What if what Jesus taught wasn’t what you’ve been taught? What if your crusade for the “gospel” and the “Bible” isn’t God’s cause at all? What if you really don’t have any special status as a member of “God’s chosen people,” but rather have simply enjoyed the individual care and concern that God extends to every human being? What if the world is not, fundamentally, a battleground between the “righteous” and the “wicked,” but rather a place where we are all equally struggling, failing, and learning under the universal compassion and generosity of God? What if there are no “rejects,” and no one who gets tossed in the cosmic garbage can at the end of history? What if life isn’t about spiritual achievement at all, but simply about learning to receive the gift of pure happiness that God intends for everyone, whether they are able to receive it now, or only through the healing God reserves for them in the next life? What if God is able to completely eradicate evil from his creation without resorting to cruel or tyrannical behavior? What if his justice gives everyone, not what they “deserve,” but what they need to get from misery to joy?
Back in 380 A.D., while Augustine of Hippo was still a Manichaean dualist, the Greek Cappadocian bishop Gregory of Nyssa had already laid the groundwork for this refreshingly commonsense interpretation of Christianity, based on the idea that God seeks, not vengeance, but restoration. History wouldn’t follow Gregory’s lead–the idea of universal restoration would eventually be condemned by the Church 160 years later.
But history took a long time to follow his lead in other areas, too. Gregory may have been the first person in recorded human history to speak out clearly against slavery in all its forms. His family was astoundingly progressive. He honored his sister Macrina as the real spiritual teacher in the family–their brother, Basil of Caesarea, was one of the first people in the Western tradition to assert the complete equality of women with men.
The Church never dared to condemn Gregory as a heretic, even in later centuries. His thoroughly Trinitarian universalism wouldn’t flower again in the West until the mid-nineteenth century, in the works of visionaries such as the Scottish poet, preacher, and novelist George MacDonald. But today, it’s an idea whose time has come. Reading Gregory’s interpretations of Jesus’ parables makes me realize that there were other options than the ones that the Western Church went with–ones that make significantly more sense. Could history have been different if we had followed Gregory’s lead, instead of Augustine’s?
That question is impossible to answer. But I am convinced that Christianity has no viable future as a positive cultural influence unless it can move from the dualistic “culture war” mentality of “Christian vs. pagan” with its toxic eschatology of vengeance, to a consistently universalist upholding of God’s steadfast care for the dignity of every person. Maybe this can only happen when the Church has been cured of its Bibliolatry–its misplaced idea of what constitutes inspired communication. But, as Gregory shows, due reverence for the Scriptural texts is by no means incompatible with the conviction that God intends eternal happiness for everyone.