My Thoughts on Atonement and Christus Victor

before we talk about atonement, we must first talk about who Jesus is and how i view him. to use Marcus Borg's idea, there is two Jesi, the pre-Easter Jesus and the post-Easter Jesus.

The pre-Easter would be the historical dude that you could have videotaped. He was Jewish mystic, healer, wisdom teacher, and prophet of the kingdom of God; he proclaimed the immediacy of access to God and God's kingdom; he challenged the domination systems of his time, was executed by the authorities, and then vindicated by God (Borg, 303).

In the decades after Easter, his followers spoke of his significance with the most exalted language they knew: son of God, Messiah, Lord, Light of the world, ect. This is the community's language about him. I, like Borg, do not think that these two need to be separated, and in fact, you can't separate them as they are inherent in the gospel narratives. the gospels are both testimony and memory; history as well as parabolic language (language of parable, metaphoric language). Thus the real Jesus is one who lived 2,000 years ago and was a Galilean peasant-teacher and the one who has shaped the lives of millions of people, many of whom claim to have met him and have a personal relationship with.

Both matter, both are true.

This would be the Alexandrian view of Jesus where he is both human and divine, but the divine overrides the humanity, just as it did in the gospels and in the historical community that called themselves Christian.


with that straight, i then head to atonement. As stated before, i used to throw people under the bus who subscribed to sacrificial atonement. i still think it's bad theology and bad history as it elevates one understanding and way of viewing Jesus over the rest. the substitutionary atonement i still have no room for as i think it's Vampire Christianity; interested in Jesus' blood and little else. I don't like sacrificial as it is often understood as God demanding death and thus having it be a part of God's plan for the salvation of everyone else. this misses the humanity of Jesus as well as the life he was willing to sacrifice for his beliefs, his passion which drove him to say the things he said and get him killed by the authorities of his time. they don't crucify people for no reason, they were enemies of the state, politically dangerous!

The substitutionary atonement model i understand now more than i did. i think becoming a parent has helped with this view. yet i don't see Jesus as a doormat or coward. He was akin to the archetype of the forceful, yet nonviolent, organizer. A grass-roots agitator calling for equity and fairness for all. The type that gets the gentry all riled up and the rich nervous. A force that needs removing or one we need to co-opt and normalize.

I also disagree with Christus Victor because i do not have angels or demons in my metaphysic. I have God with no devil. we do the job of temptation very well on our own with our own biological framework to have a dude in a red suit running around. Humans are inescapably subject to the temptation of evil. We get into trouble when we de-humanize or de-prioritize others and put ourselves first.

When we deny that we are captive, we conjure notions of social progress, romantic optimism, manifest destiny, all forms of human pride that overlook our fragility and limitation. yet on the other extreme, which Christians have been labeled more often than not, we capitulate to the tragic and doomed outlook on life. We lose hope.

The resurrection, whether understood metaphorically or literally, is resistance to the powers of death, a refusal to allow death to have the final word, which is where I connect to the Christus Victor model. The power of the cross subverts it's own nature as an instrument of death, harmful and oppressive, and instead becomes an intellectual, spiritual, and communal resource for radical change. God's presence is then with those who suffer, telling them that they aren't to be afraid anymore. No worries about death, that isn't the worst thing that could happen to you. The cross and resurrection are a two fold attack to the masochism of submissive suffering and the pride of unchecked triumphalism. it boldly reclaims common humanity, in this rubric there is no room for the other.

In this way, I'm Christus Victor. Death cannot defeat life, life will always carry on in some form. yet it always changes, it is impermanent. life adapts, grows, and leaves us behind, yet our children will go on and their children after them. that's why it is good to plan to the 7th generation in your actions. yet when we do act, we do so not fearing death yet understanding our limitations. In Jesus, the powerful tried to kill him and it didn't work. the worst evil could do was try to kill us and it never can kill us all. even when we die and we finally know what lies beyond, i believe we will all be welcomed in. this is where apokatastasis comes in. because i see God through Jesus, i see that even the forsaken, those outcasted and assured a place in hell are welcomed. the cross overturns all of our conventions. this is what it means when the gospels read "he died for the sins of the world" or "his life was ransom for many" (paraphrases from john and mark). as to what heaven looks like, that's as far as my metaphysic goes. heaven, yes, hell if we chose it and be it of our own making.



the problem then becomes when the church seeks cultural convention and prejudice over the radical message Jesus so passionately died for. this doesn't mean that i'm not patriotic, i'm just not nationalistic. i'm a Christian not because i'm after a ticket to heaven, or need to meet requirements for salvation. no, i'm after a community that seeks transformation of themselves into Jesus. I'm after a better world. a more just world, a more equitable world.

we are building up the new world. resistance is victory, defeat is impossible.

Bibliography


Bond, Susan. The Trouble with Jesus.


Borg, Marcus. Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary.


Weaver, J. Denny. The Nonviolent Atonement

STAY IN YOUR BOX CHRISTIAN!

In 2004, CBS rejected an ad from the United Church of Christ, saying its message of inclusivity was "too controversial." Now CBS is planning to run a pro-life ad sponsored by Focus on the Family during the Super Bowl.



there's also this one too:



here i think we have the big ol' fallacy of "No True Scotsman." The UCC can't be Christian because we all know Christians are exclusive. They all are pro-life, conservative, and believe the same thing. WRONG!

Why then do some expressions of Christianity get more access than others? I keep coming up against the same objections to my theology time and time again, namely that it doesn't sound too "Christian." when pressed further, most ppl will articulate that i don't match up to the conservative Christian stance, since that is the percieved majority.

Funny thing is, the Pew Forum ran a survey that found

"the spiritual roots of the religious right and left to two broader faith communities. On the right, white evangelical Christians comprise 24% of the population and form a distinct group whose members share core religious beliefs as well as crystallized and consistently conservative political attitudes.


On the left, a larger share of the public (32%) identifies as "liberal or progressive Christians." But unlike evangelicals, progressive Christians come from different religious traditions and disagree almost as often as they agree on a number of key political and social issues."

Whoa?! Progressives outnumber evangelicals? Well, that doesn't make sense! Well, we know that every Christian believes the bible is the Word of God and reads it literally.

On matters of faith, fully 62% of white evangelicals say the Bible is the actual word of God, to be taken literally. In contrast, only 35% of the public including just 24% of Catholics and 17% of white mainline Protestants share this literal view of the scriptures, with most believing that although the Bible is God's word, not everything in it is literally true. (from the same survey)

Well butter my butt and call me biscut! The majority believes what I do, that the bible isn't COMPLETELY the word of God but contains it. As Karl Barth put it "when we read the bible we aren't reading THE word of God, we're reading FOR it." This is what it means when ppl answer that the Bible is the "Living Word of God." Much different than a static literal "Word of God." stance. This view has also been backed up last year as I and others in my class had to do church surveys for our "Church and the Human Sciences" class. Some took theological inventories as part of this survey, and they too found that churches largely view the bible like this... this comes from an American Baptist, two UCCers and a Methodist. My inlaws church also did a survey like this and they posted the results!

Well, we know all Christians are dogmatic and completely tribal, excluding all other faiths. The Pew Forum also found that"Many Americans Not Dogmatic About Religion" crap! They even found that Most Mainline Protestants Say Society Should Accept Homosexuality and that they believe "Other Faiths Can Lead to Eternal Life."

So why then, with all this "objective evidence" (HI SABIO ;-)) do these stereotypes still exist? Well, because of access to media thanks to morons like those at CBS who only want a pre-packaged "Pop" understanding of Christianity. Also because the more conservative segment of the religion would rather call the liberals "not Christian at all" as evidenced by this post by Shane Vander Hart. That argument makes me very very sad yet I hear it time and time again from the right seeking to pull the rug out from under their own brethren.

There is not just one view on Christianity, but multiple streams, theologies, views, denominations, and debates that have been going on since the founding of this religion. I like what a character in Defiance states about Judaism and what they traditionally do on Passover: "We will sit around and argue just has we have been doing for thousands of years." I like this idea! If you look closely enough, you'll find that every religion is doing this. That's one claim I can stand by. Even Islam, which claims that the Koran is the indisputible word of God has denominations, namely the Sunni and the Shi'ite. We can throw in the Sufi's as well, crazy mystics are always muddy'n the religious waters ;-)

I fit directly into a particular sense of what it means to be Christian. I'm a Mainline Protestant who used to be Catholic (largely Jesuit trained!). Science as always been held in high regard, the Bible has always contained stories... even though I once thought Jonah was literally swallowed by the whale. Now that I'm older I can use form criticism and see what is myth and what is not. I don't fit into a conservative understanding of Christianity nor do i have to, as it is not the only understanding out there.... so please stop acting like it is.

Am I Wry? No.

Time spent here in the hospital is making me an atheist.


Not in the classic "there is no God or gods just as there is no pink unicorns" sense but in the fact that I don't believe in religion. I read a lot of Robert Capon last summer and found this quote:

"Christianity is not a religion. Christianity is the proclamation of the end of religion, not of a new religion, or even of the best of all religions. ...If the cross is the sign of anything, it's the sign that God has gone out of the religion business and solved all of the world's problems without requiring a single human being to do a single religious thing" (The Mystery of Christ ... and Why We Don't Get It, p. 62)

I'm frustrated that more and more people i meet are lamenting "why did this happen to me? I'm a believer!" I don't think bullets, cars, or clogging arteries stop to ask whether one is Christian or not. It's a matter of physics, health and genetics, and spacial location, not a matter of theology. I believe in God and I believe in grace. I also believe in the incarnation of that God of Grace that is with us always... and esp. when we spread the "good news." But we'd sooner accept a God that we are fed to than a God we are fed by. The God presented by Jesus is one that feeds us. That is the God of Christianity. A God that doesn't punish, impeade our free-will, or one that doesn't shame us. I spend a lot of time talking with patients on these three subjects.

Now, sure there are religious elements to the Christian faith. There are some rituals and practices that help us in our daily decernments. They in no way change God, they are not some magic ritual to do when you want to get your way like some petulent child. You shouldn't pray for God to give you that Flatscreen TV, that Mac notebook, or ho-ho-ho, that video gaming system. God isn't your cosmic bellhop. Prayer changes the person who prays. it lets you know that you swim in grace, every second of every day. we are awash in something we can't fully see or comprehend... like fish in water. Like Jason recently stated, "Spirituality is intangible. Religion tries to make it tangible – the expression of the intangible."

So the 3,000 plus dividing Protestant denominations are false boundaries. They only demarcate a focus, an emphasis on social justice, or healing, or sacrament, or organ vs. folk vs praise music, whatever. We can't continue to let that divide us. I'm getting sick of those who do. I can't believe in a religion that divides people. so maybe I'm not an atheist, just really frustrated with people's crap. Really tired of hearing the "why me God?" because that's the wrong question to ask. God is always there, grace ever flowing. God doesn't fit our power-dynamic though. Love is more powerful than anything, it's much harder to do as you have to work at it, keep the relationships going and be honest. It's easier to lie and go to war.

I'm looking forward to 12-15. I've gotten a lot out of the CPE experience. I'm clearer now on how I operate as a pastor and how I think. I'm clear now that I need to serve a parish as I crave that long term relationship and ability to follow up. it's been a fantastic and practical experience. i'm just feeling overwhelmed here at the last few weeks. but i know i'll find the energy to carry on.

headline taken from this song by Mew:

A Fallen Letter

Dear Fellow Christians,

okay... once and for all! there was never an GARDEN OF EDEN! there were never just two ppl, an adam or an eve. scientifically the earth is billions of years old. God is very old. so quit acting like we'll return to a perfect state.

if you want a fall, it'd be when the first multi-celled organism ate another multi-cellular organism. it may have been when the single-celled organism ate another one to become a multi-cellular organism! hell! i dunno! what i do know is we can't keep believing in a fall or original sin or baptism washing away.

i heard a devout Christian say that they really don't like how their baby is filled with original sin because it cries all the time. WTF?! why not just get it baptised? then the original sin would wash off and you'd have no more crying.. that didn't work?! baby is still crying? prolly cause it's not a sin! it's the only way the baby can tell you what it needs. this type of moronic thought is what is driving ppl away from Christianity.

also... let's rearrange our thought on the fall.. cause apparently ppl like this idea. so how about we start out as a little baby, we're selfish because we have no concept of other ppl... much like Adam and Eve. only thinking of themselves, unaware that their actions could have consquences. we make mistakes, we do what is forbidden, and sure.. we sin.. but we LEARN! we GO AND SIN NO MORE!

we fall UPWARDS. we go from a place of selfish innocence to a place of spiritual maturity. in our spiritual maturity we see the bigger picture (albeit not the whole one) and we trust that we are guided, loved, and sustained by God. so much so that we are able to forgive and love our enemies.

what do we think about that? is that something we can do with?

respectfully,

-L

A Parable and Rant

Parable: an old lady is in the grocery store shopping. she has a walker, so her progress is very slow. she creeps around and gets the things she needs and puts them into her small basket which hangs from her walker. she heads to the checkout and is greeted by a young mother who is ahead of her in the check out line.

"Ohh..." says the young woman. "I see you have a walker. Can I pray for you?"

The old lady agrees and the young woman launches into a prayer that asks Jesus to help the old lady's ailments fade and restore her youth and help her walk again making sure to command the body cells to get their act together "in Jesus' name."

The young woman then turns, pays for her groceries, and goes home. The old woman then struggles to check out, lugs her bags to the bus stop, and heads back home alone.

What good was done in Jesus' name?

Rant: it seems as though we Christians have a choice. we can either be Dogmatic or Doctrinal. either Catholic and embrace sexism, patriarchy, and oral-tradition or Protestant and be narrow-minded, rigid, and literal. both are topped with ego, racism, homophobia, and a colonialist mindset. this seems to be the perception others outside the faith have. i call this the American Pop-Christianity.

these are two options, but simplistic and flawed ones. so what are we to do about it?

KNOW YOUR HISTORY. take what is good, leave the bad. Luther had a good thing going with the emphasis on grace, and Table Talk is just straight funny! But leave the stubbornness and esp. the Tract on the Jews and their Lies. view it, see it, and learn from it.

Being a Christian is not about wishing someone well. It's about love and service to all people at all times. Let's live like it.

i don't care about your view of the afterlife. i don't care about your politics. i don't care about your view of the bible. none of these things matter in this instance. it is simply, if you say you're a Christian, stop being a jerk and start spreading the Good News (and if necessary, use words).