Social Media Rule Number one: “Don’t feed the trolls”.
And to this, I add a new rule: “Don’t argue online with people who hold to Penal Substitutionary Atonement – however extreme their viewpoint!”
[Oh, for Kiwis, I could have a third rule now: don’t put online that you’re a clergy person who has exercised their democratic right by signing an open letter against the Treaty Principles Bill; but angry public (mostly anonymous) reaction against that meant that about 45,000 people saw I had done so – the algorithm doesn’t distinguish between supporting or antagonistic responses. All responses drive up further views.]
So – to my “God loves us by hating Jesus” story.
I reacted against online messaging that claimed that Jesus, on the cross, was cut off from God’s sight, abandoned by God. Now to me it’s the opposite: God abandons no one – that’s Good News!
But these people doubled down: On the cross Jesus experiences God’s judgement, they said. That, they said, is what the darkness that fell over the land at the time of crucifixion means. That, they said, is why Jesus cries, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Jesus is abandoned that we might be accepted, they said. That is what a descent to the dead means, they said. Jesus, they said, dies forsaken and accursed by God.They told me (and everyone else following the online debate) that it is a doctrine of the Trinity that the Father turns his face away from his Son as he a sin offering.
So much for what was presented online as (what they claimed to be) “orthodox Christianity”. Then there’s what they said about me. Certainly, my ordination was rejected {they were against women in ordained ministry; my ordination was questionable/invalid, I was ordained by a (male) bishop tainted because he accepted women’s ordination and ordained women}. Mine was a false gospel. I am a false teacher. Satanic. They said.
They pressed for me to indicate how I thought the Cross works. My response, that I believe in a Saviour not a theory of salvation, was mocked. They raged. A few other people joined in supporting my approach. These people were also appalled at the ‘God can only love us by hating Jesus’ approach.
There are several energetic anti-theists/anti-Christianity/ex-Evangelicals online, and they regularly present this extreme form of the Penal Substitution Atonement Theory as a significant reason why they left Christianity, and why they are enthusiastically evangelistic about the attacking of Christianity – they see this theory as damaging. And I agree that it can be damaging.
In my life, I also had to grow out of an almighty ogre in the sky who is constantly watching our every thought and deed and always seeking to punish us, or to test us. But I grew into a view that even those who feel abandoned are NOT abandoned by God! Mixing up Ps 22, darkness at the Cross, and the Descent to the Dead, with a god so impotent he needs to abandon someone to accept another is NOT Good News but mocks it. Read Mysterium Paschale by von Balthasar on the Harrowing of Hell.
People communicated to me privately, of course, about the public heat. I had not come across the term “cage-stage Calvinists”, but was told, in these private conversations, the term refers to Calvinists who would be best placed in a cage rather than cause undue offence due to their zealous promotion of their theology. Some wondered if these people have unresolved parent issues that they project onto God; I wonder if their rage is the source or result (or a mixture) of their theology.
Yes, the divisions within Christianity (or, to be fairer, “Christianities”) are presented very publicly in such arguments. I am distressed about that. But my bigger concern is the presentation of an image of God that resonates, dovetails with, and feeds into the poor self-image that many people have. I want to present an image of God as love – a love from which we, and Jesus, cannot be separated.
There are a number of atonement models (attempted explanations how we are redeemed): the moral influence theory, the ransom theory, Christus Victor, the scapegoat theory… Models may be helpful for some. We have models of how gravity works, models for electricity, for matter – but gravity, electricity, etc work without the model. We believe in a Saviour, not a theory of salvation.
In the online raging, one verse was constantly repeated by my attackers: Gal 3:13
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’—
This verse was their lens on what they read as a univocal Bible. I remember two Jehovah’s Witnesses coming to my door (an older man with a learning-the-ropes young woman). The older man wanted to argue Jesus isn’t God and opened his Bible and pointed to a verse on the right hand page. But I noticed there was a verse intimating that Jesus IS God on the left hand page. When I pointed this out, he said, “but we interpret this verse (left hand page) in the light of this verse (right hand page)”. To which I, unsurprisingly, responded, “and I interpret this verse (right hand page) in the light of this verse (left hand page)”. When the young woman became interested in my approach and beliefs, she was rapidly ushered away by her mentor! Whatever the interpretation of the complexities of Gal 3:13, I would not make “God loves us by hating Jesus” the lens through which I approached God, Jesus, the Bible, and Christianity!
And when you read through the whole of Psalm 22 (the tradition Jesus follows on the Cross – a tradition followed by Jews and Christians – is to reference the whole psalm by the opening verse) you will notice that God does not abandon the person praying this psalm; the one praying is not cut off from God’s sight!
God gives us, each one of us, Himself fully in love – even (and especially) on the Cross. At each moment, God loves. God IS love. It is quite the opposite of Jesus on the Cross being cut off from God’s sight: God joins us to Jesus, the Beloved (Jesus is always, at each moment, including on the Cross, God’s Beloved); God plunges us into the death and resurrection of Jesus; God unites us to Jesus so that, through Jesus, with Jesus, in Jesus, we too die and come into the fulness of resurrection life.
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Good article, as always. I do wonder sometimes if people forget that our God is not just Three persons, but also One. There can be no separation between the three persons, because the three persons are One God. Jesus cannot be separated from the Father, or the Holy Spirit. Jesus in his incarnation is there to unite us to himself, and therefore by extension all of God (Theosis). God comes down, so that we may be lifted up (so to speak). Jesus death on the cross is the work of humans, not God. It is my belief that God does not demand violent sacrifices, but humans do… (as is evidenced again and again all over the world) And so God gave us his very self as a sacrifice, and in his resurrection showed us the folly of such sacrifices (which is a little Girardian scapegoaty I do admit). But any sacrifice we offer as Christians (such as the Eucharist) is a mutual relationship of love, we give bread, we receive God’s very self. So there you go… that’s my theory of salvation, you don’t have to believe in it. 😉 But the point for me is Theosis; how do we express that we are not in fact separated from God at all, even though we feel we are. As Christians I believe the answer to that is Jesus. God with us.
Thanks, Fr Frederik – I, like you, find Girard a very helpful key. Blessings.