The following essay is from DOXA. I put it up because tonight on CARM I ran into an argument I've seen a number of times, but not until now did it dawn on me why people make it. I suddenly realized so few people understand why there was an atonement. The average Christian understanding is so screwed most of them can't explain it to another person. This is reflected in the answers to this argument.
The argument goes like this: So what if Jesus was crucified? what's the big deal? There re much worse ways to suffer. Crucifixion is bad but it is far from the worst thing that can happen to you. So why was it a sacrifice, I mean after all he is God, what would it matter to him if he dies? And he got to come back."
Now this is incredibly ignorant, but it occurs to me there re some resins for this kind of chaotic thinking, but also one big hidden premise. Before launching into that analysis, however, I would like to comment on the inadequacy of Christian understanding.
First, most Christians try to answer this out of a need for piety. They do not give a theological answer, they give a pious one. The pious answer can't be undestood by modern people, they lack pious feelings, so it just makes it worse. The pious answer of course is to try and mount up the pain and make it seem so very much worse. O. Jesus suffered in hell and he suffers every minute and he's still suffering and he felt all the agony in the world. Of course it doesn't' really say that anywhere in the Bible. While I think this is true, and while my pious side feels the prier sense of reversions Dan gratitude to our savior for this work, we can't use this to answer the question because modern impiety can't understand the answer. They just hear us reiterating their hidden primes.
The other Christian answers are Propitiatory atonement, Substitutionary, or Moral government. These are the tree major ways of looking at the atonement. Propitiation means to turn away anger. This answer is also incomprehensible t moderns. God is so very angry with us that he can't stand the sight of us, he hats o stick Jesus between himself and us so he will see Jesus and turn away his anger. This just makes God seem like a red faced historical parent who couldn't comprehend the consequences of his creation when he decided to make it. Substitutionary atonement says Jesus took our place, he received the penalty our sins deserved. This comes in two verities. One is financial translation, Jesus paid the debt. the other is closer to moral government, Jesus was executed because he stepped in and took the place of the guilty party. Both of these are also problematic, because they really allow the guilty to get off Scott free and persecute an innocent person. The thing is in real Fe you could not go down to the jail and talk them into letting you take another prisoners place. WE can harp on how this is a grace so fine we can't undersigned it in the natural mind, and relapse into piety again singing the praises to God for doing this wonderful act, but it wont answer the atheists questions.
I realize that the view I hold to is a little known minority view. I know I'm bucking the mainstream. But I think it makes a lot more sense and actually why there was an atonement. Before getting into it, however, I want to comment upon the atheist hidden premise. The explicit premise of the atheist argument is that atonement works by Jesus suffering a whole lot. If Jesus suffers enough then restitution is made. But wait, restitution for what? For our sins? Then why should Jesus suffer more than we do or more than our victims do? Why do antes seem to think, as was argued on CRAM tonight, that Jesus must suffer more than anyone ever has for the atonement to work? It's because the hidden premise is that God is guilty and the atonement is the time God pays for his own mistakes. Jesus has to suffer more than anyone to make up for what God has done, inconveniencing us by creating us.
The sickness of the modern mind can scarcely comprehend Christian theology now. I wonder if it isn't too late and we are just past the day when people in the West can really be saved?
I mean consider the idea that usually accompanies this argument: well he is God after all, a little torture death cant' hurt him. In the old days, when we had a culture that ran on Christian memories, people said how great that God would do this for us when he didn't have to! Now the argument is "Of course he had to, it's the least he can do, after all I didn't asked to be born, so I'm entitled to whatever goodies can get in compensation." That's why I think the hidden premise is to blame God; its as though they are saying God has to suffer more than anyone to make up for the suffering he caused as creator. This sort of attitude is very troubling.
In any case, my view is the Participatory atonement. It was embraced by several church fathers and modern theologians supporting it are mentioned below:
I.The Atonement: God's Solidarity With Humanity.
A. The inadequacy of Financial Transactions
Many ministers, and therefore, many Christians speak of and think of Jesus' death on the cross as analogues to a financial transaction. Usually this idea goes something like this: we are in hock to the devil because we sinned. God pays the debt we owe by sending Jesus to die for us, and that pays off the devil. The problem with this view is the Bible never says we owe the devil anything. We owe God. The financial transaction model is inadequate. Matters of the soul are much more important than any monetary arrangement and business transactions and banking do not do justice to the import of the issue. Moreover, there is a more sophisticated model; that of the sacrifice for sin. In this model Jesus is like a sacrificial lamb who is murdered in our place. This model is also inadequate because it is based on a primitive notion of sacrifice. The one making the sacrifice pays over something valuable to him to appease an angry God. In this case God is paying himself. This view is also called the "propitiation view" becuase it is based upon propitiation, which means to turn away wrath. The more meaningful notion is that of Solidarity. The Solidarity or "participatory" view says that Jesus entered human history to participate in our lot as finite humans, and he died as a means of identifying with us. We are under the law of sin and death, we are under curse of the law (we sin, we die, we are not capable in our own human strength of being good enough to merit salvation). IN taking on the penalty of sin (while remaining sinless) Jesus died in our stead; not in the manner of a primitive animal sacrifice (that is just a metaphor) but as one of us, so that through identification with us, we might identify with him and therefore, partake of his newness of life.
B. Christ the Perfect Revelation of God to Humanity
In the book of Hebrews it says "in former times God spoke in many and various ways through the prophets, but in these latter times he has spoken more perfectly through his son." Jesus is the perfect revelation of God to humanity. The prophets were speaking for God, but their words were limited in how much they could tell us about God. Jesus was God in the flesh and as such, we can see clearly by his character, his actions, and his teachings what God wants of us and how much God cares about us. God is for humanity, God is on our side! The greatest sign of God's support of our cause as needy humans is Jesus death on the cross, a death in solidarity with us as victims of our own sinful hearts and societies. Thus we can see the lengths God is will to go to to point us toward himself. There are many verses in the Bible that seem to contradict this view. These are the verses which seem to say that Atonement is propitiatory.
C. Death in Solidarity with Victims
1) Support from Modern Theologians
Three Major Modern Theologians support the solidarity notion of atonement: Jurgen Moltmann (The Crucified God), Matthew L. Lamb (Solidarity With Victims), and D.E.H. Whiteley (The Theology of St. Paul).In the 1980s Moltmann (German Calvinist) was called the greatest living protestant theologian, and made his name in laying the groundwork for what became liberation theology. Lamb (Catholic Priest) was big name in political theology, and Whiteley (scholar at Oxford) was a major Pauline scholar in the 1960s.In his work The Crucified God Moltmann interprets the cry of Jesus on the cross, "my God my God why have you forsaken me" as a statement of solidarity, placing him in identification with all who feel abandoned by God.Whiteley: "If St. Paul can be said to hold a theory of the modus operandi [of the atonement] it is best described as one of salvation through participation [the 'solidarity' view]: Christ shared all of our experience, sin alone excepted, including death in order that we, by virtue of our solidarity with him, might share his life...Paul does not hold a theory of substitution..." (The Theology of St. Paul, 130)An example of one of the great classical theologians of the early chruch who held to a similar view is St. Irenaeus (according to Whiteley, 133).
2) Scriptural
...all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were Baptized into his death.? We were therefore burried with him in baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the death through the glory of the father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him in his death we will certainly be united with him in his resurrection.For we know that the old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.--because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.Now if we have died with Christ we believe that we will also live with him, for we know that since Christ was raised from the dead he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him; the death he died to sin he died once for all; but the life he lives he lives to God. In the same way count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Chrsit Jesus.(Romans 6:1-5)
In Short, if we have united ourselves to Christ, entered his death and been raised to life, we participate in his death and resurrection thourgh our act of solidarity, united with Christ in his death, than it stands to reason that his death is an act of solidarity with us, that he expresses his solidarity with humanity in his death.
This is why Jesus cries out on the cross "why have you forsaken me?" According to Moltmann this is an expression of Solidarity with all who feel abandoned by God.Jesus death in solidarity creates the grounds for forgiveness, since it is through his death that we express our solidarity, and through that, share in his life in union with Christ. Many verses seem to suggest a propitiatory view. But these are actually speaking of the affects of the solidarity. "Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath thorugh him! For if when we were considered God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! What appears to be saying that the shedding of blood is what creates forgiveness is actually saying that the death in solidarity creates the grounds for reconciliation. IT says we were enemies then we were reconciled to him thorugh the death, his expression of solidarity changes the ground, when we express our solidarity and enter into the death we are giving up to God, we move from enemy to friend, and in that sense the shedding of blood, the death in solidarity, creates the conditions through which we can be and are forgiven. He goes on to talk about sharing in his life, which is participation, solidarity, unity.
D. Meaning of Solidarity and Salvation.
Jurgen Moltmann's notion of Solidarity (see The Crucified God) is based upon the notion of Political solidarity. Christ died in Solidarity with victims. He took upon himself a political death by purposely angering the powers of the day. Thus in his death he identifies with victims of oppression. But we are all victims of oppression. Sin has a social dimension, the injustice we experience as the hands of society and social and governmental institutions is primarily and at a very basic level the result of the social aspects of sin. Power, and political machinations begin in the sinful heart, the ego, the desire for power, and they manifest themselves through institutions built by the will to power over the other. But in a more fundamental sense we are all victims of our own sinful natures. We scheme against others on some level to build ourselves up and secure our conditions in life. IN this sense we cannot help but do injustice to others. In return injustice is done to us.Jesus died in solidarity with us, he underwent the ultimate consequences of living in a sinful world, in order to demonstrate the depths of God's love and God's desire to save us. Take an analogy from political organizing. IN Central America governments often send "death squads" to murder labor unionists and political dissenter. IN Guatemala there were some American organizations which organized for college students to go to Guatemala and escort the leaders of dissenting groups so that they would not be murdered.
The logic was that the death squads wouldn't hurt an American Student because it would bring bad press and shut off U.S. government funds to their military. As disturbing as these political implications are, let's stay focused on the Gospel. Jesus is like those students, and like some of them, he was actually killed. But unlike them he went out of his way to be killed, to be victimized by the the rage of the sinful and power seeking so that he could illustrate to us the desire of God; that God is on our side, God is on the side of the poor, the victimized, the marginalized, and the lost. Jesus said "a physician is not sent to the well but to the sick."The key to salvation is to accept God's statement of solidarity, to express our solidarity with God by placing ourselves into the death of Christ (by identification with it, by trust in it's efficacy for our salvation).
E. Atonement is a Primitive Concept?
This charge is made quite often by internet-skeptics, especially Jewish anti-missionaries who confuse the concept with the notion of Human sacrifice. But the charge rests on the idea that sacrifice itself is a primitive notion. If one commits a crime, someone else should not pay for it. This attack can be put forward in many forms but the basic notion revolves around the idea that one person dying for the sins of another, taking the penalty or sacrificing to remove the guilt of another is a primitive concept. None of this applies with the Participatory view of the atonement (solidarity) since the workings of Christ's death, the manner in which it secures salvation, is neither through turning away of wrath nor taking upon himself others sins, but the creation of the grounds through which one declares one's own solidarity with God and the grounds through which God accepts that solidarity and extends his own; the identification of God himself with the needs and crays of his own creation.
F. Unfair to Jesus as God's Son?
Internet skeptics sometimes argue that God can't be trusted if he would sacrifice his son. This is so silly and such a misunderstanding of Christian doctrine and the nature of religious belief that it hardly deserves an answer. Obviously God is three persons in one essence, the Trinity , Triune Godhead. Clearly God's act of solidarity was made with the unanimity of a single Godhead. God is not three God's, and is always in concert with himself.
13 comments:
That sounds like an idea that I put forward, and without the benefit of all that fancy philosophy readin'...
Take substitutionary atonement. It works up to a point as a metaphor, but if it doesn't get you to the bigger picture, it leads to the strongest forms of Calvinism, of extreme judgmentalism and exlucisivism. The way I understand that particular theological model is that we are all already embraced by God but we cannot see it or accept it. It is our duality of thinking, of God and not-God, of exaggerating the objective reality of good and evil, that keeps us from accepting this truth and resting in God. This way of thinking, of a cosmic struggle, of us and them, is clearly expressed in the most concrete of terms in the Bible as the view of God alternates between a jealous and insecure sky-deity and an all-embracing Source of all that is becoming.
But that doesn't mean we are just supposed to accept that view without further thought or reflection, as the flat-thinking folks would have us believe. I believe it does however, when combined with what Christ taught, ask us to follow through. Christ had to die because we are the ones who see a distance between ourselves and God, because we give our faith to such distinctions. We are the source of alienation, and we don't know how to truly love ourselves and each other, to forgive ourselves and each other, to heal and allow ourselves to be healed. It isn't God's sense of justice that must be satisfied - it isn't God's sense of isolation and intrinsic autonomy that has caused the perception of a rift between ourselves and God (that is, it isn't God's sin) - it isn't God who ate from the fruit of the tree and divided the world into good and evil -it is our own doing. That is a fuller picture of how to appreciate substitutionary atonement in my humble opinion. In our sin we don't just act bad, we fail to achieve our full goodness - our full potential.
This is what Paul said about substitutionary atonement. "It is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous."
Paul didn't just think SA is b/s he knew it it is.
This is what Paul said about substitutionary atonement. "It is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous."
Paul didn't just think SA is b/s he knew it it is.
Paul uses several models, I agree that he's not stuck on the substitution idea literalistic nor does he get all the things out of it that Calvinists do, such as limited atonement. But int his statement he is not saying that salvation is by works or by keeping the law. He's saying if you set out to make it be being righteous rather than by accepting God's grace you have to the keep the whole law and if you screw up then you fail.
He's saying the only way you can make it is by accepting Jesus sacrifice. But in saying that I believe that the way to accept it is as a statement of solidarity.
"The law was added so that the trespass might increase." Rom. 5:20
Also Heb. 7:12b "there is made of necessity a change also of the law."
What you do know is not in the remotest sense what the apostle Paul teaches. And you are even less than that in knowing what God has done by Jesus' crucifixion.
"The law was added so that the trespass might increase." Rom. 5:20
try connecting that to the arguemnts please. Because he si not saying this means salvation is by works. It does not say have to follow the law to be saved. HE's saying the law is there to show us how bad bad is. But then also counters it with the realization that we can't keep the law because we are sinful and we need God's grace to give us the power not to sin.
Also Heb. 7:12b "there is made of necessity a change also of the law."
That in no way says what you want it to.
What you do know is not in the remotest sense what the apostle Paul teaches. And you are even less than that in knowing what God has done by Jesus' crucifixion.
that is not an argument. that is nothing more than posturing. I can read what he says. Apparently I understand what I read better than you do. I also have read many commentaries and scholarly articles on what he meant, apparently you have not. I also read Greek and have read this in Greek, I would bet you have not.
I clearly understand Paul better than you do.
Thanks, but the door into the kingdom of God, friend, is small, narrow.................few find it, and make every effort to use only it. For when you're caught climbing over the wall it is into the hand of the Living God. Something that is terrible for a man. He does not survive.
Thanks, but the door into the kingdom of God, friend, is small, narrow.................few find it, and make every effort to use only it. For when you're caught climbing over the wall it is into the hand of the Living God. Something that is terrible for a man. He does not survive.
sorry buddy, God has not appointed you the orbiter of my salvation. You are not the divine gatekeeper. You don't' even understand the basic principles the chruch teaches.
God did not make you the head hoaky. I know Jesus, I doubt that you do., but I know I do. So I don't care about your heretical misconceptions.
salvation is by God's grace, period. you are wrong.
If your conjecture is true that by knowing Greek is also congruent with the gift of interpreting the Scriptures then you are only even with every Greek. For they are said to think and say that the gospel of God is foolish to them as you admit it is to you.
If your conjecture is true that by knowing Greek is also congruent with the gift of interpreting the Scriptures then you are only even with every Greek. For they are said to think and say that the gospel of God is foolish to them as you admit it is to you.
that is no excuse for thinking that your arguments don't have to make sense. If the Holy Spirit shows you an interpritation it must still be recoginizable to anyone reading the passage with erasonable aobut of teaching and discussion. Everything has to be verifiealbe to anyone who can read the passage, or you are impossing your own will and fooling youself.
there is no private interpriation and Paul said that I believe.
you can't just pretend God is telling you something and not be able to show it verified in reading the passages. that passage you quoted is not a license to assert foolish opinions in the name of God.
stop responding, because I want to do this as a main blog piece for this week and then you can respond to that one. give me a chance to write it.
Then why is it that Jesus says "Thou preparest a table before Me in the presence of mine enemies."? And doesn't this table sit right down front center of every Christian church house in existance? ref. 1 Cor 11:26-29 And you know Jesus?
Now is the day of salvation friend for there might not be a next week.
Theo. I have put up a new post disproving your view point. I would apprecaite it if you would answer there rather than on this post. Because that one is new and easier for me get to.
here
Hi Metacrock. Interesting post. Its a pity you didn't have more constructive feedback and its a pity the comments degenerated into a slanging match--an all to
familiar feature nowadays
among Christians who may be hot on theology but not so hot on being Christlike. In fact it
might be better to sacrifice the former if the latter is compromised.
But be that as it may I would like to share how I have been trying to tackle a legalist similar to Theo and came across a very helpful article "Concepts and Models of the Atonement" by James A Fowler. Have you read it?
Fowler examines a variety of models and makes the point that whatever model one chooses your theological considerations "must avoid positing Christ's work only in terms of
"benefits," since, he argues, it "creates an overly objectified disjuncture of the work of Jesus Christ from the living person of Jesus Christ....He did what He did, and does what He does, because He is who He is. All of His acts are inherent in His Being."
With this qualification in mind he finally arrives at a concept of the atonement which is, unsurprisingly, modelled on ontological lines. He labels it 'The Spiritual/Ontological' Model. What I particularly like about his concept is that it attempts a composite of all Biblical models. I was hoping he would arrive at one and I was not disappointed.
So, then, what distinguishes the model? Well, I would not want to spell it our here because it has so many facets and it is better to read his article directly. But one sentence stands out, viz: "Going beyond the emphasis on the remedial work of Christ, the results of which are often cast in terms of benefits bestowed by Christ's work, this model recognizes the divine objective of the ontological Being of God in Christ restored to function in man."
If you are able to find time to read Fowler I will be interested to know your response and how well it compares with your chosen Solidarity Model.
God bless
Brian
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