All the great religions of the world talk a lot about death, so there must be an essential lesson to be learned here. But throughout much of religious history our emphasis has been on killing the wrong thing and avoiding the truth: it’s you who has to die, or rather, who you think you are—your false self. It’s never someone else!Historically we moved from human sacrifice to animal sacrifice to various modes of seeming self-sacrifice, usually involving the body. For many religions, including immature Christianity, God was distant and scary, an angry deity who must be placated. God was not someone with whom you fell in love or with whom you could imagine sharing intimacy or tenderness.
The common Christian reading of the Bible is that Jesus “died for our sins”—either to pay a debt to the devil (common in the first millennium) or to pay a debt to God the Father (proposed by Anselm of Canterbury, 1033-1109). Theologians later developed a “substitutionary atonement theory”—the strange idea that before God could love us God needed and demanded Jesus to be a blood sacrifice to ”atone” for our sin. As a result, our theology became more transactional than transformational.
Franciscan philosopher and theologian John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) was not guided by the Temple language of debt, atonement, or blood sacrifice (understandably used in the New Testament written by observant Jews). He was instead inspired by the cosmic hymns in the first chapters of Colossians and Ephesians and the first chapter of John’s Gospel. For Duns Scotus, the incarnation of God and the redemption of the world could never be a mere mop-up exercise in response to human sinfulness, but the proactive work of God from the very beginning. We were “chosen in Christ before the world was made” (Ephesians 1:4). Our sin could not possibly be the motive for the divine incarnation; rather, God’s motivation was infinite divine love and full self-revelation! For Duns Scotus, God never merely reacts, but always freely acts out of free and unmerited love.
Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity (it did not need changing)! Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God. God’s abundance and compassion make any scarcity economy of merit or atonement unhelpful and unnecessary. Jesus undid “once and for all” (Hebrews 7:27; 9:12; 10:10) all notions of human and animal sacrifice and replaced them with his new infinite economy of grace. Jesus was meant to be a game changer for religion and the human psyche.
This grounds Christianity in love and freedom from the very beginning; it creates a very coherent and utterly attractive religion, which draws people toward lives of inner depth, prayer, reconciliation, healing, and universal “at-one-ment,” instead of mere sacrificial atonement. Nothing “changed” on Calvary but everything was revealed—an eternally outpouring love. Jesus switched the engines of history: instead of us needing to spill blood to get to God, we have God spilling blood to get to us
Bruxy: Understanding Atonement
The pattern is pronounced: WE are responsible for killing Christ. BUT GOD intervened by raising him from the dead. Yes, there is wrath displayed in the crucifying of Christ, but it is ours, not God’s.
When we look at the cross, we see our wrathful rejection of God, and his unhindered love for us. For some reason, the earliest gospel preachers and the writers of scripture refrain from describing God pouring out his wrath upon Christ on the cross.
.. God discharging his wrath upon Jesus is simply never stated in Scripture. And if it is not stated in Scripture, and never preached publicly as the gospel, there is likely a very good reason why God has decided not to offer us that mental image – an image of our loving Father pouring out pure undiluted angry punishment upon his beloved son.
.. When we think about the suffering of Christ, we do see wrath, but it is our wrath we see raging against Christ. And God? He is in Christ, suffering along with Christ, loving us through Christ, and reaching out to us with reconciling love. This much is clearly stated in Scripture:
“God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5:19)
God was in Christ.
God was reconciling the world to himself.
.. If I told you I forgave you for the debt you owe me, and I can do this because I already got my son to pay that debt on your behalf, well, that isn’t true forgiveness, but just a different route to payment.
.. If a convict is exonerated for a crime and given a full judicial pardon (i.e., justified), the punishment simply goes away; it is withdrawn. That person’s punishment doesn’t have to be meted out onto someone else to keep things fair. Forgiveness is, by nature, unfair.
.. his all seems to me to be the HEART of the Gospel. God’s wrath is no longer something a Christian will face because the Son took it on himself for us. That makes the good news SO GOOD. That is why grace is so amazing. We are so sinful and utterly inept to change our present state that we need a Savior to die on our behalf and be that sacrifice that we could never be for ourselves.
.. The idea that an almighty God cannot simply forgive the sin of a repentant believer until he vents his anger onto another member of the Trinity seems to many to diminish rather than heighten his holiness.
Now, I agree that it is very good news indeed that no one has to face the wrath of God, if they trust in Christ to exchange their sin for his righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21). Praise God! And yes, this is at the HEART of the gospel. But precisely HOW God goes about doing that is not the heart of the gospel and is not proclaimed in Scripture. And so on this matter I think it is best to heed the apostle Paul’s warning: “Do not go beyond what is written” (1 Corinthians 4:6). As I pointed out in my blog post, why should any of us object to proclaiming the gospel the way the first Christians did in the book of Acts and elsewhere?
.. I’m suggesting, along with a growing number of Christians, that this popular atonement theory has very weak biblical support.
.. Jesus died the death of a sinner, his cry on the cross was not Father, Father why are you killing me, but why have you forsaken me
Episode 224: What Did Jesus’s Death Really Do? With NT Wright
Jesus had to “die for our sins,” right? But what does that actually mean? We mess up, God gets mad, so someone needs to pay for our sin or we can’t go to heaven when we die? But what if our ultimate problem isn’t sin, and what if our ultimate goal isn’t heaven?? Egads!! World-renowned theologian N.T. Wright joins Phil and Skye to talk about his new book – The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. No biggie… just the absolute heart and soul of the Christian faith!!
Let’s go back to being image bearers.American Christians have given up on the world because of eschatology.Lets get on doing the work of the Lord because its not in vain.
Richard Rohr: One Great Act of Giving Birth
In his letter to the church in Rome, Paul writes: “From the beginning until now, the entire creation, as we know, has been groaning in one great act of giving birth” (Romans 8:22, JB)
.. Just that line should be enough to justify the theory of evolution for Christians. Wouldn’t it make sense that God would give such autonomy and freedom and grace to creation to continue self-creating, just as any mother or father desires for their children?
.. Creation did not happen once by a flick of the divine hand and now it’s slowly winding down toward Armageddon and tragic Apocalypse (which is the hopeless universe inside of which many fundamentalists live). Creation is in fact a life-generating process that’s still happening and winding up!
.. The common Christian understanding that Jesus came to save us by a cosmic evacuation plan is really very individualistic, petty, and even egocentric. It demands no solidarity with anything except oneself. We whittled the great Good News down into what Jesus could do for us personally and privately, rather than God inviting us to participate in God’s universal creative work.
.. Instead of believing that Jesus came to personally fulfill you privately, how about trusting that you are here to fulfill Christ?
.. You are a part of this movement of an ever-growing Cosmic Christ that is coming to be in this “one great act of giving birth.”