Welcome to the final day of the
January Series 2017 My name is Kristi Potter,
and I'm the director of the January Series. Can you believe it? The time has
gone by so quickly. *Applause* It's been a great fifteen days,
and I know many of you come day after day to enjoy the
presentations, and we've been inspired together, we've been
challenged, we've learned together, and I hope that has been a
blessing to you all. As we close out our thirtieth year
I just want to say a special thanks to our series underwriters: Baker
Publishing and Doug and Maria DeVos. To all of our sponsors,
our daily underwriters, and those of you who sent in gifts
in the envelopes, all of you have helped make the
January Series a free gift for all, and we are grateful. Thanks also to our technical team
for all your hard work behind the scenes, and to the hosts at the
fifty remote sites. I know that you've worked
very hard on these fifteen days. And on this final day I want to
send out a special welcome to the audiences at four of our remote
sites: Portland Oregon, Chino California, Muskegon
Michigan, and the LCC International
University in Lithuania. And now President LeRoy,
the president of Calvin College, will introduce the Stob Lecture
Series and open with prayer. Thank you. Good afternoon and, it has been
an incredible year as we celebrate the thirtieth anniversary
of the series. Today the long standing Stob Lecture
Series also coincides with the January Series as today's
address continues the series' history of bringing to light matters of
ethics, apologetics, and philisophical theology. The Stob Lecture is sponsored
annually by Calvin College and Calvin theological Seminary
in honor of Doctor Henry J. Stob who served so well as a professor
in both institutions. The Stob Lecture is funded by
the Henry J. Stob endowment, and we express our appreciation
to the family of Dr. Stob for their continued support of this event. Now please join me in prayer. Holy God, we come before you
in reverence and awe. You carry us through the seasons
of the year and the seasons of the heart. You grant wisdom, and you
reveal knowledge. You have blessed your servent,
Tom Wright, in great measure with both wsidom and knowledge. So, too, now bless us
through his words with fresh perspectives on the
cross of Jesus Christ, which saves us and prompts us
to live in gratitude. Amen. Now I would like to introduce my
friend and the president of Calvin Theological Seminary,
Jul Medenblik, who will introduce Tom Wright. A Brief introduction to
N. T. Wright, a contradiction of terms. A prolific writer, of both
popular and scholarly books, N. T. Wright bridges the world
of the academy and the church. He has written over thirty books
including "Simply Christian", "Surprised by Hope", "What St. Paul Really Said", "The Challenge of Jesus", "Jesus and the Victory
of God" "Paul and the Faithfulness
of God", "The Case for the Psalms", and his most recent, "The Day the Revolution Began;
Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus' Crucifixion." He has also written the "New Testament
for Everyone" commentary series. Formerly bishop of Durham in England, Tom Wright is research professor
of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Saint Andrews
in Scotland. He has served as canon theologian of Westminster Abbey and Dean of Lichfield Cathedral He taught New Testament for over 20 years at Cambridge, McGill,
and Oxford Universities. In addition to his many books, Tom Wright reaches a broad audience through media appearances and his extensive travel
and speaking engagements. He has been a frequent guest of Calvin College and Seminary, and he will be presenting
at the Calvin Symposium on Worship this coming week. As is customary, our speaker will be available to meet/greet the audience in the west lobby of the Covenant Fine Arts Center following the presentation. Calvin College and Seminary are grateful to the Stob Lecture Series for underwriting todays presentation. Please join me in welcoming Tom Wright. *Applause* Thank you so much for your welcome. It's always very good to be
back here at Calvin and to have the honor once again of being part of this prestigous
January Series. We have done our homework
and discovered that this is actually the fifth time
I've been here. First was in 2002 and I hope this won't be the last - hint hint to the organizers. It's great to be here, and from a glance at the program this time it's clear you've had
a wonderful Series. I wish I could have been with you to soak it all up and get involved in the discussions but I'm glad I have the chance now to bring it all back home as it were by focusing on the event without which there wouldn't
be any Christian faith and thought at all and as I shall be explaining by without which the principalities
and powers of the world would still be ruling unchallenged
and unchecked. What I am going to say is based on and growing out of my new book, "The Day the Revolution Began." Before I launch in, let me do one other piece of
shameless advertising: this book and several other topics are featured in a series of online courses which you will find available at ntwrightonline.org And I know some of you
have already done that, somebody was mentioning
it this morning. Now when we come to the Crucifixion, we always ought to do so
with awe and trembling. We will never fully understand what's going on here, and we ought just to be grateful and awed by it. All my life, the Crucifixion of Jesus has been a powerful presence. My earliest Christian memories from the time when I was a small boy are being overwhelmed at the thought of Jesus loving me enough to die for me. Nothing in the years of academic study and church life has changed that. I have preached on the cross and
lectured and written about the cross many times over many years, but until this book,
"The Day the Revolution Began," I'd never really tried to pull it
all together in one place, and even then I was thwarted because
the book got too long, and I didn't touch the letter to the
Hebrews, which is a major omission, but still, Gospels and Paul and
Revelation particularly feature. But I found myself coming to
conclusions in this book which surprised me. I hadn't seen it like this, I
hadn't said it like this before, and it was a difficult task. Even though I thought I knew
where I was going, it kept on changing as I went along, and I feel that I've got through it
something of a fresh perspective, not presumably the last,
but a fresh perspective on the deep meaning
of Jesus' death. Now, in much popular Christianity
there's a gap at this point. It's always dangerous to say this
sort of thing at Calvin, that nobody today thinks that such and
such. I discovered this five years ago when
I spoke about the forgotten meaning of the gospels, and various people
here, notably Jamie Smith, told me in no uncertain terms that it hadn't
been forgotten here at Calvin thank you very much. But I think I'm on safe ground in
saying that we all find it easy to lapse into an oversimplified, and
perhaps distorted vision of what the cross achieved. For the new testament writers, the
cross wasn't just about how we get saved, though of course it is that,
it was about the royal revolution that had changed the entire world. So here at the end of this January
series, I'm not simply reminding you let's go back to the Bible to the
gospel, good though that would be, I'm suggesting that when we do that,
we might see fresh perspectives on what it means as we face pressing
issues of many kinds in our society and culture. What it means to be people of that
royal revolution. Curiously, I think, most books on
the atonement don't give much space to the gospels. And likewise, many books on the
gospels don't give much space to atonement theology. But here's one of the biggest clues:
In all four gospels, Jesus chose passover to confront the temple
establishment with his radical counterclaim, knowing where it
would lead. Think about it, he didn't choose
tabernacles or Hannukah, he didn't choose the day of
atonement. He chose passover because Jesus'
understanding of his own vocation was to accomplish once and for all
the new exodus for which Israel had longed. Passover imagery then, in the new
testament, isn't just miscillaneous Biblical decoration around the edge
of an atonement theory whose real focus is elsewhere. It is the flesh and blook reality. Within the gospels recounting of
that passover, one scene stands out, which I'm going to use as a way in
for our though this morning. Or this afternoon, or whenever it is,
actually it's this evening on my body clock, but we'll call it morning
because I haven't had my lunch yet. John's gospel displays deft artistry
and fathomless theology throughout, but especially in the foot washing
scene in chapter thirteen. I'd assume you all basically know
the story. In a few lines in John 13, we
glimpse a tableu which is both intimate and touching, and scary
and dangerous. John began his gospel with the all
creative word becoming flesh and revealing God's glory. He now moves to the beginning of the
shorter second half of the gospel. The gospel divides clearly between
chapters 12 and 13, with an acted parable of exactly the same thing,
of the incarnation of the word. Jesus removes his outer garments,
and kneels down to wash the disciples' feet, summing up all that is to come
in the act of divine humility, of loving redemption, of clensing
for service. For John, as for the whole of the
New Testament, Jesus' vocation to reveal the divine glory in
rescuing the world from its plight, is encoded in action simultaneously
dramatic, fraught with cosmic significance, and gentle, tender with
human emotion. if you want to understand the
mysteries of Christian theology, trinity, incarnation, atonement
itself, you could do worse than spend some time in John 13. The chapter begins, "Having loved
his own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end, to the
uttermost." Here we see what it means that God
so loved the world that he gave his only son, a love at once powerful
and humble, soverign and sensitive. Jesus' actions, the footwashing,
shocks the disciples. Peter characteristically raises an
objection, "Shouldn't be doing this." But Jesus waves it away If I don't wash you, he says, you
have no part in me, and that produces a typically petrine overreaction. Well then, says Peter, not my feet
only, but my hands and my head as well. Calm down, says Jesus, you are
already clean because I have washed you, all you need now is the regular
foot washing. But like everything else in John's
story, this all then points forward to the great saving action to come
in which the filth are mire of the centuries would be washed away in
the torrent of water and blood. Jesus then resumes his garments and
explains the surface layer of meaning as I have done this to you, you
should do it for one another. Already this points ahead to the
spirit driven ministries of the gospel in John 20. As the father sent me, so I send you. Atonement then, atonement now. The theology of the cross is only
ultimately complete when it issues in the foot washing, fruit bearing, and
world transforming mission of Jesus' followers. Into this scene of symbolic prohpetic
action, John has woven the dark strand which explains why all this is
neccasary, and how the great redemption is to be accomplished. And this is at the heart of the
fresh perspective that I'm trying to explore. John says that the accuser, the Satan,
had already put it into Judas' heart to betray Jesus. The accuser, the Satan, is the dark
sub-personal force that has dogged Jesus' footsteps throughout his
mission. Rather as, in The Lord of the Rings,
Golem is never far away while Frodo and his companions undertake their
fateful journey. Jesus had already hinted that one of
his own followers would act out the great accusation, the charge that
would take him to his death. It isn't just, you see, that Satan
has now temped Judas to do something particularly wicked, that's true as
well, but it's not the point, rather, the Satan, the accuser, is working
through Judas to bring Jesus to trial, to accuse him, in other words. The hate and shame of all the world,
the raging howl that rises from the accumulated forces of evil, of
anticreation, of tyranny and spite, and sneering and lies, has gathered
itself into one and has focused its deadly spotlight on the end fleshed
word, the living embodiment of the loving and wise creator. And love only makes it worse. It is after the foot washing, where
Jesus warns that you are already clean, though not all of you, it's after that
that the Satan finally enters into Judas. Do it quickly, says Jesus, and Judas
goes out into the night. People sometimes say that Luke was
an artist, but if ever a Biblical scene had all the elements of a great
canvas, holding many different characters and moods within a single
dramatic tableu, it's that scene in John 13. Some here may know if there are any
old masters of that scene, I can't recall any but I'm not an art
historian. Now I begin here in John 13 and in
order to stir your imaginations, to move beyond theories and models
of atonement, and to reach into vivid historical reality. John has carefully positioned the
foot washing scene to launch the final moves to the foot of the cross,
and out beyond to the fresh morning in the garden, and the warm breath
of the outpoured spirit. The theories of atonement to which
we shall return mean what they mean as interpretations of the real life
narrative of the word made flesh, of the flesh made shameful, of shame
itself killed and buried. The theories are their best, battered
little signposts pointing towards that larger reality. The gospels are written not as so
often in Christian readings, the gospels are written not to provide
lively illustrations of those theories, but to name and invoke the historical
reality towards which the theories point. When Jesus wanted to explain to his
followers what his death was going to mean, he didn't give them a theory,
he gave them a meal on the one hand, and a dramatic action on the other. The word became flesh, and it is in
flesh, his flesh and then worryingly our flesh, that the truth is revealed. God forgive us that we have often
answered skeptical rationalism with fideistic rationalism. It's in flesh that the world was
saved. It is in the flesh that the glory was,
and is, revealed. Now John places this tableu of chapter
13 not simply within his gospel, but by multiple implication within
the vast and sprawling scriptural story of Israel and the world. One of the reasons we need fresh
perspectives on the cross is that we have failed to pay attention to
that great story. We have reduced it to a string of
proof texts for doctrines that we have called from elsewhere. John insists otherwise. In particular, his prologue places
the whole story within the long reach of the first two books of the Bible. It's well known that John focuses on
the temple, on Jesus and the temple, Jesus upstaging the temple, Jesus
speaking about the temple's demise and the building of a new one, and
on Jesus finally doing what the temple could not. That is common coin. Anyone who seriously reads John
knows that. But what has this to do with Genesis
and Exodus? Time for some basic but often ignored
Biblical theology. Again, a nod to anyone here who would
tell me that here at Calvin of course we don't ignore this, I'm delighted
to hear that, thank you. But there may be some here who need
gentle reminders. Genesis 1 and 2 describe, to first
century eyes, the construction of the ultimate temple, the single heaven
on earth reality, the one cosmos within which the twin realities of
God's space, heaven, and our space, earth, are held together in balanced
mutual relation. That's what a temple is, a place
which holds heaven and earth together. And the seven stages of creation, as
many scholars have pointed out, are the seven stages of building a
temple into which the builder will come to take up residence, to take
their rest. "Here is Zion," says God my resting place Within this temple the final element created on the sixth day is the image That's what you do when you
build a temple in the ancient world you finally put in an image of the god Through which the rest of creation will see and worship the Creator But the image also is the creature through which the Creator becomes present and active in and with his creation The God of Genesis 1 is the heaven and Earth God The God who chooses to work through humans in the world and with this we understand both the start and the climax of John's gospel The start, you all know it In the beginning was the word en archaea, corresponding to Genesis 1:1 bereshit, in the beginning God created And now in the beginning was the word and the word became flesh And then onto the climax of John's gospel on the last Friday, the sixth day of the week the representative of the world's ruler Pontius Pilate declares, "Behold the Man" Pilate says far more than he knows acknowledging that Jesus is the proper man the true image when we look at him John has already told us we see the Father, that's what an image enables and the Father is present working powerfully through him, the whole of the Gospel is about that and when, as he says, the light has shon in the gathering darkness and the darkness has tried to extinguish it the final word that Jesus speaks Chapter 19 verse 30 echoes Genesis once more Tetelestai: it is finished The work is accomplished there then follows the rest on the seventh day laid to rest in the tomb before the first day of the new week the eighth day When Mary Magdalene comes to the garden and discovers that the new creation has begun John is writing a new Genesis and the death of Jesus places at the heart of this
heaven and Earth reality the sign and symbol of the image through which the world will
see and recognize its Creator and know him as the God of unstoppable love the sign and symbol of the image through which the Creatorhas established that love at the climax of world history the revolution that changes the world the fountain head for the rivers of water that will now flow out to refresh and renew the whole creation That is the primary story John is telling But if it's a new Genesis it is also a new Exodus Here there's a problem for years when reading Exodus I used to misjudge Moses' request to Pharaoh remember Moses goes to Pharaoh and says We need to leave because we need to worship our God in the desert I used to think that was just an excuse, we actually want to go to our promised land Pharaoh's not going to let us do that so let's tell him we want to go
and worship in the desert But the whole logic of the Pentateuch forbids that interpretation If you read Exodus at a run you'll get to Mt. Sinai easily enough
it's a page turner up to that point The pace then seems to slacken
for a moment as you get the first list of rules
and regulations but in fact the narrative now moves
swiftly forwards to the main purpose which is the
restoration of creation itself how, this is the purpose for which
God called Abraham in the first place the purpose to join heaven and earth
together once more only now in dramatic symbol and
onward pointing sign the giving of Torah is just
preparation what matters is the tabernacle we should thank God for the many
studies of tabernacle and temple theology now available and we should
repent for the protestant ignoring of that strand of scripture the tabernacle is the microcosmos
the little world the heaven and earth place, the
mysterious untamable moving tent in which the living God comes to dwell to tabernacle indeed in the midst of
his people in the pillar of cloud and fire the whole book of Exodus is moving
towards this moment in chapter 40 the tent is constructed and decorated
with the highest human artistry that itself is part of the point and the divine glory comes to dwell in it so that even Moses can't enter Exodus 40 answers to Genesis 1 and 2 There's a long narrative arc that
joins them creation is in principle renewed heaven and earth are held together
again the world itself is holted from its
slide back to chaos and the people of God, tent-makers
and tent-keepers and pilgrims wherever the glory
filled tent will lead them are to live the dangerous and
challenging life of a people in who's midst there now
dwells in strange, humble sovereignty the living hope for the whole
of creation all of this and much more, think of
Solomon's Temple in first Kings think of the vision in Isaiah 6,
all of this is then poured by John into the dense revolutionary
reality of his prologue as it reaches it climax in the
beginning was the word and the Word became flesh and
tabernacled among us ????? and we gazed upon his glory we have been allowed where Moses
was not we have seen the glory, the heaven
and earth reality the human microcosmos, the tent where
the God of the Exodus is revealed as the one God of creation and new
creation John is describing in his Gospel,
the ultimate Exodus through which creation itself was
rescued and renewed to be the new creation which comes
to birth on the 8th day after the dark power, the great and
terrible Pharaoh has been defeated once and for all of course Genesis and Exodus
themselves indicate that things are not going to be straightforward the glorious vision of Genesis
1 and 2 gives way quickly to the whispering serpent, the
original exile the first murder, the long decline
into human arrogance which ends with the tower of Babel Eden and Babylon, like Jesus and
Judas at the last supper framed the action which follows as
Abraham and his family are called to a stupendous vocation
and come repeatedly within a whisker of throwing it all away then they go down to Egypt and
Abraham says that Sarah's his sister the whole thing might have been
aborted right there and then the children of Israel
gloriously rescued and on their way to the promised
inheritance make a golden calf at the very moment where the
microcosmos was about to be constructed among them And it only doesn't then go horribly
wrong because Moses goes out and has a shouting match don't you love that scene where God
says to Moses your people whom you brought out of
the land of Egypt they've done wrong, you push off and Moses says no you've got it
wrong there, your people, you brought them
out of the land it's your reputation that's on
the line this is classic Jewis prayer
I love it and it works but as the Pentatuch moves to its
puzzling conclusion the end of Deuteronomy, it becomes
clear that the people of God the tent-keepers if you like, are
still a rebellious people who will have to suffer the
consequences of putting other images at the
intersection of heaven and earth and they, like their primal forebears
will go into exile not despite the fact that they're
covenant people but because they're the covenant
people and that's what happens when the
covenant people are disobedient and worship other gods God will fill his creation with
his glory but it will come through the casting
away and receiving back of the tent-keepers and ultimately
through the casting away and receiving back of their royal
representative Genesis and Exodus then give us the
structure, the framework of all subsequent, Biblical theology
and perhaps of John's Gospel in particular God will rescue and restore His
heaven and earth creation and the tabernacle is the sign seal
of that promise Aaron and his sons, the Priests
are the image reflectors who holds that hope together Israel as a whole is the royal
priesthood for the sake of the whole of creation of the five books of Moses then
give us the story stretching forward in the final
prophetic chapters of Deuteronomy to embrace the whole period of
kings and prophets of exile and restoration And the kings themselves are deeply
ambigious lot and nevertheless called in the Psalms
to be the image bearers to be the spearheads, the metaphor
is not too harsh of Yahweh's victory over the powers
of evil to be the focus of his reign of
justice and peace think of those royal Psalms, Psalm
2, Psalm 8 red royal as it should be Psalm 72, 89, 110 there is to be royal revolution
against the principalities and powers or so it seems until kings and
priests and even prophets alike fail miserably and the prophets, the canonical
prophets particularly Isaiah and Ezekiel see
the glory of God and the shame of Israel in severe
counterpoint with the consequence that the shame
is complete and the glory departs but Ezekiel then describes the
creation of the new temple with Ezekiel 43 corresponding to
Exodus 40 as the divine glory returns at last and Isaiah in his Gospel of comfort
describes the scene of majesty in which the sovereign God comes back the mountains have flattened and
the valleys are filled in for the glory to be revealed for all
flesh to witness it and the majesty is joined with
tender intimacy just as in John 13 he will feed his
flock like a shepherd gather the lands in his arms and
gently lead the mother sheep this is then a new Exodus, a new
passover that's what we're talking about
all through this prophetic theme though stretches
like a long question mark over the 400 years after exile
in Babel til a voice in the wilderness declares
that the time has come King, Temple, new Exodus, new creation John sees these themes rushing
together and with his deceptively simple
aristry of his narrative he's held on to them and shown
how they fit Jesus chose passover as the moment to
awaken the biblical resonances which would frame his final kingdom
bringing action and passion his royal revolution The Gospel writers following this
foundational insight tell the story of Jesus as the story of
the strange new Exodus in which the glory returns at last
but in a form nobody had seen coming no wonder ???? and his kronies
were alarmed they're priestly role supposedly
standing between heaven and earth was about to be upstaged once
and for all by the true image, the word made
flesh who would sum up in himself both the long
delayed obedience of Israel and the long awaited return of
Israel's God these two fit together when Paul, quoting the early formula
says that the Messiah died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures
it is this complex narrative full of doom and glory that he
has in mind proof texts are for the birds or
more accurately for near marcionite rationalists what matters is the story, the
true story John and Paul draw out one theme in
particular from Exodus, Isaiah from the entire earlier narrative Babel must be overthrown if Abraham's
people are to inherit the world Pharaoh must be overthrown if
Abraham's family are to be rescued Babylong and its Gods must be
overthrown if the new Exodus is to be accomplished This victory of God against the
usurping powers is clear throughout the prophets
particularly Isaiah for whom God's kingdom will be
established through the defeat of the dark powers and
the return of Yahweh to Zion both of which will occur through the
work and the shameful death of the servant All this is retrieved and celebrated
by the Gospel writers particularly John as he leads the
iap from his prologue through the footwashing scene and
onto the cross Jesus signs in John unveil his glory
starting with the wedding at Canaan which is itself a temple image
symbolizing the marriage of heaven and earth and the sequence of signs leads
to the cross where the dark glory of God is
revealed as the glory of the true image, the
priest, the lover, the king the royal revolutionary this theme picked up in the foot
washing scene where Judas embodies the satan, has actually
been highlighted in the previous chapter John 12 as John draws together the threads
from the first half of his Gospel he quotes just those passages from
Isaiah in which the ideas I've sketched come to sharp expression And the crucial passage I want to
look at now John 12 verses 20 to 36, you probably
know it by hear being good Calvin folk but if you don't, look it up when
you get home Johnh 12:20-36 begins with a typical
Johannine puzzle some Greeks come to the feast and
want to see Jesus what's going on here? Jesus, instead of arranging, you know
if some Greeks came to me and said, yea sure I say let's go
down to Mousakka later on in the day and sort it out but instead of arranging to meet them
Jesus speaks in riddles the hour has come he says for the
son of man to be glorified for the grain of wheat to fall into
the earth and die so that it can bear much fruit what's that got to do with these
poor Greeks who want to see him Jesus is gazing beyond the immediate
request to the ultimate purpose the world upon which he looks out
the pagan world and also tragically the Jewish world is in the grip of
the Pharaoh, the dark Babel gods the ruler of this world, there is no
point having a chat with these Greeks here
on out what matters is not understand the
the world but to rescue the world this is the time for God's name to
be glorified for judgment to be passed on the ruler of the world, now says
Jesus the ruler of this world is to be cast out and when I am lifted
up I will draw all people to myself that is the answer, Jesus death will
be the means by which the power that has gripped the world
of Greek and Jew alike will be overthrown by the greater
power the power the world never imagined
the revolutionary power of a royal love which loves its
own and loves them til the end then it will be time for the Greeks
to come in freed from the powers that have
hitherto enslaved them and prevented their approach
to Israel's God You see, in John's gospel, there
are two things which cannot happen until Jesus has died apart
from the resurrection and the new creation themselves First, in Chapter Seven, the Spirit
cannot be poured out into the world through the hearts of the disciples
into the world until Jesus is glorified And then here in Chapter Twelve, the
dark power which has held the world in its grip must be defeated
before it makes any sense for the Greeks to come and
see Jesus Look wider and weep for what
the Church has done The Greeks cannot hold Jesus within
their world of theory They need to be embraced
by the world of the new temple the new cosmos that will open up
when their present captivity is undone. How often we in the
Church have exchanged that vision for a set of theories Jesus' death will overthrow the
power, the ruler of this world and then it will be time, as Paul
sees in 1 Corinthians 2 for the hidden wisdom
to shine forth and that is why chapters 18 and 19
where Jesus engages in sharp dialogue with Pontius Pilate,
Kingdom of God vs Kingdom of Caesar is so vital to the meaning of
the story, and also for today's implications of the
royal revolution Pilate asks about kingdom,
Jesus replies about truth Pilate doesn't know what truth is
because the only truth he knows is power. Sounds familiar. In his case, the power to kill Jesus says all power, including
yours, Pilate, comes from above. But what he doesn't explain,
because like the Greeks, Pilate just wouldn't get it, is that ultimate power, the
revolutionary power, is the footwashing power, the Passover power, the power
of radical, transformative love. But on the cross,
as John makes clear, that love goes powerfully to work. John explains this again, not with
theory, but with small scenes that bring out the meaning. There is the tender moment
with Mary and John. And there is Pilate himself declaring,
"What I have written, I have writen," not realizing, again in 1 Corinthians, that by declaring Jesus
to be King of the Jews, Pilate is acknowledging him- Psalm 2, Psalm 72, et cetera- as the lord of the world,
the ultimate ruler, the justice-bringer,
the revolutionary. Tetelestai: it's finished. The new Tabernacle,
the new creation, rescued from the wreck of the old through the king who is
also the Passover lamb whose bones remain unbroken. New exodus. Real return from exile. Return of Yawheh to Zion. Messianic enthronement. Priestly work complete. Revolution accomplished. Creation itself ransomed,
healed, restored, forgiven. My friends, please don't ever think
of trying to constuct something called "atonement theology," unless you
know with John and Paul what it means that the
Messiah died for our sins in accordance with
the scriptures. Because, of course, we have tried,
the Western tradition has tried, to do it in many other ways. We have erected different structures
with Israel's scriptures as merely a sourcebook for random prophecies,
which can then be fitted into the redemption narratives which we have
gleaned or constructed from elsewhere. And we've then distorted those texts
themselves to play the role demanded by those other narratives, narratives of divine honor offended,
divine law courts sitting in judgement, human muddle and mistake. All these matter in their own way, but if we start with them,
we will skew the whole. Even "atonement" itself, the word
is far less precise, actually, than we normally imagine, must include so much more,
including the notions of sacrifice, which goes on past the cross
and up to the ascention, where according to Hebrews,
the son offers his once for all sacrifice in the heavenly temple. And these ideas themselves can be
and have been distorted as we've put them into
our different frameworks, in particular, I can't spend
long on this now, but just to put down a marker, we have misread the sacrificial
traditions of ancient Israel. In the Levitical and Numbers'
sacrifices, animals were not being subjected to a
vicarious death penalty. They were killed so that their
blood, itself a gift from God, would cleanse the sanctuary to
maintain the heaven and earth reality in the midst of an as
yet unredeemed world. Passover was not an atoning sacrifice. The animal that ever has sins
confessed over its head is the only animal in the Levitical
rituals that does not get killed, the scapegoat that bears Israel's
sins into the wilderness. So many muddles and mistakes there. Largely, again, as with the
temple theology in general, because the Western world has been
so distanced from the entire subculture within which these things originally
made the sense they did. But these and other misreadings
are enshrined in our traditions. The much cherished and
defended atonement theology of the 16th century Reformers,
which has been vital in some ways as a bulwark against other errors, those theologies were themselves framed
in reaction to late medieval ideas, particularly of Purgatory
and the Mass. The Reformers were trying to
give Biblical answers to 15th century questions. That's a noble aim! But the Bible itself, rightly
seen as authoritative, makes it clear that
this is not enough. We must get inside the world of
the Bible to hear their questions and to see their answers as
answers to those questions. We must understand what is means
that the Messiah died for our sins in accordance with, along the
line of, as the fulfillment of, the great single narrative
of Israel's scriptures, and only so will we get fresh
clarity in our thinking and, equally importantly,
fresh energy for our mission. I have said almost as a mantra
in one lecture after another, I may well have said it here before, we in the Western church have to
stop giving 19th century answers to 16th century questions, and start giving 21st century
answers to 1st century questions. That's tough. I've tried in the book to summarize in
three moves what I think has gone wrong. First, we have Platonized
our eschatology. If you've read my book,
<i>Surprised by Hope</i>, you'll know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, please do. I think you'll enjoy it.
[laughter] [laughter] We have Platonized our eschatology;
that is, we have assumed that the aim of Christian faith is
going to heaven when you die, not realizing that the people
who taught that in the 1st century were not the Christians,
but the Middle Platonists. Not Paul, but Plutarch. The New Testament is not about souls
going up to heaven, but about the new Jereuselam
coming down from Heaven to earth. About the new creation already
symbolized in the wilderness tabernacle. no wonder we never understood
temple theology. and brought in to reality by the
royal priest, Israels ultimate
representative. The word made flesh, and when you
get this right it isn't just a matter of adjusting a few nuts
and bolts about personal escotology and future. What we say about the future
plays back into how we think about everything else. Particularily how we concieve
the problem to which the cross and resurection are offered in the new
Testament as the solution, because second; if we simply
think about souls going to heaven Platonizing our escotology,
we shrink the human vocation to be image bearers, to be the royal
priesthood, to be God reflecters in the world, into mere moralism. Now, morals matter but morals
matter as the by-product of being image bearers. Summing up
the praises of creation rather than worshipping and
serving idols. Morallity matters because only
through properly functioning image bearers, will God's rescuing justice
flow out into the world. But if we focus on morallity,
thereby making the knowledge of good and evil the fruit around
which we construct our theological menu, then we turn
the whole drama of creation and new creation into a self-
centered play about me and my sin and what God's going to do about
it. And then with much western
theology we read genesis and what follows not as the story
of the temple and the image and not in consequence as the story
of idolotry, but simply as the story of humans failing an exam
deserving punishment and the punishment falling somehwere else. In the Bible though what ultimately
matters is not sin but idolotry, wrongly directed worship, that's
what produces sin, and that's why the Christers victor
theme, victory over the dark powers, takes priority over and then
contextualizes God's dealings with sin. when we worhsip idols, we give them
the power we are ourselves ought as image bearers to be
excercising. and we have then platonized
our escotology and to fit with that, we have moralized our anthropology. and the result is that we have
been in danger of paganizing our soteriology. It's to the ancient pagan world,
not the ancient jewish world, that we find sotries of an angry God
and an innocent victim and somebody being rescued from divine wrath
because some innocnet person got in the way at the last minute. Now, of course very few preachers
or theologeans would admit to preaching the gospel like that.
They will always insist that they speak of Jesus' death as the act
of divine love, but you know and I know that this
pagan story is what generations of people in our churches have
heard, and that's been easy because
that's how generations of Christians have behaved, using "would be" redemptive violence
whether internationally or domestically and always asserting that it is done
with the best of intentions, out of love. And so people hear what they think
is suppose to be the gospel, but instead of hearing God so loved
the world that he gave his only Son, they hear God so hated the world
that he killed his only Son. And the biblical truth of
penal substitution is thereby distorted and shrunk. Distorted because there is a biblical
truth of penal substitution. You find it in a classic passage
like Romans 8: 1-4. There is no condemnation for those
who are in Christ Jesus because, on the cross, God
condemned sin in the flesh. Definitely penal,
definitely substitutionary. But it doesn't belong within
the normal Western narrative. It belongs within the much
more interesting narrative of Paul's story of how humans are
reconformed to the image of the Son. And Paul's formuli mean what they
mean within the narratives to be found where most theologians
don't bother looking for them: in the gospels themselves, the story of God's Kingdom
coming on earth as in heaven. Perhaps this is, perhaps this is muted
because it generates at once, as John's gospel obviously does, what we today with our little
categories call "potical theology." How can the good news that God's,
the worlds' creator has, recused creation from disaster and established his son,
his image, at the center of the new world, how can this not have implications
for every policy, ever household, every community and country? Every polity and policy? How can we not at once be driven
to reflect and act on the basis that the dark powers
have been defeated so that the power of love
may flood the world? And if we really grasp that,
would we not recognize that the grandiose and Messianic
statements we hear from people on both sides of the Atlantic are in
fact a grim and self-serving parody? A gross caticature of the reality. And this is what I mean when
I say that normal theories about the atonement have actually shrunk
the meaning of penal substitution. One of the online reviewers of my book
accused me of not explaining how this, all this stuff, actually works. But he ignored the point. Here's how it works: In the four gospels, the story of
Jesus is set in counterpoint with the Biblical story of Is- of evil. The snake in the garden,
the tottering Tower of Babel, the power of Pharaoh killing
the babies, think of Herod, rebellious Israel, wicked priests
and kings, false prophets, idolotry is right, left, and center. And then Jesus arri- announces,
arrives and announces, that God is now becoming king
and that he looks like this, and he draws unto himself as though
by a magnet all the evil in the world, from the shrieking demons
in the synagogue to the plotting priests
in the Sanhedrin and ultimately to Pilate. Judas and Pilate merely bring into
sharp focus what is going on all along. Evil is gathered together in one
place and does its worst. And this is how atonement works. With Jesus' death exactly as in
scripture, Pharaoh is overthrown. Babel crashes to the ground. The gods of this world are
robbed of their power, because Jesus, representing Israel,
representing thereby the whole human race, and equally representing and
embodying the creator God himself, took upon himself the weight
of evil hanging over all flesh. "This is your hour," said Jesus
as they arrested him, "and the power of darkness." And he went into the heart of that
darkness so that Peter and the others wouldn't suffer it. So that Barabbas and the brigand
on the cross might be freed. So that like the chickens protected
by the death of the mother hen, those who come to him for shelter
would find that he'd taken their place. The victory then is won, though
the representative substitution of the servant, the son, the image,
the lover, the footwasher, the one who has saved the world
and revealed the glory at last. And this, not some cheap and logic-
chopped scheme, is why there is forgiveness of sins. Why Gentiles are now freed
from the enslaving powers to become members of God's family. This is why Jesus' followers do not
constitute a "religion" like other so-called "religions" to be catelogoued
by secular modernity, pinned to the wall like
so many dead butterflies, but a polis, a new kind of community,
a spirit-driven, suffering love people who follow their master to the
places where the world is in pain in order that by the Spirit they
may embody the love of God and the pain of God right there and bring God's healing and hope and this is why the church urgently
needs to reclaim our primary role of speaking truth to power exactly
as Jesus did in John 18 and 19 unless we read the gospels like this
and to this end, we are falsifying as we do when we
chop them into little snippets and use them as moral lessons or
whatever the gospels are the launching
narrative of our own story the first act in the new divine
drama in which we are called to play our part and this is why as I draw to my close
we need not a refined set of theories but a larger vision of the
Biblical narrative my new book poses the question:
By the evening of the first Good Friday, what had changed? Clearly all the New testament
writers think something had changed in the world, what was it? and how do we make our reality,
not just our own, but our mission The modern world has displaced
the Christian narrative because it tells a story in which
the redemptive moment arrived to the eighteenth century
with the revolutions with science and technology with the banishing of God to a
distant realm so that we could run the world ourselves God could be visited by the pious
few like a kind family calling on the elderly relative every Sunday The western church is regularly
coluded with this diminishment of the Bible and the gospel and that is one of the reasons
why the vaccum is filled by the rough beasts now slouching
towards Bethlehem but the cross told us the climax of
all four gospels particularly Johns, which I
focused on leaves us no choice, now is the
judgement of this world now is the ruler of this world cast out, we have some fresh
thinking to do to put it mildly, but thinking
the realm of logos has become flesh and must become
flesh once again that is how the glory will be
revealed in tomorrow's world that's how the world, saved
once for all by Jesus revolutionary victory on the cross
will as he promised be filled with His glory and
knowledge as the waters cover the sea we are to be in the power of the
Spirit, new Genesis people new Exodus people
new gospel people new Jesus people.
This is the Royal Revolution. This is the fresh perspective on the
cross, which I believe we urgently need in our troubled times Thank you *applause* -We have already, lots of questions
coming in and I'll ask you one that I realize is the
tip of the iceberg, maybe but a student would like you to clarify
just a little bit your comment that it is idolatry and not sin that
we need to focus on -In the Bible, sin is what happens
in your humanness when you've actually been
worshipping that which is not God You become a genuine you
by worshipping the true God in whose image you're made When you worship whatever idols
they may be, the ancient ones of Mars and Mammon and Aphrodite or
all our moderns ones which correspond and go beyond etc,
then bits of your humaness start to deconstruct and that
deconstruction is sin so sin matters but if you're just
trying to address sin as sin you'll miss whats going on underneath -Thank you Well the next question I know is
uh asks about when you talk about the renewal of creation, you
said the purpose of God tabernacling is the renewal of
creation, do you mean by that the spiritual renewal
or physical? -It's, that's the classic platonic
either or It's got to be both because those wonderful passages I
just quoted from about the earth being full of
knowledge and glory of the Lord as waters cover the sea. There's
a sense that our distinction of physical and spiritual does not
correspond to the Bible's distinction of Heaven and Earth Heaven and Earth are made for
one another They are not in, it's one of the
classic lies of the post-enlightened world to think that
if there is a Heaven, it's completely different from the Earth
and never between shall meet in fact they are made for
one another -Could you talk about the Holy
Spirit's role during the crucifixion? -That's a very interesting one There is a silence, darkness
in the gospel narrative the Spirit is not mentioned there,
however, I think if we were to ask John, what was the Spirit
doing, I think John would say the Spirit was dwelling within
Jesus, just as in Paul in Romans 8, Paul says
that the Spirit groans within us as we groan in desperation,
particularly when we don't know what to pray for, that is a
crucifixion image in Romans 8 25, 6, 7, that part and it seems
to be whats going on, on the cross is Jesus living out that reality and I think John and Paul would
both say the Spirit was there both enabling Jesus to to to
shout tetalestry etc -I'm going to make a lot of
theologians mad here but I the soccer team wants to know who you
favor in the English premier league? Priorities
-I'm not currently interested in the premier
league because the team I've supported all my life is New
Castle United which currently is in the championship happily,
they're at the top of the championship and they will be
promoted at the end of the season -Okay, *laughs* -You heard it first here -That's, um, so why and how did the
present popular escapist notions of heaven and hell come to dominate
the Christian imagination -I think that's a medieval thing
and it's a medieval retrieval of ancient paganism, it's
I mean, most people don't know this but actually the idea of a
heaven and hell in the sense that we often think of
them is very frequent in the ancient Pagan world rather
than the ancient Jewish world and the early Christians do not
retrieve that Pagan notion but it creeps back in like a lot of
bits and pieces of Paganism creep in as you move towards the,
I'm not a medievalist but I merely observe -I am
-Oh okay, well fine you can ask the question but I mean by the time you
get the 15th and 16th century it is very well established in Western
not in the East the Eastern Christians have the split
of the 1000AD the Eastern Christians simply don't
see the eschatology like that they have other problems but not
this one they actually believe that heaven
and earth are made for each other and that's what Jesus is all about -That is one of the things that made
me a Medievalist is the notion that you don't
separate everything -uh huh, yea -Here's a question on a different note how do you balance personal life and
life in the ministry? -It's extremely busy, I get up very
early in the morning I say my prayers and do the next
three things that have to be done I mean it's a, there's no real
secret to that it's just the basic disciplines and
it's a constant juggling act a constant negotiation, a constant
should I accept this and be engaged with something else, and um yea I've been juggling it for 45 years
doesn't get any easier It's fun though, I have a good time
-Good, I'm glad it is would you talk just a little bit, we
have a book on Paul to look forward to maybe tell
us a little bit about that -Yea, my publishers asked me I mean
I've written quite a few books on Paul as was mentioned
earlier but they said we need a biography of Paul, people
need to know who this guy was and I thought you really need to try
and do it in such a way that we understand what he's going
through and what he's facing things so that when then we find him
writing a letter we already know roughly what he
ought to be saying to these people how it might work, rather than
meeting the letter cold as it were, as it were a
document outside history to try and get inside, and some of
it is inevitably speculative because there are gaps we don't
know very much about bits and pieces, it's difficult
to fit all the bits to that but that's common to all ancient
history that you have that kind of a problem of gaps where we don't
know what's going on so anyways that book went off to
the publishers last Thursday of middle day and I'm waiting with
bated breath to hear how much editorial, it's quite
possible editor will come back and say I don't like chapters 5,6
and 7, do it differently and I, I'm hoping and praying that
he won't do that -See, it's not just your English
teacher how would you teach the resurrection
and crucifixion let's put that in the other order, uh, the crucifixion
and resurrection to a child Uh, I would want to have them in
church with me over Holy Week and Good Friday and Easter because
this is a drama a real life drama and children
learn, I think extremely well by living through a drama and the
questions that they ask as they're doing that, can be very
illuminating and revealing and I think there are lots of musical
things I think I first really started to
think about all this when a 7 year-old, I was singing in the
Repiano chorus in Bach Matthew's Passion where you know you just
hear the entire drama of Matthew 26 and 27 and you're just living it and the music is helping you reflect
on this and at that age of course I'm
completely innocent of all that Bach was doing but it's
doing something to you so in other words I would want to
create an imaginitive context within which then the things one
might want to say by way of more explicit theory or
whatever might make the sense they might make, some hymns
do this very well, not all because poetry like drama, like music
reaches the parts that often logic can't. -I like what you just said, I like
everything you said I'd like to thank you all for coming
and let you know that Tom Wright will be out in the front
lobby afterwards It's been great, thank you Kristi
Potter, thank you AV and physical plant and security and
listeners and talkers and everyone Thank you very much. [applause]
