Our understandings change as time and increased knowledge progresses. For example, President James Garfield never would have died from the bullet fired by Charles Guiteau if modern medical practices had been known and followed. The physicians attending him totally derided the existence of germs and the need for antiseptic practices, hence, the president died of infection. Given this truism, in 40 years of ministry my theological thinking has changed most significantly with respect to the atonement.
Bear with me as I offer a historical note and a couple of twenty-five-dollar-sounding words.
For a long time I had been bothered by what was for me the problem of an angry God and Jesus’ death. The understanding with which I cut my theological teeth, both in childhood and at seminary, was developed by Anselm, an 11th century Archbishop of Canterbury. In a nutshell Anselm proposed that because when the law is broken there must be punishment (God’s justice), Christ paid the price by taking our place on the cross, thereby satisfying a wrathful God. It is known as penal substitutionary atonement theology. Put simply, we need to be rescued from the deserved wrath and punishment of God, and this rescue was affected by God sending his Son as a sacrifice to die a tortuous execution. Anselm assimilated Jesus’ death to that of the pagan sacrificial principle where Jesus’ atoning work on the Cross is no longer seen as an act of grace by a merciful God, but is morphed into the most violent image one can imagine: child sacrifice.
While it is a much too complex study to thoroughly address here, suffice it to say that with Anselm authentic Christian thinking about the meaning of Jesus’ death went straight out the window. Penal substitutionary atonement theology is foreign to the apostolic writers, contradicting their emphases and language. Nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus say that God’s wrath must be appeased before God can accept sinners back into the fold. In Jesus’ Parable of the Prodigal Son, for instance, the father requires nothing – no payback, no ransom, no punishment, no sacrifice – when his son returns. In fact, he’s been watching every day for that familiar figure to appear. And when he does, Dad runs to greet his son as “one who was lost but now is found.”
For a decade and a half I have been studying the works of René Girard and theologians who have expounded on and expanded his writings. This was the primary focus of my 2011 sabbatical study during which I met with thinkers from this perspective across the continent. Those who participated in my 8-session Sunday Adult Study, The Jesus Driven Life, this past Fall-Winter got an abbreviated presentation of the alternative (and, for my money, much more Scripturally accurate) to Anselm’s erroneous conclusions.
Phrases such as Christ died for our sins (1 Corinthians 15:3) and died for us (Romans 5:8) are found in the New Testament, but never within the context of it being a punishment for sin. Jesus sacrificial death was not to fit into the from-human-beginnings system of an economy of exchange with God. In an economy of exchange one seeks something not within one’s power by making a gift (sacrifice) before making a request. From time immemorial human society has operated by this principle: if you gift me, I owe you (and vice-versa). So with the “gods.” Religion is doing something in order to get something from God. The question in the ancient world was not which god do you believe in, but to which god do you sacrifice? This principle – encapsulated by the Latin phrase du ut des, I give in order to receive – has so infused our very existence that we have assumed all along that God operates on the same basis. And this assumed basis is 180 degrees opposed to grace. Jesus came not to fit into this fallacious way of thinking about placating an angry God with sacrifice, but to reveal and do away with that satanic notion once and for all.
The atonement makes a lot more biblical sense when we think of it as at-one-ment. Jesus’ death and resurrection reveal clearly that we ARE one with God ... always have been ... like the father in Jesus’ story who never dreamed of disowning or demanding payback from his wayward son. Of course we mess up in a thousand and one various ways. But, to repeat myself, Christ’s life, teachings, death, and resurrection shout to the heavens that we have always been loved by God, are loved by God, and will always be loved by God. No sacrifice needed. None. Period. We are at-one with God, better news of which you can’t find on the planet!
Humanity has spent history not recognizing this, hence the message we couldn’t miss: Jesus! And Jesus was not paying off God (appeasing God’s anger or buying God’s pleasure) with his sacrificial act. It is patently incontestable from Scripture that God does not work that way. S. Mark Heim put it clearly in his important work, Saved From Sacrifice: “We are not reconciled with God and each other by a sacrifice of innocent suffering offered to God. We are reconciled with God because God at the cost of suffering rescued us from bondage to a practice of violent sacrifice that otherwise would keep us estranged, making us enemies of the God who stand with victims.”
A corollary point has to do with the oft-heard proposition that the Bible says one need accept and love Jesus or that one is going to experience eternity as a crispy critter. One of the theologians I met with in 2011, Michael Hardin, puts it this way. Imagine the most handsome, intelligent, witty, outgoing fellow who every gal wishes they could have as their husband, comes to you and says, “I love you so much, so deeply that it astonishes me. I cannot even describe the depth of my love for you. I want to be with you forever; you light up my life; you are the reason I exist. Will you marry me?” Imagine spending your life with such a person who was absolutely devoted to you, who loved you with an undying love, who cared for you in ways beyond your wildest dreams.
But before you respond with a “yes” suppose the suitor went on to say, “But you also need to know that if you will not love me in return I will make your life a living nightmare, a hell on earth. I will spread rumors and lies about you and make it my life’s goal to punish you in every way possible if you won’t accept my love for you.”
Any high school student in the country would say that is a perverted, haywire concept of love . . . in fact, not love at all. And yet this is exactly the picture of God which has predominated in the church over the ages. “Love Jesus or you’re going down!” Example: the church reader board I passed in Phoenix some years back during a heat wave that read – “You Think It’s Hot Here?” Message: accept Christ, love Him with all your heart, and do an “acceptable” job of walking in His steps or you’re going to Hell. Sakes alive, what a wonderful gospel message to proclaim! A fellow once said to me, “If there’s no hell, what’s the point?” To which I replied, “You’ve missed the point!”
It is clear to me from Scripture that God loves each and every human being, be it the model on the cover of Family Circle or on the cover of Hustler. And there is absolutely no way to lose that love. Again, Jesus’ death and resurrection writes that joyful message in hundred-foot-high letters. Along with the joy of ministering among and with the people of God who already know it, the reason I have been doing what I’ve been doing for forty years is simply the fact that there are so many who do not know this Good News. And my message has essentially been, “Have I got a deal for you!”
In closing, I add the following based on decades of serious study of the Bible. It is a wonderfully liberating feeling to be able to let go of an image of a God who demands a bloody sacrifice of an innocent victim before I can be forgiven. It is an equally wonderfully liberating feeling to be able to let go of an image of a God who consigns all who do not acknowledge Christ to an eternal hell. It was Jesus Himself who said from the cross, “Father, forgive them because they don’t know what they’re doing.” Our life in Christ is meant to be one of living and proclaiming this really good news . . . and letting God take care of the rest.
