Please note that due to the software used, not everything in this transcript will be accurate

Tough Texts                                                                                        

Media – Alex O’Connor

John Dickson (Studio)

That’s Alex O’Connor, the Millennial champion of open-minded scepticism. He started as an atheist, but considers himself more of an agnostic these days. His criticisms of the Bible, though, and of the book of Genesis in particular, are as scathing as ever. O’Connor represents a lot of people out there who read the Bible and come away annoyed, angry, or at least confused. They have tough questions. And we’re going to look at some of them [seven of them] in this episode. The impressive thing about Alex O’Connor is that, unlike some other doubters, he seems to be seeking answers, not just throwing hand grenades.  Questions like ..

Why is there so much violence in the Bible?
Isn’t the Bible’s view on sex just totally outdated?
Surely there can’t be a literal heaven and hell, can there?  

And a bunch more. 

As I’ve always said, Christianity isn’t (or shouldn’t) be troubled by any of this. At its best, Christianity stands smiling in the ring … of history, science, culture, ethics, and all the rest, and invites anyone to come take a swing. And today we’ve got a guest who is a fantastic, thoughtful, happy ‘punching bag’ for our tough questions about the Bible. I’m John Dickson, and this is Undeceptions.

Undeceptions theme

John Dickson (Studio)

My guest today is Dr Andrew Ollerton. He’s an author and pastor, with degrees in Geography, Theology and History, and a PhD in Historical Theology. He’s a fellow of the Royal Historical Society who specialises in making complex biblical ideas simple and relevant to believers and doubters alike. He recently developed a new edition of The Bible Course with the Bible Society; and he’s worked closely with Bear Grylls to publish a Bible called The New International Version for Young Explorers. His most recent work got my interest, God’s Book: An Honest Look at the Bible’s 7 Toughest Topics.

John Dickson:
Yeah, great. All right, mate. Um, so my summary of your book is, hey, the Bible’s not as dumb and mean as you think, so maybe pick it up and read it. I like that. Good approach. Um, but let’s start at the beginning where lots of people think the Bible is at least dumb, uh, Genesis. And one of the things you say is that, uh, people get confused because both skeptics and some believers think that Genesis 1, uh, was written with a scientific view in mind. Uh, you’re not so sure about that. Talk us through it

Andrew Ollerton:
Yeah, I don’t, I don’t buy the idea that it’s unrelated to the findings of science. You know, ultimately, the Genesis is, is an attempt to describe, to tell the story of the origins of the natural world, and science is an attempt to investigate the workings, the inner workings, if you like, of the natural world. So it’s not that they’re unrelated. I don’t, I don’t buy that. But I do think that the imposition of a scientific worldview onto Genesis is where we get into, into trouble because we effectively try and force it to answer questions it’s not trying to ask, and then we miss it for what it is trying to bring to the table. And I think that’s, you know, without being simplistic, without being over simplistic at least, I make the point as others have, that to some degree, science is asking the how questions. How old are things? How does– how do things reproduce? How do things photosynthesize? Genesis is asking the deeper why questions. You know, why is there something in the first place? Why is there moral order seemingly integrated with the natural universe? Why do mathematics– why does mathematics correspond with the world that we actually externally inhabit? Why does music, um, you know, and mathematics correspond to things you love as well? So I’m not saying they’re unrelated. I’m simply saying they’re trying to answer different questions. And Genesis has been so unfairly treated, I think, because it’s been tried to make it– it’s been tried to force to, uh, answers to questions it’s not trying to answer, and then we’ve not appreciated the beautiful answers it gives to questions like, why is a human being different to an animal? You know? That’s, that’s at the heart of Genesis, I think.

John Dickson:
That’s at the heart of Genesis Yeah. Talk more about, um, the, the, the music of creation because, you know, I got all warm and fuzzy as soon as you mentioned that. Uh, but yeah, like part of the answer that Genesis is giving to the question Genesis is answering is the orderliness and elegance built into the fabric of things.  Can you talk us through that?

Andrew Ollerton:
Yeah, absolutely. I think the, that, that’s a nicely put phrase there, order and elegance. I think when you start Genesis one with the statement that the earth was formless and empty, tohu wa-bohu, the idea of conjuring up words that spoke to chaos rather than order. Um, when you start by framing the material universe in those words, you, you immediately say two things. Number one, what you’re about to hear is not primarily about where raw matter came from, but how it came to have such elegance and beauty and purpose and meaning and morality. And the second thing you’re saying is we’re gonna see now how tohu and bohu or, you know, formless and empty in their structural sense, how they are overturned. So the first three days of the created, um, description seem to particularly address the issue of the earth was formless. You know, so God is separating out things that otherwise when they’re merged, if you merge horizons, people feel like it’s confusing. But if you separate out horizons, you know, sky and sea, land and, and ocean, when you separate out horizons, you create form, and it’s form that ultimately gives shape and elegance to the world. When you then fill the emptiness with birds and animals and plants and humans, you’re then putting beautiful things into the elegant shape that’s been formed. And I, I say in the book, I just think that’s a very compelling way of describing not the exact timeframes, time codes and details of how God made… This is not a DIY, if you wanna make your own universe, this is how to do it. This is a sense of where did all of the underlying beauty and order come from in our world? Why does the universe seem to make music? Um, and I think Genesis is answering that, as I say, not, not as a scientific answer, but as a deeper, um, deeper answer. I mean, behind you right now, for viewers who can’t see, you’ve got an impressionist painting, haven’t you? And it’s like, I make the point in my book that, you know, take, um, either The Starry Night by, uh, as, as a painting or take a, a, an image from the, uh, Hubble Telescope, um, or the James Webb Telescope. You know, whichever, take these two things, they both are true. It’s just that Van Gogh’s approach to truth is impressionist, atmospheric, moody, elegant, and the tub– the Hubble Telescope or the James Webb Telescope is a photo approach to truth. And I think I’m saying, I think Genesis gives us the impressionistic beautiful answer to truth.

John Dickson (Studio)

There’s no doubt that what the Bible says (and doesn’t say) about slavery is troubling for many. The idea that the Bible defends and even justifies slavery is an argument that is consistently made by atheists as a reason to dump Christianity. We’ve got a full episode on slavery coming up at the end of this season, so my discussion with Andrew about the Bible and slavery in this episode is going to be just for PLUS people. If you’re not a PLUS subscriber, don’t worry – you’ll get the full slavery episode in a few weeks time. But if you want to hear what Andrew has to say about the topic now, you can head to undeceptions.com/plus to become a PLUS subscriber and get the longer version of this episode. For PLUS people, here’s that section now. For the rest of us, we’re moving on to VIOLENCE.

Reading

On the seventh day, [the priests and the armed guard] got up at daybreak and marched around the city seven times in the same manner, except that on that day they circled the city seven times. The seventh time around, when the priests sounded the trumpet blast, Joshua commanded the army, “Shout! For the Lord has given you the city! The city and all that is in it are to be devoted to the Lord. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall be spared, because she hid the spies we sent … When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city. They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it – men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.
Joshua, Chapter 6

John Dickson:
But then you, you keep turning over the pages and you get to the Book of Joshua, and uh, I, I remember when I was reading the Bible to my, uh, to my little boy when he was a little boy, uh, and getting to some bits of Joshua and quickly  turning the page and saying, “Oh, Josh, look at that.” His name was Josh, too.  “Look at that,” and then I’d quickly turn over the terrible passages. Uh, but, you know, someone’s not gonna do that. Someone’s gonna read through Joshua and think, “Oh yeah, all that stuff about the Bible endorsing genocide.” Uh, like there’s some good material here to work with for that criticism. But you say not so fast

Andrew Ollerton:
Well, I’ve… First up, I say there is a problem here. I don’t wanna pretend that these parts of the Bible don’t trouble me and shouldn’t trouble anyone who reads them. This is probably the hardest, I think, of all of the things we bump into in the Bible,

John Dickson:
Oh no, I’ve got another one toward the end, mate. Don’t, don’t

Andrew Ollerton:
Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, you’re probably right there actually. We’ll come to that. I think I know what you’ve got in mind. But anyway, we’ll leave the, the suspense. I think it’s at least right up there with the hardest because, um, the whole narrative of the Bible that is clearly depicted in Jesus, who is the center of the Bible and the fullest revelation of the God of the Bible, who, if you like, the Old Testament is us hearing about God, in the New Testament we get to meet Him in person. That’s the big idea of the Bible, isn’t it? You may have had this, uh, when you go to speak at places, John. I often get people say to me when I speak at places, “Oh, it’s… I’ve heard so much about you. It’s great to finally meet you.” And I often think that’s a lovely statement to sum up the Bible really. In the Old Testament, we hear so much about God, it’s great to finally meet Him in the person of Jesus. But the troubling thing then about the Old Testament is when we read it back, we think, “Is this the God that we meet in Jesus? Is, is this the same God?” You know, I, I think there’s a few places in the Old Testament where people feel like there’s a disconnect with Jesus saying, “Love your enemies,” and then Joshua being commanded to wipe out their enemies. Now, I think, again, there’s several things to say. I don’t believe there’s a one bu- you know, one silver bullet on this. And I say in the book, I actually… In the book, I have this section where I loop around. I imagine it’s walking around the city of Jericho seven times like the an- ancient Israelites did and saying there are seven different perspectives you need on this, not one. But I think that’s the key. Again, it’s the perspective of a storied context. The ancient Israelites, remember at this time, were not a lean, mean fighting machine. They were not modern-day Israel armed, you know, with powerful weapons. The context here, again in the story, is that they had been… that their forefather, Abraham, had lived in this land of Canaan. They had been taken down to Egypt where they’d been held as slaves, um, oppressed by the Pharaohs for hundreds of years. Now, having escaped through the story known as the Exodus, they come back to the brink of the land that God had promised to their forefather, Abraham, and to the… and his descendants. So there’s a storied context here, which is firstly, they’ve got some history with this land. Secondly, they are an asylum-seeking nation. They have, they have no home. They’ve been wandering in the wilderness. And if this people who, according to the Bible story, carry the hope of the whole earth, the whole world’s hopes are pinned on this people and the offspring that will come through the ancient Israelites. If they are to bring hope to the world, they need a homeland to settle in. And, you know, you might say, “Well, why can’t God just click His fingers and sort out a land for them?” But I say in the book, you know, th- this is ultimately the Bible, not Disney. And in the… The Bible actually is more gritty and more embedded in cultures and empires And nations than we realize. And, you know, the way of the world at the time was that tribal warfare decided land rights, and God gave the Israelites unique permission to drive out the Canaanites to s- to end their practices, which included some quite immoral things like child sacrifice. So on the one hand, he’s bringing an act of judgment, and on the other hand, he’s setting up his people to bring hope to the, the world. That’s their calling. So I’m not saying it doesn’t still leave us with some questions, but in the light of who Jesus is, the full revelation of God, and in the storied context of a, a nation who have just been slaves, only just liberated, needing a homeland through which to bring the promises to bear, that at least reframes it. Now, there’s other things we should say. I say in the book when we… I think it’s… One of the points I make in, uh, Professor John Walton, who you’ll be familiar with, has this lovely little saying, “Though the Bible was written for us, it wasn’t written to us.” And what he’s saying is, we need to be cautious about assuming that when I say the Israelites destroyed the city of Jericho, we need to be cautious about assuming, well, I know what a city is. It’s where millions of, um, civilians live because that’s what we think a city is. The city of Jericho, archeologists differ on this. It’s contested, but it may have been as small as two hundred inhabitants, and it was probably much more like a castle or a, a citadel or a fortification where soldiers lived than a modern-day city with an urban population of civilians. So we need to reframe these stories in the light of their ancient context, not our modern context. And the final thing I’d say just quickly is you used the word genocide. Um, I’d like to hear your view on this. I, I mean, I, I don’t know that’s… I don’t think that’s the right word to use. I know why you used it. It’s, it’s often the word skeptics use. But when you think that Rahab, one of the Canaanite women who worked as a prostitute in the city of Jericho, when you think that her entire household are saved from the destruction and incorporated into the Israelites, you realize whatever this God is doing, it cannot be genocide. That, that is not… I don’t think that’s a fair description, um, of what’s happening.

John Dickson:
Yes, and the fact that that is the first story in the Book of Joshua, like that is what happens in the first battle. Uh, I’ve often wondered whether the author is telling us, “You’ve got to read this whole narrative with this paradigm.” Uh, not that I’m gonna tell you every time there was a battle s- people were saved. Uh, but th- paradigmatically in the first battle, this whole family of pagans was saved. Uh, that’s how you’re meant to think about the rest of the, rest of the story.

Andrew Ollerton:
I had not thought of that before, but I think that’s fair, and I think it, it is paradigmatic, isn’t it? It is, uh, paradigmatic on so many fronts. One is y- the Israelites are not a lean, mean fighting machine, as I said. They, they win the battle by blowing trumpets and looping around a city. And again, the fact that the whole nation could walk around a city seven times in a day shows this really was more of a castle, um, in our modern parlance than a city. But I agree with you. I think the story of Rahab, the embedding of her family in the Messiah’s family, the fact that King David, I noticed this, is descendant from Ruth and, um, Boaz, and the fact that Rahab was Boaz’s mother, i-i-it’s, it’s all these details that we find in the biblical narrative to say, actually, the story of Israel is a story that deliberately integrates the other nations. Even whilst bringing judgment on them, there’s an integrating, a desire that peace and salvation should come to the whole earth.

John Dickson (Studio)

Biblical Creation, slavery, warfare, and violence – these are all good questions. But there’s another question that eclipses even these. Stay with us.

Break

Media – news reports of the Venezuealan earthquake

John Dickson (Studio)

Lord, have mercy. Reports like these from Fox News or NBC shocked the world in June this year—Buff and I were sitting on our couch watching it unfold on the screen, with jaws dropped, and nothing really to say to each other! What on earth can be said! 

John Dickson:
What part of the Bible do you go to, uh, for people who aren’t really asking does God exist in the universe, but more where is your God in all this mess?

Andrew Ollerton:
Well, the, the truth is there’s actually several answers to your question, which in itself is revealing. The Bible does not hide from the n- the messy, painful, troubling times of life, suffering and the problem of evil. It never seems to address it in a purely philosophical way. Even the closest example of that, I think, would be the story of Job. But even then, as I indicate, it’s a biography, it’s a story. Whether you think he actually existed or not is beside the point. It is a storied way of saying, “These are real people that we’re talking about when we wrestle with the problem of evil and suffering.” Um, so the Bible is simultaneously deeply personal about the problem of suffering and pain, deeply personal, but ve- deeply honest as well. There’s no sense in which those difficult things have been airbrushed out. The Psalms you could go to, the laments. In the book, what I go to is the story of Israel and I s- I notice the ironic symmetry between or parallel between they conquer the land by force, that’s the s- that’s the issue of conquest and violence, but then they’re thrown out of the land by force when the Babylonians invade and destroy Jerusalem, burn down the city and take the inhabitants who are fit and healthy hundreds of miles away from their homeland to live as captives in Babylon in what’s known as the exile. So the exile is, I think, the moment in the story of the Bible more than any other where you come head-to-head with, uh, the issue of suffering and pain and where is God when it hurts? And of all the things that I say there, I think probably the, the most important is that the stories are designed to say, firstly, that this is the, uh, this is an unusual telling of history where the defeats of this people will be showcased. So often, you know, r- as you know, writing histories in the ancient world was in- expensive. It was nearly always commissioned by rulers who were wanting to use it as propaganda for their victories. It’s almost unparalleled, as far as I’m aware, to have a showcasing of defeat. But the Bible gives this. It’s the story from below. It’s the story of pain, um, etched in real biography. So there’s, the first thing that’s striking to me is the God of the Bible is clearly not embarrassed by our tears, our hurts, our questions. Uh, he includes them, um, in the scriptures. And the second thing is the God of the Bible as, as portrayed in the Bible, God is not distant from the suffering  person. There’s a really moving scene in the story of Ezekiel that I highlight where having seen the Jerusalem temple destroyed and being relocated to, um, Babylon There’s a vision that Ezekiel has of God’s throne leaving the temple in Jerusalem and moving east, which is the direction of travel for the exiles, as if to say, in some mysterious way, a vision to say, “I’m coming to sit in the pain with you. I’m not a God who stays on my throne in heaven. I’m a God who comes down into the pain on earth.” And that exile glimpse is fulfilled ultimately in Jesus, obviously, who is, we believe as Christians, is the, the Son of God, the God of heaven, who came into our pain, um, and, uh, entered our suffering.

Reading

“Yet, why so many words, when I can say it all in a single sentence, and indeed in a sentence that is most apt for me as a Jew …”

John Dickson (Studio)

The concluding words of Albert Einstein in 1915 when asked for his opinion of the ugly Christian nationalism developing in his native Germany …

Reading

“Honour your master, Jesus Christ, not only with words and songs but, rather, foremost through your deeds.”  

John Dickson (Studio)

The antidote to hateful, prideful Christianity, Einstein says, is not less Christianity, but a Christianity with more Jesus. Many agnostics like Einstein have loved “the luminous figure of the Nazarene,” as he put it. But sometimes Jesus’ followers are a turn-off. In 2022 the Barna Group surveyed people born between 1981 and 1996 and found that 71% of American teens and adults have a positive opinion of Jesus, but only 36% of those who aren’t Christians have a positive opinion of Christianity. It seems that Christianity stands or falls on the person of Jesus. Fair enough. But people have thoughtful questions and complaints even about all the Jesus stuff. 

John Dickson:
Okay, so you’ve brought us to Jesus just there. Um, in some ways Jesus is the best thing Christianity has going for it, and some would say the only good thing Christianity has going for it. But at the same time, the most problematic, uh, in the sense that while most people agree he existed, um, there are some, you know, onliners who, who say otherwise, but m- most people say he existed. But all those miracles, you know, like starting with the virgin birth and then all the crazy healings and the nature miracles and then of course the, the resurrection. Uh, I think thoughtful people fear that those gospels, that life of Jesus, is fantastically embellished. That really the original Jesus must have been just a beautiful teacher who said those lovely things. You know, I’m, I’m wearing the T-shirt today, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” et cetera. Um, that I can handle, that I like, but, but the miraculous undermines the whole show

Andrew Ollerton:
Yeah, I mean, I think that selective reading of we like the Jesus who says beautiful things and tells beautiful stories, but we just don’t believe in the miraculous. I mean, that’s been tried and tested. Even the Jefferson Bible had an attempt at sort of cutting out with, I think, with a razor blade all of the miraculous stories in the Gospels…

John Dickson (Studio)

The Jefferson Bible was an attempt by Thomas Jefferson, American founding father and the third president of the United States, to make a Bible that made sense to him. Basically, he kept all the ethical teaching stuff, and cut out all the pages with miracles and resurrection and the like. He literally crafted a version of the New Testament using scissors!! 

Andrew Ollerton:
But, but the thing that, um, couple of things. M-my good friend, and y-you’ll be friends with Peter Williams from Tyndale House in Cambridge. He’s written a book on the genius of Jesus, where he makes the point that even if you don’t address the miracles of Jesus, even his teachings are, in a sense, miraculous.Th-there’s a sense in which, well, maybe miraculous isn’t the word. There’s a genius there somewhere, and the point he’s making is you have to find some explanation for how the teachings of Jesus and the stories he told have such extraordinary power on our world. They’re still with us today. So, you know, the, the, the idea that this carpenter or this builder gets crucified by the Romans at a young age should be the end of the story. If there’s nothing more powerful about it, you wouldn’t expect that we were still talking about it. So there’s, there’s something about almost like the, the elephant in the room is the miracle of Jesus of Nazareth still being on the table at all. Now, that makes me say, well, I’m more open then to the fact that he may have performed miracles because if his teachings have a genius about them, and if the fact that he’s endured through the centuries of history is very surprising. There’s something about all this. I remember saying– I remember my t- my, um, going all the way back to my theology degree. I remember the, the lecturer for, uh, New Testament studies, and the Gospel specifically was a skeptic, actually. But I remember him saying, uh, of– He, he made the point that having four Gospels written about a builder from Nazareth, you know, books at the time were expensive. Even the Caesars wouldn’t expect to have so much attention. And he, he just– I remember this phrase he said. He said, despite being a skeptic, he said, “Something nuclear must have happened.” And I, I’ve always liked that phrase. You know, so something nuclear. There, there’s something about Jesus that even the strongest skeptic cannot just dismiss because something nuclear must have happened. Now, when you then get into the details of the miracles, and I look in the book not just at the miracles, but the exorcisms of Jesus as well, because I feel like actually the cultural moment we inhabit is more open to the supernatural. We’re not actually– Most skeptics today, um, as I’ve encountered them, are not David Hume, um, denying the possibility of the miraculous…

John Dickson (Studio)

 David Hume was the 18th-c Scottish philosopher who famously argued: “no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish.” In other words, a miracle can only be established by testimony that is practically impossible to disbelieve testimony which is so irrefutable that it would be a ‘miracle’ if it turned out to be false. The philosophical literature since Hume has pointed out pretty consistently that his fun dictum was designed to rule out reports of miracles not to probe whether they could have merit.  Friend of the pod, Dr Max Baker-Hytch of the Philosophy Department at Oxford has a wonderful short video on this. We’ll link to it in the show notes. Interestingly, Andrew reckons that increasingly people today are moving away from this sort of scepticism.

Andrew Ollerton:
It, it seems like we’re living in a moment where people are more open to the weird, um, and the strange, and most people have experienced something that doesn’t easily make sense in a materialistic explanation. But that may be a dark thing, not just a light thing It may be that they’ve experienced some kind of presence that they can’t explain or some kind of interference that they can’t explain. So I try and look in the book, not just at the positives, the miracles, but also the exorcisms of Jesus, the evil spirit language, and so forth. And one of the things I highlight for both the exorcisms and the miracles, I highlight what I believe to be the authentic reactions of the bystanders, and I think this just lends a bit of credibility. Let me just give one example. When Jesus calms a storm on the lake, now that sounds fantastical. I understand that. The idea that someone could stand up having just had a nap and just speak to the wind and the waves as if they’re his pets, and they come to heel and obey. I know it sounds fantastical, but what’s interesting is that when the storm dies down, we’re told that the disciples who were in the boat with Jesus were even more afraid. The language of fear goes up a level, and I don’t know, I just think that feels authentic to me. If I, if I, if there was someone in my boat who just spoke to nature, I wouldn’t just say, “Oh, well, that’s fantastic. The storm’s gone.” I would be even more afraid at the thought of who this person is, and that, that seems like an authentic reaction. And we have to remember that the people… I always say this, you know, the people in the Bible didn’t realize they were in the Bible. I, I think so often we imagine that they were sort of, you know, the disciples were thinking, “Well, this is strange, but I suppose we are in the Gospel of Mark, so anything’s possible,” you know? And it’s like, no, no, they didn’t know they were in the Gospels. They just thought they were in the mother of all storms, and they were about to die. Now, if you put yourself in their shoes, I think their reaction in the Gospels is exactly what you would expect. So my point is that the miracles of the Gospels, in the Gospels are not written up as fantastical, mythological events. They’re written as if real hardened skeptical fishermen actually experienced them, and their reactions, I think, lend credibility to the accounts.

John Dickson:
The other lovely example is after the so-called transfiguration when, when Jesus is apparently miraculously very shiny and glorious and, uh, you know, ancient Old Testament figures appear with them. And the disciples say, uh, “Should we build some tents?” And, and, and the narrator says they didn’t really know what they were saying. I, I find that remarkable, as a comment on the, the sort of natural reactions of those around him

Andrew Ollerton:
Yeah, exactly. It’s, and it’s always Peter, isn’t it? It seems to be always Peter. I love the fact that Mark says, doesn’t he, I think it’s Mark who says that he didn’t know what to say. And I remember a commentator just saying it would never have occurred to someone like Peter just to say nothing, you know?

John Dickson:
I, I love that, that the personality of Peter, this is just by the by, is the same across all four Gospels. Um, uh, n- not simply because of the repetition of stor- the same story, but it’s the same figure, the foot-in-mouth figure that you get across four Gospels. I think that would almost be impossible to orchestrate

Andrew Ollerton:
Yeah, that’s a good point. Again, I’ve not thought about that, but I take your word for that. I think consistency of personality and reaction is hard to fabricate, isn’t and, and I think, you know, y- this is your area of expertise more than mine, John, and I, and I appreciated your work as I researched for this section of my book. But I just got back actually from being in Dublin in Ireland last week, where I visited the Chester Beatty Library, which hosts the most extraordinary, I’m sure you’ve been there, most extraordinary collection of biblical manuscripts. And what I noticed was that f- you know, I didn’t, I hadn’t noticed this before. I’ve visited but never seen this, that there was one collection dated back to the second century, where the early Christians had actually stitched together the four Gospels and the Book of Acts as a compiled collection of writings. So it just reminds us, doesn’t it, that very, very early on, these four accounts, and in this case, the Book of Acts, were being recognized as having historical credibility such that they were being stitched together in the early codex invention of, of the book. They’re being stitched together and passed around. And so to get to that, you know, the, I think so often people who are skeptical assume the Gospels must have been made up centuries later. No, no. With, by the second century, the four Gospels are being stitched together as if to say these are the authoritative texts that need to be read and passed around. And I, I was reminded again, even in seeing that, that we have very physical, tangible evidence for this reliability.

John Dickson (Studio)

Up next … a question many regard as more damning of the Bible than any of those mentioned so far. I know that sounds clickbaity … but … well … yeah … stay with us. 

Break 2

Media – ‘Messed Up Bible Stories’

John Dickson (Studio)

God reflecting on the fate of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, courtesy of the YouTube channel Messed Up Bible Stories. The title gives it away – it’s more mockery than thinking. But there are sincere, humble questions people ask about the Bible and LGBT people.

Reading

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. Romans, Chapter 1

John Dickson
That does bring me, Andrew, to the letters. Um, and you, you treat these letters, and I, I think you treat them really well because you, you, you’re sensitive to the, the questions of, of a doubter who might find lots of lovely stuff in the letters, also some weird stuff, but they will come across Paul, um, saying mean things about, uh, people, sexual minorities. Um, very strong things like in Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6. So you hardly have to get into the, the letter section of the New Testament before it just sounds like Christianity is dumb and meaning– dumb and mean after all.

Andrew Ollerton:
Yeah, they’re challenging letters to read in our modern context especially. I think I make a couple of observations here. One is back to the story point. The Apostle Paul was a Jewish, um, a Jewish teacher who became a follower of Jesus, and therefore, he’s inhabiting the Jewish story, the Judeo-Christian story, which is that from the very beginning, God created, um, male and female in His image and likeness. So he has a foundational belief in creation that the world is not, um, a, a result of random accidental evolution, but through a guided process, at least let’s say that, a, a creative process. Now, that means that fundamentally in Paul’s mind, there is a pattern. There is something established. I use the analogy that if a carpenter is faced with working with a piece of wood, they know that there is grain running through the entire wood, so they have to work with the grain. They have to work out what’s the given pattern here, and then our result will be much better if we go with the grain. In the same way, the Apostle Paul believes that there is a grain, a pattern to humanity, that we’re not accidental, and that pattern is male and female. Uh, and that pattern is that sexual union consummates a covenant relationship where right back in Genesis it says that the two, uh, man and woman, shall become one flesh. So there’s something consummated of a union that is a covenant-making act. It’s not just a sexual act. It’s a covenant-making act. Now, my point is, if you don’t believe that story, of course you’ll reach different conclusions about what’s the kind of appropriate behavior. But effectively, Paul is inhabiting that story. He believes that sex is between a man and a woman within the covenant context of marriage, and therefore, the only, um, the only alternative that he sees to, uh, singleness is that marriage union. You know, that’s, that’s Paul’s vision. But the other thing I point out… So that’s the kind of pattern story point. But the other thing I point out is that there is a cultural context here as well, which is in the ancient context of the Roman Empire, first century AD, sexual, um, sexual norms were very different to ours. Again, back to the point the Bible was written for us. It wasn’t written to us. It wasn’t written yesterday by someone inhabiting one of our cities. It was written by someone inhabiting a cit-city like Corinth or Rome. And in those contexts, free Roman men were top of the hierarchy. Um, they were the high status individuals who often, n-in fact, normally would own slaves and possibly concubines and sleep with prostitutes as well. And so it was very, um, disgraceful for a Roman free man to sleep with another man’s wife Because that was a, a breach of status. Um, but it was not at all disgraceful for a Roman free man to sleep with his slave or do whatever he wanted with his slave. That was his property. So the whole world worked on a hierarchy, and one of the books that very much influenced my research for this is by, uh, Kyle Harper, “From Shame to Sin,” which is a brilliant, um, historians of- as a historian of antiquity, without any agenda. He’s not trying to write from a Christian perspective. He simply teases out how the Christian revolution, sexual revolution of the first century onwards really shifted the idea that really sex should be thought of as an act of status as opposed to an act of holiness or morality, meaning it’s the teachings of the Apostle Paul that first introduced this idea that, no, a man must be caring towards the vulnerable within his care, not using them for his own personal use, drawing on the example of Jesus himself, who, as the most powerful being, the Son of God, did not come to exert his power in exploitation, but to save the vulnerable, um, and to bring his…use his power to bring redemption, salvation to others. Now, the British historian Tom Holland is the, is the person who’s most teased out how this, this, to us, very obvious concept was in the Roman world an incendiary teaching. It, it had… It pulled the rug from under the feet of Roman men especially and told them a very different story. You’re part of a very different story, which is not a story where you can use your power for it to exploit and to use. It is a story where your power is to be used, your status is to be used in the protection of and the service of others. As Christ gave himself as a sacrifice, so other, so we should do likewise. And I think all that to say, you know, putting it very bluntly, I think Tom Holland’s point, I’m not wanting to put words in his mouth. Tom’s a, a brilliant thinker in his own right, obviously. But I think his point is roughly something like this. The, the likes of Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein would have fitted in perfectly well in ancient Rome. The reason that we are appalled by what they’ve done is precisely because the Apostle Paul wrote the kind of letters he wrote that brought a sexual revolution over time to the values of ancient Rome that mean we’re living in a Christianized world. We’re living in a world where the value of consent seems obvious to us. There was no such thing as consent in the Roman world. It was simply about status, and I think we have to recognize then before people s- dismiss Christianity as being, its teaching on sex as being outdated or, uh, bigoted, we should at least appreciate the context in which it was given.

Media – TikTok of Angel in heaven

John Dickson (Studio)

I’m no big fan of TikTok – even if Director Mark’s on it all day long. There’s a reason Undeceptions hasn’t had a TikTok account … Although …  Anyway, Director Mark tells me that the Heavenly Receptionist series created by Taren Delanie Smith is an easy way to lose a few hours of your life. Mark calls it research! In the show, angelic receptionist Denise deals with all sorts of inquiries into who gets into heaven, who doesn’t, and who qualifies for Angel Premium Plus – and apparently your social media feeds are of particular interest to the people upstairs. This might sound dumb. But plenty of people think the biblical version of the afterlife is just as dumb, and far less entertaining! 

John Dickson:
Okay. Let’s, um, sort of come toward the e-end, uh, which, you know, your book sort of, uh, lands on the Book of Revelation and all that crazy. Uh, but, um, heaven and hell, okay? Uh, just that light topic. Um, to many people, uh, that could seem like carrot and stick, that the Bible ends with this great big, you know, bribe to have eternal life and this great big threat. You know, if you don’t believe all these things, you’re gonna go to hell, and it seems like hell’s pretty bad, and God tortures people eternally. Talk us through that. Bring some clarity for those who worry about that carrot and stick ending to the Bible

Andrew Ollerton:
Thanks, John. Yeah, well, my book is definitely Genesis to Revelation, and you’re right, this is where I land ’cause this is where the Bible lands. There is a vision in the Bible of a day of judgment, a throne of judgment actually. Um, I think what I would say is that act of judgment at the end of time, it’s worth noting, is met with celebrations, with hallelujahs actually. The Hallelujah Chorus, which Handel’s Messiah makes so famous, the Hallelujah Chorus originates in the act… in the context of judgment. And it just is a little clue that maybe there’s something here that we actually need for our world as opposed to something contrived or forced against our wishes ’cause the, the stick and carrot approach is, is almost suggesting that we don’t really need this or want this. It’s just a device being used to control. But what if it’s actually something that deep down we really want? And, and I would say that probably the most difficult thing I’ve seen with some of the fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein files being released is seeing some of the victims describing how they felt when they realized, when they heard that Jeffrey Epstein had died, um, in prison. And one of them in spec- specifically said they were so devastated because he will never be brought to justice. And I suppose what I’m trying to say in that final part of the book is according to the story of the Bible, he will be. No one in the end… The, the whole vision i-i-it uses various symbolism, which Revelation does, to capture the fundamental idea that no one will escape from the absolute white… Uh, the, the throne of God is depicted as white. You know, colors in Revelation are symbolic, aren’t they? So, uh, you know, purple is, is royal, and pale is sickness and death, and white is about justice ultimately, purity. The, the throne of God is going to be this absolute justice, this absolute purity that will put… In other words, things that are wrong will be put right. Now, deep down, I think actually that isn’t a stick or a carrot, some device against our wishes. That is what we want. We want that for the world. When we see victims outside a courtroom finally saying, “Finally today justice has been served,” or feeling that justice hasn’t been served, whichever way the, the verdict has gone, uh, there’s something deep in us that says our world needs justice. Now, the problem we have with it, I believe then, is not ultimately a moral problem, uh, that in some way God’s going to do something unethical at the end. The Hallelujah Chorus says that it’s going to be the most ethical moment our world has ever experienced when the rights will be… uh, when, when wrongs will be put right. I think the, I think honestly the problem that we have with it is that it has to… according to the vision of the Bible, what God is trying to do is not just randomly wake up on a bad day and judge the world ’cause he’s just moody. No, no, no. God is trying to do through judgment is erase from the world everything that destroys and, and defiles it and, and causes it to be broken so that he can reconstruct a world in which everything is right again. It’s, it’s actually… Judgment is the means to an end. It’s not the end. The end is the new heavens and the new earth. But here’s the thing, and I make this point in my book. If God is… Think about it then. God needs to be ruthless. He has to get rid of all that is wrong with our world because if, if ju-just a small crack in the windscreen will spread through the whole thing, just a few cancerous cells will begin to take over again. He has to root out all evil. Now, that means he can’t just get rid of, you know, sex traffickers. Lust must go He can’t just get rid of criminal gangs. Greed must go. He, he can’t just get rid of some immoral, uh, some, some, uh, lying politicians. Dishonesty must go in all forms. And I think that’s, that’s why the day of judgment is necessary. It’s a vision for a world put right ultimately. But that’s why it’s also disturbing. And I, no, I don’t apologize for that. I actually just think judgment in the Bible is just the Bible being honest. If there’s a God who actually cares and will not turn a blind eye to evil, then if you have lust or greed or dishonesty in your heart, you’re on the wrong side of that God by nature. But the intervention of Jesus Christ is that you might be put on the right side of that God by grace. I’ll just say that again. I think that’s a summary of the story, that you c- you are on the wrong side of this God by nature, but you can be put on the right side of this God by grace, by a gift, um, of something you have not deserved or earned. And in that, I put my trust because I have to say I believe one day I will face a reckoning, but I also believe that on that day, the judge who I will face will be none other than Jesus himself, who died for the things I’ve got wrong, and that’s my hope. Um, and I believe that’s why the message of Christianity matters because it’s about the world being put right, not just a small religious minority wanting to be right. It’s not about us being right. It’s about the world being put right, and that’s why judgment ultimately is a good thing.

Reading

My point is that people didn’t get tired of the church’s ideals, but of how they were actually practiced. Monasteries were criticized not because monks were chaste, but because they weren’t. Christianity became unpopular not because Christians were humble, but because they were arrogant. If the church failed, it was mostly because of the church leaders…

But this is just one clear example of a bigger truth: the great ideals of the past didn’t fail because they were outgrown, but because they weren’t fully lived. Humanity hasn’t moved beyond the Middle Ages. Instead, it has backed away from them in retreat. The Christian ideal hasn’t been tried and found lacking. It has been found difficult and left untried. – GK Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World

John Dickson:
When I was, uh, doing English classes in my high school as a 15-year-old, I, I was the classic kid who put up his hand and said to the teacher, “Miss, Shakespeare’s stupid.” Right? And I, I remember the, the teacher having a, you know, wry little smile, you know. And now I look back at it and I’m thinking there was only one stupid in the room. And I think what your book does, um, from its opening chapters is tell you why you can’t really say, “Miss, the Bible’s stupid,” uh, because there’s more sophistication, uh, artistry in this text,

Andrew Ollerton:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I rememb- I remember something not dissimilar in a music lesson actually, and I was never strong at music, and I never… Frankly, I never had a, an appreciation for it. I look back and realize I was a little bit of a Philistine, to use a biblical, uh, analogy. Uh, and, um, I remember one time the, the music teacher said, “We’re gonna listen to a piece of music.”  I think it was from Handel’s Messiah, but I’m not sure. And the, and they said, “I want, I want to see what you, what you make of it, um, whether you think it’s good or not.” And, um, and then just before they played it, the teacher just said, “And by the way, it’s not the piece of music that’s being assessed.” And the point they were making was, you know, we know this is brilliant, so really it’s [00:07:30] whether you think it’s brilliant or not that’s being assessed. And I think there’s something about that with the Bible. You know, it is brilliant. Time has told that loud and clear. It’s still the world’s best seller. If you don’t think it’s brilliant, you’re probably missing something.

Media – Handel’s ‘Messiah’

John Dickson:
Finally, Andrew, um, do you ever get exhausted by the myriad questions and complaints thrown at the Bible? Uh, or maybe I should ask it the other way around. Why do you seem so chipper about all of this?

Andrew Ollerton:
I’m glad that I still do. Um, you know, I think what I’d say is two things. Number one, the Bible I think has been generally assessed by a criteria that almost nothing else is assessed by. I think it’s, it’s treated with a heightened level of suspicion. Almost no other sacred text or historical text goes through the mill like the Bible does. And I think actually for all the reasons that might frustrate us about that, I actually think that’s just a, a little sign that it matters and that people realize this is much harder to be… There’s no easy defeaters with the Bible. Um, so on the one hand, I’m encouraged by the hard press that it gets, and then secondly, I’d say this. In our Western moment, in our Western world right now, I’ll speak for the West and the UK in particular, I, one of the things I say to people is, “You know, you can, you can disagree with the Bible, and it’s perfectly within your rights to do that.” Part of the biblical vision is that you should have the right to disagree with the Bible. But I’d also just ask, well, what have you got as an alternative? You know, w-what have you… You know, the Bible will bring comfort to millions of people in this moment. Psalm 23 alone, just one poem in the Bible, will be read at bedsides and gravesides, and it will speak hope and meaning and purpose. So if you’re gonna ditch it, you, you better have something else to put in its place, and I don’t know that there is anything that performs quite like the Bible performs, to use that language. In fact, coming back to the sexuality point, one of the things I most often say is, you know, obviously culture has largely, since the sexual revolution of the ’60s, has largely gone for a different narrative about sex. It doesn’t need to be con-contained within the marriage, uh, union of a man and woman. Absolutely fine. You know, we’re free to try and experiment, but, uh, one of the questions I often ask is just, well, how’s that working out for everyone? You know, how’s it, how’s it going? Is everyone doing really well, or are we struggling? And I would say in this particular cultural moment we’re in, a lot of people are struggling, and I think that’s why Bible sales are rising, searches on Google about the Bible are rising, and I’m meeting more and more people who are just saying, “I’m open, and I’m curious, and I wanna know what the Bible has to offer.” And if that’s where some of our listeners are at, I would just say give it a try. What have you got to lose? You’ll have read the world’s best-selling book of all time. That’s a good thing, and you may find more than you bargained for.

John Dickson:
Andrew Ollerton, thank you so much for your time, mate

Andrew Ollerton:
Thanks, John

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