Posts filed under 'Atonement'
November 7th, 2006
An article in Christianity Today’s 50th Anniversary with the promising title "The Church’s Great Malfunctions," written by Miroslav Volf and colleagues from the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, is a refreshing self-critique of modern Christianity. It’s good, and as I said, refreshing, but it doesn’t go far enough.
The essay begins by conceding that too often, "Christian faith neither mends the world nor helps human beings to thrive. On the contrary, it seems to shatter things into pieces, to choke what’s new and beautiful before it has chance to take root, to trample underfoot what’s good and true."
This was refreshing because the 152 page special edition of CT consulted 114 leaders from 11 ministry spheres about the future of Christian evangelical priorities, and only Volf was this candid. Among all the concern about getting back to scriptural basics, connecting to culture while being counter-cultural, and the repeat warnings about the gay agenda, only Volf’s article, (with the exception of one or two others leaders who drew attention to poverty and AIDS) asks an apt question. That is, why is it that Christians who embrace a peaceable faith have often been so violent?
His answer laid out under three rubrics; a thin faith, an irrelevant faith and an unwillingness to walk the narrow path, was however disappointing. It provided nothing new other than an appeal to renew Christian character. It never reached into the underlying cause that this blog, when given opportunity, will go banging on about. And that is the sacrificial reading of scripture and substitutional atonement theory.
Please, Yale Center for Faith and Culture, you say it takes hard intellectual and spiritual work to learn to understand and live faith authentically. Then don’t ignore the implications of Girardian thought, the most exciting theological thinking since Augustine and the most fruitful anthropological thinking since the arrival of anthropology.
All quiet on the Eastern front
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Any question on violence in reference to Christianity and the gospel must take Girard into account. Is it because entrenched statements of faith rooted in medieval theology are too layered over by time and tradition to be overcome?
As long as we ignore our sacrificial ways, already exposed by Christ, as long as we continue to unconsciously justify them through our uncritical acceptance of a flawed theory of the atonement we remain imprisoned by them. And so we go on acceding to so-called redemptive violence and wonder why we fit a violent culture.
But by excavating our error, by undergoing the all together non-violent way of God which is the peace of Christ, we may then find that symptoms like thin faith etc., lose their grip.
Technorati Tags: Rene Girard, Miroslav Volf, Christianity Today, Yale Center for Faith and Culture, Atonement, Christianity, Peace, Violence
October 22nd, 2006
We all have our inconsistencies and contradictions to wrestle through. We piece together our lives as best we can, refitting as we learn and grow. So what I say here is offered with mercy and a deep desire that a small vibration may be added to the early but growing wave that there is something amiss at the core of Christianity.
Besides being influential and sincere spokespeople for Christianity, what do Charles Stanley, Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson have in common? All have encouraged the use of
sanctioned violence to destroy, "take out," or otherwise terminate "our enemies." (Also, because of his recent article I include Canada’s own
Michael Coren here.)
Something else they have in common is the doctrine that salvation comes through the substitutionary death of Jesus that gave full satisfaction to the justice of God for our sins; and accepting these terms is what saves. A version of this will have been the message of the Franklin Graham Festival in Winnipeg this weekend.
I have no issue with these Festivals. (You may remember when they called them crusades.) Sometimes they have a kind of cranking-out-converts feel but there are good-hearts behind all this effort.
This weekend’s Franklin Festival however attracted additional attention and was covered by CTV and CBC. Some humanitarians along with some Mennonites staged a minor protest outside the stadium because of comments Graham has made about Islam.
This is what is on record: In 2002 Graham said that the USA should use weapons of mass destruction–if needed–to "destroy the enemy." Two years later, he told NBC News: "We’re not attacking Islam, but Islam has attacked us. I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion." Somewhere around this time we have Christianity Today’s editor David Neff giving this advice: "Those who want Graham to stop condemning Islam should stop asking him to explain himself."
And in a June 2006 interview, Graham said: "There’s a lot of evil in the world today. And I’m not saying that the Muslims have a hold on that, there were many things we did wrong in the name of Christianity, but Jesus did not say go out and kill your enemy." The suggestion here is that Islam condones murder and Christianity doesn’t.
In Graham’s defence he has since clarified and softened his position, however he still leaves earlier comments unexplained. It may be unfair here because of the distance of time to bring up Franklin’s father’s discussion with Nixon; but it is in context. In effect, the White House tapes in the National Archives have Billy Graham sharing anti-Semitic remarks with Nixon and discussing the idea of using atomic bombs in Vietnam.
In Franklin Graham’s appeal for understanding he points out that extremists within Islam have committed atrocities. This is true and should not be overlooked or dismissed. But it’s also a diversion from a critical point. The point is, and what I find distressing as a fellow Christian of Graham, Stanley, Coren et al, is their sincere belief that there really is a theological allowance for killing enemies in the face of Jesus’ pronouncement otherwise. They still believe that there is such a thing as redemptive violence and that this good, redemptive, sanctioned violence can cast out bad violence.
Now the way this is most often gotten around is concluding that there is no moral equivalency between government and individuals. So in other words, Jesus would have had no issue with an elected body militarizing a willing segment of the Jewish population to violently liberate themselves from the Romans as long as any unenlisted individuals didn’t do the killing.
This I suppose is a reasonable stand when you believe that the gospel message can be partitioned–that Jesus was not speaking to government bodies or societies, only individuals. So, Jesus is Lord…of a segment! The greater part of Christendom has been blind to this two-sphere gospel application since Constantine. Today this goes unquestioned within much of North American Evangelicalism.
What we have then is a strange kind of evangelical-animal. On the one hand there is energy and compassion for the well-being of people’s hearts and souls. What’s more–and this needs to be applauded–there is a growing social-care aspect of evangelicalism that works for relief of impoverished and sick and AIDS plagued people through projects like Graham’s Samaritans Purse. But on the other hand there is a glaring disconnection which allows and even actively encourages the use of violence to make the world safe for Christianity.
So how is it possible that this ambidextrous creature has come to be understood as traditional Christianity? In my view (and I suppose I’ll be banging this drum until the end, or until I can be shown otherwise), it’s primarily because of a misinterpretation of the Old Testament and parts of the New Testament. A misunderstanding that results in a mapping-on of a sacrificial justice-desiring "Father" God to the non-sacrificial mercy-desiring "Son of God". Only this kind of ill-fusion allows for the destruction of enemies while preaching peace and love of enemies.
Technorati Tags: Franklin Graham, Charles Stanley, Pat Robertson, Michael Coren, Atonement, Christianity Today, Islam, Peace, Violence
October 11th, 2006
Wondering how I was coping with today’s stories in this world of ours–from N. Korea to the Amish tragedy–a friend asked, "What has happened to humanity that we can go as far as we do to destroy the image of God in each other?"
It’s the right question. But how do you answer it? Is it possible?
It’s a religious question: If there wasn’t something "divine" about us, I suppose there would be no use asking, well, no ability to ask in the first place.
It’s also a question that sees human culture moving toward disintegration and asks about its moment of truth.
The question also recognizes that our "god-image" is mutually destroyed in each other in the reciprocity of violence.
We read the "stories" or have the anchor read them to us, and what?
Where is our Philip to help us interpret what we see and hear. Will we remain as thick as the eunuch before the interpretation or will we be able to apply a hermeneutic of the cross? Because, if the central feature of the gospel sheds no light on 9/11, Iraq, Kim Jong Il, and Charles Carl Roberts IV, then what use is Christianity? No, let me restate that, what use is the gospel? I restate because, thankfully, Christianity does not own the Gospel. A good thing.
Technorati Tags: Kim Jong II, Charles Carl Roberts, Amish tragedy, N. Korea, Violence
September 21st, 2006
(Continued from yesterday’s post) 
After reading Alison’s story in "On Being Liked", the incident I described in the last post and my treatment of Colin came back to me like a swift blunt blow. More importantly, the truth and insight that the Gospels attest to regarding my (our) sacrificial ways, and how God desires to save us from all that, leapt out with a freshness that I can hardly overestimate. That said, I dedicate yesterday’s and today’s post to James Alison. (The following is a mere stencil of his thought.)
To the conclusion…
Let me revisit my experience with Colin. Imagine that when we were chasing Colin, he had run into traffic and been hit by a car and was hospitalized for a few months. It’s not hard to see that after a short time of regret, perhaps even genuine remorse, our group would be irritably off balance until we found someone else to pick on. And of course, with Colin gone, all of us on the lower levels of the prevailing power structure would be seriously worried.
But now suppose that Colin, having healed, came back to school not sullen, or angry, or vengeful; not holding on to any resentment, but entirely free and open and wanting to play with us, because he truly liked us. And what if it became apparent that he always did like us, had always wanted just to play with us, but that before our causing his injury, we just couldn’t see it.
Because the relationships in our group depended on there being an outcast, this would be hugely destabilizing. But, at the same time, Colin’s presence would now offer us a way of relating that was free from there being others who were supposedly inferior or superior to us. That is, free from structures of power.
And in this buoyant freedom we could find ourselves called into being people we had no idea we could be. Because Colin’s non-violent “liking-presenceâ€, would be our forgiveness. In this way, Colin could become our radical counter model.
This, of course, is what is offered to us by Jesus Christ. Jesus, in allowing himself to be the ultimate scapegoat, and through his resurrection-as his forgiving and merciful return, is now our radical counter model that has nothing to do with retaliation, shame, or any sort of violence.
In his dramatic self-giving act, Jesus exploded the power of the “scapegoating mechanism†and its false unity through sacrificial violence, offering us the possibility to renounce involvement in it and embrace true peace. As Christ put it, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.â€
Grow Mercy
Technorati Tags: James Alison, Scapegoating Mechanism, Atonement, Christianity, Peace, Religion, Violence
September 20th, 2006
When I was in grade six, there was a group of us that picked on Colin. Colin was in our class and always got better grades than everyone else. He was also ungainly and preferred sticking to himself. In short, Colin was a "natural" outcast.
I remember one day agreeing with a few of the bigger boys in our group to corner him after school and beat him up. Colin somehow smelled our plan and when the bell rang to end class he was the first one out the front doors, running as fast as he could to his house a few blocks away. But I was a fast runner. I caught and tackled him before he made it out of the school grounds. The other boys, having caught up to us, began to beat him up while I stood there watching.
The utterly detestable thing about this, besides the act itself, was that at the time, I had no remorse for Colin, only relief that it wasn’t me flailing away on the ground. I knew my action gave me a place within the group; but I remember having the vague feeling that without Colin around I might have been the target. In some twisted way I needed Colin to occupy this place.
I’ve since learned from anthropologist Rene Girard, that Colin was our "scapegoat". In some elemental way our identity was bound up by being something that Colin wasn’t. And so, while he was the "outcast" he was also the thing that unified and solidified our group. For a while at least, any conflicts in our group could be solved by a new round of bullying, or "scapegoating" Colin.
Now while we pretty much knew that abusing Colin in this way was wrong, we didn’t understand the dark dynamics of our involvement in this "scapegoating violence". We didn’t know, as Rene Girard has shown, that this "scapegoating mechanism", in all its limitless permutations, is at the bottom of all kinds of "power plays" and power structures, from schoolyard bullying to "office politics", from church splits to gang wars, and from the creation of cultures to the founding of religions.
We didn’t know because the mechanism has an uncanny ability to stay hidden when we are personally caught up in it. It’s usually only when confronted by our own deep complicity in scapegoating violence that we are able to choose another way. Mercifully, there is a story that can confront us, and begin to heal us. (Continued)
Technorati Tags: Rene Girard, Scapegoating, Bullying, Atonement, Christianity, Religion, Spirituality, Violence
September 10th, 2006
Len, I am grateful for this comment:
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 necessity. "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.
Perhaps mystery is still the grand realm where all of our stutterings reside because they begin and end with the incarnation. And how I love your statement: "Jesus was the fulfillment of some mysterious necessity." Mysterious…certainly. Necessary…absolutely.
Here are a some of the books that have inspired and changed me, and have become texts for Grow Mercy: Books by James Alison: Knowing Jesus, Beyond Resentment, On Being Liked, and his thesis–where he deals with all the substitutionary atonement scripture and more–not an easy read but amazing breadth, an amazing book: The Joy of Being Wrong - Original Sin through Easter Eyes. Books by Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred, and perhaps the pivotal book, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World. And also, Gil Ballie’s accessible and pragmatic and beautifully written, Violence Uncovered.
There are of course others. Traces of the non-sacrifical, (hesitate to call it a movement) can be detected to various degrees, in authors like Merton, Nouwen, and Vanier. I could be wrong here but even evangelical writers like Yancy and Campolo seem to employ a kind of "atonement lite". At least the emphasis, as in all of Brennan Manning’s books for example, are all upon the exemplary love of Jesus. Here the work of Jurgen Moltmann for example, or the "exemplary view", or "Christus Victor" understandings of atonement are evident. These are efforts at reworking the substitutional atonement, while still leaving the language intact.
You’ll be intrigued to know that Girard regards Dostoyevsky as one of the greatest of novelists, and shows how Dostoyevsky, through his own writing over the course of his life, came to a deep understanding of human desire (mimetic desire) and to a non-sacrificial understanding of Christianity.
Again thank you for your comment. I hope in my own peice-meal way, through my own limited experiences, with obvious help from author-friends, that I can shed slivers of light in future posts in how all of scripture points to and supports non-sacrifice and non-violence and non-scapegoating.
The key is to read all things, as far as we are able, through "Easter eyes". I think that, in the end, this is what Simone Weil did. Her life was an amazing self-gift to the working poor, her mind a wealth for theologians, and her refusal to enter the church was, for her time, a Christ-like act…an identification with all people through rendering the Temple/Church exclusionary "laws" (which are by their nature sacrificial) as nul and void.
Technorati Tags: Atonement, Rene Girard, James Alison, Gil Ballie, Jurgen Moltmann, Thomas Merton, Heni Nouwen, Jean Vanier, Tony Campolo, Philip Yancy, Brennan Manning, Dostoyevsky, Easter, Christianity, Religion
September 9th, 2006
Thank you "Former-Saul" for your comment:
…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!â€â€¦ 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 really would like to understand your position.
There is open-mindedness (bad sense) that is of course anything from a self-justification for errant thinking and bad behaviour, to an evasion of commitment. But there is open-mindedness (good sense) without which we fail to grow or learn or live. My ardent hope is that I lean to the latter. No doubt I have too often been found in the former. I am sincerely indebted to anyone who would steer me right.
God knows I have preconceptions that need pruning and lenses that need squeegeeing. But lenses just the same. If post-modernism has taught us anything it is that we are never without lenses…that we are contingent beings unable to escape our subjectivity. (We were of course foolish to try, as the Enlightenment has shown us.)
Perhaps then, the better way to approach this "sacrificial" thing is to try to find the story that best fits the story. A kind of search for existential verification. While post-modernity has bequeathed some questionable ideas, this is one of post-modernisms good gifts. Something we humans have always done is tell stories.
Marcion wanted to tell a radically truncated rendition. I may need correction but I recall that Marcion was intent on jettisoning the whole of the Old Testament and anything that he sensed as Semite in the NT. A theology professor I had felt however that Marcion should at least get credit for getting the "Father’s" to quit dragging their feet and round up all the letters and the writings that later became the New Testament canon. So we need at least to thank Marcion for this contribution.
Now then, if Rene Girard inspires theologians to throw fresh light on the "traditional-sacrificial" story making it again the more compelling story, then he has served a Marcionesque purpose. And we all benefit. I am truly open-(minded) to this.
As I’ve said, the story I’ve come to inhabit was not sought by me. I was relatively content with a form of dispensationalism that included without me realizing it, a form of Arianism…that is, God needed to be violent in the past but then Christ came and he was now offering grace from his wrath, although, because he is just, will have to be apocalyptically violent again sometime in the future. Well, my moving away from this story wasn’t because it failed to tell a kind of encompassing story, it was because I was blind-sided by an infinitely better story, a story moreover that read me (crucified me).
In retrospect, the "blind-siding" was a long time coming. My only explanation for this was my decision, nine years ago now, to hang my life on a piece of scripture: "…to know nothing but Christ, and him crucified." This in turn lead me to Merton et al, then to the Benedictines, although there’s nothing "special" about this, except that I then found myself in the company of James Alison and finally Rene Girard. (Are we not always lead to the transcendent through particular humans? There’s a certain beauty about that.)
So I do appreciate your desire to understand "my" position. Although of course it isn’t mine at all. And even Rene Gerard, who has developed the "story" (mimetic desire and it’s theological significance leading to scapegoating-sacrificing) refrains from claiming it as his. As an anthropologist/theologian it is something he himself happened upon in his reading of all the (great) texts. And if there is anything Girard does, it is read texts. Check out this interview with Girard, as a very brief introduction to him and his thought.
Far from ignoring huge sections of scripture, the non-sacrificial reading incorporates all of scripture, bringing back into play all the great doctrines of the faith…from creation, to original sin, to atonement. And it does so not in any mere cerebral way, but in a heart-breaking self-revealing way.
This story, (which is simply the gospel) because it is alive and dynamic, will need many future posts. And in all this, as we tell our stories, there need be no fear or wrath, only love. I thank you for inspiration.
Technorati Tags: Christianity, Rene Girard, James Alison, Marcion, Merton, Post-modernism, Scripture
September 6th, 2006
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.
Technorati Tags: Copernican shift, Michael Coren, War, Atonement, Christianity, Peace, Violence
September 3rd, 2006
Thank you "Former Saul" for this comment posted on the Open Letter to Christianity Today:
I would agree with the direction but not the timing…in my limited understanding, Jesus put an end to the sacrificial requirements with His final sacrifice for all…while there is a way around it, not sure why we would try?
Coming to see the radical difference between a sacrificial reading and a non-sacrificial reading of scripture, in other words, the difference between a God who occasionally uses sacrifice (who supposedly made certain sacrificial prescriptions for his people) and a God who has nothing at all to do with sacrifice, is truly difficult for those of us inculcated in the traditional penal-substitutionary atonement doctrine. Perhaps it’s on the level of a Copernican shift.
For people who grew up with a (Ptolemaic) geocentric understanding of the solar system, the heliocentric version proposed by Copernicus was unthinkable. The atonement as simply and only Christ’s utter self-gift that exposes our sacrificial ways, may seem as unthinkable.
But presuppositions, preconceptions, can be overcome through trying on new lenses, trying out a different framework. Coming to scripture with (St. Anselm’s) the familiar framework of penal substitution in mind, those scriptures that allude to God’s sacrifice of Christ, fit well enough. However, when you take with you an view of God being completely non-violent and non-sacrificial, a view that Jesus reveals the whole nature of God, full-stop, that the "sermon on the mount" is arbiter of God’s unfolding revelation, then, concerning conventional atonement, things are turned inside out.
Is it possible that God’s supposedly putting an end to the sacrificial system or its requirements through "sacrificing" is geocentric thinking? Is it possible that in this scheme we remain half-blind to our own sacrificial-scapegoating ways of constructing life together. Instead, is it possible that God’s putting an end to the sacrificial system through uncovering its workings and our complicity in its perpetuation, is Copernican thinking?
Is it the sacrificial reading that furtively "makes its way around" the revolutionary aspect of the gospel? Is it possible that while substitutional atonement recognizes God’s self-gift in Christ and our (sin’s) role in Christ’s death, it cannot go the whole way because in the end it is still God who demands Christ’s death in payment for our sins? Does God’s wrath need appeasing through human sacrifice, even when that "human" is also God? Or was it our wrath that needed appeasing?
The Gospels do not require a sacrificial reading, and in fact ask for a non-sacrificial understanding.
Is it any wonder that the "resacrilizing" of Christianity has lead to anti-Semitism, the Crusades, and continues to serve as justification for wars of all kinds? the current USA’s Administrations justification for war as just one example.
So yes, with utmost respect, we must try to come to grips with God’s radical non-sacrificial and non-violent ways. It’s time to reject all dispensational categorizing and any and all shades of Arianism and take Christ’s word that God is fully revealed through Jesus Christ.
Technorati Tags: Sacrifice, Arianism, Atonement, Christianity
July 25th, 2006
This is in response to a comment on the Achan post. The question was:
Does your spin on the Achan story depend on the notion that there must have been other “Achans†who weren’t caught?
The way I see it is if the events in the Achan story" are interpreted literally, then obviously you can have only one Achan. Things are what they are. God commands the wiping out of nations and anything associated or "touched" by them, like Achan and his family. And so it goes, the sacrificial altar humps along, (throughout scripture) claiming its victims and restoring "meaning" and "peace", and keeping the sacrificers safe and on the right side. (And far as we’re concerned, all we need to do is make sure we stay on the right side.)
If however you question this kind of God and refuse an Arianistic split between Father and Son and believe the Son wholly reveals the Father, then things look much different. The first difference is that the interpretation of the Achan event must be seen not only theologically but also anthropologically. That is, that this culture, as those around them, lived within the cult of sacrifice. But with a difference–that the writers interpreted the events within their culture as best they could, with the "light" they had. And that "light" was God’s gradual self-revelation.
In fact the story of scripture is that this "light" grows through God’s slow but persistant self-revelation; even while God continues to work within our own sacrificial matrix as a way of finally undoing it. The light becomes successively brighter as we move through the historical books, then through the poets and especially the prophets; and finally, in Christ, we discover that the "light" is the Light of the world.
With this anthropological as well as theological understanding in mind, "my spin" on the Achan story is that it doesn’t need other Achan’s, actually, doesn’t need an Achan at all. That’s because an "Achan-like" culprit/victim will be found. That is just the intransigence of the "scapegoating mechanism".
In the same way, Christ didn’t plan his being sacrificed, it wasn’t a Father/Son sacrificial pact as the substitution atonement theory presents. What Christ did know is that his studied non-association with sacrifice and scapegoating, powerfully represented in everything from the healing of the Gerasene demoniac, a quintessential scapegoat, to the cleansing of the Temple and its sacrificial fascination, would inevitably result in his being sacrificed. As Caiaphas says from deep within the mechanism, "better to have one man die in exchange for the nation…" And so Christ is sacrificed, and predictably "peace" breaks out, Pilot and Herod become friends over the sacrificial altar.
And without the resurrection, the mechanism stays hidden, violence casts out violence claiming sacred status, the "power of sin" holds, Satan doesn’t fall like lightning. But mercifully, of course, the resurrection redefines everything.
Technorati Tags: Sacrifice, Atonement, Christianity, Peace, Religion, Violence
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