Puzzle Pieces and Bridges

Sometimes I think Protestants have approached theology like the Bible is a big box of jigsaw puzzle pieces and if we just had enough time and patience, we’d be able to fit everything together. This is what some scholars would call a presumption of univocality. In other words, God is the ultimate author of the Bible so everything in the Bible must fit together. It shouldn’t contradict itself, it should be clear and univocal (spoken as if with one voice).

So, when it comes to figuring out atonement theories – things like how does salvation work, why did Jesus die – many people read the Bible thinking it’s going to provide perfectly clear answers. It’s as if we think the Bible is a math textbook. Once I figure out the quadratic equation I’ll be fine this semester; once I figure out atonement theory, I’ll be saved or at least know how it works. Setting aside that I believe we’re all saved entirely through God’s grace and not through any action or decision of our own, I also believe there is no univocal atonement theory in the Bible.

I’m not actually sure you need an atonement theory when God does all the work anyway. But when I read atonement in the Bible, I now see these passages less as airtight theories and more as metaphors and motifs. This wasn’t always the case. I was pretty convinced of the Romans Road argument at one point in my life. The Romans Road is the flipside of Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA): we sinned, therefore we deserve a penalty of eternal death to uphold God’s sense of justice, but thankfully Jesus died and paid that penalty.

To anyone paying attention, it’s no wonder so many people who are taught PSA leave the faith. To believe in PSA requires you to wrestle with questions such as:

• Why would a loving God sentence us to eternal punishment when I wouldn’t do that to my own child?
• Why would our punishment be eternal if the amount of sin in a human life is necessarily finite and contained in that one lifetime?
• Did God get angry and kill God’s own son?
• How does this work mechanically? I mean, who receives the payment for sin or the sacrifice? Death? Satan? Does an infinite God need payment for anything at all, let alone for the errors of a single little creature on a single little planet? How is this not just incredibly silly?
• If God is all knowing and all loving, how could God bring individuals into existence who God knew beforehand would suffer eternal damnation? Wouldn’t that be pointless and cruel?
• What kind of salvation am I going to experience if even a single loved one isn’t going to be there with me? My wife is half of who I am, we are one. If only one of us is saved, that person can only ever be half saved without the other. I feel the same for my sons, my sisters and even my dog.

I could go on, but that’s enough to give you a flavor for the concerns most of us develop over PSA.

It may surprise you that PSA wasn’t really the dominant theory of atonement for the first 10 centuries of our faith. The ransom theory of atonement was widely espoused, and while it was also substitutionary it wasn’t penal. There was a debt paid to either Satan or death itself in Christ’s death and we were set free. That would be similar to how a slave could be bought out of slavery. If you want to dig deeper, it was Anselm in the 11^th century who first popularized ideas about PSA. Then, because they both had legal training, Calvin and Luther latched on the legalistic ideas of broken laws and penalties and Protestants have suffered ever since.

After becoming disillusioned with PSA, I struggled to find a new atonement theory to replace it. I may take these up later more as an historical excavation, but you may be interested in other atonement theories such as Christus Victor, Ransom, Moral Exemplar, Satisfaction or scapegoating. I’ve generally lost interest in them because I don’t think that’s how any of this is supposed to work. My point in this article is not a deep dive into atonement theories. My bigger point is that there is a reason there are so many conflicting theories and none of them scratch the itch.

What is that itch? Christianity formed because a scandalous miracle happened. A popular, wandering healer, preacher and mystic was crucified as a political criminal then rose from the dead. I think the resurrection is the real story that changed everything, not atonement through sacrifice and death. It’s why our protestant churches have empty crosses on our walls instead of crosses featuring Jesus dying like you might find in Catholic or Orthodox churches. The empty cross is about the real saving hope of the resurrection, not the suffering on the cross. But the early church and everyone who came after had an important question to wrestle with: if God saw fit to raise Jesus, why did Jesus have to die in the first place? That is the big itch we’re trying to scratch with the atonement theories.

In trying to answer this, the early church as recorded in various Bible passages came up with some metaphors and motifs. I don’t think they intended us to take them completely literally as we have since done in forming our atonement theories, but then again, that was 2,000 years ago so who knows?

I know some of you will read the word, “metaphor,” and think, “inferior to the truth.” Not to get all post-modern on you, but what do you think truth is anyway? I’m a composer, poet and writer so to me, “metaphor,” can easily mean something that is even closer to the truth than literal meanings can aspire. The question, “why did Jesus have to die at all,” is a great puzzle and one way to answer it is through the many lenses of various metaphors. That doesn’t mean that any single metaphor is the only right one, or even that the metaphors need to line up together somehow. The Bible is not univocal.

When someone dies and is eulogized, metaphors work together to help us fill out a picture of the person. It doesn’t mean they are all equal, or accurate, or literal or are even intended to make sense together.

• She lit up every room she entered
• She was an angel
• She was my guiding star
• Every moment with her was a warm embrace and gentle breeze
• She was the anchor, the steady oak
• Her love was a gentle river, always flowing out to anyone she cared for

Similarly, some of these metaphors and motifs for atonement in the Bible are just trying to make sense of why Jesus died, not provide an airtight systematic theology of salvation.

A ransom payment that purchases us out of slavery:

• For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)
• For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all. (1 Timothy 2:5-6)
• He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds. (Titus 2:14)
• You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of humans. (1 Corinthians 7:23)

A sacrificial offering:

• …he entered once for all into the holy place, not with the blood of goats and calves but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. (Hebrews 9:12)
• You know that you were ransomed from the futile conduct inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. (1 Peter 1:18-19)

Substitution:

• For our sake God made the one who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)
• Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” (Galatians 3:13)

Victory:

• “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55)
• I have said this to you so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution but take courage: I have conquered the world!” (John 16:33)
• …for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it who conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? (1 John 5:4-5)
• Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil. (Hebrews 2:14)

Could you combine these like one big box of puzzle pieces into PSA? You could try but I don’t think you could do it rationally. It’s more like taking pieces of different puzzle boxes and trying to force them together. They weren’t meant to work together. You might accidentally get an interesting picture, but it wouldn’t look like the picture on any of the individual boxes. And you wouldn’t solve any of the reasonable and logical problems people have with PSA outlined above in the beginning of this article, mainly how could a loving and all-knowing God bring us into life without our consent knowing some of us would be consigned to an eternal trash bin?

So, what is it? Was Jesus’s death a victory, a ransom, a substitution, something else? Maybe all the above and more.

I think Jesus had to die because right now, that’s the truth of humanity. I think the story of our fall and our sin is a wonderful myth that can open our eyes to pain and suffering and even explain a lot of things in our psychology but whatever the reason is, we suffer a lot and then we die. Welcome to our absurd humanity from which none, even God’s own son, can be saved. Jesus died because that’s what humans do.

The miracle was not the death, but victory over death. The resurrection. The resurrection was a lightening bolt that said death isn’t real. There is a greater hope and God has shown it to us in the resurrection. As a universalist, I believe that whatever happens to me after death will happen to you and Vladmir Putin, too. I don’t know how, or how long it will take for someone as stained with evil as Putin to come around, but we’ll all be saved.

So, I think “salvation,” is less about how I get into heaven and more about giving me freedom over the powers of death and empire to live my life because God is ultimately in charge and it’s going to work out just fine. Atonement is less a puzzle and more a bridge. I have my own favorite metaphor for salvation. Our village has been at war forever and we don’t know there is a bridge out of town. We’re saved, but if we don’t know the bridge exists, we live surrounded by warfare’s death and fire and pain. Jesus’s resurrection showed us a bridge we didn’t know about. God has already been in charge; God has already given us eternal life. We just didn’t know about it until we saw Jesus. And like the above metaphors, you could take it further and say Jesus himself is that bridge. Or don’t. It doesn’t matter, the bridge has been there all along regardless of what you knew or believed about the bridge. I might hear about the bridge and flee across it. I might hear about the bridge and tell my family to stop crying, we’re saved. I might decide not to shoot my enemy but convince them to cross the bridge with me to a new life. But that’s only possible if I’ve heard of the bridge.

Jesus’ resurrection was the first fruits. It was to show us that we’ll be there someday as well, even though we’re currently mired in a world of sin, greed, violence and shame. If the sin of Adam –whatever that means – caused us all to come to death, then Jesus shows us life will come to all. All! If it doesn’t mean we’re all saved, then Adam’s sin is greater than Jesus’ victory. It’s already there, the bridge is there, and the resurrection shows it to us.

1 Corinthians 15:20-28

But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.  For since death came through a human, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human, for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in its own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “All things are put in subjection,” it is plain that this does not include the one who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all.