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.