Mel Gibson's monumental film with its obsessive dwelling on Jesus' bodily sufferings, draws more heavily on devotional tradition than on New Testament scholarship; but it is serving a useful purpose if it turns peoples' minds to the vexed questions as to whether his Passion was necessary for the well-being of humankind –" the Atonement" – and if so, how it could be effective.
No complete answer to these questions can be given in a single article, but I hope to present here some useful ground clearing. I shall first describe three different views of the Atonement that have found favour, from time to time, in the Catholic and Protestant churches of the West. For this I shall be drawing largely on Gustaf Aulén's classic Christus Victor (1931). I shall next describe the ideas of two later authors that I have also found helpful, and conclude with a couple of concerns specific to my own beliefs.
The view that comes through strongly in Mel Gibson's film is the one that Aulén refers to as the Latin or juridical theory of the Atonement. That has been the dominant one in both Catholic and Protestant circles for the last 900 years.
Anselm, an Italian who became Archbishop of Canterbury, was the first to put it forward as an entirely coherent argument in Cur Deus Homo/ Why God Became Man (1094). He started by asserting that God was just, and therefore had to condemn "Man's" sin, for which the punishment was death. (The Latin word homo, although traditionally translated as "Man", always includes Woman as well.)
God's justice, stated Anselm, could only be satisfied if a representative of humanity made reparation by consenting to accept death, That representative had to be sinless, or else the sacrifice would be defiled and unacceptable to God, who could not countenance sin. Such a sinless representative could only be found by God taking human nature and living a life free from sin right up to the moment of that voluntary death. Anselm finally pointed out that "the union of the Divine nature with the human nature in Christ confers on His work a greater value than it would otherwise have;" so all humanity is potentially saved by that sacrifice (Aulén 1931, p87).
"Nothing can be more rational," claimed Anselm, but while no-one ever seems to have questioned his logic, there were from the start those who regarded his theory as unlovely and his premisses as questionable. Most notably his younger contemporary, Peter Abelard, countered with a version of what is known as "the subjective theory." This is basically that the saving power of Christ's death on the Cross lies in its effect on people's attitudes. Abelard suggested that it evoked love towards God, and that it was this love in return that evoked God's forgiveness (Aulén 1931, p96).
The subjective theory is less closely reasoned than the Latin one. It has taken many forms since Abelard's time, but all seem to suffer from the same weakness–if there was no objective reason why Christ should die, then why should his voluntary acceptance of death evoke any positive response in the first place? We do not usually admire those who court martyrdom, just for the sake of it, at the hands of an oppressive authority!
Aulén rejects both the Latin and the subjective theories in favour of what he terms the classical or dramatic view, refusing to describe it as a theory. The shortest version I have found of this "classic view" is the following, taken from C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity (1955): "We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death washed out our sins, and that by dying he disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. This is what has to be believed. Any theories...are...secondary." (Lewis 1955, p55)
Aulén fleshes this skeleton out with a wealth of images drawn from the New Testament and the Fathers. It is a cosmic drama, a conflict between good and evil with God involved at every stage and in the end victorious. The Devil and the powers of darkness feature prominently. They are God's enemies, and yet at the same time the instruments of His justice. They are defeated because they overreach themselves in pursuing that justice. Most importantly, God is both the Reconciler and the Reconciled in this drama, for reconciliation between God and humanity is at the heart of the Atonement. Indeed, atonement and reconciliation are one and the same thing.
To provide an example of the "classic" or "dramatic" view at its most intelligible, I turn to another book by Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950). This is one he ostensibly wrote for children, but clearly hoped that adults would read it as well (and they do). It is set in a fantasy land called Narnia, peopled by talking beasts, dwarfs, centaurs and the like. Four children from our world find their way into it, and one of them, Edmund, whose character has been twisted by bad influences at school, betrays his brother and sisters into the hands of the cruel White Witch. That Witch has usurped the lawful rule of Aslan the Lion, who is the Narnian counterpart of Christ. Aslan rescues Edmund from ritual execution by the Witch, but she herself escapes to parley with Aslan, claiming that Edmund, as a traitor, is (by virtue of Deep Magic from the Dawn of Time) her lawful prey, and should be handed back.
As you might have guessed, Aslan offers his own life in exchange for Edmund's, and the Witch (who cannot believe her luck) agrees in fierce triumph. Next morning, Aslan gives himself up to the Witch's army, is bound, muzzled, spat on, jeered at, and finally executed on the Stone Table.
With Aslan dead, the Witch, expecting an easy victory, leads her army against the dismayed Narnians. She is only foiled by a Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time that brings Aslan back from the dead, more powerful than ever. The stubborn but desperate Narnian army is relieved, the Witch killed and her army routed. Edmund, incidentally, performs heroically in the battle before Aslan's arrival, destroying the Witch's wand, but is severely wounded in the process. He is restored to health by a special cordial that Aslan had given to his sister Lucy.
Note how faithfully Lewis reproduces the classic view. He paints a cosmic drama, a conflict between good and evil, with Aslan involved at every stage and in the end victorious. Aslan is killed for Edmund, his death is the price for Edmund's treachery, but by that death, the Deeper Magic is triggered that destroys death itself.
Note also that whatever might be considered acceptable in the Latin theory is retained. The Law set down by the Emperor-over-Sea (God the Father) is fulfilled to the letter. His justice is satisfied, but it is not the Emperor that demands this satisfaction; it is the powers of evil, acting simultaneously as the Emperor's enemies and the instruments of his justice. The Witch overreaches herself in the process and her power is destroyed. As for the subjective theory, we are shown what effect Aslan's sacrifice has on the character of Edmund. He is transformed from a spiteful little brat into a wise and heroic warrior-king. (Highly recommended for reading to and by children!)
Note finally that Lewis does not provide any rational explanation for the Atonement. He invokes instead Deep Magic from the Dawn of Time and Deeper Magic from before the Dawn of Time. These Magics are beyond reason, but they do not contradict reason. Rather, they stimulate our imaginations so skilfully that we willingly suspend our disbelief.
Are we then to abandon reason so far as the Atonement is concerned, and take refuge in blind faith? That may be an overreaction, but we certainly seem to be dealing with mysteries that we cannot fully understand here and now. (Most of us are in the same situation with regard to quantum theory, the role of DNA and the psychology of the stock market.) All we can reasonably expect to do is make pictures or models that ring sufficiently true for us, and are couched in terms that we can comprehend.
Lewis came up with one such model in Mere Christianity. This is how he presented it (and, by the way, he did so well before people started using gender-neutral language).
It is a matter of common experience that when one person gets himself into a hole, the trouble of getting him out usually falls on a kind friend. Now what was the sort of "hole" man had got himself into? He had tried to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself.
May I note, in passing, that this is what the advocates of Economic Rationalism assert that we all should be doing? But back to Lewis.
In other words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement. He is a rebel who needs to lay down his arms. Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realising you are on the wrong track and getting ready to start again from the ground floor–that is the only way out of our "hole." This process of surrender–this movement full speed astern–is what Christians call repentance.
Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing a part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And here comes the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person–and he would not need it...
Can we do it if God helps us? Yes, but what does it mean when we talk of God helping us? We mean God putting a little bit of Himself, so to speak... We love and reason because God loves and reasons and holds our hands when we do it... But unfortunately we now need God's help to do something which God, in His own nature, never does at all–to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die... God can only share what He has: this thing in His own nature, He has not.
But supposing God became a man–suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God's nature in one person–then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was a man; and he could do it perfectly because He was God. [So] we cannot share God's dying unless God dies; and he cannot die except by being a man. That is the sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all. (Lewis 1955, pp56-57.)
Now that is not a bad picture, and was quite helpful to me when I was younger, but it lacks one feature that I later felt to be necessary. True, Christ died, but how could he truly repent? He had nothing to repent of. I found some help in another little book; John Hadham's Good God (1940):
The one thing that God-in-a-human-life had not yet experienced was failure... Moreover the failure and the experience of separation from God which failure had brought man, had to be of so profound a quality that God could subsequently honestly say to himself when he contemplated an apparently complete human failure: "he has not gone as far as I went, so that I know there is a road back, because I got back along it myself."...Because of his complete reliance upon God, he had been involved in a more complete betrayal than any man had ever experienced. (Hadham, 1940, pp57, 58, 60.)
That for me was and still is an incredibly compelling insight. Furthermore, only a few years after Hadham wrote his book we learned how appallingly efficient brainwashing could be. Jesus had suffered abandonment by his disciples, denial by Peter, hostility from the crowd, flogging and mockery from the soldiers, and finally being nailed to a cross and left to die. We now know that, with his human limitations, he would almost certainly have felt guiltily responsible for that total failure. His felt need for perfect repentance now seems completely explicable.
But I must emphasise here that neither Lewis nor Hadham pretends to have the whole answer, and neither do I. My guess is that there is layer after layer of mystery here that none of us is ever likely to understand. I echo Lewis:
Such is my own way of looking at what Christians call the Atonement. But remember this is only one more picture. Do not mistake it for the thing itself: and if it does not help you, drop it. (Lewis 1955, p58.)
I finally turn to two special concerns of my own that I am likely to share with many of my fellow Liberal Catholics. (By this I mean members of The Liberal Catholic Church, not Roman Catholics of a liberal persuasion.)
First, there is, on the face of things, a contradiction between the notion of Atonement by substitution on the one hand, and the Law of Cause and Effect (karma in the Eastern Philosophies) on the other. The persuasiveness of that Law is such that it once led even St Paul, perhaps in an unguarded moment, to concede that "every man shall bear his own burden." (Galatians 6, v5). However, the contradiction need not be a real one. The Atonement enables us to face up to our shortcomings, but it may not (cannot?) relieve us from the responsibility for them, nor from any inevitable consequences of them either.
The second concern is the uniqueness of the Divine Incarnation, which again many Liberal Catholics do not feel comfortable with. They and I would say that all human beings are in their own way incarnations of the Godhead. A very few–Jesus was one–are already "cosmically conscious," directly aware of their participation in the Divine Life. Others, like myself, are intellectually persuaded of that participation, but still need to live by faith rather than by sight. Others again (doubtless the great majority) do not even share that conviction, but carry the Divine Spark nevertheless. If we are right, then even if it is really necessary for the Reconciler to be God as well as Man, that requirement might not be so difficult to fulfil as it might first appear.
Ken Brewer is a lay member of the Liberal Catholic Community of St Thomas, Canberra, Australia.
References:
Aulén, G. (1931) Christus Victor. Authorised translation by A.G. Hebert. Page references from reprint by S.P.C.K.: London 1965.
Hadham, J. (1940) Good God: Sketches of His Character and Activities. Penguin: Harmondsworth. Page references from the Forward American Miniature Book Edition, Forward Movement Publications,: Cincinnati 1965.
Lewis, C.S. (1950) The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Bles: London. Page references from the Puffin edition, Penguin: Harmondsworth 1959.
Lewis, C.S. (1955) Mere Christianity. Collins (Fontana): London. Passages quoted originally in Broadcast Talks, 1942. The first edition of Mere Christianity (a revised and amplified edition of Broadcast Talks, Christian Behaviour and Beyond Personality) was published in 1952.
Notes: Gustaf Aulén was Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Lund and (Lutheran) Bishop of Strängnes in Sweden. John Hadham was the pen-name of James Parkes, an Anglican priest and an acknowledged expert on Judaism. C.S. Lewis was, at his death, Professor of Mediæval and Renaissance English at Magdalene College, Cambridge, but was (and still is) best known for his "rare gift of being able to make righteousness readable."
