What is justification by faith? Should we speak in tongues? 🤔 Ask NT Wright Anything

the problem is when a word that is in our translations of the Bible Cuts loose and gets on a tradition of its own then when people start there they assume that what the Bible said means what we've made that word mean and again and again that ain't necessarily so when God looks at us he doesn't see us as we are he sees us in Christo in the Messiah the Messiah the coming King is the one through whom God's promised blessing to Abraham will extend to the ends of the Earth and chosenness means chosen to carry

This Promise forward but of course you've done your Magnus opum on that as well uh magnumopus magnumopus even let's get the Latin sorted out here before everything else the ask n write anything podcast let's start with uh the topic of justification because that's where a lot of people encounter what you are saying about Paul and and what he had to say on that particular issue uh Keith in chamber ber Pennsylvania says I've always wanted to know how entri would explain his understanding of justification to a local rural church congregation where people aren't as versed in

the various schools of Pauline interpretation well this is a good opportunity I think just to perhaps unpack for the Casual listener yeah in in simple enough terms what you mean what you think Paul meant by justification and how that's commonly been in your view misinterpreted I it's slightly frustrating because this word simple um uh I've written one or two books with the word simple or simply in the title and one of my Publishers said to me once Tom I have to sit you down and explain the meaning of Simply and and I said listen if

somebody comes to me in St Andrews where I work and says tell me how to get to Glasgow and keep it simple I could say just keep heading west and a bit South and you can't miss it but it might be kind to tell him that there's a big river which is several miles wide and that there's a mountain range and that there's this way around or that way around and you might get in a mess so forgive the complexity but sometimes it is actually necessary for the sake of getting you to where you need

to go I think if I were faced with that with a congregation that had never really thought it through what I'd like to do is to take them to Galatians Chapter 2 and say let's just sit with Galatians 2 and maybe even do some role play as to what's going on in the church in Antioch because this is the first time that Paul talks about justification and we presume that this makes sense you know I I want to bring in Romans and Philippians as well eventually but not yet and in Galatians what's going on is

there's a a a crisis because Jews and Gentiles are sharing Fellowship in the Messiah sharing table Fellowship together as Christians with no distinction between them and then some people come from Jerusalem to say shouldn't be doing this Gentiles you're not supposed to be in the same at the same table as Jews and so please go away um and or the Jews separate themselves and when Paul is talking about justification that is the presenting issue and our trouble with reading Galatians 2 is that because we have in our Traditions justification is I'm a sinner I need

to get to heaven so I need to be justified in order for that to happen we import that back into Galatians 2 and we forget what was actually going on and the point is that God in Christ has dealt with the sin problem not so that we can go to heaven but so that God by his Spirit can live in our midst and so that we can be the family of God together because the reason Jews didn't eat with Gentiles is that they were regarded as unclean as automatically Sinners because they were outside the law

they were idolators etc etc and the point of the gospel for Paul is that what has happened on the cross means that anyone who is in Christ has had had their sin and evil and all that dealt with so that then there is no reason why uh Christian Jew shouldn't sit down so justification is God's declaration that all those who are in the Messiah are part of the same family and that their sins are forgiven and it's not uh in that sense a transactional thing as it was sometimes presented by the reformers and what then

happens so this was an answer to the question how might you started off with the village congregation I would get them to wallow in Galatians 2 until they' got the message and then they might want to go on to Galatians 3 as well which is about the Covenant with Abraham Etc sooner or later I would want to take them through Philippians 3 which is a similar thing but with Paul's autobiography being very Central um you know where I had all these Jewish privileges but I I abandoned them for the sake of the Messiah Etc sooner

or later I would want to get to Romans and in Romans and only in Romans justification is reframed within a law Court setting what has happened in the Christian tradition is that people have taken the Law Court setting from Romans have forgotten the covenantal and familial settings which were the original location in Galatians and constructed a whole extra thing based only on a law Court setting and have then tried to work out how it works and particularly they've tried to do so out of Romans 1:4 without Romans 5 to8 but actually the argument of Romans

on justification is 1:8 with then coming through to 9 to11 and the whole strand of of of what this means for God's worldwide purposes in and through Israel and then 12 to 16 so it's more complicated if you start with the post Luther questions then okay we can have great fun going through the 16th 17th century through to the 21st different theories of how people get Justified all all with a law court with either imputed righteousness or imparted righteousness or whatever and I want to say I know what those questions are about they can be

extremely helpful pastorally but they can also be extremely puzzling I believe that the Bible itself is the place to start this is the great irony that Luther was saying the Bible the Bible the Bible but actually often his followers have forgotten well they they go to Luther and they go to subsequent diminishing because Luther was quite a a many-sided rich character he said a lot of things about a lot of things and I don't think actually he would have radically disagreed with me about Galatians he might have done a bit but already in 1955 in

one of the volumes of church dogmatics called Luther on his misreading of Galatians very interesting so there's all sorts of issues then but again it's comparatively simple if you start with the Bible and allow the Bible to tell you how you should use these words but the problem is when a word that is in our translations of the Bible Cuts loose and get on a tradition of its own then when people start there they assume that what the Bible said means what we've made that word mean and again and again that ain't necessarily so now

this is sometimes called the new perspective on Paul though I'm sure you would say well it's the the original perspective A New Perspective A New Perspective um and uh Douglas in jalter says in the light of your understanding of the new perspective on Paul and your reading of Romans how would you lead someone to faith in Christ now that's much bigger question I suppose but I suppose the question at the heart of it is um something that was relatively simple maybe to present as a here's how to become a Christian and have your sins forgiven

suddenly looks a little bit more complex or not as quite as simple to explain in that sense yes and obviously people have taken Romans chapters 1:4 and have referred to it as the Romans road and have said here you are you're a sinner Christ died for your sins so now dot dot dot you can go to heaven of course what they don't usually say is so now according to Romans 4 you're part of Abraham's family that's not does normally make into the scripture exactly but when you find yourself telling a story which then doesn't actually

quite square with what's in the text you should beware so I would say sorry we need to complexify we have oversimplified and we have misread Romans and if the question is how do you lead somebody to Christ then again as I said before in answer to an earlier question on another podcast um it depends entirely who they are where they're coming from what their background is how much they know already I would in all sorts of ways much rather walk with them through one of the gospels with Mark or John say um and say let's

just live with this and let's look at this person Jesus and let's ask the questions about what is his kingdom why did he die who is he Etc if in the course of that issues come up about God's whole plan by all means let's read Romans but Romans is like you know REM like climbing the north wall of the Iger It's a Wonderful spectacular thing and the view from the top is unmatched but it's a tough climb and if you think it's actually going to be a simple Sunday afternoon stroll then you may slip around

from time to time I mean if it were to be boiled down into a a phrase or or something that you could give uh in simple terms are we are we inviting people to become part of God's family in Christ essentially there's a sort of that's the invitation that we're giving when we that is the invitation and that is how a great many people do become Christians because they realize this is a family and it's a a loving generous outgoing cheerful family and they want to be part of it um but and do you have

to have as it were um if you like signed on the dotted line of a number of things I believe Jesus died for me he died for my sins rose again this is all the basic baptismal things and I have taken many baptisms and confirmations and I've explained to congregations that the reason we say the Creed during that is that this is the badge we wear that when I confirm somebody baptize somebody I say we're not welcoming this person to the family because they're male or female or because of the color of their skin or

because they're rich or poor or anything the only badge we wear is the badge of what we believe and that's justification by faith actually that that we are not defined by our Background by our ethnicity by our previous moral background we are justified in Christ Paul says three times Romans 3 Philippians 3 Galatians 2 we are justified in the Messiah in other words when God looks at us he doesn't see us as we are he sees us in Christo in the Messiah and the Messiah has died therefore we have we've left all that behind and

that takes a lifetime to work out what that then means but that is that is justification by faith let's open up another massive can of worms then um staying in Romans I suppose Devon in Old oxed Sur says are we elected SL chosen by God is our Salvation all by Grace or do we have to make a choice or do we have to make a choice how how can that be Grace um all the classic questions I'm very confused says Devon um how do you try and present this simply this is of course a classic

theological problem that became very sharp edged at certain points in the Reformation though it actually goes back way behind that and Augustine and aquinus and so on they believe very clearly that some people were chosen by God and some people seemed not to be part of the problem here is that the language of election is very much Israel language it's very it goes back to Deuteronomy and to the call of Abraham and uh when the New Testament is retrieving that it's retrieving something which isn't primarily about how this person gets saved but the way in

which God is using this what we've called before the scandal of particularity to reach out into the world and that Jesus himself is the elect he is the chosen one um this sounds for a moment very like Carl Bart that that that we are chosen in him and Paul says that in Ephesians 3 we're chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world but Israel's election which is what that's modeled on was always for the sake of the world here's major parting of the way here that that there are some who will say God chose

the Jewish people so that they would be his people and then he seems to have extended it but actually the point is in Genesis 12 and Genesis 15 Genesis 17 Genesis 20 the promises to Abraham are promises through Abraham for the world and you see that in the Psalms particularly where in Psalm 2 Psalm 72 Etc the Messiah the coming King is the one through whom God's promised blessing to Abraham will extend to the ends of the Earth and chosenness means chosen to carry This Promise forward but that chosenness doesn't in that sense though mean

God has pre-selected a select group of people who will believe in him and be in the Kingdom that that that is that is part of the mystery and and when you get to Romans 828 293 there is a sense that Paul is saying something which sounds a bit like that but again Romans 8 is all about the true climax of the Israel story in the Messiah and the whole point is it's for the whole creation so if we are shaped according to the pattern of the Messiah the minute we think oh so we've been chosen

so we're special so that's fine we've missed the point because it's so that we are the ones through whom the world will be redeemed now that I'm not Universalist that doesn't mean everyone will be saved it means I don't think actually that passage Romans 8:28 to 30 is trying to answer the questions that Calvin and the others who followed him were addressing when we hear a word like predestination I think we often read into it of course of course cin and other and this get we trip over as well because there have been major philosophical

debates about determinism and Free Will and the Christian debates about predestination or or um free choice or whatever are a kind of a theological reflection of those philosophical debates and both of the ends of that feel wrong in that we know in our bones that we're not just autometer at least we really really think that is very hard to imagine that we're simply running on an automatic thing equally um we don't want to be like random atomic particles whizzing around without Rhyme or Reason somewhere there is a balance and the philosophers struggle with here here's

a picture I've sometimes been given by those who want to reconcile the language of predestination and and human freedom and so on um imagine a flight that's on its way from London to New York uh that flight is predestined it's scheduled to go there but it's a free choice of anyone who wants to book themselves into that flight as it were and there's this sense that all those who are in Christ as it were are are on the flight but that doesn't mean that there isn't freedom to choose whether you are on that flight and

so you could get away with that perhaps halfway through a sermon I wouldn't like to argue it in a theological seminar um but but I think that the fact that we reach for illustrations like that is a way of saying that we we know we shouldn't get skewered on the horns of this dilemma because yes Ephesians 2 by Grace you are saved through faith it is not of yourselves it is the gift of God it's very clear in Paul and in John and all over but at the same time if we think that that means

okay nothing for me to do then we've misconstrued go back to Genesis 1 for goodness sake humans are made to be reflecting God's image that's a vocation it's not you're not just a passenger let's talk about some specific questions about the Apostle Paul uh Stuart and S asks thank you so much for your biography of Paul Tom I found it really helpful and interesting uh my question relates to Paul's prayer life when the Apostle thanks God uh that he speaks in tongues more than all the church in Corinth why do um you appear to ignore

tongues as a significant dimension of Paul's experience of prayer interesting I need to go back and reread the biography and see what I say about tongues I didn't think I'd ignored it um uh because yes clearly from what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12 um tongues is a very important uh aspect of his prayer life I have tended I suppose to focus on the passages where we can see Paul taking the Jewish prayer traditions and repaying them around Jesus as in 1 Corinthians 8:6 where he expands the Shemar hero Israel the Lord Our God the

Lord is one so that we find Jesus inside it which is hugely exciting but yes clearly Paul does pray in tongues though he says normally that for him is private rather than something he does in church because he's a teacher he wants people to be built up which if you pray in tongues won't happen unless someone interprets and that's a whole other issue interestingly if we didn't have 1 Corinthians 12:4 we would never know that there was any question of tongues in the early church at all far less in Paul so he can write all

his other letters and all his other chapters without that seeming to be important but we know from that just like if we didn't have First Corinthians 10 and 11 we wouldn't know that the PA Line Community celebrated the Eucharist but clearly they did it was important so I want to say yes it is hugely important and yes I think it continues as being an important gift in the church today um but it's one of those puzzles as to how you integrate it and how you how you pull all that together I'd just be interested to

know whether this the the idea of tongues um was a phenomenon that existed anyway in that culture um it wasn't a specifically new thing among the chran no um the idea of ecstatic speech is reported among many groups in the ancient world which is why in First Corinthians 12 Paul has to say um beware if somebody says Jesus be cursed that person is not speaking in the spirit in other words it's possible that this can be counterfeit yes um and Paul is very much aware that any gifts can be counter feated and and need to

be dealt with wisely in that sense um lurman in Canada asks uh Professor Wright in your book Paula biography you say that Paul is striking a blow at the very heart of the oropus rondra when he speaks of a judgment by a resurrected man but Paul leaves the Democratic jurisprudence structure itself intact is it a problem for Christians with their strong sense of the imaro day for Humanity that the Athenians were first to implement a democratic process that's quite quite a big and complex question it's a great question um but uh the Athenians were and

weren't Democratic in our sense I mean of course half the Athenian Society were slaves and half of the remaining a free Athenian Society were women and it was only Athenian citiz male Athenian citizens who voted so from our point of view it's a really rather shrunk democracy um and the Athenians may have invented it but they did funny things with it and it didn't last and different things happened uh what I would want to stress is that for the early Christians like the Jews of the same period they looked around the world and they saw

that many countries had had different systems of of monarchy and of or different whatevers they weren't terribly interested in how people came to power they were much more interested in what they did with power once they'd got it we in the modern Western democracies we think um for all sorts of interesting philosophical reasons going back to the 18th century and beyond we think that voting democratically gives people a mandate to do what they want for the next term in office because they've now been voted so they have the right to do it and then we

have real difficulty holding them to account afterwards because the only way we have to hold them to account is not voting for them next time round now the Athenians as part of their democracy had the system of ostracism where if there was somebody that they really thought was a pain in the neck and we could name various people from British public life right now and possibly even American public life you could have a vote and you could actually banish somebody for a significant time from the city wouldn't that be nice well people but this was

this was the Athenians knew that they had to have some checks and balances in that system and then the Romans often after a magistrate a Consul or Pro Consul or whatever who had their term in office when their term of office was over they would often be put on trial for mishandling what they did now we don't usually do that either and and maybe we should so so when we look at the ancient democracies we see that they knew they had to have some some checks we have abandoned that because of the 18th century ideology

which I suspect may be partly behind this question which says that we don't believe in the divine right of kings so God is out of the political question so politics just makes itself like a sort of political version of darwinian evolution um and and then it goes where it goes and well look at the 20th century that's where it goes and we think we ought to be saying hang on we need to think more wisely about how to do this so e even though obviously our Christian Traditions may have shaped what we now you know

Embrace in terms of democratic government and so on that wasn't Paul's primary purpose by any means in terms of shaping that particular way of do government and yet what's happening with the church is that there is a multiethnic philanthropic um polychrome worship based fictive kinship group that's a church yes um which is exactly what the Romans would have loved to have attained and they couldn't do it it's exactly what the European Union would love to attain but but hasn't been able to it's exactly what um America wants to attain and it's very creaky and difficult

it shows you that simply instituting a form of government is not necessary the the church ought to be holding up a mirror to the world and saying actually we know how to do Multicultural Society uh wish that the church in final question uh stevenh in Sacramento California asks if you could go back in time and had the chance to interview Paul what three questions would you ask him oh goodness goodness goodness can't think of three one will do well there are some classic passages I still when I read 1 Corinthians 11: 2 following which is

about women wearing head coverings in church I think I get what he's basically wanting to say that when women are leading in worship they should look like women and not be um pretend men and that that's fine but the argument he actually uses about the creation of man and woman and the image and so on does seem to me out of kilter with the other things he says about humans being in the image of God and I'd love just to tease out whether I'm missing out on something there I spoke to someone who's written a

book on that and they go down the line that they believe he's quoting others back to them this is a lady from cheltonham or it is yes um oh names escaped me just at this very moment but yes you can you can Flash it up on the screen at this point um is I I I know that argument I am not yet convinced by that but I since I read it I haven't studied it in detail I haven't been back and actually work through the detail um that that's that's one thing um I think I

would like to know more about his imprisonments in Ephesus I've argued in the biography that there was definitely an Ephesian imprisonment and that his suffering there was was what caused this deep poetry of Philippians 2 and Colossians 1 and so on to emerge and I'd love to know whether that's actually the right way of looking at that I would like to know whether in the dark 10 years after he goes back to to tarus um whether he was ever married whether he did have a wife and if she left him or died or whatever um

we simply don't know and he is carefully elusive about that in 1 Corinthians 7 so there are questions like that but of course the the the main things would have to do with Jesus and with because that's Paul is a Jesus man that's what he's most passionately interested in and it has come back to me who the scholar was that we were trying to Rack our brains for Lucy pepot oh yes and her book I think think is um women and worship at Corinth Paul's rhetorical arguments in First Corinthians so that's one place to go

for for more on that particular view on that uh okay thank you so much for for answering such a wide range of questions on Paul um the issue of women is timely we are going to be doing that in a future podcast uh so look out for that as well um but for the moment thank you so much Tom for being with me again my pleasure [Music]