Christopher B. Hays is the D. Wilson Moore Professor of Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Fuller Seminary, where his teaching focuses on biblical languages and the Hebrew Bible. In 1996, his father, Richard, a leading figure in New Testament ethics, published The Moral Vision of the New Testament, an influential text that placed same-sex relationships outside the bounds of biblical sexuality. Last year, Chris and Richard released The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story, in which both scholars argued from their continued study for a new recognition that God is continuously doing a new thing, something centered on the values of mercy and grace. Given recent events, I am grateful for Chris’ words on God’s inclusive mercy.
Greg Garrett: The Moral Vision of the New Testament and its conclusions on moral issues was definitive for so many Christians. Your dad speaks to this a bit in your dual Introduction, but I wonder if you might summarize for my readers why the two of you felt the need to explore The Widening of God’s Mercy.
Christopher B. Hays: Both my father and I spent much of our careers in and out of institutions and communities that were either in a conservative position or were in conflict over issues of human sexuality. And, indeed, our own family included people close to us who still held anti-LGBTQ positions. (In the book, my father tells the story of the conflict with his own brother over where to hold their mother’s funeral, because the church she had pastored had become open and affirming.)
Christopher Hays
Yet we were also immersed in local communities and academic communities that were much more progressive. So we recognized that although this issue felt settled to many people, there were perhaps even more people for whom it was an ongoing struggle. And we thought we had something to say about that on the basis of our lifetimes of reading the Bible closely.
Specifically, I’m dead tired of hearing people repeat that excluding LGBTQ people from full participation in the church (or any other rights and privileges) is the “biblical position.” It’s not.
I would add that my father, in the interviews he did after the book appeared, emphasized that he wanted to ensure his legacy would not involve the exclusion of LGBTQ people from the church. He wanted his legacy to be the kind of love and peace he advocated for other issues and he exemplified in his own life and relationships.
GG: One of the huge theological issues your book is embracing is the character of God. Who is God? Is God immutable and unchanging? Or can God change God’s mind based on new data and a growing understanding of creation? Where are some of the major biblical and church warrants for your idea that God changes God’s mind for the better?
CBH: Yes, the book is arguably more about theology than it is about sexuality. It’s very much about the fundamental issue of who God is. It came out of our realization that, after all our work with the Bible, our image of God seemed to be different in important ways from the image held by many others, and sexuality was an issue that brought that into focus.
At the most basic level, the book is a survey of the entire Bible — both testaments — pointing to dozens of examples in which God changes God’s mind. And that’s not always just because humans repent or change their ways. Rather, God seems to be responsive to human concerns and objections.
“At the most basic level, the book is a survey of the entire Bible pointing to dozens of examples in which God changes God’s mind.”
I don’t think anyone would disagree that the Bible portrays a God who cares about humankind, who loves his creation and wants it to flourish. And that includes us. And God doesn’t only love humans when they submit to existing judgments and authorities. Characters like Abraham, Moses, Job and the daughters of Zelophehad stand up and challenge God’s justice, and the outcomes would surprise many people.
As part of that survey of the whole Bible, we were able to point to many issues on which the Bible shifts its portrayal of the divine will. One of the examples that ought to hit home for the sort of Protestant Christians who may object to our conclusions is the inclusion of Gentiles within the people of God. People conveniently forget that in much (but not all) of the Old Testament, they would have been considered the enemies of the people of God. It’s only by the expansion of God’s grace to the rest of us that we’re part of God’s story at all. (Of course, God’s grace also starts out very broad in the very beginning, so that’s a tension the book lays out.)
GG: Like you, I’ve felt some institutional tension around this issue. I joined the Episcopal Church after they’d wrestled painfully with inclusion, but Baptists and historically Baptist institutions like Baylor are still in the thick of arguments over this issue. How do you balance your theological and scholarly conclusions with your place as an endowed professor at Fuller Theological Seminary? How do you see conditions on the ground changing given our political and cultural realities?
CBH: In general, I don’t feel any tension between my scholarly and professional commitments. Fuller originally was envisioned as a kind of CalTech for theology, meaning a research institution with a strong and creative faculty. And I’ve been here long enough, and served faithfully enough, that I feel a certain authority to be at least one of the voices in the conversation that defines who and what we are.
My place as a chaired professor at Fuller is secure, and I feel strong support from many people at all levels within our school community. Of course, the debates over sexuality are tense, and unfortunately we don’t all agree here. But Fuller historically has been the kind of place where people can come and have serious dialogue and debate about pressing issues, and I don’t think anyone wants to do away with that identity. I could be wrong. Times do change. But that’s how it looks now.
More generally, I hope as real Christians look around at the things that are happening in the world right now, they’ll recognize the ways of exclusion and violence are, finally, antithetical to the way of the prophets and of Jesus Christ. I hope we’ll pull back from the brink.
GG: Could you speak a bit about the concept of God’s “widening mercy” and why this could be a way to address a number of contemporary concerns? In the face of “the curse of empathy” being advanced by many conservative Christians, how might the thesis of your book apply to some of the central ethical questions of our present moment?
CBH: I agree with the idea that God’s mercy and responsiveness to human suffering and concerns is one that could and should be applied to any number of things. In the book, I wrote: “Any religious tradition that makes its peace with harming people is to be feared. And any religious tradition that fails to grow and respond to the ongoing work of the Spirit will stagnate and die.” I think that speaks to a number of issues at the moment.
Immigration is a big one — there are so many migrants in the Bible, from the patriarchs and matriarchs, to Israel in Egypt and Judah in Babylon, to Jesus himself. Moses says repeatedly: “Remember that you were a slave in Egypt!” You would think Christians would immediately recognize that and be sympathetic with sojourners and migrants.
“The idea that empathy is a curse seems so obviously misguided as to not require comment.”
As far as the conservative talking heads and the so-called “curse of empathy,” the idea that empathy is a curse (let alone a sin, which also has been said) seems so obviously misguided as to not require comment. Empathy and care for each other is a hallmark of human evolution; it’s literally what creates civilization, and it’s what’s gotten us this far.
I count myself lucky that although I grew up conversant in classically orthodox theology, it wasn’t actually in any sort of conservative evangelical subculture. So what that means now is that I don’t feel obligated to pay very much attention to what rightwing evangelicals say. I’m genuinely untroubled by it, to the point that I’m basically unaware of it.
To those who have been harmed by certain manifestations of the Christian church, I commend this approach! But I know it’s difficult to tune it out if you’re immersed in it in your local culture and/or family.
GG: After I reached out to you originally, my university responded to heated conservative criticisms of a grant from the Baugh Foundation to study how LGTBQ people and women have felt included or excluded within church settings by choosing to return the grant. For those of us who lean into an inclusive reading of the Scriptures, this historical moment in the church, the academy and the culture feels painful, very much like what my friends who are people of color have been saying feels like a rollback of Reconstruction. I believe love wins, yet at this moment, hate seems to be ascendant. For those who share the theological understandings of The Widening of God’s Mercy, what are some ways we can continue to work for and hope for a world where the wideness of God’s mercy applies to all?
CBH: I’ve seen a fair amount of talk lately about the well-known quote that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I’ve heard a lot of people commenting that it doesn’t seem that way. There’s a tendency to despair, and I understand that.
You mentioned the comparison to race, and I think it’s safe to say the Western world made real progress in the way it treats racial and sexual minorities in the course of the past century. But there also is a kind of narrow tribalism deep in the human soul, or deep in the brain stem if you prefer. It’s a tendency to exclude people who are “not like us,” and historical conditions repeatedly bring it out.
We’re seeing it come out again now, with a vengeance. But this is not accidental or merely natural. It’s engineered by a relatively small number of powerful opponents of that progress, using both normal political structures and also more nefarious means.
There is, of course, another view of history as cyclical rather than linear. This is the view of the book of Ecclesiastes, which tells us that there is “nothing new under the sun,” and that everything that people think is new already has happened before. It also points out that people don’t remember history. So you can also take the more pessimistic view that the apparent progress of the past century was essentially illusory, that we were doomed to “regression to the mean” (pun intended, because there’s a lot of meanness in the air right now).
“The moral arc does not bend on its own.”
Whichever way you view it, I would say we have to own the fact that the moral arc does not bend on its own. In this world, we have to bend it ourselves.
You can think of the distinction in terms of eschatology: Classically, Christians who care about social justice tend to be postmillennial, such that we’re called to create paradise on earth so that Jesus can return. But even if you’re premillennial — such that justice on earth will only be established after the Second Coming — isn’t it the worst possible response to wash your hands of caring for fellow human beings? Surely that’s not the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s not what he modeled.
I think education is a huge part of working for hope in the world. Educators at all levels shape what people become, sometimes as much as families do. I don’t know the details of the grant that was just refused at Baylor, but I’ve always thought of it as a leading university that made space for various ideas, so that’s disappointing. If you can’t even research a question, then how are you going to form students who know how to have a conversation with people who see things differently?
Naturally, education seems important to me. But everyone, in every role and position, has opportunities every day to show God’s expansive grace and mercy to the world. And then every so often they get to vote, and it would be great if we could bring the same spirit into the voting booth.
Greg Garrett is an award-winning professor at Baylor University, where he is the Carole McDaniel Hanks Professor of Literature and Culture. One of America’s leading voices on religion and culture, he is the author of 30 books, most recently the novel Bastille Day and The Gospel According to James Baldwin: What America’s Great Prophet Can Teach Us about Life, Love, and Identity. He is currently administering a major research grant on racism from the Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation and finishing a book on racist mythologies for Oxford University Press. Greg is a seminary-trained lay preacher in the Episcopal Church and Honorary Canon Theologian at the American Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Paris. He lives in Austin with his wife, Jeanie, and their two daughters.
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