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Paternoster Press,
2005
Category:
General theology
Level:
Intermediate
Link:
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Notes
Alan Mann gained a reputation in this country recently for being something of a theological outlaw by co-authoring with Steve Chalke The Lost Message of Jesus. He posted some reflections on the controversy on this website here. His new book Atonement for a ‘Sinless’ Society will undoubtedly raise the bounty on his head, but it reads as a genuine attempt to move the debate forward (notwithstanding the fact that it is based on an earlier MA thesis) and is well worth having a look at.
The book presents a remarkably straightforward and coherent thesis. It starts with the observation that postmodern, post-industrialized Western culture no longer has a meaningful concept of sin and guilt: we cannot do wrong to others or to the ‘Other’, we can only be wronged against, we can only be victims. The resulting self-obsession, however, has given rise to a rather different ontological plight - the realization that a huge gulf exists between our real self and our ideal self. What this realization generates is a sense of shame and the isolation of the individual. What the postmodern seeks, therefore, is an ‘ontological wholeness’ and the recovery of intimacy. In Alan Mann’s view this creates a serious problem for the church: the traditional doctrine of atonement was designed to solve the problem of sin (understood as an offence against objective standards) not of shame and therefore needs to be restated for a post-industrialized culture. What shamed people need is not forgiveness but a ‘sense that they can live as whole, coherent beings’ (51).
A narrative theology of the atonement
The rethinking of atonement begins by recognizing the centrality of narrative both for the theological task and for the process of constructing individual identities. Alan discusses the role played by narrative in ‘constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing the self’ (6) and the particular use in therapy of counter-stories to repair the damage caused to the self by false and alienating narratives. This leads naturally to the argument that the atonement should be presented not as a matter of ‘fact or truthful propositions, which have little meaningful credibility in a postmodern context’ (91) but as a counter-narrative to the narrative of shame that so characterizes the postmodern condition.
So how does the atonement counter-narrative work? The argument is that Jesus is ‘an individual who narrates his identity and his intent to himself and to “Others”’ (8). This is a narrative about Jesus’ ideal self. What the postmodern then asks, conscious of his or her own failure in this regard, is whether Jesus can maintain the coherence of this ideal self and the real self. ‘The reader is looking for the hope of ontological or narrative coherence and so for the possibility of living free of shame. The post-industrialized self is seeking a narrative identity that can hold together the ideal- and real-self without contradiction.’ (113) The story of Judas is told as a paradigm of the post-industrialized self ‘traumatized by the dis-ease of chronic shame’ (124), unable to enjoy the supreme good of ‘mutual, undistorted, unpolluted relating’ with the ‘Other’ (131).
The argument becomes more difficult when Alan attempts to explain how Jesus’ death brings about ‘at-one-ment’. Essentially the cross is seen as an intentional act of self-giving love for the sake of the ‘Other’, narrated in advance by Jesus chiefly through the symbolism of the meal in the upper room. The narration is important in two respects. First, Jesus offers an interpretation of his death that is counter to the thought that haunts the post-industrialized mind that death cuts off ‘the chronically shamed, incoherent, storied-self from every meaningful and potentially healing relationship’ (132).
Jesus takes to the cross (the symbol of human non-being) his storied-self: an ontologically coherent self. In doing so he redeems the cross and changes its significance. There is a paradigm shift in its meaning. For by making his death on the cross the intent of his storied-self, facing this place of non-being and non-meaning and giving up his life there for ‘Others’, Jesus takes to it his ‘at-oneness’. In doing so, it becomes the place, symbolically and in reality, for the presence of mutual, undistorted, unpolluted relating. This is the place we all must go in search of our own at-one-ment. (140)
Secondly, by faithfully enacting on the cross the story that was told in the upper room Jesus preserves the coherence of the ideal self and the real self - in effect, he lives up to the expectations that he had created for himself. This story then becomes available as a counter-narrative for anyone who is looking for a way to recover ontological coherence.
Traditionally evangelicalism has made some sort of confession of faith the means by which the benefits of Jesus’ death are appropriated for the individual. Alan suggests that for the postmodern the most appropriate context for encountering the atonement narrative is repeated eucharistic observance.
The Eucharist is that rite of identification that allows for the atoning work of Jesus to manifest itself in the lives of those who encounter the narrative. It is that moment when, narratively speaking, the ‘death’ of the self can occur and the possibility of divine authorship can become a real possibility. In this way the Eucharist has its most profound and poignant effect in putting to death the narrative incoherence of the storied-self while at the same time bringing forth life after death in the form of a new, narratively coherent self. (159)
Dialogue in motion
In an appendix to the book Robin Parry voices three of the major concerns that evangelicals are likely to have with Alan’s thesis. i) He is not convinced that shame has replaced the idea of sin against others for postmoderns. ii) Similarly he resists the idea that postmoderns need to be saved from self-judgment rather than from divine judgment, arguing that shame is better seen as a particular manifestation of the anger of God. iii) He feels that Alan needs to clarify the relation between the atonement narrative and what is historically or objectively real. The thesis is constructed in such a way that the historicity of the Gospel narratives is virtually irrelevant. He asks, ‘Could not a fictional story provide the kinds of counter-narrative postmoderns seek? If so could Alan’s atonement theology survive with a fictional Jesus?’ (196).
The critique is a sharp one and its inclusion, to my mind, a little surprising - but at least it makes clear that while Alan’s argument needs to be taken very seriously, some considerable work needs to be done in thinking through how it relates to more ‘normative’ theological interpretations of the atonement. Alan appears at times rather dismissive of traditional and historical accounts. He argues, for example, that the ‘construction of a historical Jesus’ is an unnecessary distraction: ‘we are merely seeking a narrative possibility that is bearable and conceivable, and one that can be owned by the individual as meaningful and sufficient’ (107). He states his position bluntly: ‘the quest for the historical Jesus is not a quest for salvation but merely for fact’ (108). But this simply perpetuates the ‘modern’ dichotomy between history and theology, fact and meaning, politics and spirituality. I would suggest that there are much more constructive and healing ways of understanding the epistemological and missiological relation between Alan’s narrative-therapeutic account of the atonement and the sort of account that emerges from biblical and historical investigation.
Alan’s atonement story is entirely separated from eschatology, understood as the crisis of second temple Judaism - apart from which it is very difficult to make sense of Jesus’ death. This really shouldn’t happen in a narrative theology nowadays - the appeal to narrative should not be an excuse for neglecting the historical context of those isolated incidents and subplots out of which we like to fabricate our theologies. I think there is considerable merit in Alan’s argument, but if it is detached from this backdrop there is serious risk of it being distorted and devalued.
One obvious distortion that arises is the persistent emphasis on the individual self. There is some reference to the role of community in the discussion of the eucharist, but nothing is said about the significance of Jesus’ death within the narrative about Israel. I think there is more to this than pedantry - it is a question of how we understand mission. This seems more fundamental to me than how exactly we explain the atonement. The doctrine of atonement has become such a problem for evangelicalism precisely because it has been detached from a proper understanding of the missional narrative. Alan’`s reconstruction takes us a step towards correcting this and offers some excellent insights into the state of the post-industrialized soul, but my fear is that taken on its own his proposal is likely to derail attempts to understand from a biblical starting point what it means to be the people of God in the world. Before we can understand the atonement we have to ask what it is for. We have hardly moved on from the traditional substitutionary model if we are still stuck with an interpretation that is preoccupied with the plight of the individual.
Another way to look at this is to ask what exactly is the ideal self of the postmodern. Perhaps I have read the book too quickly, but it seems to me that this approach to the atonement offers a recovery of ontological coherence, a reconnecting of ideal self and real self, without seriously asking what that ideal self is supposed to be. Are we simply to assume that the postmodern ideal includes the possibility of reconciliation with God? How far does that ideal overlap with biblical accounts of what constitutes Godly or Christlike or Spirit-filled behaviour? Is there anything more to this ideal self than being a nice person in touch with the ‘Other’? I think what I would say is not that this line of thinking is a dead-end or that we need to back track and take a more familiar and less controversial path, but that it needs to be reset within the context of the larger biblical narrative. It is this larger narrative, which is in the first place historical, that must define the ideal self and locate it within an eschatologically determined community. I am not convinced that Alan’s thesis helps us to understand how to progress from individual fulfilment or ‘salvation’ to an adequate concept of divine vocation any better than the old models.
A Response
Thank you Andrew for posting such an insightful critique of the book. You may have only given it a ‘quick read’, but your overview, comments and criticisms leave me little to quibble about.
I personally thought it timely that it should appear directly above a post entitled ‘The Need for Adventurous Theology’ - though how adventurous you and others think I have been is perhaps a moot point, given the observation that you doubt, ‘we have … moved on from the traditional substitutionary model if we are stuck with an interpretation that is pre-occupied with the plight of the individual’. Given the kind of responses Steve and I had to the Lost Message of Jesus, I’m sure there will be many who feel I have moved a long way from it and would be more than willing to try and claim the bounty you feel is on my head.
With regards to your question about the nature of the ideal-self of the post-modern - I fully accept your observation that I haven’t stated what this ideal-self is supposed to be. Perhaps it’s because in some senses this is subjective and therefore lacks any sense of universal ideal. Though more thought needs to be put into your question than perhaps this answer suggests. I think the main point I was trying to make, however, is that this ‘ideal’ cannot be found independently of the ‘Other’ (both human and divine) and that ultimately, the ideal-storied-self is found in the counter narrative of what it means to be human as played out in the biblical revelation. Therefore, I am happy with your observation that, ‘it needs to be reset within the context of the wider biblical narrative.
This, however, brings me to one final point. While I valued and have taken on board your criticisms that perhaps my story of atonement has so digressed from an ‘eschatology, understood as the crisis of second temple Judaism’, and neglected much of the ‘historical context of those isolated incidents and subplots out of which we like to fabricate our theologies’ in favour of a purely reader-driven response to a narrow biblical narrative (and that in doing so I have ‘distorted and devalued’ my own argument), I still think the thrust of what I am trying to do still stands. That is, I am trying to take seriously the context in which I live, the stories people tell to shape their world and their identities, and so meet these head-on with a narrative of atonement that is meaningful and sufficient. My response may ultimately be speculative, inadequate and biblically and theologically overreaching, however, a critique such as your own, that calls for an atonement story to be more historically grounded and understood in the light of the crisis of second temple Judaism, still has to face the challenge of becoming a meaningful and sufficient story for our increasingly post(or pre-non)Christian ‘sinless’ society.
Thanks once again for putting up the review.
Two tasks
I don’t disagree with this. I fully understand that the atonement narrative must be bi-polar or bi-contextual: if it arises out of a biblical-historical context, it must somehow also land convincingly, meaningfully, in the context of contemporary ‘mission’. My plea is simply that these two tasks remain in contact with each other, that they talk to each other. The sort of critique I have developed here should not be heard as a rejection of your thesis - it is meant to be an invitation to pursue the conversation further. Your analysis of post-industrialized culture in terms of shame and the exploration of how the Christian narrative might work in a postmodern setting are very interesting. But I feel that this sort of creative thrust will ultimately fail if it breaks from the task of biblical-historical investigation - just as the historical interpretation will be worthless if it lacks imagination.
Atonement for a sinless society?
Alan Mann’s view of the atonement (and the terminology of Andrew’s review) is somewhat complex. I wonder if we are sometimes too prone to equate complexity with profundity. The appeal of traditional views of the atonement is that they can easily be grasped. I suspect the reason for this is that a traditional, substitionary view of the atonement is one with which most people can instinctively identify. I don’t think people do need a theory of the real self, the ideal self, and ‘the Other’ to make sense of the atonement today. Sin is proved, on a personal level, by the knowledge that its depths inside us are limitless. Society illustrates the same. It’s not a question of whether we believe in objective, absolute standards of right and wrong any more. We need to be changed. Human history is the mirror, on the macro level, of the micro level of our inner world.
The mistake that I think ‘The lost message of Jesus’ made was in setting a narrowly caricatured view of ‘penal substitution’ against the view that the two authors then presented as a preferable alternative. This was regrettable, as the view of the atonement then being presented was one we need to hear. But it seems to me that we need to hold several views of the atonement in tension if we are to grasp something of the full richness of the event - including the view that Alan Mann presents in his new book.
If Alan’s view is that the primary purpose of Christ’s death was to bring ‘wholeness’ to our divided selves, it suffers from a very self-centred emphasis. From this perspective, ‘the Other’ seems merely to be a servant of the task - to make man whole. To avoid naming God by name, and to fail to perceive the damage done to him which traditional views say the atonement came to undo, seem to me to be major weaknesses of the scheme. Man remains at the centre of his universe even after this new view of the atonement.
The healing of man’s divided psyche seems to me to be a secondary consequence of the atonement’s primary purpose - to satisfy the offence to God’s character and purposes stretching back beyond the forming of Israel to the beginning of time. Any accusations of cosmic child abuse evaporate in the realisation that God suffered the penalty in himself - through the Son. On the cross, it was we, mankind, who wounded God - not God who inflicted gruesome torture on an innocent victim. Through this suffering, the fractures opened up in God between his justice and covenant faithfulness were made whole, but in a way that none could have foreseen, and which still surprise and shock, when perceived, today.
Is sin then an outdated concept? I think very much not. More than ever in a post-modern world, the heart of sin can be seen in ourselves not as psychological or social victims, but as active agents: our tortured self-obsessions confirming the fundamentally self-centred commitments of our lives, out of which all the sins which Jesus described in Matthew 15:19 flow. Does Jesus accuse us in our prisons of self-bound pain and misery, or have compassion on us? Both - for the pain that I bear is never an excuse for the sin that I commit. Is there no social dimension to sin? Of course - we all participate in sin (and suffer from it) through its personal and social dimensions. We are all victims and perpetrators.
Is Genesis 1-3 no more than an ancient folk-tale, to be taken simply at face-value? Even if we take Genesis 3:1-7 alone at face value, we have one of the profoundest and most subtle accounts of the psychology of sin that has ever been written - which transfers readily and aptly to our post-modern situation. John, for one, had no problems in extracting from it three main factors which he describes as the malaise underlying the problems of ‘the world’ (1 John 2:18).
The narrative in Genesis following 3:1-7 opens up a world of guilt, fear, blame, accusation, evasion of responsibility, and ultimately murder which are as relevant today as they have ever been. The different levels of narrative over painfully protracted periods of time find their focus in the atonement narrative - where a covenant-keeping God did what he had always been committed to do: maintain faithfulness with his people, and deal with sin. The levels of narrative reach back through the immediate historical context of second temple, post exilic Israel, through to the Exodus narrative, and then to the primal sin of Adam, which is repeated and replayed endlessly in all of our lives, until our lives are invaded by the narrative of the Son of God in his atonement. Is this a view of the atonement developed in later times by a theologising church establishment? No - this was the theology of the apostles who first grasped the meaning of the atonement as described within the bible’s own pages - Paul, Peter, John, (including the letters and apocalypse ascribed correctly or incorrectly to him) - as well as the theology of Matthew, Mark, Luke.
For all its language and terminology, and its recontextualisation in an appealing gloss of contemporary relevance, I’m not sure that Alan’s new perspective on the atonement will work as a primary description of its power for a post-modern age. We are as sinful a society as ever, because we remain as sinful a people as ever. Sin has not grown outdated - it just needs clearer definition.
Doing theology missionally
Peter, there is a lot in here to grapple with. It’s an excellent restatement of a more traditional theology of the atonement. Thanks. I have only a couple of points / questions.
First, how would you account for the following argument biblically? I’m curious to know where this theology of ‘God on the cross’ has come from.
Secondly, what you have presented is an argument about sin and atonement from the perspective of a theologically well-informed believer. To my mind, the real value of Alan’s book is that he makes an attempt to approach these questions from a quite different direction - partly as an exercise in missional imagination, partly, no doubt, as a matter of personal instinct. The question he asks is something like: Given its particular self-understanding, how might the postmodern, post-industrialized mind constructively approach the narrative of atonement? Does a person need a different understanding of his or her state of alienation, fallenness, in order to receive the gift of grace?
I think that this is an important statement:
I read it as an attempt to do theology in a missional framework. Of course, this is hazardous, but I’m not sure it’s really any different to what the old missionaries did when they translated or told the biblical stories to alien cultures. I didn’t get the impression that Alan thought he was offering a ‘primary description’ of the power of the atonement.
Atonement for a sinless society
Briefly, Andrew, in response to your comments:
First, how would you account for the following argument biblically? I’m curious to know where this theology of ‘God on the cross’ has come from.
The theology comes from the on-going narrative of the New Testament scriptures. The disciples may or may not have had any inkling that Jesus was more then a merely (failed?) human messiah as he died on the cross (though actually the divine nature of Jesus is everywhere in the gospel narratives). The Roman centurion hints at a realisation of the divine - bearing in mind that the phrase ‘Son of God’ was itself being re-interpreted during the course of the unfolding narrative. (The theological significance of gentiles exercising more faith then the people of God is of course in itself theologically important in the gospel narratives). Peter’s Pentecost sermon takes the process further - though I’m not sure it can now be called a process: it’s more like a revelation event. Peter is clearly re-interpreting Psalm 110 to be not just messianic but concerning the nature of God. ‘Lord’ has now come to mean one who is to be worshipped as God. If this wasn’t clear in the main body of the sermon, it becomes so in his emphatic conclusion ("… both Lord and Christ."). From hereon in, is there anywhere in the N.T. where Jesus cannot be said to be worshipped as God?
My point is of course that nowhere is it suggested that Jesus acquired divinity only after his death and resurrection - that on the cross he was human, but afterwards he was divine.
If we want to take a view of Jesus stripped back of theological significance, where are you going to begin, and which parts of the New Testament scriptures are you going to dispense with? There is very little in the New Testament, including the gospels, which is not theological, when it comes to describing Jesus. So if we want a non-theological Jesus, where are we going to get him from? Or if we want to emphasise his humanity, it can only be with the understanding that this is only part of the story which the N.T. scriptures convey.
The response to your second point follows from the first: in a mission context we do precisely require of the ‘post modern, post industrialised mind’ a considerable level of theological understanding of the gospel - just as we have of minds in all other ages. It is a level of understanding which eluded the best minds in the country then (as it does now) but is strikingly comprehensible to others - as the contrast between the responses of William Pitt and the Bristol miners to John Wesley illustrates. Or the response of Lord Chesterton when quizzed about going to hear Wesley preach: "Do you believe what he says?" - "No, but he does!"
I agree that in each era we need to understand and engage with the mentality and mind-set which are characteristic of that era - and there is a mentality/mind-set which goes with the post modern. I am arguing that we should not confuse things that are secondary with those that are primary - important as the secondary things might be. I feel that Alan is highlighting very important things, and is taking seriously our contemporary context. But important as Alan’s approach is, I just don’t think that the things he highlights are primary, in relation to the gospel.
Incidentally, it occurred to me after submitting my comment, that an age which ceases to believe in objective, absolute good and evil illustrates my point: a consequence of sin is indeed to erase such beliefs, though our visceral responses will always, I suspect, catch us out.
Modern secular society and the atonement
I want to take issue with the basic premises of Alan Mann’s book “Atonement for a ‘Sinless’ Society”. In doing so I am relying on the OST discussion as I have not read the book itself.
Andrew’s review says
the book starts with the observation that postmodern, post-industrialized Western culture no longer has a meaningful concept of sin and guilt: we cannot do wrong to others or to the ‘Other’, we can only be wronged against, we can only be victims.
and a little later
I have previously expressed in OST my deep scepticism about “post modernism” as a coherent philosophy. Human society is built on the idea that there is truth and falsehood, good and bad- concepts that post-modernism opposes. But without such ideas, law courts could not function nor could the machinery of government nor ordinary activities like shopping, paying bills or getting the washing machine fixed. If your philosophy denies the premises of ordinary life, so much the worse for your philosophy.What I particularly want to oppose here is the suggestion that post modernism characterises the mind-set of human beings in 2005. It may have some currency in some corners of Western academe but, I would suggest, none at all in the wider world.
Hence, I want to ask: what evidence does Alan have for his thesis that post-modern, post-industrialized Western culture no longer has a meaningful concept of sin and guilt? It is true that people increasingly do not believe in sin, defined as an offence against God, but this is because they are increasingly uncertain about God. The secular equivalent of sin- the notion of right and wrong- is adhered to with as much conviction as it ever was.
I am a regular listener to talkback radio (in Australia- but I am sure it is the same elsewhere in the Western world). Its defining feature is moralising- the attribution of right and wrong to others (druggies, unmarried mothers, illegal immigrants etc.,) and demands that they be punished. My experience of the world gives absolutely no support to the notion that we can no longer tell the difference between right and wrong. Popular culture, and indeed all of us, (when we are not swept along by a particular modern philosophical current), have no problem at all with such notions.
That having been said I believe that the notion of atonement faces enormous difficulties in modern secular society. But the problem is not a modern inability to tell right from wrong. Rather it is rejection of the notion that human beings bear an inherited guilt simply in virtue of the fact that they are human beings; and that this guilt renders human society radically flawed. People do not want to acknowledge guilt for something for which they were not personally responsible and they do not agree that the world is as bad as Christians paint it.
I suppose people can be got to see that guilt can be communal. For example few would question the propriety of assigning communal guilt to Germany for its Nazi past or to white Australia for its terrible treatment of aborigines. But what is the equivalent crime of which the human race as a whole is guilty? And why is it imputed in perpetuity- after all, we have now forgiven the Germans.
And how does the Christian view of humanity, as a guilty before God and in need of atonement, compare with Buddhism which attributes humanity’s situation to ignorance of the true nature of desire and the need for detachment? To many the notion that we err through ignorance is far more persuasive than that we are born with the consequences of something done by someone else in the distant past.
For myself, I believe in the atonement. This poem, by George Herbert, is part of the reason why
Love
Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack’d anything.
‘A guest,’ I answer’d, ‘worthy to be here:’
Love said, ‘You shall be he.’
‘I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on Thee.’
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
‘Who made the eyes but I?’
‘Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.’
‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘Who bore the blame?’
‘My dear, then I will serve.’
‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat.’
So I did sit and eat.
George Herbert, 1593-1633
I believe in the atonement
Paul, I too believe in the atonement - and I am desperate for people to be reconciled to the Jesus I know and love. That’s why I’ve tried to take seriously certain issues of communication with regards to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, that I (and others) believe we face a few years into the twenty-first century. Indeed, you even indicate yourself that ‘the notion of atonement faces enormous difficulties in modern secular society’.
I may not have diagnosed, approached or answered such issues in a way that appeals or convinces all, and I am happy to accept that. I’m even happy to accept that post-modernity may not be a coherent philosophy at the foundation of our twenty-first century worldview. However, I think there are issues surrounding concepts such as sin and atonement that people increasingly struggle with and it is these I’ve tried to address.
I hope you go on to the read the book, even if it frustrates the hell out of you, as I am sure there will be some elements of it you may find interesting and even helpful and stimulating in your own quest to speak meanignfully and sufficiently about the atonement to the (post?)modern world.
This is actually a reply to a
This is actually a reply to a previous comment by Alan, and to Paul’s comment.
With regard to Alan’s comment: he has written a book (more than one book), and completed a masters degree at London School of Theology: I haven’t. It’s easier to criticise someone else’s creativity than to come up with anything of one’s own.
I haven’t read ‘Atonement for a sinless society’ - so my remarks are based on limited understanding. I did get some idea of the thesis behind the book from Andrew’s review - which seemed to show a good grasp of the argument. I did react to this - as my comment illustrated. Whilst I need to read the book to get a fuller picture, I do have difficulty agreeing with its basic premise. Simply because a culture has rejected a concept of ‘sin’ would not seem to me to be a good or necessary reason for developing a different framework with which to understand the atonement. So I guess my presupposition would be that the atonement is still God’s means of dealing with sin and being faithful to his covenant. A culture that rejects a notion of sin has not thereby erased the reality of sin. It may exhibit sin’s characteristics all the more. My feeling would be that our own age is simply repackaging sin in ways that are rather unique to itself; so it’s our job to discern what these are.
With regard to Paul’s comment - the notion of the atonement is no more difficult for a secular culture to grasp than any other culture. It is always a difficult notion - until we become aware of our personal need of an atonement, and an atoning Christ. This rests on discovering the reality of sin in our own life. Only the Holy Spirit can bring about such an awareness - but it is an entirely reasonable concept: it is far from illogical. I agree that an abstract idea of ‘inherited guilt’ can seem morally repugnant, but I disagree that this is what our age is struggling with, in regard to accepting the Christian faith. But we don’t have to struggle with this apparently illogical concept. There is enough ‘sin’ to be going on with, for which we are entirely responsible, without having to resort to inherited sin and its guilt!
But for many people, like myself, there comes a realisation that there is something at work in our lives that goes beyond the simple mechanisms of moral choices - and that is an awareness of the depths to which we can sink, and that we need more than forgiveness and the chance to ‘turn over a new leaf’. We need what God (through Jesus) provides: an entirely new nature. It is this that the gospel offers, not just the strength to do better next time, but a new life which kicks into being when we realise that we cannot just ‘do better’. God’s plan is not to patch up and repair the old: it is to bring to us something entirely new - nothing less, in fact, than God’s life, the character of Jesus, breathed into us by his spirit. Genesis 2:7 on an entirely new level. So the cross was on one level a statement of death to the old, and an entirely new dimension of life being introduced through the resurrection of Jesus. God is finished, on one level, with the old creation. It is nevertheless our task to bring ‘the new creation’, and its values, its principles for life and relationships, its practical realities, its power, into ‘the old creation’. The one will live side by side with the other, until God wraps up the old, and all that we have will be the new.
I also find myself, again, disagreeing with Paul about the nature of post modernism. Paul - do you live somewhere in the outback? I suggested in a post ages ago, and you seemed to agree at the time - post modernism is everywhere! It’s not simply a philosophy we are free to choose or reject, it’s in the air we breathe. One of the features of post modernism is its inconsistency. Whilst the notions of good and evil would be rejected as absolute and objective realities, a post modern would routinely appeal to concepts of good and evil as if they were absolute or objective realities, if he/she wanted to. Post modernism is reflected in a range of cultural, scientific and philosophical developments; it’s in our attitudes to organisations; it’s characterised by developments such as the internet - this site, even. It’s characterised by opposition to hierarchies, big explanations and stories of things (so Christianity is in as much trouble as , say, Marxism). It prefers (small) communities to institutions, networking, ‘flat’ leadership styles, spirituality to religion, and on and on.
I agree with Alan that ‘evangelical’ explanations can become formulaic and trite. But equally ‘post modern’ explanations and discourse can be vacuous and pretentious. My sticking point is probably here: that in engaging with the post modern, we can and should adopt its language and enter into its field of vision, but this does not mean we have to abandon our own terms of reference and adopt its own. Call it what you like, but ‘sin’ is a reality which the scriptures everywhere presuppose; the broader narrative of the scriptures is entirely about the consequences of primal sin and its dull, repetitive message replaying endlessly in our lives. The central characteristic of the kingdom of God is that this relentless current in our lives can be reversed, and an entirely new order be brought into being. The epicentre of this movement is the cross - and the atonement a term which attempts in various ways to explain what happened in this event.
It is becoming somewhat fashionable in ‘progressive’ circles to denigrate a ‘substitutionary’ explanation of the atonement (Jesus died in my place). Greg Haslam’s defence of ‘penal substitution’ in Christianity magazine in the UK did nothing to reommend the cause he was supposedly promoting! But I think the new tendency to denigrate substitionary atonement is highly unfortunate. We may need to have explanations which promote the atonement’s corporate relevance, but this does not mean that its significance for individuals is no longer necessary. We were created as individuals - but with a need to belong to each other. We fall into a damaging and misleading ‘either/or’ dichotomising tendency if we promote one view by rejecting the other. With the atonement, we will never come up with one theory which captures entirely the rich diversity of meaning which, I would assert, is spread through all the interpretations, in one form or another. And equally, I would suggest, all the interpretations fall short in one form or another. The atonement does not lend itself to logic. But it is proved by its effects in our lives.
Substitutionary Atonement or Satisfaction Doctrine?
In reading the exchanges on this subject I wonder whether it is helpful to make a distinction between satisfaction doctrine and substitutionary atonement. I myself believe that the former has so dominated evangelical understanding of the cross as to expunge all other perspectives on the meaning of the atonement that it has, in my opinion, become close to a heresy in itself. Satisfaction doctrine has at its core the notion of a perfect, holy God who is so offended and disgusted at human sin and the effect that it has had on his creation that he is within his rights to destroy the world and send the perpetrators to an eternal exile from himself. Articulation of the ‘good news’ therefore becomes reduced to a) needing to convict people of sin and its consequences then b) telling them that God, in his mercy, has provided a mechanism for them to grasp that allows them to escape the coming catastrophe. Spin it and dress it up in whatever clever way you like, but deviate from this formula and you are not being faithful to the ‘Gospel’.
The problem I have with this is that it is based not, I believe, on a scriptural understanding of the atonement, but on a doctrine that sought to apply mechanistic principles in order to understand what God did on the cross in terms of a legal transaction (rooted in ancient Roman law). Somehow it has replaced all other views of the cross and anyone (Steve Chalk or Atonement for a Sinless Society -which I will now of course have to buy) who dares to criticise Anselm’s doctrine of satisfaction is seen to be playing fast and loose with the very core of the christian faith. The result is that conversations on this subject hit raw nerves everywhere and it can get ugly.
It took me 2 years of searching, struggling and arguing to arrive at the conclusion that I love the biblical principle of substitutionary atonement when properly understood. The analphylactic reaction I had against most of the ‘gospel’ that I heard was in fact a rejection of satisfaction doctrine. I am grateful to another friend I made in cyberspace (Derek Flood) for helping me through this logjam. When you articulate the gospel not as a God of wrath who is offering you a contract to escape the eternal destruction that you deserve, but as a God who so loves the world that he is not merely transcendent but comes into it, cries with it, suffers with it, and at enormous cost decides to draw onto himself its pain, its evil, and the death that it will inevitably see. This is a God who in the most powerful symbolic act and enacted parable also ontologically draws to a close the frustration, suffering and death of the old creation and ushers in the new. The invitation therefore becomes one of joining with this God in this project of bringing in the new creation with all the hope and healing that Jesus embodied and in doing so experiencing depths of personal and social forgiveness, acceptance, healing, hope and meaning that restore to us what God has always intended for humanity. Jurgen Moltmann’s abiding metaphor for the atonement therefore becomes the scape goat. God himself becomes that sacrifice that draws all of the sins of the people onto itself and is taken away from the people by God himself into the desert never to be seen again.
Articulation of the gospel therefore does not have to take the rigid inflexible path of that prescribed by satisfaction doctrine that relies conviction of sin as the starting point of the dialogue. The ‘good news’ is that God’s profound love and commitment to his world means that he has overcome every barrier between us and him in order to bring a life of restored relationships, hope for the future, and a story of meaning that we find ourselves in now. This message it seems to me is one that a post modern culture can understand and actually longs to hear.
The criticism I have had for this perspective of the message is that it ignores the biblical notion of the wrath of God, down plays sin and dodges the doctrine of hell. My response to that is that very often in the bible God’s wrath is interpreted as his abandoning of his people to the inevitable consequences of their choices (read the psalms, the interpretation of the exile, Romans 1). Wrath therefore to me is a way of understanding not a God whose holiness makes him want to take revenge on rebellious creatures, but a God who will step back from intervening in his creation and gives it the dignity of freewill despite the disasterous consequences that he knows will result. I have not yet read Brian McLaren’s latest book on hell, but I suspect I will agree with where he is coming from on it. There is too much ambiguity (despite what many conservative evangelicals believe) about how this world will play itself out, what the new creation will look like, and whether there will be limited efficacy to Christ’s death and resurrection or not. A thought that I have found helpful that unites the notion of God’s wrath (handing us over to the consequences of our choices) and his unending love for all of his creation is that perhaps hell could be understood more in terms of exile in the new creation. That would apply a core biblical concept of interpreting God’s wrath and leave open to me the potential for God’s unfailing love to continue to work to bring healing - Revelation 22:2 ‘The leaves of the tree are there for the healing of th nations.’ I would be interested in what people think on this idea.
We can never abandon the notion of sin and our responsibility for it, but I do agree that we need to think through again how we engage in our dialogue with our culture about the subject. I would like to see, if not abandonment of Anselm’s doctrine, certainly an understanding that it must not be the only or even the core interpretation of the work of God in the cross and resurrection. Substitutionary atonement is a beautiful thing. Let’s not allow over-reliance on a human doctrine spoil our understanding of it.
Christian atonement, Buddhist detachment
Why would someone contemplating Christianity, Buddhism and Islam be drawn to Christianity? Is there something on offer from Christianity that resonates with common human experience in a way that the other two do not?
Well, of course, religions cannot be evaluated like washing powder and people make their decisions about them on all sorts of grounds. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the atonement and the issues that surround it are the key to explaining Christianity to someone who has no knowledge of it.
In my previous post I said that Buddhism suggests that when people err they do so through ignorance- ignorance that the suffering they endure arises from desire and lack of detachment. This view is remarkably similar to that of Socrates who believed that if one knows what the good is, one will always do it. But both Buddhism and Socrates are exposed to the same objection, which is that people often err through moral weakness or malice or are actuated by the forces of evil (how else do you explain Hitler and Stalin and their henchmen?). Ignorance just does not seem an adequate explanation.
Christianity, by contrast, does respond to our common human experience of moral failing. But the Christian idea of moral failing is different from the one that most human beings have. Vox populi says: “Well of course, nobody is perfect and I have my faults- but I have my virtues too. I agree, there are monsters- serial killers, psychopaths, sadists- but most of us are not like that. For most of us, people who speak at our funeral will note all our virtues, pass over our vices in indulgent silence and be glad that we were on the planet.”
Can Christianity be content with this view of the human condition? Did Christ come to save us from our petty faults?
Augustine did not think so and nor did Luther. They both saw humanity as irredeemably corrupted. And this seems close to what Peter has written
“But for many people, like myself, there comes a realisation that there is something at work in our lives that goes beyond the simple mechanisms of moral choices - and that is an awareness of the depths to which we can sink, and that we need more than forgiveness and the chance to ‘turn over a new leaf’. We need what God (through Jesus) provides: an entirely new nature. It is this that the gospel offers, not just the strength to do better next time, but a new life which kicks into being when we realise that we cannot just ‘do better’. God’s plan is not to patch up and repair the old: it is to bring to us something entirely new - nothing less, in fact, than God’s life, the character of Jesus, breathed into us by his spirit. Genesis 2:7 on an entirely new level. So the cross was on one level a statement of death to the old, and an entirely new dimension of life being introduced through the resurrection of Jesus. God is finished, on one level, with the old creation. It is nevertheless our task to bring ‘the new creation’, and its values, its principles for life and relationships, its practical realities, its power, into ‘the old creation’. The one will live side by side with the other, until God wraps up the old, and all that we have will be the new.”
It is this view of human nature that (it seems to me) is the indispensable starting point of Christian belief and it is a very tough one to get across. In part this is because Christian churches themselves have used the notion of sin as a conduit to power and control, have encouraged a concentration on sex and have emphasised the personal at the expense of the communal. But the more abiding problem is human incapacity to see what is in our own hearts. There is a scene in the brilliant new movie ‘Crash’, where an older cop who has engaged in vicious and depraved behaviour tells his younger partner, who has asked to be assigned to someone else: “Just wait till you have been on the job a few more years. You have no idea what you can end up doing”. Most of don’t enter the spiral into depravity but all of us can, as all those good Germans, drafted into Hitler’s army or concentration camp garrisons found.
Understanding God’s response to sin is the other part of the atonement. I found Nate’s description of substitutionary atonement very similar to the fifth para of Peter’s post and both very useful. The best thing I have read on atonement understood in this way is Simone Weil’s “Love Of God And Affliction” (published in “Waiting for God”).
Peter, on post modernism: in fact we did not end up agreeing . My problem with post modernism is that it is a portmanteau expression that can be used to mean just about anything. As such it does not enlighten understanding but clouds it. . For example you say that while
“notions of good and evil would be rejected as absolute and objective realities, a post modern would routinely appeal to concepts of good and evil as if they were absolute or objective realities"
In my view, it would not be possible to have a discussion with someone who took such a position.
You also say that
“post modernism is everywhere! It’s not simply a philosophy we are free to choose or reject, it’s in the air we breathe…. It’s characterised by opposition to hierarchies, big explanations and stories of things (so Christianity is in as much trouble as ,say, Marxism). It prefers (small) communities to institutions, networking, ‘flat’ leadership styles, spirituality to religion, and on and on”.
My own view is that post modernism is not everywhere but only has currency in some parts of academe- in the wider world it has zero impact and would be indignantly rejected if it were proposed (say, in a law court where somebody is being tried for murder). And I do not see that it has much that is cogent to say about the particular examples you quote- that is, I believe you could more fruitfully understand opposition to hierarchies etc without reference to post modernism than with it.
And in response to your enquiry, do I live in the outback: fair go cobber, I’m a citizen of the world.
Clarifying the complexity
Peter, thanks for the post. Though critical, it’s important for me to see that people are wrestling and discussing theological issue, for that’s the reason I write. (It’s certainly not for material gain).
On the whole, I don’t have a problem with traditional understandings of the atonement. In fact, as Andrew has already suggested, perhaps I haven’t wandered far ‘from the traditional substitutionary model if we are still stuck with an interpretation that is preoccupied with the plight of the individual.’ Ironic then that you should wish to criticise me, not only for disengaging from the traditional substitutionary understanding, but for suggesting a model of the atonement that ‘suffers from a self-centred emphasis’. It would appear that I can’t win.
I think a careful (re)-read of the book, however, will prove that in fact I am entirely critical of human self-centredness and that ‘wholeness’ and atonement cannot be found independent of the ‘Other’ as our therapeutic age likes to suggest. Therefore, the ‘Other’ (and to reassure, I speak often of God as the ‘Other’), becomes the centre of the Universe not the self and that preferring the ‘Other’ brings atonement. Surely such views are in continuity with both Jesus’ teaching and action - even in going to the cross for a sinful humanity.
With regards to the issue of sin - in using ‘sinless’ in the title, I am not suggesting that sin is not the heart of the issue. My background is too Reformed and Conservative to take me to such extremes. What I have suggested is
1). That for all kinds of reasons sin as a concept has become just as tainted, polluted and defiled in the postmodern mind as the word itself indicates.
2). That we often speak of sin in a language of reduction in order to the turn the key of simplistic and formulaic understandings of the atonement.
In my complexity I am in fact trying do precisely what you ask - to bring a clear definition of sin in all its religious, relational and biblical complexities.
This brings me to my final point here. I think it’s a moot point to state that ‘most people can instinctively identify with a traditional, substitutionary view of the atonement’. I also think your initial post, and your response to Andrew, actually indicates that these easily-grasped traditional views of the atonement are far more complex than you suggest. Indeed, at their foundations, all understandings of atonement are complex.
When I was a theological student at The London School of Theology (formerly London Bible College) the college’s strap-line was: ‘To communicate simply you must understand profoundly’. I think one of the problem’s the church faces in communicating the significance of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is that many Christians only have simple, sound-bite versions of the atonement with which to engage the complexities of culture, pluralism, post-modern, post-Christian philosophies and the emotional, spiritual and psychological human condition. That’s why one of the great needs is the theological education of the lay Christian so that they can hold several views of the atonement in tension, grasp something of the full richness of the event and therefore have a ‘profound’ and ‘complex’ understanding of the atonement with which to engage their world and their own lives in a meainingful and sufficient manner.
Missiology and shame culture
First of all, it was excellent to meet a few of you on Sunday. I feel like I’m writing to people now, not just an electronic audience!
I admit that I haven’t read the book, but the discussion has raised a few issues that interest me. First, there is the re-telling of the atonement narrative for the 21st Century Western society. This interests me because I’m a missionary and contextualization of the Gospel is what missiology has been doing for twenty centuries, and I’m glad that someone else realised that the culture we live in needs contextualization as much as any other. :) So I’m glad this kind of discussion is going on, but it needs to be constant, it needs to keep going on; our contextualization must change as quickly as our society does, and that’s pretty darned quick…
One of the things I mentioned on Sunday was the idea of the gospel for shame cultures; as the concept of sin is on the decline in the postmodern West, this contextualization - which was originally developed for Middle Eastern people - may become more relevant "over here". A great exposition of that gospel is given in this EMQ article. I’ve used these ideas in communicating the gospel to the Japanese, and would have absolutely no problem doing the same in a Western context.
Another idea I mentioned has a lot less weight because I haven’t really thought it through yet, but I hope OST can be somewhere where we can explore this kind of thing together.
Take a look at Leviticus 18. Yeah, it’s a long chapter which deals a lot with all kinds of sexual sin; then at the end, all of these things - which we call "sin" in our context - are explained in terms of their defilement, particularly of the way they defile the earth. This is very much an honor/shame concept which speaks to a Middle Eastern defilement taboo mentality. (As in the gospel for shame cultures.)
Are you getting that - sin is sin in Lv 18 because it is against the cultural taboos of the time. Perhaps this means that the honor/shame presentation of redemption and atonement is much more rooted in the Biblical context than we might imagine. Again, I don’t know where to go with this, but it’s certainly worth thinking through.
Chronic-Shame not Honour/Shame
Lathos,
thank you for the supportive words, with which I wholly concur.
However, having read it, I felt I needed to post a section from the book to clarify where I am coming from regarding Shame, for as you can see, I am not discussing the same issue as you are here.(It might interest you to know, however, that Joel Green and Mark Baker have a chapter on the cross and shame from a Japanese context in their book, Recovering the Scandal of the Cross.)