Tag: Atonement

Repent and be Baptized. You have been Ransomed!

Steven WoolleyLeave a comment
This Sunday some of us will hear a portion of Peter’s first sermon from Acts calling on his listeners to repent and be baptized, followed by a portion from 1st Peter saying that Christians have been ransomed with the precious blood of Christ.  
Repent, be baptized, you have been ransomed by the blood of Christ.  That’s the call, but I think it falls short.  There is a ‘so that’ attached to it.  “[S]o that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart.”  It is this heartfelt, deep, mutual love for one another that must be the intention of our repentance and the sign of our Christian fellowship that is displayed to the entire world.
My experience is that the Church, writ however large or small you want, pays little more than lip service to the commandment to love and the importance of displaying that love as a sign to the world.  Most of us are not unaware of that even if we don’t want to admit it.  It’s why contemporary figures such as Tutu, Teresa, Nouwen, Merton and others are revered as the ones to whom we can point while generally rejecting their example as having any practical application in our own daily lives.  Few of us are called to become a Tutu, Teresa, Nouwen or Merton.  We are neither monk, nun nor bishop, we don’t want to become one, and we wouldn’t be good at it if we were.  Nevertheless, every Christian is called to a life of discipleship, not at the margins but at the core.
Since formation for discipleship is among the highest priorities across all denominations, I suggest that deep mutual love for one another must be an essential ingredient of it.  Without it there is no true repentance, baptism loses its meaning, and the ransoming blood of Christ is trivialized.  The problem, at least for me, is that deep mutual love for one another is an abstraction without clear definition.  It sounds great – just exactly what a good Christian should exhibit.  But how does that get worked out in real life?  The kind of life most people actually live?
There’s the rub.  Learning to follow Christ through love is the hardest thing any of us will ever attempt.  Yet I believe that it is only through one’s own personal commitment to the discipline of Christlike love that we can truly claim formation as believers.  It would please me to make that claim for myself, but I can’t.  I’ve been working on it a long time with only marginal success.  I can forcefully assert that I know what needs to be done, but I am not the one others should aspire to emulate.  What bothers me is that too many leaders appear to ignore the love commandment altogether, or dare to claim that their narrow minded, bigoted teaching is a fulfillment of it. 
Scripture offers many places to begin.  One of them is the 12th chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans:   
I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.  Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.  We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness. Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. 

The Case of the Little Girl and the Two Gods

Steven Woolley1 Comment
I have a very dear friend in her eighties who lives with two gods, both of whom keep her in a constant state of anxiety.  God number one is the biblical god of her childhood that was driven deep into her soul.  This god is known to her mostly as an accusing judge from whom no escape is possible except by the grace of Jesus Christ, which may come to some if their faith is right, but that is a huge question.  God number two is the devil.  Not the biblical devil, but the devil of long standing myth.  Exactly what the devil does is a mystery, but it’s clear that he has a lot of power and is control of more that happens on earth and in life than most people believe.   These two gods are ever present in her life and keep her in a constant state of near jeopardy.  
One certain characteristic of god number one is that he has a particular plan for every life, and nothing of any significance happens, whether for good or ill, that this god has not caused or allowed, and always for a reason.  To the extent that persons have free will, it is limited pretty much to using one’s powers of reason to discover god’s life plan and follow it, and to seek to understand why god caused or allowed to happen bad things and learn from that about amendment of life.  Failure to do that is a sign, if not a promise, that one is damned.  
Good things do not need much examination in part because her theology is combined with a solid individualistic work ethic that ascribes material well being to hard work and perseverance.  Poverty, on the other hand, is the product of laziness and lack of discipline, or a sign of god’s disfavor.   The obvious conflicts between her theology and work ethic do not trouble her, but they do add to the confusion she expresses whenever we talk about God, especially as revealed in the life and teaching of Jesus.  
The devil, ever lurking to ensnare, and probably in control of huge sectors of the world, is the anti-god in whom there is no hope at all.  His exact nature is unclear, but it is clear to her that we live as little more than pawns in the midst of a battle between these two gods.
Over the years she has listened to my sermons, attended some of my classes, and we have spent hours in conversation exploring these matters.  The God of our tradition, the God whom I know and love through Christ Jesus, the God whom I see revealed in scripture and in life, that God, remains just barely out of reach to her.  The peace of God that passes all understanding bypasses her.  The love of God that is abounding, steadfast and slow to anger is intellectually present but cannot find a place in her already occupied soul.  
What I want to know is who was it that, seventy or eighty years ago, stuffed her little heart so full of judgment and damnation, an accusing god and a threatening devil, that subjects her still to fear and anxiety about God and her own salvation?  I think Jeremiah has something to say to that person in words that some of us will hear on Sunday:
“What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves?  …The priests did not say, ‘Where is the Lord?’…[but] prophesied by Baal, and went after things that do not profit.”

Atonement – contuning the conversation 4, and maybe the end for now

Steven Woolley2 Comments
Is the Eucharist, and thereby the transubstantiation of blood, necessary to complete the work of incarnation?
I know no other place to start than by asserting that blood as symbol of the divine gift of life cannot be avoided; there is just too much of it in scripture not to be taken seriously.  But that is not to say that blood is in itself the divine gift of life, and since my tradition does not use the word transubstantiation, and denies the medieval terms by which it was defined as a sort of alchemy, I find it difficult to understand arguments in which it is used.  However, the main issue is whether the Eucharist is necessary to complete the work of incarnation.  I don’t think it is.  Rather, it is a participation in the work of incarnation by Jesus’ own invitation and command.  By that I mean that the ministry of the generosity of grace that you have illuminated in your exposition on Luke 7 is to be continued by “the body of Christ”, which is the Church.  The Eucharist is, at its heart, the mystical participation with Jesus in the moment of the Last Supper, receiving with those who were there the bread and wine in which Christ is truly present as holy food and drink for the the work that lies ahead.  In it we, in a sense, take the place of that woman who was a sinner (Luke 7) and both give thanks for and receive the outpouring of God’s generous grace in no less an intimate and physical way than did she.
Having said that, I also have to admit that few persons presenting themselves at the altar to receive Holy Communion actually think about it in that way.
As for your heretical take on incarnation as meaning made flesh, on free will, on prevenient grace, and on gratuitous generosity, I think you have nailed it quite well, and if that is heresy we’ll both hang together. 
You raised the question about the relation of power (dunamis) of the Spirit as over against the power of blood to provide meaning.
My take is that blood has no symbolic meaning without the power of the Spirit.  It is only the power of the Spirit that gives any sense to it at all.  From the blood of sheep as a symbol of the divine gift of life, to the annunciation of new life in Mary’s womb, to the wine declared as Christ’s blood, to the blood of the cross, it is all driven by the power of the Spirit of God.
In your penultimate statement you said: “Here is my struggle: Is blood so powerful that it has to be transubstantiated to have the promise of meaning fulfilled?  Or may the promise of meaning be fulfilled as our bodies inflect each other out of gratuitous generosity?  If the latter takes place, the former is not necessary.”
An evangelical and many mainline Protestants would agree, at least so far as the Eucharist is concerned.  Although, for some reason strange to me, while they would never be caught with a crucifix anywhere in sight, they tend to wallow in the idea of blood sacrifice.  As a catholic, or small ‘o’ orthodox Christian, gratuitous generosity that is authentically holy can only flow through me by power of the same intimacy and touch received by the woman who was a sinner.  Even at that, as I leave the table, just as she did, to return to the world in which I live and am known as the sinner I am, I find that outflowing of gratuitous generosity draining away through the many cracks and holes in my being.  That is why I return to the table time and again, each time as if for the first time.

A Public Conversation

Steven WoolleyLeave a comment
Dear Readers,
What you have been experiencing these last few days is a long conversation about the meaning of atonement mostly between my friend Tom and me.  It’s a first.  We often have conversations such as this one, but never before worked out in public on a blog site.  I imagine we will be done in another few days.  In the meantime, your reflections are always welcome. 
CP

Atonement – contuning the conversation 3

Steven Woolley2 Comments
Does the incarnation require the cross and then resurrection?
I keep trying to back away from words such as require and necessary in favor of inevitable.  To be a requirement one would have to argue that the precondition of fulfillment through incarnation was crucifixion and resurrection.  I know it sounds like splitting hairs, but it seems to me that legal execution by some means was inevitable but not a requirement.  At the same time, resurrection is not inevitable, but it is a requirement in order for the work of incarnation to be completed.   
I guess the difference between requirement and inevitability has to do with freedom.  Something that is required does not permit freedom to operate.  Something that is inevitable recognizes that under given conditions, human freedom will inevitably take certain turns.  Highways around here are posted at 60mph.  It is inevitable that human freedom will result in average speeds closer to 65mph, but that is not a requirement. It is inevitable that some who go faster will get tickets because troopers are required to issue them.
Is incarnation a blood event?
I suppose it is in the sense that Jesus is both the subject and object of the story, but I’m unwilling to suggest any connection to the doctrine of transubstantiation, and wonder where you see that connection.  As for Mel Gibson and fellow travelers, I just don’t get their obsession with what you call the “bloody miracle.”  It seems to me that even the most vivid of New Testament biblical witnesses (Heb. 9:22: Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins) is firmly rooted in the symbolic meaning of blood as found in the Hebrew scriptures rather than in the fundamentalist demand for a bloody substitutionary sacrificial punishment.  
How deep is quid pro quo thinking?
All that aside, I believe that a great deal of ordinary Christian teaching moves in the direction of a quid pro quo, not because it reflects anything of Jesus, but because it is human to live so deeply into an exchange economy that anything other seems irrational.    The Old Testament is filled with the language of reciprocity in which humans constantly demand of God that he live up to the contract of exchange the way a proper god should.      I do not believe that such language justifies a theology of exchange or reciprocity as coming from God. The story of Job puts the lie to all of that, which is no doubt why it is such a hard book to comprehend.  To be sure there is only a slight difference between a divine covenant and a negotiated contract, but it is an important one.  As Krister Stendahl was fond of pointing out, the divine covenant is never negotiated, it is imposed.  However, it is not imposed by coercion after the manner of a conquering emperor.  It is imposed by God as nonnegotiable with the single condition that it be accepted of one’s own free will.  God’s continual renewal of his covenants constantly drive in the direction of the divine outpouring of generosity not based on exchange that was only fully revealed in Jesus Christ, and from which we immediately began to retreat as soon as Jesus was safely out of sight.
Is Incarnation about blood or spirit?
Why not both.  Consider the two annunciation stories.  The child in Mary’s womb was proclaimed to be of the Holy Spirit.  It is, on the one hand, a rejection of the Greek idea of the separation of spirit and flesh, and, on the other, a dramatic amendment to the Hebrew idea of an embodied soul.  If there is something that comes from God that inspires all life, whether in breath or blood, then the child in Mary’s womb is, in a sense, self inspired because he is not the recipient of the gift of life from God but the very source itself.  I think that is what John was trying to get at in his prologue.  As a small ‘o’ orthodox Christian, I have no problem with the virgin birth, but neither do I believe that it is necessary for the Christ to be, as John says, the Word of God made flesh.  Nor do I understand the gross manipulations the Roman Catholics have gone through to assert the freedom of Jesus from original sin by way of the immaculate conception of Mary.  To me that is just pure theological silliness.
Is there a relationship between human evil and the human body?
Christian theology has been struggling with that for two thousand years.  Again, I suspect it is the heritage of too much Greek thinking.  Augustine’s concupiscence is what we are stuck with, and while I know very little about the early Church fathers, my guess is that he inherited it from them.  It flies in the face of the incarnation, however you understand that.  In whatever way Jesus was the visible presence of the invisible God, he was so in the flesh and all of this works were works of the flesh in which restoration to wholeness illuminated the Genesis language declaring that what God created was very good.  The way I see it, what gives life to human evil is free will.  Out of that will we empower ourselves to bodily do things that are destructive, corrosive, evil.  That certainly engages the body in evil, but I don’t see how bodily existence itself can be held accountable.  
Is the victory of the cross the outpouring from Jesus of nonreciprocal generosity in the face of God’s apparent abandonment?  
Yes, I think that is a huge part of what is meant by the victory of the cross.  You said it best when you wrote: “Forgiveness out of love on the cross radically transformed its meaning: the presence of terror became the promise that love overcomes: that the fulness of what life can mean follows from God’s generosity even here in this most horrific of public deaths; even this is for love.”
So why go on to insist on the literal resurrection of the body?
In part because it is attested to by those who were there, but more because it is the definitive symbol that there is no separation between spirit and flesh.   The restoration to wholeness includes the material and the spiritual in mutuality.  That restoration to wholeness answers the problem of sin and the problem of finitude, each in its own way.  Does that make it a “failure of nerve” and a “fall back on the sealing of a [reciprocal] deal?”  It shouldn’t, but I do think that it gets expressed that way in far too much, perhaps most, Christian preaching and teaching.  

Atonement Part 2

Steven Woolley5 Comments
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.  

Reciprocity and Atonement

Steven Woolley8 Comments
The principle of reciprocity is a powerful tool in our culture.  It is the principle of the quid pro quo: I’ll do this for you if you’ll do that for me.  As Robert Cialdini pointed out over twenty-five years ago in his little book “Influence: The New Psychology of Modern Persuasion.,”  it is a principle constantly at work in our daily lives.  In its best guise it is simply an exchange of more or less equal things.  For instance, when good friends invite us to their house for dinner, we make a mental note of our obligation to reciprocate at an early date.  We like to keep things even.  We feel uncomfortable when things get too far out of balance, as when a well meaning person always pays for our coffee and never let’s us do the same in return.  It puts us in a subordinate position.  It makes us wonder what he or she wants or will ask for at another time.  Obviously some kind of exchange is required, and we dislike not knowing what it will be.
Oddly enough it is not a principle in which equality of exchange is required.  The reciprocal act is essential, but it can satisfy social expectations and our consciences without being an equal exchange.  That’s what makes it so easy for it to become a principle in which significant advantage of one over the other is sought.  Accomplished sales people use it to full advantage.  They may well have a very find product or service to sell, and it may be one that you or I want or need.  But the deal can be closed solid by employing the principle of reciprocity.  In exchange for lunch at a fine restaurant, we give our life savings into the hands of a broker.  In exchange for feigned friendship and manufactured personal connections, we fork over thousands of dollars for a new car.  At its worst, it is the underlying principle of every con and scam.  We live in a culture driven by the principle of reciprocity, both fair and unfair.
We even try to work that principle into our religious faith, and we have since the beginning of time.  The psalmists are constantly imploring God to punish their enemies and in return receive unending praise.  The disciples compete for who will get the most in God’s kingdom in exchange for the quality of their discipleship.  On television a few nights ago, a well known cleric said that in exchange for being a Christian you get eternal life.  Prayers are constantly offered to God asking “What did I do to deserve this?” and “If you will do me this favor, I will do thus and so for the Church.”  It’s all about reciprocity.  Even the theories of atonement are based on some aspect of reciprocity.
My friend Tom, who teaches philosophy at a local college, wonders what it would be like to understand God in Christ as the one who refuses to live by the principle of reciprocity and invites his followers to do the same.  He suggests that through Jesus we are able to see something of what the superabundance of God’s generosity looks like when it is poured out as gift with no quid pro quo attached.  Those upon whom the gift is poured, and who are willing to receive it, find themselves impelled to respond with praise and thanksgiving, yet not in the context of reciprocity.  They may become followers of Jesus, true disciples, not as a way of paying back, but more in the sense of being swept along in God’s superabundant river of generosity.  
How would that play out in the events of Holy Week, the Cross, the grave and the Resurrection?   How would that make sense as a foundational argument for a theory of atonement?  To continue the metaphor, what if one chooses not to be swept along by that river of generosity?  What if one is content to sit on the bank and just watch?  What if one denies that there even is such a river?  Where does judgment fit in with that?  Scripture offers a tantalizing clue in Peter’s first letter where it is said that Jesus preached to the spirits who had perished in Noah’s flood (1 Peter 3.19, 4.6).  Were all those spirits now swept along in a new flood of redeeming, superabundant generosity?  Was Jesus “harrowing hell” to raise up the good and leave the bad behind?  In the 5th chapter of John’s gospel, will all the evil dead who are raised to the resurrection of judgment discover that as condemnation, or an invitation to be swept along in the new flood of superabundant generosity?
What would a theory of atonement founded on the idea of an outpouring of God’s superabundant generosity in which there is no place for reciprocity do to our usual ways of thinking about what it means to be Christian?

Sealing the Covenant with Sacrificial Blood

Steven Woolley7 Comments
I’m not sure whether we are sneaking up to Holy Week or it is thundering toward us.  In either case, many of us will hear the reading of the passion narrative on Palm Sunday.  In it is one very brief sentence from which we take a significant part of our understanding of Holy Communion: “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”  At least that’s Luke’s version. 
I imagine that the disciples had an almost instantaneous, instinctive grasp of what Jesus meant because they were familiar with scripture’s promise of a new covenant and the importance of sealing it with a blood sacrifice.  That is not to say that they would have been able to formulate a sophisticated theological argument, but only that, in the context of their religious lives and beliefs, it made perfect sense. 
That is not true for most contemporary Christians.  They hear it, or something like it, every time Holy Communion is celebrated.  Some believe it.  Others accept it without much thought.  Others never pay the slightest bit of attention, and still others reject it as barbaric.  Almost none of them connect it with the promise in Jeremiah 31 of a new covenant, nor to the explanation in Leviticus 17 that the (God given) life of the flesh is in the blood, nor, and this is important, to the description in Exodus 24 of the sealing of God’s covenant with the Israelites by sprinkling sacrificial blood on them.
The disciples knew all of that.  The symbolism of the post dinner cup of wine would have been very clear.  If Jesus really is who he says he is, then the life of the flesh that flows within him is not simply God given but God’s actual presence in a way that cannot be replicated in any other creature.  If the sprinkling of sacrificial blood on the people of Israel sealed their covenant with God, how much more would the holy blood of Christ seal the new covenant, especially when it is not sprinkled on but taken in.  No longer was God’s seal on them, it was in them.   They would not fully understand that for days, and perhaps years, to come, but the significance of it would become an essential piece of what it meant to be a Christian. 
No doubt someone will observe that the wine is not sacrificial blood, it’s just wine, and besides, Jesus had not yet been crucified when he uttered those words.  My only response is to cite what was once attributed to Queen Elizabeth I:
“Twas God the Word that spake it,
He took the Bread and brake it:
And what the Word did make it,
That I believe and take it.”
That aside, I believe that we who are called to teach must be more diligent in helping today’s followers of Christ understand these kinds of connections because, without them, we loose too much of what is essential.  Finally, and for what it’s worth, I have tried to teach these connections for many years with only marginal success.