The New Perspective on Paul with Simon Gathercole and Peter Williams

I'm Matt Schmucker, Director of Nine Marks. We believe the local church is the focal point of God's plan for displaying His glory to the nations. Our vision is simple. Churches that reflect the character of God. To that end, we pray that Nine Marks audio will benefit both you and your local church. Listen, learn, and join the conversation. The date for all of you who are curious is November the 20th, 2006, place Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington DC, and we are interviewing two friends who are in town right now for the Society of Middle Literature meetings. There are Pete Williams and Simon Gather Call, and they will each introduce themselves to you now. Pete, tell the folks listening who you are and what you do. I'm Pete Williams, and I'm a senior lecturer in New Testament in the University of Aberdeen, which is in the northeast of Scotland. Offal, you're going to be a senior lecturer. Are there junior lecturers who are 19, 20? No, generally lecturers might start around 26 at the very, very, very youngest. So senior lecturer is anything over 28. You get promoted to it, having usually completed your second book and shown other signs which they think were the operation. And how are your books doing? Selling in certain numbers. Tell us what your books are so far. You really want to know. Yes, of course. Okay, one is called Studies in the Syntax of the Peshita of One Kings, which is all about. Okay, and what's the other one? What's the other one? Early Syriac translation technique and the textual criticism of the Greek gospel. Now that one you would have thought would have done something by now. It is selling copies even this week. But now, okay, we're going to turn to Simon and just saying, I know that you're a serious Christian. Why have you engaged in those studies? Because most pastors are not going to know what those things are. What I obviously thought they're important up to give time to them. What I think is important to do is to study the Bible and study the text of the Bible and the manuscripts of the Bible. And that's what I'm passionate about. What one can show is the fidelity of transmission of the Bible and the way it's being handed down to us over the generations. And you can do that with detailed study. The other person here is Simon Gathacol, who also is at Aberdeen. Right. My name is Simon Gathacol. I have exactly the same position as Pete. I've seen an lecturer in New Testament in the University of Aberdeen in the School of Divinity, History and Falsehood. So how are you different from Pete? He is younger. Other than that. I mean, do you have the same expertise, the same stuff you do? No, we do very different things, actually. I work on Paul. I suppose in particular, my first book was on Paul. If we were to go through our two books, my first book was called "Where Is Bosting Early Jewish Soteriology." I've got a card here right here. And my second book is called "The Preexistent Son." But he's also sent off the manuscript of his third book to Oxford University Press, which is on the newly discovered Gospel of Judas. So Simon, why are you working on the things that you're working on? The recent thing I wrote on the Gospel of Judas, I wrote because there's been a lot of sensational literature on the Gospel of Judas by written by people like Bart Erman, who were the most popular person I guess, his well known author of Miss Quoting Jesus, which I think we're going to talk about later. And so, for example, he's said that the Gospel of Judas opens up new vistas for our understanding of Jesus and earliest Christianity. And what I try to show in the book is that in my treatment to the Gospel of Judas is that it's because it's written in, say, around 150 AD. It's written really in a time period when the eyewitnesses who knew Jesus and knew the apostles had died out, and so being written in a period where there's much more of a free for all about what you can say about Jesus in the second century, new portraits and Jesus and new stories about Jesus are kind of emerging all the time. And the Gospel of Judas is full of those. It's not full of new, authentic Jesus material. So, in the middle of the second century, Jesus was a popular figure, because most seminary students pass a rule of read Josephus, and they'll know that Josephus really talks about John the Baptist and that's about it, but Jesus was really very a sort of popularly known figure throughout. I think he was growing in, yeah, more and more people were getting to know about Jesus in the second century, even though even if they weren't Christians, because of the spread of Christianity across the Roman Empire. And there were a number of different strands of religions which were associated with Jesus, and we're obviously familiar with the sort of orthodox strand of Christians who carried on the tradition of the New Testament and carried on the apostolic preaching. But there was also a strand which saw Jesus in a radically new light, saw Jesus as someone who didn't die on the cross, who wasn't a true human being, someone who is primarily a reviler rather than someone who dies for sins. And this conventionally goes on the label of 'nosticism'. So it sounds a little bit like modern Protestant liberalism. I think one of the things that could be said here is just how quickly Christianity spread and how white, you know, fast, the numbers grew. That's what you pick up certainly from the book of Acts that talks about 3,000 being converted at Pentecost, then 5,000 mails is the next number then it just stops counting. But that's also what you get from the non-Christian sources when you see tasters talking about the great fire in Rome in 1864, he talks about a huge multitude of multitudes doing gains. Great number there. When Pliny who's in charge in part of Turkey writes to the emperor, Trajan in 1812, he talks about the vast numbers of Christians that he's having to deal with and how that is actually affecting the local economy that the temples are getting deserted. And that's up in Turkey which is not somewhere where all of Angela is. So I think you could argue, it's likely the church spread even faster in other ways which is exactly the impression you get from Acts 19 with the ride and emphasis. So I think Christianity spread like wildfire. And when we're studying Christianity from the second or third centuries, today what really appeared to those of us who are evangelical, as if we're studying Roman Catholicism, what we know is Roman Catholicism? Well it's certainly the case that it's fairly early on that some strands begin to treat Mary in a very special way that seems to start in the second century. However there are many strands of Catholicism that you simply don't see at that stage and I think therefore we-- What about the sacramentalism in their understanding of salvation? I don't think that the sacramentalism comes in that early in terms of seeing the elders of the church as carrying out some priestly function that's not there that early. There is still a simplicity often in talking about Christian worship. So there are ways in which people are forgetting how things should be done. I mean when you read something like the shepherd of Hermos, I mean it seems as a kind of moralism that seems, I think, theologically it's innate in fallen humanity. But it very quickly takes a part of the church and the way Christians communicate or people who say they're following Jesus communicate seems to be in a way that we as evangelicals today would smell out as not faithful to the gospel. Yes and I think if we do date that text as around the year 140 then it's quite a way away from the beginning of things. What I think we can say is that one of the embassies that there is through the early centuries in the churches is the importance of the scriptures and how they need to be normative in the church and that's something very much that we as Protestants are in line with. So you guys are both teachers, senior lecturers, at a public university. University of Aberdeen is not what we call in the US of private college. It's a state university. So how can, and you're both confessing evangelical Christians. So how do you find teaching Bible in a public university like that? I think in many ways we have a great deal of freedom in British universities. I mean this is the university where I Howard Marshall was for years. And so one factor may as well, may also be that Aberdeen is in the north east of Scotland which is quite a traditional area of the country. But I think in many ways people in universities in Britain do feel a certain freedom to say things that maybe we wouldn't be able to say in, for example, a liberal evangelical seminary. So I have a friend who interviewed for two jobs. One was a job in Cambridge University and one was a job at Spurgeon's College. And he couldn't get the Spurgeon's College job because he didn't think that women should be ordained to preaching ministry. But he could get the Cambridge University job because there are no kind of theological requirements to teach in a British public university. Interesting. It's interesting that you often find that the opposition from certain Mae'n unrhyw i'r sydd sydd yn unrhyw sydd sydd sydd yn unrhyw i'r sydd sydd yn unrhyw i'r sydd sydd sydd sydd sydd sydd sydd sydd sydd sydd sydd sydd sydd sydd sydd sydd sydd yn ystod ystod yn ystod yn ystod yn ystod yn ystod yn ystod yn ystod yn ystod yn ystod yn ystod yn ystod yn ystod Gwyrdd'n gwybod yw'n gwybod yw'n gweithio yw'n gwybod yw'n gwybod yw'n gwybod yw'n gwybod yw'n gwybod yw'n gwybod yw'n gwybod yw'n gwy i'n gweithio'r gweithio yn y byddiad. Mae'n gweithio'r gweithio yn y byddiad. Mae'n gweithio yn y byddiad. Mae'n gweithio yn gweithio yn y byddiad. Mae'n gweithio yn y mithafio yn y byddiad. Mae'n gweithio yn y byddiad yn y byddiad. Mae'n gweithio yn y pethio yn y byddiad. a'r yw'r ysgwch i'n fwy. Again Simon, they're not denying Christ's death as a substitutionary atonement. They're often denying Christ's death as a substitutionary atonement and and Christ's bearing the penalty for us. There's often an. So when Jesus in Mark's Gospel says that he came to give his life as a ransom from many, what's I think often a number of a number of people would take the ransom for many there to be Jesus delivering a new ransom, just like God ransomed the people out of Egypt in the Old Testament. Now God ransomed His people through Jesus from anything bad which might be in danger. On much less clear connection to his death, certainly none assumed to his death as a substitution. Yeah, the big objection is often to Christ's death as a bearing of a penalty in our place. Yeah, that is and continues to be a big stumbling block for a lot of people. And that's been popularized in the UK to I mean I know Steve Chalk has gotten into quite a bit of controversy over this with what the lost message of Jesus. Yeah, lost message of Jesus, yeah. And do you want to get that in your classes at Aberdeen? I mean are there students who are clearly read and been influenced by these books and write papers based on this or to make comments or I think a lot of the impact is not necessarily on people reading unhelpful stuff and coming away with a clear alternative to the traditional picture. A lot of the impact of this literature is more on the side of muddying the waters as to what we can say clearly about the attainment. So students read a lot of these competing views and you know they read these four views books and they think well Jesus' death has some connection with salvation and we you know we it'll be a bit dangerous to say too much more than that. But you think Jesus' death is connected to our salvation in what way? Well I think if we take a statement in Paul in 1 Corinthians 153 that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures that the reference there to Jesus dying for sins is clearly a reference to the penalty. Throughout the Bible death is the penalty for sin the divinely the divinely appointed the divinely delivered penalty for sins. So in one Kings we have the statement that Zimri died, King Zimri died for the sins which he committed and in one particular way Jesus' death is just like Zimri's death it's a result of sin it's the it's the divine judgment on the sit-on on sin but the big difference is that Jesus of course does not die for his own sins but dies for our sins. So it's not only a penalty that he's bearing it's a penalty that he's bearing in our place. And that would not be a popular opinion today in New Testament in scholarly New Testament circles? No. Not even that the New Testament says that not that it's true but even that the New Testament teaches that. Yeah it's very unpopular for you that the New Testament teaches that. So does that make it difficult for you in your publishing and your professional career? I mean are you are you kind of written off? It doesn't it doesn't affect my chances of getting a book published because publishers are just interested in making money so if people are going to buy book then they'll they'll publish it. And your books have been published? Yes. Just curious I'm just asking I'm just wondering what they don't sell in quite the same numbers in their hard backs. Okay. They'll last longer. And sometimes sometimes people treat you with respect because they can see that you have good scholarly credentials. You do know your original languages you know your stuff and you may write this quirky stuff at times but but you're basically someone who has intellectual stature. Sometimes people do just regard you as as someone who is just high bound by theological presuppositions which which leads you to distort the text. So I know in Britain and Steve Chalk is a well-known name among evangelicals over here in the US he's not. Can you just basically explain who he is? He is he has been a leading figure in the Baptist Church in Great Britain and has done lots of great things in terms of his impact on social justice. He is a great politician. He's someone who networks with members of parliament and organizes lots of social projects and he's been on the TV as a lot as a kind of Christian spokesperson. But in the last three or four years he's become slightly more notorious for coming out of nowhere with this with this book on the lost message of Jesus in which he advocates that the the historic Christian doctrine of the attainment in which as I just said that Christ dies for our sins Christ dies takes the penalty for our sins in our place but this is a form of cosmic child abuse in which God you know beats his son with a stick for sins and that we have because of because of the associations of this with you know God beating his son and cosmic child abuse that we need to just get all that out and reframe the doctrine completely and he suggests you reframe it how that Christ when he dies bears that bears in himself the kind of the sickness of society the the weakness that we all feel the lostness that we feel the emphasis is much more on so he's sort of the impasse from Star Trek anyway yeah the impact is much less on on object the objective reality of our sin before God and much more on how Jesus can help Jesus through his death can help us in our lostness and you've probably debated Steve Chalk what was the setting saying was organized by the evangelical alliance in in Britain which one of the leading evangelical bodies in Britain which brings churches from different denominations together and as a result of the stir which this book had caused because Steve Chalk was such a leading figure in the Baptist Church they the evangelical alliance wanted to look at the issue of the attainment again and so they organized a panel of people to discuss the book yeah any other thoughts comments on that Simon I think it could be said that Tom Wright is a very good writer he's interesting to very need and naturally when you get someone like that publishers want to make arrangements with them and he has those who will promote his work he's very engaging speaker as well which goes alongside his writing and he produces large amounts so I think that needs to be taken into account in terms of the general impact it's not to confuse things you're not saying that Tom Wright would make the same criticism about the our understanding of the atomic that Steve Chalk was making no no and I think also part of his appeal to to to to many evangelicals is that he does say a lot of great stuff and so when you read him on the mystery of the resurrection yeah when you read him on Jesus he is strongly affirming of the historical ministry of Jesus the history of Jesus miracles history of the resurrection he's very firm on the fact that the Gospels the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Judas and those sorts of texts really don't tell us anything about the about Jesus at all that it's not already in the in the New Testament that the four Gospels as we have them in the New Testament are how we know about Jesus yeah I remember hearing him once talk about the new perspective to a gathering of academics in which he got everyone agreeing with him by his rhetorical means on the new perspective only to dig a trap for them at the end of the talk to say that this is an argument for the authenticity of Ephesians and Colossians which actually a lot of academics don't want to accept and that's a fairly typical of of the way that he won't operate and there are things that we would want to agree with him on I was surprised when I read you guys may not be able to say things like this but I'm a local church pastor I can say just about anything I read on the back of I think it was simply Christian one of Tom writes a new book which I think is his attempt at a kind of basic Christianity book an endorsement from Jim Packer on the back which he said like Bishop Wright is one of God's best gifts to the Western Church and I just thought like wow I don't think so I mean you know that's that would not be my assessment from what I've read and heard from him and that kind of unacceptable no exceptions qualification or endorsement certainly concerns me from some of the things that I read about well maybe that's something you can raise with Jim when you're next in the photo to him actually I did actually with him recently that's another story so Simon is back to your book where is posting has it been received well I think it's been received like any book it's had mixed reception some people have been enthusiastic about it some people have been critical if over here in the States I think it's fair to say the new perspectives has made more headway among younger reform types than in other groups and those are actually the same ones who listen to these nine Marx interviews so if someone is wanting to try to think through this issue? Would your book where is boasting be a good place to start out? I think it would probably not be the best place to start out there would be other books that would be better on that. Such as. Such as. There was a great book by Don Hackner and Peter Stuhlmacher about with title I've forgotten. Yeah that's right. It's got justification in the title. H-A-G, any are at end of time and justification and you'll figure it out. Yeah, all right. What else? But Stephen Westaholm's book is a great book. Respect is old and new on Paul. Respect is old and new on Paul and his critics. It gives a great survey of the whole field. Simon Gather Cole says about this written with sparkling humor. This book is a land. well why am I reading it? Here you go Simon. Written with sparkling humor this book is a landmark work both in its treatment of the vast scholarly literature and its crisp exegesis of Paul himself. Perspectives old as a new on Paul. It goes on. It's proof again if proof we're needed that Stephen Westaholm is still having shoulders above almost everyone else as an interpreter of Paul. How long did it take it right there? Oh all of about 15 seconds. But so you you still come in this you think this is a great. Yeah it's very helpful. One of the most helpful sections is the first part which takes you through the the doctor and justification as it's presented and it's got a hilarious instruction but after that you've got the doctor and justification as Augustine puts it and then the doctor and the justification in Luther Calvin and Wesley and that's a great introduction to the historic doctor and justification which is often presumed many of the much of the literature on the new perspective on Paul kind of presumes that we all know what the traditional doctor and justification is but Westaholm sets it out very clearly. Now Peter Stillmarker who you just complimented his book he has a wonderfully positive blurb on Seyoon Kim's book Paul on the new perspective. Yeah Seyoon Kim's book Paul on the new perspective I think has one particularly has a number of helpful aspects but one particularly helpful aspect of it is that it highlights the way in which the new perspective on Paul often downplays the seriousness of sin. Now the new perspective on Paul is a very wide-ranging movement and so you can't necessarily say well because the new perspective on Paul on mass does it therefore just get down to your ear all authors but I think it's a general tendency in the movement to downplay the importance of sin so salvation is not so much about the fact that Israel the whole of Israel is an under slavery to sin the whole of the Gentile world is under slavery to sin and therefore God redeems us God redeems all people from their sin and from and from the divine judgment that hangs over both Jew and Gentile. The emphasis in the new perspective is on salvation as the inclusion of the Gentile so that all can share table fellowship together at God's table and Seyoon Kim I think really helpful he puts his finger on that downplaying of sin in the new perspective. You know just in if you're in systematic terms if you think of Bushnell in the 19th century there's a mystical view of the atonement I mean what happens is you get a downplaying of sin because all you're dealing with is behavior in the future you're not looking at any kind of objective reality of a sin I committed yesterday or a year ago as if that has any kind of continuing reality before an eternal God and somehow has an objective nature that must in and of itself be dealt with so you're necessarily I think lightening it to be just current ongoing future behavior modification and you're not dealing in any way other than modifying the ongoing behavior with the reality of the sins previously committed it's as if yesterday is less important than tomorrow as if yesterday doesn't exist somehow and when you have a God who's the God of Abraham Isaac Jacob yesterday today forever before Abraham was I am well then that just that doesn't that doesn't fit yeah one that I particularly like is Guy Waters book justification and new perspectives on Paul yeah just what I and other pastors have been looking for to help us understand and consider contemporary understandings of Paul and justification I think and what about David Winham's Paul follower of Jesus or founder of Christianity I think but this is written in response to a particular kind of quirky approach to Christianity by Ann Wilson which was written in the 90s yeah arguing that Jesus was just a good humble Jewish rabbi preached about love for one another and then few years later this guy Paul came along and he imported all these ideas from Greek religion about the nest certain there about some kind of descending redeemer who comes down from heaven saves us from the plight that we're in and then goes back up to heaven again as if Paul and Jesus just passed like ships in the night and David Winham shows very helpful I think that there are that that Paul is just carrying on the tradition that he received the tradition that came from Jesus that Jesus preached the kingdom of God which in Paul's language is new creation that Jesus talked about his death as a ransom for many which in Paul's languages Christ died for our sins and that the gospel consists in the death and resurrection of Jesus which is true in all for the New Testament gospels and it's what Paul presents in his letters as well as the gospel and Peter you're just following sleep I mean do you read any of these books what do you teach men? I teach various things I do teach Paul I do teach Paul I don't read these things I read some of these things but I and I will be teaching in fact New Testament theology next term and we'll probably be dealing with the doctrine of salvation as part of that alongside Christology ecclesiology and eschatology so when you're at Aberdeen and you've got to have a textbook on New Testament theology what what do you use? well there is Howard Marshall's New Testament theology that just come out and the well it came out a year ago and the advantage with that is it's a New Testament theology based really on the shape of the canon so it goes book by book and it talks about the and that is useful in terms of giving you a summary of say 20 or 30 pages for each book highlighting the themes that emerge from that what we were doing of course in New Testament theology is actually begin by asking the question whether a New Testament theology can be justified but it's because of course in the academy there are secular voices like hanky resonant who would say that you cannot have a theology of this particular group of 27 books because they are not coherent that these so that there cannot be that academic discipline so one of the things that we'll do in the first couple of weeks in the course is justify that using the work of Peter Baller and others on that salmon do you teach a kind of general intro to Paul course? I teach three yeah I teach the the Paul course which is based around I base it around Romans okay what do you what do you use for that I actually get them to read Romans I get them to read Romans I also get them to read Carson Moon Morris's introduction to the New Testament which has a very helpful section on Paul's epistles which deals with both the shape of Paul's thought and with Paul's biography and you actually think Paul wrote Romans controversially I do in fact almost everyone thinks that Paul writes Romans in fact you define the person of Paul by the fact that whoever it was he wrote Romans that's Paul right and so what other things would you use other than Carson Moon Morris intro I usually recommend that the students buy a commentary so usually they read either cran fields shorter commentary on Romans or Peter Stollmarker's commentary on Romans for their students who don't have Greek but for the students who do have Greek then I recommend that they read either Tom Schreiner's or Doug Moon's commentary on Romans great comments just brief because pastors probably have two or three or four of those commentaries you've just mentioned you want to give quick Simon comments on each one of those commentaries I think Charles Cranfield's commentary in particular the shorter commentary you did you mention Joe Fitzmire's no I didn't it's quite expensive yeah okay right Charles Cranfield's commentary the shorter commentary here which is an abridgment of his big two volume masterpiece is it is just a very clear very helpful introduction to Paul and did you have no him at Durham I did know him yeah and he's an incredibly careful writer I remember him telling me once that sometimes he would agonize for a day about how to construct a sentence just right so it expressed what he thought was really what Paul was talking about in a certain verse it's an incredibly clear commentary setting and I think one of the merits of his commentary is that it's very much based in the tradition of the of the church fathers and on Luther and Calvin he knows his stuff in terms of the history of theology and I know I did a doctoral seminar it took took a doctoral seminar it took on Romans back in 80 or 81 and Cranfield's commentary was referred to as sort of the standard commentary at that time on Romans would it still be other to that way 25 years later yeah it wouldn't be regarded another shorter one along with I should see the big two volume commentaries is still regarded as a great piece of work obviously scholarship has moved on a lot since then and in particular with this new perspective on Paul which Cranfield doesn't really touch on so much because of the time it was written okay so that's Cranfield keep going others I think for for for in terms of a modern good commentary on the Greek text, Tom Schreiner, who teaches at Sudden Baptist Theological Seminary, his country is really a model, I think, of clear exegesis. It's not so cluttered as some other commentaries are with alternative views, although he does go into alternative views of particular verses, but sets out the immediate meaning of Paul's statements and the theological implications that come from it. I think it's a very helpful commentary. And Doug Moose, Doug Moose is also a very useful commentary. I think it has a great deal on the alternative views that, in the scholarly world, he has a number of interlocutors that he refers to again and again, who are the major commentators on Roman, so he's constantly in dialogue with, I think, 12 or 16 other comments. You think that makes it maybe a little less clear for a pastor than Tom Schreiner's commentary? I think sometimes, I mean, it's very helpful. There are some slight theological differences between the two in that I think to overstate the matter slightly. Doug Moose is a little bit more Lutheran in its emphasis on so a fee-day as a very strong dominant theme in Romans. Tom Schreiner's commentary emphasizes the importance of persevering faith as essential to the Christian life. And you haven't mentioned your own supervisors commentary in the word "Biddle or commentary" series. Yeah, that is an insight to the media of everything you could ever want to know about Romans. Was it Doug Moose kind of that way? Well, Doug Moose is even more so. It's a two-volume, you know, total of about 1,600 pages with incredibly small print. I mean, it must come to about 500,000 words in total and, you know, it took him 10 or 15 years to write and, you know, nearly killed him. Writing it. And this is the first commentary on Paul, really, to apply the new perspective to a commentary on a particular Paul line. And how was that received when it came out? That was what 15 years ago? Yeah, 1988 it came out, so nearly 20 years ago now. And it was received as a breakthrough in New Testament scholarship by the New Testament scholarly guild, as applying the insights of the new perspective, so called to the individual parts of the letter. But if a pastor can buy one or two kilometers, that's not one of them you're encouraging. I wouldn't. You're by Schreiner and. I think in general, not only because I disagree with some of the content of Romans commentary on Romans, but I think in general, pastors would find the word biblical commentary series, you know, which is encyclopedic in the number of biblical parallels and non-biblical parallels that gives to every conceivable statement in an epistle. It's just more than you need to know most of the time. Other trends in New Testament studies that you guys noticed that are coming up that you're seeing when you've just been here to a professional meeting here in DC for the Society of the Liberal Literature, are there things that you think we should be aware of that the average pastor probably isn't? I know Pete, you're work with the Miss Quoting Jesus thing. Pastors with the Da Vinci Code here in America faced a lot of questions about historical reconstruction, including the early church period, and how much the Jesus we have is just a constructed Jesus. And a lot of pastors aren't equipped to deal with this particular. I think one of the challenges is really an attack on the integrity of the Christian canon of the New Testament, so that nowadays people are wanting to put all early writings together. They're also wanting to switch around chronology so that it's not that the, on the whole, the 27 books of the New Testament were written first, and then other things were written later, but people are trying to date a New Testament book as later as they can, and a pop full book. Early if you see that at the exhibit at the Sackler, you said you weren't there. That's right, and so this is a problem that people are wanting to make everything look like, it's just early Christian writing, and what happened was that there were the orthodox, which they would call the proto-orthodox, who were essentially the winners in a big battle amongst all of the competing ideas. Now this is, this is an idea that goes back a while to walk about, who wrote in orthodox, in Heresy, in the earliest Christianity, but it's become, it's become almost mainstream. And so the idea that we would look at these 27 books as special is. In Zarbatreon. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Now, in fact, of course, when we look at, say, Gospels, the four Gospels, Matthew, Martin, Luke and John, are earlier than any other Gospels, as far as can be established by any rational means. There are those who have some very complex, literary arguments to try to put things like the Gospels of Thomas much earlier. But, I mean, the Gospels of Thomas is, we think, what, early 3rd century, late 2nd century? Well, no, there are manuscripts of the Greek of the Gospel of Thomas, which probably are from around the year to 100. In fact, Simon's published an article on one of those. But the most of the Gospel of Thomas only survives in Coptic, and that manuscript is. That's right, Coptic. Yes, we both read Coptic. Together. We have a Coptic reading group ever written back and forth to each other in Coptic. We haven't yet done that. We ought to think about that. That's another thing we need to find for a lot of time. Keep going. Well, what do you want me to talk about, Pastor Mark? I think what Peter's raised is essential in terms of how we understand Jesus. Because we have, we have the Jesus of the four Gospels, who is the Messiah, the expected Messiah of Israel, and who comes and dies for our sins. That's the Jesus of the New Testament. But this is now being, these waters are now being muddied by the kind of mixing with mixing in with these four, the other earliest Gospels, particularly Thomas and the newly discovered Gospel of Judas, in which suddenly it's up for grabs again. Is Jesus really the one who is the expected Messiah of Israel? Or is he really the one who died for our sins? The Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Judas have a very different picture of things. He's not the expected Messiah of Israel. He was probably not even a Jew. He was probably not even a human being. He was someone who sort of appeared on the scene from Harvard, from heaven, but sort of Harvard six feet over the ground was loosely connected or not very loosely connected even to a human body. So not very incarnate. Not incarnate at all. And so obviously a Jesus who's not incarnate cannot die. Jesus who can't die can't die for our sins. And so this Jesus doesn't save us by dying for our sins, but saves us by revealing secret information to us. These are two radically different conceptions of Jesus, the Jesus who's the Messiah who dies for our sins over against the Jesus who is a a discarnate, bodyless figure who simply reveals heavenly truths to us. And these two figures are being confused and merged together in current conceptions of Jesus. Pete, what are you going to say? Simon actually has been doing quite a bit of interesting work on the gospel of Thomas, looking at it and showing. Whereas some people think that they can make an argument for the gospel of Thomas being early and being a sort of primitive version of Christianity without this emphasis on the death of Christ, what Simon has been showing is that the gospel of Thomas is almost certainly dependent on Paul. So Paul comes earlier than Thomas and this is something that despite the fact that there are many of what Simon and I call neo-nostics around, this very popular emphasis on looking at Gospels, there's a vast literature on it. Virtually no one takes any notice on the fact of the fact that this gospel seems to have read or know about Paul's writings. So I think that's been an interesting area. If I can say one more thing that I think is a bit of a trend which of course for a while within New Testament scholarship people have been questioning the authenticity of some of Paul's letters. So people have tended to emphasize Romans, one Corinthians, two Corinthians and Galatians as the main Pauline letters and I think this has very much become the defunct the norm and so people don't want to include Ephesians and Colossians and this let alone the pastoral epistles and this is a great concern or revelation. Thank you Mark. If you want to know about the authorship of those letters just listen to Mark Sermon's on them but what we find is that people have just accepted that as norm. It's interesting within my own discipline which is manuscripts and textual criticism is actually much more normal for people to accept that all of the letters are by Paul. Even the pastoral's. Even yn y postrwyr, mae'r cymryd i'n transmysio. Mae'r cymryd i'n transmysio. o'r ysgol hynny. to say, well, if you don't feel like it's an issue you're facing, whether you will face just kind of, don't worry about it. I would say don't worry about it. I would say don't worry about it, but the thing is, I do think, I mean Justin, that's a good question. My guess is, other kind of guys who listen to these interviews, probably for over half of them, it will be an issue that they should think about, but for a large minority, it won't be. And that's a good question, brother. Thank you. Yeah, they shouldn't, they don't need to go out and get guy-water-spoken read it, you know? Anything else, anything else, before we close this time. If somebody wants to do doctoral research on the imputation of the active right-distance of Christ, where should they do that these days? Well, they should go with Simon, obviously, in Aberdeen, but I'm about to buy this and saying that. Or if they were studying it. Do you, do you, do you work right on that? Not ready. Yeah, I didn't think so. So we're, I mean, who, where, do you do that in an evangelical seminary in America? Like Trinity Souther in Westminster? For example, Brian Vickers has just written a book on this subject, and that was a PhD thesis that came out. The book? I haven't read it yet. I haven't either, I can just read it. It's only just, it's only just just coming out. Okay. He wrote that under the Tom Schreiner at a Southern seminary. Okay. So at least now, playing places in which, in Britain, in which you could study that in an historical perspective, I mean. Yeah. So many Reformation historians would, you know, that's obviously their bread and butter. And if you're looking at, the relative, the relation between Luther's doctrine of imputation and the lengthens doctrine of imputation and whether they're the same or whether they're different than many Reformation historians would, would be interested in teaching that kind of area. Great. Simon Gallaghal, people, thank you very much for being with us for this interview. Thank you. To learn more about Nine Marks, visit our website www.9marks.org. 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