This semester at Varsity I'm studying a paper called "Salvation in Christian Perspective". It looks at the whole idea of salvation within the Christian faith. What is salvation? Does it apply to everyone, or only to some people, and, if only to some, then who are the some? Who is saved? From what are they saved? How are they saved? And what's it all got to do with something that happened 2000 years ago? It's hard, fascinating and often frustrating stuff.
Part of the reason for this is that the New Testament itself seems to give us a variety of answers to some of these questions. The scholars talk of "models of atonement". There is, for instance, the model of the cross as victory. That on the cross a final battle was being waged between God in Christ and the devil, and that Christ was the victor, proven by his resurrection. He was victorious over sin, death and the devil. That's one model, and there is support for it in the Scriptures.
Other models focus on the judgment that sin brings on humanity. We are estranged from God because of our sin. Sin is so awful in the sight of the holy God that he cannot bear to look upon us. A penalty must be paid but we are incapable of paying it so Jesus pays it for us. He literally redeems us, buys our freedom, by his sacrificial death. That is another model – or a group of models – for which there is clear authority in the Scriptures.
Here's one more. It is said that in his life and death Jesus sets the example of the perfect human life. We look at him and are inspired to follow his example of love, no matter what the personal cost may be.
Well, how do we evaluate these models? One way is to ask ourselves what each model says about God. Is God involved in the model at all? Some critics suggest, for example, that the first and third models leave God out of the equation. In the victory model it sounds as if God's hands are tied. He wants to be reconciled with his creation but because of our sin he can't be. So his Son has to rescue him from that conundrum by dealing with our sin, for God's sake as much as our own. That can't be right, can it?
A similar criticism is sometimes made of the model of Christ as supreme example. If Christ does all the work here, what role does God have? And if we answer, ah, but Christ is God, then we can ask, how then can he give us mere human beings an example and expect us to be able to follow it?
Which leaves the middle model – the one that shows God as deeply offended by our human sin and demanding the payment of the debt we owe to him. This model has a number of variations but basically it puts justice, God's justice, at the top of the tree. It is said that God could not simply forgive us because that would be inconsistent with his justice. He had to find a way of forgiveness that at the same time meets the requirements of justice. His solution was to send his Son to take upon himself the sins of the world, to suffer death as the penalty for those sins, and then to forgive all those who pleaded Christ's death in their own defence.
That last approach has had centre stage, at least in Western theology, for many centuries now. It is the classical evangelical approach. We are saved by the blood – the sacrificial death - of Christ. But there have always been those who find that type of understanding repugnant. It seems to show, not a God of love, but a God of justice. Not a God of mercy and forgiveness, but an accountant God demanding payment in full of outstanding debts.
Worse still, it is said, it shows a violent God. A God who demands blood, and who is even prepared to go to the ends of killing his own Son to get it. Given our own human propensity for violence, including ghastly child abuse, do we really want a God like that?
And so the search is on for a model of atonement that does not involve divine violence; and one of those involved in this search is a Mennonite theologian called, J Denny Weaver. I don't know much about the Mennonites, but the one thing I do know about them is their commitment to pacifism – they are a peace church with a long and proud record of opposition to war. So we shouldn't be surprised that Dr Weaver is seeking what he calls a non-violent atonement.
And in his book of that name he gets of to a promising start. He reminds us that it is a fundamental teaching of the Christian faith that Jesus is the full revelation of God. If we want to know what God is like, we look at Jesus. God is like Christ, as a former Archbishop of Canterbury has famously put it, and in him there is no unchristlikeness at all.
So far so good. And, says Weaver, we look at the manner of Christ's life, his teaching and his death and we find that he is throughout thoroughly non-violent. He never resorted to violence in his own defence; he never used violence to overcome opposition or to achieve his own ends; and, of course, he taught his disciples to follow in his non-violent footsteps. Turn the other cheek, forgive over and over again, and love your enemies.
Again, all this sounds right. So, concludes Weaver, if Jesus is himself non-violent, the God whom he fully reveals must also be non-violent. We must therefore reject any model of atonement that shows God using or demanding any form of violence, including violence against his own Son. Jesus' death on the cross was, purely and simply, a criminal outrage committed by a bunch of human thugs protecting their own power. It was not willed or sanctioned in any way by God.
Great stuff – and very appealing! But as always in theology there is a problem in all this. What Weaver says about Christ's teaching is true, but it's only half the truth; and to see the other half we only have to think about his so-called judgment parables. And we only have to look at today's gospel reading. The blunt fact is that most of what we are told in the New Testament about God's wrath and judgment we learn from the gospels; not from the tough-minded St Paul, as his critics often complain, but from Jesus himself.
It was Jesus who told us, for example, the story of the unforgiving servant. Remember that guy? He was forgiven a huge debt by his master, but then insisted on the payment of a much smaller debt owed to him. When the master found out he was so angry with him he threw him in prison, revoked his waiver of the debt, and told the man he could rot in jail until he repaid every last cent. And what does Jesus say at the end of this story: This is how my heavenly father will treat each of you unless you forgive one another from your heart.
And then there is today's gospel reading. What are we to make of that? One commentator goes so far as to describe it as one of Jesus' mission statements. Jesus explains why he has come: I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled. What sort of image does that conjure up for us? Not a warm glow in a Yunca helping to overcome a brisk Otago winter, surely, but a raging bush fire sweeping across thousands of acres. It is an image of judgment.
Jesus has come to show us the way to God, and to warn us that the opposite way leads from God. It leads to disaster. Just as our experts tell us that our bad diets lead to diabetes and other health problems, and other experts tells us that our affluent lifestyle leads to environmental degradation, so Jesus is warning us that our damaged spiritual life leads away from God to a hell of our own making.
And, he says, the signs are all around us. What are those signs? Do we really need to have them spelt out for us before we recognise the spiritual malaise that is growing in this country? Increase in crime, in addiction, in depression and other mental illness, in teenage pregnancy and abortion, in pornography, in racial and ethnic tensions, in gross materialism? Are they not signs that something is seriously wrong with the path we're on? As the verse immediately following today's reading says: Why don't you judge for yourselves what is right?
Of course, the question remains, what has all this got to do with the cross? Well, we're only half way through the course. If we do discover the answer to that in the second half, I'll let you know in a later sermon.
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