Atonement

We talked about atonement in Sunday school a couple of weeks ago. We had folks coming in and out due to the string quartet and trumpet voluntary practice, so I said I'd try to post most of what we talked about.

Now, one of the main things to understand is that what God did in atoning for our sins is mystic: it's not just that we don't understand it completely; it's that we can't understand it completely. So, we'll do our best, and try to be honest about anything that doesn't quite fit.

What is atonement?


Here is a dictionary definition. Here's another.

In essence, I like to think of atonement as the act of restoring a broken relationship. If I stole your diary, I can, perhaps, atone for that by giving you back the book, and apologizing. (That's the usual understanding: atonement is about making up for something you did wrong.) I think it also counts as atonement if you tell me to consider the book a gift, and forgive me. If I lost the diary, or destroyed it, or something like that, the second option may be the only way to repair the relationship.

The atonment story


Atonement is something like the middle part of an old romatic comedy that goes "Boy gets girl; boy loses girl; boy gets girl back; boy and girl live happily ever after."

  1. Creation -- "boy gets girl"
  2. Sin/The Fall -- "boy loses girl"
  3. Atonement -- "boy gets girl back"
  4. Ressurection/Salvation/Sanctification -- "boy and girl live happily ever after."


(Of course, I don't mean that God is a "boy" and we're a "girl".)

It seems to me that the peculiar thing about Christianity is that the apostles understood that atonement had happened before ever realizing that there was anything wrong to begin with. It's like they realized that God had made things right before they even fully realized that anything was wrong. Christianity started the story in the middle.

Yom Kippur


The Jewish day of atonment is called Yom Kippur. Here is a link in the Wikipedia.

The main things for us about Jewish atonement is: (1)It's an atonement of the sins of all the people of God. The whole thing is in the context of the community. (2) There is a faith throughout all the rituals of atonement that God will hear the prayers of God's people and accept their offerings.

As we'll come to see, the Jews have it basically right.

Bad Atonement


There's this idea that gets passed around that what's happening in atonement is that God gets really mad at us for sinning, and gets good and ready to smack us but good, but at the last minute Jesus jumps in and stops God from destroying us by taking it on the chin.

Two big problems: Why is God so mad? More importantly, where in the Bible does it even hint that Jesus would act contrary to God's will? (Remember, God wants to smack us.)

[Not to leave well enough alone, some folks tell the "bad atonement" story this way: God gets really mad at us, starts to smack us, we yell out the magic words "Jesus Christ", and then Jesus takes it on the chin.]

Anselm of Canterbury


Here's a Wikipedia article about Anselm of Canterbury.

Anselm tried to answer the "Why is God so mad?" question by saying that an offence is judged not just by what happened, but who it happened to. Shoving your sister is bad, shoving the President of the United States is worse. Because God is all powerful and infinitely good, any sin is infinitely bad, regardless of what that sin is.

According to Anselm, God's love dictated how God handled this situation. God decided to exact the punishment upon God's self, the only being whose stature was such that such action could atone for the sin.

Of course, this is all very medieval and feudal in thinking. Why is pushing the President worse than pushing your sister? Because the President can do a lot more about it. Your sister can't put you in jail, the President can. It seems to me this whole thing revolves around an idea of God as just a big, powerful MAN. The Bible doesn't seem to bear this up.

There are volumes written debating this.

Martin Luther, John Calvin, and others


If there's one thing Martin Luther was big on, it was sin. Luthor saw the problem with even the smallest sins as being not that they pick on the really big God, but that they destroy the sinner, and separate the sinner from other people and the rest of God's creation. The problem is that the communion which was broken is the most vital thing there is in life.

Luthor felt that the way God atoned for this was by enmeshing God's very self into the being of the sinner, and the sinner into God. God chooses to be present in the sinner (us) and God draws the sinner (us) into God. Whatever disunion our sin created, God removed by instilling a deeper communion. What happened on the Cross, according to Luther, is that God joined with us even at our most personal, most terrifying moment.

John Calvin, seen as the founder of the Reformed church movement (of which the Presbyterian Church (USA) belongs), says much the same, but emphasizes God's initial action. It was God who chose to act (in love) when we could not.

There are difficulties here too. Luthor and Calvin, for example, insisted that Christ's presence in the sinner, and the sinner in Christ, was a real presence. In what sense is it "real"? Spiritually? What, precisely, does that mean?
If Christ is really present in us, why do we keep on sinning?

Conclusions


Well, we didn't get any real easy answers, but we said upfront that we wouldn't.

Still, it seems all my life I've been told that what's happening in atonement is a balance between God's love and God's justice. Yet, the more I read of the Bible, the more I see God's justice as merely the expression of God's love. God seems far less worried about bad people "getting theirs" than about poor people not starving, widows not being abandoned, and orphans being given a life and a future. I wonder if there's not a way to see atonement in light of God's justice as God's love.

Thoughts? Comments?

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