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.
Do follow:
The Liturgy Facebook Page
The Liturgy Twitter Profile
The Liturgy Instagram
and/or sign up to a not-too-often email
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.
As I was reading this my mind passed to an Australian Catholic hymn, O Jesus Crucified, which was written by the poet James Macaulay. Some fine words, I think. Music was added by Richard Connolly, otherwise known for writing the Play School tune here in Australia. Somewhere I have a CD of it being sung which is fabulous, but this computer-generated simulation of it will have to do, horrid though it is. The music is very simple – basically just two chords – with the feeling of the inexorable march to the Cross and to the crown. It’s amazing how many lovers of Penal Substitution angrily erupt when I quote ‘… It was our sins that nailed him there on the Cross’ – for them it all seems to be about a Very Angry Father who punishes Jesus because he gets pleasure out of it. Of course, one member of the Holy Trinity cannot be pitted against another because, as Fr Carl Somers-Edgar once told me, that’s heresy.
https://youtu.be/uD-a2abY7Xs
Actually here is a version sung by a soloist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_RmUhAQwpA
O Jesus crucified, for us you suffered for us you died on the cross.
1. How can we pass by and not care?
It was our sins that nailed him there
on the cross. (Refrain)
2. See the crowd unpitying stare:
‘Forgive them Father,’ is his prayer
on the cross. (Refrain)
3. Thorns the only crown he must wear,
thirst and wounds our King must bear
on the cross. (Refrain)
4. See our high priest make his great prayer,
himself the victim, bleeding bare
on the cross. (Refrain)
5. Let our lives by giving declare
Amen, Amen to that great prayer
on the cross. (Refrain)
6. May we die to sin and so share
the triumph he enacted there
on the cross. (Refrain)
Thanks, Robert – this site is being bombarded with sp@m currently, hence the delay in getting this online. Blessings.
‘zealous promotion of their theology’
A zealous promotion of *any* theology is likely to go horribly astray in my experience!
2 Corinthians 6 says ‘Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own bowels.’ as well as all the other admonitions…
‘Mine was a false gospel. I am a false teacher. Satanic. They said.’
Really. How strange, people do and say some weird things sometimes, been lead a bit astray themselves maybe? I have always found your writings and prayers a great help and guidance.
‘A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.’
Keep the faith (as I know you always will) Love Tracy
Thanks, as always, Tracy. Blessings.
Gosh, what a hellish harrowing you experienced!
I haven’t actually heard that interpretation of the cry of dereliction before (the one they hurled at you). If you follow the orthodox view of incarnation (which I mostly do), the theory that was hurled at you dramatizes further the most heinous inner conflict within God. One person of the Trinity turns his back, wrathfully, callously, sadistically, on another person of the Trinity – and right at the point when unity, solidarity, and love is most needed. God is conflicted in God’s very core. Presumably, God is part of the crowd, cheering on the one who hammers nails into Jesus’ hands and feet. God needs to be in therapy – twice weekly, in my clinical opinion, for many years! Gosh, it really looks like terrible human projection.
I used to respond to this in light of Moltmann, (quoting Luther) ‘the crucified God’. It is precisely this depth of human pain – feeling abandoned by one’s Source and hope – that God needs to experience, or rather, needs to show us God is present to, undergoes, in order to truly give us hope.
But surely crucifixion represents the death of everything – hope, theorizing, online theological fist fights, *as well as claims that God is loving and doesn’t abandon us*.
Did God the Father abandon Jesus? I don’t know. I’m really less sure these days. The human experience would be: well, it certainly feels that way. I felt abandoned by God during a period of physical and mental breakdown, torture, in my life. Was God really not there? Probably not, but it sure felt like it.
I guess all we can say with some degree of certainty is that the crucified Jesus was not abandoned by his mother. But I’ve seen very little theology on that.
Thanks so much, Mark. Growing into being more comfortable within uncertainty is, I’m convinced, part of the deepening journey of faith. Blessings.