Freedom and Free Choice

Unveiling of the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World
(1886), by Edward Moran

In terms of importance to the western cultural ethos, freedom or liberty is up there in the company of such ideological priorities as life and equality. The story of modernity is easily conceptualized as a progression from less freedom to more freedom, from bondage to despots, superstition, and the shackles of nature to the freedom offered by liberal democracy. More "freedom", whatever form it may take, is a Good Thing; it is thus common for debates on social issues to be framed in terms of promoting freedom.

Just what kind of "freedom" is being assumed here? Arguably, it is the freedom of choice, of self-determination, the freedom to chart one's own course in life by acting on one's free will, and the corresponding freedom from any oppressive constraints that prevent one from doing so. (This is the distinction between positive and negative liberty) On a societal level, in modern liberal democracies this freedom is seen as a goal in itself; it serves to support and ensure the capacity of the individual to formulate and live out his or her own goals in life, whatever they may be, and it is the duty of the state to protect it.

But, however praiseworthy the power of choice may be, does "freedom" truly consist in it? I would  disagree. Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart (in a First Things article about, of all things, Janet Jackson's accidental exposure at the Super Bowl) considers the consequence of equating freedom with choice to be "that we tend to elevate what should at best be regarded as the moral life’s minimal condition to the status of its highest expression, and in the process reduce the very concept of freedom to one of purely libertarian or voluntarist spontaneity." For Hart, and for many others in the eastern Christian tradition, "freedom" includes, but is much more than, the freedom of choice. "True freedom," he says, drawing on the definition inherited by classical Christianity from Platonic philosophy, "is the realization of a complex nature in its proper good (that is, in both its natural and supernatural ends); it is the freedom of a thing to flourish, to become ever more fully what it is."

In light of this definition, choice is not automatically an expression of freedom, but can actually impair it. In fact, as Hart says in his book The Doors of the Sea, "the will that chooses poorly, then—through ignorance, maleficence, or corrupt desire—has not thereby become freer, but has further enslaved itself to those forces that prevent it from achieving its full expression." (71) Freedom is not simply the ability to choose between ends arbitrarily; it is directed towards a particular end, the realization of what we are, what we are created to be (not simply what we choose or wish to be via self-determination), and freedom is truly suppressed when this realization is hindered—even by our "free" choice. The particularity, the directionality toward which our nature is oriented, far from a constraint which much be cast off to maximize freedom, is rather the mode in which we are most truly free. In the words of my high school economics teacher, true freedom is freedom for (the full realization of our nature), not merely freedom from (oppression and constraint).

In Orthodox theology, this dynamic is applied in the distinction between two kinds of "will", the natural will and the gnomic will, developed especially by the 7th-century church father Maximos, as Fr. Stephen Freeman explains:

St. Maximos the Confessor, in writings that have become the teaching of the Church following the 5th Ecumenical Council, held that there is such a thing as the “natural will.” This is the will of our human nature. The natural will always wills the good and right thing. It wills the proper end and direction for a human being. This is an inherent part of every nature. It “wants to be” what it is, so to speak. But we do not directly experience our nature for the most part. What we experience as “choice” is a brokenness that St. Maximos called the “gnomic will.” It does its best (as we do when we’re at our best) but is frequently torn between things.

The innate desire of the natural will is the "true freedom" described above by Hart. It is an inalienable part of who we are, namely beings created good by a loving and all-powerful God for union with him (cf. John 17:21-22), and through it we innately, naturally desire to be more what we really are. Our created freedom to realize this highest end is a consequence of our creation in the image of God (Gen 1:20-21), who is perfectly and completely free to be who he is, as the second-century church father St. Irenaeus writes:

If then it were not in our power to do or not to do these things, what reason had the apostle, and much more the Lord Himself, to give us counsel to do some things, and to abstain from others? But because man is possessed of free will from the beginning, and God is possessed of free will, in whose likeness man was created, advice is always given to him to keep fast the good, which thing is done by means of obedience to God. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV.37.4)

Throughout this section, Irenaeus presupposes that the created nature of man and the biblical admonishments to obey and choose the good which he is given entail the power of choice, "so that those who had yielded obedience might justly possess what is good, given indeed by God, but preserved by themselves." (IV.37.1) Our active, free participation in the good is what makes it so precious and worthwhile. In the same vein, St. Gregory of Nyssa later wrote in the fourth century:

He who created human beings in order to make them share in his own fullness so disposed their nature that it contains the principle of all that is good, and each of these dispositions draws them to desire the corresponding divine attribute. So God could not have deprived them of the best and most precious of his attributes, his freedom. (Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Oration 5)

But obviously we do not always realize the desire of this natural will. We sin, we miss the mark, we fall short of attaining to the likeness of God (Rom 3:23) as our natural will desires. And so, because of sin, our will experiences fragmentation, debilitation, corruption, inner division. We become double-minded, as James describes in chapter 1 of his epistle. Our nature itself does not change (for this is a misunderstanding of the concept of "nature", and otherwise no one could "by nature do" the things of the law, as Paul describes in Rom 2:14, followed by a description of the double-mindedness involved). As Freeman writes, if our nature had actually changed from good to evil, "we could never be nor become what we truly are", because we would truly be evil, and any change from this natural state would be a delusion. Nor is our freedom of choice totally abolished, for then we could not be held responsible for sin (a common intuition among the Fathers, especially Irenaeus and Chrysostom), but the faculties of our nature, the will and the passions, are blinded and corrupted. The image of God is still very much present in us, and our nature remains good just as God created it, but the expressions of these things become distorted and confused.

And so choice, intended to be the manifestation of our natural will's freedom, always freely choosing God, instead becomes its own kind of bondage. Choice is no longer simply the singular voice of the natural will calling out to God and freely moving towards him, but an often agonizing and unclear deliberation of one course of action among numerous alternatives. We have to choose because we are torn between the still, small voice of the natural will and the corruption of sin, and so situations that are transparent to the natural will seem opaque to us. For to one who knows the way perfectly, there is no real "choice" to make between possible routes; there is only freedom to walk the Way. Similarly, I normally don't have to "choose" to be faithful to my wife, but only in times of extreme temptation and weakness do any alternatives to faithfulness begin to seem like possibilities. This imprisoning necessity of choice which the world considers true freedom is what Maximos calls the "gnomic will". Hart writes that "this is the minimum that liberty must assume; but it is also, just as obviously, a form of subordination and confinement." (The Doors of the Sea, 70-71) Freeman further describes our situation:

We may choose countless numbers of ways to remain in bondage. But unless and until we can see the proper goal of our life and existence, we cannot freely choose it. We live our lives in an illusion created by free-choice, but always with a vague, haunting sense that something is missing – this is the echo of the natural will.

This is something like how Orthodox believe that we have the freedom of choice, so that we can actually be expected to obey the commands of God and held responsible for disobedience, while remaining enslaved to sin and unable to free ourselves. For we are not saved simply by making the right choices, even if salvation necessarily involves our active "yes". Christ promises to set us free, as in John 8:32-36—what kind of freedom is this? Not the voluntaristic freedom of choice idealized by modern western culture (which, as we have seen, is really the expression of our captivity), but the kind that makes us "slaves" to God and to righteousness (Rom 6:18-22). This is no paradox or contradiction, but the heart of Christian soteriology.

In my opinion it is characteristic of the western controversies about justification and the "order of salvation", especially following the Reformation, to conflate and confuse these two kinds of freedom or willing. Pelagius, against whose teaching much of the debate was reacting in one way or another, arguably did so. Jaroslav Pelikan describes Pelagius' view:

[To Pelagius, t]he doctrine of original sin was self-contradictory. 'If sin is natural, it is not voluntary; if it is voluntary, it is not inborn. These two definitions are as mutually contradictory as a necessity and [free] will.' Even after sin the will remained as free as it had before sin was committed, for man continued to have 'the possibility of committing sin or of refraining from sin.' (The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition, 315)

Pelagius' heresy, in one sense, was the denial that we are any less free after sinning than we are before, because sin remains voluntary; we can seemingly choose to sin or not. Yet as we have seen, according to the Orthodox tradition choosing not to do any particular sin does not make us any freer; we remain trapped in the necessity and blindness of choice itself. In a very real sense, all of our choices not made by faith, even our "good" ones, are sinful (that is, they miss the mark of union with God); see Rom 14:23. Despite having the "freedom" to choose, we remain in bondage to sin. Pelagius' error was supposing that because the gnomic will remains "free", the natural will must be free as well.

The Protestant response to Pelagianism tends to continue his conflation of the natural and gnomic wills and argues the contrapositive—that because our natural will is bound, our gnomic will must be bound as well and our "freedom of choice" abolished. Instead of the minimal, sorry condition of our fallen nature, free choice is seen as somehow exceptional, a power that has been lost to the Fall, the power to "save oneself" in a Pelagian sense. Conversely, when we are made "free" in Christ, this refers to the restoration of choice; as one saying puts it, after redemption in Christ, we become free to sin or not to sin, whereas before, we could only choose to sin. The role of choice in salvation, somewhat paradoxically, thus tends to be exaggerated, especially in traditions placing great emphasis on the "decision for Christ" as the decisive crux when someone "gets saved".

This way of thinking presupposes a radical view of the Fall as abolishing or destroying the image of God in man, or actually changing our nature to be evil instead of good as originally created (which, again, is a contradiction of the classical definition of "nature"). As the commonly used term "sinful nature" suggests, in this view sin is taken to have become the "natural" or baseline condition of our existence as human. Such an intensive view of the Fall is unknown in the Fathers, and is considered by Orthodox to be incompatible with the doctrine of creation, and of evil as a privation of the good. For in this view, sin cannot exist on its own, as a discrete thing occupying the place formerly held by the love for God in our natural will, but only as a parasite, alongside and beneath a good will. If there were no prior desire for God in our hearts, there would be nothing for sin to corrupt. If the image of God were not only tarnished and damaged, but actually destroyed, along with our free will, we would be little different from the animals, unable to be held responsible for our sins (St. Irenaeus expresses this idea in Against Heresies IV.37.2), and there would be no one to save. St. John of Damascus wrote that "God made [man] by nature sinless, and endowed him with free will. By sinless, I mean not that sin could find no place in him (for that is the case with Deity alone), but that sin is the result of the free volition he enjoys rather than an integral part of his nature." (The Orthodox Faith II.12) Our freedom of choice is not removed by sin; it is what makes it possible for us to sin (and to be saved).

All of this speaks to my prior confusion about how the Fall could have actually changed our nature; how did Adam have such power to do so? Why can I not change my nature back through my own choice, as he apparently did? Or did God inflict the "sinful nature" on him as a punishment, thus creating the problem he would later solve through the gospel? As I came to understand and accept the Orthodox teaching on the matter, it became much clearer.

So for the Orthodox, "free" choice is not as a casualty of sin, but a symptom of it: it entails not that we have the power to save ourselves in a Pelagian sense, but that we are "rational" (not mere animals), able to be held responsible for our deeds. It is not really "free", not in the sense of being somehow prevented from choosing good, but because it testifies to our weakness, our frailty, our inability to see and know the good and our resulting vacillation between good and evil, or (as we all too often perceive them) pleasure and pain. Our rejecting the evil and choosing the good does not, in itself, make us any freer; against Pelagianism, Orthodoxy rejects the notion that we can be saved simply by the exercise of the will, without the intervention of divine grace received through faith. In other words, our "free will" (as choice) is not constrained; it is itself the constraint on the innate desire of our deeper, still-good natural will, as Hart summarizes:

The natural will must return to God, no matter what, but if the freedom of the gnomic will refuses to open itself to the mercy and glory of God, the wrathful soul experiences the transfiguring and deifying fire of love not as bliss but as chastisement and despair. The highest freedom and happiness of the creature ... is the perfection of the creature's nature in union with God. And the highest work of providential grace is to set our deepest, 'natural' will free from everything (even the abuse of our freedom) that would separate us from that end, all the time preserving the dignity of the divine image within us. (The Doors of the Sea, 85)

The Confession of Dositheos, an Orthodox confession promulgated by the Synod of Jerusalem in 1672 largely in response to the claims of Calvinism, expresses how the human will can naturally choose what is good (explaining how, in the language of total depravity, man is not as evil as he could be), but cannot do any "spiritual good" (leading to real salvation) without grace working through faith.

We believe man in falling by the [original] transgression to have become comparable and similar to the beasts; that is, to have been utterly undone, and to have fallen from his perfection and impassibility, yet not to have lost the nature and power which he had received from the supremely good God. For otherwise he would not be rational, and consequently not a human. So [he still has] the same nature in which he was created, and the same power of his nature, that is free-will, living and operating, so that he is by nature able to choose and do what is good, and to avoid and hate what is evil. For it is absurd to say that the nature which was created good by Him who is supremely good lacks the power of doing good. For this would be to make that nature evil — what could be more impious than that? For the power of working depends upon nature, and nature upon its author, although in a different manner. And that a man is able by nature to do what is good, even our Lord Himself intimates saying, even the Gentiles love those that love them. {Matthew 5:46; Luke 6:32} But this is taught most plainly by Paul also, in Romans 1:19, [actually Rom 2:14] and elsewhere expressly, saying in so many words, “The Gentiles which have no law do by nature the things of the law.” From which it is also apparent that the good which a man may do cannot truly be sin. For it is impossible for that what is good to be evil. Although, being done by nature only and tending to form the natural character of the doer but not the spiritual, it does not itself contribute to salvation without faith Nor does it lead to condemnation, for it is not possible that good, as such, can be the cause of evil. But in the regenerated, what is wrought by grace, and with grace, makes the doer perfect, and renders him worthy of salvation.  

A man, therefore, before he is regenerated, is able by nature to incline to what is good, and to choose and work moral good. But for the regenerated to do spiritual good — for the works of the believer being contributory to salvation and wrought by supernatural grace are properly called spiritual — it is necessary that he be guided and prevented [preceded] by grace, as has been said in treating of predestination. Consequently, he is not able of himself to do any work worthy of a Christian life, although he has it in his own power to will, or not to will, to co-operate with grace.

Abortion, love for enemies, and the sins of all

You have heard that it was said, "you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. (Matthew 5:43-48 NKJV)

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If, like many of the people I know, you consider yourself "pro-life", know first of all that I share your basic conviction on the immorality of abortion. I believe the ethics of the killing of an unborn child do not simply come down to a woman's right to do as she likes with her body. Though I don't know how to "prove" it and am somewhat weary of attempts to do so, I believe abortion is the destruction of a bearer of God's image, the waste of a human life created to be a partaker in the life of the divine (cf. 2 Peter 1:4), and a terrible tragedy whenever and wherever it takes place.

Yet I hesitate to identify myself with the pro-life movement. This is because while I share its basic convictions on abortion, I feel that it doesn't act on them in a way that is consistent with its substantially Christian identity. (The inescapability of billboards with Bible verses and gestation milestones on any drive through the rural Midwest is a testament to this identity) In large part, I think this can be described as a failure to heed the Lord's command to love even our enemies—a radical teaching from the "sermon on the mount" which I often find myself coming back to precisely because its implications are so profound and far-reaching that we can always readily think of another way we are failing to live up to them. There are at least three such implications that I think are relevant for the pro-life movement. (And please bear in mind that I am attempting to speak corporately of the movement as a whole, not every single person who identifies with it)

The first is the simplest and most immediate: love your enemies enough to stop slandering them. By "slander" I am referring to the false accusation against Planned Parenthood that it has been selling aborted fetal tissue for profit based on the misleading editing of a video interview with PP officials promulgated by the Center for Medical Progress, used as justification for the recently-fervent calls to defund it. The unedited video is fairly long, which is probably why most people don't pay attention to it, but it makes clear that the payment PP accepts payment for fetal tissue strictly to cover the costs of preparation, handling, and transportation, not to make a profit. The ethics of using this tissue for research, legal as it is, are certainly worth further conversation, but no such conversation is happening, only cries of outrage over a demonstrable falsehood.

So far investigations by seven states, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the GOP itself have all failed to find any evidence of illegality in PP's handling of aborted fetal tissue. Yet despite all of this, anti-abortionists are not calling each other out on this myth, but perpetuating it, to the point where PP has stopped accepting even legal reimbursement in order to quell the rumors. So I simply have to ask: if you are one of those railing against PP for profiting off abortions, how much more proof will it take to convince you that these accusations are baseless? Will any amount be sufficient? Or have you simply determined that this will be its hill to die upon, regardless of the facts?

Underlying the endurance of the false claims made by the CMP's video among pro-lifers is an attitude towards truth that I find deeply disturbing for a Christian movement. Of course they are not making claims that they know to be false; I believe they are simply ignorant of how thoroughly the claims have been refuted. But this raises a new problem; it speaks to a failure to "do one's homework", so to speak, an eagerness to believe negative claims about PP without bothering to see if they are really substantiated. This is not just irresponsible; it is a failure to love those we consider our enemies. If you are reluctant to believe bad things said about your friends, then you should be just as reluctant (not eager) to believe them about your enemies, and should require the same amount of convincing. My attempt here to debunk the slander being spread about PP is an effort to obey this teaching, even if it means defending those with whom I strongly disagree from those I would consider my friends. The love of God does not conform to the divisions we create between ourselves.

As well, PP has made no secret at all of the fact that it has been performing abortions for decades. So why has the CMP's video ignited such ferocious calls to defund PP? How has the basic ethical situation changed? What it does with fetal tissue has no bearing on the morality of abortion. If abortion is just another medical procedure that women have the inalienable right to choose for themselves, as abortion supporters believe, then whatever is done with the fetal tissue afterwards is of little further ethical concern; it is just like disposing of, say, an amputated limb or removed appendix. If it is the killing of a person, as pro-lifers argue, then it is a monstrous evil whether the aborted tissue is given a reverent funeral or cut into pieces and sold at a profit. So why does this "revelation" even make any difference to their struggle to protect the unborn? The answer is obvious: because selling fetal tissue for a profit is illegal; if it is really what PP is doing, then it becomes possible to legally prosecute it and (hopefully) shut it down. Because the goal is to stop as many abortions as possible, right?

The second implication: love your enemies enough to talk to them, not past them, to listen to what they have to say, and maybe even (gasp!) to learn from them. Again, just as you would respect a friend in conversation, so you should do with your enemies. Too often it seems to me like pro-lifers are so focused on abortion itself—restricting it, controlling it, defunding it, or condemning it—that they forget what their would-be conversation partners are constantly trying to draw their attention to: the context of abortion. Abortion, like Scripture, has a context: the socioeconomic factors that drive women to end their pregnancies, the things leading up to the decision to terminate a life. This fact sheet describes those factors:

The reasons women give for having an abortion underscore their understanding of the responsibilities of parenthood and family life. Three-fourths of women cite concern for or responsibility to other individuals; three-fourths say they cannot afford a child; three-fourths say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for dependents; and half say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner.

As should be obvious, having an abortion is not a decision made lightly or easily. It is not the first wish that comes to anyone's mind in the event of an unplanned pregnancy; it is a last resort, undertaken when carrying a child to term is simply unimaginable for one reason or another. Yes, some abortions may happen because a woman simply doesn't want to care for a child with a disability or wants an "easy" way out of an pregnancy that would be more inconvenient than impossible to carry to term, but looking at the numbers we can't assume these cases are more than a minority. My friend Joe explains in his own words:

[Women who have abortions are] making a hard choice about their ability to provide for all of the people they need to. Sixty percent of women who have abortions in the US already have children; forty percent of women who have abortions in the US are below the official poverty line, and more than seventy percent are below what actually constitutes seriously poor. The choice that's being made isn't between a child and a Maserati or a child and a vacation to the Riviera; it's between having three children or having two children and enough money to give them food, shelter, and medical care.

Abortion is not so much a problem in itself as it is a symptom of deeper, interconnected problems: poverty first and foremost, our flawed health care system, lack of support for new mothers, abusive relationships, single parenthood, and everything else that undermines a woman's ability to care for her children. If it is to be consistent, the fight for "life" cannot be confined merely to unborn life; a fight against abortion must also address these factors.

I think much of the rhetoric leveled against abortion fails to take this context into account. Simply pointing to it as a monstrous evil, a testament to our nation's hardness of heart and full-speed trajectory away from God, a glaring sin which must be repented—these things might all be true, and they might make a single mother struggling to take care of her two children feel guilty about aborting her third, but they do nothing to help her situation or offer hope, and will thus ring hollow. I'm reminded of the Lord's words against the teachers of the Torah: "Woe to you also, lawyers! For you load men with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers." (Luke 11:46) Arguments from Scripture about the dignity or personhood of a fetus, while true, are not much better. Another statistic from that fact sheet that shocked me was that over 60% of women obtaining abortions identify as Christians (37% Protestant, 28% Catholic). No doubt many of these would agree, at least in theory, with pro-life rhetoric about the "sanctity of life" and the personhood of the unborn. Yet they still seek abortions, probably for the kinds of reasons described above, in spite of those beliefs. (The failure of their churches to offer them much-needed support in carrying their children to term is, to say the least, sobering)

This context also means that the kind of restrictions conservatives seek to place on abortion are not likely to be as effective as they hope, and will also ring insensitive at best, anti-woman at worst. A woman who wants to have an abortion probably feels that the alternative of not having one will be even worse, and so she may go to great (even illegal and dangerous) lengths to avoid that alternative. In all likelihood, she feels she has no other choice—can you imagine why trying to take away the one choice she feels she has left might seem callous and backward? In my other post on abortion, a doctor writes of his experience before Roe vs. Wade treating a women who had had a then-illegal abortion: "Her desperate need to terminate a pregnancy was the driving force behind the selection of any method available." We can expect such cases to become increasingly, tragically common if we take away womens' access to legal abortions without concerning ourselves with the context.

The very dichotomy between "pro-life" and "pro-choice" ideologies is also emblematic of a failure to listen, on the part of both self-identified camps. When did valuing life and respecting peoples' freedom to make their own healthcare decisions become necessarily conflicting goals? Who decided that you have to choose between them? Unfortunately, I think a good deal of the blame falls on the pro-life movement. While the legal measures it pursues against abortion and its providers do protect unborn life (at least in intention), they tend to do so by...constraining choice. Restricting when, where, and how abortions can be obtained, forcing doctors to attempt to dissuade women seeking abortions, or trying to defund organizations that provide them all have the effect of undermining and reducing a woman' choice of the medical treatment she desires and feels (however wrongly) that she needs. The pro-choice agenda is not so much an intentional campaign against life as it is a fight for womens' welfare and their ability to make their own medical choices—as just about any pro-choice supporter will tell you, if you listen. These things are not bad in themselves; why do we act as though we are opposed to them?

This article asks much the same questions. The author remarks on how "it has become a bad thing to be against ending preborn human life." Trying to stop abortions with legal force, as pro-lifers do, is "like trying to put out a fire with gasoline". It has led to defending unborn life becoming correlated with being against womens' health and their right to make medical choices for themselves, and with undermining their welfare. For example, opposition to an Ohio bill that would ban abortions when the sole reason is that the fetus has Down Syndrome is based on the impression that lawmakers are "controlling women and denying them the ability to make the most important choice that they will ever face". It's not unlike the fear among supporters of gun rights that any restriction on gun ownership is a prelude to the government coming and taking all their guns away—except that in this case, the total prohibition of abortion is the explicit goal of most pro-lifers, not just a feverish projection of one's own fears. The author writes about the pro-life legal struggle:

As long as the battle for preborn life takes place in capital buildings and courtrooms, pro-choice advocates will continue to believe that pro-life advocates are backwards and anti-women, that Planned Parenthood fights for the rights of women; and as the quote at the top of the piece argues, that rallies such as the one in St. Paul are held to prevent basic health care.

My friend Joe adds that the legal battle here is not just over the recognition of the personhood of a fetus or the moral status of abortion: pro-life supporters are also seen (rightly?) as promoting sex education that does not help prevent unplanned pregnancy, spreading misinformation about abortion and women's health, doing little to support (or even opposing) health care that promotes the welfare of women considering if they can support a child, and showing comparatively scarce concern for the welfare of children that have already been born. It bears repeating that not everyone who identifies as pro-life is involved in all or any of these things, but rare indeed is the voice of loyal dissent raised within the pro-life movement against them. Pro-choice supporters show a strong awareness of the deeper problems of which abortion is a symptom, problems that too often get ignored in pro-life rhetoric, and it is on this neglect that they base much of their own arguments. In a way, the pro-life cause is self-defeating precisely because the measures it takes to advance its agenda also strengthen its opposition.

I hope I have shown sufficiently how the effort to protect the unborn can benefit from talking to those it disagrees with rather than past them. This means not ignoring them or giving a dismissive response, but listening well enough to hear when they may be reminding us of what we have forgotten. It means addressing our rhetoric to what they are actually saying, not simply to ourselves. It means making their accusations our self-critique: do we, in our actions as well as in our words, care more about unborn life than life in other stages and forms? It should lead us beyond "pro-life" as a mere political cause to the more fundamental why: the recognition, preservation, and cherishing of the image of God and we whom God has granted to bear it. And the truth is, the most ardent pro-choice activist is just as much a bearer of the image of God as an unborn child, worthy of just as much of honor and compassion. If we confine our struggle for the sanctity of life merely to abortion, it becomes contradictory and self-defeating. Listening to the truths spoken by both sides offers hope for a stance toward abortion that combines the best (i.e. true) parts of both ideologies and none of their faults.

Once you stop believing that the two are opposites, it is possible to be both pro-life and pro-choice. If abortion is the result of women feeling like they have no choice, no other way of dealing with a pregnancy, then perhaps the best solution to the problem it poses is not to take away what little choice they have left, but to give them more freedom, more choices, better choices—alternatives to the taking of a life. Instead of condemning those who seek and provide abortions, highlight and celebrate the beauty of choosing life—and, inasmuch as you continue to work on a political level, offer the support needed to help more women make that choice. On a rhetorical level, zoom out from the impasse over abortion itself and turn to the distortions in our culture that give rise to both the justification and permissibility of abortion. As the article author puts it, "offer a hand, not handcuffs ... highlight the beauty of choosing life and offer support to help it come into the world." Not only will this undermine the basis for much of the ideological conflict over abortion and promote reconciliation; I think it will also truly undo the evil represented by abortion instead of just diverting it.

But this attitude of openness, of willingness to listen and seek reconciliation, is tragically rare in the pro-life movement, as far as I have seen. Far more common is the mindset of warfare: we must rally the troops and fight to defend the sanctity of life from all who would devalue and destroy it, from the horrific evil of abortion, no matter what it takes, even slander and bitter condemnation of the "other side". Instead of compassion and a helping hand, women seeking abortions are denounced as murderers and participants in a horrific national evil. The picketing and harassment of abortion providers is a highly visible example of this; according to the fact sheet, "Eighty-four percent of clinics experienced at least one form of antiabortion harassment in 2011. Picketing is the most common form of harassment clinics are exposed to (80%) followed by phone calls (47%). Fifty-three percent of clinics were picketed 20 times or more."

I don't think such an attitude of judgment and condemnation is fitting for fellow sinners such as us—especially not if there is anything to my previous two points and this condemnation is accompanied by corporate sin that is visible to no one more than the very people we condemn. Should immorality among those making a Christian profession of faith (claiming to be a member of "a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people" [1 Peter 2:9]) not concern us more than that of the world, where it is to be expected? Are we not first to judge among ourselves, and leave it to God to judge the world? As St. Paul writes: "For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? But those who are outside God judges. Therefore 'put away from yourselves the evil person.'" (1 Cor 5:12-13) Going deeper into the sermon on the mount, the final implication of enemy love I want to discuss is this: love your enemies enough to see your own sin as worse than theirs.

This is one of the teachings of the Orthodox Church that I have found especially humbling, though it is by no means unique to it. It is obedience to the Lord's later teaching in Matthew 7:1-5: "Judge not, that you be not judged. ... And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? ... Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." It is to adopt as our own the sober self-understanding expressed by St. Paul when he writes, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am first" (1 Timothy 1:15), as Orthodox pray before receiving communion. It is to feel the weight of our own guilt upon ourselves as heavier than a mountain, and cry out in repentance and prayer for the pardon and remission of our sins; meanwhile, we view the sins of others charitably, as lighter than a feather, pointing them out not simply to condemn but in loving admonishment, to speed them along the path of salvation. Loading others up with guilt over their own sins without giving priority to your own is the opposite of Christlike—it is pharisaic.

This focus on the seriousness of one's own sin and the importance of pursuing one's own salvation, the discouragement of dwelling on the sins of others, is amazingly pervasive in Orthodox theology and devotion. It is basic to the character of one being conformed to the image and likeness of Christ.  But there is also a rarer, more profound and radical dimension of the teaching: the idea that we are each responsible, in some way, for the sins of everyone. Obviously this does not imply a confusion of persons or a contradiction of the biblical idea that each one is responsible for his own sin; it is something you have to "put on", a different and counterintuitive perspective you have to shift into seeing, not something innate. We don't just see ourselves as involved in the same kinds of sins as others; we actually see ourselves as somehow responsible for the sins of others—and repent for all! As the book I am currently reading for my catechism class puts it, "a saint is one who sees himself in the sins of others."

This idea is presented memorably by the saintly Elder Zossima in Dostoevsky's classical novel The Brothers Karamazov. Fr. Stephen Freeman shares this quote from the book:

“Love one another, fathers,” the elder taught (as far as Alyosha could recall afterwards). “Love God’s people. For we are not holier than those in the world because we have come here and shut ourselves within these walls, but, on the contrary, anyone who comes here, by the very fact that he has come, already knows himself to be worse than all those who are in the world, worse than all on earth … And the longer a monk lives within his walls, the more keenly he must be aware of it. For otherwise he had no reason to come here.

“But when he knows that he is not only worse than all those in the world, but is also guilty before all people, on behalf of all and for all, for all human sins, the world’s and each person’s, only then will the goal of our unity be achieved. For you must know, my dear ones, that each of us is undoubtedly guilty on behalf of all and for all on earth, not only because of the common guilt of the world, but personally, each one of us, for all people and for each person on this earth.

“This knowledge is the crown of the monk’s path, and of every man’s path on earth. For monks are not a different sort of men, but only such as all men on earth ought also to be. Only then will our hearts be moved to a love that is infinite, universal, and that knows no satiety. Then each of us will be able to gain the whole world by love and wash away the world’s sins with his tears …

“Let each of you keep close company with his heart, let each of you confess to himself untiringly. Do not be afraid of your sin, even when you perceive it, provided you are repentant, but do not place conditions on God.

“Again I say, do not be proud. Do not be proud before the lowly, do not be proud before the great either. And do not hate those who reject you, disgrace you, revile you, and slander you. Do not hate atheists, teachers of evil, materialists, not even those among them who are wicked, nor those who are good, for many of them are good, especially in our time.

“Remember them thus in your prayers: ‘Save, Lord, those whom there is no one to pray for, save also those who do not want to pray to you.’ And add at once: ‘It is not in my pride that I pray for it, Lord, for I myself am more vile than all …’

Later, on his deathbed Zossima similarly teaches:

“Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of any one. For no one can judge a criminal, until he recognizes that he is just such a criminal as the man standing before him, and that he perhaps more than all men to blame for that crime. When he understands that, he will be able to be a judge. Though that sounds absurd, it is true. If I had been righteous myself, perhaps there would have been no criminal standing before me. If you can take upon yourself the crime of the criminal your heart is judging, take it at once, suffer for him yourself, and let him go without reproach. And even if the law itself makes you his judge, act in the same spirit as far as possible, for he will go away and condemn himself more bitterly than you have done. If, after your kiss, he goes away untouched, mocking at you, do not let that be a stumbling-block to you. It shows his time has no yet come, but it will come in due course. And if it come not, no matter; if not he, then another in his place will understand and suffer, and judge and condemn himself, and the truth will be fulfilled. Believe that, believe it without doubt; for in that lies the hope and faith of the saints.

“If the evil doing of men moves you to indignation and overwhelming distress, even to a desire for vengeance on the evil-doers, shun above all things that feeling. Go at once and seek suffering for yourself, as if you were guilty of that wrong. Accept that suffering and bear it and your heart will find comfort, and you will understand that you too are guilty, for you might have been a light to the evil-doers, even as the one man sinless, and you were not a light to them. If you had been a light, you would have lightened the path for others too, and the evil-doer might perhaps have been saved by your light from his sin. (6.3.h)

Through his memorable depiction of Zossima, Dostoevsky shows the kind of humility, repentance, and love we are called to in Christ—a love that, like our Lord's, bears the guilt of the sins of others. At first I struggled to apply this attitude to the sin of abortion. How am I responsible for it? Not in any immediately obvious way; I don't know anyone who had one (that I know of), and I have never been supportive of it. But I have definitely not done much (if anything) to help address the problems I discussed earlier as the "context" of abortion. In that sense, I am a hypocrite. On further reflection, I realized that despite my words, in how I actually live I worship the same idol of self-governance as do those who convince themselves that there can be such a thing as a "right" to abortion. Most days I pray more as a quick distraction than a vocation, and the great majority of my time is divided up according to whatever I "feel like" doing: a subtle form of hedonism. So in some sense I am able to see myself as responsible for the sin that underlies abortion. The evil that it represents is not just something "out there" to war against; it is alive and at work in my own heart, and I am told to condemn it first of all. When I judge this evil, I judge myself first, and if I seek to heal it, I must be continually repenting of my participation in it.

I am the first among sinners. Paradoxically, so are you. Only when we truly believe this are we ready to pass judgment on the sins of others.

Position Paper: Christology, Soteriology, and Pneumatology

The following is the fourth position paper for my systematic theology class, on Christology, soteriology (study of salvation), and pneumatology (study of the Holy Spirit). The paper format (a series of affirmations and denials) was dictated by the assignment requirements, but I found it very helpful for expressing my views on all three subjects concisely.

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I affirm that Jesus is the Word of God (Jhn 1:1,14), the Truth of God and the Way to God (Jhn 14:6, 17:17), the eternal Logos of God, who was incarnated on earth for our salvation. "Christ doesn't just speak the truth, he is the truth."[1] The fact that Truth is a person has far-reaching implications. The content of the Word of God, then, is not simply truth about God, but God himself, in the flesh. (Hence both Jesus and the Bible are considered fully divine as well as fully human[2]) Knowing the Truth, that is, knowing God through the incarnate revelation of Christ (Col 1:15-20, Heb 1:1-3), inseparably involves both knowing truth and living truth.[3] As John Chrysostom said, "Virtue is really true, vice is falsehood."[4] Theology, to the extent that it prioritizes knowing things about God over living them, falls short of the Truth.

The personal nature of truth means that those who don't know Jesus consciously and personally still know him partially because of their partial knowledge of what is true and right. "Everything that is true, whether or not it is said by a Christian, is true because of Christ; anything that is approaching truth is approaching Christ. And everyone who is doing the truth is making some kind of approach to Christ, whether or not they name him as Christ."[5] As Justin Martyr wrote, Christ's role as the universal Logos (reason or wisdom) of God means that all people and faiths have at least an "implanted seed of the Logos" in them.[6] This does not mean that everyone has a salvific knowledge of Christ, but it does make dialogue and common ground with nonbelievers of all kinds possible.

I affirm that Jesus is fully God (Mat 25:31-33, 26:64; Mar 14:62; Jhn 8:58, 19:7, 20:28; Phil 2:6; Col 1:15) and fully human (Luk 2:51-52; Jhn 1:14; Gal 4:4; Phil 2:7-8). We do not come to this truth by trying to combine our pre-understandings of divinity and humanity into one person, but by glimpsing in his person both what divinity and humanity truly are.[7] "Rather than measure Christ's divinity by the norm of our humanity ... we can only grasp the mystery of the preexistent Logos, and understand the meaning of that incarnation for our salvation, insofar as we measure our humanity by the norm of his divinity."[8] Christ is the clearest revelation of God to us (Jhn 1:18, 14:6-11; Heb 1:1-3) and shows us true humanity as it is meant to be, free from the corruption of sin and death, as we who are in Christ will be. (1 Cor 15) The more like Christ we become, the more we are living as fully human, and vice versa.

I affirm the Nicene Creed and Chalcedonian Definition as orthodox descriptions of the mystery of the Incarnation of Christ, that he is both fully God and fully human. The Creed truly depicts Christ's nature as "true God" and relationship with the Father as the only-begotten Son, "of one substance with the Father", and the reality that for our sake he took on flesh, suffered, died, rose again, and ascended into heaven. The Chalcedonian Definition teaches how true humanity and true divinity can coexist in one person with two natures "without confusion, without change, without division, and without separation", that Christ is "of one substance with the Father in relation to his divinity and ... of one substance with us in relation to his humanity."

I affirmthat through his death and resurrection, Jesus destroyed the power of sin and death by dying (Jhn 11:25-26; Rom 8:34-39; 1 Cor 15:20-26,51-57; Col 2:9-15, 3:3; Heb 2:9,14-15), ransomed us from the power of the devil (Mat 20:28; Mar 10;45; 1 Cor 6:20, 7:23), and demonstrated to us what true love is (Jhn 15:13, 1 Jhn 3:16). These correspond to the Christus victor, ransom, and moral influence theories of atonement. In keeping with his role as the Truth of God, Jesus also saves us by bringing us to knowledge of God, which is eternal life (Jhn 17:3). The truth makes us free (Jhn 8:32), and God wants everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of him. (1 Tim 2:4) "For it is the God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ." (2 Cor 4:6 RSV)

Regarding ransom theology a little more must be said. Christ's ransom to sin, death, and the devil was not legal in nature, as if these powers had somehow obtained a legal right to us that God must honor. This language is metaphorical; for example we are "sold under sin" (Rom 7:14) not in an actual legal transaction that Christ has to reverse, but in that we are "under sin's power", “owned” by sin, as if we were sold to it in a real transaction. Our salvation from sin does not consist in Christ literally but rather metaphorically buying us back from sin by destroying its power over us and freeing us to live in him. Similarly, Basil the Great wrote that Christ "gave himself as a ransom to death" in his Eucharistic prayer.[9] Again, it strains belief (and the imagination) to see how death could have legal rights over us and demand a literal ransom. Ransom theology does not describe a literal transaction between Christ and sin/death/the devil, but is one of the many ways the church has described his victory over these things for our sake.

I affirm that Christ's death is intended and sufficient for the salvation of all humanity, but is only effectual for those who believe in him. Abundant evidence for the former is found in Jhn 1:29, 3:16-17; 2 Cor 5:14-15; 1 Tim 2:6; Heb 2:9; 1 Jhn 2:1-2, 4:14, and it can also be inferred from God's universal love for and desire to save all people (Eze 33:11; 1 Tim 2:4; 2 Pet 3:9). The latter is seen in numerous passages like Hab 2:3-4; Jhn 1:12-13, 3:16; Rom 5:1. I believe that in this formulation I express the same meaning that Paul did when he said that Christ is "the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe." (1 Tim 4:10) Passages like Mat 1:21; Jhn 10:11,15,26-27; Acts 20:28; Rom 8:32; Eph 5:25 that appear to limit the scope of Christ's atonement are merely speaking of those for whom it is effective and actualized, and are not intended to limit the extent of the atonement to a special subgroup of humanity.

I deny that the historical reality of the person of Jesus Christ is in any way unknowable or dispensable, as modern theologians like Barth and Bultmann have claimed. It has been the witness of the church from the beginning that the "historical Jesus" is real, knowable, and important. The apostle John takes pains to establish this against Gnostics. (1 Jhn 1:1-4) To dismiss these references to the God-man who entered history, took on a tangible body, and lived among us for 33 years as secondary to the kerygma (preaching and theologizing) of the church about Jesus is to subvert that very kerygma (which has always affirmed the historical importance of the "Christ event") in the name of modern, often existential philosophies.

I deny that Jesus' atonement somehow served as a ransom/payment to the Father, or that it was necessary to "satisfy" his justice. I will expand on this in the section on salvation below.

I deny that Christ "atoned" for our diseases and sufferings, as Mat 8:16-17 and Isa 53:4 are sometimes interpreted to mean. It is true that Jesus' atonement is intended to do away with sickness and suffering; like every other part of our human condition, Jesus bore these things, as the prophet says, to redeem them. The substitutionary nature of the atonement means that Jesus bore the weight of sin and death as our representative (so that we might share in his life and redemption as he shared in our sorrows), not our surrogate (so that we no longer have to go through what he went through). Like the father of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), God is eager and ready to forgive our sins, but never does he promise to make us sinless the moment we are saved; neither does he promise to heal us of every affliction on request, as Paul learned (2 Cor 12:1-10). These things are part of the labor pains of the creation (Rom 8:22-25); we await deliverance from them with faith and patience.

I affirm that salvation is the saving knowledge of God in and through the person of Christ (2 Cor 4:6), reconciliation with God (Rom 5:1, Col 1:21-23), forgiveness of sins (Mat 26:28, Act 10:43, Col 1:14), and freedom from "the law of sin and death" (Rom 8:2) that the devil wields against mankind. (Heb 2:14-15) Most fundamentally, though, salvation is life: true, eternal life in Christ (Jhn 5:24, 10:10, 17:3; Rom 8:9-11). By participating in Jesus' death, we also participate in the eternal life he has in himself. (Jhn 5:26, 2 Cor 4:8-12, Gal 2:20) This will be realized at the resurrection of the dead. (1 Cor 15:51-57) The point of salvation is not what we are saved from but what we are saved to. We are freed from sin and death not merely because they are bad in themselves but because they are separation from the author of life. "Salvation cannot be understood only in the narrow terms of liberation from self, from evil powers, and from death. 'Salvation' in the fullest sense leads to the acquisition of life through grace."[10]

I affirm that nothing can imperil our salvation or pull us away from God (Jhn 10:27-30; Rom 8:31-39, 14:4; 1 Cor 10:13; 2 Tim 1:12; 1 Pet 1:3-5), but that we can remove ourselves from our saving union with Christ by apostasy. This is shown by warnings against doing so (Mat 24:3-14; 1 Cor 8:27, 10:12; Heb 2:1), mentions of the conditionality of our perseverance in faith (Col 1:21-23; Heb 3:14, 6:11-12), and teachings about apostasy (Heb 6:4-6, 10:27-27), as well as countless examples of apostasy both in the Bible and in contemporary Christianity. Just as God respects the freedom he created us with by not compelling anyone to believe in him, so he also does not prevent us from rejecting him. It is misleading to speak of "losing" your salvation the way you might lose your car keys; salvation is not something we merely possess but something we actively partake in. Genuine salvation is not “lost”, but ceased or renounced.

This is not cause for worry, however. It is important to distinguish between "losing" one's salvation and losing one's consciousness (subjective awareness) of it. "Dark nights of the soul" are not unknown to any of the great figures in the Bible, even Jesus (Mat 26:38). These experiences, when we fear and struggle to maintain faith (trust) in God the most, are exactly the situations which the biblical assurances of our perseverance are meant to address: no external circumstances can separate us from God's love. But if we are living as God's redeemed children, fear that we will actually reject his salvation is not only baseless; it is impossible, excluded by our faith in and love for him. I believe this is actually more comforting than the alternative, the Calvinist teaching of perseverance. For if all those who claim to have been Christian and fallen away were never really Christians at all, no matter how sure they were of their salvation, what confidence can we have that we are? How are we any better? So the teaching of perseverance merely substitutes uncertainty about the reality of our salvation for uncertainty about its continuation. I consider the latter easier to deal with and more in line with the biblical teaching.

I deny that God's justice had to be "satisfied" by Christ's death, that our salvation is literally forensic, or that we are literally saved from God's wrath. This doctrine, the "satisfaction theory" of atonement, was formulated by the late-eleventh-century bishop Anselm of Canterbury and is based on an inverted understanding of God's justice (based on the judicial system which Anselm knew) that is inward-directed and demanding rather than outward-directed and generous like his other moral attributes. This is in contrast to the abundance of biblical evidence depicting God's justice as something we positively desire from him, no different than his love, wisdom, righteousness, etc. (Isa 59:15, Hos 2:19, Mat 12:18) God's justice means that he "waits to be gracious to you", not that he is obligated to avenge all offenses against his honor. (Isa 30:18) In effect, the God who has no need of anything is said to "need" satisfaction for his justice, or else the moral economy of the universe will be disrupted! But God's justice is most basically his righteousness and love distributed, not a need that must be satisfied. Construing it as such makes God incapable of truly forgiving sin, as he has commanded us to do in his example (Mat 6:12, 14-15; Eph 4:32; Col 3:13); he can only accept satisfaction for wrongs committed against him.

In effect, satisfaction theology trades the patristic understanding of sin, death, and/or the devil as the one from whom we are saved, to whom the ransom is paid, with the God of "justice". In addition to its implications for God's character and verses depicting God's justice as the means of our salvation (Isa 1:27, 51:4-5; Hos 2:19; Mat 12:18) rather than the reason we need salvation, this switch lacks historical consciousness. Such an understanding of salvation is absent from the writings of the early church. Gregory of Nazianzus, preaching some seven hundred years before Anselm, denied satisfaction theology surprisingly specifically:

But if [the ransom is paid] to the Father, I ask first, how? For it was not by Him that we were being oppressed; and next, On what principle did the Blood of His Only begotten Son delight the Father, Who would not receive even Isaac, when he was being offered by his Father, but changed the sacrifice, putting a ram in the place of the human victim? Is it not evident that the Father accepts Him, but neither asked for Him nor demanded Him; but on account of the Incarnation, and because Humanity must be sanctified by the Humanity of God, that He might deliver us Himself, and overcome the tyrant, and draw us to Himself by the mediation of His Son, Who also arranged this to the honour of the Father, Whom it is manifest that He obeys in all things?[11]

My use of the word "literally" in the denial is important. The biblical testimony about Christ's death as paying a debt or legally justifying us or about our salvation from God's wrath (e.g. Rom 1:18, 2:5, 3:21-26, 4:15) is not simply there to mislead us. These things are metaphorical descriptions of our salvation, not literal definitions. Athanasius wrote that Christ's death paid a "debt"—but to death, not sin.[12] Obviously this is not a legal debt, but an analogical description of Christ's death as doing all that is necessary, "paying the price in full", so to speak, to purchase us from death's clutches. Similarly, we are saved from God's wrath because we are saved from our sins, which bring God's wrath upon us. This wrath is not the demand for satisfaction or punishment for failing to give it, but the destruction and corruption that result from cutting ourselves off from our Creator. Of course God wishes all men to be saved, not to facilitate our destruction in the name of "justice". (1 Tim 2:4)

I deny that our salvation is most basically from sin. This idea has historically been held as a corollary of the satisfaction theory of atonement and its belief that Christ's death primarily served to deal with the guilt of sin. Rather, I believe the forces of sin, death, and the evil coexist as a sort of "unholy Trinity", and that we are equally saved from the power of all three.[13] The wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23), but the sting of death is sin (1 Cor 15:56). Sin separates us from the author of life in whom all things hold together (Col 1:17) so that we disintegrate into nothing, but death enslaves us to sin and the devil (Heb 2:14-15), whose temptation is revealed to be at the root of the first sin and our mortality. (Gen 3) Our most basic predicament, then, is not sin, but simply man's alienation from God and our ensuing corruptibility, which is the common factor in our subjection to these things.[14] But as we are saved now from the domain of sin, death, and the devil as Christ reconciles us with God, so we will be saved even from our mortality at the resurrection. (1 Cor 15:51-55)

I deny that God individually predestines some individuals and not others for salvation. Again, in light of God's desire to save everyone and that no one would suffer death (Eze 33:11, 2 Pet 3:9), if God really did elect people in eternity past and infallibly perform everything necessary to render their salvation certain and there was no secret duplicity in his will, the result would be universalism, which unfortunately does not appear to be the case. (Mat 25:46, Jhn 5:28-29, Rom 9:22) Rather, faith in God is the necessary condition, and this faith necessarily involves (but is not solely) our free response to God's grace. Salvation is a complex combination of God's grace acting and our will (which, again, we have by God's grace) responding, and is not reducible either to Pelagian synergism or Augustinian predestination.[15] In this I hold what I consider to be the historic semi-Augustinian belief of the church. It is perfectly compatible which make God's "drawing" a necessary component of salvation, as in Jhn 6:44.

Language about God's election must be understood in its context. It is written that we are chosen by God as part of our salvation (Jhn 15:16, Eph 1:3-4). These passages are not speaking about individuals, but about God's redeemed people, the church. The "choice" here was not the secret election of certain individuals for salvation, but the choice to purchase the salvation of all through the blood of Jesus Christ, who "gave himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity and to purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds." (Tit 2:14) In Romans 9, the passage most often cited in support of predestination, the focus is again not on individual election of some individuals over others, but Paul's justification of the corporate election of the church over ethnic Israel, the problem he deals with through chapters 9-11. (9:1-5) In Christ we see that God's true people is not a specific nation, but the children of the promise (v. 8), to whom we belong by faith. This is the particular thrust of Paul's discussion on election, at least here. Basically, I understand biblical affirmations that we are "chosen" by God as referring to the church, with no implication of rejection for those outside it except their own rejection of God.

I affirm the full divinity (Mat 28:19; Luk 1:35; Rom 15:19; 1 Cor 3:16-17, 6:19-20; 2 Cor 13:14) and personality (Jhn 14:16,26, 16:14; Rom 8:26; 1 Cor 12:11; Gal 4:6; Eph 4:30) of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not an impersonal force, energy field, power, bond between the personal members of the Trinity, or any other such thing. He is the third member of the Trinity, functionally subordinate to the Father and the Son, but fully God and ontologically equal to them.

I affirm the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is indispensable for our salvation, being responsible for our regeneration (Jhn 3:3-8); conversion is baptism in the Holy Spirit (Luk 3:16). The Spirit is also instrumental in our continuing salvation. He empowers us to perform even greater works than Christ (Jhn 14:12, 16:7) and sanctifies us (Rom 8:9-17, Gal 5:25). The Spirit also helps us to bear the fruit of our salvation (Gal 5:22-23) and gives gifts to the church (Rom 12:6-8, 1 Cor 12:4-11, Eph 4:11, 1 Pet 4:11) as he wills (1 Cor 12:11) to build up the church (12:7, 14:12). He inspired the Scriptures (2 Tim 3:16-17), and he is the one who guides us (as the church, not enlightened individuals) into the all truth as we read and interpret them to grow in salvific knowledge of God in Christ. (Jhn 16:13)

I affirm the testimony of the Nicene Creed to the Holy Spirit, that he is Lord and giver of life, that he should be worshipped and glorified along with the Father and Son, and that he spoke by the prophets (as well as the apostles). I affirm the original text of the Nicene Creed when it states only that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, as does Jhn 15:26. The addition to the Creed saying that he proceeds from the Son as well as from the Father, the filioque, originated in Spain as early as the fourth century and slowly made its way into the western Christian consciousness until Pope Benedict VII formally approved the amended creed for the Roman rite.[16] All who reject the doctrine of papal supremacy should agree that the form of the Creed arrived at by the ecumenical council of Constantinople cannot be changed except by another ecumenical council, which it has not been. Regardless of the theological issues behind the single or double procession of the Spirit (which are easy to oversimplify), I affirm the historic belief of the church that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone (or from the Father through the Son).

I deny that certain spiritual gifts are normative for all Christians, or that a second "baptism of the Holy Spirit" is necessary following conversion to receive any such gifts. Paul specifically (albeit rhetorically) challenges the expectation that any gift of the Spirit is universal in 1 Cor 12:29-30. Earlier he also teaches that the Spirit "apportions [gifts] to each one individually as he wills" (v. 11). Though we are to seek after the greater gifts (v. 31), we should not make any gift, "supernatural" or otherwise, mandatory for all believers. We do better to expect the fruits of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23), which we have every reason to expect to see manifested in every believer. As well, Paul considers entry into the Church to be the true "baptism by the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor 12:12-13). The experience of the first Christians in Acts 2, in which the Spirit descends on them accompanied by glossolalia, is not how we should always expect receiving the Holy Spirit to look. Its timing following their conversion by weeks or months reflects the unique and promised bestowal of the Spirit on the church by Christ (Jhn 14:25-26); thereafter, baptism in the Holy Spirit was and is simply Christian baptism.

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1. Peter C. Bouteneff, Sweeter than Honey: Orthodox Thinking on Dogma and Truth (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2006), 25.
2. John Breck, Scripture in Tradition: The Bible and its Interpretation in the Orthodox Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press), 39.
3. Bouteneff, Sweeter than Honey, 22.
4. John Chrysostom, “Homily XIV. Philippians iv. 4-7,” The Complete Works of Saint John Chrysostom, Kindle Edition.
5. Bouteneff, Sweeter than Honey, 27.
6. Justin Martyr, “Justin Martyr on Philosophy and Theology,” in The Christian Theology Reader (ed. Alistair E. McGrath; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 1.1.
7. Millard Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 671.
8. Breck, Scripture in Tradition, 189–190.
9. Basil the Great, “The Divine Liturgy of Saint Basil the Great,” Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, (5 November 2014).
10. Breck, Scripture in Tradition, 190.
11. Gregory of Nazianzus, “The Second Oration on Easter,” New Advent, (5 November 2014), XXII.
12. Athanasius, “On the Incarnation of the Word,” New Advent (5 November 2014), 9, 20.
13. Richard Beck, The Slavery of Death (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014), 17.
14. Beck, The Slavery of Death, 14.
15. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978), 324.
16. Breck, Scripture in Tradition, 171–172.

Exonerating Pelagius

So, how about that post title? It made you really want to click and find out what in the world I'm talking about, right? I digress...

In terms of popularity among evangelical Christians, the fifth-century heretic Pelagius ranks somewhere between Judas Iscariot and Satan. His eponymous teaching is considered the heresy of all heresies, the false teaching from which all others spring. Somewhat like proving NP-completeness, a teaching can be proven to be heretical if it can be shown to imply or equate to Pelagianism. What is this dastardly, false, and dangerous teaching? The gospel of works-based righteousness, it is said. The lie that man can be good without God. That our righteousness is up to our free will and moral effort rather than the grace of God. That we can earn our salvation. That man is innately good rather than sinful. It is the very antithesis of the Gospel, such that the Gospel can sometimes be defined more negatively than positively, as the opposite of works righteousness.

But like my erroneous 32,000 Protestant denominations figure, virtually all of this is hearsay. After studying total depravity in my systematic theology class, I have to wonder, how historically grounded is this picture of Pelagius and Pelagianism? I'd like to try to dispense with the following myths about Pelagius:

• Pelagius' goal was to deceive people and pervert the gospel. Actually, his concern was much more pastoral. He was not very given to lofty theologizing; his concern was to help people live righteous, Godward lives. He saw the church's increasingly prevalent theology of original sin and human inability as an unnecessary hindrance, reasoning that God only commands us do do something (even "be perfect", Mat 5:48) if we are able to do it. He viewed Augustine's doctrines of original sin and predestination as a perversion of God's justice and a resurgence of the fatalistic pagan teachings the church struggled against in the second century, and defended what he considered to be the traditional teaching of the church on human responsibility. Adam's sin only affected Adam himself, and every human after him has the same freedom Adam did to choose to obey or disobey.
• Pelagius denied God's grace/taught that we can be good without God. Actually, Pelagius' theology was just as full of grace as Augustine's, albeit in a different way. To Pelagius, God's creation of man with free will and the ability to choose between good and evil was an act of grace. Man's exercise of that ability was not self-righteous moral effort, but grace on the part of his Creator. He also viewed God's revelation and moral instruction as dispensations of grace. Where he differed sharply from Augustine was that he saw grace as something largely passive or external, whereas Augustine saw grace (the most important, salvific kind) as active and internal.
• Pelagius promoted a theology of "works". He was not given to discoursing about "works" and their value at all. Rather, Pelagius stood up for what he saw as the church's teaching of human free will and responsibility over against fatalism.
• Pelagius taught that we earn our salvation. In the fifth century there was little sense of salvation as a legal transaction based on merit. Salvation was viewed as rich and multifaceted: the forgiveness of sins, regeneration of damaged human nature, deliverance from death and the devil, bestowal of the Holy Spirit, and Godward growth in holiness, righteousness, and Christ-resemblance. It was not given in an instant but received over a lifetime, primarily through the administration of God's grace via the sacraments. Pelagius affirmed that we actively participate in our salvation by choosing God and righteousness over sin and evil, but in no way taught that we simply "earn" salvation the way a worker earns his wages.
• Pelagius was condemned for these things. Actually, Pelagius' initial condemnation came from the Synod of Carthage in 418 over the allegation that his theology (especially his denial of the nascent doctrine of original sin) made infant baptism, a firmly established practice of the church and commanded in the Nicene Creed, unnecessary "for the remission of sins". This was reiterated at the Council of Ephesus in 433, along with mention of his denial of internally working grace.
• The church sided with Augustine over Pelagius. This is mostly, but not entirely, true. Though Augustine's theology has been enormously influential in the west, his contemporary church, especially in the Christian east, was not willing to follow all of his conclusions. They actually agreed with Pelagius' criticism of predestination as fatalistic, and that it implied that God did not actually wish all men to be saved, as 1 Tim 2:4 says. Neither did they deny that God's grace could work externally, or that man's free will is part of God's grace. Rather, both kinds of grace are active in the salvation of man. This is basically the theology of the Orthodox Church to this day. The term "Semi-Pelagianism" was only applied to this position in the sixteenth century and does not do justice to the fact that it has been the consensus of the church throughout the majority of its history.

Pelagianism is a heresy, but it is not the arch-heresy that it gets made out to be. It is certainly not the anti-gospel. There is plenty to criticize Pelagius for that is actually true without perpetuating these myths. And Augustinian theology is not as rock-solid orthodox as it gets made out to be, historically speaking. Augustine remained in good standing with the church and was never condemned for his teachings on predestination, but later theologians who propounded them with less of his nuance and balance (like Gottschalk, Cyril Lukaris, and Cornelius Jansen) were. Augustine was one of the greatest theologians of the church in any age, but he was not infallible, and his theology does not define the rule of faith. I hope this historical context has been helpful.

Position Paper: Anthropology

The following is my third position paper for my systematic theology class, on anthropology (a theological perspective on humanity).

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In Christian theology, the knowledge of God is inseparable from the knowledge of ourselves. Calvin said of them, "as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other."¹ At least as much as the questions of theology proper, the questions about humanity are universal, human questions: Who are we? Why are we here? Where did we come from? What is wrong with the world?

First, the question of human identity. First, and basically, what does human nature consist of? Are we ordered collections of atoms? Do we have a body and some kind of incorporeal soul responsible for consciousness? Is matter an illusion altogether? Any attempt to separate human nature into more than two parts seems to be needlessly speculative and difficult to support biblically. Monism (the view that there is only one basic human substance) runs aground on passages that speak of an intermediate state in which the soul/spirit is separated from the body (Luke 16:19-31, 23:43, 2 Cor 5:8); Mat 10:28 also seems to make a strong distinction between body and soul. This leaves some kind of dichotomism (people have bodies and souls/spirits), but a simply dualistic approach that locates the "self" or consciousness exclusively in the soul does not do justice to the biblical idea of body-soul unity and the promise that our final state will be as new bodies, not disembodied souls (2 Cor 5:2-4, see also 1 Cor 15). Though it is by no means explicitly spelled out in the Scriptures, it seems best to conclude that the normal state of the human is a body-soul unity, with both together constituting the "self", but which can be broken upon death, though this disembodied state is by no means ideal or permanent.²

Humans were made in the image and likeness of God. (Gen 1:26-28) Are the "image" and "likeness" are synonymous or different. The early church generally believed they were different: the image of God is something innate and essential to humanity that remains untouched by the Fall, while the likeness is something humanity has to grow into through Godward growth in holiness and Christian maturity. Origen wrote "that man received the dignity of God's image at his first creation; but that the perfection of his likeness has been reserved for the consummation."³ Irenaeus identified the image with reason and free will, and the likeness with growth into Spirit-endowed righteousness.⁴ This distinction is still a frequent teaching of the Orthodox Church today: "The image, for those who distinguish the two terms, denotes man's potentiality for life in God, the likeness his realization of that potentiality."⁵

In contrast, Luther taught that the image and likeness are synonymous, with Gen 1:26 an instance of Hebrew parallelism⁶, as did Calvin.⁷ On this he based the belief common in Lutheran and Reformed theology that the whole image of God has been damaged in humanity by sin; only a relic remains, and the whole person (even the will, mind, etc.) is in need of regeneration. I tend to agree with the traditional view that the image and likeness are distinct, reflecting the fact that due to sin we are lacking in some areas of God-resemblance (those pertaining to morality and knowledge of God) but not others (the innate faculties we have in common with God that make relationship with him possible, as Irenaeus states). Put another way, our creation in the image of God means that humans, of all the earthly creatures, are not only capable of a personal relationship with God, they cannot escape this relationship, whether positive or negative. The image of God is also the biblical basis for human rights and dignity which are in no way affected by sin; we see it used as the justification for prohibiting the shedding of human blood (Gen 9:6) and cursing others (Jam 3:9). Because of the image of God, there is something innately valuable about a human person. But the likeness of God is something we must grow to realize, which means developing this relationship, strengthening it with love, and being transformed by grace into the likeness of Jesus Christ. (Rom 8:29, 2 Cor 3:18, Eph 4:15)

Next is the question of human purpose: why are we here? Reflecting the previous point, I think God's desire for humans is to grow into his likeness. Christians seek to be imitators of Christ. Paul speaks of this goal in Eph 4:11-16, saying that God builds up the body of Christ (the Church) "until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (v. 13 RSV). "Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ" (v. 15). Jesus was the perfect example of a true human being, and we were made to become like him. On a broader level, we see the purpose of humanity in the initial statement of their creation: after making humans, God tells them to "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." (Gen 1:28) In a Christian context, this means our imitation of God (in his moral nature) applies to our relation to the rest of creation as well as to each other. We become most fully human when we live in union with God and fulfill his purposes for us.

Regarding the third question, the Bible gives an account of human origins depicting our instantaneous creation by God, along with the rest of the world. Genesis 1 and 2 appear to contain two different creation accounts side-by-side,⁸ the first emphasizing God's majestic sovereignty that creates the cosmos in a peaceful, orderly fashion, the other emphasizing his personal nature and creation of humans in particular. People have been making much of these accounts since before Christ, but our appreciating them today is complicated by their apparent contradictions with the scientific account of our origins. I do not consider biblical concordism a suitable option for reconciling the two accounts as it imposes our modern expectations on an ancient text, which tends to lead to ad hoc interpretations that often produce more questions than they answer, questions which the biblical authors almost certainly didn’t concern themselves with. To further explain why, let's look at some historical approaches to interpreting Genesis.

The traditional interpretation of Genesis 1 does view it as speaking historical truth: how God really created the heavens and the earth. However, to note only this is misleading. Early interpreters did not view the literal sense of Scripture (not just the "literal" interpretation, but the intended meaning of the author) as the only way to read it, or even the most important. Because the Scriptures were inspired by the Spirit of God, they had multiple layers of meaning, including dimensions the human author did not intend.⁹ The church fathers focused on the allegorical or spiritual meaning of the paradise narrative, mostly using Adam’s historicity to prove the universality of Christ’s salvation of all the sons of Adam.¹⁰ In The Literal Meaning of Genesis, St. Augustine cautions against interpreting the Bible to contradict facts that are common knowledge among nonbelievers, for fear of casting doubt not only on themselves, but on the Scriptures as well.¹¹ In other words, if we consider ourselves defenders of "traditional Christian orthodoxy", we should not assume that a literal, historical interpretation is the only one possible, even for passages that appear to be historical. And we should be willing to rethink our interpretation of Scripture if it contradicts things that even unbelievers know to be simple fact. To adopt a nonliteral interpretation of Genesis 1 in response to scientific evidence is not to compromise on the integrity of God's word, but to accept our limitations as human interpreters.

It is often pointed out that Paul seems to believe in the historicity of Adam, and indeed claims that sin and death came from Adam's sin. (Rom 5:12-21; 1 Cor 15:21-22, 45-49) Doesn't this settle our interpretation of Genesis 2-3? Without a historical Adam, what did Christ die for? I will briefly respond with two points to consider. First, Paul was an ancient man, reading his Bible (Old Testament) with an ancient understanding of science and origins that was, in his time, entirely uncontroversial. Elsewhere in 1 Cor 15 he states (about the resurrection) that "What you sow does not come to life unless it dies." (v. 36) But today, we know that a seed that dies cannot germinate.¹² Paul’s being wrong about botany does not falsify the resurrection any more than his being wrong about the historicity of Adam does. Also, Paul is not making his understanding of Christ dependent on his understanding of Adam, but the other way around. What Christ reveals about Adam is not his place as the historical originator of sin and death, but as a type of Christ, his archetypal sin serving as a typological prelude to Jesus' universal redemption. In a very real sense, Christ reveals to us the nature of the very problem he solves.¹³

One other argument is the question: if man was not created instantaneously but by evolution, when and how did the human soul (or the image of God) originate? Did God at some point in evolutionary history implant it in a sufficiently developed primate? I think this question again arises from concordism, the quest to align biblical history with scientific history. But as a scientific theory, evolution is not bound to answer theological questions like this any more than the Bible is bound to answer our scientific questions. Is the origin of souls really an essential dogma of the faith? (Keep in mind that Genesis 2 never specifically mentions any ensoulment of Adam; it must be inferred by assuming that it tells us the etiology of souls) We should not expect spiritual realities like these to be accountable to our modern, scientific inquiries; "spiritual realities are not open to this kind of precise analysis".¹⁴ I don't see any problem with considering the origin of souls a divine mystery, real but wholly outside the explanations of science.

Regardless of how God created us, our biblical status as beings created by a personal God (in his image, no less) has great significance. We are simultaneously connected to God and to the rest of creation. Like the animals, we are limited, part of the creation and dependent on him for our existence (see Psa 104, Mat 6:25-34). But at the same time, because of our creation in the image of God, we have a unique relationship with him among all the earthly creatures. As our creation mandate directs, we are made to be God's stewards and emissaries here on earth, taking an active role in the exercise of his rulership of creation. In light of Adam's role in naming the animals (in the ancient Near East the name of something was effectively its identity¹⁵), we are even made to be God's "assistant creators", continuing his creative work in his Name towards the redemption of all things. And of all the creatures besides the angels, we alone are capable of knowing God and loving him personally. Scientific or no, the Bible gives a much better account of human origins than the dominant stories of our culture.

By studying the original ancient Near Eastern context and genre of Genesis 1-3, we can better understand the intent of the creation account beyond simply telling ancient history. The contrasts between Genesis 1 and contemporary creation myths (like Enuma Elish) are glaring. Unlike Marduk, "God is portrayed as truly mighty in that he is solely and fully responsible for forming the cosmos"; there is no struggle involved in his doing so, and the elements of creation are depersonalized rather than enemies that God has to subdue.¹⁶ Since Enuma Elish predates the Genesis account, these contrasts are surely intentional. Genesis 1, besides an account of Israelite origins, is a polemic for worship of the true God. John H. Walton offers another interpretation, that it may also be a description of God establishing the cosmos as his temple and taking up residence in it to rule all things.¹⁷ Genesis 2 has typological parallels with Israel's exile, and since it was completed from an earlier written/oral tradition after the Babylonian exile¹⁸, it likely reflects a humble Israel's desire to remember her past sins and seek to serve her Creator humbly. These are just a few examples of the significance of the creation account beyond the literal.

No biblical discussion of humanity would be complete without turning to what is known as "the human condition". Christians and non-Christians alike know that our existence is not perfect. We are reminded of it every time we look to the news, and sometimes with problems that hit closer to home. The faithless believe the apparent indifference of the universe is exactly what it looks like; the faithful agonize over the question, why does a loving, all-powerful God allow suffering, evil, and death? This is the "problem of evil", a fundamental question of human existence. Our understanding of mankind is inextricably connected to it.

In light of my ahistorical interpretation of Genesis 1-3, I don't attribute the existence of evil and death to an original human sin that somehow corrupted our nature; the presence of "natural evil" before the existence of humans makes this conclusion untenable. This view also has theological problems: I see no way that Adam could possibly have ruined human nature in a way that takes God thousands of years to mend. If, as some suppose, this corruption was instead an act of divine judgment,¹⁹ then by implication we need salvation not from sin and death but from God himself. Additionally, if basic human nature really is corrupted by sin, then Jesus, by being sinless, was less than fully human. I consider these implications untenable.

I instead hold something like the eastern formulation which, instead of making Adam's act of "original sin" the source of our total depravity that is condemned with death, holds that mortal is our basic problem, and that sin springs from it.²⁰ Sin is not something that Adam (much less God) somehow injected into basic human nature, but the result of slavery to the terror/power of death wielded by the devil.²¹ (See Hbr 2:14-15) As Paul wrote, "The sting of death is sin" (1 Cor 15:56). Yet at the same time our sin pulls us further from God, the giver of life, which accelerates the vicious cycle; "the wages of sin is death" (Rom 6:23) In Orthodox theology, sin, death, and the devil are all viewed together as a sort of unholy trinity, namely the one Jesus came to defeat.²² Human nature, created by God, remains essentially good, but is trapped by these forces and cannot escape corruption and destruction on its own. What we need is not legal pardon, but rescue and vivification; the arena of salvation is not a courtroom, but a hospital. This theology, with its focus on sin and death together as present realities which we understand and are delivered from through Christ, is much more amenable to a nonhistoric Adam.

Yet I, for one, can't simply ignore the question of the origin of death. If death was not only the condition into which the first humans were born but vital to the evolutionary mechanism that produced them, the question must be asked: did God create a world with death "built-in"? And if death is "the last enemy to be destroyed" (1 Cor 15:26), does this make God responsible for the very problem that Jesus solves? Only if we view salvation history as merely a timeline, a succession of events one after another. Some (particularly in eastern traditions) restructure even this timeline around the eternal reality of the Incarnation. One priest writes: "But does this mean that God created a world that has held death from the beginning? It would not be strange to say so, since Pascha [Easter] was before the beginning."²³ The second-century church father Irenaeus even views our faithful journey through the presently corrupted world as an intentional part of God's process of soul-making, bringing us to full maturity in the knowledge of him as well as freedom from sin and death. Accompanying this is a concept of “perfection” that is not simply freedom from taint, but fully realized completion. "God, for his part, could have offered perfection to humanity at the beginning, but humanity was not capable of receiving it, being no more than an infant."²⁴ Though unintuitive, I find this way of approaching the problem of evil compelling in that it does not clash with scientific discoveries but challenges us to take on God’s eternal perspective and put off the human one from which we pose our accusatory questions.

I believe that Christianity, more than simply being conversant with philosophers’ questions about humanity, holds the best answers to them. Who are we? God's beloved creatures, made in his image to shine in his likeness. (Phil 2:14-16) Why are we here? To be conformed to the image of God's Son (Rom 8:29) and, with the Son, to become participants in God's ongoing work of new creation/reconciliation of the world to himself (2 Cor 5:19). Where did we come from? The hand of God (Gen 1:26-28), working with the instruments of nature. What is wrong with the world? The oppression and corruption wrought by sin, death, and the devil (Rom 6:23, 1 Cor 15:56, Hbr 2:14-15), whose works have already been brought to nothing by the Lord Christ and in whose victory we participate by the shedding of his blood. (Col 2:9-15) Calvin was right: it is impossible to come to a full understanding of ourselves without also finding a full understanding of the gospel.

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1. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (trans. Henry Beveridge; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008), 1.1.1.
2. Millard Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 491–492.
3. Origen, De principiis, III.vi.1 (22 October 2014).
4. Erickson, Christian Theology, 462.
5. Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995), 66.
6. Erickson, Christian Theology, 462.
7. Calvin, Institutes, 1.15.3.
8. Denis O. Lamoreux, Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2008), 199.
9. Michael Graves, The Inspiration and Interpretation of Scripture: What the Early Church Can Teach Us (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 48–55.
10. Peter C. Bouteneff, Beginnings: Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation Narratives (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 173–180.
11. Augustine, “The Literal Meaning of Genesis”, quoted in Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (New York: Free Press, 2006), 83.
12. Lamoreux, Evolutionary Creation, 137.
13. Fr. Stephen Freeman, “Creation and Evolution,” Glory to God for All Things, 11 February 2014, (17 October 2014); see also Peter Enns, The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say About Human Origins (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2012), 131–135.
14. Lamoreux, Evolutionary Creation, 289.
15. Henri and H. A. Frankfort, “Introduction,” in The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man: An Essay on Speculative Thought in the Ancient Near East (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), 13.
16. Enns, The Evolution of Adam, 41.
17. This is the overall argument of John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL: 2006).
18. Enns, The Evolution of Adam, 23–26.
19. R.C. Sproul, “The Pelagian Controversy,” Ligonier Ministries, 1 August 2005, (22 October 2014).
20. John Chrysostom, “Homily on Romans 5:12” in The Works of Saint John Chrysostom (ed. Philip Schaff, George Barker Stevens; Kindle edition: 2011).
21. Richard Beck, The Slavery of Death (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014), 12–14.
22. Beck, The Slavery of Death, 17.
23. Freeman, “Creation and Evolution”.
24. Irenaus, “adversus haereses,” in The Christian Theology Reader, 343.