What should our Christian political witness look like in an age of totalitarian terror and dysfunctional democracies? What is the church's role between Jesus and Caesar? What does Jesus' kingdom look like in the shadow of empire? How do we testify to the powers? How do we resist them?
Today we welcome N.T. Wright to the show. Prof. Wright is currently a Research Professor Emeritus of New Testament and Early Christianity at St Mary’s College in the University of St Andrews and a Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. He has authored or co-authored over 90 books, and today he joins Apollos Watered to discuss his newest book, "Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies."
Takeaways:
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So there are huge issues, never mind the migration crisis, which affects us as much in the UK as it does with people coming up through Mexico in the United States.
Tom Wright:And we don't have answers to these things.
Tom Wright:So what Mike and I are hoping to do is to lay down some parameters for not for who to vote for, but for how to start thinking wisely and Christianly about major political issues.
Tom Wright:And we're trying to avoid the knee jerk reactions and to say let's dig down and look at the biblical foundations of this and how it all plays.
Travis Michael Fleming:Watering time everybody.
Travis Michael Fleming:It's time for Apollos Watered, a podcast to saturate your faith with the things of God so that you might saturate your world with the good news of Jesus Christ.
Travis Michael Fleming:My name is Travis Michael Fleming and I am your host.
Travis Michael Fleming:And and today on our show we're having another one of our deep conversations.
Travis Michael Fleming:I know that we're in the political season, but rather than focus on political candidates, we're issues.
Travis Michael Fleming:For a moment, let's pause because I want to stop and talk about the church's posture in the face of our political witness and really what is our responsibility in politics.
Travis Michael Fleming:We can't hide from it.
Travis Michael Fleming:I have to confess, over the years I've tried to now I spoke out on issues.
Travis Michael Fleming:But when it came to actual politics or politicking or understanding politics and even its role, I didn't want to know because for me it actually kept people from seeing Jesus.
Travis Michael Fleming:In my mind, I wanted them to see Jesus, not my politics.
Travis Michael Fleming:So I put it to the side.
Travis Michael Fleming:But as I've been studying over the past several months, I've seen that the Bible doesn't do that.
Travis Michael Fleming:In fact, to remove politics from the equation is actually horrific because the Bible is actually a very political thing.
Travis Michael Fleming:The Gospel is a very political thing and you're going to see about that in just a few moments.
Travis Michael Fleming:Really what I want to talk about is our posture in the face of our politics because I believe that our political witness, as you're going to hear, is actually assigned to the spiritual powers of Jesus victory over sin and death.
Travis Michael Fleming:And moreover, it's a declaration of Jesus lordship over all creation.
Travis Michael Fleming:And the one to speak to us about this important topic is one of the most well known, if not the most well known Bible scholar in the entire world.
Travis Michael Fleming:And that is nt otherwise known as Tom Wright.
Travis Michael Fleming:Tom has co authored or authored over 90 books and held a variety of both academic and chaplaincy posts at Oxford, Cambridge and McGill University, Montreal.
Travis Michael Fleming: e was Canon of Westminster in: Travis Michael Fleming:Mary's College in the University of St.
Travis Michael Fleming:Andrews and Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.
Travis Michael Fleming:He comes to us today to discuss his newest book, Jesus and the Christian Political Witness in Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies.
Travis Michael Fleming:It's a deep, insightful, invigorating and rich conversation and is going to help you see your political responsibility in a new light.
Travis Michael Fleming:Happy listening, Tom.
Travis Michael Fleming:Welcome to Apollos Watered.
Tom Wright:Thank you very much.
Tom Wright:Good to be with you.
Tom Wright:Thank you.
Travis Michael Fleming:Are you ready for the fast five?
Tom Wright:Sure, yeah.
Travis Michael Fleming:Okay, here we go.
Travis Michael Fleming:Now, you travel all over the world, but what is, when you come to the United States, the food that you like the most?
Tom Wright:That's a hard one.
Travis Michael Fleming:Is it hard that it's not got any good food?
Tom Wright:No, no, no, no, no.
Tom Wright:I associate the United States with good food.
Tom Wright:But, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm really stuck on that.
Tom Wright:I, I actually some of the best steak I've had has been in the United States.
Tom Wright:So I probably better played safe straight down the line and say, as long, as long as it's a really good steak, then I'll go with that.
Travis Michael Fleming:Well, that's a safe answer, but that's also probably a real answer for everyone.
Travis Michael Fleming:Just a really good steak.
Travis Michael Fleming:All right.
Travis Michael Fleming:Number two, the contemporary person, actually in the 20th century, that has influenced you the most in your thinking.
Tom Wright:That's hard as well.
Tom Wright:Before we came on the show, you mentioned Leslie Newbegin, and Leslie Newbegin was very important for me at a particular juncture in my life, and partly because of who he was as well as what he wrote and said, he had a presence about him, which he was quite quiet.
Tom Wright:He didn't have to raise his voice.
Tom Wright:It was just when you were with him, you had a sense that God was in charge and that everything was possible.
Tom Wright:And I've met other people who said the same.
Tom Wright:Oh, yes, Bishop Newbiggin came here and he suggested we might try doing this.
Tom Wright:And.
Tom Wright:And we did.
Tom Wright:And that's been the foundation of everything we've done.
Tom Wright:I've had that story a few times from people.
Tom Wright:And so I look back at.
Tom Wright:I was very privileged to know Leslie along with, along with one or two other greats of that, of that vintage, people like Professor Charles Mole of Cambridge and my own teacher, George Caird in Oxford.
Tom Wright:And so I'm a combination of.
Tom Wright:Combination of influences.
Tom Wright:But Leslie stands out.
Tom Wright:He was unique.
Travis Michael Fleming:I love Leslie Newbiggin, you just made my heart swell.
Travis Michael Fleming:Because he's one of my favorite and most.
Travis Michael Fleming:He's influenced the most to create this ministry to help wonderful.
Travis Michael Fleming:The missionary encounter with Western culture.
Travis Michael Fleming:But let's get into your.
Travis Michael Fleming:The next question here.
Travis Michael Fleming:Okay, how about this one?
Travis Michael Fleming:One thing that puzzles you most about Americans is what.
Tom Wright:I, I am puzzled that despite so much riches of education and the opportunities and the possibilities and the books that are published, et cetera, E How so many in North American churches still seem to be as I would see it.
Tom Wright: hich particular moment in the: Tom Wright:You know what I'm talking about.
Tom Wright:But trying to shift that is extraordinarily difficult.
Tom Wright:And this is quite different.
Tom Wright:We just don't have this phenomenon in Britain.
Tom Wright:In fact, the only places in the rest of the world where it exists are where American dispensationalist missionaries have gone and taught people to think like this because happy people don't think like that just by reading the Bible, you know, you have to be, have to be inducted into it.
Tom Wright:So that's a real puzzle.
Tom Wright:How come.
Tom Wright:And that makes me ask the question what ideologies are being served by embracing that?
Tom Wright:Now that is something we could all be asked.
Tom Wright:I know, but I would want to ask that.
Travis Michael Fleming:It's actually fascinating.
Travis Michael Fleming:I don't know if you've read Andrew Lynn's work Saving the Protestant Ethic, which was done by Oxford, but he actually examines how contemporary or American eschatology has affected the economic system.
Travis Michael Fleming:Oh yeah, and it's fascinating, really fascinating.
Travis Michael Fleming:All right, number four, how about this question as we jump into this.
Travis Michael Fleming:How about you've already talked about the, the person who has influenced you the most, but I do know that you're a musician.
Travis Michael Fleming:So if you could have form a band now, what would you, what would it be called and why.
Tom Wright:What would it be called?
Travis Michael Fleming:Yeah, what would it be called?
Travis Michael Fleming:What would you name your band?
Tom Wright:Okay, well, the sort of band I would love to play in again would be a Dixieland jazz band.
Tom Wright:That is, let's, let's, let's go back to the 20s or 30s and just do all that stuff.
Tom Wright:So the, the, the Basin Street Brothers or something like that.
Travis Michael Fleming:You.
Travis Michael Fleming:Dixieland jazz?
Tom Wright:Yeah.
Travis Michael Fleming:I didn't know that was your musical.
Travis Michael Fleming:I didn't know that was your area.
Tom Wright:It isn't my area.
Tom Wright:It's one of several areas.
Tom Wright:It's one that whenever I used to, I haven't played Dixieland for a long time, but whenever I hear it, I think, oh, yeah, that stuff is just so good.
Tom Wright:Something about the, the, the spontaneity and the fun of it.
Tom Wright:I played and, and, and college.
Tom Wright: uld have been about the early: Tom Wright:But then we had kids and they took over and their musicians and I didn't get, didn't get a chance to, to go on doing it.
Tom Wright:But maybe one day I'm, I'm still not, I hope, too old to play a bit.
Tom Wright:But I mean, I'm eclectic in my musical tastes.
Tom Wright:I, I, you know, Shostakovich, Sebelius, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Bach, of course.
Travis Michael Fleming:All right, here's your last question.
Travis Michael Fleming:What is the one habit that your wife and kids always just roll their eyes whenever they think of you?
Tom Wright:Probably my habit of escaping into the study and doing zoom interviews with yet one more person.
Tom Wright:So I'm sorry about that.
Tom Wright:You kind of set yourself up.
Travis Michael Fleming:No, that's okay.
Travis Michael Fleming:Philip Jenkins said the same thing.
Travis Michael Fleming:He goes, my wife says it's weird that I do these zoom calls.
Travis Michael Fleming:That's actually what he said.
Travis Michael Fleming:He's like, what?
Travis Michael Fleming:He said.
Travis Michael Fleming:All right, well, let's jump into your.
Travis Michael Fleming:This is your newest book that just came out, Jesus and the Powers.
Travis Michael Fleming:Actually, it's soon to be released as we're recording this.
Travis Michael Fleming:And of course, we all know what's going on politically right now.
Travis Michael Fleming:But what made you want to write this book when there are so many books out there talking about political Witness in this age?
Tom Wright:Well, I think there's something quirky about Mike Bird, who's an Australian, and me as a Brit, writing a book which is obviously partly aimed into the American situation.
Tom Wright:I should say we're having an election sometime soon in Britain.
Tom Wright:Nobody knows when, because in our system you have to have a party parliamentary election every five years at the outside.
Tom Wright:But it's up to the present Prime Minister to call it as the five year deadline comes up.
Tom Wright:So we know it's going to be at some point in the next year, but we don't know exactly when.
Tom Wright:But we have major political problems and issues in our country as well, and they get overshadowed by the question of Trump and Biden, but they're not insignificant because Britain still has a rather odd place both within and outside Europe.
Tom Wright:And Europe has a very contested place and role at the mom vis a vis Ukraine, the Baltic States, et cetera, et cetera.
Tom Wright:So it's actually a very dangerous time in world history.
Tom Wright:And we hope that actually globally there are big issues.
Tom Wright:And I think one of the good things that Mike Bird, one of the many good things that Mike Bird brought to this book because he knows more about it than I do, is an awareness of the political situation in say the South China Sea and the question of Taiwan and China's relationship with Australia and also the question of India, I mean Indian politics.
Tom Wright:I've got a good friend who's a senior church leader in India, India, who keeps me informed of this.
Tom Wright:There's some major developments going on there at the moment which are really worrying from a Christian point of view, from a global political point of view, and from the fact that India seems to have an ambiguous relationship with Russia and sometimes a more positive one than most of us would wish they had and so on and so on.
Tom Wright:So there are huge issues, never mind the migration crisis, which affects us as much in the UK as it does with people coming up through Mexico in the United States.
Tom Wright:And we don't have answers to these things.
Tom Wright:So what Mike and I are hop to do is to lay down some parameters, not for who to vote for, but for how to start thinking wisely and Christianly about major political issues.
Tom Wright:And we're trying to avoid the knee jerk reactions and to say let's dig down and look at the biblical foundations of this and how it all plays out.
Travis Michael Fleming:Okay, so you start off in your book.
Travis Michael Fleming:You talk on the thesis that the kingdom of God is not from this world, but is definitely for this world.
Travis Michael Fleming:So let's start there as we jump into this because again there's so many people that we talk about politics and I've a lot of conversations on this show, including with Albert Mueller.
Travis Michael Fleming:We had a lot of disagreements on political, our involvement as well as Pete Wehner who writes for the Atlantic in the New York Times and they the as well as Russell Moore.
Travis Michael Fleming:We've all had these conversations.
Travis Michael Fleming:Everyone is advocating for the flourishing of the, of, of society, but everyone has a different ideal.
Travis Michael Fleming:You start saying, no, let's start with the kingdom of God, let's begin there.
Travis Michael Fleming:So what do you mean when you say that the kingdom of God is not from this world, which I think many of us get, but is definitely for this world?
Tom Wright:Well, I mean this is a way of refuting the normal but wrong interpretation of what Jesus says to Pontius Pilate, when Pontius Pilate says to him, so are you a king?
Tom Wright:And Jesus says various things but he ends up then saying, my kingdom is not from this world.
Tom Wright:And that was translated in the King James Version as my kingdom is not of this world.
Tom Wright:And so generations were taught that Jesus kingdom is a spiritual kingdom which exists up in heaven and which then basically leaves this world out of consideration.
Tom Wright:And this world is just a dirty place, and you get more dirty by messing with it.
Tom Wright:So the sooner you can get out of here and get your soul in tune with God and then ultimately go into heaven, the better.
Tom Wright:And so this was a way of saying no to that view and saying instead what Jesus meant.
Tom Wright:Certainly according to John's Greek, there is my kingdom is not from this world.
Tom Wright:In other words, my kingdom does not grow within this world.
Tom Wright:But everything we know about Jesus and the kingdom from all four Gospels is that the kingdom of God was supposed to be coming on earth as in heaven.
Tom Wright:In other words, it is for this world.
Tom Wright:One of the things that astonishes me is the number of Christians who pray that prayer day by day because they were taught by their mother or whatever, the Lord's Prayer, but don't realize what it is they're praying for, that God's kingdom would come on earth in this present reality.
Tom Wright:And then if you say, well, look out of the window, it obviously hasn't happened yet.
Tom Wright:The answer is, ah, you're looking for the wrong thing.
Tom Wright:And Jesus redefinition of kingdom in Mark Chapter 10 is absolutely vital here.
Tom Wright:I think I get to it in one of the chapters here in this book where James and John want to sit at Jesus right and his left in his coming kingdom.
Tom Wright:And Jesus says, you have no idea what you're talking about.
Tom Wright:And then says, you know, are you able to suffer the same way I'm going to?
Tom Wright:And then he says, listen, the kings of this earth get their way by bullying and bossing people.
Tom Wright:We're not going to do it that way.
Tom Wright:We're going to do it the other way around.
Tom Wright:The one who wants to be great must be your servant, must be the slave of all.
Tom Wright:Because the Son of Man didn't come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.
Tom Wright: he atonement theology of Mark: Tom Wright:And we're going to run the world a Different way, by being servants, by going and giving of ourselves to people.
Tom Wright:And that's what the Sermon on the Mount's all about.
Tom Wright:You know, blessed are the poor in spirit and the meek and the humble and the brokenhearted and the mourners and the hungry for justice people and the peacemakers.
Tom Wright: rth as in heaven for the last: Tom Wright:And so the question then is, how do we as Christians facilitate a society which has those sorts of priorities about putting the poor first, the weak first, peacemaking first, justice first, et cetera, rather than what the demagogues and the tyrants have done all along.
Tom Wright:So that's the very short version.
Travis Michael Fleming:It's interesting you mentioned that talking about the Sermon on the Mount, I remember reading in that book that I just alluded to about Andrew Lynn and saving the Protestant ethic.
Travis Michael Fleming:And he actually refers to C.I.
Travis Michael Fleming:scofield, of course, the premillennial dispensationalist who actually said that the Sermon on the Mount was not for today, not at all, and just totally removes that from us.
Travis Michael Fleming:But we see that we are to advocate for that kingdom.
Tom Wright:And that's a real problem with the whole dispensationalist movement.
Tom Wright:That dream has been postponed until either the Lord comes or the Rapture or whichever system happen to follow.
Tom Wright:And that, that, it seems to me, is such a flagrant denial of the whole message of the New Testament that it's extraordinary that people who hold that sort of view could ever hold their heads up and say they're Bible believing Christians because it's so absolutely antithetical.
Tom Wright:But anyway, you, you, you know that world as much as I do.
Travis Michael Fleming:Well, I probably know it a little bit better.
Travis Michael Fleming:I went to a premillennial dispensationalist school as an undergraduate.
Tom Wright:It.
Tom Wright:I'm so sorry.
Tom Wright:I hope you managed to take the right antidote.
Tom Wright:You had a good doctor who gave you a medicine to take.
Travis Michael Fleming:I did.
Travis Michael Fleming:It took me a long time to learn to see the difference.
Travis Michael Fleming:And then praying that with the Lord's Prayer, seeing that that actually really changed my mind is seeing the Scriptures, seeing it brought out.
Travis Michael Fleming:But there's still a lot of confusion because it is the predominant theological system that is existence within America.
Travis Michael Fleming:And I find that there is so much confusion even now.
Travis Michael Fleming:But there is a swift, you know, there's a pendulum shift right now.
Travis Michael Fleming:Go ahead.
Travis Michael Fleming:You were going to say something.
Tom Wright:Well, I was going to say the problem is that it leaves a vacuum.
Tom Wright:And into that vacuum can come all sorts of other ideas.
Tom Wright:And the people who embrace that dispensationalist view have no real basis to critique the things which come into the vacuum because they've absented themselves, they're not playing on the field anymore.
Tom Wright:And so then you get somebody like your former president and possibly about to be next president, who knows?
Tom Wright:And, and a lot of those people are voting for him for reasons which I find disturbing and distressing in the extreme on the grounds that somehow they think he's going to preserve or protect some way of being an American Christian, whether it's on the abortion issue or whatever.
Tom Wright:And that is such a naive way to do political thought.
Tom Wright:Well, it's not even doing political thought, it's a way of abrogating political thought and saying we're going to go with a knee jerk reaction instead.
Tom Wright:And then we're in very, very dangerous terr territory.
Tom Wright:And I mean, you know, I don't agree with the idea that America should be the world's policeman, but nevertheless, over the last 150 years, if America decides we're going to go and do something like helping Europe in the First World War and the Second World War, then sooner or later that weight is going to tell.
Tom Wright:Obviously that didn't always work.
Tom Wright:Think of Vietnam, think of Afghanistan, etc.
Tom Wright:However, a sense that we need America to be on side with liberal, democratic, freedom loving societies around the world.
Tom Wright:And if it's not going to play and hold up its end, then we're all in trouble.
Travis Michael Fleming:How then do you just suppose that you talk about the kingdom and the cross and those two that are twins, that they need to go together and we need to understand it, but we also need to be understanding how we are to build the kingdom.
Travis Michael Fleming:Now actually, no, excuse me, you said we don't build the kingdom, we build for the kingdom.
Tom Wright:Correct.
Travis Michael Fleming:So really parse that out for us because I thought that and I went, oh no.
Travis Michael Fleming:I used to do this thing with church members where I would hand out hammers and when they become members I would say you're helping build the kingdom.
Travis Michael Fleming:And now I'm like, I need.
Travis Michael Fleming:Feel like I have to go back and take back the hammers because I didn't say it right.
Tom Wright:Well, if, if you give them a sickle in the other hand, then they'll be building a different kind of kingdom.
Travis Michael Fleming:You're killing me, Tom.
Tom Wright:The, the thing is this.
Tom Wright:Paul in one of his letters talks about his fellow workers for the kingdom of God.
Tom Wright:And when we See how Paul talks about the kingdom.
Tom Wright:He talks about it both as a present and as a future reality.
Tom Wright:And Jesus is already ruling the world, according to 1 Corinthians 15 and according to Matthew 28 and all over the place, the ascended Jesus is already Lord of the world.
Tom Wright:He doesn't have to wait for that.
Tom Wright:That's the reality.
Tom Wright:But Paul then says he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.
Tom Wright:So he is ruling the world.
Tom Wright:But at the moment there is a battle going on in the heavenlies, as in Ephesians chapter 6, with which Christians are recruited to be prayer warriors and putting on the helmet of salvation and all the rest of it.
Tom Wright:Because until death itself is conquered, then the new creation, which is the ultimate kingdom of God, hasn't happened yet.
Tom Wright:So we're in between.
Tom Wright:The kingdom has been launched decisively.
Tom Wright:Jesus is in charge.
Tom Wright:But it's Jesus who's in charge, not some tin pot tyrant.
Tom Wright:And Jesus is the Jesus who gives his life as a ransom for many.
Tom Wright:So the way he is in charge, through his Spirit, is through his followers giving their lives to look after the world and to bring God's hope and justice and mercy to the world.
Tom Wright:You know, Christians who campaign to free slaves and that sort of thing, and plenty of other things besides.
Tom Wright:So that's building for the kingdom.
Tom Wright:The point being that when God then does bring about God's kingdom finally and fully, what we do in the present will be seen to be little bits of antiquity, anticipation of that, bits of God's future borrowed from the future, instantiated in the present as signposts to what's coming.
Tom Wright:So that's building for the kingdom.
Tom Wright:If you know my book Surprised by Hope, I use the example of a stonemason in a medieval cathedral workshop.
Tom Wright:And you mentioned in this one too.
Travis Michael Fleming:You mentioned in this one too, you have that in this one too.
Tom Wright:Okay, but the image then is of the stone mason who's just been told, I want you to carve this bit of stone, put this little, this little curve here, etc, and the stonemason probably doesn't have a very good picture in mind of what the whole cathedral is going to look like.
Tom Wright:Just knows this is what's been given to him to do.
Tom Wright:But then when that bit of stone goes up on the wall of the west front of the cathedral and you stand back, you realize the tiny thing that I was doing that seems so insignificant in the stonemason's yard is part of the much larger plan that the architect had in mind all along.
Tom Wright:So that's the sort of image that I have in mind when I talk about building kingdom in the present.
Travis Michael Fleming:Let's go into the powers, because you do mention that the church is to really speak against the powers.
Travis Michael Fleming:Let's define the powers first of all, because I know people have different ideas in their mind of what the powers actually are.
Travis Michael Fleming:What are the powers you're referring to?
Tom Wright:Ultimately, the dark power, which Jesus refers to in Luke 23 when he says, this is your hour.
Tom Wright:22 when he says this is your hour.
Tom Wright:And the power of darkness.
Tom Wright:There is a sense of darkness as opposed to light, in other words, chaos, as opposed to order, in other words, the destruction of God's good creation, as opposed to its enhancement or flourishing.
Tom Wright:And sometimes that dark power is personalized and given the name of the Satan, which means the accuser.
Tom Wright:And of course there's a long history through Scripture of the way in which the idea of the Satan and then of the devil comes to be spoken of.
Tom Wright:I prefer to think of that power as an it rather than as a he, because I think it's a kind of a sub personal power.
Tom Wright:But it is the power of the negativity, the power to destroy, destroy, to kill, to tear down anything that's beautiful or good.
Tom Wright:And that's the power that then gets its claws into us humans and seems to have a handle on much of the rest of the world to produce entropy and so on.
Tom Wright:But ultimately it is opposed to the God of creation and new creation.
Tom Wright:So it's as though right now, and certainly when Jesus was announcing the kingdom and thereafter, the powers of darkness were trying to do their worst against him.
Tom Wright:Sometimes these powers are itemized in the plural.
Tom Wright:Thrones, dominions, kingdoms, powers, authorities, et cetera.
Tom Wright:I think when Paul and the other writers list them like that, I don't think they have a precise definition for each one of those.
Tom Wright:I think this is a way of saying that when you give humans any kind of authority over bits of God's world or over other humans, you are giving them with that the standing temptation to abuse that position for their own good.
Tom Wright:Now this is the trick because you can't say, well, let's do away with authorities, because God wants his world to be wisely ordered under human governance.
Tom Wright:That's Genesis 1.
Tom Wright:It's Psalm 8.
Tom Wright:This is what bearing the image is all about.
Tom Wright:Being God's representatives, bringing wise order into the world.
Tom Wright:But the minute that you step away from being God's representative to do this, you start doing it for your own benefit, or for Caesar's benefit, or for somebody else's.
Tom Wright:You see this most clearly in John 19, when Jesus says to Pontius Pilate, and this is Jesus talking to Pilate, for goodness sake.
Tom Wright:When Pilate says, don't you realize I have the authority to have you killed?
Tom Wright:Jesus says, you have no authority over me unless it was given you from above.
Tom Wright:Therefore the one who handed me over to you has the greatest sin.
Tom Wright:In other words, even Jesus acknowledges that even Pilate has authority over him because that's how God wants the world to work.
Tom Wright:But the corollary is the bearers of authority have a responsibility.
Tom Wright:They will be held accountable to God.
Tom Wright:And so there's that to and fro the whole time.
Tom Wright:God wants his world to be wisely ordered, but God will hold those who are rulers in the world to account.
Tom Wright:So the rulers and authorities are the ones who do hold some kind of authority in God's world.
Tom Wright:But when they become, if you like, too big for their boots, when they forget that their whole vocation is to serve the people whom they're looking after and think that they must do it for themselves, then they become, as we might say, demonic.
Tom Wright:And Paul is quite clear, like many Jews of his day were quite clear, that the big gods, Zeus, Aphrodite, Poseidon, whoever, they exist.
Tom Wright:But what do exist are these nasty little demons, these dark forces that skitter around and have the authority of the Satan.
Tom Wright:They are aimed at destruction.
Tom Wright:They're aimed at destroying, pulling down things that are good in God's world and people who are good in God's world.
Tom Wright:So we are never given a definition of what these powers are, but they're superhuman and more than the sum total of human folly and sin.
Tom Wright:But ultimately they only exist because God called humans to be his servants in looking after his world.
Tom Wright:And humans prefer to give their power away to certain forces within the world, whether it's money or sex or power or whatever.
Tom Wright:And then those forces say, thank you very much, now we're in charge.
Tom Wright:And they start to carve things up.
Tom Wright:So it's a messy situation.
Tom Wright:My fear is that most Christians have never even thought round that loop.
Tom Wright:But that little loop that I just described is absolutely basic to biblical theology.
Tom Wright:This is how things work.
Tom Wright:And then the problem is that the dark powers are sneaky.
Tom Wright:They don't come out in the open and say, hello, I am a dark power.
Tom Wright:You better watch out.
Tom Wright:You only discern them when bad things are happening and you can't quite figure out why.
Tom Wright:And then you have to get together and pray, deliver us from evil and so on.
Tom Wright:And putting on the whole armor of God.
Tom Wright:Spiritual warfare is absolutely vital.
Tom Wright:Otherwise we just fool ourselves and imagine that the people who we elect to serve over us, who then do their own pleasure, that they're just silly human beings.
Tom Wright:And the answer is they're not.
Tom Wright:They can be manipulated by the powers.
Tom Wright:The powers like to stay off stage and out of sight.
Tom Wright:And so it's just these humans who are taking the rap.
Tom Wright:But we need to be discerning.
Tom Wright:I could go on about this, but I probably said enough to answer your question.
Travis Michael Fleming:I know that people have asked you about Mike Heiser and Mike talking about the unseen realm and his work in regards to that.
Travis Michael Fleming:You also mentioned, though, that the unseen realm and the physical realm overlap.
Travis Michael Fleming:You mentioned that in the book.
Travis Michael Fleming:The question is, is how do they overlap?
Travis Michael Fleming:How do we determine that difference?
Travis Michael Fleming:And when we speak truth to power, are we talking about it in the idea of we're taking a stand, speaking to the, the, the spiritual powers?
Travis Michael Fleming:Or is it we're speaking to these human agents that represent those spirit, spiritual powers?
Tom Wright:Yeah, that's a good question.
Tom Wright:And I, I, I haven't met Mike Heiser.
Tom Wright:I haven't actually read his books.
Tom Wright:I've been, I skimmed one of them when a friend said, you should read this.
Tom Wright:And if you look around my room, you'll see lots of books, half of which I've, I should have read.
Tom Wright:And so it's just how life is.
Tom Wright:But I, I would say when we're speaking truth to power, the first place to speak it to is to the actual human beings who are running the country or the committee or whatever it is, that we have to be able to have the discernment and then the courage and then the wisdom to speak truth to power.
Tom Wright:And that is a principal vocation of the church.
Tom Wright:I would say from John 16, when the Spirit comes, the Spirit will convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment.
Tom Wright:How does the Spirit do that?
Tom Wright:That by being in and through Jesus followers speaking the truth to power.
Tom Wright:But then as we do that, sometimes human authorities will say, do you know, you're right, we were really messing that up.
Tom Wright:We need to take stock and peg back and do this differently.
Tom Wright:Other times they will start to make excuses and squeeze around the edge and you realize something else is going on beyond simply human beings thinking things through.
Tom Wright:And when that happens, and in any case, you know, day by day, we should be praying, deliver us from evil.
Tom Wright:But when that happens, particularly, we then have to say which powers are being worshiped here.
Tom Wright:And chances are it's going to be, you know, Marx, Freud and Nietzsche, money, sex and power, somewhere in the mix.
Tom Wright:And those sometimes need to be smoked out and they need to be addressed that actually, if this is what's going on, we are calling you to recognize it and renounce it and find better ways forward.
Tom Wright:Power is important.
Tom Wright:You know, money, sex and power are important, but they're not all important.
Tom Wright:And when they, when one or more of them become all important, then we're all in deep trouble.
Travis Michael Fleming:How do we go about in doing that as Christians, knowing that we're going to experience persecution?
Travis Michael Fleming:We know that that's inevitable.
Travis Michael Fleming:Just as Jesus talks about.
Travis Michael Fleming:We see that Paul, you know, endure suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of God.
Travis Michael Fleming:How do we juxtapose that with this political idea?
Travis Michael Fleming:Because the gospel, as you've already mentioned, is a political, political thing.
Travis Michael Fleming:It is.
Travis Michael Fleming:It speaks into our.
Travis Michael Fleming:Our lives.
Travis Michael Fleming:Then you get others, though, that see that separation and others, even still others.
Travis Michael Fleming:And you reference Kuyper in the book, who sees the transformation of them to see the sovereignty of God within it.
Travis Michael Fleming:Yet we have the James Davidson Hunter concept where we're to be faithfully present within that.
Travis Michael Fleming:As Christians, we want the flourishing of society.
Travis Michael Fleming:We want to see Christ glorified.
Travis Michael Fleming:We know that we can't, that Constantinian temptation is there to force that, but we can't.
Travis Michael Fleming:We're in a pluralistic society in order for other people to bridge that gap.
Travis Michael Fleming:So how do we speak then to our people as their role, both individuals and as a collective body to embody and be that signpost of the kingdom in the middle of a world that's never going to agree with them entirely and hold them in account.
Tom Wright:Yeah, I just finished doing a lecture course on the letter to the Ephesians, and the Ephesian letter is very much addressed to this where right from the beginning, the trouble is, in the Western medieval and then Reformation traditions, people have read Ephesians as being about how you get to heaven.
Tom Wright:And really it isn't.
Tom Wright:It's about what God wants the Church to be here.
Tom Wright:And obviously ultimate salvation is the horizon.
Tom Wright:But it's very much that through the Church, the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.
Tom Wright:That's Ephesians 3:10.
Tom Wright:And what is this church of which chapter three, verse ten speaks?
Tom Wright:And the answer is it's the polychrome, polyglot, polyform church, the church composed of Jews and Gentiles, of men and women, of slaves, and freedoms.
Tom Wright:A church which does what Caesar would have loved to have done, namely unite humans across traditional ethnic and sociological boundaries.
Tom Wright:But.
Tom Wright:But Caesar's empire was never able to do that.
Tom Wright:And the church at its best, and Paul is struggling to say, this is your best, please go for it will hold up the mirror to power.
Tom Wright:When Caesar sees the church being the church, then, oh my goodness, there's nothing else quite like this.
Tom Wright:I remember once going on a diocesan pilgrimage when I was Bishop of Durham.
Tom Wright:We went Holy island off the Northumberland coast and we walked across the sands like the old pilgrims had done.
Tom Wright:1500 or more or more years, I forget how many hundreds of years, but in the days of people like Cuthbert and Aiden, and as we did that, there were some television cameras rolling and a colleague pointed out that look at the people who are here.
Tom Wright:We've got old ladies, we've got families with young kids, we've got middle class people, we've got sort of business types, we've got all sorts of people.
Tom Wright:Where else would you find a cross section of society like this, all gladly engaged in the same thing and then all coming together to worship the God in whose name they're called?
Tom Wright:And that was an indication to me, I have no idea how many people saw the news clip or whether that message got through to them.
Tom Wright:But that's the point, that the Church, by being the church, sends out signals to the rest of the world that actually this is the way to do the whole human project.
Tom Wright:And of course, that is why the church spread in the first centuries.
Tom Wright:I was talking with somebody just the other day and the point came out very clearly, and it may be that Tom Holland says this in his book Dominion, I just can't remember, but that when the early Christians talked about a God of love, a God who loves you, this is totally new.
Tom Wright:The average pagan had no thought that Zeus might one day say I love you, or Athena might, or Poseidon might.
Tom Wright:They didn't love human beings, they manipulated them, they used them in their power games, et cetera, et cetera.
Tom Wright:And if somebody said, well, we don't really believe you about this God you talk about, the answer is, look how we live together.
Tom Wright:We live as family, we are caring for one another, we are looking after one another.
Tom Wright:And we are doing that because in Jesus, the one we follow, the one by whom we are formed, we see this God of love, which is a God that you and your world had never dreamt of.
Tom Wright:And when people see that, that is enormously powerful.
Travis Michael Fleming:That's the John 17 argument.
Travis Michael Fleming:I pray they may be one as we are one.
Tom Wright:So the world may know you, the world may believe.
Tom Wright:Yeah, absolutely.
Tom Wright:But it's.
Tom Wright:It's kind of.
Tom Wright:It's Love with skin on.
Tom Wright:I was talking to one of our ordinance from Wycliffe hall just yesterday and she said she'd been working in a church in a very difficult, rough area of one of the British cities.
Tom Wright:And she had a teenage girl who came into the church and sat down and said, I am safe here.
Tom Wright:And I thought, wow.
Tom Wright:First I thought, I hope she really is.
Tom Wright:But then I thought, that is a way of saying this church is a real church.
Tom Wright:This is a church where people who are bruised and broken and frightened and nervous about everything else that's going on in the world, they can come here and they know that they're going to be genuinely loved and looked after and held as family and not let loose to the winds.
Travis Michael Fleming:Love with skin on it.
Travis Michael Fleming:Constructing a safe place for people in the midst of a chaotic world.
Travis Michael Fleming:I know that we're talking about politics, but when we're talking about the powers, we're moving beyond spin doctors, platforms, debates, pundits and talking points.
Travis Michael Fleming:We are talking about speaking truth to power and about loving one another in such a way that the seen and the unseen realm both take notice.
Travis Michael Fleming:How do we think wisely and Christianly about our politics?
Travis Michael Fleming:Tom Wright is a fascinating discussion partner, and in my opinion, it's precisely because he and Mike Byrd are not Americans that their thoughts on how to think wisely and Christianly about our political engagement is so crucial.
Travis Michael Fleming:And I'm sure when you heard Tom speak on some of those issues, it shook you up.
Travis Michael Fleming:And I'm glad for that because it's precisely because he's an album outsider and he sees things from a different perspective and is still a Christian.
Travis Michael Fleming:That makes his insights so valuable.
Travis Michael Fleming:We know that we're opposed by dark forces, the powers opposed to God.
Travis Michael Fleming:I'm not sure if I'm in quite the same place as Tom and how he talks about the Satan or the demons.
Travis Michael Fleming:I understand he doesn't want to give too much power or recognition and there is something wise there.
Travis Michael Fleming:But I also think that there is a personal force opposing God and opposing.
Travis Michael Fleming:Opposing his people.
Travis Michael Fleming:I do take Tom's point, though, that the dark powers we face are very, very sneaky.
Travis Michael Fleming:They do like to stay in the background and pull strings.
Travis Michael Fleming:They are forces of chaos.
Travis Michael Fleming:Sometimes they attacked us directly and sometimes they come to us just like the evil one did years ago as an angel of light sprouting or spouting Bible verses.
Travis Michael Fleming:So what stood out to you from today's conversation?
Travis Michael Fleming:Was there anything that really resonated, perhaps you disagreed with or something you may have loved?
Travis Michael Fleming:Something you never really thought of before?
Travis Michael Fleming:Whatever it may be, we want to hear from you.
Travis Michael Fleming:Feel free to drop a comment on our Facebook page or our YouTube channel, or simply send me a note @travispolloswatered.
Travis Michael Fleming:Oh, and the conversation is not over.
Travis Michael Fleming:Next time we continue our conversation addressing such topics as sin, the image of God, Christian nationalism, and much, much more.
Travis Michael Fleming:You won't want to miss it.
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Travis Michael Fleming:Thank you in advance.
Travis Michael Fleming:Another episode is in the books and I want to thank our Apollos water team for helping us to water the world.
Travis Michael Fleming:This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollo's Watered Stay watered everybody.