For readers who are interested, the following is a continuation of a conversation begun in the previous post. It will not make much sense unless you read that post and the comments in response to it. The questions below come from them and my responses are not definitive answers but a continuation of the conversation.
The question is; “Is the victory of the cross the victory of God’s grace over human evil rather than in relation to the human body?”
I believe the issue is not either/or but both/and. Moreover, I’m not convinced that the cross makes much sense unless it is bracketed by the incarnation and resurrection. That said, the cross is the victory over human evil, or sin if you will, not that it is erased from the human condition, but that it is demonstrated to have no ultimate power over one’s relationship with God that we call righteousness. And, it is also the victory over human finitude so that the fullness of life’s meaning is not determined by the few short years between birth and death. If this sounds familiar, it is true that I have been heavily influenced in my thinking by Niebuhr.
The question is; “How can you reconcile your emphasis on the generosity of love that has the grace to forgive from the cross when it becomes the ‘bloody miracle’ of the agony of the cross that itself promises forgiveness IF I just say yes to all that spilled blood – a quid pro quo?”
I am grateful to Anselm for continuing the exploration of the meaning of atonement, but I fail to see why we should be stuck in a thousand year old doctrine that has been twisted into macabre shapes by 18th, 19th and 20th century fundamentalists who delight in featuring an outraged God demanding punishment for sin in exchange for life. I admit that it appeals to a great many people who cannot conceive of a superabundant forgiving grace that demands no exchange, especially one calculated in terms of human lust for vengeance. That kind of thinking is fed not only by Mel Gibson’s atrocious theology, but also by most every action movie plot out there, which makes it hard to get away from.
Those of us who worship out of the Catholic tradition are also faced with Eucharistic language peppered with blood language that seldom gets explained, or at least explained the way I think it should be. It goes back to the early Jewish understanding that blood is a divine gift that gives life to all creatures. With that in mind, the blood of Christ is not simply a symbol of that gift but the very source of life itself. In using the word symbol I mean it to be understood both as representative of and participating in. In that light, the blood of the cross is symbolically an attempt by evil, in whatever form, to extinguish the source of life itself: the victory of death over life at its most basic and universal meaning. I do not see that as necessary but as inevitable, and not as a calculated scheme of the devil, but simply on the grounds that, sooner or later, the Romans and Sadducees would have to get rid of Jesus for ordinary political reasons, but political reasons that symbolize the original sin that is the human desire to be in control of all things, including destiny.
The resurrection is the symbol, in the way I mean symbol, that the very source of life and the superabundance of God’s grace cannot be overcome. Forgiveness comes not through bloody sacrifice but through grace, and human finitude is given meaning through the resurrection.
Obviously this needs some work, but it’s as far as I can go right now.
I'm going to respond, Steve, through a series of short posts on specific points, and then 'take stock' and write a longer reply. This is how I'd like to extend what I take to be an important conversation, most especially here on Easter morning.I'd like to begin with your comment (for which I'll respond to its context later): \”I’m not convinced that the cross makes much sense unless it is bracketed by the incarnation and resurrection.\”This is related to my question of whether Incarnation itself requires the cross and then resurrection. A lot here would then turn on just how Incarnation is understood. Well, of course that's a large issue. But let's focus it by way of blood, since I think you're right about the importance of blood in the Hebraic tradition (as is made clear by something as straightforward as matrilineal succession, that is, motherblood, to determine who is a \”Jew\”).Is Incarnation a blood event? Is it itself a transubstantiation of blood? So that the succession from Incarnation to the Last Supper to the Cross to Resurrection to Eucharist is quite simply by way of blood and its transubstantiation?This would then be the ground for Mel Gibson's fascination with blood and for my prior use of the phrase \”bloody miracle\”: each of these configurations of transubstantiation are bloody miracles. Mel is obsessed with the staging of bloody miracles–a staging that inevitably moves in the direction of a quid pro quo.What is the alternative reading of this succession that begins with Incarnation? It begins from the notion that Incarnation is of the power of Spirit rather than of the blood, that is, that it has to do with the meaning of the body: the body as incarnate meaning, where \”meaning\” is itself a possibility of Spirit. The contrast here is what it means to live the body in the spirit of the \”flesh\” (to use Paul's term).From the above, what I want to follow out in the next post is: how is the overflow of God's generosity understood in the context of blood transubstantiated and in the context of the possibilities of incarnate meaning?
So to continue, Steve, let's consider the context for my last post. You wrote:\”The question is; “Is the victory of the cross the victory of God’s grace over human evil rather than in relation to the human body?”I believe the issue is not either/or but both/and.\”You are right to imply that I want to separate that which your \”both/and\” would conflate, that is, I don't see an internal relation between \”human evil\” and \”the human body,\” though I know that that is how most folks read Paul's notion of the \”flesh.\” But I think that reading radically and perniciously misguided.Yes, you cannot have \”the flesh\” without a body but you cannot have Incarnation without a body either: both are ways of understanding the embodiment of meaning, in, for example, a caress, or the very specific form of torture that is dying on a cross.To me, the \”victory of the cross\” is, again, the movement by which Jesus overcome his own sense having been \”forsaken\” by God's generosity, for how could such love lead to this absolute form of bodily torture?, to what it meant for him to act on \”they know not what they do,\” to turn the other cheek, to be generous, even here and thereby show the absolute limit to the power of the flesh to dominate the sense of what is and is not possible.But if so, I'm still stuck: why go on to insist on the literal resurrection of the body? And here I think we run into the question of human finitude. To which I'll turn tomorrow.
I'll wait until tomorro before wading in again, but I do suggest the following. I intended my both/and to mean that the problem of human evil and the problem of human finitude are resolved in the Christ event. I suppose that one could be resovled without the other except that I believe that the Christ event resolves each of them. At the same time, I do think that the problem of human evil is related to human finitude in the sense that human evil is, at least in part, the assertion that humans can do/be what they cannot do/be because of their finitude. That is, they cannot accomplish things of ultimate truth or enduring meaning because they cannot be God. Humans can only conditionally approximate truth and meaning. Whenever I have said that out loud in adult bible classes or in the presence of conservative evangelicals it drives them nuts because the obvious implication is that there is conditionality not only in scripture but also in our ability to understand it. Again, Niebuhr keeps poking his head in here.
So, Steve, let's continue with your comments on human finitude. I'll respond today to what you wrote in your original post and then tomorrow I'll take up your follow-up comment.Originally you wrote:\”And, it is also the victory over human finitude so that the fullness of life’s meaning is not determined by the few short years between birth and death.\”\”[H]uman finitude is given meaning through the resurrection.\”The sense of a \”victory\” here concerns a temptation that arises from the question, What do the \”few short years between birth and death\” mean? The temptation is to think that we create the meaning of our lives on our terms: that my will is sufficient to authoring the meaning of my life and death, that I can do it my way. A self-made man. That pride.Roman crucifixion made such pride literal by dictating the terms of death to control life.Forgiveness out of love on the cross radically transformed its meaning: the presence of terror became the promise that love overcomes: that the fullness of what life can mean follows from God's generosity even here in this most horrific of public deaths; even this is for love.Let me ask again: Since the above directly follows from the Sermon on the Plain at the heart of which is the generosity that allows one to turn the other cheek. And since it shows both that the terrorized fantasies of compensatory human pride are powerless over such generosity and that such generosity is the source of what grace this life might have. Since it does all that, just what is the resurrection of the body supposed to be doing?And here is where, again and again, I see the quid pro quo returning. Unnecessarily returning. The Sermon on the Plain is sufficient for understanding the meaning of the cross. Taking the new step of the resurrection of the body, which is not present in the Sermon on the Plain, is a failure of nerve, is to fall back on sealing a deal instead of staying right there on the cross as Jesus moves from abject despair to faith renewed.More tomorrow….
Let's take up this part of your follow-up comment, Steve:\”I do think that the problem of human evil is related to human finitude in the sense that human evil is, at least in part, the assertion that humans can do/be what they cannot do/be because of their finitude. That is, they cannot accomplish things of ultimate truth or enduring meaning because they cannot be God. Humans can only conditionally approximate truth and meaning.\”Yes, I completely agree with the above, and was trying to point to it with my comment on the fantasy at work in the terror of Roman crucifixion. The problem for me is the temptation to collapse \”human evil\” and the human body, and thus my comment on what I take to be bad readings of Paul's notion of the \”flesh\” in relation to what I take to be good readings of Incarnation. The difference between \”bad\” and \”good\” here is over the constitution of meaning. The \”dunamis of Spirit\” constitutes the possibility of meaning. Incarnation constitutes a human body as the promise of meaning. That promise is fulfilled in love and perversely denied by way of the flesh. The difference between love and the flesh is shown by forgiveness out of love on the cross. Yes. But it also can be shown in the mutuality of any loving touch, indeed any loving caress. Thus Jesus also shows the difference between love and the flesh with every touch he welcomes, and he welcomes every touch.Why take what happens on the cross as more important than Jesus' welcoming touch? Why doesn't what happens on the cross, that is, forgiveness out of love, simply follow from the generosity that allows any one to welcome touch?Well, because evidently we, \”we\” who?, need something more: the bloody miracle, the promise that I will get a new body. This too is a temptation of the flesh.This body in all its finiteness is meant to welcome touch and welcoming touch is sufficient. This too is full of grace.