a resurrection to judgment of those who have rejected Christ. Paul, I don't think ever says that, and I don't think that you can read either of those positions easily into the Book of Revelation, though the end of Revelation remains quite complicated about the first resurrection and the second resurrection. That's a whole other area which we won't go into at the moment. So. So I do think that according to John, according to Jesus, in John, those who do not belong to Jesus, those who have done evil in the Johannine phrase, will be raised, but not in order to have an immortal physicality. It will be a resurrection which will be so that they can be judged appropriately. That raises all sorts of other questions which I don't think we can get into, but that would be my reading of the passages. Mike, I hope you agree with all that, because this is, I think, not an easy question.

Mike Bird (19:00)

I'll stop. I think that passage in John 5 is exceptional I wish more people knew about it because you've got John 5:24, which is a great statement of being saved by faith. But then it does talk about how we're going to be judged by works, both the good and the bad. And for people who say that John has no eschatology, well, they need to go have a serious look at John 5. Yeah, that's. That's an amazing passage. Yeah, I fully agree, but it's time to take a break. But don't go too far, because when we get back, we're going to deal with an interesting pastoral question about the assurance of salvation. Back in a moment.

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Mike Bird (21:18)

Welcome back. You know, Tom, we've just been discussing John 5. And in John 5:24, Jesus says, I'm telling you the solemn truth. Anyone who hears my word and believes in him who sent me has the life of God's coming age. Such a person won't come into judgment. They have passed out of death into life. Now, a passage like that can give someone a pretty good sense of assurance that if they have faith, they have experienced this new Exodus. But when you go down a few verses later, it talks about those who have done good will be raised to a resurrection of life, and those who have done wicked to a resurrection of judgment. So, you know, there is a bit of a tension here between the assurance of. Of faith but the need to do good. And I think that's a good context for our next question from John B. Of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom. And he's got a question about whether you can be sure of final salvation through disciplining yourself. And this is what he asked. He says, I have been a longtime fan of Tom Wright's work and even have a bookshelf almost entirely dedicated to his books. I have a question that begins with a specific passage, but also touches on broader issues related to salvation and assurance. I have heard Tom quote 1 Corinthians 9:27 on multiple occasions, and that says, but I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. This verse honestly terrifies me. If Paul himself had to discipline his body, and some translations even say beat battle or pummel, then what hope do I have? How can I be sure that I am disciplining myself enough to receive final salvation? This feeling intensifies when I compare my life to those of great saints like Paul. I know that my level of obedience and holiness falls far short. I must admit these kinds of questions have weighed heavily on my heart and mind for years. At times it even feels like they prevent me from moving forward in my Christian walk. Any words of wisdom would be deeply appreciated. And Tom, what words of wisdom do you have have for John B.

Tom Wright (23:54)

Well, it's a great question, and I think I want to put that paragraph at the end of 1 Corinthians 9:24, 27 in the light of the whole argument of chapters 8 through 10, recognizing, and I mentioned this in answer to an earlier question, that in chapter 10 he is very specifically addressing the Corinthians with the fact that an awful lot of people have flooded into the church in Corinth. There's all sorts of reasons for this very interesting question. Question. Because Christianity has become legal in Corinth ever since Gallio's verdict in 1 Corinthians 18. And suddenly Christianity is the new thing in Corinth. Lots of people want to come in. It's exciting. People speak in other languages. There's great singing. They have a shared meal. It's amazing. And the legal restraints are off, so anyone can come in. And it looks as though a lot of people have been taking advantage of that. And so in First Corinthians 8:10, Paul addresses the. The specific question about whether you're allowed in your ordinary life to eat meat that has been offered to idols. But this is really a larger question about living as Christians in a pagan society. And Paul is very much aware throughout this whole passage that yes, of course, people come in who are from a Gentile background, a non Jewish background, and yes, they are allowed to eat non kosher food, and yes, they are allowed to eat food that has been offered in sacrifice to one of the many local idols. In a city like Corinth. Most of the meat that was available in the meat market had probably been offered in sacrifice and then would be sold on through the meat market. And some people who were frightened about colluding with idolatry would abstain from meat that had been offered in sacrifice in case they would, by extension, as it were, be committing idolatry. So these issues of, of being holy in a pagan society are new things which Paul is having to help the Corinthian converts feel their way into. And he sets out the principles in chapter eight. Then in chapter nine, he uses himself as an example because he says, look, I am free. I am an apostle, I am free of all things, so that I might then be God's servant to reach out to the Gentiles. But this doesn't mean that I can just go and do whatever I like. I have got to remain a disciplined follower of Jesus. And likewise in chapter 10, and he builds up towards the climax, which is the very end of the chapter, where he says, whatever you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. So then the argument of chapter 10 is saying, so don't assume you can just drift into the church and behave like you like, do whatever you like, because actually, if you are the redeemed Israel of God, the people who've come out of the Egypt of sin and death under the shed blood of the Lamb, to use later language, that if that's so of you, you've got to now learn what living as God's people is supposed to look like. And so overarching the whole thing is this moral imperative. Our problem is, is that ever since the Reformation, we've been taught we're justified by faith, not works. And the danger of that, as Paul already saw in Romans 6, is, oh, well, shall I therefore sin that grace may abound? Does it matter if I sin? Because that will just show up God's forgiving grace all the more splendidly, Romans 6, 14, 15, et cetera. And the answer is absolutely not. If you're the new humanity, you have this glorious chance and challenge to live as the new humanity. And that may be tough, that may require, and again, cross reference to Romans 8, that by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body. That is never swept aside in the great celebration of justification by faith. So I would want to locate the whole discussion of 1 Corinthians 8, 9, 10 on the larger map of Romans 1:8. And there it's quite clear that, yes, we are justified by grace through faith. Yes, nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ. But therefore, because of that, we are called to be new creation people here and now. And if we were to say, oh, I'm not bothered about that, I'm just going to do whatever takes my fancy in whatever way I like, then that shows that you haven't even understood what justification itself was all about, because it is about new creation. And sometimes, sometimes living as new creation is tough, sometimes the pull of an old way of life, especially if you're from a pagan background surrounded by a dominant pagan culture, easy to think we could just go along with that. And Paul says, no, there come hard decisions, but this is not to deny your salvation. And so at the heart of it, I think Paul would say, as you pray, as you invoke the name of Jesus, as you live in the power of the Spirit, as you ask for more and more of God's Holy Spirit Spirit within you, that's where the assurance comes from. Not simply from a logical thing. I have believed, therefore I'm okay, but rather from a meditation on Jesus, on his death and resurrection, and on the fact that this means the loving embrace of the Creator God reaching out to enfold and include you as well. And so I think Paul would say in 1 Corinthians 10:11, part of the way in which this reaches out is through the breaking of the bread and the sharing of wine, because they are the symbols of God's love for us. And when we take them, if we know what we're about, we are drinking and eating the signs that God is for us. And so Paul sees the church framed within baptism and Eucharist, framed by the Gospel and by the death and resurrection of Jesus. And he says, therefore. Therefore, as you live this life, you never get to the place where you can treat it casually, oh, yes, I'm going to heaven, no problem, or I'm going to be part of the new Creation, no problem. It is always then therefore, we are to live as newborn creatures. That is tough. And yes, we are right from time to time to look at ourselves in the mirror and say, are you fooling yourself? Are you actually sliding off, going off track, or are you actually on track? And I would Recommend reading Romans 1:8, reading the whole of Romans as an exercise, just the whole thing straight through. If you're worried about assurance, then ultimately Romans is one of scripture's great answers.

Mike Bird (31:00)

I mean, what I would say to John B. In light of what you've said, Tom, is that if he desires to discipline his body and discipline his desires rather, and engaging in the sort of debauchery that Corinth was known for in his part of the world, that's probably a good sign he's on the right track because he's appropriating the grace of God and he wants to go on and be that proper new creation subject. And the very things he's afraid of would indicate that he's kind of on the right path. I mean, is that a way of also giving him a sense of assurance?

Tom Wright (31:39)

Absolutely. That it's like when people have sometimes I don't hear this so often now, but people used to say, oh dear, I'm worried that I may have committed the unforgivable sin. And the pastoral response to that is, if you're worried about it, you obviously haven't, because if you had renounced the work of the Holy Spirit, you wouldn't be worried. So, yes, it's a paradoxical thing, but the fact that you're anxious about it shows that actually you are on the right track. And that should give you the moral courage to say, well, I fall over from time to time, but I'm going to repent. I'm going to get back on my feet and carry on long to follow Jesus.

Mike Bird (32:18)

Well, John, I hope that gives you some consolation to your heart and reaffirms the sense of assurance you can have from Scripture. Well, that's all we have time for today on Ask Anti Write anything. But remember, you can send us your questions@askntirite.com we're very eager to get them. And also we have a whole backlog of episodes. There's a whole prior season you can go back through and listen to the Q and A that Tom has done. But that's it from us for now. I'm Mike Bird.

Tom Wright (32:52)

And I'm Tom Wright.

Mike Bird (32:54)

And we'll see you on the next episode of Ask N.T. wright. Anything Sam.