Mike Tolliver (00:00)
Can you be held accountable for someone else’s sin? Join me as I talk with Dr. Andy Everhart about the nature of individual and corporate responsibility on issues big issues like systemic racial injustice. This conversation goes from several examples found right in Scripture to a direct comparison to our responsibilities today. If you’ve ever felt like you don’t know quite what to do with thorny issues like reparations,
Then I think this conversation is for you. If you like what we do here at the Biblical Mind Podcast in the Center for Hebraic Thought, go ahead and give us that five star review wherever you get your podcasts. If you’re more of a YouTube person, go ahead and like and subscribe. It helps with the algorithms. And if you want to give to the cause a little bit more directly, you can go to the biblicalmind.org slash give. Now, on to the show.
Andy Everhart (00:55)
So I think
In my experience and in my conversations with either pastors, average churchgoers, or even my students, usually I think the biggest sticking point I was encountering was around the idea of individual responsibility. so for a lot of Christians, but especially I think Protestants particularly, there’s this notion that a a kind of significant part of the Christian doctrine of sin, of what the Bible teaches us about right and wrong and morality,
and some have even argued something kind of a unique contribution of the Christian faith to even how society understands morality is this idea of personal responsibility. so I am responsible for the things that I’ve done wrong. I’m not responsible for what someone else has done wrong.
And that a lot of even New Testament teaching, at least the perception goes, is about taking ownership for the things that we’ve done wrong. And that’s so that’s really important to people. And the idea of systemic sin, of not the individual
doing something wrong, but some broader system or idea or group really I think throws people for a loop because they they have this idea that what the Bible teaches is the individual’s responsible and the individual takes ownership of their sin. but as soon as you start putting that on the system, well then the the individual isn’t responsible anymore.
now as I’ve researched this I’ve actually found that kind of comes out in a couple different ways. One way that could come out is a nervousness that, well, if if it took a whole system to create this really big problem, a problem like slavery, for instance, how can one person bear the responsibility of what it took generations and entire systems of law, lots of people,
Involved in order to create, right? So there’s this idea that you know, how how can I as a white man be you know responsible for racism when that’s this massive systemic issue? The other fear is that if I blame the system, then I don’t have to take ownership, I don’t have to do that kind of individual reconciliatory work. and so there’s this kind of disconnect I’ve found between the individual and the group or the system or the society. And that’s I think where a lot of
the
sticking points are for how people think about sin.
Mike Tolliver (03:21)
So y you mentioned this being, you know, I I I I don’t know if you said it exactly this way, so please correct me if if I’m misrepresenting, but you know, kind of a a a Protestant issue. I’m curious if there’s a distinction to be made between maybe Western sort of individualistic expressions of Protestantism versus, you know, maybe someone coming from an Eastern expression of that.
Andy Everhart (03:49)
Yeah, so I think
Th so this is I mean, once you start getting into kind of the global perspective of Christianity, you’re gonna see a lot more variety, right? And that’s one of the wonderful things about theology is that we now have Christians in many contexts who are kind of looking at scripture and seeing different things. And so a lot of what I’ve kind of started seeing and picking out and trying to draw in is coming from yeah, outside of the Western world, particularly the global south, I think, i is where I’ve found a lot of reading
of scripture and
Intuition that no, there is the individual, but there’s also the community, and there’s a lot more responsibility for one another that makes the idea of systemic sin feel a little bit more natural or seem a little bit more obvious in scripture. when you’re reading it in another context where those those kinds of ideas of responsibility for the group or responsibility for one another is is just kind of baked into the culture more. So I think there is a kind of Western individualism at play in how we’ve tended to interpret.
Sin in this way. But I don’t think that Western Christianity is the only context
Mike Tolliver (04:59)
Mm.
Andy Everhart (04:59)
in which individualism is kind of the sinequinon, the primary concept of how we think through sin. Some of that might be because Western Christendom kind of got exported to the world more broadly. Some of it might be because those contexts are just more naturally given to individualism. It really does depend.
We’re we’re we’re talking about a very big planet, after all.
Mike Tolliver (05:24)
Yes.
very true. Now you d you do a lot of work, or how do I say it? You you’ve done a lot of showing your work is is maybe how I wanna say, in how you’ve resourced your ideas in particularly the Hebrew Bible. And I was wondering if you could kind of, you know, maybe help us see this distinction in scripture itself.
Andy Everhart (05:47)
Absolutely, yeah. So I I think a big part of my my intuition to do that
work up front and start the project there because I think as as we’ve talked about this is a much bigger project for me in building towards towards an actual book on the topic but it started with lots of little articles and chapters and discrete little parts of the argument and I think I approached in that way because I wanted to kind of clear the groundwork specifically for evangelical Christians for whom the Bible is really important and they want scripture to be an authority in their lives and they look at the Bible
And they they kind of they’ve adopted this intuition that the Bible teaches individual responsibility for sin, and that’s that’s the most important thing about sin is that you kind of own your stuff, that you own your mistakes and and kind of make up for them. And so there’s this hesitancy that the Bible could even support the idea of systemic sin. So the first thing I wanted to do in that one article which which I think you’re referencing was to kind of clear the ground and say, well, do we see a purely individual?
Individual take on sin, or do we see something more corporate and communal? And one of the arguments I found out there, or one of the intuitions, was that, well, yeah, maybe things used to be a little bit more communal in the Hebrew Bible, but then you get to the by the time you get to the New Testament into Jesus, Jesus starts breaking down those more communitarian or socialized assumptions about sin. So I wanted to kind of tell a story about how we go from the Hebrew Bible, from the Old Testament into the New Testament with a more consistent
View of sin and show how those concepts get picked up and how there is a obviously development of and changes to how different authors see sin, but there’s still elements of both, I think. And I think the Hebrew Bible is the most helpful for kind of demonstrating because of the covenant law and the structures around how you kind of repent for sin or you offer sacrifices, there’s very clear ways of tracking an individual’s wrongdoing and
how that impacts others and what needs to be done to fix those sorts of mistakes.
Mike Tolliver (07:59)
Now I d I’m trying to remember the exact address. I d I apologize. I’m I’m not gonna get it right, but I I think it’s in Ezekiel where he he talks about a transition of I used to hold you accountable for the sins of your fathers, but now I will hold you alone responsible. is that is that like a a place that people go to defend this transition?
You know, what’s your take on that?
Andy Everhart (08:30)
I d I do think that I mean, obviously, you know, Christians are gonna prove text whenever they can. I mean that’s that’s that’s how we’ve been taught to read the Bible. That’s how I was taught to read Bible.
Mike Tolliver (08:37)
Proof texters are gonna
proof text, yeah.
Andy Everhart (08:40)
That’s
how I came up. I’ve I’ve had to learn my way out of that. I and I think, you know, fair enough. It it that would be a support for it, but I also think there’s a broader intuition that comes from certain corners of Christianity, including but not limited to evangelical Christianity, where there is this kind of, well, this was the old covenant and this is the new covenant. This is how we did do things and this is how we now do things. There was the law and now there’s love. very much so rooted in this kind.
kind
of almost Luther’s way of, you know, law versus gospel, kind of carving things up. And the law reveals to us that we’re sinful, but the gospel shows us this kind of new way forward. and so there’s I think that’s where the intuition comes from. And then it’s probably supported by passages like that as well.
Mike Tolliver (09:29)
Okay. there were there were two examples that you gave that I thought were helpful of of this dynamic at work, the individual and the corporate body. and that was Josiah and John the Baptist. and I I’m curious if you could talk a little bit more about maybe how those are operating so we could see this Old Testament, New Testament continuity with this subject in mind.
Andy Everhart (09:56)
Absolutely. And can I can I throw another example in there which I is usually my
Mike Tolliver (09:59)
Please do.
Andy Everhart (09:59)
go-to to explain some of this?
Mike Tolliver (10:01)
Yeah.
Andy Everhart (10:02)
is Achan, actually. I think is is probably my best example to kind
Mike Tolliver (10:06)
Okay.
Andy Everhart (10:06)
of show nope, sin is is not just about you the individual.
And it’s an uncomfortable story, right? Because so you know Joshua he’s he’s waging war on the Canaanites, God’s going before them, and God is kind of blessing their efforts, and then he he kind of gives these strict rules of like, hey, you’re not gonna take this stuff from them, it’s tainted, it’s been offered to idols, so we’re not touching it. and of course Achan does. It doesn’t even say Achan and his family, it just says Achan does. And yet because of this, all of Israel kind of loses this this kind of war blessing, and they they lose the battle.
And everyone is is cur is cur. and sorry, actually I’m now confusing stories. I’m also thinking of
I I almost jumped to the the snake thing. which was actually that was
Mike Tolliver (10:53)
Okay, okay, sure.
Andy Everhart (10:55)
now sorry, that was Zipporah and Aaron were complaining about Moses. So I almost jumped there. We’re not gonna do that one. everyone suffers because of of Achan’s decision not to listen to God. Even though it’s an individual decision, everyone stands under this, and so they go through this process of it’s not it’s not this group of people, it’s it’s this group of people, and then they they kind of get it down. everyone sits under responsibility, they’re everyone is made responsible for what Achan does.
Everyone has to kind of go through this act of repentance and kind of reconciling with God for what was taken, despite the fact that they had no agency over that decision. now only Achan and his family are killed. And I think there you can see there’s a difference here between responsibility and guilt. So Israel isn’t made to be guilty for the sin of one individual. just that person and in this case their family a little bit are
Are held culpable. That’s why they’re killed. Everyone else, however, is made responsible for getting rid of the artifacts, finding out who took them, and then repenting of it to God for these things that are taken.
Mike Tolliver (12:05)
Yeah.
Andy Everhart (12:05)
And
I think I draw that distinct I like that distinction because that lets me show that we’re not losing individual responsibility, right? Only Achan did the thing that was wrong, only Achan is held guilty. but everyone in the community is made responsible for fixing the damage done by this one person.
And that’s what I the thread that I see pulled into the new into the New Testament specifically, where there is this kind of intuition of like, well, you know, that was the Old Testament, that was the law, it was things were a lot more corporate back then. New Testament, Jesus gives us, you know, a much more individualistic picture of sin. And I still see, specifically in in kind of the writings of Paul, but as well, I think with
way that John the Baptist talks about repentance, there is this interplay of the individual and the community.
And I wanted to use that example specifically to unpick the kind of seeming competition between individual responsibility and corporate responsibility. They’re related, in the way that, you know, when Achan sins, everyone has to kind of take responsibility for it. Same thing with the Josiah example. Well, our ancestors sinned, so we have to we have to take responsibility for continuing to resist that sinfulness, otherwise we’re gonna slip back into it. Even though we didn’t do those wrong things, we’re
susceptible for them and we we’re responsible for making sure we don’t go back to those those idolatrous ways. So there is this kind of sharing of responsibility based on relationship.
And that’s some that’s the thing that I wanted to kind of unpick so that it’s not like we’re getting rid of individual responsibility, but we’re also not reducing everything down to individuals and their actions. Because what we see
Mike Tolliver (13:54)
Sure.
Andy Everhart (13:55)
between the two testaments, between these stories of humanity and wrongdoing and what repentance and reconciliation looks like, is that it’s fundamentally all about relationship. And so what I do affects others and impacts their
flourishing their well-being and can even incur responsibilities for them.
Mike Tolliver (14:18)
So I kind of wanna unpack a little bit this concept of differing obligations or maybe different responsibility with respect to the individual and the court. And I think that’s actually gonna serve as a bridge into the specific instance of like racial injustice for us. because you know, you you’re you’re kind of highlighting that, you know, Achan and his family are held responsible in a way that is different from how
All of Israel is held responsible. And there’s this concept of guilt, like the guilt of Achan, that is maybe not distributed across all the people, but there is still responsibilities at play. So in in the case of you know sin, grievance against God, you know, what whatever it is that is causing disrepair, talk about the
the repair required at those different levels. is is there one set of obligations that we see that is common to the the corporate body and one set that is common to the individual? Is it case by case? yeah.
Andy Everhart (15:32)
Yeah, no, it’s a I mean it’s a very good question. I do think it’s gonna be probably case by case because some of it has to do with well, what was the wrong enacted?
That’s gonna kind of determine, you know, what’s the damage, because that’s gonna determine the repair. A hole in my roof requires different kinds of repair than a broken window, for instance, right? One of those has to be replaced, one of those can be patched up. So a lot of that case by case actually just has to do with the nature of you know, different wrongs caused different damage. but a lot of it too, I think, has to do with the roles that we play in our communities. So, like with Josiah example, Josiah takes on the responsibility of restoring the law
Why? Because he’s the king, and as the king, so the people. So there’s a kind of leadership dynamic where there’s more responsibility for the person leading that community than the individuals who are being called to follow. Now they might have responsibilities too, like to say, we are gonna continue we we swear an oath, we’re gonna continue to resist the sins of our forefathers and continue to kind of be vigilant against them. and I think.
there’s a with the kind of distributing of responsibility versus guilt. yes, you you’ve you’ve keyed into that and I think that’s really where it’s helpful. It’s it’s not so much that there’s always going to be this kind of responsibility for the individual and this kind of responsibility for the group.
But I do think there’s something there where you’re going to see what kind of responsibility is incurred by those who are just kind of bystanders, right? Members of the community. It’ll be determined by their relationship to that individual. but it’s still going to be of a very different kind of responsibility. One of those key differences is I think at what point the responsibility is created and at what point guilt may or may not be entered. So a really good example for this one is
Paul chastising the whole Corinthian community for what is it, the son-in-law that’s sleeping with his mother-in-law.
Mike Tolliver (17:30)
Yeah.
Right.
Andy Everhart (17:33)
really awkward, you know, sexual situation. Really, this is like
Mike Tolliver (17:36)
Yeah.
Andy Everhart (17:36)
two individuals. Like there’s no way to kind of put that on the whole community in the traditional ways that we’ve thought about sin. It’s like, no, these two are doing this horrible thing. And yet he calls them out in front of the whole community. And it’s not, he’s saying, and these two are doing something wrong. He says that, but then he says, you’re allowing this to happen.
Mike Tolliver (17:54)
Mm-hmm.
Andy Everhart (17:55)
And therefore you’re guilty.
And what I think that communicates about the nature of responsibility is there is a kind of responsibility, so a type of responsibility that’s corporate in the sense of you know in the community.
Sin is going to cause damage, not just to the individual sinning, but to others, right? So if there’s rampant theft and corruption, everyone’s gonna suffer, right? And it’s one thing to say that everyone’s guilty because this bad thing is happening among you. That’s probably a bridge too far. That’s why I want to separate guilt from responsibility. So you might not be guilty of, you know, sleeping with your mother-in-law, but you are responsible for coming alongside that person and trying to turn them back towards righteousness.
Turn them back towards God.
And I think the guilt comes in when you’re given a responsibility by God, by, you know, hey, you’re aware of the situation. this is a bad thing, and and you’re responsible for this individual because of your relationship with them, to be a brother or sister in Christ and come alongside them, and not doing that is what starts to incur guilt. And in the first paper that I sent you, the one that’s published in the International Journal of Systematic Theology on what I call communal reconciliation,
this is the example that I use to kind of connect with things like racial injustice. Because I think one of the hot button issues that makes this such a contentious issue, this idea of systemic sin. one of the things that I think motivates the fear around ascribing systemic sin, sin a kind of systemic character, is when I was talking earlier about the two ways that this kind of misconception can parse out, one of them being
Well, I I don’t think, you know, black people are b all bad. So I’m not racist, right? There’s a fear of responsibility for a whole system being put on an individual and that individual not being able to stand up to it. There’s fear that while my ancestors could do all these terrible things, I had no control over that, and yet I can still be held accountable for those things.
And this is where I like using this language of responsibility and its relationship to guilt. if, as I kind of h have argued in a couple of different places now, we can incur responsibility for what others have done in the past or in our communities because of our relationship with them. a responsibility like with the Josiah example to resist the sins of the past because we’re gonna be more prone to those sins because of the way we were raised or because of the community that we’re a part of.
So we need to be very vigilant against those things. Or, like in the instance of the mother and son-in-law, it’s like, this thing is happening. It’s not enough to for me to just not participate in it. I actually need to be a kind of voice against that injustice or against that bad thing and speak truth into that situation. So we can incur responsibility for something like systemic racism.
simply by being parts of communities that you know have been shaped by systemic racism. where it becomes guilt, where we become participants in that racism, is one, when we’re kind of actively doing things that are are prejudiced against different groups of people, so we’re kind of inactive participation. But there’s also a kind of passivity towards sin that I think the Apostle Paul is really worried about.
And that allows the sin to fester and continue to damage the community. And of course we can imagine ways in which, you know, if if there are racist laws and there’s racist people and no one’s telling them not to be racist, then the racism is just going to continue. So we, who are a part of that community or part of that group, ha
can incur a responsibility to resist racism in a very particular kind of way. And we only become guilty of that racism if we’re either actively participating in it or failing to live up to that responsibility.
Mike Tolliver (21:59)
So I’m I’m curious then the at least two of the examples that you gave the you know of Achan and then the mother with her her son in law, it seems like, to use your terms, that that is where the individuals are guilty and the community is responsible, but it it seems like that with something like
racial systemic injustice, the community is actually guilty where individuals may be responsible. And so it feels like that’s a flipping of the paradigm that you’ve laid out. Does that does that impact anything? Am I seeing that rightly?
Andy Everhart (22:45)
Well, i in some ways, so th this is why I kind of give a couple of different examples. I use the Achan example and the sexual immorality example as ways of showing how individual responsibility isn’t lost, and individual guilt for one’s sins and kind of the particularity of guilt is not lost. So I’m I’m trying to assuage that worry that many Christians might have, ’cause I know that’s
Mike Tolliver (23:08)
Sure.
Andy Everhart (23:09)
a big stumbling block. But then I point to okay, so what else is going on in the New Testament in terms of the relationship between the community and
So
you can have, you know
You and I are in community, you make a mistake, I’m responsible for kind of helping you to rectify that mistake. It’s not just on you, it’s a community issue. So responsibility can transfer through relationship from one individual to another. Not guilt, but responsibility. But that’s on the basis of the fact that we are in community. So community kind of shapes the relationships that we’re in, right? And determines the roles. That’s why you know the Israelite community has these determined roles that gives Joshua.
Messiah his role in restoring the law, and the priests their role in restoring the law, and then individuals in in in the who are kind of worshipping at the temple, their roles in kind of making the oath and and resisting the sins of their forefathers. so all of that happens in the context of community, and you can’t you do have therefore these examples of widespread systemic issues in Israel and then in the church as well.
But so the the first examples I give of the individual net transfer is just kind of the proof of concept
Mike Tolliver (24:25)
Sure.
Andy Everhart (24:26)
in some ways and kind of getting people over this idea of no if we have like you know responsibility beyond just the individual then we lose the individual and I’m like well that’s clearly not true. if anything we get more responsibility because we’re responsible for ourselves and for others around us in our communities. But
if we follow that line, that takes us to this level of this kind of corporate level of thinking about responsibility that in the same way that kind of a Aikensin can affect the community or
That you know, sexual immorality can affect the community. Paul’s worried about that because sin that’s left undealt with festers, you know, like a disease, and it spreads and it normalizes things that are unhealthy and prevent flourishing. So that’s why he’s really worried about it. And you can see examples of that in other passages of scripture where Paul is saying, you know, that this there’s this widespread problem in the community, this is all happening. Individuals are still doing things, but it’s happening.
such a widespread level that just explaining it by reference to individuals isn’t enough to really explain what’s going on. And that has a parallel with something like systemic racism, because at one level, you know, when racism is happening, it’s not like there’s no indiv there’s gonna be individuals who are participating in that prejudice, knowingly or unknowingly. But to only explain racism as like and spontaneously all these white human beings started treating anyone with a different skin color bad.
it’s really not a satisfying explanation of what’s going on. So we have to talk about how, you know, this individual’s prejudice affects another’s prejudice, and we teach that prejudice to our children, and we write laws that continue to enshrine that prejudice. And so it starts with individuals at some level, right? Sinning and doing things that are wrong, but the effects of individual sin carry into the communal level, right? And at some level we know this intuitively. That’s why we
have laws, we have rules, we have community guidelines in our churches and in our theological education institutions because we realize that we want to behave a certain way, we want you know to be formed in certain ways, and we are formed by those laws, by those rules, by the shapes of our society.
Mike Tolliver (26:51)
Yeah. And so as I was kind of thinking through this distinction of the the corporate guilt piece of things and then the individual response, I was thinking towards that end that the Josiah example was maybe your your best analogy. Cause here you have Josiah who’s inherited this you know, corporate worship that has gone so far awry from the proper worship of Yahweh, and he comes in and says, I’m gonna fix it.
you know, I didn’t break it, but I’m gonna fix it. And then because he makes that decision, all of Israel you know, benefits from that. am I tracking with you there?
Andy Everhart (27:33)
Yes, and I think g so that’s something I tried to show throughout the different examples is it’s more than just there’s individual sin and then there’s corporate sin.
they’re it’s a tangled web of things because we’re social and relational beings. Imaging a social and relational God in some ways, right? God is is triune. God is community. and that’s why he creates us for community. but that means that it it is all t so that’s why I kind of try to lay it out in the way that I have and why you propose Josiah as one example. I’m like, well let me step back to Achan really quick because I think that’s that in some ways is the hardest thing for people
To kind of get their heads around why does Achan do this wrong thing and then everyone else has to kind of do something and take responsibility for it? But that once you kind of get over that hump and you’re like, no, no, no, this is how sin works. Sin damages others and means others have to do work too, and can influence others and can impact others in negative ways, all of a sudden, then you talk about something like the way Josiah talks about sin and talks about the return to the covenant, suddenly it makes sense because it’s not just, well, those individuals
Spontaneously all at once did these horrible things. Will we do the same? I don’t know. It’s like, no, because they’ve raised us and taught us to think in these ways, sin is getting passed down. It’s transmitting through relationship from generation to generation. So it’s not just about don’t do what they did. It’s about actively resisting that sin because we know we’re prone to it, because we know we’re being we’re swimming in it, right? Like the f the fish
Mike Tolliver (29:09)
Sure.
Andy Everhart (29:10)
that doesn’t know that it’s wet. So in that sense, I do.
think Josiah is one of my best examples.
As is the way that, you know, John John the Baptist calls all of Israel into repentance in this way, despite the fact that there’s many individuals to which he’s he’s talking and who he’s baptizing. I think those examples make more sense when you can kind of put it in light of this relationship between the individual and the community. Because I think there
Mike Tolliver (29:38)
Yeah.
Andy Everhart (29:39)
there have been other solutions for talking about this that actually try to prioritize the community over the individual. So the individuals just
Mike Tolliver (29:46)
Okay.
Andy Everhart (29:47)
come before
function of their environment or their environments.
Mike Tolliver (29:50)
Good. Yeah.
Andy Everhart (29:51)
So, you know, we’re we’re all parts of many different communities. I’m I’m American, I live in the UK, I’m part of the London School of Theology community. I’m also, you know, a member of different academic organizations, I’m a friend of the Biblical Mind podcast. Like I’m you I I’m members of all these commun and all these communities are part of who I am and help make me who I am. That’s true. but I don’t think I can be just reduced to the sum
Mike Tolliver (30:19)
Sure.
Andy Everhart (30:20)
of my different communities.
And I think there isn’t an intuition among some interpreters of scripture and theologians. So I wanted to avoid that mistake as well. Because I think that.
Mike Tolliver (30:29)
Yeah.
Andy Everhart (30:30)
that would lose the individual. And I’m not sure I’m I’m willing to do that because I do think the individual’s important.
Mike Tolliver (30:37)
Sure.
Andy Everhart (30:38)
I just want to have a conversation about the relationship between corporate responsibility and individual responsibility, how the individual’s wrongdoing can affect the whole community, how the community’s structures and rules and the things that shape social interaction
can be one of those things that shapes the individual and how they navigate their own relationships in sinful and non-sinful ways.
Mike Tolliver (31:05)
Perfect. Thank you. and I’m curious then, because I I feel like I can hear somebody dismissing this dynamic, not for you know, Luther, you know, possibly Marcionite reasons, but to say that just historical context is so drastically different. And they might point to something like the church state nexus of ancient Israel.
As these things get practiced, maybe say over and against a church and state distinction here in the states. And so
Andy Everhart (31:43)
Yeah.
Mike Tolliver (31:44)
I’m curious if you can talk about how maybe the firewalling of certain responsibilities across sectors of society makes this more difficult or or what? I’m just curious your thoughts on that.
Andy Everhart (31:58)
Yeah, no, I
th I mean that’s a really good question. So it’s it’s not when I’ve come that kind of the church state thing. I’ve not actually run into that argument against this yet. It
I think I’ve heard things like that that tend to run something like this. This is the version I’ve heard anyway. So tell me if I’m on the right track with understanding you. So something I I have heard is like, yeah, well, you know, back then Israel was the state, the church is not the state. Like, we’re we’re not, you know, we’re not a theocracy. so you know, maybe maybe you’re right, maybe systemic sin does exist, or there there are these systemic injustices. but that’s the responsibility.
the state, not the church. The church is, you know, about you and your heart and the individual. And it appeals to a lot of what we talked about, you know, the Ezekiel passage and the kind of old covenant, new covenant distinctions that we’ve we’ve already kind of talked about. So there there might be an appeal to those things to justify this. Except I think a lot of the so well anyway, tell me if if I’ve got that right, that there is this kind of
you know, the church shouldn’t be political rhetoric, kind of lying behind or or or that might overlay some of what you’re talking about. This idea that like a spiritualizing of sin, so therefore it’s about the individual, whereas this is more of a social issue, that’s politics, that’s not really what the church should be doing.
Mike Tolliver (33:29)
Yeah, so I’m I’m thinking of like a s a specific racial injustice
Andy Everhart (33:35)
Yeah.
Mike Tolliver (33:35)
of like restrictive covenants or redlining of the sale of property or things along those lines. It feels like the church would have absolutely nothing from an administrative standpoint in common with that specific racial injustice. And so if someone would just defeat
The argument that the church has any then responsibility to that because of those you know distinct d d does that explain kind of where I’m
coming from? Okay.
Andy Everhart (34:07)
It does, and I think there’s
there’s a couple things we can say here. So in one sense we can actually grant a part of that argument, which is to say that, you know, the church is not the one who sets the laws.
So whereas Israel was kind of setting its own laws and so there was a a closer relationship between spiritual belief and and and legal theory, I guess. and so there would be more like a certain kind of impetus, or if we think about it again in terms of relationship, because Israel
you know, in its religious beliefs, as a religious community, had this closer relationship to kind of the legal authority of its time, there might be a more direct kind of responsibility for the community to change those laws towards justice again. Like when Josiah restores, for instance, the the not cutting the corners of your not reaping the corners of your fields so that the sojourner might be able to feed themselves as they pass through your land.
Things
like that, right? Where you could have this more direct kind of responsibility than you might have for for Christians today because we don’t control the state in a direct sense. Now
It’s interesting ’cause a lot of the Christians who would push this kind of line, or who at I at least imagine pushing this kind of line, and who around issues of racial justice, maybe I can push them to like, okay, yeah, maybe the Bible does have something to say about that, but that’s a political issue. You know, Christians don’t have control of the state, so we we shouldn’t be, you know, directly engaging that issue because that’s politics, that’s social, that’s not, you know, something the church controls.
So I think I’ve I’ve heard a version of that, and that that I think is a great hypocrisy, because the kind of Christian who seems resistant to that is also probably, you know, really gung-ho about like putting the Bible in schools and the Ten Commandments on the walls
Mike Tolliver (36:02)
Right, yeah.
Andy Everhart (36:03)
of schools. Or really, you know, thinks that because of the Bible, as a legal argument, we should ban abortion. you know, as if we live in a Christian society. So I think
Mike Tolliver (36:17)
Sure.
Andy Everhart (36:17)
we’re we’re
Playing fast and loose with our definitions because the very same people who are r like hesitant to get involved in racial justice because of that reason oftentimes have other issues for which they say, well, the Bible says therefore politically we should take this view and we should vote in these ways and that kind of thing.
I’m not gonna kind of get into the the whole weeds of like Christian political theory and like should Christians yeah, how how should Christians, you know, should Christians dictate policy or vote for Christian policies or things like that. But I do think there’s a disconnect where sometimes we allow it and sometimes we don’t. But that shows that intuitively there are things we think that Christians should be supporting in political le or legal senses. We do think Christians should be a force for social good in society in some way.
And I think we do find foundation for that in Scripture. in the way e even in the New Testament, where Paul, even Jesus, are, you know, proposing radical ways that challenge the social norms of the day, and and do cause social change in the world, not just within the church. so I I I don’t think you can get a consistently isolationist view of the church out of scripture. You might get it out of some passages, but not
not anything truly that consistent. And so insofar as we are supposed to be the light shining on the hill, salt and light to of the earth, right? Pointing the way to Jesus, I think we are supposed to be known by our love of God and love of neighbor. And insofar as that is true, that cr I I think
Christians have responsibility to root out things like systemic racism not only within themselves but also in the world around them, in the same way that, you know, Paul challenged the imperial propaganda and the, you know, the Caesar cult in his day. he challenged the way that the poor were treated. he I think, you know, Jesus challenged the way that women were treated in society.
And so I yeah, I I don’t think s an argument like that holds up. It does make it it does help to highlight though, that again, it’s about relationships. So what the responsibility is towards society, towards, you know, different social norms will be shaped by the church’s relationship to the state. Absolutely. but I don’t think it can be used to get rid of that responsibility.
to challenge injustice when we see it too, or you know, as as the Old Testament prophets would say, act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly before God.
Mike Tolliver (39:04)
Yeah, I I love that. And if I could introduce the term theological whack-a-mole is can can we do that? I I really I appreciate you calling that out. yeah. It
Andy Everhart (39:12)
Yes. That great technical term from the Greek theological whackamolo Mai.
Mike Tolliver (39:18)
it it is. It is, yes. depending if it’s in the aorist, I think. Is that right? Yeah. Okay. That’s
Andy Everhart (39:22)
Yes, yes. I prefer the present passive aggressive, theological whackamol ametha.
Mike Tolliver (39:28)
good. I’m gonna steal that too. okay.
Andy Everhart (39:32)
Yes.
Mike Tolliver (39:32)
So we I
This is such a broad topic and we can go in so many different directions. I have one like hyper specific practical, like, how does this work out on the ground? question for you. And so I have a friend who is a Norwegian immigrant. I met him as he was completing his citizenship journey. he’s been married to an American for many years and he just got his
citizenship and I said, you know, congratulations, you now know American history better than most Americans, which is a hundred percent true. but
Andy Everhart (40:09)
you know it’s sad but true.
Mike Tolliver (40:11)
I I’m curious what is his responsibility with respect to the issue of systemic racial injustice?
Andy Everhart (40:22)
Yeah. so as I’m reading it from scripture, right, I think what I see with the way that Paul talks about different issues in different churches, it’s not about whether you’re from Thessalonica, you’re from Corinth, or from like there’s no qualification there. It’s just if this thing is happening in your community.
you inherit responsibility, right? If if your children are partaking this thing, or if your your parents, your brothers, your sisters, your friends, if this thing is happening in your midst, at some level you take on a responsibility. Now, you might not have, in some sense, the same kind of historic relationship as an O region to the inherited history that most Americans would have of the transatlantic slave trade.
but the now, without getting into a very complicated argument about the philosophy of groups and group identity, which if you do if that is your thing and you’re like I r I really want to get down to the brass tacks of this argument, I do have a paper which I’ve mentioned in the International Journal of Systematic Theology. It is open source or open access, so anyone can read it. You don’t have to have a subscription. just search DT Everhart.
and communal reconciliation it’ll come up somewhere. that’d be wonderful, yes.
Mike Tolliver (41:42)
We we could probably link it in the show notes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Andy Everhart (41:46)
and then the other the chapter on reparations is not out yet. but perhaps it will be by the time this episode airs so I will keep you posted on that. but the what was I so yeah there it is.
So the what I talk about in that article is a little bit and then I’ve talked about more extensively in a book that will be coming out in June, July of 2027 with Baker Academic called A Christological Anthropology.
Is the idea of at-will collectives, right? So a collective is, you know, a group, a group that has agency, therefore it acts like a person, it can inherit responsibilities, it can have guilt, it can have culpability because it can take actions, it can have intentions, but they’re shared as a group. so with this idea of joining an at-will collective, you’re taking on a new identity. In the same way, this should not be foreign to Christians, because we take on a new group identity when we join the body of Christ. We take on the identity being in Christ.
And that becomes a part of who we are as individuals, but it’s something that we’re sharing with the community that is the body of Christ, the Communio Day. And so there is a sense in which when we join a new community, we take on its problems, we take on its joys, we take on its issues, and we inherit responsibilities by joining that group. So I think your friend has now a good job, you’ve joined a historically responsibility.
racist
nation that had a huge part in the transatlantic slave trade. So you’ve inherited by joining this group a responsibility to resist the sins of the past.
That is a part of the community that you’re in. But that will be different if we’re gonna tell kind of this person’s narrative. Their relationship to that responsibility will be different than someone who’s grown up in it. and one way that might work out, for instance, is they might not understand naturally some of the systems and laws that are racist in the same way that an American might. They also might see through some of the the the things that we take for granted.
as being neutral, but actually bear effects on different racial groups. And so your friend might be able to see that because they think about things differently. They’re coming from a different context. And so again, the responsibility, but also how they engage in that responsibility might just be different because of the way they’ve been socialized, because of the point at which they’ve joined in this community and inherited that responsibility. so I don’t think they’re off the hook, so to speak. I think
Mike Tolliver (44:30)
Sure.
Andy Everhart (44:31)
This is the way I conclude that paper, interestingly enough, which is all about just defending the idea that you can have systemic sin and individual responsibility is actually we’re we’re not less responsible because of systemic sin. We’re more responsible. we knight might not be more guilty in the way that people assume, but we are more responsible. And one of the ways that parses out is as we join different communities, we take on their troubles.
I don’t think that should scare us. If anything, that’s a good thing, because when people join our community, it’s more shoulders to bear the burden, to work together and to challenge us in the ways that we’re thinking about our own sinfulness and our our own communities.
Mike Tolliver (45:12)
Okay, so final question to maybe tie this all together in a neat bow. so if he is not guilty, but he is now responsible by voluntary association with this new group, would it be right for him to repent of American historical racial injustice?
Andy Everhart (45:38)
So this is an interesting one. My answer is maybe.
Mike Tolliver (45:42)
Ha ha.
Andy Everhart (45:42)
because in some sense, right, repentance we typically associate with guilt, more so than responsibility. Now this is something I’m gonna
Put an asterisk next to all this, this is one of the things I’m trying to do research on now and figure out what do I think about this. But my the chapter I sent you on reparations, which will hopefully be out this year, is very much so talking about the relationship between repentance and reparative action. and I think one of the interesting things I see in scripture is that repentance isn’t considered genuine repentance until reparative action is taken, right? So you’ll have these instances.
where, you know, God calls people to repentance. They say they’re sorry, they put ash on their head, but then they go right back to doing what they were doing. You didn’t really repent. it’s not until you’ve actually undone damage and and taken steps to repair and stopped doing that thing and and and undo it that, you know, general repentance has happened. So I do think
That your friend has inherited some responsibility to help with the repair, right? if you move into a house with with your family or with a bunch of friends, you all move in together and and when you show up it’s like, there’s damage to the house. Well, you know, you you gotta take on some r some responsibility for fixing that because otherwise you’re gonna live in a leaky house. that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve inherited the guilt for causing all that damage to the house. And so is repentance required?
I’m not sure it is. Not necessarily. However, repair is required. And one of the things that I I could end up changing my position later on as I as I research this is one of the things that I see happening in repentance throughout the Bible is this notion of yeah, this essential need for repair. And I do think.
That your friend could join the American system, which because of historic reasons, because of systems and laws, might still bear the vestiges of systemic racism. Like there’s still systemic racism baked into the system. and your friend, as a Norwegian person who presents as white, might benefit from that.
And that is where I think, okay, maybe there might end up being some space for a kind of repentance. Not the kind of repentance required of someone who is actively prejudicing or disparaging or acting in a racist way towards people of color, but in a way where your friend might recognize one day where, I’ve I’ve I’ve gathered this benefit that I wasn’t supposed to have. I’ve participated unknowingly in an
injust system that’s benefited me and harmed another. So there, what I might look for, maybe it’s repentance or maybe it’s something like reparative action.
But a kind of effort to restore the imbalance that was done, something like what was called in the Old Testament a jubilee, right? every seven years Israel would kind of restore land to its original owners and and kind of reset the clock to make sure no injustice was allowed to persist and that where injustice had persisted, the effects of that injustice were being cut off. So I can imagine something like that. Now is that repentance or is that something else
I’m not sure because I really just do think there is something about repentance that’s really closely ta tied to reparative action, to not just saying you’re sorry, but actually restoring the relationship and doing things to fix the damage that’s done. But I’m not sure that they’re identical. So this is where where I’m kind of working through some of these concepts.
Mike Tolliver (49:29)
Well, I appreciate you kind of inviting us into your thought process. I think it’s instructive for anyone who is, you know, which is everyone, right? Who’s working through, you know, their own kind of theological commitments of the moment. And so you you don’t have to have it all figured out from square one. Like it’s a process and we do it in community. So I thank you for being a part of our community. Dr. Andy Everhart, thank you so much for your wisdom here today. And
We’ll have to have you back on when you get this figured out.
Andy Everhart (50:01)
you know, if I get it figured out. I mean there’s there’s fifty fifty on that. I could just come back and say, you know, I don’t know what repentance is. There’s too many definitions. but
Mike Tolliver (50:08)
Fair.
Andy Everhart (50:09)
hey, I I hope to come up with something and thank you very much for having me. And yeah, hopefully I’ll see you again on this podcast.
Mike Tolliver (50:15)
Perfect. Thank you.
