Post Edited (Namaste) : 11/1/2006 7:41:17 AM (GMT-6)

Namaste: Jesus voluntarily ASSUMED RESPONSIBILITY for the organic whole of Adam…

Tom: I agree. But I still don’t know WHY Jesus must do this for me to be reconciled to God.

Forget the Cross, OK? Let’s say there’s no sacrifice. There’s just God who loves me and has already forgiven me (because God doesn’t need a sacrifice to forgive me) and me. I realize I’m a sinner, I turned to God, have faith in his love for me, and ask him to restore me to him. Then I start living out of that unconditional love. I get healed. I become a blessing to others. I celebrate God’s love for me. I die and go to heaven.

WHY the cross? We’re dancing around the issue. What is possible for us, available to us, via the cross that would not be possible for us apart from the cross? Are we saying the above scenario just ISN’T possible without a sacrifice? I turn to God who has already freely forgiven me apart from any cross, and say, “Thank you for forgiving me! I wanna be healed and in relationship with you,” and this God who needs no sacrifice to forgive me says, “Eh, well, sorry. I can forgive you without a sacrifice. But that’s as far as we can go. If you want to really relate to me—and I want that too by the way—then a sacrifice is needed.” I say, “Why? You’ve already forgiven me. Why must you also die?”

And God’s answer is…?

I still don’t know.

I think it just boils down to some sort of cosmic score card or bank account and JUSTICE is the bank examiner. We create ugliness in the world—we sin—and justice says: You must die—i.e., must live in despair out of relationship with God—and before you can come back into relationship your ‘debt’ must be paid. You’ve made all these bad karma deposits in your personal life-account and justice (the very nature of reality defined by God) says ‘That account HAS to be paid’ before you can live. It’s like a set of scales. Your sin weighs it down on one said and “human death and despair” is the just consequence that MUST be placed on the other side to balance the scales and create the possibility for you to come out of debtors prison (remember Jesus’ “you’ll stay in prison until you pay the last penny!”?). God can personally forgiven you (that is, not harbor any angst against you for all the ugliness you’ve dumped upon him and his creation), but that’s as far as God can do without the debt being paid.

Is that it?

POW: Like a sponge he [Christ] soaked up our peutridity. And like a vine he restored life to our being.

Namaste: Exactly.

Tom: You’re just stating WHAT he did over and over. NOBODY is saying WHY he must do this. WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY?

I see pieces of a puzzle (organic wholes, privation, freedom, love, relationships, forgiveness that doesn’t need a sacrifice, etc.). I just don’t at all see how they fit together to show WHY a sacrifice of this kind was NECESSARY to our being healed and restored to relationship with God. But until the pieces are fitted together I'm not clear on what it's a picture of.

Tom

Post Edited (Namaste) : 11/1/2006 8:34:36 AM (GMT-6)

Satan's project is futile! Sin CANNOT succeed, and this was PROVEN in the death and resurrection of Jesus!

Post Edited (Corey) : 11/1/2006 10:07:29 AM (GMT-6)

Corey is happy!

---------------

I hope this isn't anticlimactic! Namaste set me up! I’ve forgotten already how I expressed it on the phone this morning that made it click! I’m an INTP, but I’m a 46 year old INTP!

Anyhow, one thing that was tripping me up was that I thought Namaste was trying to argue some new view of the atonement against the established versions (like substitutionary, Abelardian, Christus Victor, etc.). With that in mind, I kept looking for a new REASON for the sacrifice to be articulated. But having talked it over with Namaste this morning, I’m clearer on it. We’re basically arguing FOR the substitutionary view. We’re just not arguing a ‘penal’ view of substitution that says God’s pi**ed off and angry, his anger needs to be propitiated, and so Christ propitiates it in our place (substituting himself for us). Christ is substituted for us, yes, just not in this sense.

Knowing we’re working in a substitutionary framework helps a lot. The question is still—Why a sacrifice? The answer then is just—because the metaphysical constraints of the sort of relationship God designed and purposed us for require it. Let’s do two things. First let’s dump “sacrifice” and say instead what it is the sacrificed one (Christ) is in fact doing by being sacrificed. I mean, what he’s doing ‘metaphysically’. Secondly let’s then try to say why this needs to be done.

Think of all the arguments we make for why God endowed us with LFW. Why? We’ve always said ‘because of the metaphysics of love’; more specifically, because of the metaphysics of loving, morally responsible relationality. God wants a loving relationship with us. That sort of thing (loving relationships) requires those involved to take responsibility for their choices. So moral accountability and freedom are constitutive of loving God-world relations. That’s just ‘the nature of things’. It’s not like God could have gotten us to such loving relationship with him apart from our being free and accountable but just decided to spice things up. No, if God wants this kind of a relationship with us, then he have to pay the metaphysical price tag—create us free and accountable persons. TNT1--Love requires freedom.

Why Jesus has to suffer and die is explained by the preceding paragraph. It has to do with the nature of that personal accountability that defines the sort of loving relationship God wants with us. Accountability (and behind it ‘justice’) says morally accountable persons must take responsibility for their choices. It also says this (importantly): choices have consequences. Accountability, or taking responsibility for my actions, means nothing apart from those actions having ‘consequences’.

It’s the “deep magic” Aslan spoke of. It’s just the ‘way’ of loving relationships as defined by God’s own trinitarian experience, THE most fundamental reality of all. Where there’s love between two persons, there’s INTIMACY (I have a LOT to say about this, but later)—that is: loving relationality is defined by the mutual exchange of life (life basically being thoughts, feelings, and desires). That’s just what loving relationships are and do. To be in a loving relationship with another, I choose to BE who and what I in truth AM in the presence of that other person, and that just means I have to be honest about who and what I am. I have to take responsibility in the presence of the other person for who and what I am and what I’ve done, and that means embracing the consequences of my choices.

So we just have to say what are the consequences for the relationship between two people where one of them makes selfish, sinful choices? Clearly the consequences are brokenness for the relationship. But what is THAT? What does that entail? Well, understand it in terms of what the relationship OUGHT to be. And we said that what it ought to be is INTIMATE. That is, it ought to be an exchange of life (viz., the celebration of the thoughts, feelings, and desires of the other) between two people. THAT is what I deny when I sin. That’s what is ‘privated’ by evil. I exist, but I deprive myself of the exchange of divine life. I don’t get to live off the thoughts, feelings, and desires of God. What is the consequence of THAT? Despair. I’m in despair. I’m suffering. That’s the just (the right, natural, inevitable, defined by God’s own trinitarian experience of love…) consequence for my choices.

God still feels and thinks about me the same—love. He hasn’t broken the intimacy on his end or refused to exchange his life with me. It’s still offered. And it still touches and blesses me even though I’ve rejected him. It’s just that I’ve removed myself from it.

OK then. I said let’s dump “sacrifice” for the moment for a better term or phrase that unpacks “sacrifice” and describes just what it’s doing, what’s actually happening in Jesus on the cross. Well, what happens is that Jesus experiences the just consequences of my choices on my behalf. Straight up substitutionary atonement. The deep magic is satisfied. That is, the metaphysical constraints are propitiated, they’re “addressed” and fulfilled. It’s not about “sacrifice” and “cross” qua sacrifice or cross. It’s about the human person on the other side of the God-world relationship (a relationship that was freely broken on the world’s side) taking responsibility for its choices and experiencing the consequences of those choices. That HAS to be the way things work if loving personal relations are to be at all possible between God and us. Remember, the metaphysics of love defined this whole thing in the first place, and the same metaphysics (the metaphysics of INTIMACY!) now define what accountability is and what the consequences are, namely, (a) owning up to the truth about my choice AND (b) experiencing the just consequences (suffering despair) which the deep magic weaves into the nature of the cosmos (more specifically into the nature of loving responsible personal relationships). Those consequences HAVE to be experienced on the human (the offending) side of the equation. No loving relationality would even be possible between God and us if this were not the case. It’s the loving relationality that constitutes these constraints. That is why we MUST have a “sacrifice,” or in better words, why somebody on OUR side of the divide must experience in full the despair that is the just consequence of our being out of loving relationship with the only source of life and love--God. THAT is what the sacrifice DOES.

One last thing here. How is it just (given the deep magic that emanates from God) and right for someone to experience the consequences of MY sinful choices? Isn’t that unjust? Wouldn’t the deep magic say, “No, only TOM can suffer the despair of TOM’S choices. No one else may step in and experience those consequences for him”? Obviously not! And aren’t we glad for that! It might seem to be the case that no person can step in and experience my consequences for me. But it’s not a violation of the accountability necessary to loving God-world relations that someone substitute themselves on my behalf. Personal accountabilty isn't incompatible with personal substitution. A person can substitute themselves on others' behalf. Not just ANY person. The deep magic specifies what sort of person can qualify as the sort of person who may stand in on our behalf. How? How is the same deep magic, the same metaphysical constraints that define the depairing consequences for me and insist that they be experienced also permit another to stand in my place and experience those consequences on my behalf?

Come back in twenty years and I'll have the answer.

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 11/1/2006 11:12:42 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (TGB) : 11/1/2006 1:03:18 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Namaste) : 11/1/2006 3:32:43 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Namaste) : 11/1/2006 3:35:26 PM (GMT-6)

TOM:    It’s about the human person on the other side of the God-world relationship (a relationship that was freely broken on the world’s side) taking responsibility for its choices and experiencing the consequences of those choices. That HAS to be the way things work if loving personal relations are to be at all possible between God and us

B:   Good.

Chrysostom's Paschal Sermon:   Hell swallowed a man, and met God.

Let no one bewail his poverty,
For the universal Kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one weep for his iniquities,
For pardon has shown forth from the grave.
Let no one fear death,
For the Saviour's death has set us free.
He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it.

By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive.
He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh.
And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry:
Hell, said he, was embittered
When it encountered Thee in the lower regions.

It was embittered, for it was abolished.
It was embittered, for it was mocked.
It was embittered, for it was slain.
It was embittered, for it was overthrown.
It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains.
It took a body, and met God face to face.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.

O Death, where is thy sting?
O Hell, where is thy victory?

Christ is risen, and thou art overthrown!
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave.
For Christ, being risen from the dead,
Is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be glory and dominion
Unto ages of ages.

Amen.

Post Edited (Sahid) : 11/2/2006 1:38:56 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Namaste) : 11/2/2006 7:42:42 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Starkman) : 11/2/2006 9:01:36 AM (GMT-6)

I earlier ended with:

How is it just (given the deep magic that emanates from God) and right for someone to experience the consequences of MY sinful choices? Isn’t that unjust? Wouldn’t the deep magic say, “No, only TOM can suffer the despair of TOM’S choices. No one else may step in and experience those consequences for him”?

Namaste said it’s just the “power of giving.” Giving is powerful for sure. And maybe this is all there is to it, but it sounds strange to answer “How is X just and right?” with “It’s right and just because X is powerful.” I like the spider-web analogy too. It’s a good picture.

I’m just looking for that moment of enlightenment, that something that will really connect with me so I can say “Ah, THAT is what’s going on. So THAT is how the transaction is made.” I guess the analogies given so far work, but maybe I’m just lagging behind. Maybe I’m looking for something else. Don’t know. I’m looking for a real ‘Ahhhh’ moment, and though the analogies all seem to work, I’m not that affected by them. I’m like, “OK, well, what’s so extraordinary about that?” or “That’s not so deep a logic.”

Corey, you and I are the INTPs here. Do you know what I’m talking about? It’s like I understand enough of the atonement to avoid rejecting it, to basically say, “Yeah, it works. We do things like that too.” But an INTP is looking for that nugget, that core operative truth, that fundamental metaphysical piece of the puzzle that makes sense of the transaction. It’s like two objects being tied together with a chain and one object is suspended from the other. You see it suspended so you know the chain must be a solid series of intertwined links, but you look at the chain and see a missing link. You know there must be a link there because the object couldn’t be held in suspension without a solidly linked chain. Likewise, I see atonement working. I see people in despair actually brought back into relationship with God and their lives are changed. So I judge from these facts that the broken God-world relation must be restored and linking God and these people, including me! But when I look at the links in the chain (creation, fall, justice, consequence, despair, individual responsibility, Jesus, cross, resurrection, faith, salvation) I don’t see HOW they all connect. Maybe I do but I'm disappointed. Why is that?

Am I nuts? What's wrong with me?

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 11/2/2006 2:59:56 PM (GMT-6)