“The other God’s were strong; but thou wast weak;
They rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne
But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak
And not a god has wounds, but thou alone”[1]
In order to understand salvation it is first necessary to fully realize what one needs to be saved from. “A deficient understanding of the human predicament leads to a defective understanding of the solution offered.”[2] I have briefly touched on the nature of sin, in how God communicates conviction of sin to us, but it is useful to fully appreciate the human condition; that is our place relative to God, for salvation is the restoration of ourselves to our intended place relative to God.
Theology always shows a distorted view of God. Traditional views of the atonement have done so as well. There are several leading theories of the atonement, all of which pose bigger questions than they answer. There is the Substitutionary or Penal Substitution theory, There is the Ransom theory and the Satisfaction Theory, as well as the Moral or Non-violent Theory and others. The differing views of the atonement are useful in that they speak metaphorically to us as we understand our own sinful position. But as serious theology it misses the central premise of the entire story of the universe.[3]
All of these theories hold that we are somehow held captive by the devil, that our inability to return to God is somehow imposed upon us. Bloesch says it this way:
“Bondage to sin means captivity to an anti-god power, the prince of darkness. This power is inferior to God but superior to man, and man can only gain freedom from this spiritual force of wickedness through faith in Jesus Christ.” [4]
A more accurate view would be that we are unable to return to God because unwillingness is a component of the rebellion in which we are fully complicit.[5] For even as he says earlier:
“The fall is not transition from essence to existence (as Tillich) but turning away from God in the life of every person within history. It is not simply being ‘in the world’ (M Heidegger) that is the cause of man’s predicament but being caught up in a rebellion against his Creator, one that was already in effect at the beginning of the race.”[6]
For Luther (and Augustine) sin was being bent inward upon ones self, and so the “anti-god power” to which we are held captive in ourselves. We are not victims in this whole operation. We know Apophatic-ly that we are not in right relationship with God. This is either because God does not exist to be in relationship with, or we are in rebellion to his intended will there are no other alternatives.
Luther’s affirmation that man is free in the realm of things below, but not toward God,[7] is affirmed. Rebellion perpetuates itself. We must reject the image of man being freed from prison in favor of an image of man being the last one standing on a battlefield after marching with the forces of darkness against the powers of heaven. Man “must” fight on for the same reason the demons give in Paradise lost; but he is held captive by no-one. He is powerless to restore himself, surrender will bring certain destruction and he is overpowered.
In the Garden, the serpent seduced the woman, telling her that she could be “like God” –
“Who first seduc’d them to that foul revolt?
Th’enfernal serpent, he it was, whose guile
Stirr’d up with envy and revenge, deceiv’d
The mother of mankind, what time his pride
Had cast him out of heaven, with all the host
Of rebel angels; by whose aid aspiring
To set himself in glory above his peers,
He trusted to have equall’d the Most High” [8]
The serpent was enlisting man voluntarily on his side of an insurrection; one that man has henceforth been committed to fighting. I’d go so far as to say that along with the death on the cross and resurrection, the most significant event of the Easter season is the release of Barabbas, the rebel and insurrectionist, for it is a glimpse of our coming redemption.
What is the gospel? The Gospel is God’s love which pursues us. It is the epic story of God’s pursuit of man since his first rebellion in Eden
This rebellion continues today, as man declares that God is dead. It is refusal of man to acknowledge anything outside of his faculties of sense and reason, especially the divine. This is sin: that we declare ourselves god, the judge of good and evil, partaking anew in the fruit of the tree from which we were commanded not to eat. We refuse to acknowledge the creator for as Paul said “we exchanged the glory of the immortal for images and created things.[10]
While we were yet in rebellion, God sent the Christ who bears the perfect image of God, which we bear distorted because of our rebellion. This Christ surrenders himself to be killed the fulfillment of this rebellion, but rises again on the third day to be the fulfillment of God’s love. We can choose then to die in the Anarchy of our own autonomy, or live the life of His resurrection, for He throws open the gates of heaven through this act of expiation; nullifying our act of rebellion, allowing us to find peace with God, and be welcomed as sons of His kingdom.
Why it matters: propitiation we understand to be the sacrifice to appease the wrath of the gods, as payment for our sin. It is the fulfillment of the law for sure, and if we remain in rebellion against God, we remain under the law and a propitiation is needed. We shall vainly claim in judgment that Christ’s work propitiated for us – for propitiation is cheap grace - it necessitates no resurrection (nor the divinity of Christ). Only in Expiation[11] is God’s grace fully understood, for although the cost is great, it alone satisfies the demands of the rebellion in order to radically de-escalate the conflict between God and man, it alone invites us to new life, nullifying the act of rebellion once and for all. For although we in our rebellion did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, He knows exactly who he is, and he has made himself clearly known through his resurrection, and new life costs us all we have - our rebellion.
In a meaningful exegeses of 1 John 4:10 we understand ilasmon to mean expiation or the nullification of our offensive act of rebellion. That very act of rebellion being consummated in our crucifying the Christ. For while it is often translated propitiation – propitiation means an act performed by man to appease the gods. In 1 John 4:10 the act is performed by God and stands without equal. Expiation then being not a penalty but the putting aside of our offense. If we are talking about the free gift of Grace then it must be expiation not propitiation.[12]
Leon Morris in his book “The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross” devotes a good section to the refutation of the claim by C.H. Dodd that ilasmon (and that word group) refer in the New Testament exclusively to Expiation rather than Propitiation. Morris concedes that “it is a relief to know that we have solid grounds for our conviction that the God of the Bible is not a Being who can be propitiated after the fashion of a pagan deity”[13] and “We readily agree that pagan ideas of wrath and propitiation are absent from the biblical view of God.”[14] It seems neither Dodd nor Morris recognize that in recognizing the Uniqueness of God, we must also recognize the Uniqueness of his salvation, the means of which is Unique from classical literature. There is in this Propitiation centered reading an illogical treatment of the philosophical and theological concepts at play, in favor of a desired outcome. While Morris affirms G. Smeaton when he says “The uniform acceptation of the word (ilasmos) in classical Greek, when applied to the Deity, is the means of appeasing God, or of averting His anger; and not a single instance to the contrary occurs in the whole of Greek literature.”[15] He and others like him disallow God's radical uniqueness, by saying that while God is not a pagan deity; surely he acts in the same way for different reasons. Who first postulated that the appeasement was to God? The Law is mans law (indeed we naturally refuse to even acknowledge God's law), and God expiates by appeasing man through an act that radically de-escalates the rebellion of man. We read in the biblical text that God “gave them over...”[16] and time and time again in the Old testament God tolerates mans dictation of the terms...[17] But God puts this to an end once and for all and demands an answer through the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross.
Again the image of the battlefield is apt. We are alone, hopeless standing in opposition to God with no options. God opens up and becomes vulnerable to us, in order to invite us back, while promising judgment for those who resist. The exact nature of this expiation is a mystery, but it seems to exclude a Propitiatory sacrifice.
In Paul Helm's “The Providence of God” he writes of the knowledge of the relationship of Creator to creation:
“On the one hand, because of the difficulty of these issues it is tempting to say no more about them; or to have recourse to paradox. For we are dealing with matters not only of which human beings have no experience, but of which they could have no experience. On the other hand, it is also tempting to try to offer a theory: something that will, like a scientific theory, offer an explanation of this unique relationship and so make it intelligible. Each of these approaches is, in my view, to be resisted.... For unless one is going to grant that there is a fundamental incoherence at the heart of God's relationship to the world - which is in effect to say that there is no relationship at all, for there are no relationships which are incoherent - then there is some consistent account of that relationship.... Nevertheless, because of the unique character of God's relation to the world, a great deal of caution needs to be exercised. For the exact nature of that relationship may be beyond our comprehension.” [18]
Christological confusion: Hume's syllogism of all things causes the modern Christian problems.[19] He is right that a miracle is a violation of the “laws of nature” but we have accepted his second point that the “laws of nature” are inviolable, while claiming to reject his conclusion that a rational person is never justified in believing that a miracle ever happened. The inability of humans to suggest alternate courses will be our downfall. While Hume’s first point is true, the second is wrong headed. That which exists within nature is surely unable to violate the laws of nature, but this assumes that we both know the laws of nature, and that there is nothing outside of nature.
Christological confusion is easily demonstrated for us in the early period of the church. Monarchianism, Arianism, Docetism, and a host of other “heresies” sought to explain the relation of Jesus to God. There were the Homoosians and the Homoiosians; it gets confusing. The church leaders of the day championed their own view, and the popular consensus was deemed orthodox, while sectarian views were deemed heretical and kicked out. This infighting led to division, and distrust within the early church.
What none of the early fathers seemed to see was that the confusion was due to the mysterious nature of Christ himself. God himself is ineffable. How then can we describe the relation of Christ to a God we do not understand fully. The central teaching of the Kerygma was the kingdom of God 553 A .D.)[20] Earlier church fathers urged the church toward unity, to disregard the differences. Later fathers urged dogmatism and the rejection of others. It seems the church was already losing its authority.
The varying Christological views of the second and third and fourth centuries were attempts to explain the differences between the nature of Jesus as man and God. This was misguided, as the right explanation settles on the uniqueness of Christ, to do that which others could not do, regardless of the makeup of his nature. The relationship must remain a mystery for us, because it is a relationship with the divine, which we cannot know fully and while it is acceptable for these concepts to exist in nebulous form directing our attention to aspects of Christ's uniqueness, or God's grace, it is heretical to nail down a concrete explanation of the Godhead, Christological makeup, or the like.
Indeed the Christology of even the second century fell victim to the indictment of Martin Kahler:
“How can Jesus Christ be the real object of faith for all Christians if what and who he really was can be ascertained only by research methodologies so elaborate that only the scholarship of our time is adequate to the task?”[21]
We do best to let God speak for himself, to take him at his word. Jesus words on the subject are cryptic but his actions clearly demonstrate the authority he operates in, he never explains the Christological makeup, even on the mount of transfiguration - as if it were not important. But he performs 34 separate miracles in the gospels, he “revealed his understanding of who he was by his actions.”[22] The work is unchanged, it's effectiveness still in place, and our faith made stronger through this mystery. It is then by denying the miraculous that we deny a meaningful Christology.
I am ardent in my warning against serpents who ordain the teachings of paganism (with thousands of years of history) and the status quo, with Bible verses and Jesusism. “These people, while pretending to be trustworthy, mix Jesus Christ with poison.”[23] I find it ironic, how these others, can turn Grace into a work, by which of course alone you must be saved (along with agreeing with them on every point of their doctrine). The Evangelicalism they claim to support is dying, because it lost its life, not because of liberalism. Take the doctrine of vicarious penal substitutionary atonement of Christ on the Cross, which they claim is THE central doctrine of Christian faith; tell me we are not looking at a pagan ritual? Rather, the Uniqueness of Christ is the fundamental point of the Gospel. Bloesch affirms this at least partially when he says that some satisfaction theory “smacks of the pagan idea of trying to force the hand of the gods or alter their disposition through ritual offerings.”[24]
It is not good news if Baal can do it, if Molech, or Ashtoreth, or Mithra or Re can do it. The good news of the gospel is that; what they could not do Jesus could - bring us out of rebellion. Those beliefs all have “penal substitution theories.” If our gospel is no different than the story of these gods, then all faiths are equal, and the answers of post-modern plurality are right.[25]
While the criticism of liberalism expressed by H. Richard Neibuhr is poignant, that the social gospel is about “A God without wrath who brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”[26] The converse criticism is also valid: That a god like every other god, capricious and wrathful, demands men perform a pagan sacrifice to achieve their own catharsis. I want to know the God of love, of hope, of peace, the source of life and Truth, not the spirit of the age.
God’s salvation is from the rebellion we have committed in the name of autonomy and freedom, it is salvation from ourselves. The Gospel means exactly what each one of us is afraid it means.[27] It is precisely when we let go of this fear that it becomes our hope.
[1] Edward Shillito, Jesus of the Scars and other Poems (London, Hodder & Stoughton 1919)
[2] Alister McGrath, Understanding Doctrine; What it is – and Why it Matters, (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Zondervan, 1990) p.161
[3] “With Reinhold Neibuhr we affirm not an ontological or transcendent fall but a historical fall.” Donald G Bloesch, Essentials of Evangelical Theology, vol.1 God, Authority, & Salvation, (Peabody, MA.: Prince Press, 1998) p.107
[4] Ibid. p.109
[5] Romans 8:7 “For the mind that is set on the flesh is Hostile to God, it does not submit to God’s law, indeed it cannot…” NIV
[6]Donald G Bloesch, Essentials of Evangelical Theology, vol.1 God, Authority, & Salvation, (Peabody, MA.: Prince Press, 1998) vol.1 107
[7] Ibid. p.100
[8] John Milton, Paradise Lost, (New York
[9]” “For to recognize that something is created by God is to recognize that it is under His authority.” (Alister McGrath, Understanding Doctrine; What it is – and Why it Matters, (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Zondervan, 1990) p.87)
[10] Romans 1: 22-23, NIV
[11] Bloesch affirms our understanding of expiation when he says “It was an offering made not simply by man to God, but by God to God” Donald G Bloesch, Essentials of Evangelical Theology, vol.1 God, Authority, & Salvation, (Peabody, MA.: Prince Press, 1998) p.161
[12] Collin Brown, The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, vol. 3, (Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1979) Pp.148-152
[13] Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 1965) p. 148
[14] Ibid. p.148
[15] Ibid. p.145
[16] Romans 1
[17] This starts with Cain and continues with few exceptions throughout (notable exceptions are the 250 followers of Korah) – It is clear God preserves the revelation of his judgment for later times, in forbearance.
[18] Paul Helm, The Providence of God: Contours of Christian Theology (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity press, 1994) p.164
[19] Robert H. Stein, Jesus the Messiah; A Survey of the Life of Christ (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 1996) p.19
[20] Ibid. p.133
[21] Ibid. p.98
[22] Ibid. p.143
[23] Note: some discrepancy in translation whether the word here is poison or “themselves”. (Ignatius of Antioch Grand Rapids
[24] Donald G Bloesch, Essentials of Evangelical Theology, vol.1 God, Authority, & Salvation, (Peabody, MA.: Prince Press, 1998) p.160
[25] For Thielicke, “Christ does not simply offer himself to God in the name of man, so that God is the object of atonement (as in Anselm). He also offers himself to man in the name of God and as God’s sacrifice.” (Donald G. Bloesch, Essentials of Evangelical Theology vol.2 Life, Ministry, and Hope, (Peabody, Ma,: Prince Press, 1998) p.277) (from Helmut Thielicke, The Evangelical Faith, II, trans. & ed. Geoffrey Bromiley (Grand Rapids, Mi.; Eerdmans, 1977) p.395)
[26] H. Richard Neibuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (Middletown, Ct.: Wesleyan University Press, 1988) p.193
[27] It means we give up autonomy (which looks different for every person) in exchange for the freedom from the certain destruction we are bringing upon ourselves. “Therefore, when God makes alive, He kills; when He justifies, He imposes guilt; when He leads us to heaven, he thrusts us down to hell.” (Martin Luther, cited in Donald G. Bloesch, Essentials of Evangelical Theology vol.2 Life, Ministry, and Hope, (Peabody, Ma,: Prince Press, 1998) p. 259) (from Karl Barth’s Epistle to the Romans, trans. Edwyn C. Hoskyns, 6th ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), p.39)
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