At Church a couple of months ago, I had an enlightening conversation with a preacher who I admire greatly, who told me that he spent large amounts of his life ‘on the edge’ of the Church for his inability to reconcile certain Christian doctrine with his Christian instincts. He stated that he could never accept the concept of ‘Penal Substitutionary Atonement’, the idea that Christ was punished in the place of the sinners of the world, in order to satisfy a wrathful God, to whom we are so unacceptable and inferior that he demands a cosmic punitive justice, which can only be met through the sacrificing of his son. I had not, until this moment, considered the atonement at any greater level than I needed for A-Level Religious Studies, yet his objection (characteristically considered and thoughtful) seemed to be valid, in spite of the apparent ubiquitousness of this interpretation of Jesus’ death. This interaction, and my subsequent reading of Richard Rohr’s writings on the atonement in The Universal Christ, led to a deeper reflection on the meaning of the phrase spoken from every pulpit in the world: “Jesus Christ died for us.”
What is so difficult to accept about Penal Substitutionary Atonement is simply that it appears so cruel! How are we so irredeemably evil and flawed that God must brutally sacrifice his only son as a last resort to save us from a terrible fate? Yes, you may accuse me of being too arrogant and prideful to accept my own flaws, but my belief in an infinitely loving creator does not lead me to the conclusion that God is a distant and violent overlord who not only set humans up to be deeply sinful and irreversibly condemned, but then required the death of his son to ‘pay off’ the violence that he should be exerting against us, as a consequence for said sinfulness. I suspect that doubt in the validity of Penal Substitutionary Atonement is more widespread in congregations than one might think, because it seems almost impossible to reconcile the unbounded love of God with a model of the atonement that reduces Jesus of Nazareth’s role in history to a gentleman’s agreement between God and humanity that we are not to face eternal damnation. Yet, this is the standard Christian doctrine of the atonement, and has been in the West for centuries.
In the 11th century, legendary theologian Anselm penned Cur Deus Homo? (Why Did God Become a Human?), in which he claimed that a price must be paid to God the Father in order to restore his honour, which we had blighted through our immorality. If you are thinking that this sounds like the theology of a man heavily influenced by monarchy, patriarchy, and the feudal system, then you would be correct. Pre-Anselm Christians, and even groups who opposed these ideas in the years after the Reformation, such as the Franciscans, would be befuddled by the modern evangelicals who view Penal Substitutionary Atonement as a key pillar of doctrine, or by the widespread presence of this view in mainline churches. Regardless of whether the view is correct or not, we must first acknowledge the mistake of enshrining one view of the atonement across modern Christendom when the consensus for the first half of Christian history was nowhere near as unanimous. We must also acknowledge that this view of the atonement is responsible for programming countless well-meaning Christians to believe that they are serving and appeasing an angry and punitive God, not one that is eternally loving! God is not like an abusive parent or employer, whereby one must consistently pay imaginary debts to bring honour to our superior, or else we shall have shame brought upon us. God is the eternal and universal force of love that binds together the universe through his presence in every atom of creation, not the overlord who cannot forgive us without the cleansing effect of Jesus’ sacrifice. I ask you to consider this last point very carefully. God cannot forgive us without Jesus’ sacrifice. How dedicated are we to maintaining the influence of archaic and authoritarian theologies that we will readily accept the premise that God cannot forgive? It is inconceivable.
Not only is Penal Substitutionary Atonement irreconcilable with a forgiving and universal God, but it is an insult to the transformative role of Jesus of Nazareth in history. If his death on the cross is a one-time redeeming event that constitutes his primary purpose on earth, then he is nothing but a sacrifice, and we need not have any more than his final three days on earth in order to appreciate him. Never mind the lamb of God, we may as well have had a literal lamb! However, we know that Christ is much more. He is a wonderful moral teacher, a truly transformative and eternal power, and he can be seen and embodied in every element of creation. He brings about salvation, not in a singular, punitive, one-time event, but through his transforming lessons for society and history. This is the aspect of his nature that we lose use to hell-centred theology and the scramble for salvation. The Protestant idea of free salvation is undoubtedly correct, but only in the sense that God’s unbounded love and grace is extended to all, free of conditions, no exceptions, no takebacks, allowing us to build a world whereby this divine love is showered upon all people through human channels. My regular readers will know that I don’t view salvation as humanity being saved from eternal torment in another dimension in the afterlife, but in our constant engagement in fulfilling God’s intentions through transforming our imperfect world to avoid a ‘hell on earth’. As James Baldwin said,
“Salvation is not flight from the wrath of God, it is accepting and reciprocating the love of God”
Jesus’ death on the cross is not a one-time pass out of hell, it is a cosmic act of powerlessness which calls on all of us to give ourselves willingly to others, empty ourselves out for the causes of love and peace, and imitate this act of supremely radical nonviolence in the face of injustice. Christ is the centre of the Christian world and life, but the Penal Substitutionary model prompts us to focus only on the final few hours of Jesus’ life, and its significance in ‘saving’ us from a fate that could only be cooked up by a tyrannical God, preventing us from focusing on his life in its totality. Richard Rohr summarised the negative consequences of our transactional view of the atonement in The Universal Christ:
“This interpretation has kept us from a deep and truly transformative understanding of both Jesus and Christ. Salvation becomes a one-time transactional affair between Jesus and his Father, instead of an ongoing transformational lesson for the human soul and for all of history.”
In essence, if we insulate ourselves from the true effects of the Gospel by subscribing to a God who cannot even love his own creation without an act of violence, we lose our ability to truly imitate Christ in every aspect of our lives. Our religion is not a transaction, but a transformation. John Wesley called this lifelong process being “perfected in love.”
‘So, if Jesus doesn’t bring salvation (in the sense of avoiding hell), has it always existed?’
Yes.
I mulled over this question for an evening myself, conditioned already by the masses and masses of literature and theology which promote the Penal Substitutionary view, the countless hymns that postulate ‘Christ alone’ as the single source of our salvation, and the sermons from even the most progressive of ministers who seemingly accept Penal Substitution as sacred dogma. It seemed to be controversial, or taboo, or un-Christian to suggest that Jesus’ primary purpose was something other than helping us escape from a nasty fate, even as someone who doesn’t believe in hell! But is it controversial to say that the love of God existed before 33AD? Even the most cursory look at a timeline or map of history shows us that Jesus’ time on earth, and the two-thousand-odd years after it, is a minor portion of human history and development. To suggest that all creatures were condemned to hell until God’s price for human sin was negotiated (with himself) around the time of Jesus of Nazareth is frankly preposterous, creating a truly cold and tyrannical God.
Christianity instead carved out a unique and radical vision of God. It is something entirely revolutionary, far removed from that of ancient religion. In times gone by, humans had sacrificed their children, their animals, and their crops in order to appease an angry, punitive, authoritarian, institutionalised, and entirely anthropomorphised idea of God. In Christ, God gives himself to us, in both his incarnation in a human man and in the Eucharist. This is a redemptive and transforming act, reverting the course of our previous relationship to God. In a punitive understanding of the cross, and in creating an evil tyrant God, we serve to enable the power that crucified Christ, rather than the God who came to earth and reconciled himself to us. Richard Rohr identifies this as embodying the healing ministry of Jesus, whereby his miraculous acts of physical and social healings are an indication of his reconciliatory and restoring role in history, repairing man’s relationship to God not through the same blood and violence as ancient religion, but through willingly offering himself up for us.
Christ giving himself to us is not an act of saving us from a terrible punishment, but the highest and most perfect imaginable example of divine love, self-sacrifice and nonviolence, which we are called to reflect. Any theology of the cross must be a liberating theology of the poor, which sees Christ in every criminal on the hill at Golgotha, reflects God’s unbounded divine love on all people, and witnesses God brutalised and trampled upon by empire, power, and evil. The ‘moral example’ model of the atonement can sometimes be oversimplified, losing the historical significance of Christ’s realigning of our relationship to God from sacrificial and punitive (based on human justice) to one based on grace and love (God’s justice). However, there is no doubt that Christ’s death on the cross is a call to action for those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matthew 5:6), and a message of solidarity to those who are persecuted and crucified.
We must see God giving himself to us in Christ, bearing the load of our sufferings, experiencing the pain and oppression suffered by humanity.
We must see God’s radical vision of grace, mercy, and service.
We must reflect in our own lives the unbounded and self-sacrificial love of Christ, as shown in the cross.
Thank you. I needed to read this. It really does change the motivations of my faith and discipleship when I view it this way.