J. Kameron Carter’s intricately structured book, Race: A Theological Account, is divided into three sections by a pre-, inter-, and postlude on Christology and race in which he interrogates three church fathers on the significance of their theology for overcoming the modern racialization of humanity. In his interlude on the abolitionism of Gregory of Nyssa, Carter asks how it is that Gregory came to feel a divine imperative for human freedom that was denied by equally apt readers of scripture such as his brother Basil, Augustine, or Gregory of Nazianzus. Carter traces the source of Gregory’s abolitionism to his refusal to abstract Christ from the Jewish flesh which he conceives of as the very Image of God–the concrete universal in which all creatures participate as images of God. Thus, if Christ is the Image of God set free from death by the Father, so also must all who are made in the image of God be set free from the penultimate forms of death such as slavery.
Today the whole world can be seen gathered like one household for the harmony of a single song and neglecting every ordinary business, refashioned as at one signal for earnest prayer…. And truly the present day is well compared with the coming day which it portrays: both are days of human gathering, that one universal, this partial. To tell the absolute truth, as far as gladness and joy are concerned, this day is more delightful than the anticipated one, since then inevitably those in grief will also be seen when their sins are exposed, whereas the present pleasure admits no sorrow. The just man rejoices, and the one whose c onscience is not clear awaits the restoration which repentance brings, and every sorrow is put to sleep for the present day, while none is so distressed that relief does not come from the great splendour of the feast. Now is the prisoner freed, the debtor forgiven, the slave is liberated by the good and kindly proclamation of the church, not being rudely struck on the cheek and released from beatings with a beating, nor being exhibited to the mob on a stand as though it were a show, getting insult and indignity as the beginning of his freedom, but released and acknowledged with equal decency…. 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 openness; 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.
- On the Holy Pasch, 7-8 (Quoted in Carter, 244)
