N.T. Wright on "Jesus and the Powers"

[Music] what do we do about politics in our world I mean we have it going on everywhere we go and we need a Discerning voice to help us find some degree of normaly as we're trying to Wade through the cultural chaos in which we find ourselves that's why we have today's guest on the show n Wright now n grew up in northeast of England and studied Classics and the ology at Oxford where he was ordained in 1975 and took his Doctorate on St Paul in 1981 having served as a college chaplain and taught New Testament in both Oxford and Cambridge he was assistant professor of New Testament at McGill University Montreal from 1981 to 1986 and then was fellow tutor and I mean there is so much into your bio chaplain of Worchester College Oxford from 86 to 93 before becoming den of Lichfield dean of litfield excuse me in 1994 canid of Westminster 2000 and Bishop of Durham in 2003 he is now the senior research fellow at Wickliffe Hall in Oxford now if you know anything about him he's written a lot of books over 90 books and so today we're going to be talking on Apollo watered about his newest book Jesus and the powers so Tom welcome to AP good to good to be with you thank you are you ready for the Fast Five sure yeah okay here we go now you travel all over the world but what is when you come to the United States the food that you like the most that's a hard one um is it is it hard that it's not got any good food no no no no no I I associate the United States with with with good food but um yeah I'm I'm I'm really stuck on that um I I actually some of the best stake I've had has been in the United States so I probably better play it safe straight down the line and say as long as long as it's a really good stake then I'll go with that well that's a safe answer but that's also probably a real answer for everyone just a really good stake all right number two the Contemporary person actually in the 20th century that has influenced you the most in your thinking that's hard as well um when before we came on the show you mentioned Leslie nuban and Leslie nuban was was very important for me at a particular juncture in my life and uh partly because of who he was as well as what he wrote and said he had a presence about him which uh W he was quite quiet he didn't have to raise his voice it was just when you were with him you had a sense that um God was in charge and that everything was possible and I've met other people who said the same oh yes Bishop Newan came here and he suggested we might try doing this and and and we did and that's been the foundation of everything we've done I've had that story a few times from people and so I look back at at I was very privileged to know Leslie um along with along Ong with one or two other greats of that of that vintage people like professor Charles mole of of Cambridge and my own teacher George K in Oxford um and so I I'm a combination of combination of influences but Leslie stands out he was unique I love lesli nuban you just made my heart swell because he's one of my favorite and most U he's influenced the most who create this ministry to help people with a missionary encounter with Western culture but let's get into your the next question here okay how about this one one thing that puzzles you most about Americans is what I I am puzzled that despite so much um uh Riches of education and the opportunities and the possibilities and the books that are published etc etc um how so many uh in North American churches still seem to be as I would see it and I don't want to be rude about this but still seem to be stuck in basically 19th century sensationalism um brought up to date with with um interesting prophetic insights about um which particular moment in the 1970s or ' 80s or 90s meant this particular figure in Revelation you know what I'm talking about but um trying to shift that is is extraordinarily difficult and this is quite different we don't we just don't have this phenomenon in Britain in fact the only places in the rest of the world where it exists are where American dispensationalist missionaries have gone and taught people to think like this um because happy people don't think like that just by reading the Bible you know you have to be have to be inducted into it so that that's that's a real puzzle how come and and that makes me ask the question What ideologies are being served by embracing that now that is something we could all be asked I know but I I would want to ask that it's actually fascinating I don't know if you've read Andrew Lynn's work saving the Protestant ethic which was done by Oxford but he actually examines how contemporary or American eschatology has affected the economic system oh yeah and it's fascinating really fascinating all right number four how about how about this question as we jump into this how about uh you've already talked about the the person who has influenced you the most both most but I do know that you're a musician so if you could to form a band now what would you what would it be called and why what would it be called yeah what would it be called what would you name your band okay well the sort of band I would love to play in again would be a Dixie Land jazz band um that is let's let's let's go back to the 20s or 30s and uh uh just do all that stuff so um the the Basin Street brothers or something like that you Dixie Land Jazz yeah I didn't know that was your musical I didn't know that was your area it isn't my area it's one of several areas it's one that whenever I used to I haven't played Dixie Land for a long time but whenever I hear it I think oh yeah that stuff is just so good um something about the the the spontaneity and the fun of it um I played a lot at school and and and college I think the last time I played in a relatively serious band would have been about the early 1980s but then we had kids and they took over and they're musicians and I didn't get didn't get a chance to to go on doing it but maybe one day I'm I'm still not I hope too old to play a bit but I mean I'm eclectic in my musical taste I I you know um Shostakovich seus Bob Dylan um Beatles uh bar you know what's funny is we almost got Alice Cooper on the show that would have been a very interesting conversation we should have had him on just with you that would have been a fun conversation I'm sure all right here's your last question what is the one habit that your wife and kids always just roll their eyes whenever they think of you uh probably my habit of um escaping into the study and doing Zoom interviews with yet one more person so I'm sorry about that you kind of set yourself up no that's okay I Philip Jenkins said the same thing he goes my wife says it's weird that I do these Zoom calls really that's actually what he said hea what he said all right well let's jump into your book this is your newest book that uh just came out Jesus and the powers actually it's soon to be released as we're recording this and of course we all know what's going on politically right now but what made you want to write this book when there are so many books out there talking about IAL witness in this age well um I think there's something quirky about Mike Bird who's an Australian and me as a Brit writing a book which is obviously partly aimed into the American situation um I should say we're having an election sometime soon in Britain nobody knows when because in our system you have to have a parliamentary election every five years uh at the at the outside but it's up to the present prime minister to call it as the 5-year deadline comes up so we know it's going to be at some point in the next year but we don't know exactly when but we have major political problems and issues in our country as well and they get overshadowed by the question of trump and Biden um but they're they're not insignificant because um Britain still has a rather odd place both within and outside Europe and Europe has a very contested place and role at the moment viav V Ukraine and the Baltic states etc etc so it's it's actually a very dangerous time in world history and we hope uh that actually globally there are big issues and I think one of the good things that Mike Bird one of the many good things that Mike bird brought to this book because he knows more about it than I do is an awareness of the political situation in say the South China Sea and the question of Taiwan and China's relationship with Australia and also the question of India I mean Indian politics I've got a good friend who's a senior Church leader in India who keeps me informed of this there's some major developments going on there at the moment which are really worrying from a Christian point of view from Global political point of view um and from the fact that um India seems to have an ambiguous relationship with Russia and sometimes a more positive one than most of us would wish they had and so on and so on so there are huge issues never mind the migration crisis which affects us as much in the UK as it does with people coming up through Mexico in in the United States and we don't have answers to these things so what Mike and I hoping to do is to lay down some parameters for not for who to vote for but for how to start thinking wisely and christianly about major political issues and um we're trying to avoid the nerk reactions and to say let's dig down and look at the biblical foundations of this and how it all plays out okay so you start off in your book you talk on the thesis that the kingdom of God is not from this world but is definitely for this world so let's let's start there as we jump into this because again there's so many people that we talk about politics and I've had a lot of conversations on this show including with Albert Mohler we had a lot of disagreements on political our involvement as well as Pete wayer who writes for the Atlantic and the New York Times and they the as well as Russell Moore we've all had these conversations everyone is advocating for the flourishing of the of of society but everyone has a different ideal you start saying no let's start with the kingdom of God let's begin there so what do you mean when you say that the kingdom of God is not from this world which I think many of us get but is definitely for this world well I mean this is a way of refuting the normal but wrong interpretation of what Jesus Jus says to Pontius Pilate when Pontius Pilate says to him so are you a king and Jesus says various things but he ends up then saying um my kingdom is not from this world and that was translated in the King James version as my kingdom is not of this world and so Generations were taught that Jesus kingdom is a spiritual Kingdom which exists up in heaven and which then basically leaves this world out of consideration and this world is just a dirty place and you get more dirty by messing with it so the sooner you can get out of here and get your soul in tune with God and then ultimately go to heaven the better and so this was a way of saying no to that view and saying instead what Jesus meant certainly according to uh John's Greek there is my kingdom is not from this world in other words my kingdom does not grow within this world but everything we know about Jesus and the kingdom from all four gospels is that the kingdom of God was supposed to be coming on Earth as in heaven in other words it is for this world uh one of the things that astonishes me is the number of Christians who pray that prayer day by day because they were taught by their mother or whatever um The Lord's Prayer but don't realize what it is they're praying for that God's kingdom would come on Earth in this present reality and then if you say well look out of the window it obviously hasn't happened yet the answer is ah you're looking for the wrong thing and Jesus redefinition of Kingdom in Mark chapter 10 is absolutely vital here I think I get to it in one of the chapters here in this book um where James and John want to S Jesus his right and his left in his coming Kingdom and Jesus says you have no idea what you're talking about and and then says you know are you able to suffer the same way I'm going to and then he says listen the kings of this Earth get their way by bullying and bossing people we're not going to do it that way we're going to do it the other way around the one who wants to be great must be your servant must 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 ransome for many and it's fascinating because over against what both liberal teachers and cons ative teachers have done you get the atonement Theology of Mark 10:45 giving his life as a ransom for many inside the redrawing of political theology which is this is how the rulers of this age do it by being demagogues or tyrants or whatever and we're going to run the world a different way by being servants by uh going and giving of ourselves to people and that's what the sermon on the mount's all about you know blessed are the poor in spirit and the meek and the humble and the Brokenhearted and the mourners and the hungry for justice people and the peacemakers and they're the ones through whom God's kingdom has been coming and his will has been being done on Earth as in heaven for the last 2,000 years and so question then is how do we as Christians facilitate a society which has those sorts of priorities about putting the poor first the weak first um peacemaking first Justice first Etc rather than what the demagogues and the tyrants have done all along so that that that's the very short version you it's interesting you mentioned that talking about The Sermon on the Mount I remember reading in that book that I just alluded to about um Andrew Lynn and saving the Protestant ethic and he actually refers to CI scoffield of course the premillennial dispensationalist who actually said that the sermon of the mount was not for today not at all and just totally removes that from us but we see that we are to advocate for that Kingdom and and that that's a that's a real problem with the whole dispensationalist movement um that that you know that that dream has been bed until either the Lord comes or the Rapture or whichever system you happen to follow um and that that it seems to me is such a flagrant denial of the whole message of the New Testament that it's extraordinary that people who hold that sort of view um could ever hold their heads up and say their Bible believing Christians because it's so absolutely antithetical but anyway you you you know that world as much as I well I probably know it a little bit better I went to a premillennial dispensationalist school as an undergraduate I'm so sorry I hope you managed to take the right antidote you you had a good doctor who gave you a medicine to take I did it it took me a long time to to learn to see the difference and then praying that with the Lord's Prayer seeing that that actually really changed my mind to seeing the scriptures seeing it brought out but there's still a lot of confusion because it is the predominant theological system that is existence within America and I find that there is so much confusion even now but there is a a swe you know there's a pendulum shift right now go ahead you were going to say something just going to say the problem with that is that it it leaves a vacuum and into that vacuum can come all sorts of other ideas um and the people who Embrace that dispensationalist view have no real basis to critique the things which come into the vacuum because they've absented themselves they're they're they're not playing on the field anymore um and so then you get somebody like um your former president and possibly about to be next president who knows um and a lot of those people are voting for him for reasons which I find disturbing and distressing in the extreme um on the grounds that somehow they think he's going to preserve or protect um some way of being an American Christian whether it's on the abortion issue or whatever and uh that that is such a naive way to do political thought well it's not even doing political thoughts it's it's a way of abating political thought and and saying we're going to go with an knee-jerk reaction instead and that's and then we're in very very dangerous territory and I mean you know I don't agree with the idea that America should be the world's policeman but um nevertheless over the last 150 years if America decides we're going to go and do something like helping Europe in the first world war and the second world war then sooner or later that weight is going to tell obviously that didn't always work think of Vietnam think of Afghanistan Etc however a sense that U we need America to be on side with liberal Democratic Freedom loving societies around the world and if it's not going to play and hold up its end then we're all in trouble how then do you just suppose that you you talk about the kingdom in the cross and those two that are twins that they need to go together and we need to understand it but we also need to be understanding how we are to build the kingdom now actually no excuse me you said we don't build the kingdom we build for the kingdom correct so so really parse that out for us because I I thought that went oh no I used to do this thing with church members where I would hand out Hammers and when they become members I would say you're helping build the kingdom and now I'm like I need feel like I have to go back and take back the hemmers because I didn't say it right well if if you give them a sickle in the other hand then they'll be building a different kind of you're killing me Tom the the thing is this Paul in one of his letters talks about his fellow workers for the kingdom of God and when we see how Paul talks about the kingdom he talks about it both as a present and as a future reality and Jesus is already ruling the world according to 1 Corinthians 15 and according to Matthew 28 and all over the place the ascended Jesus is already lord of the world he doesn't have to wait for that that's that's the reality but Paul then says he must Reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet so he is ruling the world but at the moment there is a battle going on in the heavenlies as in Ephesians chapter 6 with for which Christians are recruited to be Prayer Warriors and putting on the helmet of salvation and all the rest of it um because until death itself is conquered then the new creation which is the ultimate kingdom of God um hasn't happened yet so we're in between the kingdom has been launched decisively Jesus is in charge but it's Jesus who's in charge not some tinpot Tyrant and Jesus is the Jesus who gives his life as a ransom for many so the way he is in charge through his spirit is through his followers giving their lives to look after the world and to bring God's hope and Justice and and mercy to the world you know Christians who who campaign to free slaves and and that sort of thing and and plenty of other other things besides um so that's building for the kingdom the point being that when God then does bring about God's kingdom finally and fully what we do in the present will be seen to be little bits of anti ipation of that bits of God's future borrowed from the future instantiated in the present as signposts to what's coming so that's building for the kingdom um if you know my book surprised by hope I use the example of a stone Mason in a medieval Cathedral um workshop and and they're they're building this great cathedral but the image then is of the stonemason who's just been told I want you to carve this bit of stone um put this little carve here this little curve here uh Etc and the stonemason probably doesn't have a very good picture in mind of what the whole Cathedral is going to look like just knows this is what's been given to him to do but then when that bit of stone goes up on the wall of the West front of the cathedral and you stand back you realize the tiny thing that I was doing that seemed so insignificant in the stonem Mason's yard is part of the much larger plan that the architect had in mind all along so that's the sort of image that I have in mind when I talk about building for the kingdom in the present you in in the book you talk about the powers because you do mention that the church is to um really speak against the powers and what is let's define the powers first of all because I know people have different ideas in their mind what the powers actually are what are the powers you're referring to ultimately the dark power which Jesus refers to in Luke 23 when he says this is your hour 22 when he says this is your hour and the power of Darkness there is a sense of Darkness as opposed to light um in other words chaos as opposed to order in other words the destruction of God's good creation as opposed to its enhancement or flourishing and sometimes that dark power is personalized and given the name of the Satan which means the accuser um and of course there's a long history through scripture of the way in which the idea of the Satan and then of the Devil comes to be spoken of I prefer to think of that power as an it rather than as a he because I think it's a kind of a subpersonal power but it's it is the power of the negativity the power to destroy to kill um to to to tear down anything that's beautiful or good and that's the the power that then gets its Clause into US humans and seems to have a handle on much of the rest of the world to produce entropy and so on but ultimately it is opposed to the god of creation and New Creation so it's as though right now and certainly when Jesus was announcing the kingdom and thereafter um the powers of Darkness were trying to do their worst against him sometimes these powers are itemized in the plural Thrones dominions kingdoms Powers authorities Etc I think when Paul and the other writers list them like that I don't think they have a precise definition for each one of those I think this is a way of saying that when you give humans any kind of authority over bits of of God's world or over other humans you are giving them with that the standing temptation to abuse that position for their own good now this is the trick because you can't say well let's do away with authorities because God wants his world to be wisely ordered under human governance that's Genesis 1 it's Psalm 8 this is what bearing the image is all about being God's Representatives bringing wise order into the world but the minute that you step away from being God's representative to do do this you start doing it for your own benefit or for Caesar's benefit or for somebody else's you see this most clearly in John 19 when Jesus says to pontious pilate and this is Jesus talking to pilate for goodness sake when pilate says don't you realize I have the authority to have you killed Jesus says you have no authority over me unless it was given you from above therefore the one who handed me over to you has the greatest sin in other words even Jesus acknowledges that even pilate has authority over him because that's how God wants the world to work but the coroller is the bearers of authority have a responsibility they will be held accountable to God and so there's that to and fro the whole time God wants his world to be wisely ordered but God will hold those who are rulers in the world to account so the rulers and authorities are the ones who do hold some kind of authority in God's world but when they become if you like too big for their boots when they for yet that their whole vocation is to serve the people whom they're looking after and and think that they must do it for themselves then they become as we might say demonic and and Paul is quite clear like many Jews of his day were quite clear that the big Gods Zeus Aphrodite Poseidon whoever they don't exist but what do exist are these U nasty little demons these dark Forces that skitter around and have the the the authority of the Satan they are aimed at destruction they're aimed at destroying pulling down things that are good in God's world and people who are good in God's world so um we are never given a definition of what these powers are but they're superhuman and more than the sum total of human Folly and sin but um ultimately they only exist because God called humans to be his servants in looking after his world and humans prefer to give their power away to certain forces within the world whether it's money or sex or power or whatever and then those forces say thank you very much now we're in charge and they start to carve things up so it's a messy situation my fear is that most Christians have never even thought around that Loop but that little Loop that I just described is absolutely basic to biblical theology this this is how things work and then the problem is that the dark powers are are sneaky they don't uh come out in the open and say hello I am a dark power you better watch out um you only discern them when bad things are happening and you can't quite figure out why and then you have to get together and pray Deliver Us from Evil and so on and putting on the whole armor of God spiritual warfare is absolutely vital otherwise we just fool ourselves and imagine that the people who we elect to serve over us who then do their own pleasure that they're just silly human beings and and the answer is they're not they they can be manipulated by the powers though the powers like to stay off stage and out of sight and so it's just these humans who are taking the r but we need to be Discerning I could go on about this but I but I probably said enough I I know that you've talked about Mike people have asked you about Mike Heiser and Mike talking about the Unseen realm and his work in regards to that you also mentioned though that the Unseen realm and the Physical Realm overlap you mentioned that in the book The question is is how do they overlap how do we determine that difference and when we speak truth to power are we talking about it in the idea of we're taking a stand speaking to the the the spiritual powers or is it we're speaking to these human agents that represent those Spirit spiritual Powers Yeah that that's a good question and I I I haven't met my kaer I haven't actually read his books I've been I skimmed one of them when a friend said you should read this and if you look around my room you'll see lots of books half of which I've read and half of which I should have read so it's just how life is um but I I would say when we're speaking truth to power the first place to speak it to is to the actual human beings who are running the country or the committee or whatever it is that we have to be able to have the discernment and then the courage and then the wisdom to speak truth to power and that is a principal vocation of the church I would say from John 16 when the spirit comes the spirit will convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment how does the spirit do that by being in and through jesus' followers uh speaking the truth to power but then as we do that sometimes human authorities will say do you know you're right we were really messing that up we need to take stock and and Peg back and do this differently other times they will start to make excuses and and and squeeze around the edge and and you realize something else is going on Beyond simply human beings thinking things through and when that happens and in any case you know day by day we should be praying Deliver Us from Evil but when that happens particularly we then have to say which powers are being worshipped here and chances are it's going to be you know Marx Freud andich um money sex and power somewhere in the mix um and those sometimes need to be smoked out and they need to be addressed that actually if this is what's going on um we are calling you to recognize it and renounce it and find better ways forward um Power is important you money sex and Power important but they're not all important and when they when one or more of them become all important then we're all in deep trouble how do we go about in doing that as Christians knowing that we're going to experence we're going to experience persecution we we know that that's inevitable just as Jesus talks about we see that Paul you know endure suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God how do we juxtapose that with this political idea because the gospel as you've already mentioned is a political thing it it it is it it speaks into our Our Lives then you get others though that see that separation and others even still others and you reference Kyer in the book who sees that transformation of them to see the sovereignty of God within it yet we have the James Davidson Hunter concept where we're to be Faithfully present within that as Christians we want the flourishing of society we want to see Christ glorified we know that we can't that that constantinian temptation is there to to force that but we can't we're in a pluralistic society in order for other people to to bridge that Gap so how do we speak then to our people as their role both individuals and as a collective body to embody and be that signpost of the kingdom in the middle of a world that's never going to agree with them entirely and hold them in account yeah I I I just finished doing a lecture course on the letter to the Ephesians and the Ephesian letter is very much addressed to this where right from the beginning the trouble is in the in the western medieval and then Reformation Traditions people have read Ephesians as being about how you get to heaven and really it isn't it's about what God wants the church to be here yeah and obviously ultimate salvation is the Horizon but it's very much um uh that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to the principalities and powers in The Heavenly places that's Ephesians 3:10 and what is this church of Which chapter 3:1 speaks and the answer is it's the polychrome polyglot polyform church the church composed of Jews and Gentiles of men and women of slaves and free uh um uh a church which does what Caesar would have loved to have done namely unite humans across traditional ethnic and social sociological boundaries but Caesar's Empire was never able to do that and the church at its best and Paul is struggling to say this is your best please go for it will hold up the mirror to power when Caesar sees the church being the church then oh my goodness there's nothing else quite like this I remember once going on a diois and pilgrimage when I was Bishop of we went to Holy island off the northand coast and we walked across the Sands like the old pilgrims had done um 1500 more or more years um I forget how many hundreds of years but um in the days of people like cuber and Aiden and uh as we did that there were some television cameras rolling and a colleague pointed out that look at the people who are here we've got old ladies we've got families with young kids we've got middle class people we've got sort of business business types we've got all sorts of people where else would find a cross-section of society like this all gladly engaged in the same thing and then all coming together to worship the god in whose name they are called and that was that was a an indication to me I have no idea how many people saw the news clip or whether that message got through to them but that that's the point that the church by being the church sends out signals to the rest of the world that actually this is the way to do the whole human project and of course that is why the church spread in the first centuries um I was talking with somebody just the other day and the point came out very clearly and it may be that Tom Holland says this in his book Dominion I just can't remember but that when the early Christians talked about a god of love a God who loves you this is totally new the average Pagan had no thought that Zeus might one day say I love you or athenia might or posidon might they they didn't love human beings human they manipulated them they used them in their power games etc etc and if somebody said well we don't really believe you about this God you talk about the answer is look how we live together we live as family we are caring for one another we are looking after one another and and we are doing that because in Jesus the one we follow the one by whom we are formed we see this God of love which is a God that you and your world had never dreamt of and and and when people see that that is enormously powerful that's the John 7 argument I pray they may be one as we are one so the world the world may believe yeah absolutely but it's it's kind of it's love with skin on I was talking to one of our ordinance from wickliff Hall just yesterday and she said she'd been working in a church in a very difficult rough area of one of the British cities and uh she had a teenage girl who came into the church and sat down and said I am safe here and I thought Wow first I thought I hope she really is but then I thought that is a way of saying this church is a real church this is a church where people who are bruised and broken and frightened and nervous about everything else that's going on in the world they can come here and they know that they're going to be genuinely loved and looked after and held as family and not uh let loose to the winds it's interesting you mentioned that in the book that came out it it was specifically focused on North American Christianity called the Great de churching I'm not sure if you're familiar with it but in it it talks about how in the last 25 years 40 million people have stopped going to churches in the United States of America 40 million and and it's I mean there's a lot of different factors involved the internet plays A Part within it politics some of it's just simply moving prag just practical things but what you're seeing is a continued decrease across the West in the UK you see it in Europe you see in Australia we see it here but do you think this is just your personal opinion is it because we have separated it and made it individual salvation without the understanding of a robust understanding of the church and its role that we've lost this greater witness to the world because we've individualized it to the point of removing it from the collective nature that the church has I think that's part of it I think that's part of it uh to be sure it's partly the whole Enlightenment critique um which has eaten into the very fabric of of many people's awareness so that even if they still sometimes want to go to church and sing Christmas carols say because that reminds them of when they were kids um it doesn't doesn't actually go too deep it's still there it's still a resource but it often doesn't go too deep but I I think you're absolutely right and this is where this is the danger of certain kinds of Western individualism that we want to say the gospel is for you that you know you can't think you're a Christian just because your great aunt was a Christian or whatever it's got to be you personally I've heard people preachers say God has no grandchildren you know you you need you need to know God as your father not just your parents father or whatever and there is of course great truth in that make for yourself make your own the faith into which you were born or baptized or whatever it is however that individualism then does produce and I've seen this in some would be Evangelical contexts the idea of church which is just a sort of happy accident that this person's a Christian that person's a Christian that person's a Christian so sometimes they all like to be in the same room saying their prayers or singing A Hymn together because it's kind of fun rather than seeing the witness of a community because you know in the Book of Revelation the great scene is a great multitude that no one can number of all Nations and kingdoms and tribes and tongues unless there are moments when we're doing that we're not actually being our true selves we are diminished and different cultures non-western cultures have often got this right you know the African slogan I am because we are and so on um and that can be overdone and that can produce passive Christians who just slide along and hope it's all right but we've we've got to re to recapture that sense of corpor identity well I think that's where Andrew walls came in understanding just the understanding of the the non-majority or the majority World speaking to the non-majority world because one of the thesis that we have is that as the western church begins to decline we've seen cultural idolatries that have attached to Christianity syncretizing it into something altoe else and removing it from the church what we want is a missionary identity really or a missionary ecclesiology as the church and that's where I think what you're saying is it has to permeate within the political world because the gospel is political in its nature so in some respect we're not fighting the unbelieving world right now I mean we are but we're fighting bad theology is what we're absolutely theology across the board and and I mean it's it's very telling I was reading a book recently a very serious academic book on christology on what what we to say about Jesus which um goes into all the great medieval debates and Reformation debates about how you put the humanity together with the Divinity etc etc at a certain point reading that book I thought hang on where's the kingdom of God in all of this and I looked in the index and there was no mention of the Kingdom not as K Kingdom but not under Jesus teaching either um it's as though the whole the only thing that matters is figuring out how Jesus can be both fully Divine and fully human as though if we get that right then wow we we we've won we're at the top of the tree um instead of saying the whole point the way I've said it in lectures is sometimes like this that the idea of Jesus being Divine and human that is the key in which the music is set but it isn't the tune that's being played in other words I've used the image supposing the conductor comes onto stage looks around at the audience and says C minor and the audience think uh yeah we've got bet five on our programs we thought it was in c minor so you're telling the truth but we're waiting for you to go da d d da and and so it's it's one thing to say I as a theologian have constructed this lovely picture of how he can say Jesus is divine and human but unless you're prepared to say the kingdom of God is breaking in has broken in in Jesus is coming as his return and we are agents of it right here and now then the heart of the thing the main music is not being heard or played we had we had Kevin van huser on the show and we were talking about it as a Divine drama really the Divine drama of redemption and our play in it it's not just a propositional script where you discern these truths but we also had Dan strange on and he mentioned in the first Millennium how they're debating on the the de of Jesus fully God fully man second one the second Millennium nature of Salvation third millennium is what does it mean to be human in the middle of the world and I think that's a pretty telling idea to see that and I think your work actually is hand and glove for that It just fits that idea which is something the scriptures already talk talked about why do you think though we've lost this I mean is it because of the bad theology that's there how have we just mored away from this so so completely I think a lot of it and you know I I don't join in the anti Augustine um chorus which goes on I have a lot of respect for Augustine even where I I think he did lead us astray in some ways but the concentration on sin then filtered through the Long Middle Ages comes out as this is the first thing we say about human beings indeed it's the first thing we say about Genesis you know God creates this lovely garden and he sets humans and exam which they fail and and that's not what's going on in Genesis 1 and two it isn't here's an examine if you pass this you get to go to heaven and if you don't I'm sorry you're going to hell and so many Christians have been taught theology that way um what it is is here are these humans who are the image bearers within God's Temple and as you will know this stuff I hope that creation is the construction of a of a temple a heaven plus Earth reality with an image at its heart that is a temple in the ancient world the humans are given this amazing vocation to reflect God into the world and reflect the Praises of the world back to God before we mention sin we've got to celebrate that vocation which is celebrated in for instance Psalm 8 uh in other words the fall hasn't ruined that vocation and in Colossians three Paul says that we are now in Christ to be renewed in knowledge according to the image in other words getting back to the image is where we're aiming at and in the Book of Revelation we are to be the royal priesthood that's the same thing sharing God's rule over the the world sharing the Praises of the world to bring them back to God now when you see that that's what being human is all about then you realize that the problem with sin is not oh dear I've done some wrong things so God's got a big stick and he's going to punish me but that oh dear I've messed up I've worshiped idols and therefore the bit of God's ongoing creational purposes which I ought to be an agent of ain't happening right now and I need to be rescued not just so that my soul can go to heaven which is something the Bible never says but so that I will be part of God's putting right purposes for his world and that is a whole different take on what it means to be human what it ought to mean to be human and and when we get that right yes well roll on the third millennium if that's what we're going to be talking about but that that that's that positive line and this isn't to say that sin doesn't matter it's when you see this you realize just how much sin matters because it's not just messing up me personally or other around me it's messing up God's purposes for his whole creation well that's why we have Romans 8 where it says that the the creation groans for the sons of God to Beed absolutely and then you that was my that was my last book which you didn't which you didn't interview me on um and teing you you probably you've probably seen this book have you I have I haven't got it yet but I I'll do that and then we'll do an episode on that one just for fun just for fun just to annoy your wife even further okay but going back you mentioned the fact that they were considered to do their vocation and yet when when Adam Falls all of creation Falls with it I I think sometimes we fail to mention that part of it we do talk about the fall but we talk about it as an individual in the humanity how death entered in and we know that because death then spread to the all the world but but it's intimately tied to Creation itself why is that so significant for us and what does that mean for us then as we're acting as these ambassadors in the midst of this world trying to dispense our own vocation as as red redeemed Humanity that that's absolutely vital and it's it's interesting that several of jesus' parables are about farming um about sewing seeds or whatever it's it's as though being a steward of creation is built into his thinking about the kingdom and that part of the point of the kingdom is he is sewing the seed of the Kingdom as in Isaiah 55 you know as the rain and the snow come down and but so will my word be that goes forth from my mouth Jesus is doing New Creation and and and telling us we got to join in and the sewing of the seed is both a metaphor as in the parable and momy in other words our looking after of creation is itself part of the Kingdom good news but then I have of course as you'd expect the line that goes on too as you said Romans 8 where the point is that creation is groaning in travel and creation will only be put out of its misery when the humans are finally raised from the dead to be the genuine humans they were supposed to be all along and at the moment we are lamenting with the groaning of creation and the spirit is lamenting within us which is one of the most profound passages in Paul but the point is that we are grieving the fact that God's creation is not yet as it should be and will be and that we are living with that tension because we who have the first fruits of the spirit we know where this ought to be going and it seems to me that's one of the places from which you would fund a properly Christian um uh ecology a care of creation is that and if somebody says well God's going to set it all right in the end so we don't need to worry now I would say you know wash your mouth out the whole point as with um when we sin it's no good saying well one day God will raise me from the dead and I won't want to sin then Paul is very clear though you've already been raised from the dead in Christ so you Jolly well deal with sin in in your life right now thank you very much and in the same way if we are already raised with Christ then we are in this tension between what we already are and what we will be and if what we will be is the true creation carers and creation restorers As Romans 8 then we ought to be getting into practice right now and we ought to be putting up signs of that coming ref fructifying of creation right now in the present well then taking that into consideration and getting back into the political aspect of that and and playing that out you look over a variety of different expressions of government in this I don't know if it's you or it's Mike it's writing about it what is our responsibility to speak the truth to power in in Civil Disobedience specifically or even uncivil Disobedience yeah yeah yeah I I mean there are there are times when some sort of Civil Disobedience seems to me I'm not sure about uncivil Disobedience but certainly some sorts of Civil Disobedience are are appropriate and you could say that some of what Jesus did was uncivil Disobedience when he was feasting with public and sinners this was you shouldn't be doing that you know this is going totally against the grain but it was a sign of the kingdom and in a sense the last supper was a sign of the Kingdom Jesus doing something which was a a quasi Passover meal um but absent from and over against the temple system I mean that that was that was a very very powerful and deliberate um symbol sign Sacrament whatever you want to call it but this is a matter obviously for discernment and the church always had to wrestle with that of Discerning the spirits and and of not rushing in um so easy to rush in when something has triggered us and we're angry about something oh we're going to do this we're going to be so brave and put out the Banner to this than the other and then it may be that in a week or two or a month or two we think actually there might have been a wiser way of doing that um and I I don't have much experience of of of doing that kind of thing because I've been very very fortunate to live most to my life within systems which though not perfect are still not um you know the the the devastating sorts of political systems that some people have to have to live under but I I ask myself the question you know what would I do if I was living in Hong Kong right now what would I do if I was um U living in Taiwan and the Chinese came to invade um what should we have been thinking when the Russians invaded Ukraine and so on and so forth the these are very difficult questions and I have I've actually asked some wise friends who are leading political theologians about such things and they tend to say yes these are very difficult questions thank you very much um but they're they're they're real they're on the ground right now so um the the the the question about you know whether civil disobedience is Justified Romans 13 indicates the general truth that God wants his world to be ordered because order is better than chaos basically even tyranny is wor is sorry even tyranny is better than Anarchy because in Anarchy the bullies and the bad guys are always going to win uh with with tyranny there is a hope that that actually things you may be able to navigate through but um the the Great Western this is one of the really important things which again Tom Holland brings out the Great Western push towards what we Loosely call Li liberal democracy is itself one offshoot of the Christian impulse to say we want to find a way way which doesn't let people get too uh High an opinion of themselves into self idolatry but which doesn't lapse into chaos either and the idea of voting every few years and of doing our best to advise and support and have a loyal opposition etc etc this seems to be as good a way of doing stuff as we have yet found and though I'm not saying that the gospel validates the great Li the great 18th century liberal Democratic experiment it certainly has more to support it than the forms of tyranny and Anarchy which we've seen sadly disfiguring the planet in recent years there's so much that I would love to parse out on that but we we don't have time today um let's talk about Christian nationalism I I know that is something that is is in the American at least in the media perspective how much it's actually being lived out that's a debate so you don't know if if the media is taking control of it but what does Christian nationalism get let's say let's I hate to say get right let's say what it gets right but I know CU there's a whole lot more that gets wrong or is there anything that Christian nationalism has that's right within it that would be hard to say because one of the most fundamental things about Christianity is that it's for everybody um is is that it is precisely for um The Samaritan who you might have considered an outcast or whoever um it is for the Jew and the Gentile together it is for male female slave free Etc so as soon as you say we're going to have a Christian uh Gentile thing and keep the Jews out or a Christian Jewish church and keep the Gentiles out then uh St Paul particularly but actually the whole of the New Testament says hang on hang on hang on you're missing something absolutely fundamental this is about being the new humanity and anything which says this nation has a specific Christian calling you we in England used to play this game the whole time um we we've largely given it up now which is I think a very very good thing but um if you go back a century or so um you will find people saying and meaning it most sincerely that in our country we have actually Christian civilization and we have a responsibility to export that to the rest of the world unfortunately we exported a lot of other stuff as well and it just so happened that it meant that diamonds and gold and other Goods came back our way oh what a happy accident that was so you know we've deconstructed all that and I'm I'm not one of those who thinks that Empire is always wrong but but saying that this Empire is a Christian Empire I think is always wrong because if it was Christian it wouldn't be the Empire of just the people who happen to belong to this country or this this ethnic group or whatever it would by definition have its doors thrown open to in a broad wide welcome to anyone ho everyone who thirsts come to the waters says Isaiah and and Jesus picks that up in John 7 and and without that note which I think Christian nationalism must do without that note then we're not Christian anymore and then it just becomes a nationalism which is using Christian language as a way of propping itself up one of the things that you mentioned in direct correlation to that or at least I'm going to bring that out you talk about how when we're to submit to the authorities that's referring to those who have been elected or appointed or conquered meaning that legitimate or illegitimate there's a submission to to those authorities am I am I stating that correctly yeah it's a way of saying that the the Jews of the first century and the Christians in the in the early days they didn't much bother about whether somebody had been freely and fairly elected because in so far as people had elections they had elections in in in Rome from time to time but it really didn't matter everybody knew that Caesar was it and the the petty officials beneath him would come and go that wasn't the point the point was God wants his world to be ordered and governed and Order and governance is better than Anarchy and Chaos um therefore you submit because you want to share God's project which is of of bringing wise order to the world back to Genesis 1 order creation coming out of chaos but along with that goes constantly the responsibility of God's people to speak the truth to power back to what we were saying half an hour ago the the the John 16 Mandate of convicting the world of sin and right righteousness and judgment and that's not a matter of waiting for the next election and voting the other way next time it's a matter of constant and you see you see the church doing this in Acts you see Paul doing it in Acts where Paul um the Philippian magistrates tell him to get out of town and he says um excuse me Roman citizen beaten without trial um imprisoned without charge that's a public apology by the way and he gets it because they're scared he knows his wres and he's prepared to tell them when they've been out of line he does the same with the high priest in Acts 23 um you know and and this it seems to me is a model of uh the way in which even though Paul was was you know Paul would as I've often said would say boo to every goose and then all the swans as well um that that this this is perhaps not the best way to win friends and influence people and we don't all have the personality of Paul but the the the model is correct that the church is not to say oh well we won't vote for you next time then the church is to say actually here is the standard by which you really ought to be behaving and you're getting this wrong right now and the church better be careful because it needs to know the ground it's standing on and there may be a critique coming back as well so before we launch this exos set into the public domain let's make sure we've got our own house in order but that isn't an excuse for hiding away until we're squeaky clean ourselves we've got to embrace that mandate speaking then truth to power what role does the government have or what is our role when the government government out steps its Authority into other Arenas specifically in America talking about gay marriage and abortion but you can also talk about immigrants you could talk about whatever issue that you have what is our role then to a after speaking truth the power the powers the be don't listen well do we submit how do we respond I mean it's very interesting looking from the outside at the American situation where you've got the same people wanting to have legislation that allows drunken 17y olds to own weapons grade um guns and the same people who uh want to prevent um young women who've been raped having abortions um there's something very bizarre about that um which tells me that actually the desire to to legislate against abortion at all costs is not actually driven by the same thing that was driving the the Jews and the early Christians to say that abortion was because abortion was common in the ancient world in the Pagan world people would often force their compel their wives to have abortions which were very dangerous operations in the ancient world but that was that was ruled out by the Jews and the Christians just like they ruled out infanticide you have a daughter that you don't want throw her out the Jews and the Christians didn't do that now um the fact that the Jews and Christians didn't do that was a witness to the society and the society noticed um now it the trouble is in America at the moment as in Britain and in other ways these things have all got bundled up so that if you put a check by this thing on this side of the page you're going to put a check by all those others because that's what that party stands for and then you're putting checks the other side um in contradistinction to that most of these issues do not admit of such an easy um easy categorization so one of the things the church has to do is to articulate in the Public Square by whatever means possible uh wiser ways of thinking about the things that have become the so-called hot button issues now I know that's not easy I was in public life myself for several years as a bishop and the House of Lords and so on um saying things which are unpopular in that context um people don't like it naturally but the church has to be able to do that and I remember speaking up in a debate in the House of Lords about the assisted dying question the the um euthanasia Bill we have to be able to say things to say this is the path of wisdom and that is the path of folly um and then if people don't listen then we have to find ways of demonstrating um that actually the the way we're following is is the wiser and healthier way for the human race in the book you talk about these different desparate groups that are all in some ways finding their root or their voice within a judeo-christian framework and they are speaking I mean they are beneficiaries of that that how do we how do we mend the division between voices that are so influenced by this idea of Rights and Justice and all of these different pieces and those on the other side that advocate for evangelism and Holiness they're they're not opposing factors but yet we've made them that way yeah yeah we we've we've made them that way through the outworking of various basically 18th century impulses this is very much Enlightenment stuff where where you have um a split between sacred and secular between church and and politics etc etc um in a way which certainly didn't come out of the New Testament and and actually didn't come out of some of the mainline reformers either because they were they were usually very keen on reforming society as well as um enabling people to find fullness of Salvation and so on so it's a comparatively modern thing and I think part of the deal is we have to uh to demonstrate that to people to show them historically we got where we got and some bad turns that we made and the bits of the Bible that we missed out in doing so and then we have to put put the chest pieces back on the board and say I'm sorry the whole teaching about jesus' Kingdom message is a vital part of the Bible and if you skip over it on your way to your reading of Paul as telling you how to go to heaven then you are missing out a vital part of God's word ironically some of the people who do that claim to be Bible Christians but then their whole theology is if you say this prayer you go to heaven and be careful you don't try to do any good works to earn your passage there as well or that will nullify it um which is such a misreading of Paul but I've heard that again and again it's not only a misreading of Paul it's a skipping over of of the gospels and and how people can justify that I'm I'm really not sure one of the things that you mentioned is having a shared story in as we're going through the world kind of really parking our theology within the greater biblical framework of the story and its its trajectory and where it's headed because we do we live by a story you've mentioned this in different several different of your writings why is it so important to hang this truth and understanding within the greater biblical narrative as Christians we are not at Liberty to pick and choose in the Bible to say we want this little strand here that's going to be our and no doubt we all Begin by having certain biblical strands which we kind of like and understand and we go with but it's rather that the story of Jesus itself embeds itself into the narrative from Genesis to Revelation in other words the story of creation and New Creation the story of Covenant and New Covenant uh or renewed Covenant or renewed creation and the way that the gospels tell the story of Jesus um has its roots deep in um the Hebrew scriptures the Old Testament uh in the promises of creation and new creation and Covenant and New Covenant and it's pointing forwards the whole time to the ultimate new creation of resurrection and and the new world and so um if we're followers of Jesus and the Jesus that we know is the Jesus we find in Matthew Mark Luke and John not some fantasy Viger that we've dreamt up somewhere else the real Jesus then we are not at Liberty to say well we'll have Jesus but we we'll forget those Old Testament Roots many people have tried to do that or we'll have Jesus but we'll forget that he was talking about new cre and think that he was talking about souls go to heaven thousands of people still believe that of course rather we need that whole biblical framework and when we forget it we lapse back into some kind of philosophy Christian platonism is the popular thing has been for years um which is about the souls going to heaven and so on um and somehow somehow those of us who are gripped by the total biblical story we have to learn how to tell that and how to live it in a way which makes people say oh that's curious I'd never quite seen it like that before how does that play out with this and that and the other those are the golden moments for me as a teacher when I realize that people are glimpsing a bigger picture of the biblical narrative and no doubt if I live for another five or 10 or 15 years please God I will see bigger and bigger vistors as well because that's been happening to me all my life and I hope it's not going to stop now but talking of stopping now we ought to stop now in a minute or my wife will not just be rolling her eyes she'll be hammering on the door okay well then I'll ask you this uh one more question here you mentioned our greatest argument um and and I'm going to read this little quote here you have on 169 our greatest argument against tyranny the answer to the critics of liberal democracy is to point to the Monumental achievements of liberal democracy and improving the quality of life and preserving equality under the law for all of its citizens you you also mentioned a few pages before that the love of neighbor and if we're to show equality of life and the love of neighbor how do we speak to the love of neighbor when The Neighbor is doing something that could as you mentioned female circumcision something that could could actually harm people how do we do that how do we go about loving our neighbor to prevent something that they have that freedom in some respect to do we campaign through um proper channels uh to get a law passed or changed um to make it clear that there are certain ways of Behaving which are intrinsic Ally dehumanizing which are intrinsically destructive which are dangerous and uh which are reducing the humanness of human beings and that that has to be pretty near the heart of it um and if the campaign is not working then the early Christians would say we have to live in such a way that the wider Society will come to see that the way we're living is the better way to be I mean it took the church 300 years before um the the Roman Empire cottoned on um so many people becoming Christians because they could see that the way these Christians were living was vastly preferable to the way that the the Pagan world had ordered itself but that took time and it took a lot of martyrdom and and a lot of prayer and a lot of anger and threats and so on maybe we'll have to go through that again you know we' the enlightenment has bought us Time by embracing an Enlightenment shaped version of Christianity the West world doesn't need to be persecuted because who's going to persecute us for believing that one day we'll go to heaven when we die as long as we just keep ourselves quiet at the moment um but if we were actually to start saying um we're going to campaign for the rehumanization of our neighborhood our town our country whatever this might quite soon lead some people in authority to say we're going to we're going to ban that we're going to rule that out and and then who knows how soon we could get to that point um I I forget who it was I think it was a a Roman Catholic Archbishop of Chicago was it who said somebody was quoting this to me the other day who said to his subordinates I will probably die at peace in my bed um some of you may well die in a police cell some of your successors May well die in front of a firing squad um now that's perhaps a bit overd dramatic but it could happen it wouldn't be the first time that there's been a big change and particularly if we give up liberal democracy for all its for all its dangers and and faults if we give up liberal democracy and go for some sort of State tyranny instead then who knows how quickly we would get to that point these are good thoughts good conversation one of the things that we do like to leave our people with is because we are Apollo watered we want to help water Faith so we say we leave them with a water bottle for the week what is one little water bottle that you can leave for our audience today I I would want to go back to Colossians chapter 3:10 and say that we are to be when the spirit comes we are to be renewed in knowledge according to the image of the Creator that's really really important so many issues come down to God made humans to reflect his image in the world the gospel doesn't stop us being genuine image bearing humans the gospel remakes us into genuine image bearing humans and the gospel says yes to the original Creation in saying yes to the new creation and that is at the heart of many of our great puzzles at the moment well Tom I want to thank you for coming on the show thank you for the book I recommend everyone go out to get it to to read it Jesus and the powers uh it should be out in just the next week or so and then you can get it wherever you get your books but Tom thank you for coming on Apollo's thank you very much good talking to you all the very very best thank you

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Keywords: #NTWright, #JesusAndThePowers, #ChristianTheology, #PoliticalEngagement, #BiblicalPerspective, #ChristianWitness, #KingdomOfGod, #ChurchAndPolitics, N.T. Wright interview, Jesus and the Powers discussion, Christian political engagement, Biblical theology of politics, N.T. Wright podcast interview, Christian witness in politics, N.T. Wright latest book, Kingdom of God perspective, N.T. Wright on Jesus and the Powers, N.T. Wright on Jesus and the Powers, Christianity and politics

Id: IJIzsimwuwg

Length: 65min 57sec (3957 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 22 2024