Editor’s Note: The following essay is the eighth in a series dealing with topics of interest and importance to Presbyterians. Author Johnson explains: “The report from the General Assembly Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church provides us both the occasion and the urgency for theological dialogue within the PC(USA). This and succeeding essays are offered as a constructive effort in that direction.”
The work of Christ for our redemption (atonement) is another place where the current divisions within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) beg for a better way forward, for three reasons. (1) The current Modernist-Pietist Church milieu has narrowed the work of Christ largely to the role of example. (2) Many people today put two atonement ideas into false and unnecessary competition with each other. (3) The “classical” view of atonement, neglected by both sides but deep within the Bible and the Reformed tradition, offers a powerful way to reconfigure the total work of Christ for our redemption. This essay explains these assertions.
Modernism-Pietism (1650-1950/present) talks about Christ, but its main concern is for the benefits we humans receive from redemption. For Pietism, Jesus is primarily a means of our salvation. One side talks about his moral life, his deeds of love and mercy, his innocent sufferings, and his teachings about God as a way of showing us how to live. The other side talks about his sinless life, his persecution and sufferings, and his painful death on the cross as the expiation for our sins. Both sides agree, however: the benefits come when Christ enters our hearts and dwells there by faith. With Christ in us working through us, we become the hands and feet of Christ to do God’s work. Christ (or the kingdom of God, or the Spirit) is incarnate in us just as God is incarnate in Christ. Our redemption, that is, takes place by the incarnation of Christ in us.
The incarnation of Christ in us poses an unresolved question at the heart of Pietism from its beginnings until now. What happens to us when we are saved? With Christ dwelling in us, are we united with his divinity and so are divinized? OR, are we united with his humanity, the new humanity created in him, the image of God restored by him, and so are humanized? It makes no difference to say, “both.” The ambiguity over this question has led to some of the worst distortions of the Gospel in the Modern period.
Presbyterians are rightly wary of a divinized humanity, apart from Jesus. Like Calvin, our built-in antennas pick up any signals of idolatry. We are typically annoyed by the self-righteousness of some church members and appalled by the public pretensions, abuses, and scandals of high-profile Christian ministers and TV evangelists over the last 30 years. While Presbyterians are not likely to go for the divinizing option within Pietism, we still have to deal with the apparent success of it in some current, popular movements and congregations.
We are much less guarded about the possibilities of an ideal humanity. The PCUSA Book of Order, Chapter 3 on the Church’s mission, says openly that the Christian community is “the provisional demonstration of what God intends for all of humanity” (G-3.0203). And Presbyterians, too, at times talk about being Christ-like, as if the aim of the Christian life is to make us morally good. Jesus Christ thus becomes an ideal or an example of moral perfection for us to attain. In fact, the Pietist concept and practice of sanctification fits well with the Modernist-Enlightenment notion of the perfectibility of the human in time.
Either way, the work of Christ for our redemption is seriously diminished. If we are divine like him, Jesus Christ is no longer uniquely divine, and he becomes for us mainly an example of how to live the divine life, such as when people speak about a spark of divine goodness in everyone.
Similarly, if Jesus humanizes us by his perfect humanity, he does not need to be more than an ideal of moral or relational perfection. Above all, Jesus doesn’t have to be divine to accomplish this result, only divinely appointed and inspired. He doesn’t have to be a savior or lord either, if we can manage the human condition ourselves with just the help of a good example. So we should not be surprised when we hear increasing doubts about Jesus’ unique divinity, even about divinity itself. Nor should we be surprised to hear doubts about Jesus’ unique humanity, since other heroic figures might be just as useful to our human fulfillment.
Jesus Christ is more than a useful means of redemption. His divinity makes his human life, death, and resurrection an act of God for our redemption. His humanity gives God access to our humanity right down to the very dregs of the human condition. As the very human Jesus, God experiences human life in all its ambiguity, vulnerability, suffering, and finally death–the ultimate separation from all that is alive, beautiful, meaningful, or beloved. As the very human Jesus, God takes on sin at its ugliest, evil at its worst, plus the tragic consequences of sin for human life. The radical significance of the Trinity is that the human Jesus is bound to God as family members are bound to each other: Jesus is to God as son is to father, and the two share the same Spirit. God’s Trinitarian experience of our humanity in turn is the key to our human experience of God (Moltmann).
Running against the Pietist stream–united with Christ by God’s work of redemption, we humans participate in Christ’s divinity without ourselves becoming divine. United with Christ by God’s work of redemption, we Christians participate in the human righteousness of Christ and in the image of God restored in his humanity without embodying, controlling, or dispensing that righteousness or image as our own possession. Once we have tasted this fellowship in Christ–abiding with God and God abiding with us–we cannot get enough of it!
What is the total work of Christ for our redemption? Three biblical views of atonement stand out as primary, each one aligning with specific parts of the birth, life, sufferings, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The moral influence view (Abelard, died 1142) draws on Jesus’ life, ministry, teachings, and sufferings unto death: “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Jesus thus manifests God’s love for humanity and inspires us to love God and live the Christian life[1].
The substitutionary view (Anselm, died 1109) encompasses Jesus’ birth and his sinless life, to set the stage for his vicarious suffering and death, which is primary: “He was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5, carried out in the passion stories of all four New Testament Gospels). Into the agonizing Jesus, the Son of God, on the cross at Golgotha God discharges the punishment all we humans deserve for our sins and constant sinfulness against God. By God’s own act our debts against God are canceled and our sins forgiven. Jesus thus removes the legitimate consequence of God’s righteous condemnation on human sin.[2]
The classical view (Irenæus, died ca. 200; Martin Luther, died 1546)[3] draws mainly on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ: If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold the new has come (II Cor. 5:17). The movement here is two-fold. First, Jesus defeats death (the last enemy to be defeated, I Cor. 15:26), the underlying problem of sin (the wages of sin is death, Rom. 6:23) together with all the evil and sufferings human sin brings to life. Jesus defeats death by his own dying, that is, by occupying the space of death so that death no longer has any space of its own (that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, Heb. 2:14). Second, Jesus recreates human life by rising from the dead (The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God, Rom. 6:10)[4]. The crucifixion and resurrection are two sides of the same act, each one inseparable and essential to the other. Only the classical view explicitly makes the resurrection an integral part of Jesus’ work of redemption[5].
As we know from a lifetime of controversy, conservative Pietists stress the substitutionary view and regard Jesus’ death as a divine transaction that clears the books of human wrong-doing now and always. Salvation means to live as forgiven sinners, free from sin and certain of eternal life with God. Liberal Pietists press the moral influence view of Christ’s work of redemption and take Jesus’ life of suffering love as a full representation of an obedient humanity before God. Salvation means to live as Christ lived, in love, peace, and justice with other people and with God. Although being Christ-like is important to both, neither side acknowledges the place or importance of the other. Both sides criticize each other unmercifully. And both sides ignore the classical view of atonement altogether.
Critics of the moral influence view cite its concept of sin, which begins with the interior self–bad attitudes, habits, feelings, or relationships. Imbedded in a particular culture or society, such sins can be pervasive and entrenched. However, these sins belong essentially to psychological or political processes that humans can manage very well with sound vision, expertise, and a little inspiration. hey don’t really need a radical act of forgiveness by God. To figure out what is really happening around us, we need to pay closer attention to the shifting norms of culture than to what the Bible says about sins against God’s righteous demands.
Critics of the substitutionary view cite its concept of sin as individualistic and otherworldly, blissfully unaware of how a community’s sins fall on the world at large or on its own members. Furthermore, the substitutionary view of God is unworthy of the God of Jesus Christ. Instead of a warm, mutual love and devotion, relationship with God looks like a legal contract in which an overbearing God exacts a gory punishment from a scapegoat to satisfy the demands of a Medieval sense of honor and/or a law that has been superceded.
This critique of the substitutionary view stands as long as we take Jesus Christ merely as the useful means of our salvation. However, if Jesus really is God as a human being (Emmanuel), forgiveness becomes an entirely different matter. Reconciliation with God, the injured party, cannot happen at arms length, i.e., through a scapegoat or an instrument or a delegated representative. Only God’s own act of forgiving the ones who have sinned will reconcile them to God. Nor can God simply wish away the violation. Forgiveness is inherently costly. Absorbing the hard blow of the injury and suffering its consequences hurts like hell (pun intended). And only the sinned-against can forgive. Sinners can repent of the awful hurt they have caused, but they cannot forgive it and they cannot take back the brokenness they have caused. The New Testament portrays the condemnation, sufferings, and painful death of Jesus Christ on the cross as God’s own costly act of forgiving human sin. On the cross God absorbs the full brunt of human sin against God and removes its most tragic, punishing, and binding consequences. On this reading of the matter, the substitutionary view of atonement is a vital component of the authentic forgiveness of human sin by God. Put differently: dispensing with the substitutionary view of atonement probably does dispense with genuine forgiveness, hence reconciliation between God and humanity.
Similarly, the critique of the moral influence view stands as long as Jesus Christ primarily represents the ideal humanity for which we are to strive. If Jesus really is God as a human being (Emmanuel), his humanity is far more than an ideal we are to seek. In fact all the elements of the moral influence view fit what Jesus says about our new life in Christ and our future life with God, namely, the resurrection. Participating in the resurrection of Christ brings that future into our present. In his teachings (Sermon on the Mount+), his ministry of compassion and service to others, his strong but humble bearing, his devotion to the truth and righteousness of God, his parables of the kingdom, his identification with the least among us, his suffering and forgiving love, Jesus actually provides a concrete description of the resurrected life. As a vital part of the work of Christ for our redemption, the resurrection thus gives the moral influence view of atonement a significance and a power it does not have otherwise.
Which leads to my conclusion here. The total work of Christ for our redemption has a place for all three views of atonement. The most striking configuration begins with the substitutionary view (forgiveness, release from the consequences of sin), moves to the classical view (defeat of death/re-creation of life, addressing the underlying problem of sin/death), and then comes the moral influence view (how to live concretely in union with the resurrected life of Jesus Christ.) The classical view is the glue for this configuration. In my study of theology so far, I have found only three theologians who put the three views together in this way, and the Reformed tradition claims them all: Athanasius (4th century), John Calvin (16th century), and Karl Barth (20th century). 6
At Easter time 2007 I believe the work of Christ for our redemption has a direct bearing upon the life and health of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Our current polarizations are self-absorbing and self-defeating for all parties, for the Church of Jesus Christ above all. By his work of redemption Christ himself points to fresh insights into the Bible and our own tradition. Isn’t it time to follow Christ beyond the poles as well?
MERWYN S. JOHNSON currently is professor of historical and systematic theology emeritus at Erskine Theological Seminary, Due West, S.C., and visiting professor of theology at Union-PSCE in Charlotte, N.C.
[1] Note the words to several hymns: “Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee” (11th century), “O Master, Let Me Walk With Thee” (1879), “Lord, Speak to Me, that I May Speak” (1872), “Christ of the Upward Way” (1915), and “Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life” (1903).
[2] Note the words to several hymns: “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” (ca. 1150), “Jesus Christ Is Risen Today” (14th century), “Ah, Holy Jesus, How Hast Thou Offended” (1834), “Hail, Thou Once Despised Jesus” (1757), “My Hope Is Built On Nothing Less” (1834), “Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me” (1776), “There Is a Green Hill Far Away” (1776), and “The Old Rugged Cross.”
[3] The classical view of atonement is explicit in the PCUSA Book of Confessions: The Scots Confession, Chapts. VIII and X; The Heidelberg Catechism, qq. 43-45; The Second Helvetic Confession, Chapt. XI (5.076); The Confession of 1967, 9.08-.11; A Brief Statement of Faith, lines 20f and 22-26. See also the funeral service of The Book of Common Worship, 1993: 921 (prayer 1) & 931 (mystery of faith 2), and 1946: 214 (committal prayer). As far as I can tell, The Westminster Confession of Faith, Larger and Shorter Catechisms set forth only the substitutionary view of atonement.
[4] Paul speaks often about our dying in Christ and rising with him (all die in Christ, all rise in Christ), e.g., Romans 5-6, I Cor. 15, and II Cor. 5:14-21. The language of these passages can work at points with the substitutionary view as well as the classical view, but they fit the classical view better. Similarly, John links the resurrection with eternal life, i.e., abiding now and forever in God’s love, as in John 3:1-21, 11:1-44(25), 15:1-17, & I John 4:1-21(7-12).
[5] Note the words to several hymns: “Thine Is the Glory” (1884), “The Strife Is O’er, The Battle Done” (1695), “Who Trusts in God, A Strong Abode” (1572ff), “Rejoice, the Lord is King” (1746), and the two hymns by Luther, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” (1529) and even clearer “Christ Jesus Lay In Death’s Strong Bands” (1524). Two recent hymns are noteworthy here: “I Danced In the Morning” (1963) and “Christ Is Risen” (1960).
[6] See Athanasius, “On the Incarnation of the Word,” sections 1-32; Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 2, Chapts. 15 (the offices of prophet, priest, and king) & 16 (the offices rendered historically: his comment on the descent into hell expresses the classical view); and Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. IV, Parts 1 (office of priest), 2 (office of king), & 3 (office of prophet). For hymns that combine the three views, see Calvin’s “I Greet Thee Who My Sure Redeemer Art” (1545) and perhaps “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” (1707), “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go” (1882), “I Bind My Heart This Tide” (1907).
