On the United Methodist Church’s Decision

Noah’s flood might have required 40 days to drown the world, but the Methodist General Conference of 1844 nearly matched it, with the tide of slavery washing over the denomination and leaving it shattered after 41 days of acrimonious debate.

For decades, the question of slavery festered within the body of the nation’s largest denomination; by 1844, only one American organization was larger than the Methodist Episcopal Church: the federal government itself.

And like the government, Methodists were paralyzed by their divisions over the ownership of human beings. Initially one of the strongest anti-slavery voices in American Christianity – inheriting the convictions of its founder, John Wesley – Methodism in the South, like all of southern Christianity, had become increasingly tolerant, even supportive, of the institution as it became increasingly vital to the regional economy.

Northern bishops, however, became increasingly convinced of slavery’s evil, following in the tradition of evangelist Francis Asbury, who relied more on natural law than the Bible when he argued that “every perfection [God] possesses must be opposed to a practice contrary to every moral idea which can influence the human mind.” Likewise, slavery was “totally opposite to the whole spirit of the gospel.”

Methodist slaveholders took a different approach: using the plain text of the Bible – especially the Old Testament, which provided justification not only for slavery but also for the enslavement of Africans, descendants of the cursed son of Noah, according to a literal reading of Genesis.

Further, proslavery Methodists – again, like southern Christians as a whole – pointed to the several places in the New Testament where Paul sets out conditions of a master-servant relationship. It would be unscriptural, these slaveholders argued, to go beyond the plain, literal text of scripture.

As one southern Methodist bishop put it, there existed “no warrant from apostolic precept or example” to upend this relationship, and to do so would “go beyond the [biblical] charter and transcend the bounds of our commission.”

When Bishop James Andrew of Georgia inherited a slave through his wife – and with no way to easily free him under state law – abolition-minded northern Methodists were outraged. Andrew proposed resigning, but fellow southerners insisted he stay and fight. After 41 bitter days, the General Conference of 1844 requested his resignation – and within a year the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was born.

Reunification would not occur for nearly a century.

History does not repeat itself, the saying goes, but often it rhymes. History rhymed pretty clearly last week.

Scriptural Perspicuity: Summary and Next Steps

Last part of the thrilling trilogy! Part 1 | Part 2

So returning to our original questions, it seems to me we answer them this way:

1. How do we define scriptural perspicuity?

Very carefully! But basically that the Bible is clear enough about the basics of the gospel that any person of reasonable intelligence can understand them without mediation from an authority figure.

2. Does the Bible claim perspicuity for itself?

I don’t think so. Parts of it claim a high level of authority for other parts of it, but none of it seems to claim perspicuity as we’ve defined it, and parts seem to expect the very mediation we define as antithetical to perspicuity.

3. Has the church affirmed perspicuity?

It depends on the church. For 1,500 years, the church generally did not – and the largest Christian group, the Catholic Church, does not. Without researching it, I’d guess the Orthodox Church does not either. Perspicuity is strictly a Protestant doctrine, first articulated in its clearest form by Martin Luther 500 years ago.

4. What have been the fruits of perspicuity?

Division, division and more division. Perspicuity, which relies inherently on the clarity of the text, is undermined by its own results, which show significant and vehement disagreement about the text by people whom perspicuity has taught to believe are simply seeing what is clearly there (which means others who don’t see that must be deluded by Satan or acting in bad faith).

Given those responses, I can only conclude that perspicuity is a failure as a doctrine. It is not supported by the Bible itself, relatively speaking does not have a long history of church affirmation, and where introduced leads to results that fatally undermine its own premise.

So now what?

The Irony of Scriptural Perspicuity

Part 2 of a series on the perspicuity of scripture. Part 1 dealt with defining “perspicuity” and discussing what the Bible says about itself. Today’s post deals with church history and the results of this belief.

What does the church say?

Well, that depends on the church!

But really, just as the Bible was written in a time of few educated elites and many illiterate followers, so too did understanding the scriptures require centuries of mediation through educated church leaders.

Of course, those circumstances changed practically overnight with the invention of the printing press and the printing of the Bible in common vernacular, followed by Martin Luther’s revolution that fragmented the Western church.

Because Luther rightly objected to excesses and abuses perpetrated by a church that had grown secretive and corrupt, the notion that church leaders could be trusted to appropriately mediate the scriptures to their congregants took a severe blow. Why should we assume these greedy, mendacious priests are accurately synthesizing biblical precepts when they are using their positions to enrich themselves and maintain their temporal power?

Thus Luther, in On the Bondage of the Will, laid out for the first time an argument for the  comprehensive perspicuity of the Bible:

But, if many things still remain abstruse to many, this does not arise from obscurity in the Scriptures, but from their own blindness or want of understanding, who do not go the way to see the all-perfect clearness of the truth. … With the same rashness any one may cover his own eyes, or go from the light into the dark and hide himself, and then blame the day and the sun for being obscure. Let, therefore, wretched men cease to impute, with blasphemous perverseness, the darkness and obscurity of their own heart to the all-clear Scriptures of God. … The Scripture simply confesses the Trinity of God, the humanity of Christ, and the unpardonable sin. There is nothing here of obscurity or ambiguity. 

That last sentence seems more than a touch unintentionally ironic; the Bible of course nowhere confesses the Trinity as such, and what Christian hasn’t spent a long time wondering what exactly is “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” (the one unpardonable sin, according to Jesus)? In a lengthy defense of the Bible’s clarity, Luther cites a case in which a key Christian doctrine must be inferred from the text and a notorious example of an unclear and troubling statement from Jesus himself.

So it took roughly 1,500 years and the Protestant Reformation for the church to include any prominent or official doctrine of scriptural perspicuity. Which doesn’t mean it’s not true – just that we should recognize this was a significant departure from the historical understanding of the church, one that we should therefore treat with caution.

What are the effects?

One way to test a relatively new doctrine is to assess how it changes the church itself. To “judge it by its fruit,” so to speak.

What is the fruit of this doctrine, this idea that the Bible is so clear that anyone, including children, can read it and understand the basics of the gospel?

Namely, massive division on a scale never previously seen in the church. Perhaps the ultimate irony of the doctrine of perspicuity is that it has led to the creation of literally thousands of schisms among people who felt the Bible was so clear on a certain point that they could no longer worship in good conscience with those who believed otherwise. There are easily more than 1,000 – perhaps as many as 2,000 – Protestant denominations worldwide. There are easily thousands more intracongregational and -denominational splits that have led to much heartache and bitterness.

It is no coincidence that these splits have become more common since Enlightenment modernism, with its democratic and egalitarian assumptions. There is obviously nothing wrong with those assumptions per se; they were and remain vital to the liberation of oppressed people around the globe. But when applied to the Bible, they have led to a largely unexamined embrace of the notion that anyone can and should open it without any guidance and understand the gospel – and, on the flip side, an unexamined hostility to the notion that ministers or scholars should play any significant role in mediating the text to others with less training.

Yet if we look at two traditions that have most radically adopted the democratic ethos of modernist egalitarianism (well, for men, anyway) – the Plymouth Brethren and the Stone-Campbell Movement – they are perhaps the two most schismatic groups in church history.

Both movements were born through the notion of unifying fractious denominations around the basis of just doing what the Bible says, following its plain teachings in the establishment and organization of congregations and worship, relying heavily on the “pattern” established in Acts.

Yet within 50 years of their establishment, both movements experienced massive splits – the Brethren between “exclusive” and “inclusive” camps, the Stone-Campbell Movement between the instrumental, largely northern Disciples of Christ and the a cappella, largely southern Churches of Christ. While the former eventually became a formal mainline denomination – the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) – the southern branch became increasingly fractious, with congregations dividing over increasingly trivial matters – down to how many cups to use in communion. Likewise, a chart of Plymouth Brethren splits and reunifications is like trying to trace strands of spaghetti cooked in a bowl.

What does it tell us about the alleged perspicuity of scripture that those who hold most strongly to it are the most likely to disagree so vehemently about what it says that they cannot remain in fellowship with each other?

Perhaps it tells us that the Bible is not so perspicuous, after all.

Part 3 will conclude with some potentially disconnected thoughts about scripture and how we should view it given the challenges it poses to the doctrine of perspicuity.

How Clear Is the Bible Anyway?

To some, the Bible is a brook – a refreshing stream that flows gently through a meadow. Its waters are clear: Anyone can look into them and understand what they must do to get across safely to the other side.

But I wonder more and more whether the Bible is something else entirely – a swift river, dark and cloudy, its depths hiding potentially treacherous rocks that could unbalance the unwary traveler and send her tumbling downstream. Venturing into its waters is best done with someone who knows the path and can show the traveler where to step and how to avoid the deepest, darkest areas.

I wonder, in other words, whether the Bible should be treated much differently than we typically do in American Protestantism, where we assume anyone can crack it open and learn who God is and how to “get saved” in Jesus’ name. Maybe the Bible requires more care – and more community – when we read and interpret it.

What I’m talking about is the perspicuity of scripture. For something to be perspicuous is to be clear, like that gentle brook. (Why don’t we just say the clarity of scripture? Because obviously there’s no reason to use a 10-cent word when a five-dollar one will do.)

To explore this topic, we need to answer some questions:

1. How do we define scriptural perspicuity?
2. Does the Bible claim perspicuity for itself?
3. Has the church historically affirmed its perspicuity?
4. And what historically have been the results of belief in scripture’s perspicuity?

Today, I’ll look at the first two questions.

How do we define the perspicuity of scripture?

No one knows!

OK, that’s not entirely true, but a brief search of the internet finds a lot of people recognizing that the term itself is, ironically enough, unclear – and then spending a LOT of time and words trying to define it.

I don’t get the sense that anyone argues that all parts of the Bible are perspicuous; rather, perspicuity is a general sense that the Bible is clear in its primary teachings, particularly the gospel message of sin, salvation, and Jesus’ role in saving us from the one and facilitating the latter.

As usual, the best popular-level definition probably comes from Wikipedia (yes, I could use a theological dictionary, but the point is to have a definition as popularly understood today, not as scholars understand it). I’ll underline some key phrases:

The doctrine of the clarity of Scripture (often called the perspicuity of Scripture) is a Protestant Christian position teaching that [quoting the Westminster Confession] “…those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.” …

Lutherans hold that the Bible presents all doctrines and commands of the Christian faith clearly. God’s Word is freely accessible to every reader or hearer of ordinary intelligence, without requiring any special education. Of course, one must understand the language God’s Word is presented in, and not be so preoccupied by contrary thoughts so as to prevent understanding. As a result of this, no one needs to wait for any clergy, and pope, scholar, or ecumenical council to explain the real meaning of any part of the Bible.

To boil that down, we might say the perspicuity of scripture is the doctrine that the Bible is clear enough about the basics of the gospel that any person of reasonable intelligence can understand them without mediation from an authority figure. 

But let’s be honest: That the phrase is so hard to define, and that its implications have to be cordoned off with multiple caveats and conditions, is a big red flag that this stream is far muddier than we might assume.

What does the Bible claim for itself?

Of course, “the Bible” does not claim anything for itself as such because the authors typically did not realize their texts would become canonized, but several of them did recognize other texts as bearing that kind of weight. Typically, this involved early Christians, including Jesus himself, quoting from the Hebrew scriptures with a sense of their authority, but it also includes later New Testament authors adding special weight to Paul’s letters.

So, for example, 2 Tim 3:14-17:

But you must continue with the things you have learned and found convincing. You know who taught you. Since childhood you have known the holy scriptures that help you to be wise in a way that leads to salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus. Every scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for showing mistakes, for correcting, and for training character, so that the person who belongs to God can be equipped to do everything that is good.

In this most famous of passages about the nature and purpose of scripture, referring to what Christians now call the Old Testament, the author clearly sees the texts as being mediated through teachers – perhaps parents or synagogue rabbis (“since childhood”), perhaps even Paul (“you know who taught you”), to whom this letter is traditionally attributed.

Other New Testament verses commonly cited as referring to scripture paint a similar picture – or don’t actually refer to scripture at all despite how they’re frequently used. For example:

Heb 4:11-13:

Therefore, let’s make every effort to enter that rest so that no one will fall by following the same example of disobedience, because God’s word is living, active, and sharper than any two-edged sword. It penetrates to the point that it separates the soul from the spirit and the joints from the marrow. It’s able to judge the heart’s thoughts and intentions. No creature is hidden from it, but rather everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of the one to whom we have to give an answer.

Although many cite Heb 4:12 (“sharper than any two-edged sword”) in a scriptural-authority context, it’s clearly talking about the actual word of God, or God’s voice; it comes after an extended riff on the power of that word in sparking the creation of the universe and establishing the Sabbath.

There are many passages like this. Google around for a list of verses talking about scripture, and you get a host of references, especially in the OT, to “the word of God” or “God’s judgments” that actually refer to God’s verbal commands. Of course, some of them were eventually recorded and became part of the Hebrew scriptures, but I don’t see these passages as being intended to describe the authority of the text itself.

Deut 6:6-9 does discuss what Israel should do with God’s commands – namely, write them down, “recite them to your children,” and talk about them constantly. Assuming these commands eventually became part of the Hebrew scriptures, this passage envisions a mediated relationship with them, where their meaning is initially delivered by parents and other members of the community.

Back in the NT, the author of 2 Pet 3:15-16 discusses the writings of Paul, which have rapidly gained authoritative weight among the early assemblies:

Consider the patience of our Lord to be salvation, just as our dear friend and brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him, speaking of these things in all his letters. Some of his remarks are hard to understand, and people who are ignorant and whose faith is weak twist them to their own destruction, just as they do the other scriptures.

Paul’s letters are explicitly given the same weight as “the other scriptures” yet they are certainly not described as perspicuous! Rather, they are “hard to understand,” opening them to pernicious misinterpretation. Yet many Christians today consider Paul’s letters, especially Romans, to be quite clear in establishing a large number of doctrines, ranging from salvation by grace alone to the alleged sinfulness of gay sex.

Not surprisingly, Paul himself had something to say on this topic, in Rom 15:4: “Whatever was written in the past was written for our instruction so that we could have hope through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures.”

This doesn’t really say anything about the perspicuity of scripture, but it’s worth pointing out that Paul frequently engaged in creative reinterpretation of his scriptures, engaging in exegesis that often turned the plain-text reading of certain passages on their heads (the moving rock in the wilderness in 1 Cor 10, the respective connection of Israel and the gentiles with Ishmael and Isaac). He did not act like, nor did he ever argue that, scripture was so abundantly clear anyone could understand it without help.

But of course why would he? The Bible was written in an oral culture; few people had the ability to read what was written, and those who could did so aloud so others could hear it. The scriptures we have were written with the assumption that they would be mediated through an educated elite to the illiterate masses.

Which is why Jesus and Paul themselves served as mediators of scripture to their audiences. For example, Luke 24, where Jesus meets two disciples on the Emmaus road and “interpreted for them the things written about himself in all the scriptures, starting with Moses and going through all the Prophets.” Although Jesus calls them “foolish” for their inability to understand that the OT scriptures referred to his death and resurrection, it’s probably not a coincidence that this happens all the time in the Gospels.

Over and over again, the only person who seems aware that he is the fulfillment of various prophecies about the Jewish messiah is Jesus himself. And it’s up to him to mediate those scriptures to his audiences, which included intelligent, highly educated people who struggled to find the perspicuity Jesus claimed to find in them. The Gospel of John illustrates this well: “Examine the scriptures, since you think that in them you have eternal life. They also testify about me, yet you don’t want to come to me so that you can have life. (John 5:39-40)” On the one hand, yes, Jesus does tell his audience to “examine the scriptures.” On the other hand, his audience here was the religious leadership responsible for teaching the scriptures to their congregations and they were struggling to find in them what Jesus said was there.

Not only is Jesus frustrated that “Jewish leaders” can’t see him in their scriptures, but he also rejects the idea that “eternal life” can be found in those scriptures, as opposed to himself. This is a statement that does not receive as much attention, I don’t think. In our bibliolatrous times, scripture is often seen as providing if not eternal life itself, at least the key to eternal life. And it may very well do that, but Jesus explicitly says here the point of scripture is to point to him, and he, not it, will give eternal life. Again, this cuts against our traditional notions that scripture is perspicuous on matters pertaining to the gospel and salvation – that in order to be saved, you must do the work of reading and understanding the text well enough to find Jesus, believe the right things and pray the right prayer.

Now, of course, people who argue for the perspicuity of scripture have their texts, too, including some of these same ones! They argue that if it can be understood by children, as Deut 6 implies, it must be perspicuous. But I’d argue the scriptures give the responsibility of teaching children its precepts not to itself but to their parents and religious leaders. Likewise, there’s a lot of reliance on references to God’s laws or judgments in the Psalms, but relying on poetry for establishing doctrine is a fundamental category error.

Before we leave the texts, I’ll point out practically how we can be led astray by the idea of the self-evident clarity of the Bible. One article laying out the case for perspicuity argues, “The Bible is clear in all that is necessary for man to know in regard to his sinful state, his need for salvation, and the means of attaining that salvation, faith in Christ (Romans 3:22).” Ah. Except it’s not actually clear that Rom 3:22 says anything about having faith in Christ. Scholars argue – persuasively, in my view – that the correct translation of the Greek grammar there is that righteousness comes through the faithfulness of Christ. Not so perspicuous!

In Part 2, I’ll combine the next two questions into a brief, overly selective history of the church’s interaction with the notion of scriptural perspicuity.

Kill the Beast: Disney Musicals, the Book of Revelation and You

Beauty and the Beast is probably my all-time favorite Disney musical.

My aunt took me to see the theatrical version on Broadway for my 14^th birthday, and that sort of experience tends to be pretty formative (my 13^th birthday was Phantom of the Opera, and I can still basically recite that play by heart without needing the music). But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate the depth of the story:

• It’s a call for open-mindedness and diversity that was pretty unusual for its day (1991) and remains relevant today.
• Its heroine, Belle, is a much stronger woman character than had been typical to that point (only Jasmine is comparable until we hit the Tangled/Frozen era)
• And its climactic song, unimaginatively titled “The Mob Song,” is a rousing and chilling exploration of how fear turns people into the beasts they so despise and war against.

I’ve been thinking more about this song lately, especially its 2017 live-action version, which makes the subtext more explicit when Gaston’s sidekick, Lefou (played by the wonderful Josh Gad), mutters to himself: “There’s a beast running wild, there’s no question/But I fear the wrong monster’s released.”

Dear GQ (and Fellow Christians): The Bible Is Not a Book

Wrong Bible?

The latest front in the seemingly unending culture wars is Bible-believing Christians versus GQ.

In case you are blessedly ignorant of what’s been happening, allow me to ruin your day.

First, GQ decided to publish a snarky, irreverent piece essentially saying: “These 21 books are almost universally considered great. They actually suck. Read these other 21 thematically similar books instead.”

Now, obviously, the goal of a listicle like this is clicks. Fans of the dissed books will express their outrage, whether feigned or genuine, GQ will reap the ad-revenue and brand-expansion benefits, and the world spins on.

End of story, right? Well, no.

12. The Bible

The Holy Bible is rated very highly by all the people who supposedly live by it but who in actuality have not read it. Those who have read it know there are some good parts, but overall it is certainly not the finest thing that man has ever produced. It is repetitive, self-contradictory, sententious, foolish, and even at times ill-intentioned.

The takes, they were hot.

Why Genesis 2:24 Is Not Trying To Defend a Certain God-Ordained Picture of Marriage

Everyone knows Genesis 2:24 –

This is the reason that a man leaves his father and mother and embraces his wife, and they become one flesh.

It’s cited widely elsewhere in the Bible – in all three of the synoptic gospel’s portrayals of Jesus’ divorce teachings, in 1 Corinthians 6 and in Ephesians 5. And it’s lately become the crux in what I call the template argument, in which this verse provides the proof that God designed marriage to be between one man and one woman.

This verse came back to my attention while reading the short – though quite dense – book The Septuagint, Sexuality and the New Testament by William Loader, professor of New Testament at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia. Loader is looking for ways in which the Septuagint translators changed the Hebrew text of certain Old Testament passages dealing with sexuality, and how those changes influenced the arguments of Greco-Roman Jews relying on the Septuagint, particularly Philo of Alexandria and Paul of Tarsus.

What If Julian of Eclanum Had Beaten Augustine?

We all know St. Augustine of Hippo, the theological genius of the fourth and fifth centuries who influenced the medieval church more than any other bishop and continues to have significant influence today – particularly thanks to what I would say is the toxic doctrine of original sin, which has warped our view of human nature and sexuality so that we think of these things negatively rather than positively.

We don’t know as much about the people who opposed Augustine’s beliefs, those ill-fated objectors who raised objections to the doctrines he formulated. One of those was Julian of Eclanum, a southern Italian bishop who was deposed and excommunicated because he refused to sign Pope Zosimus’ edict against Pelagius. Julian was a second-generation Pelagian, the group against whom Augustine fought often in his career. Pelagians held an exalted view of human nature and held strongly to the notion of free will, contra Augustine’s leanings toward predestination, but did so to such an extent that they thought humans capable of achieving perfection in this life.

So of course these battles, as they often do, came down to two sides advocating the extremes of an issue, the one with a decidedly pessimistic view of humanity and its sexual proclivities, the other a decidedly optimistic, if not naive, view of the same.

Yet when we look at what Julian wrote – such as we know it, mostly through Augustine’s rebuttals – it’s hard not to get the sense that he was quite well ahead of his time, by about 1,500 years or so.

That Business about Women Keeping Silent in Church – What if Someone Else Added It In?

I’m reading through Eldon Jay Epp’s book Junia: The First Woman Apostle, which has succeeded in blowing my mind, and we haven’t even gotten to Junia yet.

Epp starts the book by talking about textual criticism, the means by which scholars look at the oldest texts we have and study their language and variations, and the problems such criticism poses for exegetical certainty. For example, everyone here is familiar with 1 Corinthians 14:34-35:

³⁴ the women should be quiet during the meeting. They are not allowed to talk. Instead, they need to get under control, just as the Law says. ³⁵ If they want to learn something, they should ask their husbands at home. It is disgraceful for a woman to talk during the meeting.

Pretty clear, right? But let’s zoom out a little and see what we find when we include it in context:

³¹ You can all prophesy one at a time so that everyone can learn and be encouraged. ³² The spirits of prophets are under the control of the prophets. ³³ God isn’t a God of disorder but of peace.

(Like in all the churches of God’s people, ³⁴ the women should be quiet during the meeting. They are not allowed to talk. Instead, they need to get under control, just as the Law says. ³⁵ If they want to learn something, they should ask their husbands at home. It is disgraceful for a woman to talk during the meeting. ³⁶ Did the word of God originate with you? Has it come only to you?)

³⁷ If anyone thinks that they are prophets or “spiritual people,” then let them recognize that what I’m writing to you is the Lord’s command. ³⁸ If someone doesn’t recognize this, they aren’t recognized. ³⁹ So then, brothers and sisters, use your ambition to try to get the gift of prophecy, but don’t prevent speaking in tongues. ⁴⁰ Everything should be done with dignity and in proper order.

The parentheses, which Epp includes in his treatment of these paragraphs, kind of give it away: One of these paragraphs is not like the other two. You could read from verse 33a to verse 37 without any trouble, as if verses 33b-36 didn’t exist. That’s interesting enough, but by itself doesn’t prove that verses 33b-35 or 36 are later additions to the text.

But Epp goes on to point out that not every text of 1 Corinthians place verses 34-35 between 33 and 36; some place it after verse 40. So this text is a little more mobile than your typical Pauline text. Also, though every text of 1 Corinthians 14 we have includes this passage, at least two of our earliest versions (Codex Fuldensis, dated to 547, and Codex Vaticanus, dated to the 300s) include scribal notations also found with such passages as John’s story of the woman caught in adultery, a well known case of textual variation. As Epp puts it:

This combination of literary analysis and text-critical assessment has moved a sizable group of scholars to view the passage on “silent women” as a later intrusion into 1 Corinthians and most likely one never written by Paul. (19)

So what does this mean? What do we do if one of the key passages governing gender roles in conservative and fundamentalist churches turns out to be a later, non-Pauline addition? After all, it’s still in our Bibles, and – at least theoretically – Paul is not of greater importance than any other biblical writer (though we Protestants certainly seem to prefer him to, say, James).

But the point is not to simply dismiss pieces of the Bible we don’t like; the point is to recognize that the Bible itself – not any particular passage but the very nature of the texts we have – rejects our attempts to flatten it into a cut-and-paste set of rules for 21st century life and worship.

“All Shall Be Well,” Chapter 2: Gregory of Nyssa

I’m a big fan of Gregory of Nyssa, the bishop from Cappadocia (modern-day Turkey, more or less) who lived in the middle fourth century. For my Patristic and Medieval Theology class, I wrote a paper about Gregory’s universalism, which led me to this book, and therefore this series.

Gregory’s universalism was complete and total – when Gregory said that all of God’s creation would eventually be restored to him, he meant it, Satan, demons and all. In my paper, which I’ll post once I get the grade back, I argue Gregory’s expansive view of the goodness of God, which Gregory believed was the overarching divine characteristic against which all of God’s actions must be judged,  required the belief in Satan’s salvation. Without it, either the evil to which Satan had turned was stronger than the inherent goodness Satan carried as part of God’s good creation – and therefore evil was stronger than God – or God’s deceit of Satan in the atonement was simply justice without mercy, and therefore not good. We’ll talk about that more when I post the paper later this summer.

Unfortunately, Steven R. Harmon touches very little on all of that in his chapter of “All Shall Be Well,” titled “The Subjection of All Things in Christ: The Christocentric Universalism of Gregory of Nyssa (331/340–c.395).”

Instead, as the title indicates, Harmon focuses on the role of Jesus in God’s plan to restore all things. He argues that such a role is somewhat hidden because Gregory talks so much about what God does in the reconciliation process.