This is my annual Christmas article. I will post on Friday but not Monday. I'll probably take off next Wednesday too. So I wish every a Mary Christmas!
The Christian part of Christmas, that's the nativity scene with no
trees or elves. That's the part you go to chruch to talk about. Show
some mangers and some wise men and play the drummer boy song (eeeeee
can't stand that son, p-rum-pum-pum-pum, rum-pum-pum-pum...enough
already!) and you've done your bit for Christmas. I actually love
Christmas, I like the manger and the baby and all that. Yet that is not
what it's about. The entrance of Christ into the world in a lowly birth,
worshiped by wise mean and heralded by angles and a star, those are
nice folk tale elements. That masks what it's all about in guise of cute
fluffy heart warming imagery. Christmas is about the birth of Christ,
God come in the flesh, and that signals to us the death of Christ; its
meaning, it's end, it's un-final end and new beginner. The birth heralds
more of the positive side of Jesus time in the flesh, his career, his
mission, the promise and the possibilities. After all they angels said
"peace on earth, good will toward men." How does that connect to a kid
born in a manger?
,,,,,,,Even with the positive possibilities
of peace the birth hearlds the death and since we are compelled to think
of both they both remind us of the meaning of Christ's mission and the
reason for his coming. I used to read a book every Christmas, the same
book. It was one of my all time favorite books;
The Crucified God, by Jurgen Moltmann. The subtitle is very important:
The Cross of Christ as the foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology.
That book seemed to most adequately sum up what the incarnation is
about. I haven't read it in many years, lost in the moving, the many
moves I've had to make.
.......Motlmann was from the 60's to
the 90's and maybe even up to the present was the greatest living
Protestant theologian. He was best known for this book and his
Theology of Hope.
both of which served to dramatize and legitimize the theology of
liberation and the struggles of Latin America. Moltmann's book is
actually an argument for placing Paxis on the front burner of theology
and leaving the dray musty doctrinal stuff on the back burner. Praxis is
the idea of reflection upon material need, how to apply the lessons of
theology in a practical way to people's needs.
.......To get to the core of the book and it's relation to Christmas, the
argument goes like this: So what if Jesus was crucified? what's the
big deal? There are 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."
.......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 proper sense of devotion and gratitude to our savior
for his 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 to moderns. God is so very angry with us that he can't
stand the sight of us, he has to 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 that Jesus took our place, he received the
penalty our sins deserved. This comes in two verities. One is financial
transaction, 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. Again modern people can't understand this kind of thinking; 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 explains 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 atheists seem to think,
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 acompanies this argument: well he is God after all, a
little torutre 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 marks the disease of the modern mind.
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 inadquacy of Financial Transactions
Many
ministers, and therefore, many Christians speak of and think of
Jesus' death on the cross as analogous 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 sacrament
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 finiate humans, and he dide 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 premature animal sacrafice (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 interprits 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) Scrtiptural
...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 certanly 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
through our act of solidarity, united with Christ in his death, than it
stands tto 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 through 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 through 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
prematurity 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 premature 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 cry of his own creation.
The Blogging Parson
Moltmann's
theodicy is the great strength of this work, in that it directly
engages the protest atheism of the mid twentieth century without
negating the powerful emotional impact of its claims. We are returned
to the cross as the heart of the Christian message repeatedly - it is
no accident that Luther features so strongly and so positively in these
pages. Further, the rigour of his penetrating search for the
implications of the cross for God himself has led him rightly to the
trinity, and stands as a rebuke to the western tradition for neglecting
this understanding of God for so long. The atonement is necessarily a
trinitarian event/process. The sense of God identifying with human
beings in Christ is also very strong. Moltmann develops a theology of
the atonement with a cosmic scope, and does not fall into the trap of
individualising the work of the cross.
Moltmann's
work turns out to develop a "Trinitarian history of God." This works
through a dialectic through which God rejects the Son, then accepts the
son, then raises the son to a hope and a future in which we can
participate. This also raises a dialectical relation between God and man
because the son becomes part of humanity then humanity becomes part of
the son through adoption to sonship and participation in the future.
Christ particpates in our life and We in his. That's quite a
philosophical turn on for a German.
Blogging Parson again:
We
might complain that Moltmann's doctrine of God suffers from an
overdose of Hegelianism, by presenting the history of the world as
God's history, the process by which he realizes himself. By rejecting
impassiblity and divine aseity, does he allow a compromise of God's
freedom? This having been said, is God still as impersonal
as he ever was under the scholastics? Further, the God presented here
seems almost dependent on, or at least intrinsically tied to, the
world. His is a vulnerable God. Moltmann's trinitarian reflection
leaves him open to the charge of tritheism - however, he more than
responds to such a charge in The Trinity and the Kingdom of God; and he is recapturing a biblical emphasis, after all.
While the cosmic vision of Moltmann's theologia crucis is
admirable, it says almost nothing about individual salvation - in
fact, it almost non-soteriological. He describes God's judgement in the
terms of the "giving up" of human beings to their godlessness, as in
Rom 1 (p.242). The atonement is achieved not by any substitutionary
work of Christ but by his identifying with human beings in their
lostness, by solidarity with them. In the end, his panentheism leads
him to a universalist model; and the preaching of the cross becomes a
following of God's example in identifying with the lost and godforsaken.
This
last criticism I think is valid on the surface. Mostlamann doesn't
spend a lot of time focusing on individual piety I think the
implications for the individual are obvious and it's up to the
individual to step into a relationship with God. For me I find Chrsitman
can be a great way to do what but only if you overlook the commercial
crap and read a book like the
Crucified God..
Online copy of Crucified God by Jurgen Moltmann
