Sex, LGBTQ , Pre-Marital Relationships and Identity... Ask NT Wright ANYTHING!

so somebody comes to faith in Christ this somebody is in a cohabiting relation with somebody else what to do the church ought to be constantly in the business of reminding people how to do moral discourse homosexuality is a 19th century construct and in particular it's a modernist construct it's an essentializing construct which comes out of modernism rather than postmodernism these are genuine dear people who one loves and wants to help and affirm and so on however as with some other styles of behavior if I as a pastor see somebody doing something which I deeply and

with care believe is really destructive in some way I need to say something about that I have grandchildren now I worry about them being in a world where somebody might ask you know a 7-year-old um do you want to be a boy or a girl we think in terms of the physical being irrelevant and there's a spiritual reality which is different and the the Bible is very keen on the physical stuff the ask entty WR anything podcast this is one you have to treat carefully um and sensitively but it is the issue of sexuality transgender

Christian sexual ethics and so on um I don't think it's it's any secret that you hold a traditional view on this around um sexual ethics often it's the only thing people often want to talk talk about sometimes and you have a lot of other things to talk about obviously um I suppose just leading out with a general question on this um how best do you think Christians can um learn to I suppose work alongside each other deal with the contentious issues when they come up in the church yeah this is a real problem because of

the fact that and many people have commented on this in many areas Western society as a whole over my lifetime has found do public discourse really hard Al Gore wrote a book about this um I think it was the decline of discourse or something like that um about the way in which we used to know that you built up what you wanted to say from first principles which you could demonstrate to an argument which could then be debated and somebody else says no there's a slippage in the loog logic there etc etc and that's one

of the great tasks of philosophy always has been to enable people instead of yelling at each other and throwing things at each other or calling each other names to say look no no no um we can talk about this sensibly there is this there is that there is the other now how do we put that together and if somebody else wants to say no you're doing it wrong let's have that discussion and I have always in whatever sphere of life I've been um been a let's have the discussion person um and I bitterly regret the

way in which now um things get hugely polarized and people accuse one another of phobias or victimization or whatever it may be so that it becomes almost impossible to express a moral View and that that's at the heart of it and I think the church ought to be constantly in the business of reminding people how to do moral discourse and I would say that on any issue whether it's investing in arms sales or or whatever it is um and the church itself hasn't been good at it tragically because we are taught Paul insists on it

to be transformed by the renewing of our minds and in that same passage Romans 12 Paul goes on and says if it's possible so far as it lies with you live at peace with all people in other words constantly be striving for ways in which you can say even to people with whom you have major disagreements please can we sit down look each other in the face and actually talk about this and we used to be much better at this than we are and so it's that larger context which um in America that's very very

politicized at the moment the culture wars have gone on dividing and it's worse now than it's ever been I think um but we have our own equivalent and other in Europe and other parts of the world do as well um so when you then say what about sexual ethics it's not just that this is special it's actually we're throwing that question into a World which already doesn't do discourse well yes absolutely I I suppose part of that is because obviously it is at one level such a personal it's not a an academic or dry subject

is one that impacts people in their in their daily life um but your plea is doing all that with the level of graciousness and compassion that is obviously required in anything that has a pastal dimension we still need to be able to about 20 years ago I was part of a group that was working under the radar as it were with um people from very different points of view meeting together privately church people um to get to know one another without a sort of particular agenda that we were going to produce a report or whatever

just to say can we at least understand what we're talking about here and understand one another and why this matters and some of that is still going on thank God I haven't been involved with it since I left my previous job but um uh that that needs to go on um but here's the here's the the really tricky thing the fact that we say let's sit down and talk about it doesn't mean that actually we're all agreed and it's only a matter of dotting a few eyes and crossing a few T's it's like John Henry

Newman once said that there are two types of disagreement there's disagreement about words and disagreement about things that often you and I will in fact agree but you use a particular word which I don't like and I use a word that you don't get what I'm meaning and when we tease that out we say oh I see we're really in agreement fine but there are other things which when we cash them out we really are are saying No this actually is a deal breaker and then the question is how do you say what is a

deal breaker within the church and obviously within the early church there were lots of things that some people thought were deal breakers that others didn't and that's we're on the same page except with the different issues our questions for today and I suppose a speculative question inevitably but do you it seems like these this is the the issue sexuality that that particularly the Anglican church and many others is in a sense fracturing over and do you do you think there will be a sort of an ultimate kind of split part of the problem when people

are dealing with um issues like that is that the different cultures in which we live are so very different I remember at Lambeth in 2008 the Lambeth conference the meeting of Anglican Bishops one of my colleagues hearing a conversation between a Sudanese bishop and an American bishop and just seeing these two totally different cultural context and both of them trying to be responsible and sensitive in their context and just saying how how do we how do we have that conversation we'll we'll get to one or two of the questions on on some of the the

really contentious issues in the moment let let's start though in um in a sense with something somewhat simpler um uh not necessarily Emily in London wants to know um when it comes to say a heterosexual Christian um who is perhaps a new Christian but in say has just come into the church um but is still in a cohabiting relationship um and H what what would your counsel be to that person and that church um uh if you take a sort of traditional view on on Christian sexual ethics should they immediately abstain from any sexual relations

um live apart what will the impact be then on that relationship they've had is that too much to ask are we simply to ask for a sort of a gradual changing of of priorities and behavior and so on yeah that that's that's a question which I know a lot of people face um and I I remember from 30 years ago hearing a talk that John stot did as part of university of mission in Cambridge which I thought was really sensitive addressing exactly this issue and people expected start an old traditional Bachelor you know that he

wouldn't be talking about obviously he'd met exactly this situation as a pastor again and again and again Pastor of a busy London Church you would this would be in the in the 1970s or ' 80s um and his C was so somebody comes to faith in Christ this somebody is in a cohabiting relationship with somebody else what to do some rigorist might say oh well you got to leave at once get out and he said no he said you are already bonded with this person and now you need pastoral help to see how the the

bondedness that you to now have can best be part of God's future for for you both from here on and with that pastural help it might be that the other partner would say actually what you've got with this Jesus stuff is so amazing I want it too and let's work on that or they might say huh if that's the way you're going I'm not having any of that and that might precipitate a change in the relationship and in the meantime the Pastoral sensitivity you're not starting from cold you're not starting from scratch um at the

same time I would say this our culture is absolutely soaked to the bone in Aphrodite worship we are what do you mean by that there is the goddess of erotic love um OS the little boy in Picadilly circus but but the the ancient goddess Aphrodite um who is uh a very demanding goddess she says oh this is what you want erotically this is you know the the pornography industry um just massive now that's the modern incarnation of Aphrodite worship well it's part of it it's part of it but but the lie at the heart of

it is that it's irresistible and that to resist it is bad for you right um and those of us who've been fortunate enough to know people in um enclosed monastic or or conventual communities will know that yes there are problems there there are pastoral problems you have to deal with but actually these are some of the most fulfilled happy wise whole people that you could could ever wish to meet and actually I think I want to say the same about Jesus and Paul yeah um and so I think the idea that life without regular active

sexual relationships is not worth living that's a modern lie so if it was the Pastoral thing to say to this couple well maybe while this turbulence is going on you might find it better actually simply you maybe still live in the same or whatever but you might find it okay to refrain while we sort this out but I would emphasize the Pastoral thing pastoral business is never about somebody like me on a podcast saying do this and all will be well it's always about working with an actual Pastor on the ground don't try and be

pastored by a podcast host that's for sure exactly exactly um yeah I suppose though the overall sort of where you would see the the momentum going though is towards that that ideal if you like of of of sexual being expressed within a with a marriage and I mean when I was younger people never talked about this stuff but such as I've read and I'm not an expert on this is to do with the the the the chemicals that are released um during sexual activity which are designed to bond you with this person um so that

it is almost like um in in in Midsummer Night stream the sprinkling of fairy dust whatever so that when you wake up this will be the person you want to live with the person you're happy with do you would you even tie that back to the sort of you know Jesus saying one flesh you know absolutely I think the one flesh this we have tended I think I have tended in in thinking about that over the years to think of it almost as a legalistic thing will now one flesh there it is but actually as

CS Lewis says somewhere that When a Man Lies at the woman let's just keep it at heterosexual for the moment um then there is a bond set up between them um Lewis makes a sort of a mystical almost Supernatural thing I I would say it's actually first and foremost chemical right and and there is something about that about the bondedness which um isn't just about God said so you know those whom God has joined together let no one put us under as you say in the wedding service or we say in the wedding service it

it's not just God's law says you mustn't do it it's actually when you pull apart a couple who've been living together it is a tearing of Flesh um it's a it's a a trauma which is much more than just who has which of the CDs you know it's um absolutely yes um let let's um open up the can of worms now um Francis asks um is the homosexuality we understand today the same as that which is condemned in the Old and New Testaments for a start Old and New Testaments are interestingly different in that uh

it's very contentious as to which of the famous passages in the Old Testament say what precisely about sexual relations I mean for instance the question of Sodom um uh in Genesis let's just leave that to one side it does seem that the prohibition in Leviticus 18 about lying with a man as you would lie with a woman that is something which is then picked up explicitly in the language of First Corinthian 6 Etc um so there is a a similarity there but we're talking about documents produced over Millennia and so we have to be very

careful but more particularly we have to be very careful about any word ending in ity as in it homosexuality it's rather like words ending in ISM Judaism Buddhism Etc isms were invented in the 19th century you know when the British missionaries went to India and told the Indians that they the Indians had a religion called Hinduism the Indians were surprised they didn't know we didn't know that was this is a 19th century construct in the same way homosexuality is a 19th century construct and in particular it's a modernist construct it's an essentializing construct which comes

out of modernism rather than postmodernism postmodernism now which I think is where some of the Leading Edge of those movements is now um doesn't say this is my Essence it says today I feel like being this sort of a person or that sort of a person and it's fluid it's much more fluid and and I think that's where the Leading Edge is which is ironic because in the church often people talk as though we were all signed up to an essentialized view but actually essentializing is not where the culture is is at now I think

we're we're behind on that but then here's the here's the key thing I'm an ancient historian first and foremost when I approach these texts I I read grear roman sources and I try and understand how the New Testament would have impacted in that world one of the poets that I really enjoyed reading when I was at school is the rather scarless Latin satirist juvenile um no doubt as many school boys did you enjoy juvenile for all the wrong reasons and you um you have an expirated text in the back of you have an expiated text

in class but then you know where to find in the library the thing with all these strange Latin words you look them up and oh my goodness was that what they got up to and juvenile in Saturn 9 describes very clearly uh what you might call the gay scene in Rome and it isn't a matter as people have often said of um powerful men exploiting boy slaves Etc um that happens as well of course but it's also very much a matter of some long-term Partnerships and also a lot of people um who juvenal describes in

lavish detail who who choose what juvenile describes as the female role in homosexual behavior um in other words there's nothing that we know about actual behavior that they didn't know and and so just to square that Circle very often the contention is among some people that well what Paul describes and prohibits in certain of his letters in terms of um that behavior well he's referencing some kind of as you say pedist explo whatever well that's all completely different to what we consider to be that is that is a view that people have taken if you

read not only the text I've referred to juvenile satar if you read plutarch's treaties on love plutar is a near contempory of Paul if you read Plato's Symposium which is a discussion of Love okay that's written um a few hundred years before Paul but platoo is one of the go-to authors um you know Homer is the Old Testament for Greek civilization PL is the New Testament and if you look at the school curricular of the time Plato is is widely read and the Symposium has all kinds of relations including long-term faithful stable Partnerships um so

the the the rather trivial suggestion that oh this was all exploitative thing and now we have something quite different historically that won't work now let me say um I would expect that many historians of many pers Asians would agree with me on this and that doesn't then foreclose the issue as to what you do with it um because in many Church circles people will say oh well at that point we're just going to disagree with Paul um and fine that raises quite other issues and then you have to start talking about the integration of what

Paul says in these very small passages and they are small passages obviously with all the other things he's doing and then it's about creation and about the Redemption of creation um and that that's what's really at the heart of it many more issues we could unpack but we'll leave them for now um and go move it into a different can of worms um the I had a number of different questions on this actually um come in uh from different people like Carol in Arizona for instance the question of transgender and um that that in a

sense if if the sexuality issue has kind of come on a pace I think the transgender issue has has more than doubled the you know in terms of the rapid changes inet culture I suspect a lot of that's to do with the the sort of technological age we live in and the way things can spread so incredibly fast these days but um rather than comment on specific pastal issues that some people have have have written in about which obviously you're not in a position to really speak into I did notice that you um you did

sort of put your head above the parit let's say in the times a year or two ago um commenting on a couple of articles and issues that had come up there and this was the letter you wrote and I'd just be interested in you expanding on your comments on this um perhaps I should say one of the Articles was by that I was commenting on was by um uh Hugo riffkin yes who's son of former foreign secretary Malcolm riffkin and Hugo I think is is basically a secularist who's just observing the scene rather than taking

a particular moral these were just sort of cult cultural sort of analysis type pieces in fact in in whether they filled it in for you or you did it's mentioned here anyway it says sir the articles by CLA foges I think uh gender fluid world is muddling young minds and Hugo Rifkin social media is making gender meaningless and the letters about children wanting to be pandas dogs or mermaids show that the confusion about gender identity is a modern and now internet fueled form of the ancient philosophy of gnosticism the Gnostic one who knows has discovered

the secret of quote unquote who I really am behind the deceptive outward appearance in rifkin's apt phrase is the ungainly boring fleshly one this involves denying the goodness or even the Ultimate Reality of the natural world nature however tends to strike back with the likely victims in this case being vulnerable and impressionable youngsters who as confused adults will pay the price for their Elders fashionable fantasies you wrote so um yeah expand that one a little bit I mean you probably got a little bit of backlash I'm assuming on this this letter I did a little

bit I actually got a bit of whatever the opposite of backlash is because um The Washington Post phoned me up and asked if I'd like to write a whole opad piece about it and I courteously declined their invitation I said you know what I've written I've written um I mean what struck me particularly again as an ancient historian was with that article by riffkin when he describes people not being satisfied with this boring fleshly body that they've got and looking inside for a different identity I thought I I know that stuff that there's a lot

of that in the second and third centuries and it's very interesting the rise of gnosticism in roughly the middle of the 2nd Century onwards then chimes in with the fact that gnosticism has been one of the default American religions particularly for the last 200 years Harold Bloom says this in a famous book in other words and you find it in Yung and other psychologists um the idea that who I really am is what I discover when I look deep inside my heart and then I discover and then if I look at my body oh dear

this doesn't quite match well we got to do something about it and the early Christians were quite clear on two fronts first the created order is good and to be redeemed not to be rejected gnosticism is ultimately dualistic right second with Jeremiah the heart is deceitful above all things and who can fathom it and Jesus says it's out of the heart that there proceed and then he gives a rather uh worrying list of things in Mark chapter 7 and he implies that these are the things that defile us and the problem with gnosticism is finding

my inner identity and this is the stuff of many many movies novels plays Etc who I really am now I have known as we most of us have some people who have had transgender issues shall we say and again I would stress this is not something for somebody like me to come down from a great height and say you're all silly go away bahahahah these are genuine dear people who one loves and wants to help and affirm and so on however as with some other styles of behavior if I as a pastor see somebody doing

something which I deeply and with care believe is really destructive in some way I need to say something about that and particularly I worry about children you know I have grandchild now I worry about them being in a world where somebody might ask you know a seven-year-old um do you want to be a boy or a girl as though this is you and the whole the whole rhetoric of saying oh you were assigned that gender at Birth but actually you may be somebody else this idea that that gender is a a purely socially constructed phenomenon

socially constructed phenomenon which can be then wished On You by people other than your that's part of what gnosticism is responding to is the Imperial power of a regime that tells you who you are and gnosticism is saying no we're different from it's a protest movement but it goes inside and protests against its own embodiment um it's an interesting one because this stuff is all moving so fast anyway I think even in the secular postmodern world people are coming up against certain consequences let's say in the sporting world yes where where certain female athletes are

saying hang on I I'm all for transgender people but it doesn't make sense to have people who are physically male competing against wom and and indeed the soal you know trans exclusion radical feminists I think is now the term turfs um the tradition you know the the the first wave of feminism you know jine Greer and so on who who are actually saying well I've got a problem and and suddenly you've got people who you might expect to be bed phos actually at all to each other yes and and I just think that that that

demonstrates the confusion that results from saying that my identity is constituted by some feelings with in me about maleness femaleness um both identity and desire and uh it's partly the residual platonism of Western culture that that we we think in terms of the physical being irrelevant and there's a spiritual reality which is different and the the Bible is very keen on the physical stuff so when God said he created the male and female and he said it was good there's there's a givenness in your opinion to that identity and that interestingly in the New Testament

I know that in Galatians 3:28 it says neither Jew nor Greek slave nor free no male and female that's because you are all one in Christ but all the rest of the time Paul is very much aware that he is a Jew that other people are not and we have to navigate that and in the same way he is male some people are female and we have to navigate that there the fact of being all one in Christ doesn't mean that we deny any differ we deny any differences exactly fascinating stuff um the time is

up already and uh thank you for for delving into what is often obviously a very very you know obviously explosive sort of area to to to raise any source of thoughts on but um appreciate your your openness to doing that thank you very much [Music]