On the table for discussion is the question God's intention regarding the violence suffered by Jesus. The editor, John Sanders (author of The God Who Risks and No Other Name), sets the stage with a few questions: If God the Father used the cross of Christ to redeem us, did the Father intend for the Son to experience the violence he did? Is violence necessary for redemption? If the Father did not intend the cross, then does it have any significance for our salvation? Does any connection between Jesus' suffering and redemption valorize suffering? Should we understand suffering as a means to reconciliation with God or as a consequence of our reconciliation?
J. Denny Weaver presents what he calls, "Narrative Christus Victor." He explains, "Each atonement image attempts to explain what the death of Jesus accomplished, or in popular language, to explain 'why Jesus died for us.' ... Their distinct approaches appear clearly when we visualize the object or the 'target' of the death of Jesus for each family of images" (p. 2). Christus Victor targets the Devil, Satisfaction targets the offended honor of God, Penal Substitution targets the broken Law of God, and Moral Influence targets alienated humanity. Helpfully, he notes that "Anselm deleted the devil from the salvation equation" (p. 4). Weaver probes deeper by asking: "Who or what needs the death of Jesus?" (p. 4) and "Who arranges for or is responsible for the death of Jesus? ... Who ultimately killed Jesus?" (p. 5). He offers some challenges to the exalted status received by substitutionary models in contemporary evangelicalism. Then he offers his view of atonement: "Jesus did suffer and die a violent death, but the violence was neither God's nor God directed. Suffering and dying were not the purpose or goal of Jesus' mission. Death resulted when Jesus faithfully carried out his life-bringing and life-affirming mission to make the rule of God present and visible. Since saving his life would have meant abandoning his mission, his death was necessary in the sense that faithfulness required that he go through death" (p. 25). He concludes, "I am arguing that his death was not willed or needed by God. His death did not pay off or satisfy anything. On the contrary, it was a product of the forces of evil that opposed Jesus and opposed the reign of God. The real saving act of and in and with Jesus is his resurrection" (p. 26).
On Weaver's heels comes the essay by Hans Boersma. He advocates a view he dubs the "Modified Reformed View." Before he expounds his own ideas, he offers a critique of some portrayals from within his own reformed group. "It seems to me," he concedes, "that Calvinist covenant theology has tended to view our relationship with God too exclusively through a legal grid....There is no denying that there is a tendency here toward an economic exchange model of atonement ... [which] minimized the historical link between Christ and Israel. The transaction between Christ and the elect could have taken [50] place at any time and at any place" (pp. 49-50). Regarding the recent tendency to refer to the action on the cross as "divine child abuse," he writes, "The accusations of divine child abuse overlook the mystery of the incarnation" (p. 51). Weaver addressed such a response in his essay by saying, "[I]t is not possible for God exercise violence while Jesus is only nonviolent, and if Jesus is nonviolent, then the Godhead is also nonviolent" (p. 16). The format of the book really shines on this point because Boersma critiqued Weaver's premise, saying, "[I]f Jesus is truly one with the Father - of the same substance with the Father - then what happens on the cross is not a transaction between two individuals, one of whom is abusing the other" (p. 35)! Boersma concludes his assault on the nonviolent view by saying, "[T]hey need to come to grips with the biblical witness that repeatedly associates God with violence, including violence on the cross" (p. 53). Boersma then begins to explain his own view which is based on recapitulation (in the line of Irenaeus) and reconstitution (in the line of N.T. Wright). He clarifies, "When we say that Christ recapitulated Israel and Adam, we have not yet said in which way Christ recapitulated them. This is where the three atonement models come in. It is as the representative of Israel and Adam that Christ instructs us and models for us the love of God (moral influence). It is as the representative of Israel and Adam that Christ suffers God's judgment on evil and bears that suffering of the curse of the Law (penal substitution). It is as the representative of Israel and Adam that Christ fights the powers of evil, expels demons, withstands satanic temptation to the point of death, and rises victorious from the grace (Christus Victor)" (p. 55). In response to the question Why doesn't God simply forgive? Boersma says, "[P]unishment can serve different goals: prevention, rehabilitation, deterrence, retribution, or some combination of these four....[59] Abolishing all external punishment eliminates a much-needed incentive for the perpetrator to stop the cycle of victimization and so removes the perpetrator's as well as the victim's hope for peace and justice" (pp. 58-59). In other words, punishment has purpose. He concludes, "Exilic punishment (and Christ's suffering on the cross), ... is a form of restorative justice that is meant for the restoration of the people [61] of God" (pp. 60-61).
[Note: Regarding the concept of divine judgment, Weaver says, "Judgment, a violent judgment, need not be understood as the point in divine time when God stops being patient and moves to punish. Rather judgment, violent judgment, is what evil does to itself. Biblical proclamations of divine judgment are really declarations of what evildoers will bring or have brought on themselves if they continue in their evil ways. A human analogy is the professor who warns a student that he will fail the course if he refuses to do the required assignments. The student who does not do the work may complain that a hostile and judgmental professor failed him but in truth the student failed himself" (p. 77).
On the same concept, Thomas Finger (whose essay comes next) writes, "I find that God frequently judges sinners by abandoning them, or handing them over, to the gods they choose. I also notice, surprisingly, that Scripture very often ascribes these acts not only to God, but also to those death-dealing forces. For example, Yahweh is frequently said to judge Judah by sending her into Babylonian exile. But this same judgment is also ascribed quite often to the Babylonians. [New Paragraph] This judgment, accordingly, must be called God's judgment on Judah's injustice, unfaithfulness, and idolatry. Yet God is only the remote, or [39] indirect, cause of the actual events involved. The active, direct cause is the Babylonian army. Since this pattern appears very frequently in Scripture, I conceptualize it by distinguishing indirect from direct judgment - and consequently, indirect from direct use of violence. I propose that theology can attribute the former to God (contra Weaver), but not the latter (contra Boersma)" (pp. 38-39).]
Thomas Finger, the next contributor, presents a view called "Christus Victor as Nonviolent Atonement." In his scheme, Adam and Eve's disobedience to God in the Garden of Eden also constituted obedience to another lord, namely the serpent. He says, "By submitting to this lord, Eve, Adam, and their descendants not only turned away from God, they also subjected themselves to the serpent's dominion. This finally resulted in death - but not simply because God decreed it as a legal penalty for disobedience. Submission to the serpent intrinsically led toward death because it cut people off from God, life's source" (p. 91). Next, Finger analyzes sin. "Sin," he says, "is not only a human activity and disposition; it is chiefly bondage to sin, a suprahuman, quasi-personal power. Sin is a force that strives to snatch creatures away from God's order and subject them to its own rule, but thereby departs from life's source and, along with its captives, inevitably surges toward death. Like Boersma before him, Finger calls Irenaeus and N.T. Wright into his service; but he does so in slightly different ways. He writes, "According to Irenaeus, our childlike first parents did not so much reject a well-understood command directly as turn aside from it: by following another voice, taking another path....[New Paragraph] [This] entails that humans are both responsible for, and victims of, sin....We suffer not only the direct consequences of our own acts, but also the assaults of these collective forces. Since these are directed toward domination and death, ever-widening injustice and violence spread in their wake. God holds us responsible for our allegiance to these lords. Yet the sufferings they inflict are often excessively cruel and arouse God's compassion" (p. 93). Also, he notes that "God normally judges sin indirectly: by handing people over to the lords they choose. This implies, on one level, that these lords execute God's judgments. In this sense, these powers function as God's servants. But on a deeper level they are God's enemies, whom God works to destroy. Said otherwise: God, on one level, allows other powers to punish sin, ultimately with eternal death. Yet on a deeper level God works to save those under their judgment" (p. 94). Finger points the way between a substitutionary model, which he says focuses on Jesus' death; and a moral influence model, which he says focuses on Jesus' life. His depiction of Christus Victor incorporates two dimensions: transformative and conflictive. Employing Irenaeus' pattern of recapitulation, he says, "Jesus walked the path that God originally set before Adam and Eve....Unlike our first parents, Jesus, the second Adam, continually obeyed God's commands. As he responded to the Spirit's guidance, his humanity was increasingly divinized [a concept he explained earlier as the "transformation of our thoroughly human nature by divine energies" (p. 93)]. This process culminated with Jesus' bodily resurrection, through which he was fully divinized and became the first human to be entirely at-oned with God - the first fruits of many to follow" (p. 95). Transformation happens, he insists, through "participation with [Jesus], his Father, and his Spirit chiefly through incorporation into his body, the church. The Holy Spirit returns to the depths of the human heart, dispelling sin's greedy, fearful, violent inward rule" (p. 96). Continuing the theme of recapitulation, he says, "To recapitulate the human task, Jesus had to not only obey God but also resist the forces of evil as Adam and Eve had not, to avoid coming under their dominion....[97] By continually resisting these powers and their recommended behaviors, Jesus remained under God's dominion. Rather than succumbing to another lord and being taken over by its violent greed to dominate others and their belongings, Jesus served others and was increasingly divinized by God's Spirit. At the Gospel's heart, then, we find a conflict over the basic means of bringing atonement: by war and domination, or by servanthood and the way of peace" (pp. 96-97). Regarding the death of Jesus, he writes, "Were Jesus to share our fate, including the punishment we deserve, the death penalty would be executed, directly, by the powers ruling our world (by those operating, in Jesus' case, through religion and the violent state). Jesus bore their wrath, not his Father's, directly. To be sure, since the Father used these agents to execute justice, Jesus bore God's general judgment against sin, as we all do, indirectly" (p. 98). He sums up the benefit of his view by saying, "No longer is the Father opposed to or 'above' the Son (and the Spirit omitted). Instead, the evil powers are on one side, and God - the Father, Son, and Spirit - on the other....It is the powers, ranged over against God, who inflict the death penalty although Jesus was innocent. God does not inflict such a penalty, save in the indirect sense of allowing it to be exacted, without [100] intervening violently to prevent it, because this was an inevitable consequence of their mission of self-sacrificing love" (pp. 99-100). Of course if all that happened was a Jewish prophet crucified on a Roman cross, then there would have been nothing to proclaim. But there was resurrection: God's no the verdict of the powers and God's yes (and vindication) to Jesus. Because of that, Finger concludes, "God the Father, who had refrained from violent intervention in his Son's death, now intervened through his resurrecting Spirit to bring justice. Christ was now 'Victor' over the powers, judging them at the apex of their violent drive to subject all creatures to their dominion..." (p. 102). This matters because "[T]he resurrection 'verdict' consisted, above all, in the return of the Spirit of life, whom humankind since Adam had rejected, with strength to enliven the dead....Christ, through his Spirit, now breaks repeatedly into Satan's forfeited kingdom, reuniting humans and other creatures with God and one another" (p. 103). Finally, regarding the language of "substitution," Finger says, "This term could perhaps describe Jesus' work in the sense that he attained something for us that we could not attain for ourselves on which we can rely instead of our own inadequacies....[105] Jesus' death, then, did something for us, and also before us and outside of us, which he gives to us - as substitutionary theory insists. Yet we receive that benefit chiefly by participation in Christ - when the risen Jesus shares it with us, incorporates us into it, better, into himself, with his Father through his Spirit. Nevertheless, participation language, by itself, can blur distinctions between participants. It can blur the otherness of Jesus and his work, and thereby its character as gift, as grace. Substitutionary concepts can accent a contrasting objectivity. I do not find terms such as transfer of payment or legal right by themselves well suited to express atonement's participatory dynamism. Yet terms like these appear in Scripture. They have been used, and still can be used, in a secondary sense in Christus Victor" (pp. 104-105).
The final essay is by T. Scott Daniels. He presents a view derived from the sociological/anthropological/theological work of Rene Girard. This view is variation on the theories of mimetic rivalry and scapegoating. S. Mark Heim is another contemporary proponent of this view. I have looked into it, but remain unconvinced of its validity as a substantive theory of the atonement claimed by the New Testament.
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