It's Good Friday, the day that we Christians "celebrate" -- actually, commemorate -- Jesus' crucifixion. For the last several years, in my little corner of Christianity, there's been lots of talk about the atonement -- that is, about what exactly happened, cosmically speaking, when Jesus died. In fact, the nature of the atonement has become the bête noire of emergent Christians and the cause célèbre of the resurgent Reformers.I believe that Jesus of Nazareth was a real, historic human being who lived from approximately 6-4 BC to approximately AD 26-29.
I firmly believe, in unity with the Council of Chalcedon, that Jesus of Nazareth was both fully human and fully divine. This belief is key to one's understanding of the crucifixion. If Jesus was a little less than fully either, then his death means something different than what I think it means.
One key to my understanding of the crucifixion is the beginning of Jesus' ministry. At about the age of 30, Jesus arrives at the Jordan River and is baptized by his cousin, John. He then retreats into the wilderness where, after a 40-day fast, he's tempted. Really tempted. That is, the result of Jesus' interaction with "the tempter" was not foreordained. Nor did Jesus know that he was divine in such a way that he wouldn't cave in to the temptations before him. Had Jesus been cognizant of his divinity, he would not have been truly tempted.
Another key to my understanding of the end of Jesus' life is what he did with the three previous years of his life. It seems to me that he did just a few things: 1) He taught about the Kingdom of God; 2) He performed miracles; 3) He developed a following that included 12 close followers and, by the end, hundreds of others.
The importance of 1) and 3) are pretty obvious to Jesus' mission. The significance of the miracles, however, is sometimes misunderstood. They were not significations of Jesus' divinity (as evidenced by the other magicians and sorcerers on the scene in Jesus' day). Instead, they were little in-breakings of the new age that Jesus, as the Messiah, was inaugurating.
Especially in the healing miracles, Jesus touched the people who had been condemned as "unclean," and thus unworthy of Temple worship -- woman with an issue of blood, blind men, lepers, paraplegics, a crazed demoniac -- and cleansed them. He upset the order of things by bringing the people who had been marginalized -- now you can include tax collectors and whores -- by the dominant religion of his time and place and making them "right" with God again.
So when Jesus' three years of traveling, teaching, and miracles ends in Jerusalem, on a Roman cross, his death culminates the life that he lived. His execution amidst common thieves is his ultimate act of solidarity with every human being who has experienced godlessness and godforsakenness. In other words, every human being.
On that very day, a few of the human witnesses understood this at an intuitive level, most
notably the Roman soldier who, from the foot of the cross, said (probably under his breath), "Surely this man is the son of God." And since that time, billions of human beings have found solace and victory in the fact that God rather,
Another key to my understanding of the end of Jesus' life is what he did with the three previous years of his life. It seems to me that he did just a few things: 1) He taught about the Kingdom of God; 2) He performed miracles; 3) He developed a following that included 12 close followers and, by the end, hundreds of others.
The importance of 1) and 3) are pretty obvious to Jesus' mission. The significance of the miracles, however, is sometimes misunderstood. They were not significations of Jesus' divinity (as evidenced by the other magicians and sorcerers on the scene in Jesus' day). Instead, they were little in-breakings of the new age that Jesus, as the Messiah, was inaugurating.
Especially in the healing miracles, Jesus touched the people who had been condemned as "unclean," and thus unworthy of Temple worship -- woman with an issue of blood, blind men, lepers, paraplegics, a crazed demoniac -- and cleansed them. He upset the order of things by bringing the people who had been marginalized -- now you can include tax collectors and whores -- by the dominant religion of his time and place and making them "right" with God again.
So when Jesus' three years of traveling, teaching, and miracles ends in Jerusalem, on a Roman cross, his death culminates the life that he lived. His execution amidst common thieves is his ultimate act of solidarity with every human being who has experienced godlessness and godforsakenness. In other words, every human being.
On that very day, a few of the human witnesses understood this at an intuitive level, most
notably the Roman soldier who, from the foot of the cross, said (probably under his breath), "Surely this man is the son of God." And since that time, billions of human beings have found solace and victory in the fact that God rather, ...made himself nothingSome people today may find it compelling that some Great Cosmic Transaction took place on that day 1,980 years ago, that God's wrath burned against his son instead of against me. I find that version of atonement theory neither intellectually compelling, spiritually compelling, nor in keeping with the biblical narrative.by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.And being found in appearance as a human being,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death-- even death on a cross!
Instead, Jesus death offers life because in Christianity, and in Christianity alone, the God and Creator of the universe deigned to become human, to be tempted, to reach out to those who had been de-humanized and restore their humanity, and ultimately to die in solidarity with every one of us. Yes, he was a sacrifice. Yes, he was "sinless." But thank God, Jesus was also human.
The hope he offers is that, by dying on that cross, the eternal Trinity became forever bound to my humanity. The God of the universe identified with me, and I have the opportunity to identify with him.
Today, and every day, I hang with him on that cross.
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Barb, I'm sorry that you were able to grow up in an evangelical church and not properly learn about the atonement. Tony's error is plain to see by all who know the basic doctrines of the cross. I am sad that your pastors and teachers did not so equip you.
I hope you will look to the scripture again and study the subject, for Tony's new and strange opinion will give you no place for forgiveness of sins. Remember, it is "by His stripes" that you are healed. He "bore your sins on His body." He did not die simply to show you that He shared your humanity. He was without sin, and He became sin on your behalf.
Wait, Mike, there is another post of Tony's you need to see before you throw out what he is presenting. It is a sort of missing puzzle piece. He isn't throwing out atonement. There is more than one theory of the atonement. I just ran a search of Tony's posts and am not finding the one I want. It isn't the Ash Wednesday one, but it is one that has the major theories all laid out.
Tony, help me out here?
Anyway, I was not grieved (this time) because people are being mean to someone I care about. It is the whole disunity of the people of God. But I admit that to assume all of the critics here are bent against emergent is wrong. I give you that, and apologize to all. I just know Tony's greater teachings because I read his books and listen to his podcasts and read his blogs (not nearly as much as I want to - you are a busy guy, Tony!) and I know he is not saying what he is being accused of saying. But he (frustratingly) isn't one to come out and say where he has been misunderstood. I think if you have the chance to capture the greater picture, you will get it, and maybe Tony just knows that there will always be something else to argue about if he clarifies (after all, in the end I find people believe whatever they wish to believe, no matter what they are told). So maybe although he is very inclusive (more than I think I could be) to anyone who wants to join the conversation, maybe he just doesn't have time to constantly clarify what is clear if you take him at his words without adding to them. That sounds confrontational as I go back and read it, but I don't know how else to word it. My desire is not to confront. Hope you don't misunderstand me. I desire the same peace and unity Jesus does among us, his people. Peace. :-)
Tony, you wrote:
"Some people today may find it compelling that some Great Cosmic Transaction took place on that day 1,980 years ago, that God's wrath burned against his son instead of against me. I find that version of atonement theory neither intellectually compelling, spiritually compelling, nor in keeping with the biblical narrative."
Perhaps you need to become a bit more familiar with 'the biblical narrative' ...
"He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness." (1 Peter 2:24)
"For our sake, he made him to be be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Corinthians 5:21)
"In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace ..." (Ephesians 1:7)
"God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood." (Romans 3:25a)
"... just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Matthew 20:28)
"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: 'Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.'" (Galatians 3:13 referencing Deuteronomy 21:23).
The entirety of the biblical narrative points not only to the person of Christ, but to the redemptive work of his sacrifice on the cross. I'm not sure how you could deny something so entirely central to every aspect of the Bible and still claim to believe and follow its teachings.
JB is right. This blog post is yet another in a long, long, long line of attempts to reduce the atonement to an appendage of the incarnation, rather than acknowledge its true biblical meaning.
Hey Tony,
Love the Gauguin painting of the crucifixion - the yellow Christ. The fields are yellow, Christ is yellow, the trees are red orange. The Breton women in their traditional garments from the Brittany region of France may appear to some to be Catholic Nuns wearing habits, but they are simply Breton women wearing their regional/cultural clothes. Notice the women are real, painted normal human colors with shadow, yet everything else is "not real", painted to evoke emotion and thought. You and Gauguin are doing the same thing, trying to understand God and humans and Christ, and with a needed focus on real humanity. The art in Gauguin's day was a "not fully real" image of humanity, he was trying to be real, be human. Later he depicted Mary with baby Jesus as a Tahitian woman and child, with an angel looking on - this was scandalous to white europeans. But he was making less than human people of color, fully human.
Knowing you, I think you believe many of the different views of the atonement which Christians have more recently focused on which all contain an aspect of the too large to fully grasp mystery of God becoming a human and doing the things he did, but because some aspects of the atonement have become big bullies demanding all the attention, and given the tragedies of social injustice these theological focuses' have allowed the church to stand by and not scream out in protest against, it would appear that to become as fully human and as fully committed to the well being of our fellow humans that God wants us to be, that we need new and more full views of the atonement, and that's what I think your focus in this article is trying to do - to emphasize a missing aspect.
I think attention to the aspect of the atonement that has to do with power - the all powerful God placing himself beneath the power of his own creation, allowing the less powerful to kill the more powerful - and thus showing us that love and power cannot coexist, that love requires the abandonment of power - will be another area needing special emphasis in coming days.
Jeff
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