Speeches
As I Have Loved You: A New Interpretation of Christian History with Theologian Terryl Given
Senior research fellow and theologian Terryl Givens visited Southern Virginia University on Oct. 10, to offer a fresh examination of how Christians across different eras have understood the nature of God’s love. In his remarks, Givens invited listeners to look beyond abstract or distant conceptions of the divine and reclaim a vision of God that is profoundly relational and vulnerable, revealed most clearly in the lived example and ministry of Jesus Christ.
Drawing from the writings of early Christian thinkers, Givens emphasized that genuine understanding of God begins with seeing what God revealed through Christ. Many early Christians, he explained, insisted that it was Christ’s humanity—not divine distance—that allowed people to finally see the character of God clearly.
“Early Christians testified again and again that we thought we knew God, but until we saw Him and touched Him and wept with Him, we had no idea who God was,” Givens said. “It was in Christ’s human life—not behind it—that they saw the nature of the Father clearly for the first time.”
Sharing insights from his decades of study, Givens walked students through the writings of John the Baptist and other early christian theologians such as Irenaeus, Clement, Origen, and the Cappadocian Fathers. These early voices taught that God’s love is not symbolic or metaphorical, but real, embodied, and deeply invested in human flourishing.
“Love is inherently costly—it binds us to one another in relationships that create new realities we cannot undo,” Givens explained. “Once you love someone, their joys and sorrows become your own. That vulnerability is the price of love, and exempting God from that cost was one of Christianity’s greatest losses.”
Givens explained that early Christians understood divine love as universal, costly, and inexhaustible—a force that creates genuine relationships and binds people together through vulnerability. However, by Augustine’s time, Christian thought had shifted away from this uplifting vision, and doctrines like original sin came to define human nature more in terms of guilt and corruption than divine potential.
“Instead of seeing mortal struggle as part of an educative ascent, Augustine made guilt the centerpiece of Christian identity and replaced divine compassion with divine sovereignty. It changed the entire trajectory of Christian thought,” Givens explained.
Givens concluded by reflecting on how modern believers might reconnect with the earliest Christian message: that God loves steadfastly, relational, and deeply personal. He emphasized that understanding this love changes how we see God, ourselves, and the purpose of our lives.
“If there is one message the earliest Christians would want us to recover, it’s this: God loves with the same kind of love He asks of us,” Givens said. “Not a distant, inscrutable, or metaphorical love, but real love—love that feels, that suffers, that gives, and that never gives up.”
The event opened with the singing of “Shine On Me” performed by Southern Virginia’s Men’s Chorus and concluded with the traditional closing song of “Love One Another.”