Top Theologian Discusses Whether God Ever Changes His Mind
Religion Unplugged believes in a diversity of well-reasoned and well-researched opinions. This piece reflects the views of the author and does not necessarily represent those of Religion Unplugged, its staff and contributors.
(OPINION) Allow me to direct your attention to a long, thought-provoking article that appeared in the New York Times recently under the headline, “‘A God Who Continually Surprises Us’: A Q&A With a Theologian Who Changed His Mind About Gay Marriage.”
In it, Peter Wehner — a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum who served in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and both George Bushes — interviews Richard Hays, an ordained minister and emeritus professor at Duke Divinity School.
Hays is billed as among the world’s leading New Testament theologians. With his son, Christopher Hays, he’s published a new book about the church and gay marriage.
The twist is that in 1996, the elder Hays wrote “The Moral Vision of the New Testament,” which, as Wehner puts it, “argued that gay and lesbian sexual relationships distort God’s created order and that churches should not bless same-sex unions.” In the new book, “The Widening of God’s Mercy,” Hays says he was mistaken.
To its credit, the Times gives us an in-depth conversation — 6,000 words — about how Christians sometimes change their views (or don’t) on moral and theological matters that once seemed settled. It also acknowledges the fallout that can result from those shifts.
Changing your mind about what the Bible, the church and God have said is always complicated.
If this sounds familiar, it might be because I wrote in May about the upheaval in the United Methodist Church over same sex marriage and the ordination of gay clergy.
In that column, as now, I found myself less interested in the subjects of same sex marriage and gay clergy per se than in what happens when a religious person or institution changes their historical, deeply held beliefs and says, in effect, “we were wrong before.”
That’s what Hays has done.
As Wehner and Hays explain, moving toward new positions forces us to struggle with issues more profound than the specific subject at hand. The underlying debate is over what it means to say the Bible is inspired. It’s about whether the perfect God sometimes changes his own mind, too. Or it might suggest God hasn’t changed but we previously misunderstood him. Or it might make us consider whether we’re simply reinventing God in our human image.
Not surprisingly, in such situations, believers of sincere faith arrive at wildly different conclusions. Factions form. Churches fail. Feelings and faith get battered, sometimes beyond repair.
At every step of Christianity’s development — and even before that, within Christianity’s parent-faith, Judaism — similar divisions have arisen time and again.
Probably the first within Christianity was over the question of whether the faith would remain exclusively Jewish — by Jews, for Jews — or whether God had, astonishingly, flung open the kingdom of heaven to the despised gentiles as well.
Leaders including Sts. Peter and Paul decided God was doing something new, something unforeseen and contrary to the Scriptures, or at least contrary to the way they previously had understood those Scriptures.
In the 1800s, slavery roiled denominations. The Bible, and the church through most of its history, had considered slavery a fact of life, unavoidable. But in the 1700s and 1800s, many Christians decided God was unalterably opposed to it and meant the church to stamp it out. Traditionalists argued these abolitionists were dangerous, if not heretical. In retrospect we see who had it right.
There were, and still are, heated arguments about the roles of women in Christianity. In my lifetime, I’ve seen churches drastically change their teachings regarding divorce — something condemned by Jesus and for centuries by Christendom generally, but now often accepted.
Hays says his own views regarding gay people in the church evolved as he witnessed firsthand gay Christians living in committed domestic relationships and simultaneously exhibiting great fidelity to their faith.
“What I came to think over time is that what the Bible shows is not some isolated proof texts or isolated statements of law,” he says, “but it shows us a much bigger picture of God as a God who continually surprises us, continually surprises his people with the scope of generosity and grace and mercy. And that bigger picture is the context in which we ought to think about same-sex relationships in our time.”
His experiences, then, informed his faith, and vice versa.
That, by the way, is a time-honored way of struggling with theological dilemmas. Hays hails from a United Methodist background. Methodism’s founder, John Wesley, developed what’s come to be called the Wesleyan quadrilateral for sorting out faith and practice: Scripture is essential, but must always be measured alongside tradition, experience and reason.
Hays has also dealt with pancreatic cancer since 2015; it made a life-threatening comeback in 2022. He didn’t want to go to his grave with his 1996 “Moral Vision of the New Testament” book as his final, and mainly exclusionary, word on gay people.
His and Wehner’s lengthy conversation is illuminating at every turn. It’s full of grace toward Christians of all stripes, from traditionalists to progressives. I’ve barely scratched the surface of it here. If you can, avail yourself of the entire interview.
Paul Prather has been a rural Pentecostal pastor in Kentucky for more than 40 years. Also a journalist, he was The Lexington Herald-Leader’s staff religion writer in the 1990s, before leaving to devote his full time to the ministry. He now writes a regular column about faith and religion for the Herald-Leader, where this column first appeared. Prather’s written four books. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.