From Enemies to Friends 3:
What It’s Not! Misunderstanding Atonement: Theories or Reality?

Quesnel, British Columbia, August 8, 2009

Atonement: Getting the Questions Straight!

When it comes to the subject of the atonement it’s essential to ask the right questions!

Who, what, when, where, why, in what way, by what means.
--Hermagoras of Temnos, 1st century BC.

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
--Rudyard Kipling

1. Since there is so much controversy about this—ask the who question: who is it for? Usually three answers are considered possible, which provide the three main categories of theories of the atonement. But there is a fourth extremely important answer which we shouldn’t miss!

2. Then ask the why question. Why questions are usually the most difficult, yet also the most enlightening! In the context of the atonement, the question begins with why was it necessary? which leads back to why did this situation develop? Why was there a “war in heaven” in the first place?

3. Then move to the what question—which in this area of the atonement is one of the most significant issues—since if we don’t know the answer to the question what we won’t be able to correctly answer the question how—how does God right what went wrong? So first we need to establish what did go wrong?—in God’s universe, and with us. What exactly is the Fall, and most importantly what is sin?

4. The how question—which has brought perhaps the most confusing set of answers. How does God set us right again? How does Jesus bring about atonement? These follow on from getting the right answer to the previous questions, particularly the question as to what exactly did go wrong. For if we don’t understand what’s wrong, we can’t expect to get a good answer as to how this is made right!

5. Questions regarding when and where may seem easier to answer—the atonement happened on the cross in AD 33 or whatever. However understanding the atonement to be at-one-ment, we realize that this means it extends to the whole of Jesus’ life as well as his death, his ministry in the past, present, and future. And when we consider that there was atonement in heaven before all this began, and that one day this universe-wide atonement will be made complete again—then we realize that both the when and the where questions need to be answered much more broadly and inclusively…

Many of the confusing issues in the atonement can be understood much more clearly by the application of the right questions—though bear in mind that questions may be answered by another question, and that we can end up with more questions than we started with!

The Fourth Answer

In answering the question “Why did Jesus have to die?” one frequent method is to ask a further question—“who was it for?” This is a very useful perspective since it helps focus on what is really being said and cuts through much “dark speech”! Added to this question are others such as “what does the atonement address? what problems does it solve? how is it effective?”  etc.

So let’s pick up this helpful way to examine atonement concepts and ask the question, “Who is it for?” In other words, “Who needed it?” Or “In whose direction is it?” Historically there have been three main answers to such questions.

One of the first, developed by the early church fathers, was that it was directed to the devil. Various reasons are given, some of which would concern us today. These include: we are enslaved by the devil so we need to be ransomed from him; because of sin he is our rightful owner so payment must be made to him to buy us; the devil was cheated out of his ownership of our souls by the offer to substitute Christ’s soul for ours—in one memorable line, “Christ was the bait on God’s hook by which he deceived the devil”! This is an interesting understanding of “substitutionary atonement,” and seems to elevate trickery to a whole new level… However from a modern perspective it hardly speaks well of God.

A second concept that developed later was that the “sacrifice of atonement” was paid to God. According to one of these views, following a Roman legal model, sin is a debt owed to God who needs to be paid off before he can save us. In the 11th century formulation by Anselm (based on medieval ideas like feudalism), sin causes offence to God and affronts his honor which can only be satisfied by blood payment.  These are sometimes referenced as “objective” theories of the atonement. In all these “Godward” models the primary idea is that there is something that needs to be fixed with God—that God has to be changed in some way.

The third concept is that the atonement is “for us.” This emphasizes that the atonement is initiated by God, and is not to change anything in him, but to change us—for that’s where the problem is understood to be. Certainly the cross does impact us and leads us to God and to what is right. Many different formulations have been proposed, and can be found especially in more modern views that reject the ideas of dealing with the devil or buying God off. These ideas are sometimes called “subjective” theories since they relate to us. Some theories attempt to blend one or more of the above ideas and suggest that the atonement goes in a number of different directions. However most emphasize one direction above another.

For those who take the great controversy seriously and recognize that the issues involved are over the nature and character of God, there is a fourth answer to “who was it for?” The answer in this case is “the whole universe”! Understanding that God is answering fundamental questions over his use of power, how his runs his government, and the kind of person he is, then the atonement assumes a far wider perspective. And it includes not just the Cross, but the whole life, death, and resurrection of Jesus—and his ongoing representation of God to us. Such an atonement theory is much broader than some narrow definitions of payment and removal of offence, and go to the heart of the issue of sin and rebellion in God’s universe. How God makes the whole universe one is the real answer to questions about at-one-ment, and as such goes beyond all of the above-mentioned concepts related to the direction and purpose of Christ’s death. “Through the Son, then, God decided to bring the whole universe back to himself. God made peace through his Son’s blood on the cross and so brought back to himself all things, both on earth and in heaven.” Col.1:20 TEV.

Terrible answers…

The idea that God needed to be appeased, that Christ on the cross paid the debt of sin with blood, that this turned away God’s wrath—these are the propositions of the Reformers. This is their answer as to why Jesus had to die: Christ on the cross and changed the Father from an angry and hostile God into a God who was gracious and merciful. This is Martin Luther from his sermons and other writings:

Christ has made atonement for our sins, and an angry judge he has changed into a gracious and merciful God. … Christ has taken upon his head our sins and the sins of the whole world, also the wrath of the Father.

It was the anger of God itself that Christ bore—the eternal anger which our sins had deserved. . . . The inner sufferings of Jesus, His anguish—an anguish in comparison with which all human anguish and fear are but a slight matter—was the feeling of the Divine anger.

Since we have not done God’s will according to the first revelation and must be rejected and condemned by his eternal, unendurable wrath, in his divine wisdom and mercy he has determined, or willed, to permit his only Son to take upon himself our sin and wrath; to give Christ as a sacrifice for our ransom, whereby the unendurable wrath and condemnation might be turned from us

Here now cometh the law and says, I find Him a sinner, and that such a one as hath taken upon Him the sins of all men, and I see no sins else but in Him, therefore let Him die upon the cross; and so he sets upon Him, and kills Him.

Christ would be of all men the greatest robber, murderer, adulterer, thief, sacrilegious person, blasphemer, etc., than whom none greater ever was in the world, because He who is a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world now is not an innocent person, and without sin, is not the Son of God born of the Virgin, but a sinner who has and bears the sin of Paul who was a blasphemer, a persecutor and violent, of Peter who denied Christ, of David who was an adulterer, a murderer, and made the Gentiles blaspheme the name of the Lord; to sum up, who has and bears all the sins of all men in His own body.

It being impossible for us to purchase forgiveness, God ordained in our stead one who took upon himself all our deserved punishment and fulfilled the Law for us, thus averting from us God’s judgment and appeasing his wrath.

John Calvin’s expression of such a hostile and vindictive God is no better. His answers to why Jesus had to die are severe in the extreme. He also argues that because of original sin we are all destined to eternal burning and that this is the sentence of a righteous Judge. Beyond this he also argues for a God who has predetermined who will benefit from this atonement. Some, without merit, are saved, others punished—and all this is pre-ordained. Calvin is also preoccupied with the legal implications (he was trained as a lawyer) and makes much use of terms such as expiation, propitiation, appeasement, vengeance, and wrath. Calvin also very forcibly expresses God’s hatred towards our sin, and portrays a truly terrible and antagonistic Deity:

But we affirm that He [Christ] sustained the weight of the Divine severity, since, being smitten and afflicted by the hand of God, He experienced from God all the tokens of wrath and vengeance.

It was requisite that He should feel the severity of Divine vengeance in order to appease the wrath of God, and satisfy His justice… Christ took upon Himself and suffered the punishment which by the righteous judgment of God impended over all sinners, and by this expiation the Father has been satisfied and His wrath appeased… The cross was accursed, not only in the opinion of men, but by the decree of the Divine law. Therefore, when Christ was lifted up upon it, He renders Himself obnoxious to the curse… From the visible symbol of the curse, we more clearly apprehend that the burden, with which we were oppressed, was imposed upon Him… For sinners, till they be delivered from guilt, are always subject to the wrath and malediction of God… We are obnoxious to the wrath and vengeance of God, and to eternal death…We all, therefore, have in us that which deserves God’s hatred.

… as iniquity is abominable to God, so neither can the sinner find grace in his sight, so far as he is and so long as he is regarded as a sinner. Hence, wherever sin is, there also are the wrath and vengeance of God.

God in his character of Judge is hostile to us, expiation must necessarily intervene… God could not be propitiated without the expiation of sin.

Not only was Christ’s body given as the price of our redemption, but he paid a greater and more excellent price in suffering in spirit the terrible torments of a condemned and forsaken man.

If Christ had died only a bodily death, it would have been ineffectual. No—it was expedient at the same time for him to undergo the severity of God’s vengeance, to appease his wrath and satisfy his just judgment…  The point is that the Creed sets forth what Christ suffered in the sight of men, and then appositely speaks of that invisible and incomprehensible judgment which he underwent in the sight of God in order that we might know not only that Christ’s body was given as the price of our redemption, but that he paid a greater and more excellent price in suffering in his soul the terrible torments of a condemned and forsaken man… He bore the weight of divine severity, since he was “stricken and afflicted” by God’s hand, and experienced all the signs of a wrathful and avenging God.

God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation.

But again, let him be told, as Scripture teaches, that he was estranged from God by sin, an heir of wrath, exposed to the curse of eternal death, excluded from all hope of salvation, a complete alien from the blessing of God, the slave of Satan, captive under the yoke of sin; in fine, doomed to horrible destruction, and already involved in it; that then Christ interposed, took the punishment upon himself and bore what by the just judgment of God was impending over sinners; with his own blood expiated the sins which rendered them hateful to God, by this expiation satisfied and duly propitiated God the Father, by this intercession appeased his anger, on this basis founded peace between God and men, and by this tie secured the Divine benevolence toward them; will not these considerations move him the more deeply, the more strikingly they represent the greatness of the calamity from which he was delivered?

In other words—see what you missed, and be glad! This is reminiscent of Thomas Aquinas (died 1274), responsible for much medieval theology, who remarked that, “In order that nothing be wanting to the happiness of the blessed in heaven, a perfect view is granted them of the torment of the damned.” What a testimony to the character of a gracious God…

The result: a terrible picture of divine vengeance, placated only by the blood-payment of God’s tortured son on the cross. The different confessions of the time—documents setting out what the community believed—make this abundantly clear:

Such is the severity of His justice, that there can be no reconciliation unless the penalty is paid. Such is the greatness of the anger of God, that the eternal Father cannot be placated, save by the beseeching and death of His Son. Saxon Confession

The Son of God alone is the placator of the anger of God. Wurtemberg Confession

[Christ] bore in body and soul the anger of God against the sins of the whole race. Heidelberg Catechism

[Christ] in body as in soul, feeling the terrible punishment which our sins had merited. Belgic Confession

Infinitely bad!

By a sort of legal fiction, Jesus was treated as what he was not, in order that we might be treated as what we are not. This is the best device, according to the prevailing theology, that the God of truth, the God of mercy, whose glory is that he is just to men by forgiving their sins, could fall upon for saving his creatures! George MacDonald

As a result of such God concepts laid over the theory of the atonement (or is it the other way round), many fire-and-brimstone sermons were constructed to “help” people avoid their fate by clinging to the hope that Christ had averted God’s anger through his sacrificial death. Some waxed eloquent on the vast extent of human sin—and that the smallest sin would damn anyone to an eternity of agonizing torture. As just one example, here’s Jonathan Edwards (died 1758):

Any sin is more or less heinous depending upon the honor and majesty of the one whom we had offended. Since God is of infinite honor, infinite majesty, and infinite holiness, the slightest sin is of infinite consequence. The slightest sin is nothing less than cosmic treason when we realize against whom we have sinned.

It is requisite that God should punish all sin with infinite punishment; because all sin, as it is against God, is infinitely heinous, and has infinite demerit, is justly infinitely hateful to him, and so stirs up infinite abhorrence and indignation in him.

Notice how many times he uses infinite and infinitely… But the most famous sermon he preached was “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” a classic example of such terrifying “exhortations” to repent and avoid the coming punishment. It’s reported that during one of Edwards’ more dramatic presentations the elders of one church clung to its pillars, terrified that hell might open underneath them at any moment. Here’s just a brief excerpt from this famous sermon:

The God who holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire.... He will have no compassion upon you, he will not forbear the executions of his wrath, or in the least lighten his hand; there shall be no moderation or mercy…

It’s important to consider how such a description of God would be received, and the results of accepting such beliefs. Such a hellfire motivation to the atonement defames the God who came to show us what he was truly like. The consequences of the belief in eternal torture have been horrendous, making God out to more of a fiend than a savior. For those who then proclaimed the love of God in sparing us this eternal punishment came the question as to why God had developed such a system in the first place. In view of the fires of hell and the God who sends you there for the sins of this brief human lifetime, it’s no wonder that so many have rejected such ideas of God and his atonement.

“The fact is that if you believe in an infinite God, and also in eternal punishment, then you must admit that Edwards and Calvin were absolutely right,” wrote Robert G. Ingersoll, the famous skeptic. “There is no escape from their conclusions if you admit their premises. They were infinitely cruel, their premises infinitely absurd, their God infinitely fiendish, and their logic perfect.”

Ingersoll had grown up in a church-going community. He describes his neighbors:

They knew that there could be no salvation except by faith, and through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ. All who doubted or denied would be lost. To live a moral and honest life—to keep your contracts, to take care of wife and child—to make a happy home—to be a good citizen, a patriot, a just and thoughtful man, was simply a respectable way of going to hell…

For real and virtuous enjoyment the good people depended on revivals. The sermons were mostly about the pains and agonies of hell, the joys and ecstasies of heaven, salvation by faith, and the efficacy of the atonement.

But one day Ingersoll heard a sermon on hell and reflected on the God who would do such things. He concluded: “For the first time I understood the dogma of eternal pain—appreciated ‘the glad tidings of great joy.’ For the first time my imagination grasped the height and depth of the Christian horror. Then I said: ‘It is a lie, and I hate your religion. If it is true, I hate your God.’”

This response is far from unusual. Representations of God like this, especially related to concepts of a punitive nature that at the heart of such theories of the atonement, result in rejection of Christianity itself. As Voltaire concluded, “Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.”

Luther Burbank wrote that “The idea that a good God would send people to a burning hell is utterly damnable to me—the ravings of insanity, superstition gone to seed! I don’t want anything to do with such a God.”

Because of such objections, and questions have been raised regarding the penal, substitutionary ideas of the atonement, some have felt it necessary to stress it even more strongly. Note for instance:

I must die or get somebody to die for me. If the Bible doesn’t teach that, it doesn’t teach anything. And that is where the atonement of Jesus Christ comes in.  Dwight L. Moody

Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of 10 things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these 10 things he has a special place full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever until the end of time...but he loves you. George Carlin

God had to kill himself to appease himself, so that he wouldn’t have to roast us (his beloved creations) alive for all eternity, except that he didn’t really die. Anon.

Conclusions? How mistaken ideas of the problem misrepresent God and the solution! The implications—ideas about God and the atonement are incredibly important, for much damage has been done, causing many to reject God.

Why did Jesus have to die? Answers through demonstration

I had wanted to include this brief final section for these kind of answers that seem to be left out of many responses. Away from the rigid and mechanical theories of substitution and exchange, apart from the more literalistic answers, and even missing from some of the more personal replies, are those that speak to what God was really doing.

Jesus gives as his mission the revelation of the nature and character of God. He says that if we see him, we see the Father and that he and the Father are one. He is from above, and represents the one who sent him. So on the Cross Jesus continues and expands that mission, revealing the truth about God in so many ways.

“Why did Jesus have to die?” is answered as part of the whole reason for Jesus’ coming to earth, graphically portraying the truth about God and his real character. Jesus came, lived, died, and was raised to—

·    Show us God as he truly is (John 14:9; 12:45).
·    Reveal the full extent of his love (John 13:1).
·    Unmask the devil and his lies (John 13:2, Luke 4, Rev. 12:9).
·    Reveal totality of evil (all crucifixion accounts).
·    Prove that God is trustworthy and true (1 Cor. 1:18, Mark 14:24, Rom. 3:25).
·    Demonstrate that God tells the truth that sin kills (Gen. 3:3, 2 Cor. 5:21, Rom. 6:23)
·    God’s mercy and forgiveness (Luke 23:34).
·    Show the lengths God is willing to go to set us free (Eph. 1:7).
·    Bring reconciliation to the whole universe (Col. 3:20, Eph. 1:10, 3:10).
·    Convince those who doubt of the truth (John 20:26, 27).

…and many more. The Cross as vivid revelation of God makes it truly worth examining from every perspective. For while the question “why did Jesus have to die” leads us to many useful answers, those that speak of God, his true nature, and his intentions towards us are the most important.

For what God in Jesus did there on the Cross, in his life, at his resurrection and beyond, is all for his beloved children as he brings the whole universe back into harmony with him. The final end of the drama of the ages is that everyone who so chooses is home together with God: “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them.” Rev. 21:3 NLT.

In the wonderful words of Meister Eckhart, which answers not only “why did Jesus have to die?” but “why did God do all he did?”—

What our Lord did was done with this intent, and this alone, that he might be with us and we with him.


-end-

From Enemies to Friends: The Stunning Good News of How God Wins Us Back (The Atonement in the Context of the Great Controversy) fetf3.doc

© Jonathan Gallagher 2009