Why does Jesus'
death matter? It is not because Jesus died as if he came to die
to atone for sins of people but because he was crucified. He did
not crucify himself; he was crucified (the passive voice). By whom
and why? We have to reconstruct what caused his death. That is part
of historical studies on Jesus. Bluntly speaking, if Jesus' preaching
of the kingdom of God had been accepted by people, he would not
have been executed. The stories in the gospels affirm basically
the same thing that Jesus was executed because of his costly message
and radical acts toward the sinners (tax collectors, prostitutes,
etc); his claim of radical love and justice of God that includes
the most vulnerable in society got him killed. Jesus was rejected
and ended up on a cross not because he talked about the love of
God but because he proclaimed a radical love of God. In other words,
his death is the culmination of what he spoke and acted against
evil (social or political, Jerusalem and Rome included). A good
similar analogy is that Martin Luther King, Jr. was not assassinated
because he preached about the love of God but because he preached
about the radical love of God that includes all.
This kind of view of Jesus' death is attested in the Synoptic Gospels
where Jesus' death is not directly related to the forgiveness of
sins. The forgiveness of sins is possible at baptism when people
repent or when people forgive other people. For example, in the
Lord's Prayer: "Forgive us as we forgive our debtors."
God forgives people when they repent. John the Baptist and Jesus
as well preached the same message: "Repent and the Kingdom
of God has come." The kingdom message of John the Baptist and
Jesus costed their lives. Jesus' death in the Synoptic Gospels implies
a costly love. It also implies God's judgment (justice) against
violence and injustices.
Although Luke presents a politically innocuous gospel as we see
in a centurion's confession at the crucifixion scene "Truly
this man was innocent (dikaios)," Jesus' death in historical
context involves political charges against the Roman Empire, because
he proclaimed the kingdom of God, not the kingdom of Rome. But in
Mark and Matthew, this same centurion says that "he was the
Son of God" which connotes the work of God's Son, not the work
of Caesar as the Son of God. What about the Fourth Gospel? It is
not very different from the synoptics because Jesus' sacrifice can
be viewed similarly along with the synoptics.
What about Paul's letters? In Paul's letters we find his view of
Jesus' death. Fundamentally, it is Christ's faith (the subjective
genitive of pistis christou) that caused his death. His life and
death should be read together as we saw before. Even when we talk
about Rom 3:25 where Paul uses the Greek word hilasterion which
refers to God's act of sacrifice ("God put forward as a hilasterion
by his blood"), the meaning of hilasterion does not necessarily
refer to Christ's sin offering. In Hellenistic culture hilasterion
means a propitiation, which has to do with appeasing an angry god.
Hilasterion is the Greek translation of the Hebrew kapporeh, which
means covering or the cover of the ark(mercy seat) used on the Day
of Atonement, Yom Kippur (Exod 25:10-22; 37:1-9). What does Paul
mean by hilasterion here in Rom 3:25? Options are many: 1) A propitiation
in the sense that Jesus' death appeases an angry God?; 2) Or, is
Jesus' death like sacrificial victims whose blood are sprinkled
on the cover of the ark so that sins of people are covered?; 3)
A proper expiation (rectifying things) made?; 4) Or, does Paul mean
a mercy seat -- God's holy presence right over there on the cross
of Jesus because of Christ's faith? In my view, this last option
makes more sense in the way that God affirms Jesus' faith.
So far so good; the gospels and Paul's letters (seven undisputed
letters only) affirm the historically significant aspects of Jesus'
death as stated before. But as time goes by, the cause of Jesus'
death takes on another direction, far removed from the historical
Jesus. For example, Hebrews presents Jesus' death referred to as
the perfect sacrifice that replaces the animal sacrifice of the
old covenant. In it Jesus himself is the High Priest, who becomes
a new covenant; we see here some kind of supercessionism in which
a new covenant replaces the old covenant, which is out of context
if we read "a new covenant" in Jer 31:31-34 in a historical,
literary context, because a new covenant in Jeremiah is made with
the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not for later Christians.
Atonement Theories
Atonement means "at-one-ment" according to some people:
"the reconciliation of God and humankind through the sacrificial
death of Jesus Christ” (Webster Dictionary). Is at-one-ment
(reconciliation) possible because Jesus was punished instead of
me? (penal substitution theory)? Or is it through a propitiation
of Jesus’ death to placate God’s wrath (propitiation
theory)? Does Jesus' death satisfy God's justice (satisfaction theory)?
Or, does it have to do with a ransom price to pay to the devil (ransom
theory)? Or, is Jesus' death a moral sacrifice that challenges the
believers so they may live like him (moral sacrifice theory)? Each
of these views has merit but is partial. The merit of penal substitution
is to remove guilty feelings and to recover a sense of re-connection
with God. So this meaning is valid for an individual who suffers
from isolation due to guilt or sins.
However, in another context where some people are abused wrongly
by other people or by unjust systemic evil, the message of penal
substitution does not work well and is indeed dangerous to the degree
that evils of wrongdoing are not confronted. Those responsible for
wrongdoing are condoned because there is no resistant message against
the evil. Because of this problem, some feminists oppose the positive
value of Jesus’ death as atonement, especially when the discourse
of atonement does not resist the evils or people involved. In other
words, the cross of Jesus also can be a symbol of victim (unwanted
or unnecessary innocent death), which must be avoided rather than
to be celebrated. As such, one of the important shifts in modern
scholarship lies in a more ethical reading of Jesus' death (the
cross), largely by feminists and minority circle. I also critique
the one-sided view of atonement in a movie review of the Passion
of the Christ because the view of penal substitution theory is conducive
to ethical blindness in a specific context of Jesus and today -
especially in the context of so much violence and war, what is at
stake is to protect life from unnecessary sacrifices or from needless
victimization. We need to affirm the value of life from the image
of the cross. Why do we not see the evil powers at work in Jesus'
time and today? How can we live in the midst of unjust, unwanted,
innocent sufferings of so many people? Ethical reading of Christ's
crucifixion is also possible in Paul's letters such as 1 Corinthians.
Paul’s metaphor of soma christou (Christ’s body) in
1 Corinthians can be understood as a broken, crucified body of Christ,
which then can be identified with all forms of broken bodies in
the world - especially in a Corinthian context in which people fight
for hegemony (for controlling others, bodies of others). (See my
book Christ's
Body in Corinth: The Politics of a Metaphor, Fortress in
Fall 2008).
Also the
above writing is also in my blog.
*SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER
READING
Yung Suk Kim, "Jesus' Death in Context," The Living
Pulpit Vol 16 No 2 Apr-June 2007.
---------------, Christ's Body
in Corinth: The Politics of a Metaphor (Minneapolis: Fortress,
2008).
Peter Schmiechen, Saving power:
theories of atonement and forms of the church, Grand Rapids,
Michigan : Eerdmans, 2005.
Stephen Phinlan, Problems with
atonement: the origins of, and controversy about, the atonement
doctrine, Collegeville, Minn : Liturgical Press, 2005.
Roy E. Gane, Cult and character:
purification offerings, Day of Atonement, and theodicy, Winona
Lake, Ind : Eisenbrauns, 2005.
Stokl Ben Ezra, The impact of
Yom Kippur on early Christianity: the Day of Atonement from second
temple Judaism to the fifth century, Tübingen : Mohr Siebeck,
2003.
Luke Timothy Johnson, "Rom 3:21-26
and the faith of Jesus," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 44
Ja 1982, p 77-90. |