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I find discussion on atonement interesting. The root is the Day of Atonement. A lamb is sacrificed and the blood used to cover the representation of human sin. The standard way of understanding this is that Jesus was the lamb and his blood covers us in a similar way that the blood of the lamb did. In the early Christian understanding sacrifice was needed for atonement and God sacrificed himself once for all.
If this is not atonement what is? How does it work otherwise?
As others have remarked it was a goat on the Day of Atonement, and it is to the Passover lamb that Jesus is compared. The Passover sacrifice was not regarded as an atoning sacrifice.
The wrath, the accountancy, the wrath arising from the lack of accountancy, is in human hearts. We also have to learn to live with that total love, and we have barely even started as a species, or indeed a faith community, with this huge task, having got totally caught up in accountancy.
Forgive us our debts, as we forgive those who are in debt to us.
OK. My personal injustices as a child really don't compare with the systemetic injustices we're talking about here, but I'm going to compare them anyway because they're the only solid (to me) peg I have to hang things on.
OK - I can relate to that.
What did I want to happen the peers who made my school days a misery? What would justice have looked like?
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No, what I really wanted (and would still want) would be for them to recognise the wrong they were doing, apologise - genuinely - and a future open up where they treated me as the valuable human being that I was and am rather than an object of derision to abuse for amusement, giving me the social life and friendships that should be normal for a child.
So that's the lens through which I have to see the question of justice. It's setting things how they should be, not just paying back.
Maybe I'm looking at this more impersonally (including in relation to my own experiences at school), but I don't see a distinction in kind between the personal and the societal. I hope for both rehabilitation and for a price to be paid for the societal harm they did.
The price they pay is seeing the futility of their activity. There was and is no point in harm, because it gains the harmer and the harmed nothing, in the end. Realising this, and how far it has taken them from where they belong, in God, is their punishment. Or at least, it's the first part. The second part is the task of getting to where they belong.
Fairness is far more than who gets a PlayStation. It goes to the very heart of theodicy IMO. Thinking about the worst thing that ever happened to me, the thing I struggle most with is how terribly unfair it feels (because so many stupid, wicked people didn't have to experience what I did). I do find comfort in the book of Job, which as I understand it, is the oldest book in the Bible. ISTM that the writer of Job is asking the question "is God fair?" I like the fact that the very first time someone sat down to write something about God, this is the question they were grappling with.
To me "unfair" never shakes the redolence of a child stamping its foot because its cousin got a Play Station and they only got a video game.
Perhaps the word “unfair” has become too associated with that kind of stamping of the foot?
A better word may be unjust. Human agape even at its best may not actually be all that close to the perfect agape that casts out fear.
There are examples of those who have lost a loved one in violent circumstances and yet been able to forgive those who so shockingly bereaved them. Those show me people who are further along the agape journey than I am.
@Hugal, I don't think anyone is saying that evangelical churches don't focus on the entirety of Christ's life and ministry - the Incarnation, his teachings, parables, miracles etc and his Passion, death and resurrection ...
It's more than the sacrificial and atoning aspects are understood within a particular penal and 'satisfaction' paradigm that can occlude other aspects at times.
I well remember a Christmas Day sermon by a Baptist minister in South Wales which rushed straight from the Nativity to 'a hill outside Jerusalem, three crosses ...'
If that was the case why wasn't Christ crucified as soon as he was born?
Don't get me wrong. I've heard some wonderful preaching and teaching on these things in Baptist and other circles.
Charismatic evangelicals in particular can be very strong of the resurrection too.
But it's what @Lamb Chopped and others have said about holding all these things together at once and indeed some of the OT 'foreshadowings' don't necessarily fit the paradigms we impose upon them.
I'm not against evangelicalism per se, it's just that it needs to pad itself out more and draw from a wider frame of reference, both Patristic I'd say, and indeed the broader Protestant traditions from which pietistic evangelicalism derives.
Equally, the rest of us can benefit from the oomph and vigour that the evangelicals bring to the table.
Yet, as you note, it is a connection to Christ and sacrifice is something that the Gospel accounts putting the Crucifixion at the time of Passover, and the writings of Paul, emphasise. The blood of the Passover Lamb marks us as the people of God, and we're delivered from death simply because of that identity. With a dash of reminding us that we're all family who gather together with a single Paschal lamb, and that is also integral to our identity as the people of God (and hence we're not even talking about our individual sins or acts of faith).
Picking up on this (and other posts from Alan Cresswell and Nick Tamen), it strikes me that trying to make sense of the atonement from the perspective of personal experience fails to take into account that God's covenant is with a people group, the people of God (rather than a collection of individuals). Similarly, the starting point for the consideration of justice in the atonement is justice for the people of God.
Possibly the biggest problem the Western church generally faces is that we have developed a theology of individual belief, and lost the sense of community as more than just individuals gathering together. That's in large part a reflection of how Western society has evolved. But, that's a different discussion to theories of atonement ... maybe that really is the elephant in the room.
I well remember a Christmas Day sermon by a Baptist minister in South Wales which rushed straight from the Nativity to 'a hill outside Jerusalem, three crosses ...'
That fits with Orthodox teaching as given in iconography. The icon of the Nativity shows Christ alone in a cave, wrapped in swaddling bands. This points directly to his burial alone in a cave tomb wrapped in a winding sheet.
I well remember a Christmas Day sermon by a Baptist minister in South Wales which rushed straight from the Nativity to 'a hill outside Jerusalem, three crosses ...'
That fits with Orthodox teaching as given in iconography. The icon of the Nativity shows Christ alone in a cave, wrapped in swaddling bands. This points directly to his burial alone in a cave tomb wrapped in a winding sheet.
Sure, but not in the way this bloke presented it.
But yes, I can see the point you are making and also have some sympathy with the Baptist minister. I just think he could have put a bit more 'filler' between the Nativity and the Crucifixion.
Comments
I'm wondering, more generally, what happens to the hunger or thirst for social justice in relation to this and some of the later posts on this thread.
Forgive us our debts, as we forgive those who are in debt to us.
OK - I can relate to that.
Maybe I'm looking at this more impersonally (including in relation to my own experiences at school), but I don't see a distinction in kind between the personal and the societal. I hope for both rehabilitation and for a price to be paid for the societal harm they did.
But maybe we're getting away from atonement.
Perhaps the word “unfair” has become too associated with that kind of stamping of the foot?
A better word may be unjust. Human agape even at its best may not actually be all that close to the perfect agape that casts out fear.
There are examples of those who have lost a loved one in violent circumstances and yet been able to forgive those who so shockingly bereaved them. Those show me people who are further along the agape journey than I am.
And justice is not the same as vengeance.
It's more than the sacrificial and atoning aspects are understood within a particular penal and 'satisfaction' paradigm that can occlude other aspects at times.
I well remember a Christmas Day sermon by a Baptist minister in South Wales which rushed straight from the Nativity to 'a hill outside Jerusalem, three crosses ...'
If that was the case why wasn't Christ crucified as soon as he was born?
Don't get me wrong. I've heard some wonderful preaching and teaching on these things in Baptist and other circles.
Charismatic evangelicals in particular can be very strong of the resurrection too.
But it's what @Lamb Chopped and others have said about holding all these things together at once and indeed some of the OT 'foreshadowings' don't necessarily fit the paradigms we impose upon them.
I'm not against evangelicalism per se, it's just that it needs to pad itself out more and draw from a wider frame of reference, both Patristic I'd say, and indeed the broader Protestant traditions from which pietistic evangelicalism derives.
Equally, the rest of us can benefit from the oomph and vigour that the evangelicals bring to the table.
That fits with Orthodox teaching as given in iconography. The icon of the Nativity shows Christ alone in a cave, wrapped in swaddling bands. This points directly to his burial alone in a cave tomb wrapped in a winding sheet.
Yes. The loss of a proper sense of community is a distortion. “They were together and had all things in common, sharing with the needy”.
However historic it was, not so much now.
Sure, but not in the way this bloke presented it.
But yes, I can see the point you are making and also have some sympathy with the Baptist minister. I just think he could have put a bit more 'filler' between the Nativity and the Crucifixion.
He didn't refer to the resurrection either.