Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, “You may be able to compel people to maintain certain minimum standards by stressing duty. But the highest moral and spiritual achievements depend not upon a push but a pull. People must be charmed into righteousness.”
“Charmed into righteousness” … that is an intriguing phrase. I’ve often thought that the typical evangelical Christian understanding of the purpose of Jesus’ death is less than charming. It runs like this: Christ died to pay the penalty for our sins – a penalty demanded by God’s justice. To many evangelical believers, this appears to be the plain and obvious teaching of Scripture.
Of course, the important issue is not whether this viewpoint is charming; the important question is whether it is biblical. And, at one level, the standard understanding is biblical. We can all think of passages that support it.
But is it the whole story? Is there more? Many evangelical Christians would be surprised to learn that the view of the atonement described above did not begin to be formally developed until 1100 A.D. by St. Anselm and that the doctrine was brought to its present formulation by the reformers in the 16th and 17th centuries.
This startling historical fact should at least arouse some curiosity. How can a concept that was not formally developed for over fifteen hundred years after the death of Christ be seen as fundamental to a proper understanding of the gospel? What did Christians believe about the death of Christ prior to the Reformation?
More importantly, does the standard understanding of the purpose of Jesus’ death really conform to what the Bible says? Does it fully cover all that is revealed in Scripture?
In this multi-part blog, these are some of the questions I want to address. I’ll begin by saying a bit more about the commonly accepted view. Then, we’ll look at human tendencies to see what we expect to see and miss things that we do not expect. Next, we’ll examine how that tendency may be keeping us from seeing another view of the atonement that is presented in Scripture … a view that held sway in the church for over a thousand years. Finally, we’ll consider the implications of the different views to see if it makes any difference in how we live our daily lives.
I know. I know. You might be thinking, “Can a heavy-duty, theological topic possibly be relevant to my life? I’ve got bills to pay. I’ve got to get my kids to soccer. The economy is teetering on catastrophe. It may be the end of civilization as we know it. My gosh – football season recently ended and won’t be back for six months! I’ve got bigger fish to fry and can’t afford to waste time on some bit of esoteric theological nonsense.”
I understand that reaction. Theology as commonly practiced can be terminally boring and massively impracticable. But then I always remember what C. S. Lewis said at the beginning of the 4th section of Mere Christianity (for those of you keeping track, it took me 481 words before I mentioned Lewis). He said that he had been warned not to try to explain theology to people – he was told that people just wanted “practical religion”. Apparently, that advice was mistaken since Mere Christianity has sold gazillions of copies and it has tons of theology in it.
I’m not claiming that I’ll be as entertaining or insightful as Lewis but I can tell you that new perspectives on the atonement have made a profound difference in my own day-to-day relationship with God. Perhaps it will do the same for you.
Common View of the Atonement
Christ died to pay the penalty for our sins. This is the way most evangelical Christians would respond if asked to explain the purpose for Christ’s death. If asked to elaborate, the story would go something like this: God loves us – his people whom he created. God is also holy and perfectly just. This creates a dilemma for God because all people have violated his laws and fallen short of his standards. Everyone is a “sinner”. The penalty for these violations of God’s law is death. In his justice, God cannot let these sins go unpunished. But God, out of his grace and mercy, has provided a way out. God himself became a man and died for us. He suffered the penalty for us. With the penalty paid and his justice satisfied, God is now free to pursue a relationship of love with us.
Scriptural support for this view seems abundant and obvious. In its simplest formulation, we know from the Bible that all people have sinned (Romans 3:23), that death is the penalty for sin (Romans 6:23) and that Christ died for our sins (I Corinthians 15:3). Each of these ideas has abundant scriptural support:
- All people have sinned. In fact, we are all sinners who have indulged in evil (Ephesians 2:3). Paul declares that "There is no one righteous, … All have turned away …” (Romans 3:10-11).
- Death is the penalty for sin. We are “children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3) who deserve God’s righteous judgment. We are “dead in sin” (Ephesians 2:1). We are dead men walking.
- Christ died for our sins. The Old Testament sacrificial system was designed to teach us that there is no forgiveness without death (Hebrews 9:22). The mission of the Messiah is clearly stated in Isaiah 53:5: “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” Paul agrees: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (II Corinthians 5:21).
There is no question that all of this is scriptural. But is it the whole story? Does it exhaust the biblical revelation on this topic? Is something missing?
Paradigms
Before we consider what may be missing, it will be helpful to think for a moment about how and why human beings sometimes fail to see things that are right in front of them.
In his influential book entitled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn explored the role that expectations play in our understanding of reality. The conceptual framework that a person brings to a subject heavily influences what that person sees and how he interprets his observations. Kuhn popularized the word “paradigm” to describe the constellation of ideas that a person uses to make sense of a particular topic.
Kuhn describes an experiment conducted by psychologists to illustrate the role that paradigms play in what we see and experience. The experiment involved playing cards – cards you would use to play bridge or poker.
Everyone familiar with a deck of cards has a paradigm about them. There are four different suits and two colors. Hearts and diamonds are red while spades and clubs are black.
In the psychology experiment, subjects were shown pictures of playing cards projected on a screen at a fast speed and they were asked to identify the cards. Mixed in with the normal cards were some “anomalous” cards. For example, the deck might include a five of hearts that was black instead of red. Subjects would initially identify that card as either a five of hearts or as a five of spades or as a five of clubs – fitting it in with existing categories dictated by their playing card paradigm.
As the projector was slowed down and subjects were allowed to see the cards for a longer period of time, they began to realize that something was wrong and they would get confused. They would see things that were not there. For example a subject might remark about the black five of hearts, “Well, that is a five of hearts but it has a black border around it.”
Eventually, with sufficiently lengthy exposure, most subjects would correctly identify the card as a five of hearts that had been "mistakenly" printed in black. With an adjusted paradigm, subjects were able to identify anomalous cards quickly and easily even when the projector was returned to its original speed. They were now prepared to see what was really there instead of just seeing what they expected.
Kuhn applied this insight to the history of science. He argued that outdated scientific theories often did a good job of explaining a constellation of observed facts. However, every theory is eventually challenged by some anomalous phenomena that do not fit the theory. Changes from one scientific theory to another theory occur when a scientist, usually someone young or otherwise new to the field, devises a different theory that accounts for all of the previously observed facts and that also explains the newer, anomalous facts. Kuhn gives numerous examples from the history of science to support his thesis and he describes the messy, controversial and acrimonious process that leads to changes in scientific theories.
Do these insights from Kuhn have any application in our study of the Bible? Do our theologies shape what we see and cause us to miss other things that are actually there? Does scripture reveal more about the atonement than we have commonly supposed?
I believe that the answer to all of these questions is “Yes.”
The early church had a view of the atonement that has come to be known as the Christus Victor view. In their minds, Christ died and rose again to defeat Satan and to free us from his kingdom of darkness and death. At the writer of Hebrews explains, God became a man so that “… through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, …” (Hebrews 2:14).
Did you know this? Did you know that Satan holds the power of death? Satan loves death while, in contrast, God takes no delight in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 18:23, 33:11).The Christus Victor view begins with these insights and I’ll need Part 2 of this blog to fully explain it.
