Scripture-ish

Near the end of Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis includes a chapter called “Two Notes,” a very brief chapter which essentially offers two long footnotes to the previous chapter, which is called “The Obstinate Toy Soldiers.” The first note explores why God created humans as toy soldiers and not as sons; Lewis answers that it had to be this way, but I’ll let you read how he presents his case. The second note concerns how humans are connected to one another and yet different. “Christianity thinks of human individuals not as mere members of a group or items in a list, but as organs in a body—different from one another and each contributing what no other could.” As members of a body, we should recognize our connection to one another and respect our differences. Lewis explains: “If you forget that he belongs to the same organism as yourself you will become an Individualist. If you forget that he is a different organ from you, if you want to suppress differences and make people all alike, you will become a Totalitarian. But a Christian must not be either a Totalitarian or an Individualist.”

I love that for Lewis these are not political choices. Well, of course they are political choices, but beyond that, they are moral choices, religious choices. “A Christian must not be either a Totalitarian or an Individualist.” Of course, this phrase “must not be” does not indicate that one’s salvation is at stake. Is it a salvation issue? Can a Totalitarian or an Individualist gain admittance through the pearly gates? I don’t know, but that’s not the point. It puts distance between you and Jesus. That’s the point. Being a Totalitarian or an Individualist means that you are less like Jesus. A Christian must be like Jesus. Must be, but will never be, not in this life.

Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

And now we get to the part of the chapter that I really want to talk to you about, the final paragraph. Jumping off from the notion that Totalitarianism is no good, and neither is Individualism, Lewis now says:

I feel a strong desire to tell you—and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me—which of these two errors is worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs—pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.

Note well what Lewis said here. The devil “relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one.”

It’s not that I think individualism is good, but people are so crazy—I just want to let them do whatever they want. I wash my hands of the whole thing!

It’s not that I like totalitarianism, but do you see what those people over there are trying to do? Somebody needs to stop them!

As Lewis says, the choice itself is diabolic, because it is a choice between two godless errors, and our supposed piety steers us away from the godlessness of the one into the godlessness of the other. Or, to put it another way, the choice is driven not by love but by hate. It’s not that I love the thing I choose; it’s that I hate the other thing more.

I was reminded of this point from Lewis by an online article published in the Spring at The Dispatch, which is, by the way, the best news and commentary outfit in the English language. You should, at the very least, make a habit of listening to The Dispatch Podcast. But, anyway, The Dispatch website published an article back in March called “The Philosophers and Churchmen who Fell for Fascism,” written by Nathan Beacom. The article treated the Frenchmen during the 1930s and 1940s who ended up supporting the pro-Nazi government of France based in Vichy, and those who resisted this collaborationist French regime.

Times of intense stress, such as WWII, present many opportunities, almost universal opportunities, it seems, for people to choose something important. It therefore presents many opportunities for moral compromise.

Eight and half decades of hindsight makes it obvious to all of us that it was the resisters of Vichy France who were right, while the collaborators compromised their morality in all kinds of amazing, depressing ways. But without that hindsight—if we had been there, at that time—what would we have done, resist or collaborate? What is so clear to us in the 21st century was perfectly clear to a lot of people in the early 1940s; I mean, the film Casablanca was released in 1942, for goodness sake. But, of course, the Nazis had their intellectual apologists, and what is so distressing about the article by Nathan Beacom is his profile of, primarily, two apologists from within Christianity: the French bishop François-Louis Auvity and the theologian and friar Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange. For our consideration of how Christianity does—or does not—make people good, we could simply read the entire article by Beacom, but here I’ll just present some excerpts. Beacom sets up the struggle in 1940s France this way:

In that frothy age in France, there were many forks in the road. A person did not wake up one day and decide to collaborate with the Third Reich. There was a slow, almost imperceptible process of decision whereby someone was led one way or another. Of those who counted themselves faithful Christians, many adapted to Vichy, but many others stood against it in favor of a different idea of France—and a different idea of faith.

It is instructive, however, to consider how individuals who began from similar starting points went two separate ways. Some, like the philosophers Jacques Maritain and Étienne Gilson, saw the wickedness of Vichy for what it was, while others, like Bishop Auvity, compromised themselves morally step by step. How to maintain moral clarity and avoid a blind wandering into wickedness is a question of perennial importance.

Who is this Bishop Auvity? Well, you know where to go to get quick answers to such questions, and let me now read to you the opening paragraph of Wikipedia’s entry on the bishop.

François-Louis Auvity (9 January 1874 – 15 February 1964), bishop of Mende (1937–1944), was one of seven French Roman Catholic bishops who were obliged to submit their resignations to Pope Pius XII … because of their enthusiastic collaboration with the occupation of France by Germany.

That’s the opening sentence. This guy was a bishop who lived to be 90 years old. Who knows how many people he helped during his long life, how much good he did in this world? But, according to Wikipedia, the first thing you need to know about Bishop Auvity is that he collaborated with the Nazis. My goodness, talk about beclowning yourself, covering your legacy with shame! Whatever good you did in the world is overshadowed, because in the moment of decision, when the stakes were the highest, when you had the opportunity to be a hero or a villain, you chose poorly, and that’s what people need to remember about you. Yikes!

Back to Beacom’s article.

To the end, Auvity operated out of a fear of the liberal Republicans, and at each decision point he decided to go whatever direction would most clearly work against them.

I pause here to explain that Republicans in this context does not mean conservatives or the GOP or MAGA, as it does in America now, but it means almost the opposite in Auvity’s context. Republicanism in France is most clearly associated with the French Revolution at the turn of the nineteenth century. Being a conservative, and being a fan of the Catholic Church, means that Bishop Auvity disliked French Republicanism. He longed for the old days; he wanted to make France great again. Note, as Beacom tells it, that the bishop operated out of fear; he chose the Nazis because he wanted to oppose what he saw as an error, the liberal Republicanism of his day. But, of course, he chose the Nazis not right off but at the end of a string of choices that started much more innocently—as Beacom next tells us:

And so he embraced Vichy, and Vichy led him to embrace collaboration with the Reich, and this led him to preach to the faithful that they ought to obey and be loyal to Vichy, even to that dreadful point of urging them to allow themselves to be taken to Germany for unpaid labor. Auvity’s hatred for his traditional political enemies led him—he who thought he was defending old Catholic France—to betray his country to a foreign power and to fail in the duties to his faith.

Do you hear this? What was Bishop Auvity’s motivating impulse? Beacom tells us: “hatred for his traditional political enemies.” Listen closely: hatred is the motivating impulse in American politics today. Hatred is the animating force; it’s what gets people out of bed in the morning. “I’ve got to stop those other people.” Is this true of all American politics? Um, it’s a pretty high percentage on the national level. These days, when it comes to national politics, it’s pretty common for people to vote against a candidate rather than for someone that they like. And if they do like a candidate, it’s oftentimes not because of that candidates policies but because the candidate mocks or disparages the people that the voter also despises. You want to raise money in politics? Make people afraid, and criticize the people that they hate.

Do I need to tell you that this is bad for you? That this is morally corrupting? That following the path of Bishop Auvity does not lead toward the blissful life with Jesus?

It is at this point, after describing Bishop Auvity’s embrace of the Nazis because of his hatred of liberals, that Beacom reminds us of what C. S. Lewis said about the devil sending errors into the world in pairs. What Beacom adds to Lewis is the subtlety of the choice, the fact that we don’t make it all at once but step-by-step. One last quote from Beacom: “Without knowing it, we make little choices to compromise on telling the truth, or to use underhanded means to achieve our ends, or to slander our opponents. As time goes on, the compromises get deeper and deeper, and we risk losing ourselves altogether.”

Near the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus applies a strange label to his audience: salt. Here’s how the Lord says it.

Ye are the salt of the earth, but if the salt hath lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men.

What does Jesus mean by “salt of the earth”? I know that salt flavors things, but it doesn’t flavor the earth. In fact, one of the ways of punishing an enemy is by salting the earth so that his crops won’t grow. I’m just pointing out that it’s a strange image: not just salt, but salt “of the earth.” But ignoring the earth part, people like to talk about in what ways the followers of Jesus ought to be salt. But such discussions often lose sight of what Jesus actually says about the salt, which is entirely negative. He doesn’t talk about the benefits of salt or all its good qualities; he merely issues a warning about losing one’s saltiness. For Jesus, this is what you need to know: losing your saltiness is a real possibility, even an urgent possibility. And, in that case, whereith shall it be salted? The result is uselessness. It is good for nothing. He doesn’t say so right here, but I imagine that such saltless salt he would want to spit out of his mouth. He has said such things before. Saltless salt is not actively evil, just worthless. Remember how Navalny criticized the people that just stare at the table? Or, from King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, remember the white moderate? Again, this is a real possibility. In Navalny’s telling, it’s most people. We remember how Corrie ten Boom noted ruefully how many of her fellow Dutch capitulated to the Nazis.

And then there are the people that actively work against the purposes of God, whether they are Christians or not. Usually, especially if they are Christian, it does not happen all at once. Bishop Auvity is a helpful illustration of this slow process, but hardly the only one. We have them all around us, in America in the year 2026, people who claim to represent Christianity while obviously and giddily betraying the basic principles of Christianity.

We remember that Jesus and the apostles not infrequently guided us toward the more important truths, the non-negotiables. Among these was not acapella singing in the Christian assembly, or the activities permitted to women in public worship, or even the correct procedures for baptism. Now, hold on, don’t be one of those fools who thinks that because I said these issues are not the most important issues in Christianity that what I meant was that they have no significance at all. Surely none of you is so dumb; I certainly am not. But these important aspects of Christianity are not the most important aspects of Christianity; I know that for sure, because of words that appear in my Bible in red. The non-negotiables, the issues of highest importance, are altogether different. One time Jesus distilled the weightier matters of the law as justice and mercy and faithfulness. These are the nonnegotiables, the aspects of Christianity that should be front-and-center, in our mind and in our practice. The devil—and his servants—want us to be motivated by hatred. The way of Jesus is the opposite.

Some people treat Romans 13:1–4 as if it were the most important part of Christianity—or at least maybe in the realm of politics. It’s neither. I know that because in the very same chapter, Paul said that the command to love one’s neighbor, not the command to submit to the government, fulfills the law. Submitting to the government is important, but if there is a tension between submitting to government and loving our neighbor, Paul tells us which one wins if we want to be pleasing to Christ.

Thinking about the relationship between Christianity and morality over the past few weeks has clarified some things for me. First of all, Christianity should make you good, better than you used to be, more morally upright—because the entire point of Christianity is to make you like Christ, to conform you to the image of the Son of God, as Paul says in Romans 8:29, and as the New Testament indicates in many other passages. The reason for your existence is for you to become like Jesus, and that means, yes, Christianity should make you good, because Jesus is the embodiment of the Good.

But not every Christian—not every one who claims Jesus as Lord, submits to baptism, and regularly attends a Christian worship assembly—not all of these people want to be like Jesus. There is seed sown among the weeds; this seed produces no fruit, but it does produce a plant, a plant that is choked by weeds. Do you remember what the weeds represent? “The cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things.” Good grief, how many people does that list describe? How many people that go to church regularly are motivated not by a desire to conform to Christ but “lusts of other things”?

I think it is the unfortunate truth that none of us wants to be like Jesus fully; we all want to hold something back. But it seems to me that some people have as their highest aim—not their only aim, but their highest aim—to be like Jesus. They are on the path to fulfilling the Shema, loving God with all their heart. They’re on the path; they’re not there yet. And some people, maybe a lot of people, who go to church, are not on that path. I won’t judge the eternal soul of Bishop Auvity, but I can say that to the extent that he was motivated by hatred of his enemies, he was not on the path toward Jesus. He may have thought he was, but he wasn’t.

Last time, when I talked about the Parable of the Tares, I mentioned that to avoid being a tare we must realize the constant possibility that we are a tare—or, as we have seen here, that we might lose our saltiness—and we have to desire not to be a tare. This essay has explored both of those points, but here at the end I want to emphasize the second. Our Lord said, “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” For us, the treasure is Jesus, and he has our heart.

Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. (Matthew 15:13)

People are sinners. Not some people; all people. Every single person who has ever lived is a sinner; no one has ever escaped it, except for one person—the very one we worship as God. Those who are not the embodiment of the eternal Deity sin, and they sin a lot.

There is a longstanding teaching in some Christian traditions about something called “original sin,” which is basically an attempt to explain why people are so terrible, such hopeless sinners. It’s an infection, a flaw in our nature, something we can’t help but inherit from time immemorial. I myself do not accept a doctrine of original sin—certainly not a strong version of it. But since I’ve introduced the term I can now quote the famous comment from G. K. Chesterton, an Anglican turned Catholic, who said more than a hundred years ago that “original sin … is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved” (Orthodoxy, ch. 2). He meant that if you start with the hypothesis that people gravitate toward wickedness, you will not lack for evidence. In the mid-twentieth century, Reinhold Niebuhr said something similar, asserting that original sin is “the only empirically verifiable doctrine of the Christian faith” (see the title of ch. 3 of this book on Niebuhr). The century intervening between Chesterton and us has not proven him wrong. In his 2012 book on Christianity, the Anglican layman Francis Spufford took the fact of sin—or, in his terminology, not sin but HPtFtU—as a universally recognized datum.

Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

People can and often do display remarkable goodness. I gave some examples last time; this goodness seems most clear when it requires bravery, as in the case of Casper ten Boom, who told a Christian pastor in about the year 1943 that to die on behalf of a Jewish infant would be a great honor for his family. The divine Spirit, which inhabits each one of us who have been immersed in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, works to produce goodness in us, because goodness is one of the fruit of the Spirit.

But the relationship between adherence to Christianity and the display of goodness is complex. For it is not only Christians who might overcome their natural wickedness and display goodness; non-Christians often do this, whether people of other faiths or no faith. And Christians often fail miserably to display goodness. For this latter category, I gave several examples last time, particularly the slaveholder of the young Frederick Douglass, who, as Douglass later recalled, got religion and immediately became more cruel. We can also look back at the more recent Civil Rights struggle, especially in the 1960s, and find many examples of Christians beclowning themselves, directly opposing first principles of the gospel, as if law and order were opposed to loving thy neighbor, and—even if it were—as if it took precedence over the second greatest commandment. A century earlier, to return to Douglass, this former slave sprinkled throughout his 1845 autobiography bitter complaints about Christians refusing to live Christianly. He did this so much, in fact, that upon re-reading his memoir before its publication, Douglass realized that he might give readers the wrong impression about his true feelings toward Christianity, so he added an appendix to clarify things, and the main function of that appendix for us today is that it clarifies for us how susceptible Christianity is to perversion.

I’m going to steal some valor here by excerpting a long section from Douglass, one of the greatest orators this nation has produced. Well, since I’ve never actually heard him deliver a speech, maybe I should change that description—not orator but speech-writer. That man could write a speech. I hesitate to identify Frederick Douglass as the absolute greatest speech-writer in American history, because I am thinking of his older contemporary who served as our sixteenth president. In my mind, it’s hard to beat out Abraham Lincoln as a speech-writer. And if you’re looking for a great American speech, it’s hard to surpass the two speeches that are carved into the walls of the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall. (See my previous essay.) Part of the reason that the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural are so great—a big part of the reason—is because they’re short, short enough to chisel the entire text into those walls. They’re compact; they pack a punch.

I am not aware of Douglass giving such brief speeches. But I imagine he was usually called upon to fill an hour or more, because people enjoyed the experience of listening to Frederick Douglass, so he wasn’t in a position to give brief speeches. But let me tell you, when he writes a speech, he brings it. Lincoln wrote speeches that were thoughtful, calm, considering great thoughts, applying the current moment to the great themes in history. The outcome of reading Lincoln is solemn contemplation on the serious issues just discussed. Frederick Douglass is different. I don’t mean that he’s not thoughtful; of course, he’s brilliant, but his speeches do not lull the reader into solemn contemplation. Rather, the reader of Douglass’ speeches has the sensation of having been hit over the head by a 2x4, or walloped in the gut. I mean, good grief, read his most famous speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” and it is clear that to this meeting of the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society in 1852, Douglass has brought a sledgehammer. I imagine the assembled crowd, abolitionists everyone, listening to that speech leaning further and further back in their chairs the more he talked, or maybe hiding under their seats to protect them from the thunder coming from the rostrum, but then afterwards mobbing their invited speaker to tell him, “Thank you, we needed that.” Because sometimes you need to be hit by a 2x4. Jesus knew that well enough.

So here comes the 2x4 from Douglass. It’s not one of his famous speeches, or any of his speeches, but rather a section of the appendix to his first autobiography.

I find, since reading over the foregoing Narrative, that I have, in several instances, spoken in such a tone and manner, respecting religion, as may possibly lead those unacquainted with my religious views to suppose me an opponent of all religion. To remove the liability of such misapprehension, I deem it proper to append the following brief explanation. What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. Never was there a clearer case of “stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.” I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which every where surround me. We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members. The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus.

That excerpt is merely half of the first paragraph of that appendix; he has more accusations, which it would be good for you to read. Eventually he quotes a long section of Matthew 23, applying the denunciations spoken by our Lord in reference to hypocritical scribes and Pharisees to the Christian slaveholders of his day.

Dark and terrible as is this picture, I hold it to be strictly true of the overwhelming mass of professed Christians in America. They strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Could any thing be more true of our churches? They would be shocked at the proposition of fellowshipping a sheep-stealer; and at the same time they hug to their communion a man-stealer, and brand me with being an infidel, if I find fault with them for it. They attend with Pharisaical strictness to the outward forms of religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. They are always ready to sacrifice, but seldom to show mercy [cf. Hosea 6:6]. They are they who are represented as professing to love God whom they have not seen, whilst they hate their brother whom they have seen. They love the heathen on the other side of the globe. They can pray for him, pay money to have the Bible put into his hand, and missionaries to instruct him; while they despise and totally neglect the heathen at their own doors.

Such is, very briefly, my view of the religion of this land; and to avoid any misunderstanding, growing out of the use of general terms, I mean by the religion of this land, that which is revealed in the words, deeds, and actions, of those bodies, north and south, calling themselves Christian churches, and yet in union with slaveholders. It is against religion, as presented by these bodies, that I have felt it my duty to testify.

It is important for us to hold in mind such critiques as these by Douglass, for we are often in danger of missing the point of Christianity—becoming like Christ—as we concentrate on some much more minor point. In the case of Douglass, the minor point was whether or not the Bible explicitly condemns slavery, and the idea that it does not distracted some professing Christians from pursuing Christlikeness. (I have written about the relationship of the Bible to slavery here.) For us, since chattel slavery has been illegal for more than a century and a half, we encounter different distractions, perhaps about politics, or about sexual ethics, or about transgender people in sports, or the issues that are more particular to our religious tradition, including various aspects of the administration of Christian baptism or the activities of the Christian assembly. I say again that these issues are distractions to the extent that contemplating them and discussing them with others does not contribute to our growth into the image of Christ. I do not say that these issues necessarily distract us; contemplating them may, indeed, contribute to our growth into the image of Christ, but not necessarily. And if we think that, for example, getting baptized is the main point of Christianity, we have abandoned the religion of Jesus and set up our own religion, and we stand condemned by the words of Douglass.

Religious people often fail to enact their religion, as we see in our own day and in our Scripture. The book of Acts shows amazing examples of Christian faithfulness and courage, and some examples of Christian cowardice and pride and deception, as in the case of Ananias and Sapphira. The Old Testament is filled with such tales. For every Daniel resisting the stupid and cruel laws of a pagan regime, a forerunner of Casper ten Boom, there must have been dozens, hundreds, thousands of exiled Judeans perfectly happy to go along to get along, who just didn’t want to call attention to themselves, who cared little for piety or goodness. With such people Casper ten Boom was as familiar as was Daniel. Here is how Corrie ten Boom described it.

The true horror of occupation came over us only slowly. During the first year of German rule, there were only minor attacks on Jews in Holland. A rock through the window of a Jewish-owned store. An ugly word scrawled on the wall of a synagogue. It was as though they were trying us, testing the temper of the country. How many Dutchmen would go along with them?

And the answer, to our shame, was many. The National Socialist Bond, the quisling organization of Holland, grew larger and bolder with each month of occupation. Some joined the NSB simply for the benefits: more food, more clothing coupons, the best jobs and housing. But others became NSBers out of conviction. Nazism was a disease to which the Dutch, too, were susceptible, and those with an anti-Semitic bias fell sick of it first. (The Hiding Place, ch. 5)

We remember what the householder said to his servants when they wanted to gather up the tares from among the wheat.

Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn. (Matt 13:30–31)

We live among tares. Very possibly we go to church with tares. We have seen that throughout history there have been tares that have called themselves Christians and lived what might be called a normal Christian life. They don’t know they’re tares. We need to consider the possibility that it may be a tare staring back at us from the mirror. It is not our job to determine who is a tare, but it is our job not to be one.

To avoid being a tare, first, recognize the possibility. More than that, recognize that you are a tare in some ways. And second, desire not to be a tare. Actually, I’m not sure which of these points is most important. I think there are people who can’t imagine that they might be on the wrong side of an issue, or at least they give the impression of never having considered whether they might be wrong. They seem to think that every moral question is obvious, and that God is obviously on their side. A great American orator, possibly the greatest, had this to say about a disagreement, one we’ve been talking about, that had already led to massive bloodshed: “Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other.” There are people who can’t imagine that they might be in the wrong. Christianity teaches us that we are often in the wrong. Remember what I said earlier about original sin.

Then again, I think there are people who don’t mind being a villain, or they even rejoice in it and expect others to celebrate with them. Who—knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death—not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. Sometimes we elect such people to political office. Sometimes they are celebrated in the church—Christians celebrating wickedness. What we need is training, moral training, so that we look at Casper ten Boom and marvel, and honor him, and long to be that kind of person ourselves; and we look at a tare, such as Douglass’ enslaver, and recognize it as a tare, and are repulsed by its tareness, just as God is. We need to identify heroes and honor them, and tell stories of wickedness and contemn them, and make sure we know which is which—always comparing to what Jesus tells us explicitly and repeatedly is the most important thing in life.

Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

In chapter 7 of The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom described the trouble she had finding a placement for a Jewish infant. Of course, this is during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, perhaps in 1943, and the ten Boom family was involved in the underground resistance to the Nazis, especially by hiding Jews. (Their house in Haarlem was 15 miles or so west of where Anne Frank was hiding in Amsterdam, though their stories do not intersect, as far as I know.) Hiding an infant presents a special challenge, because you can’t tell them to be quiet. Corrie ten Boom says she had a good prospect, a family friend who she thought would be receptive to the idea of hiding this baby. When the man entered her watch shop, she went to get the baby to show to the man. She describes the scene that transpired.

Back in the dining room, I pulled back the coverlet from the baby’s face.

There was a long silence. The man bent forward, his hand in spite of himself reaching for the tiny fist curled around the blanket. For a moment I saw compassion and fear struggle in his face. Then he straightened. “No. Definitely not. We could lose our lives for that Jewish child!”

Unseen by either of us, Father had appeared in the doorway. “Give the child to me, Corrie,” he said.

Father held the baby close, his white beard brushed its cheek, looking into the little face with eyes as blue and innocent as the baby’s own. At last he looked up at the [man]. “You say we could lose our lives for this child. I would consider that the greatest honor that could come to my family.”

It’s an amazing scene, an amazing comment from this 82-year-old man, Casper ten Boom, about whom there is a wikipedia page. He cultivated a deep Christian faith as a lifelong member of the Dutch Reformed Church, which was basically the state church of Holland. He lived a simple, pious life. He read the Bible to his family morning and night, and during the day in between, he worked in the watch shop that he inherited from his father. He was a man of prayer, a characteristic powerfully illustrated in ch. 5 of The Hiding Place, at the time that the Nazis first attacked the Netherlands. Corrie ten Boom describes the situation.

Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

For five days Holland held out against the invader. We kept the shop open, not because anyone was interested in watches, but because people wanted to see Father. Some wanted him to pray for husbands and sons stationed at the borders of the country. Others, it seemed to me, came just to see him sitting there behind his workbench as he had for sixty years and to hear in the ticking clocks a world of order and reason.

They wanted to hear him pray. They wanted to see him work. In a world turned upside down, they wanted to witness stability, faithfulness, and they found it in an old man behind the counter of a watch shop.

And later, when the ten Boom family, along with a group of about 35 resistance leaders and workers, were arrested by the Nazis, Corrie ten Boom witnessed this scene.

When I got back the last time, a group had gathered around Father for evening prayers. Every day of my life had ended like this: that deep steady voice, that sure and eager confiding of us all to the care of God. The bible lay at home on its shelf, but much of it was stored in his heart. His blue eyes seemed to be seeing beyond the locked and crowded room, beyond Haarlem, beyond earth itself, as he quoted from memory: “Thou art my hiding place and my shield: I hope in thy word. … Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe….” (near the end of ch. 9 of The Hiding Place)

The topic I want to address is: does Christianity make people good? And Casper ten Boom and his family, especially his two spinster daughters, Corrie and Betsie, who never left home—this ten Boom family is Exhibit A for the positive answer to the question. Yes, Christianity makes people good. Just look at the ten Boom family. They prayed daily. They read their Bible, daily. They went to church. They had a genuine faith that came out in their actions. And when they saw people in need, it was their faith that told them they must act. They believed 1 John 3:17–18, where they read these words:

But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth. (1 John 3:17–18)

So when the Jews in the Dutch city of Haarlem started wearing gold stars, the ten Boom family learned for the first time who among their acquaintances were Jewish.

Some of these Jews were, in fact, Christians, having been baptized years earlier, followers of the one perfect Jew, as some of them said. No matter; in something akin to the one-drop rule, the Nazis counted these Christians as Jews, and they wore the star. When the Jews started to be rounded up and shipped out, it quickly became obvious to the ten Booms what they must do. In 2008, the ten Boom family was named by the State of Israel as belonging to the Righteous among the Nations, for their heroism in saving Jews from extermination in the Holocaust.

Naturally, they put themselves in danger. But, again, they believed the words of 1 John 3:16, “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” That man, that family friend, presented by Corrie ten Boom with a Jewish infant that needed shelter correctly perceived that, in his words, “We could lose our lives for that Jewish child.” Casper ten Boom correctly perceived that such an outcome would be a great honor—a chance to imitate Christ.

Does Christianity make you good? Yes! Behold, the love of God displayed in the ten Boom family. As the apostle Paul tells us, the fruit of the Spirit is goodness, and the divine Spirit has been at work in the ten Boom family. The Spirit has made good use of its tools, the spiritual disciplines, especially prayer and Scripture and communal life, frequent worship with other believers, and we can see the fruit. It’s obvious. You come to Christ a sinner, helpless, desperate, and Christ enters your life and changes everything. The evidence is overwhelming. Christianity makes you good.

If only it were so easy.

The man called into the ten Boom dining room, the family friend who ultimately refused to help a Jewish infant because of the real danger the child presented—that man was a Christian pastor, who worked for a congregation in a small town outside of Haarlem. It was a Christian pastor who refused to help that Jewish infant. This Christian pastor surely, like the ten Boom family, read the Bible regularly and prayed daily, and he certainly attended church services frequently. And when called upon to put his Christian ideas into action, he declined. He was fearful that helping others would put himself in danger. He had read and probably preached the verse that says “perfect love casts out fear,” and when the moment of decision came, he chose fear over love. He was willing to offer God only that which cost him nothing.

Does Christianity make you good? No, not always.

But let me say this about that Christian pastor—it was a struggle for him. He gave in to fear, but at least he wanted to help, however weakly. It’s not like he said that the infant deserved whatever it got. It’s not like he reported the infant to the Nazis. He clearly wanted to help the child and the ten Boom family. He was not sympathetic to the Nazi cause. That is something. In the face of evil, Christians might not stand for goodness in the way you would like, but at least they don’t root for the evil.

Christianity might not make you good, but at least it doesn’t make you evil. I mean, Christians aren’t Nazis.

Are they?

Okay, some Christians are Nazis. I use the present tense advisedly.

I am reminded of another situation, when in hindsight the cause of justice, goodness, seems so obvious, but Christians had a hard time navigating the ethical terrain.

Robert Lewis Dabney is perhaps most remembered for writing a biography of Stonewall Jackson, but he himself was a Presbyterian theologian and chaplain in the Confederate army (wikipedia). Like many southern Christians, he was pro-slavery. His biographer quotes a letter that Dabney sent to his brother, dated Jan 15, 1851, part of which I will quote because I appreciate the clarity with which this theologian expresses his ideas.

If we want to effect [Dabney tells his brother] the general current of national opinion on this subject, ‘Is slave-holding intrinsically immoral or unjust?’ we must go before the nation with the Bible as the text, and ‘Thus saith the Lord’ as the answer. This policy is the wiser, because we know that on the Bible argument the abolition party will be driven to unveil their true infidel tendencies. The Bible being bound to stand on our side, they will have to come out and array themselves against the Bible. … Here is our policy, then, to push the Bible argument continually, to drive abolitionism to the wall, to compel it to assume an anti-Christian position. By so doing we compel the whole Christianity of the North to array itself on our side. This would be an immense political advantage.

Wow. This theologian cannot imagine a scenario in which the Bible could be used to oppose slavery. No beating about the bush here. He actually says in the letter that if we get into an ethical argument we might lose, unless the argument turns on religion—then we’ll win. Christianity is obviously pro-slavery.

Okay, but … maybe … maybe the kind of slavery that Christianity favors is—ya know—the good kind of slavery, the nice kind, where the master treats his slaves in a respectful, love-your-neighbor-as-yourself kind of way, the kind of slavery that’s less enforced labor under threat of death and more of a partnership, or even a vacation for the slave.

Hmm, no, I don’t think that’s gonna work. Now, let me say that both my own reason and the evidence I have seen suggest that different masters treated their slaves in different ways; some masters were more cruel than others. In his autobiography Barton Stone tells a story about a trip he took to Savannah, where he encountered a form of slavery that disgusted him and led him to believe that slavery was incompatible with his Christian faith. Stone had seen enslaved people before, but his experience in Georgia was something different from what he had previously witnessed. There were different forms of slavery, even in the American South—none of them compatible with the principles of Christianity, as I understand those principles, none of them coherent with the greatest commands, upon which our Lord said everything, the Law and the Prophets, hinge—but I acknowledge that not all slave masters were the same. And it’s hard to know exactly what to trust out of our eyewitness sources, because in the American South of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, everyone had a dog in the fight, there are no unbiased records.

Certainly Frederick Douglass was not unbiased, and his experience is the experience of merely one enslaved person, but we should still consider what he has to say about the effect of Christianity on his own enslaver. Did Christianity make the slaveholder of Frederick Douglass good? Douglass gives us the answer in chapter 9 of his first autobiography, which the 27-year-old Douglass published in 1845. In the following excerpt Douglass looks back at a time more than a decade earlier, when Douglass was a young teenager.

In August, 1832, [Douglass writes] my master attended a Methodist camp-meeting held in the Bay-side, Talbot county, and there experienced religion. I indulged a faint hope that his conversion would lead him to emancipate his slaves, and that, if he did not do this, it would, at any rate, make him more kind and humane. I was disappointed in both these respects. It neither made him to be humane to his slaves, nor to emancipate them. If it had any effect on his character, it made him more cruel and hateful in all his ways; for I believe him to have been a much worse man after his conversion than before.

Oh, man! I’m starting to wonder whether Casper ten Boom is the exception rather than the rule. Maybe Christianity is not all that helpful to the moral improvement of people. Is it more of a crap shoot?

And we haven’t even started talking about the reasons that John and Yoko wanted to imagine a world without religion, which I’m sure had something to do with big things like wars, probably the crusades, and probably also smaller-scale things like the religious people they’ve encountered who are arrogant jerks. Is it their religion that made them arrogant jerks?

I’m getting the feeling that there is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

One of my heroes is Alexei Navalny, for whom a recent report (Feb 14, 2026) endorsed by a few European governments concluded that the cause of death was murder, specifically poisoning, by the Russian government. What a shock! I read Navalny’s memoir about a year ago, and I should tell you more about it sometime. (I do so here.) It makes clear that Navalny enjoyed a warm Christian faith, and he did consider his Christian faith coherent with his own persistent opposition to the evils of Vladimir Putin’s government. But, I’m not sure Navalny should count as evidence that Christianity makes someone good, because Navalny was raised an atheist—you know, the godless communists, and all that—and he came to Christianity after his career in activism had begun. It wasn’t Christianity that made him good. Was it atheism?

Finally, I think of Malcolm X. He was raised as a Christian, and during the first half of his life, he was … I think it is fair to say … a scumbag. He went to prison, where scumbags sometimes find themselves. And in prison he converted to an unusual form of Islam, the Nation of Islam. Did the Nation of Islam make Malcolm X good? Um, that’s a difficult question. I don’t know what you think of Malcolm X’s politics, or his brand of civil rights activism, if that’s what you call it—but I will say this: among the most prominent civil rights leaders of the 1960s, Malcolm X would be my nomination for the most pious, the most dedicated to personal holiness.

Does Christianity make you good? I hope I have illustrated that the question entails complexities. And we haven’t even explored what the term “good” means and who gets to decide. That question is certainly worth exploring, as Socrates does in Plato’s Republic, and Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics. But assuming for the moment that we are in a position to judge the good, that our own moral formation has enlightened us on this score, so that we know the good when we see it, I think we’ve seen here that you can be good and not be a Christian—perhaps an atheist, perhaps a Muslim—and you can be good while being a Christian, and you can be a Christian and a pretty terrible person.

But there is more to say. I’m grateful that Frederick Douglass had more to say on Christianity than simply that it made his master worse, and we’ll want to pay close attention to his comments. And we should consider again that Christian pastor who refused to take in the Jewish infant when approached by Corrie ten Boom.

But let me remind you of two points before closing the current essay: there is a Christian doctrine of sanctification, which entails that you should grow in your likeness to Christ. The entire point of Christianity is for us to be conformed to Christ, to become increasingly Christlike. For a prooftext, see Romans 8:29, or Galatians 4:19, but really the entire Bible is on this theme. Again, let me say the phrase, fruit of the Spirit. We are grateful for examples like Casper ten Boom, who shows us that such growth is possible.

Second, the Bible talks about the possibility that we might quench the Spirit (1 Thess 5:19). It seems obvious to me that Frederick Douglass’ enslaver had done this exact thing, and others whom I’ve mentioned here. We will want to talk about ways of allowing the Spirit to do its work.

Becoming a Christian does not mean that you’re a good person, or even that you’re becoming a good person. It does mean that over the course of years you ought to become a better person than you have been. But it very well might not have this desired effect. As the martyr Stephen reminds us, there are many religious people who are stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, and who make it a habit to resist the Holy Spirit. This is the fate we would like to avoid, this hostility toward God.

We’ll consider this point next time.

Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

For Part 1, see here.

Is the divine Spirit male, or female, or neither? People have thought of the Spirit in all these ways. Most churchgoers in America probably instinctively refer to the Spirit as an “it” and think of the Spirit as some sort of “force,” even though the more experienced Christians in their more thoughtful moments will insist that actually the Spirit is a “he” and is personal, not impersonal. Max Lucado has insisted on this view: “Can you join me in a pledge? I hereby resolve never to call the Holy Spirit an it. The Spirit is a person.” Indeed, Christian theologians have traditionally referred to the Spirit as a “person” of the Trinity. But a person is not necessarily male; would it be offensive somehow to refer to the Spirit as a she? Offensive toward whom?

Stepping outside of the Christian faith for a moment, we know that the concept “god” is not tied specifically to males, because there were plenty of goddesses in the ancient world: Asherah, Tiamat, Isis, Athena, Juno, to name a few. In Hinduism, Vishnu is a male deity and Lakshmi is his wife. Deities are often male or female; examples abound.

Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

So, the Christian God: male or female? Most Christian theologians would say that the concept of gender does not actually apply to the Christian God.

Listen to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, published in the 1990s.

In no way is God in man’s image. He is neither man nor woman. God is pure spirit in which there is no place for the difference between the sexes. But the respective “perfections” of man and woman reflect something of the infinite perfection of God: those of a mother and those of a father and husband. (CCC 370)

This statement from the Catechism agrees with traditional Christian theology. In the fourth century, Gregory of Nazianzus asked some probing questions.

Do you take it, by the same token, that our God is a male, because of the masculine nouns “God” and “Father”? Is the Godhead a female, because in Greek the word is feminine? Is the word “Spirit” neuter in Greek, because the Spirit is sterile? (Oration 31.7; trans. Wickham, pp. 121–22)

Another fourth-century theologian, Gregory of Nyssa, says forthrightly, “For the Divine is neither male nor female” (οὔτε ἄρρεν οὔτε θῆλυ τὸ θεῖόν ἐστιν; Homily 7 on the Song of Songs, p. 225).

Zeus is definitely male, because he’s married to Hera, and he has sexual intercourse with human women and impregnates them. Zeus has specifically male body parts. Some ancient stories about Zeus also depict him impregnating women without sexual intercourse (see Talbert in this book). Without being too vulgar, I will say that one of the most important stories Christians tell about their God is how he did, indeed, cause a woman’s pregnancy. In fact, there are multiple such stories in the Christian Bible, but only one in which there is no human male partner, and this one is far and away the most important of these stories. In this instance, the woman’s name was Mary. As the story is told, especially in the Gospel of Luke, no sexual act contributed to the pregnancy, certainly not like those stories familiar to us about Zeus. By the way, I have found help with this concept from Amy Peeler’s recent study, Women and the Gender of God (2022).

While the Bible does sometimes speak about the arm of the Lord, or the eyes of the Lord, or talks about God walking, Christians have typically understood these expressions as anthropomorphisms not to be taken literally; God does not actually, in God’s essence, have body parts. (But, see, Charles Halton, who can, though, give off Amelia Bedelia vibes.) In the Bible, God can take on a body, as he sometimes does in the Hebrew Scriptures—for instance, when he eats with Abraham in Genesis 18—but, according to traditional Christian theology, God’s essential being does not have or need arms or eyes or legs. Such descriptions of God, anthropomorphisms, have usually been understood by believing Bible readers as accommodative language, essentially, describing God in the image of man. (Peeler, pp. 25–26, is helpful on this point, interacting with Ps-Dionysius, On the Divine Names 9.5, and modern scholars.) While scholars have increasingly given attention to the corporeal descriptions of God, both in the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament—and most of this work is indebted to a seminal 2009 monograph by Benjamin Sommer—still, whatever body God inhabits in Jewish Scripture, and however the term “body” is defined (e.g., localized presence), it is not a body like the one humans inhabit.

At least, the denial that God has a body with sexual characteristics is faithful to one way of reading the biblical text—the most common way of reading it, in fact.

The Scriptures of Israel gender God as male only insofar as they use paternal titles for God rather than maternal ones, though at times, authors described God with maternal images (Hos 11:3–4; 13:8; Deut 32:11–12, 18; Isa 42:14; 49:15; 66:13; Ps 123:2–3), but the texts resist any portrayal of a sexualized male deity. (Peeler 2022: 22)

“When procreation is the focus, the Hebrew text explicitly depersonalizes God so as to avoid a sexualized association: God is the ‘Rock’ (צור [tsur]) who begot you (Deut 32:18)” (Peeler 2022: 20). Peeler then cites (n. 3) Janet Martin Soskice (p. 2) as saying that “Paternal and maternal imagery in quick succession effectively rules out literalism, as does the astonishing invocation of a parturient rock.”

Traditional Christian theology insists that God—not as he is described in Scripture, but in harmony with such descriptions—God in God’s very being or essence is incorporeal, bodiless (see discussion in Markschies, chs. 2 and 6). If that is the case, we would need to think very carefully about whether it makes any sense to attribute a particular gender to the Christian God.

If we are going to disagree with traditional Christian theology, especially on a matter that has usually been considered very important, we should do so with our eyes open, fully conscious of our departure from the likes of Origen and Athanasius and Augustine. I myself am very wary of disagreeing with the Great Tradition when it comes to the nature of our God. (See Leonard Allen.) The principle of Chesterton’s Fence comes to mind.

I know that I have been using gender-specific pronouns for God, but I have reasons for doing this, reasons that we will get to later, reasons that have nothing to do with God’s essence as male, which I deny.

I’m not even sure if we should talk about people having gender in their essence. I accept what has become the conservative position that sex is a biological category that applies to many creatures. Usually it’s pretty obvious which sex applies to creatures, just by looking. There are some instances in which it is not obvious, and this is true for humans. There are intersex people, and people with ambiguous genitalia. As the journalist Kevin Williamson wrote last year, the occasional difficulty in classifying a newborn into one sex or the other “is no more relevant to the fact of sexual dimorphism in H. sap. than the fact that people sometimes are born without a limb negates the bipedal nature of the species.” Does that sound right to you? It sounds right to me.

Let me take this opportunity to talk about the question “What is a woman?” This question sometimes comes up in political discussions, or at confirmation hearings for federal judges.

It is a great gotcha question because if you can’t answer it, you look like an idiot. Nevertheless, I can’t answer it, and I bet you can’t either. Wikipedia tells me that “A woman is an adult female human,” and I agree, but that just dodges the problem. Now we have to define female. I say it’s a great gotcha question, but if the question were ever turned around on the questioner, I doubt they could give a satisfactory answer, even satisfactory to themselves.

How shall we define woman? By the presence of certain sexual organs? Surely not. Does it have something to do with chromosomes, or something else? Look, it is well-nigh impossible to develop a simple rule that includes everyone you think ought to be included, and excludes everyone else—and that is entirely because of the rare ambiguities that nature presents to us. And yet, in the vast majority of cases, we all know what a woman is, even if we can’t give a simple definition. This aspect of the term “woman” in no way makes it unique. We could say the same thing for many concepts, including ones that are more within the usual purview of my expertise, such as Apocrypha, or Septuagint, or, indeed, Scripture.

We have been talking about the category of sex, a biological category, but what about the category of gender? Let me again recommend to you the essay by Kevin Williamson, but here I will quote two paragraphs from his piece. He says that traditionally, gender is a grammatical category—as we saw in the previous post, when we noticed that the word for spirit is usually feminine in Hebrew, neuter in Greek, and masculine in Latin. Williamson continues:

The more contemporary uses of gender are recent neologisms: Gender meaning the “behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex, as in ‘gender roles,’” as our friends at Merriam Webster put it, dates from the second half of the 20th century. “Gender identity” and “gender expression” were unknown expressions before the 1960s and 1970s, respectively.

Sex therapist Jackie Golob put it the way one most often hears it described: “Gender identity is how you feel about yourself and the ways you express your gender and biological sex. … Biological sex is physical, while gender is feeling.” That is a common view, and it seems to me that it gets it about right. But if gender is a feeling, then there are as many genders as there are people….

We now have on record the familiar distinction between sex and gender. (For a brief accounting of the history, see this recent Oxford Handbook essay.) I have heard it said that gender is between your ears and sex is between your … well, nevermind. You know what I’m talking about. To say it a different way: sex is biological and gender is psychological—which is also biological, but in a different way. Whether or not you think this is a helpful distinction to make (this distinction between sex and gender), I’m pretty sure that I have represented the distinction fairly as it is often made today.

Okay, so, when Guy N. Woods talked about the gender of the Holy Spirit, what do you think Woods meant by the term gender? Did he mean the way the Holy Spirit feels inside? Remember that Woods said in volume 2 of his Questions and Answers, talking about the Spirit: “his actual gender is masculine.” What does Woods mean by “actual gender”? Can he mean his gender identity or gender expression? Surely he doesn’t mean the biological sex of the Spirit. Zeus is male and Hera is female, meaning that their divine biology is distinguished according to sex. But surely Woods didn’t think that the Holy Spirit, or any eternal hypostasis of the Christian God, was a particular sex. I’m at a loss. What did Woods mean by “actual gender” in the 1970s or 1980s?

Whatever he meant, it would have been nice had he explained a little more. And let me remind you that the major prooftext brought forward by Woods to demonstrate the actual gender of the Spirit, John 16:13, in no way demonstrates his contention. Woods was misled by the English translation, and some shockingly sloppy thinking. At the very least, Woods should have looked at the Greek.

One runs into all kinds of problems imagining the Spirit as male or masculine, problems both theological and biblical. As we have seen, it does not cohere with traditional Christian theology, which imagines not just the Spirit but all three persons of the Trinity as both bodiless and genderless, or sexless, in their essence—though the Son of God, having become incarnate as a human male, even now maintains that biological identity in his glorified state (apparently). But that’s because the Son became human. The Father did not, and neither did the Holy Spirit.

Yes, I recognize that I just claimed that the divine hypostasis revealed to us as Father displays neither sex or gender. Again, I’m reporting the Christian tradition to you, from which I am loath to depart. The Cambridge theologian Sarah Coakley (p. 248) talks about “the persistent orthodox refrain that God, qua God, is beyond gender; and the equally persistent appearance of gendered visual representations of that God.” She’s talking about Christian art representing God as a man—think about the Sistine Chapel, and the appearance of the divine being who reaches out to touch Adam.

Of course, such artistic representations reflect, to some extent, biblical language. Only to some extent: God is never represented in Scripture as having a beard, not even in the Ancient of Days passage in Daniel. Masculine pronouns are routinely employed in reference to God, and masculine verbal forms in Hebrew. But we’ve already seen that grammatical gender does not exactly provide a clue to the essence of the thing so named. But when it comes to God the Father, we have more than grammatical gender in play. After all, he is Father. And traditional Christian theology does see in this description, used frequently by Jesus, a clue to the essence of the First Person of the Trinity.

Not, as it turns out, a clue to the gender of the First Person, and certainly not a clue to his sex. A clue, rather, to his begetting eternally the Second Person of the Trinity, the divine and eternal Son. There is more to be said here, but I’ll let others say it. Here I note only that despite the language of Father and Son, traditional Christian theology has not seen these terms as hints at the divine gender.

But this is theological reflection; what about the Bible? The Christian Scriptures support this position of a genderless God in at least two ways: the creation of humans in God’s image, and God’s occasional denial that he is a man. Let’s look at the latter passages first.

I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee: and I will not enter into the city. (Hosea 11:9)

“I am God and not man.” The Hebrew term for “man” here is ish; God is not an ish. What is the meaning of this term ish? It appears 2179x in the Hebrew Bible, and it has several meanings, eight of them, according to the most recent authoritative dictionary of ancient Hebrew, edited by Clines. It is the normal word for a male person as opposed to a female person.

In other passages, the category of ish is denied to God. Job complains that God is not an ish (Job 9:32), meaning that Job doesn’t have much chance of meeting with God face-to-face and talking out their problems. At Numbers 23:19, Balaam says that “God is not an ish that he should lie.” Similarly, Samuel tells Saul that God will not repent because he is not a man, using not the Hebrew ish but the Hebrew adam. In these passages, the denial of the category “man” to God doesn’t seem to highlight his lack of sex or gender, but highlights rather his divine nature, maybe his omnipotence or, in the case of Job, his inaccessibility. This is definition number 6 in Clines’ Hebrew dictionary (p. 310): “mortal, as distinct from God,” and it is here that our verses are listed: Numbers 23:19; Job 9:32; Hosea 11:9.

I’m not so sure whether Hosea 11:9 fits that definition. God says that because he is not an ish, he will not execute his anger. That’s not about mortality, is it? It’s about self-control. It seems to me that here ish might mean male as opposed to female; while members of both sexes lose their temper, still responding in anger is more stereotypically masculine behavior, which makes it all the more poignant that God denies that this characteristic applies to him. “I am God and not ish.” (On the other hand, in some cultures, such as the first century Roman world, excessive anger is considered feminine; see Plutarch §8; Seneca 1.12; 1.20; cited in Hylen, p. 60, p. 145 n. 6.) As Phyllis Trible (1973: 32) pointed out long ago, God’s denial of being an ish at Hosea 11:9 is constitutive of his very being, his character, his mercy toward his wayward people.

Genesis 1:27 is the other biblical passage that problematizes the notion that God in the Bible is masculine.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Male and female both represent God, or jointly represent him. There is biblical support for the idea—which early on became the standard notion within Christian theology—that God is without gender, or at least cannot be represented by the male gender alone.

As the Orthodox theologian Nonna Verna Harrison wrote thirty years ago:

Clearly, no maleness is present in his divine nature. There is a consensus among the fathers that the divine nature surpasses all human understanding and does not have the mode of existence or the characteristics found in created beings. God’s essence is wholly transcendent and incomprehensible. Maleness and femaleness are properties that belong to embodied earthly creatures, that is, human beings and animals. These properties do not belong to the Godhead. (article cited here, p. 112)

She goes on immediately to talk about gnostics, who did imagine male and female deities.

Christian believers have responded to this idea of the gender-less God in at least a couple ways.

* Some Christians have made a point of making use of pronouns of all three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter) in reference to their God; see for instance the comment of Charles Halton (p. xvi): “… the features of the divine face—the color of his eyes, the shape of her nose, the thickness of their lips—remain in the shadows.”

* Others have refused to use pronouns at all in reference to God. These latter Christians will not say things like: “God represents himself as loving.” Rather, they will say, “God represents Godself as loving.”

In my opinion, both of these responses are faithful and orthodox, acceptable Christian practices, though my impression is that the first one (the use of the three gendered pronouns) is more confusing than the second. It seems to me that Hook and Kimel (p. 311) are right that (something like) the first approach introduces sexuality into the Divine, and it is not reflected much in the Christian Scriptures. Moreover, whereas using the masculine pronoun for gender-neutral subjects does have a long—and, recently, controversial—history in English, using the feminine pronoun in this way does not.

I follow neither of the practices mentioned above; I’ll explain why. Though I am personally convinced that God’s very nature is without gender or sex, and it would be improper—or just plain inaccurate—to think of God as essentially male, the Bible does choose to represent God with masculine language. This comes across especially in two ways: grammar and images. As for the images, the Bible usually—not always!—chooses male images to represent God, most familiarly “father.” Throughout the Bible, and especially in the ministry of Jesus, God is revealed as “father.” In terms of grammar, in both the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament, masculine pronouns and verbal forms are used in reference to God. And I think that I have usually used the masculine pronoun in reference to the Christian Deity—in imitation of the Bible—without inferring or implying a male or masculine Deity. For these reasons, I think it is a faithful response to the representation of God in the Bible to use masculine pronouns in reference to him. We should also recognize the potential for misunderstanding that this practice entails.

Now, back to the Spirit—does the Spirit have gender? In the essence of divinity, the Spirit would, like God, be without gender. No “actual gender” here, despite the claim by Guy N. Woods. Pressing beyond that issue, do we find in reference to the Spirit the Bible using masculine language and images, similar to the way the Scriptures represent God the Father, as we just saw? How does the Bible represent the Spirit? What do we make of the images or grammar? As far as I can tell, the Bible uses images of the Spirit (dove, water, wind) that do not obviously communicate a specific gender. We’ve seen that the grammar is ambiguous. In that passage from Jerome’s commentary on Isaiah that I mentioned last time, in which Jerome pointed out that the word for “spirit” has a different gender in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, the commentator goes on to use that fact as an indication that the Spirit in essence has no gender. As for pronouns, while I think using masculine pronouns for the Spirit is fine, I do not think it is required, and I think the neuter pronoun, “it”—rather than removing his personal identity (as suggested by Hook and Kimel, p. 311)—may capture the non-gendered nature of the Christian Deity (see Castelo)

I think I have made it clear that Guy N. Woods was wrong when he said that the actual gender of the Holy Spirit is masculine—wrong, and potentially heretical. But let me cut Woods some slack. Perhaps Woods, in the 1960s and 1970s, was trying to head off another heresy. His affirmation of the masculine Holy Spirit was his way of insisting on the personal nature of the Spirit. This is, itself, an important concept. I think it is a misstep to connect gender with personhood, but I can understand why people make that misstep. At any rate, Woods was well-known for his teaching on the Holy Spirit, mostly negative teaching, denying that the Holy Spirit personally indwelled Christians but did so only representatively through Scripture. Of course, Woods didn’t mean it this way, but his audience hearing him deny the personal indwelling of the Spirit might come to the conclusion that the Holy Spirit was not personal in any way. And so, in the answer we have been considering, Woods strongly endorsed the personal nature of the Spirit. I’m grateful that he did so. Unfortunately, in guarding against heresy, Woods unwittingly promoted the heresy that the Holy Spirit has actual gender. Two wrongs don’t make a right—and, yes, I just said that what Woods taught about the Holy Spirit’s indwelling was wrong. But we’re not going to get into that right now.

Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

Let me tell you what’s going to happen here. We’re going to talk about the gender of the Holy Spirit, and I’m going to use Guy N. Woods as a foil, and so I’m going to go on a long tangent about Brother Woods. But this essay—part 1 of 2—is basically about the Holy Spirit and gender. Here we go.

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.

That important verse is Romans 8:16, and I have presented it from the ESV. Here we are not going to delve into the meaning of the verse; I just want to highlight one particular aspect of it. The apostle Paul refers to “the Spirit himself.” But it’s different in the KJV, where the same verse reads “The Spirit itself.” Which is it? Should it be “himself” with the ESV or “itself” in the KJV?

Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Where can we turn for an answer? How about Guy N. Woods!

It’s always exciting to look at a volume of Questions and Answers from Guy N. Woods, because you never know what you’re going to find. Guy N. Woods spent three or four decades as the Answer Man at the Freed-Hardeman Lectures in Henderson, Tennessee, and he also spent many decades as a writer—and, eventually, editor—of a magazine called Gospel Advocate, published in Nashville. In the mid-1970s, he published a collection of answers he had provided to the audience at the Freed-Hardeman lectures over the years, and a decade later, he published a second volume of answers, that come again from the Freed-Hardeman lectures and, maybe, also from the Gospel Advocate. My favorite question in these volumes is:

Can a Christian participate in body development contests such as Mr. Universe?” (2.196)

That’s a question Woods addresses in volume 2. I wonder who was struggling with whether or not to enter the Mr. Universe contest and decided to seek the guidance of Brother Woods.

Here are some more questions printed in these volumes that I found worthy of note.

* Is it okay to say Gee Whiz and Gosh (1.180–81)

* Do angels have wings? (2.179)

* What is the shortest prayer recorded in the Bible? (2.322)

* What are Hedge’s Rules of Controversy? Please list them. (1.271)

Remember, this is before google.

And then there are the double or triple questions, the ones that come up multiple times. “What is the Rapture?,” a question repeated in volume 2 (2.176, 216). Why would they print this twice in the same volume, with two different answers? There are three questions that basically say, “what do you think of the Hardeman-Bogard Debate,” once in volume 1 (1.287) and twice in volume two (one of them is at 2.348, the other is earlier in the same volume). There are two questions about how Woods knows that Judas was not present at the Last Supper (one at 2.352, the other earlier in the same volume). The question “What is death” (1.226, and some other place I’ve seen), comes up more than once.

A few of the questions deal with the history of the Bible, a topic of my own expertise. There’s a question about the Apocrypha (1.58), another on canon, and chapter and verses (1.183–88), one on the Dead Sea Scrolls (1.224), and one on the “masorites” (1.299). I have not read the response to these questions, but it might be worth perusing how an influential leader in the Churches of Christ dealt with such matters in a previous generation.

Another inquirer asked Brother Woods “Why do you believe the Bible?” and Woods begins his answer: “Because I want to believe it!” (1.174). I love that. That’s a great answer.

The second volume of these Questions and Answers is less organized than the first. The first volume, but not the second, has a table of contents, and the first volume has a much better index. Whereas volume 1 basically arranges its questions according to the order of the Bible, volume 2 has no discernible order, and quite a bit of repetition.

Before I continue, let me make sure everyone recognizes who I’m talking about. Do you know who Guy N. Woods is? When I was a student at Freed-Hardeman in the late 1990s, it was Guy N. Woods who was most frequently cited as the authority on Bible issues. As I mentioned, he had for decades been the moderator of the Open Forum at the FHU lectureship. The open forum, by the way, is when a Bible answer man is on stage and people get to pepper him with questions. As we have already seen, some of these questions can be very random. “What is the shortest prayer in the Bible?” “Can a Christian compete in the Mr. Universe contest?” Woods was the Bible answer man, during most of the second half of the twentieth century, and so when I was at Freed-Hardeman, people would still talk about what Brother Woods had said on an issue.

I recognize that Woods has been dead for more than thirty years now, and some people might not know the name. You’d be in the same boat as I was when I got to college and heard people talking about him. For a while I had no idea who he was, and I didn’t realize that “Guy” was his first name. I don’t think I had ever heard that word as a name before. And it made it worse that his middle initial happened to be the letter “n.” I remember, when I was a freshman, thinking about a man in a forest discussing Bible questions. I finally asked who these fellow students were talking about, and they explained who he was. I have recently learned that that the middle initial stands for the name “Napoleon”: Guy Napoleon Woods. I think if I had been him, I would have gone by my middle name.

I tell you all this to establish the idea that among conservative Churches of Christ in the twentieth century, and still today for some churches and preachers, Guy N. Woods was a major authority figure, and therefore it is worthwhile for us to see what he said on an issue. And so, when I disagree with him in a moment, he is someone worth disagreeing with. He’s not a random schmuck; he’s a respected, even revered, Bible answer man from the not-too-distant past, and he helped shape the theology of many people in Churches of Christ.

Now, back to the Questions and Answers. From volume 2 (1986):

“In Romans 8:16 the Holy Spirit is referred to as ‘itself.’”

Let me just pause there to say that the question is based on the KJV. In case you’re curious, the ASV from 1901 says “the Spirit himself,” like the ESV and most modern English versions. Back to the question.

“In Romans 8:16 the Holy Spirit is referred to as ‘itself.’ Does this lend support to the view that the Holy Spirit is simply and solely an influence and not a distinct Person?” (p. 134)

First of all, the correct answer to this question is “no,” and the reason that is the correct answer is because the word spirit in Greek is grammatically neuter—the Greek word is pneuma—and the grammatical gender of the word has very little to do with the actual gender of the thing named by the word. Just because we in English refer to a ship as “she” does not mean that a ship is female—only grammatically. So also for the Spirit in the New Testament.

As a further example, note that the Greek word meaning “male” as opposed to female is arsen (ἄρσεν), and it can be grammatically masculine, or feminine, or neuter. Seriously. The Greek word in the Septuagint at Exodus 1:16, 22, translated “female” (thēlus, θῆλυς), is grammtically neuter. Grammtical gender can have little or no connection to actual gender.

Back to the Holy Spirit. Let’s explore the gender of the Holy Spirit a bit more, and that will help us understand the answer that Woods provides.

What are the Holy Spirit’s pronouns? (If you want help thinking about pronouns in a modern context: McWhorter.) That’s a modern-sounding way of asking the question, what gender is the Holy Spirit? Should we refer to the Holy Spirit as he or as it, or perhaps as she? Does it matter? Should we—or can we—alternate pronouns, choosing the one that feels appropriate in the moment? Or maybe we should just eschew pronouns altogether when it comes to the Holy Spirit, so that instead of saying “The Spirit does what he wants to do, or it wants to do,” we say rather, “The Spirit does what the Spirit wants to do.” (For a 2001 evangelical response to—and rejection of—such concerns about the gender/sexuality of God, see this book.)

I say the question of pronouns is modern-sounding, rather than modern, because, of course, ancient people also had to figure out what pronouns to use in reference to the Holy Spirit, and that choice was usually tied to the gender of the word “Spirit” itself, in whatever language was being used. As Jerome noted in his early fifth-century commentary on Isaiah (on Isa 40:9–11), the word for “spirit” has a different gender in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.

* The Latin word for “spirit” is the masculine word spiritus.

* The Greek word for “spirit” is the neuter word pneuma.

* The Hebrew word for “spirit” is the feminine word ruaḥ. In fact, it is more accurate to say that the Hebrew word, ruaḥ, is gender fluid, mostly feminine, sometimes masculine.

Let’s focus on Greek, the language of the New Testament, where the Spirit of God takes on some definition and emerges as personal and an independent hypostasis or persona of the deity. I recognize that what I just said is confusing and controversial, but it is also traditional Christian theology going back to the early centuries of the church, and, indeed, going back to the New Testament, at least according to most people who have ever called themselves Christians, so let’s just go with it for now. What pronouns are used for the Spirit in the New Testament? Well, since the Greek word pneuma is neuter, neuter pronouns are used for the Spirit. And that is why in Romans 8:16 the KJV says “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.” That opening phrase, “the Spirit itself,” translates the first three Greek words of the verse, auto to pneuma, and it is that first word, auto, that is the neuter pronoun referring to the Spirit.

But we have seen that most English versions use the masculine pronoun here, “the Spirit himself.” Why do they do that if the Greek pronoun is neuter? Because these translations usually come from translators holding traditional Christian theology which entails that the Spirit of God is a person—I don’t mean that the Spirit is a human being, I mean that the Spirit is personal, with his own existence, his own agency. According to this view, the Spirit is not like the force from Star Wars, not like Mother Nature, not like gravity. Gravity is not personal; it has no agency; it has no desires. But the Spirit does. And so English translators think that if the Spirit is personal, we in English should not refer to the Spirit as an “it” but as a “he.” And so they switch the pronoun, from neuter to masculine.

Is it true that if the Spirit is personal then we should not refer to the Spirit as “it”? Is that a special rule of English? It’s clearly not a rule of Greek, which does use neuter pronouns for the Spirit, not just in Romans 8:16, but also in, for instance, Romans 8:26 and John 14:17 and 14:26 and Acts 5:32 and Ephesians 1:14. And there’s a neuter participle used for the Spirit at Matthew 10:20; Acts 8:16; 20:23. But grammatical gender is not necessarily tied to actual gender; a neuter adjective is used for Jesus in Matthew 12:8, 41–42; a neuter pronoun for baby John the Baptist at Luke 1:62, and a neuter pronoun for baby Jesus at Luke 2:28, 40. Why neuter in these instances? Because grammatically neuter Greek nouns—such as “infant” or “child”—are applied to these males in the passages cited. I should also point out that the New Testament sometimes uses masculine pronouns for the Spirit, such as in John 14:26, and 15:26, and 16:7, and 16:13. Why masculine pronouns here? Because in these passages in the Farewell Discourse of the Gospel of John, the Spirit is given another label, parakletos or Paraklete or Comforter, and this Greek word is masculine, and so it takes masculine pronouns.

Back to English; is it a rule that a personal subject should not take neuter pronouns? I don’t think so. I think that idea confuses different meanings of the term “person,” the different meanings that we’ve already talked about. I will just say that I often refer to my dog as an “it,” but I don’t mean to imply by the neuter pronoun that my dog has no agency or desires. (Contra Hook and Kimel, in ch. 3 of this book, pp. 75–76.)

Now let’s see how Guy N. Woods addressed the Holy Spirit’s gender. Again, the question is, does the neuter pronoun in Romans 8:16 “lend support to the view that the Holy Spirit is simply and solely an influence and not a distinct Person?” As we have seen, the right answer is “no,” and Woods does provide the right answer, but he doesn’t stop there, and that’s where he gets into trouble.

No. The King James translators rendered the phrase auto to pneuma “the Spirit itself” to indicate the grammatical relationship subsisting between the pronoun and its antecedent. Because the pneuma (Spirit) is neuter gender in form, the translators, to maintain the accord in English which exists in the Greek text, rendered the pronoun “itself”; this does not mean that the Person so designated is neither masculine nor feminine; quite the contrary, the Holy Spirit is clearly indicated to be of masculine gender by the pronouns in the following passage: “Howbeit when HE, the Spirit of truth, is come, HE will guide you into all truth: for HE shall not speak of HIMSELF; but whatsoever HE shall hear, that shall HE speak: and HE will show you things to come.” (John 16:13) In this remarkable affirmation it was the Spirit’s intent to make clear that his actual gender is masculine from the fact that the word ekeinos is used. Thus, the consideration which led the KJ translators to render the pronoun “itself” resulted from grammatical grounds rather than actual ones; the American Standard translators more properly looked at the actual gender of the Spirit and translated it “himself.” The Holy Spirit is not simply or solely an influence; he is a Person wielding an influence and this is done through means—the revelation of truth which he made through the writers of the Scriptures. (1 Corinthians 2:9–13)

The proper response to this exposition is “Agggh!” There is so much nonsense squeezed into this paragraph, nonsense built on nonsense, it is quite something to see. Shall we laugh, or shall we cry? I suppose, instead, I should patiently explain the many errors of Guy N. Woods.

First of all, his primary Scriptural prooftext of John 16:13 does not have multiple masculine pronouns in Greek, despite Woods’ giving emphasis through capitalization to all the masculine pronouns in English. There is a single masculine pronoun in Greek in that verse, and we have seen that the Spirit receives other masculine pronouns in John’s Gospel when the Spirit is given the label Paraklete, which is masculine. John’s Gospel also has several neuter pronouns in reference to the Spirit. None of these pronouns—the masculine ones and the neuter ones—have anything to do with the actual gender of the Spirit. They indicate only grammatical gender; that is all they are capable of doing.

Woods asserts that John 16:13 demonstrates that the “actual gender” of the Spirit is masculine. What kind of nonsense is this? I am tempted to call it heresy. As if the Holy Spirit has gender in actuality, in essence. Meaning what? That we can associate the Holy Spirit with a sex distinction, not female but male? Surely this is heresy.

Aside from that particular issue, which would have been heretical in 1986 and in every other year, it is also true that our historical moment, at the quarter mark of the 21st century, imposes on us special obligations, just as the year 1986 imposed on Woods obligations perhaps no longer relevant in our time. What are our special obligations? Given the greater sensitivity to issues of gender in American culture forty years after Woods provided his take on the gender of the Spirit—and our greater sensitivity to issues of gender arises from more than one cause, as you know—we have a greater responsibility to be careful with our language in this arena.

We’ll try to follow that advice next time.

Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

Okay, so we know that it’s sinful, displeasing to God, to celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, but we saw last time that by the turn of the twentieth century, most Christians who had traditionally opposed Christmas had come around to the by-now traditional trappings of the day: feasting, gift-giving, time with family, and even Christmas trees and Santa Claus. I say most Christians had come around to this notion, not all. In the Churches of Christ, discomfort with Christmas—or even outright rejection—continued to the mid-point of the twentieth century, or even later. But when I was growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, I was completely unaware that some people thought that Christmas should not be celebrated at all, not even as a family holiday. That view was—and is—still around, but it’s pretty fringe.

But where do some people get off actually talking about the birth of Jesus on Christmas? How could they do such an ungodly thing?

Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Come to think of it, how do we know that observing Christmas as a religious holiday is sinful or ungodly? Last time we encountered the argument that we’ve got to avoid anything that makes us look like one of the denominations, and celebrating Christmas is, apparently, what the denominations do. Then again, last time we also learned that it was Protestant denominations like the Presbyterians who spearheaded the Christian opposition to Christmas, so it might be that refusing to celebrate Christmas is an imitation of the denominations. Hmm.

Let’s go back to the 1976 essay by John Waddey published in the Firm Foundation (“Christians and Christmas,” December 14, 1976, p. 792).

But no New Testament writing instructs us to observe a holy day for Christ’s birth. To so observe the day is to go beyond what is written. According to Christ such religious practices are vain worship for they are the precepts of men (Matt. 15:9). God gave his church only one special day, the first day of the week.

Wait a second; is that the reasoning? Let’s go over that again: “no New Testament writing instructs us to observe a holy day for Christ’s birth.” Um, okaaay. What in the world does that matter? Well, Waddey thinks that to observe this holy day in the absence of New Testament instruction would entail going beyond what is written, an allusion to 1 Corinthians 4:6. And he thinks Christ characterized such a departure from the written word as vain worship, citing Matthew 15:9.

That’s the same argument you’ll find in other authors. The early Protestants often opposed Christmas because it couldn’t be found in the Bible. Let me quote again an essay from The Oxford Handbook of Christmas (2020): “Those opposed to Christmas [in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries] objected to any religious observance that was not explicitly commanded in the Bible (the so-called regulative principle) and which was seen as a vestige of popery” (p. 168).

And just to be clear about the argument, let me quote one of the most authoritative voices in Churches of Christ in the second half of the twentieth century. In the first volume of his Questions and Answers, Guy N. Woods had this to say about Christmas.

The observance of Christmas, as a religious holiday, did not originate in the apostolic age, and is thus without divine sanction. As a matter of fact, it is not possible to determine in what month, or on what day the Saviour…

and I pause just to note that the word “Saviour” is spelled in the British fashion, with a ‘u.’ I just think that’s weird. Anyway, back to the quotation:

…or on what day the Saviour was born and inasmuch as there is neither precept nor example for its observance, faithful Christians do not keep it as a religious festival. (p. 203)

Okay, “neither precept nor example for its observance.” That sounds similar to what Waddey had said.

Honestly, I can’t make any sense out of this. To go over it again, the idea is that it would be vain worship to observe a holy day in honor of Christ’s birth because such a holy day is not mentioned in the New Testament. I think part of my difficulty is this term “holy day.” That’s Waddey’s term; Woods used the term “religious festival,” and I assume that in this context “holy day” and “religious festival” are basically synonymous; whatever Waddey meant, Woods meant the same thing with his term. I’m not sure what these terms are supposed to mean, or what opponents of holy days think that they are opposing. Isn’t “holy day” and “holiday,” like, the same thing? It’s just a day set aside to observe a particular thing, right?

I mean, everyone would agree that it’s okay for Christians to observe Mothers Day, wouldn’t they? Have you ever heard of a church preaching against Mothers Day? I don’t remember Mothers Day being mentioned in the New Testament, but it doesn’t seem like Christians have usually thought about a special day for mothers as going beyond what is written, as vain worship. In fact, for my entire life, every single time the second Sunday of May rolls around, the sermon has revolved around mothers, and the mothers in the audience are specially singled out for greetings and warm wishes, and maybe even given a flower or some other present. Oftentimes the children’s Bible class that day focuses on mothers, and the children make a craft designed for their mothers. In a similar way, the churches I have been a part of have observed Fathers Day, and Veterans Day, and Thanksgiving Day, and the Fourth of July, and other special days. Is this going beyond what is written? Is this vain worship?

These special days are certainly not mentioned in the New Testament. But the excuse for observing Mothers Day that I have heard and that I have made is that Romans 13:7 tells us to honor those who deserve honor, and mothers—most mothers—deserve honor. It is not going beyond what is written; it is doing what is written. Now, I’ve never heard anyone say that Mothers Day is being observed as a holy day for mothers, or as a religious festival, but I have heard people talk about the holiday called Mothers Day. I’m not sure what the term “holy day” is supposed to communicate, and I’m not sure that people that oppose holy days do either.

Let’s go back to the reasoning for opposing the religious observance of Christmas. Nope, actually, before we do that, let’s think about that phrase: “religious observance.” Do churches typically oppose or embrace the religious observance of Mothers Day? I don’t know how you could get any more religious than centering your worship service around the reason for the season in the second week of May. Yes, of course, most American churches observe Mothers Day religiously. Again, it’s the same for Fathers Day and Thanksgiving Day and even the Fourth of July.

Now, let’s go back to the reasoning for opposing the religious observance of Christmas. As Waddey put it, “No New Testament writing instructs us to observe a holy day for Christ’s birth.” I have suggested that “holy day” is a term without clear meaning, and is basically in this discussion a red herring, a distraction. Let’s omit it. “No New Testament writing instructs us to observe Christ’s birth.” Or, as Woods said, there is “neither precept nor example for its observance.” As I see it, that claim is the nub of the argument against the religious observance of Christmas. We will have to consider whether the claim is true. Does the New Testament instruct us to observe Christ’s birth?

What Is There to Celebrate?

Does God want us to celebrate the birth of Jesus? Celebrate it in our churches and in our homes? Does God want us to religiously observe the birth of Jesus? Does Woods correctly evaluate the New Testament when he says that “there is neither precept nor example” for the observance, the religious observance, of the birth of Jesus? Or are there examples in the New Testament? Does the New Testament instruct Christians to celebrate Jesus’s birth?

Yes!

Yes!

Yes!

It is the most significant event in the history of the universe, and Christians should celebrate it. Religiously. As a holy day, whatever that means. The New Testament instructs Christians to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Let’s probe why the birth of Jesus is so important, and here I want to go back to what I said last time, that “celebrating the birth of Jesus is not really the right way of saying it.” To my mind, the phrase “birth of Jesus” gives the wrong impression about what we’re doing. If a friend has a baby and we go to the hospital to celebrate with her the birth of her child, we will be holding the child and making goo-goo noises at the child—or, at least, my wife Jodi will do that. I myself will simply observe the infant from a safe distance. But I’m not a normal person. Most people will talk about how cute the baby is, how much fun infants are, the little noises they make, their silly little outfits. This has little correspondence to what we celebrate about Jesus at Christmas. It’s not so much the birth of a baby but the incarnation of God that we are celebrating.

“Incarnation” comes from a Latin term that means something like en-flesh-ment. (The root carn* in Latin means “flesh.”) Think about John 1. “And the Word became flesh” (John 1:14). This is the Word that John has already told us was with God in the beginning, and was itself—or himself—God. This word, this God, became flesh. The human being Jesus of Nazareth was God. There is much to discuss here, and much mystery. There were many early Christian debates, lasting centuries (or, actually, still ongoing), about how exactly to understand the identity of Jesus. One influential statement from the Council of Nicaea in the year 325 said that the Lord Jesus Christ is of one essence with the Father, very God of very God. While this language is not found in Scripture, the concept is, as we have just seen from the Gospel of John. (See more from Leonard Allen.)

Other stories depict divine beings taking on flesh—but not like this. Zeus sometimes became human—or some other creature of flesh—usually in order to get to know a young maiden better (see, e.g., Iliad 14.315–321; Odyssey 11.260–265). But Zeus did not stay in that form for long, certainly not for a lifetime. Zeus did not spend any length of time as a baby, getting his diaper changed, or as a toddler, or adolescent, or teenager. Zeus did not, as a human being, grow in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men, as Jesus did.

In the Gospels we encounter the high God, creator of heaven and earth, through whom all things were made (John 1:3), who became a real human being, experiencing everything that human beings experience, from birth to death. That’s incarnation.

Early Christians celebrated the incarnation of God. I mean, come on, you don’t think Christians in the first century read the story of the Annunciation in Luke 1 and praised God that the Holy Spirit overshadowed a young woman to form within a virgin the holy Son of God? Don’t you think early Christians read about the praise of the angels before the shepherds in Luke 2 and joined in the celebration? “Neither precept nor example”? Give me a break.

Check out this passage:

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. (Philippians 2:5–8)

Paul is talking about the incarnation—one who existed in the form of God, and emptied himself to take on the likeness of people. Many scholars have thought that this section of Philippians 2 represents an early Christian hymn. If that’s the case, then we have first-century Christians praising God in song for the incarnation, the birth of Jesus. Even if this passage wasn’t originally a song, it is certainly our Scripture now and we should sing it. We should praise God for the incarnation. We might also check out Colossians 1, where Paul says “in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.”

I said earlier that the incarnation, the birth of Jesus, is the most significant event in the history of the universe. More significant than the crucifixion of Jesus? Yes! More significant than the resurrection of Jesus? Yes. Many other people died on Roman crosses, and their deaths had no bearing on me at all. Some other people rose from the dead, even in the Gospels, but their resurrections were not for my justification. What made the death and resurrection of Jesus different from those of other people? The incarnation, that’s what. His death was the death of the incarnate Son of God; his resurrection was the resurrection of the Lord of life who could not be held in death’s power. The crucifixion and resurrection are meaningless without the incarnation.

We should celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Mopping Up

Let me just deal with a few stray points here at the end.

First, I am fully confident that Guy N. Woods celebrated the birth of Jesus. Why? Because he was a Christian, and Christians celebrate Jesus, his birth, his life, his death, his resurrection, his ascension, and his present intercession on our behalf. It is inconceivable to me that Woods did not celebrate these aspects of Jesus’ life.

Second, is December 25 the actual birthday of Jesus? No, of course not. Or, maybe it was, I don’t know. Against this date you’ve got that argument about the shepherds that I mentioned last time, but I’m not sure how solid of an argument that is. At any rate, the date was not chosen because anyone had any actual knowledge of Jesus’ birthday, and it probably wasn’t chosen because of the Saturnalia festival. The most common theory as to why this date was chosen is the “Calculation Hypothesis,” and I’ll let you read about it on Wikipedia. At any rate, it’s just a day set aside for an observance, just like every other holiday.

Third, what about those pagan symbols? Well, symbols mean different things to different people. An image of the sun might mean “god” to the ancient inhabitants of Egypt but represent Jesus to ancient Christians.

But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall. (Malachi 4:2)

The meaning of symbols is not established forever without the possibility of evolving. Just because some people may have worshiped a tree at one time does not mean that I should chop down every tree I see as if they’re all idols. I don’t have to regard them all as objects of pagan worship—especially when I don’t know anyone who worships trees or uses trees prominently in their worship. (This may have been a more potent argument in early medieval Germany.)

The Christmas Tree is a Christianized pagan symbol? Isn’t that a good thing? Doesn’t God want us to take pagan symbols and transform them into symbols of our faith? Isn’t that what has happened to the cross? (See Holland, pp. 1–12. “Whether in Korea or in Tierra del Fuego, in Alaska or in New Zealand, the cross on which Jesus had been tortured to death came to serve as the most globally recognised symbol of a god that there has ever been,” p. 12.)

Conclusion

It is a good thing for the people of God to join with the angelic chorus and celebrate the incarnation of our God, that is, the birth of Jesus. It is the most important event in the history of the universe. We should celebrate it at any time, even on a particular day set aside for that express purpose.

Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

When I was young, Christmas happened the night before. We were a Christmas Eve family. Christmas Day—after the rush of discovering what Santa Claus had left us—was pretty boring, until the year that my dad realized, probably when I was an adolescent, that the local movie theater was open on the day. A new Gallagher tradition was born! We did not go to church on Christmas Day. That would be silly; Christmas had nothing to do with church. Christmas was a time for overeating and overspending—or, to put a more positive spin on it, Christmas was for families and for generosity.

Back to Christmas Eve. When my parents got off work on December 24, we would load up the car with presents and head over to my Granny’s house, bustling with family and food. Granny had cooked her chili with spaghetti noodles—no, not like Cincinnati chili, not that many noodles. It was still soup, to be eaten in a bowl. And it was wonderful. There were various other treats, the usual suspects, I’m sure, but the only thing I remember is Granny’s chili. After supper, we would open presents. Participants included my parents with me and my sister, and my aunt Lea with her three kids, and my aunt Anna Lou, and Granny. Sometimes perhaps a cousin’s boyfriend or girlfriend would come around. Afterwards, we went home and prepared for Santa’s visit, who would deliver the final presents of the season. This traditional Christmas at Granny’s house continued, I think, until she moved into an apartment that couldn’t fit everyone.

Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

I married into a Christmas Day family, and Jodi and I have done a pretty good job of combining our respective traditions, of making Christmas Eve and Christmas Day special. Having a lot of kids helps. But Jodi refuses to go to the movies on a holiday.

One of the big things that’s different from my youth is that we are much more explicit about celebrating the birth of Jesus. That’s not really the right way of saying it, but it’ll do for now. We even go to church on Christmas Eve. Indeed, we attend a Christmas Eve service at the Sherrod Ave. Church of Christ in Florence, Alabama. Just let that sink in for a moment. There’s a Church of Christ in Alabama—a very traditional Church of Christ, an acapella Church of Christ with all-male leadership—that hosts a Christmas Eve service. Times have changed.

I grew up in a Church of Christ in western Kentucky that did not say much about Christmas. This was a congregation that was not hardcore traditional; this congregation did not get a steady diet of preaching against the sins of the denominations, and we didn’t hear about the evils of Christmas. But, as far as I recall, we didn’t hear about the birth of Jesus either, not in December, anyway. Maybe in April or October. There was an understanding that Christmas was a good holiday for families; there was no need to tell people that Christmas should not be celebrated religiously because no one in the congregation had any thought of making Christmas a religious holiday.

Coming around to Christmas

In this way, the church where I grew up shared a tradition common to many people in Churches of Christ, though things were beginning to change even then. In the year I was born, there was an article printed in the Gospel Advocate called “What about Christmas?” (December 20, 1979, p. 780) by a fellow named Ross W. Dye, who at the time lived in Anaheim, California. Dye said he was grateful that people around the world honored Jesus at Christmas time, and he thought churches ought to teach about the birth of Jesus, even in December. But a few weeks later, the Gospel Advocate printed a response to Dye’s article by a Collinsville, Virginia preacher named A. Lowell Altizer (“What About ‘What About Christmas’?” January 21, 1980, p. 109), who expressed concern that talking about the birth of Jesus in December would confuse people about the intentions of the Churches of Christ, with the result that outsiders would lump Churches of Christ in with the denominations. “Why not teach and sing about the birth of Christ in mid-summer instead of December?” Altizer asked. “I am persuaded,” said Altizer, “that any action that makes us look like a denomination or a partaker of their error ought to be avoided.” But it seems that Altizer was fighting a losing battle.

The next Christmas, the Firm Foundation ran an editorial by Reuel Lemmons (“Christmas,” December 23, 1980, p. 818), largely positive toward Christmas, even as a religious holiday. “Personally, we are glad that the world, bent on carnage and drunk on hedonism takes time out to acknowledge that God has sent his Son into the world.”

This viewpoint was becoming common in the Firm Foundation. In 1977, Cecil Hook wrote “In Defense of Christmas,” (January 25, p. 56) a remarkable article, arguing that imperfect Christianity is much better than secularism, and that Christmas (and Bible teaching in public schools) does a great service in preparing people to receive undenominational Christianity.

In protesting the religious over-emphasis centering around the alleged birth date of Jesus, many disciples have been crusading to “keep Christ out of Christmas.” And the crusade is becoming effective. Christmas is becoming increasingly secular. Religious sentiment in the songs of Christmas is being heard less. “Santa Claus is coming to town” is replacing “Joy to the world, the Lord is come!”

I regret this change even though I recognize no religious observance of Christmas. I regret it because we are losing something. Something is better than nothing. Secularism is nothing.

The year prior to Hook’s article, the Firm Foundation ran an article by John Waddey (“Christians and Christmas,” December 14, 1976, p. 792) that was less positive about the religious observance of Christmas—which is, Waddey says, unbiblical—but recognized quite a bit of the Christmas celebration that was perfectly acceptable for Christians.

But no New Testament writing instructs us to observe a holy day for Christ’s birth. To so observe the day is to go beyond what is written. According to Christ such religious practices are vain worship for they are the precepts of men (Matt. 15:9). God gave his church only one special day, the first day of the week.

…

What shall we do? We live in a world that makes December 25 a national holiday. We obviously cannot participate in the religious observances connected with this day. But neither can we “go out of the world” (1 Cor. 5:9, 10). It is the author’s view that we can observe the legal, civil, social holiday as such, just as we would any other; for example, Labor Day, Independence Day or Thanksgiving Day. It appears to him that Christians could:

* Take the day off with pay;

* Accept a Christmas bonus;

* Receive a Christmas gift;

* Eat a Christmas feast of turkey and cranberries;

* Give presents to his family and friends;

* And enjoy the holiday festivities without sin or compromise so long as he did not make it a special religious observance.

Waddey ends his article by stressing that if participation in the celebration of Christmas makes you feel guilty, then you should not do it. But then he warns: “Do not, however, try to force your scruples on other brethren.” He then points to Romans 14.

Also in 1976, the same year as Waddey’s article, Guy N. Woods published a collection of Questions and Answers (Henderson: Freed-Hardeman College) that he had addressed over the years at the Freed-Hardeman lectureship. (A decade later, he would publish a second volume.) One of the questions concerns Christmas.

What does the word ‘Christmas’ mean? When did the observance of the birthday of Christ on December 25, begin? Is it wrong for Christians to engage in any of the usual activities associated with Christmas such as putting up Christmas trees, decorating lights, and exchanging gifts? (p. 203)

The answer Woods provides is the same as what Waddey had said. Christians should not observe Christmas as a religious holiday, but it is fine to celebrate it as a family holiday.

…many people consider it as no more than a holiday around which many family, social and national traditions have gathered, and there is in it for them no religious implications. I grew up in a home where these views prevailed and though the season contributed much to my happiness and enjoyment, I was never under the impression that we were observing Christ’s birthday. Christmas, when thus regarded, is simply an occasion when gifts are exchanged, families get together, and hearts are warmed by the happy festivities. I have always felt that children, not privileged to experience the innocent joys of the holiday season, are being deprived of rich blessings rightfully theirs. (p. 203)

Woods grew up in a home apparently much like my own, at least in terms of the celebration of Christmas. I am glad to know that in 1976—or before then—he publicly declared that there is no problem with a faithful Christian participating in the usual aspects of the family celebration of Christmas.

Then again, the question was asked. What was this questioner thinking? Why would he need to be reassured by Guy N. Woods that it’s okay to put up a tree in your house in December and to hang lights from your gutters?

Christian Opposition to Christmas

The positive evaluation of Christmas given by Woods may have proven controversial in his own time and certainly so in the previous generation, even for the paper that Woods eventually came to edit. In 1938, the Gospel Advocate published a sermon outline by Clarence C. Morgan of Odessa, Texas (“Should We Observe Christmas?” December 15, 1938, p. 1168).

The text of the sermon was Galatians 4:10–11, “Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.”

Today many of God’s people insist on observing days and seasons contrary to Christianity or the teachings of Christ.

The only difference in the sins of the Galatian Christians and Christians today is that the Galatians were going back to the law of Moses and observing things that once had God’s approval and were of his commands, but had been abrogated, while Christians today are going back to the dark ages and paganism and observing days and seasons that never did have God’s approval in any age.

Morgan goes on to say that

Roman Catholicism is the mother of “Christmas.” The word “Christmas” is a Satanic abbreviation for “Christ-Mass.” … The observance of “Christ-Mass” is not only Romanistic but it is clearly going beyond what is written and is adding to God’s word. No Christian should observe “Christ-Mass” in any way.

Note that phrase, “in any way.” What does Morgan mean that a Christian should not observe Christmas “in any way”? The article continues by describing Santa Claus as evil and the Christmas Tree as pagan and condemned by Jeremiah 10:1–5, a passage mocking the practice of chopping down a tree and turning it into an idol. Morgan declared: “Christians should leave all such alone.” I guess when Clarence Morgan preached in 1938 that a Christian should not observe Christmas “in any way,” he meant it.

What about the earlier decades? How did churches in the Restoration Movement handle Christmas in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? I don’t know, but if they ignored the holiday or preached against it, they would not at all have been unique. There is a long history of Christian opposition to Christmas, especially in the few centuries after the start of the Protestant Reformation. (See Bowler 2017 and Larsen 2020.)

A recent academic essay in the Oxford Handbook of Christmas (2020) explains the reasoning for this opposition: “Those opposed to Christmas [in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries] objected to any religious observance that was not explicitly commanded in the Bible (the so-called regulative principle) and which was seen as a vestige of popery” (p. 168).

Sounds familiar.

The main opponents here: English Puritans and Scottish Presbyterians. In fact, Christmas Day became a public holiday in Scotland only in 1958.

A different academic article, this one by Carl Philipp Emanuel Nothaft (published 2011), further explores attacks on Christmas by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestants. Here’s a bit of the conclusion:

In the end, it was the lack of scriptural foundation and the perceived historical links to Roman idolatry, which led to Christmas’s temporary demise in mid-century Puritan England and the North American colonies. At the same time, however, the kind of criticism voiced in the works of Rudolph Hospinian, Thomas Mocket and others could not have been made as forcefully without the chronological evidence that had been previously assembled by continental scholars such as Beroaldus, Wolf, Scaliger. Thanks to their profound antiquarian learning and occasional sparks of ingenuity, they had shown that the joyful celebration of Christ’s birthday during midwinter—a highly popular tradition that had gone virtually unchallenged for nearly a millennium—was historically baseless and even counter to the available sources. (p. 521)

Two points I found especially interesting in this article:

* Heinrich Wolf in 1585 was the first author—among those surveyed by Nothaft—to use the argument that I have often heard against December 25 as being the true birthday of Jesus, that is, that the shepherds would not have been with their flocks in the field in the middle of winter, and he quotes the first-century Roman writer Columella (De re rustica 7.3) as evidence. I couldn’t find an online copy of Wolf’s work, but the snippet view is here.

* It was Rudolph Hospinian (1547–1626) who first made the suggestion that early Christians adopted December 25 as the birthday of Jesus because they were trying to Christianize the pagan festival of Saturnalia. He does this in his work called Festa Christianorum (Zurich: Wolphius, 1593), and Nothaft translates a statement appearing on p. 110v thus: “those who first instituted the feast in this month of December did not do it, because they believed that the Lord was then born, but in order to convert the Saturnalian feast, which was celebrated at Rome at that time, into this feast [sc. Christmas].” Already before Hospinian, Polydore Vergil had noticed similarities between Christmas and the Roman Saturnalia. Hospinian was followed by Isaac Casaubon.

Such opposition to Christmas by Christians seems to have waned through the course of the nineteenth century. More-or-less. Of course, there were still opponents, as we’ve already seen. According to Timothy Larsen,

The Society of Friends was one of the Protestant bodies that most strongly objected to Christmas. This stance was articulated in an article by John Bellows, ‘Why I Ought Not To Keep “Christmas”’, written in 1879, but often reprinted in quaker periodicals, even into the twentieth century. Bellows argued that Friends had a duty to refrain from feasting and to keep their businesses open on December 25. To do otherwise would be to further superstition, idolatry, and apostasy—and even, he hinted darkly, the cause of the Antichrist. The Society of Friends, however, was numerically small. The significant forces of opposition to Christmas came from the Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists. (Larsen, p. 37)

As Larsen documents, these groups increasingly became comfortable with the trappings of Christmas, which were becoming more prominent (and wholesome?) in society at large. “The crucial difference was that these denominations did not offer a Christmas worship service” (p. 38).

Larsen ends his essay: “With the vast majority of Reformed and Dissenting Protestants now enthusiastically on board, a domestic focus on family and children, Santa Claus, Christmas trees, shopping, new carols, Christmas cards, a renewed commitment to generosity and charity in a modern context, and more, Christmas reached the end of the nineteenth century significantly bigger and stronger than it was at its start.”

This image of the late nineteenth-century dissenters becoming more comfortable with Christmas is confirmed by another author (Holmes again), who quotes an anonymous writer in 1898 to this effect.

Christmas amongst modern Nonconformists is a bright and joyous time in most of our places of worship, as well as in our home circles. We are getting rid of the idea that it is a superstitious festival, and therefore a hurtful custom of our homes with holly and mistletoe as a device or snare of the Evil One. Christmas services abound in our midst, and in many places are made the occasion of felicitous reunions and of common gatherings of different denominations for united praise and prayer. (here, p. 369 of the file; quoted in Holmes)

So by the turn of the twentieth century, much of the Christian opposition to Christmas had given way to embracing the season as a time to focus on families and especially children.

Not everyone had come around. We’ve seen that in Churches of Christ there was still the viewpoint that Christians should not celebrate Christmas even as a family holiday, though this seems to have waned by the second half of the twentieth century, and—anecdotally—it seems that by the end of the twentieth century many Churches of Christ were willing at least to capitalize on Christmas as a golden opportunity to talk about Jesus, even his birth.

Still not everyone is convinced even now, whether in the Churches of Christ or not.

More next time.

Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

But now the time has come to go away. I go to die, and you to live; but which of us goes to the better lot, is known to none but God.

—Socrates

To live is Christ and to die is gain.

—Paul

One time Peter got put in prison in Jerusalem during the time of Passover. The story is told in Acts 12. The year was probably AD 44. The text says that it was King Herod who put him in prison. Now, there are various Herods mentioned in the New Testament. This Herod in Acts 12 is not the most famous Herod, the one who killed the babies of Bethlehem (Matt 2:16). That was Herod the Great, the first in the line of Herods. Our Herod in Acts 12 is called Herod Agrippa, and he is the grandson of Herod the Great. Later on in Acts, Paul will meet another king whom the biblical text calls Agrippa (Acts 25–26), who is the son of the Herod Agrippa in Acts 12. Historians call the father Herod Agrippa I and the son Herod Agrippa II.

Herod Agrippa I put Peter in prison with the plan to execute him after Passover and the days of unleavened bread (Acts 12:4). But on the night before the scheduled execution, an angel showed up in the prison and set Peter free. God sent an angel to save Peter’s life, to rescue him from certain death. Our God can do things like that. Once Peter was out of the prison, he went to the house of Mary, mother of John Mark, where the church had gathered to pray on Peter’s behalf. You remember what happened next. Peter knocked on the door and announced that he had been released. Rhoda the servant was so excited to tell everyone that she forgot to let Peter in. Nobody believed Rhoda; they thought it must have been his angel (Acts 12:15), whatever that means. When Peter finally got into the house, he reported about his escape and left.

Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

We know what year all this happened because of the next event narrated in the chapter: Herod Agrippa I died. According to Josephus, Agrippa I died in the year AD 44. (Of course, Josephus does not use our dating system; see the report of Agrippa’s reign at Antiquities 19.351–52.) The story Luke tells about this death contains the memorable and potentially confusing wording that the king “was eaten by worms and breathed his last” (Acts 12:23). We sometimes say that once a person has died, he becomes worm food, but Acts says that the worms were eating Agrippa before he died. Of course, that sometimes happens. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus described something similar about Queen Pheretima in Libya in the sixth century BC: “she died a horrible death, her body seething with worms while she was still alive” (4.205). According to Luke, the judgment of God came upon this King Herod for his arrogance, illustrated in his futile attempt to kill one of the Lord’s apostles.

Acts 12 is a story of liberation. It shows us the power of God, who is able to rescue from death. This story encourages us as readers to recognize that a hopeless situation is brimming with hope as long as we trust in the God who loves us and can cause everything to work out for our benefit (Rom 8:28).

This story is not the only time that Peter had seen the Lord rescue someone from death. During his ministry in Galilee, Jesus sometimes raised up people who had already died. One time there was a synagogue leader named Jairus who approached Jesus asking for help for his sick daughter. By the time Jesus got to Jairus’ house, the report was already circulating about the girl’s death. Jesus’ response to this report? “Do not fear, only believe” (Mark 5:36). Jesus went into the girl’s room and simply said, “Talitha cum” (5:41)—and she got up! Peter was there, he heard those words from Jesus’ mouth, he saw the girl rise and eat. Do you remember who else was in that room at the time? Aside from the girl’s parents, it was only Peter, James, and John.

We sometimes see this trio of apostles granted special privileges, not enjoyed by the other apostles. These were the three on the mount of transfiguration, who witnessed Jesus glowing and talking with Moses and Elijah (Mark 9:2–8). Later, in what seems like the moment of Jesus’ greatest need, it was Peter and James and John with him in the garden of Gethsemane (Mark 15:32–42). While all twelve apostles had their mission from Jesus, it seems like the Big Three were an especially important group with an unusually intimate relationship with Jesus.

Peter, the rock (John 1:42).

James and John, the sons of thunder (Mark 3:17).

No doubt Jesus had big plans for these three special apostles, some sort of special project.

The Gospels record some stories that involve just James and John without Peter. It was these two brothers who suggested to Jesus that they could call fire down from heaven against some rude Samaritans. Sons of thunder. Jesus rolled his eyes (Luke 9:51–55). It was also James and John (Mark 10:35–40)—or, actually, their mother (Matt 20:20–28)—who asked for the best seats in the kingdom of God, on the right and left of the Messiah. This time, Jesus did not roll his eyes but asked a question: “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” (Mark 10:38). James and John answered confidently, “yes, we can do that!” Did they know what they were talking about? We can be sure that they did not know the full import of their words. Jesus actually told them, “You do not know what you are asking” (10:38). But did they realize that the cup Jesus mentioned, and the baptism, had to do with suffering? I’m not sure, maybe. They may have thought that they were proclaiming their readiness to serve on the front lines in the coming war, to put themselves in dangerous situations for the kingdom of God. They probably did not realize that there would be no battle against Rome or any earthly foe. But they may have thought that they had signed up for some degree of suffering. And Jesus told them that they were right about that. “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized” (10:39). Jesus would endure suffering, and so would James and John.

Acts 12 does not start with King Herod putting Peter in prison. It starts with Herod imprisoning James, the brother of John. In prison is one of the sons of thunder, one of the Big Three apostles. There is no rescue plan from God, no miraculous escape. Instead, Herod “had James, the brother of John, killed with the sword” (Acts 12:2). Peter would be saved by a miracle, but not James. Why the one and not the other? Luke does not tell us.

When Peter was imprisoned, Christians gathered to pray in the house of one of their members. They asked God to spare the life of this beloved leader. Do you think that the church did the same for James? When James was taken by the authorities, do you think the Christians prayed for him, too? What did they pray? Of course, we don’t know the words of their prayer, but let me offer a suggestion by reminding you about an incident that James witnessed.

One of those occasions when the Big Three were alone with Jesus was in Gethsemane. The way Mark tells the story (perhaps based on the memories of Peter; see Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 2.15.1–2), the apostles were having trouble staying awake. It was late at night. Even if they hadn’t fallen asleep, I’m not sure they were close enough to overhear what Jesus prayed, but somehow people found out what the Lord prayed in the garden, because it’s reported in all three of the Synoptic Gospels (Matt 26:39; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42): “Let this cup pass from me; yet not what I will, but your will be done.”

Do you think it’s possible that—assuming the church gathered to pray for James after his arrest—they reflected on Jesus’ prayer in the garden? James had probably told them many times about what he witnessed that night, about his shame at falling asleep in that hour, about how he wished he had realized at the time the significance of the events he was experiencing, and about Jesus’ prayer. James had probably said that when it came to his own hour of death, he hoped he would face death in the same way Jesus did. Do you think it’s possible that the church prayed for James just as Jesus prayed in the garden, so that they asked God to let this cup pass from the apostle, if it be God’s will—and if it be not God’s will, but if rather God will that James should drink the cup to the dregs, perhaps the church prayed that James would show himself worthy of imitating Jesus through a brave and noble death.

We usually recoil from death, try to prevent it by every means possible, even though we all know that it’s coming. Sometimes we encounter people who seem to stare at death and—far from recoiling at it—endeavor to die in a particular fashion. There’s a moment in the novel Dracula when Arthur Holmwood (by now, Lord Godalming) is asked to give his beloved Lucy Westenra a transfusion of blood (ch. 10). Poor Lucy has been experiencing a repeated and mysterious loss of blood. Only Abraham Van Helsing seems to have any idea of how the blood was leaving her body, and what those two tiny pinprick holes on the side of her neck might have to do with it. At any rate, she needs blood immediately, and Van Helsing asks Arthur to supply the blood. Arthur answers, “If you only knew how gladly I would die for her.”

We can think of other examples. I believe that not every state has a designated state hero, but the state hero of Connecticut is a man named Nathan Hale. At age 21, he was arrested by the British as an American spy during the early period of the Revolutionary War. When he was hanged on September 22, 1776, his last words were reported as, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”

There are plenty of examples of noble deaths in religion as well. Near the end of the second century AD, the Christian author Tertullian wrote in his Apology (ch. 50), “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church,” meaning that Christians endure death in so noble a fashion that it actually attracts people to this illegal religion. The writer of Hebrews mentioned people who accepted death in this way: “Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection” (Heb 11:35). The author here is probably thinking of the Maccabean martyrs, who had experienced terrible suffering and death about two centuries before Jesus was killed. We know the story of these martyrs from the apocryphal book of 2 Maccabees, probably written in the second century BC. The wicked king Antiochus Epiphanes tried to force Jews to abandon their law, threatened death if they didn’t eat pork. Of course, some gave in, abandoned their faith to preserve their earthly lives. But 2 Maccabees 7 describes a family of seven brothers and their mother who “were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection.” Each brother, and their mother, made a speech, declaring their resolve to endure the worst suffering the Greek tyrant could offer—and the chapter describes some pretty awful punishments. They basically said, like Arthur Holmwood, “If you only knew how gladly we would die for our God,” or like Nathan Hale, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my Lord.”

I am not sure how James faced his death. Did he make a speech? Did he face it bravely? Luke does not say. The fourth-century church historian Eusebius told a story about James going to his death, a story in which James did make a speech, bravely declaring the name of Christ, such a moving speech that the soldier guarding him gained the courage to reveal that he himself was also a Christian, and the two marched out together and were both executed (Ecclesiastical History 2.9). Should we trust that story? Is that close to the way it happened? Did James cower in fear before the executioner, or did he welcome the chance to prove his faith in the way that martyrs before and after him did?

To ask the question is to encounter an obvious answer. Surely this son of thunder did not shrink in fear. I bet that at the moment of his death, James remembered having been on the mountain, one of the privileged few, amazed at the bright light emanating from his Lord, standing there with Moses and Elijah.

I’m sure as he walked toward the executioner, James remembered the instructions of Jesus, if you would be my disciple, you will take up your cross (Mark 8:34). I bet he remembered his younger and more impetuous self, and that once (or was it more than once?) he had the audacity to ask for the best seats in the kingdom. And I bet he remembered how Jesus answered this request with a question about drinking a cup and about a kind of baptism—a question to which he had confidently asserted, “Yes! I will drink that cup! I will receive that baptism!” Walking toward the executioner, he finally realized the significance of those words, and Jesus’ reply, “You will drink that cup. You will receive that baptism.” Luke does not tell us how James felt in that moment, but I bet he remembered the words of Jesus and saw his death as an opportunity to fully imitate his master, to be a true disciple of Jesus, to glorify God. “If you only knew how gladly I would die for him.”

That makes me wonder how Peter felt to be rescued.

I’ve never been in combat, never been in a war zone, never been a part of the military. I understand from TV and movies that soldiers sometimes experience something called survivor guilt. Out of the many great World War II movies, one of the greatest is called The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), starring Fredric March and others. It tells the story of some WWII veterans who return from war and have trouble adjusting to “normal” life, in part because it seemed so pointless after what they had just experienced, in part because of the physical toll the war took on them, and in large measure because they wonder why they survived to live this easy and comfortable life while so many of their friends had died in battle. Why was I chosen to live? You might think about the last scene of Saving Private Ryan: “Tell me I’m a good man.” Near the end of Les Miserables, Marius sings these words:

Oh my friends, my friends forgive meThat I live and you are goneThere’s a grief that can’t be spokenThere’s a pain goes on and on.

—From the song “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables.”

And in the Japanese novel Silence, written by Shūsaku Endō (1966), the priest Rodrigues envies his dead friend, Garupe, who had drowned. “Behind his eyelids like a hallucination floated the head of Garupe sinking down into the sea. How he envied his companion! Yes, how he envied Garupe freed from anguish such as this!” (ch. 8).

How did Peter feel about the miraculous rescue he enjoyed after witnessing his dear friend and fellow apostle, co-member of the Big Three, die such a cruel and noble death? Peter had no doubt joined with others and prayed for James, prayed for his release, prayed for God’s will to be done no matter what. James was given an opportunity denied Peter by that angel. Did Peter feel guilty for living?

The most famous speech in American history contains this passage.

It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.

For present purposes I am not so interested in “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” but I quote Lincoln for what he says about the purpose of living after so many have died. “It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.” The apostle James was given the opportunity—and seized it!—to so nobly advance the kingdom of God. Peter was not given that same opportunity in Acts 12. What should he do? Be dedicated to the unfinished work.

We are in the position of Peter. God has allowed us to live to this point. What do we do with that? Be dedicated to the unfinished work until we are granted the privilege of honoring God through our deaths. James enjoyed that privilege in Acts 12. Peter would have to wait. For now, his great task was to honor God with his life.

According to a popular report, George Washington once said to a young lieutenant colonel who had dreams of dying for the patriot cause during the Revolutionary War: “Dying is easy, young man; living is harder.” James had the privilege of honoring God through his death. Peter now had the burden of honoring God through his life. We share that burden. Until that day when God permits us to imitate James, he calls on us to imitate the apostle who lived.

Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

The iniquities of the wicked ensnare them,and they are caught in the toils of their sin. (Proverbs 5:22)

I have actually heard people say that Juneteenth is a holiday for only one segment of the population. But what I can’t figure out is why we would not expect Black people to celebrate?

Obviously it’s a holiday for white people—or, let’s put it this way: it must be a time of celebration for those people who look back on the nineteenth-century American South and, because of their skin color, wonder whether, had they lived then and there, they would have been slave owners. Thank God we are no longer confronted with such sin! With all the potential for moral corruption around us in the 21st century, thank God he has removed that particular cause of depravity!

Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

When we think about American slavery one of the things we should think about is how the slave society dulled the moral sense of the slavemasters.

Slavery exerted a corrupting influence on the slavemasters.

I know that the slavemaster is not the first victim of slavery to which our mind turns, and you might think it’s silly—or worse than silly—to reflect on the evils of slavery for the enslaver. I get that. There’s an episode of Little House on the Prairie in which a boy is being abused by his alcoholic father. The men of Walnut Grove get together to talk about how to help the boy, and someone says (I think it’s Doc Baker) that they should probably try to help the father. Charles Ingles responds: “I don’t care about the father, I care only about the boy.” Do you understand why Charles feels that way? That’s the way a lot of people are going to feel about slavery: Who cares about the travails of the slavemaster?! We only care about the slaves!

There are a couple of reasons I want to think about the slavemasters.

* Had I been born 200 years ago, I would not have been one of the slaves.

* There were a lot of opponents of slavery in nineteenth-century America who wrote about the problems of slavery for slaveowners. In his first autobiography (1845), Frederick Douglass wrote about his master’s wife: “Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me” (ch. 7).

Sin hurts the sinner

As Augustine wrote in the Confessions (3.8.16) at the end of the fourth century, talking about people who know not God: “even when they sin against you, they act wickedly against their own souls. Their iniquity speaks falsehoods to them, whether by corrupting or perverting their own nature, which you created and ordained, or by making immoderate use of licit things, or by so burning with desire for illicit things that they use them contrary to nature” (trans. Williams 2019: 39).

“They act wickedly against their own souls.” That’s the theme I want to highlight in this essay, and mostly I’m going to do that by lining up quotations that demonstrate the point, quotations about the general idea—sin hurts the sinner—and then also about the specific instance under consideration here, slaveholding.

First, the general idea, and it’s one that Socrates mentioned in his final speech—before being sentenced to drink the hemlock—in reference to his accuser, Meletus (and Anytus): “I think he does himself a much greater injury by doing what he is doing now—killing a man unjustly” (Plato, Apology 30d; see the discussion by Emily Wilson, pp. 46–51).

The Proverbs are filled with this sort of reflection.

yet they lie in wait—to kill themselves!and set an ambush—for their own lives! (Proverbs 1:18)

Those who are kind reward themselves,but the cruel do themselves harm.The wicked earn no real gain,but those who sow righteousness get a true reward. (Proverbs 11:17–18)

As righteousness tendeth to life:so he that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own death. (Proverbs 11:19)

The deuterocanoical book of Wisdom, written just before the time of Jesus, mentions that “One is punished by the very things by which one sins” (Wisdom 11:16), and the other deuterocanonical wisdom book, this one called Sirach, says similarly: “One who sins does wrong to himself” (Sirach 19:4).

It was not just Jews and Christians who saw this truth; the pre-classical Greek poet Hesiod asserted: “A man contrives evil for himself when he contrives evil for someone else, and an evil plan is most evil for the planner” (Works and Days 265–66; trans. Most, pp. 108–9).

One more example, much more recent, written in America about 15 years before slavery was federally prohibited, but this example is not about slavery. It’s from the novel The Scarlet Letter (1850, ch. 14), in which a man named Roger Chillingworth has been wronged, and so he plots his revenge, and it turns out that the biggest victim of his revenge is himself. “In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man’s faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil’s office.”

A devil’s office

Slaveowning in the nineteenth-century American South was a devil’s office, and it turned humans into devils.

Living in a slave society himself, Augustine recognized the dangers of sin, and the madness of ignoring the perils of, for instance, hating an enemy. “As if there were any greater danger from a human enemy than from the very hatred that one feels toward him! As if one did more serious harm to someone else by persecuting him than to one’s own heart by stoking one’s hostility!” (Confessions 1.18.29).

In a work written after the American Revolutionary War but before the drafting of the US Constitution, Thomas Jefferson had diagnosed this problem.

There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people [i.e., white Americans] produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. (Notes on the State of Virginia, 1785, Query 18)

Jefferson goes on to continue describing how easy it is for the slavemaster to abuse his slave and thus train his child to do the same. The child who is

thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriae of the other.

These are amazing sentences from Jefferson in 1785, and with the benefit of hindsight of another nearly two and half centuries of American history, they are tragic. Jefferson’s discussion continues for a few more sentences, and those sentences are well worth reading in this book—his only published book—easily accessible online. But note in the last sentence quoted above that he imagines that with all the harm to the slave entailed in the practice of American slavery, he observes that it is the slavemasters who are turned into immoral despots. You might imagine what the author of the Declaration of Independence thought about immoral despots.

In an 1847 letter, Francis Wayland, an opponent of slavery, quotes this passage from Jefferson and adds the comment a bit later: “It is in accordance with the general law, that those who enslave the bodies of others, become in turn the slaves of their own passions” (see here, pp. 119–20).

The English writer Charles Dickens, visiting America in 1842, published a series of Notes, near the end of which he describes the logical outcome of the training of a slavemaster (text here, near the end of ch. 17):

Do we not know that the man who has been born and bred among its [= slavery’s] wrongs; who has seen in his childhood husbands obliged at the word of command to flog their wives; women, indecently compelled to hold up their own garments that men might lay the heavier stripes on their legs, driven and harried by brutal overseers in their time of travail, and becoming mothers on the field of toil, under the very lash itself; who has read in youth, and seen his virgin sisters read, descriptions of runaway men and women, and their disfigured persons [as Dickens had quoted earlier in his chapter], which could not be published elsewhere, of so much stock upon a farm, or at a show of beasts;—do we not know that that man, whenever his wrath is kindled up, will be a brutal savage?

According to Jefferson, enslaving another person renders you an immoral despot. Yes, I know, he himself was a slavemaster, and among his slaves were some of his own biological children. That does not make his observation wrong; I think it gives a powerful illustration of it. According to Dickens, the slavemaster trains himself to become a brutal savage. According to the historian Douglas Foster (p. 55), it is for this reason that Alexander Campbell, the nineteenth-century religious reformer in Virginia, opposed slavery.

What I’m saying is, I’m glad I won’t have to stand before God and answer questions about my record as a slavemaster.

But we can continue. We have heard from some white people, including a slaveowner, Jefferson, but now we turn to some slaves, or some former (runaway) slaves. (Douglass was still legally a slave when he published his autobiography, as his freedom was not purchased until 1846.)

Going back to the first autobiography of Frederick Douglass, who escaped from bondage when he was about age 20, he includes some descriptions of the moral corruption that enslavement wrought on his enslavers. When he was a young boy, he met with a kind woman, the wife of his master, who had not grown up around slaves and so at first treated little Frederick well, like a fellow human being. Such treatment did not last.

But, alas! this kind heart had but a short time to remain such. The fatal poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and soon commenced its infernal work. That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of a demon. (ch. 6)

Who said that about how power corrupts?

At first, this kind mistress taught young Douglass to read, before she realized that it was against the law to educate a slave.

It is due, however, to my mistress to say of her, that she did not adopt this course of treatment immediately [= preventing him from learning]. She at first lacked the depravity indispensable to shutting me up in mental darkness. It was at least necessary for her to have some training in the exercise of irresponsible power, to make her equal to the task of treating me as though I were a brute. (ch. 7)

“She at first lacked the depravity.” Would that she had never acquired it!

Another escaped slave, this one a female named Harriet Jacobs, wrote in her autobiography of 1861 about her former owner and his wife. (All of the following quotations from Jacobs’ book are from ch. 9.)

Had it not been for slavery, he would have been a better man, and his wife a happier woman.

And again.

I can testify, from my own experience and observation, that slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks.

According to Jacobs, when the white daughters learn that their own fathers have fathered children with their slave women, children who are now their own slaves, these daughters themselves select a slave man and bear its child.

In such cases the infant is smothered, or sent where it is never seen by any who know its history. But if the white parent is the father, instead of the mother, the offspring are unblushingly reared for the market. If they are girls, I have indicated plainly enough what will be their inevitable destiny.

Jacobs says about the effects of slaveholding:

It makes white fathers cruel and sensual; the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the daughters, and makes the wives wretched. … Yet few slaveholders seem to be aware of the widespread moral ruin occasioned by this wicked system. Their talk is of blighted cotton crops—not of the blight on their children’s souls.

She says, if you go to a southern plantation and call yourself “a negro trader”: “Then there will be no concealment; and you will see and hear things that will seem to you impossible among human beings with immortal souls.”

I believe her. And I believe Lord Acton; that’s the guy who said that famous statement that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I have witnessed the corrupting influence of power and money. And I believe the Lord, who told the apostle Paul: “my strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Sin hurts the sinner. Enslaving someone turns you into a savage brute and an immoral despot and trains you in depravity.

Ought I not to celebrate the eradication of this particular evil?

A divine office?

Or, maybe not. What if we’re looking at this all wrong? Maybe enslaving others is good for you, good for your soul. Maybe it provides training not in depravity but righteousness. After all, having children to care for is good for you; helps you be unselfish. That’s an argument I’ve made before and would make again. I’ve experienced it. So … shouldn’t it be the same with enslaving others. Are slavemasters sorta like parents, and the slaves sorta like children?

I feel like I’ve got a lot of work to do to convince you of this, and it’s going to be difficult, because I find the idea ludicrous.

But not everyone has found it ludicrous. Some pro-slavery apologists in the nineteenth-century American South made this very argument.

For example, William Harper, a South Carolinian, in 1835 wrote that enslaving others improves one’s moral character, just like parenting children.

He who has been accustomed not only to command, but to protect others; to provide for their wants and relieve their distresses, will, if his nature be not unusually perverse, acquire an habitual and humane interest in the objects of his care. (text here, pp. 13–14)

Whereas Thomas Jefferson (in his Notes, Query 18, part of which I quoted earlier) and others had alleged that enslaving others makes one lazy (Jefferson: “For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him”), Harper rejects this idea (pp. 14–15).

Can Harper be right? Perhaps there is a superficial plausibility to his argument.

Whether or not we should agree with Harper, I submit, is made clearer by his other statement in the same speech saying that we should recognize that the claim that all people are made equal is an exaggeration. (I quoted this statement from Harper in an essay I wrote on slavery in the New Testament, which you can find here; for the quote, see p. 85. Alexander Campbell also mocked this idea from Jefferson in the conclusion to his article “Slavery and the Fugitive Slave Law—No. II,” Millennial Harbinger (1851): 247–52.)

To return again to Jefferson and that Query 18 in his Notes on the State of Virginia, published 9 years after the Declaration, he does not seem to think he was exaggerating when he wrote about the self-evident nature of the claim that “all men are created equal.” In his Notes of 1785, he wonders: “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?” Since Jefferson has been talking about slaves, when he now says that “these liberties are of the gift of God”—a phrase that reminds us of the Declaration of Independence—he is obviously including the slaves in this evaluation. He goes on to express foreboding about what God will do to America for the sin of slavery. He was prescient.

No; rather, a devil’s office

Harper was wrong, obviously wrong, absurdly wrong. The best one can say for Harper is that he is hopelessly, willfully naive, wrong perhaps in a similar way to Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “The White Man’s Burden.” (See Jonah Goldberg’s comments here.)

We best return to Frederick Douglass, this time to his Fourth of July oration from 1852—note the year; the 13th Amendment is still thirteen years away; the Civil War is still almost a decade away. And the economic system of slavery is more than ever entrenched in the southern United States. During the course of this speech, Douglass again finds reason to discourse on the dangers of slavery to the slaveholder.

Fellow-citizens! I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad[;] it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a bye-word to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it, as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. Oh! be warned! be warned! a horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation’s bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty millions, crush and destroy it forever!

A century later, some Black civil rights activists recognized the same dynamic at play in their day. See, for instance, the famous 1965 debate at Cambridge between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley.

At the 24:20 mark, James Baldwin comments: “Now I suggest, that of all the terrible things that can happen to a human being, that is one of the worst”—in reference to poor white people glorying in their whiteness. “I suggest that what has happened to white southerners is in some ways after all much worse than what has happened to Negroes there.” He immediately brings up Sheriff Clark in Selma, Alabama, who is the subject of his comment at the 25:20 mark. “Something awful must have happened to a human being to be able to put a cattle prod against a woman’s breasts, for example. What happens to the woman is ghastly; what happens to the man who does it is in some ways much, much worse.”

Also in 1965, The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published, unfortunately posthumously, which contains this comment.

But I want to tell you something. This pattern, this “system” that the white man created, of teaching Negroes to hide the truth from him behind a façade of grinning, ‘yessir-bossing,” foot-shuffling and head-scratching—that system has done the American white man more harm than an invading army would do to him. (from the chapter “Icarus,” p. 279)

I think he’s right, and so does Wendell Berry, who excerpted that comment from Malcolm X and used it as the first epigraph in his 1970 book The Hidden Wound, a short book that explores the effects of slavery and racism on Berry’s own family. (See this commemorative essay on the book.)

What would I have done?

Had I lived in the early 1800s in the same town I live now (Florence, Alabama), what temptations to depravity would I face? Of course, not all white people owned slaves; some were opposed to the peculiar institution, some just couldn’t afford it. Not rich enough to become a savage brute. What a blessing!

In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail Martin Luther King asserted that “I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time [of Hitler], I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers.” I agree with him: King would have acted in that way. His life proves it.

I am less confident about myself.

The epistle of James in the New Testament instructs readers to rejoice in the trials they face (James 1:2). Perhaps we should also be thankful for trials we haven’t faced.

Sometimes you’ll hear people say that they would love to have been alive to see Jesus teach on the mountainside or multiply the fish and loaves. Peter witnessed the Transfiguration; and Peter denied Jesus three times.

Would you like to have witnessed Jesus ride into town on a donkey? Would you like to have been one of the crowd shouting, “Hosanna to the coming king”? Would you like to have been in the temple, seeing Jesus answer questions, shutting up his opponents? That same crowd gathered at the governor’s house on Friday morning. The trial they then faced is described in Mark 15:6–14. They ended up calling for the crucifixion of their Creator. Absurd but true. Pilate was surprised at the crowd.

I’m glad that when I stand before God I won’t have to answer questions about what I did on that Good Friday. Most of the players did not acquit themselves well.

We should be thankful for the trials we don’t face.

I recognize that these examples ought to drive us to wonder about the trials we do face, and how we are handling them. Those are good questions to ask, but they are not the point of this reflection. Here I am thinking about a trial I have not faced.

Sin sometimes sneaks up on you—like Peter

Sin sometimes overwhelms you—like the crowd before Pilate. Sin dulls your senses. That’s what Frederick Douglass described in his Fourth of July oration.

In a speech given two decades later, celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation, Douglass announced: “We are all liberated by this proclamation. Everybody is liberated. The white man is liberated, the black man is liberated….” (“The Proclamation and a Negro Army,” March 1863, at p. 307 of The Portable Frederick Douglass).

The two and a half centuries of American slavery provided plenty of evidence for “man’s faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil’s office.” Many people were overwhelmed by this sin, captured by it, corrupted.

Juneteenth reminds me to rejoice that I was not among them.

Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com

Buy the book at 21st Century Christian.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit edmongallagher.substack.com