A More Holistic View of Salvation

I don't believe in Substitutionary Atonement anymore.

For those of you that have grown up in most American evangelical denominations, this is the doctrine concerning Jesus and salvation that came naturally to us, pre-packaged almost from birth. We were taught it in elementary Sunday School, a colored picture of a crimson-stained Jesus catching our attention near the end of the Gospel of John in our Children's bibles. We sang it in worship, proclaiming that "nothing but the blood of Jesus" could wash away our sin, and that from "his hands, his head, his feet" came "sorrow and love" (read=blood) when we stopped to survey that wondrous cross at Calvary. And we were taught to teach it, each day that we witnessed to someone, telling them eternal salvation lay in their acceptance of the gift of divine grace God gave us in Jesus' blood, shed for our sins in death. Its been the only way I've thought of Jesus' salvific nature until the past year and a half or so, and I've finally come to some conclusions about it.

I can no longer see this idea in the biblical text. I realize that, to many, I've just entered the realm of the heretical. Perhaps it's that I usually feel more comfortable there. Or, perhaps, it might be that the heretical is closer to the truth, and the true nature of Jesus and of God, than we might think.

To begin, it's not the only theory surrounding the death of Jesus and its implications for salvation out there. (There's also Christus Victor, Moral Influence, Ransom, and various others.) It also wasn't fully articulated by anyone until Anselm of Canterbury in the eleventh century, who formed his theory by using ideas of law and justice framed by an ancient Roman context. A quick glance at early and medieval Christian history makes clear the reality that Substitutionary Atonement, though it definitely came to be orthodox by the Reformation period, was never the only accepted theory of salvation out there. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Peter Abelard are only a few who thought, in their own ways, that the accepted norm might not be so.

At my core, I can't boil salvation down to one event in Jesus' life; an event which, when I think about it sometimes, can't help but make God out to be viciously mean.

The "suffering servant" passage of Isaiah 52 and 53, traditionally thought to allude to Jesus, has to be taken out of historical context to be applied to the crucifixion. We really have no idea what it truly means or alludes to, because of our inability to historically define who the "servant" of the passages actually is. If anything, the "servant" could be Moses, Jeremiah, or--as seems most probable--the people of Israel during the exile, rather than a historical figure to come five hundred years later. (Prophets in ancient Israel did indeed predict the future, but it seems an illogical stretch to think they didn't, in most cases, have the relatively near future in mind when they spoke, since their fate depended upon the validity of their words. Thus, it seems a stretch to think Isaiah wrote with Jesus in mind, to come a full five hundred years later.) This narrows down, quite quickly, the paschal lamb imagery upon which the idea of Substitutionary Atonement feeds and depends.

Ponder, as well, how the other part of that fateful weekend for Jesus, the Resurrection, is non-existent within our traditional, Substitutionary Atonement-driven perception of salvation. Then, think about how everything from the rest of Jesus' thirty-three year life is nowhere to be found there, either. (Remember, all that is required for salvation, traditionally, is the blood of Jesus shed on the cross.)

This tends to somewhat, if not completely, fracture the traditional picture of salvation, through the simple use of our own God-given reason and logic, which seeks some sort of wholeness and continuity to the life and message of Jesus, and thus the idea of salvation.

So, if there is continuity, where is it found?

I think it is found in the reality that Jesus, above all else, was an unorthodox, subversive, and prophetic representation of God incarnate, whose primary purpose was to usher in the radically all-inclusive, love-centered, death-defying and eschatologically-driven kingdom of God on earth. God became man and taught us a new way to live, to rectify the splintered sense of being we had felt ever since our estrangement from God in Eden. We were taught how to take the evil we too often found spilling forth from within ourselves and others--our self-created anti-Semitism, homophobia, racism, violence and war-making, imperialism, and misogynism--and replace it with mercy, equality, peace, understanding, grace, hope, and love, in the process making manifest the kingdom of God on earth, as it was originally intended to be.

The problem, however, is that it seems we still have work to do. The kingdom of God was not completely fulfilled in Jesus' midst. Nor has it ever been since. People lie homeless on the streets and in the alleyways of Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and Kiev. Racism, sexism, and xenophobia still exist both in our own country and throughout the world, not only in the hearts and minds of individuals but also collectively, as many of our self-created power structures still systematically deny economic and social equality, leaving wealth in the hands of the few and the cards stacked, on the whole, in favor of those already in abundance. Countries continue to make war, whether preemptively or in retaliation for wrongs committed, inviting the vicious cycle of human violence to continue unaltered and unquestioned. And humanity still divides and stratifies itself, whether based on what clothes one wears, what job they have, or who they choose to love.

This is certainly not what Jesus had in mind when he told the hungry and the poor (both economically and spiritually) that they were blessed (Matthew 5:1; Luke 6:20-21), or what Mary believed when she said God had "scattered the proud," "lifted up the lowly" and "filled the hungry with good things" (Luke 1:46-55), or what Zechariah thought when he proclaimed God gave "light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death" (Luke 1:79).

Indeed, humanity still, more often than not, creates its own affliction, pain, and misery. The climax of its ability to do so came on that thunderous gray Friday morning outside of Jerusalem, where the God who took on human form and gave new meaning to the heart of life, lay rejected at the hands of the most corrupt elements of the human soul.

But, three days later, the meaning of salvation became fully illuminated once again. God eclipsed death, stating that then, now, and for eternity, the forces of oppression, hatred and inequality that reside at the darkest corners of the soul are defenseless against those of compassion, forgiveness and grace. In effect, God said, "It is here that true salvation lies. Remember the words I've said to you, and the things I've shown you, through Jesus. Until I come again, work to create the kingdom I spoke of in your midst. It is by this that you will know you are my people." And with that, the prophetic voice of the Spirit had spoken again, in a new way, leading us on to where we might again meet and be one with the Holy.

Call it something between the Christus Victor and Moral Influence theories.

Call it what you want. But clearly, there's still work left to do. And somehow, it seems, salvation--for ourselves and for the world--might just depend on it.

The Next Freddie Mercury

His name is Mika (actually, it's Mica Penniman). And if his song Grace Kelly (as in, the 1950's American actress and Princess of Monaco) is any indication, he's the spittin' image of the famous Queen frontman.

Of course, he is trying to sound like Mercury here. But anyone that tries, and pulls it off relatively well, has to have some talent. I mean, the falsetto and the outward fist pump. Classic. And, even if the song is a little annoying to some, it's still incredibly catchy.

A Lamentation (for New Orleans)

Lamentation

How like a widow sits the city once so beautiful!
She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks,
Because there is none to comfort her.
She stretched forth her hands, but none came to her;
In her streets the flood bereaves;
In the sodden houses it is like death.
The leaders and elders of the city have fled,
But the poor are trapped within her levees.

Her friends have dealt treacherously with her;
Those who promised to help are worse than her enemies.
When she cried aloud, none came;
Smooth words promised much,
But they were empty rhetoric,
Wells without water, phantom bread.
Shame! Shame upon us all.

Who would have believed it!
She who sang even when she mourned,
The people who danced even in their want--
Now they are dying.
Their colorful robes are stained with mud;
They are gray, all gray, the pallor of the dead.

Weep, weep for the great city!
Orators of platitudes, politicians of promises,
It is you who betrayed her!
You took from her her safety;
You neglected her when she reached out to you.
You channeled her rivers and harnessed her waters--
But for yourselves!
For the profits of your friends!
You caused her marshes to dry and her wilderness to recede;
You brought the might of the waves and the winds
To her very doors.
The poor, those who dwelt in the lowest places,
Who lived in miserable shanties of wood,
Termite-ridden and forlorn,
Where none but the hopeless would dwell:
You have murdered them,
And their corpses drift in the brackish floods,
But their cries have gone up to God!

Woe to you, Republicans!
For you pumped wealth from their lands
And sent their sons to die in your wars,
But they are as nothing to you.
"Who is my neighbor?"
You do not know yet the answer to this ancient question.
Your only neighbors are your friends in the country clubs,
Or the "good old boys" in the redneck bars.
Your grandfathers set the slaves free,
And you return them to a worse bondage of perpetual poverty!
Your fathers segregated them, but you ghettoize them;
Then you redistrict them to take away the few voices they have,
But God will cause the ruined city to cry on their behalf!
Shame!
Shame for your hypocritical use of my name to lure the unwary.

Woe to you also, Democrats!
You were the fathers of slavery, the first sons of the South!
You damned the poor to generations of ignorance and want.
Your fathers segregated them,
And you promised to bring them into your family.
But where were you when they needed you?
For you lack the courage of your convictions!
You curry the favor of the enemies of your own people!
You have become impotent by your timidity.
You endorsed the wars.
You approved the miserable crumbs
For education and employment.
You courted the indifferent, smug suburbs--
May you live among them eternally,
Bored forever by their white sameness!
Shame! Shame for your graft in the statehouses,
Your selfishness that has turned your people from you in disgust.

Woe to you Christians who pride yourselves
In the name Conservative,
Who call all generous spirits and inclusive hearts "liberals,"
Who see wars as strength and peace as weakness!
The Prince of Peace rebuke you!

Woe to you also, Liberal Christians!
You scorn the common
And cause the simple to feel inferior in your midst.
Your hearts are ever open,
But your pocketbooks are always closed!
He who lived among the poor rebuke you!

Woe to you, television preachers and megachurch pastors!
False prophets!
You deceive the people with your bleats of piety,
While you endorse wars and favor your rich benefactors.
Your prophecies of end times have come true--
In your own generation!
Look upon the city! Look upon hell on earth!
See what your leaders have wrought, the shame of the earth!
All mock us and call us fools,
We who send armies across oceans,
But cannot cross the Mississippi to help our own!
Shame, shame upon you!

I hate, I despise your solemn assemblies,
The self-hypnotic repetitions of your pagan praise-hymns
Are a scandal in my ears,
Come before me no more lifting up unholy hands,
Do not use my name to grow your personal kingdoms,
Or to bless your political ambitions.
What do you think I desire? Barrels of oil from Iraq?
Herds of sacred cows from Texas?
Go now and learn what this means:
I desire mercy and not sacrifice,
Lovingkindness, and not benign neglect.

Weep, weep for my city,
For my people,
For my children.
For they are dead.

Written by Clyde Fant.

The Vision: A Liturgy of Confession

For ignoring the vision,
breathed by the living Spirit
churning deep within our souls;
Lord have mercy,
Lord have mercy,
Have mercy upon us.

For refusing to look at the vision
alive within those
who look, or act, or sound different from us;
Christ have mercy,
Christ have mercy,
Have mercy upon us.

For choosing familiarity, ease, and comfort,
rather than risking the opportunities
afforded in the vision;
Lord have mercy,
Lord have mercy,
Have mercy upon us.

(Assurance of Pardon)
If the vision seems to tarry,
wait for it;
it will surely come,
it will surely come.

Based on Habakkuk. Copyright Katherine Hawker, 1998.

Paul, the Preacher You Love to Hate

The man you see above is not a particularly close friend of mine. Our friendship has tended to oscillate ever since I was first encouraged to seek out his advice on how to live more like another friend I had come to know, Jesus of Nazareth. Even though he didn't really know Jesus at all in the physical sense, I was told, he knew him very well spiritually.

"See what Paul has to say," my friends told me.

So I called him up one afternoon, and told him what was on my mind: ministry. For a long time, he had some good advice to give. Lots of ideas about how to organize pastors, elders, deacons, the works. He was truly a good counselor, like a Jesus-infused Dr. Phil, only with a bit more of a temper and propensity for using curse words (at least when around the Galatian friends I knew).

I met him for some prayer after breakfast one day at the summer camp I always went to, though, and he sounded different. "Women should be silent in the church," he said. I was stung. Even a little frustrated. I had female friends who wanted to be pastors. "Maybe he's just a little pissed off today," I said to myself.

A few years later, as I left for church one Sunday, I heard him tell the wife of a friend to submit herself to the leadership of her husband. "Your husband should lead and rule over you as Christ over the entire Church," he said. "No way," I mumbled to myself. "Can't be what I just heard." Weren't we all equal, with no divisions of race, ethnicity, gender or economic class, like he had also assured me? I found myself disagreeing with him more and more. He was less refreshingly insightful, and more contradictory, than he used to be.

"Your gay and lesbian friends are sinning," he said to me another few years down the line, as we talked over a cup of coffee during my first semester of college. I remember that day. We had just settled down to talk. Like usual, he wasted no time. He was never one to beat around the bush, always shooting you straight whether you liked it or not. He was indefatigably confident, as assured as he had ever been when launching into a long, boisterous discourse on grace, eschatology or personal morality (or sometimes a mix of the three). The hounds of hell weren't going to stop him. They never did. I listened as politely as possible. I let him have his say about the subject, let him tell me about how he remembered saying the same thing to the local church in Rome years ago, when they called on him to settle their theological crises during the prime of his writing career.

When he finished, I set my cup down and, respectfully but firmly, told him our conversation that day had reached an end. I needed to reevaluate the benefit of our friendship.

After that, we didn't talk for a long time. We still don't talk very often, to be honest. I find him too frustrating of a friend to sit down with, more often than not. Always tooting his horn about his closeness to Jesus. Always telling everyone how, or how not, to live their personal lives. Always droning on about how the end of the world will come soon. He became a bit too obsessive and other-worldly for me.

I feel like giving him a piece of my mind after all these years, but most of the time, it's not worth it, anyway.

He'll say what he always has. And that's fine.

Sometimes, we'll have to agree to disagree, respectfully.

K. Fabricius: 12 Propositions on Same-Sex Relationships and the Church

This is one of the more interesting and challenging discussions of Christianity and same-sex relationships that I have seen in a long time, written by a man named Kim Fabricius, a blogger and fellow journeying Christian in Europe. After having other friends link me to it at the blog Faith and Theology, I have decided to repost the propositions here (since I saw no rules concerning copyright, and since I have credited the writer here as well). I would also suggest visiting the original post, here, to view the conversation that has begun in response to Fabricius' propositions. Enjoy, and make any comments here as you see fit.

Twelve Propositions on
Same-Sex Relationships and the Church

by Kim Fabricius

1. Let it be said at once that the question of same-sex relationships and the church is a question of truth before it is a question of morality or discipline. Is the church’s interpretation of scripture true? Is the church’s traditional teaching true? If they are not, then they have to go, otherwise the faith of the church becomes bad faith. As Milton said, “Custom without truth is but agedness of error.” One other thing in anticipation: Jesus said that the truth will make us free (John 8:32); Flannery O’Connor added that “the truth will make you odd.” But before we say anything more, we must know what we are saying it about. In most discussions on the issue of human sexuality we talk at each rather than with each other; in fact, we talk past each other.

2. I take it that homosexuality – and certainly the homosexuality I am talking about – is a given, not a chosen (a “life-style choice”); a disposition recognised, not adopted; a condition as “normal” as left-handedness – or heterosexuality (whether by nature or nurture is a moot but morally irrelevant point). I also assume an understanding of human sexuality that is not over-genitalised, where friendship, intimacy, and joy are as important as libido, and where sexual acts themselves are symbolic as well as somatic. Needless to say, the “Yuk” factor deployed in some polemics has no place in rational discussion, while the language of “disease” and “cure” is ignorant and repugnant. Fundamentally, homosexuality is about who you are, not what you do, let alone what you get up to in bed. This is a descriptive point. There is also a normative point: I am talking about relationships that are responsible, loving, and faithful, not promiscuous, exploitative, or episodic.

3. What about the Bible? This is the Protestant question. “The Bible says,” however, is a hopelessly inadequate and irresponsible answer. Nevertheless, we must certainly examine specific texts – and then (I submit) accept that they are universally condemnatory of homosexual practice. Arguments from silence – “Look at the relationship between David and Jonathan,” or, “Observe that Jesus did not condemn the centurion’s relationship with his servant” – are a sign of exegetical desperation. No, the Bible’s blanket Nein must simply be acknowledged. But Nein to what? For here is a fundamental hermeneutical axiom: “If Biblical texts on any social or moral topic are to be understood as God’s word for us today, two conditions at least must be satisfied. There must be a resemblance between the ancient and modern social situation or institution or practice or attitude sufficient for us to be able to say that in some sense the text is talking about the same thing that we recognise today. And we must be able to demonstrate an underlying principle at work in the text which is consonant with biblical faith taken as a whole, and not contradicted by any subsequent experience or understanding” (Walter Houston).

4. The first condition is not satisfied. The Bible knows nothing about homosexual orientation, or about homosexual relationships as defined in Proposition 2. In the Old Testament, the stories about Lot and his daughter (Genesis 19) and the Levite and his concubine (Judges 19) are about gang-bangs, while the prohibitions against homosexuality in the Holiness Code (Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13) are about (a) cultic cleanliness and (b) male dominance (i.e. a man should not treat another man like a woman). While purity concerns are not entirely anachronistic, Brueggemann is surely right to say that if push comes to shove, justice trumps purity.

5. More pertinent are attempts to ground an anthropology of heterosexuality in Genesis 1 and 2. But as sympathetic as I am to understanding the imago Dei in relational and social terms, there are serious exegetical problems with this reading of Genesis 1:26-28, particularly if you read the text Christologically. As for Genesis 2, there is a rather obvious aetiological reason why a man and a woman would have to parent the human race, which says nothing about “compulsory” heterosexuality. There is certainly more to say about Adam and Eve than not Adam and Steve, and much in the rest of the Bible that would dissuade us from taking reproductive sex as the norm. Finally, a major omission from most references to the Old Testament: the Wisdom literature, with its emphasis on the observation of the world as a clue to discovering the way things are with God and creation, and therefore the suggestion that empiricism itself is biblical, and scientific findings germane to the discussion.

6. In the New Testament, the gospels are mum about homosexuality. That leaves three references in the Pauline corpus (Jude 7 is irrelevant: cf. Genesis 19). The condemnations in I Corinthians 6:9-10 and I Timothy 1:8-11 depend on the translation of two obscure words (malakoi and arsenokoitai), but let us assume that they refer to same-sex relationships. There is certainly no question about the matter in Romans 1:18ff., undoubtedly the most relevant Pauline text about same-sex relationships. Or is there?

7. It is at least noteworthy that Paul deploys the language of dishonour and shame, rather than sin, to describe male-male relationships, which, in any case, are but a specific instance of the universal distortion of desire that enters the world as a result of the primal sin of idolatry. And Romans 1:26 is an interesting verse. We assume it refers to lesbianism (the only one in the Bible if it does), but the early Fathers, until John Chrysostom, and including Augustine, took it to refer to male-female anal intercourse. A cautionary tale here about the “obvious” meaning of a text! There is also the question of the rhetorical function of Romans 1:18ff. – or rather Romans 1:18-2:5. As James Alison observes (rightly ignoring conventional chapter and verse denotation), Paul’s argument works by condemning Gentile sexual practices – why? – so as to set his Jewish-Christian “hearers up for a fall, and then delivering the coup de grace” (Romans 2:1), such that “the one use to which his reference could not be put, without doing serious violence to the text, is a use which legitimates any sort of judging” such behaviour.

8. More to the point, again, is the question of the nature of the homosexual relationships being condemned. Are they the kind of relationships defined in Proposition 2? Is, therefore, the first condition of the hermeneutical axiom stated in Proposition 3 satisfied? The answer is No to both questions. The Hellenistic homosexual relationships that Paul condemns, if not forms of cultic prostitution, would normally have been both asymmetrical in terms of age, status, and power (the “approved” form was pederasty) and therefore open to exploitation, as well as inherently transitory. And as Rowan Williams reflects on Romans 1: “Is it not a fair question to ask whether conscious rebellion and indiscriminate rapacity could be presented as a plausible account of the essence of ‘homosexual behaviour’, let alone homosexual desire, as it may be observed around us now,” let alone in the church?

9. Summing up the Old and New Testament texts as they contribute to the contemporary discussion on homosexuality, the late Gareth Moore says: “In so far as we can understand them, they are not all concerned with the same things, they do not all condemn the same things, and they do not all condemn what they do for the same reasons. Most importantly, they do not all condemn same-sex activity, some of them do not condemn same-sex activity, and none of them clearly condemns homosexual relationships or activity of a kind which is pertinent to the modern Christian debate.”

10. Unlike Protestants, Catholics approach the issue of same-sex relationships indirectly through the Bible but directly through tradition as interpreted by the magisterium. In particular, appeal is made to “natural law”, norms of being and precepts for action said to be knowable apart from revelation, through ordinary experience and practical reason. Cultural pluralism and post-critical insights about the social construction of reality have radically problematised the concept of natural law. Nevertheless, the condemnation of same-sex relationships on the basis of natural law even on its own terms is intrinsically contingent. Thomas himself accepted that natural law may not be immutable, and that specific judgements are open to change. With the Wisdom literature, empirical evidence is indispensable. One recalls Wittgenstein’s advice: “Don’t think, look!” And when one looks at gay and lesbian people, what does one see? Does one see defective heterosexuals with an inclination that is “objectively disordered” leading to behaviour that is “intrinsically evil”? Whose experience? What evidence?

11. My own view is that, following the biblical trajectory (cf. the “underlying principle” in the second condition of the hermeneutical axiom stated in Proposition 3) of an ever-expanding inclusiveness of once-marginalized people (Gentiles, women, blacks), it is only a question of time before the list expands to embrace homosexuals. Theologically, the issue before us is not that of “rights”, or even justice or emancipation (the discourse of liberalism), it is a matter of divine grace and human and ecclesial ontology. The issues we have to tease out together include biblical hermeneutics (particularly as it relates to the prescriptive use of scripture in Christian ethics and to Augustine’s regula caritatis), empirical evidence, and personal experience. With my own eyes I have seen the certainties, caricatures, and phobias of Christians melt away through the warmth of contact and fellowship with lesbian and gay people, and, indeed – crucially – through the visibility of their holiness and charisms. The biblical paradigm is the story of the conversion of Cornelius in Acts 10 – which, of course, is actually the story of the conversion of Peter himself, an “Aha!” moment before “Truth’s superb surprise” (Emily Dickinson), an event which sent the early church back to torah and tradition trusting that the Spirit would guide it into new heuristic strategies of reading and interpretation.

12. For all Christians, as the drama unfolds, the question must surely be this: How, as embodied and sexual creatures, do we live in the truth and witness to Christ? “Live in the truth”: acting not according to law, either biblical or ecclesiastical, but not according to personal feelings either, rather following the truth that must ultimately lead to Christ, while refusing complicity in conspiracies of secrecy and deceit, particularly in clerical culture. And “witness to Christ”: as forgiven sinners with no claims to infallibility, not being judgmental on the one hand or contemptuous on the other, and not seeking to score points against one’s opponents, or to back them into a corner, let alone bullying, un-churching, even demonising them. Amidst the rubble of cognitive dissonance caused as the tectonic plates shift, the building blocks of the future will be the practice of “hearing one another to speech” (Nelle Morton) and piles of patience and perseverance, for (to conclude the Dickinson verse): “The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind.” We will certainly discover what the church is made of, whether we Christians really trust the Spirit, practice peace, and live in hope.