Believing into Christ

Engaging in skillful analysis of Latin and Greek grammar, Natalya Cherry shows in this book that, properly translated and used, the phrase 'believing into Christ' is at the heart of the early creeds and of Augustine’s theology. She argues that the phrase illuminates the Augustinian concept of deification which coincides with the flourishing of human life, and consists in the believer’s movement into union with Christ, in partial symmetry to the movement of God to become human. She shows that while the reception history of this formula yielded a reductive understanding, its proper restoration involves a relational view of sacraments, reconfigured to include much needed works of social justice.

~Natalia Marandiuc, Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University

Some of the oldest and most familiar words of Christian faith become new and surprising in this joyful book by Natalya A. Cherry. Proving once again that ‘God is in the details,’ Cherry shows how the proper understanding of a single preposition can sweep away centuries of mental cobwebs and cast fresh light on what it means to believe. This is not just a good book to read, it is a book to take to heart.

~R. Kendall Soulen, Professor of Systematic Theology, Candler School of Theology, Emory University

Cherry’s book is a timely reconsideration of practices of Christian belief for the post-Trump era. It replaces an inward-looking ‘belief in’ God predicated solely on a personal relationship with the divine with an emphasis on a bodily, relational, sometimes even bawdy, practice of Augustinian ‘belief into,’ that makes the case for ‘individual faith as inseparable from communal faith.’ Her suggestion that Christianity ‘cannot be merely a personal relationship between individual human and divine that benefits no one else’ is highly relevant in an increasingly individualistic if not to say egotistical age.

~Chris Vasantkumar, Lecturer in Anthropology, Macquarie University, Australia

Citing a bevy of theologians beginning with Augustine, Cherry impishly observes that even demons believe in God while contending that Christians are instead called to believe into God by enacting forms of relationship aimed at the promotion of human flourishing. In the constructive part of her argument, Cherry offers a timely and necessary reminder that, at a moment when intellectual assent to certain propositions about God is used as a basis for measuring belief and dividing up society into us and them, Christ calls his followers to love their neighbors, not to judge them. Cherry’s explication of the ancient meanings of credere in will change how readers conceive of belief; indeed, I will never be able to profess the Apostles’ Creed again without thinking and saying, ‘I believe into God…’

~John T. Sebastian, Vice President for Mission and Ministry & Professor of English, Loyola Marymount University

This important book is not only a journey of rediscovery; it also opens up a future journey of exploration – challenging and encouraging the Church to face the ways in which we exclude, oppress, marginalize or ignore people. This is a book that gives a refreshing and challenging theological underpinning to the Church to be a beacon, an icon, a flourishing and relational body, intimately connected with the living God, by believing into Christ, enabled by the glue. Well worth venturing into the deep end.

~David McCoulough, Theology