4.7 Atonement in the New Testament

4.7.1 Christ's Death as Satisfaction

• Historically, metaphors of Christ's death as a sacrifice probably came first. 
• In Paul, we have, the image of Christ's death as a passover sacrifice (1 Cor. 5:7), as a sin offering (2 Cor. 5:21; Rom. 8:3), and as the Day of Atonement sacrifice (Rom. 3:25).
• There are debates over the meaning of 2 Corinthians 5:21. Cf. N. T. Wright
• There are debates over the meaning of hilasterion in Romans 3:25 (Is it propitiation, expiation, sacrifice of atonement, place of atonement?)
• In Mark 10:45 we have Jesus death as a ransom.
• Luke 22:20 looks at Christ's death as a new covenant inaugurating sacrifice.
• Understanding Christ's death as a sacrifice is of course a metaphor. For us it is a dead metaphor but for them it was a very live metaphor.
• The Maccabean literature might have provided an ideological precedent for this understanding (cf. 2 Macc. 7:38; 4 Macc. 17:22).
• From a slightly different perspective, there is the sense of Christ's death satisfying God's justice (Rom. 3:25-26; 2 Cor. 5:21).
• Of course Hebrews provides the fulchrum point for Christ's death as the definitive atonement/sacrifice for sins. See 4.6.1. Also explore the interpretation of David Moffitt with Christ's blood offering as an offering of life rather than death.

4.7.2 Christ as Representative Humanity

• The idea of "substitutionary atonement" is another one of the major theories of atonement.
• The idea of being "in Christ" is fundamental to Paul. We die with Christ; we rise with Christ (Gal. 2:20).
• Hebrews 2:5-18 probably gives us insight into Paul's inner logic. Humanity was created for glory but "all have sinned and are lacking the glory of God." Christ became human and tasted death for everyone.
• Christ as Last Adam is a fundamental theme in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15. As Last Adam he undoes for humanity what Adam did at the beginning.

4.7.3 Christ as Demonstration of God's Love

• Romans 5:8 certainly views Christ's death as an expression of God's love.
• Parable of the Prodigal Son is the fulchrum point here. Explore theologically any sense that God "had" to atone in a particular way.
• Explore Joel Green and Mark Baker's analysis of penal substitution. Cf. Recovering the Scandal of the Cross.

4.7.4 Defeating the Devil (Christus Victor)

• Jesus' exorcist ministry was a beginning of the arrival of the kingdom of God (Luke 11:20)
• Hebrews 2:14 - The defeat of the Devil was a defeat of the one holding the power of death.
• Colossians 1 - Christ's supremacy over all evil powers. Cf. Eph. 6:12.

4.7.5 Broadening Scope of Christ's Atonement

• Restoring the Kingdom of Israel? (Acts 1:6)
• Dead in Christ will rise (1 Cor. 15)
• Hebrews - all old covenant sins atoned through Christ, not so clear about the future
• We need to look into the debates of the first few centuries to find exhaustive atonement (Novatian and Donatist controversies).

Previous "chapters"
Chapter 1: What is Biblical Theology?
Chapter 2: Theology of God
Chapter 3: Creation and Consummation

4.1-3 Sin and the Fall

4.4 Sin in the Old Testament
4.5 Sin in the New Testament
4.6 Atonement in the Old Testament

4.6 Atonement in the Old Testament

In my biblical theology classes, I have often covered atonement immediately after I have covered sin. I was noticing this morning that there is a tension in this order. A systematic theologian would surely cover atonement after Christology, as a matter of soteriology. Of course atonement is not related to Christology in the theology of the OT. Still processing.

4.6 Atonement in the Old Testament

4.6.1 The Perspective of Hebrews
The author of Hebrews gives us the canonical perspective on the OT sacrifices. Hebrews 10:2-3 is especially determinative. None of the OT sacrifices were actually able to take away sins. Although we often hear talk about how "without blood there is no remission of sins," Hebrews goes on to indicate that none of the blood of the OT actually worked.

The OT sacrifices were thus all foreshadowings of the one effective sacrifice of Christ. "raincheck" One thus wonders how much investment God actually had in blood sacrifice or whether this was God meeting the human psyche where it was. In the end, God does away with it.

4.6.2 Priests versus Prophets
In this section I would talk about the tension between prophetic passages that say things like "I desire mercy not sacrifice" (Hos. 6:6; 1 Sam. 15:22; cf. Matt 9:13), it's justice and mercy, not sacrifice (Mic. 6:6-8; Isa. 1:12-18; Ps. ). The prophets know nothing of a necessary sacrifice (cf. Jer. 7:3-4; 21-22). They more seem to think that Israelites sometimes hid behind sacrifices as an excuse not to do justice.

Yet there were lots of sacrifices in the OT, even if the Law might represent somewhat of a standardization. The first chapters of Leviticus give us the five main types (which were not all for atonement). Day of Atonement, Passover, hyssop, red heifer, inauguration (mention NT correspondences). There also seems to be a deuteronomistic sense of atonement by death (e.g., Achan).


Previous "chapters"
Chapter 1: What is Biblical Theology?
Chapter 2: Theology of God
Chapter 3: Creation and Consummation

4.1-3 Sin and the Fall

4.4 Sin in the Old Testament
4.5 Sin in the New Testament

Wesleyan-Arminian Reflections on Christ and Salvation

Here are now the links to my reflections on the first two parts of my ongoing series on theology from a Wesleyan-Arminian perspective. These are in my "theology in bullet points" series. I'm almost ready to self-publish Part 1. Part 2 is now finished as of today. I'll start the final section next Sunday.

Part 1: God and Creation
God and Creation

Part 2: Christ and Salvation
The Doctrine of Christ (Christology)
1. Christ has been the Son of God from eternity past.
2. Jesus is "God with us," God's Word become flesh.
3. Jesus on earth was a prophet of the kingdom of God.
4. In his death, Jesus became the priest of all humanity and creation.
5. In his resurrection, Jesus became the king of all humanity and creation.

The Doctrine of Atonement 
1. God chose Christ's death as the means to reconcile the world to himself.
2. In his death, Jesus showed us the love of God.
3. In his death, Jesus satisfied the order of things.
4. In his death, Jesus took humanity's place.
5. In his death, Jesus defeated the power of death.

The Doctrine of Salvation (soteriology)
1. Jesus saves.
2. Saving us is part of God's plan.
3. God was reaching out for us long before we knew it.
4. God used Israel to prepare the way for Christ.
5. God justifies us in response to our repentance and faith.
6. God fills us with his Holy Spirit as a seal of ownership.
7. God adopts us as his children: we are born to new life.
8. The power of the Spirit breaks the power of Sin.
9. The dead in Christ will rise.
10. Christ will come again to save his people and judge the world.
11. God will restore the world and we will enjoy him forever.

Wesleyan-Arminian Reflections on Atonement

Here's now links to my reflections on atonement from a Wesleyan-Arminian perspective. These are in my "theology in bullet points" series.

Part 1: God and Creation
God and Creation

Part 2: Christ and Salvation
The Doctrine of Christ (Christology)
1. Christ has been the Son of God from eternity past.
2. Jesus is "God with us," God's Word become flesh.
3. Jesus on earth was a prophet of the kingdom of God.
4. In his death, Jesus became the priest of all humanity and creation.
5. In his resurrection, Jesus became the king of all humanity and creation.

The Doctrine of Atonement 
1. God chose Christ's death as the means to reconcile the world to himself.
2. In his death, Jesus showed us the love of God.
3. In his death, Jesus satisfied the order of things.
4. In his death, Jesus took humanity's place.
5. In his death, Jesus defeated the power of death.

A5. In his death, Jesus defeated the power of death.

This is the fifth post in a section on atonement in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first set had to do with God and Creation, and I have also finished a section on Christology.
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A5. In his death, Jesus defeated the power of death.

One of the approaches to atonement is the idea that, in his death, Jesus defeated the powers of death and the Devil. It is sometimes called the "Christus Victor" approach, "Christ the victor." [1]

Probably the most explicit form of this idea is found in Hebrews: "Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil" (2:14, NRSV). Similarly, 1 Corinthians 15:55: "Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"

According to Aulén, this was the oldest approach, the one that dominated until the time of Anselm, when the idea of Jesus satisfying God's wrath and justice became dominant. Prior to that point, he argued, the idea of Jesus paying a ransom through his death dominated.

We do find ransom language in the New Testament. Mark 10:45 says, "The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many" (NRSV). Of course this is a metaphor. Those church fathers who thought of Jesus "paying off" the Devil's ransom were taking the metaphor too far and going way beyond the biblical texts.

It is hard to know exactly what passages like Hebrews 2:14 and 1 Corinthians 15:55 might mean literally other than the fact that God in his authority chose to stop allowing Satan's power to exert itself rampantly through the world by virtue of Christ's death. By virtue of Christ's death, God has chosen to put to an end this situation where death is the final answer.

Of course this end has only begun. In God's will, death continues and Satan continues to wreak havoc on the earth. But his death was the turning point, the beginning of the end. His resurrection is the victory. His reign is now and not yet. It has commenced and will reach its full form upon his return to the earth from heaven. Then there will be no more death, and Satan will disappear forever.

In his death, Jesus defeated the power of death and inaugurated the beginning of the end for Satan's power on the earth. His defeat of death means the resurrection of all, some to everlasting life and some to everlasting contempt (Dan. 12:2).

Next week: S1. God was reaching out to us far before we knew it.

[1] The expression, "Christus Victor" comes from Gustav Aulén, Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of Atonement, trans. by A. G. Herber (London: SPCK, 1931.

A4. In his death, Jesus took humanity's place.

This is the fourth post in a section on atonement in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first set had to do with God and Creation, and I have also finished a section on Christology.
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A4. In his death, Jesus took humanity's place.

1. While sacrifice primarily had to do with the satisfaction of a god, it could also have an element of substitution, where the sacrifice in some sense took the place of the worshiper. So the substitutionary theory of atonement holds that, while we deserved to die, Christ died in our place. Great care should be taken with this idea, for most of the verses used to support it probably did not exactly mean this idea.

For example, to say that Christ died "for us" is not the same thing as saying he died "in our place." I can do something for your advantage or in your favor that doesn't exactly have the sense of me taking your place. While we were still sinners, "Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8). This verse is not saying that he took our place as sinners. The point is that it would have made sense for Christ to do something for a friend, but he died for us when we were his enemies.

"For us" in this context is certainly not some mathematical sense of penal substitution, where Christ takes our punishment in some criminal sense to some precise degree. In its most rigid form, this idea requires a substitute for sin to suffer the exact quantity of punishment that each individual sinner deserved. Some interpret the line in the Apostle's Creed, "he descended to hell" in reference to Christ experiencing the punishment for our sins there in between his death and resurrection.

But there is no biblical text that either says or means anything of this sort. It is a medieval idea that traces to Anselm and that became part of the Reformation through John Calvin. It is neither a biblical doctrine nor one that ultimately fits with the character of God.

2. The statement, "he descended to Hades," should be understood to say that "he descended to the dead." There is no verse in the Bible that indicates Jesus suffered in Gehenna, the hell of fire. Hades is the Greek word for the realm of the dead, not the place of punishment for the wicked dead. So Psalm 16:10 and Acts 2:27 cannot be used to support this position. Similarly, 1 Peter 3:19-20 and 4:6, where Christ seems to visit the dead after his resurrection, say absolutely nothing about him suffering there.

We must therefore consider this notion of Christ suffering in hell to be one element of the medieval perspective that should also have been abandoned as unbiblical in the Reformation. We are a few centuries late, but the spirit of the Reformation is semper reformanda, "always needing to be reformed." Jesus did not suffer in hell to take our punishment. It is an unbiblical notion.

3. The New Testament at times approaches using transfer terminology in relation to Christ's death. For example, Paul says in Galatians 3:13 says that on the cross Christ became a curse "for us." Even here, Paul does not exactly say that our curse was transferred to him. He certainly does not say that our guilt or penalty was transferred. This is the language of defilement and abomination, language from a different worldview than our modern legal mentality. It is purity language.

Israel was cursed for not keeping its covenant with God (Gal. 3:10). But Christ redeemed Israel from the curse of failing to keep the covenant, and everyone else with them (3:13). His cursing on the cross in some way seems to transfer or absorb our curse. More precisely, it "redeems" or "pays the price" for our curse. Redemption in this sense is obviously a metaphor, and accordingly we must be careful not to over-read it.

The image of the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement is relevant here (Lev. 16). Two goats were involved. One was sacrificed, the other set into the wilderness. The one that was sent out into the desert in a sense transferred Israel's impurity and uncleanness to it and carried it away from the camp, so that the camp could be clean (Lev. 16:10). Again, there is a transfer of impurity here, but not a substitution of guilt. The goat absorbs the defilement of Israel, perhaps similar to Christ taking on our curse.

Other verses in the New Testament that are often read to indicate some straightforward substitution also likely have the broader sense of Christ being a sacrifice for us rather than some precise replacement for us. 1 Peter 2:24 says, "'He himself bore our sins' in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness," and 3:18 says, "Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God."

In these verses, Christ clearly dies "for us," but no precise equation is given of some legal exchange. It is not said that Christ is some exact substitute. Indeed, it is a corporate atonement that Christ makes here, formulated in terms of humanity as a whole rather than, as we immediately think with our Western glasses, an individual substitution.

Christ tasted death for us (Heb. 2:9). There is an overtone of substitution here to be sure. He did it on our behalf, but he also did it so that we would not necessarily have to die. Most of us still do, of course. But the power of death has been defeated in the long term. There is a "taking our place" element here and in all passages like this one.

So there is certainly an element in the New Testament of Christ taking our place. We are just prone to over-read it. It is not formulated in legal terms--Christ taking our sentence and criminal punishment. It is formulated more in terms of defilement. It is not formulated in individual terms. It is our sins taken together corporately. And it is not mathematical, as if God must account for every last ounce of penalty. In short, the Bible does not teach penal substitution in the manner of Anselm or John Calvin.

4. Here we should say a note about 2 Corinthians 5:21. Wearing our modern glasses, it is very easy to think we see a transference of sin and righteousness in this verse: "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." It is hard not to hear overtones of transference in this verse, for the verse is arranged as a kind of chiasm: 1) no sin 2) becomes sin so that 3) we with sin 4) become no sin.

However, if it had these sorts of overtones, they were likely a play on words whose more basic meaning would have been obvious in the context of the earliest church. So what does it mean for God to make Jesus "sin"? The most obvious meaning in a first century context would be for Jesus to be a sin offering "for us," as in Romans 8:3.

Similarly, the phrase, "the righteousness of God" had a history at the time as well, not least in Old Testament passages in Psalms and Isaiah where God's righteousness is parallel to his faithfulness and his salvation (e.g., Ps. 85:8-11; Isa. 46:13). [1] The righteousness of God is thus that faithful propensity of God to save and rescue his people. The context of 2 Corinthians 5 is full of such imagery, for Paul is talking about how God is reaching out to the world to reconcile it back to himself. [2]

The first meaning of 2 Corinthians 5:21 was thus likely, "God made him who did not have sin into a sin offering on our behalf, so that we might demonstrate the righteousness of God in Christ."

Still, it is difficult not to think that Paul has worded this verse in such a way as to evoke a kind of double entendre. "In Christ," we have gone from sin to righteousness. In some sense, Christ took on our sin as a sacrifice of atonement. This is nothing like a straightforward exchange or transfer. It is a poetic exchange.

5. The phrase "in Christ" brings us to a more fundamental category for Paul. Paul's writings have a strong element of our participation in the salvific (salvation related) actions of Christ. We are baptized "into Christ." We are baptized "into his death" (Rom. 6:3). When he died, we died. As he lives, so we are raised (Rom. 6:8).

The phrase "in Christ" leaps repeatedly from the letters of Paul. When we are baptized, we are somehow, mystically, incorporated into Christ's body. Christians constitute the body of Christ (e.g., 1 Cor. 12:13). We have been crucified with Christ (Gal. 2:20), which allows us to die to the Jewish Law and its condemnation. In Christ, we will all be made alive, just as in Adam we all died (1 Cor. 15:22).

This is something more profound here than a mere legal exchange. We actually die ourselves "in Christ." It is not just Christ dying in our place, it is us dying in Christ's body with him. We participate in his death. We participate in his life. This is not substitution. It is incorporation.

6. With this groundwork laid, we should dispense with all sorts of other foolish rumors about atonement. God the Son, Jesus, is the one who suffered on the cross, not God the Father. Jesus learned what it was to suffer death on the cross. God the Father, however, did not suffer on the cross. [3] God the Father did not learn something on the cross.

The view that God learned what it was like to suffer--indeed, the idea that, in Jesus, God learned what it was like to be human--assumes that God was not all-knowing beforehand. Rather, since God created the possibility of suffering out of nothing, God knew exactly what it was like to suffer from eternity past. He created suffering as a possibility. There is no distinction in God between experiential knowledge and head knowledge for God. This is a human distinction.

In the same way, the popular notion that "God turned his face away" when Jesus assumed our sins finds no clear basis in Scripture. It is rather a romantic notion built on a series of assumptions that go far beyond anything the Scripture says. It both involves a significant anthropomorphism (picturing God in human terms) and a legalistic sense of God's justice.

The Bible simply says nothing of the sort. Our sins cannot harm God. Our actions are just not that significant. God does not throw temper tantrums when people do not listen to him. This is the reaction of someone who is insecure, and Go is not insecure. When the Bible pictures God getting angry at sin, it is impressing the seriousness of sin for us, not for God. We diminish God if we think these images, drawn from humanity as pictures we can understand, literally picture God's mind. He is far greater than that.

In his death, Jesus took humanity's place. That is, he took away our stain and our shame, our curse. He became sin, a sin offering in fact, so that we might become truly righteous in him. And in him we are, if we have the Holy Spirit. We are in Christ, incorporated into his death and incorporated into his life. We have been crucified with Christ, and the life that we now live, we live in the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us.

Next week: A5. In his death, Jesus defeated the power of death.

[1] The discussion of the phrase, "the righteousness of God" is extensive in biblical scholarship. As good places to start, see N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997) and Richard Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 1993).

[2] N. T. Wright has effectively set out this interpretation in, "On Becoming the Righteousness of God," in Pauline Theology, D. M. Hay, ed., vol. 2 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 200-8.

[3] A false idea known as "patripassianism."

A3. In his death, Jesus satisfied the order of things.

This is the third post in a section on atonement in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first set had to do with God and Creation, and I have also finished a section on Christology.
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A3. In his death, Jesus satisfied the order of things.

1. The earliest sense of Jesus' death was as a sacrifice. Even at the Last Supper, Jesus anticipated that his blood and body would forge a new covenant (Luke 22:20). Paul surely passes on earlier tradition when he thinks of Jesus death as a Passover lamb (1 Cor. 5:7). In Romans 8, he uses the metaphor of Christ's death as a sin offering (Rom. 8:3).

The book of Hebrews takes this imagery to the next level. Now Jesus is not just the sacrifice, but the priest offering the sacrifice. Indeed, he is the high priest of the new covenant, superseding all priests of the old covenant. He serves in a superior sanctuary to any earthly sanctuary--the true, heavenly one. And he offers the sacrifice to end all sacrifices.

In the thinking of Hebrews, no sacrifice before Christ was effective at all (Heb. 10:1-3). But now, "By one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. (Heb. 10:14).

These are of course metaphors, since Jesus literally was put to death by Romans as a criminal on a cross. Hebrews uses these metaphors to explain to its audience that the sacrificial system of Jerusalem was no longer necessary. Jesus had satisfied the order of things. Through his death, all the sins of history were now potentially atoned for.

2. What was the function of ancient sacrifice? Their most basic function was to appease the gods. They were ubiquitous in the ancient world. The amount of sacrifice was often obscene. In most cases, the person bringing the sacrifice could eat a portion of what was brought, the god and the priests of the god also taking their portion. In some cases, sacrifice was understood as feeding the god.

Therefore, we should not be surprised to find imagery in the Bible of propitiation, where a sacrifice satisfies the wrath of God. This is imagery filled with metaphor, since God does not literally get angry. Indeed, from one perspective, you could argue that the sacrificial system of the Old Testament was God meeting Israel in its Ancient Near Eastern context, where sacrifice was ubiquitous. He takes a practice of their world and uses it to transform them and move them toward him. After all, Hebrews says that none of those sacrifices actually took away sin! The only sacrifice that actually worked was the death of Jesus, which then did away with sacrifice forever!

On the other hand, sacrifice arguably serves some deep felt need within humanity, some deep trace of our alienation from God. I will not commit on whether God started sacrifices with primitive humankind in anticipation of Christ, but the drive within humanity toward sacrifice surely fits some deep sense we have within of our alienation from God. It is a consummate example of a deep human sense that the universe is in disorder and that the order of things needs to be set aright.

3. A similar approach is that of Hugo Grotius and what is sometimes called a governmental theory of atonement. Grotius (1583-1645) suggested that, while God did not have to punish anyone for the sins of the world, God did so in order to demonstrate his justice (e.g., Rom. 3:25-26). While this position was not exactly that of John Wesley, the governmental approach is very common among those in the Wesleyan tradition. 

4. In his novels, C. S. Lewis captured this inner logic to the universe with the phrase "deep magic." There is a sense of fitness that God should not just forgive us without any price being paid for our sinfulness. There is a deep sense of the need for penance, for restitution.

Crimes have been done against him and against each other, some of them horrific. Individuals have murdered, groups have committed genocide. We have lied and cheated for our own pleasure. We have hurt others to advance ourselves. We have sinned against others in our lust for pleasure and selfish anger.

There is a need for an offering. It feels like something needs to be paid. God could forgive the Hitlers of the world by divine fiat, but it feels like justice needs to be satisfied. It feels like someone needs to pay.

Using another metaphor, the New Testament sometimes speaks of Jesus' death paying a ransom. We are enslaved by sin. We cannot pay the price to be freed on our own. Someone else must pay the price. Some early Christian thinkers took this metaphor too far, as if Christ was paying off the Devil, who held us as slaves. But it is just one image and we should not overread it.

5. Jesus' death satisfies the order of things. Jesus death works the "deep magic" that reconciles the world. He is a spotless lamb without blemish. He was tempted as all humans but did not sin (Heb. 4:15). As a pure sacrifice he atoned for the sins of the whole world. He was thus found worthy to open the seals of judgment that would set the world to right with God (Rev. 5:4-6).

Jesus' death satisfied the order of things. "God became human so that humans could become like God," we might paraphrase Athanasius. As God, Jesus was qualified to pay the price for humanity's debt to God. As human, Jesus was part of the group that needed to pay the debt to God. These are metaphors that make sense, not necessities or absolutes, since God is God and has both the authority and power to forgive and heal us by his divine command.

Yet Jesus' death makes sense of God's forgiveness. It fits the order of things. It satisfies the deep magic of the universe. It communicates the power of God's love. It feels right given the way God has created the universe.

In his death, Jesus satisfied the order of things by enabling humanity to offer to God the greatest peace offering that is possible to imagine, namely, the peace offering of God's own sacrificial death.

Next week: A4. In his death, Jesus took humanity's place.

A2. In his death, Jesus showed us the love of God.

This is the second post in a section on atonement in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first set had to do with God and Creation, and I have just finished a section on Christology.
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A2. In his death, Jesus showed us the love of God.

1. John 3:16-17 put it aptly, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."

The cross demonstrates the love of God. "Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:7-8).

God did not have to atone for our sins. He was under no compulsion to offer us hope, let alone to send his Son to die on the cross. God does not send anyone to hell. The default state of humanity at this time is already one of separation from God. God is not compelled to lift a finger to do anything about it. The gravity of our sinful state will pull us to destruction on its own without God's intervention.

Christ's death on the cross thus took place by God's free act, where the will of God the Father and the will of God the Son were in complete agreement. The cross demonstrates God's love for humanity, his desire to be reconciled to us.

2. This free act of God was potentially for everyone. Not all Christians believe that Christ died for everyone. In 1618-19, the Synod of Dort in Holland concluded that the scope of Christ's atonement was "limited." The "L" in the Calvinist acronym "TULIP" stands for "limited atonement" and issued from this council, where Armininianism was rejected.

The idea of limited atonement is the sense that Christ must have only died for those God predestined or predetermined would be saved. Christ thus only would have died for those whom God unconditionally elected. [1] However, 1 Timothy 2:4 indicates that God would prefer all people to saved. If this is the case, then he must not predetermine who will be saved. If God desired all people to be saved and it was entirely up to him, then all people would be saved. Since the Bible clearly does not teach that all will be saved, God must not predetermine who will be saved.

Christ thus died potentially for everyone. Not everyone has or will avail themselves of this possibility, but God has made it possible by his will, and Christ has made it possible by his free death.

3. Could Jesus have chosen otherwise? This question relates to another question, "Could Jesus possibly have sinned while he was on earth?"

The controversies about the person and nature of Christ concluded that Jesus was one person but that he had two natures and thus two wills. [2] Hebrews suggests that Jesus was tempted in every way like us but that he did not sin (Heb. 4:15). Hebrews is clearly speaking of intentional sin, since the situation presupposed is one in which Jesus had a choice based on temptation.

Could Jesus have chosen wrongly? Certainly we should think of these temptations as real. That is to say, the temptations of Jesus pulled on him but not to the point of sin. We have said in a previous article that the temptation to sin can in some cases be a good desire that is directed toward an inappropriate object, such as when a good sexual desire is directed toward the wrong person. So a person without a "sin nature" can be tempted, as in the case of Adam and Jesus. [3]

So we can suppose that Jesus' human will in itself would have been capable of sinning. However, the orthodox Christian teaching of the centuries suggests that, on this point, Jesus' divine will would have prevented his human will from taking that step. Thankfully, there was no such crisis. Both Jesus' human and divine wills both freely chose to do what was right.

Similarly, both Jesus' human and divine will in concert freely and willingly chose to die on the cross for our sins.

4. I argued in the previous article that God as all powerful had the power to heal us of our sin by divine command and that as sovereign he had the freedom to forgive us by his free choice. It is hard to see how it could be otherwise. We must therefore conclude that God's choice to send his Son to die for our sins was entirely his free choice, since he could have forgiven and healed us by his divine command.

This fact accentuates how great an act of love the atonement was. God chose to identify with our suffering when he did not have to. God the Father does not learn anything on the cross. He created the possibility of suffering, pain, and temptation. He knows everything.

But we learn something on the cross. We learn that, even if we do not always understand why God allows evil and suffering to persist, God the Son has suffered with us. God has identified with our situation.

5. Therefore, while it is not complete, we must consider the "moral influence" theory of atonement to be an important element of the atonement. [4] Some would argue was the most prevalent view in the early church until the time of Anselm in the 1000s. [5] The moral influence approach suggests that one reason for Jesus' life and death was to make us righteous, to "influence" us in a positive moral direction, to empower us to be righteous.

We see this sense of Jesus as the perfect moral example in the slogan, "What would Jesus do?" As 1 John 3:16 says, "Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters." Jesus came to earth to do more than give us a good moral example and to show us how to love each other, but certainly part of what he came to do was to show us how to be the kinds of human beings we should be, indeed were created to be.

Jesus' death on the cross was the ultimate demonstration of God's love because God did not have to heal us and because he freely chose to heal us in this way. He chose to heal us in a way that identified with us in the predicament of our suffering and the consequences of evil. In his humanity Christ showed us how to be fully and perfectly human, and he then gave us the Holy Spirit to become as human as he was.

In his death, Jesus consummately showed us the love of God for us and for the creation.

Next Sunday: A3. In his death, Jesus satisfied the order of things.

[1] A five point Calvinist is someone who accepts all five tenets of the TULIP: Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, and the Perseverence of the saints. There are "four point" Calvinists who reject limited atonement.

[2] We might call these controversies about Christ, "Christological controversies." The view that Jesus only had one will, which was eventually rejected is called "monotheletism," just as the view that Jesus only had one nature is called, "monophysitism."

[3] As we have argued in a previous article, the idea of a "sin nature" is itself a metaphor rather than an actual thing inside us.

[4] The moral influence theory is often associated with the very weak form of Abelard in the 1000s, when it was directly opposed to Anselm's theory of penal satisfaction. Abelard did not present it a form where it could be combined with the other theories of atonement. It was simply Jesus showing us his love. Similarly, as we will argue in the next two articles, Anselm overemphasized the satisfaction and substitutionary elements in atonement. Both thus reflect significant changes to atonement theory in church history.

[5] Cf. A. J. Wallace and R. D. Rusk, Moral Transformation: The Original Christian Paradigm of Salvation (New Zealand: Bridgehead, 2011). (reference taken from Wikipedia)

A1. God chose Christ's death as the means to reconcile the world to himself.

This is the first post in a section on atonement in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first set had to do with God and Creation (soon to be self-published), and I have just finished a section on Christology.
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God chose Christ's death as the means to reconcile the world to himself.

1. In Christian history, there has been a spectrum of Christian perspectives on atonement. Atonement is the reconciliation of humanity to God by means of a sacrifice. Unlike the Trinity and the nature of Christ, there has never been a universal council where a specific perspective on atonement was endorsed as the Christian perspective.

There are four main perspectives, none of which necessarily excludes the others. The ability to combine these probably speaks to why Christianity has never chosen one exclusively.

The first is arguably the oldest and relates to Jesus' death as a sacrifice. That is the conviction that Jesus' death in some way satisfied the order of things, including the wrath of God toward sin. A second perspective involves substitution on some level, with Jesus taking our place in some way. A third theme is that of Christ's victory over Satan and the powers of evil, including the defeat of death. Finally, there are approaches to atonement that focus on God's love for us and his desire to woo and influence us toward him.

2. The New Testament teaches that "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). Similarly, Jesus says in John 14:6, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." And in the book of Revelation, no one is found in all creation who is worthy to open the scroll to initiate both the final judgment and salvation except the Lamb of God, Jesus: "You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth" (Rev. 5:9-10, NIV).

It is thus the consensus of the New Testament that God has chosen Christ as the only path to be reconciled to himself. As it was put in the Protestant Reformation, "Christ alone" (solus Christus) is the only means by which such reconciliation can take place. The default state of humanity is one of alienation from God. Christ alone has made reconciliation possible.

A later article will explore the question of how Christ's death is appropriated by those who are reconciled to God. There is a spectrum of positions, ranging from those who believe Christ only atoned for a limited few who will are predetermined to make a conscious decision for God to those who believe God gives every a chance to be reconciled in one way or another to those who believe Christ's death automatically brings salvation to every last human being.

For the moment, we affirm that God has decided that Christ's death would be the only means and path by which a person can be reconciled to him. We might additionally point out that the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition does not believe in "limited atonement." That is to say, we do not believe that Christ only died for some individuals, those whom God has predetermined to be saved. [1] The Wesleyan-Arminian tradition holds that Christ died potentially for everyone who has ever lived, even though in actuality not everyone will appropriate that atonement.

3. In most of church history, the assumption has been that humanity could not have been reconciled to God without atonement taking place in the way it did. In the late 300s, Gregory of Nazianzus put it in this way, "What has not been assumed has not been healed." In other words, if Jesus did not fully assume our humanity, he could not heal us of the disease of sin.

In the early 300s, Athanasius put it this way, "God became human so that humanity might become God." He did not mean that we would literally become God (that would be heresy). He meant that Jesus' incarnation was what made it possible for us to become like God in our moral character and in the restoration of God's image in us. [2]

There is a certain logic to this tradition. We will explore the "substitutionary" element of atonement in a later article. This is the idea that in his life and death Jesus identified with our humanity and took on our sin.

However, if taken too literally, this line of thinking seems to contradict a robust sense of God's sovereignty and his omnipotence. If God is all powerful, then he is able to heal us miraculously of our sins by his divine command, by divine "fiat." [3] To say anything else seems to deny God's omnipotence.

Similarly, if God is sovereign, then surely he could have forgiven us of our sins by an act of his divine free will. To say otherwise seems to imply that God is not free to do what he wants, since we know that he wants everyone to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4). He does not want to punish my sins more than he wants me to be saved or else there would be no possibility of salvation at all.

We must therefore conclude that God has chosen for atonement to take place through Christ, not that atonement had to take place in this way. As we will see in later articles, it certainly made sense for God to reconcile the world in this way. There is a logic to it. It satisfies the order of things that God himself created. [4]

But we would claim that it was ultimately God's free choice to reconcile in this way. To say otherwise seems to deny either his sovereignty or his power.

God freely chose Christ's death as the means to reconcile the world to himself.

Next week: A2. In his death, Jesus showed us the love of God.

[1] "Limited atonement" is a belief of many in the Calvinist tradition. It is the "L" in the so called TULIP, that captures the general sense of salvation for high Calvinism. T=total depravity, U=unconditional election, L=limited atonement, I=irresistible grace, P=perseverance of the saints.

[2] Sometimes called "theosis."

[3] "Fiat" is Latin for "let it be."

[4] In this last set of comments, I have gone beyond Wesley. Wesley was still quite Calvinist when it came to his sense of atonement.

Greatest Common Denominator: Atonement

This series is sketching out what the "greatest common denominators" of Scripture might be on topics of theology. Previous posts were:
God
Creation
The fallen world

What is the greatest common denominator of Scripture on the subject of atonement? Here are some thoughts.

1. God's love
The ultimate basis for all reconciliation between God and humanity is God's love. It is God's love that put atonement into action. In God's sovereignty, we must consider the manner of atonement God's choice. There can be no rules on God saying, "He had to do it this way." God freely chose to offer Jesus/himself as a sacrifice as the instrument. He could have done it by divine fiat because he is God and can create something out of nothing. That's just not what his choice was.

"God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8). See also John 3:16.

2. The cross
The New Testament and the earliest preaching of the church saw the cross as the means of our reconciliation to God. "May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world" (Gal. 6:14).  "I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor. 2:2).

What did the cross do?

a. It absorbed the curse we had because of our sinfulness. "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole" (Gal. 3:13).  Jesus absorbed our curse in that we were cursed. "God made him who had no sin to be sin[b] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor. 5:21).

You can see where someone would think this is substitution, Christ taking our place. But in church history, substitution wandered way beyond anything the NT pictured. If we think of us being defiled and Jesus absorbing our defilement, we will be closer to what the NT was thinking.

b. It satisfied the order of the universe. "the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45). See also Romans 3:25.

I doubt seriously that any of us really understand how sacrifice worked in the minds of the biblical authors. It's roots in human history stretched back long before any book of the Bible was written. The biblical authors might have come closer to explaining that we do with our rationalizations. To use the words of C. S. Lewis, there was a "deep magic" to sacrifice.

We can talk about satisfying the wrath of God (Rom. 1:18), but this is just a picture, an anthropomorphism. God doesn't throw tantrums literally. We've come to talk in terms of justice, and that probably starts to get at it. But it's really something much deeper, something to do with the order of the universe. Sacrifice somehow satisfies the intrinsic order of things and performs a deep magic.

c. Jesus defeated death. If you look at Heb. 2:14, Jesus defeated Satan, who held the power of death. 1 Corinthians 15 also talks about Jesus defeating death. Again, the Bible doesn't really explain how this works.

3. It is worth noting that most of the references above come from Paul. Matthew, Mark, and Luke really don't have a lot to say about the meaning of Jesus' death, nor does Acts. John has a few more images. This general silence is worth noting, because it suggests that it is legitimate for some Christian traditions to emphasize atonement theory more than others. If some churches emphasize the cross, it is legitimate for other churches to emphasize the moral example of Jesus' life (like Luke) or resurrection power (like Acts).

The OT itself has strands that emphasize sacrifices (Leviticus) and strands that proclaim social justice far more important to God than sacrifice (Isaiah 1, Micah 6, Jeremiah 7). In the same way, "crucicentrism" must be balanced with concerns like social justice and the imitation of Christ.

The Significance of Christ's Death

The earliest gospel, Mark, has only one explicit statement on the significance of Christ's death: Mark 10:45. "the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." [1] Matthew and Luke have little more, and Luke even softens this verse. [2] The temple curtain does rip from top to bottom (e.g., Mark 15:38), which may imply that Jesus' death was a final atonement for sins or that those who trust in his death now have direct access to God.  But the Synoptic Gospels do not say what the significance is.

As we would expect, the Gospel of John is more explicit.  "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life" (John 6:54). So John tells us that Jesus' death is the mechanism by which we can have eternal life. John doesn't specify exactly how it works, but we have good reason to think in sacrificial terms. For example, John seems to have moved Jesus' action in the temple (2:13-25) next to Jesus turning water into wine (2:1-12). The two stories go hand in hand.

The jars into which Jesus has them put water are for the waters of ritual purification (2:6). Turning water into wine may very well then symbolize the transition from Old Testament purification by water to the "wine" of Jesus' blood. Similarly, Jesus "destroys" the temple with his death and raises it up anew when he rises from the dead.

In the minds of the ancients, sacrifices functioned on a deep level. Perhaps most basically, they kept the gods happy, well fed, as it were.  Christian thinkers have long tried to unpack the significance of Christ's death, and the views that relate most to Jesus' death as a sacrifice are the views that see his death as a satisfaction of God's anger toward sin or even some basic satisfaction of the need for justice. Paul puts it this way, "God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished" (Rom. 3:25).

Jesus's death shows that God is just, even though he is choosing not to hold us accountable for our past sins.  There is a general sense, then, that Jesus took our place. He died "for our sins" (1 Cor. 15:3). Mind you, some have taken this picture of Jesus' death far beyond anything the New Testament says. Paul doesn't treat Christ's death as some mathematical equivalent for the exact amount of punishment our sins demand from a standpoint of justice. [3] "For our sins" is the reason he died, not a statement that he substituted for our exact punishment.

Jesus' death satisfies the order of things. It powerfully demonstrates what God stands for. His grace to us came at a huge price.  It also demonstrates how much he loves us, so much that the Father is willing to sacrifice his own life for us.  Indeed, Jesus himself is willing to die for us.

Christianity has never endorsed a single view of how Jesus' death worked. It was a sacrifice. It satisfied the order of things. Jesus took our place. Jesus showed us God's love and his obedience to death is a model for us to follow. All these pictures of Jesus' death are true.

A final one is the idea that in his sinless death, Jesus defeated the powers of Satan. The image of a "ransom" relates somewhat to this view, as well as to the satisfaction view. Jesus' death "pays off" the price to free humanity from sin and death. It is a metaphor that shouldn't push it too far. The "Christus Victor" view is the one that looks at Christ's death primarily as the defeat of Satan and the defeat of the evil powers that enslave the world.

However it might exactly work, the effect of Jesus' death is reconciliation to those who trust in it. God has "reconciled us to himself through Christ" (2 Cor. 5:18).  We are "buried with him through baptism into death" (Rom. 6:4).  We "have been crucified with Christ" (Gal. 2:20). We die with him and will thus rise as he did as well.

All this reflection arguably came after Jesus' time on earth. Jesus' death played almost no role at all in Jesus' own early message and explicit mission.  Perhaps only in his very last days did he begins to speak to his disciples of his death as a kind of sacrifice.

This observation does not in any way deny the central and essential importance of his death. However, sometimes it seems like some Christians ignore the bulk of Jesus' message while he was on earth and focus disproportionately on the saving significance of his death and resurrection. We can preach the good news of Jesus' death and resurrection without ignoring the good news of the kingdom he brought while he ministered in Galilee.

[1] We already discussed earlier in the chapter the probable significance of Jesus' words at his Last Supper.

[2] Luke 19:10 simply says "The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost," leaving out the sense of Jesus' death as a ransom. Luke has nothing to say about the atoning significance of Christ's death but is instead focused much more on the significance of his resurrection.

[3] A view sometimes called penal satisfaction.

Reconciliation (Wes Theo Series)

Outline/overview of Wesleyan theology.  More detailed posts:

1. Faith (Introduction)
2. God
3. Creation and Alienation
4. Revelation

5.1 Incarnation 
Christians have long viewed Christ taking on flesh as the first step in the reconciliation of the world. God becomes one of us. He not only comes to us. He identifies with us. He assumes our situation and our problem, to some extent. He is tempted as us. His earthly life is part of the reconciliation.

5.2 Christ's Death
Christians of the ages have used a number of pictures to describe how Christ's death serves as a mechanism for our reconciliation. Christ's death satisfies God's anger toward sin or satisfies the need for justice and order in the world.  It is an atoning sacrifice. Christ takes our punishment and substitutes for us. Christ shows us God's love and thus woos us back to him. Christ redeems us from slavery or defeats the power of Satan over us.

These are all pictures of atonement and Wesleyans can ascribe to all of them. The Wesleyan emphasis on God as love, however, sometimes shifts the focus. So Wesleyans often resist rigid views of penal substitution, where some mathematical sense of punishment had to be assumed for it to work. A Wesleyan may lean toward seeing Christ's death ultimately as a matter of God's choice in reconciliation rather than some inevitable path he would have to take. Would not God have the authority to forgive us outright if he wanted?

A Wesleyan might see the picture of God's wrath as one of the least literal of the pictures, though one with which we may most identify. Anger involves emotion and emotion involves new stimulus, but God knows all things equally from all eternity. A fuller picture is of God's love in action. We understand and identify with sacrifice for us. There is a certain order to things that Christ's death embodies. We are enslaved and we understand the defeat of our enslaver.

5.3 The Spirit and the Church
Christ's presence in the world continues through the Spirit and the Church. The Spirit inside us marks us as God's possession and empowers us to live reconciled lives. We are a new creation. We are an island of heaven in a fallen world.

God also uses his Church as a means of reconciliation. The invisible Church consists of all those with the Spirit in all times and all places, despite what visible Church they may attend. But the Church is also physical, visible entity that gathers together to proclaim God's word and participate in means of grace.  Baptism is the image of entrance into the Church, although the Spirit is the more important threshold. Communion is the image of atonement, reminding and catalyzing our continued reconciliation with God.

5.4 Justification and Sanctification
Protestants think of justification as our legal acquittal of the charges against us for our past sins.  Through Christ, all charges are dropped against us. Sanctification then positively empowers us to do what is right. Wesley largely adopted Luther's understanding of (initial) justification. A difference comes in his sense of final justification.

For Wesley, final justification is dependent on a continued relationship with God that manifests itself in right living. Lutherans fear such talk, because it seems to give too much importance to "works" in the equation of justification. Calvinists agree with Wesley that works must follow, but see no element of human will involved in the process and affirm the persistence of the elect from beginning to end.

Wesleyans do not believe in "eternal security" but see right relationship with God as breakable. A person must continue in faithfulness to that relationship after initial justification.

Calvinists and Wesleyans also disagree on the extent to which God makes us righteous in this life. Wesley even taught a crisis experience where one was freed from the power of sin, to be able to love God with all one's heart, mind, soul, and strength. Wesleyans do not believe that the fight against sin in this life must always be a struggle, and especially not a losing struggle.

5.5 Society
Wesleyans have historically been activists for change in society where possible. An emphasis on helping those in need has been core to Wesleyan identity since Wesley himself. Many in the Wesleyan tradition were strong supporters of abolition and women's rights.  Today, the best Wesleyan voices speak out against those who would intentionally or unintentionally oppress the disempowered of society.  Even when someone has done wrong, the best Wesleyan attitude is one that looks to redemption and insists on love as the primary value.

5.6 Creation
A view of reconciliation that does not include the entire cosmos is an incomplete view. The best Wesleyan voices will be conscious of God's creation and strive to be good stewards of it. Paul says that the creation too is enslaved to sin and slated for redemption. It is the Wesleyan way to be optimistic about how much redemption we can see now on every level, without waiting for Christ's return.

Saved cont. (4.3)

And so it goes, and so it goes, and so will you soon, I suppose...
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So what is God’s plan for right standing? It is to trust in what God has done through Jesus the Christ. Romans has already set out what the plan is. First, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). Paul never really spells out the specifics of how Christ’s death works. When 1 Corinthians 15:3 says that “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,” Paul is not laying out some specific teaching about Christ taking our place. The word “for” simply means he died to deal with them. Paul does not say exactly how.

One picture he gives us is the transference of the curse of our sin to Christ on the cross. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree’” (Gal. 3:13). Paul seems to imply in 1 Corinthians 1:23 that the cross stood at the center of his preaching, making the logic of Galatians 3:13 very significant to understanding Paul’s thinking. In this picture of the cross, Christ does not take our punishment, but he takes our curse. Like the scapegoat of Leviticus 16, our defilement (not our debt or punishment) is transferred to Christ.

We also find the picture of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice here and there in Paul’s writings. The most explicit is in Romans 3:25, “Through his faithfulness, God displayed Jesus as the place of sacrifice where mercy is found by means of his blood” (CEB). This translation is debated, with the NIV and the NRSV going with the more common “sacrifice of atonement.” The reason the CEB translates it as “place of atonement” is because the word Paul uses regularly refers to the cover of the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament, the place where blood was taken once a year by the high priest to atone for the sins of Israel (cf. Leviticus 16:14). One way or another, Paul is thinking of Jesus’ death in sacrificial terms.

Atonement is reconciliation by way of an offering. The idea of Jesus’ death as such an offering pops up throughout Paul’s letters. Romans 8:3, for example, likely speaks of God sending Jesus as a sin offering. 1 Corinthians 5:7 thinks of Christ as a Passover lamb sacrificed for believers. The inner dynamics of sacrifice are often difficult for us to get our heads around. Sacrifice fits roughly in the category of “satisfaction” theories of atonement, where Christ’s death satisfies the wrath of God, “propitiates” it. But it is not clear that Paul connected these dots. In some ways, C. S. Lewis’ picture of a “deep magic” that is mysterious and inexplicable may come closer to a less defined sense that the order of things was restored through the offering of blood.

Jesus’ resurrection from the dead was also significant for Paul in getting us right with God. “If Christ has not been raised,” Paul writes, “you are still in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:17). In Romans 4:25, Paul says that Christ was “raised to life for our justification.” Perhaps hiding behind such statements is yet another Christian theory of atonement, namely, the “Christus Victor” or “Christ the conqueror” view. Paul speaks of death as the last enemy for Christ to defeat, one that he will definitively defeat at the time of the final resurrection (1 Cor. 15:20-28).

Again, it is difficult for us to get into Paul’s head. After all, Paul did not think of death as a person or Sin as a person. It is mysterious to us how exactly Jesus’ victorious resurrection might defeat of Sin and death. Indeed, just because Paul found such language natural does not necessarily mean that he could explain the specifics of how it worked either. Nevertheless, “the sting of death is sin” (1 Cor. 15:56) and “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death” (Rom. 8:2, NRSV). Somehow, Christ’s resurrection entails the defeat of these forces against us.

"Deep Magic" and Atonement

I deeply respect C. S. Lewis, although I have never idolized him. He thinks he has too much figured out for my liking. He was also a consumate modernist, at least in the first half of his writing and lecturing. I think I would have liked him, but I think I would have teased him a little too, like his buddies at Oxford did, especially about his cult like following by Americans. :-)

There, I have absolved myself so that I can now compliment him. I've been moderately impressed with him this week as I've been doing research for a chapter of the philosophy book. I think some of his arguments unravel pretty quickly, but you have to give him credit for others.

When it comes to explaining atonement, the idea of "deep magic," taken from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, is as good as anything any theologian has ever written on the subject.

And I might say, since a number of skeptics come across this blog from time to time, that this concept works whether you actually believe in atonement or not. The sacrificial practices of the world can hardly be unpacked in rational, propositional language. There is something much deeper going on here, something that defies literal linguistic expression.

We can say that this deep magic involves the disempowerment of evil powers and the empowerment of the person offering the sacrifice. In the case of Christ, it is the disempowerment of Sin over us and the empowerment to do the good we want to do through the presence of the Spirit in and among us.

We can say the deep magic in some way satisfies the need for order. To speak in sterile terms like to satisfies God's justice doesn't get at the mysterious. There is a setting of the world to right, somehow in the sacrifice. The offender needs to make amends in some deep way. It defies rational explanation.

In pagan contexts, there is the need to let the god be the god, to show that you are merely mortal and you would not dare think yourself anything. You humble yourself, giving the god no reason to want to put you in your place by throwing a lightning bolt, a sea storm, or a volcano.

And the victim magically takes the place of the offerer. It enables the criminal to escape death or the penalty.

All these aspects of atonement are a deep magic. Even to describe them is to disempower them. The need for atonement is a Jungian archetype, deeply imprinted within us. Some might want to say it is a deep part of our unconscious that we have inherited from Adam.

I don't know whether Christ had to die for us to be forgiven, although this seems part of Christian orthodoxy. Part of me would like to say that God had the authority to forgive us without anyone paying, if He had so chosen. He did not so chose, making it somewhat of an academic question. Even so, it may very well be that, like prayer, the need for sacrifice had a whole lot more to do with us--the "deep dynamics" of our deepest mind--that made it necessary for us to have this "deep magic" available for us.