the singularity of being and nothingness
Posts tagged Atonement
The Truth About Easter: Conclusion
Apr 2nd
In my last post , I described in a fair amount of detail what I call the “truth about Easter.” In popular, Western Christianity, there is an unconscious, mostly unthinking prejudice toward understanding the cross as a picture of God’s wrath and punishment against sin unleashed upon Godself in Christ. As I argued in my post, however, if we presume that God were not to respond in such a way to human sinfulness (that is, to punish human sin with death, destruction and hell), we can still adequately describe the nature and reality of “hell” exclusively from the basis of considerations of the “natural” consequences of human sinfulness and violence toward God and self.
The truth about Easter, then, is not that God needs the cross in order to forgive humanity by punishing Christ, but rather that the cross is an expression of sinful humanity’s “gratitude” for God’s love: God in Christ comes with grace and mercy, and we respond in our hatred by nailing Christ to a cross, exulting in his brutal and violent end. Therefore, the cross is really a revelation of our true predicament apart from God, and casts a bright light on what our fundamental need is: to More >
The Truth About Easter
Apr 2nd
So if you didn’t realize it, Easter is only a few short days away. And yes, we are in the midst of Holy Week…go figure :).
Now with Easter comes some very regular and predictable things. We know that little girls all over the country will compel their parents to purchase new, spring-ish dresses for them to wear for one solitary Sunday (believe me, I know this all too well…). We know that many American children will go into certifiable sugar comas following the obligatory egg hunts on Saturday. We also know that their parents will achieve similar levels of pre-diabetic shock from eating the candy that their children “simply don’t need”… And, from most pulpits in America, you’re bound to hear something about the cross, Christ’s blood, and the drama of Atonement (and maybe even something about the resurrection, if you’re lucky).
If your church’s theology is typical of Western, Protestant thinking, the subject of this discussion will probably revolve around one particular pole: that of the cross as a picture of divine punishment. While it seems perhaps a bit harsh to the non-initiated, the often-rehearsed logic of God’s punishment of Christ on the cross seems reasonable enough. After all, humanity has More >
A Quick Thought About the "Penalty" of Human Sinfulness
Feb 28th
The consequence of sinfulnesss–being cut off from the life and goodness of God–is so perpetually annihilating in and of itself that no additional “penalty” needs to be imagined in order to increase the disaster of sinfulness. If God does nothing in regard to sinfulness, the consequence to the sinner is just as terrible as if God somehow actively brings about the same end.
Why, then, do we conceive of the consequences of sin within the framework of penalty? It’s simple: because at the core we are sinful, vindictive creatures that desire a vision of God wherein God reacts along the lines that we, as sinful creatures, would act. We want God to respond with violence and hatred because these are what fundamentally characterize the neurosis of sin. If our God behaves in similar ways, we have–in a very small and neurotic way–legitimized the categories of our behavior, and God is simply the biggest and most violent one in the end.
Fortunately, the truth is that God does not pile “penalty” upon our heads, but quite to the contrary invades our sinfulness in the person of Christ to rescue us from the fear of death and dissolution (Hebrews 2:14-15) so that we might More >
