A common narrative is that Christianity slowly, over time, realized that slavery was wrong. Although it took centuries, it followed from the logic that we are all equal before God and created in his image. In the West, a key flashpoint centred on the abolition of the North Atlantic slave trade. This narrative, true in partial ways, has nevertheless strengthened arguments to the mistaken position that Christian morality progresses from worse to better, widening over time.

My argument here is that Christians did not need to progress far enough before they could realize that slavery was evil. Many knew. The example I want to give here is one of Gregory of Nyssa’s homilies on Ecclesiastes, in which he calls out the evils of slavery.

Gregory of Nyssa on the evils of slave owning

Gregory lays out four arguments against slavery:

1. Slavery usurps God’s domain over us as humans.

2. Slavery is contrary to human nature which is free.

3. Slavery gives a price for human life, which is impossible, since life is priceless.

4. Slavery has no real support, because its document of ownership is mere paper.

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Slavery usurps God’s ownership

First, Gregory criticizes the opulence of the wealthy, pointing out that the rich even consider themselves masters over another human being. In the voice of the rich, Gregory proclaims, “I got me slaves and slave-girls, he says, and the homebrewed slaves were born for me” (Homily 4 on Ecclesiastes, §334.12–13). This attitude, Gregory avers, amounts to a boastful challenge to God. Why? Because “we hear from prophecy that all things are the slaves of the power that transcends all [Ps 119/118.91].” As the psalmist says, “all things are your slaves.” And if that is true, claiming that another human being is our slave divests God of his universal claim.

“So,” concludes Gregory, “when someone turns the property of God into his own property and arrogates dominion to his kind, so as to think himself the owner of men and women, what is he doing but overstepping his own nature through pride, regarding himself as something different from his subordinates?” (§334.15–18). In other words, Gregory’s first argument against owning slaves centres on taking what belongs to God as if it is our own. God owns all, not us.

Slavery is contrary to human nature

Second, Gregory points out that slavery contravenes human nature, which is naturally free:

“I got me slaves and slave-girls. What do you mean? You condemn man to slavery, when his nature is free and possesses free will, and you legislate in competition with God, overturning his law for the human species. The one made on the specific terms that he should be the owner of the earth, and appointed to government by the Creator – him you bring under the yoke of slavery, as though defying and fighting against the divine decree.” (335.5–10)

According to Gregory, God created humanity to rule over the earth. He cites Genesis 1:26 in evidence, “Let them rule over winged creatures and fishes and four-footed things and creeping things,” and concludes: “You have forgotten the limits of your authority, and that your rule is confined to control over things without reason” (335.12–13, 11–12). Due to God’s creation and mandate that humans have authority over non-rational creatures (i.e., not humans), Gregory finds slavery contrary to God’s original intent in creation.

He further cites Psalm 8:7–8 and 104:14 to show how humans in general have authority over creatures, but not each other. “But,” claims Gregory, “by dividing the human species in two with ‘slavery’ and ‘ownership’ you have caused it to be enslaved to itself, and to be the owner of itself” (336.4–5). And that does not agree with God’s creational intent for us.

Humans have no price because they bear God’s image

Third, Gregory reasons that humans have no price of purchase because they are made in God’s image (Gen 1:26). And this gift is irrevocable (Rom 11:29). “God would not therefore reduce the human race to slavery, since he himself, when we had been enslaved to sin, spontaneously recalled us to freedom. But if God does not enslave what is free, who is he that sets his own power above God’s?” (336.17–19).

Sir William Blackstone, refuting the Justinian (i.e. Roman) justifications for slavery,[1] provides similar reasoning when he writes:

“Every sale implies an equivalent given to the seller, in lieu of what he transfers to the buyer. But what equivalent can be given for life or liberty? His property likewise, with the very price which he seems to receive, devolves ipso facto to his master, the instant he becomes his slave: In this case, therefore, the buyer gives nothing, and the seller receives nothing. Of what validity then can a sale be, which destroys the very principle upon which all sales are founded?” (Commentaries on the Laws of England, bk. 1, ch. 14, 1765–1769)

Gregory goes beyond life and liberty and adds: “He who knew the nature of mankind rightly said that the whole was not worth giving in exchange for a human soul” (336.26–28). Citing the words of Jesus (Mark 8:36), Gregory presses the point even further by showing that buying another human would be the equivalent of buying God, since we are in his likeness and have authority over the earth. So there is a priceless quality to being human. We simply cannot afford each other due to being created in God’s image.

The legal document deceives the owner

Finally, Gregory points out that the legal document that says we own a slave deceives owners. He writes:

“But has the scrap of paper deceived you, and the written contract, and the counting out of obols? If the contract were lost, if the writing were eaten away by worms, if a drop of water should somehow seep in and obliterate it, what guarantee have you of your slavery? what have you to sustain your title as owner? I see no master of the image of God” (337.13–16).

The key here is that a piece of legal paper means nothing because God alone owns us: “I see no master of the image of God.” And after all, “Are not the two one dust after death? Is there not one judgment for them? – a common kingdom, and a common Gehenna?” (338.12–13).

And in Gregory’s conclusion to this argument, he points out how human slavery and chattel slavery differ, how it is proper for humans to own animals but not each other as animals:

“If you are equal in all these ways, therefore, in what respect have you something extra, tell me, that you who are human think yourself the master of a human being, and say, I got me slaves and slave-girls, like herds of goats or pigs. For when he said, I got me slaves and slave-girls, he added that abundance in flocks of sheep and cattle came to him. For he says, and much property in cattle and sheep became mine, as though both cattle and slaves were subject to his authority to an equal degree.” (338.14–19).

So what?

We should avoid a hermeneutical approach to Scripture that says God’s revelation progresses after the Bible to make us more just, more equitable, and more merciful than the Bible is itself. We may be more merciful than many other Christians—and that would be a great thing—but that argument differs from saying we are more merciful than the Bible is. I often see this distinction confounded.

The Bible frequently records humans doing human things, including sin and making mistakes. Paul even tells us that the Old Testament was written so that “we might not desire evil as they did” (1 Cor 10:6). When it comes to slavery, Solomon imposed forced labour on his subjects, and his son Rehoboam threatened to make it worse, and that led to the division of the kingdom of Israel and began the decline into sin and misery.

On the other hand, some forms of slavery were allowed in the Mosaic Law. In Israel, this meant serving a master for seven years under humane conditions, usually for economic reasons (Exod 21:2–6). And even if a slave was outside of Israel, there were careful laws and regulations for the ethical treatment of slaves.

We might find this objectionable, but it is worth noting how the Mosaic Law differed from the nations in its treatment of slaves. We might call this indentured servitude and not chattel slavery. Further, Jesus has told us that Moses allows for activities that God did not originally intend (Matt 19:8; Deut 24:1–4). We may feel justified in applying this to slavery, which the narrative of Kings (noted above) seems to confirm.

I know that I have bypassed many important distinctions, and my goal here is mostly to share the arguments of Gregory. But it is not as if his arguments have never been heard or repeated in Christianity. After all, John Wesley said, “Give liberty to whom liberty is due, that is, to every child of man, to every partaker of human nature. Let none serve you but by his own act and deed, by his own voluntary choice. Away with all whips, all chains, all compulsion! Be gentle toward all men; and see that you invariably do unto every one as you would he should do unto you” (“Thoughts Upon Slavery,” 1774).

Gregory, I think, presents to us a particularly Christian way to see others created in God’s image, as priceless. He knew about the evils of slave owning during the height of Christian influence in the Roman Empire whose economy relied on slave labour. He was not a man of his times. He was a man out of sync with his time because he was a man of the Bible. And that meant he dedicated his preaching to calling out the evils of social injustice, such as slavery.

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Union essential to Prosperity.

The advantages of union in promoting the accomplishment of important objects requires no proof. Two are better than one, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. While the Church of Christ is united, there is no danger of its being injured; but if its members are divided they presently become an easy prey to those who lie in wait to deceive. There is abundant proof that flourishing Churches and Kingdoms have been destroyed by their own dissensions. When Jerusalem was besieged by Titus Vespasian, all his battering-rams, and engines of war did not so much harass and distress the Jews, as the animosities which prevailed among the fiery zealots within their walls. It is said of Julian the Apostate, who treated the christian religion with the greatest spite and malignity, that he considered the most effectual way to prevent the spread of the gospel, was to keep up the divisions between the Catholics and the Donatists. We know who has said, A house divided against itself is brought to desolation. and A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand.

It is our happiness to live at a time when there is a greater degree of union manifested amongst christians than at any former period. The establishment of Bible, Tract, and Missionary Societies, have tended greatly to promote this desirable object. Those who have attended the annual meetings of these institutions in London, have insensibly imbibed the spirit by which they are influenced, and have left the assemblies determined to unite with every christian, of any denomination, who possessed a kindred spirit, and who was disposed to attempt the amelioration of human misery, whatever form it may bear. By these meetings also a gradual accumulation of talents, of property, and of exertions have been drawn into unison with the parent Societies, by which the deficiencies made by death and otherwise, have been repaired; the zeal of their members has been increased; and their hopes have been so animated, that they have been individually resolved not to decline in their exertions, but with a cessation of ability or of life.

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Feeling ardently desirous in common with all christians that these institutions may abundantly prosper, there is one society which has paramount claims to the attention of the denomination to which we belong. This is the Particular Baptist Missionary Society for propagating the gospel among the Heathen. An institution which has already done more towards uniting our denomination than any plan that was ever devised. “It has (said one of our judicious ministers well acquainted with its operations) passed like a magnet over our churches, and by powerfully attracting the particles of steel they contain, has brought them to a point, and united them into one object.”

This effect has been produced by the greatness of the design contemplated. An attempt to evangelize the millions of Asia by circulating the scriptures in the languages of the East, and by preaching amongst these Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, must approve itself to the judgment and to the heart of every one who properly estimates the nature and design of the glorious gospel of the grace of God. What Christian can feel indifferent while he hears the song of Angels sung in these lands of misery? He imbibes its spirit and joins in the chorus, Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, and good will towards men. What Christian can be unaffected while he beholds the triumphs of the cross, in turning men from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God? What Christian can refrain from rejoicing when he hears that Idol Gods have been abolished! that their deluded votaries have consigned them to oblivion, and instead of paying their daily orisons to the Ganges, and their annual devotions to Juggernaut, that they are become disciples of Jesus; members of his church; and preachers of his gospel?

That a very considerable degree of unanimity prevails in our denomination on this subject is cheerfully admitted, and it is a cause for much gratitude to the God of Peace. But it is asked whether every mean has been adopted which is likely to increase and perpetuate it? Has all the benefit been obtained from this circumstance which it is calculated to produce? Does not the constitution of our churches which prevents all external interference, and therefore preserves them independent of each other, require some general bond of union? and in order to this, some mode of general association? The plan that has often been talked about, is now submitted, through the medium of their Magazine, to all the members of our churches, and particularly to the Ministers and Messengers of our Annual Associations, viz. That an Annual Assembly be held, either in

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London, or at some of the larger, and most central towns in the Country; composed of the Ministers and Messengers from the neighbouring Churches, and of two deputies from every Association in the united kingdom. If at this meeting a report was to be made of the state of the Mission in India, and collections made after the Sermons, for its support, one valuable end would be answered; a spirit of zeal and benevolence would be thus diffused through all our churches. In addition to this, an account of the itinerant labours in our own country, through the medium of the Secretary of the Baptist Itinerant Society in London, may be made, and thus a spirit of emulation to visit our dark and benighted towns and villages may be excited. Many other things might be mentioned, such as perhaps a fund for the support of our Seminaries, and the relief of our aged and necessitous ministers, &c. &c.

Such an Assembly in the year 1689, and till 1693, met in London, and in the last year at Bristol. And it is likely, had such an institution then existed as the Baptist Missionary Society, to absorb their attention in a regard to the interest of the Church of Christ in general, rather than to the particular concerns of a denomination, it might have continued, a great blessing to our churches and to the world. What is the cause that while the Methodists have their “Annual Conference;” the Quakers their “Yearly Meeting;” and those who compose the Missionary Society, their Annual Assembly in London, that the Baptists have no General Meeting of any description? Why should we be so far behind other denominations in plans to promote the union, the peace, and prosperity of the Church of Christ? Some of our friends object to bustle and parade, and point to the quiet and persevering zeal of the Moravians as our example. But the case is not in point. The Moravians have their Septennial Synods, and numerous plans to keep them a compact body, they are like a company of horses in Pharaoh’s chariots; and to this principally, under a divine blessing, are their great attempts, and eminent successes in the conversion of the heathen to be attributed. O! that we, like them may adopt and maintain the honourable appellation of the United Brethren. And may he who has all hearts in his hand, and with whom is the residue of the Spirit, so water our churches with the influences of his grace, that the Fruits of the Spirit may be abundantly produced in every congregation. Then, there can be no doubt, but a plan will be soon matured among the Ministers and Messengers in our Country Associations, in connection with those of the London “Monthly-meeting,” by

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which a General Assembly may be convened to assemble in the summer of 1812. Thus shall we attend to the exhortation of the Apostle, Rom. xiv, 19. Let us therefore follow after the things which make for Peace, and things wherewith one may edify another.

IOTA.

Source: Joseph Ivimey, “Union essential to Prosperity,” The Baptist Magazine 3 (1811): 234–7.

History: https://www.baptist.org.uk/Publisher/File.aspx?ID=151602 and

Historia ecclesiastica: e-history with a Christian dye

“Union essential to prosperity”: Joseph Ivimey’s old adage retooled for a new day for theological education in Ontario

In the summer of 1812, the London Particular Baptist leader Jospeh Ivimey (1773‒1834)[1] wrote to his fellow Baptist, Andrew Fuller (1754‒1815) about plans he had for a general assembly of Baptists in London. Fuller was not sanguine. “You will only show the poverty of the denomination by such a meeting,” he replied to him…

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4 months ago · 7 likes · Michael A.G. Azad Haykin

Augustine wrote “On the Trinity” partly to guide readers in their knowledge of God. In this pursuit, he self-consciously followed dominical sayings such as, “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).

One key term that defines this journey is purify. Augustine believes that we need to purify our minds “because the weak eye of the human mind cannot be fixed on a light so dazzling, unless it has been nourished and become stronger by the justice of faith” (Aug., De Trin. 1.2.4).

To purify the mind, Augustine has something quite concrete in mind that follows the order of teaching contained within Scripture itself. As he says, “we must first find out by an appeal to the authority of the Sacred Scriptures whether faith is in a position to do so [i.e., reveal God to us]” (De Trin. 1.2.4).

Ultimately, his answer will be a qualified yes, provided “By [the principles of faith] a carefully-regulated piety,” heals our minds so we can “perceive the unchangeable truth” (De Trin. 1.2.4). In other words, Augustine’s ascent to God means that our whole self comes to know God.

How does he suggest we go about our pursuit of true knowledge of God?

First, it all begins with the faith once for all handed down to the saints. And that faith centers on inseparable operations, namely, that the Father, Son, and Spirit work inseparably in all that they do. Augustine emphasizes the unity of divine action—what later theology would call the principle that opera trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa (the external works of the Trinity are undivided).

But the key point is: The one Lord Jesus Christ, the one God and Father of all, and the one Spirit of God inseparably operate in all they do, which evinces their unity of power, of substance, and ultimately their equality.

Second, by embracing this faith taught by the apostles and preserved in the church, we can purify our minds as we pursue a knowledge of God in Holy Scripture.

Third, Augustine lays out a pathway through the Old to the New Testament to know God in accordance with an order of teaching that moves from visible signs to invisible realities.

What is Augustine’s pathway?

Augustine begins with God’s revelation in the Old Testament through angels or other creatures (e.g., prophets). He then moves to the unique way that Christ and the Spirit are sent from God in their two visible missions—the Incarnation and Pentecost.

Next, Augustine reflects on how the visible missions of the Son and Spirit reveal eternal realities, namely, that both proceed from the Father as their origin or source. And lastly, Augustine thinks we can reflect on our inner man (our memory, understanding, and will) because we are created in God’s image and our inner man has an analogical relation to God who is invisible, immortal, and simple.

Put in bullet point form, these steps are:

• To know God in his manifestations or theophanies through his creatures within the Old Testament. The invisible God uses visible angels or creatures to reveal his will (operations)

• To know God in Christ at the Incarnation, which means the invisible Son of God becomes visible; and to know the Holy Spirit who uniquely dwells within us at Pentecost (missions)

• To know God in Christ and the Spirit, who proceed eternally from the Father (processions)

• To know God in whose image we are made by reflecting on the parallels between God’s inner processional life and our inner life (psychological analogy)

In other words, we move from the Old to the New Testaments to understand what the Bible says about God. We reflect on how operations and missions tell us about God’s processional or inner life. And we find parallels in God’s created order by looking at our inner man.

As Augustine models his ascent to God, we can see how his ascent is really the ascent of every human being. We begin by seeking God’s face in Holy Scripture, and through it, we come to know “the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).

Originally published at Ad Fontes.

Few doctrines can boast more of dividing Christians than the doctrine of baptism. And yet Christians have maintained that baptism unites us into one body. So how can we overcome this disagreeable state? Well, by God’s grace through much prayer, reflection, and the Spirit. As a possible first stage in this process, we might also consider how Christians in the first two-hundred years of Christianity baptized. For the most part, they remained united on the meaning of baptism despite regional diversity.

Perhaps we can find in them a model for holding disagreements while staying united on the main things. But even if not, the historical exercise can help us better understand what Christians have meant by baptism. That, it seems to me, is worthwhile in and of itself.

In the following, therefore, I outline how early Christians understood and practiced baptism. I do not claim to be comprehensive but only to show how some representative Christian communities during the first two centuries of Christianity understood and practiced baptism.

Methodologically, I have tried to explain how Christians in the early centuries described baptism in their own words. Believers in these early centuries did not feel the need to overly nuance or articulate the mechanics of baptism. They did not have centuries worth of baptismal debates like we have.

For this reason, they affirm the necessity of baptism in biblical language unencumbered by later debates. I hope that this article helps readers both to recognize the basic continuity we share with early Christians and also to perceive how different that world is.

With that said, this article begins briefly with a discussion on baptismal washings prior to the New Testament before addressing that Testament and also Christian writers up to about 250 AD on the topic of baptism.

Pre-New Testament

Ceremonial baths existed around the temple precincts in Jerusalem. Likely, they existed for ceremonial washings. Later traditions indicate that such washings centre on ritual purity and as initiation rites (e.g., m. Pesach 8.8). These traditions, however, come later than the New Testament (so McGowan, 2014: Ancient Christian Worship, 137).

Andrew McGowan also points out that the baptisms in the Essene community (and also as described in the Dead Sea Scrolls) do not signify initiation rituals but map onto “ritual washing practices” (McGowan, 2014: 138).

So while pre-New Testament traditions provide important context for ritual washings and baths, Christian baptism does something evidently unique. In short, Christian baptism functioned as an initiation rite into the body of Christ, whereby the washing of water meant the forgiveness of sins and the Spirit’s act of regeneration

John the Baptist

John the Baptizer followed a long tradition of ceremonial cleansing rituals within Judaism. What marks him as unique was not so much his baptizing but the reason he gave for his baptizing. John baptized people to prepare the way for Christ, and he spoke of his baptism as one of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Mark 1:4; Luke 3:3). Matthew records that John also preached repentance due to the kingdom being at hand (Matt 3:2).

Importantly, John contrasts his baptism in water with Jesus’s superior baptism by the Spirit (Matt 3:11 // Mark 1:8 // Luke 3:16). John thus distinguishes his baptism from Christian baptism; they are of different orders with different purposes and effects. Further, that Jesus baptizes with the Spirit may explain why Paul speaks of baptism in relation to the Spirit (1 Cor 12:13). Christian baptism signifies the Spirit’s work of washing away sins and incorporating us into the Christian community.

Historically speaking, Josephus, the Jewish historian, provides external evidence for John and the meaning of his baptism. For example, Josephus speaks of John, noting “that [he] was called the Baptist” (Antiquities 18.116). And Josephus explains John’s baptismal ministry as follows:

“Herod slew [John], who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism; for that the washing [with water] would be acceptable to him, if they made use of it, not in order to the putting away [or the remission] of some sins [only], but for the purification of the body; supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness” (Antiquities 18.117).

Josephus’s emphasis on righteousness matches the Bible’s language. John proclaimed “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Luke 3:3), but since he did not baptize with the Spirit nor bring forgiveness as Christ did, we might say that the purpose clause—“for the forgiveness of sins”—fits into his preparatory ministry, because Christ forgives sinners and gives the Spirit without measure (cf. Acts 2:38).

Tertullian makes a similar point in his On Baptism, writing, “[John’s baptism] was directed only to repentance, which is in a man’s own power, not to forgiveness or to the gift of the Holy Spirit” (On Baptism, 1.10). And a bit later, he concludes, “The remission of sins which John preached was not present, but future, and his baptism of repentance was no more than a preparation for this” (1.10). Most would agree with this judgment (e.g., Origen, Romans, 5.8.6), although writers like Clement of Alexandria will still see Jesus’s baptism as paradigmatic for later Christians baptisms.

Paul

Paul, the earliest New Testament author to write on baptism, does not outline the practice of baptism in detail, rather he theologizes about its meaning. The most common way that he describes baptism is by being baptized “into Christ”:

Romans 6:3: “Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” Paul then says we are “buried with him through baptism into death” (Rom 6:4). And quickly afterwards, he maintains that we also rise with him in a resurrection like his: “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Rom 6:5).

Galatians 3:27: “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”

1 Corinthians 12:13: “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body.” Here, the body is the body of Christ.

Colossians 2:12: “having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.”

For Paul, baptism into/with Christ indicates that our baptism means participation in Christ’s life; particularly, Paul names his death and resurrection.

That said, our union with Christ by baptism includes more than the events of Christ’s death and resurrection, since Paul will speak of Christ living in him comprehensively (Gal 2:20). Baptism incorporates us into the life of Christ, and our life fully belongs to Christ: “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3). Baptism thus signifies that death and resurrection into our new life with Christ. We are new creations (e.g., 2 Cor 5:17).

Important to this discussion is Ephesians 4:5–6 where Paul names our sevenfold oneness through our one faith in the Trinity and our baptism into one body: “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.”

When it comes to the practical questions of how, who, and when, we need to read Paul cautiously since he only implies answers to these questions. As to how, Paul may believe baptism spatially symbolizes our death in Christ as we enter the waters and our resurrection with Christ as we ascend from them. That at least seems to be the implication in Romans 6:3–5.

Further, baptism implies washing with water, which further explains how Paul thought one should be baptized:

1 Corinthians 6:11: “you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified.”

Titus 3:5: Paul speaks of “the washing of regeneration.”

Ephesians 5:26: Of the body of Christ, the church, Paul says, Christ “cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.”

1 Corinthians 10:2: Paul argues for a typological relation between crossing the Red Sea and baptism: “all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.”

These passages confirm what the word baptism obviously implies: being washed with water.

As to who baptizes, Paul implies that leaders generally baptized new believers (1 Cor 1:13–17). In 1 Corinthians 1, congregants remembered which leader baptized them and had a hierarchy of sorts on that basis. This hierarchy is a problem, but Paul does not seem to criticize the practice of named leaders being the ones who regularly baptize.

The baptized person becomes part of the body of Christ, the church: “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body” (1 Cor 12:13). And hence the New Testament regularly speaks of the church as one body, the body of Christ, and so on. In fact, the New Testament only defines the church four times explicitly, and in each case, it identifies it with the body of Christ (Col 1:18; 1:24; Eph 1:22–23; Eph 5:23). The most basic definition of the church is the body of Christ, and baptism incorporates us into that body (cf. Eph 4:4–6).

Finally, when it comes to when someone is baptized, Paul specifies no age or capacity for baptism per se, but the apostle does mention that there is only one baptism due to its symbolism in Ephesians 4:5: “one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” This may mean re-baptisms are inappropriate to the symbolism.

Further, Paul claims that our death and resurrection in baptism occur “through faith” in Colossians 2:12, which implies the presence of faith in the one baptized.

Synoptic Gospels

The three synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) are written after the Pauline epistles, and they testify to Jesus’s own understanding of baptism. In the first place, John Baptizes Jesus to fulfill all righteousness (Matt 3:15). Jesus also metaphorically speaks of his death as a baptism, and commissions the apostles to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Each point is worth recounting briefly to fill out our understanding of early Christian baptism.

Jesus consented to John’s baptism because, he explained, “it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (Matt 3:15). In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus uses the word “fulfill” to indicate how his life completes a pattern begun in the Old Testament. For example, Jesus’s parents took him to Egypt in Matthew 2:15 “to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, Out of Egypt I called my son’” (Hos 11:1).

During this time, we learn that Herod threatened the life of Israelite children as Pharaoh threatened the lives of Israelite children in Egypt, which once again fulfills scripture (Matt 2:17). And after Jesus’s baptism, the Spirit ushers him into the wilderness for forty days where he lives not by bread alone but God’s word in parallel to Israel who learned that lesson during their forty years of wandering the desert (Deut 8:3).

So in Matthew 3:15, Jesus may very well think of his baptism as parallel to Israel’s baptism into the waters of Moses, since the passage narratively follows sojourn in Egypt and precedes his forty days of wandering in the wilderness. If so, then Jesus walked through the waters of baptism as Israel walked through the waters of the Red Sea. This fulfillment of baptism would parallel Paul’s typological view of baptism (1 Cor 10:1–2).

Jesus also talks about his baptism for his disciples. When he does so, Jesus underscores that the apostles would be baptized into his suffering (death).

Here are the relevant passages:

Mark 10:38–39: “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” And they said to him, “We are able.” And Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.”

Luke 12:50: “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished!”

In Mark, James and John seek a powerful place in the coming kingdom. Jesus tells them if they want a senior place in the kingdom, they must undergo the baptism of death. They will need to suffer as he will. In Luke, Jesus speaks more generally of his baptism of death.

Importantly, Jesus invites the disciples to take up their cross and follow him (Mark 8:34), suggesting that being baptized into his suffering means following Jesus on the way of the cross. This may be the kind of thing Jesus means when he speaks of the cup of suffering in Mark 10:38–39.

Possibly then, this language of being baptized into Jesus’s suffering led Christians like Paul to see baptism into Christ’s death as a way to identify themselves with Jesus in his death. After Jesus rose from the dead, it may have seemed obvious that baptism into Christ’s death also meant baptism into his resurrection. After all, Jesus tells James and John that they must suffer before they receive glory, just as Jesus must suffer the cross before he receives the crown.

Lastly, Jesus commissions his apostles, saying: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt 28:19). Key here is the phrase “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Paul more concisely speaks of being baptized “into Christ,” but most Christians found Jesus’s full saying to be the best way to describe the theological meaning of baptism.

This trinitarian baptism would therefore play a pivotal role in early Christian baptisms. These baptisms included some sort of trinitarian confession and/or a triune dipping into the water. But interestingly, in the Book of Acts, Christians are often baptized in the name of Jesus.

As a final note, Mark 16:16 also contains an important passage on baptism: “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” Many argue that this passage, in the longer ending of Mark, was not original to the Gospel but added early on.

Even if we grant that point, then it remains an important early Christian testimony to the theology of baptism. Early Christians also knew of this ending and cited it as Scripture (e.g., Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.10.6). No matter one’s textual view of the passage, it still tells us something illuminating. Here, we see that faith and baptism are closely united. And since one is condemned for a lack of faith and not for a lack of baptism in Mark 16:16, we might say that Jesus here underscores the priority of faith in salvation.

Acts of the Apostles

Acts narrates the Church’s growth in its earliest years, and it provides numerous examples of baptism.

First, baptisms occurred with large groups, small groups, or individuals (e.g., Acts 2:41; Acts 10:47–48; 8:36–8).

Second, baptisms happened in public or in semi-private settings, such as when Peter baptized Cornelius and his household (Acts 10:47–48).

Third, when leaders of households were baptized, Acts records the rest of the household also being baptized (Acts 10:44–48; 16:15, 33). Likely, this would have included not only immediate family members but household servants too. One implication might be that faith in the earliest churches had a corporate dimension; household heads led in faith on behalf of those under their care.

Fourth, baptism usually involved the Holy Spirit, but the timing of the Holy Spirit’s reception varied: before baptism (Acts 10:44–48), during baptism (Acts 2:38; 19:5–6), and after baptism (Acts 8:14–17). The Spirit and baptism go hand-in-hand, but there is no strict order or timing of the Spirit’s reception relative to baptism.

Fifth, baptism occurs in the name of Jesus (2:38; 8:16; 10:48; 19:5), which may be a summary statement that does not exclude a Matthean baptism into the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit.

Sixth, baptism involves repentance and believing in the Lord Jesus (Acts 2:38; 8:12; 16:31–33).

Seventh, baptism marked entrance into the community of faith (Acts 2:41–42), although not every baptism in Acts explicitly shows this initiation.

Eighth, named leaders baptize throughout Acts, even when baptisms happen semi-privately.

Ninth, baptisms generally do not include laying on of hands, but the laying on of hands sometimes occurs close to baptism or the reception of the spirit (Acts 8:17; 19:6). Baptism, laying on of hands, and the Spirit seem related, but they need not happen at the same time or in any particular order according to the Book of Acts.

Tenth, baptism immediately follows belief in some cases (Acts 8:36–38; 16:33). In other words, in Acts, we find no evidence of long periods of preparation before baptism.

The picture that emerges from Acts is that when someone repents and believes in the Lord Jesus Christ, they get baptized, receive the Spirit, and sometimes have hands laid upon them. The timing, place, size, and persons baptizing the baptized vary. Acts 2:41–42 notes that baptism initiates someone into the community of faith, what Paul calls the body of Christ or the church.

Peter

The apostle Peter draws a connection between Noah’s ark that saved eight persons through the flood and Christian baptism (1 Pet 3:20). He then writes, “Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

Peter seems to draw a distinction here between a merely physical baptism (“a removal of dirt from the body”) and a baptism that involves “an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus.” It is, in this way, that baptism saves us: by appealing to God through Jesus Christ. The water alone does not save; but the water with the appeal to God through Christ saves.

The Gospel of John

The Gospel of John may be one of the last writings in the New Testament, possibly being written in the mid 90s. Hence, the Gospel book seems to assume baptismal practices and thus focuses on deepening the theology of baptism.

Like in the Synoptic Gospels, John the Baptist contrasts his water baptism with Jesus’s baptism by the Spirit (John 1:33). But in John, this contrast is programmatic because throughout this Gospel book, Jesus, the Spirit, and water tie together theologically.

For example, Jesus explains what new birth means to Nicodemus in John 3:5. Here, the Lord says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” In other words, one must be born again by water, which may refer both to birth waters and baptismal waters, along with the Holy Spirit who gives life (John 6:63).

Jesus says that he gives the Spirit without measure (John 3:34) and speaks about living water (i.e., the Spirit) in John 4:10–14. John 7:37–39 identifies the Spirit with living water:

“On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ “ Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”

When Jesus says, “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water,” he either means the one who believes or, as I take it, to be quite literally the side of Christ on the cross from which water and blood pour out, signifying the Spirit and Christ’s atonement sacrifice: “But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water” (19:34). Elsewhere, John remembered Jesus’s teaching and said, “For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree” (1 John 5:7–8).

In short, John unites baptism with new birth and the Spirit. Living water symbolizes the Holy Spirit—”Now this he said about the Spirit”—in order to deepen our understanding of the Spirit’s relationship to Jesus and how Jesus baptizes by the Spirit, that is, living water. Early baptismal manuals (see below) commended baptism in living waters (i.e., fresh water), possibly in memory of the words of Jesus.

Paul also unites water with the Spirit in Titus 3:5 when he speaks of “the washing of regeneration [i.e., new birth] and renewal of the Holy Spirit.” And elsewhere, he can speak of Christ sanctifying the church, “having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word” (Eph 5:26). He may be remembering the words of Jesus, which John later recorded in his Gospel Book.

In any case, Christians must have picked up on Jesus’s teaching on baptism, living water, and the Spirit. Acts shows us that the connection between water and the Spirit is not mechanical. But living water, nevertheless, symbolizes the Spirit who acts in our rebirth.

John may also support a non-mechanical connection between the living waters in baptism and the Spirit. When Jesus speaks to Nicodemus, he says, “Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:7–8). The Spirit cannot be tied down to one act. This would agree with Acts where the Spirit comes before, during, and after baptisms.

The NT on Baptism

The above survey bypassed important passages in Hebrews for the sake of brevity. I mainly aimed to draw attention to key themes in the New Testament that early Christians emphasized and repeated over the next two centuries across various locales (Syria, Rome, North Africa).

Before I do, I need to mention one of the most important passages in the Bible for understanding the theology of baptism, Acts 2:38, where Peter says, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Christians would, like Peter, think of baptism as for the remission of sins and tied to the divine gift of the Spirit, who was thought to wash away our sins. Further, being baptized “in the name of Jesus” was usually understood as a summary of the Faith, which Matthew 28:19 expands into a trinitarian confession of the faith.

Early Christians used the language of Peter (forgiveness, baptism, gift, Spirit) and of the Faith given in Matthew 28:19 to order their baptismal practices. To see how they did so, we can now turn to the Didache and various other early Christian documents to advance our understanding of baptism by showing how representative early post-NT Christians baptized.

Syria: Didache

Christians in Syria likely wrote the Didache in the second century, yet its traditions may trace back to the time of the apostles in the first century (2 Thess 2:15). Its language and feel match the Gospel of Matthew but it is written as a manual for church practice. Hence even if its traditions go back to the apostles themselves, it did not amount to Scripture for early Christians.

In the seventh chapter, the Didache provides a somewhat detailed description of baptism:

“And concerning baptism, baptize in this way: having reviewed all of these things, baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in [living] water. But if you do not have access to [living] water, baptize in other water. And if you are not able to baptize with cold water, then baptize with warm water. But if you possess neither, pour water on the head three times, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And before the baptism the baptizer should fast beforehand, and the one being baptized and any others who are able. Call upon the one being baptized to fast beforehand for one or two days.”

First, notice that baptism in the Didache is not spontaneous as it appears to be in Acts. There is a time of preparation, which in the Didache looks like moral formation but presumably it also included doctrine given the trinitarian baptism and theological discussions in the didache, which assume prior knowledge.

Second, observe that baptism occurs “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” as it does in Matthew 28:19.

Third, baptism happens ideally in “living water” which means running or fresh water, like a river. This ideal setting plausibly links to the teaching of Jesus in which the spirit and living waters share a symbolic world.

Fourth, the water of baptism has a sequence of options, depending on what is available. One can baptize in non-living water, cold water, warm water, and so on. In fact, if small amounts of water are only available, one can “pour water on the head three times, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Possibly, the triple pour parallels an implied triple dip into living waters given the parallel here.

Fifth, the one being baptized should “fast beforehand for one or two days.” For the Didache community, fasting was a normal practice, occurring on Wednesdays and Fridays (8:1).

Sixth, later in the Didache, we learn that only the baptized may enjoy the Eucharist (Lord’s Supper): “But none shall eat or shall drink from your Eucharist but those baptized in the name of the Lord; for also concerning this the Lord has said, “Do give not what is holy to the dogs’” (9:5). As far as I can discern, fencing the table in this way was the normal practice for early Christians.

If the Didache recounts the spoken traditions of the disciples of Jesus, and that seems possible (2 Thess 2:15), then the spontaneous baptisms in Acts had already given way to baptism after a time of preparation very early on for this community. Other writings in the second and third centuries confirm that preparation before baptism was the norm. This reality suggests that Christians did not view Acts as teaching what must be done in the church but rather a narrative of how the risen Lord, through his Apostles, led the church.

Rome: Shepherd of Hermas

The Shepherd of Hermas traces its origin to Rome. As a composite document, the author(s) wrote portions of it as early as the 90s and as late as the 140s. The named-author is Hermas, a prophet from Rome.

According to Hermas, baptism includes the forgiveness of sins, since Hermas says there is only one more repentance after baptism and, for him, repentance meant forgiveness (Mandate 4.3.1–4). Further, in a different section of the book, Hermas emphasizes the necessity of baptism for entering the kingdom of God (Visions 9.16; cf. John 3:5). This would constitute evidence from the early second century that Roman baptism concerned forgiveness and repentance.

A final note on Hermas. He calls baptism a “seal” (Vision 9.16), a term associated in the New Testament with the Spirit who seals our salvation. For example, Paul says God has “put his seal on us and given us his Spirit” (2 Cor 1:22). In Ephesians, Paul speaks of being “sealed with the promised Holy Spirit” and of the Holy Spirit “by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption” (Eph 1:13–14; Eph 4:30).

In their original context, these sealing passages do not explicitly mention baptism. But Christians inferred that baptism may be the seal of the Spirit, a sort of visible imprint of the Spirit’s inner work. That, at least, is how many Christian authors after Hermas spoke about the Spirit’s sealing.

Alexandria: The Epistle of Barnabas

The Epistle of Barnabas was composed sometime in the early second century, although it may go all the way back to the first century. Its provenance is not known, but many suspect it comes from Alexandria because of its allegorical approach to Scripture. If so, it provides early evidence for how Christians in Alexandria understood baptism.

Barnabas, in the eleventh chapter of his Epistle, cites a long list of Scriptural passages to show how the waters of baptism flow from ancient precedent (Jer 2:12–13; Isa 16:1–2; Isa 45:2–3; Isa 33:16–18; Ps 1:3–6; Zeph 3:19; Ezek 47:12). For Barnabas, the living water in which we are baptized harkens back to the waters and tree of life.

He cites Ezekiel 47:12, “And there was a river flowing on the right hand, and beautiful trees rose up from it; and whosoever shall eat of them shall live forever,” and then concludes: “This he says, because we go down into the water laden with sins and filth, and rise up from it bearing fruit in the heart, resting our fear and hope on Jesus in the spirit. And whoever shall eat of these shall live forever; he means this: whoever, he says, shall hear these things spoken and shall believe, shall live forever” (Barnabas 11:11).

In context, “in spirit” means in the Holy Spirit (Barnabas 11:9), and this baptism also leads to the remission of sins according to Barnabas (11:1). The language of going “down into the water” and rising “up from it” pictures someone immersing themselves in a river or bath, such as happened in John’s Baptism or as the Didache prescribes (“living waters”). It may also reflect Paul’s view of baptism in Romans 6, wherein Paul speaks of going down (death) and rising up (resurrection) with specific theological meaning.

Rome: Justin Martyr

Justin Martyr, writing from the middle of the second century in Rome, describes baptism as he observed it in Rome (First Apology, 61). First, Justin points out that: “As many as are persuaded and believe that what we teach and say is true, and undertake to be able to live accordingly, are instructed to pray and to entreat God with fasting, for the remission of their sins that are past, we praying and fasting with them.”

In short, once believers are persuaded of Christian teaching and believe, they seek out baptism. Justin explains: “Then they are brought by us where there is water, and are regenerated in the same manner in which we were ourselves regenerated. For, in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with water.”

In this context, he cites John 3:5 and Isaiah 1:16–20 to illustrate how baptism washes and cleanses us and thereby regenerates us. Baptism in Justin’s Roman churches occurred in the name of God the Father, Jesus Christ, and Holy Spirit.

In terms of meaning, Justin maintains that our first birth involved sin and lack of knowledge, and so our new birth involves our choice to “obtain in the water the remission of sins formerly committed.” And, comments Justin, “there is pronounced over him who chooses to be born again, and has repented of his sins, the name of God the Father and Lord of the universe; he who leads to the laver the person that is to be washed calling him by this name alone.”

Our choice in baptism is key for Justin. By this choice, the baptized receive illumination since sin and ignorance had ruled over humans since their first birth. Justin continues:

“For no one can utter the name of the ineffable God; and if any one dare to say that there is a name, he raves with a hopeless madness. And this washing is called illumination, because they who learn these things are illuminated in their understandings. And in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and in the name of the Holy Ghost, who through the prophets foretold all things about Jesus, he who is illuminated is washed.” (First Apology, 61)

Since we had lived in ignorance and sin, “this washing is called illumination” because God illumines our minds to understand him. Hence, baptism is, for Justin, a regeneration (new birth).

After baptism, the baptized, now illuminated, could enter into the assembly, pray, kiss, and enjoy the Eucharist (First Apology, 65). This service ended with a formal meal to celebrate the inclusion of the newly baptized: “those who are called by us deacons give to each of those present to partake of the bread and wine mixed with water over which the thanksgiving was pronounced, and to those who are absent they carry away a portion.”

Gaul: Irenaeus of Lyon

Irenaeus of Lyon may be the greatest second-century theologian of the church due to his having written his magisterial Against Heresies that not only rebuffed one species of gnosticism but also established with clarity the truth of the Faith. While Against Heresies does mention baptism, another writing of Irenaeus’s provides clear positive affirmation of its meaning. This work, called On the Apostolic Preaching, functioned as a manual to sum up the Christian faith.

Irenaeus first recounts how the elders (the disciples of the apostles) handed down the faith. It is worth noting that Irenaeus studied under Polycarp, the disciple of John and likely heard these traditions while in Smyrna or elsewhere in Asia Minor before his time as Bishop of Lugdunum in Gaul, or modern day Lyons in France.

In his own words, Irenaeus writes:

“So, faith procures this for us, as the elders, the disciples of the apostles, have handed down to us: firstly, it exhorts us to remember that we have received baptism for the remission of sins, in the name of God the Father, and in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, [who was] incarnate, and died, and was raised, and in the Holy Spirit of God; and that this baptism is the seal of eternal life and rebirth unto God, that we may no longer be sons of mortal men, but of the eternal and everlasting God” (Preaching, 1.3).

So baptism, as everyone agrees, is for “the remission of sins,” language that Peter himself uses (Acts 2:38). Further, this baptism is a trinitarian baptism (Matt 28:19). The act of baptism also is “the seal of eternal life and rebirth unto God.” Here, we observe the seal language, drawn from Paul, to indicate that baptism seals our eternal life; it is the imprint upon us that shows us we are reborn into eternal life.

The trinitarian aspect of baptism reveals its creedal dimension. Irenaeus points out that the Rule of Faith, a phrase that describes a paradigm for Christian confession, which believers in the second century followed to understand Scripture, is a Trinitarian rule. Hence, baptism was creedal. After recounting the Rule (which is similar to the Apostles Creed), Irenaeus writes “For this reason the baptism of our regeneration (παλιγγενεσία) takes place through these three articles [i.e., a confession of the Father, Son, and Spirit], granting us regeneration unto God the Father through His Son by the Holy Spirit: for those who bear the Spirit of God are led to the Word, that is to the Son, while the Son presents [them] to the Father, and the Father furnishes (περιποιέω) incorruptibility” (Preaching, 1.7)

In short, baptism for Irenaeus is for the remission of sins and into the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit. And this “into” implies a full confession of the Rule of Faith, which as far as I can discern, was usual practice in extant second and third century texts (and beyond).

Alexandria: Clement

According to Simon Wood, Clement or “Titus Flavius Clemens was born c. 150, most probably in Athens” (Christ the Educator, vi). He was a brilliant Christian teacher, who systematically taught the faith. As an intellectual, Clement nevertheless knew Scripture well, suggesting that he grew up as a Christian. We at least know that he learned from the Christian stoic Pantaenus in Alexandria in the mid-second century, and Clement further seems to have taken over the role of catechetical teacher from Pantaenus. Origen would later follow Clement in this capacity, although there is some doubt as to the nature of this catechetical school.

The foundational paradigm for Clement’s view of baptism is Christ’s baptism in which he was washed and consecrated by the Holy Spirit (The Instructor, 1.6.25). While Christ was already perfect, Clement observes that he was baptized to give us a paradigm to understand our baptism. One should keep in mind, however, that the New Testament distinguishes John’s baptism with water from Jesus’s with the Spirit; Clement would be aware of this distinction but emphasizes that Jesus still remains a paradigm or model for us to imitate in baptism.

As to what baptism means, Clement explains, “When we are baptized, we are enlightened; being enlightened, we become adopted sons; becoming adopted sons, we are made perfect; and becoming perfect, we are made divine. ‘I have said,’ it is written, ‘you are gods and all of you the sons of the most High’” (The Instructor, 1.6.26). In his writing, the two key motifs appear to be rebirth and illumination, which agrees with the emphasis of Justin Martyr in Rome a few decades earlier.

He also names the various words that describe the rite of baptism in Alexandria during the second century:

“This ceremony is often called ‘free gift,’ ‘enlightenment,’ ‘perfection,’ and ‘cleansing’—’cleansing,’ because through it we are completely purified of our sins; ‘free gift,’ because by it the punishments due to our sins are remitted; ‘enlightenment,’ since by it we behold the wonderful holy light of salvation, that is, it enables us to see God clearly; finally, we call it ‘perfection’ as needing nothing further, for what more does he need who possesses the knowledge of God? It would indeed be out of place to call something that was not fully perfect a gift of God. He is perfect; therefore, the gifts He bestows are also perfect. Just as at His command all things came into existence, so, on His mere desire to give, there immediately arises an overflowing measure of His gifts. What is yet to come, His will alone has already anticipated” (The Instructor 1.6.26).

Clement also sees this as a rebirth or a beginning of life: “​​Moreover, release from evil is only the beginning of salvation” (The Instructor, 1.6.26). It seems obvious that Clement has in mind adults in baptism, since he emphasizes moving from ignorance to knowledge. He concludes: “To be sure, the things that ignorance restricts, to our harm, knowledge sets free, for our good. The quickest way to loose those bonds is to make use of man’s faith, and God’s grace, for sins are forgiven through the one divine remedy, baptism in the Word. All our sins, in fact, are washed away; instantaneously we are no longer bad” (The Instructor, 1.6.29–30).

In his homily on “Who Is the Rich Man That Shall Be Saved,” Clement likely calls baptism a “seal” while speaking of those who fall away after redemption (§39). This sealing mattered for the practice of baptism, because it sealed the baptized and prevented evil spirits from getting within.

For example, in a passage that likely represents Clement’s own view in his Excerpta ex Theodoto, Clement writes: “It is fitting to go to baptism with joy, but, since unclean spirits often go down into the water with some and these spirits following and gaining the seal together with the candidate become impossible to cure for the future, fear is joined with joy, in order that only he who is pure may go down to the water” (§83). It is partly for this reason that early baptisms involved an exorcism before the candidates were sealed with oil.

North Africa: Tertullian on the Meaning of Baptism

Tertullian (155–220) wrote the earliest extant treatise on baptism that we are aware of, called “On Baptism.” Likely he wrote it in about AD 200, and it is not the only writing in which he mentions baptism.

For example, in De Corona, Tertullian lays out how Christians baptize in his North African community in this way:

“When we are going to enter the water, but a little before, in the presence of the congregation and under the hand of the president, we solemnly profess that we disown the devil, and his pomp, and his angels. Hereupon we are thrice immersed, making a somewhat ampler pledge than the Lord has appointed in the Gospel. Then when we are taken up (as new-born children), we taste first of all a mixture of milk and honey, and from that day we refrain from the daily bath for a whole week. We take also, in congregations before daybreak, and from the hand of none but the presidents, the sacrament of the Eucharist, which the Lord both commanded to be eaten at meal-times, and enjoined to be taken by all alike” (§3).

Before the bath, catechumens (baptismal candidates) deny the devil and his works, a tradition still practiced today by many Christians. The triple immersion matches the practice of Syrian community of the Didache (at least the triple pouring). The symbolism of new birth remains central. What may be unique is the relationship to “milk and honey,” a common practice by early Christians but one not mentioned in the New Testament. That said, milk and honey represent blessings throughout the Old Testament, and so the imagery is not foreign to Scripture.

According to Tertullian, the presidents lay hands upon the catechumens during the exorcism, and they also give the first taste of the Eucharist to those baptized. In other words, baptism precedes the Lord’s Supper, a pattern present throughout early Christian writings. Since baptism meant one entered the community as a full participant after their times as catechumens, it makes sense for the baptized to enjoy the fellowship of the Lord and his body at the Eucharist.

When it comes to his treatise on Baptism (c. AD 200), Tertullian goes into considerably more detail. As he opens his treatise, he notes that the waters of the new creation or birth in baptism remind us of the waters of the first creation (On Baptism, 1.4). The Spirit, he notes, hovers over both (Gen 1:2).

He points out, however, that the Spirit is not in the water materialistically: “Not that the Holy Spirit is given to us in the water, but that in the water we are made clean by the action of the angel, and made ready for the Holy Spirit.” (On Baptism, 1.6). Possibly, Tertullian had in mind the angel at the pool of Bethsaida in John 5:4, which healed those who came into those waters. Additionally, Tertullian assumes a basic Christian belief that God works through created effects of angels.

Note that Tertullian believes the Spirit comes and enacts the “cancelling of sins which is granted in response to faith signed and sealed in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (On Baptism, 1.6). In other words, at baptism, catechumens confessed the Father, Son, Spirit, and, adds Tertullian, the Church; for the Church is a trinitarian body—so it remains three. Baptism also “seals” the baptized in the triune name.

After baptism, Tertullian describes how the baptized are anointed, citing Aaronic priests and Christ himself (the anointed one) as precedent (On Baptism, 1.7). Next, the baptizer or some other person lays hands on the baptized which bestows the Holy Spirit, according to Tertullian: “The imposition of the hand in benediction calls down the Holy Spirit” (On Baptism, 1.8).

Drawing natural and Old Testament analogies, Tertullian then concludes that just as, “[The Holy Spirit] came down upon our Lord in the form of a dove,” so he descends upon us (On Baptism, 1.8). Importantly, the ritual of baptism draws on identification with the life of Christ, whether in the anointing or in the reception of the Spirit, which visibly occurred at his baptism.

In summary, Tertullian sees baptism as a washing that brings us into the community of faith, related to the reception of the Holy Spirit. It also records a confession of faith in the triune God, which parallels other known early baptismal rites. In other words, early Christians were confessing a trinitarian creed to represent the meaning of their baptism into the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit. This act of credo-baptism would be the normal practice among other churches of this time too.

North Africa: Tertullian on the Practice of Baptism

Tertullian also provides detailed information about the practice of baptism, which I outline in the following.

Who baptizes

Tertullian affirms that the bishop should first of all, but presbyters and deacons may also do so, as long as the bishop gives them permission. Laymen may baptize, notes Tertullian, in extreme circumstances (On Baptism, 3.17).

Who may be baptized

Tertullian advises caution and delay to ensure that catechumens are fully prepared for baptism:

“Baptism must not be conferred without careful consideration. The baptism of the eunuch by Philip is no precedent for hasty action, for this was a very particular case, led up to by divine guidance, and accompanied by special circumstances. Also Paul’s speedy baptism was by our Lord’s direct command. Baptism on mere request can both disappoint and be disappointed. Delay is always advisable, especially with young children; these ought to wait until they are old enough to know what is being done to them. Delay is also advisable with young persons, especially the unmarried” (On Baptism, 3.18; Evans’s paraphrase).

Particularly, Tertullian advises that one should delay baptizing “young children,” a diminutive term (parvulus) of the word small or parvus in Latin. It refers to very small children, likely including infants, although not exclusively.

Why reason so? Tertullian thinks small children may be in danger of salvation like anyone else, and so a quick baptism may not be of use. So he advises: “So let them come, when they are growing up, when they are learning, when they are being taught what they are coming to: let them be made Christians when they have become competent to know Christ. Why should innocent infancy come with haste to the remission of sins? … Let them first learn how to ask for salvation, so that you may be seen to have given to one that asketh.” (On Baptism, 3.18; Evan’s literal translation).

The translation of Evans above translates one word, innocens, as “innocent infancy,” and so it may simply mean very young children (which would include infants), but not exclusively so. Likely, bishops had baptized children too young to know what was happening in baptism. So Tertullian writes these words to correct that practice. Even so, the language and context probably include infants.

When to baptize

The ideal time for baptism, Tertullian points out, would be Passover (i.e., Easter) (On Baptism, 3.19). Amongst his contemporaries, this was the standard time to baptize. The imagery of the Passover, including the crossing of the waters as well as its association with Pentecost, when Christ sent the Spirit to the church, makes, for Tertullian, the day particularly appropriate.

How to prepare for baptism

Tertullian emphasizes that those about to be baptized should fast, in ways similar to the Didache (On Baptism, 3.20). He adds confession of sins as preparation too.

And as a last note, Tertullian notes that alongside water baptism, there is a second, a baptism of blood, citing 1 John 5:6 as evidence. Here, one can infer that the death of martyrs also played a role in Tertullian’s thinking.

North Africa: Cyprian

Cyprian (210–258), a Berber bishop of Carthage, ministered about fifty years after Tertullian’s time. While his baptismal theology shares much with Tertullian and others surveyed above, Cyprian contributes to our picture of early Christian baptism in a few specific ways.

First, Cyprian advocates for infant baptism. And unlike Tertullian, Cyprian argues that there should be no delay in the baptism of infants. Cyprian’s view becomes clear when we consider a local controversy on when to baptize infants, whether on the eighth day or earlier. Cyprian—along with sixty-six pastoral colleagues—declared that it was unnecessary to wait for the eighth day. In his language, “we all judge, that the mercy and grace of God is to be denied to none born of man” (Letter 64), by which means, infants should be baptized immediately.

According to Cyprian, Scripture maintains that baptism is a gift given to all ages: “Moreover the truth of Holy Scripture declares to us that all, whether infants or elders, have the same equal participation of the Divine gift” (Letter 64). Central, then, to Cyprian’s description here is that baptism is a gift of God, which no one should bar. As a gift, baptism in the Church forgives sins and, explains Cyprian, baptism in the Church would make someone “be fully sanctified, and become sons of God, if they be born of each Sacrament; since it is written, ‘Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God’” (Cyprian, Letter 72.1).

Indeed, Cyprian so closely ties water and Spirit together that he maintains baptism is not baptism without the Spirit: “For water alone cannot cleanse sins and sanctify a man, unless it have also the Holy Ghost. Wherefore they must needs concede either that the Spirit is there, where they say Baptism is; or that that is not Baptism, where the Spirit is not, in that Baptism cannot be without the Spirit” (Cyprian, Letter 74.7). Theologically, Cyprian sees the act of baptism involving one’s “sins being laid aside in Baptism” and the baptized being “spiritually formed into a new man” which apparently made one “fit for receiving the Holy Ghost” (Cyprian, Letter 74.7). And this washing of regeneration is nothing other than a new birth for Cyprian (Letter 74.8).

The most common way Cyprian speaks of baptism is as a baptism for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38), which is given based on a confession of faith in Father, Son, Spirit, and church (e.g., Cyprian, Letter 73.6–7). But since that confession relies on the triune God inhabiting the one true Church, Cyprian added that only baptisms within the Church are valid and those outside of the Church, united by the college of bishop, are invalid.

The lapsi controversy and the schism of Novation in Rome led Cyprian to this further reflection on baptism. If, as Cyprian argues, heretics or schismatics are not in communion with the Church and they baptized someone, then that baptism was invalid since the church alone participates in the grace of baptism. In context, this meant that Novation’s baptism was invalid. This was a controversial view in Cyprian’s day, but it illustrates how baptismal theology came to centre on notions like church unity, the validity of bishops, and the church’s administration of the gift of God (baptism).

However, in this controversy, Cyprian clarifies the process of baptism and fills in the blanks about what was confessed and answered in baptism by those baptized. He writes:

“But if any here object and say, that Novatian holds the same rule that the Catholic Church holds, baptizes with the same Creed wherewith we also baptize, acknowledges the same God the Father, the same Son Christ, the same Holy Ghost, and therefore can claim the power of baptizing, because he seems not to differ from us in the baptismal interrogatory:—whoso thinks that this may be objected, let him know in the first place, that we and schismatics have not one rule of the Creed, nor the same interrogatories. For when they say, “Dost thou believe remission of sins and eternal life by the holy Church?” they lie in their interrogatory, since they have no Church. Then moreover they themselves confess with their own mouths that remission of sins can only be given by the holy Church; and, not having this, they shew that sins cannot be remitted with them” (Cyprian, Letter 69.6; also 73.10).

Commenting on Cyprian’s restricted baptismal practice, Rose Bernard Donna writes, “Cyprian’s great respect for the Sacrament leads him into the error of associating the efficacy of the Sacrament with the worthiness of the minister” (Saints Cyprian: Letters 1–81, xx–xxi). This judgment is sound, and one might also add that Cyprian’s view of baptism as a gift of God should have implied that it can be given despite the invalidity of the baptizer. And apparently Stephen, the bishop of Rome, was not pleased with Cyprian’s practice (xx–xxi).

In any case, Cyprian in these discussions on baptism reveals some practical examples of how people in his North African settings were baptized. First, note that at baptism, candidates confess “the rule of the Creed,” which would involve a confession of the Father, Son, Spirit, and Church—for where the church is, so is the triune God. These rules of faith, present in the writings of Irenaeus, Tertullian, and functioned as baptismal creeds across the various parts of the world with some variations. Cyprian takes umbrage with the last (fourth article) of the creed, namely, the confession of one’s remission of sins through the church. Cyprian notes that Novation’s baptismal candidates cannot make that confession, since they belong to another church (a schismatic community) and hence their baptism remains invalid.

Cyprian maintained a baptism for the forgiveness of sins, and so he inferred that anyone lacking the Holy Spirit cannot confer forgiveness through the Spirit due to Jesus’s words in John 20:21–23 (Cyprian, Letter 69.9). It is noteworthy that in Cyprian, baptism now concretely means forgiveness and the gift of the Spirit. In this regard, schismatics who were baptized outside the true Church can be baptized within the Church, if they so choose, meaning they would be anabaptists (rebaptizers), although Cyprian would say that is not true because their first baptism was invalid (Cyprian, Letter 69.9; 71.1).

In terms of how to baptize, Cyprian agrees that a full washing is normative, but allows that the sick may be sprinkled or affused (Cyprian, Letter 69.12). This aligns with regular practice, one whose tradition has already been noted in the Didache above.

As to the water, Cyprian maintains, “The water then must first be cleansed and sanctified by the priest, that it may be able, by Baptism therein, to wash away the sins of the baptized” (Cyprian, Letter 70.1). This was important because of the baptismal exorcism. While Cyprian does not mention it in this context, generally speaking, baptism was thought to seal Christians, protecting them from unclean spirits who might enter them; and so, the sanctification of the waters needed to be intact.

In conclusion, Cyprian follows the mainstream of Christian thought on baptism and practice, yet the controversies of his day led to specific polemical positions: namely, that one must be baptized by in a church in communion with the college of Catholic bishops; that other baptisms were invalid; and that baptism is a gift of God that the true Church alone can bestow. While these ideas may have been present in varying degrees in the prior century, Cyprian, we might say, makes these conclusions specific.

Otherwise, he agrees with others that baptism was for the forgiveness of sins, involved a confession of faith in the trinity and an exorcism, sealed the baptized (Cyprian, Letter 73.6), and symbolized new birth and inclusion into the community; for Cyprian, the anointing oil of baptism came from the Eucharistic table, further tying baptism to the Cup of the Lord.

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Syria: Didascalia Apostolorum (Teaching of the Apostles)

R. Hugh Connolly writes of the Didascalia Apostolorum, “The book has naturally been classed with that family of documents which we know as the Church Orders, among which it forms a third in point of time to the Didache and the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus (Didascalia Apostolorum, xxvi–xxvii)

If Tertullian provides insight into baptismal practices in North Africa and Hippolytus clarified practices in Rome, then Didascalia Apostolorum shows how Syrian Christians from about the same time practiced baptism. A practical manual, the document gives us precious little on what baptism meant but explains how this community of Christians in Syria practiced it.

In Didascalia, we learn that baptism practically looked like the following:

First, this community divided its deacons into male and female. Men baptized men. Women baptized women. This is largely because those being baptized disrobed, and so deacons of each sex were needed for propriety (Didascalia, 16).

Second, a bishop would “with the imposition of hand” anoint the head of the person being baptized with oil. In fuller context, the Didascalia explains:

“As of old the priests and kings were anointed in Israel, do thou in like manner, with the imposition of hand, anoint the head of those who receive baptism, whether of men or of women; and afterwards—whether thou thyself baptize, or thou command the deacons or presbyters to baptize—let a woman deacon, as we have already said, anoint the woman” (Didascalia, 16).

After the bishop anointed the head of the candidate, then either a male or female deacon would then oil the rest of the person’s body. Next, a bishop, presbyter, or deacon would baptize the candidate. Fifth, a man (either a deacon or presbyter) would invoke “the divine Names in the water,” that is, Father, Son, and Spirit. Last of all, a deaconess receives and instructs baptized women in “how the seal of baptism ought to be (kept) unbroken in purity and holiness (Didascalia, 16).” If the baptized was male, likely this would be a bishop, presbyter, or male deacon.

Because deaconesses received women after baptism, Connolly points out the ceremony must have been a closed ceremony (Didascalia, xlix). This would make sense given how careful the document is about propriety during the anointing process. Such baptisms would be relatively normal practice, as far as I can discern in other jurisdictions. Men would baptize men; women would baptize women. Then the group would redress and enter into a common area to enjoy the Eucharist, signifying their initiation into the body of Christ.

Syria: Dura-Europos Baptistery

The earliest extant baptistery that we know of comes from a transformed house in Syria (c. 233–256). And it provides an example of how some early Christians created space to baptize. During a Persian siege against the city, the Roman city’s wall was reinforced, which in turn reinforced the building of the house church. This led to its preservation. In other words, despite the fact that this is our earliest extant baptistery, likely others existed. Communities would have renovated houses to make them into church buildings like this one.

Within the baptistery area, there was a pool where candidates stood to be immersed into the waters. Behind them, was a wall with a door opening, where almost certainly the candidates would have stood.

Because candidates disrobed for anointing, this screen would have ensured that the male who baptized would not see the unclothed body of women. After the baptism, we might assume that the candidates walked into the large open area to join the rest of the congregation for worship, and likely the celebration of the Eucharist.

On the walls of the baptistery in Dura-Europos (c. 240) was this image: a procession of women, possibly tied to the story of the ten virgins awaiting the bridegroom.

If the Didascalia describes the normal liturgical practice in Syria, then we can imagine women deacons would anoint women candidates for baptism in this space.

Given the Syrian location of Dura-Europos, we might imagine the Didascalia community using a renovated house for their worship as well. In other words, when Christians met in houses, they began to renovate them into worship spaces, creating art and liturgically appropriate structures within those spaces.

Rome: Apostolic Traditions of Hippolytus

Written around AD 235, but drawing on traditions much earlier, Hippolytus’s Apostolic Traditions give insight into baptismal practices in the second and third centuries. According to Hippolytus, catechumens should spend up to three years in preparation for baptism, although he notes that it depends on the person’s background (§17).

When they are ready for baptism, the bishop or perhaps other leaders examine the candidates. Given that they have had up to three years of training, this examination centred on “their lives” (§20). When examined so, the bishop would next lay a hand over the baptismal candidate to exorcize any unclean spirits.

Candidates would then bathe on the fifth day of the week to prepare for the sabbath baptism. Then they would come to the Bishop who lay his hand on them to exorcise them (this might be a second exorcism or the earlier description summarized it), blow on their faces to symbolize the spirit coming, and then seal “their forehead, their ears and their noses” (§20). This sealing after the exorcism would prevent unclean spirits from entering into the candidates and thus the waters of baptism. Presumably, bringing an unclean spirit into the waters of baptism would have created a problem.

The baptized enter into flowing or running water, although necessity would allow different kinds of water (§21). It is obvious that infants could be baptized in Rome at this time, since Hippolytus speaks of little ones who could not speak for themselves. Importantly, during baptism, one could not take a foreign vessel to, presumably, protect the waters from unclean spirits.

Within the waters, each person who could speak should confess their faith. Hippolytus explains it thus:

“And he takes them one by one asking them about their faith. He says “I renounce you, Satan, and all your service and all your works and all your filth.” And when he has made this profession he is anointed with the exorcized oil, praying that he be cleansed from every alien spirit. Then he is handed over to the bishop or the presbyter who is to baptize him, and stands naked in the water. And a deacon likewise goes down with him into the water.”

Further, baptisms were trinitarian in act (three dips) and confession. Hippolytus recounts:

“When the one being baptized goes down into the waters the one who baptizes, placing a hand on him, should say thus: “Do you believe in God the Father Almighty?”

And he who is being baptized should reply: “I believe.”

Let him baptize him once immediately, having his hand placed upon his head. And after this he should say: “Do you believe in Christ Jesus, the son of God, who was born of the Holy Spirit and Mary the virgin and was crucified under Pontius Pilate and was dead and buried and rose on the third day alive from the dead and ascended in the heavens and sits at the right hand of the Father and will come to judge the living and the dead?”

And when he has said, “I believe,” he is baptized again.

And again he should say: “Do you believe in the Holy Spirit and the holy church and the resurrection of the flesh?”

And he who is being baptized should say: “I believe.” And so he should be baptized a third time” (§21)

At this point, the presbyter anointed the baptized and said, “I anoint you with holy oil in the name of Jesus Christ.”

A little later, the bishop then would theologically interpret baptism by saying:

“Lord God, you have made these worthy to deserve the remission of sins through the washing of regeneration: grant that they may be filled with the Holy Spirit, sending your grace upon them so they may serve you in accordance with your will; for to you be glory, to the Father and the Son with the Holy Spirit in the holy church both now and to the ages of the ages. Amen.”

Then lastly, a few more trinitarian statements would happen with oil applied, a drink of milk and honey would be enjoyed, and triune drinking of the Eucharist would occur, with words of trinitarian affirmation given.

Alexandria/Caesarea: Origen

Origen of Alexandria served in both Alexandria and Caesarea, and so his writings testify to a diverse geography of Christian practice. Further, he is the only author in the list who provides a robust theological rationale for infant baptism because of inherited corruption.

Citing Psalm 51 and Job 14, Origen surmises that all people are born in sin and then infers:

“To these things can be added the reason why it is required, since the baptism of the Church is given for the forgiveness of sins, that, according to the observance of the Church, that baptism also be given to infants; since, certainly, if there were nothing in infants that ought to pertain to forgiveness and indulgence, then the grace of baptism would appear superfluous” (Leviticus, Homily 8.5).

Origen argues that infants are born in sin and since the Church baptizes for the forgiveness of sins, then, he maintains the Church should also baptize infants. In his fourteenth homily on Luke, Origen distinguishes, however, between sin and the stain of sin, noting that infants have the stain of sin: “‘Stain’ and ‘sins’ do not mean the same thing. ‘Stain’ is one thing, ‘sin’ another” (Homilies on Luke, 14.3).

So he will conclude:

“Little children are baptized “for the remission of sins.” Whose sins are they? When did they sin? Or how can this explanation of the baptismal washing be maintained in the case of small children, except according to the interpretation we spoke of a little earlier? “No man is clean of stain, not even if his life upon the earth had lasted but a single day.” Through the mystery of Baptism, the stains of birth are put aside. For this reason, even small children are baptized” (Homilies on Luke, 14.5).

Origen does not quite say what Western churches would argue some years later; that infant baptism washes away the stain of original sin. But his pattern of reasoning sounds similar to the fifth century baptismal theology of the West.

Elsewhere, Origen agrees with the testimony of other authors listed here. Baptism is for the forgiveness of sins (above) and involves the grace of the Spirit (Leviticus, Homily 6.3). Further, Origen affirms that “Among us, there is only one pardon of sins, which is given in the beginning through the grace of baptism” (Leviticus, Homily 2.4). Here, we note two things. First, baptism is a beginning, or an initiation. Second, Origen apparently takes a hard line when it comes to post-baptismal sins: “After this, no mercy nor any indulgence is granted to the sinner.”

Like others, Origen affirms that “there is no legitimate baptism except under the name of the Trinity” (Romans, 5.8.7). In other words, Origen follows the mainline of earlier baptismal theology but justifies infant baptism due to infants being born in sin and thus needing the forgiveness of sins.

Common Themes

Everyone surveyed above maintained that baptism was for the remission of sins through the Holy Spirit. This language parallels Peter’s words in Acts 2:38, when he commanded the first Christian baptism on the Day of Pentecost: “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Few found it necessary to parse out the precise relation of the water, the Spirit, and forgiveness, but all agreed that confession of the Faith was necessary. That confession involved an objective affirmation of the Father, Son, and Spirit. While there was some variation on exactly how to make that confession, all Christians and communities surveyed maintained a trinitarian baptism, following the command of the Lord in Matthew 28:19.

In the New Testament, baptizers probably immersed the baptized. The Christians surveyed above evidently followed this pattern, but when not enough water was available or someone was ill/sick, then other methods were allowed: namely, pouring and affusion.

As implied in the New Testament and made explicit in early Christian documents, named leaders baptized: bishops, elders, or deacons. And in all documents that I read, baptism preceded one’s formal entrance into the congregation of the faithful where the Eucharist was enjoyed to symbolize one’s unity with the Church, the body of Christ.

Exorcisms played a central role in baptism, although they were as simple as receiving an anointing and renouncing the devil and all his works. Nothing like modern movies occurred. Before or during baptism, believers were sealed by oil after their exorcism to prevent unclean spirits from returning and prepare them to receive the Holy Spirit. Baptisms, we might say, signaled the entrance of the Holy Spirit and the exit of all unclean spirits.

For the most part, early Christians were remarkably close in their practice. We can detect different orders of elements, and some congregations included a symbolic meal of milk and honey, a tradition that would become more common in later centuries. But over all, the meaning and practice were relatively uniform across the diverse geographies of Christianity.

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What Does This Mean Today?

Nothing in these documents will ultimately resolve the differences among credo-baptists, paedo-baptists, Roman Catholics, anabaptists, or any other communion.

Consider, for example, how Eastern Orthodox priests generally baptize by full immersion as Baptists do. Yet these two groups differ greatly on what baptism is and does. Presbyterians will sprinkle water over the one being baptized, yet they baptize infants as Eastern Orthodox do. But again, these two communions differ in many other ways.

Or consider how Martin Luther believed that infants could have an infantile faith that saved, a view partially similar to modern credo-baptism. Yet that faith Luther spoke of would not satisfy many Baptists! With that said, all of the documents above affirmed credo-baptism, if that meant affirming a Creed, a confession of the Father, Son, and Spirit.

Or again, Roman Catholics believe that the grace of baptism removes the stain of original sin, a view that some Protestants maintained during the early modern period. That view, hinted at in Origen but later solidified in the fifth century, justified infant baptism for many. But the majority of Protestants then and now find that view unsatisfying, and so they either had to re-theologize a theology of infant baptism or baptize adults.

All these modern practices, and likely many others, have precedent in the early centuries of Christianity. The variations demonstrated above remain true among Christian communions today. From one vantage point, baptism is genuinely a gift of God, and so perhaps we should accept it as best we are able without overemphasizing the differences. But can we?

Baptism marks our entrance into the Church, the body of Christ. And with Cyprian, we might wonder: which church is that? A local church? The universal church? But how is that defined? Protestants would affirm that a true church is marked by Word and Spirit. And thus we are all baptized by one Spirit into Christ’s body (e.g., 1 Cor 12:13).

I find that satisfying, but then just which baptisms are valid? Does it depend on the baptizer? Shall a Baptist church reject a Roman Catholic adult baptism since the priest is Roman Catholic? But then we might just make the same mistake as Cyprian, thinking baptism relies on the person baptizing and the validity of the church’s connection to the right kind of pastors rather than on the individual faith of the baptized and the gift of God.

And what of the exorcisms that so many early Christians emphasized in baptism? Anglicans still practice them, and so do some other Protestants, but why have these fallen out of practice? One might say, well, because they are not explicitly commanded in Scripture. But neither does Scripture tell us to read testimonies before baptism, yet Baptists usually require this, believing it a right and necessary consequence of credo baptism. Might baptismal exorcisms be the necessary inference of our transfer from the kingdom of darkness under the principle of the power of air into the kingdom of light under the Lord Jesus Christ within the Empire of the Holy Spirit?

Further, Paul tells the Thessalonians, “So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter” (2 Thess 2:15). So could exorcism be one of those traditions “by our spoken word”? That, at least, seems to be the early church’s view. Yes, Scripture alone is our final authority, but tradition plays an important ministerial role in our churches. So we have to at least reckon with the possibility of baptismal exorcisms being an important part of baptism.

I could say much more, but I shall leave it here and let you judge on these matters for yourself. I hope that you have at least found yourself better informed about the meaning and practice of baptism in the first two centuries of the church.

The work of historical retrieval should evoke humility in us. Disagreements always existed, and yet Christians have not always held their disagreements with each other with venom. Part of this, I think, is because history tells us that the Church was never a monolith of practice; regions and leaders differed over many things. It is not so different today. And perhaps recognizing this, we might find ourselves more ready to listen, slower to speak, and avoid the anger of man that so ruins our fellowship in the body of Christ.

When Jesus prayed, “not my will, but yours be done” (Matt 26:39), he declared himself to be united in willing redemption with the Father. He did so because he always did his Father’s will (e.g., John 5:19).

Yet since Jesus is both God and man, we may wonder how he willed the will of the Father. At least two possible errors can result when trying to answer this question. We could say that Christ’s human will, apart from his divine will, is in question here. But this fails to take into account the hypostatic union of divinity and humanity in the one Lord Jesus Christ.

A second error unites the divine will in Christ with the human, so that the former controls the choices of the man Jesus Christ. But as Gregory of Nazianzus has said, “What the Word does not assume, he does not heal,” meaning Christ must have a genuine human will for it to be redeemed along with the whole Christ.

That leaves us with not a lot of wiggle room to find language that rightly describes the Gethsemane Prayer of the Lord Jesus Christ. However, we are not without a guide. For Maximus the Confessor attempted this feat in his sixth opusculum in which he claimed that Christ shows us his natural human will at rest in the will of God for our sake.

With some minor criticism, I follow the train of Maximus’s thought to demonstrate a pattern of theological reasoning from Scripture that avoids Christological error, clarifies the meaning of the text, and leads us into a deeper worship of Christ.

Does Christ Refer to a Gnomic Will?

Christ as the new Adam redeemed lost humanity. And at Gethsemane, we might say that while Adam said no to God’s will, Christ said yes. Benedict XVI explains, “What Adam wanted was to be like God, that is, to be completely free. But the person who withdraws into himself is not divine, is not completely free; he is freed by emerging from himself, it is in the ‘yes’ that he becomes free; and this is the drama of Gethsemane: not my will but yours.”

Maximus too emphasizes this yes of Christ. By doing so, he places the Gethsemane Prayer in the context of redemption, as the one Lord Jesus Christ hands over his will to the Father. Yet in so doing, Maximus denied a gnomic will in Christ, a will that deliberated and vacillated as it chose the good. Christ instead naturally desired the good for the human will of Christ had been deified through the hypostatic union.

Why did Maximus take this approach? Apparently, Severan theologians affirmed that Christ had one gnomic will, and this gnomic will explained the unity of Christ (Disputations with Pyrrhus, §76). More specifically, Maximus argues that the gnomic will is not a substance but rather “an act of willing in a particular way, in relation to some real or assumed good” (§85).

The gnomic will is not a substance but a quality, a mode of willing rather than a discrete faculty of will. It is “a mode of employment [of the will], and not a principle of nature” (§87). Since Christ is the God-man, he did not need to deliberate or vacillate between choosing good and evil; Maximus thus believes he does not employ his will gnomically for he always naturally desired good.

In this narrow sense, the gnomic will belongs hypostatically, not to the natural will. Christ, according to Maximus, does not have such a mode of willing, since Christ subsisted divinely (§87). The Severan theologians not only misunderstood the gnomic will, believing it to be something that could show the unity of Christ, but they also affirmed something in Christ that belongs to sinful humanity, those who, due to the postlapsarian gnomie, do not naturally desire the good.

Theologically, we might nod along, but we also suspect that the formulation sounds a little too perfect. After all, if Jesus did not have a gnomic will, in what sense could he redeem our gnomic will?

Maximus probably thinks he protects himself from this charge since he has not called the gnomic will a substance but only a hypostatic mode of willing a real or assumed good. Christ has a different mode of willing because he subsists divinely.

In speaking this way, however, we risk abstracting what the Bible holds together: namely, that the one Lord Jesus Christ acts always as the Eternal Word from the Father who made flesh his very own. But since Jesus said, “not my will, but yours be done,” we find ourselves bound to speak of a divine will and a human will.

And so we need to pursue this line of thought further to ask, “Just what will was Jesus talking about?”

What Will or Wills Did Jesus Talk about?

If Christ is the hypostatic union of two natures (divine and human), then it follows that he must have two wills. No ancient Christian would associate the faculty of will with hypostasis or person but only with one’s nature. For example, in arguments about the unity of will between Father and Son, the church fathers insisted that the unity of will evinces the unity of the one essence. Maximus explains, “if the will be one, then, according to the teachings of the Fathers, the essence is one” (Pyrrhus §108).

Applied to Christology, we cannot simply say Christ has one natural will, a mixture of human and divine, for at least two reasons: (1) because that would imply that the Godhead itself became human, but only the Son did; (2) because the union of the two natures occurred hypostatically or personally. Christ is the only hypostasis because he assumed flesh enhypostatically. The one Lord Jesus Christ is the eternal Word from the Father and the One who was made flesh. There is only one subject, one person, one Hypostasis—the Word of God the Father. Hence, the union of two natures requires a union of two wills.

So we must avoid the two errors I mentioned previously, which have their origin, whether fairly or not, in Severus and Nestorius. The former emphasized the one gnomic will in Christ, while the latter divided the wills to ensure that the Godhead did not receive human qualities into it. Maximus for his part would emphasize that Christ is two natures hypostatically, although he would not necessarily be against the Leonine “from two natures” or the Cyrilline “in two natures” formulas.

For Maximus, Severan doctrine should be rejected not only because it arises out of a strange use of the gnomic will but primarily because it mixes the two natures of Christ. Put into the context of the Gethsemane Prayer, when Jesus says, “Not my will, but yours,” he reveals a dyothelite (two-willed) existence. Likewise, we must reject Nestorianism because it implies that the human nature of Christ can will independently of the hypostasis, but that is absurd. Natures do not act; persons do in or through natures.

Hence, the one Christ acts in and through his divine and human natures. The phrase “not my will, but yours” cannot refer to wills acting independently of the one Christ. It must refer to the one Lord Jesus Christ acting in and through his nature(s).

So how can we affirm the Lord’s prayer while avoiding the Scylla of Nestorianism and the Charybdis of Severianism (monophysitism)? I would point to the exegesis of Maximus in his sixth opusculum, even if Paul Blowers and I wonder if Maximus did somewhat overstate his argument about the gnomic will (“Maximus the Confessor and John of Damascus on Gnomic Will (γνώμη) in Christ,” 2012).

The Savior Who for Our Salvation Willed Redemption

Maximus denies any form of resistance of will between the Son and Father in Matthew 26:39. The Lord did not vacillate and waver in his will to redeem us (i.e., he had no gnomic will). Rather, the statement “not my will, but yours be done” shows a perfect harmony and concurrence of will with the Father because his will “has been completely deified” (Opus. 6, 64A).

But as Maximus says, we need to speak not of the will per se but the subject who wills. He asks whether the subject was a man like us (with a gnomic will) or the man in his role as Savior (with a deified natural will due to the hypostatic union; 65C). Rhetorically, Maximus obviously means the latter. And if so, we cannot attribute wavering doubts to Jesus (i.e., he is not like us with a gnomic will).

Instead, Christ shows us in Gethsemane a perfect concurrence of his two wills (theleseis) and energies (energeiai) in respect of his two natures.

Maximus admits that someone might say the Eternally Begotten Son may have a different will from the Father. Here, one would attribute a contradiction of wills in God, but “the Father and the Son always share a common will” (68B). So an absurdity would result because God would negate his own desire for redemption. Unless one wants to say that Christ merely says “not my will, but yours” to show the unity of the divine will. In which case, despite the verbal “not my will,” the meaning of the statement would simply be to show the unity of God’s will in salvation. Or, as Maximus points out, the phrase “not my will” could imply that the one will of God would not desire the salvation of man, an impossible claim since God by nature desires our salvation.

All that said, Christ is the divine man. And so while the above resolution perhaps could be smoothed out to work logically, it does not represent how the Bible speaks of Jesus Christ.

So Maximus argues that Christ speaks in accordance with both natures in ways that respect their natural integrity. In his own words:

“Now if even the thought of such reasoning is repugnant, then clearly the negation here—Not what I will—absolutely precludes opposition and instead demonstrates harmony between the human will of the Savior and the divine will shared by him and his Father, given that the Logos assumed our nature in its entirety and deified his human will in the assumption. It follows, then, that having become like us for our sake, he was calling on his God and Father in a human manner (ἀνθρωποπρεπῶς) when he said, Let not what I will, but what you will prevail, inasmuch as, being God by nature, he also in his humanity has, as his human volition, the fulfillment of the will of the Father. This is why, considering both of the natures from which, in which, and of which his person was, he is acknowledged as able both to will and to effect our salvation. As God, he approved that salvation along with the Father and the Holy Spirit; as man, he became for the sake of that salvation obedient to his Father unto death, even death on a cross (Phil 2:8). He accomplished this great feat of the economy of salvation for our sake through the mystery of his incarnation.” (68C–D; trans. Paul Blowers, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ).

Here, we see the elegance and beauty of Maximus’s solution. As we consider Christ’s two natures, “from which, in which, and of which his person was, he is acknowledged as able both to will and to effect our salvation.” He does so by speaking in an accommodating or human manner in the garden (ἀνθρωποπρεπῶς). Yet as he does so, we see him doing in action what Paul described in Philippians 2:8: becoming obedient to the point of death for our salvation. In other words, the one Christ wills in, from, and as two natures that he is hypostatically.

Why? “He accomplished this great feat of the economy of salvation for our sake through the mystery of his incarnation.”

Here we also see the freedom of Christ in choosing yes in obedience to God. Benedict XVI explains:

“St Maximus tells us that, and we know that this is true, Adam (and we ourselves are Adam) thought that the ‘no’ was the peak of freedom. He thought that only a person who can say ‘no’ is truly free; that if he is truly to achieve his freedom, man must say ‘no’ to God; only in this way he believed he could at last be himself, that he had reached the heights of freedom. This tendency also carried within it the human nature of Christ, but went beyond it, for Jesus saw that it was not the ‘no’ that was the height of freedom. The height of freedom is the ‘yes’, in conformity with God’s will. It is only in the ‘yes’ that man truly becomes himself; only in the great openness of the ‘yes’, in the unification of his will with the divine, that man becomes immensely open, becomes ‘divine’.”

Originally published at Ad Fontes.

In Miracles, C. S. Lewis argues that Naturalism cannot explain reason without undermining the argument for Naturalism. He points out that Naturalism acts as a closed system because it assumes that everything can be explained within it.

But Lewis notes: if God or something like God does not exist (but only Nature does), then reason becomes an emergent property of Nature. And in Naturalism, Nature itself has no intentional direction, no rationality; the best we can say is that natural selection forms what we call reason or inferential reasoning.

If so, then prior causes led to the emergence of reason and inferential thinking. Yet that is different from saying we know the reason why something is true or false—what Lewis calls ground-to-consequent reasoning. If our reasoning is merely one effect after a long series of causes, it cannot reliably inform us whether something is true or false.

In other words, Naturalism cannot use inferential reason to validate its truthfulness, according to Lewis. It is that argument I want to recount here because I find its basic premises illuminating (but perhaps not persuasive).

Two kinds of causation

To make his case against Naturalism’s ability to use inferential reason to validate itself, Lewis points to two common patterns of causation. For example, consider these two ways to use the word because:

Grandfather is ill today because he ate lobster yesterday.

Grandfather must be ill today because he hasn’t got up yet.

If grandpa is sick because he ate lobster, then the lobster caused his sickness (cause to effect). But if grandpa must be sick because he got up late (and he always gets up early), I explain the reason or ground for why I believe him to be sick (ground to consequent).

Importantly, this second form of reasoning resembles what Aristotle meant by a cause: not merely that one event preceded another, but an explanation of why something is the way it is. By contrast, Lewis’s cause-and-effect ‘because’ is closer to Hume’s picture of causation as the regular succession of events, namely, that one thing follows another, but we never observe the reason it must. Lewis’s distinction between ground and cause maps, roughly, onto this older philosophical divide.

From there, Lewis observes how when we give reasons for something in the first sense, it generally means that our reasons are groundless. In other words, we say to a theist, “You only say that because you are a Christian!” or to a conservative, “You only say that because of your politics,” or to a man, “You only say that because you are a man,” and so on. When we say such things, we mean that these causes preclude a ground, or at least that the person’s opinion—while caused—is not established as true precisely because it is caused (in a cause to effect relationship).

Besides, Lewis notes, even a madman’s views are caused; being caused does not make a belief true or false but simply means that one or many events preceded another event in a great chain of causation that spans time backwards and forwards.

Yet this train of causation does not explain why something is the case through ground-to-consequent reasoning. Cause and effect do not give us a reason, and in fact citing such causes often implies that our reasons are groundless: “You only say that because you are a Christian!”

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Psychological events

Now, we might think our reasoning works as a ground-to-consequent relation, at least as a psychological event. But if Naturalism is true, then what we perceive in our minds really amounts to a cause-and-effect relation, one that appears to be one of ground to consequent. But it cannot really be so, since reason emerges from natural means (say, natural selection). Its ability to determine what is true or false is a because only in the order of cause and effect; so much so that we could say, “You only believe that because of natural selection!”

And even if this seems absurd, remember that the madman and the liar both speak because something caused them to do so. Having a cause does not make something true or false; it is simply a cause that precedes an event in such a way that one leads to the other.

The difficulty of Naturalism

So, Lewis concludes, Naturalism as a closed system cannot account for inferential reasoning that can validly claim that something is true or false. That requires something outside of the total system to be able to judge whether Naturalism is valid or not.

If reason is within the system, it would be an effect of some cause (say, natural selection) and unable to be trusted as validly discerning true from false. And this means one cannot use inferential reasoning to validly conclude that Naturalism is true, for Naturalism itself has stripped reason of the capacity to do so.

As Lewis puts it, “[Naturalism] discredits our processes of reasoning or at least reduces their credit to such a humble level that it can no longer support Naturalism itself” (22).

Or, in longer form, Lewis puts his argument like this:

“Unless human reasoning is valid no science can be true. It follows that no account of the universe can be true unless that account leaves it possible for our thinking to be a real insight. A theory which explained everything else in the whole universe but which made it impossible to believe that our thinking was valid, would be utterly out of court. For that theory would itself have been reached by thinking, and if thinking is not valid that theory would, of course, be itself demolished. It would have destroyed its own credentials. It would be an argument which proved that no argument was sound—a proof that there are no such things as proofs—which is nonsense.” (21–22)

While he thinks this applies to strict materialism straightforwardly, the argument also applies to Naturalism in more subtle ways. Since Naturalism sees reason as within the total system, emerging from it, from some process like natural selection, then, according to Lewis, reason cannot be reliable in discovering truth.

“If, writes Lewis, “there is nothing but Nature, therefore, reason must have come into existence by a historical process. And of course, for the Naturalist, this process was not designed to produce mental behaviour that can find truth. There was no Designer; and indeed, until there were thinkers, there was no truth or falsehood” (27–8). So natural selection does not select for truth as such, but only for survival. And whatever other way we want to describe a total system like Naturalism, it is hard to justify the existence of morals or truth in ways beyond words like fittingness, natural selection, and other like terms. Put simply, arguing that Naturalism is all there is and thus God is not, for example, falls outside the possibilities of Naturalism itself.

In this context, Lewis cites Professor Haldane, who writes, “If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true . . . and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.” Lewis goes beyond Haldane’s argument, but the point remains similar. If our cognitive acts are mere events in a chain of cause and effect, due to atoms or otherwise, then they do not necessarily provide validity and cannot confirm what is true or false.

We may simply think something is true due to activities at an atomic level, or due to natural selection or some other set of causes, but such forms of determinism do not allow for anything like rational judgment; after all, this process follows cause and effect, not ground-and-consequent causality, due to the internal logic of Naturalism.

There is nothing outside of Naturalism, judging it to be true or false; indeed, truth and falseness only emerge as an effect of a series of causes within Naturalism. Restated, there is no way to use reason to validly rely on our ability to know truth or falsehood, since our opinions are mere effects of a chain of causation. That is, reason within Naturalism cannot validly conclude Naturalism.

The theist answer

If Naturalism cannot account for its truthfulness, could theism? Lewis answers in the affirmative. Theism is an open system, argues Lewis. So it allows for God to be above and prior to Nature, such that “the human mind in the act of knowing is illuminated by the Divine reason” (34). Importantly, we do not reason or make inferences due to only cause-and-effect processes; we can also judge the truth of things because of divine illumination from this perspective.

Theists can admit both kinds of causality (see above). Therefore, through divine illumination, the theist gets around the problem of Naturalism, and in this narrow sense, the act of knowing is supernatural:

“We mean only that it ‘won’t fit in’; that such an act, to be what it claims to be—and if it is not, all thinking is discredited—cannot be merely the exhibition at a particular place and time of that total, and largely mindless, system of events called ‘Nature.’ It must break sufficiently free from that universal chain in order to be determined by what it knows” (35).

In other words, our thoughts are not biologically, atomically, psychologically, or otherwise determined by prior causes as just one effect. Those causes play a role, of course, but we can also justify our vision of what is true or false because we believe that God illumines our mind (”the light of reason”) to be able to explain why something is true or not.

Is Lewis persuasive?

As long as someone says nothing outside of Nature itself can cause us to rationally perceive truth, then Lewis has a point. If atoms, hormones, events, traumas, biological states, and a trillion other causes mechanistically determine our choices, then our judgment is explained by prior causes. And we cannot be sure that we judge truly or falsely; only that we judge based on prior causes.

It may be that our judgment fits the data around us, that we can seemingly act in response to the world in such a way as to understand it. But again, that is hard to intellectually justify apart from thinking itself. But that thinking must give a reason for the truthfulness of our judgment about Nature. But could we truly trust that judgment, were it only one effect of many or one cause? Lewis claims no. And I tend to think he makes a good point. The judgment that Naturalism is true requires inferential reasoning, because that kind of reasoning can validly conclude truth from falseness, without being simply a mere event within a chain of causation.

With Augustine and the Christian tradition more broadly, I see the light of reason being the divine gift that allows one to make choices, choices that are genuinely free. And hence when John 1:9 says the Word illuminates every human being, I see this illumination as a universal act of grace to provide the intellectual capacity to think because we do not live in a closed system. The cosmos opens up to the grace of God. And divine light shines forth into our minds in the act of thinking. It is grace all the way down.

ChatGPT and Claude will make us all more efficient. That much seems clear. But will it make us happier?

I want to outline two reasons why AI may not make us happier.

First, because AI does not relieve the pressure of work but intensifies it.

Byung-Chul Han has described how we have become entrepreneurs of ourselves in our modern economy. To get a promotion or a raise, we advertise our success and the value we provide to the company. To get a job or simply to raise one’s profile, we document our lives on social media, thus creating our own brand. While such decisions feel free, they are in fact the result of structural pressures placed upon us to produce more and more.

The psychological pressure to be productive spans all spheres of life. We cannot ask someone about their weekend without saying something like, “Did you have a productive weekend?” If not, we almost feel embarrassed. “No, it was a lazy weekend, but that’s because I had a long week of hard work!” Rest, non-productive activity, is not something we are usually proud of. Sure, some communities may lead the resistance to efficiency culture, but the pressures of work and society do not easily allow it.

So we become, in the language of Han, both predator and prey, oppressor and oppressed. We burn ourselves out by aiming to eke out the most productive labour, meanwhile becoming more and more exhausted. “Why am I so tired all the time?” we wonder.

Recent data confirms that AI ostensibly will accelerate this exhaustion. Aruna Ranganathan and Xingqi Maggie Ye studied 200 tech workers in the USA to trace how AI transformed their work habits. What they found is that AI did not make work easier, but accelerated its intensity. They write:

“In an eight-month study of how generative AI changed work habits at a U.S.-based technology company with about 200 employees, we found that employees worked at a faster pace, took on a broader scope of tasks, and extended work into more hours of the day, often without being asked to do so. Importantly, the company did not mandate AI use (though it did offer enterprise subscriptions to commercially available AI tools). On their own initiative workers did more because AI made ‘doing more’ feel possible, accessible, and in many cases intrinsically rewarding.”

The key here is “On their own initiative.” AI frees us up to do more, faster, better. We seize the opportunity for more efficient and productive labour.

As one worker noted, “You had thought that maybe, oh, because you could be more productive with AI, then you save some time, you can work less. But then really, you don’t work less. You just work the same amount or even more.”

Additionally, in their report, Ranganathan and Ye isolated three kinds of intensification: task expansion, blurred boundaries between work and non-work, and more multitasking. These forms of intensification corroborate the argument that AI-ification of work means we exploit our psyche. We exhaust ourselves because when nothing seems impossible, we believe all things are possible. So we do more and more. AI enables that feeling, and the human psyche cannot handle it apart from burnout, fatigue, and related disorders.

We will work more intensely, therefore, but will that make us happy? Probably not. If burnout syndrome has been on the rise for the last few decades (it has), then likely it will increase alongside AI-ification of work.

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Second, because AI deprives us of the very means by which we can attain happiness.

Annie Crawford recently wrote, “If Aristotle is right and happiness is the state of the soul in an activity of excellence, then offloading all our creative and intellectual work to AI will make us supremely miserable.” I think she is right, but her point may not be obvious to everyone. So let me walk through it before I infer a similar conclusion.

First, human beings naturally seek to achieve what they can achieve. We build culture (agriculture, horticulture, etc.), and we not only enjoy what we make, we use it for food and other ends. We naturally love others, and want to be loved back. So we end up marrying, having children, and supporting our families. We could add a mountain of things that we naturally can achieve.

But the limits of “can achieve” are vast. I cannot fly without an airplane. I may find that extreme isolation (say, in an isolated prison cell) is its own form of torture, since I am made for community. So what we can do is not everything, but we potentially can do a great many things, provided we act on our potential.

Second, we find deep satisfaction in the things that we can do. A hard day’s work satisfies us, and the rest following our labour seems sweet. The same might be true of a number of excellences we pursue in life, whether skill, craft, or otherwise. But if AI machines increasingly replace our labour, our excellences, then we will outsource the very things that satisfy us, those potentialities within us.

If that is the case, AI may remove the very mechanism for human happiness; the way in which our souls exist in the act of achieving excellence, the satisfying experience of doing what you were made for.

If this seems too abstract, consider the retired person in your life who has lost the will to live; the light has dimmed in their eyes. What makes one retired person dim and another bright? We know the answer upon reflection. The retired person who gives his life to non-economic ends (as a grandparent, artist, volunteer, etc.) thrives; those who stop acting and become reclusive dim slowly.

What I am saying is this: human beings are happy when they excel in the activities they are made for. If those activities are outsourced to AI, then human beings will lack that excellence. For Aristotle, achieving excellence defined happiness; it was not an emotion. I agree there is truth in his view. We are happiest when we do what we were made for.

My claims might sound surprising, but consider these recent findings by the Institute for Family Studies:

Now ask: what do the words “harder” and “better” mean? How can we measure “relationship quality” or the “effect on parental reported difficulty”? The only plausible answer is by using a scoring system based on subjective and objective criteria, defined by the Institute for Family Studies in their IFS Survey of American Family Culture, 2025.

While some of these criteria are transparent, the original study does not tell us the questions asked of respondents. So we are left partially in the dark.

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But even if we did know, what would it mean for a teenager to say that they have a closer or better relationship with their parent when that parent’s parenting style is defined as “strict” due to curfews, bedtimes, and screen time?

We tend to jump to the conclusion that the meaning of this data is obvious. Be strict! Gentle parenting is bad! The data is clear! But it is not, and it never is.

The data above, like all data, has pre-interpreted categories of value—values that the data-makers defined already. Do we agree with them on strictness, on their scoring system based on questions, and their conclusion about the data in the graph’s title? Maybe. But we certainly are not gaining insight or discovering meaning.

We borrow meaning from the data-makers, and we assume that we have gained insight. We have not. We have heard a carefully curated data set, controlled by its questions and categories, to lead us to a conclusion. The conclusion may be correct, but the data itself cannot tell us whether it is or not.

Three reasons illustrate why data alone cannot furnish insight.

First, consider why politicians almost always rely on data and statistics to make political decisions. They do so in order to appear objective and to avoid making principled decisions that they might be wrong about. “The data say,” “the science is clear,” and “the polls tell us.” These phrases and others like them appear across the political spectrum, including in medical messaging and not just among federal politicians.

Second, data promises to make the world accessible to us. But for the data to be accessible, it must be simple, transferable, and able to be understood by many people. By definition, this means such data gets abstracted from concrete, high-context situations.

Can a metric count the inner transformation of a child transformed by the love of a father and mother over forty-five years? What sort of metric would count the inner resilience, the small acts of kindness, the feeling of security provided by a loving family? We could try, but we know that metrics abstract data at a simplified level to make it accessible. So such data, important as it is, often misses the most important and most valuable dimensions of human experience. It promises to make the world accessible to us, but it fails to deliver many of the most valuable things in life.

Third, metrics and statistics cannot cross the chasm between information and soul. What we can measure externally—change, percentages, effects, and other such data—cannot easily tell us about the slow formation of the soul. It may be that a runner over a ten-year period develops grit, appreciation of the outdoors, courage, and the capacity to see hardship as gain when endured; but how might we score that? Just what would tell us those inner experiences? And even if it could for one person, how would we create a questionnaire for a mass population to test such things?

In short, these reasons (and others like them) tell us about the limits of metrics in providing insight and meaning—something that only rational agents possess and can discover.

Even with the caveats aside, some measurable things are too sticky to ignore. Strictness may very well be good, presumably with love and compassion, since strictness with abuse would not accomplish better relationships in any real way, even if a metric captures it as doing so.

But would this data mean that strictness is good? At best—and I stress this is at best—the data might tell us how one thing follows another thing. It may tell us that curfews statistically precede, along with other factors, subjective feelings of affection in families.

But what if the measured items (curfew, screen time, etc.) are effects of something deeper: an intangible experience of a parent’s love for a child? I am not saying they are, but then what we might discover here are patterns of love. Yet I cannot discover that in the IFS data, for the reasons given above, although I may guess at it.

So what must I do? The answer is: use rational principles and follow models of good parenting. For example, here is a principle with my judgment: Be strict with your kids insofar as your guidelines and rules tend towards something good (respect, discipline, etc.). That is true no matter what the data say. I will not try to model anything here, since I believe that happens not so much in writing but through experience with others.

With all of that said, I am increasingly convinced that data is quiet, has no voice. We accept the categories of measurement and assume that it means what we hope it means. But can a metric count the inner transformation of a child transformed by the love of a father and mother? No. But does that mean data has no use? No, again.

Such data is useful for a great many things. I want 50,000 MRI scans to know how to spot a recurrent pattern of illness; I want metrics on water volume to ensure that I have running water at home. The technique or technology of metrical reasoning makes modern society possible. I am thankful for this gift.

But as Mary Midgley tells us in The Myths We Live By, just because mechanical reasoning works in one field of knowledge (science), it does not mean such reasoning can explain everything in other fields of knowledge. I believe we assume that metrics can make transparent and accessible the world to us. So we use data, thinking that through it, we might gain insight.

We cannot. Only we can have inner sight; only rational agents can discover meaning. We may do so through judgments made in connection to data. But the data has no meaning in itself; it cannot. It is not a rational agent. Nor can we find insights in it, since we alone have such sight.

So the more I think about it, the more I think that data cannot speak and provides no insights—that inner sight is ours alone. And the great danger, I think, is that such mechanical values will capture our minds, as C. Thi Nguyen argues in The Score. So captured, we will begin thinking that the categories of the data-makers are the most important values for us to consider. The Conditioners, as C.S. Lewis warned in The Abolition of Man, will have conditioned us to become calculators. And we will forget what we used to know: we were made for eternity.

Peter affirmed, “Christ suffered in the flesh” (1 Pet 4:1). This phrase and its conceptual parallels in the New Testament defined the terms for 5th-century debates over Christ’s passion (suffering).

On one side, Cyril of Alexandria championed the notion that the one Lord Jesus Christ suffered impassibly in the flesh. The emphasis here falls on the “one Lord Jesus Christ.” By contrast, others, sometimes called Nestorians, could use similar language but emphasize “in the flesh.”

This Christological debate revolved around the question who or what suffered. Was it the one Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh, or was it the flesh of the one Lord Jesus Christ?

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Theodoret: The suffering of Christ’s body

What makes the fifth century Christological debates difficult is our historical distance. Most of the terms of the debate have been forgotten, and we tend to read theological claims from that era in a flattened way, assuming everyone merely battled over words without substance.

For example, Theodoret of Cyrus, when asked who suffered in the passion, can simply say, “Our Lord Jesus Christ.” That sounds nearly identical to the view of Cyril of Alexandria. And indeed, Theodoret would eventually affirm the Creed of Chalcedon and anathematize theological formulations attributed to Nestorius (in a guarded way). But Theodoret remains at the time of writing someone associated with the Nestorian position.

With that said, does Theodoret’s affirmation genuinely parallel Cyril’s? Probably not, since Theodoret also clarifies “the body is spoken of by the name of the person.”[2] In other words, Theodoret believes the apostolic authors use the name Christ in contexts of suffering to refer to the body, not the person (i.e., the One Lord Jesus Christ). He emphasizes the body’s (or flesh’s) suffering, flesh that is proper to the person, the one Lord Jesus Christ.

But the key here is that Christ’s human nature suffered, according to Theodoret. In this regard, he will affirm that “a body won our salvation for us” but is quick to add: “but not a mere man’s body, but that of our Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God.”[3]

Cyril: The suffering of Christ the Word

Cyril admits that we mentally sometimes need to think about Christ as God and as man: “It is appropriate for one’s mind to sense a distinction between the natures (after all, human and divine natures are not identical), but at the same time as this acknowledgment, the mind must also accept the concurrence of the two into a unity.”[4] Here, he might sound like Theodoret and even Nestorius upon first glance.

But the key here is “mentally.” This is not a distinction in reality. The one Lord Jesus Christ is the single subject of the birth of the virgin and the passion of the cross. So we can mentally say Mary birthed God, God suffered on the cross, or the opposite. But what we must mean is that: the one Lord Jesus Christ suffered in his own flesh.

In his response to Theodoret, Cyril carefully explains:

“For he made the passible body his very own, the result of which is that one can say that he suffered by means of something naturally passible, even while he himself remains impassible in respect of his own nature; and since he willingly suffered in the flesh, for this very reason he is called, and actually is, the Savior of all. It is just as Paul says, “By the grace of God he tasted death on behalf of all.” The divinely inspired Peter will testify to the same thing, rightly saying, “since Christ suffered for us,” not in his divine nature, but in his flesh.”[5]

Where the differences really lie

Although our historical distance from this debate makes it hard to detect the stakes, Cyril here and throughout his writings will emphasize that the one Lord Jesus Christ personally suffered in his own flesh. The emphasis falls on the divine Person who suffers.

Theodoret and others almost speak as if Christ’s body or flesh alone suffered, not the Person. Such authors will respond that Christ may be said to suffer, but what the New Testament really means is that his human flesh suffers because God cannot suffer.

In other words, the doctrine of impassibility plays a central role in the debate. Just who suffers? Christ (Cyril) or Christ’s body (what Cyril sees implied in Theodoret’s teaching). And it is hard not to agree with Cyril, who, to my mind, more clearly affirms what the apostles freely do by saying Christ himself suffered in flesh (e.g., 1 Pet 4:1). It is Christ who suffers, not merely his flesh.

While in the second century, the doctrine of impassibility served to rebuff Greek notions of deity (i.e., gods who lived by passions unlike the Biblical God), in the fifth century, the doctrine centers on the one Lord Jesus Christ, who suffered (passion) in the flesh.

But do note that the stakes matter more than we might think. Did Christ, the eternal Word from the Father, suffer for our sake or not? If it was only his flesh that suffered, then can we say that Christ tasted death for everyone? Or must we say, his flesh alone did? Cyril believes the Nestorian logic of the passion requires the latter belief; and he may be right, as I argued elsewhere.

Should we care about this debate today? Yes, for two reasons. First, because it sharpens our understanding of the biblical doctrine of Christ’s incarnation and atonement. Second, because the logic of Nestorius can appear in our preaching still today when, for example, we say only Christ’s body died on the cross in order to protect the deity of Christ from the passion of death.

And while such notions come from a good place, they invariably create a strange scenario where the eternal word from the Father who made human flesh his very own does not himself suffer, but only his human nature. Neither Christian theology nor, more importantly, the Bible itself teaches such a thing. With Peter, we must affirm plainly, “Christ suffered in the flesh” (1 Pet 4:1).

Footnotes

[1] Theodoret, Eranistes or the Polymorph 3, p 217

[2] Theodoret, Eranistes or the Polymorph 3, p 227

[3] Theodoret, Eranistes or the Polymorph 3, p 221

[4] Cyril of Alexandria, On Orthodoxy to Theodosius, §25

[5] Cyril of Alexandria, A Defense of the Twelve Anathemas against Theodoret §12

The only stable thing in our world is change. As technology accelerates and transforms life, we lose stability. We no longer have the sturdiness of permanence. Our hometowns can’t remind us of days gone by, because they have been so transformed by industry that we can barely recognize them. Change is constant.

And as Augustine recognized in his Confessions, we feel just as unstable as the things we hope in. So, he reasons, we need to place our hopes in something that cannot change, something more stable than the changing world around us.

His observation was not novel. Hundreds of years before, the Book of Ecclesiastes made much the same point. Its author, Qohelet, argues that life under the sun is transitory and cannot satisfy our deepest longings. And if we seek anything under the sun to satisfy the eternity set into our heart, it amounts to vanity.

The Christian theologian Theodoret of Cyrus (393–458) calls this “the futility of impermanent things.” I think it’s an apt description of a key theme in Ecclesiastes, one that marks our world as one in which hoping in impermanence leads to hopeless vanity.

In this article, I explore this theme of the futility of impermanent things in Ecclesiastes. By doing so, not only will we gain a better sense of the whole book but also of its ending, which has long puzzled interpreters.

Vanity as Impermanence

According to Theodoret, Ecclesiastes leads us “to discern the futility of impermanent things and the transitory character of what seems pleasant.” It is hard to deny Theodoret’s view, since the opening verses say:

“Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever” (Ecc 1:2–4).

The earth remains forever, and our efforts are “vanity of vanities!” Note the contrast between life under the sun (vanity) and the implied permanence of the earth. Here, we begin to see Qohelet’s theological argument in practice. The world of impermanence cannot satisfy. God, Qohelet says, “has put eternity into man’s heart” (Ecc 3:11). And further: “whatever God does endures forever” (Ecc 3:14).

Life under the sun cannot satisfy our longing for eternity, because only God and his work lasts forever. But we do not, nor does our work under the sun.

What makes Theodoret’s point of view so compelling, however, has to do with the word “vanity” itself. The term translates the Hebrew term hevel, which means breath or vapour. Imagine seeing your breath on a cold day. The vapour appears for a moment, then is gone again. That is the kind of thing meant by the phrase “vanity of vanities.” It refers to transience.

Throughout Ecclesiastes, human life approximates vanity, life as a vapour. But God’s work lasts (Ecc 3:14). And evidently, God lives beyond us since our spirit returns to God at death (Ecc 12:7).

The vanity of life lies in its impermanence, in its temporary character. Nothing lasts but the work of God. Everything we do, whether great or mighty by human standards, cannot survive the test of time. Time comes for us all, whether we will it or not.

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God as Permanence

Of this paradigm in Ecclesiastes, Theodoret explains, “Ecclesiastes comments on the nature of visible realities and thoroughly explains the futility of the present life so that we may learn its transitory character, despise passing realities and long for the future as something lasting.” (Preface to Commentary on the Song of Songs).

In other words, the things of this world cannot satisfy our eternal longings because they are temporary. Thus, Theodoret says Ecclesiastes helps us, “to discern the futility of impermanent things and the transitory character of what seems pleasant.” While Ecclesiastes does not aim to show how we find satisfaction in what is eternal (Theodoret reserves that purpose for Song of Songs), it does give us enough hints to understand the only answer possible in the book.

First, God sets eternity in our hearts (Ecc 3:11). Next, his work alone remains (Ecc 3:14). And finally, when we die, our spirit returns to him (Ecc 12:7). For such reasons, the book concludes “Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth” (Ecc 12:1) and: “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Ecc 12:13–14).

This conclusion for Ecclesiastes has long puzzled readers because it seems disconnected from the rest of the book. In other words, the injunction to fear God and keep his commands does not appear to follow from its twelve-chapter argument on the vanity of life (Ecc 12:13).

Some have suggested that the implied argument is that life is meaningless; so obedience to God is all that is meaningful. Others think a pious scribe placed the conclusion there to ensure that readers would not get the wrong impression. Others have tried to correlate the book’s argument with its conclusion.

But no matter where we end up, we need to ask: why mention life’s purpose here in explicitly religious terms, only in the final two verses of the book, in a way that appears disconnected from the book’s structure and internal development?

The answer is that Ecclesiastes 12:13–14 makes sense as the conclusion to a book in which life’s impermanence shows its futility, its vanity. And so the only way to find permanence is to find God. In this way, the concluding two verses fit into the larger argument of Ecclesiastes, acting as an anchor that provides stability for the fleetingness of life.

Why not Argue Throughout That We Should Contemplate God then?

First, because Ecclesiastes aims to show us what it looks like to pursue wisdom under the sun. Its purpose, we might say, is natural philosophy. And second, of the three Solomonic books, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes aims to show us the futility of impermanent things, while other books emphasize the satisfaction of contemplating God.

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It is worth noting Theodoret’s longer explanation for how these three books fit together to inform our moral life, our natural life, and our contemplative life. In his words:

“It is also necessary to say by way of introduction that three works belong to Solomon: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs. Proverbs offers those interested moral benefit, while Ecclesiastes comments on the nature of visible realities and thoroughly explains the futility of the present life so that we may learn its transitory character, despise passing realities and long for the future as something lasting. The Song of Songs … brings out the mystical intercourse between the bride and the bridegroom, the result being that the whole of Solomon’s work constitutes a kind of ladder with three steps—moral, physical and mystical. That is to say, the person approaching a religious way of life must first purify the mind with good behavior, then strive to discern the futility of impermanent things and the transitory character of what seems pleasant, and then finally take wings and long for the bridegroom, who promises eternal goods. Hence this book is placed third, so the person treading this path comes to perfection” (Preface to Commentary on Song of Songs)

Theodoret follows a long line of Christian thinking on these three writings. Indeed, Ecclesiastes is something of a half-way house between Proverbs and the Song of Songs.

That Song is the Holy of Holies among these writings. Years ago, Rabbi Akiva made this point when he said, “for all the writings are holy but the Song of Songs is the holy of holies.” (Mishnah, Yadayim 3:5). As God sat enthroned in the holy of holies, the place where Israel met God, so when we read Song of Songs do we meet God there.

But Ecclesiastes is not that book. It tells us about the futility of impermanent things so that we might find stability in the permanence of God.

The Guardian came under fire recently for publishing an AI-generated news article. An author by the name of Bryan Graham wrote what can only be described as “AI slop.” But fascinatingly, a Guardian spokesman reportedly said, “Bryan is an exemplary journalist, and this is the same style he’s used for 11 years writing for the Guardian, long before LLMs existed. The allegation is preposterous.”

Assuming for the moment this quote did come from a real spokesman, I am not sure how to understand the argument. Are we saying that Graham wrote in mechanical and uninspired ways for years? Or might this just be cope?

Max Spero thinks the latter. He fetched 871 articles that Graham published with the Guardian in a six-year period, presenting evidence that at least some of Graham’s articles are fully AI generated.

What makes Spero’s evidence interesting and the Guardian’s reported defence of Graham damning is the Guardian’s own policy on AI use in journalism from 2023:

“If we wish to include significant elements generated by AI in a piece of work, we will only do so with clear evidence of a specific benefit, human oversight, and the explicit permission of a senior editor. We will be open with our readers when we do this.”

Evidently, the policy changed. But the Guardian is not unique in its use of AI writing for journalistic ends. Writing has become intertwined with AI use. While not everyone will use Generative AI to produce writing, the temptation to do so is too great. From students to professionals, generative AI use has become virtually necessary for everyday life.

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The speed at which North Americans have adopted AI use is staggering. Pew Research recently found that 62% of work-aged adults regularly use AI throughout the week. I imagine that number will accelerate through 2026.

And this means that business writing, marketing, and other forms of the written word will increasingly rely, to some degree, on generative AI. At this point, it is destiny, not decision.

The danger of what C. Thi Nguyen calls “value capture” is present. We often outsource our values to external scoring systems. In the case of writing, it might mean “clicks” and “views.” So writers and editors end up changing how they produce content to match demand. The values of readers are increasingly transferred to writers and editors. And increasingly, the core values of the writing team, even if they do not formally change, become captured by external standards of value.

Value capture happens across industries. And so we should expect that as writers learn how to write through AI, they will begin to sound like AI. Then we won’t really know what AI writing is and what it isn’t. But we will know that writing will become boring, all the same.

The standardization of processes came into being to ensure that a factory can hire any able-bodied person to fulfill a role. No longer did employers need experts, but they can insert or remove any individual who could follow a simple mechanical process. As time went on, this process of standardization spread across various fields (education, law, etc.).

And where standardization exists, individuality on average plummets. Obviously, there will be exceptions that show some people to be non-average. And that will continue. But I am here talking about general patterns.

And when it comes to writing, I suspect that just as factories used standardization to remove the need for skilled workers, AI writing may do something similar. AI, as a machine, scrapes the internet to find common patterns of acceptable writing that people will read. It thus standardizes writing through generalities.

As a machine, AI works by outsourcing its values to external creations. Then it adopts these values to express them to users. Yes, a skilled AI user will avoid this problem, but I am talking about averages. The average person, as data has shown over the last two years, outsources his or her memory and skills to the machine. As Gurwinder recently reminded us, we should only automate what we want to lose.

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Publishers contribute to this paradigm. Over the last few decades, publishers have standardized their books to fit the values of buyers. This process was already well underway, mind you. But as the mechanical sciences flooded the humanities, so did publishing become more machine-like. Mary Midgley describes this as the myth of science, the myth that because science works so well in physics (it does), then it must work well in the humanities (it does not always).

Likely, I should stop here and make my point: standardization intentionally lowers quality. The point is to make something easy so that anyone can do it. AI privileges standardization through its machine-like mode of operation. As writing becomes more and more machine-like, it will become more and more generalized. Consequently, the quality must needs lower, as writing becomes even more machine-like.

So maybe Bryan Graham did write his article by hand, and perhaps AI detection software found true AI writing. But it did not come from Generative AI; it came from an AI-generated writer, whose individuality has become lost in the machine.

But if that is the case, might that be worse than simply using AI-generated content? It would mean that AI has changed what it means to be a human writer. We might see, in Lewis’s phrase, the beginnings of the abolition of man.

At the end of the book of Job, after thirty-seven chapters of argument, accusation, and anguish, Job says something that has confused readers for millennia: “I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6). Some readers take this as a confession, namely, that Job finally admits that he was wrong, that his suffering was deserved, that his friends were right all along.

But that reading has a serious problem. It puts us on the side of Job’s three friends. And the whole book of Job aims to deny their viewpoint, stemming from the principle of retribution (i.e., you get what you deserve).

So if that is not what Job means, then what does Job repent of? That is what this article seeks to answer. To answer that question, we need to begin with Job’s three friends who accuse Job of suffering because of sin.

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Job’s friends accuse him

Job’s three friends (Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar) accuse him of sin. Their argument is simple: suffering is punishment; therefore, Job must have done something to deserve it. Repentance is what he must do. But we as readers know that Job is innocent, because God himself declares it.

In the book’s prologue, God says of Job: “There is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man” (Job 1:8; cf. 2:3). And at the very end of the book, God rebukes the friends directly: “You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has” (Job 42:7–8). In other words, Job is upright and speaks rightly.

A fourth friend, Elihu, enters the dialogue in Job 32–37 and accuses Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar of failing to find an answer, even though they declared Job guilty. He also accuses Job of vindicating himself rather than vindicating God. Elihu thus aims to vindicate God on God’s behalf.

As I will explain below, God does not appear to want or need Elihu to do so, placing Elihu’s words as a failed attempt to take control of Job’s situation by over-reading his theology and thus denying the mystery of God’s Being.

Job’s desire to plead his case

Although Job’s friends accuse him, Job does not cave. Throughout the dialogues, Job insists that if he could only stand before God, he could vindicate himself. He is confident that he could argue his case and be declared innocent:

• “But I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to argue my case with God” (Job 13:3).

• “Though he slay me, I will hope in him; yet I will argue my ways to his face” (Job 13:15–16).

• “Behold, I have prepared my case; I know that I shall be in the right” (Job 13:18).

• “Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his seat! I would lay my case before him and fill my mouth with arguments” (Job 23:3–5).

• “There an upright man could argue with him, and I would be acquitted forever by my judge” (Job 23:7).

• “Oh, that I had one to hear me! Here is my signature! Let the Almighty answer me!” (Job 31:35).

Job wanted a day in court with the Almighty. He got one. But when God speaks from the whirlwind, he does not invite Job to present his case. He turns the tables: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me” (Job 38:2–3).

God answers from the whirlwind

After 35 chapters of silence, God finally speaks to Job (Job 38–41), but God does not answer Job in ways we might expect. He does not explain Job’s suffering, nor does he adjudicate the dispute between Job and his friends.

God simply reveals himself: his power, his wisdom, his transcendence. His speech harkens back to Job 28, the key chapter of the book, which argues that human beings cannot find wisdom because only God knows where it dwells.

The implied critique cuts in every direction. Job’s three friends have not found wisdom. And Elihu, too, is silently rebuked for presuming to vindicate God when God needs no human advocate. A mortal cannot possess the wisdom that belongs to God alone (Job 28).

God’s answer, in the end, is simply: I am who I am. And the I that I am transcends you. There is no explanation that human words can give. And God needs no advocate to vindicate him. Job came to realize this when the wonder of God confronted him from the whirlwind.

What Job repents of

So when Job sees who God is, he can only say: “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (Job 42:3).

This is what Job repents of. Not sin or moral wrongdoing. Instead, Job repents of having spoken about God ignorantly, of having presumed to comprehend the grandeur and wonder of a God who transcends all human categories. God himself affirms that Job did not sin. But Job did speak beyond his understanding.

For this reason, Job says, “I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6).

Or does he say this?

It is important to recognize that the Hebrew of Job 42:6 is not easy to translate, and the familiar rendering given above may not be the best one. Another possible translation is: “I reject and am comforted in/concerning dust and ashes.”

If this is the correct translation, the passage could mean one of two things. First, Job could be rejecting the posture of mourning, having been comforted by moving past dust and ashes (symbols of grief) and now turning to the blessing that would mark the next phase of his life (Job 42:7–17). Gignilliat and Thomas thus paraphrase the passage, “I reject and I am comforted regarding the mourning process I have undergone. I can now move to a renewed sense of life” (2025: 302).

Second, he could be rejecting his anxiety about mortality and rejecting his belief that his suffering meant that God rejected him. In Job, “dust and ashes” generally refers to human mortality, echoing the language of Genesis, where Adam is made from the dust of the ground. The Hebrew preposition ‘al in the phrase usually translated “in dust and ashes” does not typically mean “in” but rather “concerning” or “about.” That Job likely takes comfort concerning dust and ashes furthers the sense that the traditional English rendering of Job 42:6 may not capture Job’s words fully.

​​Putting this all together, we can say: because Job rejects his previous opinion on dust and ashes, he takes comfort. In Job’s last speech, he lamented that God had hurled him into a clay pit. He had become like “dust and ashes” (30:19; cf. 2:8) before a God who has rejected him (30:20–23).

On this view, Job’s confession is that he was wrong about God. God had not rejected him. Actually, Job spoke unwisely, believing that his innocent suffering could only mean that God’s smile had turned to a frown (29:1–6). Job’s confession too, then, follows the same lines of thought that Job 28 does. Human wisdom fails before the creator God’s wisdom; Job was wrong about God’s rejection of him, and he must fear God and turn from evil (28:28).

The point stands either way

However one takes Job 42:6, the conclusion remains the same. Whether we call it repentance or comfort, the theological point is the same. Either way, God vindicates Job’s innocence (Job 42:7–8), just as we knew from the beginning (Job 1:8; 2:3).

To read the book of Job as a story about a man who suffered because he sinned is to agree with his three friends. But the entire book denies that proposition. The narrative denies it. God himself denies it. We should too.

And so we cannot read Job 42:6 as a confession of the sin that caused his suffering, unless we wish to say that speaking beyond one’s understanding constitutes that sin (Job 42:3). Even then, that would not be the sin that caused his suffering. It would be the sin, if we may call it that, of having tried to comprehend a God who is beyond comprehension.

The vindication of Job

The principle of retribution in the ancient world led Job’s friends to claim that Job suffered because he sinned. But the narrative framing of Job (Job 1–2) and God’s own comments in Job 42 vindicate Job and condemn his friends:

“After the Lord had spoken these words to Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite: ‘My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. … my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has done.’” (Job 42:7–8)

Job spoke rightly of God. Job was innocent. His problem was one of experiential knowledge, of speaking of things too wonderful. He was formally correct in his words, but he could not know that his human words and ideas could not comprehend God in all his majesty. Only when God revealed himself to Job in the whirlwind did Job know.

We find no answers to Job’s suffering except what Job 28 has already told us. Humans cannot find wisdom on their own. Instead, “Truly, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding” (Job 28:28). This, and this alone, is what mortals can grasp. God’s ways are too far beyond our reach.

And perhaps there is comfort in this. We cannot always explain why we suffer. To do so, to take control by explaining it away, would be to follow Job’s friends in their retributive principle or to follow Elihu in his claim to speak on behalf of God. Instead, we have to cast ourselves wholly into the God who is beyond our comprehension. We must commit our ways to him, and allow the fear or awe of God to be our beginning of wisdom.

In mass society, the law of supply and demand no longer functions organically. You don’t build a horseshoe for your neighbor who needs one because he asked you to make it. Instead, you create a factory that produces horseshoes and flood the market with them. But once that market fills up, your business plateaus. And in mass society, you cannot plateau, because to cease growing is to fail. Failure is unacceptable. Perpetual growth becomes the only option.

This shift fundamentally changes how we think about work and its relation to our products. We no longer make products for our people, our village, our city, or the local army. Instead, we produce for an abstract audience, an ideal consumer. What begins locally (perhaps in your village or city or province) eventually scales to mass production. Things change. We no longer make seventy different kinds of casks for our winery; we make twelve standardized versions because they’re mass-produced. Diversity lessens. Standardization increases.

But there’s a problem here, perhaps not so subtle. If you must always be creating, always growing, always expanding, you will never be satisfied with local, organic growth connected to place and specifically designed for the people around you. Consider clothing: it used to be that many clothes were made, manufactured, or at least modified by local tailors. Nowadays, they’re mass-produced, largely uniform, and stylistically tame (with some exceptions, of course). Individuality slows as mass production increases.

So companies must find new markets: overseas expansion, international reach. Constant growth is imperative. If you don’t grow, it’s a crisis.

In digital society, mass production reaches its zenith

The issue I want to address is how digital society represents the zenith of mass production and mass consumption. Digital products can be consumed in the blink of an eye, consumed again and again without end. We mass-produce content (TikTok, YouTube), and these platforms not only produce content at scale but use us to create it for free. Millions of pieces of video and audio content are created, and millions (probably billions) are consumed every minute of every single day. It’s endless. There’s no end to the movement of swiping a thumb across the screen.

We swipe across smooth, flat, easy, frictionless, resistance-less screens, and more product appears. More consumption happens. Ad revenue grows. Watch time increases. There’s no limit to the amount of product created and consumed. This is mass society on steroids. The digital age is, so far, the zenith of our ability to produce and consume, and we continue expanding into new markets as more people digitalize.

But as more and more of the world goes digital, I wonder: what happens when we reach everyone? Will we find more ways to produce, more ways to consume, faster and faster? Will brain implants enable us to consume more? Will wearable glasses allow us to watch multiple short videos simultaneously, to experience hybrid digital events all at once? Will we simply watch four shorts instead of one to quadruple our consumption?

I don’t know. But I do know the world we inhabit is characterized by endless consumption, endless production, and the resulting loss of individuality.

The sameness of everything

Everything is the same now. Nothing feels different. Yes, there are holdouts: places where uniqueness survives, people who hold to the light of art. We must cultivate those areas. But in general, mass society (mass digital society) has created the sameness of everything. AI accelerates this trend.

All answers are the same. All AI writing sounds the same. All prompts begin to sound the same. Nothing changes because everything must be standardized to be consumed by the maximum number of people for the sake of GDP.

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Gurwinder recently wrote, “Automate only the skills you’re willing to lose.” I cannot stop thinking about what that might mean.

Marshall McLuhan spoke of technological tools as both extending and amputating something about us. If I use a hammer, it makes my hand useless for the moment but extends my ability to drive nails into wood. If I wear a jacket, it mutes my skin’s ability to sense wind but keeps me warm.

Applied to digital technology, we need to ask what it extends and what it amputates. My answer: it extends our ability to organize and recall information, but does so by outsourcing our memory. Cell phones began storing phone numbers, and now I don’t know anyone’s number. Maybe that is acceptable, but applied everywhere, what have I lost? What have I gained?

Some losses are greater than others. Social media drives our concentration down by teaching us to love short, fast, entertaining bits of information. In exchange, we lose our ability to focus. We outsourced our concentration and gave it to a stream of reels and memes. That was not a good exchange.

Now I find myself wondering what LLMs like ChatGPT or Claude give me, and what they make me lose. Hopefully, I can outsource busy work to LLMs. I recently organized a file structure on my computer using Claude. It was excellent. I didn’t want to do it myself. LLMs also catch typos, so you can read an article like this without misspellings everywhere.

But I don’t want AI to write for me. Even if it were ethical to claim AI-generated content as my own, I think the tradeoff would not be worth it. Likewise, I don’t want to learn through prompts instead of books. I love books, and they have done something to my mind that I delight in. They spark some deep imagination, some creative energy, that a screen cannot.

I am a bit mystical about it. So sue me.

“Automate only the skills you’re willing to lose.” I think that is what we must do. So what skills are less humane and what skills are more humane? Or maybe that’s a poor criterion. I really don’t know. All I know is that I want to pursue joy relentlessly through actualizing my human potential, but I need to remember what that potential is.

I am not made for computing things like a calculator, although I should use a calculator. I am not made for statistical analyses, although we need such analyses for the benefit of society. These tools extend my ability to make humane decisions, but they are not the skills that in themselves help me make those decisions. Prudence precedes data, and data is useful only through prudential use of it.

In my life, I am not sure what this means yet. But I think I will keep typing my own words, reading my own books, and outsourcing calculative tasks to AI so that I can make judgments based on the available and selected data—data that I have selected.

Hayao Miyazaki’s 1986 film Castle in the Sky animates Miyazaki’s ecological philosophy that would energize Miyazaki’s entire career. The film portrays a recurring pattern in human civilization that leaves us with a stark warning: when technology bypasses the limits that nature sets, power concentrates in the hands of the few, and the many suffer.

Partly because I love the film, but mostly because its argument has only grown more important in our digital age, I want to trace Miyazaki’s vision and set it alongside several Western thinkers who arrive at similar conclusions.

To Nature And Beyond

In the world of Castle in the Sky, humanity begins in an organic relationship with the earth. Wind turns windmills for grain. Boats move by sail. Houses nestle into hillsides. Technology exists, but it flows from the contours of the land rather than against them. Romano Guardini, in his Letters from Lake Como (1927), describes this kind of culture: human making that arises from attentive response to place. Guardini marvels at Italian culture, built into the rivers and valleys that they inhabit. Their technology served nature in an organic relation between human culture, making the places that humans inhabited.

Miyazaki’s opening sequences of mining towns with their windmills and sun-warmed stone render a world in transition from Guardin’s organic ideal and the coming of the industrial machine age.

In a fascinating myth of civilization, Miyazaki narrates the backstory of Laputa as a parable of technological overreach.

First, humans lived on the land with windmills and simple machines. Then they begin to dig deep into the earth and discover aetherium (called “volucite” in the Japanese original), a mineral with the power to defy gravity. They extract it in ever greater quantities and process it into crystals. At one point, they figure out that aetherium can lift them off the ground entirely. With this power, they leave the earth and build airborne cities.

At this stage, the transition is not yet catastrophic. The flying city of Laputa is built around a giant tree; gardens flourish; robots tend the flora and fauna. There is still a mixed way of life; presumably, some inhabitants favour the organic, while others favour the technological. But eventually, the royal family or others in power seize the power of aetherium, weaponize it, and use Laputa’s sky-borne position to rain destruction on the cities below. The castle becomes an instrument of domination.

Something then disrupts this regime. Perhaps it was a civil conflict, but the film never fully explains. The victors, however, choose to abandon Laputa and return to the earth. The Laputian civilization thus collapses. Seven hundred years later, the castle drifts empty among the clouds, tended only by a solitary robot who still cares for the garden, an image of technology returned to its proper, humble function.

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The Abolition of Natural Limits

C. S. Lewis, in The Abolition of Man (1943), points to something similar to what Miyazaki does. What we call “man’s conquest of nature,” Lewis observes, turns out to be the power of some people over other people. The aeroplane, the radio, the contraceptive, each gives certain humans new leverage over others. Lewis warns that once we reject the objective moral order he calls the Tao, natural law, then the final stage of the conquest of nature is the conquest of human nature itself. The “Conditioners” of Lewis’s nightmare are people who have abolished the very categories of good and evil by which tyranny could be judged. (Are these Nietzsche’s Supermen? Those who have gone beyond good and evil?)

Miyazaki’s Colonel Muska is a portrait of exactly this figure. Muska exploits people and things, desires to become a god by seizing power, and wants Laputa’s technology to dominate and control the world. His contempt for the tree roots that have grown into Laputa’s throne room, his annoyance at the small bugs there, and his ambivalence to the tree at the centre of the castle illustrate his technological annihilation of man (he is the man in this case). He rejects the natural order itself. It is man overcoming man.

Resonance, Standing-Reserve, and the Loss of the World

The sociologist Hartmut Rosa names what Miyazaki animates. Rosa argues that today we want every part of the world to be reachable, available, and controllable. We want to master our environment, optimize our time, and quantify our relationships. When gain such control, Rosa says, the world falls silent. It becomes a series of “points of aggression, ”things to be managed, obstacles to be overcome. What we lose is what Rosa calls “resonance”: the experience of being called by something we cannot fully control.

The Laputians lost this resonance. From their castle in the sky, the earth below becomes a target, not a home. The wind is no longer something to work alongside, but something that can be controlled due to the power of Aetherium. The stones beneath the earth no longer mysteriously speak through their silence, but become a resource to be used, thus falling silent.

Martin Heidegger, in his 1954 essay “The Question Concerning Technology,” would call this relation to Aetherium as one of Bestand, or “standing-reserve.” When we view the Rhine River as merely a power source for hydroelectric energy, or a forest only as board-feet of lumber, we have enframed nature. We reduce it to a stockpile awaiting our use. Heidegger’s warning is that this enframing eventually encompasses human beings themselves; we too become resources to be optimized and deployed. The Laputian robots, built as caretakers, are repurposed as weapons. The people below Laputa become subjects to be dominated. Aetherium becomes muted, a power to be controlled, but lacks all mystery. The logic of standing-reserve consumes everything.

Roots in the Earth

During the film, Sheeta confronts Colonel Muska with a song from her homeland, the valley of Gondoa:

We need roots in the Earth;
Let’s live with the wind;
With seeds, make fat the winter;
With the birds, let’s sing of spring.

What makes this poem so important is that it came from descendants of ancient Laputa, those who chose to leave and return to the earth. Sheeta yearns for that return; Muska despises it. But in the end, Sheeta along with Pazu detonate the Castle in the Sky, returning the Aetherium to the ground whence it came.

When they speak the spell of destruction, Laputa’s weapons platform falls away. The Aetherium returns to the earth, but the great tree survives and lifts the garden into the sky, trailing its roots. The image is Miyazaki’s final word: nature endures even when we cease to control it.

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Aetherium And Data

Miyazaki could not have foreseen the digital revolution when he made Castle in the Sky in 1986, but the pattern he identifies has repeated itself in human history. Where the Laputians extracted aetherium from the earth, we extracted oil. The Laputians processed the Aetherium into crystals, and now we turn minerals into chips for digital machines. The weapons of Laputa exist today (nuclear bombs); but while we may worry about nuclear disaster, AI and digital technology surveil us constantly, eliminating our agency, guiding our desires, and dominating us by what Byung-Chul Han calls psychopolitics.

Whenever civilizations gain new technologies, whether that be gunpowder, the steam engine, petroleum, nuclear fission, technology’s promise of freedom submits to new forms of domination. Today, our technological power regularly bypasses the limits nature sets, what Lewis calls the Tao, and makes those who wield it less humane, not more. And as Rosa would put it, the world becomes a collection of points of aggression, things to be controlled, rather than a source of resonance and genuine encounter.

A New World

Castle in the Sky animates our movement from a pre-modern use of technology to a modern, machine-like approach to technology. Whereas we used to create culture by integrating into the world as we found it, now we bypass such limits entirely. Why build a house into the side of a mountain when we can drain a swamp and build a subdivision of 1,000 of the same homes?

But as this new relation to the world advances, we begin to see a world in which the concentration of power leads to some dominating the many. Guardini saw the same pattern in the industrialization in Germany and mourned it. Lewis saw it in the ambitions of modern science. Heidegger saw it in a hydroelectric dam on the Rhine. Rosa sees it in our digitalization and optimization culture. Miyazaki sees it in a castle that forgot it needed roots in the earth.

Each of them warns us that when we bypass nature’s limits, we mute nature. We refuse to let the stones beneath the earth speak to us, resonate with us, because we have reduced them to mere supply. And thereby, we become less human.

When that happens, we lose what makes us most human and the least humane seize power and the many will suffer for it.

Romano Guardini, in his Letters from Lake Como, contemplates the cultural costs of modern technology. What we lost, he suggests, is a relationship between culture as an organic expression of nature, that slowly, over time, conforms itself to the natural contours of the world around us, and only then, gradually, reshapes that nature in return. Instead, industrialization has changed how we relate to nature.

In particular, Guardini sees us now living in a machine-like society. Instead of organically relating to nature around us, we come to dominate it through factories, manufacturing, and industrial means and thus reshape the environment in which we live.

Guardini came to this realization while travelling from Germany southward to Italy. In the places he stayed, he found a human culture more organically related to the land than the factories and machines he had left behind in northern Europe, which orchestrated everything towards machine-like ends.

The abstraction of technological society

Guardini makes several interesting observations, but the one I want to highlight here is this: mass society, or what we might call technological society today, creates a culture that relates to nature in a way that is remote, abstract, and further removed from nature than in centuries past.

No longer do we look at a river and build a bridge at its most narrow, most obvious, or most humane point. We command our motors against the current more than we float down the river on sailing ships under the command of the wind. Instead, as Martin Heidegger observes in his essay “The Question Concerning Technology,” we build hydro dams to extract power. We create tour guides to present the river as something to be viewed. We build bridges wherever we want for economic or material advantage. We use technology to dominate and master nature.

Now, human beings have always done something like this. But the way we have taken dominion over nature in the past is not the same as it is today. The mechanical machine age and mass society of the mid-twentieth century, and now the technological age in which we live, do something rather strange: we enframe the world as a resource to exploit, control, and count. We use mechanical and technological means to master it for our own chosen ends.

We have bridges, trains, cars, and planes; these are the modern mechanisms of society that control and shape everything. We no longer rely as much on the contours of the land itself, only slowly and incrementally building a culture out of it. Technological society today, mass society of the mid-twentieth century, and machine society of Guardini’s time represent modes of increasing abstraction and removal from a close and intimate relation to the land around us, to the geography in which we live.

What technology does to us

What does this mean for us? Guardini says it changes us.. We don’t always know how it changes us, but it transforms how we think of the world and the people around us.

Everyone senses this at some level. In the technological age, we are wired to mediate experience through technology, through phones. We fail to see each other face to face, not confidence in unmediated encounters. The world seems more digitally friendly. Friendships are cultivated more through chat rooms and social media than fireplaces and laughter. It represents a fundamental change in who we are as human beings, how we relate to the world around us, what we expect, what we assume, and how we feel about the world.

Most people in cities don’t know how to replace an o-ring on a toilet or cook an omellete for breakfast. Instead, we call the plumber; or we use DoorDash. In this regard, we have so altered our relationship to food that we order meals prepared by others, despite the fact that it costs much more than preparing them ourselves. And we lose thereby an organic connection with the food we have grown or purchased and made for ourselves.

The alienation of human culture

This transformation happens across all of society and changes the kind of culture we create. When culture was necessarily bound to the land and to the limits that geography and space imposed upon us, we would grow culture little by little to bring order to the land around us in a way that was in agreement with the land. A windmill required wind to turn it in order to crush grain. Now we use machinery and electricity extracted from the wind, rivers, the sun, or whatever source is available. It changes our entire way of thinking about enculturation.

Human culture now is an abstracted culture, alienated from the world around us through our advanced technological means.

As C.S. Lewis observed in The Abolition of Man, as we come to dominate more and more of nature, nature itself becomes something that dominates us more and more because we become like the thing we are dominating. In other words, as Heidegger observed, when human beings see the world as something to be counted, calculated, ordered, and held ready as a resource to be used, rather than an organic, natural world that reveals itself to us, we begin to see ourselves as a kind of human calculator. Everything requires an Excel spreadsheet. Nature is ours to order, count, optimize, and put into place, just like the machinery we use to organize the nature we now view as a machine.

The loss of natural law

I don’t know what the final result of all this will be, but I will say that it makes me more aware of one key moral point I want to outline as I finish this reflection.

In prior societies, when you were necessarily closer to nature, you created a culture that was organically related to it, even as you ordered the nature around you. But in a culture today, in post-mass society and now in technological society, we do not allow nature to be our limiting factor. We abstract ideas and impose them upon the land around us, and it bows to our will.

This means, however, that we are no longer able to be limited by natural laws observable in the created order. Those laws become merely obstacles to be overcome through technological mastery in order to accomplish our economic or technological ends.

This might be one reason why natural law has become forgotten in modern society, not because it truly is irrelevant, but because we can no longer see reality as it is. Nature is an apocalypsis, a revelation to us. But that clearing of nature which reveals itself has become obscured. As Heidegger worried, we can no longer see reality for what it is because we are so beclouded by what we expect nature to be: namely, in the language of Hartmut Rosa, a series of points of aggression that we must overcome and overpower for our technological ends.

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Augustine’s On Christian Teaching presents a hermeneutical theory whose ultimate aim is not merely to inform the mind with facts but to transform the reader through rightly ordered love. Understanding his approach requires grasping his foundational distinction between signs and things, and between use and enjoyment.

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Signs and things

In Book One, Augustine develops what initially appears to be a complicated theory of signs and things, though on reflection it proves quite straightforward. When we read Scripture or interpret the world around us, we encounter signs (words, for instance) that signify things. The word “tabernacle” brings to mind a tent; the word “temple” evokes a temple. So far, so simple.

The key move comes when Augustine distinguishes between how we should relate to created things. Everything in this world can either be used or enjoyed. The problem arises when we attempt to find ultimate pleasure in created things, as though they could fully satisfy our deepest needs. Created things are by definition changeable, malleable, and corruptible. Moth consumes them; rust corrodes them. Whatever pleasure they offer is temporary and transient, liable to be lost.

By contrast, there exists something or rather, Someone who is eternal, immutable, and unchanging: God himself. We are made to find ultimate pleasure in him. Augustine does not deny that we naturally take pleasure in food, friendship, and the goods of this life. His argument is rather that if we treat such things as finally pleasurable, whether sex, money, or any other created good, they will prove enjoyable for a time but ultimately disappoint. This was Augustine’s own experience, recounted throughout the Confessions.

Use and enjoyment

The proper response, then, is to regard created things as useful, not in a merely instrumental sense, but as goods that draw us toward ultimate pleasure in God. We do all things for God’s sake: whether we eat or drink, as the Apostle Paul says, we do all for the glory of God. In Augustine’s framework, we swim for God’s sake, eat for God’s sake, love for God’s sake. This reorients our vision so that we see the things of this world not as ends in themselves but as means toward our ultimate end, which is God.

This need not involve constant conscious reflection. One does not pick up a fork thinking, “This utensil is useful for my enjoyment of God.” Rather, Augustine is describing the ontological reality of created goods: they are what they are, regardless of whether we attend to this truth in every moment. Friendship, beauty, and earthly joys remain genuinely good—but they are goods that, upon reflection, draw us higher still.

This distinction proves essential for hermeneutics. When interpreting Scripture and the world, we must recognize the difference between God, who alone is to be enjoyed as our final end, and created things, which are useful for bringing us to the God who gives us that final pleasure.

The restless heart

Augustine learned this lesson through his own restless searching, as he recounts in the Confessions. For him, everything comes back to love and the heart. God made us for himself, and consequently our hearts are restless until they find rest in him.

Why should this be so? Return to the theory of things. Created realities are changeable, losable, corruptible, temporary and transient. If the heart fixes itself upon such things, it will be just as stable as they are. Which is to say: the heart will become temporary, transient, unstable, ready to be consumed by the same forces that erode all earthly goods. Such a person will not be like a rock against which waves crash harmlessly but like the water itself, scattering in every direction upon impact. Augustine knew this instability firsthand.

Purification of the heart

How, then, does one move through this problem? When interpreting Scripture and the world, we must recognise created things for what they are and what they are for. We treat them as useful, good, and genuinely joy-bringing but for God’s sake, as means of drawing us to him.

Augustine develops this through the biblical language of purification. Paul prays that the eyes of the Ephesians’ hearts might be enlightened (Eph. 1:18); Jesus declares that the pure in heart shall see God (Matt. 5:8); Peter in Acts speaks of God purifying hearts by faith (Acts 15:9).

Our hearts, the invisible aspect of ourselves capable of perceiving the invisible God, are somehow obscured by our bodily appetites, which incline us toward pleasure in created things. We must be trained to love rightly, to see earthly goods as drawing us upward to God. In his On the Trinity, Augustine traces out this process of purification through contemplating the eternal God in contrast to temporal, created things that are good but not meant to satisfy us ultimately.

The goal of Scripture

To summarise Augustine’s hermeneutical theory: when reading Scripture or interpreting the signs of the world around us, we should see them not as ultimate goods but as things useful for drawing us to God, who made us for himself and made us to find ultimate pleasure in worshipping him. This is how we attain the deepest happiness available to us.

The goal of Scripture, for Augustine, corresponds to Jesus’s summary of the law: the whole law hangs upon love of God and love of neighbour. Love fulfils the law. We are to love the Lord our God with our whole heart, soul, and mind by purifying our minds to understand what things truly are so that we may love our neighbours as those worthy of love for God’s sake. Our neighbours bear intrinsic worth as God’s image-bearers, yet our love for them ultimately directs us toward God himself.

This is why Augustine can say that even if we err on certain details of interpretation, we may still have grasped the main point if our reading encourages love of God and neighbour. He is not commending inaccuracy; his point is that Scripture exists to lead us to love. We will inevitably make mistakes (that is simply part of being human), but we must not miss the central aim. Created things are good and useful, useful precisely because they draw us from changeable realities toward the one unchanging reality: God himself.

Conclusion

Augustine’s hermeneutical vision, articulated in On Christian Teaching and throughout his writings, insists that reading Scripture and interpreting the world is not merely an intellectual exercise aimed at accumulating facts. It is a transformative process whereby rightly ordered love enables us to see everything as a theatre of God’s love, mercy, and glory; these are things to be used for God’s sake, that we might worship him and find our ultimate pleasure in him alone.

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The Song of Songs has long puzzled interpreters. Is it erotic poetry? A celebration of human love? Or does it speak of something deeper? In what follows, I point to a traditional literal approach to Song of Songs that defines it as a parable. According to Nicholas of Lyra (1270–1349), a well-known medieval interpreter of Scripture, the literal sense of the Song centres on its being a parable.

As a possible alternative to today’s literal readings of the Song, this article retrieves Nicholas of Lyra’s approach. I am not arguing that he is correct, but only that he gives us another way to think of reading the Bible literally that can help us see and know God’s word with clarity.

Nicholas of Lyra: signs and things

Nicholas is aware of various approaches to the Song of Songs by Christian and Jewish interpreters alike. Not satisfied fully with any single approach, he falls back on a traditional distinction between words and signs, as well as accepting the genre conventions of parables to make his case.

In the course of his argument, Nicholas cites Judges 9:14 which says, “Then all the trees said to the bramble, ‘You come and reign over us.’” Now, the words of Scripture speak of two things: trees and the bramble. Yet these two things point to the Shechemites and to Abimelech. By reading the text’s words (signs), grasping the things (trees, bramble), one then moves to what the things signify. This is precisely how Nicolas of Lyra defines the literal sense of Scripture: “And the literal sense is this, not that which is signified by the words, but that which is signified by the things signified by the words” (Song of Songs, 31).

Nicholas applies this principle, as illustrated in Judges 9:14, to point out that the Song of Songs is also a parable. He first defines parable lexically as a combination of para (besides) and bole (thought), and concludes: besides what is signified (e.g., trees, bramble), another word or thought is signified (Song of Songs, 31). Hence, as a parable, Song of Songs portrays a king and his romantic interest (things), which themselves signify something else: God and his people. This reading constitutes, for Nicolas, the literal sense of the text.

At one level, this definition is obvious. Judges 9:14 clearly is a parable, and its literal sense is not to say that trees will serve a bramble. Rather, the literal meaning is that the Shechemites will serve Abimelech. By parallel, if Song of Songs is a parable, then it follows that its literal sense will be about something other than the king and his beloved.

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What is the parable about?

For a moment, assume that the Song of Songs is a parable, which means its literal sense is about something other than the things written of (king, beloved). What might that mean?

Here is Nicholas’s argument: the Song itself alludes to divine love through its language. So Song of Songs is about God’s love for his people as illustrated through the love of Solomon and the Shulamite.

For example, the book presents Solomon’s love for the Shulamite in ways that remind readers of God’s love for Israel. Consider how Solomon leaves the wilderness and arrives in Jerusalem to marry his bride:

“What is that coming up from the wilderness like columns of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all the fragrant powders of a merchant? Behold, it is the litter of Solomon! Around it are sixty mighty men, some of the mighty men of Israel” (Song 3:6–7).

The Song describes Solomon as a “column of smoke,” bringing to mind the way in which God protected Israel from Egypt during the Exodus (Exod 13:21–22). Solomon then leads the men of Israel from the wilderness to Jerusalem, to Zion, to marry his bride (Song 3:11). The consummation of the marriage between Solomon and his bride is like a return to Eden (Song 4:16–5:1).

The greatest of songs, the Song of Songs, is a song that celebrates a royal marriage—a marriage (a thing) that signifies another thing: God’s marriage to Israel. Like Hosea’s marriage to Gomer, Solomon’s marriage to the bride intentionally symbolizes God’s relationship with Israel. The Song of Songs is written to be a parable; that is the author’s intent.

The Song of Songs not only alludes to God’s covenant with Israel, but the entire book celebrates one of the greatest mysteries in the universe: marriage. According to the Apostle Paul, human marriage is a mystery that points to the love Christ has for his church: “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” (Eph 5:32). Applied to the Song of Songs, Solomon, in the line of David, points to the ultimate Son of David, the Christ. The bride refers to the church.

This type of reading might make us uncomfortable. After all, it does not feel right to equate sexual love with the love that Christ has for his church. But we must realize that marriage is a mystery that points to the intensity of God’s love for us, and that love is pure. Today, we tend to think of sex in pornographic terms due to the over-sexualized culture in which we live. But sex itself is pure, holy, and part of what makes a marriage a marriage. It points to God.

Yes: the groom is Solomon. Yes: the bride is the Shulamite woman (Song 6:13). But the Song of Songs is also meant to give insight into one of the greatest mysteries in the universe: Christ’s love for the church. All marriages do this, but the greatest of songs is an inspired account of the holiest of loves: “For love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the LORD” (Song 8:6). Love’s fire is as powerful as the death-defying love and the fiery jealousy of the LORD.

Who are the characters?

If the Song is a parable, does that mean we should not take the story historically but as parabolic writing? Perhaps. But just as Hosea truly married Gomer, yet that marriage signified God’s relationship with Israel, so I find no reason that Solomon could not historically have loved the Shulamite.

One part of the story gives me pause, however. The bride’s description as the Shulamite (הַשּׁ֣וּלַמִּ֔ית) looks to be a feminine form of the name Solomon in Hebrew (Song 6:13). The symbolism of the name suggests that the parable does not record historical events. Further, since the book ends with the climactic moment when love is defined as “the fiery flame of Yah[weh]” (Song 8:6), it stands to reason that the theological purpose of the book is not to convey historical narrative but divine love.

That said, my approach to Scripture is to exercise caution in judgments. And while the book may communicate a parabolic meaning (sometimes called allegory), my literal approach to Scripture prevents me from dismissing the possibility that Song of Songs conveys historical narrative.

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What exactly is going on then when it comes to things and signs?

In Scripture, signs refer to the words on the page. But sometimes they point to real things like the tabernacle or the curtain within it. However, the curtain itself points to Christ’s flesh, as Hebrews 10:20 tells us. So in this sense, God divinely revealed the true tabernacle in heaven to Moses (Exod 25:40) to teach us about Christ, the Word, who would “tabernacle among us” (John 1:14).

The uniqueness of Scripture, as Thomas Aquinas explains, is that the Bible gives us signs that speak about things, and those things bespeak realities that God intended. So the tabernacle is about Christ, and Song of Songs is about God’s love for us in the mystery of marriage, of Christ and the church (Eph 5:32).

The particular language that Nicholas uses relies on Augustine of Hippo’s work On Christian Teaching. There, Augustine lays out how Scripture provides signs, things, and things that the things signify. The signs might be words like trees and bramble; the things are the trees and bramble themselves; and the things signified by these things are the Shechemites and Abimelech.

Applied to the Song of Songs, we might say the words speak of Solomon and the Shulamite. The things are Solomon and the Shulamite (and their love). The things signified by these things are God’s love for his people, inclusive of Israel and the church.

Conclusion

On this approach, the Song of Songs is not merely a love poem. It is a parable whose literal sense points beyond the king and his beloved to God and his people. Through the mystery of marriage, the Song reveals the intensity of divine love: a love as strong as death, as fierce as the grave, and as consuming as the very flame of the LORD. Which love in marriage always pointed to Christ’s love for the church (Eph 5:32). And that, Nicholas tells us, is the literal sense of the Song of Songs.

Further Reading

https://ca.thegospelcoalition.org/article/three-ways-misread-song-songs/

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Life is uncontrollable.

Control is like trying to hold water in our hands. It moves, flows, and slips through our fingers. We cannot control it. It flows past.

But believing we must capture it amounts to an impossible desire, one frustrated and filled with the non-release of anxious energy.

Our pursuit of control follows from two causes, according to sociologist Hartmut Rosa. First, sociologically, we fear the lack of growth, progress, and control of all things. We grow GDP, become more efficient at work, and apply this machine-like thinking to all of life. We fear losing our jobs, our stuff, and our future if we do not control the world.

Second, personally, we live by a hope to grow our world, to gain more of it. We want a bigger house, more experiences, broader travels, and to gain as much as possible in life. We live by this hope of ever-increasing newness. This is how, Rosa points out, we conceive of the good life. His alternative is what he calls “resonance”—a mode of being in which we are touched and transformed by the world rather than seeking to master it.

Knowing this is one thing. Doing something about it is another.

We relate to the world in ways we do not choose. Being born in a modern economy means the need for ever-more growth in the economy, workplace, and life seems intuitive and common sense. Granted, everyone has to work and produce. But we do so with a sort of religious fervour. Expansion, exploitation, and capital growth mark our modern economies and lives.

So the world appears to us as just this way. Marilynne Robinson speaks of “the givenness of things,” the world as sheer gift. Martin Heidegger pointed to something similar decades ago, although with the theological meaning that Robinson. He noted how the world appears to us can be something of a given, and that changes the way we see and experience the world. But by recognizign this, Heidegger suggests we might discover a saving power.

Perhaps. But as Rosa points out, the way we relate to the world and the way it relates to us form a symbiotic or organic relation. They work in tandem. We cannot change how reality has been given to us.

Or can we?

I suggest we can at least try. We begin by recognizing the uncontrollability of the world and accepting that we cannot control the future. This is an old idea. The Roman Stoics pointed to fate and how happiness or the good life partly revolved around accepting that you cannot change external things but only our judgements about them.

And I suppose there is something to this. It eliminates the fear of loss through what we think we can control but cannot in fact control.

But more is needed. Stoic acceptance can tend toward resignation. We also need hope, something that orients us toward a future good.

Hope helps us to see that taking our piece of the world, attaining more and more experience and possessions, is not enough to make us happy. We need a hope that remains unshakeable.

We might say that hope is in us.

We could say that.

But we can also think of the hope as outside of us. If we accept what we cannot control, can we trust the uncontrollability of our lives to someone or something else?

The Christian tradition says yes.

But I am not making an argument from tradition primarily. I also think experience shows why it is a practical necessity to live by Providence, a word that derives from the Latin providentia, “to see beforehand.” If God sees all beforehand, then we can stick to what is in front of us. We can control our judgements, not others and the things around us because God sees for us.

For us, life is uncontrollable. Accept it. And hope in the Being who sees all beforehand. Or else, life might feel like a constantly hostile experience, one task that challenges forth after another.

So might there be a better way than this path of hostility?

Might we be the water that flows through the hand of God? Could we, like the water, simply flow?

I’d like to think so.

After all, he has the whole world in his hands.

Ezekiel 1 is one of the strangest passages in Scripture. Here, Ezekiel sees a chariot with four living creatures that have four different faces (Ezek 1:6, 10). The living creatures move without turning (1:9, 12), and their wheels have rims full of eyes that move below them (1:15–18). Above the living beings is an expanse (1:22–23), and one “like the appearance of a man” sits upon this mobile throne (1:26).

What on earth is Ezekiel describing? Or better: what in heaven did Ezekiel see?

In this article, I seek to answer that question, so that you can better grasp Ezekiel’s theological intention.

What did Ezekiel see?

The vision begins with a storm theophany: a windstorm from the north, a great cloud, flashing fire, and gleaming metal (Ezek 1:4). From within this storm, Ezekiel sees a chariot with four living beings that have four different faces: human, lion, ox, and eagle (1:6, 10). Fire and lightning flash among them (1:13). They move without turning (1:9, 12), directed wherever the spirit goes (1:12, 20–21).

Below the living beings are wheels structured as a wheel within a wheel; their rims are full of eyes (1:15–18). Ezekiel may be describing smaller wheels within larger wheels. Or perhaps he is describing a sphere. It is hard to know precisely. In any case, the eyes upon the wheels probably signify God’s all-seeing nature from his throneroom. Ezekiel 10:12 also says the bodies of the creatures are covered with eyes.

Above the creatures spans an expanse (1:22–23) like in creation, and upon a throne sits one “like the appearance of a man,” radiating fire and brightness, surrounded by something like a rainbow (1:26–27). Ezekiel identifies this luminous sight as “the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD” (1:28).

So what is that thing?

Ezekiel sees a theophany, an appearance of God, on a mobile throne. The language of theophany (windstorm, cloud, fire, etc.) signifies that this whole object portrays God. For example, the spheres mean that the chariot can move in any direction, to the four corners of the earth. God is omnipresent. The eyes everywhere represent God’s omniscience. The creatures, identified as Cherubim in Ezekiel 10:1, may show God’s power over the created order.

And here, God appears in a storm as he did at Sinai (Exod 19:16–18). What makes this theophany unique, however, is that, like Isaiah 6, Ezekiel sees God’s heavenly throneroom. Here, God’s chariot and throne appear with cosmic signs. That this is God’s heavenly throne also becomes clear in Ezekiel 10 when we learn that Ezekiel sees the heavenly reality that the earthly temple symbolizes.

In that chapter, God’s glory leaves the temple. Now, the most holy place held the ark of the covenant with winged cherubim surrounding it (Exod 25:18–22). In other words, the ark of the covenant is like a throne. The whole room represented God’s heavenly dwelling. But it was visible; what Ezekiel sees is the reality which the visible signs pointed to, namely, the throne of God.

Ezekiel sees past the earthly signs to the reality of God’s enthroned presence, his glory as it is in the heavenly places. Put directly, the earthly symbols of the temple reveal God’s real presence; Ezekiel sees that real presence.

And it is the same throne room that both Isaiah and John see. For example, the vision parallels Isaiah 6 in which seraphim surround God’s enthroned presence. Here, the four cherubim approximate the seraphim, although the cherubim have four wings instead of the six of the seraphim.

So the thing Ezekiel sees is the heavenly reality that we believe in with our hearts but do not see with the eyes of our flesh. Second Kings 6:17 shows a parallel scene where Elisha’s servant has his eyes opened to see chariots of fire at Dothan. Or one might think of the throneroom scenes in Revelation and Isaiah 6.

Where is God?

If Ezekiel sees God’s presence, where is God? This is the most important question, because the Bible is a work of theology: it reveals God and things related to God. To answer this question, three observations follow.

First, God cannot be seen as God. At Sinai, the people saw signs of thunder and lightning. But they saw no form of God (Deut 4:15). God cannot be seen, and no one has seen except the only begotten God (John 1:18). So God reveals himself, as Augustine pointed out, through creatures: angels, fire in a bush, prophets, and here in Ezekiel, a cosmic chariot. We should not expect to see the invisible God who dwells in unapproachable light, because that light is by definition unapproachable and unseeable (1 Tim 6:16; cf. Exod 33:20; John 1:18). We see the created form that reveals to us.

Second, not only does the whole scene reveal God to us, but Ezekiel also identifies the Spirit as the director of the chariot-throne (Ezek 1:12, 20–21). God is thus implied and his Spirit named as the animating and directing force of the chariot.

Third, and most shockingly, God is described as being in human form. As Ezekiel 1:26 says, “And above the dome over their heads there was something like a throne, in appearance like sapphire, and seated above the likeness of the throne was something that seemed like a human form.” How and why could God be described in human form? After all, God made humans. He is not first a human, but he is God!

Ezekiel, however, tells us: the being on the throne is “like a human.” He is not a human per se, but he is like one. He has the look and form of a human.

What does this mean exactly? Mark Gignilliat and Heath Thomas explain: “What Ezekiel sees in this divine vision of omnipotent and omniscient glory is nothing less than the glory of God revealed in human form. Ezekiel peers into the mysteries of the universe with this vision, and in so doing, he sees the form of Christ slain before the foundations of the world” (Old Testament, 239).

Christ on the Throne

John’s vision of the glorified Jesus Christ in Revelation 1:13–16 parallels many features of Ezekiel’s vision.

John sees “one like a son of man” (Rev 1:13), echoing “the appearance of a man” seated on the throne in Ezek 1:26. Ezekiel describes brightness and fire from the waist up and down (Ezek 1:27), while John sees eyes like blazing fire and feet like bronze glowing in a furnace (Rev 1:14–15).

The gleaming metal surrounding the figure in Ezekiel (1:4, 27) parallels the burnished bronze of Christ’s feet (Rev 1:15).

Ezekiel’s rainbow-like radiance encircling the divine glory (Ezek 1:28) reappears both in Christ’s face shining like the sun (Rev 1:16) and in the rainbow surrounding the throne in Revelation 4:3.

Likewise, Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1 share many features (throne, seated one, winged creatures, glory, smoke/cloud, fire, etc.). And John 12:41 identifies Jesus as the one on the throne in Isaiah 6: “Isaiah said this,” explains John, “because he saw [Christ’s] glory and spoke about him.” This indirectly furthers the conclusion that the Incarnate Christ is the one upon the throne.

But how could he be, since the Incarnation had not yet happened? The answer centres on God’s experience of time. As Gignilliat and Thomas alluded to in the quote above, Revelation 13:8 speaks of “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” He was slain as the lamb and as Christ because Christ is the eternal Word from the Father. We can think of Christ as Incarnate in his fulfilled vocation. He was always meant to be the Lamb; in this sense, he always was.

God the Word took on human flesh (John 1:14). He who lives outside of time took time to himself; he who was apart from flesh received our flesh and blood; he who could not change became changeable for us and for our salvation. As the Timeless One took chronology as his very own by the Incarnation, we can think of God the Word in almost no other way than as Jesus of Nazareth. That is who he is as the eternal Word from the Father.

In these ways, we can understand that God the Word appeared as Incarnate in something “like a human form” (Ezek 1:26) because that is how the Son is always revealed to us.

What did this mean for the exiles?

Ezekiel recorded this vision while in exile. He, along with 10,000 others, was exiled to Babylon in 597 BC. The major crisis for the exilic Judahites had to do with the temple. If God’s presence was there, then could God bless and help the exiles?

The vision of God’s throne and the later vision of God’s glory leaving the temple (Ezek 10) show that God is not a local deity, but his glory fills the earth. The rest of Ezekiel, especially the oracles against the nations, furthers this impression.

For Ezekiel, the man on the throne also gives him his commission as a watchman in Ezekiel 2–3. So the vision serves as his commissioning.

Putting Ezekiel’s original and Christological contexts together, we can say that the God who met Ezekiel in Babylon is the same Lord who would later take on flesh and dwell among us. His presence is never confined, always reaching toward his people, whether through vision or Incarnation.

More could be said, but I wanted to relay some reasons as to why Ezekiel included this vision in his prophecy.

Conclusion

Ezekiel saw Christ in his glory. The vision is nearly indescribable. We cannot fathom what Ezekiel saw. (Just try to draw the wheels within wheels.) We can, however, say that the overwhelming pressure of glory in that vision shows us Christ, the Lord of Glory, who would bring Judah and the nations low before raising them up again to newness of life through the glorious Gospel of our salvation.