What was the cross all about?
Why did Jesus die?
What is the relevance of the resurrection?
All good questions.
Let’s take a few steps back…
Original Sin
If, like me, you came to faith or were brought up in a Western Protestant tradition, you would have most likely heard that we are all inherently evil, that we deserve punishment and that God, being completely holy, cannot stand to be with us because because of our sinfulness. Jonathan Edwards, in his famous, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” sermon of 1741, says this:
“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or loathsome insect, over the fire hates you… he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire. He [cannot] bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.”
According to Brian Zahnd, this sermon has done more to shape American evangelicalism than any other single piece of teaching. Whether or not that is true, it has certainly helped to shape conservative evangelicalism in the West and particularly how we view God and how we believe he views us.
We really should ask how did we get to that view? It must raise the questions about how we can conclude that the God who is love, who loved the world so much that he sent his only son, who knitted us to together in our mother’s womb, and who numbers the hairs on our head, hates us? Also, following on from last week, if Jesus is God, then how do we reconcile the fact that he seemed to spend all his time with “sinners” (to the chagrin of the religious leaders) with the idea that he cannot bear to even look upon us? We should also ask, how do we square the that God hates us and cannot bear to look upon us, let alone spend time with us, with the fact that throughout scripture, it is this same God who pursues sinful humanity – Cain, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Israel, Nineveh, Nebuchadnezzar… and then the entire human race by coming himself in Jesus?
These are good questions and should not be dismissed, so let us explore the foundation of this – the idea of “original sin.” It may be a surprise to learn that this was only actually developed in the late fourth or early fifth century, by Augustine. The first thing we should ask is, how come it took four hundred years to be thought up if it is true and if it is so fundamental to our faith?
Orthodox theologian and super brainy guy, David Bentley Hart, in his translation of the New Testament, comments on Romans 5, which is where Augustine, who was a native Latin speaker, got this from. He notes that it “constitutes one of the most consequential mistranslations in Christian history.” (296, footnote p), and goes on to observe that the Eastern church fathers (who all spoke Greek as a first language) never made this mistranslation. The crux of it is this; in the West, the translation has traditionally asserted that when Adam sinned, death came into the world because all sinned, and the point is that we are all guilty of Adam’s sin, along with him, and that this makes us inherently evil and God cannot, therefore, bear to be with us. However, the Eastern Church fathers’ translation (and the one held by everyone for the first three hundred years, was that when Adam sinned, “it resulted in us becoming sinners”.
What’s the difference, I hear you say?
In the first, our sin caused death to enter the world, in the second, our sinfulness is a result of it entering the world, or as Hart puts it, “sin entered into the cosmos and introduced death into all its members, so the contagion of death spread into the whole of humanity.” (297) The point is that, in the former, we are criminals needing punishing and in the latter view (held by pretty much all the church fathers, and most beautifully articulated in Athanasius’ On the Incarnation) we are infected with a disease that needs curing.
It makes a huge difference.
With the idea of original sin, humanity is hated by God, and essentially, if you take Jonathan Edwards’ words to their logical conclusion -Jesus came to save us from the Father! This is a pretty scary prospect and one that is very hard to defend from scripture, but it leads on to another theology…
Penal Substitution
Around the Eleventh Century, Bishop Anshelm developed the idea of an Angry God who needed to be appeased. Despite being familiar to us today, it is actually completely rooted in Pagan ideas of what the gods are like. However, if we were to take on Augustine’s idea that God hates us because of our sinfulness, it has a kind of logic.
The idea led to several attempts to reconcile the angry God with forgiveness of sin and a great deal of corruption, which, in turn led to the Reformation. Luther and Calvin , working within a legal metaphor, came up with the idea that the only way that God could be appeased was that there had to be a pure sacrifice. This is the same idea that leads to throwing the virgin into the volcano or sacrificing the virgin on the altar to appease the gods, or sacrificing the children to Molech. Jesus, therefore, was the sacrifice.
Again, if we think this through, what we are saying is that God was so angry that he literally could not control himself and needed someone to take it out on. Up steps Jesus and gallantly allows himself to be murdered by his own father, instead of us. This has many attractive points as a view because it apparently ties up many loose ends. The problem of original sin is dealt with because we can now hide behind Jesus and the problem of the angry God is dealt with because he’s used up his anger on his son. The legal transaction is done and the price is paid.
However, Tom Wright notes that Calvin and Luther were honestly, and with all integrity, trying to find “biblical solutions to medieval questions”, but that the problem was that it would be better to find a “biblical answer to biblical questions” (Tom Wright, The Day the Revolution Began, 32.) This is the point. It solves lots of the problems created by original sin and God being angry, but the question is, are they actually biblical problems?
Once again, we come back to the fact that we are saying that Jesus died to save us from the Father? Also, we have to stop and think for a moment and ask ourselves whether we can cope with the idea that Jesus and the Father (two parts of the inseparable Trinity, that is the one God) actually attacked each other on Good Friday? When we put it like that, it seems absurd, but that is the logical conclusion of this view. We also must ask ourselves whether we really believe that God could not control himself and had to kill someone to calm down? Again, not a nice thought but the extrapolation of this view.
A More Beautiful Gospel?
Perhaps if we an step away from that and think about this as a theological view instead?
When Adam sinned, sin and death entered the world, and all who were born from then on were infected. Throughout history, starting in Genesis 3 (immediately after the fall) our Father, who loves us, has pursued us and planned for the day when we will all be healed. That love is demonstrated by sending his only Son to heal and save us (by the way, the Greek for heal and save is the same word – sozo).
He showed us how to live because he loves us so much.
He taught us what it was to be human because he loves us so much.
He forgave sins (before the cross had happened) because he loves us so much.
He allowed all the violence and hatred and sin of the world to be focused on him. He allowed the powers and principalities to kill him, thinking that they had won, and he went to Hades, because he was a man, but it could not hold him, because he was God, and he plundered it. He smashed his way out of Hades, plundering it (see the picture above) and death was utterly defeated. No longer a destination but a doorway.
That is good news!
New Ideas?
I am not telling you anything new. I am just telling you what was the more or less universal view before the Vulgate (the Latin Translation of the NT) was written in the fourth century. I am very nervous of new teaching. I am very nervous of people talking about God doing “a new thing”. As John Wimber used to say, “God is not doing a new thing. He is doing the old thing.”
New ideas worry me.
“Original sin” is a new idea – I know that 1700 years old doesn’t seem very new, but if you consider that no Jew in the entire history of Israel, ever subscribed to that theology (which is essentially rooted in the OT), then it is quite new.
“Penal Substitution” is a new idea. Less than five hundred years old and rooted in a Pagan view of God which is rooted in Augustine’s “original sin”. Do we honestly think that it took 1500 years for the church to work out what the cross was about?
Back to the Creed
Within the evangelical Church (as I mentioned in the introductory blog to this series) these two ideas are often considered to be non-negotiables of our faith, and yet, neither is mentioned in the creeds and thus, to insist on either being fundamental to Christianity, which means distilling and editing the Creeds, is, in my view, a dangerous position to take.
This is what we know that is fundamental:
God became man and lived and died to save us. He plundered Hades and defeated death. He rose again, thus showing us that new life was available to us for now and for ever and that death was now a doorway.
Amen.
Recommended Reading:
“The New Testament” – David Bentley Hart
“The Day the Revolution Began”- Tom Wright
“Cross Vision” – Greg Boyd
“Sinners in he Hands of Loving God” – Brian Zahnd
“A More Christlike God” – Brad Jersak
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