J. Kameron Carter, renowned Black theologian and philosopher of religion, argues in his masterwork Race: A Theological Account that race and racism distort how we imagine human beings. Race has forced us to think racially about human beings, and not to think of them theologically or covenantally as God’s image bearers.
Carter’s Race is a very dense work. Thus, a short Substack newsletter will not be able to sufficiently summarize the nuances of Carter’s argument. But what I’d like to highlight is his brief, yet crucial, engagement with the early church theologian, Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 335 CE - ca. 395 CE) — one of the theologians who helped develop the doctrine of the Trinity. In a chapter dedicated to reading Gregory as an “abolitionist intellectual,” Carter quotes him,
If [the human being] is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and has been granted authority over everything on earth from God, who [can be] his buyer, tell me? who [can be] his seller? To God alone belongs this power; or rather, not even to God himself. For his gracious gifts, it says, are irrevocable (Rom. 11:29). God would not therefore reduce the human race to slavery, since he himself, when we had been enslaved to sin, spontaneously recalled us to freedom. But if God does not enslave what is free, who is he that sets his own power above God’s?1
Through Gregory, Carter seeks to reinstate that the only way to disrupt the racial logic, through which we perceive other human beings, is to reaffirm the Image of God (Imago Dei) in every human being. It is to think theologically about human beings as image bearers, and not as people to be dominated or exploited for one’s own gain. This is why Gregory is able to write so firmly against slavery during his time — it is precisely because no one has the right to enslave others, because God “does not enslave what is free.”
Thus, to enslave humans is to subvert God’s authority. It is to disobey God.
In a separate passage, Gregory preaches during an Easter sermon to slaveowners worshipping in his congregation:
Now is the prisoner freed, the debtor forgiven, the slave is liberated by the good and kindly proclamation of the church… You masters have heard: mark my saying as a sound one; do not slander me to your slaves as praising the day with false rhetoric, take away the pain from oppressed souls as the Lord does the deadness from bodies, transform their disgrace into honour, their oppression into joy, their fear of speaking into oppenness; bring out the prostrate from their corner as if from their graves, let the beauty of the [Easter] feast blossom like a flower upon everyone.2
Here, Gregory points to the “Easter feast,” or Christ’s resurrection, as the cornerstone of abolition, which Carter interprets: “The resurrection means the liberation of slaves.”3
There is so much more going on in Carter’s Race, as he engages with various theologians, historians, and philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, St. Maximus the Confessor, Michel Foucault, Frederick Douglass, Cornel West, James Cone, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Jarena Lee, and more. It is certainly a book that has brought me to sing the praises of Jesus Christ in celebration and deep gratitude for the freedom, joy, and hope we have in him.
Indeed, in Christ, slavery has been abolished, and all who have been oppressed by sin and death are set free! Yes, my heart sings the song of Psalm 146:4
Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God. He is the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them— he remains faithful forever. He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free, the Lord gives sight to the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked. The Lord reigns forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the Lord.
Quoted by Carter on p. 229.
Quoted by Carter on p. 244.
Ibid.
Psalm 146 (NIV).