0:00

Welcome to this replay of Ask N.T.

0:02

Wright Anything, where we go back into the archives

0:05

to bring you the best of the thought and theology

0:07

of Tom Wright, answering questions

0:09

submitted by you, the listener. You can

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videos and e-books. That's premierunbelievable.com

0:26

And now for today's replay

0:28

of Ask N.T. Wright Anything. Well,

0:31

welcome back to the show, Tom. It's great to

0:33

see you, even though we're not together, as we have

0:35

been on many an occasion in the past, in

0:37

the flesh, as it were. You've

0:40

been doing this for an awful long time now, haven't you? These

0:42

meetings on Zoom. I'm sure they take their toll,

0:45

though, don't they? Yes. I mean, we've had six

0:47

months plus of it now, haven't we? And even

0:50

during my summer holiday when we were up in

0:52

Scotland, because I had

0:54

pre-recorded some lectures which were going out

0:56

in a big seminar, I had to be

0:58

present for the Q&A at the end of each lecture,

1:01

even though I pre-recorded the material itself. And

1:03

so I was sitting there in a little Scottish hotel,

1:06

hunched over a computer

1:08

and a camera. And I just thinking, really,

1:11

it's time for a break from this. But

1:13

at the moment, that's not likely.

1:16

It is at least able to

1:19

have me and other people in

1:21

places where we actually,

1:24

even without this, we wouldn't have been flying around the

1:26

world to do these various things. So I

1:28

suppose

1:28

that's a good thing. But it is very tiring. And

1:31

people are doing it a lot, continually

1:33

report that Zoom fatigue is a real thing.

1:36

And I've suffered it a few occasions when I've come out

1:38

reeling from a session. I can imagine

1:40

because you have to concentrate so hard

1:43

on when you do these sorts of things. That

1:47

is the blessing and the curse of technology. You

1:49

can do anything from anywhere, but it also means you can

1:51

do anything from anywhere. Exactly.

1:54

I used to enjoy it getting on planes and thinking,

1:57

ha, nobody can email

1:58

me. It was wonderful. And now they've

2:00

introduced it so that you can spend the entire journey

2:03

on it. Exactly. You can't escape it on the flights anymore

2:05

either. Right, right. It's one of those things. Well,

2:08

look, I can't provide the coffee and

2:10

the tea and the bananas

2:12

and croissants, but I see you've managed to sort yourself

2:14

out with some coffee yourself, and I've got mine

2:16

here as well. I have to confess,

2:18

this is before we get into today's questions, which are on

2:21

sort of current affairs, cultural issues, politics,

2:23

and so on. One

2:26

of the things I enjoyed seeing during the lockdown,

2:28

particularly, was the Bookcase

2:31

Credibility Twitter account,

2:33

which has been tweeting

2:36

all kinds of people, because they're all appearing

2:38

in their studies and offices with bookcases behind

2:40

them. And you featured, you

2:43

were, you know, this great honour

2:45

of being featured on the Bookcase Credibility Twitter

2:48

thread. And this

2:50

was the comment, because it's a very tongue-in-cheek

2:53

account, and sort of gives

2:56

the idea of what the psychology is of

2:58

the person based on their bookshelves. It says,

3:00

Tom Wright, a cavernous amount of credibility

3:02

here. The books are like bats roosting

3:05

on the walls of Tom's mind. A few

3:07

flutter about behind him like stray thoughts.

3:09

The lamps, one on and one off, tell us

3:11

that we must choose areas to illuminate. Our

3:14

minds work best when focused, which

3:16

I thought was quite a good description,

3:19

actually, in some ways. That's quite nice. I mean,

3:22

one of the reasons that Maggie and I moved to this

3:24

house nearly a year ago was that when we

3:26

looked around it and discovered it had a study

3:28

with significant bookshelves already in place.

3:31

That was a kind of a sigh of relief, because wherever I

3:33

go, you know, I did. We

3:35

got rid of maybe, I don't know, three or four thousand

3:37

books before we left Scotland. Wow. And there's

3:40

still some actually up in Scotland waiting

3:42

for us to do something else with. But this room

3:45

has most of my academic ones to

3:47

do with Biblical studies, Judaic

3:49

and classics, and some reference

3:52

books. The rest, the philosophy,

3:54

the history, the culture, etc., is all in my study

3:57

in Wycliffe, which is about the same size. So, you know,

3:59

my. multiply this by two and you've got

4:01

my phone on your face. Yes,

4:03

we're just seeing a small selection of them

4:06

on your webcam at the moment. Speaking

4:09

of which, actually, when we did that lovely livestream

4:11

with you a few months back, Tom, someone

4:13

asked, I'd love an episode of the show

4:16

where Tom just takes us through his bookshelves.

4:18

Now, that could be a very long episode, but

4:21

perhaps we could do something. We could do

4:23

a, yeah, the highlights. It could. My

4:26

younger son who is training for the ministry of the

4:28

Kripal now came and gave me two

4:31

or three hours of slave labor, reorganizing

4:33

the section on St. Paul, which is back there

4:36

and getting all the general books on Paul into

4:38

alphabetical order and getting all the commentaries

4:41

in the canonical order with the Romans ones in

4:43

alphabetical order of author. And I found

4:45

myself doing exactly that with him, saying, oh, there's

4:47

so and so. I remember meeting him at a conference and

4:50

he said this and he said, so

4:52

many of those books particularly have

4:54

quite powerful memories from my earlier

4:57

life when I was doing my doctorate and that kind of thing. Yeah.

4:59

Well, journey through my bookshelves coming from

5:01

Tom Wright soon. But let's start

5:03

some of these questions that have come in. We're

5:06

recording today's show sort of in the run up to

5:08

the US election. Obviously,

5:11

that is filling our news feeds along with all the coronavirus

5:13

stuff as well. And and

5:16

the latest that we know at this point of

5:18

recording, Tom, is that President Trump

5:20

has returned, apparently healthy to

5:23

the White House, having had this bout of Covid-19.

5:26

Obviously, there's still about

5:29

a month or so before the election

5:31

itself. So

5:33

why don't we start with a question on this front?

5:37

I mean, before we have this question, actually, from Michelle

5:39

in Washington, any thoughts generally

5:41

on these news events, this

5:44

election, which comes at such an interesting

5:46

time, obviously? I mean, it's a fascinating

5:48

thing. I felt more or

5:50

less every American election for the last 20,

5:53

30 years that

5:55

what happens here will affect the

5:58

whole geopolitical. globe.

6:02

And this is hugely serious,

6:04

whether you live in Korea, or

6:07

Germany, or South

6:09

Africa, or Latin America, or

6:11

the Amazon rainforest, whoever gets

6:14

to win in Washington, that

6:16

will have a knock on effect for the rest of the world. And

6:19

that's simply the fact of the case. But then it strikes

6:22

me as rather odd and amusing that only

6:25

Americans vote in this election, because

6:27

the rest of us are going to be affected by it. But

6:29

we don't have a say. And this

6:31

goes back, of course, to the 18th century, when

6:33

one of the great cries of the American colonists

6:36

against the British was no

6:38

taxation without representation. And

6:41

so there's a kind of oddity about

6:43

this. And I think we have to address that

6:45

globally. And this is, of course, what the United

6:47

Nations was supposed to do, which is

6:49

why many in America don't like the

6:51

United Nations, because they they want

6:54

to be able to do what they want to do and

6:56

not have somebody else, some strange person

6:58

from another country telling them how it should

7:00

be. And I think we need to be able to talk

7:03

about these issues. I know it's not easy.

7:05

And we British when we had a navy that ruled

7:07

the world, we didn't want anyone else telling us what

7:10

to do. Thank you very much. But we

7:12

live in a dangerous global village. And

7:15

we need to be clear that we

7:17

can all actually, if not support

7:20

directly, nevertheless be comfortable

7:22

with the people who are making decisions

7:24

that affect the rest of us. And that's a

7:26

very important consideration seems.

7:30

Well, look, here's the question from Michelle in Washington,

7:32

who says, is it wrong to not

7:35

vote? I can't in good conscience

7:37

put my name behind either Republican or

7:39

Democratic candidate in the upcoming US

7:41

election, because both of them stand for things I

7:44

disagree with. But my evangelical

7:46

upbringing has taught me that it is my duty as

7:48

a Christian and a woman to vote. I'd

7:50

love to hear your thoughts. And Michelle adds

7:53

hashtag right Briley for President 2020.

7:56

Well, I'm not sure we're in the running for this year's but

7:58

who knows four years time. maybe on the ticket

8:01

were it not for our British. I

8:03

think as we all know from Trump's attacks

8:05

on Obama you actually have to be born in

8:07

the state, you can be qualified.

8:09

So very happily I'm ruled out when I say thank you.

8:12

I'm very happy about that yes. But yeah

8:15

I think the idea of it being a Christian duty

8:17

to vote, that's a kind

8:20

of a, I see it as a second order

8:22

Christian duty. I mean yes if

8:24

you can and if it's possible but

8:26

I don't think you've committed some huge sin

8:29

if you don't. I think that

8:31

there's a very

8:33

large conversation to be had about how from

8:35

the 18th century onwards with the rise of

8:37

modern western democracies it's been

8:40

assumed that now that

8:42

you've got the vote and of course time was when women

8:44

didn't and time was when other people didn't, then

8:47

you really have a

8:49

duty to use it. And I would broadly

8:51

support that. I'm not sure it's

8:53

a specifically Christian duty. The New Testament

8:56

is written to people many of whom didn't have

8:58

any sort of voting rights at all and

9:00

I think people would have said if you have that chance

9:03

to influence the way the world is going then

9:05

of course you should use it. But

9:07

I think here's the problem when we vote

9:10

for somebody we are not saying

9:13

that we agree with them about everything

9:15

and we support them in everything

9:17

that we think they want to do. We are

9:19

simply, it's a much lower grade thing than that,

9:22

it's simply saying I think at this

9:24

moment in our country's history we need

9:26

the kind of leadership which

9:28

broadly this person or this party might

9:31

produce. And if one looks at two or possibly

9:33

as in the case of Britain three or four parties

9:36

and you look at them all and you say well I think

9:38

they're all going in the wrong direction then

9:41

it might well be a Christian duty to spoil

9:45

the ballot paper or to write none of the

9:47

above or something like that. And

9:50

maybe there are times when that's what one has

9:52

to do and that's a fairly

9:54

ineffective protest because that vote

9:56

then just goes in the bin, doesn't actually

9:59

do anything. But maybe if

10:01

somebody believes strongly enough that that

10:03

is the case, they need to join together with

10:05

other people who believe that and find

10:07

some other way forward. This is a very

10:10

difficult, creaky process because a

10:12

binary vote is a very, very, very

10:15

blunt instrument and the chances of finding

10:17

two candidates, one of whom you absolutely

10:19

agree with and the other one of whom you absolutely don't

10:21

agree with is fairly minimal. But I think this

10:24

emerges from the ideology

10:26

of the 18th century, which was basically,

10:29

we'll get rid of kings and we'll get rid

10:31

of bishops and we'll get rid of all these high ups

10:34

telling us what to do and we the

10:36

people will decide and

10:38

then utopia will arrive, won't

10:40

it? Because that was the sort

10:42

of sense that once we stop these people

10:45

with power and money squashing us all

10:47

into shape and let people be

10:50

themselves, then it'll all work

10:52

out fine. And so then it's sort

10:54

of assumed that there must

10:57

be one candidate or one party

10:59

who is basically just

11:01

two or three steps from that utopia, which we

11:03

know we all want. We in Britain

11:05

have actually never really believed that, or

11:08

hardly ever. We have tended

11:10

to think we are voting for the least

11:12

worst. Once you say we're voting

11:14

for the least worst, then I think,

11:18

there's a kind of a sigh of relief. I

11:20

do not have to scrutinize every bit

11:23

of this person's voting record or whatever. I

11:25

simply have to assess what the options

11:28

are and what would be best for

11:30

the world and for my country

11:32

in the current stage of affairs. I mean, if

11:35

I may follow up with a follow up question, I'm

11:37

airing on my own unbelievable show my other podcast

11:40

this coming weekend, a debate between

11:42

David French, who's a Christian

11:45

commentator in the US and a

11:47

never Trump, though he is an evangelical

11:50

fairly conservative. And

11:53

Eric Metaxas, who's become rather well known

11:55

recently for his his very pro Trump positions.

12:00

Essentially, the debate that they had, which we'll

12:02

be airing, is David

12:05

Trump, sorry, David French

12:07

saying a

12:09

person of Donald Trump's moral character,

12:12

Christians would never have dreamed, you

12:14

know, 20 years ago of supporting

12:18

this person as someone fit for the White House.

12:21

Metax's point essentially was he's getting

12:23

things done, and he's giving a

12:25

lot of even things, he's keeping his promises to a lot

12:27

of evangelical Christians who put him in power. What's

12:30

your view on that? It does, to what extent

12:32

are we voting people in on their moral character? To what

12:35

extent are we voting them in as people who get things

12:37

done, whether they do it in the way we like necessarily

12:39

or not? It's very difficult because

12:42

of course I only know what I know about

12:44

Donald Trump through what comes across in

12:46

the media, which is, as we all know, heavily

12:49

selected, both one way

12:51

and another. I know

12:53

Eric Metax is a bit, I don't know your other correspondent,

12:57

but Eric and I have had little

12:59

bits of this conversation in the past. So

13:03

it's very difficult to me at a distance,

13:06

never having sat down with Donald Trump or whatever,

13:09

to say very much. However,

13:11

I have friends, people I've known

13:13

for years, who have worked in Washington

13:16

for years, including

13:18

some staunch Republicans, who

13:20

have said very clearly, this

13:22

man, it's not a matter of his moral character,

13:25

it's a matter of his mental capacity.

13:27

He has a man who deals with

13:30

television news headlines and Twitter feeds and

13:33

seems to lash out in all directions. This

13:38

is other people saying this, not me, but there are people

13:41

who know the situation well, that

13:43

he's a bit like a rogue elephant and if he's pricked

13:45

this way, he'll swing that way and if

13:48

he hears an alarm go off, he'll

13:50

rush in that direction. And this

13:52

is not a happy position to be in. And

13:57

the question of whether he supports evangelicalism.

14:00

agendas or not, well he doesn't,

14:02

he doesn't is the answer to that. And

14:04

there is a quite different question about

14:07

the way in which many bits of

14:09

what calls itself evangelicalism

14:11

in America have gone with

14:14

particular cultural tides without

14:17

necessarily realizing that. And

14:19

this is something we might come on to later or another

14:22

podcast when we're talking about the whole Black

14:24

Lives Matter business, and about

14:26

how the fact is that these are broadly

14:28

speaking white evangelicals, and I

14:30

should say white conservative Roman Catholics as well,

14:33

who have seen Trump as the kind

14:35

of the person who will guarantee

14:38

certain moral policies. I mean, I think

14:40

the abortion issue in terms of evangelicals,

14:42

I think of attitudes to the present

14:45

state of Israel. And I hope there are many Jewish

14:47

people in America and in the

14:49

state of Israel who are horrified at

14:51

what Trump has been doing in that regard. Equally

14:54

well, there are others who say at last, he

14:57

has a president who gets the point because

14:59

America needs to support Israel. That was

15:01

certainly, you know, in this

15:03

upcoming debate that I'll be airing Eric Metaxas

15:06

very much sees Trump as having been a champion of

15:09

Israel. And also, you know,

15:12

of religious freedom. And indeed,

15:14

he believes he's taking a sensible approach to

15:17

what, again, Metaxas

15:19

sees as a sort of left wing cultural

15:21

Marxism of the sort of Black Lives Matter movement

15:23

and so on. Now, now we've got questions

15:25

on these actually that it kind

15:28

of segues into helpfully.

15:30

Kellyanne Colorado USA

15:32

wants to ask about if

15:35

Christians or Christian owned businesses should

15:37

be denying services to people that don't

15:39

agree with their Christian beliefs. I'm thinking

15:41

of some high profile cases in the US

15:44

where businesses refuse to make wedding cakes

15:46

for gay couples. I understand that people and

15:48

businesses want to be set apart from the surrounding

15:50

culture, but isn't business simply business.

15:53

Can't imagine Paul denying someone a tent because

15:55

of their beliefs. I'd love to hear your input on

15:57

this very complex topic in America. And

16:00

yes, so this touches on the issue of religious freedom

16:02

and some of these cases have gone to the Supreme

16:04

Court and we got our own versions of them

16:07

here in the UK as well. What's

16:09

your feeling on where the lines are drawn on these cases?

16:11

Yes, I mean, there's several different

16:14

issues bundled up in there. And as

16:16

with all contemporary hot

16:18

button issues, it's very dangerous

16:20

simply to lurch one way and say, I'm going

16:22

to check all the boxes down this side or all the

16:25

boxes down that side. We have to take

16:27

things case by case. And the one that I remember

16:29

from the UK was a couple in Northern

16:32

Ireland, I think it was, who a gay

16:35

couple who rather ostentatiously

16:38

were trying to

16:41

put a cake

16:43

manufacturer on the spot with a similar

16:46

request. And they were

16:48

clearly pushing to make it a co-celevere

16:51

knowing what the response would be and then being

16:53

able to say that this shop was guilty of whether

16:55

hate speech This was the Asher's Bakery

16:58

case. The specific cake that they

17:00

were being asked to make was in support

17:02

of gay marriage being legalized

17:04

in Northern Ireland, which had not

17:06

happened to that point. And

17:09

they eventually, and yes, the

17:11

business declined the request. And

17:13

this went all the way to the highest courts.

17:16

Yes, and of course, I mean, it would

17:18

have been perfectly easy for the people

17:20

concerned to go to some other cake

17:23

company that wouldn't have cared anything about

17:25

that. And they clearly were targeting

17:28

people who they knew would find this

17:30

really difficult in order to put them on the

17:32

spot. And this goes

17:34

on and on and on because both sides can play

17:36

this game, putting people in a position where

17:39

they are forced to declare their hand this way

17:41

or that on key issues. And

17:44

this is deeply unhealthy. But

17:47

I suppose every generation, every

17:49

century, there are key

17:51

issues that the majority

17:54

of the population really believe

17:56

this absolutely matters. I mean, 150 years ago. my

18:00

right of 180 years ago, maybe you

18:03

wouldn't have been able to be a fellow

18:05

of an Oxford College or indeed an undergraduate

18:08

in Oxford College, unless you would give

18:11

your assent to the 39 articles

18:13

of the Church of England. So that if you're a Methodist,

18:15

you couldn't, if you're Roman Catholic, you couldn't, certainly

18:17

if you're a Jew, you couldn't, etc, etc. And we

18:20

forget how quickly that has totally

18:23

changed. But every generation

18:25

has certain things which it

18:28

sees as necessary for the preservation

18:30

of the health of the society. And for

18:33

many generations, giving

18:35

your assent to the 39 articles for the Church of

18:37

England was seen as necessary for the

18:40

health of society. And if you can't

18:42

do that, well, sorry, you can't, you're not welcome

18:44

at these, these August institutions. And

18:46

now of course, that's totally blown away. And

18:49

you'd have the reverse really that if somebody was

18:51

holding to a very strong Christian line,

18:54

oh, well, maybe that's hate speech, because you

18:56

disapprove of this, or you don't like that or whatever.

18:59

But it's as though it's

19:01

very difficult to get to a sort of equilibrium

19:04

where we all really believe in total

19:07

freedom of speech for everyone. You know,

19:09

I don't want or expect to hear people

19:11

marching up and down the street outside my room

19:13

here shouting anti Semitic slogans,

19:16

or for instance, and now

19:19

if they were simply making

19:21

some sort of a protest about something going on in

19:23

the state of Israel, persecution of

19:25

Palestinians in the occupied territories or whatever.

19:29

I would understand that, but I would

19:31

say, we're in very dodgy territory

19:33

here, because there is a history of anti

19:36

Semitism in Britain, and it is

19:38

actually quite alive and well in

19:40

certain quarters. And I would want

19:42

to ban anything that was going to be stirring

19:45

that up. And I would hope that

19:47

the police would intervene and that the courts would take

19:49

action. But then when you apply out

19:52

beyond that, academic freedom.

19:55

I've seen this debated in terms of when

19:57

you need to keep with the same sort of area. When

20:00

you get Holocaust deniers people who say

20:02

that only a few Jews were killed and they were all

20:04

elderly anyway or whatever And

20:07

one wants to say no. Sorry. Here's

20:09

the evidence There are libraries full of the evidence

20:12

and there are photographs as everything etc, etc But

20:15

the answer to somebody who is talking

20:18

nonsense is not we

20:20

will ban them But let us

20:22

have the debate. I'm speaking in the middle of

20:24

a great university That's what

20:26

a university is for not to

20:28

protect people from ideas that they feel

20:30

threatening But to say let's

20:33

have the discussion. Let's look at the evidence

20:36

Let's marshal the arguments and see where we

20:38

come out That has always been my view and

20:40

God willing it always will be in other words I remember

20:43

my old teacher George cared

20:46

who quoted at me more than once I

20:48

totally disagree with what you say, but

20:51

I will defend to the death your right

20:53

to say it That's the position

20:55

that we would all like to be in there are times

20:57

times of war times of real trouble Where

21:00

you can't hold on to that position because it's

21:02

actually too dangerous for too many people

21:05

and those are judgment calls But

21:07

in general in Western society,

21:09

we have aimed at that freedom of speech

21:11

Which is a precious and rather a delicate

21:14

flower and we should not be trampling

21:16

on that and wondering off topic Well,

21:19

but I was going to bring this back to Kelly's specific question

21:21

in that sense that obviously in this case

21:24

rather like the one in Northern Ireland There

21:26

was that there was someone's if you like rights

21:28

of conscience, you know They didn't feeling

21:31

good conscience that they could put a particular

21:33

message onto a cake as they were a Christian

21:35

And Kelly is saying but isn't a business

21:38

a business, you know is pulled But

21:42

I mean selling newspapers is a business Newspapers

21:45

used to have quite a strong commitment

21:48

to fact-checking and to truth-telling

21:50

and that has slid away In

21:53

many cases quite a long way and

21:55

newspapers will now post advertisements

21:58

for all sorts of bizarre things because the advertisers

22:01

pay money, et cetera, et cetera.

22:04

At what point does a Christian in the

22:06

newspaper business say, I

22:09

really believe in truth, and we want to have these

22:11

facts checked. And if somebody says, oh, but this is a great

22:13

story. Well, nevermind, you can't. So

22:15

there are always gonna be points of tension.

22:19

And I can think of many other

22:21

things where business is business,

22:23

but if somebody sells you a car that

22:25

actually they know has got something

22:28

wrong with it, which is gonna give out in 50 miles

22:30

time, then I would say they

22:32

as a Christian have a responsibility to say,

22:34

no, I'm not gonna do that. So

22:38

the lines are gonna be drawn in different places. And

22:41

I mean, my personal

22:43

feeling on this is that I don't think in either

22:45

of these cases, the Christian

22:47

proprietors of these businesses were refusing

22:49

to serve the people on the basis of their sexuality.

22:52

It was rather the message that was being put

22:55

on the cake. And likewise, Paul

22:57

was approached by a Roman to

22:59

make a tent. I'm sure he'd have no problem with that. But if this Roman

23:02

asked them to emblazon it with Caesar is Lord,

23:04

he might say, no, I don't think

23:06

that's the kind of message I want to put on my tent. That's

23:09

a very interesting suggestion because

23:12

many of the tents that would be made and sold

23:15

by people like Paul would be four units

23:17

of the army. Does that mean that

23:19

the Paul approved of the Roman army?

23:22

Well, no, he probably didn't. Though he probably did

23:24

think that having a strong justice

23:27

system was better than wild

23:29

vigilante out of

23:31

control militias roaming around which

23:34

is often has often historically been the

23:36

alternative. So there are many, many

23:38

different things. And I think then

23:40

it is a matter of conscience. It is a

23:42

matter of Christian teaching. And

23:46

Paul is very good on not trampling

23:48

on people's consciences. In 1 Corinthians 8,

23:51

9 and 10, yes,

23:53

you're free to eat any meat that's

23:55

for sale in the market, but if somebody says, hey,

23:57

that was offered to an idol, then. Their

24:00

conscience is at risk here and you shouldn't be

24:02

trampling on that. Yes, I mean, again,

24:04

I don't want to dwell too long on it, but when I've had

24:06

discussions online with some of my atheist friends

24:08

on this, I said, well,

24:10

I personally would

24:14

hold the right of a Christian couple not

24:16

to have to put messages on that they disagreed with.

24:19

As I would equally say, an atheist printer

24:22

has no can refuse a young

24:24

earth creation sort of banner that is

24:26

being asked to produce, you know, they might not particularly

24:29

want their business to be used for that. And

24:32

I think we have to see it from different perspectives.

24:37

Let's move on. There is another very important issue

24:40

that we've got in among the questions for this episode

24:42

before we finish. And it's returning

24:44

to the issue of Black Lives Matter,

24:47

some of the issues around race that have obviously been dominating

24:49

our headlines recently. Let's start with Kirsten

24:52

and John in Liverpool, who say, is

24:55

checking your privilege a biblical

24:57

concept? I'd love to hear Tom comment on

24:59

the Black Lives Matter movement versus

25:02

the phrase some people are using, all lives matter. And

25:04

is there a better theological language you

25:06

can we can use in this idea of privilege?

25:09

Yes, I need to be

25:11

brought up to speed with what people

25:14

now are meaning by checking your privilege,

25:16

because I think checking there

25:20

doesn't isn't that referring isn't that

25:22

an Americanism, where when you

25:24

go into a restaurant, you check

25:26

your coat at the door, you give your coat

25:28

isn't that what's going on there? I

25:30

could well be yes, yes, I think I think it could

25:33

refer to either in a sense you need to, or

25:35

you need to be aware of your privilege whenever

25:38

you come into a conversation like this. Right,

25:41

right. But I was I was thinking of it

25:44

more in terms of you know, like people say, well,

25:46

when you go into church, you have to check your brain

25:48

in at the door or whatever. Right? Yeah, it could

25:50

be I wouldn't know, to be honest, exactly

25:52

what it refers to. But they have a similar

25:55

sort of connotation. Yeah. Yeah.

25:58

I did a a lecture,

26:00

written lecture, an article, The

26:03

Time of the George Floyd Crisis, which

26:05

is on the Wicklip Hall website, which says

26:07

a lot of what I would want to say about this in

26:10

much more detail than I can say it here. And

26:12

I've been reflecting on it since and in discussion

26:14

with friends and indeed, one or two family members

26:16

who are very concerned about all this.

26:19

There's a couple of points I really want

26:21

to stress. One is that

26:23

right from the start, the

26:26

Christian movement, as in

26:29

Antioch in Syria, when Paul and Barnabas

26:31

were teaching there in

26:33

the 40s in the first century, Christianity

26:36

was a social experiment

26:38

in multicultural, multi-ethnic,

26:42

quasi-familiar living

26:44

together. People, Jew, Gentile,

26:47

slave, free, male, female.

26:50

And in the ancient Mediterranean world,

26:52

color was not an issue. Because

26:56

people of all shades of pigmentation

26:59

would be moving around through

27:01

the Middle Eastern world. And so

27:03

at no point in the New Testament do we get any

27:06

binary certainly of black and white or anything

27:08

like that. That's very much a modern thing.

27:10

That's the second point I'll come on to. But this

27:13

vision of the church, and think of the book of Revelation,

27:16

a great multitude of every nation and

27:18

kindred and tribe and tongue, everybody

27:21

all together, all singing in praise of God

27:23

and the Lamb and acting as and

27:25

thinking as and praying as a single

27:28

multiple family. That's

27:30

been the vision of Christianity from the beginning. How

27:33

come we forgot that? And I think

27:36

partly it's because in the Middle

27:38

Ages the church was either

27:40

the great Orthodox church in the East or

27:43

the great Catholic church in the West. And

27:45

it became a European phenomenon

27:48

living to itself with not

27:51

many tentacles going out into

27:53

the world where you'd find people of significantly

27:55

different culture or color. And

27:58

then particularly the...

27:59

tragedy on the 16th century when

28:02

people

28:02

said we want the Bible and the liturgy

28:04

in our own language, which absolutely

28:06

I want the Bible and the liturgy in my own language. But

28:09

that resulted in the setting up of churches

28:11

from the 16th century onwards, which

28:13

were German churches, Polish churches, Portuguese

28:16

churches, etc., etc. So that

28:18

in London in the 17th century, you would

28:21

have these different churches, French churches,

28:23

whatever, where people of that nationality

28:26

would meet to worship in their own language. But

28:28

I think that kind of tacitly gave permission

28:31

to say we will have different churches according

28:34

to who your parents were and which country you came

28:36

from. And that then has produced

28:39

doctrinal divergences of various sorts.

28:42

And then we need to know the history because

28:44

it's so important here. And then with

28:47

the rise in the 18th and 19th

28:49

century of social Darwinism,

28:52

the idea of the evolution of species

28:55

and guess what? Different human

28:58

species. And one of the reasons

29:00

behind evolutionism, not evolution,

29:02

but evolutionism was an

29:05

implicit desire by people in Western

29:07

Europe and North America to discover

29:10

by spurious means, of course, that

29:13

they were the kind of elite race

29:16

and that other peoples, well, they might

29:18

be sort of human, but they were a second order

29:20

or third or fourth order race. And

29:22

that's the stuff that's at the heart of it. And

29:25

if the church had been true to its founding

29:27

charter, i.e. the New Testament, i.e.

29:30

Galatians and Romans and

29:32

Matthew 8, where Jesus says many will come from

29:34

east and west, and Revelation, we

29:37

would have seen this one coming a mile off and

29:39

we would have said right from the start, we cannot

29:42

do that because we are a single family across

29:45

all these boundaries. The church has not

29:47

done that. And when the church doesn't

29:49

do part of its core mission, we

29:52

shouldn't be surprised if other people come

29:54

along and say, we're going to fill in the

29:56

gaps. to fill in the

29:58

gaps. or

30:00

their Marxist or their anti-family or whatever. Well,

30:03

yes, we have left a vacuum there. And

30:05

if other people are filling it with their ideologies,

30:08

shame on us. We should have been first in the

30:10

field. So that's the

30:12

more brief with the second thing. That's the first thing. Second

30:15

thing is, I actually checked recently

30:17

in the big Oxford English dictionary,

30:20

which I have down there with the magnifying

30:22

glass and so on, the use of

30:25

the word white to describe

30:27

people who, whatever they are, they aren't white.

30:29

The only actually white people are

30:32

dead people, because most of

30:34

us are brown or pink or something

30:36

or other. And we change color according to moods

30:38

and health and so on, as has often been

30:41

pointed out. So who thought of calling

30:43

this white? The answer is it goes back

30:45

again to the 17th and 18th century where

30:47

explorers finding, particularly in Africa, people

30:50

of very, very dark skin started

30:53

to use this as a binary, black, white,

30:56

and to import into that all

30:58

kinds of evaluative comment. And

31:01

we need to get underneath

31:03

that historically. And instead of just

31:06

checking your privilege, see where

31:08

this came from to understand

31:10

it and then to be able. And I don't

31:12

think we can do this easily. I think we can only

31:14

do it if the church as a whole

31:17

gets behind it and says, our

31:19

charter from the beginning was a single

31:21

family of every nation and language and tribe and

31:23

tongue. What we've seen in the modern

31:26

multicultural movements is

31:28

the attempt to get the result of the gospel

31:30

without allegiance to

31:33

Jesus himself. It can't be done and

31:35

it produces a backlash. And that's where

31:37

we are right now. Yes, indeed.

31:40

And I suppose the problem is, and perhaps

31:42

this is what Kirsten and John are hinting

31:44

at, is that some

31:47

of the attempts to help and

31:49

to bring people together and

31:51

to overcome some of the inherent

31:54

racism that does exist in culture

31:56

and so on is by making people

31:58

aware of the privilege. that may

32:00

come with that particular skin tone,

32:02

with the culture that they're part of and have

32:05

grown up in and so on. And this is the idea

32:07

behind this, white privilege is

32:09

a phrase that has been in

32:12

common parlance recently. But

32:14

is that a biblical, so are you saying that isn't

32:16

a biblical concept or that it is a concept,

32:18

but that there's a better way of understanding

32:20

it? No, the idea

32:22

of being privileged socially, culturally,

32:25

whatever, no doubt that

32:27

has happened in many cultures. You

32:30

could say that Paul actually trades on

32:32

the fact that he's a Roman citizen at certain points

32:35

in order to make particular points, although

32:37

he's very much aware of the irony

32:39

and the ambiguity of doing that. But

32:41

Paul came from the Jewish

32:43

people who themselves believed with

32:46

good biblical basis that they were

32:48

the people of the creator God, the people

32:50

who existed for the sake of the rest of the world. And

32:53

so this has

32:55

always been around as

32:57

kind of a possibility. And

33:00

one of the great moves that's made in the New Testament is

33:02

to take that idea and say, now

33:04

it is Jesus who sums that up and

33:07

the crucifixion of Jesus actually

33:09

dethrones and demolishes the

33:12

idea of privilege and

33:14

says, no, if anyone wants to be great,

33:16

they must be the servant. If anyone wants to be privileged,

33:19

they must be the slave of all. And

33:22

so what we see in the New Testament is

33:24

the demolition of that. And of course, because

33:27

the church and I

33:29

fear particularly both evangelicals

33:32

and Catholics by focusing on the

33:34

idea being, how do our souls get to heaven?

33:37

We have ignored what we're

33:39

supposed to be doing here and now, how we're supposed to be living

33:41

as a family here and now. But

33:44

it's absolutely central to the New Testament

33:46

vision. And so

33:48

I think the trouble

33:51

then is, as with some other things in

33:53

society at the moment, if

33:55

you simply say, oh, there's this privilege

33:57

thing and we need to be aware of that, let's see.

34:00

is all preaching moralism, it's preaching

34:02

the law in the old theological sense.

34:05

And actually when you do that, you

34:08

ought also to show here is how you repent

34:11

and here is how you can amend your

34:13

life. But very often, people

34:15

who preach this rather heavy moralism, they

34:17

don't have any sort of amendment. It's

34:19

like certain movements in postmodern

34:22

morality, where just certain people are

34:24

inherently guilty, some feminists by

34:26

no means all, basically said all men

34:28

are guilty. And then if you're a male, there's nothing

34:30

to do about that. You're just guilty. That's how it is.

34:33

There's no redemption. No redemption.

34:35

Exactly. So the church

34:37

somehow urgently needs to find ways

34:40

of articulating and living,

34:42

living as a family, which

34:44

redeems this very

34:46

dangerous culture, because otherwise, the

34:49

church can easily collapse into separate

34:51

groups of the like minded, which often means

34:54

the same skin colors. And that

34:57

is a denial of something which

34:59

is central, not peripheral, but central in

35:01

the New Testament. We're slightly over

35:03

time, but I did there is one more question I just want to ask,

35:06

because I know that you've recently endorsed a book

35:09

by Esau Macaulay. It's

35:11

called, I believe, Reading While Black. And

35:13

he was one of your PhD students. But this

35:18

could could simply ask answer Christie in Tennessee's

35:20

question, who says with the current racial

35:23

injustice debate in the United States, I'm reminded

35:25

that I need to add diverse voices to my

35:27

readings. Does Tom recommend any books

35:29

by black theologians? Yes, and certainly

35:32

Esau's book, which is just I think it's just out

35:34

now is one I strongly recommend.

35:37

Esau grew up in the south. He's

35:40

he's an African American from an old

35:43

African American Christian family and

35:45

suffered all the things that African Americans in

35:47

the south have traditionally suffered

35:50

that the sneers and all the rubbish and they're

35:52

being pulled over while driving and all

35:54

this sort of stuff, which we so

35:56

called white people basically haven't

35:59

had to suffer. And

36:01

Esau somehow has come through with

36:04

a lovely Christian testimony and

36:06

a first-class intellect. I mean, his work

36:08

on Galatians and on the Zionism

36:11

and all that is very, very interesting stuff. I

36:13

have learned a lot from him as one does from one's PhD

36:15

students. He's now teaching at

36:18

the moment at Wheaton College in Illinois, and

36:20

we've been lucky to have him. So I would strongly

36:22

recommend Esau as a good place to start.

36:25

And from there, you could move out because there are many

36:27

different shades of opinion, of course, within

36:30

African-American writers at the moment. Well,

36:33

there's one recommendation at least, and I'll make sure

36:35

there's a link to that book and indeed to the article

36:37

you reference that's on the Whitcliffe website,

36:39

I believe, that you've written on racial justice.

36:42

But I hope that gives you some

36:44

starting points, Christie, and

36:47

thanks to all the others who've been in touch on similar

36:49

issues. That's all for

36:51

today's show. Thank you very much, Tom. It's always

36:53

a delight to be with you. Glad to be back,

36:56

even though we're only doing this over Zoom as usual. But

36:59

thanks for being with us, and we'll see you next time.

37:02

Yes, indeed.