How should Scripture be interpreted?

    Last month, Aaron Welch responded to some of my earlier blog posts about my preterist interpretation of the Olivet Discourse and Revelation. Since he was such a big part of my own journey and growth in faith (and my decision to start a blog), I’d like to take this opportunity to thank him for engaging with my views. His responses certainly highlighted quite a few weaknesses in my reading of various passages. After a back-and-forth dialogue online, Aaron challenged me to better explain my hermeneutic for interpreting Scripture. In this post, I’ll try to do just that. Unfortunately I suspect that Aaron will be disappointed, only because my hermeneutic has grown so different from the ‘Concordant’ hermeneutic that he and I used to share.

    In examining and refining my own hermeneutic in order to write this post, I’ve come to realize just how different my hermeneutic is today than in the past, even than just two years ago when I wrote the bulk of my articles about preterism. At that time, I would have described my hermeneutic as grammatical-historical, perhaps historical-critical. I subscribed to the principles that authorial intent determines the correct meaning of the text and that “Scripture interprets Scripture” (while recognizing the importance of extrabiblical literature for context). Now, I wouldn’t even say that I subscribe to the principle of sola Scriptura; if at all, only in an extremely qualified form.

    In this post, I will explain my hermeneutic via three categories – community, canon, and Christ – which I believe should govern a Christian reading of the Scriptures. The first two categories govern the interpretation of any text believed to be inspired (even ‘Concordant’ interpretation of the Bible), while the third is distinctively Christian. [Aaron: I apologize if the hermeneutic that I describe here seems different to what I said in our earlier discussion… I hadn’t fully fleshed out these ideas at that time, even though they were in the back of my mind, and your challenge led me to reexamine and refine my principles of interpretation.]

Community

    “The Bible” (derived from ta biblia, ‘the books’) is not a single text but a compilation of texts from diverse times, places, and authors. Apart from the collection of these texts by various communities of ancient Judeans, and later, early Christians, there would be little reason to see them as sharing a unifying message or being collectively authoritative. In fact, it should be uncontroversial that no text, or collection of texts, can be viewed as objectively inspired and authoritative apart from a community of faith. [1]

    Various communities of faith possess different scriptures, collections of texts that they consider to be divinely inspired and authoritative. The Islamic community has the Qur’an, while different sects consider different collections of hadiths (‘sayings’) to be secondarily authoritative; the Jewish community has the Tanakh, and considers the Talmud (rabbinic commentaries on the Torah) to be secondarily authoritative; the Hindu community has the Shruti texts along with the secondarily authoritative Smriti texts. The Christian community has the New Testament along with various lists of Old Testament texts, including the texts of the Tanakh with various other books (accepted by Catholics, Orthodox, and other sects). The ‘Concordant’ sect falls under the Protestant umbrella of considering only the New Testament and books of the Tanakh to be inspired and authoritative.

    Each of these communities has certain boundaries of belief that define them as communities of faith. The relationship between the community and its scriptures is a dialectical one: the boundaries of belief dictate which interpretations of scripture are considered acceptable, while the scriptures also inform those boundaries. For example, since the New Testament repeatedly and forcefully makes the claim that Jesus is the Christ, it would be nonsense to accept the New Testament while denying that claim. In turn, it would make very little sense to accept some scriptures while rejecting the community that produced and traditioned (or ‘canonized’) them.

    Note that I’m not saying that, in order to accept certain scriptures as infallible and/or inerrant, one must also accept that the community which traditioned them is infallible and/or inerrant (an argument made by some Catholic apologists). This would lead to an infinite regress: in order to know that the Scriptures are infallible, we would need an infallible source to tell us that, but we would also need an infallible source backing up that one, and so on… [2] Instead, I’m saying that anyone who accepts the particular scriptures of a community of faith should also abide by the boundaries set by that community, or else they are inconsistent. This argument is epistemological, not ontological: in order to believe that the Scriptures are inspired, we must believe that the Church which produced and traditioned them was also guided by God. Thus, the community must possess primacy of interpretation over their own scriptures.

    So far, nothing that I’ve said damages the ‘Concordant’ view. Members of the ‘Concordant’ community are perfectly consistent in accepting their list of Old and New Testament scriptures, while also abiding by their community’s boundaries of belief (which includes universal salvation, the non-deity of Christ, and dispensationalism).

    The community which produced and traditioned the New Testament wasn’t merely an intellectual community, but was sacramentally united through baptism and communion. The community which Paul called the “one body” of Christ was entered into by “one baptism” and remained united by “one bread” (1 Cor 10:16-17; 12:12-13; Eph 4:4-6; cf. Rom 12:4-5; Eph 2:16; 3:6; Col 3:15). Furthermore, the process of traditioning the Christian Scriptures into their present form continued into the fourth century.

• The first indication of compilations of early Christian literature comes from the early second century: Polycarp’s reference to a corpus of Ignatius’ letters (Pol Phil 13.2) and 2 Peter’s reference to a corpus of Paul’s letters (2 Pet 3:15-16). Justin Martyr (ca. AD 150) frequently refers to the “memoirs of the apostles,” which based on his quotations includes the synoptic gospels.

• The first authoritative corpora of New Testament texts come from the mid to late second century: “Marcion’s canon” of the Gospel of Marcion and ten Pauline letters, and the “Muratorian canon” which included four gospels (including Luke-Acts and John), all thirteen Pauline letters, 1 and 2 or 3 John, Jude, and Revelation, along with the Apocalypse of Peter and the Wisdom of Solomon.

• Irenaeus (ca. AD 180) refers to an authoritative corpus of four gospels (Adv Haer 3.11.8) and cites the Shepherd of Hermas as “scripture” (4.20.2), as well as citing every New Testament book except Philemon, 2 Peter, 3 John, and Jude. Tertullian (ca. AD 200) cites every New Testament book except James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John. Origen of Alexandria (ca. AD 230) cites every New Testament book except James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, along with some other early Christian texts (including the Shepherd of Hermas) that he considered divinely inspired. Eusebius (ca. AD 330) gives a list of New Testament writings that excludes James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and Revelation as disputed, and he rejects the Shepherd of Hermas.

• The now-accepted list of twenty-seven New Testament books is first attested in the mid to late fourth century: Athanasius refers to this list as “canonized” in his 39th festal letter (AD 367), and it was officially accepted in the West at the synods of Rome (383) and Hippo (393). However, disputes about the list of New and especially Old Testament texts continued beyond the fourth century.

This brief history makes it clear that the New Testament in its present form didn’t exist until the late fourth century. Therefore, it’s inconsistent to accept the New Testament as inspired without claiming continuity (and especially sacramental continuity) with the early Church up to at least the late fourth century.

    This doesn’t disqualify Orthodox, Catholic, or most Protestant groups, which do claim continuity with the Church of the fourth century. However, it disqualifies restorationist groups like Mormonism, Iglesia ni Cristo, and the ‘Concordant’ sect, which reject continuity with the early Church. The ‘Concordant’ sect is internally consistent in its claim that the true Christian community disappeared after the apostolic age and was reconstituted in the 19th century, or that there was a continuity of ‘Concordant’ doctrine that is entirely invisible to history – but this is no more plausible from the outside than the similar claims made by Mormonism or any other restorationist group.

    Objection: the early Church fell away after the death of the apostles, or even within their lifetime, as evidenced by e.g. 2 Tim 1:15 and contradiction between the New Testament and early Church. Aaron Welch argues cogently for this view in his article “They Will Not Tolerate Sound Teaching: Exposing Christianity’s Counterfeit Church”. There are many passages in the New Testament that warn against doctrinal apostasy, especially as Aaron points out “in the later writings (1 Tim 1:3-11; 4:1-3; 2 Tim 4:3-4; 1 John 2:18-20, 24; 4:1-3; 2 Pet 2:1-3, 20-21; Jude 1:3-4).”

    However, the only reason we have these passages (and consider them authoritative) is precisely because this same Church traditioned them as Scripture. This tension within the argument seems irreconcilable to me. In fact, these same texts to which Aaron appeals (1 and 2 Timothy, 1 John, 2 Peter and Jude) show every indication from the outside of having been composed pseudonymously in the second century, after the alleged apostasy took place! Apart from the early Church’s acceptance of these texts as authentic and inspired, there would be no basis to interpret them in the way that Aaron does. Extra ecclesiam nulla scriptura, [3] and without scripture there is no argument.

    A similar argument is that the true community of faith is expected to be in the minority, in both the Old and New Testaments. For example, see Elijah’s remnant in the time of Ahab (1 Kgs 19:9-18; Rom 11:2-4), and Jeremiah’s persecution by the other prophets, and Jesus’ statement that “there are few who find [life]” (Matt 7:14; Luke 13:23ff).

    However, the example of Elijah illustrates the opposite point, that the true community will not die but will always possess at least a remnant (Rom 11:2-5). Although there were few who found life in the time of Jesus’ ministry, he told parables about how the kingdom of God would grow large (Matt 13:31-33). There were also times in Church history in which the party that ultimately won out was in the minority and/or persecuted (e.g., the mid-fourth century and the Iconoclasms). Finally, this argument simply doesn’t get at the root of the issue, which is that without the true Church surviving into the fourth century, there could be no New Testament at all.

    Objection: doctrinal development in the early Church was enforced from the top down and is therefore false. The popular example is that Constantine I created the biblical canon and/or doctrine of the Trinity at the Council of Nicaea (which is a myth), but there are certainly examples of this. The Roman emperor played a large role in the seven ecumenical councils and in certain cases (especially Constantinople I) forced a particular decision. [4]

    Although I once found this argument convincing, it’s actually fallacious. [5] An orthodox position may have been reached by coercion rather than dialogue, and it may have been enforced by unsavory methods, but this does not make it false. Merely describing the historical reality doesn’t negate the possibility of divine guidance; if it did, then the historical Jesus of Nazareth could never be reconciled with the Christ of faith. Christ’s death was also procured by unsavory men and means, while being God’s plan for salvation (Acts 2:23; 4:27-28).

    Furthermore, by the principle described in Acts 5:34-39, [6] the true Church could never be wiped out by the authorities (cf. Matt 16:18). [7] It was morally wrong for the Roman emperors to persecute heretics, but the fact remains that if those heretics were the true Church – and the orthodox were not – then the emperor would have been “fighting against God” and not able to overthrow them. There were periods when the imperial authority was directed against the party that became orthodox (such as the mid-fourth century and the periods of iconoclasm), and the emperors even convened councils directed against them, but did not succeed. This means the empire couldn’t have been the only determining factor in the doctrinal development of the early Church.

Canon

    The Scriptures, like virtually any collection of texts, have tensions and contradictions within them. Apart from the presupposition of inspiration and univocality, this is very clear. [8] For example, there is a clear tension between Paul and James regarding the role of works in salvation. This can be resolved in a few different ways. Hyperdispensationalists presuppose based on this tension that Paul and James taught different (yet equally legitimate) gospels, and therefore emphasize points of distinction between the two and deemphasize similarity. [9] The traditional approach is to presuppose that Paul and James taught the same thing, and therefore to emphasize points of similarity and deemphasize disagreement. Another approach, taken by Marcion and to a much lesser extent Martin Luther, is to deemphasize James entirely as uninspired, or less inspired than Paul (or vice versa).

    Apart from certain presuppositions about which parts of Scripture are central and which are peripheral, there is no single objective way to resolve the tensions therein. Dan McClellan’s analogy of a Lego set is useful here: the Scriptures are like a box of Lego bricks, which can take a multitude of shapes depending on which pieces are taken to be central or peripheral, what order they’re placed in, and even which ones are left out. [10] McClellan says that there is no objective ‘picture on the box’ that can tell us what shape the pieces should take, since the Bible can’t tell us how to resolve the tension within itself.

    A very similar analogy is made by the second-century Christian apologist Irenaeus of Lyons in his book Against Heresies, when he argues against the Valentinians:

Such is their hypothesis which neither the prophets preached, nor the Lord taught, nor the apostles handed down [lit. ‘traditioned’]… They disregard the order and the connection of the Scriptures and, as much as in them lies, they disjoint the members of the truth. They transfer passages and rearrange them; and, making one thing out of another, they deceive many by the badly composed fantasy of the Lord’s words that they adapt. By way of illustration, suppose someone would take the beautiful image of a king, carefully made out of precious stones by a skillful artist, and would destroy the features of the man on it and change it around and rearrange the jewels, and make the form of a dog or of a fox out of them, and that rather a bad piece of work. Suppose he would then say with determination that this is the beautiful image of the king that the skillful artist had made, and at the same time pointing to the jewels which had been beautifully fitted together by the first artist into the image of the king, but which had been badly changed by the second into the form of a dog. And suppose he would through this fanciful arrangement of the jewels deceive the inexperienced who had no idea of what the king’s picture looked like, and would persuade them that this base picture of a fox is that beautiful image of the king. In the same way these people patch together old women’s fables, and then pluck words and sayings and parables from here and there and wish to adapt these words of God to their myths. (Adv Haer 1.8.4) [11]

    Irenaeus uses the analogy of the mosaic of jewels in the image of a king, which can be rearranged into different pictures (a dog or a fox). Unlike McClellan, however, he asserts that there is a ‘picture on the box’ which tells us how to put the pieces together. There is a correct hypothesis – a classical literary term which refers to the plot or argument which is “placed (thesis) under (hypo)” the text(s) for correct interpretation. [12] The gnostics have a hypothesis which is not what the Lord taught nor the apostles traditioned, making them like those who rearrange Homeric verses to create a new story (Adv Haer 1.9.4). The correct hypothesis is the “canon [kanōn, ‘rule’] of truth received through baptism” which allows readers to discern the “image of the king” from the jewels (1.9.4). This “canon of truth” is

…the faith in one God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them; and in one Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was enfleshed for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who through the prophets preached the economies of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus our Lord, and his future manifestation from heaven… (Adv Haer 1.10.1)

    This formulation is clearly structured along the lines of the triadic baptism formula “in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Matt 28:19; Didache 7.1; cf. Justin, 1 Apol 61; Hippolytus, Ap Trad 21). It also reflects the “one-God, one-Lord” formulae [13] (1 Cor 8:6; cf. Matt 23:8-11; Eph 4:5-6; 1 Tim 2:5; 1 Clem 46.6) and the Christ-creed material (1 Cor 15:3-4; Phil 2:6-11; 1 Tim 3:16; 1 Pet 3:18-19, 22; cf. Luke 24:7, 46; Ignatius, Eph 7.2; 18.2; Trall 9.1; Smyrn 1.1-2), which originated with Jesus himself and the apostles and were further developed by the apostolic fathers. The language of the canon of faith is eminently scriptural and based in the writings of the apostles. [14] The relationship between Scripture and canon, just as between Scripture and community, is dialectical: the canon of faith is drawn from the Scriptures and governs the interpretation of Scripture.

    Various formulations of the canon of faith are found across the Christian writers of the late second and third centuries (Irenaeus, Adv Haer 1.10.1; Epid 6; Tertullian, Praesc 13; Adv Prax 2; Virg Vel 1; Hippolytus, Noet 17-18; Novatian, De Trinitate; Origen, De Princ Pref.4). Although some of these formulae are more abbreviated, each author shares a common core: belief in one God the Father, [15] creator of everything; in the Lord Jesus Christ who is the Son and Word of God, through whom all things were made, who was proclaimed by the prophets, incarnated and born of a virgin, crucified, resurrected, and ascended; and in the Holy Spirit. [16] The fact that this core is shared by all of these authors, from various places, times, and relationships to the institutional Church, strongly supports the claim made by these authors that the canon of faith was handed down by the apostles (cf. Irenaeus, Adv Haer 1.10.1-3). [17]

    The canon of faith developed over time into regional baptismal creeds, and ultimately into the Nicene Creed, which was standardized as the baptismal creed of the entire Church in the fifth century. [18] However, it retained the same basic outline and core. This canon serves as a fundamental guideline, the scaffolding on which a sound interpretation of the Scriptures must rest, the ‘picture on the box’ of the biblical Lego set. Without it, the tensions within the Scriptures cannot be objectively resolved, and any number of different interpretations are equally possible. In the words of the second-century Church father Clement of Alexandria, “The canon of the Church is the concord and harmony of the law and the prophets in the covenant delivered at the coming of the Lord” (Strom 6.15.125).

    Objection: The Scriptures disagree with the canon of faith at various points, therefore it can’t be used as a guideline for interpretation. For example, the historical-critical reading of certain Old Testament prophecies calls into question the canonical claim that the prophets proclaimed the coming of Jesus Christ. The impersonal presentation of the spirit of God in the Old (and even New) Testament appears to contradict the canonical personality of the Holy Spirit.

    This would be a valid objection if authorial intent were the only, or most important, factor in interpreting Scripture. However, that wasn’t the early Church’s approach to reading the Scriptures. This will become more clear in the next section of this post. Rather, because they recognized the divine inspiration of the Scriptures, they saw the human author’s intentions as secondary to the divine author’s intent, which must be discerned spiritually with the help of the canon of faith.

    Origen of Alexandria especially developed this method of interpretation; although it’s found in earlier writers (e.g., Irenaeus, Adv Haer 4.26), he was the first to clearly systematize his hermeneutic. Origen distinguishes between three senses of Scripture: one of ‘body,’ which corresponds to the level of authorial intent; one of ‘soul,’ which involves taking a principle found in a passage and applying it elsewhere; and one of ‘spirit,’ which involves allegorizing a passage to apply it to a wholly new situation (De Princ 4.2.3-8). [19] All three senses are edifying, but certain heresies arise from only considering the ‘bodily’ sense, like Marcionism which perceives contradictions between the Old and New Testaments (4.2.1-2). Even certain “impossibilities” and contradictions are found in the ‘bodily,’ thus such passages don’t have a true ‘bodily’ sense, so that we don’t forget the divine inspiration and remember to seek out the ‘spiritual’ sense (4.2.9-3.15). We must learn to search the Scriptures and discern the “impossible,” with the guide of the “canon of piety” and of the Holy Spirit, in order to discover the ‘spiritual’ meaning (4.3.5, 14).

    Although not all aspects of his hermeneutic were taken up, Origen’s influence was widespread, and the idea of multiple senses of Scripture – of which the ‘literal’ sense was just one and not the most important – was shared by many later Christians. Basil the Great and Gregory of Nazianzus approvingly included his writing on this topic in their Philokalia (cf. Gregory of Nyssa, VM 2.89-101). John Cassian in the early fifth century exported Origenian hermeneutics to the West, and distinguished between historical, allegorical (typological), anagogical (eschatological), and tropological (moral) senses of Scripture (Conferences 14.8). Augustine also distinguishes four different senses and provides examples from the New Testament (De util cred 5-8).

Christ

    The Christian faith is unique in that it doesn’t merely rely on timeless truths revealed through history, but on a specific historical event: the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. It’s important to remember that the earliest Christians had no written Scriptures, other than the Hebrew Bible which they shared with other Jewish sects. Their faith rested entirely upon the event of Christ, in whose light they were forced to reread their Scriptures before they could write about him themselves. According to Luke, the first thing that Jesus did after his resurrection was “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the Scriptures… he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (24:25-27, 44-48).

    The Scriptures are not innately understandable apart from the opening of the mind by Christ and the event of his death and resurrection. Indeed, we don’t read them simply because of the content they contain, but because of whom they reveal. “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, yet it is they that testify on my behalf… If you believed Moses, you would believe me, because he wrote about me” (John 5:39-40, 45-47).

    Paul shared the same perspective: “Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, the same veil is still there; it is not unveiled since in Christ it is set aside. Indeed, to this very day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds; but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed” (2 Cor 3:14-16). The Scriptures can only be read in light of the revelation of God through the person of Christ (cf. 2 Cor 4:6), thus until his coming (and even “to this very day” among those who are without him), they were veiled. [20] This is how, for example, Paul can interpret the Exodus account as an account of Christ saving and judging his people (1 Cor 10:1-11), which is dubious as far as authorial intent is concerned.

    If we recall back to what Irenaeus says about the canon of faith, this is what keeps our reading of Scripture in line with the correct hypothesis – what allows us to arrange the “jewels” into the correct picture. But this is not just any picture: it is “the image of the king” (Adv Haer 1.8.4; 9.4).

If anyone, therefore, reads the Scriptures this way, he will find in them the word concerning Christ, and a foreshadowing of the new calling. For Christ is the “treasure which was hidden in the field,” that is, in this world – for “the field is the world” – hidden in the Scriptures, for he was indicated by means of types and parables, which could not be understood by human beings prior to the consummation of those things which had been predicted, that is, the advent of the Lord. And therefore it was said to Daniel the prophet, “Shut up the words, and seal the book, until the time of the consummation, until many learn and knowledge abounds. For, when the dispersion shall be accomplished, they shall know all these things.” And Jeremiah also says, “In the last days they shall understand these things.” For every prophecy, before its fulfillment, is nothing but an enigma and ambiguity to human beings; but when the time has arrived, and the prediction has come to pass, then it has an exact exposition. And for this reason, when at this present time the Law is read by the Jews, it is like a myth, for they do not possess the explanation of all things which pertain to the human advent of the Son of God; but when it is read by Christians, it is a treasure, hid in a field, but brought to light by the Cross of Christ… In this manner, then, I have shown it to be, if anyone read the Scriptures. (Adv Haer 4.26.1) [21]

For Irenaeus, the correct interpretation of the Scriptures can’t be based on authorial intent, because they are only intelligible in light of their later fulfillment. The hypothesis of Scripture – the foundation upon which it stands, and to which it continually returns – is the crucified Christ, the Son of God. If our reading of Scripture does not lead us to Christ, then we have gotten something wrong. [22]

    By the time of Irenaeus, the apostles who had known Jesus on earth and witnessed his crucifixion and resurrection were long gone. “Therefore,” Irenaeus says,

it is necessary to obey the presbyters who are in the Church, whom I have shown have the succession from the apostles [Adv Haer 3.2-4]; who with the succession of the bishops have received the sure gift of truth, according to the will of the Father. But others who depart from the primitive succession, and assemble themselves in any place whatsoever, are to be held in suspicion… [I]t is necessary to learn the truth from those who have the succession of the Church that is from the apostles… For these preserve our faith in one God who created all things; and they increase that love for the Son of God, who accomplished marvelous economies for our sake; and they expound the Scriptures to us without danger, neither blaspheming God, nor dishonouring the patriarchs, nor despising the prophets. (Adv Haer 4.26.2-5)

This continuity with the apostles is necessary, but not sufficient, to guarantee continuity of doctrine. The presbyters and bishops must be “sound and blameless in conduct,” not prideful, if they are to maintain true doctrine (4.26.3-5). Nevertheless, it is this apostolic succession within the community of faith that preserves the hypothesis and canon of the truth, and allows us to find the true crucified and risen Christ when we come to Scripture. [23] Christ is encountered not just in text or in history but in his living Body, the Church.

Conclusion

    We’ve become too used to thinking of the Bible as a single, univocal book that reads as a narrative from Genesis to Revelation. This is an anachronistic perspective that didn’t become possible until the fourth century, or even more accurately, until the invention of the printing press. Before that point, for most believers, the Scriptures were a collection of texts that were primarily encountered in the liturgical life of the Church. The earliest Christians had no unique Scriptures of their own (“New Testament”), and had to reinterpret their existing Scriptures (“Old Testament”) in light of the event of the crucified and risen Christ, as their minds were opened by him (cf. Luke 24:27, 45-47).

    The idea that the Bible is sufficient on its own for determining truth, when read by an individual, is not possible. Inspired and authoritative scriptures cannot exist apart from a community of faith that produces and traditions them, which therefore has primacy in interpreting the texts. Furthermore, no scriptures can be properly interpreted apart from certain presuppositions – canon(s) of faith – that determine what is central and what is peripheral. In the case of Christianity, the canon of faith is passed down through baptism. The Scriptures are not univocal, but a collection of polyphonous voices which the canon of faith turns into a symphony (cf. Clement, Strom 6.15.125).

    The Christian faith has as its hypothesis the crucified and risen Christ, prior and fundamental to any interpretation of the Scriptures, belief in whom is passed down through apostolic succession. He is the true Word of God, because of whom the Scriptures are (secondarily) the word of God. Therefore, the Scriptures can only be correctly interpreted as revealed by the person of Jesus Christ in his Body, which is the Church.

______________________________

[1] Although someone might independently consider some text or texts authoritative for their own life, such a judgment would be subjective by definition.

[2] Even according to the Catholic view, the Catholic list of Scriptural books was not dogmatically defined until the Council of Trent in 1546 – previously only defined by regional councils, hence not infallible for Catholics – which means (according to the argument) that no Christian could have rationally believed in infallible Scripture until that time!

[3] “Apart from the Church, there is no Scripture.”

[4] For a good historical and theological overview of the seven ecumenical councils, see Sergey Trostyanskiy (ed.), Seven Icons of Christ: An Introduction to the Oikoumenical Councils (2016).

[5] This argument falls under the genetic fallacy, which is when a claim is dismissed (or accepted) on the basis of its origin rather than its content.

[6] “...if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them — in that case you may even be found fighting against God!” (Acts 5:38-39 NRSVUE)

[7] For a more developed argument, see Thomas Farrar, “Our Nicene common ancestor: an ecclesiological-historical argument for Trinitarian orthodoxy”.

[8] The benefit of the historical-critical method is that it allows us to examine Scripture from an external, purely historical and literary perspective, without presuppositions overriding authorial intent.

[9] For an example of this approach, see my old blog posts where I argued for hyperdispensationalism.

[10] See his video “The LEGO Bible” in which he quotes an excerpt from his book The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues (2025).

[11] Translation from John Behr, Formation of Christian Theology Vol 1: The Way to Nicaea (2001), 31.

[12] Karl Olav Sandnes, “The rule of faith: Getting the jigsaw puzzle right,” Studia Theologica 76, no. 1 (2021): 1-18.

[13] Note that in Irenaeus’ formulation of the canon, among others, the oneness of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ are emphasized, while the third item of faith is simply “the Holy Spirit,” which indicates the combination of the “one-God, one-Lord” and triadic baptism formulae.

[14] Tomas Bokedal, “The Rule of Faith: Tracing Its Origins,” Journal of Theological Interpretation 7, no. 2 (2013): 233-255; Bryan M. Litfin, “Apostolic Tradition and the Rule of Faith in Light of the Bauer Thesis,” in Orthodoxy and Heresy in Early Christian Contexts (2015), 145-165.

[15] God is specifically the Father of the Son Jesus Christ, a point which is emphasized in many of the formulations of the canon of faith.

[16] Some of the abbreviated formulae omit parts of this core, but all of these points are found in one or more of the formulations given by each of these authors.

[17] Bryan M. Litfin, “Apostolic Tradition and the Rule of Faith,” 161-165.

[18] The self-understanding of the early Church was that this development did not involve any innovation upon “the faith that was once and for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), only further explication of that original deposit of faith. The extent to which this is correct is debatable. However, the development of the Christian Scriptures themselves took place during this same period, so it would be inconsistent to reject this doctrinal development while accepting the Scriptures.

[19] Origen interprets Prov 22:20-21 and the Shepherd of Hermas (Vis 2.4.3) to support this trifold hermeneutic. He allegorizes John 2:6 to state that some passages of Scripture only have a ‘psychical’ and ‘spiritual’ meaning, and lack a ‘bodily’ sense. As an example of the ‘psychical’ sense, Origen cites Paul’s quotation of Deut 25:4 in 1 Cor 9:9-10, and as examples of the ‘spiritual’ sense, he supplies Heb 10:1, 1 Cor 10:4, 11, Heb 8:5, Gal 4:21-24, and Rom 11:5.

[20] Compare this with Origen, CommJohn 1.33: “[B]efore the coming of Christ, the law and the prophets did not contain the proclamation which belongs to the definition of the gospel since he who explained the mysteries in them had not yet come. But since the Savior has come, and has caused the gospel to be embodied in the gospel, he has made all things gospel, as it were.”

[21] Translation from John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death (2006).

[22] For an overview of how the early Church interpreted the Scriptures according to this Christ-centered approach, see John Behr, The Mystery of Christ.

[23] Note that this is different from the later doctrine of apostolic succession, which holds that bishops in the Church must have direct succession rom the apostles via laying on of hands. The second-century doctrine of apostolic succession, as found in Irenaeus, holds that presbyters and bishops maintain true belief via their unbroken line of continuity with the apostles. This doctrine, unlike the later one (which developed into the fourth century), doesn’t necessarily exclude Protestant churches from the apostolic succession, but it does exclude restorationist sects (such as the ‘Concordant’ sect) which lack continuity with the apostles.

Taking a break from blogging (again)

    I’m busy with work and other commitments, so I won’t be blogging weekly for the foreseeable future. I might release posts less frequently, if I find the energy and time to do so. Thanks for everyone’s feedback and support on my blog posts!

"Hell? No": against Thomistic arguments for perdition

    Like many universalists, I find the doctrine of eternal torment utterly abhorrent and contrary to the God of love who was revealed in Jesus Christ. Over the history of Christianity, though, many believers in this doctrine have offered justifications for why eternal torment – despite appearances to the contrary – is actually compatible with the Christian doctrine of God, and possibly even necessitated by it! The most well-known one today is C. S. Lewis’ free-will defense of hell, which I think is incredibly weak, but many other defenses have been given which aren’t so weak.

    In my opinion, the strongest defense of hell is the one associated with Thomas Aquinas and his followers, since it relies on an Aristotelian metaphysical framework which I broadly agree with (see my posts on that topic). This argument has been presented in a modern context by Ed Feser (2016a; 2024) and James Dominic Rooney (2024a; 2024b), and a related argument is given by Wahlberg (2022). In this post, I’ll show that these Thomistic arguments fail to make hopeless damnation for any person plausible. The failure of these arguments points to the plausibility of universal salvation, given certain fundamental Christian (and specifically Thomistic) commitments about God and humanity.

Background metaphysics

    In a previous post on arguments for God’s existence, I tried to show that we can know from reason alone that (1) God desires our good and (2) God himself is our ultimate good. This grounds a solid belief in the fact that he “desires all people to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4). Thomistic infernalists agree with this point. However, they argue that while God desires, all other things being equal, the salvation of each individual person, wider considerations could allow God to permit the hopeless damnation of some people. Specifically, they claim that the post-mortem repentance of a sinning person is a metaphysical impossibility, which even God couldn’t bring about.

    To understand this claim, we have to first consider the relevant metaphysics. For Aristotelians, goodness is defined as the fulfillment of a thing’s “appetite,” which is the actualization of a potential within a thing’s nature. A thing’s potentials are only actualized to the extent that it exists, so goodness is interconvertible with existence, which is also interconvertible with truth (something is only true insofar as it exists in reality). These properties (existence, truth, goodness) are referred to as transcendentals, since they are shared by all being. Whatever is not good (i.e., evil) has no existence in reality; evil is the failure of a potential to be actualized when it should be (Oderberg 2019).

    Moreover, for Aristotelians, what distinguishes rational beings like humans and angels from other creatures is our intellect and will. The intellect is what abstracts universals out of their particular contexts, thus allowing us to understand abstract concepts like triangularity and dog-ness which don’t correspond to any particular, material being. In order to abstract universals from their material contexts, the intellect itself must be immaterial. The will (also called the rational appetite) is what orders our actions toward ends that we choose, according to the intellect. If the will didn’t exist, then we would still be able to know things with our intellect, but we could never use this knowledge to do anything.

    Our intellects are ordered toward (universal) truth; otherwise it would forever be tied down to particular contexts. This would be contrary to the intellect’s ability to abstract universals out of particular contexts. Furthermore, if the intellect were ordered toward anything other than truth – for example, survival – then we could never know something as true, merely as it is good for survival. This view is self-refuting, since someone who claims that the intellect is ordered toward survival is making a truth-claim – that it is true that the intellect is ordered toward survival.

    Likewise, the will is ordered toward (universal) goodness; otherwise it would be tied down to some particular good. In that case, the will would be unable to order the multiple goods associated with human flourishing (friendship, sensory pleasure, bodily health). Moreover, the will can’t desire something that it doesn’t perceive to be good in some way (the “guise of the good”), for then we would be acting toward something we know to be nothing at all in reality. Since the intellect and will are ordered toward (universal) truth and goodness, it follows that the rational natures of humans and angels can only be completely fulfilled by truth in itself and goodness in itself, which is God. However, no created intellect can naturally comprehend the divine nature in itself (what some Christians refer to as the “beatific vision”); this requires God’s supernatural intervention to achieve.

    So far, so good. I agree with all of this metaphysical background, and in the following sections I’ll take it for granted. To sum up: being, goodness, and truth are interconvertible transcendentals; rational beings like humans and angels have an immaterial intellect and will, which are ordered toward (universal) truth and goodness, respectively; therefore rational beings can only be completely fulfilled by God, who (as pure existence) is truth-itself and goodness-itself, and this requires supernatural intervention.

Post-mortem cognition and repentance

    Why do Aquinas and modern Thomistic infernalists hold that repentance after death is impossible? First, let’s consider why Aquinas thought that angels – which in his view are immaterial – could never in principle repent after falling.

It belongs to the angels’ nature to have actual knowledge of everything they can know naturally, as we by nature have actual knowledge of first principles, from which we by a process of deductive reasoning proceed to acquire knowledge of conclusions. But angels do not have such a process of reasoning, since they intuit in the principles themselves all the conclusions proper to natural knowledge of them. And so as we are permanently disposed regarding knowledge of first principles, so the angels’ intellect is permanently disposed regarding everything it knows by nature. And since the will is proportioned to the intellect, it follows that their will is also by nature irrevocable regarding what belongs to the natural order. But it is also true that they have potentiality regarding movements to supernatural things, whether by turning toward them or by turning away from them. And so they can only have the change of moving from the order of their nature to things transcending their nature by turning toward or away from them. But since everything added to something is added to it according to the mode of its nature, it follows that angels persist irrevocably in turning from or toward a supernatural good. (De Malo 16.5)

     This needs more than a little clarification. First, consider how we humans know things by our intellect: we observe things in multiple particular contexts, abstract out information about universals (e.g., that 2 + 2 = 4, that grass is green), and use this knowledge to reason our way to conclusions. This mode of knowledge is essentially embodied because it relies on sensory input. If angels are immaterial, then their reasoning isn’t temporally extended like this. They immediately have whatever knowledge is natural for them to have, including perfect self-knowledge.

    Since the angelic intellect knows all natural things in a single act, the angelic will also chooses its end in a single act. Once an angel chooses its ultimate end, it can’t naturally gain any more knowledge that could cause it to reconsider its choice. Moreover, having perfect self-knowledge, the angel can’t be mistaken about its desires, and must identify with all of them and integrate them all toward its chosen end (Rooney 2024a, 4–6). Therefore, if it chooses an ultimate end other than God, it will be unable to reconsider or desire anything other than what it has chosen.

    But if an angel has all natural knowledge, how could it choose something other than God, if a rational being can only choose what it perceives to be good? Simply put, because it has all natural knowledge, not supernatural knowledge. The angel doesn’t have perfect knowledge of goodness itself (i.e., God), since the beatific vision requires supernatural intervention. Unless it chooses union with God, no angel possesses the beatific vision. If it chooses otherwise, then the (now fallen) angel doesn’t gain the supernatural knowledge that would be necessary for it to reconsider its choice.

    Therefore, even having all natural knowledge, it’s possible for an angel to wrongly choose some derivative (spiritual) good for itself as its ultimate end in place of God. At that point its choice is ‘locked in’ (so to speak) forever. Even God couldn’t alter its choice without destroying its personal identity, since the fallen angel, having perfect self-knowledge, fully identifies with its desires which have been fully integrated toward its perverted end. This is why it is impossible, in Aquinas’ view, for a fallen angel to ever repent.

    What does this have to do with humans? According to Aristotelian anthropology, when a human dies (i.e., her matter and form separate), her form naturally continues to exist immaterially, due to its immaterial operations of intellect and will. Aristotle and Aquinas refer to the form of the living human as her “soul,” although it better corresponds to the Scriptural category of “spirit” (as I argued elsewhere). After her death, the human’s spirit is relevantly like an angelic spirit: it no longer knows via sensory input and discursive (temporally extended) reasoning – since that requires a body – but it instead immediately possesses all its natural knowledge, including perfect self-knowledge.

    In the moment immediately after a person’s death, therefore, her spirit perfectly knows and identifies with all of her desires, and the will integrates those desires to the ultimate end that she chose before she died. Like the fallen angel, her choice becomes ‘locked in’ to the extent that even God couldn’t change it. The basic orientation of the will, either toward or away from God, is fixed at death. For some people, there will be a mixture of good and evil desires (since in our bodily state, without perfect self-knowledge, our desires may conflict). In that case, some desires will have to be modified, but in a state of perfect self-knowledge one’s desires will ultimately be made consistent.

    For those who choose an ultimate end other than God, they will forever suffer evil (in the Aristotelian sense), since their rational nature will forever fail to fulfill its ultimate end. In addition to this terrible privation, they will suffer positive punishment. Consider that a failure to fulfill our nature, by acting in a disordered way, often results in some kind of unpleasantness: sickness results from overeating, a guilty conscience results from violating a moral duty, and so on. This usually serves the good purpose of directing us away from evils. However, for those who have fixed their will against goodness, they are also fixed in a state of unpleasantness that corresponds to the faulty end they have chosen for themselves. Since it’s God who orders things according to their natures, this punishment is “from God” in an ultimate sense (Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles III.140; Feser 2016b).

    This line of argumentation is used by Aquinas and modern Thomistic infernalists to prove the reality of hell and purgatory (for those whose desires are ‘mixed’ between good and evil at death). If people’s wills truly are fixed at death, then universalism might still be true – it’s theoretically possible that God leads each person to repentance just before they die. But this certainly seems unlikely, and ruling out the possibility of post-mortem repentance would strike a massive blow against Christian universalism.

Why the argument fails

    First of all, I disagree with Aquinas that angels are wholly immaterial beings. This doesn’t have much bearing on his argument for hell, since we could simply consider what it would be like for immaterial creatures without conceding that any such beings exist. In fact, I’m perfectly willing to concede that if wholly immaterial creatures did exist, it would be impossible for them to repent after falling – I see no issue with this part of the argument. But because I don’t think angels are wholly immaterial, I disagree that it’s impossible in principle for them to repent (Case 2021). With Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, I hold that all created rational beings, up to and including the satan, can and ultimately will repent.

    I also don’t necessarily agree with Aquinas and modern Thomists that the human spirit is conscious or active apart from the human body. It seems at least as likely to me that my spirit, although it continues to exist after my death, will be no more active than it is during deep sleep or syncope. (That would also account for the metaphor of death as “sleep” throughout the Scriptures.) In that case, the argument for hell fails because a person’s spirit after death won’t be in a state to set its final end, integrate its desires, and thereby become ‘stuck’ in that orientation. However, I’m willing to grant for the sake of argument that the human spirit is relevantly active after death, since I think the argument still fails.

The possibility of new experiences

    First, as Rooney (2024a, 7) points out,

all that is fundamentally required for someone to persist in sin forever is simply that they make up their mind about what they want (where what they want is something incompatible with love of God) and never to encounter any reason sufficient to make them reconsider that decision, thereby prompting a potential new volition.

Both conditions are necessary for someone to persist in sin forever. While the first condition is fulfilled by the perfect self-knowledge of the post-mortem spirit, the second condition is much harder to fulfill. The very logic of the infernalist position requires that people undergo new (if unpleasant) experiences after death, which can form the basis of new knowledge and allow people to reconsider their choice. It seems like it would only be possible for a mind to have all natural knowledge all at once if it were completely atemporal and impassible, such that it could have no new experiences.

    For this reason, the Thomist view of the fixity of the will after death seems like a merely Aristotelian holdover which doesn’t fit well into Christian theology. Aristotle believed that the mind, “when it is separated, is just as it is, and this alone is immortal and eternal, though we do not remember, because this is impassible” (De anima III.5). In other words, the mind after death is totally impassible and has no memories or new experiences. Aquinas and modern Thomists hold this idea in tension with Christian theology, since they believe that the human will is fixed after death and that people have new post-mortem experiences. But these views look like they’re mutually exclusive.

    Moreover, this merely Aristotelian view doesn’t square well with the Christian doctrine of bodily resurrection. Even if the spirit is immutable when it’s disembodied, it will be embodied again in the future, and its re-embodiment will bring new perceptual experiences that should restore its mutability. Ed Feser (2016) argues against this conclusion:

But might not the resurrection of the body restore the possibility of a course correction? Aquinas answers in the negative [De veritate q. 24, art. 11]. The nature of the resurrection body is necessarily tailored to the nature of the soul to which it is conjoined, and that soul is now locked on to whatever end it opted for upon death. The soul prior to death was capable of change in its basic orientation only because it came into existence with its body and thus never had a chance to “set,” as it were. One it does “set,” nothing can alter its orientation again.

    Feser’s (and Aquinas’) argument here is sound, based on his view that human spirits after death (like immaterial angels) gain all natural knowledge all at once. If that’s the case, then being embodied wouldn’t change a thing, since the person would already have all the knowledge they could possibly use to make a choice. But that’s precisely what I’m arguing against here. The human experience is essentially temporal and open to new experiences, so a human, unlike a wholly immaterial being, couldn’t possess all natural knowledge all at once. That’s just not within the realm of logical possibility.

Goodness and evil

    This brings us to an even deeper problem with the Thomistic argument for hell: it implies that good and evil are on an ontological par. The human will can rest in good or evil eternally, depending on which one it chooses. Feser (2018) actually says this explicitly:

If the wills of the damned could change after death, then so too could the wills of the saved. Thus, they wouldn’t truly be saved any more than the former would truly be damned. They would forever be in danger of falling again into evil and facing punishment for doing so. The travails and instability of this life would never end. Hence, no hell, no heaven either.

This argument assumes an ontological equivalence between good and evil. If the human will can’t rest eternally in evil, then it can’t rest eternally in goodness either.

    But this is totally contrary to the fact that evil is nothing in itself, being merely a privation of goodness – which Thomists agree with. This logically leads to the classical doctrine of “the guise of the good,” that people only desire what they perceive to be good in some respect. No one could choose that which they know to be nothing at all in reality. Thomists like Feser agree with this; in fact, they’re some of the strongest defenders of this view in the modern day (e.g., Feser 2014)!

    To be sure, this doesn’t mean that people can’t be culpable for sinning. A person can do something that they perceive to be good in some respect, even if they know that it’s evil in other respects. Someone can culpably sin by voluntarily failing to consider the evil in an action, and only considering the good they perceive therein (Rooney 2024a, 2–3; citing Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 73). However, no one could be perfectly culpable in the way required for eternal damnation – that is, having perfect knowledge of the good and choosing something else as one’s end – it’s simply impossible. Because of the ontological imbalance between good and evil, someone who (culpably or not) chooses evil could always encounter or consider new knowledge that would lead them to repent.

    Rooney (2024a, 8) argues against this conclusion on the basis that the only “decisive” reason that could bring a fallen spirit to repent is perfect knowledge of Goodness itself, the beatific vision, which “constitutes salvation and is not a necessary condition for salvation to occur.” I actually agree with this. However, my argument for universalism doesn’t rely on anyone encountering a decisive reason to repent. As long as there’s a non-zero chance of repentance, over a potentially infinite amount of time, the chance that any individual won’t repent will become infinitesimally small (Reitan 2022).

The “Autonomy Defense” and hell

    Another Thomistic defense of hell has been offered by Mats Wahlberg (2022) in response to David Bentley Hart (2019). Wahlberg and Hart rightly reject the “free will defense” of hell (popularized by C. S. Lewis). According to the “free will defense,” in order for God to create a world with creaturely free will, he had to allow for the real possibility – outside of his control – that some people will reject God and choose evil forever. This defense is hugely problematic for a few reasons:

1. By casting creaturely free will as the freedom to choose evil, this defense implies that God (and the saints), who can’t choose evil, are radically unfree. But this is clearly wrong; God isn’t unfree, but the most free being, since nothing apart from him can constrain his action. Thus, freedom doesn’t imply the possibility to choose evil.

2. It’s incompatible with Jesus’ own statement that “the truth will make you free... everyone who does sin is a slave of sin” (John 8:31-35). This means that freedom is precisely the freedom to choose good, and those who choose evil are thereby unfree.

3. It ignores the metaphysics of good and evil, and the “guise of the good.” Rational beings can only choose what we perceive to be good in some way; moral evil is a result of the failure to (culpably or not) know and/or consider certain facts, and this comes from our finitude. This supports Jesus’ claim that those who do evil are unfree, and undermines the free will defense.

4. According to classical theism, God is the primary mover of all change in the world, and concurrently actualizes the being of everything that exists. God’s concurrent causality is not only compatible with freedom, but is necessary for anyone to do anything freely (Koons 2002; Grant 2010). Thus, there’s nothing contradictory with the idea of God causing someone to freely choose him, and classical theism is incompatible with the free will defense (De La Noval 2024).

5. Even if the free will defense succeeded in showing how someone’s choice to reject God could possibly be forever un-reversed, it doesn’t show that anyone’s choice would be irreversible. That would negate the concern for freedom that underlies the entire defense. But since the irreversibility of the choice is precisely what’s being debated, the free will defense is a red herring.

For these reasons, no Thomist or classical theist (or, for that matter, any Christian) should find the “free will defense” very convincing.

    However, Wahlberg provides an alternative defense of hell – which he calls the “autonomy defense” – that seeks to sidestep these issues. First of all, this defense relies on the Aristotelian-Thomistic concern for preserving creaturely causality. God is the primary cause of all change, but created beings act as real (if instrumental) causes and have causal powers according to their natures. If creatures aren’t real causes, then this is occasionalism – the view that only God is a real cause – which leads to pantheism (that only God is real). Thus, there must be some measure of creaturely autonomy in order for us to say that there is a creation at all.

    Due to our finiteness, every rational creature has the potential to fail to know and/or consider some moral facts, and as a result desire evil. The possibility of sin follows from God’s decision to create rational beings that aren’t himself. “Not even God could create rational creatures that are infallible or indefectible by nature” (Wahlberg 2022, 54). God could supernaturally intervene to remove this possibility of sin in two ways: by providing every rational being with the beatific vision from the start, or by actively and directly frustrating people’s choices to sin. Both of these options, however, deny creaturely autonomy. In order to avoid occasionalism, rational creatures must be able to sin. Otherwise, God hasn’t really created a new being at all; he’s simply play-acting with himself.

    So far, I agree with this argument. I think the concern for creaturely autonomy provides a very plausible theodicy of moral evil which avoids the pitfalls of the free will defense. But Wahlberg goes further: he argues that friendship with God, like friendship with other humans, relies on the autonomy to be or not to be friends. If my friendship with another person is a sheer metaphysical necessity, then – Wahlberg claims – it is “gravely deficient” because it lacks the autonomous self-giving that characterizes friendship. Thus, if (as David Bentley Hart argues) every person will necessarily choose friendship with God, it’s really no friendship at all. There must be the real metaphysical possibility of eternal rejection of God, although this leaves open the possibility of hopeful universalism (Wahlberg 2022, 55–60).

Why I disagree

    There are a couple reasons I disagree with this argument. First, I’m not sure I agree that friendship, even with other humans, relies on the autonomy to be or not to be friends. Suppose that there are two people who are just so compatible that in every possible world where they meet, they’re best friends. Would this make their self-gift to each other any less real and valuable? My intuition says no. Moreover, consider that on some accounts of social trinitarianism, the relationship between divine persons is precisely a metaphysically necessary interpersonal friendship. There are many valid critiques of social trinitarianism, but would anyone say that the divine persons aren’t really friends on such an account?

    Second, even if it were the case that friendship with humans must be autonomous, it doesn’t follow that friendship with God could be autonomous. Wahlberg (2022, 62) responds to this critique:

we all agree that self-determination is a value-enhancing or good-making property of human friendships. It would therefore be very odd if our friendship with God lacked this characteristic. While friendship with God is certainly different from intra-human friendships, it cannot be different in the sense of lacking some fundamental property (compatible with God’s nature) that makes human friendships more valuable than they would be without it.

    However, our relationship with God is so different from our relationship with humans that it could not be autonomous. God, unlike other humans, isn’t a being among beings, the kind of person who we might or might not love. God is the ultimate efficient and final cause of everything that exists, the one by whom and for whom are all things (Rom. 11:36). Simply because we exist, we’re already in a relationship with God, whether we like it or not. As David Bentley Hart (2019, 183) points out, “It is hard to exaggerate how large a metaphysical solecism it is to think of God... as an option that can be chosen out of a larger field of options”.

    Within the “autonomy defense” is hidden the same mistaken assumption we saw earlier: that good and evil are on an ontological par. God is Goodness itself, and to say that someone might ultimately choose God or something else is to say that they might ultimately choose good or not. But this is a mistaken sort of voluntarism that assumes the human will might just latch onto anything whatsoever as its ultimate end. The human will is naturally oriented toward the good, and chooses evil only as a result of some defect (which might be culpable or not). Wahlberg (2022, 67) recognizes this, but simply holds it in “paradoxical” (contradictory??) tension with his autonomy defense.

Conclusion

    Both of the Thomistic defenses of hell that I looked at here are problematic in their own way, but they share the fundamental error of implicitly assuming that goodness and evil exist on an ontological par. If evil has no real existence in itself and is merely a privation of the good, as Thomists believe, then the idea of a human’s will being ‘fixed’ upon evil without even the possibility of repentance is a metaphysical impossibility. The chance of anyone eternally choosing evil without ever reconsidering is incredibly low, and even less credible when we consider that God himself desires all people to ultimately repent and be saved.

    To be sure, it’s logically possible that someone might choose evil forever, just not that they can be left without even the possibility of repenting. The question of whether anyone will choose evil forever is one that likely can’t be answered by philosophy alone; for this we have to turn to revelation. I believe that, whether or not an eternal hell is possible, revelation tells us that this world is not one in which any rational being will abide in evil forever. God will defeat sin and death and reconcile with every person (1 Cor. 15:20-28).

Yes, the early church was communist

    ...and that probably doesn’t mean what you think it does. In my recent post on Christian anarchism, I said that the early church, at least in Jerusalem, practiced “libertarian communism,” and that there’s a lot of evidence that this was widespread and long-lasting within the church. But I anticipate some confusion (‘libertarian communism’? isn’t that a contradiction in terms?) and pushback on this point. Here I will clarify my claim and provide further evidence in its support.

“Communism” defined

    Most people, at least in the West, think of states like the U.S.S.R., Maoist China, and modern-day Cuba when they hear “communism.” Strictly speaking, this is incorrect. As an economic system, communism is an economy which is conducted on the principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.” Within the Marxist framework, a fully communist society would be classless and therefore stateless; although I’m not a Marxist, I would agree that communism implies a horizontal, and therefore stateless, society. None of the authoritarian leftist, Marxist-Leninist regimes listed above have ever reached full communism, nor did they ever claim to have done so, although they are said to be “Communist” in ideology because they claimed to be working toward such a society.

    Socialism, on the other hand, refers to a system of property rights in which workplaces (or “means of production” to use the outdated leftist phrase) are owned by the workers themselves. This definition presupposes development from a modern economy with a worker/owner distinction, so it can’t really be applied to pre-modern economies (which were primarily feudal or slave-based). However, we can apply the term “communist” to pre-modern economic relationships. As anthropologist David Graeber points out, in every society there is always some amount of “baseline communism” — that is, economic relationships conducted on the communist principle — even if this is just sharing between family and friends. [1]

    In addition to communism, Graeber identifies two other types of economic relationships which are found (to varying degrees) in nearly every human society: exchange and hierarchy. “Exchange” refers to relationships where some kind of equivalence is expected between traded items; this tends to predominate in societies where most relationships are impersonal and/or violence is widespread, so long-term relationships based on trust between parties are not expected. [2] “Hierarchy” refers to relationships where there is formal inequality between parties, and so there is no reciprocity; one party (the ‘superior’ one) comes out ahead by design. [3] This is usually based in violence which becomes systematized over time.

    We can make a distinction between “formal” and “informal” communism, following Roman Montero. [4] Formal communism refers to economic relationships in which the principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs” is regulated by formal rules, whereas informal communism refers to communist relationships that are not formally regulated. In modern society, communism is usually encountered informally (e.g., between family, friends, and coworkers). We can also make a distinction between “authoritarian” and “libertarian” communism, where the former is regulated by some centralized (human) authority and the latter is regulated, if at all, by decentralized relationships between people.

    With these definitions in mind, we can consider which economic relationships predominated in the early church. If communist relationships predominated over exchange and hierarchy among early believers, and their beliefs and practices actively cultivated communism, then we can truly say that the early church was “communist” in their economic structure. If the early church was communist, then we can also look into how formal or informal, and how authoritarian or libertarian, this economic structure was.

Internal evidence from the early church

    We can begin with the paradigmatic case of communism in the early church: the first community of believers in Jerusalem as described by the book of Acts.

Now all the believers were together and had all things in common; they were selling their possessions and goods and distributing the proceeds to all, as each had need. Every day, as they continued together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. (Ac 2:44–47)

Now the whole group of believers were of one heart and soul, and no one said that anything he possessed was his own, but all things were in common for them... There was no one in need among them, for as many as owned lands or houses were selling them and bringing the proceeds of what was sold. They were laying it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as anyone had need. (Ac 4:32, 34–35)

    It’s fair to say that this is an idealized depiction of the early Jerusalem church, but it does present this community of believers as fully communistic. In fact, the slogan “to each according to their need” plausibly originated from this very passage. [5] As depicted by Luke, this was an informal communism, because each person’s property remained formally under their authority (Ac 5:4) but “no one said that anything he possessed was his own” (4:32). It was also more libertarian than authoritarian, since the contributions were apparently voluntary (grounded in ethical obligations rather than any threat of force). Even so, there was also a formal aspect to the communism, whereby a centralized group of apostles received the proceeds and distributed them according to need (4:34–47; but cf. the plural verbs at 2:45).

    Some, in an attempt to avoid the radical implications, have suggested that this was an “unusual moment in the life of the early church” which “[f]or all we know... lasted six months”, which was certainly never normative or prescriptive for believers. [6] The problem with this assertion is that it’s simply false. In fact, communism is prescribed for believers in two other first-century Christian writings:

You shall not hesitate to give, nor shall you grumble when giving, for you should know who is the good paymaster of your wages. You shall not turn away from someone in need, but share all things with your sibling, and do not say that anything is your own. For if you are partners in what is immortal, how much more in what is mortal? (Didache 4:7–8)

You shall have all things in common with your neighbors, and do not say that anything is your own. For if you have the corruptible in common, how much more the incorruptible? (Epistle of Barnabas 19:8)

    Both of these documents were held in high regard in the early church, and were even considered to be Scripture by some. The Didache (also known as the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) is thought to have been written in the mid-to-late first century, most likely from Syria. The Epistle of Barnabas was written some time between AD 70 and the mid-second century from Alexandria in Egypt. This shows that communist economic practices were considered normative among early believers for at least several decades after the beginning of the church, and over a widespread area.

    The commandments in the Didache and Epistle of Barnabas share some phrases with Acts, specifically that “all things” are held in common and that believers “do not say that anything is [their] own” (Ac 4:32). However, they also have a common rationale for this practice — that believers share an immortal and incorruptible hope, so they should also share mortal and corruptible things — which isn’t found in Acts. This points to a shared tradition (whether written or oral) independent of Acts which goes back to the very early church, that believers should share all things with their brethren in need and not regard anything to be their own. [7]

    These practices continued to be widespread among Christians well into the second century. The mid-second-century Christian apologist Justin Martyr states,

[We] follow the only unbegotten God through his Son... we who formerly delighted in fornication, but now embrace chastity alone; we who formerly used magical arts, dedicate ourselves to the good and unbegotten god; we who valued above all things the acquisition of wealth and possessions, now bring what we have into a common stock, and communicate to everyone in need (First Apology 14)

In an apologetic context, this could just be an idealized depiction of the church. But Justin later describes in detail the ceremony that took place in the churches on every Sunday, where (recalling Acts 4:34–37) those who are present deposit their belongings before the deacons, who distribute them to “all who are in need” (First Apology 67).

    Similarly, the early church father Tertullian wrote in AD 197 from Carthage: “One in mind and soul, we do not hesitate to share our earthly goods with one another. All things are common among us but our wives” (Apology 39). The extent to which this informal communism was practiced is evident from the fact that Tertullian is careful to distinguish it from pagan cults which shared even their wives. Like Justin, he gives a detailed description of the formal communism practiced on each Sunday, where a voluntary donation would be made to support any brethren in need, prompting even the pagans to remark, “See how they love one another!” (Apology 39)

    If Paul’s writings are any indication, communism was practiced not only within each church, but between churches as well — at least, that was the ideal. Throughout much of his ministry, he took up a collection from the gentile churches for the relatively poorer Judean churches (Rom 15:25–27; 1 Cor 16:1–4; 2 Cor 8–9; Gal 2:10). This was following a decision by the apostles that “according to their ability, each would send relief to the brethren in Judea” (Ac 11:29). Paul gives his rationale for the collection as follows:

For you know the generosity of our Lord Jesus the Messiah, that being rich, for your sake he became poor, so that you may be made rich through his poverty... Not that there should be relief for others and hardship for you, but equality. Your present abundance will be for their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, so that there may be equality. As it is written, “The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.” (2 Cor 8:9, 13–15)

    For Paul, the early Christian communism follows the paradigmatic case of Jesus’ own sacrifice, the perfect expression of agapē (cf. especially 1 John 3:16–18, which makes the exact same point). He also quotes Exodus 16:18 about the gathering of manna in the wilderness, which shows that his vision of economic equality extends back to Israel’s very origins. Paul is careful to emphasize that the collection for the Judean churches is voluntary, not based in a commandment (2 Cor 8:8; 9:6ff), which means that this communism was informal and libertarian. For me, this is reminiscent of the libertarian communism that was implemented by the Catalonian anarchists during the Spanish Civil War, in which different villages created regional federations to share resources with one another. [8]

    Our clear, direct evidence for early Christian communism dries up around the end of the second century. However, there are tantalizing hints in the later church fathers that this continued into the fourth century. Basil of Caesarea in his Sermon to the Rich says that the rich unjustly seize goods which are rightly “for the benefit of all in common”; in an ideal society,

if we all took only what was necessary to satisfy our own needs, giving the rest to those who lack, no one would be rich, no one would be poor, and no one would be in need.

    John Chrysostom, the late fourth century archbishop of Constantinople, makes a similar point: “the rich... possess things which belong to the poor, even if their property be gained by inheritance; in fact, from whatever source their substance is derived” (Discourse on Lazarus II.4). He held that the rich are parasitic on society, and a society of all poor people would end up far more successful than a society of all rich people (Homily 34 on 1 Cor 13:8). St. Ambrose held the same view: the rich “are usurping what was given in common for the use of all. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich” (On Naboth). Sadly, this traditional Christian view dwindled as the church became entangled in the politics of empire.

External evidence from the pagan world

    If all we had were testimonies from within the church, it might be rightly objected that this is just an idealized picture which wasn’t actually practiced. Fortunately, we have hostile witnesses from the outside pagan world who confirm that early believers did practice communism, and this was ridiculed by outsiders! The second-century Syrian satirist Lucian wrote an entire satire, called “The Death of Peregrinus,” about a traveling huckster who takes advantage of Christian communism to live affluently without working. Here’s an excerpt:

...their first lawgiver [i.e., Jesus] persuaded them that they are all brothers of one another after they have transgressed once for all by denying the Greek gods and by worshiping that crucified sophist himself and living under his laws. Therefore they despise all things indiscriminately and consider them common property, receiving such doctrines traditionally without any definite evidence. So if any charlatan and trickster, able to profit by occasions, comes among them, he quickly acquires sudden wealth by imposing upon simple folk. (Peregrinus 13)

For Lucian, communism is not only a practice of Christianity, but the defining practice, which to him is ridiculous; they’re “despising all things” and inviting charlatans to take advantage of them! Thanks to their generosity, Peregrinus was able to “live in unalloyed prosperity” (16), what simpletons!

    Whether or not this is a true tale, it’s clear that the early Christians did have to be on guard against those who would take advantage of their communism. Paul himself faced this problem with the Thessalonian church, where some believers were living in idleness off of the church proceeds; the solution was that “anyone unwilling to work should not eat” (2 Thess 3:6–15). Likewise, the Didache says that churches should receive and care for any travelers who come in the name of the Lord, but “beware” of those who stay for long periods of time without being willing to work (12:1–5). The fact that this was even a danger shows the extent to which informal communism was practiced.

    Well into the fourth century, hostile witnesses still confirm that at least some Christian communities were practicing communism. The pagan emperor Julian “the Apostate” writes in a letter that the Christians “are bidden to sell all they have and give to the poor,” and orders that the collective funds of the church of Edessa should be confiscated so that “poverty may teach them to behave properly” (Letter 40). In another letter he takes this matter more seriously:

For it is disgraceful that, when no Jew ever has to beg, and the impious Galileans [i.e., Christians] support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us. (Letter 22)

The generosity of the Christians, both for their fellow believers and apparently others, made the Roman Empire look bad by comparison, which caused a PR problem for Julian. As a result, he orders the high priest of Galatia to teach the pagan temples to also contribute to the poor “by teaching them that this was our practice of old,” so as to “not... allow others to outdo us in good works” (Letter 22). This is an example of how radical movements like early Christianity can effect change in the wider system without becoming ingrained in that system (in other words, being in the world without being a part of the world).

The basis for early Christian communism

    The historical evidence clearly shows that the early Christians practiced informal and formal communism on a large scale, over a widespread area, for over a century after the beginning of the church. But to what extent was this a deliberate result of their theological beliefs vs. a mere historical accident? Let’s look at the influences that led the early church to practice communism on an unprecedented scale.

    The Essenes were another second-Temple Jewish sect that intentionally practiced full communism, although not as successfully as the Christians. Josephus describes their communism in detail, saying that those who joined them gave up their possessions to be “common to the whole order,” whence they were distributed by the “stewards” of the community “for the uses of them all”; this was a formal process regulated by rules (Wars 2.8.3, 6). There was also an informal communism whereby “every one of them gives what he has to him who wants it, and receives from him again... what may be convenient for himself” (Wars 2.8.4). Philo says that their communism extended to food and clothing (Apology for the Jews).

    This is confirmed in the writings of the Essenes at Qumran. Their Community Rule describes the same strictly regulated, formal communism depicted by Josephus; participation was contingent on a rigorous entry process into the community, and goods were distributed by the community leaders (1QS 5–6). The Damascus Document provides a different perspective: there was an aspect of formal communism (a tax levied for the needy members of the community), but also informal communism, where members were expected to provide for each other without holding back (CD 6–7; 18–19). The same combination of formal and informal communism was practiced in the early church, but there it was more libertarian, as the leaders of the church played a lesser role than the leaders of the Essenes.

    Some Greek philosophers also envisioned communism, but only between fellow virtuous philosophers, whom they considered to be the only people capable of real friendship. [9] A common saying was that “what friends have is common property” (koina ta tōn philōn), and for Aristotle, “brothers and comrades have all things in common” (Nicomachean Ethics 8.9). But freely sharing between social classes was considered a vice, not a virtue (e.g., Plautus, Trinummus 2.2). Between social classes, the proper economic relationship was patronage, which was a form of hierarchy (to use Graeber’s terminology), where wealth was transferred down in exchange for honor and subservience from the lower classes. [10]

    Based on this, the most likely origin of Christian communism (which crossed social and cultural boundaries) is from its Jewish roots and not from outside Greek culture. Indeed, Acts 4:34 (“there was no one in need among them”) is likely an allusion to Deut 15:4 LXX (“there shall be no one in need among you”), which was a prophecy of the Sabbatical year when all debts would be forgiven (Deut 15:1–4). Jesus viewed his own arrival as the coming of the eschatological Sabbath (e.g., Mk 2:23–3:6; Lk 4:16–21; 13:10–17; John 5:1–18; cf. Heb 4:1–11). [11] This meant the permanent forgiveness of debts, and an end to relationships of exchange and hierarchy (which are fundamentally based in debt).

    The Lukan Jesus makes this rejection of exchange and hierarchy explicit:

“If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive payment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. Instead, love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.” (Lk 6:34–35)

“The kings of the gentiles lord it over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather, the greatest among you must become like the youngest and the leader like one who serves.” (Lk 22:25–26)

David Graeber notes that communism (as opposed to exchange) is found precisely where giving isn’t associated with any expectation of return. [12] Jesus also rejects the hierarchical patronage relationships found in the pagan world (i.e., “benefactors”), where wealth was given in exchange for subservience. In the Lord’s prayer and elsewhere in the gospels, Jesus associates the Sabbatical practice of forgiving debts with God’s own forgiveness of our sins (Matt 6:12; 18:23–35; Lk 7:42–43; 11:4; cf. Didache 1:5–6). It’s clear that early Christian communism goes all the way back to the teachings of the historical Jesus.

    In addition to Jesus’ explicit teachings, we shouldn’t lose sight of his actions. Love (agapē) was central to the ethic of the early Christians, and for them it was exemplified in Jesus’ ultimate self-sacrifice for our sins (John 15:13; Rom 5:8; 1 Jn 3:16). The two most prolific writers of the New Testament, Paul and John, explicitly connect Jesus’ self-sacrifice to the informal communism that they practiced (2 Cor 8:8–15; 1 Jn 3:16–18). It’s not hard to see how “love your neighbor as yourself” translates practically to “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.” If we desire to love others as we love ourselves, then we shouldn’t withhold from them what we have that they need.

A few common objections

    There are a few common critiques of the view that the early church was communist (for example: Sean McDowell; Kevin DeYoung; Jay W. Richards). For the most part, I think these critiques result from a failure to properly understand the concepts being discussed. It’s not a question of whether the early church was socialist (it wasn’t), or Marxist (of course not), or whether non-Christians were thrown into gulags (LOL). Rather, it’s a question of the extent to which the early church actively practiced and cultivated economic relationships according to the principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.”

    For one, many of these critiques confuse communism with socialism, or assume that communism is just the most extreme version of communism. (“Socialism is when the government does stuff, communism is when the government does all the stuff.”) This is not how these terms are used by political theorists. It would be utterly anachronistic to attribute socialism (i.e., worker ownership of workplaces) to the early church, since there was no widespread working class at that time. Socialism and communism may go hand-in-hand in a modern economy, but in pre-modern feudal and slave economies, communism could be (and was) implemented on a large scale without socialism.

    These critiques also often assume that “communism” and “socialism” refer only to the statist, authoritarian socialism associated with Marxist-Leninist regimes. As such, they think that it’s a slam-dunk rebuttal to point out that the early church’s economic relationships were voluntary. But this only shows that the early church practiced libertarian (rather than authoritarian) communism, not that they didn’t practice communism at all. Rather than the U.S.S.R., a better modern parallel to the early church would be rural Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War, where anarchist revolutionaries established full (libertarian) communism on a large scale. [13]

    Another critique, made by Jay W. Richards, is that the practice of communism was an unusual and very short-lived stage in church history (possibly as little as six months in Jerusalem only!). This is simply an ignorance of historical reality. As I have shown, both formal and informal communism were normative and widespread within Christianity until at least the end of the second century.

    Finally, a more nuanced critique points to Acts 5:4, which says that the proceeds of Ananias’ sale of land were still at his authority. If his proceeds weren’t immediately owned by the community, it is argued, then the church wasn’t practicing communism. But this ignores the distinction between formal and informal communism. Ananias wasn’t legally obligated to provide all his proceeds to the church, but he clearly had a social and moral obligation to do so. (He’s obviously not portrayed in a good light in the rest of the passage, Acts 5:1–11). In our modern world, where there’s thought to be such a stark distinction between the personal realm and the political realm, this may be hard to grasp; but in the ancient world, the political was considered an extension of the moral, personal realm.

    In summary, the critiques of early Christian communism either result from a failure to understand the terminology, an ignorance of the historical evidence, or a failure to recognize the distinctions between formal vs. informal and authoritarian vs. libertarian communism. I haven’t yet found a critique which doesn’t fall into one of these errors. There are very good historical and theological grounds for thinking that the early church practiced and actively cultivated libertarian communism on a large scale, and so it can be truly said to be “communist.”

What are the implications?

    I think there are two big implications of this, one for modern-day Christians and the other one for modern-day leftists (of all stripes, not just Christian). First, Christians who uphold and support the capitalist structure of the modern world are compromising with the world, and to that extent are not leading ideal Christian lives. I’m a bit loathe to say this, since the majority of Christians aren’t economic leftists, but I don’t see any way around it. To be clear, I’m not saying that non-leftists aren’t Christian, but to the extent that they support capitalism they aren’t ideal Christians (as no one but Christ truly is). If we are Christian, we should be economically leftist.

    Another implication is for modern-day leftists. State socialists and anarchists often disagree about who has been more ‘successful’ in the past at implementing communism. (In my opinion, the anarchists win the debate hands down; no Marxist-Leninist state has ever achieved full communism, whereas anarchists have done so, for example in the Spanish Civil War). But by this metric, the most successful one is Jesus, who initiated and guided the early church in their successful practice of full communism for more than a century. For this reason, if they're really concerned with the viability and successfulness of a movement, every socialist should not just be an anarchist, but a Christian anarchist.

______________________________

[1] David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (Melville House, 2011), 97–102.

[2] David Graeber, Debt, 103–108.

[3] David Graeber, Debt, 109–113.

[4] Roman Montero, All Things in Common: The Economic Practices of the Early Christians (Wipf and Stock, 2017), 25–26.

[5] Luc Bovens and Adrien Lutz, “’From Each according to Ability; To Each according to Needs’: Origin, Meaning, and Development of Socialist Slogans,” History of Political Economy 51, no. 2 (Apr 2019): 237–257.

[6] Jay W. Richards, Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem (HarperOne, 2009), 22–24; “After Pentecost, was the Church Communist?,” The Stream (5 June 2017).

[7] Roman Montero, All Things in Common, 62–64.

[8] Sam Dolgoff, The anarchist collectives: workers’ self-management in the Spanish revolution 1936-1939 (Black Rose Books, 1990), 121–128.

[9] Roman Montero, All Things in Common, 35–42.

[10] Ibid., 42–45.

[11] N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Fortress Press, 1996), 294–296, 390–396.

[12] David Graeber, Debt, 99.

[13] Sam Dolgoff, The anarchist collectives.