The Atonement - Jesus and the Victory of God - How did Jesus conceive his death?

NT Wright’s 3rd and 4th lectures on Evil and the Justice of God are now available at www.ntwrightpage.com. They had been missing before yesterday. The third one begins to address some of these questions about atonement and Jesus’ own perception of his vocation.

According to the four-fold gospel account(s), Jesus saw his death as a ransom, an atoning sacrifice ‘for many’ (Mt.20:28; 26:28), a laying down of his life for his sheep (Jn.10:14-18; cf. 11:50-51), the people of God.  His death lies at the center of the formation and subsequent life of this new community (John 6:35-59). 

Jesus also saw his death and subsequent resurrection as ‘necessary’, ‘according to the scriptures’ (note the repeated use of ‘dei’ in these texts, Mt.16:21; 26:54; Lk.13:33; 17:25; 22:37; 24:7).  In this way he explicated his death and resurrection to the disciples on the Emmaus road: “‘O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?’ And beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.”  In a later appearance, He told the disciples, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”  This language of necessity no doubt reflects a divine necessity.  Scripture so prophesied concerning the Christ, and, as Jesus said, “scripture cannot be broken.”  Thus the early church confessed “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,” 1Co.15:3-4. 

Thus Peter preached to the crowds at Pentecost, “This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross,” (Acts 2:23).  And later, in his second recorded sermon, told the temple crowds concerning the crucifixion of Christ, “And now, brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance, just as your rulers did also. But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ should suffer, He has thus fulfilled” (Acts 3:17-18).  And the apostle Paul says, “The people of Jerusalem and their rulers did not recognize Jesus, yet in condemning him they fulfilled the words of the prophets that are read every Sabbath,” 13:27, “And when they had carried out all that was written concerning Him, they took Him down from the cross and laid Him in a tomb,” 13:29

This was a mystery, to use Paul’s language concerning the gospel.  The unveiling of this divine mystery caused many to stumble.  Christ crucified indeed was a stumbling block to Israel (see Lk.2:34; 7:23; cf. 20:17; Acts 4:11; and note the ironic fact that Peter’s [understandable] reaction to Jesus’ clear revelation of his scandalous mission became ‘a stumbling block’ to Jesus, Mt.16:23).  A crucified Messiah?  An executed victor - executed by none other than the cruel, crass cross of godless Rome?  Surely this cannot be.  Consider their vantage: as he lay dying, bleeding and terribly beaten, with the horribly ironic placard over his thorn-crowned head, certainly this is NOT the royal Son of David, who would rule the nations with an iron scepter. 

Yet, by his resurrection from the dead, the promises to David concerning His royal dynasty (and in him, the promises to Abraham concerning His ‘seed’) are fulfilled (Acts 2:25-32; 13:32-37) and by His death/resurrection/ascension, forgiveness of sins has been secured (Acts 2:38; 13:38-39) as promised in the new covenant (e.g., Jeremiah 31:34; cf. Lk.22:20) - for both Israel (Acts 5:31) and the Gentiles (Acts 26:18).    

This understanding of the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection by the early church, according to Luke-Acts, is essentially Jesus’ own understanding, reflecting the instruction He gave concerning the mystery of His mission to the disciples in chapter 24 of Luke’s gospel.    

Regarding manner, the language of giving his life as a ransom for many (clearly reflecting Isaiah’s prophecy of the Lord’s suffering servant, an identity Jesus seems to subsume in the ‘humble’ Son of Man statements recorded in the Synoptics), the words of his institution of the Lord’s Supper, and, if we accept the essential historicity of John’s gospel, in his teachings about the good shepherd and his comment to the disciples, “greater love has no man than this - that he lay down his life for his friends,” it seems evident that Jesus understood His impending death as not only salvific, necessary for the salvation of ‘the many’, but more specifically as substitutionary (which is clearly articulated by the high priest that year in his mysterious prophecy, Jn.11:50-51). This is obviously the ‘manner’ of the redemptive suffering of Yahweh’s servant in Isaiah’s prophecy (e.g., Isaiah 53:4-6, 11-12), which Jesus apparently appropriated in his own self-understanding as the Son of Man.   

How was this connected with ‘the Day of the Lord’?  Jesus no doubt saw the fall of Satan as bound up with His first advent (Lk.10:18; 11:18-22; cf. Jn.16:11), in which the cross/resurrection is the climax.   There is a sense in which the eschatological judgment of God takes place on Good Friday, on a rock called Golgotha.  And in His resurrection, Christ inaugurated the new age, the age of the resurrection of the dead (1Co.15:23ff.).  However, it would seem that Jesus also saw the Day of the Lord as yet future, and bound up with His second advent (hence the traditional two-fold eschatology, as reflected in 1Co.15:23), couched in terms of Daniel’s prophecy in chapter 7, v.13 regarding the coming of ‘one like a son of man’ (see Mt.24:29-30; 26:64; cf. 25:31-32).  This seems to be consistent with the eschatology of the apostolic church (e.g., 2Th.1:7).  Thus the author of Hebrews writes: “having been offered once [in these last days, cf. 1:2] to bear the sins of many, [Christ] will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him,” He.9:28.  This salvation from ‘the wrath to come’ in the dark and terrible day of the Lord (to paraphrase Amos) is secured in His atoning death on Calvary, according to the apostles (Ro.5:9; 1Th.5:9-10).  Again, assuming that their understanding is essentially derivative of the Lord’s own revelation to the disciples, I am compelled to believe that Jesus thus understood his sacrificial death.  But, in the context of biblical eschatology, in which salvation is ultimately salvation from the coming wrath (cf. Lk.3:7-9), how else could he have understood his death as ‘a ransom for many’?  If we are forgiven our sins by his blood, how much more, the apostle reasons, shall we be saved from God’s wrath!

As interesting as this topic is to explore, it is difficult to verifiy what exactly Jesus thought about how his life, death, and resurrection would affect creation.  Never the less, theology is a topic that pushes the liminal boundaries of our imaginations to engage mysteries such as sacrifice and atonement.

Ultimately, this topic hinges on OUR understanding of what happened.  Each of us brings our preconceptions, and experiences which influence our interpretation of biblical text; as such, as we search for the voice of Jesus, we will more often then not, find ourselves hearing the voice that upholds our own understandings of how God interacts with the whole of creation.

Why do I start this response this way you may ask?  Or conversely, why would I not say that the Word made flesh can be found and interacted with in the ‘Word made text’?  Well, we do hold that God became incarnate, and therefore becomes a God who we can interact with, but never the less, each individual will still bring something of their own to a relationship, discussion, etc.  As such, we cannot let ourselves forget that we have preconceptions that may need to be shifted.  We will fail to actually hear the Word made flesh, if we don’t discern who’s voice belongs to whom.

This is a long introduction to a short incite into the discussion topic, but I believe strongly that we are explicit translators, who use our own experiencial encylopedia to make meaning.  We place the ‘Word made text’ in a box if we fail to recognize this reality.

Now to add to this discussion I will pose a question of my own: Is the atoning act of Jesus bound up entirely in the necessity of his death, SO THAT, through resurrection after death the power of death (sin/judgement) is broken?  This interpretation is by and large the one that has undergirded the majority of scholarly understanding of biblical text surronding sacrifice and Atonement theories.  The focus here, inspite of the ‘victorious conqouring’ of death, is in fact Jesus’ death. 

This focus is bound up in scholarly interpretation of cultic sacrifice in the temple.  By and large the vast majority of scholars hold that the temple cult believed that in the death of the animal sacrifice, or in the application of blood on that which needed to be consecrated/purified, the moment of reconciliation with God was made manifest.  Here scholars use texts such as Gen 22 (Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac), and some texts out of Leviticus 1-7 to support their belief that reconciliation can only be made through the death of something else.

What is overlooked however, is an incite that is made by Christian Eberhart, a biblical scholar, and professor of biblical studies at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, SK, Canada who has published several articles including: "The Term ‘Sacrifice’ and the Problem of Theological Abstraction: A Study of the Reception History of Genesis 22:1-19," in: Christine Helmer (Ed.), Valence and Multivalence in Biblical Theology (SBL-Congress-Volume)  (forthcoming).  Eberhart identifies one key offering in the Leviticus texts that implies that death is NOT the key to understanding sacrifice.  Namely, the grain offering.  Unlike most scholars, Eberhart suggests that the slaughter, and blood application rites are not the culmination of the temple cult, instead it is the burning rite: the moment when the offering is burnt on the main altar.  This rite is universal through all five types of sacrifices, and signifies a transformation and transportation of the offering TO God…thereby allowing humanity, and all of creation (since the Temple was seen to be a metaphorical representation for the whole of the cosmos) could interact with God. 

In later times when the prophets began to critique some instances of injustice and unrighteousness, there was a tradition (out of which Jesus may have arisen) that did not explicity condemn the temple cult as a whole, but focused on acts of righteousness and justice as the smoke that rises to God, creating a pleasing odor for God (Amos).

In both of these interpretations of cultic sacrifice, there is NO focus on death, but rather on life.  Never the less, both Old Testament and New Testament scholars focus on the atoning act of Jesus to be found in his death.  NT scholars particularly rely on the book of Hebrews, and Ephesians to outline their understanding of Jesus ‘sacrifice’, interestingly, however, if we look at the temple cult from Eberhart’s perspective we come to the question I posed above - Is death the necessity? 

From my own experiencial encylopedia, I would say that it is in the whole life of Jesus, both before and after his death, that we find our atonement.  After all, the idea of incarnation as sacrifice is just as powerful, if not more so, than the idea of the death as sacrifice.  Not only does it represent the binding of humanity to God (and vice versa), which is the whole idea behind atonement,shalom, reconciliation etc, but it also represents a significant shift in the way that we value life - life is yet again (as seen in the Genesis account of creation) deemed valuable by God when Jesus becomes a part of the creation and lives among it.  This, for me is the fulfillment of God’s vision of Shalom for all creation.