Roaming Through Romans

Darrell Bock:

Welcome to The Table, where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, Executive Director for Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. And my guest today is Tom Wright, all the way from the UK and apparently live in his study. I get asked, Tom, sometimes whether I've read all the books in my library and I reply, "Some of them twice." But we really do appreciate you coming and being a part of our podcast today and helping us think through the book of Romans.

N.T. Wright:

Thank you very much. You know Umberto Eco, the Italian philosopher and novelist. He said, when people ask him, "Have you read all these books?" He says, "No, these are the ones I have to read this month, the other ones are upstairs." It's a great line. I bequeath it to you if you need it in future.

Darrell Bock:

Okay, that's good. Well, it gives me an alternative answer when I can use, because I do get the question more than once. Anyway, so my opening question is something I always ask when we interview someone for the first time, and that is, how did a nice chap like you get in a gig like this?

N.T. Wright:

Well, I grew up in an ordinary middle class, middle of the road, Anglican family in the north of England. And a lot of my male relatives were clergy. My mother's father was clergy. My godfather, who was a cousin of my mother's was clergy. We were in church every Sunday. It wasn't particularly either evangelical or Anglo-Catholic or anything, it was just kind of ordinary English, Anglican. Quite low-key, but nevertheless, you were expected to show up and we said prayers before bed and all that stuff, and sang hymns around the piano on a Sunday afternoon. And this was normal kind of 1950s middle English piety, I guess.

And within that context, when at quite an early age, I think maybe seven or eight, I was aware that what I really wanted to do with my life was to do what my grandfather was doing, which was to be running a parish and preaching sermons and taking services. And I didn't really know very much about what else clergy did, but I just thought, "That's a great life, I'd like to be doing that."

And there were twists and turns along the way. And at that stage, I had no idea that there was such a thing as academic theology, I wouldn't have known what that could have been about. But when I then in my late teens ran into philosophy and theology properly, oh my, I knew that that was the particular direction that my kind of ministry was going to be going in. Though I never wanted to leave the vocation to be a pastor and to be leading in worship and so on. And so I've managed through twists and turns, as I say, to combine the two over the years, much to much taxing for my poor wife and family who've had to move house and move job and move place and so on.

But it started very early and in quite an ordinary way. Only when I was a bishop and helping others towards ordination did I realize that actually knowing that you were called to ministry at the age of seven or eight is actually quite unusual. Most people, it's a bit later than that.

Darrell Bock:

Yeah, it's nine or 10.

N.T. Wright:

But for me… Nine or 10, or actually in many cases, 20, 30 or 40 or whatever.

Darrell Bock:

Right, right.

N.T. Wright:

Yeah. So that's where it all began.

Darrell Bock:

That's great. And so, in your education, your theological education, you said you became aware of academic education as you hit philosophy and other things. Walk us a little bit through that background.

N.T. Wright:

Well, yeah, I always enjoyed the classics at school, Greek and Roman classics, language and literature. I'd done Latin from the age of eight, because in my school system that's what we did. And I started Greek at the age of 13, which was a bit late. I was in a class that had already done two years, so I had quite a bit of catching up to do. But it was because when I was about, I think 11 or 12, a school master who I trusted had asked me one day quite casually, "What are you going to do when you grow up?" And I'd said, "Actually, I'm going to be ordained." And he had immediately reacted very positively and said, "That's wonderful, because you'll have to get to know the classical world and study the New Testament and learn Greek and all that stuff." I remember thinking, "Yes, that sounds great." So I was diving into the classics and then got fascinated by the early Roman Empire, particularly, which I was studying at school.

And then I was fortunate enough in coming to Oxford to be able to study philosophy and ancient history, which is the main classics degree at Oxford to this day. And I was as excited by the philosophy, which was new to me then, more or less, as I was by the theology. I'd done a bit of philosophy at school, not that much, but the philosophy and the ancient history were my first degree, and then I did theology as a second bachelor's degree. So I had the two BAs, one after the other. And having plunged into the ancient history and philosophy, I then found the whole thing rushing together when I was studying theology and particularly studying the New Testament, which I quickly realized was the thing I really wanted to do.

And I always intended to study the New Testament's use of the Old because I didn't want to lose touch with either testament, and that seemed to be a good way of doing it. And so, I picked on Romans, having talked to my professor, George Caird, he became my professor after that conversation, to say, "What should I be doing for my doctorate?" We agreed that if I wanted to study the use of the Old Testament in the New, then Romans was a pretty good place to start. So that was 50 some years ago, and after all these years, I just keep coming back to it.

Darrell Bock:

Yeah. I know how that works. My own study at Aberdeen started with the use of the Old Testament in the New, and Luke, Acts for Christology. So for all the same reasons basically, to keep the testaments together and linked. So very much appreciated. Tell us a little bit about George Caird as a supervisor.

N.T. Wright:

Oh, George Caird was an old-fashioned English gentleman. I mean, Scottish gentleman actually, he had quite a Scots accent. He was kind in a really rather sharp way. He said to me when we first met after the initial conversation, he said, "Well, go and write something and then we'll talk about it." Which is I now know a very scary thing to say to a beginning doctoral student. So I spent about eight or 10 weeks trying to write a paper that would say something that I thought I ought to be saying and realizing the huge volume of books that I was going to have to read, and I couldn't do more than a few of them. And then he would sit down and we'd go through and say, "Well, on page two, it's an interesting idea, but had you not thought of such and such?" And then, "Well, but so-and-so says this, doesn't he? But Paul elsewhere says the following, and how does that square with what's going on in Galatians?"

And so, these were all questions and push-backs. It meant very kindly and supportively, but it meant that after each session like that, I would go away thinking, "He's not going to do that to me next time, I'm going to…" And I think this is probably the aim. And after about two years, something that he said to me was really positive like, "I really like it when you said such and such." And I thought, "Oh my goodness, I've hit the jackpot. This is amazing." So, I don't think he wasn't intending to be cruel or difficult. It was just, you've written something, we're adults, we're discussing it, here it is.

But then about, when I've been with him for about two years and had done all sorts of things and had to apply to having my status elevated in Oxford terms, you start off as a BPhil student and you have to get bumped up to the DPhil status, which was what had happened. But I then applied for a research fellowship at one of the Oxford colleges, and I knew that this was a long shot because they had about 300 applicants for about three of these fellowships, and he was my principal referee. So when I then was awarded the fellowship, I thought to myself, "Oh my goodness, Caird must've written me a pretty darn good reference." And that was the kind of, "Oh, I think maybe he likes what I'm doing." And then gradually it became apparent that he really did, but he wasn't going to say that off the top, presumably to stop me being big-headed or think that I'd got it all made or whatever because I obviously still had a long way to go.

But then, I wouldn't say we ever really became close friends. He was very busy. He was running Mansfield College for some of that time. And then very sadly, not long after I'd finished my doctorate, he died in his mid-sixties quite suddenly. And that's a shame because I would've loved to have got to know him as an older man as it were, and we might've become real friends. But so, I revere his memory. He was a great man, a fine scholar in all sorts of ways, even though I disagree with some of the lines he took. But that's inevitable and right and proper.

Darrell Bock:

Yeah. I mean, his take on New Testament theology, I still talk to my students about to this very day in terms of historical Jesus questions. Your interactions with him remind me of my exchange with Howard Marshall. When I wrote him about the initial topic I wanted to do, he wrote me back and said, "Here are two German works you need to look at to see if they will help you narrow what you're interested in." And I didn't know a lick of German at the time. So I was here going, "Well, I think I'm a little behind." And went from there. Well, great. Yeah. Well, so let's talk about your love for Paul. I'm working my way obviously to Romans, but let's talk about your love for Paul. How did Paul get into the mix?

N.T. Wright:

Well, when I was an undergraduate, I was a very active member of the Oxford Christian Union, the student evangelical Christian body, which was a very lively and full of interesting people. It wasn't narrowly evangelical in the sense that the word might be used today, but it was a very sort of British evangelical and all sorts of topics would come up. And I remember in my middle year, I think as an undergraduate, somebody coming and speaking to the Christian Union who was saying that actually Christian discipleship means leaving behind Romans 7 and getting into Romans 8. In other words, you should no longer be having moral failure in your life. If you really have the spirit dwelling in you, that wouldn't be happening anymore and you need to find the new spiritual level.

And it was like the old holiness movement from the 1890s and the early years of the 20th century. And then it was coming in as well on the back of the then very new Pentecostal and charismatic movement. We're talking late '60s, early '70s here. And because, try as I might, I found myself still frequently as an enthusiastic Christian still saying the evil that I would not is what I find myself doing and the good that I want to do, I seem to miss out on. I was then very much taking the same line, which I subsequently discovered Jimmy Dunn and Charles Cranfield had taken on Romans 7, that this is the normal Christian life and that Romans 7 and 8 sort of go together as Christian discipleship. So, that was a major issue.

And the other major issue that would hit us as students in the late '60s was the issue of Calvinism and predestination and so on. It was when the banner of truth-trust was at its height, I think. And so, we were all debating about Romans 9 and how does it work and does God really a predestine some to salvation and others to damnation or what? And so, with those big questions in the back of my mind, and assuming that I sort of knew, we didn't call it the Romans road, but we had something similar, you work through… Well, you know as well as I do. Sin, salvation, belief in Jesus. So, I knew my way around Romans reasonably well, but with certain big buzzy topics.

And it was with those in mind that I was then studying the text for myself when I was doing theology as my second degree. And then particularly, when I was diving into doctoral studies. And I quickly found that if I thought there were just two options here, there were about 22 options and that Romans went on being challenging and fascinating. And fortunately that was okay at an undergraduate level, I was still handling all these issues. And then when I started my graduate work and plunged in particularly to Romans 9 to 11, all sorts of things happened and all sorts of changes took place.

And I went out one day and bought a large board, which I put up at the back of my desk and I photocopied the text of Romans in Greek, and I stuck Romans in Greek right across this board so that whatever I was reading, I had Romans in Greek as the backdrop. And I got lots of different colored felt-tip pens and I scribbled all over that for about two or three years until I really, I could feel the way that the argument of Romans worked and the way that Paul comes back to different themes, but from another angle. And Romans is just the most extraordinary work of art, quite irrespective of its theological meaning.

And so I kind of did a, say I've done a deep dive into Romans 8 here, but I did a deep dive into Romans, and this was in the mid-70s. And I still look back on those days with delight, but also with a measure of awe, because I realized still how little I understood. I was feeling my way forwards. And that's when the so-called new perspective really kicked in, because I was doing my best to try to find out how Romans and Galatians belonged together. Was it a development? Had Paul changed his mind about the law? How did that work? And it was one day, actually here in the same street where we now live, curiously, Holywell Street in the middle of Oxford. We were living just six doors down the road, and this is 40 years ago.

And when I was working through again and got to Romans 10:3, when Paul says that they are seeking to establish, seeking a righteousness which is of their own righteousness rather than submitting to God's righteousness. And realizing, this is not the Jews being legalistic, trying to do good moral works to earn their status of moral goodness, this is a righteousness which is for Israel and Israel only and keeping Gentiles out. And Paul's whole point is that it's for everybody. And I remember coming back home to our house, just down the road here and sitting up in bed and reading Galatians in Greek and thinking, "This is going to work. This is going to work. This makes sense of Galatians in a way that I've not seen before, and I think we're onto something here."

And it was the following year that Ed Sanders published Paul and Palestinian Judaism. And though he wasn't saying what I was saying, he hadn't seen that point, he kind of opened up the whole field of different ways of reading Second Temple Judaism. And it was just around then that Geza Vermes was reediting Schürer's work on the history of the Jewish people in the time of Jesus Christ. It was just then that various other major works on Second Temple Judaism were coming out, and I just plunged in, scrolls, pseudepigrapha, the lot. And the more I went at the Jewish world, the more the pull that I was discovering made sense. And that's really, sorry, it's a longer answer than you're expecting, but that's how it all began.

Darrell Bock:

No, that's actually a great answer. It actually makes a wonderful segue into the book on, I call it taking a deep dive into Romans, into the heart of Romans. And one of the things that strikes me about what you emphasize is this corporate dimension of the way of reading the New Testament, particularly Paul. That we're not thinking about each individual so much as we're thinking about large entities that are present in the reading and intended in the reading. If we think individualistically, it's only because Paul is a representative of a kind of person who belongs to a kind of group, if I can say it that way.

N.T. Wright:

Yeah. No, I see what you mean. Yes.

Darrell Bock:

Yeah. And so, I noticed at the beginning of your book, you make the point, you make three points and I'll let you take them in whatever order you want. "This is not about me or my salvation, it's a much bigger corporate concern. It's the story of Israel, but it's the story of Israel that leads to a Messiah who's in the middle of everything that's happening." And this is where I hope we spend the bulk of our time is, "It's not about some heavenly ethereal existence to come, it's about this world." So, take that in whatever order you want.

N.T. Wright:

Okay. Well, let me just quickly go through, the first one was the individual or corporate thing. And I mean, sometimes people take fright at this and they think, "Oh, this is a kind of a liberal move to say it's not about whether I have faith or not, it's just something much larger." And I want to say, no, if Paul found anyone in one of his churches who said, "Oh, I'm just sliding along, everyone else believes it, I'm not sure whether I do." Paul would sit them down and make sure that the gospel was eyeball to eyeball with them personally. But having said that, yes, the larger issues that Paul is dealing with are the big cosmic ones about how in the Messiah, Jew and Gentile come together, and this, I'm kind of tracking with Ephesians at this point.

Darrell Bock:

Yeah, exactly.

N.T. Wright:

This is the sign to the powers of the world that God is God, that Jesus is Lord. And so, you get it at the end of the theological argument in Romans, in Romans 15 where he says that, "So that you may with one heart and voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus," And that that is the sign that Isaiah 11 has kicked into operation, which is the Messianic passage about the root of Jesse who rises to rule the nations, and in him the nations will hope. And this is, Paul wants the church in Rome to be, what I call a small working model of new creation. That when people come together gladly, freely in faith, obviously individuals, but that's not the point he's making. That cross the cultural and ethnic boundaries and across the gender gap and across the social gaps, when they're all together worshiping, this is the sure sign of hope. He says, "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace, so you may abound in hope." This is the sign to the world that the new creation is on the way.

So that's really, really important. And everybody, it's like rowing in a boat. Since we're in Oxford, that's what people do here, in a rowing age. You're all doing it together, and you must all do it together, but there's no room for slackers, everyone has their own particular ore to pull it. So, it's both the corporate and the individual, but he's emphasizing the corporate.

The second thing is about Messiah and Israel. And so much of Paul's theology is about Jesus as Israel's Messiah summing up the people of God and their destiny in himself. Drawing of course on Isaiah 40 to 55 and the servant picture there, who is both a Messiah and Israel and so on. It's a kind of a fluidity between the one and the many there. And for Paul, I have emphasized this because so often today, and you'll be aware of this, there are people who talk about Paul within Judaism. They think that Paul thought that you could have… Jews are all right to stay as Jews, they don't need to convert and become Christians, but Christianity is fine for Gentiles.

And that's complete nonsense. Because for Paul, Jesus is Israel's Messiah. And if you said to a first century Jew, "The Messiah is here." It would make no sense to say, "But it really doesn't matter whether you want this Messiah or not, you just carry on the way you were." No, if God has sent his Messiah, this is the point around which Israel is being regrouped, regathered, reshaped, fulfilled. And so, it's not a matter of then the Jews being shunted off into a siding, it's about Israel being enlarged to include exactly as Isaiah had said, exactly as the Psalms had said, exactly as God promised to Abraham. What's Paul quoting again and again? The Abraham cycle, the Psalms and Isaiah to say, "This was always God's intention to enlarge the family of Abraham to include the Gentiles, so Messiah and people of God." So those are your first two. Now, sorry, I've already just lost the the third.

Darrell Bock:

The third was, "it's not about some ethereal existence in the future, it's about this world."

N.T. Wright:

Yeah. I mean, you will know my book, Surprised by Hope, which is probably my best known book in America, I think at the moment. I've got a sequel, which I've been trying to write for the last two or three years. But last year I had long COVID and I've had all sorts of medical problems on the top of that, and that's my excuse for why it's still sitting in piles of paper behind me on the desk here. But the point is this, most Christians today in the western world, and most non-Christians as well, think that the point of Christianity is for my soul to go up to heaven when I die. Actually, in the New Testament and in the Old Testament, the point is that God always intended, the creator God always intended to come and live with his people. The strap line at the end of Revelation isn't the dwelling of humans is with God, it's the dwelling of God is with humans.

And the New Testament, gospel four, canonical gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, tell the story of how Israel's God came back at last to dwell with His people. And the way Luke tells the story of the Spirit in Acts 2, is the Spirit coming and filling the house and the people, which is like a temple scene. This is Yahweh returning to Zion, and it's all about God coming and dwelling in and with and through us. So then, so much of the New Testament, which we have read as though it's really about, "How do I get out of here and go off somewhere else?" Is actually about, yes, you are going to be rescued. When you die, God will look after you and eventually when He makes His new creation, you'll be raised from the dead. But the resurrection from the dead is not so that you can lull around and do nothing for all eternity. It's very clear that Paul says in Romans 5:17, "Those who receive the gift of righteousness will reign in life." Revelation 5, "We are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb so that we can be the royal priesthood." We have task.

And the good news in Romans 8, not least, is that the vocation starts now, that we are debtors to God to live now in the present time as ourselves, individually and corporately, the small working models of new creation. And that's really the heart of so much for Paul and Romans, Ephesians. It's about the people that we are at the moment being already a sign to the world that Jesus is Lord. And this comes out of the strong theology of the resurrection of the body of Jesus, plus the strong theology of the Holy Spirit. That this is not designed as, "Oh well, now we have the clue to how you can be good Christian platonists and leave earth and go to heaven. In fact, the word heaven hardly occurs in Romans. And when the word heaven does occur in Romans, it isn't talking about the place where God's people will go when they die.

And likewise, we maybe going to get to this, the notion of being glorified. So many Christians, so many of the great commentators have assumed that when Paul talks about glorification, he simply means going to heaven and perhaps shining like an electric light bulb. That's not the point. As in John, the glorification is the being set in authority over the world. It goes back to Psalm 8, "The humans are made little lower than the angels to be crowned with glory and honor with all things put in subjection under their feet." So there's a whole raft of stuff coming through there, which is about, the Word became flesh and dwelled among us. It's about the Spirit coming to dwell within us, to make us already the people God wants us to be.

Obviously, that issues in suffering and issues in the prayer of groaning, which Paul talks about in Romans 8. But it's that vocation which we've so often missed out, partly because as good Protestants we're frightened of doing anything that might seem to be trying to please God. No, the pleasing of God has been done by Jesus, let's not make any bones about that. Jesus has done what Jesus has done. As a result of which, we are now called to be conformed to the image of the Son, Romans 8:29. Now, I could go on about this all night-

Darrell Bock:

Yeah, I can. I feel like I hit an on button.

Anyway, so there are two strands I want to pick up in what you've said, and I'll do it in reverse order of the way probably we ought to talk about it. But you talked about the connection to Ephesians. I just gave a chapel message to the seminary here, in which I talked about God's multifaceted and unconventional wisdom. And out of Ephesians 3:10, which is making your point, we're supposed to shine before the principalities and powers. And what shines, is this radical idea that in the first century, that Jews and Gentiles, who would be estranged groups, you could hardly think of more strange groups in the first century, God says, "I'm going to make you family."

N.T. Wright:

Absolutely.

Darrell Bock:

And I think that is at actually the center of most of the New Testament, that cosmic reunion that pulls us back together. And then here's the second strand, that takes us back to actually Genesis 1, that God created humanity so that we would subject the earth. And then my line is, we're all designed to be hummers. We were supposed to so reflect the presence of the image of God, that creation hummed, that it was functional. And we cooperated and collaborated with one another in such a way that creation would hum and be functional. And of course, what we see is the dysfunction that sin has introduced into that and the competition that sin has introduced into that. But when we manifest this reconciliation and genuinely experience it and begin to work together and appreciate one another in the process, we actually replicate what God was originally asking of us when He created us.

N.T. Wright:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's frustrating that we haven't spent more time together over the last 20 or 30 years because we're clearly on the same page there. And likewise, I go back to Genesis 1, and I've learned so much from people like Richard Middleton and John Walton and others who've written about Genesis 1 and about the image as, what I call, this is my way of doing what you are doing with the humming thing, I think, the angled mirror. And I explained to students, it's like a mirror that cuts across like this, reflecting God into the world and reflecting the world back to God. So that humans are called to be the wise stewards of creation, reflecting the loving care and wisdom of God into the world. And also called to be, this is the royal priesthood bit, to be reflecting the praises of creation back to the Creator. And also, especially in Romans 8 and in the Psalms, the laments of creation back to the Creator.

And so, if that's the human vision, then of course you get it in Colossians 3, where we are renewed in knowledge according to the image of the Creator. You get it at the end of 2 Corinthians 2. You get it, as I've already quoted in Romans 8:29. You probably know, by the way, that one of my graduate students, Haley Goranson Jacob wrote her thesis, I thought I had it here, it's over on the shelf, Conformed to the Image of the Son. She did a lot of work on the use of Psalm 8 in Romans 8, in a way which I hadn't followed through before. And she was landing on 8:29 as summing up that vocation. And I owe a lot to her work, which I've tried to acknowledge in a couple of places in this book.

So that, yeah, Genesis 1, and then you see for me, this goes back, you probably know this from other bits of stuff that I've written. But when I was quite young, somebody told me I should read Umberto Cassuto's commentary on Genesis. An old Jewish scholar, a big commentary on Genesis. And it was Cassuto who pointed out, which I'd never seen before, that the promises to Abraham reflect the commands to Adam as though Abraham is being the new Adam. And that's one of those things, once you've seen it, you can't unsee it. And it is of course there in the rabbis. God says, "I'll make Adam first, and if he goes wrong, I'll send Abraham to sort it all out,"

So then when you're reading Romans, and here is Abraham in Chapter Four, and the promises to Abraham are fulfilled. And then you turn over the page, and that's a sort of QED. Therefore we now have the Adam story fulfilled at last. And as you say, it's precisely in the coming together, and I would say, Ephesians, the coming together of heaven and earth in Chapter One, the coming together of Jew and Gentile in Chapter Two, the coming together of man and woman in marriage in Chapter Five. I see all these things as contributing to that lovely verse you quoted from 3:10, that amazing Greek phrase, "ἡ πολυποίκιλος σοφία τοῦ Θεοῦ,", the many colored, many splendid wisdom of God. And I wonder if you feel this living where you do, I certainly do in Britain, that this is a message that our churches in the West just have not thought about.

Darrell Bock:

It's exactly where… I mean, it's actually the dedication of my life the last 10 years, to actually encourage churches to think through what it means to manifest this reconciliation, which automatically is a contrastive message to what we see going on in the world today.

N.T. Wright:

Of course.

Darrell Bock:

I mean, it just comes with the territory. And so, you don't even have to… Once it's seen, you don't have to write about it because it stands out so much, and yet we don't pursue it.

N.T. Wright:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Darrell Bock:

Yeah. Like I say, the more I read the New Testament, the more I feel like if this isn't the theme of the New Testament, it's pretty close.

N.T. Wright:

It's pretty close. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Darrell Bock:

And so, I'm actually going to give a lecture in Australia. I'm doing the Henry Morris lecture at Ridley College this summer, and it's going to be on this.

N.T. Wright:

Oh, great.

Darrell Bock:

Because I just think this is… And what it does, is it gives an ethical bullseye for the church to pursue in terms of thinking through what it's supposed to be and what it's supposed to show.

N.T. Wright:

Yep. That's great. That's great. So Ridley College, you're going to be hanging out with my friend Mike Bird.

Darrell Bock:

Yes, Mike Bird and Brian Rosner, who's a former student of mine.

N.T. Wright:

Brian, yeah. Okay. Okay. But Mike and I are just finishing off, in fact, we're proofreading at the moment a book called Jesus and the Powers, which is a kind of a, the beginnings of a Christian political theology from the New Testament and elsewhere. And that's coming out in three months or so, which is exciting. But see, I have this theory, and I would love to know what you think of it. The Protestant Reformation was so keen on discovering justification by faith over against what it saw as the Catholic justification by works. But that that became a very individual thing, "How is your soul going to get to heaven?" But at the same time, they were very keen, rightly, on having the Bible and the liturgy in their own languages. So yes, excellent.

But that meant that by the end of the 16th century already in London you had a French church and a Portuguese church and a Polish church and a this and a that and the other. And then we exported all these to the new world, of course, often with their own different theologies. And at no point did anyone say, "Hang on, if the Bible is our authority, we're missing a trick here, because we're supposed to be worshiping together, precisely across these boundaries." But we were so keen on doing our own thing in our own cultures that that theme has been missed out in Protestant Christianity for the last 400 years. So, then you get, of course, both in Britain and in America, and in South Africa and so on, people who think it's better to keep different ethnicities apart and to try to argue that from the Bible, when the whole of the New Testament is saying, "No, no, this is the time when the new thing happens."

Darrell Bock:

Yeah, the sad thing about that is, is that on the one hand, it's the differentiation that shows the reconciliation, but you can't have the reconciliation unless you're all together.

N.T. Wright:

Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Darrell Bock:

And so it's both layers. It's like a lot of theology that gets us into trouble. I tell my students, sometimes we ask either or questions that are actually both ends.

N.T. Wright:

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

Darrell Bock:

And if we would learn how to do that better, our theology would be better. We create problems for ourselves.

N.T. Wright:

Yeah, I'm very much aware of the danger. And as a Black woman theologian pointed this out to me some years ago, and she said, she heard all that I was saying and then said, "Nevertheless, when I hear a White man saying that, what I hear you saying is, 'You all now get to be honorary White males.'" And I said, "No, that's absolutely not the point. How can I say what needs to be said without giving that impression?" And that's a real toughie.

Darrell Bock:

Yeah, it is. And that's part of the work, I reckon, part of the work of the New Testament is, it's bringing these two very distinct cultures together to try and make them one family, and they're having to figure each other out in the process. And that's not easy,

N.T. Wright:

Hence Romans 14 and 15.

Darrell Bock:

Exactly right. Exactly right. That's exactly where that is. Well, man, I've got so many different directions I want to go. Let me say one more thing about image, because this is, I really like your phrase, image reflectors, that's in this book. That we're designed to be image reflectors and that that's part of our vocation. The way I like to say it is, we're made in the image of God to image God, to image His character, to image His heart to people and to show what He's really about. And so again, I think a lot of the world that doesn't know the gospel is actually searching for location and they don't have it.

N.T. Wright:

Interesting.

Darrell Bock:

And so I tell people, why is it that the world tries to define its own identity if it's not connected to the church, it's because they don't have any alternative.

N.T. Wright:

Yeah, yeah. I think that's right.

Darrell Bock:

And you hear it in the language they say, "I'm trying to find myself."

N.T. Wright:

Yes, that funny.

Darrell Bock:

There's a part of me that's humorous that goes, "I thought you were with me all along." But still-

N.T. Wright:

But that is, of course, as Harold Bloom said, Agnosticism is the default American religion.

Darrell Bock:

… Yes.

N.T. Wright:

Much more so America than here. But discovering who I really am as opposed to what my body may be outwardly appearing to be or whatever, or my social or cultural background. No, there's a real me inside somewhere. And from that fount flow all sorts of nonsenses, as far as I can see.

Darrell Bock:

Exactly right. But I say, if you don't have a sense of location in who you are, that's what you're looking for. I mean-

N.T. Wright:

Yep, that's what you're looking for. Absolutely.

Darrell Bock:

…. it's the natural default if you're not going to have a sense of location. So being understood to be made in the image of God is pretty important. Let me deal with another thing that I think you raised, it's really profound. And that is, "We rule, but we rule being able to stand in the place of suffering and lament." I think that is, it's in the middle of the book, and I just thought, "Man, this is an interesting idea." So talk about that a little bit.

N.T. Wright:

Well, I suppose across the New Testament, the clearest place where that is stated is John's gospel. Where the whole climax of the sequence of signs and the point about Jesus being lifted up and glorified, where it's a double entendre, He is both glorified in the sense of being magnified and praised and lifted up on a cross, for goodness sake, which is the most horrible way of killing somebody that they knew. And John is telling us all the way through, I take it, I'm not a John specialist, but that's my understanding. That actually this is how Jesus is taking charge of the world by dying for the sins of the world, by fulfilling the mission which God had lined up for His own second self, if you can put it like that, for the Word made flesh, this is what He came to do.

And so, from then on, He has defeated the powers of darkness. It says, "If I'm lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself." There you've got, all people, again. So now is the ruler of this age cast out. This is very much John 12, but then leading into the whole crucifixion narrative. When I then come across to Paul, I find, particularly in Romans 8, the sense that this being conformed to the image of the Son, this is the image of the crucified Messiah. And that whole passage from Verse 18-28, is about the groaning of creation, the groaning of the church within creation, and the groaning of the spirit within the church. And then Paul says, "The one who searches the hearts, that is God the Father, knows the mind of the spirit." And that's how we are conformed to the image of the Son. Because the dialogue between the Father and the Spirit is taking place in us as we lament, as we lament.

I mean goodness knows, as we look around the world at the moment, there's so much to lament, so much horrible stuff happening. And when we then allow our own personal laments, of which we all have, some of us have a lot, when we allow those laments to resonate together, then Paul is saying, we are being conformed to the image of the Son. In other words, exactly as in Galatians 2:19 following, "I am crucified with the Messiah. This is who I am. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but the Messiah lives within me," But being crucified, being co-crucified with the Messiah, obviously that comes out of Romans 6, but it's this sense that He has won the victory by going to the cross to bear and share the sin and the pain and the shame and everything of the world. That's how the victory was won, and it's how the victory then has to be implemented.

Just as in 1 Peter, you know 1 Peter, writing to people who thought that because Jesus had died, they were going to have a free pass. And Peter is saying, "No, no, no, you are sharing the sufferings of the Messiah." That is what was uniquely achieved on the cross is implemented in the world. And so, I mean, I don't like suffering, I don't like the idea of being called to suffer. The suffering by definition is what we don't like happening to us, but that is how we go through it as people who are called to share the victory of Christ by sharing his suffering. And that for me is the, what I've sometimes called the dark heart of Romans 8, Romans 8:18-30.

Darrell Bock:

You know what's interesting about that is, is that if it's properly appropriated, it seems to me it creates an empathy that you have, forcing and of deep awareness of your need for God at the same time.

N.T. Wright:

Absolutely.

Darrell Bock:

And I tell people, when you're sharing with someone who doesn't share your faith, you need to remember that's where you were at one time, that your back was turned to God. And if you will approach the conversation that way, it will be a different kind of conversation. And if you feel like, "I've got to crush this person," in some sense of the term. So this idea of being able to identify with the pain and fallenness of the world and then how do I react to it? I like to shorten John 3:16 to, "God so loved the world that He gave," And just leave it there. And just leave it there. Because it shows the heart of God and why He gave His son.

N.T. Wright:

Yeah. And that's very much Romans 5, of course, out of which Romans 2 flows. And one of the things, you'll have picked it up, is that I read the odd little phrase in Romans 8:28, that those who love God , τοῖς ἀγαπῶσιν τὸν θεὸν, as referring back to the previous verse in which he's talked about the groaning of the spirit within us and the Father listening. Because in 5:5 he said that, "The love of God is pulled out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who's been given to us." And I think he's saying that when we are groaning like this and the Father is listening, we are in that relationship of love. God is loving us and we are learning to love and trust Him. And that it's, God works with those who are doing that to bring about good in the world. And you'll have picked up that I have this revisionist reading of 8:28, which again, I got from some friends who nudged me into saying, "Come on, Tom, read the Greeks. Remind yourself what it actually says."

Darrell Bock:

Yeah. As I tell my students, nothing beats observing the Greek text. Nothing, nothing at all.

N.T. Wright:

Absolutely.

Darrell Bock:

So let me go to one other theme, I think we have time maybe for one more. And that is the ascension. I think the ascension is the lost act of Jesus, if I can say it that way. Or the lost act of God for Jesus. And the way I like to say it is, is that when we come to Easter, we tend to say the pastor walks out, at least what happens in the States, is the pastor walks out and says, "He has risen." And the crowd says back, "And he has risen indeed." And so we think about the new life that we have. Which is tremendous and is obviously a point of Easter.

But the other point of Easter that I think is as, if not even more important, because it's the supposition for being able to say that is, is that Easter is God's vindication of the options of what the cross represented. Because Jesus either hung on the cross because He was the intended exalted figure of God, or because he was a blasphemer. Those were the two options that put Him on the cross. And of course the Jewish leadership in Rome said, "Oh, He's a pretender, He's not the real thing." And the resurrection was God's vote in that dispute. And the idea that He sits at the right hand of God, sharing in the rule and the benefits of God is making that point. And I sometimes think we miss on Easter the opportunity to drive that point home on that special day when there are a lot of people in church who otherwise wouldn't be in church.

N.T. Wright:

Yes, of course in my tradition, we keep a day called Ascension Day, which is 40 days later. And technically we are supposed to keep Easter as a 40-day festival, all the way from Easter to Ascension. And then you have Pentecost a week later. I know that not all churches keep Ascension Day, but it's one of my favorite moments in the church year and we have some great hymns about it. And I've often preached on the end of Matthew 28 where Jesus says, "All authority in heaven and on earth is given to Me." And I've said, many evangelicals like to think of it as the great commission, "Go into all the world," Well, fine. But that only makes the sense it does because all authority has been given to Him. And that's an already, that's not will be given, that has been given in His resurrection and then His being seated at the Father's right hand.

And that's obviously such an important New Testament theme. And it's kind of implicit in Paul, but it's then obviously explicit in that last great paragraph, that He died, yes, He was rather, He was raised, and He is at the right hand and He intercedes for us. So that sense that He is ruling the world, and I've often said in preaching and chatting with people, we are quite happy to think about Him having all authority in heaven, we've hardly really begun to figure out what it means that Jesus has all authority on earth. What does that look like? What are we talking about there? But part of that then is, that He's interceding for His people, praying for us so that we may be able to be His faithful witnesses, to be-

Darrell Bock:

That's a vocation idea.

N.T. Wright:

Yeah, exactly. To be the small working model of new creation so that even if it doesn't make any sense to people… The reason that early Christianity spread was not because of great ideas being passed from one brain to another, whether it was Iraneus or Tatalian or Augustine or whoever, it was because ordinary folk on the street were living the Jesus life and people looked and said, "Didn't know that was possible, didn't know you could live that way." And that's the real emphasis for me, the vocational emphasis. And this is not vocation or salvation. Of course it is about salvation, Romans is all about salvation. But salvation is about new creation, and new creation begins when Jesus comes out of the tomb on Easter morning and pours out his spirit upon his followers and is exalted to the right hand of God. And so that's where we're at on that.

Darrell Bock:

We're on the same page. I tease people, I actually did another message, it was Ephesians 2 and following, and I said, we all know the Protestant creed, "Salvation's by grace through faith, not of works, lest anyone should boast." And I say, "Keep reading. What does that salvation for?" "Created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." What's the first good work? First good work is what gets evidenced through the new man. And so I say, if you ask what salvation is for you, don't separate this calling from salvation, it's actually part of the point of it.

N.T. Wright:

Yes. And the good works, I mean because we've been so hung up about good works and good works can't justify you. People read Ephesians 2:10 as though good works there simply means, so now you get to behave morally, properly. But actually good works, as we know from, say the Letters to Titus in the New Testament, good works is about followers of Jesus doing things in the wider community that make people say, "My goodness, that was great. We're so glad to have these people on our street." The good works, whether you've got lots of money to splash out on good works of that sort, or whether it's just being kind to people and rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep. These are the good works. And I love that line, again, we're coming back to Ephesians. Γάρ ἐσμεν ποίημα. We are his workmanship. And the word poiema being the word from which we get poem. We are God's artwork. He's putting us in the world to display what his purpose for true humanity is all about.

Darrell Bock:

Yeah, the church is God's great art museum. Go ahead.

N.T. Wright:

That's right. That's right. Maybe we should write a book together, Darrell.

Darrell Bock:

That would be fun. That would be fun to do

N.T. Wright:

When we haven't got anything else to do.

Darrell Bock:

Exactly right. Well, as I tease people, I'm off the streets and the crime rate's down. Well, Tom, just a real pleasure to just exchange with you on Romans 8 and Romans and your love for Paul and your commitment to the New Testament. And what I love about what you do is, there is, and maybe this is not the best way to say it, but there is an ethical heartbeat to what you write in terms of how the church shows its theology. And I think that that is central to what the church desperately needs today in terms of being able to display what it means to be an image reflector, just to use more language that you've printed. So thank you very much for being with us.

N.T. Wright:

Well, thank you, Darrell. It's very good to see you. And again, apologies I was late on, but I'm so glad you were able to come back into the studio. That's great.

Darrell Bock:

Well, we'll have to do more of this. This is fun, and I really have enjoyed it. And like I say, one of these days when I get back to Oxford, we'll sit down and just have a long chat about all kinds of things.

N.T. Wright:

Indeed. Indeed.

Darrell Bock:

Because I can tell, this is a kindred spirit conversation.

N.T. Wright:

Absolutely. Let me know when you're coming through town.

Darrell Bock:

Okay, thanks a lot. And thank you for joining us.

N.T. Wright:

Thank you very much.

Darrell Bock:

You're very welcome. Thank you for joining us on The Table. We'll hope you'll join us again soon. If you want to see more episodes of The Table podcast, it's voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast, and we hope you'll join us again soon.