Atonement
is an extremely difficult, theological term. Some say it means "at-one-ment"
(reconciliation) between God and humankind. How can "at-one-ment"
be accomplished? What does it mean? Christians often use atonement
without clarity and often with emphasis on one view of atonement
only - the penal substitution theory. In fact, it is very complex
idea. In the Hebrew Bible there is the Day of Atonement (yom
kippur) when the sins of people (Jews) are forgiven or are
cleansed through the sacrificial victims of animals. Much blood
is sprinkled on the cover of the ark of the covenant, which is called
the mercy seat (kapporeh) (Exodus 25:10-22; 37:1-9). Is
this animal sacrifice or blood a propitiation for God's wrath? Or
is it an expiation to correct some damage done? Indeed,
it is not easy to understand the role of the mercy seat here in
the Hebrew Scripture.
In Rom 3:25
Paul uses hilasterion, which is the Greek translation of
Hebrew kapporeh which connotes two things in the Hebrew
Scripture: covering and the cover of the ark.
What does Paul mean by this reference of hilasterion to
Jesus? Does Paul refer to this mercy seat? Then, is it for "covering"
or "the cover of the ark of the covenant"? Or does hilasterion
point to the pagan use of Hellenistic reference in
which practice of propitiation is popular? Does Paul use the same
image of sacrificial victims like on the Day of Atonement? Then
in what sense? How does Jesus's death relate to hilasterion?
What does this hilasterion have to do with the righteousness
of God (as God's righteousness) (dikaiosune theou)? What
is the role of "faith of Jesus" (pistis christou)?
What about the role of faith shown by believers? As
we see here, Paul's view of atonement is complexly difficult to
understand.
Still, Hebrews
presents a very different view of 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.
But Hebrews re-interprets the so-called "the old in a new context."
Put different, Hebrews is a contextualized writing in a specific
life context.
The complexity
of view of Jesus' death (or atonement) does not cease here. The
reasons for and meanings of Jesus' death in the four Gospels are
still very different with each other. Each gospel's view of Jesus'
death cannot be compatible with each other, as I briefly sketched
in my recent article “Jesus’ Death in Context” in the
Living Pulpit Vol.16 No 2 April-June 2007. The question
is, What atonement are we talking about? Therefore, if anybody emphasizes
only one view of atonement every time regardless of historical or
interpretive contexts, s/he might end up falling into a pit because
of blindness or arragance. A simple analogy might help. If any one
climbs a mountain, one can see only one part of the scene though
its view is still imperfect. How can we see the whole picture of
the scene? Always impossible! However, a little hope is that we
can have a critical dialogue with one another to get at approxmiation
of the view. Sometimes, even the same person can take another route
of the mountain and see the different view. If one person insists
that the view of mountain is ABC, refusing to hear all
other views from others, we would say for sure that such a person
is either arrogant or nothing more than blind. The view of atonement
is much more complex than that.
Thus far atonement
and Jesus' death have been used exchangeably. However, it must be
noted that the concept of atonement can be distinguished from the
cause of Jesus’ death in a historical context. If atonement is to
a theological reflection on the meaning of Jesus’ death, the cause
of Jesus' death is to historical Jesus. This distinction is important
because Jesus' life and death cannot be isolated from each other
and in his world, whether of religion or politics. In that regard,
historical, critical study about Jesus' crucifixion carries its
weight even today.
Strictly speaking,
however, we cannot distinguish history from theology. The question
of "Why was Jesus killed? or Why did Jesus die?" is both
a theological and historical question. It must be thus said that
ultimately atonement is not a matter of abstract definition but
a result of critical engagement both in a historical and theological
context. Therefore, theology and history should be critically examined
in all aspects of life of Jesus and his world, which involve the
diversity of contexts, ancient and modern. In fact, contexts of
Jesus do not stay there to be unlocked but invite us as readers
to engage them as subjects, asking what Jesus' death means both in history
and in theology. By this I mean meaning of atonement should
be open-ended and need a re-construction time and again in diverse
contexts.
Actually, we can
see the diversity of views of atonement at work. With the Webster’s
definition of atonement, “the reconciliation of God and humankind
through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ,” the question is:
Is the reconciliation possible through substitutionay punishment
of Jesus instead of me so that God's justice might be satisfied
(penal substitution theory)? Or is it through a propitiation
of Jesus’ death to placate God’s wrath (propitiation
theory)? Or is it through a deliverance
from the Satan’s hold because the ransom is paid to Satan (ransom
theory or in some sense like Christus Victor model)?
Or is it through a moral renewal of believers because Jesus’
death invokes a sacrificial love for all (moral sacrifice theory),
which takes serious the historical context of Jesus’ sacrifice as
voluntary, costly love? Or is it still
through something else? Each view has merit in a certain context
but cannot exclude other views. Each view is partial and sometimes
could be dangerous in another context. For instance, 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 are abused wrongly by other people
or by unjust systemic evil, the message of penal substitution does
not work or could be dangerous to the degree that evils of wrongdoing
are not confronted and that even those are condoned because there
is no resistant messsage against the evils done. In this case, the
typical message is that Jesus died insted of you;
Jesus loved you until his death; so endure to the end. But because
of this problem, some feminists oppose
the positive value of Jesus’ death as an atonement,
especially when the discourse of atonement does not resist the evils
of killers and their society or any sort of evil system 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?
In closing, 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 contolling others,
bodies of others). (See
my book Christ's Body in Corinth: The Politics of a Metaphor,
Fortress in Fall 2008).
*SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER
READING
Yung-Suk Kim, "Jesus' Death in Context," The Living
Pulpit Vol 16 No 2 Apr-June 2007.
*For a more diverse spectrums of
atonement issues, see the current issue of the Living Pulpit.
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. |