Already in the twelfth century Peter Abelard put the question to which we must at last attend in our thinking about the work of Christ, a question almost totally ignored by subsequent centuries:
If [the] sin of Adam was so great that it could be expiated only by the death of Christ, what expiation will avail for the act of murder committed against Christ, and for the many great crimes committed against him or his followers? How did the death of his innocent Son so please God the Father that through it he should be reconciled to us — to us who by our sinful acts have done the very things for which our innocent Lord was put to death?
In a moment of candor rare in the tradition, Abelard sees the death of Christ as a murder in which we are implicated. He wonders how such an act could be considered so pleasing to God as to “satisfy” him. The question is aimed, of course, at his great contemporary Anselm, primary architect of the view of the work of Christ that has tended to dominate western Christian thinking, the doctrine of vicarious satisfaction. Anselm, like subsequent thinkers, concentrated on the sin of Adam, arguing that it was so great an affront to the divine honor that only the voluntary sacrifice of the God-man could make satisfaction for it. But such thinking diverts attention from the brute reality at hand: Jesus, the innocent one, was murdered by us. The sin of Adam, Abelard avers, was indeed bad enough, but surely it was small potatoes compared to the sin of murdering the Son of God. “Had not this very great sin been committed, could he not have pardoned the former much lighter sin?” Far from “satisfying” God’s honor or wrath or justice or whatever, the murder of Jesus, Abelard thinks, would only make matters worse — much worse.
I. Theories Aside
The contention of this essay is that our thinking about the work of Christ today, like Abelard’s remark, must become more concrete, more in accord with the “brute reality” as it is disclosed to us in the actual events. We need something more like a “smoking gun” approach to the matter, the consciousness of being “caught in the act.” We need to be grasped more than heretofore by the realization that Christ’s work is and remains always an act in which we are involved and implicated, which cannot be translated into convenient and quiescent ideas. Indeed, the fatal flaw in most thinking about the atoning work of Christ is the tendency to look away from the actual events, to translate them into “eternal truths,” and thus to ignore or obscure what actually happened and our part in it. We interpret Christ’s death as though it were an idea, a necessary part of a logical scheme of some sort, as though God were tied to a scheme of honor or justice making him the obstacle to our reconciliation. We exonerate ourselves, so to speak, by blaming the necessity for the cross on God.
So it seems at least, in most theories of atonement. In the so-called “objective” theory it is maintained that God needed the death of Jesus in order to be able to be merciful to us. God is the object of the atoning act. The demands of his law, or wrath, or justice had to be “satisfied.” So we are exonerated because the cross was necessary to God. But the inevitable consequence of such thinking is that it doesn’t finally reconcile us to God. If the cross is necessary to pay God, God will be pictured as at worst a rather vindictive tyrant demanding his pound of flesh or at best an inept subordinate caught in the same inexorable net of law and justice as we are. The theory intended to foster reconciliation actually contributes to further alienation. At bottom, that is what animates Abelard’s question to Anselm. The persistent criticism of doctrines of vicarious satisfaction and substitutionary atonement since the Enlightenment has the same root. The picture painted of God is too black, too contrary to the biblical witness. If the death was payment, how could reconciliation be an act of mercy? Mercy is mercy, not the result of payment. If God is by nature love and mercy, why could he not just up and forgive? Jesus, it seems, forgave sins before his death. Why then was the death necessary? The logic of the theory threatens the very thing it wants to promote: the mercy of God. To quote Abelard again: “Could not he, who showed such loving-kindness to man that he united him to his very self, extend to him a lesser boon by forgiving his sins?”
Yet the “subjective” theory of the atonement touted by Abelard and his latter-day followers shows that the question about the murder of the Son of God was not taken seriously by them either. It is used largely as a negative foil to discredit the idea that God is the object of atonement, that the death of Jesus could have a positive effect on God. The subjective view also diverts attention from the actual event by locating the “necessity” for the cross in Jesus’ own inner life and devotion and the persuasive power flowing from his example, his faithfulness unto death. Thus, it would seem, God sent his Son to a shameful and painful death to provide an example powerful enough to entice us to be reconciled to him as a God of mercy and charity.
But what then happens to the question about the murder of the innocent one? Somehow it has been whisked out of sight again by the machinery of the theory. For could not the question just as well rebound on Abelard and his followers? How can God possibly be “justified” in sending his Son into this world to be cruelly murdered at our hands just to provide an example of what everybody already knew anyway? If the cross does not actually accomplish anything new, is not the price too great? Is not a God who would do such a thing fully as thoughtless and cruel as the God of vicarious satisfaction? Those who push the “subjective” view rarely entertain such questions. No doubt because of the terror and cruelty of the actual event as well as our implication in it, it has been quietly forgotten. Since it is “necessary” or at least understandable on moral or like grounds, we are (more or less) exonerated. We can sit back and admire the event that took place on Golgotha! It was so impressive!
Of late, those who have sought to avoid the debits of both the “objective” and “subjective” views have tended to take refuge in what Gustaf Aulén called the “classic idea” or “victory motif.” Christ’s work in incarnation, death, and resurrection is understood as victory over the demonic powers that enslave us. Instead of a merely “objective” change in God or a “subjective” change in us, Christ’s work brings about a new situation: the demonic powers — sin, law, death, the devil — have been defeated; Christ has triumphed for us. No doubt there is much to be said for this view insofar as it seems to provide a better conceptual structure for considering Christ’s work. Something actually new is said to be accomplished in the cross and resurrection, and God’s mercy is not overly tarnished.
Yet we must ask how the victory motif fares in the light of our question. Once again the killing has been covered up. Jesus’ death is somehow necessary to defeat the demons. We are exonerated because the demons did it. God, too, is exonerated in the process because he can appear as the hero of the piece, the mighty conqueror of the demons. Since he is not the obstacle to reconciliation (at least directly), he can appear more unambiguously as a God of love and mercy.
But the question is whether all this exoneration has not been purchased at too great a price: God loses some of his sovereignty to his dualistic adversaries, and the work of Christ is translated to a semi-mythical cosmic battle quite removed from our world. We should not forget that both Anselm and Abelard were well aware of the victory idea. What bothered them, however, was precisely the question of divine sovereignty over the demons. Why should the cruel death of Jesus be necessary to defeat the demons? Surely if God is God, he could just put the demons out of commission whenever he wished. The inadequacy of the victory idea as an explanation for the actual and painful death was the very reason for Anselm’s question: Cur Deus Homo? If victory over the demons is all that is necessary, why the death? Why should God have to “stoop to such lowly things,” or “do anything with such great labor,” when he could, supposedly, just blow the demons away?
Abelard also attacked the idea that the demonic powers provide necessary reason for the murder of Jesus. If the demons acquired the right to torment sinful humanity only by divine permission, the permission could simply be withdrawn — if God is God. After all, Jesus cast out demons and forgave sins only by fiat and presence.
So what compulsion, or reason, or need was there — seeing that by its very appearing alone the divine pity could deliver man from Satan — what need was there, I say, that the Son of God, for our redemption, should take upon him our flesh and endure such numerous fastings, insults, scourgings and spittings, and finally that most bitter and disgraceful death upon the cross, enduring even the cross of punishment with the wicked?
The victory motif, in short, could not provide adequate reason for the murder of Jesus. The Fathers, it should be recalled, had considerable difficulty with the question themselves. They vacillated and temporized, wondering whether the “ransom” was to be paid to the devil or not, just who had rights and who didn’t, or whether God surrendered Jesus to death to deceive the demons or to deal fairly and honorably with them or whatever. The very indecision and ambiguity led, no doubt, to the ultimate demise of the view — at least in the west — and contributed to the ascendancy of Anselmian theory. In spite of its several advantages, the victory motif, too, stands somewhat embarrassed before the hard question of what actually happened: Why the murder of the innocent one? Even if the mercy and propriety of God is not overtly challenged, the question covertly rebounds on God again: If he is God, could he not have spared his Son the agony?
In sum, each of the major types of atonement theory tends to obscure the truth of the murder of Jesus in the very attempt to convey its “meaning” and “significance” to us. As a matter of fact and not just coincidentally, the theories seem to defeat their own purpose: they tend to alienate rather than to reconcile. In attempting to explain the “necessity” for the death of Jesus by taking it up in the schemes suggested, God’s “reputation” is endangered, not enhanced. Why should a God who is by nature merciful demand satisfaction? Is a God who consigns his Son to an excruciating death just to provide an example of what everyone already knew really a “loving Father”? If God is God, could not the defeat of demonic powers have been accomplished without the painful death? In other words, “Was this trip really necessary?”
So we come back to our original question: Why the murder of the innocent one? What does that accomplish for us — or for God? What is “the word” of Christ? What does he actually do for us that God could not have done with greater ease and economy in some other way? The crucial and persistent question emerging from discussion of the various views seems always to be that of the necessity for the concrete and actual work of Christ among us. It is, of course, ultimately the question of the necessity for Christology at all. Cannot God just up and forgive and/or cast out demons? Or to use another current form of the question: Is there not grace aplenty in the Old Testament? Or in nature? Or in other religions even? Why Jesus? Why the New Testament?
II. The Brute Facts
If we are to get anywhere with these questions today, we shall have to begin by paying closer attention to the “brute facts” of the case, looking at the actual events as they have been mediated to us in the narrative itself to see what we can make of them. Perhaps this is to say, to use a distinction employed for the person of Christ, we should begin our consideration of the work of Christ “from below” (from our point of view) as much as possible before we proceed to discuss it “from above” (from “God’s point of view”) — realizing the problematic nature of such distinctions. The reason for insisting on such a beginning is not to invest theological capital in the distinctions as such, but simply to suggest that we have tended in the past to hurry by what actually happened here “below,” with us and to us, to get to the theory, the perspective “from above.” The theory has overrun the event. If we begin “from below” perhaps the impact of the work of Christ will emerge more naturally and directly from the narrative itself and we will find ourselves “caught in the act” in more ways than one — caught at it and at the same time caught by it. If we can begin in this fashion we might be better prepared, I think, to get some glimpses “from above,” some indications (a posteriori, of course!) of why God could not or at least would not do it any other way.
Why could not God just up and forgive? Let us start there. If we look at the narrative about Jesus, the actual events themselves, the “brute facts” as they have come down to us, the answer is quite simple. He did! Jesus came preaching repentance and forgiveness, declaring the bounty and mercy of his “Father.” The problem, however, is that we could not buy that. And so we killed him. And just so we are caught in the act. Every mouth is stopped once and for all. All the pious talk about our yearning and desire for reconciliation and forgiveness, etc., all our complaint against God is simply shut up. He came to forgive and we killed him for it; we would not have it. It is as simple as that.
We don’t like, of course, to face that brutal simplicity because, I suppose, we are caught in the act, the act of being who we really are: sinners, fakes, liars, deniers, unbelievers. “But,” as my students sometimes protest, “don’t we really want reconciliation? Don’t we seek it and desire it?” The best answer to the question, I like to say, is “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” No doubt, Peter “wanted” reconciliation. It’s a nice “idea.” He even swore that he would not deny his Lord. But the cock crowed. Too late! Caught in the act. So it is now. The cock has crowed. It is an act, an event, not an idea. It has occurred. It is too late for all our protestations. We treat “reconciliation,” “salvation,” and “forgiveness” as though they were things, ideas, lying on a shelf somewhere which God “provides,” which we could want or not want and thus, perhaps, acquire or have more or less at will. No doubt, we might want salvation; but what of a savior? One who actually works it, does it to us. What shall we do about that?
Why was Jesus killed? It would seem from the actual narrative that we should be much more careful about saying that Jesus had to die because God, at the outset, was angry with us. There is indeed a sense in which we must say that Christ’s work is to “satisfy” the divine wrath. But it is surely a mistake to say, to begin with, that Jesus was killed because God’s honor or justice or w...
