From Ted Grimsrud:
Hmm. I'm not sure I'm ready to accept this teaching.Jesus’ God is not a God who demands repayment of every ounce of indebtedness. Rather, God is a God of abundant mercy. Jesus taught that debts would be released without any kind of payment (Luke 4:19). The nature of the salvation Jesus proclaims turns the debt motif on its head. His Jubilee theology does not accept the logic of retribution that portrays human beings having an overwhelming debt to God. That logic sees this debt leading God to demand perfect obedience or a violent sacrifice as a necessary basis for paying the debt and thereby earning God’s favor. Instead, Jesus began his ministry by proclaiming a word of pure acceptance—the poor, the captives, the oppressed are given a simple word of unilateral acceptance by God. God simply forgives the debts.
Jesus’ gospel message does lead directly to his death. This death, though, is not the necessary means to affect the salvation Jesus the Savior brings the world. Rather, the death stems from the response of the Powers to the salvation already given by God. Jesus’ straight out mercy reveals to the world God’s saving will with unprecedented clarity.
Jesus’ death adds nothing to the means of salvation—God’s mercy saves, from the calling of Abraham on. Rather, Jesus’ death reveals the depth of the rebellion of the Powers, especially the political and religious human institutions that line up to execute Jesus. Even more so, Jesus’ death reveals the power of God’s love. Jesus’ death does indeed profoundly heighten our understanding of salvation. It reveals that the logic of retribution is an instrument of evil and that God’s love prevails even over the most extreme expression of (demonic) retribution.
I want to have both -- that is, both that Jesus' death is the result of an evil world's response to His way of love and nonviolence, and also that Jesus' death is part of God's plan to effect the redemption of the world.
At the same time, I don't want to limit the work of the atonement to Jesus' death, nor to its means. The resurrection seems central (because it is there we see life overcoming death), although I would not want to limit the work of the atonement to the resurrection, either, to the exclusion of Jesus' death--and Jesus' life.
I am so glad we are not saved by correct doctrine, but by the work of God in Christ (whatever the heck that is). :)
(There is nothing else to this post).
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"Make me a channel of Your Peace."
-St. Francis
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4 comments:
Good post, Scott.
A good exercise concerning the atonement is to read Gustav Aulen's "Christus Victor (193?)," in which he makes a distinction between a classic, objective, and subjective theory of the atonement. He favors the classic--which is NOT substitutionary. The objective theories can be divided into the merit-acquisition ones and the penalty ones. I don't want to go any further than that here because if you're intrigued by the topic, you really should read Aulen.
However, the exercise then consists of finding passages in the NT supporting all three (or four) theories, though one is probably primary.
You can go wrong one way or the other with regard to the atonement: either to reduce it to one single explanation, which does not do justice to either God's rich ways of dealing with the world, or to lose yourself in an unnecessary ambiguity.
Thanks, Win, for the recommendation.
I think Ted Dorman's book classifies various models of atonement according to Aulen's categories. Also, I'm familiar with inclusive/ecclectic approaches to atonement theology. Scot McKnight's _A Community Called Atonement_ is one example, but I've come across the notion before--probably from Dorman or Heth and/or other Taylor profs (quite possibly including you).
I am periodically troubled by substitionary models--that the penal substituion model only dates to the Reformation period does not automatically mean it is poor theology, but it does raise a red flag for me. Also, I have independent (biblical/theological) reasons for rejecting retributivism in general, and so I have difficulty reconciling this with a penal view of atonement. I am aware that not all substitutionary models are penal models.
I also a pluralist in that I am not so dogmatic as to insist one must accept some particular version of atonement theology to be an acceptably biblical or orthodox Christian--nor that one is heterodox just for accepting some particular model. (And, as I said in my post, I don't think we're saved by right doctrine anyway). I think scriptural arguments can be made for several views--but it remains significant whether or not a subtitutionary or penal model of atonement is really good biblical theology--perhaps the case for it is weak, even if possible.
Hi Scott,
I appreciate your attention to my blog and your comments in response to the excerpt from my essay on salvation.
To continue the conversation, I'd like to reflect a little on what you wrote. We would need to unpack what we might mean by "plan" when we say "Jesus' death is part of God's plan," but I would certainly agree that Jesus' death is important in the history of God's saving work.
The key issue, it seems to me, is what Jesus' death contributes to this saving work. I want to suggest that its main contribution is to reveal both the nature and extent of God's love and the nature of the powers who, though claiming to be God's agents actually rebel against God by murdering God's Son. And certainly God raising Jesus from the dead is crucial to this revelation--it makes it absolutely clear that Jesus lived the life God calls him (and all of us) to and that God will vindicate.
However, I would not call this an atonement theology. I think it is a theology that understands Jesus' death (and resurrection) not as bringing something new to the table, as it were, in relation to the means of salvation so much as underscoring what the means have been from the beginning.
So, I would actually then not want to say that "we are saved by the work of God in Christ" so much as "the work of God in Christ" makes clearer than anything else ever could the presence of salvation from the time of Adam and Eve on--salvation through trusting in God's mercy.
The question anyone who sees "the work of God in Christ" saving us has to answer, it seems to me, is what this "work" adds to what was already present in the world. And is it possible to think of what might have in "added" without ultimately ending up in a kind of retributivism?
Thanks for your comment, Ted. I'm happy to have a chance to have this conversation with you. :)
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You state:
"The question anyone who sees 'the work of God in Christ' saving us has to answer, it seems to me, is what this 'work' adds to what was already present in the world. And is it possible to think of what might have in 'added' without ultimately ending up in a kind of retributivism?"
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I understand you to be presenting the following as an exclusive disjunction: either (a) we are saved by the work of God in Christ, or (b) persons living prior to the life of Jesus were saved by trusting in God's mercy.
I do not think these are mutually exclusive options. I was taught to believe that the atoning work of God in Christ occured "before the foundations of the world", i.e. that the atoning work of God in Christ is retroactive. According to this notion, it is not that Christ adds to what was already present in the world, but neither is it that Christ adds or contributes nothing. Rather, what Christ contributes is an eternal contribution, such that the atonement effected by the work of God in Christ just is what was already present in the world, in the years of history prior to the life of Jesus.
I present this here as an available theological option--the coherence and scriptural foundations of this view are certainly open to question. And that is one direction our conversation could go.
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I don't think substitionary atonement requires retributivism, because I don't think it requires a legal metaphor.
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Here are a couple of passages from Ephesians that come immediately to my mind when I think about God's saving/atoning work in Christ:
Ephesians 2:1-8 speaks of God's "making us alive together with Christ". In context, this seems to be equated with our being saved by grace through faith. This salvific work of God certainly is an expression of God's mercy, but it is also explicitly joined to an historical event--the resurrection of Christ--which is identified as an act of God in time. The writer of this letter has just mentioned the same resurrection event in 1:19-20 as a work of God's power for the benefit of believers.
Ephesians 1 also makes it explicit that our salvation is "in Christ". Eph 1:7 even says "we have redemption through his blood". I do not see a justification for divorcing the historical events of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus from God's effecting salvation in the theology of Ephesians.
Ephesians also suggests something that was added, with the birth of the Church. In Eph 1:13-14, the writer of the letter speaks of believers being "sealed with the promised Holy Spirit". In Eph 1:20-23, he speaks of the exaltation of Christ and the incorporation of the Church as the Body of Christ. I read these as new things that happened with the historical events of Resurrection & Pentecost.
The author of Ephesians also writes, in 2:11-12, that something new has happened, and this new thing was effected by the blood of Christ, and by the cross, and by his flesh. Gentiles "are no longer strangers and aliens, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God...in Christ [Jews and Gentiles together] are being built into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit."
In my own theology, these images from Ephesians are primary in my understanding of salvation & atonement.
I think there is an element of "substitution" here, but no legal metaphors--hence, no retributivism.
The core of substitionary atonement as I understand it is this: God became man so man could become God.
Credo: The Son of God (i.e., the third person of the Trinity) in the person of Jesus of Nazareth took on human flesh--he became what we are--so that (via the incarnation and resurrection and exaltation of Jesus) we could become what he is--in harmonious communion with the Trinity (and with one another).
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