He believes strongly in a message he is called to proclaim but has nothing to prove. "I am not trying to assert myself," says the slightly bemused theologian. Yet anyone who is around him, and listens to him, senses the power of his unique intellectual rigor that comes from constant engagement with Scripture that is both breath-taking and exciting. He engages the reader in Scripture with an almost child like joy.

Dr. Hall, 54, breathes the air of Holy Scripture, is familiar with the ancient languages of the Scripture and the church and various English translations of the Bible. His favorite translations are the New Revised Standard Version and the New International Version (NIV).

Dr. Hall was, till recently, Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies, Eastern University. Now he holds title as Dean of the Templeton Honors College at Eastern University, an intensive undergraduate program for high IQ kids. He is an Editor-at-Large for Christianity Today, and is the author and editor of seven books, including The Trinity. He is also associate editor of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture and co-editor of Ancient & Postmodern Christianity: Paleo-Orthodoxy in the 21st Century--Essays in Honor of Thomas C. Oden, the United Methodist Church's most prominent orthodox theologian.

Hall authored Learning Theology with the Church Fathers and Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers. In 2000 he wrote Realized Religion - Research on the Relationship between Religion and Health with Theodore J. Chamberlain. Hall co-authored The Trinity, which Eerdmans published in 2002. He has also co-authored, Does God Have A Future: A Debate On Divine Providence, with John Sanders.

The Gospel of Mark in the Ancient Commentary on Scripture (ACCS) was recently translated into Italian. As a result, Dr. Hall and other members of the commentary team were invited to an audience with Pope John Paul II last December.

The Ancient Christian Commentary series when completed will fill 28 volumes. 15 volumes have appeared in print thus far, published by InterVarsity Press. Thomas Oden, general editor of the series and co-editor with Hall of the Mark volume, writes:

"The ACCS seeks to do for the Christian community what the Talmud did for the Jewish memory of early interpreters of the Torah. It revives the early tradition known as glossa ordinaria, a text artfully elaborated with ancient and authoritative reflections and insights. It is an uncommon companion for theological and spiritual teaching, and wholesome reading and preaching. Scholars with a deep knowledge of the Fathers and a heart for the church have hand-selected material for each volume, translating where necessary, annotating and introducing it today's readers."

Oden and Hall continue: "The early church fathers rarely produced sustained commentary on Mark. This fast-paced and robust little Gospel, so much enjoyed by modern readers, was overshadowed in the minds of the Fathers by the magisterial Gospels of Matthew and John."

"With the assistance of computer searches, an abundance of comment has been discovered to be embedded and interleaved amid the textual archives of patristic homilies, apologies, letters, commentaries, theological treatises and hymnic verses. In this ACCS on Mark, the insights of Augustine of Hippo and Clement of Alexandria, Ephrem the Syrian and Cyril of Jerusalem join in a polyphony of interpretive voices of the Eastern and Western church from the second to the eighth century. Mark's Gospel displays the evocative power of its story, parables and passion as it ignites a brilliant exhibition of theological insight and pastoral wisdom."

In October 2003 Hall debated John Sanders of Huntington College over open theism, a sharply debated issue among evangelical theologians for nearly a decade. The debate received significant acclaim as both scholarly and as a model of how Christians who disagree about theology can learn from each other. "John and I clearly disagreed on key issues and the debate still continues. Yet we remain close friends." The debate produced a book: Does God Have a Future? A Debate on Divine Providence, published by Baker Academic. Hall and open-theism advocate Sanders teased out the issues through an exchange of 37 e-mails (the first nine appeared in CHRISTIANITY TODAY in May and June 2001). They debate a host of related issues, including prayer, the impassibility of God, and the problem of evil.

Dr. Hall is also an authority on spiritual transformation and he lectures frequently around the world on themes of spiritual transformation. He is a friend and admirer of Dr. Richard Foster, of RENOVARE fame. Foster is the co-editor of a new study Bible called the RENOVARE Bible and Hall has been asked to write the commentary on I and II Peter and Jude.

VirtueOnline met with Dr. Hall at Eastern University and talked with him at length on two themes. The first was the nature of his scholarship and work and secondly the subject of sex and violence, a comparative look at First and 21st century attitudes and their impact on Western Civilization.

VIRTUEONLINE: Dr. Hall, what are you attempting to do in your three books: Learning Theology with the Church Fathers, Reading Scripture With the Church Fathers and Praying with the Church Fathers?

HALL: I want to introduce modern Christians to the world of the early church, particularly because the Holy Spirit has a history. Too many evangelical folk focus only on three time periods: their own modern situation in the twenty-first century, the first century experience of the church, and church history from the reformation on. Yet the Holy Spirit has never deserted the church, and we can learn much from the Spirit's history from the second to the fifteenth centuries. The church fathers, for instance, do not see clearly on every issue, but they do tend to see very clearly on issues where modern Christians tend to be blind.

VIRTUEONLINE: Will your books help 21st Century Christians, who are largely post-modern in their attitudes, reflect better on how the Bible was understood in the first centuries of the church?

HALL: Yes. In Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers I talk a fair amount about post modernism. Most, if not all post modernists, argue that our understanding of truth is formed and shaped by the communities to which we belong. To a certain extent the church fathers would agree. The fathers understand the church itself to be an authoritative community in which Christians learn how to read the Scripture well and how to live well. The fathers clearly understood the pursuit of truth to be a communal endeavor. What distinguishes the fathers' perspective from post modernism is their insistence that the church itself, as it faithfully bears witness to and passes on apostolic truth, possesses a communal authority that other human communities do not possess.

VIRTUEONLINE: In your mind what can we learn from the church fathers that helps us today? What are the central issues for them and us?

HALL: The church fathers are particularly helpful in clearly communicating the mind of the church regarding central Christian beliefs such as the incarnation and the Trinity that are frequently misunderstood or misinterpreted in the modern church. Too many churches tend to be deeply confused and in danger of being lost, often because their leaders themselves are confused.

VIRTUEONLINE: Can you give an example?

HALL: Take the example of Christ's incarnation. I recently read an Episcopal bishop's comment that Jesus knew himself to be sinful and to be a forgiven sinner. Every church father across the board would consider such a statement to be strikingly heretical.

VIRTUEONLINE: How so?

HALL: The early church understood clearly that both Christ's sinless humanity and full divinity were necessary truths to be affirmed if the biblical witness was to be faithfully preserved within the church and if the gospel itself was to maintain its integrity. A sinful Christ can save no one.

Other foundational doctrines such as the Trinity, the resurrection and so on, are too often not understood nor appreciated by modern church leaders. The fathers can surely help us to gain our bearings at this point.

VIRTUEONLINE: What other issues do you see the church fathers address that could be of help to us today?

HALL: The fathers see very clearly on key ethical issues where modern Christians are surely in danger of losing their moral compass. The specific issues of sex and violence come to mind.

VIRTUEONLINE: I have heard you lecture on sex and violence. These are troubling issues for both Christians and non-Christians. How have these two issues damaged the Christian community?

HALL: At Eastern University I have taught for the past 13 years a class titled Foundations of Christian Spirituality. The class has grown in size over the years to where an average class runs around 70 students. Why this growth? The young students long to be more deeply formed into Christ and simultaneously know they have been deeply damaged by the infections running through the blood stream of the culture in which we live. For instance, I have learned over the years through reading students' journals that the level of sexual sin and violence to which evangelical students have been exposed is fearfully high. I have come to expect, for instance, that if I am teaching a class with 40 young Christian women, at least 10 have been sexually abused.

VIRTUEONLINE: Who are the abusers?

HALL: Most often family members, family friends, or clergy to whom my students have been exposed. Other students speak of addictions to violent material, pornography on the Internet, food (eating too much or too little) and so on.

VIRTUEONLINE: How has this affected you?

HALL: At first I was deeply discouraged by encountering the morally confused lives of my students. My discouragement has ebbed as I have come to see how deeply hungry they are for the reality of Christ and his transforming power. One of the key issues they face in cultivating a Christian moral perspective overcoming their desensitization to deeply immoral perspectives on sex and violence.. When I compare the world of my students with the world of the Early Church I am struck by how similar both worlds are.

Roman culture was violent, sexually over heated, infected with a violent, over heated perspective on almost all of life, whether it be in the arena or regarding the statuary, paintings, and mosaics that decorated many Roman households, inns and taverns. Early Christians faced the same temptations we do today.

VIRTUEONLINE: How did the church fathers regard exposure to violence?

HALL: The fathers were of one voice in forbidding Christians to attend gladiatorial contests in the arena.

VIRTUEONLINE: Why?

HALL: The fathers believed that spectators in the arena were just as guilty of murder as those doing the actual killing.

VIRTUEONLINE: Like snuff movies or violent gay pornography?

HALL: The fathers would be uncomfortable attending a movie with gratuitous violence simply for the purpose of entertaining a viewer. They were convinced that continued exposure to violence deadened a human being's soul, so you find you don't respond compassionately to human suffering. Continued exposure to gratuitous violence kills compassion and mercy. In a manner of speaking, continued exposure to skewed moral perspectives creates dead zones in the soul.

VIRTUEONLINE: Do you go to a lot of movies?

HALL: I am more discerning as I get older.

VIRTUEONLINE: What kind of movies do you like?

HALL: I like stories in which virtues such as courage and perseverance are lauded. For instance, I liked "Saving Private Ryan." Here was a film in which the violence was necessary. If we send soldiers into combat, best to realize what combat is like. And at the same time, love, compassion, and sacrifice were woven into the film in significant ways.

VIRTUEONLINE: What did you think of Mel Gibson's, The Passion of the Christ?

HALL: I thought it was great. In terms of the violence reflected in the movie, we need to remember that most modern Christians would feel deeply uncomfortable in the temple area itself. Blood was flowing constantly from sacrificial animals; the smell of blood, the sound of animals dying, filled the temple area. The ancient world was a violent one and Gibson captures this side of life well.

The temple sacrifical system taught Israel that sin was deeply serious business and that sin was insolubly connected to death. Dealing with sin was not a pleasant business; it was not entertaining, but necessary. So what Mel Gibson helps us to see is that dealing with sin cost God much. Jesus was absorbing into his body our sin and killing it there. It hurt him on many levels, including the physical. Christ suffering in his body is an indispensable aspect of what was taking place when God was atoning for human sin.

VIRTUEONLINE: What else about the movie impressed you?

HALL: I recall the horror of Jesus' flogging. Christ's blood seeps out onto the pavement. This is special blood. It is unlike any other blood ever shed. If that blood is not shed then human sin is not taken away, is not atoned. The fathers of the church understood this clearly. Across the board they had an elevated view of the Eucharist; the reality of Christ's death and resurrection shaped their perspective and the perspective of Gibson's Christianity. The gospel is not simply a philosophy, although it contains wisdom for living. It's not simply understanding certain ideas about God, though it entails that. Christianity surely involves the willingness to embrace and enter into communion with all that Christ is - His mind, emotions and his crucified and risen body. We need that blood and body, and when we see him "in that day" we will see the marks of his suffering.

VIRTUEONLINE: So you don't see it as violence for violence sake?

HALL: No. This aspect of Christ's crucifixion and passion is not violence for entertainment's sake. It was not an entertaining film. Sometimes it is a good thing to watch hard things if they lead to compassion, love, mercy, repentance and so on.

I am bit concerned that Christians are unwilling to embrace this aspect of the faith. I worry about a sanitized Christianity in which key aspects of the gospel end up being strained out for political correctness and aversion to the earthier side of the Christian faith.

The very fathers who had a deep aversion to violence as entertainment at the same time fully embraced a Christ who suffered. They knew they needed the cross and resurrection if the entirety and fullness of the gospel was to be preserved. So we need both the empty tomb and the suffering of Golgotha.

VIRTUEONLINE: Homosexuality, more correctly pansexuality, has become the lightening rod issue of the mainline denominations, especially the Episcopal Church. As a result the Episcopal church is in a moral free fall, yet continues to embrace pansexual behavior. How do you view this?

HALL: The attitude towards homosexual practice has changed largely because attitudes towards sexual chastity and purity have themselves changed. Its hard to see things clearly in a sexually overheated society. Modern North American society is sexually skewed, with the result that through attempts to be compassionate we end up advocating sexual behaviors that both in the long run and short term are deeply damaging to human beings.

VIRTUEONLINE: On the top of my list of overlooked or misunderstood emphases is the call for all Christians to lead a holy life. What is holiness?

HALL: Holiness is misunderstood and caricatured in modern culture. Holy people are too often portrayed as rigid, moral rigorists, deeply conflicted, angry, bitter, boringly lifeless and so on. The last thing I would think, then, is that anyone would want to be holy, at least if this is what holiness is. I too would avoid that. Holiness is portrayed by the church fathers and by Christ himself as a bright, shining, wondrous reality filled with compassion and love; we are all called to be holy. Holiness always involves certain yes's and certain no's. Yes to mercy and compassion and love and a refusal to condemn. And it involves certain no's. It means no to self indulgence, no to exploiting other human beings, sexually, racially and in economic terms, and no to placing oneself at the center of the universe, or creating God in my own image. It also means no to domesticating God. It also means no to the temptation to say yes to behaviors that ultimately destroy human beings through a misplaced compassion. Holy people are fully engaged with the world around them; they might be surprisingly earthy; they would know how to laugh, know how to cry, know themselves well and be more than willing to acknowledge their need for continued repentance and healing. They have heard a call to change, to be deeply formed in the image of Christ. This is a difficult, hard, and wondrous call...a call to come home, a call to be formed in the image of the one who has shown us what it is to be genuinely human. Jesus was the holiest human being who ever lived and hence the most fully human. Human beings are made for holiness. We are created for it.

VIRTUEONLINE: What names spring to mind when you think of holiness.

HALL: Mother Teresa, Billy Graham, John Paul II.

VIRTUEONLINE: The nature of our salvation still seems to be the central issue between Catholics and Protestants: How do you view this?

HALL: What I argued for in a recent CT interview is that the church fathers, Roman Catholics and Protestant folk all see clearly in certain areas regarding salvation. I think evangelicals have something to offer the Roman Catholic Church. In turn I believe that the Roman Catholic Church has something to offer evangelicals. So what I am hoping for is a cross pollination to take place between these Christian worlds.

VIRTUEONLINE: Would you ever think of crossing the Tiber to Rome?

HALL: I would at the drop of a hat, if I was faced with a choice of either becoming Roman Catholic or liberal Episcopalian. I would choose Rome without a doubt. However, I don't think that choice is necessary.

The liberal protestant world is increasingly becoming very difficult to identify as recognizably Christian. I have heard Episcopal bishops in the liberal wing of the church deny almost every fundamental doctrine of the faith as passed on to us over the years. They are not recognizably Christian. It reminds me of the time of Josiah. Josiah was called to severely discipline men who functioned like priests, dressed like priests, were doing all kinds of priestly acts yet violated the heart and core of their priesthood. If it wasn't for the orthodox wing of the Episcopal Church I would be gone.

VIRTUEONLINE: In your mind has the Roman Catholic and Protestant positions on infusion and imputation with regard to the Doctrine of Salvation been satisfactorily resolved by recent bilateral talks between Lutherans and Roman Catholics?

HALL: I believe Dr. Jim Packer, an Evangelical Anglican, has done fine work on this issue. He feels, I think, that there is more common ground than we might realize, though there is still work to be done. I have been personally referred to by some of my academic colleagues as catholic light. (Laughter)

VIRTUEONLINE: You came from a very non-conformist free (evangelical) church background. You have come a long way. Is there are any other explanation you might have for how you got to be where you are today?

HALL: My Uncle Bob was most helpful to me in understanding the gospel. He, too, had grown up in the evangelical wing of the church, a context that was non-sacramental, for instance, in its understanding of the eucharist. Before he died he called me up. "Chris, I have become a Catholic." The thing that convinced him there was truth in the Roman Catholic Church was that he always believed there was more that was going on than met the eye when he partook of communion, even in an evangelical context. He had encountered in bread and wine something tangible… that sacramental understanding of life that the orthodox and Roman Catholic folk can offer to us. What we as Evangelical Anglicans offer is a more deeply grounded biblical understanding of the cross.

VIRTUEONLINE: Thank you Dr. Hall

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