Did Jesus really die for our sins?
Fritz Eichenberg, The Black Crucifixion, 1963. Placing a black Christ on the cross changes the meaning of the image. We may need a change in our understanding of the atonement and of Christ’s passion and death. Image source: Sacred Art Pilgrim
We’re in the Christian season of Lent, and Lent is a good time to ask ourselves: Did Jesus have to go and die on a cross? If so, why?
For most Christians today the answers to these questions are Yes, and something like, Because someone had to balance out the debt owed to God for human sinfulness. This idea, known as the “satisfaction theory of the atonement,” teaches that Christ suffered as a kind of substitute for the rest of humankind, and satisfied the demands of God’s honor by his infinite merit. Or something like that.
This satisfaction interpretation of Christ’s passion and death has been a mainstay of Christian thought since the 11th century, when Anselm of Canterbury first formulated it, and today this idea appears in such clichés as “Jesus died for our sins,” in such hymns as “Nothing but the Blood,” and in such cultural wonders as Stryper, whose name is derived from a passage, often interpreted by Christians in fine satisfaction-atonement style, found in Isaiah.
For a while now I’ve been thinking it’s time to let this one go. Personally speaking, it has never made any sense to me, not really. I mean, I get the formula intellectually, but that’s it. There has never been much else in it for me. And these days I’m beginning to wonder if it has not served its purpose on the larger scale. Don’t get me wrong; I think it has served us well on balance; issues of guilt, expiation, violence, and sacrifice are very deeply embedded in us and these things must be dealt with by any worthwhile theology. And no idea lasts for ten centuries that doesn’t have something going for it. So here’s a big psnt.net salute to Anselm and his amazingly persistent interpretation of Jesus’ passion and death.
But good grief, it’s time to turn the page already. I wrote a piece for Religion Dispatches late last year in which I said that Christianity is not just about Jesus dying for our sins, and some atheists took me to task on that. They seemed to think that of course Christianity is about Jesus dying for our sins, and if I said otherwise then I couldn’t be an actual Christian. (No fellow Christians criticized me for this statement, however.) I can only conclude that (1) these folks must have something invested in all Christians believing the same things in the same ways, and (2) it is high time for other atonement theories to see the sunlight, because let’s face it, for Westerners today this one seems pretty bizarre and, whether they actually understand it or merely caricature it, atheists are right to point this out. Sometimes it’s time for an idea to die. And there are other atonement theories out there (after all, Christianity did survive for a thousand years before Anselm showed up.)
I’ve been thinking a lot about this because I’m in the middle of a book by Timothy Gorringe called God’s Just Vengeance: Crime, Violence, and the Rhetoric of Salvation. Despite the jaunty title, it’s a fine read. Gorringe’s basic thesis is that the satisfaction theory, while it has served many purposes nobly, has had a devastating effect on the way we understand criminality, violence, and criminal punishment. And the book promises to offer a new atonement theory that is not new at all, but comes from the earliest days of Christianity and even the life and teaching of Jesus himself. It may be that this new old interpretation, whatever it is, holds up better than Anselm’s in the 21st-century mind.
I have my guesses about what the new old theory may be, but I am not reading ahead and am not getting into that here.
What I will say is that, in the spirit of negative theology, remember this: Theories and interpretations come and go. When all is said and done it is seen that they are simply constructs we clamp down on reality in order to make sense of it, communicate about it, and live day-to-day in the face of it without losing our bearings (or our minds). And while interpretations can and do take on lives of their own (sometimes with not-so-hot consequences), they should never be mistaken for reality itself. Changing one’s interpretation of the atonement is not a trivial thing, but it can be a good thing.
Keep your eyes on this space to see what Gorringe’s new old theory is. And in the meantime let us all remember that people, unlike ideas about the atonement, are not theories or interpretations. So, whatever your atonement theology, please be kind to your fellow humans today.
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The two books that were most help to me on this subject are both co-authored by Rita Nakashima and Rebecca Ann Parker. The first is the more personal and more accessible “Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us.” The second is the longer and more substantive “Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire.”
Indeed. There’s been much work done, especially in a modified form of the “Christus Victor” model. James Alison (“Knowing Jesus”) is a good example. So, too, Mark Heim (“Saved from Sacrifice”) and the great collection of essays edited by Barrow and Bartley, entitled “Consuming Passion”.
After a long “sabbatical” of my own, I thought I might add two cents on this subject. Initially, I note that stalwart Christian commentator C.S. Lewis was not enamored with the “satisfaction” explanation of Christ’s crucifixion, so those who oppose it have some support from a worthy adherent. Myself, I find some merit to the doctrine. Of course, this involves a slightly different view of “God” from many writers on this blog, which I recognize, and my comments should be viewed in that light, and not as “criticism.”
The view of “satisfaction” has as a premise that God has a “personality” which includes “emotions,” one of which is “anger.” Of course, this is an unpopular position, even among those who go with the initial premise of “personality.” We basically cringe at the idea that God may be “upset” with his creation, whatever they may do. But in so doing, we must consider that there are some things that WE tend to be angry about, which we consider we have good reasons or justification for. For example, few would argue against the propriety of being “angry” with Hitler, or Stalin, or Mao, or other such “culprits” of mass persecution and destruction of human lives and suppression of the spirits of men and women. The same with mass murderers, or child molesters, etc. So, assuming God is capable of emotion, it actually should not be surprising that one of those could be anger.
But what support does this recognition give to “satisfaction”? I recognize that the “connection” is a difficult one and certainly I consider myself an unworthy and inadequate advocate of the relation. However, what this “explanation” entails is the recognition that God’s “personality” is “multifaceted,” and that, as with us (following a “made in the image of God” viewpoint), sometimes these emotions may suggest a “resolution” which is different from that of any one of them standing alone. As a highly overly simplistic analogy, I would cite the situation of myself in teaching my daughter to ride a bicycle. I greatly don’t want her to get hurt, but simultaneously I want her to have the excitement and enjoyment that a good bicycle ride on a spring day might bring. In that instance, the second “emotion” (if that is the proper appellation of the “feeling” here) wins out.
In the same way with God (according to my own view, but which is certainly held by many of those who would advocate a “satisfaction” theology in the first place, so bear with me), he has emotions such a love, justice, mercy, holiness, and others. In the “mix” of all those comes the “justification” (again, if that is the best “appellation”) for the satisfaction view of the matter of Christ’s death. God’s anger, holiness, and justice cry out for bringing “culprits” to their “just” deserts. Yet God’s almost inexplicable mercy wishes to give us all an, as it were, a “second chance.” IF WE WILL CHANGE, then things may be made right between us. But there is a “cosmic principle” that the “balance” of the universe cannot simply “ignore” a “righting of wrongs.” A difficult concept, and I insist again that I am not the best advocate of it. But here is the amazing thing, to people who see God in the fashion that I do (and many others don’t)–God is willing himself to be the one who “makes the universe right again,” much as it may “cost” him to do so. He, himself, is willing to be the recipient of the “wrath of God.” Which he underwent upon the Cross. (An appropriate remembrance at this particular time of the year.)
Nevertheless, this at first seems a very unsatisfactory “resolution” of the matter. After all, aren’t we then letting those who most deserve to be brought to justice “off the hook”? How can God’s justice be satisfied by “sacrificing” an “innocent” in the place of the “guilty”? I would first note that the Bible, or Christian tradition, is filled with “mysteries.” “This is a great mystery,” the Apostle said on a couple of occasions regarding certain truths which he espoused. Even though doubtless our Paul and I disagree on many things, and doubtless this, I think we would agree that we must approach “God” with a recognition that there are many things about him which are “beyond us.” We cannot simply “put God in a box.” Another passage in scripture notes, “Indeed, these are merely the edges of his ways.” Also, “‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my thoughts than your thoughts, and my ways higher than your ways,’ says the Lord.” So, if I cannot “do justice” to the “Atonement,” in one sense I must just say, “So be it.”
But I do think some sense can be made of the “resolution” of the “competing” emotions and cosmic principles. And that is, another basic tenet of those who hold to “satisfaction” (or actually, those of some, such as myself) is that “the books are not yet closed.” The willingness to go through the agony of sacrifice are themselves most ultimately rewarded by the just God (“Easter” follows after “Good Friday”), and those who “flaunt” such a sacrifice made in their favor “lose even what they once had.” Thus, Hebrews 12:2 states about the Christ himself, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who FOR THE JOY SET BEFORE HIM endured the cross, scorning its shame, and SAT DOWN AT THE RIGHT HAND OF THE THRONE OF GOD.” (Which this last may be “figurative” in some sense, as certainly C.S. Lewis maintained; but, it is at the least figurative of “the greatest of all possible honors.”) And in the preceding chapter of Hebrews, chapter 11, the author points out others who fall in the same category, albeit to lesser degrees than the Christ. Whereas, the “Hitlers” and such, IF THEY WILL NOT CHANGE and “take advantage” of the sacrifice which made that “second chance” a possibility for them, do come to a very dire “ultimate” end. (See, for example, Revelation 20:11-15 as a partial picture, for those whose names are not written in the “book of life” as having “accepted” the sacrifice made on their behalf by “changing” as a consequence.)
Well, that was very long. But it is a complex subject. And, having been duly and appropriately chastised for being dogmatic or “critical,” I must hastily add that I am merely trying to explain the view or understanding of those of us who do hold to the “satisfaction” understanding of the “satisfaction” view of Christ “dying for our sins.”
Tom Harkins
04/14/2011