Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Wright 0:00
I do think that we often do have our priorities wrong, and alongside church growth, and I think Paul would be horrified that we are not insisting on unity. The thing that would really shocked him, if he were to see us today is not only that we are disunited, but that we don't care. So somebody plants a church and they're successful in the church grows and they have a new building and big programs, but they have nothing to do with the church down the road or the one across the the other side of the square or whatever, because I think they think..well, God is doing this thing here. For Paul, the really important imperative at the end of Romans is that so that you may with one heart and voice glorify the God and Father Jesus, Paul saw the danger of church disunity, because frankly, if churches are this un-united the wider world doesn't care what we say.
Seth Intro 0:57
I will try to make this intro as brief as possible. Mostly because I'm very excited about who the guest is. And for those of you that cheated, you saw it when you downloaded it, but for those that just have you on autoplay, thank you for doing that and I will briefly introduce that guest.
Many of you don't know, this show is entirely funded by you. And I want to make an appeal to your good graces and your patronage. If any of the conversations that have happened over these past six months have impacted you even a small iota, I would ask you if you would be willing to help further these conversations by becoming a patron. There are different levels of perks. There are a few of you that have gotten a hold of the book club, and that is where I send out a book each month. They are fantastic books, I believe June's book will be Henry now and and you can't go wrong with Henry Nouwen.
And so the guest today is on the bucket list. If you look over at your library, as I am mine, there will be books by many theologians And I can't think that you don't have one by Professor NT Wright. If you don't, you do usually know who he is. It is a great privilege of mine to be able to speak with Tom. He speaks about Paul with a level of ease that I wish that I could. And we discussed that. So he's written a new book, Paul A Biography. So it's, we're approaching it from a different way and approaching it more from a historical context of Paul living, breathing and doing as opposed to a theological or exegetical way. And that should be enough for me. Let's roll the tape.
Seth 2:45
Professor NT Wight. Thank you so much for coming on to the Can I Say This At Church podcast and before I ask you to say a little bit about yourself, I just would like to say when I started this show, I looked on the the catalog of books that I have in there's many up there from you. And so I, I will try my best not to not to let my “fannish” nature of your work come out as we talk, but I think we'll be able to, I think I'll be able to control myself. We'll see how it goes. But thank you for coming onto the show.
Wright 3:14
Thank you. It's good to be with you.
Seth 3:18
So, I can’t think that if anyone is listening to this show that they don't know a bit about you, but can you just quickly summarize a little bit about yourself and what you do day in and day out?
Wright 3:28
Well, I basically study and teach the Bible and particularly the New Testament. I actually tried to teach the whole Bible but my official job is to be a Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Saint Andrews, which is on the beautiful sunny east coast of Scotland. I say this because I know some people think it rains all the time in Scotland and the answer is well, not here it doesn't sometimes, but we've been having a lovely day. And I write books about the New Testament and write articles and speak and lecture in various places. And I have worked over the last 40 years in a variety of jobs, some in full-time academics, some in full-time church work, and some in a mixture of both.
So at the moment, I'm doing a full time academic job, but I'm still quite involved with the church in various ways, inevitably and I've tried to combine the two. And I'm not that far off retirement, I turned 70 later this year, and the university wants me to go on for another couple of years. But I'm in some ways quite looking forward to retirement.
I enjoy my teaching, I've got some excellent students, but I'm also looking forward to in the time on the tray spending more time with my family, my grandchildren are getting older and I want to spend as much time with them as I can. So that's basically who I am.
Seth 4:45
I can understand that. I'm not anywhere close to retirement, and I still like to spend as much time with not grandkids definitely not there yet. But, but I can't think of…there's nothing. There's nothing better. I think that you can do then spending time with your family. So You have written a new book and and for those listening, I feel like you've written so many books, it would be hard to say. But so the most recent book is about Paul. So to start with this book is written from a different direction. So you kind of took it more as a biographical approach as opposed to an exegetical, or a theological probe; so why?
Wright 5:25
Well, I've written obviously quite a few books and lots of articles about Paul's theology and about the detailed exegetical study of his letters. But various people have said, that's all very well for people who read that sort of academic stuff, but what about ordinary people who need to know what sort of a person Paul was and want to get into it that way? And so the publishers both in America and in England, suggested that I try and do a biography. And I found that a wonderful challenge, because of the material that we have got it’s difficult to write in detail and to see where the gaps are like those 10 years, probably in his early 30s, late 20s, early 30s, when we really have no information about him at all, but from what we know about him later, we can probe back and say what must we have been doing during that time, and he was praying and studying the scriptures and so on, but other things perhaps as well. And for me, this was not to push the theology of the exegesis aside, but rather to set what Paul was thinking, what he believed about who God was, and who Jesus was, and so on, into its full three dimensional historical, social, cultural context.
And I find as I do that, that the letters themselves come up in three dimensions again and again, so that I wanted the readers to get the sense of actually seeing the world through Paul's eyes, so that when we find him writing a letter to the Christians in Corinth, or whatever we are saying, Yeah, of course, that's what you need to say right now. Please go ahead and say it! Instead of just meeting the letters as documents in a vacuum as it were. And I found as I did that, that the letters themselves kept coming to life in new ways, which was, was a really exciting thing to get into.
Seth 7:15
if I went back in time and so to use a bad analogy, so if I, if I got on a doctor who liked TARDIS and went back to first century Rome as a Christian today, knowing what I know, and the very little at that is, what do you feel like would be the biggest shift as I'm watching Paul preach or I'm observing this early version of Christianity? What would be that thing that would just blow you out of the water?
Wright 7:40
Well, there's there's all sorts of things which would be so, whoever you are watching, if you went back to see somebody else in Paul's world, like Nero or Seneca or somebody like that. I think I mean, it's quite interesting to say the first two things that will probably strike you before anything else one will be the smell. They didn't have soap in the way that we do. And the cities particularly, were incredibly smelly. They didn't have proper sanitation, and that they lived with this the whole time.
But the other would be the crowds. Because there was no such thing as private life in the ancient world unless you are extremely rich or extremely royal. So everything that happens happens on the street. And, and the houses are very much open to people seeing what's happening and who's coming and going. And often there are tenements, with different families living literally on top of one another, and the cooking smells and noises and goodness knows what all the time; and there is Paul in the middle of that sort of world. In other words, he's not like somebody in a modern Western town where you can have your own house and nobody knows really who you are in it. And when you go to a church on a street, and it's all quite dignified. Everything is going on in the hurly burly of a muddled human existence.
But then in particular, what would strike us about the Christians, about the Jesus followers of Paul's day, would be the way that they lived as family, they really cared for one another. I've been privileged as a Bishop to see a little bit of this in some parts of the Northeast of England where I worked, where there's some areas of real poverty, and where the church really does function as a big second family too many people. And that was the reality in Paul's day where people were often thrown out by their own families, like many Muslim people are today, if they become Christians; they don't want to know anymore. And so the church functions as a kind of extended family, but it was functioning in that way by sharing resources with people who needed it, and also by sharing resources outside the churches own circles. So Paul says, “do good to all people, especially those of the household of faith”. And from the the church had it as a priority to look out for and care for the poorest of the poor. And I think we in the West, we kind of know that sort of on the radar somewhere, but we don't make it the number one priority around which we order the rest of our worshiping and faithful life. And so I think that's probably the thing that would strike us before anything else.
Seth 10:23
Yeah, I've talked about this with other guests. I feel like when when you think about the community of the church that way, we do it as a form of convenience. And for them, it was entirely more than that it and honestly, I would say arguably more holy the way that they live.
Wright 10:37
Yes. I think that's right. And they lived as what the sociologists call effective kinship group. That is, even though they knew they weren't from the same family, and indeed, they will be different skin colors. They will be different social spaces, there’d be men and women and slaves and free and certainly Jews and Gentiles and as many different nations as you can imagine in a place like Corinth or Ephesus or Rome. They actually function as a family, nobody had ever imagined that such a thing was possible. This was revolutionary! It is revolutionary when the church manages to do it, so it's really very striking.
Seth 11:12
Outside of the context of, of the church. And I say that with a capital air quotes, yeah, church. How should one begin to approach Paul not as a theologian, but also as part of history? Because I feel like most of the time, all we treat him as as a theologian, and so how do we begin to approach that in a normal way or in a good way?
Wright 11:33
I began my academic life as an ancient historian, studying ancient history, and then philosophy before I went on to theology. And so I see Paul within that world alongside people like Cicero, and Seneca, and the great thinkers and writers of their day. And when you think, who has been the most influential from all the public intellectuals of that time, Paul has quite a claim. I mean, many people have heard of folk like Cicero and Seneca, but actually, they are read today by only a comparatively small number of people, even though they're still well worth reading and the philosopher like at the thesis as well, great people, but Paul is read by millions all around the world.
And what Paul did at the time in founding these strange little communities, these churches, these effective kinship groups, was explosive sociologically and psychologically and he's had the most extraordinary effects. And I think anyone studying ancient history, and anyone studying the effects of the first century on the later world would have to say that after Jesus himself, Paul is the most astonishingly influential person and when you think here is this by his own account, rather scruffy little chap who doesn't present a very good appearance when he turns up in a town and people rather laugh at him because he's not a terribly good speaker and so on, and so on. But what he did and achieved has resonated right through and still does in so many ways today.
Seth 13:07
And especially here coming soon in our church calendar. And so as we're recording this for those listening, it's we're coming home Pentecost quickly. And so we're very soon going to enter into the part of our church season that we're going to talk about Paul a lot, and the road to Damascus. And a question that's always been hard for me to reconcile is the Saul of Tarsus, who is normally portrayed as very belligerent towards Christians, persecuting them ready to go toe to toe at any time and reconciling that with a Paul, that is not that. The Saul vs. Paul, so help me a bit with that.
Wright 13:42
Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the thing is that soul becomes Paul, he is he is, he is eager he is, as we would say, in your face. He's ready to go for whatever's going on. And in the Jewish world that he grew up in that we have to you have to read book like say First Maccabees to realize what it was like. The Jews have been under the heel of the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Syrians, and now it was the Romans. And they had developed this fierce loyalty to Israel's God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, fierce loyalty to the Torah to the law of God; because the pagans have been making them compromise and making them eat pork and making them worship their gods, and so on and so on.
And the devout Jews like Paul and his family, Saul of Tarsus and his family, were determined to be loyal to Israel's God. And here's the thing, when Saul of Tarsus was faced with this new movement, these people following Jesus, and then fraternizing with pagans, and eating with Gentiles, they just thought this is appalling. This is precisely the sort of thing that we have been taught to resist. So he did resist it. But then when he discovered on the road to Damascus, that the one we've been resisting was actually Jesus, who was Israel's Messiah, and that God raised Him from the dead. This didn't stop him being zealous for Israel's God. It gave him a totally new insight into how Israel's God had, in fact, always planned to fulfill His purposes.
And so Saul had to rethink his entire view of Scripture, not to abandon Israel's traditions and Scriptures, but to read them in the light of Jesus. And when he did that, he redirects his zeal into love rather than violence, into a message of caring for the poor and welcoming the outsiders etc., rather than simply keeping Israel pure. And here's the thing, Paul didn't think that he was there by going soft on the total demand of God for purity of life, etc. He believed that the powers that have held the pagan nations captive had been defeated on the cross of Jesus, so that now when Gentiles believed in Jesus, then the spirits have worked in them so that they weren't impure they weren't unclean, and you could sit down and eat with them. And that was wonderful. So it's a total turnaround, but you can see how the same personality on the one hand, and the same love, Israel's God was shining through all the way through.
Seth 16:20
And so zeal then is a word that we don't use. Often today. I don't believe I ever have used it outside of the Scriptural context. And so what do you mean when you say turning from zeal into into something else?
Wright 16:32
In Paul’s day, zeal, means burning, it's something that happens inside you when you're burning with desire to do something or burning with eagerness to get on with the job or burning with anger if something really bad is happening, but then it doesn't stay inside you impose world zeal is something you have to get on and do. And for loyal Jews, I say if you read the book cautious Maccabees, you will see Judas Maccabeeas and his brothers Faced with the Syrians desecrating the temple in Jerusalem, the zeal for them men fighting battles of men saying your president saying holy men, making sure that these pagans were seen off the country never to come back if you could. And so it meant military zeal, but for Saul who became Paul, that zeal turned into a burning passion, to work for God to pray, to witness to the love and power of Jesus, and to bring the news of the gospel to the ends of the earth.
Seth 17:32
Some of the criticism that I will hear, not personally but you'll hear it online, and it's usually from a fringe group, or someone quasi-fringe, will basically say that Paul is isn't is almost restarting Christianity is kind of reinventing. When he goes and he preaches on these missions trips. Is there anything to that? Do you feel like he's trying to reinvent or become a different version of Christianity than what Jesus was?
Wright 17:58
No because Jesus wasn't teaching a religion called Christianity and in a sense nor was Paul actually, in a sense of there wasn't a religion called Christianity Jesus was bringing Israel's great tradition to its climax by embodying the return of Israel's God, to rescue his people. And so as the Scriptures have always said, When Israel gets rescued them, the world gets in on the act. If you read the Psalms, you'll see that when God does what he's going to do for Israel, then the whole world all the nations will call him blessed as well.
And Jesus is doing the thing which has to be done launching God's kingdom, and specifically through his death and resurrection, defeating all the powers that stand in the way of Israel's God becoming king of the whole world, and then in his resurrection, launching the new creation itself. Now, once that has happened, then what other people have to do is not to copy what Jesus did, but to implement it. It is the difference between somebody who writes a symphony and somebody who, as a conductor teaches the orchestra to play it. If you try to rewrite the symphony, then you're not being loyal to the original composer. So Jesus has written the music and Paul is the one who has to go around and teach people to sing it. And of course, writing music and singing it is two different things. So if Paul looks different it's because he has a different role within the ongoing purpose. For us those since the 18th century, we have been taught to think of Christianity as a religion, different from something called Judaism that's completely foreign to the New Testament.
The point is not comparative religion but what is the trade we call messianic eschatology. In other words, the point about Jesus is that he was Israel's Messiah. But if he was Israel's Messiah, then somebody has to tell the nations of the world that the One God has sent Israel's Messiah at last. So it's time for them, the nations of the world to come And only act and that's where Paul comes in.
Seth 20:02
You write in your book, and I will do it a disservice if I try to explain it. But I written down a few notes. And I'm curious, because it's not a connection that I've ever made. Well you make a lot of those in the book, but so when I think of the connection that you make between Elijah and Paul, and then they both are fleeing from danger in Israel, you know one to Arabia, one Horeb, and then they go back to Damascus. And so what is that about? And I guess, how does that relate a bit to the “silent years” that we get from Paul in Galations 1, or does that relate at all?
Wright 20:34
Yeah, well decided the tears are a bit different because the silence he has already after that time, because from relations one we know that saw Paul, after his Damascus experience, he stays in Damascus a little while then he goes off to Arabia, which, as I've argued in the book, this is actually he's going to Mount Sinai, which is where Elijah went. Sinai and Horeb are substantially the same place. scholars argue about the precise Location of which summit we're talking about in the Arabian Peninsula. But he's, Saul, is doing what Elijah did for the same reason that he's been very zealous. And this is where he is actually quoting the passage in First Kings where Elijah says, “I've been extremely zealous for the traditions of my father's”. And Paul says the same thing. “I was extremely zealous for the traditions of my father's”.
And both of them have been employing violence, and then in different ways, it's gone horribly wrong. So Elijah goes and says to God, Hey, what's going on am I still doing the right thing? And God says yep go and return to Damascus, and the nonsense or to the king or the nonsense that the prophet in your place? And Saul of Tarsus, I think he goes off and I think he's like somebody's going on a retreat when something really shocking has happened. They go away to look God in the face and say, What is this all about? And I think when he says, I returned again to Damascus, that's a direct quote from that passage. 1 Kings 20 that that's what God says to Elijah.
And so I think the point is that Elijah was one of the great role models of zeal, which we mentioned already, Elijah and Phineas, in the book of Numbers were the two great zealous characters in the Old Testament. And Paul has been role modeling them and now he is acting out the script, except now he is told, go back to Damascus and get on with not anointing someone else, but announcing the anointed one the Messiah, because he's, in fact, the king of the world.
Now it's after that, because he has to leave Damascus in a hurry because people don't like it. Then he goes to Jerusalem, and they're suspicious of him there and so they send him back to his home, which was Tarsus in Cilicias, in what we would call Southeastern Turkey. And that's when there's a long gap when we don't actually have any direct information, but we have to conclude that he must have been studying the Scriptures and praying and no doubt trying to tell people about Jesus there in Tarsus. How well that went down we have no idea, but I suspect that we see the reflection of that. When much later in writing Romans Paul says he has unceasing sorrow and anguish in his heart because of his family, his kinsfolk because they haven't believed.
And I imagine those years in Tarsus must have been pretty painful for Paul with his parents and brothers and sisters, maybe most of them saying we have no idea what you're all about. And we certainly don't think this couldn't possibly be the will of God. So out of that, then there comes this passionate man, coming back to Antioch to join in the missionary work of the church and re-engage in public life, if you like.
Seth 24:03
In Acts 17, and I usually hear this text preached as an apologetic text, and I read you argue that that's not right. And and if I'm honest, I've used it as an apologetic text as a way to preach to the God that you can't see or the idol that you should have been worshipping. But you make the case that that's not really the case. It's not intended to be an apologetic text, and that it parallels with the trial of Socrates, correct?
Wright 24:31
Yes. Well, the Areopagus in Athens, which is Mars Hill, it isn't a public debating place. It's the highest court in the land. It's the high point in the Athenian legal system. And that goes back many centuries before Paul, then the legend was that the Court of the Areopagus was founded by Apollo himself. Aesculus has a play about the founding of the Court. And why is Paul dragged before the highest court in the land, because he seems to be preaching foreign divinities. And because in the marketplace, the marketplace is where the philosophical debate to take place. Paul has been doing that. And Luke doesn't tell us what he's been saying, just as he's been arguing with the Stoics and the Epicureans, which is fine. Now, when then he gets taken to court. It's called in the ancient world each city had its own patron, we would call it like a sort of the patron saint, of divinity. In Athens, it was the goddess of Athena of course, in Ephesus. Paul gets into trouble because it's, it's Artemis, or Diana in the Roman language. And then if somebody comes to this town, saying, I want you to worship different gods or goddesses, then this means that you're not going to be loyal to the real gods and goddesses who we've all been worshipping. And if that happens, then bad things will result'; there will be earthquakes they'll be a fire, there will be a flood or something. will happen because we haven't been worshipping the gods or goddesses we should have been worshipping.
So this is a very serious charge and it is part of the same charge that got Socrates into trouble. Five centuries before, Socrates was on trial, for preaching foreign divinities and corrupting the young. Now, look doesn't say that they said Paul was corrupted beyond that kind of goes with the territory. So he has to explain himself. And now, fair enough, the explanation does involve some of what we might call apologetics today. But make no mistake, this is not apologetics as a philosophical debating society. This is apologetics with a price on your head. And so Paul doesn't mince his words. And it's extraordinary really, I don't know if you've been to Athens. But if you go there and look from the Areopagus, there's the Acropolis with this huge hill with the Parthenon on one of the greatest works of architecture ever in the whole world still to this day, de Paul says, these temples they're just a category mistake. The Almighty doesn't live in houses made with hands.
So he's not trying to curry favor with them. He's he's getting all out. It's a Jewish message. And he gets away with it because he can outsmart them he can out think them. So the court ends up scratching its head and saying, Well, okay, you've made your point. We think you're crazy, but maybe you're not actually a danger to the state after all. But Paul leaves town fairly soon after that, as though he knows that maybe someday they may try and come after him again. It's a fascinating scene it's one of the great set pieces of the whole New Testament.
Seth 27:37
I know is I am often argumentative. I don't know if I would have the gumption to do that; what in Paul's history before that, or is it just him being smarter, the smartest man in the room able to keep up with and argue for his life basically, is there anything in his training prior when he was Saul that would equip him to be able to that?
Wright 28:01
I didn't think so except for the fact that Tarsus where he grew up was one of the great philosophical centers of the ancient world. Because about the century or so before proposed time, the Romans have come and smashed Athens up because Athens got on the wrong side in a local war, and the Romans took vengeance on them. And so a lot of the philosophers who've been based in Athens, left town and they went either to to Rome, or indeed to Tarsus, excuse me, that's just a clock striking in the background, that is not putting your listeners off. And so Tarsus was a central philosophy and Paul would have grown up with these debates going on on the street all around him. He would have known what the Stoic’s said he would have known what the Epicurean’s said he would have fought his way through all that. And there were many other Jews at the time, who wrestled with the same issues. Like Philo in Alexandria. Like whoever wrote the book we call the Wisdom of Solomon. They were dealing with these philosophical issues but from within the Jewish framework. And Saul seems to have known at least some of those traditions. So words have been entirely strange to him.
At the same time, he probably didn't expect actually to behold before the highest court in the most famous city in the ancient Greek world. But I suspect he rather enjoyed that. After all, Paul knew these Old Testament Well, he knew that the servant in Isaiah 52 and 53 was the one who would startled many nations and make kings shut their mouths. And I think Paul relish the chance to say things which would stop all the nations and which would make kings shut their mouths because of the news about Jesus. And I think by then, he was, if you like, “throwing caution to the wind” and saying, I've been called to witness to Jesus, and if this is what it looks like, well, hallelujah, let's get on with it!
Seth 29:48
(Laughter) Yeah, it would be like me, well, this is hyperbolic but riding up to Washington DC and saying something so truthful and insulting at the same time that they just harming into the Supreme Court and just “get on with it correct”?
Wright 30:04
Yep! Well, that that's right. And, and who knows, I mean, we joke but in your country and mine, there might be a time in a year or five years or 20 years whenever, when actually, people who are loyal to Jesus will have to stand up and be counted and it will be risky. And I think one of the reasons that we aren't persecuted at the moment is probably because we've compromised a little bit more than we like to imagine.
Seth 30:29
Yeah, I would agree. I find from this podcast and in person conversations that result from it. The more that I talk about Jesus and or what the teachings of Christianity mean, I have to live like-I get an obscene amount of pushback. And adjectives that aren't appropriate for now.
So, when Paul is preaching to them, Christians are the atheist correct in this situation? And I know we look at it in hindsight that we call a theist, someone that doesn't believe in God, but for him to try to convert people, and you alluded to it earlier that they live communally because they're they're thrown out Christians are the atheist in this situation, correct?
Wright 31:17
Yeah. I mean, you imagine that what are the main sort of socio-cultural things that everybody in the town does. It may be everyone goes to the ball game or everyone goes to the cinema or everyone goes to whatever it is. Here in eastern Scotland, we have these lovely beaches and so on golf clubs and lots of people go to them. Now, imagine it's more than that, but not less than that.
The ancient religion means that there are temples on almost every street corner. And everybody knows when it's a festival to Lord so and so. A festival to Athena a festival to Caesar who is the new God on the block if you like, and when there's a festival the whole town shows up. I mean, I'm speaking to you now when we are about to have a Royal Wedding here in the UK. And there's all sorts of people, millions and millions of people be tuning in to watch that. I mean, that isn't, in that sense a religious event in the sense, maybe it is.
But my point is that in every city in the ancient world when they have these great festivals, which were very frequent, and great sacrifices, and so on, everyone went. And so suddenly, if you stopped going, then the neighbors will notice. And your friends will notice, “hey, why aren't you coming”? “Oh. Well, I don't do that stuff anymore. Because these actually these gods, they don't really exist. I believe in one God, the maker of heaven on earth. And in Jesus, the one who has embodied him on he's his son, and we're worshiping Him”, when they maybe say, “Well, I don't know what you've been smoking or drinking, but it sounds pretty dangerous stuff to me”.
Because as I said before, if we don't worship the gods bad things will happen to our town, and then we'll know who to blame. That's the reality of life for somebody who had been an ordinary pagan in an ordinary town and then suddenly stop. Now the Jews had a free pass, because the Romans had discovered that there was no point trying to persuade the Jews to worship their gods, the Jews just wouldn't ever do it. So they compromised - the Jews said we will pray for Roman, for Caesar, and we will not pray to Caesar lesson learned to a senior anyone like that. But then suddenly, all these people who are not choose, not ethnically Jews are claiming the same privilege. They're claiming that they don't have to do this pagan worship anymore either. Because they are going to worship the One God revealed in Jesus and powerful by the Spirit.
And this is just totally shocking, and socially, deeply, undesirable. And who are these people will and look what they're doing. They're hanging out with slaves and with women and who knows what they're getting up to. So you can imagine the socially disruptive nature of Pauline Christianity is something that most Christians today have not even begun to dream of, but it was massive at the time.
Seth 34:01
yeah, I wanna I want to ask one more, quote unquote “history” related question. And then I want to try to dovetail a few questions that I've gotten from some listeners as we come towards the towards the end of this. So when I read the latter parts of Paul's letters, at least the way that most people would date them, he seems to be more what's the word I'm looking for? More choosing the words that he use and slightly depressed and like Second Corinthians and that type of stuff. Do you see any of that in his writing? And if so, how can we learn from that on how to deal with depression ourselves?
Wright 34:43
Okay. 2 Corinthians chapter 1 describes something that has happened to Paul we don't know exactly what it was, and I write about this at some length in the book. But he says, writing to the Corinthians from Ephesus, though I think he's writing that letter while he's on the journey around Northern Greece making his way towards Corinth, but he says, Look, I don't want you to be ignorant, that when I was in Ephesus, I was so crushed that I despaired of life itself. And he said, I felt as though I had received in myself the sentence of death.
Now, I'm a pastor, if somebody came into my room and said, these last few days, I've had this deep sense inside me that I've just been condemned to death. Then I think I would say to myself, this poor person is having a nervous breakdown or something pretty close to and is in utter despair. And, you know, this isn't just a matter of a nice pastoral conversation and then a pat on the back and off they go. This is really serious stuff.
Now, we are not quite sure why he went through this experience in terms of what were the historical circumstances. My own guess is that he'd been in Ephesus, you've been very successful. All sorts of things have gone really well for him. The principalities and powers seemed to be in disarray. They were put to flight, magician's were coming and burning their magic books and so on. But the trouble is that the dark powers don't give up easily and they strike back and they don't play fair. They play nasty.
And I think something happened to Paul, which totally, totally dragged him down. And of course, if you were thrown into jail in the ancient world, as he may well have been, I think he was thrown into jail at least once in Ephesus. They don't feed you, your friends have to come and feed you. And if your friends can't find you, then you might be seriously hungry, you might be starving, you might be cold, it might be winter, you might be sick, it will be very easy to feel that everything had in fact gone horribly wrong. When you short of food and sleep and drink and you're cold and sick, then however strong your faith is then everything gets shaken. And I think that's what happened to Paul.
Now he says, “this was to make me rely on the God who raises the dead”. Now we have to tread very carefully here. I have dealt with depression. On both sides of the table as it were, it's no good saying to somebody who's depressed, “oh, you just have to trust in the God who raises the dead”, they'll probably just kick you or slap you or go and shoot themselves.
Because if it's serious depression, this telling them to snap out of this is probably the worst thing you can do. However, what I think happened in Paul's case, and we can't prove this, but I think that, like a plant in a harsh winter, Paul has had to put his roots deep down into the truth that he believed. But now he has to find them in an even deeper way. Paul has always prayed and somebody who has the habit of praying in the way that Paul lifelong that the habit of praying, he didn't stop praying when he was depressed. He just prayed his way deeper and deeper into the Jewish traditions about the One God who is the God of Israel.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one
Paul had already learn to pray that in a Christian There is one God the Father, one Lord Jesus Christ. And he’s also learned to pray, the Jewish prayers about the Exodus, the Psalms and so on. He was praying them with Jesus in mind. And I think Paul in his praying, even in despair, his heart is going on praying, and he's going down deeper than anyone have been before. And he comes back with these amazing poems that we find in Philippians 2 and Colossians 1, which are poems about Jesus victory over the powers to use his victory over death.
And I think that was how slowly…slowly he managed to crawl his way back out to the pit. I think it was through the habit, the lifelong habit of prayer, with the gospel now reshaping the ancient habits of Jewish prayer. That's the best analysis I can do, of how he got out of the bed, but what it was like when he was in there, he just tells us those two lines, it was obviously pretty awful.
Seth 38:57
Do you think that the Bible that we have today, or the history that we have of Paul today, would exist without Barnabas?
Wright 39:06
Good question. Good question! I mean, who knows what it is? It's like, you know, supposing somebody had bumped off Hitler in 1919. What was the 20th century have been like, and we can play those games. Certainly under God. Barnabas had a very strong hand, because he was he who sold that they needed somebody in Antioch, who was a good teacher who understood Scripture, and could speak the languages and get on all fours as people and he went to Tarsus and got Saul. And if that hadn't happened, who knows what what might have happened? I suspect that in the providence of God, somebody else would have done it but yes, the way things were Barnabas is pretty well responsible for that.
Seth 39:48
I hear that and what I hear in that when I read about Barnabas is don't be afraid to answer the call that when you feel called do it because it could have impacts in so much as we're still talking about it today.
Wright 40:02
Yeah, absolutely
Seth 40:03
but yeah. Alright, so changing gears a little bit, and I mean it in a way that is culturally relevant today. And I've spoken about it with with other guests about there's just a lack of historical contextual knowledge of any ancient times much less ancient Israel or, or, you know, the early church. And so do you feel like our obsession with church growth and I say that in air quotes again, now has led us to having a poor reading of Paul's letters in that we misconstrue cultural suggestions into must follow laws and must follow dogma?
Wright 40:46
Yes, I don't totally understand the church growth movement because the churches that I've worked in and I’ve worked a long time in many different churches and not part of that kind of style. I've seen church growth I've also seen shows decline, which is aligned to other things that are declining in society. So for all sorts of socio cultural reasons, I know God can do extraordinary things and rejuvenate churches, and I've seen that happen as well. So I'm not saying that God only wants small failing churches, that will be ridiculous.
But I do think that we often do have our priorities wrong. And instead of, well not instead of church growth, but alongside church growth. I think Paul would be horrified that we are not insisting on unity. The thing that would really shocked him, if he were to see us today is not only that we are disunited, but the we don’t care! So somebody plants church, and they're successful in the church grows and they have a new building and the programs that they have nothing to do with the church down the road or the one across the the other side of the square or whatever, because they’re thinking well, God is doing this thing he proposed to really important imperative at the end of Romans is that so that you may With one heart and voice glorify the God and Father Jesus. Paul saw the danger of church disunity because frankly, if churches at dis-united the wider world doesn't care what we say, they take notice.
That's why in my country, the newspapers love it! Any sign of church disunity, the newspapers reported instantly. And the churches can do all sorts of good things which won't get reported. The papers love it. Because if the judges are disunited, then they, the wider secular world, don't need to pay any attention to what we're saying. And that's the real thing that we ought to be addressing,
Seth 42:34
Is it…and this has been in the news a lot lately because of Piper, at least in my country, and I can't think that you don't follow it. But do you think it's fair to blame the bulk of the way that we treat patriarchal roles and misogyny and homosexuality and homophobia and the role that women can be in leadership in in any form of worship, on Paul's letters? Does he bare the bulk of that blame or is that us doing it wrong?
Wright 43:03
Let me say first, the fact that you mentioned all those different things that you just listed in the same breath shows that in our culture we have totally, totally misunderstood Paul. Because the question of the role of women in churches is something that I think Paul will be very clear about, face it when he writes the greatest letter ever written, mainly the letter to the Romans, who does he give it to take to Rome? Phoebe, who is a deacon in the church in Cenchreae, it was on an independent business trip to Rome. And it's to her with the entrusts this incredible lesson. That almost certainly means that Phoebe is the first person to read Romans out loud to anyone, and she's highly likely to be the first person to explain it to anyone.
And when you just stop and think of the earth shattering implications of that, then all sorts of things look different. But when we're talking about the homosexual question, and the fact that we talk about homosexualal(ity) that's a modern idea, the idea that there's an “ity” a condition called this, but also the fact that we don't distinguish between inclination and behavior.
For Paul inclination and behavior would always be radically distinct. Because Paul knew as actually most wise people have always known that all human beings at some stage in their life have all kinds of inclinations, which they know or they find out quite soon, they ought not to act on. And the question of which inclinations you act on which inclinations you don't act on, is one which our modern Western world has been singularly bad addressing, because we've somehow imbibed ever since the 60s, the idea that spontaneous impulses must be good and must be obeyed.
And so the fact that we don’t think through these things shows that we are not enough on the same page as Paul was not on the same page as Plato and Aristotle, or any of the other great moral thinkers. So we've got ourselves in a moral mess. If we blame Paul for it well, so much stupider are we! Because Paul is actually very clear on these issues? And if only we would actually understand him instead of bouncing our models back off him like echoing off some wall, then the better.
Seth 45:16
Don't turn them into a yes man then?
Wright 45:20
Don't turn him into a yes man or a no man, turn him into somebody whose whole aim of life was to get people to think, and to think clearly and to think Christianly, and if we follow that imperative, we'd all do a lot better.
Seth 45:34
How do I deal with the with what you said about Romans and Phoebe, knowing that many people will use Romans and Timothy to say that my daughters, maybe one day, cannot be ministers? How do those two reconcile?
Wright 45:48
Try going to first Corinthians Chapter 11, where Paul talks about what women should be wearing on their heads when they are praying or prophesying in church. So clearly in First Corinthians 11 he wants women expect women to be leading in public worship. He just wants them to look like women while they're doing it and dress in that way, and not try to be as men or androgynous in some way.
Now, I know there's another passage in First Corinthians 14 it’s difficult passage I and others have written about it, which says women should keep silent. I suspect that's because in a divided congregation with men on one side and women, the other the men might understood who might be more educated, might understand what the sermon was about, the women might not be getting it so they might start to chatter or gossip. And that's, that's one way of reading that passage. The passage in 1 Timothy is a difficult passage partly because it uses several words which are, if not unique, at least very rare, unique in the New Testament, and which can be translated in several different ways.
And I and others have argued variously, for instance, that 1 Timothy may well be written to a situation in Ephesus, where the main religion in town is an all female Religion, The Cult of Artemis. And it's quite possible that people in the Christian church in Ephesus was saying, “Well, if we've got a new religion called Christianity, obviously we'll have to get the women running it because that's what we in Ephesus do; we have women priests, we have this that the other.” And so 1 Timothy would be saying chapter two, no the women must not use the role of men. Now, that's not all it's saying. But that is part of the cultural context, which might help us to explain why that passage is very different.
But actually, when I'm arguing this case, I start with Mary Magdalene in John 20. This is off topic from Paul but when Jesus wants to condition somebody to be the first person ever to tell anyone else, but he's raised from the dead, that he's ascending to the Father, which is the foundation of all Christian proclamation, then the person who gets chosen is Mary Magdalene, and I just think there's a big QED after that, let's lighten up and get on with it.
Seth 48:00
Yet no, I agree and and being that I have two daughters.
Wright 48:04
Oh right. Yeah, I have two daughters, two and two sons.
Seth 48:08
I don't think that I could ever attend a church. I don't think I could ever be part of a local church, that somehow said that they can be president, Supreme Court Justice, astronaut, Professor, but not minister, anything but that.
Wright 48:24
I think, also the difficulty there is this, I would want to say very clearly, there is a big difference between being a man and being a woman. The old modernist view that men and women were identical apart from some minor biological function, I think is just crazy. And I think we were seeing a backlash against that now and part of the confusion on gender identity comes from and within that backlash. But having said that, this does not mean that I am then taking what people used to call a complimentarian position as though men can only do x,y&z and women can only do A, B, and C never the twain shall meet, there is a huge overlap, just as there is a huge overlap in various sorts for the men or women. So men and women are different, but God wants them both exercising part of the various ministries of the church. There's no question about that in my mind.
Seth 49:16
Last question for you, Tom.
Wright 49:18
Okay
Seth 49:20
What is one thing, besides buying your book and reading it, and I can't recommend that and there are other texts as well, there are many reviews of your book online that reference other other texts to help complement this. So what would be one thing that we could take away from Paul, the man, that would help us do better church today starting tomorrow or starting the moment that you listen to this? What is the one thing that we could take away?
Wright 49:43
Wow…wow! I would love to see the church learning from Paul the value of Christian poetry. There are so many things which we want to say as Christians, but it's hard to say them all together. In Philippians 2 and Colossians 1 and other passages as well; but especially those and perhaps 1 Corinthians 13; we have the earliest Christian poems ever written.
I think Paul probably wrote them himself. And there he is saying beautifully, Scripturally, Christ focused-ly, what has to be said in terms of a celebratory prayer. And we sort of read those passages out and we might preach a sermon on them. But actually, we need to think maybe there is a new vocation for people today, to think theologically, not in order to write 400 page books, but to write poems, which will go to the very heart of the matter, and which will appeal to people not just intellectually, but emotionally and culturally. To enable them to praise and worship in rich Scripture fueled ways.
I really…I mean, you didn't expect me to say that in in a sense, I didn't expect me to say this, but I've been thinking about this a lot. And I think that's something that Paul has to give that most people do not expect to learn from him; but my goodness, we could it would be very good for us.
Seth 51:03
I was not expecting that. In full transparency. I have eight pages of eight point pieces of paper in front of me with questions to answer and that thread of thought was not anywhere on any of these. So I appreciate that. I'll give you back the remainder of the evening. Thank you so much, Tom.
Wright 51:20
Thank you very much. It's very good talking to you and greetings to all your listeners. Oh, and one last thing. I assume that you know, or your listeners know that I've done these various online courses including this book there at www.ntwrightonline.org
Seth 51:37
I do that but they may not I will put a link to that in the show notes.
Wright 51:40
That will be brilliant. Thank you so much.
Seth 51:42
Yes, sir. No problem. Have a good evening.
Wright 51:44
Very good talking to you!
Seth 51:46
You as well!
Seth 52:05
Man I hope that you enjoyed that as much as I did. I can't express how thrilled I was that Professor Wright agreed to come on to the show. And I hope that we can all take a page out of his book that there's more than one way to view the Bible. The Bible is not just some huge amount of stories that matter in only a theological way.
These are real people that existed in a real time in a real culture. Specifically, we talked about the New Testament and that that culture and that history cannot be looked at in a vacuum. context matters whom was being spoken to matters. So much to learn. can't recommend enough, please go get Professor Wright's book, it is a great book on Paul, there are other books as well, that will approach it from a different way and he's written some of those but it is well worth the time and effort and energy to dig through it but work your way through it slowly. And I think that the reward at the end will be well worth the time and energy that that tape.
Today's music was used with permission from one of my favorite artists composer, producer songwriter based out of Chicago Ryan O’Neil, who goes by the name Sleeping at Last. The music specifically used today is from an album that he released a little while back called the spring the money and the proceeds raised from that album go to support the Ministry of Charity Water. Charity Water is an extremely worthwhile organization what they do is they take money and they build and help sustain wells in places that there is no clean water no functioning water and water is life giving. If you don't believe me then don't drink any tomorrow Water is life giving and so please if you have a moment go to the show notes support the Ministry of Charity Water there are extremely easy ways to get involved with that. Also please support sleeping at last and his partnership with that and and i will tell you he is recently releasing albums about the Instagram the tone of each song matches the number for the in a gram. He hasn't made it to number eight yet for me, but I'm Looking forward to when he does. You'll find all those links in the show notes will also find the music today in the Spotify playlist. Remember to rate the show on iTunes, follow the show at CISTACpodcast on Twitter. Find us on Facebook as well be blessed and we'll speak to you next week.