At-One-Ment

seven atonement theories plus mine; yes that's right i have my own personal atonement theory

Atonement, the suffering of Jesus on the cross, is a process, an event, a happening - like a sunset or sunrise. It has two time zones. It happened more than two millennia ago, and it is happening still today. Both are important. The event, freed from ideas of penal substitution, is powerful, tragic, and quietly beautiful. It reveals divine suffering and the power of forgiveness; and it opens up a historic possibility tremendously important today: a renewal of love amid tragedy. This event depends on other events for its meaning. It cannot stand alone as the single point of Christianity. But Christianity without the cross is not Christianity at all. It hides from suffering in the interests of prosperity or pleasure. A more holistic Christianity includes the whole of life, the thorns and the roses, the sins and the gifts. the need for love and the need for forgiveness.
—Jay McDaniel

For as little as I use the word “atonement,” I sure do interact with it a lot. I think this is true for at least three reasons:

First, my conclusion that God didn't need the death of Jesus in order to forgive was a theological watershed moment for me. Like raindrops collected in water basins that are directed toward certain rivers rather than others, so all my thoughts about God, life, and humanity have run into different waters than those they ran into previously.

Second, there is no doubt in my mind that our prevailing atonement ideas influence and shape our prevailing cultural issues—racism, climate change, or nationalism. Therefore, the topic is relevant.

Third, whenever I broach this subject—essay, book, text, email, or Instagram post someone somewhere messages me with questions and comments. It's true; sometimes, the questions and comments begin with "How dare you?" "Shame on you," and "You are wrong on this one," but often, the comments and questions begin with "Wow, I never knew this," "Thank you, this changes a lot," and "If this is true, then a lot of the religious stuff I do is messed up."

To the former group: "Okay. God bless. I hope the best for you." ✌🏼

To the latter: "Yes, and amen."

A few things I need to say before I say the things I need to say:

My rundown here will be too brief for those initiated into all things atonement. My apologies, but my goal is to get something salient and palatable into the minds and hands of readers who have not had time to dive deeply into this topic.

If you're looking for a bunch of verses that you can spend all day flipping back and forth to in your leather-bound Thompson Chain Reference Bible this post will leave you disappointed. I might add some in a follow-up post, but as of this moment, I'm fatigued with all the proof-texting that goes on with this discussion, and my lived experience is this 👉🏼 if a person is unwilling to see how much their context, their own religious condition, and their own biases play into the way they read Scripture, it doesn't matter how many bible verses I add.

Each of thes following ideas has some biblical merit, and as I often say … there is a way to read the bible (or any text for that matter) that would lead you to think that controlling, sacrificial violence is a necessary component of love's story, I just don't think it's the healthiest way to read the bible (or any text for that matter).

If we don't give our best thinking to reading things in a healthy way, then eventually, we will all follow the propagandists (the scapegoat-ists, and the power-hungriest, too) to a violent end. I have defined health in other writing, but in a nutshell, I'm thinking of something that never stops attempting to access love, patience, creativity, grace, dialogue, consent, non-violence, and the empowerment of those who've been marginalized all in a non-coercive and uncontrolling way. Yes, that sounds like a measure of health to me.

And finally, look, I know that I'm eager to define and redefine the events of Jesus' life, especially those that took place during what we sometimes refer to as the passion story, in light of uncontrolling love. I consider a commitment to uncontrolling love to be of utmost importance here. Yet, I confess that I often write (and live) with an impatience that undermines my commitment. 😞

Common atonement ideas around which Western Christianity revolves:

1-Ransom Theory: As the name implies, the idea here is that Jesus gives his life as an exchange or payment. The question becomes, to whom is the ransom paid? Some claim that the payee is Satan, but this is problematic. I don't know about you, but I'm not entirely comfortable with God needing to be in bondage to Satan. (Not to mention that the way the colloquial way a name like "Satan" is tossed about is probably not the same idea that the Hebrew writers had when they used the name, which is for a whole other post, but worth mentioning here.)

Another take is to say that Jesus is paying or exchanging something to/for God, and essentially, this is the Western evangelical position. But I find a God as Father making demands of anything from his Son to get his other children off the hook even more troubling than a satanic force making such demands.

It's difficult, in our culture, to distance the word ransom from anything outside of something we see as transactional, and therefore, I never use the word. Still, if I had to, I'd use it in a way that recognizes that when Jesus gives his life, he's doing so to free us from the prison of our own existential fear, the kind of fear that's driven us to create religions of scapegoating violence.

2-Satisfaction Theory: This emerges from a theologian named Anselm during medieval feudalism, a time when honoring land barons, lords, and kings played a vital role in a functioning economic system.

Anselm's idea is that our sin has dishonored God, and something God cannot ignore. But given that sacrifices made by imperfect humans would always fall short of a perfect and holy God, how would God make sure his honor is restored? To complicate matters, according to proponents of this theory, God himself is the only one who can truly fix the problem. No one else has the power God has, so obviously, it's God who has to fix God. 🤔 So, he became human and, with his death, restored his own sense of justice, and yes, all of this brings him infinite "satisfaction."

(I often think of David Bentley Hart’s line here, "Like a bank issuing itself credit to pay off a debt it owes itself, using a currency it has minted for the occasion and certified in its value wholly on the basis of the very credit it is issuing to itself.")

The satisfaction theory, like the ransom theory (and, as we'll see, similar to the penal substitutionary theory), is not something I'd categorize as good news. Not only does it have God satisfied because God allowed his only son to be killed in an effort to fix God's problem, it emphasizes our separation from the divine, it elevates the death of Jesus over the ethics of Jesus, and the entire idea is completely dependent upon sacrificial violence.

3-Moral Influence: In response to the satisfaction theory, a French theologian, Peter Abelard, created the moral influence theory. Abelard understood that Jesus showed up, lived, taught, healed, forgave, and ultimately died to influence humanity toward moral improvement. Instead of satisfying God's justice or honor, Jesus' death was designed to impress the world with a sense of God's love. While I don't use the moral influence phrase much, I align with any thinking that understands God's action harmonizing with love and acceptance vs. transactional violent sacrifice.

4-The Penal Substitutionary Atonement Theory (PSA). Okay, big breath … PSA is a mashup of ransom and satisfaction theories, so see all the aforementioned problems there. To complicate matters, courtesy of the last couple of hundred years of modernity, PSA usually comes freighted with some additional economic, judicial, and authoritarian baggage.

-The economic baggage, as I have heard it preached (more than once!), causes us to see Jesus as something like a benevolent, rich bystander who, upon learning of the overwhelming debt we've incurred against God, steps in, at the last minute and pays the incomprehensibly large sum to God, who in this illustration, can only be seen as the Great Miserly Banker in the Sky.

-The judicial baggage, again something I've heard or read countless times, causes us to see Jesus as a good lawyer who approaches God as The Great Judge in the Sky and argues for us. Apparently, in this scenario, the skill of Jesus convinces God, but only to a certain extent because, in the end, the lawyer himself must take our place. In other words, The Judge's conception of forgiveness is dierctly attached to sacrificial violence.

-The authoritarian baggage suggests that even though you and I know to ignore authoritarian hierarchy and call Child Protection Services when we learn about a parent abusing a child, in the case of God and his son, abuse is not only permitted; it's glorified.

To add to the problematic way all of this unfolds, there is precious little questioning going on within the PSA camp about the "extra" violence that accompanies the crucifixion. Questions such as, What is the point of the scourging, beating, and torture in the Passion Story? How does such absurd violence serve God? How much torture was enough torture? What was the tipping point for God—the 40th whiplash, the third, no fourth stake into his body, the 87th jeer, the 25th slap to the face? All of this, PLUS his final breath?

These questions are as necessary as they are nauseating and they are the tip of the proverbial iceberg lodged into the side of the PSA-Titanic. Meanwhile, unfortunately, most evangelical Christians assume PSA to be The Gospel, rather than a sacrificially-driven interpretation popularized a couple of hundred years ago. It's had a profound impact on the development of the empire of the United States of America (i.e., manifest destiny, slavery, politics, etc…), but it is not the gospel.

There are some really wonderful people who subscribe to PSA. I know this to be true. I won't get into all the reasons why or how this could be, as I try to do that in other places; nevertheless, 👉🏼 I happen to think that a God of love dependent upon sacrificial violence is the worst thinking ever invented and is a virus that's infected a thousand generations.

5-Mimetic/Scapegoat: Technically, what René Girard offers with his mimetic/scapegoating theory is not an atonement theory, although many have found it to be a torch to light their way out of the darkness cast by PSA.

The mimetic/scapegoating theory reveals people’s deep-seated need to "offload" their psycho-spiritual problems onto the back of the other, which causes them to identify the other as the problem. All of which leads them to rid ourselves of said problem. The peace that can sweep over a community after such scapegoating (i.e., shunning, kicking out, excommunicating, lynching, victimizing, crucifying, etc.) fools them into believing that the whole thing was divinely inspired.

The peace doesn't last, of course, and when antagonism builds back up, a community will sequence the process all over again at the expense of a new victim. It's in this re-sequencing that the process becomes sacralized and eventually materializes into religion. Therefore, for Girard, violence doesn't stem from our religion as much as religion stems from our violence. 😳

Once one becomes aware of this insight, it's impossible to read the Passion Story as one did before. Jesus doesn't use mimetic theory language, of course, but, in a sense, he diagnoses the victimizing system and becomes the antidote. He does this by inserting himself into the system as an innocent human. He becomes a scapegoat to END all scapegoating, which was never something God needed, but something we needed. What he reveals is how much the system owes its existence to our anxiety, shame, violence, and fear rather than anything we could ascribe to God.

The resurrection continues the revelation because not only does Jesus reappear, but he reappears without inspiring mimetic violence. Incredibly, instead of pursuing vengeance, he goes even further down the path he had already initiated, a path of non-violent forgiveness, mercy, grace, empowerment, consent, and estimation of all people, particularly the marginalized. I write more about this in Theology of Consent: Mimetic Theory in an Open and Relational Universe.

6-Narrative Christus Victor: The church, before Constantine and state-assimilated Christianity, in those first 300 years of its existence, probably viewed this entire discussion quite differently than it does now. It'd be impossible to nuance this as much as it deserves in one Substack post, so I'm pulling this theory altogether under the title that theologian Denny J. Weaver gives, called Narrative Christus Victor.

I greatly appreciate the lengths Weaver and others have gone to in not reducing salvation down to the last bloody, violent, shuddering breath of Jesus. For Narrative Christus Victor, it's important to embrace the entire narrative of Jesus. What's the narrative? Well, it's too much to recite here, but it includes key components such as …

• Launching his public ministry by announcing good news to the poor,

• Backing up that announcement by going out of his way for the orphan, widow, foreigner, woman, and diseased (i.e., those without representation within the religious-patriarchal system of his day),

• Breaking ceremonial laws, customs, and taboos,

• Standing up to the religious elite,

• Refusing to use violence,

• And offering grace and forgiveness to all people.

This last point is significant, particularly as we consider that Jesus was offering forgiveness before his violent death. (👉🏼 A serious meditation on just this one idea would destabilize the entirety of PSA.)

There's too much to include here (ha, read the Gospels, man), but it’s safe to say that Jesus's disposition, attitude, and actions generated some pushback from the religious, political, and economic sector. What the opposition lacked in integrity, they made up for in good ol’fashion industrial cowardice as they figured out how to …

• Trap Jesus under the cover of darkness,

• Throw together a kangaroo court,

• Fabricate some accusations,

• Secure an unjust sentence,

• And incite a mob all within a few hours.

They worked so quickly that they were able to murder him in time to get his body off the cross before sunrise of the next day, their Sabbath, lest they be found guilty of doing any work on their holy day. Because you want to be lawful when you murder someone. 😳

I pause to point out that Narrative Christus Victor includes all of these details and more in the story of atonement. Again, the point is to distance themself from the simplistic reductionistic view that Jesus was born to die. What's included in these details, quite obviously, is a savior who eschews violence at every turn.

Meanwhile, in my understanding, Narrative Christus Victor would align well with the Eastern church in seeing the death of Jesus like the death of a seed that falls into the ground, then breaks open and grows from the inside out. The Eastern Church has a great tradition of telling fantastic Easter stories about how the event might have occurred deep within and behind the gates of Hades/Sheol/afterlife. However it took place, the idea is that God went into the very source of the enemy's strength and won a decisive victory from the inside out, announcing the good news that we are no longer in need of being held captive to our existential fear of death.

Finally, as if any of this is final, the story of Jesus includes some important post-resurrection elements. It cannot be overstated: when Jesus returns from the dead, he's not doing so in military fatigues or a judge's robe or making his way back into the streets of Jerusalem with the intent of initiating a coup! No, not at all. Just the opposite. When he returns, he's mistaken for a gardener!🪴Ha, I love how the Hebrew story starts in a garden and then has its most significant plot twist in a garden.

7-I'm going to combine Liberation and Feminist theology for the last entry, for both groups are exceptional at reading the story aware of the systemic injustice humans are known to perpetuate.

These groups will always reserve suspicion, and rightly so, for anyone who claims marginalized people need to sacrifice anything, let alone their life, to gain someone’s liberation. It's quite understandable why they think this way 👉🏼 it's because their group is always the first to be called upon when someone needs to be sacrificed.

Liberation and Feminist thinkers are right to point out that if the story promotes an innocent man submitting to an unjust murder, something initiated by his authoritarian father no less, then it opens the door for the powerful to demand that the powerless remain in abusive situations.

Likewise, it opens the door to tell the powerless, in general, to stay in abusive sacrificial systems in the hope that being submissive just might change the hearts and minds of those in power. Check that last sentence, for it does more than "open the door," the reality is that this has already happened (i.e., abusive christian husbands, abusive white christian slaveholders, etc …)

Good Lord, nothing should make us angrier than when stupid and power-hungry christians hold onto abusive theology for their own gain. Ultimately, what these theological groups have taught me, and this is a quote, more or less, from my friend Catherine Keller, is "to worry less about what any of this says about atonement and worry more about the kind of power structures certain atonement theories create." Amen.

My Atonement Theory.

Haha, one should never write the sentence: "My atonement theory." And yet I just did. 🤦🏻‍♂️ I do so hesitantly because I'm really not that interested in getting boxed into any one way of framing this whole thing. I'm looking to get out of boxes, not in them. Then again, though all boxes are wrong 👉🏼 some are healthier than others.

I'm committed to love. Not a kitschy, hallmark, pop-song kind of love. No, I'm committed to something deeper: an uncontrolling, non-violent, non-scapegoating, nonbinary energy in relationship with God and creation, that's actively seeking the flourishment of everyone and everything kind of love.

I'm committed to this because of its philosophical and biblical depth. And because it seems that Jesus was committed to this kind of love, too. It is no small thing for me to read about an itinerate, impoverished, powerless, brown-skinned man embodying these concepts that, frankly, I've spent years of my life vetting. Do you know what I mean? Like, when you discover concepts, language, truth, and story that light up all your psycho-spiritual and neurological pathways and then find someone who lived it out in real, flesh and blood ways? Yeah, that’s exciting. All this kind of thinking informs the lens through which I view a word like atonement.

When I use the word, or read it, I think at-one-ment. I think that the work of love that's embodied in Jesus is an active, ongoing work of communicating to the world, over and over, that the divine is at one with us. That we are all, in essense, at one with each other. That this whole thing is one, very large movement, albeit with countless smaller movements.

What takes place at the cross is a non-linear prism of truth:

• The truth that God is at one with our suffering.

• The truth that love (for I don't know how else to think of God other than love) contains something deep and wounded within itself. I can't explain that here, but I invite you to read indigo: the color of grief or listen to Cheese in the Darkness.

• The truth that love is vulnerable and cannot single-handedly control.

• The truth that violence and entropy (even violent entropy), is reality.

• The truth that Jesus is innocent and at one with all victims everywhere.

• The truth that God is/was at one with Jesus. (In other words, his back wasn't turned; he wasn't somewhere else, wringing his hands, hoping a sacrifice would show up that would be big enough to convince him to face his son.)

• The truth that the death of Jesus wasn't a requirement of love; it was a revelation of love.

• The truth that mercy is greater than sacrifice.

• The truth that humanity's modern-ancient story (by modern-ancient, I mean the move from a hunter-gatherer to an agrarian society, which is, roughly speaking, the move we're still in) has been corrupted by an unholy trinity of existential insecurity, mimetic and violent desire, and idolatrous hope in authoritarian power.

• The truth that the hope of the world lies in our willingness to admit our culpability in all the ways that the unholy trinity plays out. Therefore, we were all at one with the Roman political system, the religious elite, and the entire mob in the murder of Jesus.

• The truth that the cross isn’t where everything is fixed; it’s where everything is held together. Okay, maybe this is more a faith than truth thing, either way, it’s certainly more a therapeutic than judicial thing, which sets me up to quote Gregory of Nazianzus: “That which is not assumed cannot be healed.” (assumed = at one with.)

• The truth that hope of the world lies in our willingness to be at one with the way Jesus returned from his murder, which was marked by peace, patience, hope, and forgiveness.

• The truth that love is at one with everything in such a deep way that even the worst things can turn out to be the best things. Look, if deicide (the murder of God) turning into resurrection and life isn't the best coming out of the worst, I don't know what is.

These truths are part faith, part revelation, part fact, and part mythic for when I speak of truth here, I'm not just talking about honesty, as in someone is telling the truth, but even more, I'm talking about structural integrity, as in the way we might talk about a building or a bridge that has structural integrity.

And can a home or a bridge be factual and mythic? Yes, actually it can. A home can be both a solid factual house and a place where a family grows in love. A bridge can both be a factual apparatus and a metaphor connecting people from one part of their story to the next part of their story. I'm betting my life, honestly, I really am, that what plays out in the story of Jesus, nowhere more so than those last few days of his life, is a truth that contains all of the above.

More than ideas to entertain, lessons to learn, or doctrine to indoctrinate, all of them together amount to an invitation … an invitation to change our mind (repent) about the way we keep thinking we're separate from the divine and each other … an invitation to be at one with everything … an invitation to see that being at one with everything could very well cost us everything we have … and an invitation to have faith in the paradoxical idea that loss is the way to gain.

Yeah, it’s really just an invitation … that’s my atonement theory. 👍🏼

at-one-ment

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