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The day the Lord has made. My name is Melissa Wigginton. I am the vice president for Education Beyond the Walls here at Austin Seminary, and on behalf of the president, the dean, the faculty, the staff, the students, just all of us, I'm really glad y'all are

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here. It's nice to see a lot of familiar faces among this crowd and also to see a lot of faces that we haven't seen here before. So, let me ask you, if this is your first time on our campus, would you raise your hand? Thank you.

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We're very, very glad you're here and we hope that you will come back. You on your seats there's a little, uh, pad of paper that requests some information if you're interested in offering that. And if you would like to be notified of future events like this,

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just write on the bottom, uh, you know, tell me more events. I wanna come back, whatever, and we'll, we'll make sure you get the notices. OK. I want, before we go any further to say thank you to Jonathan Warren, who is the person who provided us

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the opportunity to have Professor Wright with us. Jonathan, where are you? Jonathan is the director of, uh, faculty and graduate ministry with Inner Varsity here at the UT campus, and we're delighted to be in partnership with him for this event this morning. I want to say

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a word about how we'll use our time. Um, we will begin with a conversation among these two gentlemen here on the podium, and we'll spend about maybe 45 minutes with that, and then we'll open the floor to questions. So if you have questions as we go

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along, you may want to note those because we will have a time for that, and I'll give you instructions. When that time comes. The end of the question and answer period, we will recess and we will ask Professor Wright to come into the atrium. We have

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his book that he'll be talking about today for sale. If you'd like to buy one, he's offered to sign it for you, so we'll have about the last 25 or 30 minutes for book signing. OK. Now, the reason you came, we are delighted to welcome Professor

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NT Wright for his first visit on our campus. As you know, he is the former Bishop of Durham, an Anglican priest in the Church of England. 2nd Anglican priest we had on our campus this year. Sam Wells was here for the midwinter lectures, but Professor Wright

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currently is a professor of New Testament and early Christianity at the University of Saint Andrews. You are here because you know that he is a wonderful New Testament scholar. He's the author of more than 60 books, both scholarly volumes and volumes for popular public audiences. He

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is here today in association with the publication of his book, Paul and the Faithfulness of God. You, those of you who, who have not been here before may not know Professor Lewis Donaldson. Many of you were probably his students. If you were his student in the

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past 30 years that he has taught New Testament. Here at Austin Seminary, would you wave and say hello to them? Oh. Uh, Louis is a beloved professor here of New Testament and Greek, and his current work is on a book about messianic dynamics in the Gospel.

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He is also the editor of the Horizons in Biblical Theology Journal, which is published by the seminary. So without further ado, please join me in welcoming Professor Wright and Professor. Um, it's obviously an honor for me, um, to participate in this event and, um, not simply

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because, um, uh, Professor Wright is a renowned, um, Biblical scholar and Pauline scholar, but because, uh, his new book on Paul really is, uh, um, a landmark moment in Pauline's studies, uh, and it's a landmark for a number of reasons. Uh, one is because of, of

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Professor Reitman involved in Pauline studies for a long time and it's an important voice, and he, in, in this book, he gathers things that, um, he has said in a variety of other places, into one rather long book. You know we have to talk about how

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long it is. And, but also because um I think the book has some fascinating proposal. plural proposals for how to read Paul. And in a minute, I'm gonna ask um Professor Wright to say what he thinks the center of the book is, what the main thesis

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or theses are, and, but, but just let me say a couple of words first, about 30 minutes. What I love about it is how this book integrates so much of not just his work but what's going on in Pauline's studies. It, it really is an attempt

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to gather, um, um, an incredible number of conversations and he does this in uh extremely well. If you don't know much about A biblical scholarship on Paul. Read this and you will know a lot about how the discussion is framed and what's at stake in the

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discussion and so on. Um, it's a, a wonderful kind of gathering of Pauling scholarship and, and, and an analysis of it. Um. It integrates in other ways. It gathers um Um, the ancient world around the, the text of Paul, um, Jewish and Greek and Roman and,

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and Christian, and, um, he does this with enormous skill and, um, um, with the knowledge and, um, and so he, you have this, a second kind of gathering. Now, now, more to the point of the book, I think. He integrates a lot of other things. And

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um let me just give you one example. Um, I, I think he integrates better than anyone I've ever read. The Paul the Pharisee and Paul the Apostle. Um, what, when you finish this book or not, not even when you finish it, once you get a couple

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100 pages into it, you'll understand. Why, why he thinks that's important and, and why, in, in order to read that, why you have to integrate with Paul the Pharisee and Paul the Apostle, um, and, and, and you, he will start to persuade you of, of why

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uh and how uh this integration can occur. Um. Plus, there's all this other neat stuff in the book and, and I'm not gonna go into that, maybe we can do that for discussions. And so, what I will do now is ask Professor Wright to, to just

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tell us what he thinks the book is about. Thank you very much and thank you all very much for being here. Um, I'm delighted to be here. Thank you to this institution for hosting me. It's the first time I think I've done anything in public in

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Austin. I've visited before because my wife has relatives in this town, but, um, I've not actually had the chance to be on campus here before, so thank you for that. And for the chance to talk about this book, um, I still, you know, I sometimes when

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I look at this on the shelf, I see that it's got my name on the side and I vaguely remember, you know, some of the blood, toil, tears and sweat that went into it. But already a year down the track from when I more or less

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finished it, I'm thinking, you know, isn't that strange? It looks like I wrote this. There there is a, I, I, I'm sort of trying to come to terms with it myself as well as everyone else trying to come to terms, and yes, of course it's not

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but every review I've seen. But there have been 4 or 5 has has complained about the lecture or at least made some, some odd comments about it. And the answer is quite simple. I have written 4 or 5 monographs on Paul at different levels, mostly sort

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of scholarly or semi-scholarly. I've written commentaries, popular commentaries on all the Pauline letters. I've written a long commentary on Romans, and as it were. The fan club has kind of picked those up, but much of the rest of the discipline seems to me not to have

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been significantly affected except in little footnotes here and there. So I thought sooner or later I would actually like what I'm trying to say, to get out into the larger discourse, and the only way to do that is to take a very large stone and throw

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it into the pond. Here is the very large stone. I've thrown it in the pond and we shall see, we shall see, um. As I was working on this project, you know how sometimes this happens with projects at all levels. You think you know what the

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book is about, and then as you write it, um, and this happens with term papers, it happens with sermons, it happens with all sorts of things, as you're working on it, the thing that it's really about kind of looms up from behind and you think, oh

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my goodness. Maybe that's what I'm saying, and I, I that that's, that's what happened with this book that I wanted to write about, uh, as has been elegantly said, the coherence of Pauline theology and the location of Paul within his larger world, Jewish and Greek and

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Roman, and I found in order to make that clear, I had to write quite a bit about the Jewish and Greek and Roman worlds and that was fun too. Um, and also the way in which what I'm trying to do does address and bring together and

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hold together the emphasis of the very different schools of thought which are out there and actually Pauline's studies like New Testament studies in general, has become much more complicated over the course of my lifetime. I think it's a very good thing. It makes it confusing for

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students and professors alike. You know, when I was a graduate student, it was basically, here's Bullmann, here's Kaserman, here's Bornkamm, here's a few other people trying to catch up with the Germans, and where are you on this map sort of thing. And now there's several quite

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different conversations all going on with the text of poor old Paul sitting in the middle, you know, and there's these different ignorant armies clashing by night around the whole thing. So I was trying to draw all that together, but as I was doing that and wanting

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to argue a case about Christology and wanting to argue a case about eschatology and wanting to argue a case particularly about justification and all of that. So those big topics were always designed to be at the heart of the book and they are the heart of

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the book, but as I was doing that, It dawned on me that what I was saying was something about the origins of Christian theology itself. Paul is obviously our earliest witness for Christian theology, but actually when we say what is theology and we track it back,

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prior to Paul, what we now call theology basically doesn't exist. The word theologia goes back to Aristotle, but that's, The discourse about the gods, which is a sub-branch of philosophy and of the branch of philosophy they call physics. Physics is basically what there is, whatever is

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in the world, and that's physics. And so the gods and what we say about the gods are a kind of sub-branch of that, but it isn't a major discipline in itself. It isn't a major exercise. It's part of other exercises on the edge as it were.

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The Jews don't do theology in the way that Christians have done in theology and often Jews say that to Christians, you know, well you have this thing called theology, we have the Torah and we study it and try and practice it as a community and it's,

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it's not the same thing. Um, and it seems to me that already in Paul, in his, not only in what he says about God, Jesus, the Spirit, Israel, the people of God, the future, hope. Etc. all of that is freshly minted in Paul, but the actual

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exercise itself and teaching churches how to engage in that exercise is a new thing. And I found myself asking why that was so, and the structure of the book, um, reveals and reflects this because in parts one and two, my one regret about these volumes is

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that actually the first one ought to have been fatter to correspond with the second one, but there it is, it's just, I'm sorry, it was actually too short at that point, um. The the first physical volume which comprises parts 1 and 2 of the book, sets

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up in part one, the historical, cultural, social, philosophical, imperial context of Paul. Part two, the second half of the first volume, is about Paul's worldview, the things which he assumes. A worldview is not what you look at, but what you look through. It's the spectacle. which

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you look at, which help you bring the world into focus, which you only start questioning when suddenly things aren't in focus. You say, help, maybe my spectacles are broken or need cleaning or whatever. So I was studying Paul's worldview and at the heart of Paul's worldview

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I found myself saying that for Paul, the thing which makes sense of his world is the idea that there is one people of God, the people in Christ who dwelt by the. Spirit and that the unity of the church and the holiness of the church are

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absolutely central for Paul. You know, he talks about justification in 4 or 5 passages. He talks about the unity and the holiness of the church all over the place, letter after letter, chapter after chapter, and really emphasizes them. But here's the thing, the unity and holiness

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of the Jewish community, which was itself under threat at the time. The unity and holiness, such as it was, was held in place by the cultural symbols of the Jewish world, circumcision, the Sabbath, the food laws, endogamy, the temple, etc. the, the symbols which say we

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are the people of God and we are basically one people and we are the holy people because we keep Torah and whatever they mean by that, etc. For Paul, all that clearly has gone. He no longer requires circumcision of converts, he no longer requires the food

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laws, they no longer are required to make pilgrimages to the temple, etc. So how on earth is this community going to stay as the united and holy community if it doesn't have these, as it were, guy ropes to hold this flagpole in place? And I think

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Paul's answer at quite a deep level is that this community is the community that wrestles with the questions of who God is, who God's people are, what God's future for the world is, and that wrestles with those questions as a matter of praxis of how you

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do stuff on the street, but particularly as a matter of how you read scripture and how you pray. And so Paul's not only reading of scripture himself but teaching his communities how to read scripture. Paul's not only his personal private prayer but teaching his communities how

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to be people of prayer is a matter of bringing all that Jewish tradition into fresh focus, focus through the Messiah and the Spirit. And as a result, not only teaching people doctrines, but teaching them what we might say with hindsight we would call how to do

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Christian theology. I think Paul would say if you want a community to be united and holy, it has to be doing this stuff, and if you give that up. You can whistle for your unity and holiness, and I could say if I was being rude about

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the whole modern church, that if you want to see what happens when people give up doing theology, well, just look at the Western Church today, which is considerably less united and less holy than Paul would have wanted. So that that is the larger thesis which embraces

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the whole book. And within that I argue particular cases about Christology, rheumatology, salvation, the people of God, eschatology and so on. But it's that thing, you know, the slogan give someone a fish and you feed them for a day, teach someone to fish and you feed

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them for life. I think comes through with Paul saying give someone a doctrine. And you'll keep them on track for a day. Teach people how to think, and I say people plural because for Paul this is very much a communal exercise. Teach them how to think

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and you'll feed them for life, and, and on thereafter. That's why he says be transformed by the renewing of your mind and and in in 1 Corinthians 14 he says when it comes to evil I want you to stay as babies, you just don't need to

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know about that stuff. But when it comes to thinking I want you to be grown up. Tragically, so many Christians in today's world do it the other way around, but that's all that's a lot. That was, that was nicely done. It's, it's not the way I

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would have put it, but. If you haven't, if you haven't read this book yet, um, uh, I, I hope we'll get to this. I don't want to start here, but he, he really does have a proposal, uh, a book about narrative and, and Paul's uh it's,

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it's theology, but it's a, it's a, it's also a narrative theology. Now, and I think that's one of the really creative things about this. This is not appalling theology you would have gotten 100 years ago, uh, where you have the doctrines pulled out. He, he creates

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a, a narrative and then he feeds the doctrines into this narrative. It's very uh differently done. And this maybe this sets us up a little bit. Um, because I'm thinking about what questions to, to start with and I thought, well, in some ways, when I read

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this book, I One of the first things that you notice when you read this is is that Professor Wright translates the term Christos as Messiah. and he doesn't do it in a 2 or 3 passages where there seem to be messianic echoes. He does it persistently,

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uh, maybe every single time. I think one time he say king or something like that, and, um, uh, in some ways, there's a little hint there about how he's reading Paul. And um it, it, it, I don't know if you know Pauline's studies, but Christos in

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most Pauline studies, it's been stripped of its messianic echoes. It's been taken up in the crucifixion resurrection dynamics and, you know, we think, you know, there may be 4 or 5 passages where they're kind of messianic kind of dynamics may be in play, maybe, maybe. Um,

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but this is not what Professor Wright thinks. Professor Wright thinks that for Paul, Christo's is Messo and is fulfilling. Promises and what I want to start with is, um, one just a kind of a little question, colleague question and then one for the audience. First is

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how did you think of this? That's for me and it's a really cool idea just to do, I mean, so that's, I don't know how you came up with that idea. And second, what happens then when you translate it as Messiah? Thanks, yeah, that, that, that

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is, that is very central, um, and it's been central to me really since I was a graduate student and when I was a graduate student, and this is in answer to your first question as to how I came by it as it were, I was working

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on Romans. And uh uh so often commentaries on Romans, particularly if you track back and I was trying to read all the commentaries um that have been written in the 20th century, I soon gave up that ambition. There's far too many, and so I was trying

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to read a few from the earlier period and all the ones since the war, and even that was hard, um, but anyway, uh, most of them will say. The theme of Romans is Romans 1:16-17. In the gospel, the gospel is God's power for salvation because in

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it is revealed the righteousness of God, whatever that means, etc. etc. And that that's what Romans is basically about. And then people would say the earlier little flourish, Romans 1:3 and 4, is simply Paul's, uh, saying hello to the Roman congregation where he says the gospel

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concerning his son who was descended from the sea. Of David according to the flesh and designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith, etc.

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etc. Now that looks like a very dense little, it is a very dense little summary of something, but most scholars were saying then that was just Paul quoting an earlier creed, perhaps a Jewish Christian creed, as a way of saying hello to the Roman congregation. But

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then he kind of sets that aside because the idea of Jesus as the king descended from David, designated as such by the resurrection plays no further role in his theology or the letter, I mean I'm oversimplifying but that's what people used to say. And I was

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working particularly on Romans 67 and 8, where Paul is talking about what it means to be E Christo in Christ in question, who is this, um, and how that figures and how the death and resurrection of the Messiah of Christ work at that point. And the

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more I was working on that and going back to and fro between Romans 1 and Romans 67 and 8, the more I started to form in my mind the hypothesis that actually Romans 13 and 4 was far more important as an opening statement of what was

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to come than had been thought. And so I was kind of running that as a hypothesis and wrestling with people like Martin Hengel who'd written about this with Niels Dahl, who'd written a very little bit about Messia Messiahship with Jesus and God. Not much was done

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on that. WD Davis in his book 48 Judaism had had, um, messiah ship in Paul, but that hadn't you see, so much of the work on Paul. In the 20th century, was assuming that Paul wasn't basically a Jewish thinker because we knew he believed in justification

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by faith, therefore that was over against Judaism, works of the law and all that. So we'd moved away from Jewish categories and in particular we've moved away from political categories. We now see with long hindsight that was the effect of a Lutheran Two Kingdoms theology run

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through. Paul, that you've got the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Caesar, never the twain shall meet, so Messiah is obviously a a this worldly title, a Jewish title, a political title, so clearly that's irrelevant for Paul, even if he knows in theory Jesus is

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the Messiah, he's kind of putting that to one side. And I started to think back in the mid-seventies, early mid-seventies, what would happen if we said maybe that was important. And this is also to do with the structure of Romans and the structure of the way

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Paul writes that regularly he says upfront in a dense statement near the beginning of the letter, something about what he thinks the rest of the letter is going to be about. So I then started to read Romans 1:16 and 17 in the light of Romans 13

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and 4 and read the whole of Romans that way, and the second little summary in Romans 9:5. Um, of their race is the Messiah, which is definitely the Messiah, who is, um, uh, of their race according to the flesh and also, and I think that's the

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right translation, um, God overall blessed forever, and I was reading that as an advanced summary of the way Romans 9 to 11 worked. So I gradually started to, to develop that and then if I can let my answer to the first question spill over into the

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answer to the second question, I then started to see all over the place. Actually Paul is living with a narrative, the Jewish narrative, the narrative which says Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, um, Egypt, Exodus, Moses, wilderness wanderings, Sinai, entry of the promised land, uh, monarchy, um, monarchy going

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bad, prophets, exile. And then what question mark. Paul is living with, he again and again alludes to bits bits of that narrative, not as isolated fragments that can happen too, but by implication within a larger narrative and at certain key points. He brings that narrative to

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an end with someone called Christos. Now if you're a Second Temple Jew and you hint at that larger narrative and at where it's going, and finally it gets where it's going and where it's going is called Christos, come on guys, this is the Messiah, you know,

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unless you're going to step out of the world of Second Temple Judaism entirely. So Galatians, Galatians 3 particularly, um, Galatians 3, he tells the story of Abraham and the law and how all that goes wrong and. All the bad things about that, but where it all

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lands is Christos, and that's a very short version of the story, but I agree with Professor John Collins now of Yale, who says quite adamantly that where we find in a work from the Second and Jewish period, the word which is the natural Greek equivalent for

00:25:50.064 - 00:26:06.739

Messiah, and where we find it in these kinds of contexts, we have to be singularly blind not to see that it actually means Messiah. Of course, again, that has all sorts of ramifications politically, which a lot of people don't want in terms of the current debate

00:26:06.739 - 00:26:22.709

between salvation history and apocalyptic, where people like Lou Martin and others who are good friends of mine, Beverly Geventer from Baylor and others, Martin de Boer have said, um, that actually Paul is an apocalyptic theologian, that means he doesn't have a great narrative because what he

00:26:22.709 - 00:26:36.390

has is God invading the world in a whole new way. And I want to say well yes Paul does see that God is doing something radically new and unveiling his presence and his power and his salvation and his justice and all the rest of it, but

00:26:36.530 - 00:26:55.359

when we see that happen, we also see God saying in Paul, this is what I always told you I was going to do. God acts shockingly, startlingly and surprisingly as he always said he would. That's how I hold apocalyptic and salvation history. And with that, Messiah

00:26:55.520 - 00:27:14.209

means Christos means Messiah. And so the proof of the pudding then is in the exegesis. Does this make more sense of passage after passage? And I've argued actually yes it does. Great question And I think he understated it even in, uh, uh, uh, he really makes

00:27:14.209 - 00:27:34.189

this wonderful case but what Paul does is, um, he takes a Jewish narrative in his in his, in his From beginning to end, it's a Jewish story and it's about fulfillment in Christ of this, these promises, which mostly come through Abraham, but they, you know, they're,

00:27:34.310 - 00:27:51.699

they're, they're go to other places. And, but it's a Jewish story that he's taking to Gentiles and, and, um, maybe this is the, the vexed question is, what this does is it creates a different kind of community with a different understanding of what holiness is and,

00:27:51.750 - 00:28:11.900

and The one of the, the, the nervy things about the book is when you start talking about um Um, Jewish promises and who's in the community and um what happened to old covenants and new covenants. You get into lots of political debates. About, um, Christians and

00:28:11.900 - 00:28:26.339

Jews and, um, and he, uh, he, he has more nerve than I because he just waded right into that. And so I, I think that's my next question. Talk about then what happens when you have a Jewish story for Gentiles and create a new kind of

00:28:26.339 - 00:28:43.329

community. It redefines holiness in a whole. Yeah, that's, it's a great way of putting it, and, and yes, these are very sensitive issues, and I'm aware of multiple sensitivities around those questions in, and this is one of the difficulties of writing anything on the subject, let

00:28:43.329 - 00:28:55.974

alone at this length, although that's one of the reasons that it had to take such length, because if you ignore key areas where you know. I know somebody's going to jump up and down the back of the room and say, how can you possibly say that

00:28:55.974 - 00:29:08.114

because that means this, that and the other. So, OK, we have to get that in, where does that fit and so on. So this question particularly comes into land in chapter 15, towards the end of the book where I try to lay it out in terms

00:29:08.114 - 00:29:29.160

of what then are we saying in terms of Paul and the Judaism of Judaisms of his day. I think I would say this first. That all that we know about the Judaisms of the period between, say, the Maccabees in the 160s BC and the Barkhova revolution

00:29:29.160 - 00:29:46.089

in the 130s AD, all that we know about Jews in that period is that there is a constant sense of uncertainty. There's a sense of hope. Uh, our God is going to do something because he's promised he'll do it, and he obviously hasn't done it yet

00:29:46.209 - 00:30:05.395

and that something is a bit nebulous, but it's something to do with the ultimate fulfillment of his great promises. I mean, for me it's axiomatic that any Second Temple Jew reading Isaiah 40 to 55. Reading Ezekiel in the 30s and 40s, reading Jeremiah, reading Zechariah, reading

00:30:05.395 - 00:30:21.342

Malachi, any Jew reading those great books would say that stuff hasn't happened yet. The only writer that we have from that period who does seem to think that most of it has happened is Benirra, writing in roughly 200 BC where he Beats the eye up to

00:30:21.342 - 00:30:35.141

the temple and the high priest in the temple and everything is wonderful and this is almost like a new creation having all this, etc. and then that of course all went horribly wrong because within 30 years you had the Syrian invasion and the Maccabean crisis and

00:30:35.141 - 00:30:53.310

certainly a book like Vanya, a self-congratulatory high priestly book as it were. is not going to cut much ice in the first century AD when the Romans are appointing these political jumped up saddducees as the high priests. Most people, including the Pharisees, don't get it at

00:30:53.310 - 00:31:10.729

all. Thank you, that's not, uh, the sort of eschatology we want. So there's a strong sense of a narrative which is going somewhere and hasn't got there yet. And within that, the different parties within Judaism. Whether it's the different strands within Phariseism itself, let alone Kumran,

00:31:10.859 - 00:31:26.699

let alone Sadducees, let alone, uh, the fourth philosophy who seem to my view, to be quite close to what we might call the hardline right-wing Pharisees, the Shamaites. All those parties are saying we are the true Jews and you lot are missing the point. We are

00:31:26.699 - 00:31:41.760

the ones who are really representing the leading edge of God's purposes, and if you don't get on board, then you're gonna miss out. And imagine Bar Ova in the 130s. Akiba, the greatest rabbi of the day, hails him as Messiah. By no means all Jews agree

00:31:41.760 - 00:31:56.260

with that assessment. So as far as Akifa and Bar Kokfa are concerned, we are real Israel. This is how God is fulfilling his purposes, and if you don't get on board, watch out, it may be the worse for you. In other words, this is the classic

00:31:56.260 - 00:32:15.182

form that Judaism's take in this period is to define and to warn. Even to exclude, to say this is where God is acting and you lot are out of line. One of the tragedies of the war in '66 to 70 is that Josephus says more Jews

00:32:15.182 - 00:32:31.715

in Judea and Jerusalem were killed by other Jews during that war than were killed by Romans because they were following this leader, that Messiah, this this. whatever, and so we know we're the right ones and and and if you're not part of us then watch out.

00:32:31.985 - 00:32:52.050

It's all of that maelstrom of party spirit if you like, which leads John Levinson of Harvard to say in one of his books that the most Jewish thing about early Christianity is its super sessions. That that of course feels paradoxical, but I think it's exactly right.

00:32:52.209 - 00:33:09.839

I prefer not to use the word supersession because it's been picked up by post-Holocaust theologians who have talked about replacement theology and all of that. And of course there is a danger of a self-congratulatory Gentile church saying God's left the Jews behind and we're it now.

00:33:10.089 - 00:33:29.589

And Paul spends 3 chapters at the heart of Romans warning against precisely that position. But that doesn't mean that he collapses into a kind of a 2000 years before its time, postmodern relativism. Who do their thing and Christians do their thing and who cares? That's certainly

00:33:29.589 - 00:33:45.069

of course not where Paul is going. This is very hard for us in our culture to get hold of, particularly of course with the memories of the Holocaust and with the way in which those memories are being manipulated often by various postmodern thinkers with other agendas.

00:33:45.459 - 00:34:05.219

So at the heart of it, you have to say Paul is facing the question like this. If the Messiah has come, and if we know that Jesus really is Messiah, then there's no question that that is now the fixed point for finding out how God has

00:34:05.219 - 00:34:22.610

done what he was gonna do, how God has fulfilled his promises, and particularly who are the people of God. And so it isn't really a question about different peoples, it's really a question. Is Jesus of Nazareth or is he not the Messiah, that there is a

00:34:22.610 - 00:34:37.889

tendency in some circles today, both Jewish and Christian, to talk about Jesus as the Christian Messiah by implication over against the Jewish Messiah. That makes no sense at all. As far as anyone in the first century, you don't have a Christian Messiah, Messiah is a Jewish

00:34:37.889 - 00:34:53.340

category. And if Jews look at Jesus and say it doesn't look like our Messiah, Paul would say, well I could have told you that because in Galatians and 1 Corinthians he talks about the scandal of a crucified Messiah. This is, and he knew perfectly well as

00:34:53.340 - 00:35:06.780

a Pharisee, this is not the kind of Messiah he had in mind. And hence it comes back to the resurrection, that either God has vindicated this Jesus and declared him to be Messiah, or he hasn't. If he hasn't, Paul would say, then we've, we're on the

00:35:06.780 - 00:35:21.370

wrong bus entirely. We're of all people most to be pitied. And that's why I think Romans 13 and 4 will come back to it. What it is. It not only is about Jesus the Messiah, it's about God doing something apocalyptically, if you like, declaring in a

00:35:21.370 - 00:35:38.850

fresh way this is where it's at, and that is a scandal to this day, um, and of course then when he says, you know, I've just tried to write a little thing recently on the gospel in the New Testament, and I envisage Paul coming into a

00:35:38.850 - 00:35:57.020

town like Philippi or Thessalonica or somewhere like that. And he has this good news. Now the word the phrase good news at that period is in regular use in imperial rhetoric. Uh, Augustus and then his successors, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, they all use the word Evangelion

00:35:57.020 - 00:36:13.360

in Greek inscriptions to talk about the good news that it's the emperor's birthday or his accession day or something means good news for the world. Paul comes into these Hellenistic towns and says, I've got good news for you. What sort of good news? Well, we have

00:36:13.360 - 00:36:27.159

a new, the world has a new lord. Yeah, just what's this about? And he's called Jesus. Well, who was he? Well, he was a Jew, well, that's bad news to stop, and he was, and they crucified him because it's utterly ridiculous. But God raised him from

00:36:27.159 - 00:36:47.459

the dead. Well, now come on, what have you been smoking? This is just. Paul knows perfectly well that the good news is complete foolishness in the pagan world and scandalous to the Jewish world, and yet he says, When you announce this good news, stuff happens, and

00:36:47.459 - 00:37:04.139

he says it's the power of God, and you can see that it changes people's lives, it changes their communities, it brings about new creation, and that's how Paul lived. Um, and so we shouldn't be surprised today that in some ways this stuff is nonsense, in other

00:37:04.139 - 00:37:21.919

ways this stuff is scandalous, but nevertheless it has a compelling power. So I just time for maybe one more question and, and I told him I was gonna do this as we're walking over. He's in a Presbyterian setting and so I said, I'm gonna ask you

00:37:21.919 - 00:37:35.149

about justification about faith and you, whether you want to or not, you have to respond. And part of, part of, part of why I, I want to ask him that is he really has an interesting way of reframing of what the way we might get that

00:37:35.149 - 00:38:02.340

phrase. So I'm gonna ask you to talk about that. Yeah, yeah. Remember, we're very sensitive. And I remember, I'm getting out of town this evening, so. Um. Michael. We have a real problem about this, which was. Nailed by my friend and actually former pupil Alistair McGrath

00:38:02.340 - 00:38:26.729

in his book on justification on the history of the doctrine. He says right up front, give me a. That what the church has meant by the word justification. Probably from at least Augustine right through. Is just significantly different from what it seems to have meant in

00:38:26.729 - 00:38:52.330

the New Testament, that is to say, words shift and do different things, but, Paul's language about justification was picked up by the church comparatively early, In order to address subtly different questions which overlap with Paul's questions, but are not exactly the same, that's a real problem.

00:38:53.100 - 00:39:09.459

Because if you say what did Paul say about justification, I, as a first century historian, will try to tell you what Paul said about what he meant by decayosis, deca, you know, that whole word group. But when people say what did Paul say about justification, what

00:39:09.459 - 00:39:27.129

they often mean is what did Paul say on the topic. Which we know as justification, which is how do sinners get saved, what's the or salutis, how do, how does the gospel produce faith, and how does that faith, uh, get reflected in God's verdict, God's judgment,

00:39:27.199 - 00:39:42.114

etc. etc. How do we put together present justification. and all of those are things on which we can quite validly draw on Paul, but it's not exactly the same as what Paul was talking about. So this is really difficult and that's one of the reasons why

00:39:42.625 - 00:39:58.959

to understand Paul you have to get inside the mindset of a first century Jew. For whom actually the topic of justification is not a central issue. If you look at all the Jewish texts, Josephus, Philo, Kumra, um, the Apocrypha, the pseudepigrapher, etc. the early rabbis, they

00:39:58.959 - 00:40:15.350

are not talking about, it's it was one of the eye-opening moments for me when I first read Josephus. I remember thinking halfway through. Isn't this odd? Here he is, he's talking about life in Jerusalem and Judea in the 40s, 50s, 60s. That's exactly the period when

00:40:15.350 - 00:40:32.489

Paul is going about talking about justification. It's not a topic in Josephus. Josephus doesn't say that people are sitting around at night drinking coffee, arguing about whether faith receives works or works receive faith or how all that stuff. They really aren't. The reason Paul has to

00:40:32.489 - 00:40:51.000

fret about that and teach about that is because he believes the God of Israel has through Jesus the Messiah done this new thing out there in the world, and now Jews and Gentiles belong in the family together. And that's why the first statement of justification, Galatians

00:40:51.000 - 00:41:10.570

2:11-21. Is not about how you get saved. The word saved, salvation, the Sotera word group doesn't occur in Galatians, curiously, considering how important Galatian has been for subsequent debates on that. It's about who you get to sit down and eat at table with. Here's the family,

00:41:11.070 - 00:41:28.860

Jew and Gentile alike, happily eating together, which is scandalous to many people in the ancient, many Jews in the ancient world, but they're doing it because they're all in Christ. And Paul says after Peter and the others have separated themselves when folk come from Jerusalem. Paul

00:41:28.860 - 00:41:41.239

said, look, sorry, you're going about things in the wrong way, you know perfectly well that we are Jews by birth, if you see, not Gentile sinners, yet we know that one is not justified by the works of Torah, but through the Pistis Christian, which I would

00:41:41.239 - 00:41:57.290

say the faithfulness of the Messiah. And so we have believed so that we might be justified, and the whole, the whole of this discourse is about here we all are, it's about the unity of the church. That's not to save, you see, people then come back

00:41:57.290 - 00:42:10.350

and say, I saw it in print just recently, oh NT Wright collapses the vertical dimension of salvation into the horizontal dimension. Well, sorry, Paul knows nothing of vertical and horizontal at this point. We're actually supposed to be angled mirrors, that's what being in the image of

00:42:10.350 - 00:42:26.459

God is about. So it's both, both vertical and horizontal. Um, sorry, it's a bit of a rhetorical trick to say that, but just for the sake of, um, because for Paul. When God wanted to save the world, he began with Abraham and the founding of a

00:42:26.459 - 00:42:44.639

family and the promise of an inheritance. That's not to collapse soteriology into ecclesiology. It is to say that this is how the great story of salvation works, so that when God came in person in the person of His Son, the Messiah, and sent in person the

00:42:44.639 - 00:43:04.560

person of His Spirit, Galatians 4:1-7, the effect of this, the explosive effect of this is to fulfill all that he'd been doing through Ephraim Abraham right the way on. By creating in the Messiah, by the Spirit, this one new humanity in place of the two, I'm

00:43:04.560 - 00:43:19.659

quoting Ephesians 21 reviewer said rather snidely recently, it looks as though Wright's theology could basically be summed up as the letter to the Ephesians implied, um, and we know. Didn't write that, so obviously a writer's made a lodge there somewhere. Well, it seems to me if

00:43:19.659 - 00:43:30.909

Ephesians wasn't written by Paul, it was written by somebody fairly soon afterwards who knew his mind really rather well and does seem to have been trying to produce a summary. So I put my hand up and say, yeah, OK, that's no bad place to be actually.

00:43:31.750 - 00:43:58.300

Yeah But so what, what we have already in Galatians is justification as a covenantal statement, and the Dikai Zune language going back to Tadaka in the Hebrew carries all those covenantal. Associations as well as and joined together with all the associations of right behavior, righteousness in

00:43:58.300 - 00:44:14.360

the normal moral sense. Those two are not held apart in the Old Testament, they go together. This is, you know, righteousness is covenant behavior. Doesn't mean that Gentiles can't display righteousness as well, we can have all those debates. But then in Romans, not in Galatians, in

00:44:14.360 - 00:44:31.080

Romans this gets fused with a forensic debate where Paul uses the language of the law court to say all humankind is in the dock. How are they going to be got out of this mess of their being guilty before God, and then he talks about what

00:44:31.080 - 00:44:48.925

God has done in Jesus, in the Messiah. This is Romans 3:21-26, of course, um, in order to deal with this forensic. Situation, that's not the same argument as you have in Galatians. You have to be very precise here because systematic theologians have so regularly and naturally,

00:44:48.965 - 00:45:06.485

that's how the discipline works, pulled together Romans and Galatians and tried to turn them into a set of abstract propositions. Again and again we have to go back to the text and say how, what's the actual musical line that runs through this text and be sure

00:45:06.485 - 00:45:24.840

that we're hearing that. So that for instance, I'm not doing this very systematically, but it's all laid out in about 19 points in the book. Maybe more than 19. But, but, you know, just, just to show you the problem there, CS Lewis in his introduction to

00:45:25.020 - 00:45:48.760

Milton's Paradise Lost says at one point that here Milton saw as a single entity something which we even 300 years later, 350 years when Lewis is writing, see inevitably as 4 or 5 quite separate things and in order simply to understand Milton, in a sense his

00:45:48.760 - 00:46:07.080

argument to contemporary compared to Paul, we have to force ourselves to hold in our mind things which to us look quite different, but to him we're all part of the same thing. How much more with Paul, so. The righteousness language is moral, yes, it is covenantal,

00:46:07.360 - 00:46:26.479

certainly, it is also forensic. It is also for Paul eschatological, and here's how Romans works, that in Romans 2, often ignored by commentators, Paul talks about the future Day of judgment. When those who by patience in well doing seek for glory and honor and immortality will

00:46:26.479 - 00:46:46.629

be vindicated, justified, will be given eternal life, and Paul holds that as the marker, as it were. Then in chapter 3, he says this verdict has been brought forward into the present when somebody believes in the good news of Jesus Christ. The result immediately in Romans

00:46:46.629 - 00:47:02.229

end of 3, beginning of 4, is that this means there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. Back to the Galatians point about eating at the same table, because Romans 4, this is how God has been faithful to the covenant with Abraham. Do you see how

00:47:02.389 - 00:47:19.120

it all forms part of the same thing for Paul. So that then when he comes to Romans 10, which is actually the perhaps the biggest statement of all of this, in Romans 9:6 to 10:3, he has told that story of Israel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and so

00:47:19.120 - 00:47:35.679

on, all the way through to the puzzle of the post-exilic period. Where are we going, what's happening? And the way he brings it to the head, exactly as Josephus would have seen. Is with Deuteronomy because the Torah is presented, this is so important, the Torah presents

00:47:35.679 - 00:47:52.060

itself, Genesis to Deuteronomy, not just as the backstory of Israel but as the whole story of Israel. So that Josephus says when you read the end of Deuteronomy, you are seeing a prophecy about things that have taken place and are taking place in our own day.

00:47:52.800 - 00:48:09.709

Because the end of Deuteronomy is about exile as the covenant curse, followed by renewal of the covenant as the covenant blessing when people's hearts are turned around so that they will now um have a whole new relationship with God. Deuteronomy 30. What does Paul do? He

00:48:09.709 - 00:48:24.350

says, here is the entire story of Israel and now tell Oscar no and Christos, the Messiah is the end or goal of the law. How are you going to expand that? Well, of course, with Deuteronomy 30. He does in Romans 10:6 through 8, and that's why

00:48:24.350 - 00:48:39.070

he then says, if you confess to the lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised you from the dead, you will be saved, for one confesses with the mouth and so is justified, believes and, and confesses with the limbs and sorry,

00:48:39.340 - 00:48:54.120

and believes in the heart, and so I've done that the wrong way round. One confesses with 11 believes in the heart and so it's justified. One confesses with the lips and so is saved. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek because the one God

00:48:54.120 - 00:49:08.989

is the is is the God of all, uh, rich in mercy to all who call upon Him. See, Paul for Paul this is all part of that narrative, so that you've got the initial statement in Romans 2 about the future judgment. You've got the statement in

00:49:09.120 - 00:49:26.889

Romans 3 and 4, then recapitulated in 10, that in the present all those who believe are declared to be righteous in all those different senses, and therefore there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, which is an ecclesiological statement. And then in Romans 8. You see

00:49:26.889 - 00:49:56.500

people Sorry, I'm going on, but let me just say this. This is why I'm here. OK. Yes, for this. That's what Andy Hopkins. So often commentators on Romans have said Romans 1 to 4 is about justification, Romans 5 to 8 is about sanctification. Wrong. Romans 1

00:49:56.500 - 00:50:16.139

to 8 is about justification, and sanctification is subsumed, incorporated in a little bit within that. Those are the later categories of medieval and reformed dogmatics. They're not the way Paul thinks, because justification is massively the subject of Romans 8. There is therefore now no condemnation because

00:50:16.149 - 00:50:27.679

the law of the spirit of Christ, uh, the law of the spirit of life in the Messiah Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. This is all about, so now we see how we get back to Romans 2 and find ourselves

00:50:27.679 - 00:50:43.010

on the right side of the equation. We've had the present justification and this is how it makes sense, which is why in the great celebration of the end of Romans 8, Romans 8:31-39. It's all about justification. What shall we say to this if God is for

00:50:43.010 - 00:51:02.429

us, who, who is against us? Who is to declare us in the wrong? Theos or Deion. It is God who justifies, who is to condemn. This is all still about justification. But what's happened? This is not only an eschatological doctrine, the future coming into the present

00:51:02.429 - 00:51:18.149

and then being reaffirmed in the future itself. It is also about the Messiah and the spirit. So much dogmatic theology. Has tried to do a doctrine of justification on the basis of Romans 1 to 4, where the spirit is not mentioned, except at the end of

00:51:18.149 - 00:51:36.489

Romans 2, which is interesting. But if you take Romans 1 to 8 as a bad justification, you will see you need the Spirit. This is why basically I should say this in a Presbyterian context, Calvin got this right. I hope that reassures me. That is, that

00:51:36.489 - 00:51:51.610

is to say, he saw that for a full doctrine of justification you need a strong pumatology, which is what you get in your Romans 5 through 8. Now there's much more I could say about Philippines 3, etc. the one little tailpiece. So often in the, in

00:51:51.610 - 00:52:10.489

the debates back as far as Schweitzer on through Sanders, onto Douglas Campbell today. You get people playing off, and again it works out exegetically Romans 1 to 4:5 to 8, you get people playing off justification and being in Christ, as though they are two different sorts

00:52:10.489 - 00:52:30.209

of thing which just work differently. Sorry, in Galatians, clearly they belong together. Read the last 10 verses of Galatians 3 and you'll see. And in Romans 3:24, Paul says they are justified by His grace through the redemption which is en Christo Jesus, which is in the

00:52:30.209 - 00:52:45.685

Messiah. In Galatians 2:17, he says, if seeking to be justified en Christo in the Messiah, we ourselves are found to be sinners. In Philippians 3:8 the following, he says that I may be. found in him not having a righteousness of my own but that which is

00:52:45.685 - 00:53:01.564

through the faithfulness. So for Paul, justification and being in Christ belong together. If we've split them apart, that's our problem. And the mantra that I use for this is we must stop giving 19th century answers to 16th century questions and start giving 21st century answers to

00:53:01.564 - 00:53:35.399

1st century questions. Professor Wright, I just wish you could feel a little passion about your work. I, I thank you so very much. Let me ask, if you have a question that you think you would like to ask, could you raise your hand so we could

00:53:35.399 - 00:53:51.840

get a sense of, um, what's on the table right now? OK. All right, why don't we just start over here and if you will go to the microphone with your question, we are recording this. I want you to know that before you ask your question and

00:53:51.840 - 00:54:11.010

do speak into the microphone so that the, uh, recording can pick it up. Thank you. How do we, uh, deal with our Jewish brothers, uh. Rabbis in terms of um our New Testament understanding of Galatians because they have one view, they have another, especially dealing with

00:54:11.010 - 00:54:31.250

the law. Yeah, um, part of, well, there are several layers of difficulty in the way of the kind of dialogue that we would all like to have. I have been privileged to have some. Um, dialogue with Jewish, Jewish ideologies, um, there are one or two rabbis

00:54:31.250 - 00:54:47.080

who I'm privileged to call good friends with whom I've had this conversation. I am not as experienced at that as some, maybe some in this room, but there are several layers of difficulty, of which the first is that rabbinic Judaism as initially codified in the missioner,

00:54:47.169 - 00:55:08.659

roughly 200, and then massively set out in the Talmud, roughly 400, give or take. Rabbinic Judaism in certain quantifiable and definite ways seems to be a very different sort of thing from that complex Judaism's world of the first century. Um, one of my, uh, colleagues who

00:55:08.659 - 00:55:25.300

knows more about the rabbis than I do, said to me not long ago, the missioner also is super sessionist. It's a way of saying this is what true Judaism looks like, not that other stuff. And so already that's a problem because since roughly the 3rd century.

00:55:26.500 - 00:55:44.469

The most vibrant and expressive bits of the Jewish world have seen Judaism in ionic terms, which actually doesn't sit terribly easily with lots of the other stuff, whether it's Josephus, whether it's for Ezra, whether it's the Enoch literature, whatever, which we know to have been out

00:55:44.469 - 00:56:07.300

there in Paul's day. So, um, That there is a sense that we're already starting off with a slightly uneven playing field there. Then of course we come with the massive legacy of anti-Semitism in or anti-Judaism in the medieval period, which turns itself into anti-Semitism when it

00:56:07.300 - 00:56:26.320

gets bundled up with um neo-Darwinian racial theories in the 19th century. Um, and, you know, in some ways, there is a time for um those who belong to the, Long tail of that culture just to put their hands on their mouths and say all we can

00:56:26.320 - 00:56:43.919

do is hold on to what we know and and be humble about this. However, my sense now is with Jewish interlocutors like Peter Oaks from Virginia, um, who's a great Jewish philosopher who I've enjoyed dialogue with, he, I remember him saying at the end of one

00:56:43.919 - 00:57:01.409

such session. We Jews have to go on saying that Jesus isn't the Messiah. You Christians have to go on saying that you think he is, and we have to go on saying that to one another. And I thought that's, that's a wise and good and positive

00:57:01.409 - 00:57:17.250

way of saying it, you know, let's not pretend that we can water stuff down and then we'll have agreement, won't we, because we won't, not, not that easily. But let's not, um, let's find wise ways of doing it, you know, we in the postmodern world, so

00:57:17.250 - 00:57:33.500

much of our problem is that discourse has declined. We don't know how to have disagreement anymore. We just lob lob rocks at each other from the other side of fences, and maybe, maybe, maybe, please God, a wise, healthy conversation between Christians and Jews could be one

00:57:33.500 - 00:57:49.649

way of modeling how to do appropriate discourse. It's not easy. I have seen it done. I have glimpsed it, but it seems to me that's where we should be going. There's a line over here for more people, yeah, my goodness, OK. Um, with the potential of

00:57:49.649 - 00:58:02.729

throwing another frog into a pond, I don't intend to, um, and it, it works well with this idea of the discourse declining and, and knowing how to talk better, but you discussed the idea of the political implications of Christoph Asaniah, um, and I was just curious

00:58:02.729 - 00:58:18.889

for some more. Standing on that, uh, regarding, um, political within how the people of God may govern themselves, maybe how they engage in a broader, a broader political world, or how Christoph the Messiah is to guide all of life for all peoples in a current day.

00:58:19.659 - 00:58:36.120

Thank you. Whole topic for an entire other uh book actually. The obvious first thing to say is in chapter 5 here, um, I talk about the Roman imperial world of Paul's day and its iconography and its symbols and the narrative that it told, and in chapter

00:58:36.120 - 00:58:50.320

12 I come back and say, so, um, if this is what Paul's theology is all about, where does that? Land in the world of first century empire. Now here we have a problem about the recent history of scholarship because just for the last 20 years or

00:58:50.320 - 00:59:10.929

so, really since the early 1990s, there's been a sudden explosion of studies on empire in North America in particular. There are certain Identifiable local reasons for that, as many scholars in North America have seen that, uh, there are certain features of the contemporary Western world and

00:59:10.929 - 00:59:24.393

the way the contemporary Western world reacts or lives in relation to the rest of the world which remind them rather strongly of certain elements in the first century empire. Now that's a whole other debate about simply how we analyze where. We are currently in our culture,

00:59:24.623 - 00:59:41.502

but what that has given rise to, I'm thinking of the work of Richard Horsley and Neil Elliott and people like this, is a whole new swathe of studies, basically reducing, I don't think that's too sharp a word to use, reducing Paul's language about Jesus and God

00:59:41.502 - 00:59:58.926

simply to counter imperial rhetoric. And Jesus is Lord, therefore Caesar isn't. Um, and I have said again and again in those debates at the SPL and elsewhere, um, actually I do think that is one of the implications of, say, Philippians 2:6-11, where Paul tells a story

00:59:58.926 - 01:00:15.580

about Jesus in ways which would resonate for a Philippian audience with stories they knew about Caesar and going way back to Alexander the Great, actually, in a way of saying Jesus is the true savior, Jesus is the true Kyrgios, Jesus is the true king. That means

01:00:15.580 - 01:00:28.620

that you have a different kind of salvation to what's on offer in the Roman world where salvation was quite a big clunky word that meant what we Romans give you, you know, good roads, good justice, good this, good postal service, and Paul said, work out your

01:00:28.620 - 01:00:43.379

own salvation with fear and trembling because the living God is at work in you, um, you're gonna have to figure out what this whole thing means on the street where Caesar's salvation is very much in your face. So I do think there is a massive political

01:00:43.379 - 01:00:59.094

emphasis, but what's missing in the discourse of the last 20 years again and again is an integration of that with the central themes of Paul's theology and especially the central Jewish themes. You know, think of Psalm 72, think of Psalm. Psalm 89. Think of Psalm 2

01:00:59.094 - 01:01:14.169

itself near the head of the psalter. The nations are in an uproar. God establishes his king Zion, and therefore now you kings of the earth watch out because he's in charge now, and you better shiver in your shoes and see what you're going to do. And

01:01:14.469 - 01:01:29.340

Paul makes good use of Psalm 2 at key points and and and the others, but this idea that when the Jewish Messiah comes, he will be king of the whole world, that is why there's a Gentile mission. And we in the modern West have flattened that

01:01:29.340 - 01:01:42.169

down into, um, OK, if Jesus is the savior, then we get to go to heaven, so that's all right, so we can forget about this world. Well, sorry, that is just totally not where the New Testament is at. This is about new heavens and new earth

01:01:42.169 - 01:01:56.185

and Jesus in charge. What does that look like? It looks like Jesus on the cross. Wow, that's what Mark says. He's the king of the Jews. Centurion said, this man is the Son of God. This is how the New Testament political theology works, but notice what's

01:01:56.185 - 01:02:14.139

happened. It's not just a redefinition of who's in charge, it's a redefinition of power itself. It's a different sort of power that's at the heart of it. And so many of the contemporary studies of fallen politics really don't quite get that far. Some do. So I've

01:02:14.139 - 01:02:32.754

wrestled with that in chapter 12, um, and I do think therefore that there is, as was said in the introduction, a fresh integration out there waiting for us to rediscover it. Um, our Western culture has separated this, this is, you know, standard Enlightenment epicureanism. Kick gone

01:02:32.754 - 01:02:44.695

upstairs, um, if you're still interested in him, you can go and visit him on Sundays or when you say your prayers and eventually go and stay with him forever, but we'll run downstairs our way, thank you very much. And we think that's modern, it isn't. It's

01:02:44.695 - 01:03:06.560

epicureanism rediscovered in 1417 with when, um, uh, Poggio Bracchiolini found the manuscript of Lucretius's Dereum Natura and suddenly the whole world wakes up to something that the Romans knew perfectly about already. We have reinhabited that whole cultures are based on it. Um, Our culture de facto,

01:03:06.679 - 01:03:25.120

yours de jure actually. So this is a whole other risk but um uh somehow the New Testament rebels against that split level universe and Paul on Jesus and Caesar is is near the heart of that, but it's not simplistic, it, it isn't, oh well now therefore

01:03:25.120 - 01:03:41.840

we've all got to be good modern left wingers because you know. Um, what's that title of Jim Wallace's book? Why, why, why the Left, Why, Why the Left Gets It Wrong and the Right Doesn't get it, or the other way around doesn't matter. Excuse me. You

01:03:41.840 - 01:03:55.840

started to feel a bit on this as you ended the answer to the previous question, but I wonder if you would give specifically the implications of this reading of Paul for the so-called postmodern church, post-Christian church in the contemporary context, and particularly when you talk about

01:03:55.840 - 01:04:13.729

preaching the scandal of the cross, and then you mentioned earlier in your talk about the difference between teaching the fish and, and just fishing. So where is preaching and lives are changed with doing in goodness, yeah, yeah, great question, great question, um. This, this varies enormously

01:04:13.729 - 01:04:28.120

because I mean you in America still do have a tradition of preaching which we in the UK are always in danger of actually losing um. You still teach people how to preach and you have different churches with different traditions, but preaching is important in a way

01:04:28.120 - 01:04:42.590

that it isn't sadly in many British churches, and that's just by way of instruction. Um, it does seem to me that, uh, the heart of preaching, and, and forgive me if I'm sort of pressing all the wrong buttons or even the obvious ones, the heart of

01:04:42.590 - 01:04:57.229

preaching has to remain exposition of scripture. Uh, most people in our congregations do not know their Bibles very well, and how much you tell them to read them, they still sadly don't know them very well. Even children who've grown up in Christian homes and gone to

01:04:57.229 - 01:05:13.072

Sunday school, they know the big stories of Noah and. Moses and so on, but they they don't actually know how the Bible works and somehow, though the sermon is not the ideal vehicle to because really you need lectures and proper education, but somehow in the sermon

01:05:13.072 - 01:05:29.753

you have to tease them and give them tasters as to how that big picture works so that the effect ought to be both to fuel and contextualize their praying and. A lot of preaching takes place in the liturgical context of the Eucharist and it fuels and

01:05:29.753 - 01:05:41.993

contextualizes what happens when we receive the bread and wine together, but it also ought to send people back home to say, well, I never, I never read Philippians like that before. I really need to sit down and read it through, or I never sort of thought

01:05:41.993 - 01:05:56.095

of Exodus as working in that way. Let me just read it again and see that that that's what one ought to be preaching for, not as an end in itself for head knowledge, but as. As informing people with the larger picture of the the whole Bible

01:05:56.236 - 01:06:11.516

and then how the parts work in themselves all the way up and down to individual verses and back up to the big picture. So that, um, but that's gonna vary enormously if you're in an inner city congregation with people with comparatively low levels of literacy, there's

01:06:11.516 - 01:06:25.798

all sorts of things that you would do and wouldn't do which you might be completely the other way. If you were in um a reasonably affluent suburb with a congregation, lots of whom were professional people with university degrees and so on, in some ways that's the

01:06:25.798 - 01:06:41.357

harder one actually um because they will have all sorts of things which will be deeply resistant at a worldview level to what you might want to say. Um, so, so it will vary enormously, but I would say to try to get people to inhabit that world

01:06:41.357 - 01:06:55.780

and this is why again. I found myself coming back at the end of the book to talking about Paul and prayer, and I realized as I did that, that for many people today, prayer is kind of the pious thing that you do on the side, but

01:06:55.780 - 01:07:08.659

for Paul it is absolutely central. But for me the key text for Pauline Christology is 1 Corinthians 8:6. For us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we to Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ through whom we all things and we

01:07:08.659 - 01:07:25.899

through Him. What's going on there? has taken the daily prayer of Judaism, the Shema, hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and has discovered Jesus inside it. He hasn't bolted him onto the outside. He's found Jesus to be at the heart of the

01:07:25.899 - 01:07:42.919

meaning of monotheism itself, and monotheism is not for a first century Jew, an abstract theory, a box that you either put a tick or cross by. Monotheism is something you live for and die for. And we are and and and and Jews when they talked about

01:07:42.919 - 01:07:58.080

somebody saying the shama, they talked about that person taking on himself or herself the yoke of the kingdom of God. The yoke of the, in other words, when you say that prayer, you are signing on, you are saying yes this is me, count me in, I'm

01:07:58.080 - 01:08:12.159

part of this. Wherever we're going, whatever needs to be done, I'm up for it. And so Paul in 1 Corinthians 8:6, at the beginning of that section on how to live as a Christian in a complicated pagan world, he says this is where we start, we're

01:08:12.159 - 01:08:31.160

Christological monotheists, and, and, and that means, I think that's how Paul prayed, and we need then to teach people to pray theologically. In a way which is refreshed by those scriptural roots rather than just here's the theology now when you say your prayers, you might remember

01:08:31.160 - 01:08:44.580

some of it. There is a deeper integration. I could go on about this, but I think you see where I'm heading with yeah. Christian, before you ask your question, answer, ask your question, um, the other thing that Professor Wright can say about what he does is,

01:08:44.759 - 01:09:02.569

um, there's no such thing as as a single passage in the New Testament that you just pull out and read. When he reads a passage. This is overstating it only slightly. The whole Old Testament, the whole is gathered around, is in the room watching and is

01:09:02.569 - 01:09:16.858

available to, to help you hear it. Um, it, it is, uh, you can watch when he answers questions. Run off, you ask about something and he runs off and he gathers his Jewish material and he begins to gather it and then once he gathers it, he

01:09:16.858 - 01:09:36.330

can then answer your que respond to your question. Well, that's how he reads the, the New Testament text and that's how he reads Paul and it's really uh an incredibly rich way to, to try to walk through a parting passage with all those s. So, follow

01:09:36.330 - 01:09:56.080

up to the last question, at one o'clock, I'm going to a class on preaching at funerals. And uh in your previous book, Surprised by Hope, you were very energetic about the importance of resurrection, the doctrine of resurrection, the reality of resurrection, and I wondered in this

01:09:56.990 - 01:10:12.970

Gigantic book, Where does Resurrection Fit? Um, again, one of the reviews I've had told me off a bit for not saying enough about resurrection in this book, but part of the reason for that was that in the previous book in this series, The Resurrection of the

01:10:12.970 - 01:10:28.759

Son of God, which was already quite a long book, I actually went into it in microscopic detail and therefore, Just didn't want to repeat all that, it would be a bit silly because I actually see that, it's currently 4 volumes this. I see that as, I

01:10:28.759 - 01:10:45.129

see that as, as a whole statement, and so though there is some repetition, I try not to repeat it. However, um, resurrection is the point at which, Eschatology happens, the stuff that God said he would do at the end has come rushing forward and exploded into

01:10:45.129 - 01:11:04.209

the middle. That's how it works, and that's why, um, all those amazing promises which are returned from exile promises as in Ezekiel 37, which are, uh, new life for the martyr's promises as in Daniel 12, etc. etc. these all come rushing forwards, and a 1st century

01:11:04.209 - 01:11:17.959

Jew is not expecting one person to rise from the dead ahead of time. He's expecting that's what God is going to do for all his people at the end of time. And so this is part of the extraordinary thing about the Damascus Road event, um, and

01:11:17.959 - 01:11:35.879

why it just blinds and dazzles Paul and why he just has to rethink everything that suddenly all that stuff, return from exile, return of Yahweh to Zaire, defeat of the pagans, defeat of, of all the powers, etc. etc. It's all happened close up and personal in

01:11:35.879 - 01:11:52.629

Jesus and that resources and fuels everything he says about Jesus. That's why again Romans 1:3 following is so important. He is the Messiah, God demonstrated it by raising from the dead, now therefore he is. The Lord of the world who demands your believing allegiance, and this

01:11:52.629 - 01:12:10.160

is very much Caesar language, by the way, Son of God, Lord of the world, believing allegiance, result in justice and salvation. So resurrection is also about a power of God which is greater than the power of the world, um. But then of course because it's happened

01:12:10.160 - 01:12:27.720

in the middle, that's what anchors and gives body to the ultimate hope. Now preaching at funerals is, is hard because of course most people at funerals are not in much of a mood to hear any fresh doctrinal exposition. So there's there's a paradox here that what

01:12:27.720 - 01:12:42.035

one really wants to say at funerals is what ought to be said um in the ordinary course. of preaching so that when you come to the funeral, um, you don't try and do the full exposition of 1 Corinthians 15 or whatever, people just, you know, they

01:12:42.035 - 01:12:54.714

will, it'll be an odd noise. Um, it's, it's to be preached on on Easter Day, and many other times during the year so that when you come to the funeral you can pull out the one or two things which need to be said to this congregation

01:12:54.714 - 01:13:13.240

here and now, but it should be about, For sure and certain hope Not that when we die we'll go to heaven, you know, the New Testament actually curiously hardly ever mentions that. Um, I've said it in surprise but I hope I say it again, heaven is

01:13:13.240 - 01:13:29.770

important but it's not the end of the world. The important point is new heavens and new earth. And that the whole point of the resurrection stories in the gospels is not Jesus has died and been raised, therefore we're going to heaven, that Jesus died and been

01:13:29.770 - 01:13:44.049

raised, therefore God's new world has been launched, and we are called to be part of it. That that's, that's the emphasis in the gospel resurrection narratives. We are called not only to share in its benefits but to be agents of it happening because 1 Corinthians 15,

01:13:44.089 - 01:14:00.790

Romans 8, Revelation 21, etc. Holding that together with Genesis 1 and 2, new creation is going to happen, and Jesus' resurrection guarantees it, and our beloved brother or sister, we, you know, I took my own father's funeral 3 years ago this month. It was one of

01:14:00.790 - 01:14:17.569

the most moving moments of my life, and it was a huge privilege. He was a quietly, humbly believing man, huge privilege quietly but definitely to celebrate a new creation. And to say goodnight to him if you like, against the day when we will be part of

01:14:17.569 - 01:14:44.060

that again together. My professor, the late Earl Ellis, who was an early champion of the Jewishness of the New Testament, made much of the idea of corporate personality, corporate identity as a key to interpreting Paul's use of both in Christ and in Adam. Uh, how, how

01:14:44.060 - 01:14:57.339

do you evaluate that? Wow, yes, no, I, I knew Earl, not, I suspect as well as you did, but, um, uh, he was a good friend and a support to me in my, in my younger days, and I, I honor his memory, and I actually have

01:14:57.339 - 01:15:19.589

an essay in the Festri which came out about 10 years ago. Um, Ed Sanders says in Paul and Palestinian Judaism towards the end. That the heart of Paul is undoubtedly incorporation, whatever you want to call it, being in Christ, that's what Schweitzer called Christ's mysticism, which

01:15:19.589 - 01:15:37.470

wasn't a very helpful word in the British context, but either incorporation or inclusion or whatever, and Sanders then says, but what Paul meant by this is more opaque to research than is normally thought. And I think that's true, we can all sort of identify, yeah, something's

01:15:37.470 - 01:15:52.770

going on there, something about being summed up in Christ, but why did Paul say that? Um I would love it. I said this to my graduate students in a seminar just the other day, I would love it if somebody were to dig up a scroll which

01:15:52.770 - 01:16:14.529

had, uh, phrases like bamashir in the Messiah. So far they haven't. Um, the idea of incorporation into somebody is not a major second temple category. If you track it back into the Old Testament, you find odd bits and pieces. God saying to Abraham in you and

01:16:14.529 - 01:16:27.680

in your seed all the families of the earth should be blessed. One of the dissertations on this, um, in a previous generation said that maybe that's where Paul got the idea from, that he went back to in Abraham and then said, well, let's try out what

01:16:27.680 - 01:16:47.950

happens if we say in Messiah. Likewise, people. In that period we're not talking about being in Adam in the way that Paul does, not that he says that very often. So that I and others have speculated. That actually the idea of corporate personality may not have

01:16:47.950 - 01:17:02.299

been such a big thing in the ancient world as some people have thought. You you can make a case, you know, here is the army of the Philistines, here is the army of Israel, and what happens is Goliath comes forward. Philistine ranks. David comes forward astonishingly

01:17:02.299 - 01:17:21.580

from Israel. Israel ranks. They have the battle. David kills Goliath. That means Israel has defeated the Philistines. It's the first royal thing David does actually is represent the whole people and fight their battle. Um, and so though it doesn't say there in David, that comes a

01:17:21.580 - 01:17:36.964

bit later, there is a sense that something has happened where he has represented, stood in for the people. Of course the place in the Old Testament where you get this most acutely is Isaiah 14:55 where the notion of the. The servant starts off as being Israel,

01:17:37.354 - 01:17:51.180

then it appears to be the remnant within Israel, then it appears that it's not quite that either because the remnant are those who obey the voice of the servant, and then something happens to the servant, dies and is vindicated and so on at 53. And there's

01:17:51.180 - 01:18:05.669

a sort of fluidity throughout that which some people see as reflected also in the way in which in, but it's an apocalyptic image in Daniel 7, you get the Son of Man representing the people of the saints of the Most High, and there's questions about, um,

01:18:05.700 - 01:18:19.750

is that what the original text meant, is that how it's being read in the 1st century and all of that. So it's uh what, where does this come to? I think it comes to saying, We don't have as good evidence for a pre-Christian notion of corporate

01:18:19.750 - 01:18:38.180

personality as a previous generation thought we did, however, it seems that Paul is driven to saying things which almost invent that as a category, using bits and pieces of the Old Testament. Why, and again I think it comes back to the resurrection, because God has done

01:18:38.180 - 01:18:54.303

for Jesus, So low what he was expected to do for all his people at the end, and it's as though the resurrection itself says, Paul, you're going to need some sort of a corporate category here and and it's because the resurrection demonstrates him to be a

01:18:54.303 - 01:19:08.596

Messiah that he can then use N Christo. That that's where I am at the moment. There's a couple of articles in the Festsrift for Ed Sanders. By Richard Hayes, one by, I think Stan Stowers, I'm not sure, um, came out 4 or 5 years ago which

01:19:08.596 - 01:19:21.925

pick up Ed Sanders' point about this is more opaque to research and there's more of thought, and that that's that's quite helpful. But clearly we need some sort of incorporative category and that's why I think at the heart of it for Paul being in the Messiah,

01:19:22.045 - 01:19:35.720

it's basically, I say this with fear and trembling, it's an Israel category. It's a people of God category. The people of God are the ones who are summed up in the Messiah, so what is true of him is true of them. That's why a crucified Messiah

01:19:35.720 - 01:19:53.580

is a scandal. So as, as you're walking to the mic, the other interesting thing Professor Wright says it is a little different when he talks about um Um, Jesus as Messiah and uh messianic monotheism and, and, and identity, non-identity and, and, and that kind of echoes

01:19:53.580 - 01:20:13.779

on some of these things about, um, incorporation almost and absolutely, absolute, I mean, it's why, that's why it's so difficult, um. You need to say several different things all at once, it's like my Milton analogy, that there are several things which present themselves to Paul as

01:20:13.779 - 01:20:25.479

a single whole. But we approach them from this angle and we say right we think we've got it and then, oh my goodness there's all that stuff as well and for Paul it seems to be all all part of the same thing. Um, here, I mean,

01:20:25.600 - 01:20:38.910

a passage like Romans 8 obviously is spectacular. All the themes you could want are there very richly. Um, but you can read Romans 81 way and it all works, and you read it another way and it all works another way, and you, and somehow Paul seems

01:20:38.910 - 01:20:53.509

to be aware of all of that which take us, it's like the end of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony where suddenly all the tunes that you have from lots of other bits of the symphony come together and guess what, they all actually fit together and you realize they

01:20:53.509 - 01:21:08.450

were designed to fit together. You thought they were different tunes, actually it's all one rich symphonic whole ro is a bit like that, yeah. Yeah, I know you touched on this in a few different points, uh, already this morning, but another number of students in here,

01:21:08.490 - 01:21:23.529

but also a number of pastors. I'm a church pastor here, so this is gonna reveal my motive and agenda here, but what's one key theological concept that you wish pastors, church leaders, or preachers would communicate to other people that would really have an impact on their,

01:21:23.779 - 01:21:40.569

on their, on the people's Christian faith practices? That's a great question, that's a great question, um. I, I can't get it out of my head when I've, when I've done meetings like this in the UK I've done a few book launchy kind of meetings, people say

01:21:40.950 - 01:21:55.990

if Paul could see us today, what would he be most surprised by, what would he most want to say, and I come back to it, I've said it already about the unity of the church, um, that, that I think in the modern Western world. We have

01:21:55.990 - 01:22:17.620

just so long assumed a multiplicity of fragmented churches that any sense of being all one. And what that ought to look like and might look like, it's way, way off in the distance. And then when we read Paul say page after page after page, he's talking

01:22:17.620 - 01:22:31.660

about unity and how and and it's it's tough. I mean you know there are divisions in his churches and he's working tirelessly to try and bring them together um. So, but I think unity not just as an agenda but as a gift, you know, it's a

01:22:31.660 - 01:22:45.870

gift in Christ, it's a gift by the spirit, and it's then a matter of, of how do we make that real, and I think, You know, I, I grew up in a world where the sort of 1960s ecumenical movement was, was going on, and that was

01:22:45.870 - 01:23:00.669

often very boring. That was basically about high level committees getting together and, and producing reports about where we disagreed and so on. Um, one of the joys for me when I was Bishop of Durham was actually doing ecumenism on the ground by doing mission together, um,

01:23:00.680 - 01:23:15.529

by getting together and doing things we could do together and, and not worrying for the moment about all our differences, but saying we can really agree. There's a major problem in this city, and together we need to link arms and address it, whether it's uh drug

01:23:15.529 - 01:23:32.729

use or whether it's poverty or whatever it is. Um, and there's just an initiative announced this last week between the Anglican and Roman churches worldwide organized by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope, um, on contemporary slavery and addressing that full on. Here are two of

01:23:32.729 - 01:23:48.089

the largest denominations in the world actually saying, right, we're going to work together at this. That's how to do it. And to, to, to see that reproduced locally, I think uh would be wonderful. And the other thing actually on unity, I was the Anglican observer at

01:23:48.089 - 01:24:00.649

the synod of Bishops in Rome in 2008 and I heard all these Catholic bishops from around the world saying too bad we can't share the Eucharist with our Protestant brothers and sisters. There's nothing stopping us reading the Bible with them, and why don't we do that?

01:24:01.089 - 01:24:23.689

And I thought, well, isn't that nice? Wish you guys had said that in 1525, the whole world would have been different. But let's at least get on with it. Oh. Put on that same theme of unity, this is where this question comes from. One of the

01:24:23.689 - 01:24:40.410

things for which I'm grateful is the tension that you've held between the worlds of serious biblical study and deep affection for the church. In a contemporary context in which these two worlds at times, present company excluded, um, seem to be growing further apart, how might church

01:24:40.410 - 01:24:58.259

leadership and the academy begin moving back toward mutually informed partnership and reintegrate the collaborative discourse for the good of us all. Yeah, it's a great question, and it's, it's a pressing question here in America more than elsewhere in the world for this reason that you have

01:24:58.640 - 01:25:14.990

far more departments of religion teaching political studies than I think anywhere else in the world does. In the rest of the world, um, the Bible is normally. taught in seminaries or near equivalent. OK, in university contexts as well, but often you know for instance in my

01:25:14.990 - 01:25:33.750

own country, the universities will be often working very closely with local seminaries, etc. so that there is more of a collaborative discourse. We do have some places where it's more like, um, a North American department of religion, but, but, but not so many. Now part of

01:25:33.750 - 01:25:52.410

me actually wants to say there is something healthy about New Testament being studied and taught in departments of religion because um the study of the New Testament is first and foremost a historical discipline and I include study of New Testament theology. It's a way of looking

01:25:52.410 - 01:26:06.259

at the first century and saying what's going on in the first century, it's like when I answered the question about justice. It's not enough to say what do we mean by justification. Now let's get Paul address our question. Yeah, we can do that if we like,

01:26:06.419 - 01:26:19.830

but sooner or later we have to go round the hermeneutical spiral of saying let us put our ideas out of our heads for the moment as best we can, we can't do it completely, but as best we can and actually try to pay attention to what

01:26:19.830 - 01:26:39.600

Paul meant by that language, that discourse, etc. And sometimes, not always, but sometimes, um, seminaries who naturally are training pastors to go out into today's world, um, may actually be tempted, I say they always do, tempted to skip some of that hard work, and maybe the

01:26:39.600 - 01:26:52.609

department of religion sometimes holds us to account. I say us because, you know, I see myself obviously as a Christian teacher in Oxford. Um, but sometimes it's the departments of religious wives, so I have learned a huge amount in my work from engaging with people like

01:26:52.609 - 01:27:07.509

Kea Amesh, with Tom Crossan, with, with, um, uh, Ed Sanders, with the Jesus seminar, with all sorts of people who don't have in their work an overtly Christian commitment because they, as it were, hold my feet to the fire. They will say, excuse me, you haven't

01:27:07.509 - 01:27:21.490

looked at this text in Josie. Excuse me, you haven't done the archaeological homework here, and I said, OK, I need to do that partly because I believe in the incarnation. I need to, yeah, so, so there is a fruitful dialogue to be had. Unfortunately some departments

01:27:21.490 - 01:27:37.589

of religion now spill over from let's do the historical work into the post-modern uh post-colonial world where they say we now have a moral. A set of moral standards about how the world ought to be, and we are going to do a postmodern reading on the

01:27:37.589 - 01:27:53.270

New Testament, which is about setting up our moral categories and judging the New Testament according to whether it agrees with them or not. That is a totally different exercise. Again, it's a free country, it's a free society. If that's the way you want to study the

01:27:53.270 - 01:28:09.709

New Testament, fine. Come with your moral questions and let the New Testament stand or fall, OK, but that's not the same as the serious historical study. Of course we come with our questions, but part of the point of history, it seems to me, is to answer

01:28:09.709 - 01:28:30.410

us back and say wrong question. Try again. That didn't really fit this text. Let's go round that loop. So that's how I see the discipline at its best advancing, and that can be done. In collaboration right across. The danger comes and it's I think inbuilt into

01:28:31.109 - 01:28:49.589

the American perception of things where you know you've got, A sort of a right and a left and it's, it's, it's basically 18th century Epicureanism again of, of, here's the faith up here, and here's the real world down here, and, and we culturally we've forgotten how

01:28:49.589 - 01:29:05.120

to bring those two together, and so what you do with the Bible in seminary and in college and and in departments of religion and so on is simply one out of 1000 symptoms of that forgetting. And so, but you know, I'm inclined then to say wouldn't

01:29:05.120 - 01:29:22.959

it be nice if that could be the sphere in which we show the way for a better, wiser integration, but that's gonna be tough because epicureanism is built into our whole system, our bones, the way we think about everything. And to allow the New Testament to

01:29:22.959 - 01:29:36.680

be the bridge that says no, God and the world actually belong together, and that's difficult and dangerous. People get hurt when you start saying that sort of thing. But at least study of the New Testament ought to be there somewhere. But that, that's, it's not a

01:29:36.680 - 01:30:00.330

quick fix, it's not a short-term thing. This is a project for people to give their lives to. Good morning. I was wondering which of Paul's writings or teachings challenges you the most or maybe even rubs you the wrong way. I. One of my students, we ask

01:30:00.330 - 01:30:21.089

questions like that. I, I'm tempted to say you should ask Paul that when Paul, when Paul gets a look at this, you know, which, which points will he say, well you really distorted that. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a good question. I mean I have, I have

01:30:21.089 - 01:30:41.450

spent so much of my life trying to go round that historical loop and think Paul's thoughts after him, um. When I have an open Q&A on anything Pauline. The the the one passage which I will say I simply don't think I have yet understood that at

01:30:41.450 - 01:30:58.950

all is 1 Corinthians 11:2 following about how women should cover their heads in church, um. And it's, I mean, I, I think that what Paul is saying is that that when women are leading in worship they should look like women and not look like male substitutes

01:30:58.950 - 01:31:15.279

as it were. I think that's because I think for Paul it matters, um, as a sign that women are equally valued, etc. I think that's what that passage is about. My problem is that the argument Paul actually uses. Um, doesn't seem to me quite to say

01:31:15.279 - 01:31:31.379

that, particularly the image and glory language in the middle there, because I, I think when he uses image and glory language in say Romans 8 and in um other passages like 2 Corinthians 3, it doesn't seem to me to work the way it does there. Now.

01:31:32.629 - 01:31:48.509

It may be and of course then there's the question what do you do about it. I mean I grew up in a world where, where, um, in the 1950s women going to church wore hats, um, because everyone, everybody kind of knew that, and, and men when

01:31:48.509 - 01:32:00.910

they came to church took their hats off. Um, on both sides that's increasingly rare. You get now, um, particularly again in your culture, lots of men coming into church with baseball caps on and they don't, and the baseball cap is just part of the head, they

01:32:00.910 - 01:32:19.479

don't think. And, and, and comparatively few, but in any case, the hat, as in 1950s Britain, bore no relation whatever to the sort of veils that Paul was talking about and and had a completely different social function. Um, so, so there's all sorts of oddities about

01:32:19.479 - 01:32:33.259

how you apply it, um, and, and you know I'm wary of the argument which says, oh well that was just Paul's culture, so there we are, because, Let's face it, the whole thing is Paul's culture. It isn't that there are two or three bits of his

01:32:33.259 - 01:32:46.310

letters which are culturally conditioned and the rest is all abstract timeless truth. You justification by faith means what it means within his culture. So beware of saying, oh yeah, well that's culturally conditioned so we can, you know, squeeze that off to one side. It doesn't work

01:32:46.310 - 01:33:02.029

like that. Um, so that's, that's the passage, hand on heart, which I would say, um. I, I probably have more trouble about the most if so if that satisfies you. So to his defense, no one can read that passage. One way to read is to read

01:33:02.029 - 01:33:18.950

about two verses and stop. Let's take one last question and then we'll stop. Sorry, there were, there were actually 2, but, uh, yeah, there's one more after me. Um, this is a question probably not asked much, uh, not as much in evangelicalism today, but in being

01:33:18.950 - 01:33:34.080

a first century scholar, um, how would you address the issue, um, of ethnocentrism in the church, the lack of Christ consult the university. Uh, how did the early church deal with that? You talked about the divided wall hostility being torn down. Acts, obviously Peter drifting back,

01:33:34.160 - 01:33:47.779

being rebuked as not keeping in step with the gospel. Uh, what do you think Paul would say to the modern church concerning the diversity issue and to continue to drift into the modu? Yeah, yeah, yeah, um, thanks for that. I mean, I've already in a sense

01:33:47.779 - 01:34:05.562

addressed that with Galatian. Too, and it's, it's hugely important. There is a worry about the word diversity because clearly that's a modern, um, shorthand which can apply in all sorts of other areas, and I think we need to be very clear, just like, you know, we

01:34:05.562 - 01:34:23.576

have these postmodern, um, mantras about embracing diversity or embracing. These come to us from the postmodern world and they're not hugely helpful for getting back, but certainly for Paul, it is abundantly clear passage after passage, neither Jew nor Greek slave nor free no male and female

01:34:23.996 - 01:34:40.970

and in Colossians, no barbarians, Scythian, he kind of arm waving terms for anyone from anywhere. Can be part of this on equal terms. Uh, we have to remember, and there's all sorts of things about that. We have to remember, for instance, that in the ancient Mediterranean

01:34:40.970 - 01:34:57.600

world, um, the skin pigmentation color was totally irrelevant. People just don't even talk about it by and large, they may just comment from time to time that somebody has a particular color skin, but it's, it's not a demarcating factor because you've got people from North Africa,

01:34:57.649 - 01:35:18.040

the Middle East, from Southern Europe, um. It's all, that's all mixed together. Now they have other things about language, about customs, about, about different varieties of culture, and then the question is, when you put everybody together into the one family, which you must do, and that's

01:35:18.040 - 01:35:33.120

an absolute given for Paul, you know, there's no way around that, and I wouldn't want to have a way around it. When you do that, which bits of their culture, Do they bring in and celebrate and which bits of their culture do they say now that

01:35:33.120 - 01:35:47.450

you're in Christ, we don't do that. You know the Scythians who Paul mentions in Colossians 3 were famous for being hot tempered, you know. Scythian comes into church, well, you know, we, we're always losing our rag, we're always yelling at people, that that's just how we

01:35:47.450 - 01:35:59.700

do stuff. It's part of our culture, you have to accept that. Paul says, no, now, now that you're in Christ, I'm sorry, we believe in gentleness and kindness and meekness and humility and all those nice things. Because actually we're supposed to be one body in Christ

01:35:59.700 - 01:36:15.819

reflecting that, and so you know you can extrapolate out. So yes, in terms of what we mean by ethnic diversity, Paul says absolutely all are on the same footing, that there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither this nor that, and we can go on

01:36:15.819 - 01:36:39.810

transposing that how we like, um. So how, how does that work though in a modern context. That is still segregated no longer by law but by choice. We really have to challenge that. It's difficult because different parts of today's world. Um, Simply are different in terms

01:36:39.810 - 01:36:51.990

of, you know, here's a suburb which is like this, there's a suburb which is like that, and we have them in the UK as well. If you go to many parts of London, it's so polyglot and polychrome that you've got bits of everything and that's wonderful,

01:36:52.069 - 01:37:05.669

you go to church and, and it's like, you know, the United Nations more so that there's just all these people, that's wonderful. And, and when you see that working in a church in that context, it's fantastic. I live in a part of the country now which

01:37:05.669 - 01:37:23.689

is very, very monochrome. Um, uh, OK, linguistically we have English and Scottish in East Fife where I live, but, um. Uh, culturally and ethnic backgrounds, very, very few people from other, from other contexts and where I worked before in the northeast of England likewise, so each

01:37:24.149 - 01:37:43.819

community has to face this one for itself, and it seems to me that the where you get, Churches that are at least subtly and unofficially defined in terms of ethnic background, linguistic background, we have this in the UK sometimes when, When immigrants came to the UK

01:37:43.819 - 01:37:59.939

from say Poland or or Hungary or whatever, they would start a Hungarian church in London and they would or Polish church in London and I understand that, that's natural, they they don't want to lose that and say, you know this is very precious and part of

01:37:59.939 - 01:38:16.089

who we are, um, but, It should not forever be like that. Paul was a pastor, he knew about taking people from where they are step by step to where they should be. I don't think he would force everybody straight away. It's Romans 14, you know, let

01:38:16.089 - 01:38:27.830

not the one who does this judge the one who doesn't and vice versa. That's pastoral wisdom. You can't say, OK, we're now all in this, we've sorted it out, we've thought it through us right brained people, we, we, we've, we've got it, we've got it figured.

01:38:28.049 - 01:38:50.479

I've seen the big picture, um, he says no. We have to move towards this, and that's going to vary from place to place. OK, sir, did you have to, 111 quick now this is the last question. I always just. Uh, my question deals with Paul and

01:38:50.479 - 01:39:19.740

the, and the Torah. Uh It seems to me that uh Um, we in the church have deemphasized the Torah quite a bit. And, um, It seems to me that Paul is saying, That uh Uh, Christ, uh, came to us and through our faith in Him, we're

01:39:19.740 - 01:39:43.680

accredited to him for righteousness. And in that condition, We no longer have a sting in our death. But it seems to me also that he's saying that the law, that the, uh, the Torah is holy and just and good and spiritual. And that it teaches us

01:39:43.919 - 01:40:07.359

our sins. And therefore, it seems to me the difference between the Jew and the Christian. is that the Jew has to do all the law perfectly or face the wrath of God. But the Christian doesn't have to face that wrath, but that he is still obligated.

01:40:09.459 - 01:40:33.569

To do what He can to observe that. And to be taught. Uh, what our sin is. Uh, one other statement before I ask the question. When they become Christians, it's not because Christ or whoever is speaking for Christ forces us to become Christians. It's because we

01:40:33.569 - 01:40:51.540

want to become. And when we want to become a Christian, we're saying, you know, we're doing it voluntarily. We want to do it and therefore, we want to do God's will and the things that Christ has taught us, the things that the faith requires, and even

01:40:51.540 - 01:41:11.979

the Torah. And what I want to ask you is what's your view on this. Uh, I was hoping for a nice short question for the last one. Uh, The, the, the simple thing to say is that in, uh, two places in this book I have discussed

01:41:11.979 - 01:41:25.930

this in considerable detail, um, one of which is towards the end of chapter 10. Chapter 2 is the longest chapter in the book. There's a summary at the end of that, a a few pages on what I think needs to be said about Paul and the

01:41:25.930 - 01:41:42.520

Law, and it's several different points, and I'm not gonna try and reproduce them here because it would take a long time. However, let, let me, let me just say this. There's a big problem in exegesis as between Galatians and Romans because Galatians seems to say negative

01:41:42.520 - 01:41:56.839

things about the Torah and Romans seems to say mostly positive things about the Torah, especially as you quoted Romans 7, the law was holy and just and good, and these questions then all come to focus in the meaning of the word telos in Romans 10:4. Christ

01:41:56.839 - 01:42:12.299

is the end of the law or the goal of the law. And yes, as you rightly said, this is bound up with. In 1000 different ways, the question of justification and the question of, of wrath and the question of Paul's critique of Israel. I have come

01:42:12.299 - 01:42:35.709

to the conclusion that the way through all of this is by understanding the basic narrativeval world as was said, in which Paul is living, that is to say, Paul assumes the great stories of scripture. And the great stories of scripture include God in creation, God and

01:42:35.709 - 01:43:00.939

humankind, God and Israel and then different stages of God and Israel, and then ultimately God and the Messiah, and then God through the Spirit and us. And the Torah plays different roles at different stages in that narrative. So that the negative things that Paul says about

01:43:00.939 - 01:43:21.129

Torah. Turn out in fact, and he, this is implied in Galatians, but then is spelt out more fully in Romans, turn out to have a positive purpose after all that God gave the Torah, partly for that negative reason, but you only understand that when you say,

01:43:22.100 - 01:43:38.649

What was God doing anyway in calling Israel to be His people? You see, so often in the Western church we have assumed that the call of Israel and giving them a Torah was God's first shot at making people righteous or holy. God started it that way,

01:43:38.879 - 01:43:56.270

and tried it out that way, and it really didn't work, so God said, OK, we'll scrub that and do it differently, so that many, many Christians, when they tell the story, they simply go. God created us, we sinned, God sent Jesus, that's alright then. And you

01:43:56.270 - 01:44:12.109

say well uh what about the Israel bit? And then Israel collapses into being simply a source of types and shadows and advanced statements or or prefigurings or whatever, it's really not like that. God called, God created human beings to be the people through whom he would

01:44:12.109 - 01:44:25.770

bring his world into wise order, stewardship, etc. When that all went pear shaped, God didn't give up on that, but in order to rescue it called Abraham and his family. Now the problem with Abraham and his family, is that the people who are the bearers of

01:44:25.770 - 01:44:41.759

the solution are also carriers of the problem. So that right the way, that's the story of the Old Testament, that right there, They, they are carrying the solution, but they are also carrying the the the in the the medical sense carriers of the problem and the

01:44:41.759 - 01:45:00.959

Torah accentuates both halves of that. Welcome to Roman 7. That's what Roland said it was all about. Caught in the crosshairs of that. So that Romans 8 is seen as the resolution of that when there is a new fulfillment of Torah, but now here's the thing,

01:45:01.439 - 01:45:15.720

the reformers distinguish between the ceremonial law and the moral law because they saw that in the New Testament that Paul says you don't have to get circumcised, you don't do the sacrificial system anymore. Lots of bits of Torah which are essential to Torah are simply set

01:45:15.720 - 01:45:30.839

aside. Why? Well, they said it's a distinction between the ceremonial, actually ceremonial, civil, and, and moral. That's a stab at it, but I think this is one of the advantages of the so-called new perspective on Paul, we can see it a bit more sharply, that the

01:45:30.839 - 01:45:54.609

Torah, during the period between Moses and the Messiah, this is Galatians 3, the Torah was there to keep Israel as it should be, but now that the Messiah has come and has established a worldwide family. You specifically do not have the markers which were ethno-specific. So

01:45:54.609 - 01:46:11.330

it isn't just overt ceremonies, it's those are Jews specific, that's why Paul says um. If it was by the Torah, then God would be God of just the Jews, whereas in fact he's the God of Gentiles also. So then Paul can reaffirm the keeping of what

01:46:11.330 - 01:46:28.859

you might call the moral law, although without certain things like Shabbat, Shabbat, Sabbath, which were Jew-specific. Um, but I think that's the way to do it anyway, at the end of chapter 10 I spell spelled all this out much more fully, but in chapter 7 when

01:46:28.859 - 01:46:42.895

I've talked about the narratives of Paul's world, I've tried to show how once you understand the different, it's like a Shakespeare play I use in the book the example of A Midsummer Night's Dream where you've got a play within a play. There's several different layers of

01:46:42.895 - 01:46:59.576

drama and certain things work differently according to which of those dramas you're in, but ultimately they all do fit together. Now the danger is that we've come with our ideas of either we are supposed to be saving ourselves by our own efforts or we're not supposed

01:46:59.576 - 01:47:09.932

to be saving ourselves by our own efforts and so. who takes your choice, and the law in the first one says, yeah, you've got to keep me and in the second one it says no, you've broken me. And then we get in a puzzle. How can

01:47:09.932 - 01:47:40.870

Paul say those two things? We need to go back into Paul's narrative world and then I think there is a rich coherence in what he says about Torah and indeed. I. My mother would be ashamed of me for saying that. I'm trying to

01:47:40.870 - 01:48:12.479

keep time. I'm sorry. Um, what we wanna do now is ask Professor Wright if you would go into the table and get situated while I make some final announcements. We will proceed with the book signing. Thank you so very, very much. Before you walk out of

01:48:12.479 - 01:48:13.640

the room, let me tell you.