Episode 294: Roberto de La Noval – Universalism as a Doctrine

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Hey everybody, on today’s episode, we have the wonderful, the incomparable Aaron Higashi with us, nerd in residence and co-host, with me. 

Aaron: So happy to be here. 

Jared: Welcome back! So today we’re talking about Universalism with Roberto de la Naval, who actually taught our Bible for Normal People class called Universal Salvation is Not Modern, which I would recommend people listen to in addition as a companion to this episode.

Aaron: Rob is also an assistant professor of theology at Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland. He’s a systematic theologian and a scholar of Russian religious thought. His publications include a translation of Sergius Bolkakov’s Spiritual Diary. And he’s published other translations and essays in both academic and popular journals. Seems like a smart guy. 

Jared: Let’s get into it. 

Rob: “Universalism is the doctrine, the affirmation, that all persons will be reconciled and united to God in the eschaton. Here’s what Christian Universalism did not mean: It doesn’t matter how you lived, Nothing matters. You just die, you do whatever you want while you’re alive, and then it’s a get out of jail free card. That is not Christian universalism in the early church.”

Jared: Well, welcome. Roberto, to the podcast, I’m really excited for this conversation. Thanks for jumping on. 

Rob: Absolutely. I’m thrilled to be here. 

Aaron: Well, Rob, your work is primarily in systematic theology, and so I want to pick your brain about how that’s going to overlap with the Bible and biblical studies. Can you give us a definition, just a working definition of systematic theology? 

Rob: Yeah, and I’d like to start just by giving a definition of how I understand theology itself and then move into systematic theology. So I say that any theology, in terms of a product, is a construct, a product of human meaning.

And that means that it arises in a particular place, in a particular context, and no matter how transcendent, transcultural, trans-historical, the objects that it talks about might be, say, God and God’s self. Nonetheless, it will be a historically contextualized and situated product. And so, what is systematic theology?

Well, systematic theologies are historical, contextually located products that speak human meanings about God’s revelation to us, about basically God’s entrance into the story of human meaning. And so, what makes them different from other theologies? Well, systematic theologies are going to have this impulse to try to find the coherence of Christian faith, to articulate that meaning of what it means that God has come to us in history, in human meaning, in a coherent fashion.

So that has two poles. One is it’s going to ask, deeply and insistently, this question, what in the world do these doctrines that we believe mean? How can we make sense of them? Oftentimes, systematic theology is speaking to people who already believe the doctrines, right? I already believe that Christ is the Son of God, I already believe the Trinity, God is three in one, I already believe that God is the Creator.

What does that really mean, though? What exactly is it that I’m confessing? And so there’s gonna be a search for the intelligibility of the doctrines that we confess, but in that search for the intelligibility of these doctrines, we’re also gonna be asking, well, how can these doctrines make sense with other doctrines that we confess?

And so, if God is creator, how should I think about God being three persons? Do the three persons participate in the creative act differently, in the same way? And so you’re going to try to find a coherence there. And then, in the final, I guess I say maybe the third pole actually, you’re going to ask how do the meanings that I’m looking for in doctrines and what we confess make sense of other meanings in my culture and in my history and in my context?

And so when I say God is creator, what does that, how does that relate, let’s say, to the idea that maybe creation is something that has something to do with the Big Bang? So how does my confession of God as creator relate to that cultural doctrine or belief that the Big Bang is the origin of the universe, for example?

And so you kind of have this, this tripartite work going on in systematic theology. How do I understand what doctrines mean? How do doctrines relate to each other in a way that makes sense? And then finally, how does the Christian faith that I confess in all these doctrines and practices make sense of the other meanings in my culture?

And that will sometimes take the form of critique, and in other times it’ll take the form of being enriched by the meanings in my culture. 

Jared: Oh, okay. So, there was a lot there. But maybe it will help clarify as well if you can throw that other ingredient in terms of how, how does this interact with the Bible? Because I think for a lot of people, the idea of biblical studies and the Bible and theology get conflated or confused. So throw the Bible into the mix. And how does that relate? 

Rob: Absolutely. Yeah. So, I mean, the first thing I’d want to say is that for Christian confession, the number one locus of divine revelation is a person. It’s the person of Jesus Christ. And the reason why the scripture is meaningful to us as Christians, as a Christian community, is that we believe that it’s a witness to that person and to that life, to the triune God. And so, the Bible is absolutely going to be essential to any investigation of how the meanings that we confess as a particular Christian communities can be understood, can be made intelligible.

So, there’s no systematic theology that’s going to take place without attending to the Bible. And here’s a really simple way we might say, not just shifting from the Bible, but biblical studies itself. Any systematic theologian who exists in a worshiping, confessing community is reading a Bible. Well, that systematic theologian probably did not compile that Bible him or herself. That systematic theologian is using a Bible that has been put together and translated by biblical scholars. And so, at the very foundation of the systematic theological task, there is biblical studies.

Jared: I want to maybe restate what I heard you say, cause you used words that maybe some people aren’t familiar with. So when you say the locus of divine revelation, and that’s in the, in a person of, of Christ, and then the Bible, the Bible is a witness to Christ as divine revelation. Is that a fair way of saying that? 

Rob: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think sometimes we can conflate two senses of God’s word and think that maybe they’re kind of equa primordial or they’re the same, right?

They’re like on the same level. But that, that just can’t be true for the Christian, I don’t believe. Before you ever have the scripture,  I mean, why did people write these lives of Christ? Just taking the gospel. It’s because there was a divine meaning communicated in this person that was absolutely transformative of their entire lives, of their communities.

And so the Bible stands as a witness to us of that life. Now, of course, how the Old Testament relates to that life is a topic that many Christians have thought about for a long time, and it’s already there in the Gospels. You see the beginning of the work of showing how the Old Testament relates to this life.

But that’s what I mean, that the number one place you go for divine revelation, don’t think divine revelation is delivered first and foremost through a book. It’s delivered first and foremost through a life and the community that was built up around that life, and still exists today in all of our Christian communities.

Aaron: It seems to me if the goal of systematic theology has to do with coherence and with doctrines, then we have quite a ways to go from the Bible to that coherence and those doctrines. It doesn’t seem to me that the Bible itself just comes pre-made coherent and chock full of easy to read doctrines. So what kind of advice might you give to somebody who’s, who’s approaching the Bible that they want to move themselves closer to coherent doctrines? How can they do that on a, on a, on a day to day practical sort of level? 

Rob: That’s a great question. Yeah, because I mean, the Bible absolutely is not a work of systematic theology. That’s for sure. For several reasons. I mean, one of them is that the Bible is not one book in that sense, right? It’s not one coherent text written by one author or one set of authors who are trying to make some, kind of, intellectual expression of what they believe. There’s all kinds of genres in the Bible. All of, you know, Aaron, you could say much more about this than I could and Jared as well, right? As people who do biblical studies. But yeah, the Bible is not a work of systematic theology. So how does the Bible and systematic theology correlate together?

How would you do that in that task? Well, I guess one thing I’d want to say to the question is maybe question one presupposition of the question, which would be something like this, that there’s a kind of straight line to draw between the Bible and then the systematic theological product. And I want to say that actually, before you ever turn to the Bible, you already, probably if you’re reading it, exist in a community that has been reading the Bible and already has doctrines, already has meanings. And so, you’re not going to the Bible to find doctrines in terms of, like, let’s say, inventing them, right? You already live in a world, a Christian world, where there are doctrines. And so, you go back to the Bible in order to understand where did those doctrines come from, and in some cases, perhaps, to even ask the question, well, are these doctrines true to the Bible?

So that’s one thing that will, that I’ll say that one of the things that every Christian believer is doing, I think, when they read the scriptures is they’re reading with certain commitments, certain doctrinal commitments, and they’re reading, looking to see, let’s say, the data, uh, on which that hypothesis of the doctrine was formed.

And this can have some setbacks, right? This can, this can introduce some pitfalls, right? So let’s say I have the doctrine of the Trinity. And then I go to the scriptures and I’m reading and I’m looking for a confession that says, here are three persons, consubstantial, of one nature, right? Three hypostases. And I’m out of luck. There’s no such thing in the scriptures. And this can create a kind of crisis for people, right? 

And so systematic theology, one of its goals is to be able to give an account of how we move from scripture to doctrines, right? So it’s not just asking how do these doctrines make sense, it’s also asking how does it make sense that we did this as a church historically, that we moved from this data that doesn’t come in this conceptual tidy package, into like more digestible doctrines that we actually confess and we use? Because it’s through these doctrines that we evangelize, that we minister through all of these, all of these things that we do as the church. So that’s the first thing I’d say, that it’s not going to be straight from the Bible to a systematic theology.

I’d say the first thing to do is sort of locate yourself. What are the doctrines that have informed your Christian living, that inform your Christian community? And how are you using those as kind of glasses to go read the scriptures? And no, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. That’s just the hermeneutic circle. That’s just the interpretive circle. You begin somewhere. 

But as you go back, it’s totally worthwhile to ask, what is the data that my Christian community was using to come up with these doctrines? And don’t discount the community of the doctrines. You don’t find them in the scripture with the same language, but that doesn’t mean that there may not be instances where you say the doctrines that are informing my community aren’t really scripturally grounded. Uh, I mean, that happens for a lot of people, and I think that’s part of the systematic task too, to ask, well, if I’m looking for how these doctrines make sense, what if they don’t make sense with scripture? That’s part of the systematic task too. 

Jared: Yeah, I want to maybe ask one, one or two follow-ups. I know we could spend forever on this topic because I think, I think it’s really important for people to, in terms of that, that task, cause I think a lot of people grew up without a distance between what the Bible says and the theology that I hold, right?

So it’s the, that, that exercise of moving from the text to what I believe for some people is actually scary. Like they would just reject it and say, no, no, I don’t, I don’t have theology. I just believe what the Bible says. Right. So they would just reject the messiness that Aaron was talking about earlier.

But you know, at the Bible for normal people, hopefully if you listen for about nine or 10 seconds, you’re not going to be in that camp. How do you, how do you help, I guess, think through the, the, the, what are the mechanics of that? How do you do it? Cause I think, if you grew up in my tradition, it’s like we ignore that you do that.

And then once we do acknowledge that we do it, because we were told that that’s bad, we don’t have a healthy way of creating meaning. Theologically. Because there’s this guilt in the back of our head. That’s like, well, no, if it’s not directly in the Bible, then it’s untrue. It’s not helpful, right?

All we’re trying to do is get back to what’s in the Bible, which feels a little bit like a fool’s errand, because as we’ve said, it’s not, it’s not systematized for us. There is no doctrine. And to your third point, it’s not connected to meanings in my context. So. How do you do that? How do you create meaning in a way that feels faithful, especially for people like me who grew up thinking, well, if it’s not just blatantly right there in the text, it’s wrong.

Rob: Yeah, it’s a great question. I mean, this comes up with students regularly. Especially when I say things in the classroom like this, like there are no doctrines in the Bible. I mean, this can be really troubling to some students. But what I want to note is if someone’s, if someone’s suffering from that anxiety, and I don’t, I don’t, think that that’s a sign of bad character or anything like that.

I mean, I grew up in a fundamentalist context, so I’m very familiar with there is no, there is no sunlight between the Bible and my theology, they’re just one and the same thing, right? I think one thing I’d tell someone like that is to say, please show me from the Bible where it says that, all theological truth is only contained in the Bible, that everything that I believe must be from the Bible and the Bible alone, that it must be in the terms of the Bible and in no other terms.

I think at that point you would catch the person if they’re, if they’re willing to really challenge themselves and think, to realize, Oh, I’m making, I’m assuming that my position is biblical, but it actually can’t be biblically grounded. And so I already have an extrabiblical position. Once they grasp that, then perhaps there can be a relaxation and say, okay, if I hold this extrabiblical position, then maybe there are other positions that could be held that are tethered to the scripture, but not making this conflation, which is sort of, um not in the scripture at all. 

So that, that’s the first thing I’d say, that’s kind of just like a, a beginning therapeutic perhaps to, to kind of open up the conversation to your other question of like, what are the mechanics?

Well, the first thing I’d say to somebody is pick up a history book of doctrine and watch what actually happened. So like, see, see how it occurred. Right. How did some of the doctrines that you affirm today arise? I mean, that, that’s always deeply illuminating for students. And it is a tricky matter because oftentimes, uh, I guess maybe this is a general principle, oftentimes when we’re performing, we’re not aware that we’re performing and we couldn’t give a good account of our performance.

And so the early church oftentimes did have that view. Look, I’m just reading the scriptures, right? And if you read it differently, let’s say Arius, then clearly that’s just Satan trying to corrupt the obvious meaning of the scripture, right?  

So what I’d want to say is, well, as you read the early church fathers, for example, and how they’re reading scripture, note their performance, right? It’s kind of like, like Einstein said, see what scientists do, don’t listen to what they say. Right? And so I see what the early church fathers did with the Bible, right? And then you’ll get a sense of, oh, this is how doctrines were made. So that’s the first thing I’d say, actually go do a historical, kind of study, immerse yourself in the actual life of the church.

Cause if you believe the Holy Spirit’s guiding the church, then you’re going to believe that there’s something in this performance that’s right in some way. 

Okay, but actually let’s get down to the nitty gritty then. So like, what is one actual kind of mechanics that’s going to be done, right? So let’s just take an example like the divinity of Christ, right? How do we come to that doctrine from the scriptures? Because apart, you know, from one contested place in Romans, and perhaps in the end of John when Thomas the Apostle says, “My Lord and my God,” you’re not going to get a very clear statement that says Jesus is God. God, in the, you know, Hotheos, the God, right, in the full sense.

Well, one of the things that happened in the early church was that over and over, you noticed how believers were giving, in the, in the New Testament, giving the same kind of honor to Christ that was given to God the Father. They were praying to Christ, right? The Spirit of God from the Old Testament started being called the Spirit of Christ, which is a remarkable thing. The Jewish Shema got interpolated by Paul, right? He put something in there and said, not just the father, hero, Israel, the Lord our God is one, but Christ, the Lord, is in the Shema now. And so it was through all of these things, the practices of the early Christians, but then the testimony of scripture, right?

What the early Christians noted by the time they got to Nicaea was the whole sweep of the biblical evidence, the biblical data. What is it pointing to? In other words, what’s the best hypothesis to explain why the data looks like this? What’s the best hypothesis to explain why we pray to this person? Why this person is being referred to the way that the God of the Old Testament was referred to?

Well, the best hypothesis is that this person is the God of the Old Testament, and yet now there’s this nuance, there’s a relationality in God. And so that sets up a whole new problem, right? So once you say, yes, Christ is divine, now the question arises, okay, so how do the Father and the Son relate? Are they distinct persons? How does that work? Right? 

But that’s the whole history of systematic theology. You solve one problem, which just raises new questions, and off to the races you go. And that’s why there’ll never be a complete systematic theology, because Lord willing, while we’re on earth, we’ll never stop asking questions about what it means that God is with us.

Jared: If we can, I’d like to turn our attention to a second example here and, and talk about universalism. And, and I, we, we, you know, we talked before about, I think it was important to sort of set up this idea now. I’m like, well, I don’t know, we could just take up all of our time talking about this. What is theology and how does it relate to biblical studies for sure, but I think it might be good—we can use it maybe as a case study to sort of say, okay, well, what do we need? What are the tools that we need to think of universalism as this doctrine that, again to your point, is there a sweep of the Bible? Is there kind of a Nicene moment where we’re looking at the sweep of the biblical text? Doing some theology that comes with this understanding of universalism.

So maybe let’s start with a definition of universalism and maybe some of the alternative options theologically, and then maybe we can jump into how it interacts with the Bible or how do we get there from the raw materials, if you will. 

Rob: Absolutely. So, let’s start with the definition of universalism like this. Universalism is the doctrine, the affirmation, that all persons will be reconciled and united to God in the eschaton. Now, for the early church, that entailed that all persons would have to be transformed into Christ. And it also entailed, for the early church universalists, that Christ, by taking on our human flesh, had fundamentally taken the place of the old Adam and become the new head of humanity such that what happened to him—his descent, his death, his resurrection—is something that each of us will follow. And so, if Christ is dead and raised, and seated at the right hand of the Father, then we are already there mystically because our humanity is His. 

And so, three points I want to note there. One is, it’s an affirmation that’s universal. There’s no limits. All persons will be saved. Second, that salvation takes the place of a transformation in us, a dying and a rising to life. So, here’s what Christian Universalism did not mean. It doesn’t matter how you lived, Nothing matters. You just die, you do whatever you want while you’re alive, and then it’s a get out of jail free card.

That is not Christian universalism in the early church. Absolutely. And then the third point is, it’s thoroughly Christological. It’s because of what Christ did and what Christ’s Spirit is doing in the world. That we are already in Christ and we’ll follow him. So that’s Universalism. Let’s give, uh, two other alternatives.

One that’s least common in the early church, and I’d say probably still least common today, is the view known as Annihilationism. So that’s the view that some persons, the damned, the lost, will cease to exist. And so you could think of, let’s say, Romans, which says the wages of sin is death. And so, by continuing in their sin, let’s say by rejecting God’s grace, those persons who do not want to be in the eschaton, whose lives let’s say merit the death because of their sins and they don’t receive forgiveness or salvation for whatever reason, uh, those persons will cease to exist. And so that’s annihilationism. They will be annihilated.

The third option, definitely the majority tradition in the majority of the Christian history, both East and West, is what we could call infernalism. So that’s the view that some persons, the damned or the lost, will suffer eternal separation from God, they will not be among the saved or the blessed, and they will suffer eternally in some way.

Now, I just want to make a quick note on that. Oftentimes, people don’t realize that there’s many, many doctrines of hell. What do I mean by that? I mean, for example, that in the early church, many Christians thought that God actively inflicted suffering on the damned. And so there is justice, a punishment, right? Today, many Christian believers who are infernalists would really shy away from saying something like that. They would say, no, no, no, God’s not doing anything, we damn ourselves. Right? The most famous C. S. Lewis, the problem of pain, hell is locked from—the door of hell is locked from the inside. Right? So God basically just gives up people to their sin.

You could make an argument that this is such a radical transformation of the notion of hell that it would have been sort of unrecognizable to people in the early church, right? I mention that because very often some folks will say, well, look, I mean, Universalism is just kind of sentimentalism. We don’t want people to suffer, et cetera, right?

So we don’t want to proclaim God’s justice. But what I noticed is that, well, actually chances are the version of hell that you hold right now is deeply sentimental from the perspective of the early church. So just want to note that just as there are different varieties of universalism, different varieties of annihilationism, there’s also not just one doctrine of hell. There have been many doctrines of hell throughout the church’s history, and there’s been developed— 

Aaron: For the everyday person sitting in the pew, what kind of biblical data might you point to, to direct a person towards universalism? You want to give them a couple Bible verses that they can go take a look at. What might you point to, to somebody in that process towards systematic theology? 

Rob: Yeah, so I’d say, you really want to start with St. Paul. So, St. Paul has some remarkable proclamations about what Christ has accomplished. And I can tell you that when I first started reading Universalists, I kind of was, I was blown away.

And I thought, wow, I’ve been reading these texts my whole life, had them preached to me my whole life, and I never noticed this. So, just to give you an example, in Romans 5, where St. Paul says, through one man sin entered the world, condemnation, death with him, and then through one man, life will be given to all, that second man being Jesus Christ.

Justification will be given to all. And I think, wait, well, that can’t mean all. But not only that, not just that symmetry. Adam condemned everyone. Christ gives justification in life to everyone. Then he says, the trespass is not like the gift. It’s much greater. How much greater is the gift? And so, if you were to ask, you know, who’s more powerful, Paul?

Is it God in Christ who saves everyone? Or is it Adam who condemns everyone? There’s no contest for St. Paul. And so, this, you’re really kind of caught in a trap here, right? If you want to limit the all with Christ, then you somehow have to also limit the all with Adam. Or as St. Paul says in one place, the many and the many.

Well, does the many mean one thing in the beginning of the clause, but then a different thing in the second part of the, uh, the second clause of the sentence? That seems at this point like we’re just trying to get away from the data, not really interpret the data. Paul says something very similar in 1 Corinthians 15.

Another passage that’s huge for the early Christian universalists, and I think is really powerful in, in just the scriptures itself for St. Paul, is 1 Corinthians 15:22 and 28. Uh, where Paul speaks of God being all in all. And so at the Eschaton, when the son at the end of time offers the kingdom up to the father, after every enemy has been put under his feet, God will be all in all.

There will be no part of creation that is not in Christ, that is not in God. Notice this only happens after Christ has put all enemies under his feet. You wonder, what does it mean to put all your enemies under your feet? Well, if Christ offers them up to the Father, then it’s as a gift. It’s an act of worship.

And so everything will be turned into the Son’s act of worship at the end, and you know, in the eternal world. Let me just note one more, and this is one of my favorites. St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians that no one can say Christ is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. In two places, in Romans 14 and in Philippians 2, Paul has this universal statement where he says everyone above the earth, on the earth, and under the earth will confess that Christ is Lord.

Now, if you, if you can only say Christ is Lord by the Holy Spirit, then is it that they’re kind of being subjugated under Christ’s feet and admitting, you’re Lord, you’re Lord. Well, that doesn’t seem to mean what Paul, that doesn’t, isn’t really what Paul says, right? He understands that subjection as something else.

In fact, Paul uses the word subjection in Philippians. He says that the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead will also subject us to Christ. And so it’s the spirit all throughout who is doing this work of making us an offering to the Father through Christ. And so I just say there’s many passages in scripture that speak to the universal scope and power of Christ’s work, if only we open our eyes to them.

Jared: So there’s a couple of, of, uh, threads I want to tie together here because you mentioned three views and I could imagine us in a parallel universe having a, uh, a podcast about annihilationism. And you would just kind of give a couple of Bible verses that would also indicate that. And then we could do infernalism and you could point to some Bible verses, kind of going back to what Aaron said at the beginning, the Bible doesn’t necessarily give us these, you know, doctrines that are, uh, You know, I was going to say univocal, but they don’t all speak with one voice.

They don’t all say the same thing. So how do we privilege one over the other in terms of which doctrine becomes the thing we believe? If we can point to the Bible and there’s some grounding, is it like, well, this one seems to be more of a theme or this one seems to have better logic or right? Because it seems like maybe you can correct me, but it seems like all three of these advocates in the early church or today could ground in scripture.

Then it’s kind of like, okay, we have three competing and it goes back to kind of the idea of theology. Like, how do you take the data and put something together and then say personally, or as a community of faith, we endorse this one? 

Rob: Yeah, that’s a great question. I guess one thing I’d want to maybe push back on a little bit is the idea that even though each of these positions can produce texts in its favor, it’s going to be a question of particular investigation whether each position has Uh, the same sort of weight behind it, right?

And so I’d say, for example, for the Infernalist view, once you kind of take away the idea, let’s say just read the, read the letters of Paul and look for a place where he says that after death, people will be suffering eternally. Try to find it. The problem is, because we always read scripture through doctrines, and again, I’m not saying that that’s a bad thing, it’s impossible not to do that.

But just because you’re in an interpretive framework where doctrines are already kind of operative as you read the scripture, it doesn’t mean that you can’t ask a question about that interpretive framework, right? In other words, interpretive frameworks can change, and part of what can change that is evidence.

So one way I think it’s helpful to put it is that very often we don’t notice data that we don’t have a language for, but once you’re given a language for it, right, I’m not hermetically sealed, right? Somebody can point something out and say, Hey, did you see that? And then all of a sudden, oh. That’s interesting. Now there’s a tension. Now I have a question. Now I’m pursuing coherence.

Again, well, is what I held before, could that possibly be true in light of this? That’s the, that’s the journey of wonder. That’s, that’s theology. And so that’s the first thing I’d say, but when it comes to this question, now you’re really dealing with another conversation partner that’s essential to systematic theology to kind of tie it back to our earlier conversation.

And so for example, you’re going to be asking a question about what could possibly be philosophically coherent to affirm about God. So I’ll just give one example. One of the most amazing early church universalists, his name was Saint Isaac of Nineveh. He was a remarkable ascetic. He’s most known for his ascetical homilies, which were translated into so many languages in the East.

And what’s really remarkable is that there were hints that he was a universalist, but we actually didn’t have a number of his ascetical treatises until they were found, I believe, like in the 80s or the 90s in a library somewhere. And then it was just kind of this shocker. Right? Whoa. This guy was a full blown universalist, and not only that, he had some choice words for people who thought that you could imagine God being so weak as to have his plans thwarted by human beings.

So to give you an example, C.S. Lewis will say, if people go to hell, does that mean omnipotence was defeated? And C.S. Lewis says, yes, divine omnipotence was defeated. Isaac the Syrian says, one, scripture sure seems to proclaim God is sovereign of all the universe. And so, that seems like a biblical problem, but then it’s also a philosophical problem.

Is God the sort of person who has contingency plans? Well, I have contingency plans because I don’t create the whole universe. In other words, I have to deal with something outside of me that resists me. But can a reality that brings everything into being, right, if we affirm the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, can that sort of reality need to have a contingency plan for things going off the rails?

And so you can see how certain philosophical commitments about, is divine omnipotence philosophically coherent? Is the opposite philosophically coherent? And that’s a question I would argue that can be resolved purely by philosophical means. And so where you land on certain philosophical questions is really going to impact what you think the story of scripture says.

That’s not to say that some positions don’t have a better exegetical basis. It’s just to say that while you’re adjudicating possible exegetical positions, you will always have a metaphysical framework or a philosophical framework of what could possibly be real in mind. So just to give a really quick, uh, wrap this up for St. Isaac the Syrian, St. Isaac the Syrian says, when we read of punishment in scripture, it’s easy for us to imagine that this is God laying out retribution. So he punishes in order to pay back. But Isaac the Syrian says, well, this is not worthy of God. 

Not only that, he says, interestingly, read Genesis carefully. Adam and Eve, after they sinned, were given a sentence of death, and that was equal to being kicked out of paradise. But then think about it. Wait, didn’t Genesis 1 say that they were meant to subdue and fill the whole earth? And so, God always planned for them to be mortal, and he planned for them to leave paradise. And so, what seems like a retributive act of justice and punishment was actually a very cunning maneuver on God’s part, in order to get that punishment to actually open the door to new life. Because you cannot experience resurrection unless a grain of corn falls into the ground and is born again, dies and is born again.

And so for the early church universalists, they said, is God the God of love? Yes. Then punishment must always be penultimate to God’s purposes. It cannot be ultimate to God’s purposes. Look at the sweep of scripture. What is God’s punishment for? Is it retribution, like you or I would do? Well, not only philosophy, Isaac will say, look at the saints, look at the holy people that we admire, look at Christ.

Would they give retributive punishment back? Well, if they wouldn’t do it, how much less would God? And so you see how many factors are going into the reading of the scripture. There’s obviously exegesis at work, and careful exegesis. Isaac is a careful reader of the Genesis stories, and he says, notice this little wrinkle.

But he’s also appealing to philosophical notions of God and God’s power. And examples of holy people who are our models for what Christ’s likeness means. And all of that goes into moving from the Bible to an expression of what revelation can mean.

Aaron: So just to kind of sum this up then there, even though there may be biblical data for multiple positions in any given instance, we have access to these other tools: philosophy, Uh, and our experience within the life of the Christian community, and other figures who have come before us. We can draw on this extrabiblical data to help them kind of cast a tie breaking vote in which position we’re going to feel comfortable ending up with. Is it something like that?

Rob: Absolutely. And not only that’s something that we can do, it’s something that has been done, meaning—Yeah, I mean, oftentimes, you know, we are modern people, and so we are so aware of difference. So when we see, well, the Methodists read it this way, and the Catholics read it this way, and, you know, so and so reads it this way, and one of the questions we ask is like, well, who’s right? But I think a better question to ask before you can answer that question is, Why do they disagree? And understanding how theologies are made, right? What are the ingredients that go into the cake of any particular theology, right? You can ask, well, what You could ask a basic question like, well, what are their philosophical positions on what God is?

Can God change? Can God repent? Does God have foreknowledge? Does the phrase foreknowledge even make any philosophical sense if God is outside of time, et cetera? So that’s just one instance how philosophical positions, metaphysical positions, are going to be determinative for how we read the scriptures.

And so the more conscious we can become Of that, the more charitably we’ll be able to enter into real exchange and dialogue to find out why do we disagree? Why are we disagreeing here? And then we might be able to say to someone, hey, your doctrinal position doesn’t seem to line up with your philosophical positions.

You don’t truly believe God can be defeated by creatures, right? Because you affirm that God is omnipotent. So now we have a problem. So let’s see what position would make most sense of other convictions that you hold. And vice versa, right? So there’s no, let’s put it this way, there’s no recipe for resolving a theological dispute, but there are ways in which we can get to figure out what are the sources of our disagreement. And studying the history of theology helps us figure out how to do that. 

Jared: And maybe as we wrap up our time, again, I’m going to maybe restate something and then I want to ask a final question, but I think for a lot of folks, you know, these words around uh, metaphysics and, and even, even philosophical kind of commitments.

So maybe to kind of even simplify that further, to tie it back to something you said earlier, Rob, of we already come to the table. We can’t help but, we can’t help but be born in a particular place and time and context and have gone to a particular church that we went to when we were, you know, baptized as infants or when we went to Sunday school or whatever that is.

And within that tradition, we’ve inherited beliefs. What we believe about God, what we believe about the Bible, what we believe about the afterlife, what we believe about the cross, like there, we could list a great number of things that we already believe before we turn maybe a critical eye to the Bible and say, well, what does the Bible actually say?

And so it’s, it’s naive and I, I would say it’s, it’s unhelpful and can, can be, be, be disrespectful when we don’t recognize. And it’s not a bad thing, it’s an inevitable thing, that when we first go to the text at a certain age with a certain, now, uh, I don’t want to say critical eye necessarily, but like we’re reading it to say, okay, well what does the Bible actually say, whenever we do that, at whatever time and age and maturity level we do that.

We are already bringing a lot of baggage to that text. That lens is already colored by all the things we’ve been taught about God, the Bible, the afterlife. And not only is that not a bad thing and an inevitable thing, but what I’m hearing you say is over time, that’s part of the Christian life and tradition to refine those things as well.

To use the Bible and all these other beliefs to refine those beliefs. They’re all connected, and so when I go to the Bible, that might impact what I believe about God. So I came to the table with a belief about God, but maybe that will change it. Or maybe a life experience, about that, you know? And I think a lot of people have that lived experience as, you know, maybe their kid comes out.

And all of a sudden they have this different perspective on God and God’s love and acceptance. And that now changes how I’m going to read our scripture. So all of that is interconnected when we’re talking about things like, what’s our belief or what’s the doctrine of universalism and how compelled are we toward that?

Is that a wordy way of summarizing what you, what you’re saying? 

Rob: Absolutely. I think that sounds right. 

Jared: So, with that in mind, how do people, you know, we talked about some of the mechanics we’ve talked about, that we were inevitably kind of doing theology when we have these beliefs about God and the Bible and all of that in Christian community.

So as we leave, are there some practical steps? Because it feels like it can be very abstract. Like how do we, how do we untangle this mess? Because I think a lot of people, they do have a certain way they read their Bible. They do know that they have all these beliefs, that maybe they don’t even believe about anymore.

I know we’ve talked to a couple of people on this podcast who are like, I don’t even believe in hell anymore. And it’s still, uh, this is like traumatizing to me. Like I still do, I can’t help it. It’s sort of ingrained in me. So how do we, uh, you know, have you found a couple of insights or, or practices for people to help them feel like they’re a little bit more in the driver’s seat of their, of their theology? Does that make sense? How, how can people do that? 

Rob: I think there is a place to be, there’s a place for being in the driver’s seat about one’s theology. But I think there’s also a place for if you’re in a community, and I know many people haven’t been in a community that’s safe or where the scriptures have been used in some form weaponized against them. When you think about all the context in which we live today. Belief is just essential. What I mean by belief is trust, trust in a community. And so, it makes sense that we trust the doctrines that are taught to us, that we read the scripture according to them. 

And I think sometimes it can be this sort of like impossible task that we put on people to figure out what their theology is about every single thing, right? I know growing up for me in my church, it was like, you had to defend every single thing that I believed from the scripture. And if I couldn’t defend it, then it’s just something that could not be believed, right? And I mean, I think it’s part of why I became skilled at particular tasks that suit a theologian, but it also had like a psychic brunt, right?

It had like an effect in some way that I was constantly looking over my shoulder, right? Like, can I prove this? Can I prove that? Can I prove this? And I kind of want to say, I mean, if you affirm the doctrine of God’s providence, right, and you’re in a context where your church community and the way you read scripture is spiritually edifying for you, and you’re growing more deeply into the life of Christ, then stick with the doctrines you’ve got, right?

But if questions arise for you, then I would say, do a couple of things. Figure out the history of the doctrine that’s maybe troubling you. Where did this doctrine come from? So maybe pick up a Google around, uh, pick up a history book, right? And see like, where, where did this doctrine come from?

I mean, there’s all kinds of historians of doctrine and all kinds of books that you can find that will give histories of doctrine. And then you can begin to ask the questions. Well, the way they were using the scripture, is it really faithful to what the scriptures are saying? once again, not that you’re going to find every doctrine verbatim in the scriptures.

I don’t believe doctrines are in the scripture in that sense, right? Data is in the scripture that theologians and communities use under the Spirit’s guidance to figure out, this is what Christ said means for us today. But, that’s one thing you can do. Look up the history of the doctrines that you have questions about, check out how they’re using the scriptures.

And that means using the tools of historical critical scholarship, right? As you said, not critical in the negative sense, but really thinking, you know, what, what, what do these texts mean? I mean, I’m a Roman Catholic, so I always go back to the magisterial texts, the texts from the, the Catholic teaching office day verb which is a great read.

If you haven’t read it, chapter three says, If you want to understand what God means, you have to find out what the sacred writers wanted to communicate, and to do that, you have to look at literary form, genre, history, their modes of being and living. And so, it may require a little bit of research. and I would just say, well, that’s true of anything.

If you feel like you’re not, you don’t feel great about how food makes you, the food you eat makes you feel, well, what would you do? I would go look up and say, what does this food do? Is it healthy? Is it unhealthy? So you would do the same procedure, right? To figure out, like, something doesn’t seem right.

How do I find out something else, right? How do I find out what could be behind it? And then try on some other things. But the number one thing I’d say is, Are these doctrines leading me more to live, to live the life of Christ, or are these doctrines doing something else? Uh, St. Augustine famously said that, uh, if, if, someone who’s fully sanctified in this life doesn’t need the Bible, because that person knows what it’s all about, that person’s already living the Bible.

They don’t need it anymore, right? And so I’d say if the Bible, if these doctrines aren’t leading you to love God and neighbor more, that might be a good sign. Listen to your conscience. Is there a question arising for you? Be faithful to your wonder because your wonder is part of how you’re made in God’s image.

Jared: Well, Rob, that’ll preach. That’s a great way to end. Thank you so much for, uh, for jumping on and, and for, for talking about things so broadly and specifically at the same time. It was wonderful. So, thank you so much. Absolutely. Such a pleasure. 

Rob: Thank you. 

Jared: Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show. If you wanna support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just wanna give a little money, go to www.thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give. 

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Outro: You’ve just made it through another episode of the Bible for Normal People. Don’t forget you can catch our other show, Faith for Normal People, in the same feed wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People team: Brittany Hodge, Stephen Henning, Joel Limbauan, Savannah Locke, Melissa Yandow, Tessa Stultz, Danny Wong, Lauren O’Connell, and Naiomi Gonzalez.