The three main theories of the atonement are: Christus Victor (after Gustav Aulen), which has a historical Ransom element to it and of late has had a renaissance in understanding as a victory of God over the Powers, and narrative and Non-Violent versions have been developed; Substitutionary Atonement (after Anselm of Canterbury), sometimes called the Satisfaction theory, the dominant theory for much of the last 1000 years, which was narrowed by the Protestant Reformers to what we’ve come to call Penal Substitution; and Moral Influence (after Peter Abelard) which emphasises the profound love of God expressed in Jesus’ horrendous death. Andrew hints at a fourth developing idea in the last option of the atonement opinion poll, which puts Jesus’ death as an ‘archetype’ (i.e. the model and arch example) in the context of Yahweh’s vindication of His People as Israel’s history comes to some sort of consummation. A helpful contribution has been made recently by Hans Boersma in Violence, Hospitality and the Cross (what a pity his surname doesn’t begin with ‘A’! It was all looking so ‘good’ with Aulen, Anselm and Abelard!!!).
These questions may be a helpful starting point…
- What was the environment that birthed the three main theories and their variations? How did they respond to, criticise or build upon each other? What effect did the (environment of the) unification of church and state have on the formulation of these theories?
- How do the theories treat the three elements of God, the devil or Satan, and sinful humanity? What/who is the object of Jesus’ death in each of these three theories?
- In each, who or what needs the death of Jesus?
- And in each, who or what arranges for or is responsible for Jesus’ death - who ultimately killed Jesus?
A fifth example, or subspecies?
I have been pondering the question of whether the atonement was for our benefit, to signal God’s love for us in a way that we would accept and take to the next spiritual level. If God did not need an atonement to forgive us, we may have needed it to understand the depth of God’s feeling and allow God to forgive us. Jesus would have been an example for us to follow, but also something more - a message that we would accept as an expression of God’s love for us and show us how to accept that love ourselves.
Hopefully, I’m not too far off the question above. Any thoughts?
Randy Blog | Poems |Satire
Atonement
This subject is becoming unwieldly, and I wasn’t sure where to insert my comment, so if it doesn’t belong here it can be moved.
Basically, I do believe in a substitutionary atonement. I believe, though, that this doctrine should not necessarily be emphasized to a post-modern (or even modern) culture in the way that evangelicals are prone to do.
The necessity for some explanation - some theological explanation if you will - for Jesus’ death arose immediately after the fact. Did the risen Christ proceed to give the community an explanation, as Luke (24:13-27) would suggest? Or was there theological reflection on the part of the community that resulted in an explanation? Some have suggested that the death was at first understood as a means of getting Jesus resurrected and glorified to heaven, to commence his Messianic reign. (Acts 2:31-33) But surely, further reflection would cause one to wonder why Jesus was not simply taken up like Enoch or Elijah, why he had to die such a horrible death. Very early, then, the community must have come upon Isaiah 53 about the Suffering Servant as an explanation - “he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities.” (Isa. 53:5; compare Acts 8:26-35) It matters little, for our purposes, whether or not Second Isaiah originally referred to an individual servant yet to come or to Israel as God’s collective servant - the early Christian community understood Isaiah’s language to be applicable to Jesus and to provide, not merely a predictive prophecy, but an explanation for Jesus’ death. It would be a long time before all the pieces of the puzzle could be worked out - a complete theory of Atonement would require the development of trinitarian theology in which the sacrificial victim would be the Second Person of the Trinity who had assumed human nature. Inasmuch as the victim was not understood to be a creature, the Atonement could not be compared to cosmic child abuse.
But turning now to the writings of Paul, we find that the Atonement, early on, was not understood to be simply, or merely, a legal substitution. Paul has certainly provided much of the language for penal substitution. Note, for example, his counterbalancing the forfeiture of Adam’s life (the representative of humanity) due to disobedience with the willing sacrifice of Jesus in obedience to the Father, stating that the obedience and death of Jesus counterbalances Adam’s transgression. (Rom. 5:12-21) What is surprising is that Paul was not satisifed with this as an explanation for Jesus’ death, and he goes on to explain his theology of baptism - that baptism means the dieing and rising with Christ. (Rom. 6:1-5) It’s as if the resurrection were the other side of the coin, that the resurrection itself were just as efficacious in our salvation as the death of Christ. Evangelical apologists simply don’t know what to do with this. It is claimed that the resurrection provided evidence that Jesus’ sacrifice was accepted by the Father - or some other evidentiary value is attached to it - but to say with Paul that the resurrection, along with the death, was a cause of salvation is stretching it for an evangelical. Once it is accpeted that one person’s punishment can stand in for another’s (which is the stumbling block for those who do not think this way), what need is there for a resurrection? Paul’s thinking, on the other hand, creates a paradox which leaves the Atonement with an element of mystery. Like the Trinity, it is beyond our full understanding.
Should evangelicals be so out front with the substitionary atonement? I think not. We find little explanation of the Atonement in the early Apologists. How could the Church be straightforward on such a subject at a time when there were other elements of theology that needed to be worked out first? And, we find that there are forms of Christianity other than the evangelical one (and other than the liberal one as well) which, while holding a doctrine of Atonement, do not present it in the “in-your-face” way that evangelicals do. In Roman Catholicism one can view Christ on the Cross, one can meet Christ in the Body and Blood at Mass, but the idea that Christ died as the sinner’s substitute, while lying behind all this, is not necessarily the first item to be learned by the beginner. It is not necessary to reject the substitutionary atonement in order to put it on the back burner. It can be treated as one of the “mysteries” of the kingdom to be learned later when someone is ready for it, and not up front. (Matt. 13:10-13) Evangelicals, however, are used to having a gospel which is readily accessible to everyone, easy as pie to understand, with nothing held back.
The question remains, Can we present the Gospel in which Jesus is held forth as Lord and Saviour without telling people with a bold face that Jesus is their whipping boy who took their licks for them? I would like to think so.
Resurrection and Salvation
I found your point about resurrection being the other side of the coin very intriguing, and I was wondering if you could expand on that.
I read the verses you reference, Rom 6:1-5, and though I can see your point, I don’t think I follow entirely.
Resurrection and Salvation
I can’t explain it completely because, as I said, there is an element of mystery surrounding it. But, at Romans 6:1-5 Paul is talking about baptism (whether he’s referring to water baptism with a sacramental effect or a spiritual baptism is beyond out scope here). He states that baptism constitutes burial with Christ into his death. Assuming that the mode of baptism is immersion (which was customary at that time), the coming up out of the water constitutes a resurrection. So we share with Christ in his death and resurrection. When Christ rose from the dead, he entered into a new kind of life. He left the old order behind and entered the new. This included leaving sin behind (which he had somehow assumed, perhaps through imputation), and in our dieing and rising with him we leave sin behind as well and so are saved. It is as though, when he died and rose again, we were already members of his Body, but our membership does not become active until we are joined to him in faith. So, in this paradigm, it is not so much that Christ died in our place (which I’m sure Paul would not want to deny), but that he took us along with him through death and resurrection. So resurrection, being part of a continuous process, is the other side of the coin to death.
A post-modern approach?
Perhaps we need to work a bit harder to make this a post-modern investigation of the question of the atonement. One way to do this might be to recognize, as I think Justin has done, that the theories represent a late and highly developed (over-developed?) stage in a process of understanding:
1. There are events, or at least accounts of events, which we have to accept are never free from interpretive bias. In this case the event in question is the death of someone who had provoked and antagonized various religious and political parties that had the power to engineer his execution.
2. There are effects, or apparent effects, of events - the appearances of Jesus to his followers, the experience of the Spirit, the sense of reconciliation with God, the impact of the message about Jesus on the lives of significant numbers of people, the unexpected inclusion of non-Jews in the whole business, the continuation of the people of God following AD 70, and so on.
3. These effects inevitably give rise to a need to interpret and explain: how did this event give rise to these consequences?
4. There were pointers already in what Jesus himself had said and done that would obviously provide an initial framework for interpretation.
5. It was then natural for Jewish believers, driven by the need to explain themselves, defend themselves, justify their challenge to the dominant belief system, to sift through the Scriptures and tradition (not least apocalyptic tradition) in search of models, metaphors, visions, precedents, that might begin to account for the extraordinary aftermath of the execution of the man Jesus from Nazareth: the system of sacrifice as a means of dealing with Israel’s sin, the servant of Isaiah, the prophets who endured suffering out of obedience to the word of God, the martyrs of the Maccabean period, Israel under foreign oppression, etc.
6. This undertaking was complicated further by the need to account for the inclusion of Gentiles in the people of God.
7. At a later stage, for various reasons, the church began to develop ‘theories’ of the atonement - abstract, rationalized accounts of how this death could be said to be redemptive.
The problem is that by the time we get to this last stage, the likelihood is that we have forgotten where we started from. What a more post-modern theology allows us to do is work our way back through this interpretive process towards a narrative account of the death of Christ, historically contextualized, but as far as possible deconstructed and stripped of the layers of Christian theologizing that have built up over the centuries. Why not just hear the story, enter into the crude, fearful humanity of it, with history and tradition ringing in our ears?
My guess is that we will not begin to understand the atonement properly until we understand the need for an explanation - until we feel something of the same compulsion to account for this remarkable turn of events. Perhaps the problem that theologians have is that they are not sufficiently shocked by what they have to speak about. Where was God in this? Isn’t there a struggle for authenticity that needs to be entered into here? And if this is true for the way we do theology, I suspect it is no less true for the way in which we do church and mission. Perhaps right now we should allow our orthodoxy to be determined not through some convoluted process of theologizing but through the telling and retelling, and immersion of ourselves in, the story.
Re: A post-modern approach?
I think, Andrew, that you are on the right path when you speak of immersing ourselves in the telling and re-telling of the story. And that story must be the telling and retelling of the story of Jesus - the way the truth and the life. If we are to understand atonement then, I believe, we must re-focus our attention - away from the death of Jesus to the life of Jesus. When we focus exclusively on Christ’s passion and employ only those images or metaphors that focus on his death as atoning we engage in adding to the layers of theology that have been co-opted in support of violence. Violence both to humanity and to creation. To enter into the ” crude, fearful humanity of it” - the death of Christ - will be to hear it stripped of the spiritualizing of it and revealing the raw truth of the political machinations of both the Romans and the Temple. Atonement theories that focus on Christ’s life- as in he gave his life for us - might well lead us on a new path that reclaims the forgiveness, equality, inclusion, healing and caring for all of creation that is Christ’s life.
This giving of his life is more clearly understood as he risked his life for us. Risking does not imply death as a mandatory. If humanity needs to know that God understands our suffering let that be understood through the very humanity of Christ that he lived with us and suffered the same as any of us - suffering of all kinds not just physical and certainly not only through death.
When we truly engage in the telling and re-telling of the life of Jesus, we engage in the living of that story - imitation Christi - and we risk the same rejection and ridicule. For in so doing we too will be lead into conflict with the ruiling powers of both Church and State. When eventually we are willing to risk our lives as Jesus did we will recapture the salvific effect of Jesus’ life. We will come to understand atonement in new and liberating ways.
a parabolic retelling of the story
…for those who missed it first time around and at the risk of appearing to self-promoting (gasp), may I point to my parabolic retelling of the (atonement) story?
I’m not sure if it qualifies as a post-modern retelling (I still can’t claim to understand that concept entirely) but some may find it interesting and provocative…
whilst, contra to Collete8’s plea it undoubtedly focusses upon the death of Christ, it does so in reliance upon its juxtaposition with his resurrection and, I believe, suggests an approach to understanding the messianic sacrifice that moves away from that of a violent act perpetrated upon Jesus, by / for the sake of the Father. Instead Jesus is the prime actor who embraces death as a path to eternal life.
shalom! - john (eternalpurpose.org.uk)
Re: a parabolic retelling of the story
John - this quotation from ‘a parabolic retelling of the (atonement) story’:
“So, following the Incarnation, the Lamb effectively “takes away” (the consequences of) the Rebellion of Humanity. He does to by receiving, in his own body, the Due Penalty of Death – a penalty due, remember, to the Corruption of the Original, Good Creation, which thereafter could no longer serve the pure purpose for which it was intentionally made. He does this by Offering himself up to the hold of Death”
sounds very much like penal substitutionary atonement to me, though you have used words in the immediate context like ‘victor’ to tone down this emphasis.
The problem is that the NT itself, especially the Romans passages, uses courtroom imagery and language (in a Judaistic setting, of course). We have the plaintiff, the accused (Israel in both cases, humanity at large in the latter), the Judge (God), the substitute (Jesus), the declaration of acquittal (justified). The imagery of the courtroom is embedded in the concept of judgement, the Day of the Lord, and rests within the wider concept of covenant - Israel’s disobedience, and God’s application of consequences. The Mosaic covenant rests within other covenants which indicate a different outcome - covenant (arguably) with Adam & Eve, Noah, Abraham, David. Otherwise I found the ‘retelling’ admirable.
As for Colette’s comments - we may need to immerse ourselves more thoroughly in the narrative of Jesus’s life, but not at the expense of life which flows from the consequence of the death of Jesus - the outpoured Spirit. The gospels were, of course, “all that Jesus began to do and teach” - Acts 1:1. Apostolic preaching, and the letters, always focus on life given as a result of the death of Jesus and his resurrection, rather than a life which can be accessed before these events.
There is a greater need to immerse ourselves in the narrative of the death, resurrection, outpoured Spirit, ascension, return of Jesus as inaugurating the completion of the narrative of the people of God. This is the final act of the five-act drama suggested by N.T. Wright. The life of Jesus on earth was in part paradigmatic for Jesus’s followers, but much more the precursor of the final act of the drama - whose main characteristics are sketched in Acts and beyond. It would be regressive to have a gospel which retreated from this full-orbed expression, or sought to suggest a division between this part of the drama, and an earlier - though outstandingly significant - part.
Re: a parabolic retelling of the story
In the context of your comments, Peter, on Colette’s remarks on the gospels, it’s my belief that the early church’s first priority was precisely the ‘words of life’ that we now call ‘the Gospels”. The Acts and the Epistles are the applications of the gospel sometimes to situations that are not obviously covered by Jesus’s teaching and sometimes correctives to misunderstanding of the gospel itself as well as our major source for undestanding what it now means for Jesus to be our risen Lord.
I don’t think that the last bit (knowing Jesus as Lord) makes much sense when it is not grounded solidly in Jesus as Immanuel.
Live to serve : Serve to live
Re: a parabolic retelling of the story
I wonder if this is a semantic communication gap, Peter. I’m not familiar with penal substitutionary theory (though I suspect I was subliminally, at least, significantly exposed to it within my past) to be sure that I avoid my ‘retelling’ falling into that category. However, I can assure you that I did not use the terminology of ‘victor’ in any kind of attempt to sidestep p/s theory.
In fact, the whole telling flowed in one sitting, based upon my own meditations and convictions, in which the concept of Jesus as Victor over the Powers seems the appropriate understanding for the Sacrifice as I understand it. Thus, perhaps I might expand them a little bit re. the part of the narrative you point to. I also didn’t understand the import of your following paragraph about covenant (I personally consider covenant to be an essential part of our missiological / theological understanding of salvation / deliverance / entrace to eternal life… but it simply wasn’t the paradigm through which the narrative in question approached…) I.e., I seek both to clarify and to be clarified upon, re your remarks.
First to clarify…
My understanding of Jesus’ receiving in his own body the penalty of death is a reference to the penalty laid upon humanity in the garden of Eden. He voluntarily suffered death so that, through the power of his resurrection life, he could lead humanity into eternal life.
I would not think this is the same use of ‘penalty’ as in the sense I have understood of ‘penal substitution’ i.e., God effectively requiring his death as as a blood sacrifice. One refers to a penalty laid upon humanity in the past - a curse (he was cursed to deliver us from the curse) - the other refers to the ‘just’ outcome of a future hypothetical judgement which would find us all worthy of death… from which we then require a Redeemer.
Or were you perhaps actually arguing for the latter in your mention of the NT language of courtrooms… and therefore, suggesting that my error is, in fact, that I (incorrectly) distance myself from ‘penal substitution’?
Your clarification will be appreciated!
Meanwhile, thank you for the general appreciation of the narrative. In that context, particularly if the semantic issues (or otherwise) were clarified, I wonder whether you could imagine any wider usefulness to the ‘retelling’?
shalom! - john (eternalpurpose.org.uk)
Re: a parabolic retelling of the story
John - baruch haba bashem Adonai!
I was just in a contentious frame of mind, I think. Although you disclaim any previous knowledge of ‘penal substitution’, you do then give an account of it according to your understanding -
“I would not think this is the same use of ‘penalty’ as in the sense I have understood of ‘penal substitution’ i.e., God effectively requiring his death as as a blood sacrifice.”
There’s a movement at the moment to discredit the idea of ‘penal substitution’ by offering a caricature of it, then dismissing it without having examined the real thing. Your description of ‘penal substitution’ here comes close to the idea of God driven by a blood lust, demanding a gruesome satisfaction of blood. I haven’t come across any explanation of ‘penal substitution’ which comes anywhere near this - except when certain populist writer/speakers are writing/speaking in crudely oversimplified terms.
I was just wanting to point out, that without having said it, your own idea of the atonement contains penal substitution - Jesus bore the ‘due penalty of death’ so that we would not have to.
But I probably missed the point entirely. You didn’t say you were offering a theory which avoided ‘penal substitution’; you only said that you had lived your entire life without having any theory of atonement, and you were unaware of what the theories were. (I think this is what you meant!).
Sorry to be so obtuse.
Re: a parabolic retelling of the story
Blessed indeed, is he who comes in the Wonderful Name of Adonai!
Thanks, Peter, for your further thoughts. Interesting - I find I don’t have to be in a particular frame of mind in order to be contenscious! ;)
More seriously, I would certainly want to agree with your implied indictment of ‘straw man’ philosophising / theologising , which is all too prevalent a tactic today, whether it be the characterisation / falsification / demonisation of ‘penal substitutionary theory’, evangelicalism, Roman Catholicism, fundamentalism, creationism etc. I abhor this trend and the obfuscation that inevitably follows in its wake as people defend what is essentially a projection of subjective / inner anxieties.
My claim, by the way, is that I wrote my narrative not having consciously been aware of ‘penal substitutionary theory,’ nor any other “theory,” of atonement. I’m in no doubt that I have been exposed to them, however, and abstractly absorbed some of their tenets. I am drawn to the idea of Christus Victor and (crassly) assumed that my theory was more akin to that. But I think I do believe that their are elements of “substitutionary atonement” that must be incorporated into our faith (“the punishment that brought us peace was upon him” etc), so I do not baulk at your sense that I have failed to avoid p/s theory in some way.
What I was attempting to do with my retelling was to consciously explore and express (a view of) my own (limited) understanding of atonement - based on what I’ve largely subconscioulsy absorbed and meditated toward (without any formal theological training) over a period of many years - and to do so without either reacting against straw man arguments nor regurgitating other’s theories… and, implicitly, to discover what other made of my rendering.
Personally, I still enjoy the retelling, though I think it does have some glaring inadequacies (which to my surprise, have not been taken up particularly). I would add that I think there are a number of complimentary ways to understand the Messiah’s intercession, no-one of which is absolutely neccessary for faith, but I don’t know if you’d ascent to that?
One further clarification…
I would not necessarily say “so that we would not have to” (or did I somewhere in amongst my musings?!), rather “…so that a way through Death, a Way beyond Death could be made.” I think we will undoubtedly still suffer the due penalty of death ourselves, however, the reality of our deliverance from it will come via a glorious resurrection!
shalom! - john (eternalpurpose.org.uk)
The Fall-is man more sinned against than sinning?
John
I have not quite grasped the thrust of your parabolic retelling of the story but I have an unease that in developing it you have been cavalier with the story.
Let me take the example of the Genesis account(s) of the Fall.
As I read them their import is as follows
In the first creation account God says “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth] and over all the creatures that move along the ground…. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”Genesis 1:26-31
God’s announced motive in making man is his desire for a creature in his own image i.e., a being who is also a creator and a ruler, as evidenced by his command to increase in number and subdue the rest of creation.
However, in the second creation account, there is no mention of man being in God’s image; and instead of ruling the rest of creation, man is given a radically reduced role- to till and keep the Garden of Eden. In addition, God imposes a prohibition “the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” Genesis 2:15-19
Enter the serpent who tells Adam’s wife, Eve, that God’s reason for forbidding them to eat the fruit is not that they will die if they do so but that they will then be like God, knowing good and evil. So both Adam and his wife eat. The serpent is correct in his surmise that they will not die if they eat of the fruit and also about God’s real reason for forbidding them to do so. God acknowledges that knowledge of good and evil has made them immortal “like one of us” (Gen 3.22); so he moves at once to expel them from the Garden, thereby cutting them off from the eternal life which eating the forbidden fruit had won them.
In addition he decides to make their life a misery by condemning Eve to the pangs of childbirth, and Adam (who has been an unwitting dupe in the whole affair) to a life of toil working infertile ground. In short, God has lied to Adam and Eve and when found out, instead of admitting his lie, punishes them and their descendants severely. This tale, in which Adam and Eve are guilty of disobedience but God is guilty of deceit and then of gross over-reaction, becomes in Christianity grounds for the belief that all humans arrive on the planet with a burden of sin (= disobedience to God).
With this understanding of the Fall, I think your retelling will find it hard to get going
Re: The Fall-is man more sinned against than sinning?
Hello Paul
I’m not sure why you feel you’ve missed the thrust of my retelling. It’s a way of looking at the intercessory sacrifice of the Messiah, which attempts to incorporate a panoramic view of old and new testament scripture and the consistency of (at least one or two elements of) the purpose that I see revealed within.
Paul, to suggest that my retelling fails in the light of your reading of the creation accounts is probably less a reflection upon my narrative and more upon your particular reading. With God in the dock, as liar and deceiver, by chapter two of Genesis, I must wonder if you are serious about engaging with my retelling, or in promoting your own nuanced and dualistic retelling of the creation account(s)? Surely as such your novel eisegesis is worthy of a seperate discussion?
However, let me offer one snippet from the Complete Jewish Bible, which elucidates my understanding of “the Entrance of Death” (at least into humanity, if not creation as a whole) as well as answering one part of your accusation against God, Genesis 2:15-19
This supports my suggestion that the Rebellion of Adam was the entrance of Death, as a sentence, a penalty, a judgement. The experience of suffering that penalty comes for Adam, like most of us, after a life long-lived.
One further clarification: you suggest that Adam and Eve’s eating from the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil, has made them immortal “like one of us”, whereas the Genesis 3 account suggests that their being “like one of us” refers to their knowing good and evil. It still appears to be the prerogative of the Tree of Life to grant immortality and it is God’s mercy to deny them this, since man’s participation in it was now required to be offered through the Messiah, through participation in his Resurrection, a final Victory over Death.
shalom! - john (eternalpurpose.org.uk)
Re: A post-modern approach?
At the risk of making this subject even more unwieldy, I would like to draw attention to two texts in Hebrews and think with you about what happens when they are put side by side. They are Hebrews 6:16-20 and Hebrews 9:16-17. In Hebrews 6, the author asserts that God had to ratify the covenant unilaterally because there was no equal. The implication drawn from this is that we have a sure hope because Jesus became the eternal high priest. This theme of Jesus as the eternal high priest is developed in Hebrews 9 in terms of Jesus’ blood replacing the blood of the tabernacle sacrifices, and Jesus’ ministry replacing the ministry of the High priest as the offer-er. One of the implications drawn here is about salvation, which is linked to Jesus’ second appearance. The troubling verses, 9:16-17, have usually been translated into a “legal will” or “last will and testament” context, even though the surrounding, and indeed all of the other references in Hebrews, are to the Mosaic or to the New Covenant. Scott Hahn (in “Covenant, Cult, and the Curse-of-death: diathaykay in Hebrews 9:15-22” in Hebrews:Contemporary Methods-New Insights,” edited by Gabriella Gelardini) insists that the “covenant” sense be restored, and shows how this leads back to a curse-imprecation of death to oneself, made by God, to ratify the covenant. If he is right, then the sense of 9:16-17 is that God promises to die if the covenant is broken. We are in Trinitarian territory now, not actually the messy humanity of the death of Jesus, but instead the incomprehensible mystery of the God-man Incarnate Word, where the Cross becomes the attestation of God’s infinite trustworthiness. What implications does this line of reasoning have for atonement theory? is a question I’m just beginning to consider.
Re: A post-modern approach?
At the risk of making this subject even more unwieldy, I would like to draw attention to two texts in Hebrews and think with you about what happens when they are put side by side. They are Hebrews 6:16-20 and Hebrews 9:16-17. In Hebrews 6, the author asserts that God had to ratify the covenant unilaterally because there was no equal. The implication drawn from this is that we have a sure hope because Jesus became the eternal high priest. This theme of Jesus as the eternal high priest is developed in Hebrews 9 in terms of Jesus’ blood replacing the blood of the tabernacle sacrifices, and Jesus’ ministry replacing the ministry of the High priest as the offer-er. One of the implications drawn here is about salvation, which is linked to Jesus’ second appearance. The troubling verses, 9:16-17, have usually been translated into a “legal will” or “last will and testament” context, even though the surrounding, and indeed all of the other references in Hebrews, are to the Mosaic or to the New Covenant. Scott Hahn (in “Covenant, Cult, and the Curse-of-death: diathaykay in Hebrews 9:15-22” in Hebrews:Contemporary Methods-New Insights,” edited by Gabriella Gelardini) insists that the “covenant” sense be restored, and shows how this leads back to a curse-imprecation of death to oneself, made by God, to ratify the covenant. If he is right, then the sense of 9:16-17 is that God promises to die if the covenant is broken. We are in Trinitarian territory now, not actually the messy humanity of the death of Jesus, but instead the incomprehensible mystery of the God-man Incarnate Word, where the Cross becomes the attestation of God’s infinite trustworthiness. What implications does this line of reasoning have for atonement theory? is a question I’m just beginning to consider.
Buried with Christ
From a covenant perspective, I don’t find it surprising that there is some rite that “connects” a new believer to the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
The Abrahamic covenant was sworn in the blood of animals, which both Abraham and God “touched.” Abraham slaughtered and arranged the animals, and God passed between their halves in the form of a smoking pot. The Mosaic covenant was sworn in the blood of an animal, which both the Israelites and God “touched.” Half the blood was poured on an altar to God, and the other half was diluted with water and sprinkled on the Israelites after they acquiesced to the covenant.
At the Last Supper Jesus identified the cup as his “blood of the covenant.” God certainly touched this covenant-oath blood as Jesus shed it; the question would be how would members of the new covenant “touch” this covenant blood? I take the answer to be symbolically, in identifying with Jesus in his death and resurrection.
Eternal life is a covenant promise found for the first time in the new covenant. Whereas the old covenant oaths probably meant something like “If I break this covenant, may it happen to me as it has happened to this animal,” in the new covenant the oath pictures the promises of suffering and of resurrection.
Chris
Re: Buried with Christ
I appreciate Chris’ take on the blood of the covenant which is meaningful only insofar as the other party (God and/or we) touches it. I like your take on the touching which apparently is very literal when it applies to God but when you come to the members of the new covenant touching the blood, you move to a symbolic level. It is no longer the physical touching but the symbolic touching of the blood.
I would suggest that when at the last supper Jesus identifies the bread and the wine to be his body and blood, that when we touch the wine in this case, we touch the blood of the covenant. The wine is Jesus’ blood. Jesus says it is his blood and it is. When we drink of the blood of the Christ, we have not only touched it, we have embodied it and The Life which is in the blood is in us.
Let’s not quickly jump to symbolic levels and rely always on our ability to identify with. Yes, this happens and ought to happen but it is not to be confused with the how we touch the blood of the covenant. When we touch, we use our tactile sense and not our mind or our intellect.
Re: Buried with Christ
I was thinking of baptism, where we die and rise with Christ. That rite is just as physical and symbolic as the Lord’s Supper.
as muslims, we believe and we expect the 2nd coming of Jesus
As muslims, we believe and we expect the 2nd coming of the Jesus to the eart. And we take it as a sign of the end times and golden Age which is mentioned in the Qur’an.As it is mentioned, we have no choice but to believe. Some circles take it as missionary moves but as a pure muslim, I only take it as a word of God.
Surah Al ‘Imran 55 is one of the verses indicating that Jesus (as) will come back:
When Allah said, “‘Isa, I will take you back and raise you up to Me and purify you of those who are disbelievers. And I will place the people who follow you above those who are disbelievers until the Day of Rising. Then you will all return to Me, and I will judge between you regarding the things about which you differed. (Surah Al ‘Imran: 55)
The statement in the verse, “And I will place the people who follow you above those who are disbelievers until the Day of Rising” is important. Here, there is reference to a group strictly adhering to Jesus (as) and who will be kept above the disbelievers until the Day of Judgement. Well, who are these adherents, then? Are they the disciples who lived in the time of Jesus or are they the Christians of today?
Before he was raised up to Allah, the followers of Jesus (as) were few. After his ascension, the essence of the religion degenerated rapidly. Furthermore, the people known as the disciples faced serious pressure throughout their lives. During the succeeding two centuries, having no political power, those Christians having faith in Jesus (as) were also oppressed. In this case, it is not possible to say that early Christians or their successors during these periods were physically superior to the disbelievers in the world. We might logically think that this verse does not refer to them.
When we look at the Christians of today, on the other hand, we notice that the essence of Christianity has changed a lot and it is quite different from what Jesus (as) originally brought to mankind. Christians embraced the perverted belief that suggests that Jesus (as) is the son of God and similarly held the doctrine of the trinity (The Father, Son and the Holy Spirit). In this case, it is flawed to accept the Christians of today as the adherents of Jesus (as). In many verses of the Qur’an Allah states that those having faith in the trinity certainly are disbelievers:
Those who say that the Messiah, son of Maryam, is the third of three are disbelievers. There is no god but One God. (Surat al-Ma’idah: 73)
In this case, the commentary of the statement, “And I will place the people who follow you above those who are disbelievers until the Day of Rising” is as follows: first, it is said that these people are the Muslims who are the only true followers of the authentic teachings of Jesus (as); second, it is said that these people are the Christians, whether or not they hold idolatrous beliefs, and that could be seen to be confirmed by the dominant position that nominal Christians hold on the earth today. However, both positions will be unified by the arrival of Jesus (as), since he will abolish the jizyah, meaning that he will not accept that Christians and Jews live with any other religion than Islam, and so will unite all the believers as Muslims.
Allah tells about the death of Jesus (as) in one verse in Surah Maryam as follows:
(‘Isa said,) Peace be upon me the day I was born, and the day I die and the day I am raised up again alive. (Surah Maryam: 33)
When we consider this verse together with Al ‘Imran 55, it indicates a very important truth. In the verse in Surah Al ‘Imran it is stated that Jesus (as) was raised up to the presence of Allah. No information is given in this verse about death or killing. Yet in Surah Maryam 33 information is given about the day when Jesus (as) will die. That second death can only be possible if Jesus (as) dies after returning to and living on earth. Only Allah knows for certain.
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