The Emerging Relational Theology #3

I'd like to make a detour in our series here to talk about why narrative theology is important to the Emergent movement, or rather why it should be. I just finished listening to a podcast interview national Emergent Village coordinator Tony Jones did with author Phyllis Tickle about her latest book "The Words of Jesus" which takes the words of Jesus from the canonical Gospels and lays them out with some introductory commentary by Tickle, but with all the narrative removed. Now in itself I have no problem with this, after all many Evangelicals have done the same thing with our red letter editions of the New Testament where you read just the words of Jesus. We call it "reading the red". The problem I have is in a comment Tony Jones makes where he mentions a book he is writing on the Didache, and claims that

"in the Didache the gospel is not 'Jesus died on the cross for your sins', the Gospel is the teachings of Jesus"

First of all this is a highly debatable claim for the Didache. The Greek word translated as "Gospel" Tony is referring to is ευαγγελιω which is the word our "evangel" comes from. It simply means "message" or "teaching". The Didache says things like

"all your deeds so do, as you have it in the ευαγγελιω of our Lord"

and in a section before quoting from the Lord's Prayer they write,

"as the Lord commanded in His ευαγγελιω"

The word ευαγγελιω here which is translated as "Gospel" is simply a Greek word for "teaching" or "message" commonly used in other extra-biblical writings. For example in Homer's Odyssey where it means "good tidings"

"Odysseus shall return, so let me have a reward for bearing good tidings (ευαγγελιου), and as soon as he shall come and reach his home, clothe me in a cloak and tunic" (bk 14:152)

Our English term Gospel as it has come to be understood today as the Christian plan of salvation did not exist as a word at the time. So Tony's claim amounts to "in the Didache teaching refers to teaching" which kind of goes without saying. What the Didache does not say is that salvation comes through obeying teachings as opposed to by grace and the cross, which is what Tony implies here.

Now perhaps Tony did not think much before saying this, I realize it was just an ad lib in a podcast so I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but taken as it stands, his statement is one of classical liberal theology that strips away the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection and reduces the Gospel to the teachings of Jesus. With statements like these it is no wonder that people often see Emergent as Evangelicals turned liberal. On the flipside the classic conservative take on the Gospel has too often been to detach the cross from the teaching and life of Christ. People the Gospel is both the words and deeds of Christ. You can't separate them. His teachings on the kingdom are commentaries on his actions, both in his ministry of healing, forgiving, casting out demons, and of his way to the cross. In fact Christ's central teaching on the Sermon on the Mount (which is the focus of the Didache) is how we are to understand his death. As Paul says "God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Ro 5:8). The cross is God loving us His enemies, overcoming our evil through unmerited grace.

A Gospel that does not take into account all of what Jesus did and said, the whole narrative of the story of God coming among us, is at best only half a Gospel. The Gospels of Matthew Mark, Luke, and John deliberately present to us this story in narrative form, and all of it - not just the acts, not just the teaching - is how it is presented. When we try to extract from that a collection of propositional truths ( as conservatives like to do) or compendium of teachings (as liberals have a penchant for) we do violence to the intent of the Apostles. Now let me stress again that as long as it is just an exercise, reading the red as Phyllis Tickle is having us do can be a deeply rewarding expereince, but when we start to think that this "red" is the whole Gospel, and we remove the story, the actions of God in history, then we are most certainly taking a detour off the "strait and narrow" road.

We as Emergents need to be post-conservative and post-liberal. That means that we need a constructive theology that allows us to go beyond these old ruts in the road, and I do see a tendency for Emergents to lean away from the right over into the left as evidenced in Tony's statements here which I do not think are atypical. That constructive theology is greatly helped by a narrative theology that unites the words and deeds of God incarnate into one Gospel that transforms our thinking (orthodoxy) our actions (orthopraxy).

The Rebel God

Some people have complained about the term the "rebel God" saying that it plays into the pop cultural cliches. I can understand this critique since being a rebel has often been appropriated by the corporate propaganda machine to sell conformity - everyone being "original" in the exact same way, "alternative" being the new hip way to say "popular". But I still want to hold onto the idea of the rebel God because I think it tells is something profound about what it means to understand Jesus as Lord, God, and Savior. Jesus was condemned as a blasphemer and crucified as an outlaw. He was a threat to the government and subversive to religious authority. He was nothing else if not a rebel, and following him meant rebelling against the "world" system. Why else do you think the early Christians were killed? Faithfulness to Christ meant subversion of Caesar. Sadly, for so many people today God is associated ith that same authoritative system. Throughout history the church has tragically allied itself with a Constantinian understanding of authority and power. But if Jesus is God then God is the rebel, God is the outlaw, God is the one who is planning to subvert the way of this world with his revolutionary kingdom by starting that revolution in our hearts with the new birth.

I was always taught that rebellion was at the root of sin. But the more I have followed Jesus the more I have found rebellion to be a character trait. It is rebellion that taught me to question not only the assumptions of my culture and its screwed up values, but also to question myself and to never assume that I had a hold on truth, but to instead have a life of seeking. Rebellion has protected me from swallowing the toxic faith that has hurt so many people I know. It is a rebellion against authority that is rooted in the New Testaments witness that authority can be just as fallen as we can be. The "God of this world" is not the one we should follow unquestioningly, but the one we are to oppose in Jesus name. That has meant practically needing to stand up to my pastors when they were wrong and abusing their authority (which has meant taking my lumps at times), but the only regrets I have here are when I did not trust in my conscience and did not stand up. I hope that people I lead would do the same with me.

There needs to be a way for us Christians to embrace absolute truth without being seduced into thinking we have a corner on truth, thinking we can systematize and franchise truth authoritatively. Instead we need to understand that truth is a person who we always need to a to cling to in humility with an open and seeking heart. If Jesus is God then that means the ultimate authority is the one who was an outlaw, the one who identified with the sinner and the least. If Jesus is God then that means the picture of morality and holiness is seen in the one who was accused of being a lawbreaker in the very act of loving and caring for those in need, and who went right ahead and did it anyway despite the reputation it gave him. If Jesus is God then that means that God is the rebel God, it means God is a punk.

Subjective and Objective Atonement - Abelard,Girard

I've noticed that proponents of Penal Substitution seem to divide the world in to two camps: those who see the Atonement as objective (themselves) and those who see it as subjective (everyone else). By "objective" and "subjective" they mean whether the Atonement deals with an objective problem outside of ourselves such as God's wrath against sin, vs. the Atonement dealing with a subjective problem within ourselves such as our being estranged from God because we have a false image of him. The classic example of a subjective understanding of the Atonement is Abelard who saw the purpose of the cross as wooing us to God by a display of sacrificial love displayed on the cross.

Most proponents of Penal Substitution would acknowledge that there is indeed a subjective element to the cross since the love shown there does compel and speak to the heart of the lost just as Jesus does. However they would argue (I think rightly) that if our problem was only a subjective one that it would be rather unjust for the innocent Jesus to die just to appease us.

This idea of Jesus dying to appease our own wrongful need for retribution is, as far as I can tell, essentially what Girardian theory says, and for this reason Girardian theory strikes me as wrong. Again: if our problem was only a subjective one it would be unjust for the innocent Jesus to die just to appease us.

Similarly I would agree that an understanding of the cross based only on Abelard's view is equally lacking. To make an analogy: if a fire fighter runs into a burning building and dies in the flames trying to save people from an objective danger (the fire) this a noble thing. However if that same person would set themselves on fire to show us their love, this would be very disturbing to say the least. Likewise, Jesus dying only to show us God's love and not for a real objective reason would be equally disturbing. So there must be a objective reason for the cross (that can also speak to us and compel subjectively).

Where I think proponents of Penal Substitution get it wrong is in thinking that any view of the Atonement besides their own is automatically subjective. As we have seen Abelard's view is subjective, likewise (and if I any proponents of Girard would like to contradict me on this I would be happy to be corrected) Girard's view is subjective. Indeed the majority of liberal Christianity has presented understandings of the cross that are subjective. That is why I stress that I am not coming at this from a liberal perspective but from neo-evangelical one (some might also say neo-orthodox but since I have not read enough Barth I cant really say). My understanding of the cross is objective, but it sees another objective problem that goes deeper that appeasing wrath.

Penal substitution's objective necessity for the Atonement is that our sin has evoked God's just wrath and that this wrath must be quenched through punishment. That punishment is taken by Jesus who takes our place and thus appeases God's wrath. The problem with this theory is that it does not actually solve the objective problem of sin. God is not angry without reason, he is angry because of our sin. As with any anger, you get angry about something because you care about it. If you care about your kid and see them doing things that are hurting them it makes you angry because you care about them. This is the picture of God's wrath that we see all through the prophets: God is angry with Israel because of her sin and longs to see her turn back. He is angry because he loves. So in order to really deal with the objective reason for the anger what needs to happen is not simply that God can unleash his rage on someone, but that the problem that made him rightly mad in the first place is fixed. The objective problem is not God's wrath, but our sin which has incurred God's wrath. God's wrath is "propitiated" (made favorable) when our sin is healed. The primary work of the cross is not to appease wrath, but to solve the source of wrath by healing our sin.

Penal Substitution would claim that God only expiates our sin after he has been propitiated (that is: he will forgive us only after his wrath has been satisfied through punishment). This makes very little sense to say that someone will only forgive after they have gotten payback. Conversely I would say that God is propitiated ("made favorable") because our sin is expiated (removed). Remove the sin, and there is no reason to be mad. To quote JI Packer:

"The idea of propitiation includes that of expiation as its means"(The Logic of Penal Substitution)

There are in fact many objective theories of the Atonement. Penal Substitution is one. Then there is the view I have been outlining above where the objective problem is our need for moral healing (I like to call it "Incarnational Atonement" which is a combination of Vicarious Sacrifice and Recapitulation), and of course there is Christus Victor where the objective problem is our bondage to the devil.

Anselm vs Penal Substitution

Anselm of Canterbury's work "Cur Deus Homo" (which translates as "Why the God-man?") is usually credited with being the first articulation of what would later become the doctrine of Penal Substitution. However a closer reading of Anselm indicates that he would have in all likelihood have rejected Penal Substitution.

The first important thing to note is that in Anselmian Satisfaction there is a distinction between satisfaction and punishment. In Penal Substitution they are the same: the punishment is what satisfies justice. In Anselmian Satisfaction satisfaction is an alternative to punishment. The satisfaction is what restores honor so that punishment can be averted

"The honor taken away must be repaid, or punishment must follow" (bk 1 ch 8)

Satisfaction here takes the form of restoration, mending what has been broken, paying back what was taken, etc. If the guilty party is unable to make this restitution then the only alternative is punishment. The principle is taken from the legal courts of the time where a person would either be required to pay a fine, or if they could not afford it they would be punished instead. In Anselmian Satisfaction, since we cannot ourselves make satisfaction and restore God's honor since even if we led a perfect life we would only be giving what is our due, we are headed for punishment. So Christ not only lives a sinless life, which is again his due, but also is willing to endure death for the sake of love. This goes beyond the call of duty and thus honors God, restoring God's honor which Anselm saw as the central problem of the Atonement.

In contrast to this, Penal Substitution does not see satisfaction and punishment as two separate alternatives, but as the same: it is the punishment that satisfies God. Anselm would have likely agreed that it was appropriate to punish the guilty, and that in the absence of restoration (satisfaction) that punishment was appropriate. However he would not have agreed that it was fitting for the innocent Son to be punished in order to justify the guilty.

"What justice is there in his suffering death for the sinner, who was the most just of all men? What man, if he condemned the innocent to free the guilty, would not himself be judged worthy of condemnation?"

Anselm's answer to this is that

"God the Father did not treat that man as you seem to suppose, nor put to death the innocent for the guilty"

he goes on to say

"It seems to me that you do not rightly understand the difference between what he did at the demand of obedience, and what he suffered, not demanded by obedience, but inflicted on him, because he kept his obedience perfect." (bk 1 end of ch 8 and begin 9)

In other words, God did not require or take pleasure or satisfaction in Christ's suffering, rather Christ suffered because he was obedient to love to the point of suffering and even death. One can think of a firefighter who is wounded going into a burning building trying to save people from the flames. No one is "satisfied" that the firefighter was hurt in the fire. What is heroic is that despite the danger and pain that firefighter went into the inferno for the sake of saving others.

Anselm is right to reject "condemning the innocent to free the guilty" whichPenal Substitution proposes. However there are some problems with Anselm' theory as well. The largest of which is that it is rooted in what is called "natural law" which means that rather than looking at the revelation of God in Scripture, he instead looks to human laws and cultural understandings of what is right and "must be" and then imposes this on God.

I would like to suggest further that there is a difference between Anselm's natural law of "reason" as he calls it which is based on the cultural assumptions of his time and arbitrary and artificial human laws on the one hand, and a truly "natural law" on the other hand based on laws of nature. For instance when Anselm claims that there must either be satisfaction (restitution) or punishment, this is in fact arbitrary. Why must there be? Couldn't I simply decide to forgive instead? This was the argument of Socinus, and it is a compelling one. In cases of human reaction the two options Anselm gives are not the only ones available.

But what happens if we think if this in terms not of artificial human law, but in terms of natural sickness? Then the statement becomes that either the wound is treated (satisfaction), or it will fester (punishment). Either the sickness is cured (satisfaction), or it will result in death (punishment). Here we have a model that makes much more sense than a legal one. There is no third option of simply ignoring the sickness, and the act of mercy instead of being a passive non-action of not punishing becomes here active healing. Furhter the satisfaction does not seem to be applealing to vanity or vengeance, but simply to solving a real problem and the "punishment" again is not arbitrary (so we can ask: why not just forgive?) but is a natural consequence. Sickness, if untreated leads to death.

In Anselm's theory Christ needed to first restore God's honor before God could show us favor. In Penal Substitution Christ had to first be punished before God would show us favor. In a medical view however, the act of the physician is an act of favor. The "problem" is not with God but with us. We are the ones who need to be reconciled, who need to be fixed, not God. Again, to apply Anselm's argument here: Christ does not suffer in order to appease or satisfy God, rather God in Christ loves us so much that he enters into our world of sickness, coming to heal and restore us, and in loves us to the point of making himself subject to our sickness. He takes this sickness upon himself (and here I am leaving Anselm and adding in Christus Victor) and overcomes it thus setting us free from its hold.

Why I am not a Universalist

I've noticed that many proponents of Penal Substitution see it not simply as one theory of the Atonement, but as the Gospel, meaning that to deny it is the same as saying that there is no problem of sin or separation from God. I've noticed the exact same assumption from people who call themselves Universalists: they talk of Christ's work meaning that everyone is automatically saved already.

Now I am all for the thought of God making everything right in the world and "wiping away every tear", but I have seen too much injustice and misery in the world to believe that sin is not real and everything is fine. I don't believe in an imaginary problem where God is angry from some unknown trivial legal transgression that we did. I'm sure you've heard this before: God is holy, and so if you have lied to your mom or cheated on a test ever then you are condemned to eternal Hell, and even if you didn't Adam did so you're literally damned if you do and damned if you don't. In this scenario the Gospel becomes telling a person this "bad news" of how they are condemned to the severest of penalties imaginable (eternal torture) for a petty infraction, but that this same God who made this judgment wants have a loving trusting relationship with them(!)

This is an "imaginary problem" because it is not based on real human need or lostness, but on some transaction in heaven that we would never be aware of if someone did not tell us the news. The problem of sin is real. It is not detached from our experience but dominates it. My wife is a social worker and works with the homeless and the addicted. She sees people at their lowest and most broken. People who are dying alone, people who are enslaved to a life of drugs and degradation. This is the most obvious manifestation of lostness, but if you dig a little deeper you will find suffering and brokenness right next you. That person siting across from you in the pew struggles with thoughts of worthlessness and suicide. The nice woman you see at the supermarket is going through a messy divorce. One you really get to know the people around you, you will find stories of pain, injustice, brokenness, and regret everywhere.

The reason I object to a legal understanding of the Atonement is not because I think sin is not real, but precisely because I do. Because it is real, a mere legal acquittal will not solve the problem, it will not break people out of their bondage and cycles of being hurt and hurting others, it will not restore what has been lost and broken. That is what we need. If being a universalist means trusting that despite our helplessness, sinfulness, and stupidness that God can overcome all of that and find a way to really heal our real problems of sin, suffering, and lostness... yes I place my hope in that and work towards that by fighting injustice, caring for the broken, and showing the same compassion and mercy to others that I so desperately need. What I object to is the kind of universalism that leads to a "don't worry be happy" inaction in the face of human need.

It seems people have a need to think that they are fine, and so God loved them and they have worth. But we know that we are not fine. The "good news" is that God loves us even though we are not fine, and in fact tells us that he has a heart for those who are not "ok". That means that we can be real, and it gives us a basis for compassion.

Luther's theology of the Cross - pt 1 Justification

Luther's Stein asks...

"So Shark, How do you understand Justification and the legal motifs apart from a penal-substitution model?"

I was planning on going into this with Luther, so I thought I would answer this comment in a post. I've been reading Alister McGrath's "Luther's Theology of the Cross" which I highly recommend. In it he talks about Luther's struggle with the law. Penal Substitution has its foundation in a judicial understanding of justice based on a punishment and reward system. As Luther says

"I had hated that phrase 'the righteousness of God' which according to the use and custom of the doctors I had been taught to understand philosophically... by which God is righteous and punished unrighteous sinners" (Luthers Werke Wiemar Ed. 54.185.12)

Luther goes on to say that

"I did not love, and in fact I hated that righteous God who punished sinners...I was angry with God...I drove myself mad with a desperate disturbed conscience". (Ibid)

Because his understanding of justice, which he had inherited from the 500 years since Anselm was one based on a criminal law understanding of justice. Luther describes this kind of justice as a "tyrant". In his commentary on Galatians Luther writes

"Did the Law ever love me? Did the Law ever sacrifice itself for me? Did the Law ever die for me? On the contrary, it accuses me, it frightens me, it drives me crazy”

Luther's breakthrough of finding grace was in discovering that the justice that Paul speaks of was not in the legal sense of punishement but in the Hebrew sense of "making things right". Hence Paul speaks of "justification" which means "setting something right". A justice based on our own performance (works) is a death trap. But a justice that originates from God's goodness through faith means that God sets things right in our lives when we open our lives to him. The first is legal and in conflict with mercy. It sees justice as punishing (active) and mercy as leniency (inaction). That later biblical justice is in contrast about "making things right" and comes through acts of mercy as seen in the ministry of Jesus who came to establish justice in us though acts of healing and restoration. In this there is no conflict between justice and mercy becasue restorative justice comes through acts of mercy. Luther again:

"I began to understand that 'righteousness of God' ...to refer to a passive righteousness by which the merciful God justifies us by faith...this immediately made me feel feel as if I was born again, a though I had entered through open gates into paradise itself. From that moment the whole face of Scripture appeared to me in a different light...and now where I had once hated that phrase the phrase 'the righteousness of God' so much I began to love and extol it as the sweetest of words" (Luthers Werke, Op Sit)

So rather than reading the idea of justice in the legal sense of punishing, we need to read with Luther the idea of justification and justice in relational terms as God setting things right, as him through mercy breaking us out of the shackles of performance and law. God did not do this by "satisfying the demands of law" as Penal Substitution would say, but by "nailing the law to the cross" (Col 2:14) by overcoming it along with sin, condemnation, wrath, and the devil and putting all of these tyrants under Christ so that they would no longer oppress us and keep us from life, but serve us and point to the God of grace. In a nutshell we could say that biblical justice is about restorative justice not punitive justice. Punitive justice is the consequence of sin, but God's righteousness and justice is revealed in mercy which sets us right God breaks us out of that death trap putting it to death.

Christus Victor and Penal Substitution Blog

Hi and welcome to the new webpage/blog!

You'll still find all the familiar content here in the "Articles and Essays" sidebar on the right, plus I've added a blog to chronicle the researching and writing of a book on the Atonement I am working on based on a four part essay that you can read here called "Penal Substitution vs. Christus Victor". At the time I had no idea it would be such a popular essay. But it apparently touched on a nerve in people and positive responses flooded in. So I expanded the essay with new sections, until finally I decided I needed to make this all into a book to really flesh out the ideas. There have been over the years lots of books criticizing Penal Substitution, but next to none that offered a biblical alternative from an Evangelical perspective with a high view of Scripture.

So I've been working on taking the essays and adapting and expanding them into book form. A big part of that has involved reading everything I could on the Atonement. If I was going to take on a major doctrine of my Evangelical faith I wanted to make sure I was critiquing the most intelligent version of that doctrine I could, rather than a straw-man, so I could know whether the doctrine itself needed to be revisited or it simply needed to be better stated. After I read around 70 books and had developed things quite a lot I decided it would be fun to start a blog and share some of the stuff I'd been reading and thinking.

Theology is ultimately something that should be done in community, and a blog seems like a great way to get that interaction and feedback. So I look forward to any comments.