The Violence of Captialism and the Peace of the Cross (revised)

Monday, 23 February 2009

The Violence of Captialism and the Peace of the Cross (revised)
** Everyone's clarifying thoughts were very helpful. I see that I did not communicate my thoughts clearly enough. As such, I am reposting this follow-up that I hope makes clearer both what I am and saying and what I am not saying. Please leave some comments. I'd love to participate in this ongoing conversation with you! **

I do not mean to argue either for 'moral influence' of the Cross or against Substitutionary Atonement. As Kevin rightly noted, what I take issue with is penal S.A., which states that, on the Cross, Jesus took our punishment in order to appease an angry deity. So several of you have (rightly) questioned what place the Cross has in atonement theory if we reject penal S.A.

Jesus was absolutely a substitute for us on the Cross; this is well-supported by countless N.T. texts. The question is what kind of substitute? Penal S.A would have us believe that Jesus is the wrath-bearer - as though he's essentially jumping in front of God's bullet for us. As I explained in the previous note, I don't find this to be in keeping with the God of Scripture or the Distributive Justice we see the Prophets and Jesus bear witness to.

So what does that leave us? What does the Cross do? Any Christianity without the Cross is essentially Gnosticism (at best). Two things I want to affirm:
1. However we understand Sin, we must understand that it's effect on us makes us incapable of saving ourselves. Jesus cannot be just a good moral teacher or an example for us to follow (though he is both of those things), as several of you believed I was stating in my last post.
2. Whatever happened at the Cross (and in the Tomb on Resurrection Sunday) reversed the effects of Sin. (Trying to be as vague as possible) The Christ Event (death + resurrection) enables us to participate in God's Kingdom as new (re)creations.
Now, if that's true, how? How did the Cross do that? Here is my take:

          In the Garden, we chose Self-determination over Eternal Life. Simply put, we chose to take the power to set the rules, and it killed us. In the Christian vernacular, this choice to act as God is called Sin. Sin produces violence (Genesis 6), and violence produces death. Always. Violence is a product of our decision to place ourselves in the place of God (James 4:1-2). The OT established a temporary fix for this - the Temple Cult and the institution of Animal Sacrifice. And this system is pretty clearly based on some sort of Atonement theory (I'm not sure it's penal) - what goes on in the Temple serves to maintain the created order. In fact, this goes back to Genesis 15 and God's covenant with Abraham. They cut an animal in two and God walks between the pieces. Essentially, they were symbolically saying that if either party broke the covenant, they would be put to death. Thus we have a sort of fix in that we have animals who are substituted for humans (again, possibly penal-ly, possibly not). So in this system, we have violence done by humans that atones for violence done by humans.

          But Hebrews argues eloquently that even this system was inadequate. As N.T. Wright points out: Humans were meant to be the priests of creation. They were flawed, and so Israel was chosen to be priests of Humanity. But they were flawed, so the Levites were chosen to be priests of Israel. But they were flawed and so a High Priest was chosen even over them. But even he was flawed.

          And this is where Jesus comes in… God becomes a child of Abraham so that a child of Abraham can bear the death the covenant requires. He who had done no violence became the object of all of our violence. He absorbed the violence/sin/death into himself so that it might be ended. This is why the N.T. so consistently speaks of the Cross as the beginning of a new age. Jesus' death is once-and-for-all. In him, all of our Sin and Violence were brought to an end. He made peace with our violence. And so we must participate in his death. We must join him in the way he has opened up. Paul's admonitions to die with Christ make no sense in a Penal S.A. system - the whole point of Jesus' death then is so that we don't have to. But Paul recognizes that we are still fallen, still selfish, still violent. And so we must embrace Jesus' death as our own. He bore the consequences of our Selfish/Sinful choices - Violence and Death - so that we don't have to. He was not punished in our place. He died in our place. If he's protecting us from anything, it's from the consequences of our own choices (which is in the N.T., God's wrath - see Romans 1). But God's wrath is giving us what we ask for (and deserve), rather than what we need.

What we need is the Cross. What we need is Jesus. He is the only person who can free us from slavery to ourselves. He is the only person who can teach us how to live generous lives in imitation of him. Ultimately, Jesus' character is God's character. And what we see in Jesus is salvation, not wrath. What we see is Justice, not Retribution. What we see is Love.