Question & Answer
Dale Gatz, via the Internet, writes:
Question:
In First Corinthians 15:3 Paul says, “He died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.” While I believe the doctrine of substitutionary atonement has warped Christian teaching at least since St. Anselm. I see that this statement of Paul’s forms a reasonable basis for it.
What do you think Paul had in mind in writing these words?
Answer:
Dear Dale,
Yours is a good question. It is one that I will address at great length in my next book, scheduled to be published by Harper Collins on or about the first of March in 2016 (Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy-- A Journey into a New Christianity Through the Doorway of Matthew’s Gospel). People have tended to support the concept of substitutionary atonement by quoting these verses from Paul. That, however, is not what these verses meant or mean, but we almost have to be Jewish to understand the distinction.
For Paul these words, “He died for our sins,” came out of the liturgical celebration known as Yom Kippur. At Yom Kippur an animal, usually a lamb, was ceremoniously slaughtered and its blood smeared on the “Mercy Seat of God” located in the “Holy of Holies” in the Temple. The lamb was the symbol of the yearning of human beings for perfection and thus for oneness with God. The lamb, therefore, had to pass the test of physical perfection; no scratches, no bruises, no broken bones. Because the lamb also lived beneath the level of human freedom, it in addition began to be thought of as morally perfect. An animal cannot choose to do evil. So the sacrificial lamb became a symbol of the human yearning for both physical and moral perfection. It was not a substitute who accepted the fate of suffering for the sins of another.
Substitutionary atonement was built on this, largely Gentile, misunderstanding. It assumes a literal understanding of the biblical myth of the “fall” that we refer to as the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. We began to assume an original perfection from which we have somehow fallen into a status of “original sin.” That is the background against which the Jesus story was destined and mistakenly to be told. Unable to extricate ourselves from this state of sin and unable to be forgiven without someone paying the price that our sinfulness required, meant that a substitute must pay this price for us. The substitute must not be a victim of the same fall into sin that corrupted us. So Jesus was offered as the only one who could play that role. Then it was said that God punished Jesus with the punishment that we deserved and that his suffering set us free. It was and is a strange theory.
It is also deeply destructive on many levels. Substitutionary atonement turns God into an ogre who cannot forgive. This is a deity who must have a human sacrifice and a blood offering in order to be moved to offer forgiveness. It turns Jesus into a passive victim, perhaps even a masochistic victim, who finds pleasure in pain. It turns you and me into guilt-filled, Christ killers since our sins caused the death of Jesus. It thus produced a Christianity in which God is seen as either a punishing parent or a hanging judge before whom we must fall on our knees like slaves or beggars and plead for mercy. This God was also thought to manipulate life and “goodness” by employing the tools of guilt and fear. This theology, no matter how traditional one thinks it is, in fact has lost sight of the essential goal of Christianity. That goal, which was articulated best in the Fourth Gospel, when its author had Jesus describe his purpose to be that of providing the means through which we can achieve life and achieve it abundantly. Guilt and fear have never resulted in expanded life for anyone, but love, acceptance and the overcoming of the boundaries which divide the human community do.
So the future of Christianity depends first on hearing the life-giving message of love that is the heart of the gospel and then transforming our various guilt-laden liturgies so that they too reflect this message. It also means that we will have to challenge traditional postures in worship. I, for example, never intend to kneel in church worship services again, for kneeling defines me, Jesus and God in ways that I now believe are not only wrong, but are actually destructive to the meaning of humanity itself.
Without these things rising to consciousness inside the Christian church, I do not believe that there will be or can be a Christian future. So I live more in hope than in confidence as I view the life of institutional Christianity in its various manifestations in our world.
John Shelby Spong
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