I have spent the last few weeks seriously grappling with the cross of Jesus of Nazareth. Atonement, specifically, is very, very important to me. Salvation is very, very important to me, as it should be. Christ’s work for humanity is important. I am a minister of the Gospel. The importance of such subjects are presumed, and correctly so. A seminary night class focused upon Christology is proving itself to be an enormously helpful guide, as far as Christological & theological clarity, focus, and construction are concerned. So, I have been seriously preoccupied with one, ultimate question: “What happened on the cross?” I found the answer while critically unpacking the Cross, Atonement Theory(ies), and honestly questioning more than a few of my previously unexamined beliefs.
So, where am I landing, as far as Christology is concerned? My answer, without a second of hesitation: Christus Victor. I have had more than a few serious difficulties with Vicarious Atonement, Penal Substitution, and Satisfaction Theories. I will save the specific problems inherent to such theories for a later post, but I will now say that these motifs developed much, much later in Christian history (Anselm, Abelard, & Protestantism). The first 1000 years of so of Christianity were characterized by an embrace of Christus Victor. I think that is more than important to note.
So, what is Christus Victor? It is, as some would advance, the Atonement motif in the New Testament. It is the proverbial battle between Good and Evil. Christus Victor explains Christ’s work on the cross as the defeat of Satan (the Biblical “Strong Man”), and the freeing of humanity from the bonds of Sin, Death and the Satan (the autonomous force of defiance). Christ defeated the Satan in what was incorrectly perceived, by the Satan, as a moment of weakness. Christ’s death was the literal undoing of the evil bent upon deterioration, death and destruction. Jesus, by overextending the over-confident enemy, defeated it, thus providing not only humanity, but also the universe its salvation (salvation which occurs in each of us upon our acknowledgment & acceptance of it, via the daily work of the Holy Spirit). Christus Victor is not built upon the idea of Christ’s work on the cross as appeasement for God. God does not need a blood appeasement – or the death of His Son – to forgive. The problem is Sin, Death, and The Satan, not God’s need for blood appeasement. This is a huge difference! Again, Christus Victor was the embraced Atonement motif of the earliest Christians. Too, Christus Victor is very, very conducive to the overarching cosmic dualism of the New Testament (Good vs. Evil). In fact, here a few NT verses supporting it (Note: all scripture references from the English Standard Version):
I Corinthians 15: 20-26: 20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. 23 But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. 24 Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
Colossians 2:15: 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities (that is, demonic rulers and authorities) and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him (or in it, that is, the cross).
I Corinthians 2:6-8: 6 Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. 7 But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
Philippians 2:9-11: 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
John 12:71: 31 Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out.
Hebrews 2:14: 14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil …
I John 3:8: 8 Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.
A few asides: Anabaptism is historically characterized by an embrace and advance of Christus Victor. Too, Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ is laden with what seems to be a a serious Christus Victor motif (e.g., see the Gethsemane scene). The Devil Symbol is prevalent in the film. It is pictured as pushing all toward the execution of – and seeming victory over – Jesus Christ. The unholy trinity that is Sin, Death and Devil, however, mistook Jesus’ strength for weakness and was eternally defeated as a result. The unholy trinity currently rages in desperation; but all will find a culmination, as the scriptures say.
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Just as a curiosity, how do you then treat II Corinthians 5:21?
“For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
This sounds a lot like a substitutionary theory of atonement to me.
Likewise, we can look at Hebrews 9:22, which tells the reader:
“And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.”
I think we may be suffering the fallacy of false dichotomy or exhaustive hypotheses. What keeps the Christus Victor from functioning within the parameters of a Substitutionary Atonement scheme? Jesus shed his blood for the remission of sins, which in turn brought about the victorious conditions that you speak of above. Sin and death were defeated by Christ, because his blood atoned for the penalty that God lays out in Scripture, under the Law. By satisfying the necessary conditions, victory was sealed.
Maybe I am missing something – I don’t know, I hardly consider myself a biblical scholar. But Aristotelean logic is another story. Beware the false dichotomy – it looks like it rears its ugly head in this post.
I read II Corinthians and Hebrews through a lens shaped by the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Otherwise, I’d be faced with some pretty difficult issues of a contradictory sort. I’ll explain.
Jesus’ life and teach was personified by a divine dedication to non-violent resistance to evils perpetuated by Sin, Death, and Devil. In fact, Jesus bounced all over the Palestinian countryside telling everyone “If you see me and what I’m saying and doing, then you are seeing God!” In Jesus, we see how God would speak, live, and act. that said, all I see in Jesus is a constant and uncompromising dedication and practice of non-violence, peaceful resistance, and love for all. Jesus’ god obviously exemplified these things, or he wouldn’t have modeled them for people. So, how then would we make a huge leap away from Jesus’ god to a god that suddenly required violence (Jesus premeditated death in our stead) to be appeased before the offer of salvation? Said differently, how do you reconcile a god characterized by a substitutionary prerequisite and the god Jesus proclaimed?
Further, the text you cite only speak of the death of Christ, which is obviously unarguable. The Christus Victor expression of atonement, which is the earliest expression of Jesus’ work on the cross, includes the death of Jesus but does not say that this death was executed in our place to appease God. Jesus died in his battle with Sin, Death, and Devil, and for all I know it was required to unravel Sin, Death, and Devil from the metaphysical “inside” and thus destroy it and free us from its chains.
Penal Substitution Theory says something totally different that I would say isn’t even in those texts. It suggests that Jesus died 1. Because God demanded an innocent to die before salvation was ushered; 2. That God needed us to die but because of our lack of innocence had Jesus do for it us instead. These texts, and their language about shedding of blood ultimately point towards a death event – which I’m not debating – but in a subtle move we have read into this death PSA interpretations.
I say it like this: Jesus died for us, but where in the world do we find anything that says that he died in our place to placate an angry God who required death before salvation?
As an aside, and concerning Aristotelean logic, I’ll simply say that it is not the case for me. If anything, there is a dichotomy between Jesus’ life and teaching and PSA, but I’m not the one who created it. I’m simply pointing at it.
Thanks, Dave! :)