Weaver on Nonviolent Atonement
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007
J Denny Weaver, professor of religion at Bluffton University in Ohio, focuses largely on the ‘narrative Christus Victor’ aproach to atonement in his attempt to grapple with violent dimensions of the traditional ‘appeasement’ understanding of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Bluffton University is a liberal arts university associated with the Mennonite Church USA.
Weaver acknowledges that the continuing focus on the punishment of Jesus on our behalf is understandable, given the prevalent systems of retributive justice found in contemporary society. The greater the misdeed or evil, the greater the punishment. However he brings to light the growing number of critiques of traditional atonement theories.
Weaver builds on the work by Mennonite theologians Gordon Kaufman and John Howard Yoder who attempted to recover the traditional ‘Christus Victor’ model of atonement. He draws on the work of Catholic theologians Rene Girard and Raymund Schwager, who had unpacked the mimetic violence embedded in the appeasement model of atonement.
Weaver’s work is given courage and strength by contextualist theologians from the Black, feminist and womanist streams of theology.
James Cone, in God of the Oppressed, points out that white people have used the traditional atonement perspective to claim salvation (in the after life) while accommodating and advocating the violence of racisim and slavery.
Feminist and womanist theologians, such as Joan Carlson Brown, Rebecca Parker, Rita Nakashima Brock and Delores Williams, write about the classic atonement doctrine as images of ‘divine child abuse’ or ‘divine surrogacy’.
Weaver draws on insights from postmodernity to consider the contexts in which classic doctrines of atonement originally formed and were then perpetuated. He sets out to explore the possibility that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus may have particular and distinctive meanings in different contexts.
Weaver sets out to develop an understanding of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus that avoids all the dimensions of violence in traditional atonement imagery. He explores the assumed violence found in the traditional images of atonement: accommodation of the violence of sword and various forms of systemic violence by the abstract formulas of satisfaction atonement, modeling of submission to abusive authorities, and modeling the assumption that doing justice or making right depends on punishment or sanctioned violence.
The Narrative Christus Victor is first set out in an analysis of the Book of Revelation. On the surface it would appear as though this apocalyptic work is about universal cosmic conflict between good and evil in which the church confronts the empire. Weaver argues that the church in Revelation is called to a nonviolent participation in the already achieved victory of Jesus’ resurrection.
Weaver goes on to explore the non-violent approach of Jesus as he proclaimed and lived out the Kingdom of God.
“Jesus was ready to die and he was willing to die. It was not a death, however, that was required as compensatory retribution for the sins of his enemies and his friends. It was a death that resulted from fulfilment of his mission of his mission about the reign of God.”
Weaver challenges a narrow understanding of atonement based on retributive justice. Here, he says, we see Jesus talking about and modeling an understanding of salvation that is about being free from the evil forces represented by the imperial structures, the holiness code, the mob and the compromising actions and attitudes of his own disciples.
The resurrection, Weaver suggests, is more than an inspirational event. It reveals the balance of power in the universe, whether people recognise it or not. The resurrection overcomes acts of evil and becomes an invitation to join in the life-transforming rule of God in the world.
