As much of the Christian Church begins
Holy Week (our Orthodox sisters and brothers will not celebrate
Easter this year until May 5), the topic of atonement returns to the
forefront of my mind. I don't regularly ponder this, but over the
past year I have revisited much of my theology, questioning and
examining it in light of my experience and learning over the past
several years. I find that in some places my theology no longer fits
as it once did. In places it pinches, in others it is too baggy. Some
spots now appear threadbare. The time has come to refresh this
theological garment.
When I last seriously considered my
theology I was in my mid-twenties, with no children, attending
seminary classes part-time while living and working in a medium sized
American city. Since that time a lot of water has flown under the
bridge. I have experienced new cultures. I have walked through many
joys and sorrows. I have seen two children born and grow into their
teen years. I have found and embraced feminism as a key element of my
worldview. I have returned home from years of cross-cultural living
feeling defeated and deeply wounded. I don't see the world and I
don't see God in the same way that I did some twenty years ago.
Rarely do Christians stop and consider
the act we refer to theologically as “atonement.” We understand
and affirm that in his life, death and resurrection Jesus Christ
altered the fundamental relationship between God and humanity. But
how, exactly, did he accomplish this? To phrase the question in
other terms, why exactly did Jesus have to die? Could God have
altered the divine-human relationship in another manner? Thomas
Oden, in the second volume of this systematic theology trilogy The
Word of Life, provides a nice, relatively concise, summary of four
key streams of thought among Christians concerning this question. He
labels these four motifs as:
The Exemplar or Moral Influence Motif
The Rector or Moral Governance Motif
The Exchange or Satisfaction Motif
The Victor or Dramatic Motif
The Christian traditions in which I
have spent most of my life have overwhelmingly embraced the exchange
or satisfaction motif. In this motif, the death of Christ serves as
penal substitution for human sin. It satisfies God's holiness. Oden
writes: “It is in keeping with God's justice that sin not be
cheaply remitted, but must be punished, or some satisfaction offered.
Since sin is an infinite offense against diving holiness, the
satisfaction for sin must be infinite. Either satisfaction or
punishment was required by God's very nature.” This motif comes
through regularly, although perhaps without our explicitly
recognizing it, in many popular Christian songs that speak of the
blood of Jesus cleansing us of sin.
One can find support for this motif in
certain passages of Scripture, but I have come to question whether
this view sufficiently describes the need for and enactment of
atonement in Christ's death. This motif seems to emphasize a divine,
angry, judgmental God who must have “his pound of flesh” but out
of mercy directs this wrath upon his own son. As Oden writes in
pointing out objections to this motif: “Too much is made of the
divine majesty being offended, neglecting the fact that God can show
mercy and forgiveness without harming his honor or majesty.” The
emphasis on blood, on satisfaction of righteousness, on paying a debt
through the sacrifice of another seems to run contrary to the idea of
God as loving and merciful Creator. Again, I do not deny that certain
passages in Scripture use this language and we must somehow account
for it in our understanding of the divine-human relationship. But if
we hold primarily or exclusively to this motif, do we adequately or,
perhaps more importantly, appropriately capture the nature of
atonement? At the same time, does my hesitancy to affirm this
teaching arise from an inadequate appreciation of God's holiness?
I appreciate Oden's volume of
systematic theology because, unlike many Protestant systematic
theologies, he doesn't insist on a single understanding of the
atonement. He asserts the need to hold all four motifs in tension.
(Due to space I am not going to explore all of the motifs here.) The
evangelical Protestant American churches that I have been a part of
in my life rarely did so, at least not explicitly. I find myself
looking for an atonement theory that deemphasizes wrath, judgment,
violence and punishment and that emphasizes love, mercy,
reconciliation and restoration. I cannot say that I have yet come to
an adequate understanding. This threadbare part of my theological
garment remains under repair.
Although Oden does a good job of
looking back to the church fathers in his review of Christian
theology, I wonder if he adequately examines traditions outside of
Protestantism. I would be very curious to know how the Roman Catholic
Church and the Orthodox Church understand atonement in light of their
whole theologies. I would gladly hear from someone who could
enlighten me in this area. Even within the Protestant church
traditions, I would love to learn more from someone whose church
emphasizes something other than penal substitution, whether their
understanding fits within the four motifs offered by Oden or not. I
wonder in particular how the Quaker (or Friends, to refer to them in
their own terms) tradition understands the death of Christ.
Ultimately I am able to live with
ambiguity in this area because I recognize that, however it is
understood, the basic reality remains that in his death and
resurrection Jesus Christ did fundamentally transform the
relationship between God and humanity. Somehow, in the cross-event
and the resurrection event, we now have the opportunity to be
restored to what God created us to be, and not only as humans. In the
death and resurrection of Christ God has initiated (and culminated in
some sense) the renewal and restoration of creation. The power of
evil has been broken. The world need not remain enslaved to it. There
can be no better news, however we understand this to have been
accomplished.
Today in worship we sang a new-to-me song that captures well the victory of Jesus that we celebrate in
particular this week:
Sing to the King who is coming to reign
Glory to Jesus, the Lamb that was slain
Life and salvation His empire shall
bring
and joy to the nations, when Jesus is
king
How do you understand the death of
Jesus Christ? Are there ways in which the way you have traditionally
understood atonement that now pinch or are threadbare?
