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#37 Is the world doomed? Global justice and climate change

Ask NT Wright Anything — Premier
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#37 Is the world doomed? Global justice and climate change

May 21, 2020
Ask NT Wright Anything
Ask NT Wright AnythingPremier

In another show recorded pre-lockdown, Tom answers questions from listeners on whether the world is getting better or worse, on poverty and economic justice, and what climate change activism means for the theology of new creation.

·        Thurs 28 May – Apologetics & Covid-19 Webinar with Justin and Prof John Lennox https://www.premierdigital.info/28-may-special-guest-john-lennox

·        Wed 3 June 8pm UK – Ask NT Wright Anything livestream on Facebook. Join us on the day at http://www.facebook.com/unbelievablejb

·        Support the show and receive NT Wright’s brand new E-book ‘12 Answers to questions about the Bible, Life and Faith’ https://resources.premier.org.uk/supportntwright/

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Transcript

The Ask NT Wright Anything podcast Hello and welcome along to the program. It's Justin Briley, theology and apologetics editor for Premier, bringing you another edition of the show where you get to ask the questions and today we're talking about global justice and climate change with Tom and today's show is another one of those ones recorded before lockdown began before coronavirus was hitting all the headlines and I'm sure if it had been recorded during that time that would have made a significant impact on the way we talk about these issues of global justice climate change and so on but what you're hearing is is the conversation as recorded before coronavirus became the main thing that anyone is talking about these days in any case I hope you really enjoy it I think there are some really helpful questions and answers on today's show which is brought to you of course as always in partnership with SBCK and NT Wright online we've got some exciting things coming up though in the calendar even though we can't be meeting in person we've got some exciting online things going on an apologetics webinar that I'll be hosting along with Professor John Lennox on the 28th of May, Thursday the 28th of May that's at about 3.30pm UK so you'll find out about 10 in the morning EST if you're going to be joining us from the states. Premier Digital dot info slash webinars if you want to find out more I'll make sure there's a link with today's edition of the show you can find out all about how we make sense of apologetics in the era of COVID-19 that's what we're going to be looking at with special guests including Professor John Lennox so if you'd like to book in for that apologetics webinar being hosted by Premier do go to premierdigital dot info slash webinars also very excited to announce that we're doing an ask NT Wright anything live stream that's right on Wednesday the 3rd of June at 8 in the evening again UK time so a little bit earlier on in the day if you're joining us from North America or perhaps elsewhere in the world we're going to be streaming that via the unbelievable Facebook page so that's the place to go again I'll make sure there's a link so that you can be teed up to join us on Wednesday the 3rd of June at 8 in the evening UK time we're going to be broadcasting live from the unbelievable Facebook page and probably via a number of other Facebook pages that will carry the feed as well so look out for that you'll be able to ask your questions live of NT Wright as he joins me for an hour or so to answer some questions so that's really exciting looking forward to that of course you can keep abreast of what's going on in the world of the podcast by subscribing to our newsletter simply go to the show page at ask NT Wright dot com to do so you'll also get exclusive bonus content and of course the chance to ask a question yourself and if you're able to support the show through giving to us Tom's ebook on 12 tough questions about the Bible and faith will be coming to you as well so do check out the links for that at the show right now it's time to get into today's edition of the program well welcome back to the program got a really interesting one today looking at questions around global justice and the climate crisis Tom joins me as usual here on the program and you've invested a lot of your life in helping Christians in today's world understand that world of the first century but only because you want it to impact today's world what are some of the key areas where you think the church today Christians today need to understand the story of fresh so that we can tell it to today's generation yes I think it's difficult for people to get their minds out of the way that we ask key questions and into the way that the key questions are framed in the first century but unless we make that effort the whole time then we are going to be committing what we call anachronisms that is just just transposing things back almost as stupidly as if we imagined that they had mobile phones in the first century and that sort of thing particularly people sometimes say to me oh Tom you want us to imagine this great narrative that you say they were all believing but that's very difficult and I say well actually if you don't do that you will assume that they have the Western Christian narrative which is how do I go to heaven and you will assume that that's what Jesus and his friends were talking about and it really really wasn't and if you read the Jewish documents from the first century whether it's the Dead Sea Scrolls or there is Josephus or other books like what we call Fourth Ezra which is written shortly after the time of Jesus they're not talking about how we go to heaven they're talking about how the God of creation is going to put everything right on this world and what we could and should be doing right now either to anticipate that or in some sense to implement that it's about the revelation of God's saving faithfulness to his creation and his covenant and that's a very different set of questions from what most people think religion ought to be about part of the problem of course is that the modern Western idea of religion is itself very much a modern construct and so trying to get people to unthink what they just assume is really very difficult and it's only when you start to deconstruct things oh I see so you mean and at the heart of it is something I've said before on this show that we assume that the whole point of religion if you believe in it is to go to heaven eventually and be with God if there is a God but actually in the New Testament as with the Jewish world in general it's about God wanting to bring heaven and earth together and God wanting graciously to come and live with his human creatures and to be at home with them that's what Genesis 1 and 2 is all about and that's what it's supposed to be all about at the end of the book of Revelation says the dwelling of God is with humans not the dwelling of humans is with God the other way around and once you start to put everything that way up then all sorts of other things you know click click click into place in a way which they don't do otherwise I often find when people have read your book when they understand more of the context and what this kingdom was about that it gives them the confidence actually to go and talk with their friends and skeptical colleagues because it no longer seems like some bolt on you know that you you ought to get this life insurance and carry on with your life as it is but actually it says we're part of a much bigger story and I want to invite you into that story exactly I was preaching at a confirmation the other night which is very exciting with four very bright young people in Oxford College being confirmed and the readings that were chosen set me up to say that God in Jesus and through the gospel is already doing new creation all around us if we have eyes to see and you are now invited to become part of that project and in Lesley New begins phrase about the gospel being public truth I said to these four I'm not sure how they took it that you are now part of the public face of this public truth and actually to think of the Christian vocation like that I find very exciting and dramatic absolutely challenging well let's get into today's discussion Tom the climate crisis and global justice is my catch all phrase for this and lots of questions that have come in over the last few months about the climate obviously we're seeing all kinds of movements going on around the world the extinction rebellion movement this young lady Greta Thunberg who's caught the imagination of so many people and so on so lots of questions here and we'll just see where we can get to and then move on to some other issues Jonathan in Phoenix Arizona says I want to know generally what Tom thinks about where we are in human history and where we're going considering the advent of artificial intelligence global warming the continuing rise in population and the unprecedented polluting of the environment what does Tom make of it all so I suppose and we'll tease that out in various other ways as these questions come in I mean I think the first thing to say is that because of what I believe about Jesus I believe that God the Creator is sovereign over the present and the future as he has been over the past and that there have been many many times in human history I think of the black death and things like that when people really did think that all humans were going to be wiped out and that the whole world was shuddering to a horrible halt and of course when I was young there were great marches and great anxieties and all sorts of things about the UND it was the UK web that we were going to blow the world up and I want to say that was a real problem because we did and we still do have the capacity to do that and if we've forgotten that that's a problem then we forget it our peril but it's almost as though in every generation people trundle along thinking the world is going okay and then they suddenly think oh my goodness there's this problem there's that problem and it's as though and I think this is a to do with Western mindset in the 17th and 18th and 19th centuries and we lurch from an over optimism oh we're just getting on fine we're having peace and prosperity and etc to an over pessimism oh my goodness it's suddenly all going horribly wrong at the same time there are real challenges and we really have to rise to the occasion and one of the things I pray about regularly is for today's generation of younger scientists coming through schools and universities to discern and discover fresh ways of say dealing with that horrible great island of waste plastic in the middle of the pacific or dealing with all the things that we're currently doing which are making the planet warmer I mean some years ago people worried terribly about the Gulfstream being switched off which would mean that here where we're sitting in London but never mind further north we would have a new ice age because it's only the Gulfstream that stops us from being like northern Newfoundland which is where we are in terms of latitude now you know funny things have happened before and maybe that would happen again but that would precipitate enormous crises on all sorts of fronts so I want to say we need to be doing the research because part of the Christian belief in human responsibility is that God wants us to take care of our world but it's the danger with some of what I hear at the moment is that it's panicky it's just oh dear we've got to stop everything now and I want to say no we should say our prayers we should do the science we should study it very carefully and yes there are some nettles that have to be grasped and maybe Greta Thunberg has put her finger on some of them and if that's what you do with nettles take the grass and mature but there is there is a danger that that then gets bundled up with a general kind of again the establishment package and suddenly it becomes part of a whole raft of causes and you're either all on that side or you're all on that side and I think in America particularly that's a problem at the moment right where the question of do you even believe in climate change is part of a right and left package which really doesn't help and in a way has been set up in that way by the president you know the incumbent currently as president and and Prescott sort of has a question on that Prescott's in Philadelphia in Pennsylvania and says I'm sure you've heard of the recent news in the US with President Donald Trump and his Twitter beef Twitter spat with 16 year old Greta Thunberg and then also pastor Robert Jeffress going on air saying that she only needs to read Genesis 9 and look at a rainbow to feel better about her future and that climate change is an imaginary problem it's not hard to see that this is bad theology but it's not quite clear to me what exactly would be good theology seems pretty undeniable that there are significant changes happening and that the world could look drastically different in the next few decades if we don't take new measures to better care for God's creation but I'm not sure how God's sovereignty over creation fits in here would God actually let it get to the point where humans are no longer physically able to inhabit the earth for instance and how does this all fit into the context of God renewing creation so big questions there and I have often also seen that sort of theology which basically says we don't need to worry because God's gonna you know it'll all burn hands well either you don't use worries it'll all burn or you don't need to worry it says God would never let it get that bad anyway and those two are incompatible with one another but people seem to embrace the one or the other quite happily I first ran into this I made a sense before many years ago when I was doing some lectures on Jesus in Thunder Bay Ontario the northwestern end of the Great Lakes and the church where I was lecturing they'd asked me to speak about Jesus but actually what they were really worried about was people from America who were telling them that they shouldn't worry about pollution about acid rain particularly because the whole world was going to be blown up by an Armageddon fairly soon and that if you were worried about that it showed you being worldly instead of and you should be concentrating or saving souls rather than carrying things are and I mean I'd not met that this was in the early 1980s and this was quite new to me that attitude but two things I want to say one is yes we are called to care for the world that's quite clear in Genesis and if you're gonna quote Genesis 9 about rainbows there's a lot of other bits of Genesis as well particularly one and two where humans are to be looking after God's garden and that is reaffirmed in Psalm 8 where God is made humans to be under him sovereign over the world and to take responsibility and that that is reaffirmed in Romans 8 but in Romans 8 you get the other half of that which is that the creation will be set free from its slavery to decay to share the liberty of the glory of the children of God or to rather to inherit the freedom which comes when God's children are glorified now.
Part of the point of that is that God is going to do for the whole of creation at the last what he did for Jesus at Easter in other words give him he gave Jesus the new body a new immortal physical body God will renew the whole creation so that the earth will be full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. What sort of a process of dying and rising again has to be gone through for that to take place we are not told and I've often said all our language about the future is a set of signposts pointing into a fog you know they may be true signposts but they don't tell you it's not a photographic description of what it'll be like as we get there so somehow we have to hold those two in sort of tension and the second one gives us this secure faith that the God who raised Jesus is going to make all things well at the end and that's not whistling in the dark that's rooted in what we believe about Jesus but second in the meantime we are to be people of new creation who are not just beneficiaries but also agents of new creation that is we are to take responsibility for our world so we're not just to sit back and say oh well you know if the planet warms up and we can't live in it anymore too bad and that's why I say we should be praying for and seeking to foster brilliant young scientists from whatever context who are able to analyze in new ways where the problems really are to see what we've been doing wrong particularly since the Industrial Revolution it's very interesting because this is all part of postmodernity that the Industrial Revolution said we can now make anything drive anything do anything we can take over the world and Western Europe and America has basically done that and just as ideologically there's a big cost so in terms of ecologically there's a big cost and I fear that you know that the thing about Trump and Thunberg is simply one more manifestation of a political standoff of people in America or elsewhere saying don't talk to us about this because it's going to get in the way of our nice industrial plans and the answer is hang on just as you were wrong about the black white issues in the 50s and early 60s in America and maybe you're wrong about this too you know that there are there are big issues here about how we do our our total projects and so those need to be addressed and not swept under the carpet within a framework of saying God is sovereign in the God who raised Jesus will will heal his world I think some people sort of because the the language around this has got quite apocalyptic almost in itself that's where some of these questions are coming from Tim Tim has a in Nottingham has a similar question saying you know some scientists are even speculating that human civilization might collapse in the coming decades go extinct yeah how and and it's asking well if that is a possibility how does that fit with the idea of God's coming kingdom and new creation so will God intervene is that sort of something God would never allow to happen well quite and and I mean just as this is like the macro version of what happens when somebody is facing the the sickness and possible death of somebody they love how could God let this beautiful person die so young whatever it is and the answer is you you say your prayers you call in the doctors but sometimes the people who love do die it seems to be ridiculous that they should and so I don't want to say God could and would never let that happen but I do believe that if that was the way that we had to go through in order to get to the new creation I find that deeply counterintuitive actually but seems to me Paul in First Corinthians is talking about being transformed rather than there being a moment when the whole creation collapses into into chaos again at the same time we are given responsibility we are given a vocation to look after creation and it's something that as Christians we should be in the forefront of doing not in a panicky way are sometimes the men Christians are highly moralistic have you changed your light bulbs yet and we said well you know we're doing all that stuff but let's do it within a celebration of God's goodness and the arrival of new creation I mean interestingly Natalie in Australia picks up on that sense she labels it what do you make of quote-unquote climate anxiety I'm saying there's no doubt we've polluted the earth but how radical should our response be and as you say there is a certain feeling of almost panic in some court yes should Christians step back a bit from that in your view is it without without sort of skirting over the fact that there are a few serious issues that's taken I mean there's that old line in Isaiah which says you know the one who believes will not make haste they were not panic and there is a sense of calm faith and confidence even when and again the Old Testament is full of this even then there are no signs of hope at the moment but we hope in the God who we know who has done x y and z in the past and who will be trust is trustworthy to be faithful in the future at the same time if I was in Australia with the huge fires that there have been recently now I do not know the cause of those fires some people say that there were some arsonists who were at work why I mean goodness that's just unbelievable but I think in Southern California as well at the same time there do seem to be some features of what's going on which really are extremely concerning and certainly the storms we've seen in the UK recently which have increased far beyond what I remember when I was a kid and of course the melting of the ice caps on the both ends of the planet and the melting of some of the great glaciers in the world there are huge and undeniable signs of major change how much these are simply part of a slow to and fro heaven flow I simply don't know if this is not my field but it seems to me those are good questions to ask not in a panicky way but in a proper scientific way part of the problem here is that some people in some cultures and some parts of America not all are taught to distrust science in general on the grounds that if you say science it means you're a Darwinian and therefore you don't believe the Bible or whatever and that's just silly you know and if you are very sick or someone you love is very sick please go to the hospital and trust the best science there is to deal with your sickness and don't say oh you must be a Darwinian because you're going to ask me today's show is brought to you in partnership with SBCK the UK publisher of Tom's material and two new books you may be interested in the New Testament in its world an introduction to the history literature and theology of the first Christians in which Enthirite and Mike Bird provide a thorough overview of the New Testament for students, church leaders and indeed everyday Christians and another brand new book from Tom history and eschatology Jesus and the promise of natural theology it's the book version of Tom's Gifford lectures of which Miraslav Volf said a creative and arresting contribution to natural theology this book argues for the plausibility of the Christian vision and the relationship between God and the world by taking seriously the history of Jesus Christ both books available at sbckpublishing.co.uk just search for Enthirite. In a related question Donald in Somerset asks your book simply good news was a dramatic revelation to me but I'm worried that I've read too much into it can you be clearer about the social state of the world today you seem ambiguous about the idea that the world is now a better place than it's ever been I can't remember your phrase as a friend has borrowed my copy but you quoted Stephen Pinker and doubted if the world is better this has left me doubtful about expressing myself yes and goes on to say here I never understood what the kingdom God was all about after listening to preachers for over 60 years you have completely convinced me that when Jesus stood up in the temple and announced his mission statement it is becoming literally true I believe the world is a happier place than it's ever been because his death and resurrection changed people but I'd be very grateful if you could help my nagging doubts so yes where do you begin on that that's absolutely fair enough and the trouble is that and this is what Stephen Pinker is picking up on he's a Harvard professor who's written two three books recently about this he says that the world is a better place because of all the things that we discovered in the Enlightenment and that we just need to get rid of all that religion nonsense and then peace and love and democracy and his latest books on that the better angel of our nature and enlightenment now both kind of a stacked with all these statistics about all kinds of measures in which he believes the world is a better place than it ever has been that's right and I'm again it's not my field I'm not an expert in this but some of the reviews that I've read have pointed out some of the things that he ignores and that there are major things going on and actually as one reviewer said if this was going to be true anywhere it should be true in the United States which is the Enlightenment country of our excellence but actually if you step away from Harvard where he's teaching into places not too far from Boston Massachusetts there is real poverty there is real racial tension there are real all sorts of things which are smoldering away and which this nice smooth oh we're getting it all right now aren't we isn't really adequate and I'm aware as well just on that I had Stephen Pinker on this very you know in this very studio to debate these issues with an expense a little while ago right but the thing that I felt was lacking in Enlightenment now as much as there were all these measures sort of hard statistics if you like death rates mortality and so on you can look at it doesn't necessarily tell you about the quality of the life in as much as we see today in our incredibly materially rich world in the West people nevertheless the incidence of depression mental health issues seems to be going up and up and up and there's some some ways in which the more technology we have the less we seem to be able to actually this whole life I'm sure that's true and and one one does see that and the studies of young people who live on their screen and then can't relate to other people and that there's lots and lots written about that but I want to say so many of the things and this is where Tom Holland's work comes in and also Rodney Stark the rise of Christianity that actually if you look at the ancient classical world into which Christianity was born and if you look at the pagan world in general around the world and if you look at some of the great Enlightenment moments like the French Revolution and so on they were they were not places out of which you would get the idea that we now embrace of human rights or of widespread public education or publicly available medicine etc the Christians were doing that stuff from the beginning I remember somebody telling me it was time for the church to get out of the education business and let the state do it actually we've been in this education business for a long time much longer than any state has been doing and we've got form on this we know what we're talking about and so there are many many ways in which though Christianity has often been part of the problem not part of the solution because we've got things horribly wrong as well and we've distorted things nevertheless the great movements of civilization have often been traceable to deeply Christian roots which themselves have deeply Jewish roots and just talking to friends the other day about this in relation to music the way in which the flourishing of modern classical music even though some of that has gone in very different directions actually goes back to the western monastic tradition and then out of the plain song of char of some chanting then polyphony emerging in the 15th and 16th centuries and giving people these possibilities which are like a new flowering of the gospel of the many voices that actually make harmony together and I I'm fascinated by that and by art as well and the way that's worked so it isn't so much that you can then trace a steady crescendo Jesus and then things get better and better and better because often things do get horribly worse but Jesus and then there is hope and then there are new possibilities and new things happen and and you can't take it for granted and you can't settle down and say well that's all right then we're sailing smoothly to heaven or to heaven and earth combination but nor can you say with Stephen Pinker get rid of the religion and the secular world would triumph and well chimes in nicely actually with a comment really as much as a question from Grant in San Diego who says do we Christians undermine one of the greatest evidences for the truth of the whole gospel when we collude with the accusers to disparage western civilization yes it's flawed no it's not the city whose builder and maker is god yes it's culture is sometimes a mix of christianity and other odd bits of Greek and Roman paganism but it's far more Christian than not just look at the writings of historians you've just mentioned Rodney Stark and Tom Holland Christianity transformed western civilization and even as much of modern Europe declares itself post-Christian it's still so deeply Christian in its world view laws and values so by disparaging the west do we not in a sense also undermine the work of the gospel in the west and its example why are we so hard on the west holding it to standards that have never been met by any other civilization thanks for what you do yes i mean i'm deeply ambivalent about this because all that i've said before i will stand by that actually there are many many things in western civilization which are fruits of the gospel for which we should be deeply grateful the problem has come that particularly since the 18th century there's been a deep ambiguity in the whole post-enlightenment world because the enlightenment has tried to get the fruits of that long long civilization while cutting off the roots and saying we don't want the jesus bit we don't want the jewish bit we'll we'll take on these projects ourselves and actually the history of the 19th and 20th century is of that going horribly wrong whether it's in the trenches of the first world war or in oshbits or or in 9/11 or whatever that actually i mean somebody wrote a book 20 years ago why the rest hates the west right um that there is an arrogance about western civilization which is a classic enlightened and the word enlightenment says it all we are the enlightenment yeah enlightened ones so that when you see on the news um you know 20 people being killed in some suburb in bagdad and the way that that's presented as well as 20 more people that's the barbaric part of the world it's that stuff over there whereas if it was 20 people being killed on the streets of london then oh my goodness this is people like us but actually they're all people like us and and so that western arrogance has got to be named and shamed not in order to say that the west you know it's avoided with simplifications is is automatically bad but we have to be able to discern as we do with ourselves when we look in the mirror when we go to a spiritual director when we say our prayers when we receive the eucharist you know lord have mercy on me a sinner this doesn't mean that everything about my past life is as bad as it could possibly be it just means yeah there's still stuff to sort out here absolutely maybe the last one here from rahil in arisona and this could be a brief response because rahil's really just looking for some resources and commentary um anti-writers written in surprise by hope as far as i can see the major task that faces us in our generation corresponding to the issue of slavery two centuries ago is that of the massive economic imbalance of the world whose major symptom is the ridiculous and unpayable third world debt and he mentioned in an interview with the national catholic reporter that to him the big moral issue would be the money sliding into the pockets of the western banking system at the cost of keeping most of the world in unpayable debt i love this one to learn more does tom have any resources he would point us to reless and glee glee learn and be better informed in this area yes i've been hugely helped by working with the organization called christian aid which is a christian charity obviously and particularly when i was bishop of daramo work quite closely with them and spoke in the house of lords about related issues and so on and they would be my first port of call because they're working at the cold face around the world and they're in touch with all the other related movements so i would simply go on to their websites and take it from there and for me one of the high points and this is 20 years ago now was the jubilee 2000 movement which did succeed in getting some of those huge unpayable debts remitted i do want to say because people who quiz me about this am i therefore ranking these different problems the global debt is the most important thing and that other moral issues are less important no um morality is indivisible um god's world is god's world human life is human life but part of the problem about unpayable third world debt is not only its injustice and the extraordinary abuse of the system by as i say bankers and systems that just lend money at high rates of interest and insist on its being paid even though the people they lent it to a long dead and gone and then of course in 2008 when the bankers ran out of cash then the very rich did for the very rich what they'd refuse to do for the very poor that's the crucial thing but then in those countries where there is this unpayable debt education suffers medicine suffers um children suffer particularly the elderly suffer um because the country is having to try to pay compound interest debt in a way that is totally ridiculous it would never happen to you or me because we could go bankrupt and then you draw a line and start again countries can't go bankrupt and therefore if we're caring about the health and well-being of particularly the really vulnerable um then this issue actually touches all of that and it still does and i would say also christian aid um who i'm a big fan of as well um i've got some interesting resources well on what they're calling climate poverty as well yes in relation to what we've been speaking about the way that climate change adversely affects most well strongly those that are precisely because in countries like Bangladesh or some of the um some of the pacific islands which uh that they're highest are only a few feet above sea level if the sea levels rise there's a lot of people whose homes are simply going well look um i hope that's given some some idea of how we approach these issues at a global level and how we can do so i suppose in in confidence as well as with concern for the world that we live in but um tom thank you very much for lending your wisdom again and uh thank you for all the questions that have come in and we'll see you again next time thank you very much well thank you very much for being with us on today's show next time we're talking about animals do they go to heaven tom is answering questions on the new creation and the animal kingdom uh that's the next time we bring you the ask and to write anything podcast if you want more from the show of course do visit the website askentiright.com get yourself signed up so that you're included in all of the special offers and we will be announcing who won those special signed copies of Paul a biography soon so uh so do listen out for that on the next edition of the podcast do join us as well for the live stream of the ask and to write anything show are we going to be going live on facebook with tom on wednesday the third of june at eight p.m that's on the unbelievable facebook page you'll find us on some other facebook channels as well but i'll leave the link for the unbelievable facebook page in the description of today's show and also that special apologetic webinar coming up just next week on the 28th of may my special guest will be professor john lenox for that if you'd like to get yourself subscribed for that booked in premier digital dot info slash webinars is the place to go and i'll make sure there's also a link to that from today's show for the moment thank you very much for being with us on today's program in the meantime go well and we'll see you next time you've been listening to the ask anti-write anything podcast let other people know about this show by rating and reviewing it in your podcast provider for more podcasts from premier visit premier dot at www.talk.uk/podcasts.

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What Would Be the Point of Getting Baptized After All This Time?
#STRask
May 22, 2025
Questions about the point of getting baptized after being a Christian for over 60 years, the difference between a short prayer and an eloquent one, an
Licona vs. Fales: A Debate in 4 Parts – Part Four: Licona Responds and Q&A
Licona vs. Fales: A Debate in 4 Parts – Part Four: Licona Responds and Q&A
Risen Jesus
June 18, 2025
Today is the final episode in our four-part series covering the 2014 debate between Dr. Michael Licona and Dr. Evan Fales. In this hour-long episode,
Is It Problematic for a DJ to Play Songs That Are Contrary to His Christian Values?
Is It Problematic for a DJ to Play Songs That Are Contrary to His Christian Values?
#STRask
July 10, 2025
Questions about whether it’s problematic for a DJ on a secular radio station to play songs with lyrics that are contrary to his Christian values, and
Pastoral Theology with Jonathan Master
Pastoral Theology with Jonathan Master
Life and Books and Everything
April 21, 2025
First published in 1877, Thomas Murphy’s Pastoral Theology: The Pastor in the Various Duties of His Office is one of the absolute best books of its ki
What Evidence Can I Give for Objective Morality?
What Evidence Can I Give for Objective Morality?
#STRask
June 23, 2025
Questions about how to respond to someone who’s asking for evidence for objective morality, what to say to atheists who counter the moral argument for
Nicene Orthodoxy with Blair Smith
Nicene Orthodoxy with Blair Smith
Life and Books and Everything
April 28, 2025
Kevin welcomes his good friend—neighbor, church colleague, and seminary colleague (soon to be boss!)—Blair Smith to the podcast. As a systematic theol
What Should I Teach My Students About Worldviews?
What Should I Teach My Students About Worldviews?
#STRask
June 2, 2025
Question about how to go about teaching students about worldviews, what a worldview is, how to identify one, how to show that the Christian worldview
Licona vs. Fales: A Debate in 4 Parts – Part Three: The Meaning of Miracle Stories
Licona vs. Fales: A Debate in 4 Parts – Part Three: The Meaning of Miracle Stories
Risen Jesus
June 11, 2025
In this episode, we hear from Dr. Evan Fales as he presents his case against the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection and responds to Dr. Licona’s writi
Full Preterism/Dispensationalism: Hermeneutics that Crucified Jesus
Full Preterism/Dispensationalism: Hermeneutics that Crucified Jesus
For The King
June 29, 2025
Full Preterism is heresy and many forms of Dispensationalism is as well. We hope to show why both are insufficient for understanding biblical prophecy