[Dialogue] {Spam?} Spong and Crucifixion and salvation part 2

[KroegerD at aol.com]

June 13, 2007 
The Third Fundamental:
The  Substitution by Death of Jesus on the Cross Brings Salvation, Part III  

Like the first two of the five Fundamentals that we have thus far examined,  
this third one has also become not just unbelievable but bizarre to modern 
ears.  Yet it remains so powerful that it still shapes the liturgy of Churches 
across  the spectrum from the Roman Catholics to the Pentecostals. The words: 
"Jesus  died for our sins," derived from this concept, have actually become an 
undefined  mantra. The concentration on guilt by the Christen Church is a 
direct  manifestation of this theology, feeding the anger that seems to flow out of 
 Christianity toward whoever is its current designated victim. At various 
times  in Christian history Jews, heretics, infidels, women and homosexuals have 
all  been forced into the role of victim. If one is told often enough that he 
or she  is evil, and that this evil is what caused the death of Jesus, the 
human psyche  will project this pain onto another. The violence of Christian 
history makes no  sense apart from this understanding. Christians have interpreted 
the cross as  the place where the price of our sinfulness was paid by Jesus. 
So in this final  column on the third Fundamental, I seek to develop a new 
understanding of the  cross that might free Christianity from its unconscious 
sado-masochism that  threatens even now to squeeze the very essence out of this 
faith tradition.  
Let me begin by raising to consciousness just how nonsensical the statement  
"Jesus died for our sins" really is. How can the death of Jesus 2000 years ago 
 affect you or me today? Behind these traditional religious words lie two  
concepts that need to be challenged. First, there is the theistic image of God  
as a divine, record-keeping judge, who sits on a heavenly throne demanding 
that  we be punished for all our sins. Since we are not able to bear the divine 
wrath  Jesus becomes our substitute by stepping in and enduring the punishment 
from God  that we deserve. This punishing "Father God" carries out this 
sentence on the  willing divine son. This strange theological claim enables us to 
sing of God's  "amazing grace" saving a "wretch" like me.  
It never seems to occur to the proponents of this theological twaddle that  
God just might exercise the divine power of forgiveness? Is that not what human 
 parents would do with their wayward children? Would any one today call this  
punishing deity either moral or noble? Would we applaud parents who required 
the  death of a surrogate before they would reach out to love and forgive 
their  disobedient offspring? The church seems to confront us with an 
understanding of  the cross that reduces God to a sadistic ogre or a punishing parent who 
delights  in evening up the score. Who would want to worship this heavenly 
monster? This  theory of atonement also reduces Jesus to being a hapless victim, 
perhaps even a  masochistic one, who so enjoys suffering that he can hardly 
wait to mount his  cross. Finally, this idea of salvation fills you and me with 
crippling guilt. We  are said to be responsible for causing the death of 
Jesus. God required it,  Jesus absorbed it and we are redeemed by it. These are the 
ideas that have  traditionally shaped the Christian view of salvation. If 
that is what  Christianity is, then please deliver me from this demonic religion! 
I do not  believe in the God that this theology assumes. I am not drawn to 
the Jesus that  this theology reveals. I do not want to live under the burden of 
guilt that this  theology creates. The reformation of Christianity, for which 
I deeply yearn,  will have to address this crucial and serious concept that I 
believe distorts  Christianity totally.  
The second concept lying behind this theology is its generally unknown but  
close connection with the symbols of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement  
that I explored in last week's column. In that liturgy the Jews were encouraged 
 to reclaim, at least liturgically, what they were taught was their original  
perfection. It had been lost, said the Jewish myth of creation, when their  
original ancestors had violated God's rules and thus had fallen into sin,  
"original sin" as it was known. They were thus no longer what they were created  
to be. The divine image, in which they had been made and for which recovery 
they  yearned, was no more. In Yom Kippur the people acted out their plight and 
their  hopes. Separated from God, they believed that they could approach God 
only  through a symbolic substitute, a perfect Lamb of God, whose blood would  
symbolically cleanse them of their sins. Then they were taught that they could  
transfer all remaining evil onto the back of a second animal, called a "scape 
 goat," that would then carry their sins away into the wilderness leaving the 
 people in that state of perfection for which they had been originally 
created.  
This Yom Kippur pattern, which was both symbolic and liturgical, was then  
applied to Jesus by his disciples and later literalized by Gentile minds that  
had no idea of what the thinking was behind this original source. So Jesus  
became first, the literal "Lamb of God" slaughtered for us and second, Jesus  
became the "scape goat" who carried our sins away. That is how the words: "O  
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world," entered our worship  
tradition.  
Once those two things, a theistic deity and the Yom Kippur symbols of  
atonement, are raised to consciousness, we can finally begin to move out of this  
dreadful understanding of the crucifixion. The next question then becomes: Into  
what understanding of the cross do we move? What meaning does the crucifixion 
 and the death of Jesus really have?  
To begin to create a new theology of the Cross, we first must recognize that  
the idea of God as a punishing parent is not the only concept of God found in 
 the gospel tradition. There is even in the Bible itself a countering idea to 
the  theistic definition of God that now seems to dominate the popular mind. 
In the  First Epistle of John God is likened to the abstract principle of 
love. God is  love, the author states, and those who wish to abide in God do so 
when they  abide in love. The Fourth Gospel defines Jesus' purpose not in terms 
of rescue  or saving, but as that of bringing abundant life to all people. The 
New  Testament states that the disciples of Jesus will be known by their love 
for  each other and the world. How did the Christian Gospel that inspired 
these ideas  get so badly misunderstood that the death of Jesus as a sin offering 
on the  cross become Christianity's dominant theme? It started, as I 
previously  suggested, when Christians literalized the creation story and began to 
define  human life as "fallen," marked by "original sin." If that is an adequate  
definition of human life then human life is indeed in desperate need of 
either a  savior or a rescuer. That definition is the genesis of our guilt based 
theology.   
Have you ever wondered why it is that both the Vatican and Evangelicals spend 
 so much time resisting Charles Darwin? It is surely not to preserve the 
literal  accuracy of the seven day creation story. Darwin's real threat is that 
his ideas  challenge deeply the religion of control and guilt that the Christian 
Church has  developed. Darwin's thought destroyed guilt-filled religion by 
destroying the  concept of original sin. We were never created as whole or 
perfect people in a  divine image, said Darwin. We have rather evolved from our 
single cell beginning  into our present complexity. If we were never perfect, we 
obviously could never  have fallen from that perfection. If we did not fall 
into sin then we have no  need to be rescued or saved. So the understanding of 
the cross as the place  where salvation was purchased by the blood of Christ 
who paid the price of our  fallenness to the Father Judge to restore us to our 
original perfection is not  only a nonsensical way to understand the cross but 
it is also not true.  
Beginning as single cells of living matter that were neither moral nor  
immoral, we grew in complexity until we became self-conscious creatures. We  
learned through our evolutionary past the biological necessity of survival. When  we 
achieved self-consciousness, we installed survival as our highest human value 
 sublimating all else to this primary need. In the battle to survive, the 
fittest  armed with this self-centered survival mentality won the evolutionary 
struggle.  This history, however, also made it difficult to transcend these 
limits on our  humanity and thus served to prevent us from evolving beyond being  
survival-oriented creatures into the potential of being fully human, 
completely  self-giving, loving and capable of giving our lives away for another. Human 
life  thus needs to be understood not as sinful but as incomplete. We do not 
need to  be rescued by a savior or redeemer, we need to be loved and empowered 
to move  into a more complete and full humanity. There is a vast difference.  
Beginning with that new premise, we then look anew at the cross. It is not  
the portrait of a savior dying to rescue us from our sinfulness; it is the  
portrait of the God-filled free man able to give his life away with no need to  
survive himself. That is where we see life as it can be - whole, complete and  
fully human. This humanity does not grasp after wholeness, but gives love away 
 even to its enemies. The gospel portrait of Jesus is that of a human life so 
 whole that on the cross he can give his life away. When betrayed Jesus loves 
the  betrayer; when denied and forsaken he loves the deniers and forsakers; 
when  persecuted and killed, he loves his tormentors and killers. He is 
portrayed as  praying for the soldiers who drove the nails, giving strength to the 
dying thief  and consolation to his grieving mother. That is a Jesus who is a 
life giver not  a rescuer, redeemer or savior. That is also a portrait of what 
humanity can be  when delivered from its survival mentality, complete and whole 
so that the life,  love and being of God can flow through it. It was that 
understanding of Jesus, I  believe, that elicited from his disciples the cry, 
"God was in Christ!" This is  how God becomes human.  
Jesus did not die for our sins. He rather revealed a God who calls and  
empowers us to step beyond the survival mentality that warps our potential and  to 
become so fully human that God's love can flow through us to others. What a  
contrast the two portraits of the cross are. Between Jesus the rescuer and 
Jesus  the life giver, I choose the life giver.  
John Shelby Spong  
_Note  from the Editor: Bishop Spong's new book is available now at 
bookstores  everywhere and by clicking here!_ 
(http://astore.amazon.com/bishopspong-20/detail/0060762071/104-6221748-5882304)   
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Donna Percy, via the Internet, writes:  
The idea of calling God "He" bothers me. Although I had a loving father, in  
my 28 years of teaching I have come in contact with many who were abusive. One 
 year, a grandmother came in for a parent conference and revealed that her  
granddaughter's father, under the guise of saying goodnight prayers with his  
daughter, sexually abused her for years. I wonder how this girl will be able to 
 receive God's message when she continually hears God referred to as "He"? 
Even  the hymns are filled with references to "Him." Fortunately, our current 
pastors  use "God" — not the pronoun — and few in the church have noticed. I 
write on  behalf of all the girls of this world who, like my beloved student, 
have been  hurt deeply by their fathers.  
Dear Donna,  
I share your concern but we have to overcome perhaps 10,000 years of training 
 in the maleness of God. An enormous start on this consciousness raising 
activity  has been achieved, but to erase the influence of the ages will literally 
take  ages. Liturgies change, but ever so slowly, and most of them even now 
are rooted  in the 13th century. The gospels reflect the patriarchal prejudice 
of the first  century Jewish world in which they were created. Even the Ten 
Commandments  assume that women are the property of men (thou shalt not covet 
thy neighbor's  wife, nor his ox).  
Polygamy is present in the Bible because women were defined as property hence 
 the richer the man was, the more wives he could possess, as well as more 
sheep  and cattle. My guess is that it will take another 100-200 years to remove 
the  prejudice and stain of patriarchy from our patterns of worship. That is 
not said  to be discouraging since that is very rapid in terms of how long 
sexism has been  around. The fact remains that for those who are victimized by 
this prejudice,  every day is one day too long.  
This concern only dawned on me well into my adult life. I recall that when I  
wrote in 1973 and published in 1974 my second book, "This Hebrew Lord," I was 
 unknowingly still completely insensitive to male-oriented, non-inclusive  
language. That was also no problem for my publisher, Harper Collins. Even their  
style sheet was not sensitive to the need for inclusive language. When  
HarperCollins asked me to revise this book for a new edition in 1986, both of us  
were in a new place. I made approximately 3500 changes in the text of this 180  
page book, 90% of which were to remove sexist language, like the references 
to  God that referred to God as "father, he, him or his." A wonderful early 
feminist  woman in my congregation in Richmond, Virginia, named Holt Carlton, had 
begun  very lovingly, but very persistently to raise my awareness to my 
closed-minded,  unconscious, sexist prejudices. I was amazed that in the space of 
12 years  things about which I had no sensitivity at all had actually become 
offensive to  me. All of us are caught up in this change whether we recognize it 
or not. The  rate of change accelerates every year as the flow of information 
becomes almost  instantaneous, but for sexism to be completely removed will 
still take three or  four more generations. One reason for the slow pace is 
that both fundamentalist  Protestant churches and Roman Catholic churches spend 
enormous energy opposing  these changes. Those efforts will fail, but they do 
keep us from moving as  rapidly as we might otherwise move. It is also one more 
sign of both the  irrelevance and even the death of institutional religion, 
which always seems to  be on the wrong side of history.  
I do not urge you to be patient. I urge you, rather, to be loud in your  
complaints until the consciousness of all people becomes aware of the power of  
language.  
God is not a father or a mother. Patriarchy has defined God for thousands of  
years, but patriarchy is now dying.  
Thanks are due to people like you for being part of its death.  
John Shelby Spong 



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