Archive for June, 2007
Thursday, June 7th, 2007
Walter Lowe, emeritus professor of systematic theology at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, has written an essay on Christ and Salvation in The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology.
Lowe sets out to develop a fresh approach to Christology and soteriology that addresses what he perceives to be limitations imposed by classic and modernist approaches to sequence, economy and negativity. He points out that modernist studies of Christ and salvation begin with human need, developing a schema of salvation, before outlining a Christology to suit. Classic approaches, on the other hand, hold unexamined assumptions around the human condition before rolling out a schema of salvation.
Lowe draws on his familiarity with Freudian analysis and psychotherapy to critique contemporary models of evangelism that begin with the subjective human experience.
Sequence - analyses of the human condition and need
1 acceptable description of common human experience with emphasis on problems or discontents
2 specific diagnosis of phenomena in terms of underlying condition
3 general recommendation
4 specific remedy
Lowe points out that this sequence, when applied to the general recommendation of salvation and specific remedy of Christ, is problematic. What happens when Christ doesn’t fit the problem? Furthermore, this approach to salvation is inevitably grounded in negativity, searching for need, offense or deficit. The radical good of the gospel may become overshadowed by the negativity.
While classic systematic theologies do not begin with such sequences and economies, it is common for Christology and soteriology to be preceded by consideration of sin and its effects on humanity. These approaches, Lowe suggests, are flawed by the quasi-hydraulic nature of their economy. God’s offering of Jesus as ransom is in response to humanity being captured by Satan. God’s infinite justice is offended in a way that can only be assuaged by a divine gesture of justice.
Lowe points out that if the distorting nature of sin is to be taken seriously, we as theologians need to treat their systems with humility, recognising that our predetermined understanding of the human condition is by its very nature limited.
In a section relating to alternatives to modernism Lowe juxtaposes the Jewish apocalypticism described by M.C. de Boer and the Christus Victor doctrine espoused by Gustaf Aulen. De Boer had contrasted the forensic apocalyptic pattern (in which wilful rejection of the Creator God had led to punishment by death) and the cosmic apocalyptic pattern (in which the people of the earth had become idolatrous and would ultimately be defeated by God’s historical intervention). God’s intervention in each case called for human response. The giving of the law called for faithful obedience. The impending intervention of God called for perserverance. Aulen’s central theme of Divine conflict and victory picked up motifs from New Testament thinking that would have been influenced by the apocalyptic paradigms.
Lowe admits that the apocalyptic approach has been seen as mythological and dualistic, largely by those who had taken monistic and evolutionary perspective in tune with modernism. Lowe points however to the Karl Barth’s 1919 commentary on Romans as a Christian form of postmodernism, a critique of the un-intrusive God of theism who left alone the sovereign self-possessed human subject. With such forms of postmodernist theology available Lowe suggests that it was time to explore again alternatives to both the unexamined economies of classic doctrines of atonement and the fickle particular sequences of atonement formed in tune with modernist thought.
Lowe suggests that the logic of cosmic victory is to overthrow the very notion that God’s act of salvation can be contained within any economy. This speculation is linked to J. Louis Martyn’s framing of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians in a specifically apocalyptic context of the present evil age being invaded by the new creation brought about by Christ. This is not another example of what Lowe has previously described as ‘quasi-hydraulic’ effects. The Christ event itself becomes the reality in which all else is interpreted. Paul is described as opposing dualisms and economies which may attempt to contain the radical impact of the Christ event.
Lowe concludes by drawing on and expanding upon Derrida’s concept of presence to develop a model of Christological revelation. The very presence of God in the finite life of Jesus is perhaps the heart of the apocalyptic event. Lowe is aware of the temptations to draw conclusions about individual appropriation of that Presence, focusing on whether or not an individual is saved or how one is saved. The focus, rather, is to be on the glory of God.
Lowe’s final comments relate to the danger of any over arching vision becoming tyrannical. His purposes in writing are not to eliminate metaphors of atonement, exchange and substitution, but to place them in a context in which their claims for dominance are moderated by the cry of the people.
Walter Lowe here is recovering a number of understandings that have been muted by modernist reductions of salvation and Christology. By going back to the narratives of the Jewish people, with their apparently dualist apocalyptisms, Lowe has attempted to re-engage with the metaphor of intervention. Doctrines of atonement, once thought to be outdated or irrelevant to the human condition, can be revisited in the light of a new creation that resists attempts to form tyrannical metanarratives.
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Thursday, June 7th, 2007
Colin Gunton, Professor of Christian Doctrine at King’s College London until his death in 2003, published “The Actuality of Atonement: A Study of Metaphor, Rationality and the Christian Tradition” in 1988.
Gunton sets out to challenge the rationalist approaches to doctrines of atonement provided by Kant, Schleirmacher and Hegel. He describes Kant’s approach as rationalism of the moral agent, an approach which totally reverses traditional atonement doctrine to focus on the redemption achieved through the re-activation of the innate powers of the moral will. Schleirmacher’s rationalism of experience has emasculated traditional doctrines of atonement, destroying their base in the historic redemptive action of God and producing a reductionist account of their language. Hegel, Gunton writes, approached the doctrine of atonement from a perspective of conceptual rationalism, undervaluing fuzzy concepts and metaphors.
Gunton moves on to explore the re-emergence of metaphor as an accepted component of philosophical and theological dialogue. He looks at the way in which metaphor has been linked with rhetoric and ornament as opposed to argument, truth and literal description. Philosophy of science in recent years has moved away from this dichotomy, providing for metaphor as the vehicle of discovery. Metaphor, despite the concerns of the Enlightenment, is a pervasive part of language that can be used to speak about the real world. Metaphor, as an engagement with the world, must be used with imagination and modesty.
The Battlefield and the Demons
Gunton considers the claims of Swedish theologian Gustav Aulen in his 1931 book, “Christus Victor”, that the early church’s focus on the victory of Christ on the cross had been lost in favour of the notion of satisfaction. The metaphor of ‘victory over demonic power’ has been rejected by many theologians largely because of difficulty in engaging with the literal or associated meanings. As Gunton looks through the Old and New Testaments he comes to the conclusion that the texts “present us not with superhuman hypostases trotting about the world, but with the metaphorical characterisation of moral and cosmic realities which would otherwise defy expression.” He draws on contemporary writers to draw out the theme of subjection of individuals and societies to forces beyond their control. Jesus, by refusing any other means of success than the genuinely human, reveals deceptive idolatry in all its forms to be ‘demonic’. Understanding the history of Jesus as a victory clears the way for a new vision of the world in which God is involved in all aspects of creation.
The Justice of God: A Conversation
Gunton uses the atonement metaphor of satisfaction as developed by Anselm of Canterbury to explore the range of interpretations of metaphor in different contexts of time and place. He begins by pointing out that the legal metaphor was linked to the Christus Victor motif and was hinted at by early theologians such as Cyprian. The concept of justice, held by Anselm and his peers was different to that of the Hebrew scriptures. God becomes the cosmic overlord responsible for universal justice. The Hebrew Scriptures however place the law as a gift provided for the sustenance of God’s people and the maintenance of covenantal relationship. Anselm himself points out that atonement as satisfaction is not a legal transaction, but an act of unmerited grace.
Having briefly looked at Anselm’s approach to doctrine, Gunton moves on to the conversation made possible as successive generations have engaged in the justice metaphor with evolving understandings of law, including the extremes of inward-looking individualist piety and merciless domination in the name of a punishing God. These distortions are dealt with by Gunton in the context of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Gunton concludes this section with a consideration of twentieth century treatments of the justice metaphor by Forsyth and Barth. It is clear to Gunton that the justice metaphor is a pliable and living stimulus for conversation, rooted in real-life history and society.
It would have been interesting to see how Gunton would have approached the way this metaphor has been played out in the context of liberation theology, feminist theology and other such conversations.
Christ the Sacrifice: A Dead Metaphor?
Gunton begins by acknowledging the sentiment that the sacrifice metaphor has run its course due to the repugnance with which it is viewed today. He reminds the reader that even in the Greek and Hebrew contexts sacrifice means different things to different people in different contexts. The description of the life and death of Jesus as a sacrifice is treated by Gunton as an example of transfer of meaning. The Old Testament concept of slaughter and prayer together is moralised in the time of Jesus to focus on a gift of life outside the bounds of the usual temple context. The call to join in the sacrificial life of Jesus leads to a re-thinking of the metaphor beyond dying to an intentional offering of prayerful life to God.
Objections to the transactional nature of the sacrifice metaphor are explored in the consideration of Edward Irving’s nineteenth century christology. Irving rejects a stock exchange approach to divinity along with mathematical quantitative theology of sin. Irving taught that the sacrifice offered by Jesus was to live in the context of humanity affected by a relational sinfulness and randomness, prone to suffering and limitation like us. The Holy Spirit living in Jesus brought about the atonement in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus alike. Irving develops Calvin’s theology of the priesthood of Christ in both a human and cosmic context.
Gunton concludes that even though the metaphor of sacrifice has been trivialised and misused, tainted with punitive overtones for example, theologians such as Irving show us that the supposedly dead metaphor can open life-giving approaches to the doctrine of atonement.
Atonement, the Triune God, and the Community of Reconciliation
Gunton goes on to explore the relational dimension of atonement found in the triune God’s interaction with creation and lived out in the community of the people of Christ.
For further resources on Colin Gunton’s theology, see the Colin Gunton Research Discussion Blog.
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Wednesday, June 6th, 2007
Alan Mann, who has just started blogging at www.alanmann.wordpress.com, published “Atonement for a ‘Sinless’ Society - Engaging with an Emerging Culture”, with Paternoster UK in 2005.
Alan was co-author with Steve Chalke in the controversial book, “The Lost Message of Jesus”.
Mann opens with the challenge of translation of the gospel into a post-industrialized, post-Christian, postmodern context. He suggests we need a new Pentecost experience to help us speak in the languages of those around us.
Mann suggests that we have lost much of the meaning of ’sin’, in wider society as well as in the church. He writes that it would have far greater meaning if we described sin as an absence of mutual, intimate, undistorted relating that ultimately leads the post-modern self into a lack of ontological or narrative coherence.
Alan says one of the key reasons for the loss of sin awareness is the increasing absence of the ‘Other’ in our understandings of the self. He traces this postmodern lack of awareness back to the expressionism of the Romantic era. Many in the postmodern context see little relevance in Christian doctrine that stresses our falling short of God’s mark.
Rather than being aware of our sinfulness, we are more likely to be conscious of being victims who have been ’sinned against’. We hunger an approach to atonement that grapples more with a chronic sense of shame (self-judgment) and alienation than with guilt.
“How can a community help the chronically shamed person if the only narratives of healing and atonement they have to offer are ones based upon a reduction of sin and guilt to moral misdemeanour.”
Mann writes about atonement for shame being a process in which the once-for-all act that opens reconciliation, healing and fullness is lived out in a series of healing moments. I would suggest that we would be well served by considering the life, death and resurrection of Jesus as a series of moments as well. The final breath of Jesus does not stand isolation to the rest of his life.
Robin Parry, in his response to Mann, points out that many Christians struggle with shame as they agonize over the chasm between their ideal selves and their everyday actuality. He wonders if we need to do away with the concept in favour of the concept of shame. Parry advocates for a retention of accountability to God and ’sin’ as a God-related doctrine.
Mann points out that the word ’sin’ is either meaningless or tainted by layers of shame. Maybe we need to develop an alternative vocabulary that does justice to the self-Other relationship, focused not on condemnation but on potential.
It would be helpful if we did in fact have a model of atonement that focused on gospel for this life, good news for living each day. That’s something I’ll pick up as I write on Mann’s engagement with narrative therapy in another post.
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