NT Wright: Who is the God of the Bible?

you do realize that's the heading for a

four-volume work of systematic theology, but let me try and boil it down.

I think so much popular culture on both sides of the Atlantic, actually.

I mean, Britain and America are quite different in some respects, but so much pop culture still goes back to 18th century deism, which is to say that there probably is a God who's a long way away, doesn't bother too much about us.

He may well have made the world in the first place And there is a rumor that he might actually come and sort it out sometime, and we're a bit worried about that.

But one thing is clear, he doesn't normally intervene in the world.

He normally leaves it up to us.

And so though he may enjoy it if we're doing good things and be a bit worried if we don't, he's not really getting involved that much.

And I think that rather vague thing is when people say they believe in God or they don't believe in God, that's more or less the God they do or don't believe in.

When I was a student pastor, I would have students who'd come and say, I won't be coming to your service because I don't believe in God.

And I would say, which God is it you don't believe in? Which was, you know, you mean the word God is not univocal? No, there are different meanings.

And then they would describe this distant being looking down on us from a great height and maybe being crossed.

Well, the good news, I don't believe in that God either.

I believe in the God you see revealed in Jesus of Nazareth and at work in the Holy Spirit, even though that's often mysterious.

And I say, if you want to know more about that God, maybe I'll see you on Sunday.

which sometimes worked, usually didn't.

You never know with kids.

No, quite.

With Christians, then, who do believe that God came down, but they can kind of live in that deism, what do you say to them?

Well, I think part of the problem there is that they often, and I see this in debates about science and faith and that sort of thing, they often start off with, believing in a being that they call God, who is, as I say, often the deist God.

And then many Christians will then have Jesus as an add-on to that.

Yes, God is like we just described, but then at a certain extraordinary miraculous point, wow, he came down and became human.

And then often then they think, they may not say, but they think, and then he went back to being God again, which of course is not what incarnational theology is about at all.

And so much classic theology, and here I'm on all fours with, say, Karl Barth, not that I agree with him about everything by any means, but Barth would say, sorry, you've got to start with Jesus.

And the reason he says that is that the New Testament says that.