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BuildUpThatWall · Apr 9, 2008, 05:07 pm

The Christian Doctrine of Atonement

Man should lament his misdeeds. Often, when remembering a past transgression, one is overcome with feelings of shame, remorse and even self-loathing. The guilt of our past frequently holds a place of honor among our more mundane memories, and may serve, if we are willing to change, to help us to avoid repeating those mistakes. In this way guilt becomes as important as empathy in helping us to treat our fellow man as we would be treated.

A sin, however, is a direct transgression against God; and there are many, many sins. Most of Leviticus and Deuteronomy are concerned with laying down the Law of Moses, which is essentially a list of those actions that offend God. The books of the ancient Jews are also concerned with redemption and atonement. The sins change over time (the ban on clothing of two or more fabrics has been lifted, as well as the prohibition of ham), as do the methods of redemption, but the idea that mankind should follow the divine rules or face the divine wrath is one that is as old as God himself.

For early Jews redemption of sin came in the form of various sacrifices and offerings. The guidelines of these offerings are laboriously detailed throughout the Pentateuch and included burnt offerings, grain offerings, peace offering, guilt offering, and sin offerings, and each offering had the effect of either pleasing God or at least averting His wrath. This tradition of sacrificing something of value to extricate one’s sin carried over from the early Jewish religion to the early Christians.

The first writings on the subject of Atonement come from Paul. In Romans 3:23 – 25 Paul states, “For all sinned and fell short of God’s glory , but they have been made right with God freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as an atoning sacrifice that comes through faith in his blood.” Paul is earliest church father whose writings became canonical, and so the Doctrine of Atonement has been a key tenet of the Christian faith since its foundation. But there is one problem with the doctrine. It is immoral.

The ransom view of Atonement, originated by the early church father Origen, held that in committing the original sin Adam and Eve sold out the whole of humanity to Satan. Now God, being just, had no option but to pay the devil his due. As it turns out, however, God was able to pull the ultimate bait and switch on the Lord of Lies. God promised his only son Christ Jesus to the devil after the crucifixion, and Satan willingly agreed not knowing that Jesus could not be held by the bonds of death. In the end humanity is saved, Jesus ascends bodily into heaven, and everybody is happy, except the one character in the story we feel no empathy for anyway.

This is absurd piffle that, for the pious, should border on blasphemous. First we are lead to believe that God is reduced to negotiating with Satan under the unconvincing explanation of justice. What justice is being served here? Presumably Satan shouldn’t have been loitering in the Garden in the first place, much less tempting the queen of naivety into having a very inadvisable snack. If a burglar breaks his arm in the commission of his crime is he entitled to damages from the unfortunate home owner? Of course not, he is entitled to the consequences of his actions and that is all. Likewise, the serpent is entitled only to the loss of his limbs and not to some reward for his misdeed.

Even if recompense for fall of man was indeed owed, under auspices of justice, to the devil, who is to going to make God pay up? What exactly is Satan going to do about it?

The credulous have a ready, if unsophisticated, retort to this line of reasoning. God can not ignore Satan’s rightful claim because He, light of all lights, can not commit an injustice. No, of course not, better that He resorts to dishonest bargaining to wiggle out an arrangement rather than condemn the whole affair to begin with.

The real question is this: Why did Origen feel compelled to offer this awkward explanation for God’s motives in the first place?

Origen was not the only church father to attempt to rationalize the crucifixion. The most famous of these included St. Augustine, Abelard, Anslem, Calvin, and Aquinas. It is not the intention of the essay to delve into too much detail regarding the various doctrines the Catholic church has fostered since the death of Jesus (entire books have been devoted to such undertakings). It would be better to settle on the modern day explanation of the crucifixion, put forth by Tomas Aquinas in his “Summa Theologiae”. Summarizing Aquinas (a difficult undertaking): Man sins, sin requires repayment of some kind because that’s how God wants it and Jesus’ sacrifice is the ultimate form of repayment.

This is the belief held by the majority of Christians today.

The first thought that might strike one not inculcated from birth with the idea of vicarious human sacrifice might be this: Why did Jesus have to suffer and die? What justification can there ever be for the brutal torture of even one person for even one moment?

Take stock of what believing Christians are asked, unabashedly, to swallow about God. God creates man, imperfect, with a propensity for commandment breaking, then looks on with ever growing divine wrath as His own creation fails to live up to the standards He has created. And what is that thing that will calm the vengeful God? Never mind the men, women and, presumably, innocent children God is said to have ‘wiped clean’ from the earth with great flood. Never mind the vast number of ill-fated souls who had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time in the Old Testament. What is that act that will stay the murderous hand of God, and assuage his anger with all mankind?

It is the prolonged agony and sacrifice of His…own…son.

Imagine that you are the single father or mother of a rather large brood. Your children are for the most part unruly, as children in large numbers will tend to be. They are constantly bickering over toys, whining to be fed, to be played with, and to be looked at; in short they behave in the most exacerbating manner all day long. You are furious, and about to beat the lot of them, when your children suddenly realize your anger and that they have done wrong. To appease your fury they grab the youngest and most innocent of your children, that same child who cries out in fear for your mercy, and they slaughter her at your feet.

Who would not be horrified by this scene? Who would not be repulsed and disgusted down to the very core of their being at the mere imagining of it? How would this abate your anger? Or rather, what purpose did the sacrifice have? What relevance did the one child’s suffering have with the other children’s past and future behavior? If your children believe that you want them to sacrifice other children for the sins they commit should not your parenting skills be called into question? How is it that anyone, including Origen, can conceivably justify the crucifixion?

Many believers will claim that the crucifixion needs no justification. That man does not have the right to question God, or the ability to understand His motives. If we were not meant to understand, why does Paul spend much of his efforts trying to explain Christ’s death to us? Why do all four Gospels include the varying accounts of Christ’s passion? What exactly is there not to understand? God is not happy with a simple apology or remorse for sin, he has demanded blood, and Jesus paid that price for us. Understanding the logic is simple, but what about the justification? Are God’s actions above justification or is justification above God’s actions?

It is not just the demand for sacrifice that is immoral. The idea that our sins are paid for by someone else’s suffering is also immoral. The abolition of sin should eliminate human suffering, human suffering should eliminate sin. The crime of the prince has already caused someone else to suffer. In all probability, if we have a goodly prince, he is already feeling the first pangs of remorse, and if not, how much affect can the cries of the whipping boy be expected to have? Man’s guilt can not serve to guide his actions when it can be so cheaply discarded.

It is not that man should feel the constant oppression of his mistakes all the time, but simply, that his mistakes are his own, and he should learn from them and live with them. He should not be allowed to cast aside his guilt just because he believes he has been forgiven by a mystical and unaffected third party. Should rapists and pedophiles be allowed to sleep easy in the knowledge that their sins are forgiven them, or worse that they will be forgiven? How many killers have been released from prison after they ‘found God’? The murderer has not been released because we do not really believe that his sins have been wiped clean from him, because we do not really believe that it should be so easy to escape the consequences of your actions.

continued.....

Apr 9, 2008, 05:07 pm	#1 (permalink) (top)
BuildUpThatWall Sedimentary Rock Posts: 3	The Doctrine of Atonement The Christian Doctrine of Atonement Man should lament his misdeeds. Often, when remembering a past transgression, one is overcome with feelings of shame, remorse and even self-loathing. The guilt of our past frequently holds a place of honor among our more mundane memories, and may serve, if we are willing to change, to help us to avoid repeating those mistakes. In this way guilt becomes as important as empathy in helping us to treat our fellow man as we would be treated. A sin, however, is a direct transgression against God; and there are many, many sins. Most of Leviticus and Deuteronomy are concerned with laying down the Law of Moses, which is essentially a list of those actions that offend God. The books of the ancient Jews are also concerned with redemption and atonement. The sins change over time (the ban on clothing of two or more fabrics has been lifted, as well as the prohibition of ham), as do the methods of redemption, but the idea that mankind should follow the divine rules or face the divine wrath is one that is as old as God himself. For early Jews redemption of sin came in the form of various sacrifices and offerings. The guidelines of these offerings are laboriously detailed throughout the Pentateuch and included burnt offerings, grain offerings, peace offering, guilt offering, and sin offerings, and each offering had the effect of either pleasing God or at least averting His wrath. This tradition of sacrificing something of value to extricate one’s sin carried over from the early Jewish religion to the early Christians. The first writings on the subject of Atonement come from Paul. In Romans 3:23 – 25 Paul states, “For all sinned and fell short of God’s glory , but they have been made right with God freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as an atoning sacrifice that comes through faith in his blood.” Paul is earliest church father whose writings became canonical, and so the Doctrine of Atonement has been a key tenet of the Christian faith since its foundation. But there is one problem with the doctrine. It is immoral. The ransom view of Atonement, originated by the early church father Origen, held that in committing the original sin Adam and Eve sold out the whole of humanity to Satan. Now God, being just, had no option but to pay the devil his due. As it turns out, however, God was able to pull the ultimate bait and switch on the Lord of Lies. God promised his only son Christ Jesus to the devil after the crucifixion, and Satan willingly agreed not knowing that Jesus could not be held by the bonds of death. In the end humanity is saved, Jesus ascends bodily into heaven, and everybody is happy, except the one character in the story we feel no empathy for anyway. This is absurd piffle that, for the pious, should border on blasphemous. First we are lead to believe that God is reduced to negotiating with Satan under the unconvincing explanation of justice. What justice is being served here? Presumably Satan shouldn’t have been loitering in the Garden in the first place, much less tempting the queen of naivety into having a very inadvisable snack. If a burglar breaks his arm in the commission of his crime is he entitled to damages from the unfortunate home owner? Of course not, he is entitled to the consequences of his actions and that is all. Likewise, the serpent is entitled only to the loss of his limbs and not to some reward for his misdeed. Even if recompense for fall of man was indeed owed, under auspices of justice, to the devil, who is to going to make God pay up? What exactly is Satan going to do about it? The credulous have a ready, if unsophisticated, retort to this line of reasoning. God can not ignore Satan’s rightful claim because He, light of all lights, can not commit an injustice. No, of course not, better that He resorts to dishonest bargaining to wiggle out an arrangement rather than condemn the whole affair to begin with. The real question is this: Why did Origen feel compelled to offer this awkward explanation for God’s motives in the first place? Origen was not the only church father to attempt to rationalize the crucifixion. The most famous of these included St. Augustine, Abelard, Anslem, Calvin, and Aquinas. It is not the intention of the essay to delve into too much detail regarding the various doctrines the Catholic church has fostered since the death of Jesus (entire books have been devoted to such undertakings). It would be better to settle on the modern day explanation of the crucifixion, put forth by Tomas Aquinas in his “Summa Theologiae”. Summarizing Aquinas (a difficult undertaking): Man sins, sin requires repayment of some kind because that’s how God wants it and Jesus’ sacrifice is the ultimate form of repayment. This is the belief held by the majority of Christians today. The first thought that might strike one not inculcated from birth with the idea of vicarious human sacrifice might be this: Why did Jesus have to suffer and die? What justification can there ever be for the brutal torture of even one person for even one moment? Take stock of what believing Christians are asked, unabashedly, to swallow about God. God creates man, imperfect, with a propensity for commandment breaking, then looks on with ever growing divine wrath as His own creation fails to live up to the standards He has created. And what is that thing that will calm the vengeful God? Never mind the men, women and, presumably, innocent children God is said to have ‘wiped clean’ from the earth with great flood. Never mind the vast number of ill-fated souls who had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time in the Old Testament. What is that act that will stay the murderous hand of God, and assuage his anger with all mankind? It is the prolonged agony and sacrifice of His…own…son. Imagine that you are the single father or mother of a rather large brood. Your children are for the most part unruly, as children in large numbers will tend to be. They are constantly bickering over toys, whining to be fed, to be played with, and to be looked at; in short they behave in the most exacerbating manner all day long. You are furious, and about to beat the lot of them, when your children suddenly realize your anger and that they have done wrong. To appease your fury they grab the youngest and most innocent of your children, that same child who cries out in fear for your mercy, and they slaughter her at your feet. Who would not be horrified by this scene? Who would not be repulsed and disgusted down to the very core of their being at the mere imagining of it? How would this abate your anger? Or rather, what purpose did the sacrifice have? What relevance did the one child’s suffering have with the other children’s past and future behavior? If your children believe that you want them to sacrifice other children for the sins they commit should not your parenting skills be called into question? How is it that anyone, including Origen, can conceivably justify the crucifixion? Many believers will claim that the crucifixion needs no justification. That man does not have the right to question God, or the ability to understand His motives. If we were not meant to understand, why does Paul spend much of his efforts trying to explain Christ’s death to us? Why do all four Gospels include the varying accounts of Christ’s passion? What exactly is there not to understand? God is not happy with a simple apology or remorse for sin, he has demanded blood, and Jesus paid that price for us. Understanding the logic is simple, but what about the justification? Are God’s actions above justification or is justification above God’s actions? It is not just the demand for sacrifice that is immoral. The idea that our sins are paid for by someone else’s suffering is also immoral. The abolition of sin should eliminate human suffering, human suffering should eliminate sin. The crime of the prince has already caused someone else to suffer. In all probability, if we have a goodly prince, he is already feeling the first pangs of remorse, and if not, how much affect can the cries of the whipping boy be expected to have? Man’s guilt can not serve to guide his actions when it can be so cheaply discarded. It is not that man should feel the constant oppression of his mistakes all the time, but simply, that his mistakes are his own, and he should learn from them and live with them. He should not be allowed to cast aside his guilt just because he believes he has been forgiven by a mystical and unaffected third party. Should rapists and pedophiles be allowed to sleep easy in the knowledge that their sins are forgiven them, or worse that they will be forgiven? How many killers have been released from prison after they ‘found God’? The murderer has not been released because we do not really believe that his sins have been wiped clean from him, because we do not really believe that it should be so easy to escape the consequences of your actions. continued.....