Keeping Faith: Eric Gregory

The following is the final installment of “Keeping Faith,” a six-part series of conversations between politics professor Robert George and University professors of various faiths.

Eric Gregory is a religion professor and a Reformed Protestant. His research includes religious and philosophical ethics.

Robert George: Eric, were you born into a Christian family or did you come to Christian faith later in life?

Eric Gregory: I was born into a Christian family. My grandfather was a Baptist minister in New England and also a philosophy professor. However, my father left the church when I was very young. So I was raised in a mixed home, in the sense that my mother is a Christian and my father is not.

Growing up as a Baptist, a strong emphasis is placed on appropriating faith as one’s own. That is something that happened as I grew up.

RG: When you say “appropriating faith as one’s own,” is that the kind of thing that Evangelicals refer to as a “born again” experience or a “moment of decision,” as Billy Graham calls it?

EG: Yes, the tradition in which I was raised has a strong accent on a moment of decision when one embraces the faith, both as a way of life and set of beliefs.

RG: When did you do that?

EG: Well, retrospectively, it is difficult to say. But certainly faith became more important to me in my adolescence as I began to explore it on my own terms.

RG: Did you have a period during which you deeply questioned the faith? Did you wrestle with the question of whether the basic Christian claims are true?

EG: I confess I continue to have such experiences of questioning. And I think in many ways that is part of the life of faith. But I have never experienced an extreme crisis which called me to reject my theological commitments. In college I was exposed to the diversity of the Christian tradition. And, really, that was more of an existential challenge than questions raised by atheism.

So that led to a period of exploring the multiplicity of traditions in the church and realizing that the one in which I was raised was not the only one, and that the church didn’t start with Billy Graham’s crusades, missions to China in the 19th century or the religion of Roger Williams. That has led to a long journey into different aspects of the Christian faith, both historically and culturally.

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RG: Is that what introduced you to St. Augustine?

EG: I had some exposure to Augustine in college. I think I came to Augustine by reading Reinhold Niebuhr, who appropriated a lot of Augustinian thinking as a social critic. It was also in conversation with Catholic students who were friends of mine that I started to read more widely in what is called Patristic theology.

RG: “Patristic” referring to the fathers of the early church — Augustine being one.

EG: Right. And Augustine had a massive influence on the development of Protestantism. So, in some ways, it makes sense that someone who comes out of a tradition deeply influenced by Calvinism, the Reformed tradition, would be interested in a figure like Augustine, who really stands behind that tradition.

RG: Luther, as I recall, was an Augustinian monk. And I can certainly see that there are ways in which the Protestant Reformation represented a kind of radicalization of Augustine. But it’s hard to see him as a proto-Reformation figure. He wasn’t a reformer in the sense that Calvin, for example, or Luther himself or Zwingli was a reformer. Of course, like these figures, he had a strong sense of human sinfulness.

EG: I think there are multiple strands. There is the emphasis on the sovereignty of God who knows us better than we know ourselves, which is a very important theme in many Reformed traditions. B.B. Warfield, here at Princeton Theological Seminary just up the street, once said Protestantism is the triumph of Augustine’s doctrine of grace over Augustine’s doctrine of the church. Of course, that oversimplifies things a bit. In any event, it is indeed Augustine’s notion of original sin, but that can’t be understood apart from his notion of radical grace. Both of those themes have been attractive to the Protestant tradition, though in ways Augustine would reject.

RG: What is the role of grace in the life of faith? And what does it make possible from the point of view of a Christian believer?

EG: The Protestant tradition emphasizes justification by grace through faith alone. One is justified or set free from one’s sin by what Christ has done, rather than what you have done. And that is the grace of salvation.

An interesting thing has happened in recent Protestantism. It has come to not only emphasize this moment of grace, but also to talk about grace as an ongoing transformation of yourself. And this is often referred to as sanctification, which sometimes Protestants get nervous about because ...

RG: Let me guess: It sounds pretty Catholic.

EG: Yes, it sounds pretty Catholic. And it comes again from this Augustinian emphasis both on the perpetual need to live a life of virtue, both the natural virtues, but also what are called theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. Interestingly for Augustine, it’s a life of virtue that we receive rather than achieve. And that, in a nutshell, is what grace is all about. For an Augustinian Christian, what the faith is about is a holiness that one finds in friendship with God and others.

RG: Jesus is, in the Christian teaching, the one and only Savior. Would you say, as many Protestants do, that you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior?

EG: Yes, I would say that, though I worry a bit about that particular way of phrasing it. It is important not to suggest that what Christianity has to offer is simply lifting your soul out of the earth into the afterlife as a reward. I think that that is a very recent Protestant tradition, particularly within American revivalism. But for Protestant Christians, as for all Christians, what Jesus offers is a cosmic salvation of all creation through redemption. It’s not simply about individual souls. Which is why in Romans, Paul speaks about the whole of creation yearning to be set free. And this is why Christians have thought it’s important to engage culture, to try to address injustice on earth and not simply focus on one’s own spiritual liberation.

RG: In your personal journey of faith, has Augustine been your guide?

EG: Yes, but also Soren Kierkegaard and Karl Barth, who were probably the most influential Protestant theologians of the past two centuries. Plus the Bible, a lot of classic hymns and the music of Johnny Cash.

RG: Are there writers outside the Protestant tradition that you have found especially helpful?

EG: I have been reading a lot of the Desert Fathers and Henri Nouwen, a modern Catholic writer. And many of their writings, which are seen as having a more mystical dimension, have been very interesting to me. Another is Thomas Aquinas, who is often set in contrast with Augustine. But I read Aquinas as both an Augustinian and an Aristotelian.

RG: Well, Thomas saw himself that way. So you’re in good company.

EG: I thought you would say that.

RG: How about contemporary writers?

EG: Well, we live in an interesting moment, when two of the leaders of great Christian traditions, Pope Benedict and Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, are both spiritual leaders and also academics.

RG: How about Christian novelists? Do you find them helpful from a spiritual point of view?

EG: Yes. Certainly as a young Christian, the writings of Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis were all very important for me.

RG: Is there a place in your brand of Protestant Christianity for the sacramental life, or is that a distinctively Catholic thing?

EG: Something I find attractive about the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions is a sacramental view of the world, in the sense of its being charged with God’s grandeur. I think Protestantism has a place for that view, even if it doesn’t have the same teachings about the sacraments.

RG: Eric, your scholarship is mainly in the area of religious ethics and political thought. You seem to be someone who doesn’t fit neatly into any particular ethical or political category. Would you say that there’s something about the Christian faith, properly understood, that defies conventional categories?

EG: I do worry that any effort to ultimately identify the Christian faith with a particular political program or ethical theory will distort the faith, which is not to say that one never makes judgments about things.

RG: When our friend Cornel West speaks at Occupy Wall Street, he knows that he will be a cause of division — what Pope John Paul II called a “sign of contradiction.” But he thinks he has to do it because, as a Christian, he is called to give prophetic witness. I find myself in sympathy with that, however much Cornel and I may disagree about policy questions. How do you see it?

EG: I agree. Christians have a calling to be witnesses, and we always need prophetic voices to ask awkward questions to the comfortable and the powerful. But maybe in our disagreements about policy questions we also need a bit less of the aggressive rhetoric that accuses non-religious people of being immoral, or accuses religious people of being irrational.

RG: What would you say about those who stood against slavery in the 19th century, because they felt they were bound to give prophetic witness? They felt they had to call what they regarded as evil by its name, knowing they would alienate some people, implying that what they were doing was immoral and a violation of human rights.

EG: I hope that in that context I would have been one of those Christians who did actively serve at the front of abolitionism. One of my heroes is Martin Luther King, Jr., a radical Christian and radical democrat, who for me represents a kind of model for Christian engagement in public life. He certainly took a stand and was able to speak to a wide swath of Americans about important moral issues.

I think there is a current generation of Christians who feel as if the past 30 to 40 years of public expressions of Christian faith, whether on the left or the right, have distorted the perception of Christianity. I hear the argument that prophetic stances often alienate. Yet I certainly don’t want the Church or Christians to avoid them just to be nice.

RG: Have you yourself, Eric, had an experience where you felt it was necessary to take a stand that was unpopular in the sector of the culture you occupy?

EG: Yes. In fact, when I came to Princeton, my first lecture was two days after 9/11, for a course that deals heavily with questions about religion and violence in the modern world. And in the immediate years after that, my views on important issues — such as the use of torture, the role of religion in public life and even the war itself — were occasion for intense disagreement with both fellow Christians and also professional colleagues who are not Christians.

Also outside of Princeton, I find myself occasionally speaking at religiously affiliated colleges. And I do remember I was invited to give a talk about Augustine and Reinhold Niebuhr. And at the time, a number of my fellow Niebuhrian Christians were defending the use of torture as a necessity in the War on Terror. And I decided to frame my talk at this fairly conservative Christian institution in terms of why Christians should oppose the use of torture.

RG: In all circumstances?

EG: In all circumstances.

RG: There are, then, moral absolutes — things that shouldn’t be done, no matter what the bad consequences of not doing them? In addition to torture, what acts would fall within that category?

EG: The Christian tradition does indeed hold that there are certain acts that are intrinsically moral evil. Directly intending to kill an innocent person is something that has an absolute prohibition against it. I think that there are similar prohibitions against lying.

RG: How important is it to belong to a community of faith?

EG: One of the temptations of modern understandings of spirituality is to think you can do it on your own. And at least for me, I find that it demands solitude, but also participation in a community, a community that will challenge and shape you.

RG: Part of the spiritual life is recognizing the need for forgiveness. As an Augustinian, you’ll be sympathetic to the idea that we are all sinners and have fallen short. What’s the role of repentance, reform and forgiveness as part the life of faith?

EG: I think forgiveness is quite central to the spiritual life. Given that I grew up in a tradition that has a strong, morally strenuous demand, it’s often difficult to reconcile forgiveness with awareness of how far one’s own life falls from the perfection and ideals and values to which one aspires.

RG: There’s a teaching that Christianity shares with other faiths about loving the sinner, even while condemning the sin. Obviously, that’s not always an easy thing to do. So it takes a certain kind of spiritual discipline to avoid one of two errors: Either supposing that, since we love the sinner, we must not recognize the sin as a sin; or, because we hate the sin, we can’t recognize the sinner as someone who is to be loved.

How does one avoid falling into one of those errors?

EG: I think in many ways that explains the hostility to much of American Christianity today. Many Christians are perceived as failing to make that distinction. And the vitriolic expression of many of my fellow Christians with regard to those whom they identify as sinners should be a source of lament for the Church.

But psychologically, I think you’re right. It requires a spiritual discipline to maintain the distinction, lest we are unable to sustain a commitment to a moral vision that identifies actions that frustrate human flourishing, yet also love our neighbor as ourselves.

RG: Even if one acknowledges one’s own sinfulness and need to be forgiven, and even if one sincerely expresses love for those who are doing what one judges to be morally wrong, won’t anyone who speaks out against moral wrongdoing be tarred as judgmental and harsh and self-righteous? The prophets certainly came under attack. So the temptation, naturally, is to go quiet, isn’t it?

EG: Well, of course there is a prominent strand of the Christian church that does encourage a kind of quietism or even relativism. I think you and I both reject that. I think a Christian should be troubled by a vision that divides the world between the 1 percent and the 99 percent. But I think a Christian should also be deeply troubled by the forms of economic oppression that are sinful in our modern society.

There’s no theory or formula I can give as to how one both speaks about and engages these questions. It just requires the wisdom and courage to do so, without dividing the world between us and them or being silenced by skepticism about morality itself.