51: Trust in Atonement with Teresa Morgan

Hosts: Brandon Nappi and Hannah Black

Guest: Rev. Dr. Teresa Morgan

Production: Goodchild Media

Music: Wayfaring Stranger, Theodicy Jazz Collective

Art: E. Landino

Instagram: @theleadersway.podcast

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Hannah:  Hey, Brandon. 

Brandon: Hi, Hannah. 

B:            How’s it going? 

H:           Well, it’s going well. We’re back here at Yale Broadcast.

H:           I know. I love it here. Last time I was here, I was with Krista, and we were missing you. But your floating head was on the screen. 

B:            I love the idea that Krista might be missing me. Thank you for –for even the idea. 

H:           We live in hope.

B:            Krista, we don’t think you’re really missing me. But we had … it was an amazing episode. If you haven’t heard, Hannah Black going toe to toe with Krista Tippett.

H:            Not tat tat tat ? It was tet a tet and toe au toe. 

B:            It was toe au toe. And things were revealed that had never been revealed before. 

H:           Yeah. We were walking over to Claire’s Corner Copia after recording, and she said, I told stories I’ve never told on air before. And I just thought, we did it.

B:            I mean, that’s a life goal right there. 

H:           Until now, the best compliment we’ve gotten is when people are like, “That felt like when I was on Krista Tippett’s show.” And we’re like, “You’re saying we’re anything … like Krista Tippett?” And now actual Krista Tippett has enjoyed being on our show. 

B:            So I’m gonna take the credit for prayerfully supporting that conversation. Right? I was at the monastery praying, doing penance. 

H:           It … I was going to say it was truly some kind of spiritual discipline of, like, self -flagellation, not being here.

B:            It was no flagellation. There wasn’t that much penance, but I was with 20 students who could not be left alone.  I mean, they’re all adults, but it is university policy. 

H:           I was gonna say, some of them are like mothers of children. “Don’t leave them alone!”

B:             No. They’re all very responsible, but it is university policy. And I see. 

H:           Okay, I see. 

B:            So thank you for doing that. How was your weekend?

H: So glad you asked. Not only did I enjoy some Claire’s Cornucopia Lithuanian coffee cake, which I hope is our next sponsor. Not even Claire’s, just the coffee cake. But I went to a baby shower over the weekend of a friend who’s a priest, and it was sort of in the baby sprinkle tradition of–this is a second kid. You’re you’ve lost the reference, which means you haven’t seen Schitt’s Creek. But it’s okay. Somebody out there is laughing. This is for the second baby. So she was like, I already have all the stuff. I don’t need, like, a traditional baby shower. So we got tapas and then went to a Chapell Roan themed dance party. Oh. Yeah. Wow. And it’s like new dreams for myself were unlocked. Like, I don’t really associate pregnant women with wanting to hit the dance floor. And now I’m like, “Okay. New levels of womanhood revealed.”

B:            Woah. Y’all were hot to go.

H:           Yeah. Yeah. Precisely. Precisely. 

B:            That’s so cool. Was there a kind of dressing up required? There was a lot of hair? 

H:           Yes there was a theme … dress. Although, I didn’t buy anything. Like, normally, I’m all about this kind of a thing, and I did do the dreaming exercise. But I’m kind of, like, boycotting Amazon, and that’s normally where I would get my, like, funny sequin skirt, pink cowgirl hat. 

B:            You’ve joined the Amazon boycott. But what are we to imagine when we imagine, like, Hannah Black in Chapell Roan attire? 

H:           Well, it what I’m saying is it wasn’t that exciting. I see. I tried to do what I could with my closet that really said Midwest Princess, and it wasn’t a lot in the end. 

B:            It was the actual Midwest Princess.

H;           A lot of pink, so that was a problem. I don’t own cowboy boots. The last time I owned cowboy boots, I think I was a child, and I wore them with, like, my ballet clothes on the back of my dad’s motorcycle. It’s a different time.

B:            Mmmmm. Okay. Alright. Well … there’s still time.

H:           And now to transition … 

B:            We’re transitioning.

H;           I’m a very different person. Instead of ballet class and motorcycles, it’s co-teaching with the great Teresa Morgan.

B:            Oh my gosh. Teresa Morgan is here in the studio today, and she’s a rock star.

H:           Yes. Was that seamless? Yes. Loving, like … 

B:            She has like 27 brains tied behind her back that she’s harnessing at any moment. 

H:           I know. Yeah. Her … when you look at her bio on the Yale Divinity School website, I’m like, I’m not even sure if I know what all these letter mean letters mean. 

B:            There’s, like, there’s like 25 servers that Yale had to buy just to store her bio. 

H:           And stay tuned because at the very end of this episode, Teresa and my CVs got one line longer. Let’s just leave it there.

B:            Wow. You’re really dangling an Easter egg. 

H:           Professor Theresa Morgan studied classics at Cambridge University at Clare College Cambridge. This is kind of part of the basis for Teresa and my friendship, because we both went to Clare. Anyway, she also studied theology at Oxford and violin and viola in London and Cologne. She’s like a super crazy talented musician in addition to a crazy talented New Testament scholar. She joined Yale Divinity School in 02/2022 from Oxford University. Her research lies in the history of ideas and mentality and in the social and cultural practices and institutions which shape and are shaped by them. Early Christianity, especially on Greek, Roman, and early Christian ethics, Greek and Roman education, and Paul.

               Her latest book, which we’ll talk about at length today, is Trust in Atonement. And the class that we dreamed up together and co taught in the fall was called “Ideas of Salvation in Early Christianity.” So lots of fun things there and much to discuss. Much to discuss. 

B:            Much to discuss. I bet she has several Chapell Roan outfits ready to go. 

H:           Another failing. Not on her part, on my part. 

B:            Enjoy. 

               Hi. I’m Brandon Nappi. 

H:           Hi. I’m Hannah Black, and we’re your hosts on the Leader’s Way podcast. 

B:            A Yale podcast empowering leaders, cultivating spirituality, and exploring theology. 

H:           This podcast is brought to you by Berkeley Divinity School, The Episcopal Seminary at Yale.

               Hello, professor Theresa Morgan, and welcome to the Leader’s Way podcast. 

B:            Welcome. 

Teresa Morgan:     Hello, Hannah. Hello, Brandon. How nice to see you both.

H:           Thank you for being here. I’ve been looking forward to this ever since we were teaching our class together last semester, and listeners who have been along for the ride will remember that I did probably a lot of reflecting on our teaching and conversations we were having in class. 

T:            I’ll have to catch up with that. It was a lot of fun. It was a good time to teach together.

B:            I have committed about ten hours of research to preparing for this conversation. 

H:           Wow. That’s all I’ll say. Wow. What? 

B:            The fruit the fruit of my labors will be manifest later in the show. 

H:           Wow. Okay. Okay. Can’t wait for that.

T:            Wow. Listening for that. 

H:           Well, let’s kind of rewind before we get to the present.

               Most of your or a large portion of your work has been to do with the Greek word, pistis. And I think if we talk about faith, trust, not pixie dust, for a little bit, that will frame our conversation about we’ll get to salvation a little bit a little bit later. Okay. Could you tell us what is pistis? 

T:            Yes. So, quite a lot of my work, not all of it, but quite a bit of it in the last decade and a bit now has been on Greek pistis, Latin, fides. That’s a word which might be familiar, more familiar to some people than than Greek pistis. They are very, very similar in their range of meanings in the ancient world. So, I started life as a classicist before I moved into biblical studies and theology and other things. So as an ancient historian, I have always been interested in ancient ethics and the language of ancient ethics.

               And that’s how, I came by studying Greek pistis and Latin fides in the world of the early Roman Empire. It came out of previous work I’ve done on Greek and Roman popular morality, actually. But anyway, back in about, 2012/13 I was interested in this concept and practice of pistis and fides. And in the world of the early Roman Empire in general, and this is not coincidentally the world out of which Christianity emerges, pistis is centrally trust, trustworthiness, faithfulness, good faith, important legal concept. 

               And so it has a range of sort of relational meanings. But are also terms with, a very elastic kind of range of further meanings. So, pistis can be a trust or a trusteeship in law. In a commercial concept, it can mean credit. In philosophy, it can mean a proof. In philosophy, it can also mean belief, which it becomes important to Christians. And it can refer to the token, the token of trust that imperial messengers would carry around the Roman Empire, you know, to prove they were on the emperor’s business. Very elastic term. 

               And so I did a study that was a kind of a deep dive into the way that pistis and fides are thought about and work in the world of the Roman Empire. And as part of that, I was interested in early Christianity because pistis and fides are the terms which, in a Christian context, we come to translate “faith” or “belief.” But of course, faith and belief are a bit different from trust. And in particular, faith is a rather richer concept than trust. And it might include confidence, hope, obedience, knowledge of God, the eyes of faith, the leap of faith, church going. It might include a whole load of other things. So, I was interested in how this concept works in general in the Roman world and how it got from meaning Roman trust to meaning Christian faith, really. And so that was my starting point. And my finding in the very first book I wrote on this, which was called Roman Faith and Christian Faith, it came out back in 2015. My first finding was that among very early Christians in our earliest sources for about the first fifty, seventy years of Christian history, pistis and fides meant for Christians very much what they meant for everybody else. So for very early Christians, when they talk about pistis towards God or towards Christ, they mean above all trust in God and Christ, faithfulness to God and Christ, sometimes even the faithfulness or the trustworthiness of God or Christ to people. You know, it’s a two-way relationship because trust is a two way relationship, you know.

               So for very early Christians, pistis above all is, that cluster of relationships around trust, faithfulness, trustworthiness. Not so much the good faith meaning, but entrustedness is a meaning. God entrusts people with work to do in the world. That’s an idea that quickly becomes quite important to early Christians. And then since then, I have become interested in how early Christians got from there, sortof to add increasing meanings to pistis language so that it comes to mean belief very importantly. 

               So for very early Christians, for sure, thought that, they believed things about God and about Christ, about salvation, and about, the future and future hope and so on. They believed things and they occasionally used pistis language to talk about their beliefs. But it was more common to use knowing and thinking language to talk about belief in very early Christianity. And the pistis lexicon was more the trust side of things. But as you go, as Christianity develops, Pistis comes to a belief more and more often too. So that’s a whole kind of development there. But that’s  the starting point. This idea that Pistis language is trust, trustworthiness, faithfulness, entrustedness language for Christians. As well as for everybody else in that world.

H:           And it’s a lot … that early Christian conception of faith or trust or belief, it’s all a lot thicker than what we might think post-enlightenment when we talk about faith. And we might assume that that means something more like intellectual assent. 

T:            Yes. 

H:           But actually, there’s so much more wrapped up in faith in God and what that would mean in the New Testament. 

T:            Yeah. It’s very relational. It’s very much about a whole life commitment. So for someone like Paul, you believe things and on that basis, you commit your life and … 

H:           You don’t just think it. It affects your actions, your … 

T:            Yeah. It affects your emotions, your all your relationships and all your actions. So it is a very whole life kind of word. 

B:            Yeah. Can you say more about the bi-directionality? I’m really interested in in hearing your reflection there that it’s not just that I have trust in God, but there’s also an invitation from God to be trustworthy. Do I hear that that pistis works in in both of those directions? 

T:            It does. Pistis as a term is what is known in philology or linguistics as an action nominal. And that means, a term … a kind of two-ended term. So if I trust you, it is always because I hope that you are trustworthy to me. It’s implied. If I am faithful to you, it’s because I think you are worthy of my faith. You have a … so it’s always as a relational term, it’s always two ended as it were. And, God is sometimes called “pistos” both in the Hebrew bible and the new or the Septuagint, the Greek version of the ancient Hebrew, Jewish bible, and in the New Testament and in early Christian writings. And so the faithfulness or the trustworthiness of God is a concept that is there as the ground of Christian trust in God Yeah. From the beginning. 

H:           And that’s different from asking God to do something nice for you and sitting back and 

B:            Yeah. Yeah. Hannah, you’re, intuiting I think … 

H:           I see the wheels turning. 

B:            … A kind of oh, I don’t know, frustration or critique of a lot of popular spiritual writing that might invite trust. Understandably, right? I wanna trust God, but it’s usually in order to get something, to get success, my dream, money. 

T:            Well, well, I’ll say two things about that. One is, you’re so right. About thirty years ago, psychologists, social psychologists got very interested in trust. And there were a whole series of studies published on trust in God. Christian and also a few Jewish studies of Jewish trust in God, very occasionally Muslim trust in God got in there as well. But they were mostly studies of Christian trust in God. And it was very evident in the way that those studies were framed that the authors had kind of sat in their offices and thought, what do I think trust in God means? And so they’d asked they asked people questions like, “Do I trust God to find me a parking space? And do I trust God to make sure that my family are never ill?” And it was exactly that very kind of transactional relationship, which from which you conclude that maybe more people of faith should have been consulted in the framing of ethics.

            But that said, actually, there is a more serious side to this because philosophers talk about trust in three slightly different ways. They talk about one place, two place, and three place trust, moral philosophers. One place trust is a sort of generally trusting attitude to the world, an attitude to the world which says, I’m … I think on the whole people are more likely to be trustworthy than not. Two place trust is a relationship of trust with another person, which is a thing which you have for its own sake as part of the relationship. So, you know, it’s not … it doesn’t want anything. It simply is there for the sake of the relationship. But there is also three place trust in which I trust you for something. I trust you to buy milk on the way home from work or I trust … Now, both two and three place trust, I think we can see as being part of humanity’s trust relationship with God and with Christ. Because we trust God and we trust Christ simply because we believe in them, because we love them, because they are part of our lives.

            But it’s also possible to trust in God for salvation for instance, or for future … some future hope, you know, for the for the hope of glory say. So actually three place trust is not necessarily out of place in Christianity. There is a a place for trusting God for something at the end time perhaps, but maybe not so much for a parking space. 

H:        Yeah. Well, this may kind of lead us into a more atonement/salvation space. But what does that reciprocated trust look like? If I were going through life praying for parking spaces and sort of imagining that trust goes one way. What puzzle piece is missing? 

H:        I think the puzzle is a very good way of putting it. I think the puzzle piece that is missing there is the relationship for its own sake. Because I can trust the baker in the local market to give me a loaf of bread if I give them, you know, $5 or whatever. And that is a genuine trust relationship, but it’s not a very thick one. It’s a very transactional one. It’s very limited. And I might not trust the baker for anything else. Right. But I’ll trust them to hand over a loaf of bread when I, you know, give them $5. That’s fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t capture the way that we think about God as people of faith.

            We think about that as a whole life relationship and a whole life commitment, like the most important relationships in our own lives. So, you know, we don’t have relationships with our partners and our children and our parents just for the sake of getting a parking space, just for the sake of what we can get out of it, you know. What we can get–what things we get out of it, you know, are a are a small part of the whole of that relationship. But the whole of that relationship is really a life-changing, life-grounding, life-framing relationship in its own right.

And that’s the difference between the kind of trust that we have in God out of which we hope for salvation, let’s say. 

H:        Let me ask kind of like a … I don’t know, question that people might be having as they’re listening. And that’s how–and tell me if this question itself is a categorical error, but how can God trust in humanity if humanity is broken and fallen and fumbling at best. 

T:        Yeah. That relates to the question, why God might think that humanity is savable at all. 

H:        In the first place. Yeah. Yeah. 

T:        And the question whether we believe that humanity is all bad. Humanity may be fallen but still not all bad as it were. So my model of atonement has an optimistic element to it, which is that, although humanity is … has in many ways alienated itself from God, in many ways is not what we could be, what we would hope to be for ourselves, and certainly not what God would hope us to be, still we are not all bad. And I think there is theological warrant for that in the visibly good things about life that human beings can love and love disinterestedly for the sake of other people.

            They can be altruistic. They can care for the sake of other people. They can be heroic in kindness, in defense of other people. You know, that–I think we can point to quite a lot of, ways in which human beings are not irredeemably bad. And so the way that I put it in a book I wrote called The New Testament and The Theology of Trust is that God puts what, again, philosophers call therapeutic trust in people.

            And that means that God kind of takes a gamble on people being able to respond. Therapeutic trust is the kind of trust you put in your teenage children. When you go away for the weekend and you say, “I’m trusting you not to have a huge party and trash the house.” Now, you know that there is a possibility. 

B:        Small party, messy house.

T:        And that they will, yeah, slightly not fulfill your trust. But you do it to show them that trust is an important thing, that it’s part of being an adult. And you do it in the hope that if they do have a small party and make a bit of a mess, next time they will kind of know better. They will get why trust matters and why stepping up to trust matters in in adult relations. And I think I suggest that that God, as it were, sees that humanity is basically a good kid. You know, that there is hope for us. Uh-huh. That we have good qualities despite not being perfect by a very long chalk. And what I am suggesting in my model is that God sends Christ into the world trusting Christ in the human person of Jesus to be able to make contact with humanity on God’s behalf as it were. And trusting humanity to be able to see that God is in Christ. Reconciling the world to himself, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17. You know, that’s a wonderfully resonant phrase, the kind of model that I’m developing really. 

            And so God through Christ reaches out to us in trust, hoping that we will respond with trust. And one thing that I quite like about that model is that God is not simply doing something to us against our will, not simply doing something to us without our knowledge. But he’s inviting us into relationship. And that to me is very fundamental about what the Christian understanding of the we talked about the divine human relationship for a reason. It’s a relationship. It’s not something that’s imposed on us. It’s something into which we are invited. And that’s … so my model depends on that, really. And a trust-based model depends on that idea, really. 

B:        I’m gonna put my twenty first century nihilist hat on. Right? It’s almost crushing me under its weight. And …

T:        I’m very worried for you.

B:        Everything is broken. Nothing can be trusted. I mean, truth claims have fallen by the wayside. And so on the one hand, one could say, “Well, Professor Morgan, this is all very quaint and very first-century, but we live in a world where it’s quite clear nothing can be trusted.” Is there any … is there any response? 

T:        Is there anything we could say about? Okay. I would say two things about that. One is that the first century was at least as much such a world as this is. 

H:        That was my first thought. I was like, oh, the quaint first century, oh no. 

T:        Yes. A right view of the first century. The first century was a world in which, the world of the Mediterranean in the Near East under Roman rule was trying to emerge from a brutal Mediterranean wild Roman civil war and a series of brutal takeovers by the Roman state of other states. So a series of wars both internal and between states, that had overtaken, in some ways, broken societies. And one of the reasons I suspect that Christianity emerges so powerfully into this world is that this is a world where trust is actually very difficult. And there’s a lot of talk about whether you can trust anybody and how you can trust it, on what terms you can trust anybody, what you have to do to ensure that you can trust anybody. There’s a lot of that kind of talk around in this world. And Christians say, you can trust God and you will not be disappointed. And they live it out. They live it out in a way that impresses people profoundly, I think. So Christianity has been tried and tested in times and places where trust has been extraordinarily difficult, in the world around them. 

            It’s also true that, you know, one of those times is probably the present. This is a time when trust is at issue. I don’t agree with you that nothing can, nobody can be trusted. What really strikes me about the world that we live in is that people want to trust and they do trust all the time. What is, I think, is going on in much public life and discourse around us at the moment is that people are not sure what and who to trust. It’s not that they don’t trust anyone. Actually, what happens is that trust–people put trust in people and things arguably a bit randomly.

H:        And it gets broken. 

T:        You know, because they don’t quite know who or what they can trust. So they just say, okay, I’m gonna trust this person.  Okay, I’m gonna trust this thing. You know? So it’s not I I don’t think we feel that nothing and nobody can be trusted. I feel that we’re not sure how to assess where we should trust, but we feel overwhelmingly that we have to trust somebody and something, and we do. You know, the worry to me is how we grapple with the very complex environment in which we live. Not least with, you know, the complexity of modern technology in such a way as to kind of have some sense of our trust being well-founded. You know? That’s I think that’s the big issue. The big issue is not that there’s nothing trustworthy out there. And in fact, in all our small immediate everyday lives and relationships, I think trust is as possible as ever happening. It’s the big public world that’s problematic. 

H:        I can imagine who I would want by my side in the apocalypse. It’s just that I feel there’s an apocalypse coming. 

T:        Well I don’t know if this is the good news or not, but there’s always been an apocalypse coming.

B:        That’s right. That’s right. 

T:        One form or another. 

H:        This is why we need our first century vision Right. In the room.

T:        But those of us who, you know, who, follow in the now two thousand years of Christian faith think that Christian faith has met the challenges of the world in some ways very powerfully. 

H:        Let me ask a follow-up question about kind of being a Christian in the world. Does the semantic range of pistis in Christ or in God … it seems like that involves faith, it involves trust. Does it also involve faithfulness? Does it go that far or does that suggest?

T:        Absolutely it does. That is a very common meaning of that language in the first century, and it is a very common meaning of that language among Christians, and it still is today. I mean, there are churches, the Catholic church is a good example of this, in which Christians are still called “the faithful.” And from the earliest days, Christians’ name for themselves was either “hoi pistuentes” which means the trusting or the faithful or “hoi pistoi” which means the faithful or the trustworthy actually, but probably in this case, the faithful. So the faithful is actually Christians’ own earliest name for themselves and it is still the name that some churches use for worshipers. And that is because faithfulness is really a central part of trusting God and in Christ. And I think it … what the good thing about faithfulness is that, it has the implication of, on-goingness. It goes on through time. And so it’s not just an act, it’s not just a moment, it’s a thing that you do continuously. And I think that is an important part. 

H:        It brings to mind just kind of like plodding along through life.  

T:        Even when it’s hard. 

H:        And kind of I think what helps me with the issue of fallen human nature because the faithful can actually make mistakes and still get up the next day and be faithful. 

T:        And, writers from Paul talk about growing in faith, strengthening your faith. Right. It’s a thing that can be a bit rocky. It can ebb and flow a bit, without failing completely or it can fail and come back and, you know, you can have another chance at it. And I think the other thing, that is important about the idea of faithfulness as opposed to trust is that it’s a word which is often associated with action. And I think this is an important thing about the whole pistis complex. It can be an emotion trust. It can be an attitude of mind. It can be an action. And sometimes our attitude, our confidence, our feeling of trust or our attitude of trust can waver, but we can go on acting faithfully. And that might be okay, you know, because in this world, it’s a process. Faith is a process like most things are in this life. And sometimes you don’t feel the faith. But you can go on acting faithfully and .that can be …

H:        You can be kind and generous and virtuous. 

T:        Yep. And that can be a real form of faith of trusting God. 

B:        I wonder where the cross fits in to this theology. I mean, as I was hear hearing you reflect, I thought, wow, God is really taking a risk on us knowing that we will inevitably fail. It is … 

T:        Well, we might fail a bit. But, you know, God hopes, I think, that in the end we will come good. I’m pretty sure this is the idea.

B:        Yeah. So where is the … cross in this? 

T:         Where is the cross in it? This is a very interesting question. Back in 2022, I published a book called The New Testament and The Theology of Trust. And in that book, I argued that, that New Testament texts in particular show the importance of trust in absolutely every aspect of our relationship with God and Christ, including Christ’s preexistence and earthly life and teaching and death and resurrection and exalted life. All of it, is about trust in different ways. And I then I and then I kinda … there was a chapter in that book which was about the cross and about where trust is in the crucifixion. And then I thought, actually, I think that needs a bit more thinking about because especially in Western tradition and especially in Western reformed traditions to which I belong, I’m an Anglican or an Episcopalian, the cross is so central.

            So I went on to write a book called Trust and Atonement, which is all about the cross. Really to try to explain a little bit more where trust is in relation to the cross. Now I think I still think that atonement is actually… it actually encompasses everything to do with God’s outreach to us in Christ, and therefore everything to do with the preexistence and the life and the death and the exalted life of Christ. But I think especially if you belong to a reformed tradition, you want to have some kind of account of the relationship between trust and cross. And there is warrant for this because, particularly in the letters of Paul. So this book, it really develops its argument out of Paul. Paul uses pistis language a lot. And there are three big passages in Paul, in Romans 3, Galatians 2, and Philippians 3, where he which are the passages where he is talking in the most detail about, as it were, how he thinks salvation through the cross works. These are really key passages. And all of these passages talk about– use a phrase called pistis Christou at least once. A phrase about … which is much discussed by New Testament scholars.

H:        That’s what my giggle was. Years of Greek are going through—years of Greek class.

B:        So much excitement happening here in the studio. 

T:        There’s a lot of … there’s a lot of debate about this phrase. Since my first book, Roman Faith, I have argued that–so there are two, there are broadly speaking two dominant views of the meaning of Pistos Christou; either it means our faith in Christ or trust in Christ maybe, or belief in Christ. Or it means the faithfulness of Christ to God. And it is completely unclear from the grammar. It could be either of those things from the grammar, absolutely interchangeably. And it is not at all clear from the context. You can make a good case you make a good case for both in context in all these important passages. Now I have suggested a kind of a third way, which is that both of those are true. And this relates relies on the idea that we talked about a minute ago of pistis as an action nominal. It’s a two ended relationship. So what I have suggested is that, in all these passages, Paul draws on an idea which is very characteristic of him elsewhere which is that Christ is a mediator between God and humanity. Christ is the reconciler between God and humanity. And what that means is that there is a trust relationship between God and Christ, and that’s the faithfulness of Christ and God kind of pistis. And there is a trust relationship between Christ and humanity that is expressed especially in our trust in Christ. And it is because Christ has that–is at the center of that double nexus of trust, that it is possible–he makes it possible for us to be reconciled with God. 

            And I draw there not only on the way that Paul uses this language but also on the way that this language is used in the wider Greek-speaking world at the time. Because pistis is the quality of ambassadors and, mediators in law and mediators in commercial con–anybody who is doing a deal between two other people who have fallen out or who need to be got together in some way. They have to be they said all the time they have to be pistos. They have to be trust they have to trust and be trusted by both partners in order to do the deal that brings the partners together. Okay? So what I’m suggesting is that that’s Paul’s model and that’s why he talks about -istis language, the pistis Christou in both senses of God’s relationship with Christ and Christ’s relationship with us. So, that, that doesn’t in itself explain the cross. Now Paul uses this language in relation to the cross. But you could–that that could be true, that–

H:        The Christ events. 

T:        In every part of the Christ event. 

H:        The life, the miracles, the resurrection, the ascension. 

T:        What I’m suggesting about the cross is effectively that the cross is a symbol of the worst–it’ss an actual instance, but also a symbol of the worst that humanity can do to itself and to God. To it’s an expression, an epitome of the worst of human evil and sin, injustice, cruelty, you know, gratuitous evil, really. And–but that even on the cross, God and Christ are saying to humanity, there is nothing that you can do that will stop us from putting our trust in you. There is nothing that you can do that will alienate you from God permanently. And so the cross becomes a space. It becomes a place where God, through Christ, is offering trust to humanity even at its worst moment, even when it is as evil as humanity can be and saying, all you have to do is respond. All you have to do is take a step towards the outreached hand, as it were, of God through Christ on the cross. And that can be the beginning of renewed trust and the beginning of the healing of the relationship. 

            Now in that model, I am saying that humanity has to respond to God’s trust. So there are many models of atonement as you know very well and as Hannah and I have been teaching the good students of, of Yale Divinity School. There are many models of atonement. Some of them say that God does something for us before we know it, before we respond, you know, and we are changed before we do anything. And some of them say, actually, humanity has to respond. And my model is in the humanity has to respond camp. So, and that’s a choice that models of atonement have to make, and some take one route and some take another. But my model is that God reaches out to us whatever, however, disastrously evil we become. And that if we’re willing to take even the smallest step in response, there is the beginning of the basis for renewed trust. And that that’s what the cross … that’s what the cross represents. 

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H:        The conference includes plenty of time for making new friends, live bluegrass music, and an outdoor Louisville barbecue. Register at livingchurch.org/events or head to the show notes and click on the link. 

H:        I have kind of an academic follow-up question, but then a larger church follow-up question. The academic question is, do you view yourself as in alignment with Kathy Tanner’s bit in Christ the Key on this? That’s what I was hearing. And that’s the whole question. My ecclesial question is, you’re a priest and a preacher as well as a professor. Has articulating this Pauline trust model of the atonement affected the way you’ve preached at all or … yet?

T:        Yeah. I’ll tell you the thing that I’ve most noticed. Since I started working on pistis and fides and started thinking about it as trust, and all my congregations have heard me talk about trust quite a lot at this point. The thing that I find most striking, the thing I hear most often is members of my congregations say often say they struggle with what to believe. They struggle with belief. Christian belief is quite a high bar, you know. And people say to me sometimes, I’m I worry about saying the creed in church. I know it’s complicated. I know it has a history. I know in some ways that the clauses were framed the way they are … in a certain historical situation, I kind of know that, but I don’t know very much about it. And I don’t I don’t feel very comfortable saying some of the things, and I don’t really know whether it’s okay for me to say them or not.

            And that’s because the belief aspect of pistis has become so much more important to us than it was in the fifth century. So much–central. I mean, it’s become central. It’s become a deal breaker. Pistis as belief has become a deal breaker.

H:        Totally. My kind of spirituality growing up was like that was the main thing. And you should go around, like, explaining logically to people of other faiths why, No, this this set of things is the correct one.  It’s sort of like sign it and that’s your ticket to heaven. Like, it’s all just about thinking the right thing. 

T:        Thinking the right thing. And that idea that pistis means belief above all and thinking about the right that thinking the right thing is the deal maker and the deal-breaker for faith. That is the legacy of the Council of Nicaea, of which we celebrate a big anniversary this year. Very anniversary. However, that aside, which also created the Nicene Creed, which we say in church. And therefore, it’s not stupid that people connect belief with the Nicene Creed. And as you say, it is a really …  it’s a really important part of the way that many of us are taught or brought up to think about Christianity. But people worry about it. People worry about whether, you know, whether they believe enough or sincerely enough or whether they really quite believe the right things. You know? 

            And so I sometimes say to people, okay. Belief is a complicated thing, but would you be able to say that you trust God? Would you feel able to say that you put your trust in Jesus Christ? And I have so many times had someone say, “Oh, yeah. I think I could say that.” You know? And I say, “Would you say that you are trying to be faithful to Jesus Christ in your life?” And people say, “Oh, yeah. Yeah. That’s absolutely what I’m trying to do.” And then, you know, and then I tend to say that “I think you’re probably okay.” 

H:        It’s all kindof the same. Yeah. 

T:        It’s … so if you think about, the relationship of trust and faithfulness as really the root of faith as the deal maker. Maybe–it’s not that belief is not involved, but it’s that trust is the life-changing relationship of trust, is really the heart of it. A lot of my congregations feel that that they can say, “Yes. I trust. Yes. I have faith. Yes, I want to be faithful.” Even when they’re struggling with the specific content of belief. And I’m all for people going on struggling with the specific content of belief. You know, I also try to teach them about that. 

H:        We’ve made an occupation out of it, sort of. 

T:        Absolutely. It’s very important to all of us. But … but for very early Christians, the thing that got you saved, the thing that got you into a saving relationship with God and with Christ was the relational aspect, the trust and the faithfulness. And I think to return to that is quite helpful for a lot of the people I preach to.

H:        Yes. Gosh. Yeah.

B:        Professor Morgan, I’m curious about, your students who come to you here at Yale Divinity School, or parishioners in the in the summers when you go back home. Is there a kind of misconception around trust, that’s generalizable? Do people come needing to kind of unpack or let go of certain typical misconceptions around trust? 

T:        That’s really interesting. I don’t think I have had a conversation with somebody that specifically focused on that. But if there is a an aspect of trust that would worry me, you know, that I … that I can imagine might come up, it would be that people think that trust should be …  or doesn’t need to be based on anything. So, the idea of the “leap of faith.” That you believe not only because you know, not only–not only not being able to be totally certain, but actually perhaps positively because you can’t be certain.

            That interestingly is a later than a development than my world, the ancient world. I think that’s a medieval development in Christianity. That’s quite a late development. Paul or the author of Mark’s gospel or any early Christian writer that we know of, they didn’t think that their trust was a total leap in the dark. Now, Origen has a very good way of putting this in his, his big book against Celsius.

B:        Love me some Origen.

T:        He says, when we trust, we take a risk. When we trust in God, we take a risk. But it’s the kind of risk that a farmer takes when he sows seeds or a merchant takes when he goes to sea. It’s not it doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s not based on nothing. It’s based on our sense of the world. It’s based, for origin, it’s based on our whole sense that we live in a world where you can trust things, where, he has an experience that God is trustworthy, that people can be trustworthy. You know, that it’s not random. So I think that’s something that I can– that’s a conversation I can imagine one might have with people sometimes that, putting your trust in God, it’s not random.

It’s based on a sense of … it’s based on a kind of a very broad sense of the world, really, of of kind of grounds for hope for the world, really, apart from anything else. 

H:        I was just telling Brandon this concept blew my mind as an undergraduate at Biola. We were learning Pentateuch. And there’s a pattern in the biblical narrative, which I would say extends into the New Testament, where God doesn’t ever ask people to just blindly put their faith in God. First, God parts the Red Seas or delivers them from slavery or gives them Ten Commandments, revelation. You know, there’s always a burning bush … 

T:        Sends a sign to Abraham. Yep. 

H: Something that demonstrates to the people that God is trustworthy and then there’s an invitation to enter into this covenant relationship of trusting and being trusting. 

T:        It’s a very it’s a very persistent pattern in the Hebrew Bible. It’s very interesting. 

H:        So why would we expect anything Yeah. Different? 

T:        And, yes, I think that’s right. And I think that is a that’s kind of part of the logic of the incarnation. Yeah. Absolutely. With us. You know, Emmanuel, God with us.  God in the person of Jesus … experienceable as God with us. You know? And New Testament writers, early Christian writers say again and again, there is something about Christ that is experienceable as God with us unless you are positively perverse or, you know, there are various reasons canvassed why some people can’t see it. But the idea is that it is, you know, God in Christ is detectable and that there are things in the world that that lead you to trust in God.

H:        Fabulous. 

B:        I’ve so enjoyed this. And you have something up your sleeve. 

T:        That’s exciting.

B:        I do indeed. I mean, I’m sitting here with two very, August scholars with resumes as long as a marathon. But there is one gaping hole in both of your resumes. Despite Oxford and Cambridge and Yale. And that is a victory in the “Gregory or Gregory Trivia Contest” that I have created. 

T:        Well, Hannah is a scholar of Gregory of Nyssa and the Cappadocians in general. Somebody is gonna have a great advantage here.

B:        Right. So … no pressure. So we’re playing a game which I’m calling “Gregory or Gregory.” 

H:        Okay.  Who’s the other Gregory? 

B:        Well, that’s the question. 

H:        Okay.

T:        I see. 

B:        So I will ask a question and you’ll both be team members. Okay. 

T:        Oh, well, that’s alright. If I can be on her side, that’s fine–I just … I don’t wanna play against her in anything to do with any Gregory.

B:        Okay. And so there’s two steps to each of these questions. The first question is to simply guess if this is Gregory of Nyssa or not. And you get one point. If you get that part of the question correct. And then if you can guess, if it’s not Gregory of Nyssa, which Gregory, in fact, you get 10 points. 

H:        Oh, It’s a multi Gregory scenario.

T:        Oh, this is very complicated. 

B:        It is. There are more Gregory’s than anyone could imagine. 

H:        So this is all the homework Brandon was doing for this. 

B:        This was ten hours of research, and it was an utter delight. 

T:        Well, I’m sure it was very improving, and let’s give it a shot.

B:        Okay. Question number one: Which Gregory said this: “The proof of love is in the works. Where love exists, it works great things.”

H:        I mean, it doesn’t sound like it’s not Gregory of Nyssa. 

T:        No. I was just thinking that it sounds very compatible with Gregory of Nyssa to me. 

H:        Right? We were talking about faith and works earlier. The fruits of love is in the works. Faith without works is dead, etcetera etcetera. But is he being sly?

B:        I’ve designed a hard game. But it’s … 

T:        It’s a good quote. It’s … it sounds not at all unlike Gregory. I think I might tentatively go Nyssa. 

H:        But … I think we should go Gregory of Nissa.

B:        Okay. This is Pope Gregory. Not Gregory of Nyssa. 

T:        Thanks. Well, I would just like to point out that it’s a very good chance that Gregory the Great was drawing on his knowledge … 

H:        Is he quoting Gregory of Nyssa?

T:        I was gonna also say it’s not un-Augustinian, and that would be because August– because Augustine also knows a bit about Gregory of Nyssa. 

H:        That’s very true. 

T:        I mean, he’s influenced. 

B:        I think we should perhaps assign you a half-a-point for that, Professor Morgan.

T:        For sophistry. 

H:         For round two I’ll bring a keener ear. 

B:        Question number two. “The universe, she’s wounded, but she’s still got infinity inside of her.”

H:        Gosh. That … now I’m just suspicious. So I wanna say no. But, of course, there’s this whole microcosm thing going on potentially. 

T:        Why is the universe female? 

B:        Why is the universe female?

T:        In Greek, it’s normally male. 

H:        It’s a different Gregory. 

T:        That’s … that’s doesn’t sound like a Greek-speaking Gregory to me. 

H:        I love it. Okay. What Gregory would it be? 

T:        What Gregory I dread to imagine. Well, should we should we take a first step and risk that it’s not Gregory of Nyssa?

B:        Yeah. Correct. One point. Okay. Now take a guess. And I’ve drawn from sources outside the Christian tradition as well to make it maximally difficult. 

T:        Well, I can’t think of any Gregorys, apart from Gregory the Great and Gregory Nazianzus. 

H:        Is Palomas a Gregory? 

B:        Yep. The problem is you’re both way too scholarly and nerdy.

T:        We’re too early, aren’t we? 

B:        This is my very favorite artist. 

T:        This is somebody modern. I’ll say it sounds it sounds modern to me. 

H:        It sounds like some kind of music … 

B:        It’s my very favorite artist right now. Got me through the pandemic. 

H:        Gregory Allen … 

B:        Gregory Allen Isakoff! Ten points! Taking you to 11 and a half points. 

T:        You could have asked me until I was dead and I wouldn’t have gotten that.

H:        11 and a half points. 

B:         Question number three. “Grace is given not to them who speak their faith, but to those who live their faith.”

H:        Grace sounds to me like we’re post Aquinas or at least …

T:        Well, it’s a … it’s not a … it doesn’t sound to me like a very ancient distinction in relation to grace. 

H:        That’s the thing. Grace being given, we’re past … we’re like mideival … 

T:        It sounds like an odd configuration of terms for an ancient world to be, so I’m going non Nyssa. 

H:        Medieval or contemporary or something. Not Nyssa. 

B:        Interesting. Okay. Now, I’m doubting myself. But, the answer is … 

T:        We’re doubting you, frankly. 

B:        The real answer is Gregory of Nazianzus.

T:        Really? Oh.

B:        It could be a translation issue though, couldn’t it? I mean, I did not consult original texts. 

T:        Well, I would look into that because it’s an odd phrase. And I’m gonna stick with that until we’re off air. 

B:        Question three is pending. 

H:        Somehow, Brandon is losing points. 

B:        I’ve lost points. Okay. Question number four. “Concepts create idols, only wonder comprehends anything.”

T:        Oh, that could be Nyssa. 

B:        “People Kill one another over idols. Wonder makes us fall to our knees.”

T:        Yeah. I hope … I’m not so sure about the second half. The first half sounded quite Nyssa to me. But I’m going to defer to you. 

H:        At some point it’s gotta be Nyssa. Right? So based on my testing skills … I wanna say Nyssa, and I’m gonna say it’s in the Homilies on the Song of Songs. 

B:        You are correct. I don’t have a citation. But I trust the Gregory of Nyssa scholar.

T:        Very good. Well done, Dr. Black.

H;        Air high five.

B:        Twenty-one and a half points.

T:        Is that good in this game? 

H:        I’m starting to think this might be harder than the work we’ve done at Cambridge Oxford and Yale. 

B:        Okay. Number five. “I want to be defined by the things I love, not the things I hate.”

T:        Well, that doesn’t sound ancient. 

H:        No. 

T:        Desire to be defined by things sounds a very modern idea to me. 

B:        It’s a trick question. I’ll give you a hint. 

H:        Your desire can form you … in an Augustinian way. But defined sounds …

T:        “I don’t want to be defined”–That’s an awfully contemporary phrase, isn’t it? So I’m going somebody contemporary. 

H:        Yeah. Like, Gregory …

B:        So I’ll give you a hint. It’s a trick question.

T:        Well, that’s very unfair. How do you have a trick question? 

B:        So you’ve answered the first part correct. It is not …. Because it’s modern. 

H:        Is it not a Gregory? Is that the trick? 

B:        Mmmhmmm. There’s the trick. So now make a guess. “I want to be defined by the things I love, not the things I hate.”

T:        Oh, I haven’t the faintest idea. It could be anybody. You have … Sounds like a pop star.

That sounds to me like a particularly shallow observation, so it’s probably a pop star.

B:        Now, combine this great insight from Professor Morgan with what you know about me. 

H:        Is the pop star not named Gregory? Taylor Swift.

B:        Taylor Swift it is. And finally, well done. 

T:;       Whose Little known middle name is Gregory.

H:         Taylor Gregory Swift.

B:        She has an uncle Gregory, I bet. 

            “He who beholds that which is invisible and ineffable sees in himself what he desires.

He becomes at once the lover and the beloved and knows himself to be fulfilled in the search.”

H:        Fulfilled in the search? What are you thinking? 

T:        Interesting. Well … 

H:        It’s not an immediate no from me. 

T:        No. No. It’s got … it’s not without a slight medieval feeling, but it could be Gregory of Nyssa. It could be. Could it be another … I mean, if it were … could it be another bit from the Song of Songs? 

H:        Give us the quote again. 

B:        “He who beholds that which is invisible and ineffable sees in himself what he desires. He becomes at once the lover and the beloved and knows himself to be fulfilled in the search.”

T:        It does sound like somebody’s commentary on the Song of Songs. I don’t immediately recognize it … 

H:        Nor do I. But invisible … That’s …

T:        But it’s if it’s not Gregory, it is very much in that tradition would be my  …

H:        Right? It’s like Bernard of Clerveaux or something? Yeah. So I think we should go with Gregory of Nyssa. 

T:        Okay. Let’s go with that.

B:        When in doubt, go with Gregory of Nyssa. And you have both won with a total of 42.5 points. The CV has gotten longer and more prestigious, Professor Morgan. 

T:        Well, I’m very relieved. That was very good quiz. 

H:        I can’t think of a better finale to this conversation. Thank you, Brandon.

T:        Thank you very much. There was a lot of work in that. I’m most impressed and slightly mortified. 

B:        That was a blast.

H:        Thanks for listening to the Leaders Way podcast. You can learn more about this episode at berkleydivinity.yale.edu/podcast. Follow along with us on Instagram at theleadersway dot podcast. 

B:        And you can rate and review us on your podcast app and be sure to hit follow so you never miss an episode. And if you liked this episode, please share it with a friend. 

H:        Until next time.

B:        Peace be with you.