Clergy and Educators

ICJS Scripture Forum, 2003-2004
Session #6

Scripture Forum
Session #6
Goucher College
April 16, 2004

Introduction to the discussion:

   This session of the Scripture Forum was devoted to a discussion of Christian metaphors of atonement. The discussion was led by Kelly Denton-Borhaug.

   The outline provided to guide the discussion begins with definitions of "atonement," "redemption," and "sal-vation." Kelly explained that, in trying to understand atonement, we have to struggle with the words that are used to define it, with how those words are related to one another, and with how the words fit in Christian theology.
   Contributing to the difficulties in understanding atone-ment is the way it has been handled, or not handled, by Christian leaders throughout the history of the Church. Church leaders came together when necessary to ham-mer out theological issues, but they never dealt with the issue of atonement: It was just accepted as it was -- profuse and unwieldy.
   Thus it is hard to get a handle on atonement, yet this theological locus is absolutely central in Christianity, the "hub" of the wagon wheel.
   Christian theologies of atonement are not well under-stood even by theologians and religious professionals.
   Mel Gibson's movie has thrust questions of atonement back into the center of things in a way that people aren't used to looking at them.

   A Handbook of Theological Terms, by Van Harvey, states that "atonement refers to the reconciliation (at-one-ment) of two parties. In Christian theology, it refers to the restoration of the broken relationship between God and man that was accomplished in the life and death of Jesus Christ."
   This definition prompted a question from a Jewish participant: Is atonement linguistically really "at-one-ment"? This seems like a midrashic way of reading the word.
   The evidence of the OED would suggest that in the earliest usage, dating back to 1533 and 1555, the phrase "at onement" was used in the description of God's work in Christ. So "atonement" is one of those very rare theological words that is actually of English origin.
   The Jewish participant who raised the question went on to explain that there are two words in Hebrew that refer to redemption: (1) ge'ullah, which originally referred to the ransoming of a kinsman sold into slavery or the buying back of family property (when God redeems His people He acts the part of the kinsman in ancient law), and (2) pidyon ha-ben, which refers to the redemption of the firstborn son (only if he is the first child of the mother) by the payment of a ransom of five shekels.
   The discussion of redemption was followed by a refer-ence to kippur as covering over sin so that atonement can happen.

   At this point the discussion moved to questions that should be asked in thinking about various metaphors of atonement (these questions are listed in the outline):

• What is the human condition (understanding of sin) to which an image corresponds?
• What is the relationship of any given metaphor
  to the surrounding history/culture in which it emerges?
• Where does the change wrought by the work of Christ take place (objective/subjective pole)? Is God changed? Are humans changed? Is the world changed?
• How do human beings get in on the change?
• What does this change look like?
• When did/does salvation take place (another objective/subjective pole)?
• What is the relationship between the narrative components of the story of Jesus of Nazareth
  and the images, metaphors, and theories of atonement?
• How and what do images communicate to con-temporary individuals and communities? What kind of human reflection, action, perception do these images inspire?

   It was noted in regard to the first question that understandings of the human person are included along with understanding of sin, and in regard to the second question that meaning shifts in different times and cul-tures.

At this point the discussion became less guided and more free-flowing:

• Even if we want to stay connected to them, some metaphors just stop working and we need new ways of thinking about things.
• In their original contexts these things were not metaphors but were understood literally. God never needed the actual sacrifice of bulls, but
  the people did. As people changed, they no
  longer needed the (literal) ritual.
• The human condition hasn't changed, so what we need is new vessels.
• In Roman Catholic theology certain dominant metaphors no longer work in our time, but there
  is a disjunct between what we need and how we talk (which is part of Gibson's problem). The whole question of atonement has to do with how we understand the death of Christ, and there is a growing consensus that old metaphors -- e.g., ransom, satisfaction -- have ceased to function
  in our world.
• The language of metaphor is deployed in ways that drain the holiness out of the truth to which the metaphor is supposed to refer: If it's only a metaphor, then the story is drained of its meaning, its truth, its holiness.
• Question: But you still have to ask how the lan-guage of metaphor works. If you use metaphor, are you saying that it isn't true or powerful?
• Response: No, metaphor can make it more powerful.
• Every word in the Torah is true, but the Torah is not factual like a newspaper.
• Our communities have done a poor job in edu-cating people about the metaphorical use of language, about the nature of religious truth and how it differs from ordinary truth, scientific truth, and so forth. People have the mistaken idea that religious language functions the same way that scientific language does. They don't understand that religious language tries to get to truth in a different way. Atonement theology is right in the middle of this problem.
• This kind of misunderstanding is what happened when Rabbi David Wolpe said that maybe the exodus never took place (illustrating what Mai-monides said about the masses not understanding theological truth).
• But it matters whether the exodus or the resur-rection actually took place because happening or not happening impinges on how God operates in history. If we say that the exodus or the resur-rection is only metaphor, then these concepts are beyond the reach of proof or disproof.
• But we don't do history now the way it was done when the Gospels were written or the way history was done in the Middle Ages; we do scientific history.
• Is Gibson's understanding of atonement a reflection of the times in which we live?
• Another factor that needs to be taken into con-sideration concerns questions of power and powerlessness and how people feel about the
  way their leaders treat them. Roman Catholics were not able to read the Scriptures themselves for a long time, and that kept them powerless. (A related issue and another part of Gibson's problem is his contention that "pointy-headed scholars" have taken religion away from us.)
• It was noted that all of the discussion above came out of the second question -- "What is the rela-tionship of any given metaphor to the surrounding history/culture in which it emerges?" -- which shows how important that question is.



• The discussion then turned to the third question: "Where does the change wrought by the work of Christ take place (objective/subjective pole)? Is God changed? Are humans changed? Is the world changed?"
• The notion of objective and subjective poles was explained as it relates to certain specific ques-tions, e.g., in whom does change take place,
  when does change happen, and the location of change. In objective atonement theologies, change happens in God, at the end of time, and is other-worldly; in subjective atonement theologies, change happens in humanity, is part of a process, and occurs in this world.
• It is important to ask if the world is changed. Karl Rahner believed that the resurrected Christ is at the core and power radiates out from him and changes this world. That is, the power of the Christ event is embodied first in the disciples and then in the Church, and people are emboldened to live a certain kind of life that has the power to change the world. The mechanism of redemption for Rahner is to be found in ethics, in how a person behaves in the world.
• This is a tough sell in the twenty-first-century world.
• Framed as a metaphysical issue, this becomes an "unfalsifiable" claim, one that cannot be measured.
• You can see the effects of metaphysical change in peoples' lives.
• This all goes back to the question of when this happens: Does it happen as a single event or as part of a process?
• How do you verify a metaphysical claim? Under the pressure of trying to do that, we've dumped the whole metaphysical claim.
• According to Paul Tillich, a symbol points beyond itself but it also participates; its participation frees and breaks open the symbol, allowing the meta-physical to come back in and opening up the possibility for awe and mystery. What's missing
  in our world is the second naiveté.
• Jewish communities have done a poor job of teaching young people that Judaism has never held that the Bible is a literal portrayal of historical fact, and because of that young people cannot accept physics and the Bible at the same time.
• In Judaism there are different ways of interpreting a text, one of which is called peshat. Peshat refers to the plain meaning of a biblical text. "Plain" does not necessarily equate to the literal meaning of a text. Nevertheless, Jews have debunked the peshat.
• Literalism is in opposition to the historical-critical method of interpretation, and scholars wanted to move away from the literal meaning of a text so that they could hang on to the locus of power. But the literal meaning can open up the richness
  of a text. We got it wrong by not showing that. (Epistemological humility was not a characteristic of the historical-critical method.)
• Most young people stop studying around the age of thirteen, just when they are on the verge of being able to deal with a more nuanced under-standing of a text.



• Another question that was asked but not dis-cussed further was: How do the narratives fit in, i.e., which atonement theologies emphasize what pieces of the biblical narratives?



• Question: How have images of atonement played themselves out in destructive ways?
• Response: Abused women have been told that Jesus suffered and carried his cross to the end, and that is what they must do if they want to
  be good Christians.
• One participant mentioned a novel that portrays voluntary suffering as tremendous hubris in an attempt to debunk the notion that suffering makes a person better than everybody else (a notion that might be thought connected to election in Judaism).
• I Peter points out that if Jesus' followers live the way they're supposed to live they will suffer, but they are not to suffer just for the sake of being close to Jesus.
• Question: Is suffering inherent in atonement (because it isn't in Judaism)?
• The closest thing in Judaism is kiddush ha-shem ("sanctification of the divine name") -- martyrdom. This is not a choice to suffer but suffering (death) when one has no other choice.
• Rabbinic texts show suffering as a confirmation of chosenness.
• How about as a confirmation of holiness?
• We have an obligation to figure out why people are suffering and to alleviate suffering wherever we can.
• This discussion suggested another question: What uses of suffering are embedded in each of the types of atonement?



• The discussion then moved to the next section
  in the outline: Paul Fiddes' typology with eight atonement clusters.
• Typologies seem to be the way that atonement is studied, and typologies of atonement abound.
• Fiddes maps atonement out in a number of dif-ferent ways: socio-cultural aspects, historical aspects, objective and subjective polarities, etc.



• Sacrifice is probably the oldest metaphor: Sin is a stain and atonement somehow cleans it up. This notion developed in Christianity with strains both from Judaism and from gentile "religion" -- e.g.,
  the Greek notion of "noble death," or "death on behalf of."
• Question: Is the mechanism or power of sacrifice independent of the will of the people participating in the ritual?
• Question: How is it that the shedding of this blood is effective? The rabbis say that blood is powerful as the source of life, but blood is also slightly dangerous. Humans have to be protected from the power and the danger, but power and danger are effective in covering the sin.
• The burning of the red heifer works the same way. Paradoxically, the heifer purified impurity, but also caused minor impurity to the priests who prepared it for burning.
• When Christ's death is seen as a sacrifice, his blood becomes more important and his suffering is elevated above the suffering of all other people.
• One explanation of why Christ's death matters more is that sin enslaves humans to the devil,
  but God frees humans with a trick: Jesus is God disguised as a human being. Following his death on the cross, Jesus descends into hell as a kind of hook. The devil grabs the hook and the enslaving bond is broken.
• Answering the question as to why Jesus' suffering is of a different order has been done by arguing the two natures of Christ, the divine and the hu-man. This is a circular argument, and in a world filled with so much suffering, another answer needs to be found.
• If we focus on Jesus' suffering, we won't see anyone else's suffering, and we won't try to do anything about it.
• The problem with Jesus' suffering in Gibson's film
  is that the suffering doesn't take us anywhere. (Gibson should follow the example of Steven Spielberg -- who refused to profit from Schindler's List -- and use the profits from his film to help alleviate the suffering of others.)
• Jesus, who was without blemish, can take on the sins of others because he is the only one innocent of any wrong.
• But to say that only Jesus' suffering was entirely unjust is to render a judgment on everybody else's suffering.
• Dorothy Soelle holds that we should see Jesus every time we see innocent suffering.
• For that to work Jesus has to become every per-son, which begs the question of the uniqueness of Jesus' suffering. It is necessary to de-emphasize the uniqueness of Jesus.
• What really stands out is the lack of blemish. That is what makes the sacrificial metaphor work.
• But Jesus hurts his family. He strains and/or breaks relationships. So outside of the sacrificial meta-phor, the claim that he is without blemish doesn't make sense.
• Jesus is presented as the unblemished lamb, but how does that work? The whole category of innocence has to be understood another way.
• Jesus and Martin Luther King, Jr. were complicitous in their own deaths, but both of them were trying to fix institutions that were broken.
• Doing something about sin is a costly business, and all atonement theologies try to get at this insight and deal with it in some way.

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