When I read the early fathers like Irenaeus, I find a
strikingly different gospel. Irenaeus, writing in the second century, spoke of
Christ as the “new Adam” who relived and healed the story of humanity. He
called this “recapitulation”—Christ taking on our humanity so that we might
share in his divinity. In Against Heresies he writes, “For it was for
this end that the Word of God was made man, and He who was the Son of God
became the Son of man, that man, having been taken into the Word and receiving
the adoption, might become the son of God” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies
3.19.1). Athanasius of Alexandria in the fourth century wrote that Christ’s
incarnation was about restoring humanity to immortality and defeating death
itself. In On the Incarnation, Athanasius says, “He became what we are,
that He might make us what He is.” In their writings, sin was not a legal crime
in need of punishment but a sickness, a distortion of the image of God in
humanity, something that needed healing. Even Origen’s much-debated “ransom
theory” framed Christ’s death as a cosmic rescue mission, liberating us from
the powers of sin and death. These early believers saw salvation not as a
courtroom drama but as a family restoration, a return to the divine likeness,
and a participation in God’s life.
It is also clear to me that the Gentile world did not have
the same sense of guilt as first-century Jews. The Greeks and Romans feared
death, fate, and the capriciousness of the gods, but they did not imagine
themselves as morally condemned before a holy God. Their religion was largely
civic and ritualistic. They honored the gods to maintain social order and avoid
divine displeasure, not to be absolved of personal guilt. Philosophers like
Epicurus and the Stoics went even further, arguing that death was either
nothing to fear or a natural part of the cosmic order. The common people might
fear Tartarus and mythic punishments, but this was a vague, culturally shaped
dread, not a deeply moralized fear of divine judgment. Into this world the
apostles preached a God who was holy, who called all people to repent, and who
would judge the world in righteousness through Jesus. But they framed Christ
not only as the one who forgave sins but also as the one who broke the power of
death and liberated people from cosmic oppression. Paul’s words in Colossians
2:15—Christ disarming the principalities and powers—reflect this broader
victory, what later theologians would call Christus Victor.
All of this began to change with Augustine. In his battles
against Pelagianism, Augustine hardened a view of humanity as totally
corrupted, unable even to desire good apart from God’s grace. He argued that
Adam’s sin was transmitted not only as mortality and corruption but as
inherited guilt. Humanity was, in Augustine’s words, a “massa damnata”—a mass
of the damned. From this came the idea that every human being was born already
condemned before God, guilty of a crime they did not commit. Salvation, then, became
a legal pardon rather than a relational restoration. Augustine also deepened
the concept of divine wrath and punishment, making Christ’s death primarily a
judicial satisfaction of God’s offended honor and justice.
What emerged after Augustine was a Christianity defined more
by guilt than by freedom. In the medieval period, Anselm took Augustine’s ideas
further in his satisfaction theory of atonement, portraying sin as a debt to
God’s honor that only the death of a perfect God-man could repay. By the time
of the Reformation, figures like Calvin pushed this legal metaphor even harder,
giving us the full penal substitution model: humanity deserves eternal
punishment for Adam’s sin, but Christ was punished in our place to satisfy the
demands of divine justice. This view, deeply indebted to Augustine’s framework,
came to dominate Western Christianity and still drives much of fundamentalist
theology today.
The contrast between the early and later church could not be
starker. In the first three centuries, the gospel was primarily about healing
and liberation. Sin was a sickness needing a physician, not a legal crime
demanding a judge. Salvation was about being made whole, being restored to the
divine image, and sharing in Christ’s victory over death. After Augustine, sin
became primarily a legal status. Humanity was imagined as standing before a
cosmic courtroom where God, as judge, declared us guilty and in need of a
substitute to bear our punishment. This shift produced a culture of fear and
neurosis, where believers became trapped in cycles of confession, shame, and
anxiety over their eternal fate. It also gave birth to exclusionary moralism,
the belief that only those who have the right legal standing before God are
accepted, leaving everyone else condemned.
The literalism that hardened around Augustine’s framework
turned Christianity into what it was never meant to be. By freezing the faith
into a narrow, legal reading of Scripture—treating poetic images and ancient
metaphors as rigid, iron-clad doctrines—the Western church lost its
transformative edge. Instead of offering liberation from fear, it produced more
fear. Instead of a vision of spiritual maturity and union with God, it reduced
the faith to legal compliance and doctrinal correctness. It made the Bible into
a rulebook from the Iron Age, rather than a living witness pointing us toward
divine love and wisdom.
Even the early fathers understood the need for openness and
diversity in how salvation is experienced. Clement of Alexandria wrote, “Christ
is the same to all, but His influence is adapted to the needs of each
individual; for He is the true physician of the soul” (Stromata, Book
VII). This shows they recognized that not everyone meets Christ in the same
way. Some are drawn by forgiveness, others by the promise of immortality, and
still others by the experience of divine wisdom and healing. Origen too
expressed the hope of a universal restoration, saying that in the end “God will
be all in all” (cf. De Principiis 1.6.1). Such statements point to a
much more expansive and inclusive understanding of the gospel than the rigid
frameworks we inherited from Augustine’s legalism.
Even Jesus himself, in the Gospels, met people in profoundly
different ways. He healed the sick, forgave sinners, challenged the
self-righteous, and offered hope to the outcasts. To the woman caught in
adultery, he spoke forgiveness and dignity. To the rich young ruler, he spoke
challenge and invitation. To Zacchaeus, he offered acceptance that transformed
a greedy tax collector into a generous man. Jesus never forced a
one-size-fits-all approach; instead, his ministry reflected a wide embrace that
met each person at their unique point of need. This flexibility and openness
stand in stark contrast to the rigid legalism that later defined Western
Christianity.
I am convinced that the toxicity we see today in
fundamentalist and literalist Christianity is a direct result of this
historical trajectory. The endless guilt trips, the fear of hell, the obsession
with substitutionary punishment—all of it flows from Augustine’s decision to
frame the gospel in legal terms. Once that became dominant, it was locked in
place by medieval scholasticism and later Protestantism. Fundamentalism is
simply the modern expression of this same literalism, trapped in ancient
understandings of law and punishment.
Yet, even as I call this out, I also recognize that people
meet Jesus in profoundly different ways. Some are drawn to him through the
language of guilt and forgiveness, even if I see the fear generated by
literalism as toxic. Others encounter him as healer, liberator, or teacher.
Different people have different psychological needs, and the gospel meets them
in different places. This is why it makes sense to have a big‑tent
Christianity, one spacious enough to hold a variety of experiences and
theological emphases. Not everyone resonates with the same images or metaphors.
Some may find peace in legal language of pardon, while others are awakened to
life through the vision of Christus Victor or theosis.
I would even go further and say that Gnosticism, in its
various expressions, deserves a place at the table. Though often marginalized
and labeled heretical, the Gnostics sought a deeper interior knowledge of God,
an awakening from ignorance and forgetfulness of our divine origin. In their
best expressions, they reminded us that salvation is also about enlightenment,
about remembering who we truly are as children of the divine. While I do not
embrace all of Gnosticism’s dualism, I see value in its insistence that the
divine spark within us must be awakened, that salvation is not simply external
or legal but profoundly inward and transformative. In a truly big‑tent
Christianity, even these mystical voices have something to teach us about the
depths of Christ’s mystery.
The early church itself seemed to embody this big-tent
spirit. Gregory of Nyssa wrote that God’s plan “accommodates itself to the
capacity of each” and that “the same medicine is not suited to all patients” (On
the Soul and the Resurrection). This perspective honors the diversity of
human hearts and allows for different entry points into the life of God. So
while I name the guilt and fear born from literalist theology as toxic, I also
affirm that the gospel is wide enough to embrace this diversity of human
need—including those who find meaning in mystical traditions like Gnosticism,
which emphasize awakening, self-knowledge, and the interior journey toward God.
The earliest church understood salvation as victory, healing, and restoration. If we can recover that expansive vision, we can move beyond the narrow iron-age frameworks that have long enslaved the faith. In doing so, we create space for a Christianity that welcomes all—those who still need the language of forgiveness and those who seek the deeper mystery of union with the divine, those who embrace sacramental tradition, and even those who resonate with the mystical insights of Gnostic thought. It is this big‑tent vision that holds the promise of a truly liberating faith, one that reflects the inclusive ministry of Jesus himself, who met every person with exactly what their soul needed.
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