[Dialogue] {Spam?} 1st of 3 on salvation through the crucifixion Spong

[KroegerD at aol.com]

May 30, 2007 
The Third Fundamental:
The  Substitutionary Death of Jesus on the Cross Alone Brings Salvation: Part 
One  

It is hard in our generation to put into a single sentence the substance of  
the Third Fundamental that traditional Christians, at the beginning of the 
20th  century, said was essential to the Christian faith. Officially, it is 
referred  to as "The doctrine of the substitutionary atonement through God's grace 
and  human faith." Those words communicate almost nothing today. From 
generation to  generation its meaning has been carried for Protestant Christians in 
the popular  mantra, "Jesus died for my sins," while in Catholic Christianity it 
finds  expression in talk about "the sacrifice of the mass" or in references 
to the  cleansing power of Jesus being received sacramentally. These 
expressions employ  the language of what the church has typically called: "the doctrine 
of the  substitutionary atonement."  
Over the next three weeks in this column, I intend to examine this familiar  
Christian idea that I regard today as a completely bankrupt way of 
understanding  the Christian faith. In my opinion these atonement ideas have succeeded  
primarily in turning God into a child-abusing heavenly parent. They have also  
turned Jesus into being the ultimate, perhaps even the masochistic, victim of 
a  sadistic father God. Furthermore when literalized, these ideas have turned  
ordinary Christians into people burdened by the weight of guilt that at best 
is  immobilizing and at worst serves to create a religious justification for 
their  own abuse of others. It had been primarily responsible, I believe, for 
the  levels of anger that have infected Christian history, finding expression 
in the  burning of heretics, anti-Semitism, religious wars, religious 
persecution, the  Crusades and in the rampant homophobia that embraces so much of the 
Christian  Church today. All of this arises out of that strange definition of 
humanity as  so irreparably evil, that Jesus had to die to rescue us from our 
hopeless state.  People who define themselves as evil, as chronic victims 
almost inevitably  respond to the pain of that definition by victimizing others. 
These attitudes  still infect Christian liturgy, expressing themselves in our 
hymns and prayers.  Their constant recitation in typical church services feed 
the anger of  fundamentalists who like to portray the ones not responsive to 
their message as  bound for an eternity of suffering, while at the same time 
encouraging the  rejection of all things religious by those caught up in the 
rising tide of  secular humanism. Having made these grave charges let me now put 
content into  this analysis.  
Very early in Christian history, the idea developed that the death of Jesus  
must have had some ultimate significance. His crucifixion could not have been  
purposeless. It had to have been a pre-ordained act. As early as the mid 
fifties  CE, in his letter to the Corinthians, Paul sought to give expression to 
this  idea when he wrote "Jesus died for our sins in accordance with the 
scriptures."  That is the earliest attempt we have to ascribe purpose to the cross. 
Those  words, however, reveal a number of presuppositions that drive us deeply 
into the  Jewish experience.  
Paul is implying first that human life is by definition both fallen and evil, 
 and second, that Jesus' death addresses that reality. Paul is here giving  
expression to an idea that lies deep in the mythology and history of the Jewish 
 people. Mythology's primary purpose is to explain reality. In this instance 
the  reality crying out to be explained was the presence of evil in God's good 
world.  No one can deny the presence of evil. Human beings kill, steal, rape 
and abuse  one another. Human beings go to war and torture their enemies. Even 
religion is  used by human beings to justify the enormous evil that we do to 
those who  question religious tenets. Human beings seem threatened by those 
who are  different and act toward the different ones with dehumanizing 
hostility. Our  victims have included people of different races, different religions, 
people who  are mentally and physically impaired, albino people, left handed 
people and  homosexual people. Evil is easy to document. Its source, however, is 
a subject  of much debate.  
Evil was easier to explain in dualistic cultures where life was viewed as a  
battle between good and evil, God and Satan, the spiritual and material, than 
it  was in those cultures that believed that God was both one and holy. 
Dualistic  cultures postulated two deities, one good and one evil. This split 
divided human  life as well with our souls belonging to one deity and our bodies 
belonging to  the other. Religious life in these societies was understood as a 
struggle  between the good deity and the evil one. Devotees were taught to 
mortify their  fleshly desires so that their souls could be united with God. Evil 
was thus the  product of a demonic creator.  
In the Jewish tradition, however, the oneness of God could never be  
compromised by a competing deity. "Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one God,  you 
shall have no other Gods," is the heart of Judaism. Jews could thus never  
attribute evil to this one God so their explanation for the presence of evil had  t
o find a different focus. The Hebrew people, therefore, created a myth to  
explain both the origins of life and its subsequent distortion with evil and  
placed that myth at the beginning of their sacred story. The tale of Adam, Eve,  
the serpent and the Garden of Eden is obviously not history. Like all myths 
it  was designed to offer answers to questions that bothered the people, like 
how  did the animals get created, why do people have to struggle against the 
elements  to scratch a living from the soil, why do women experience pain in 
childbirth,  why does a snake crawl on its belly and why is there evil in this 
world?  
The one God of the Jews could only create a perfect world, they proclaimed,  
and so this story opened with a description of the world's perfection. God 
made  it all out of nothing and pronounced it both good and finished. That is the 
 message which opens the Book of Genesis.  
There is, however, a second creation story in Genesis 2, written perhaps as  
much as 400 years earlier, that purports to show how God's good creation was  
destroyed by an act of disobedience. According to this story, God perceived 
that  the human creature was lonely and so proceeded to fill the world with 
living  things in a loving but somewhat unsuccessful attempt to find a proper 
companion  for Adam. The great variety of animals came into being, it suggests, 
when God  kept trying to make a creature that would satisfy the human desire for 
company.  Adam, we are told, observed the wonder of God's ability to make so 
many  variations among these creatures. Just look at the variety of tails 
alone. They  were long, short, curly, bobbed, smooth, hairy and bushy. On the 
elephant the  tail actually looked like it had been attached to both ends of the 
animal.  However, in the midst of this almost infinite number of kinds of 
creatures, none  was found that could alleviate Adam's loneliness. So the story 
says that God put  Adam to sleep, removed one of his ribs and created a 
human-like, if not quite  fully human, "junior" partner for the lordly male. She would 
become his  helpmeet, serve his every need and be his intimate companion. As 
he named all  the animals to demonstrate his superiority so Adam now named the 
submissive  woman, "Eve."  
It was Eve, the story then explains, who was the agent through which evil  
entered God's perfect world. The woman, defined as not as wise or as human as  
the man, displayed her weakness by succumbing to the serpent's temptation to  
become as wise as God by disobeying God's only rule. She ate of the fruit of 
the  tree of knowledge. The result of this sin was that her eyes were opened and 
she  became aware of both shame and guilt. She quickly incorporated Adam into 
her act  of disobedience and emblazoned the word "temptress" on to her 
forehead and the  foreheads of all women ever since. God's perfection had been 
destroyed by this  weak link in the chain of being. Imperfect people cannot inhabit 
the perfection  of Eden so they were banished. Human life from that day to 
this, proclaims this  myth of our origin, has been defined as fallen and sinful, 
our created  perfection gone forever. Human destiny was to live "east of 
Eden."  
Given that cause for the break in the relationship with the holy God, the  
Jews assumed that healing could come only from God's side. Having been banished  
from God's presence in the Garden of Eden, human beings could never reenter 
it.  Having separated themselves from God, nothing that they could do could 
overcome  that separation. Human life had to be rescued by God from its 
self-imposed  bondage to sin. Unable to save ourselves we now required a divine savior. 
 
Biblical anthropology thus began with a focus on human life as fallen and  
identified that fall as the source of all evil. It was from that alienation,  
they argued that all evil flowed. The Jews did not wallow in sin as the later  
Christians would do incessantly, but they did look to God for salvation and in  
their liturgy they developed something called the Day of Atonement or Yom  
Kippur, to keep this dream of divine rescue alive. The image of atonement  
associated with Yom Kippur then informed the mind of a first century man named  
Paul of Tarsus who compared Jesus in his death to the sacrificed lamb of Yom  
Kippur when he wrote: "He died for our sins." The view of Jesus as the  
substitutionary atonement starts here. Before it had run its course, it would  create a 
religion of guilt and fear, reward and punishment, and even open the  doors 
to a sadomasochistic understanding of the relationship between Jesus and  God.  
In the next column, we will see how this concept of a fallen, sinful human  
life shaped the way Jews had talked about God, how it informed their worship 
and  how it finally became the lens through which Jesus would be ultimately  
understood. We will also come to see how such an idea is overtly and painfully  
wrong. So stay tuned.  
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 
Sandra M. Boynton, via the Internet, writes:  
I once worshiped and sang in a parish that was presided over by a brilliant  
gay priest who preached against gays. I knew he was gay; I knew his sub rosa  
partner well. Like so many people, I remained silent about his homophobic  
preaching since I believed (and still do) that one's sexuality and personal life  
are just that — personal. I was disturbed as he cemented a "traditional,  
conservative" parish, based on the primacy of men, the unsuitability of women  
for the priesthood and other policy roles in the Church, a hypocritical disdain  
for homosexuals, and stunningly beautiful liturgy and music. Then an Anglican 
 bishop at the Lambeth Conference said he was appalled and called the Church  
heretical for allowing a Native American priest to celebrate the Mass in his 
own  language and use the language's word for Great Spirit as a translation 
for God.  That did it for me. I could no longer associate with a view of the 
world and the  deity that was essentially — although the parishioners would never 
have seen  that — fundamentalist. I left that church — and all organized 
Christianity —  after that.  
I applaud your quest. Reading your columns and editorials is now my only  
connection with active Christianity. Thank you.  
Dear Sandra,  
I understand your feelings and in large measure share them. There is an  
appalling dishonesty in the Church about gay people. We have more than one gay  
bishop in our church at this moment. The Bishop of New Hampshire Gene Robinson  
is not our only gay bishop; he is our only honest gay bishop. We have had gay  
bishops who led the homophobic charge against homosexuality in both the  
Episcopal Church and the Church of England. It is disillusioning.  
However, that does not lead me to the conclusion that I will leave this  
institution. I think the Church is worth fighting for and I intend to do just  
that. I do not expect the Church to be perfect. It is made up of human beings. I  
do ask you to note, however, that it is the same Church that has so deeply  
alienated you that has also produced gigantic leaders in the past and in the  
present. This is the Church that made Gene Robinson a bishop, the Church that  
made Katharine Jefferts-Schori our presiding bishop. It is the same Church 
that  has raised up great leaders today like John Chane in Washington, Michael 
Curry  in North Carolina, Jon Bruno in Los Angeles, Mark Beckwith in Newark, 
Catherine  Roskam in New York and Steve Charleston, formerly of Alaska, and now 
dean of the  Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge. In previous generations, 
we produced  giants like John Hines in America, Robert Runcie in the United 
Kingdom and  Desmond Tutu in South Africa.  
I believe we can call this Church to honesty. I believe we can weather the  
storms of our traditional small minded critics of today and shape a new  
reformation, and I believe that the church can still be helpful in shaping the  new 
reformation. That cannot be done, however, unless there are people like you  
who raise these issues as voices inside the church who demand to be heard.  
Institutional change always comes from those who are inside the church's walls  
not outside them  
Everyone's witness is different. I, for one, would welcome your witness at my 
 side working to change this Church of ours.  
John Shelby Spong 



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