So far what has been said points me to NUMBER TWO below.

(From a tape by Bishop Kallistos Ware, "Patterns of the Atonement")

If we look at scripture and tradition what we find there is not a single theory of the atonement, worked out in legal and philosophical language. Rather, what we find there is a variety of images and symbols coexisting, juxtaposed, symbols of profound meaning and power, yet, for the most part un-explained, but left to speak for themselves.

 

Approaching then, the “mystery of the cross” our best motto is “safety in numbers.” We are not to isolate any one image of symbol, placing exclusive emphasis upon it and ignoring the others. No single image or symbol is to be pressed to far, developed one-sidedly into an exclusive explanation. We must be careful not to turn a symbol or image into a rational or syllogistic argument. We must respect the distinctive, nonrational logic of symbols. A logic that is often poetic.

 

Two passages:

 

From the Roman Catholic tradition, the Jesuit, Robert Mowery.

 

All theology starts with the human mind reaching out to evoke some echo or reflection of the ineffable by means of some poetic image of is, knowing that the ineffable cannot be pinned down. There follows a period of rising confidence in the intellects power, Then, of declining vision and confidence. Finally in decadence, an abject literalism, that can no longer distinguish the levels of discourse, and discern what was poetic imagery, what was philosophical symbolism, and what was matter-of-fact language. The peaks of philosophical poetry remain to inspire us again: Ephraim, Dante, Milton, Blake, T.S. Eliot. It would be good for the church if they were put more in the forefront of theological study. (Kallistos Ware would add from the Byzantine tradition, St. Simeon the New Theologian.)

 

And then from the Orthodox tradition, from the Romanian theologian, Fr. Demetroe Stanaloe

 

The mystery of salvation cannot be expressed except in the form of paradox. And Orthodoxy has therefore sought to safeguard the element of paradox against any attempt to unravel the mystery in a series of one-sided rational propositions. The paradoxical and apophatic fullness of the mystery of salvation is more genuinely suggested by symbols than by intellectual definitions. To consider the cross and the resurrection in images, to express them through symbolical and liturgical acts is to hint at this mystery of salvation in a way more real and more existential than is possible through Alselm’s Theory of Satisfaction, or the Penal Theory of the Protestants, which cannot express more than one aspect of the incomprehensible mystery of salvation. Such theories are acceptable only on condition that they do not claim to replace the mystery itself, in its incomprehensible fullness, but merely to expound some particular point, and that in a relative and provisional way.

 

 

Bearing in mind those two statements…outline map of the territory…

 

Four models for Christ salvation effected upon the cross. (“Five” evaporated into “four.”) And “three” questions are enlarged into four questions.

 

Beginning with the three questions…

 

The questions I’d like to ask of any particular model, or Christ’s work on the Cross, are these:

 

1.      Does the model before us envisage a change in God, or in us?

Now, some theories of atonement seem to suggest a change primarily in God. They suggest that God is angry with us, that He wishess to punish us, and that He needs to be appeased and placated. Surely something has gone deeply wrong if that is the way we think of Christ’s saving work. In 2 Corinthians 5:119, St. Paul says “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” Not reconciling Himself to the  world. It is WE who need saving…We who need reconciling; not God. God is always love. God is not an angry Father, wishing to “take it out” on someone else. Such a view of God, though it comes up again and again, is surely blasphemy.

 

 

2.      Does the model before us separate Christ from the Father? And if it does then something has gone deeply wrong. Paul says, “God was in Christ. Salvation is God’s work in Christ. We are to see Christ as God’s missile or anointed one, God’s representative, or God himself. But, if we make Christ into God’s victim, have we not introduced a fatal separation if we somehow think that the atonement is about God punishing Christ. Such a separation is unacceptable. Even though we affirm Christ’s solidarity and union with ourselves through the incarnation, as we did with this morning’s Epistles – a high priest who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and tempted in everything just as we are. Yet at the same time in affirming the savior’s solidarity with us, this must not be done in such a way as to separate Him from the Father. Even when Christ cries out upon the Cross, “my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me,” he is still in unbroken unity with His Father.

 

 

3.      Additional, New-3 (in new numbering).  

Does the model of salvation before us emphasize the Cross in isolation from the incarnation and the resurrection.  Again, if it does, something has gone wrong. The continuity and coherence of Christ’s economy has been broken. We are to see Christ’s saving work as a unity: His birth, life, death resurrection, ascension, all together constitute a single undivided action.

 

4.      And then our final question, which now becomes number four…

Does the saving work of Christ, as understood by the model before us, appeal primarily to our feelings and emotions, or does it envisage a change in the state of the universe?  Surely we want to say the later. God was in Christ altering our total situation. Christ has done something for us.

 

LETS LOOK AT THE DIFFERENT MODELS.

2^nd Model – Sacrifice

 

Now I come to the second model, Sacrifice. This is, needless to say, a highly complex theme. I can’t do more, this evening, than to offer a few hints. For us today sacrifice is on the whole a difficult notion. We have largely lost the sense of what a sacrifice signifies. IN the ancient world, on the other hand, whether Hebraic or Roman, images of sacrifice were omnipresent. But neither in the Bible nor in the classical tradition is there any single theory of what a sacrifice means. And in the Old Testament there are of course many different kinds of sacrifice. Certainly in the New Testament, Christ is likened to the Pascal Lamb: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” John the Baptist’s words pointing to Christ. And the Apostle Paul’s words, “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us.” In other parts of the New Testament Christ’s death on the Cross is likened more to the Sin Offering on the Day of Atonement. Even Christ is likened to a Scapegoat. He is, says St. John, “the expiation” for our sins. And this idea of Christ as the Sin Offering, who purifies us by his blood is evident in the account of the Last Supper: “this is my blood of the New Covenant which is poured out for many for the remission of sins.” There undoubtedly is present the imagery of the Day of Atonement.

 

 When my nanny, whom I was very attached to as a child, was dying many years later – she was a devout Evangelical Christian – her last words were: “The blood of Christ purifies us from all sin.” And then she closed her eyes and died. I would like to die like that, with such a word on my heart and lips. But I wonder how many Christians today, as they were dying, would think immediately of those words, and use that imagery. Yet it is very much part of the New Testament.

 

What is the essence of sacrifice? Sticking my neck out, I will say in the simplest possible terms, the point of a sacrifice is it is an offering. A gift. Many people think that the essence of a sacrifice lies in the death of the victim. But that is not, in my understanding, the true sense of a sacrifice. Yes, in the Old Testament the victim is killed, its blood is poured out… But that is because the blood is understood to constitute the life of the victim. And the pouring out of the blood is a way of releasing the life of the victim and offering it to God. So the essence there is certainly “offering” and not death-as-such.

 

And there are many sacrifices in the Old Testament that do not involve a death. For example, the offering of the First Fruits, sacrifices of wheat, and of the fruits of the earth. So, if we call Christ’s death a sacrifice, this is because he offers or lays down his life on our behalf. And an essential point here would be, that sacrifice of Christ on the Cross is voluntary. That which is extract from me by force and violence, against my will is not a sacrifice. The fact that Christ laid down his life voluntarily – “No one takes my life from me, I lay it down of my own accord” – it is this voluntary offering that changes the cross from a piece of arbitrary violence or a miscarriage of justice into a redeeming sacrifice for the life of the world. It is this voluntary element, the free self-offering of Christ that makes his death as it is makes his death – as it is termed in the liturgy of St. Basil – “life giving.”

 

 

Now, with those words in mind, let’s look at our questions.

 

 

 

Question 1 – In the Sacrifice Model, is the change in God or in us?

 

Here we have to be very careful. In many sacrifice theories, certainly, the change is understood to be in God. But that need not be the case. The ehart of the issue here is how do you understand the word HELASMOS. (1 John 2:2) In the authorized, KJV it is translated PROPICIATION. And there the emphasis appears to be God-ward – God the Father is being appeased, propitiated, placated by the death of his son. But, in many of the more recent translations of the Bible, the rendering given EXPIATION. And that I believe is a better translation. In general I prefer the authorization version of the Bible to the modern versions. But there are places where perhaps it can be improved – and this is one. EXPIATION, as I understand it, is man-ward rather then God-ward.The point is not that God is being placated, but that our sins are being wiped away.  And if we understand the sacrifice of Christ in that way -- not as placating an alientated God – but that it is wiping away our sins and that is the meaning of the blood on the day of atonement in the Jewish ritual, then the change is in us rather than God.

 

Then coming to...

 

Question 2 – Christ on this understanding is not necessarily separated from the Father. Certainly sacrifice models are Cross-centered. But if we understand sacrifice not just as death, but as self-offering, then you need not isolate the cross. The Incarnation can already be seen as a sacrifice. And certainly this theory of sacrifice is objective.

 

Now, linked with sacrifice there are other models, which don’t actually appear on my list. (And you might have been surprised that they are not there.) The first one is the model of satisfaction, as put forward by Anselm – where Christ’s death is seen as an act of reparation, to satisfy the Fathers offended honor. On this model the imagery is based on western medieval feudalism. How scriptural however is the word satisfaction. I don’t think PICANOPESIS appears in the New Testament or in the early Fathers. It does in a lot of modern Greek theologians. And of course, the Anselmian theory was standard teaching in Russian nineteenth century theology as well. But is this really scriptural – is this really patristic? Is it even to be found in the early Latin Fathers? Is God really a feudal overlord, whose honor has to be appeased? Surely he forgives us freely. The only satisfaction that God desires is our repentance. The only punishment that God’s inflicts on us is for our healing.

 

I don’t like the Satisfaction Theory: first, because I find it unscriptural; secondly, because it assumes a change in God rather than in us; thirdly, because God and the Father are separated; and fourthly, because the Cross is usually isolated.

 

Little account on the Satisfaction Theory is taken of the Resurrection.

 

But what about another model, beginning with the letter-S: Substitution. Unlike satisfaction, substitution is a New Testament theme. And so, if we criticize Protestant theories of penal substitution, we should not reject the idea of substitution altogether. We should make it clear we’re rejecting only a variant of this. Most clearly it is said in 2 Cor. 5:21, “For our sake God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” The idea is certainly used in St. Athanasius in his work “On The Incarnation.” He speaks of Christ’s saving work with reference to the phrase ANTIPSIKO (greek word) “laying down his life. Not just HEPAIR (greek word) “on behalf of us” but ANI -- “IN OUR PLACE.”

 

[SECOND SIDE]

 

If we are going to use this model, however, let us use it in such a way that it does not separate Christ from the Father. When I was an undergraduate, I remember going to listen to Billy Graham in Oxford, and he gave what I thought was an admirable presentation of the Christian faith; except when he came to the question of the Cross. And then he said – and I remember these words – “At the moment Christ died on the Cross the lightening of God’s wrath hit him instead of you.”

 

Strong words. But is this the best way of thinking of Christ. It makes God’s actions seem somehow arbitrary. The wrath of God is indeed a scriptural concept; but, as I understand it, it is nothing else than the Love of God. Those who cannot respond to the love of God feel his love as wrath. That is exactly St. Isaac the Syrian’s picture of hell. “The doors in hell,” as C.S.Lewis said, “are locked on the inside.”

 

But there is a central truth in this substitution language: Christ has done something for us, that we could not do for ourselves.

 

But I would like to use the language of mutual indwelling. Not Christ instead of me, as if the act of salvation was something external to me. But Christ in me and I in him. Mutual in-dwelling.

. . .

(There's much more.)

The Byzantine Church remained fundamentally faithful to the notion of what George Florovsky once called an "asymmetrical union" of God and man in Christ: while the hypostatic source of life — the goal and pattern — remains divine, man is not diminished or swallowed by the union; he becomes again fully human. This notion is also expressed in the Eucharistic sacrifice, a unique act in which no single action of Christ’s is represented in isolation or reduced to purely human concepts, such as an "exchange," or a "satisfaction." Christ as the Synodikon proclaims every year on the Sunday of Orthodoxy, "reconciled us to Himself by means of the whole mystery of the economy, by Himself, and in Himself and reconciled us also to His God and Father and of course to the most holy and life-giving Spirit."⁵