Copernican Shift

Thank you Pastor-friend for this response to my "Resacrilizing" post. Perhaps I deserved it.

The Copernican shift was required not as a mere shift in paradigm but a shift in reality. A Copernican shift was required because the previous view was simply wrong. Thus I would not say that reading the Scriptures through a different lens (non-sacrificial) is the same as geocentric thinking vs. heliocentric thinking. This is to say that a non-sacrificial way of reading the Scriptures is the more enlightened way and ultimately the correct way to read the Scriptures. It is also saying that any reading other than a non-sacrificial way is antiquated and ultimately wrong. Is this what you’re saying by putting it on the same level as a Copernican shift? Is the sacrificial approach is antiquated and have we become more enlightened? Or are you just saying that some have just chosen to read the Scriptures differently??

My use of "Copernican shift" as metaphor is admittedly strong. But I need to hold to it. Now, this is NOT at all to confer enlightenment to the "non-sacrificial side" and antiquity to the "sacrificial side", but instead to highlight my own existential shift in coming to understand what I do regard as the correct way to read the scriptures. (For me, Grow Mercy is all about the arrival of this "existential moment", which I had not anticipated or looked for.)

But I want to avoid using the term enlightened because of its currency in placing value. I didn’t use the term "enlightened", or the term "antiquated" in the "Resacrilizing" post. I ask forgiveness if I left any hint of my "being better" because I hold a non-sacrificial reading. Most Christians (hopefully) would not refer to non-Christian neighbours as Unenlightened and themselves as Enlightened. But at the same time most Christians also view the faith-they-hold-true as worthy of publishing and defending. I see this in the same light.

So no, it’s not a matter of just choosing to read scripture differently. I actually do believe that there is a Copernican-like difference concerning sacrifice and non-sacrifice. There is a Copernican-like difference in sacred-violence or what Walter Wink has called "redemptive violence" and no-violence-at-all. I do believe that Christ’s "sacrifice" was wholly self-giving and God-revealing without any trace of appeasement and transaction. And I believe this in reality and not merely in paradigm or image.

I believe Christ’s exposé of sacrifice was inherently understood and lived out to a great degree in early Christendom. In the first three hundred years of Christendom there is no evidence of Christians taking up arms. I think it can be shown that Christ’s death and resurrection was understood as usurping the power of sacrifice (scapegoating) and violence and that this was evidenced in the almost universal adoption of non-violence. The resacrilizing that came subsequent to Constantine and later formalized by St. Anselm is a doctrine/theory (substitution sacrifice) that we can and in my view must live without.

No question their are Christian pacifists that still hold a conventional "sacrificial" view of the gospel. However, I don’t believe that anyone who holds a non-sacrificial view could be anything but non-violent.

Non-sacrifice is all about a God without violence and wrath. Sacrifice has to do with a god who resorts to occasional violence to straighten things out (redemptive violence). Following this god allows us to canonize our own violence as is evident with Charles Stanley’s sermons on the Iraqi war and Michael Coren’s latest editorial in the Toronto Sun. (I have deep respect for Coren as a Christian journalist but take huge exception with this editorial. I am one of his "usual suspects".)

All this said, I pray that the revolutionary gospel continues to inform and reform and transform all our lives as we try to move ever closer to the heart of Jesus.

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8 Comments

  1. way to go Steve, well put…though I, not being the peacemaker you are, probably would take it that extra step, if I thought I could without seriously offending, of saying that the traditional sacrificial understanding of scripture is in fact antiquated….though my defense would be less intelligent and informed than yours, more of an intuition, a way of understanding scripture that for me is the only one that resonates.

  2. Interesting that “your pastor friend” quibbles on scripture choices rather than grappling with the violence of god. Another adventure in missing the point, methinks. Whaddya think?

  3. You obviously have discovered a pearl of great price.

    Unfortunately many of us who struggle to understand what God was doing in the life of Jesus are not able to see as far as your eyes are peircing into the gark glass.

    I think I agree with you. I’m just not at the place where I can say I fully understand what to do with all that sacrificial stuff in the Old Testament (I often want to chuck it all and be a Simone Weil ‘ian’)and the Lamb of God stuff in the new Testament. If we don’t include the idea of sacrificial and substitutionary atonement then there is a lot of scriptural material that I need to deal with in a new way.

    I have evolved enough to change my statement of faith on my blog to read
    “Jesus was the fulfillment of some mysterious neccessity.”

    It used to read
    “Jesus was the fulfillment of the requirements of God’s law….”

    You convinced me that I don’t have to define Jesus as God’s whipping boy, so I moved the atonement stuff to the realm of pure mystery in my thinking.

    For now I don’t know waht else to say about it.

    Perhaps If I read the book that brought the light to your eyes I too will have the epiphany I am looking for.

    Blessings.
    Len

  4. You obviously have discovered a pearl of great price.

    Unfortunately many of us who struggle to understand what God was doing in the life of Jesus are not able to see as far as your eyes are peircing into the gark glass.

    I think I agree with you. I’m just not at the place where I can say I fully understand what to do with all that sacrificial stuff in the Old Testament (I often want to chuck it all and be a Simone Weil ‘ian’)and the Lamb of God stuff in the new Testament. If we don’t include the idea of sacrificial and substitutionary atonement then there is a lot of scriptural material that I need to deal with in a new way.

    I have evolved enough to change my statement of faith on my blog to read
    “Jesus was the fulfillment of some mysterious neccessity.”

    It used to read
    “Jesus was the fulfillment of the requirements of God’s law….”

    You convinced me that I don’t have to define Jesus as God’s whipping boy, so I moved the atonement stuff to the realm of pure mystery in my thinking.

    For now I don’t know what else to say about it.

    Perhaps If I read the book that brought the light to your eyes I too will have the epiphany I am looking for.

    Blessings.
    Len

  5. a sure sign of creeping senility is repeating oneself over and over

    did I ever tell you that a sure sign of creeping senility is repeating oneself over and over?

    Well if I didn’t I should have.

    but now that I am exercising my remembering bone, I once read that an average human being needs 6 hearings of a new concept before they can begin to think it could possibly be true.

    Maybe this is my number 5 encouter. I feel I am close………..to warm milk and cool sheets.

    Good night all.

  6. hmm, interestin comments, esp Connie’s about not being a peace maker…can’t see how thats fits with a gospel of non-violence but…likely I’m just slow.
    Well, Copernicus was a sharp guy no doubt, and did have an earth moving (pardon the pun) revelation which was proved true … I’m still strugglin with urs tho Steve.
    A couple things jump out of your rsponse at me; the “trying on of new lens” smacks of the “open mindedness” that several modern and historical groups have used for peoples lack of buy in to their choices…as recent as last week when a drug abusing friend of mine told me I wasn’t open minded enough to understand why he does what he does. It seems a popular fallback position for “fringe” ideas. Be fore I turned 40, if you would have asked me what I thought of Christians my response would have been, “not much but I sure wouldn’t wanna be one!”… So when It comes to Copernian shifts, I get it. So it appears to me that your view is simply another Marcionite take on things…ignoring the huge sections of scripture that don’t fit into your present, preconcived lens… I dislike this type of dialogue as it generally seems to generate more wrath than mercy so I plan to give you a call when i’m back in oct…maybe I’ll buy lunch 🙂 I really would like to try to understand your position.

  7. I feel the need to respond to the comment that my not being a peacemaker is “incompatible with a gospel of non-violence.” I am only not a peacemaker in the sense of the Enneagram Personality type that is known for its ability to communicate and relate without offending. I am a peacemaker, at least I’m told told by those who know me best, but I’m also truthful about my thoughts even when it involves a risk of offending — a different point of view that may offend is not however equal to violence.

  8. In response to Jeff’s comment about quibbling on Scripture choices – I’m not sure what he’s referring to in this post, perhaps he’s referring to some of the latter posts – however if someone chooses to use Scripture to back up their thelogical understanding they had better use a consistent and acceptable method of exegesis and hermeneutics. If missing the point means that I want to understand the Scriptures correctly to inform my understanding of God then so be it. I guess I miss the point. I’d like to know how what Jeff uses to inform his thinking??

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