Atonement fetish - Part 1
Ever since the days at St. Mary's University, I have been fascinated with the doctrine of the "atonement". This is the message of how it is the death of Jesus reconciles humanity to God.
In school I was exposed to three dominate theories of the atonement. Here the big three are in historically chronological order.
Ransom - Humanity is held hostage to a power (Satan) and the death of Jesus is the ransom that is 'paid' in order to release humanity from captivity. This was the dominate way of understanding atonement in the first 1000 years of the church.
Substitution - Humans are condemned and deserve punishment because of our sin. The punishment of this sin should fall on humanity, but the Good News is God's wrath and punishment was put upon Christ and thus humanity is now no longer hell bound. This is the dominate way of understanding atonement in our churches so much so to question this understanding is taken as a threat to the entirety of the Gospel.
Moral Exemplar - Jesus' life and death show humanity how to live and a life of self sacrifice is a life that leads to a reconciled world. This is often a position that even agnostics and atheists can approve of as it does not need space for a deity and is taught by secularists and religious alike.
There are a ton of nuanced positions and even varied theories of atonement. For instance, there is a specific form of substitution called "Penal Substitution" which is taught as "the right way". There are new theories such as those of Girardians who talk about the death of Jesus exposes the sacred victim and scapegoat mechanism that runs our world and now that this mechanism (Girard calls it Satan) has been exposed we are liberated.
My point is not to convince you of any one position. I find each theory is helpful at times and hurtful at other times. (For more on this check out "A Community Called Atonement"). My question is where did this recent fascination with the atonement in our churches come from?
I say recent because there is no atonement doctrine in any of the creeds of the church or any of the early councils of the church. It just did not seem to be a big deal at all until recently.
Why is this? I will share a bit more on the next post as to a thought on this question.
In school I was exposed to three dominate theories of the atonement. Here the big three are in historically chronological order.
Ransom - Humanity is held hostage to a power (Satan) and the death of Jesus is the ransom that is 'paid' in order to release humanity from captivity. This was the dominate way of understanding atonement in the first 1000 years of the church.
Substitution - Humans are condemned and deserve punishment because of our sin. The punishment of this sin should fall on humanity, but the Good News is God's wrath and punishment was put upon Christ and thus humanity is now no longer hell bound. This is the dominate way of understanding atonement in our churches so much so to question this understanding is taken as a threat to the entirety of the Gospel.
Moral Exemplar - Jesus' life and death show humanity how to live and a life of self sacrifice is a life that leads to a reconciled world. This is often a position that even agnostics and atheists can approve of as it does not need space for a deity and is taught by secularists and religious alike.
There are a ton of nuanced positions and even varied theories of atonement. For instance, there is a specific form of substitution called "Penal Substitution" which is taught as "the right way". There are new theories such as those of Girardians who talk about the death of Jesus exposes the sacred victim and scapegoat mechanism that runs our world and now that this mechanism (Girard calls it Satan) has been exposed we are liberated.
My point is not to convince you of any one position. I find each theory is helpful at times and hurtful at other times. (For more on this check out "A Community Called Atonement"). My question is where did this recent fascination with the atonement in our churches come from?
I say recent because there is no atonement doctrine in any of the creeds of the church or any of the early councils of the church. It just did not seem to be a big deal at all until recently.
Why is this? I will share a bit more on the next post as to a thought on this question.
Biblical sermons
The conversation with the young woman was very nice as we shared adjacent tables at a local eatery. When I asked her what church community she was a part of, she shared that she was a part of the Catholic Church but is now a part of a "Bible Church".
Jokingly I said, "Really, I thought Catholics were a Bible Church?"
She did not get the joke at all and began to share with me that the priest never preached from the Bible on Sunday.
Not to discount her experience, I have a very difficult time buying into an idea that a Church that uses the Roman Mass and has at least four readings from the Bible is not preaching from the Bible.
Since this was Sunday, she pulled out her worship guide from earlier that morning and I saw the answer to the question I was pondering in my head.
There in the worship guide was a number of biblical citations in the pre-printed "sermon notes" section.
As I listened to her share her worship experience and faith journey, it became clear to me that a sermon or a Church is a "Biblical" if there are specific scripture citations. As long as the preacher teaches then can cite a specific biblical passage, then, from what I could gather, this young woman saw that as a "Biblical sermon."
Having a number of citations from the Bible is "Biblical" in the same way that a research paper is "fact checked" when it has encyclopedia (or in this age, Wikipedia) citations.
Here is the rub for me. This young woman was highly articulate and very clear and intelligent and yet she relied upon overt language to tell her that a sermon (or a church) is "Biblical".
Is this what is has come to? Do we only know if something is Gospel or Biblical if there is a verse citation next to it? Is this why there are posters in which we take a scene from nature and then put a bible verse next to it. Do Christians not know something is Biblical or Gospel or Good News or of God without a citation next to it?
Do we not know all churches are Bible Churches unless the sign out front says so?
All joking aside, I think there is an issue in our Churches if we are not able to hear a teaching and without the use of Biblical citations hear the Biblical witness. Heck Jesus did not cite any of his scripture yet we call his message Gospel.
Can we hear a sermon/teaching or attend a worship and critically engage in it to the point that we can hear the Biblical witness even if not one citation is made?
Let those who have ears hear.
Jokingly I said, "Really, I thought Catholics were a Bible Church?"
She did not get the joke at all and began to share with me that the priest never preached from the Bible on Sunday.
Not to discount her experience, I have a very difficult time buying into an idea that a Church that uses the Roman Mass and has at least four readings from the Bible is not preaching from the Bible.
Since this was Sunday, she pulled out her worship guide from earlier that morning and I saw the answer to the question I was pondering in my head.
There in the worship guide was a number of biblical citations in the pre-printed "sermon notes" section.
As I listened to her share her worship experience and faith journey, it became clear to me that a sermon or a Church is a "Biblical" if there are specific scripture citations. As long as the preacher teaches then can cite a specific biblical passage, then, from what I could gather, this young woman saw that as a "Biblical sermon."
Here is the rub for me. This young woman was highly articulate and very clear and intelligent and yet she relied upon overt language to tell her that a sermon (or a church) is "Biblical".
Is this what is has come to? Do we only know if something is Gospel or Biblical if there is a verse citation next to it? Is this why there are posters in which we take a scene from nature and then put a bible verse next to it. Do Christians not know something is Biblical or Gospel or Good News or of God without a citation next to it?
Do we not know all churches are Bible Churches unless the sign out front says so?
All joking aside, I think there is an issue in our Churches if we are not able to hear a teaching and without the use of Biblical citations hear the Biblical witness. Heck Jesus did not cite any of his scripture yet we call his message Gospel.
Can we hear a sermon/teaching or attend a worship and critically engage in it to the point that we can hear the Biblical witness even if not one citation is made?
Let those who have ears hear.
Dust of Christ
It was shared with me at one point in my life that to be a disciple means to walk so closely to the master that the dust of the masters that is kicked up can fall upon the disciple.
To be a disciple of Jesus means to be that close - so the dust will fall upon you.
This takes a few things to consider that are interesting.
Crowds that press upon Jesus so closely are often described as desiring to be healed. But maybe they desired the dust of the "Second Adam" to fall upon them?
When Jesus encourages the seventy (or seventy-two) to go out to the outer towns, and they are not welcomed they are told to shake the dust off their shoes. A friend pointed out that maybe in shaking the dust off their shoes also means that the dust that came off of Jesus is left in that town.
Just a couple observations, but stuff I found interesting.
Be the change by Jason Valendy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.