Last week I had the blessing of attending Peace Among the Peoples, an ecumenical peace conference which gathered together peacemakers from around the United States, and also a few from Canada. There was a lot of focus on preparing for the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation in Jamaica next summer, as well as visioning for the future of peace work together as the Decade to Overcome Violence of the World Council of Churches comes to a close. A lot of good conversations were started.
But one that fascinates me was one that began with the first two set of presentations, and became an underlying theological conversation for the entire conference. It is one I would love to hear from this community on. The question was one of our atonement theology – and whether we can move toward a more peaceful future, and claim to be a peace church (in the case of the conference, churches) if we endorse a theology of bloody, sacrificial atonement. The debate for the week was set up by Rita Nakashima Brock and Stanley Hauerwas, two theological giants of the peace community. Rita’s argument is best summed up by this quote from a Lenten season post on the Huffington Post:
Many Christians today refuse a faith that asks us to be thankful for the torture and murder of Jesus Christ [...] The earliest images of the cross — dating back to the mid fourth century — symbolize resurrection, the tree of life, paradise in this world, and the transfiguration of the world by the Spirit. These crosses are not about sacrifice or debt repayment. Christianity that is true to the life of Jesus Christ tells his death as the story of resistance to the Roman Empire, not as the story of how the Empire enacted God’s will. Rome used crucifixion against non-citizens, the poor, and slaves [...] The gospels constructed an innovative strategy to resist crucifixion. They rejected the terror that crucifixion instilled and told the story another way, against the grain of historical fact and with the grain of love and resistance. They reported that Jesus had no broken bones and died quickly. His friends removed him intact the day he died and buried him properly. They found him again in the garden, along the shore, breaking bread, and telling them to carry on his ministry. They experienced him as many people and cultures experience those they love who have died, as present still in visions, dreams, and rituals. These loving details said that Rome was impotent to erase Jesus from memory, to deny his humanity, or to end his work for justice, healing, and peace.
Stanley, on the other hand, went the route of sacrificial atonement, arguing:
But that is why we do not trust those who would have us make sacrifices in the name of preserving a world at war. We believe a sacrifice has been made that has brought an end to the sacrifice of war. Augustine and Luther thought Christians might go to war because they assumed a church existed that provided an alternative to the sacrificial system war always threatens to become. If the Civil War teaches us anything it makes clear what happens when Christians no longer believe that Christ’s sacrifice is sufficient for the salvation of the world. As a result, Christians confuse the sacrifice of war with the sacrifice of Christ.
This is a sacrificial atonement theology based out of one posited by Anslem which Rita outlines in her post:
In 1098 Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury summarized the evangelical idea of salvation: he claimed the crucifixion of Jesus was willed by God to save the world. His idea, now called “substitutionary atonement theology,” claimed that humanity’s sinfulness had dishonored God and carried a magnitude of debt from sin that was impossible to pay. God had to send Jesus to substitute for us as the only sinless sacrifice qualified to atone for sin.
This has been a lot of words to pose the question to all of you: what is your theology of atonement? If the church exists as an alternative to the world of violence, to work to bring about the peace found in Christ, do we need to radically revision our traditional conception of sacrificial atonement? Or not?
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August 4, 2010 at 6:23 pm
Andy
This debate strikes at the center of what it means to be “Christian” for SO many. It is ground that must be treaded carefully. My own opinion is the experience and the Bible support both sacrificial atonement and revisionings of the death of Christ in light of abuses of the story. Both theologies can encourage an ethic and Kingdom of peace, just as both theologies can be abused and followed to a absolutist conclusion that denies the fluidity and power of the Gospel. May personal faith rests upon my soul being saved from sin and death by the atoning, self-sacrificing love of Jesus, who not only ransomed the faithful, but exposed the cruel, evil system of scapegoating and punishment and shows the world another way of living. Could it be possible that both of these theologies can coexist peacefully? Are they really at odds, or are they two sides of the same Gospel coin that can only be understood as the two relate and hold each other accountable?
August 6, 2010 at 7:49 pm
Joshua Brockway
Great topic Jordan!
I think the unasked question is simple: Who is doing the violence?
If it were God who violent then I can see the problem. If its required, or is a deeper reality of the human condition (ie that deep change or transformation is not possible without pain and suffering) then the question is important. But, I think if a theology of peace can’t deal with the categories of Fall and Redemption, then that is an even bigger problem.
One observation: It seems like there is a large contingent of the Peace Theology community which can’t handle the concept of Fallness or Brokenness. I mean, in essence we live in a fallen world where violence literally is a way of life. If we can’t grasp that violence is a real part of this world, then what do we have to offer. In other words, evil is real (not personified, but just real). When someone tries to live as Christ, the world’s response is violent. What matters is the redemption which comes DESPITE and out of the violence.
August 9, 2010 at 3:47 pm
jblevins
Thanks Andy and Josh. Andy, generally speaking, I think you are right – and I share your personal faith conviction. However, my question for you is this: does atonement occur on the cross, or in the resurrection? And Josh, this leads me into my comments to you. I agree that there is certainly a contingent of the Peace Theology community that would love to do away with a theology of being fallen or broken. That, it seems to be, should be a separate conversation. The question there is, what is the origin of the Fall, and our brokenness?
It seems to me that where we are is a place where the Fall is the result of a personal action, and something we did (and thus do). And then the only way for redemption to occur is for God to send Jesus to die, on the cross. That this is God’s demanded “sacrifice” to make up for the sins we commit everyday. In my mind, this makes sin too individualized, and has us believing in a God who demands violent sacrifice in response (not so much that God did the killing, but that God demanded the killing happen).
Instead, I would like to posit that our fall and brokenness is a result of broken relationship and trust with God, which is then lived out in our fallen nature and brokenness in relationship with each other. The death and scapegoating of Jesus on the cross is reflective of the reality of our brokenness, not the demand of God. The point of atonement occurs when Jesus reconciles us back into relationship with God through the resurrection. What the church is called to witness to, then, is not an atonement achieved through violent sacrifice, but through restoration of relationship.
August 10, 2010 at 2:03 am
Andy
Jordan, I like your succinct explanations of both atonement portrayals. I find myself seeing the necessity for both redemption on the cross and in the empty tomb; they are a unit, a pair, a couple that cannot be split apart for me. There are two concepts I have found to be an issue for some that I have found ways to accept personally:
I also recognize that the wrath of God can seem problematic for us peace-lovers. However, I also believe in justice, and as such, the wrath of God seems to be a natural and necessary part of the wrath of God, requiring real hatred and real justice for both individual sins, systematic oppression, and broken relationships. The wrath of God is the divine reaction to the justice of God seeing sinful brokenness. If the “wages of sin are death” (Romans 6:23) because rejecting God is rejecting life, than the consequence of sin would be the termination of life.
Also, the idea that “Father” God demanded the sacrifice of the Son to appease his wrath has been emphasized as the reason for thee death of Christ. In this schema, Jesus is the victim of divine child abuse. However, as I read the Gospels and focus on Jesus’s words on and reaction to his approaching death, I see a man who willingly lays down his own life out of love. Jesus death is self-sacrifice, laying down one’s life for one’s friends (John 15:13). If Jesus and the Father are one, then Jesus knows of the necessity of this saving, atoning action and out of love gives himself up. His previous miracles prove his full ability to save himself from death if he chose to, but instead, he was led like a lamb to the slaughter.
Just some of my own justifications of atonement.
August 12, 2010 at 1:04 am
Dan Finkbiner
I think that atonement is much more than reconciliation between us and God. I can’t help but break the word up into at-one-ment. I believe the crucifixion of Jesus is a demonstration of God being at one with us in our suffering as we are at one with the rest of humanity in our suffering. It is a divine statement of, “This is how I feel about the state of my children.” It is an illustration of our fallenness as we realize that it is our hands that drive nails into the divine flesh, and our transgressions that pierce the divine side. I believe that peacemaking starts with the realization that we are part of the problem; part of the systems of violence and economic inequallity which control our world. It is our own desire to separate ourselves from these things that is the best motivation for working to help others toward that goal.
August 15, 2010 at 4:47 am
Glenn
Jordan, I stumbled into this and as a non-theologian (and not that young) you may choose to not approve this for post. I appreciate your reflection-and some of the other responses. According to “the lens of Jesus ministry” God looks to reconcile with us as creation. To pull Walter Wink in here-Jesus going to the cross exposed two realities-the world was apt to seek to destroy that which rocked the status quo, and God isn’t one to resort to violence to solve the problem or impress us. The thought that the atonement comes with resurrection certainly makes sense from a loving God perspective…if some producer in Hollywood got his hands on a diety story, we would probably have Jesus coming back and painting the town red and making the “evil doers pay!” (Oh, wait, I think that was Clint Eastwood in a couple of his movies…sorry). What carnal man seems to want is just that…but God isn’t out for blood. It seems incongruous to think that Jesus teaches us to love one another, to forgive beyond social and gender bounderies, even our enemies…to be servants to one another, and then really hammer that ideology home by saying “Look at all you poor sinners! I am perfect, therefore you don’t stand a chance unless I martyr myself before the blood lust of my Father.” It’s been turned backwards over the centuries. Humanity has been the ones with the blood lust. Humankind’s sinful tendencies put Jesus on that cross. God’s grace poured down when Jesus was raised from the grave. How many times in a year do we nail Jesus to a tree? How many times do we deny Him? And yet, as long as we seek to mend our brokenness, God will not refuse us His grace.