Great Realities That Go Astray – Atonement

Palm Sunday (April 12), 1981
Port Charlotte

re-written from:
April 11, 1954
Bridgeport

The hosannas sounded then. They sound today. Amid the long days of Lenten solemnity, Palm Sunday erupts in a moment of triumph.

In the Christian scheme of salvation, the Palm Sunday pageant begins the week of climax with a joyous overture to a drama of courage, fellowship, betrayal, rejection, and defeat. The curtain falls – but the curtain rises on Easter Sunday, with the believers ecstatic with the assurance that their Lord has risen and that life is life everlasting.

The Christian worship of centuries has made the Palm Sunday procession a central part of the way God fulfills a divine plan. The predictions of the children of Israel, made hundreds of years before, are believed to have been fulfilled. This is not an ordinary victory pageant or a hero’s parade – this is God, who has foreordained these moments from the beginning of the world. In the atoning death on the cross, God, and in his incarnation as the Christ, the second person of the Trinity, saves all humankind from the sin of [the] Fall. So goes the plan of Christian theology.

As we see the religious advertising, look to the TV and radio evangelists, feel the emotion that seems to be at the core of the vast majority of Christian groups, we become aware that this doctrine of human salvation through Christ’s atonement is the central certainty of the Christian plan of salvation. “And I, if I be lifted up, shall draw all men unto me.” Thus says the gospel writer speaking for Jesus.

Most Christians respond with a surge of enthusiasm as well as increased sense of their own guilt when they are reminded in forceful and picturesque terms that in Christ Jesus, very God of very God, is the only salvation for sinful men and women (that is, for those who believe in him).

Even though recognizing that this doctrine of the suffering servant who redeems every believer pulls at the heartstrings, nevertheless the scheme of the only human salvation through the atoning death of Jesus Christ is a reality that has gone astray. The scheme seems simple on the surface: [mankind] is depraved, the inheritors of the original sin of Adam. Because of this depravity, men and women are incapable of saving themselves, so God becomes man and saves his believers.

There is, first of all, the confusion that exists in the minds of the believing Christians as to just what this doctrine means. Few will actually discuss the hows and whys of this doctrine, central to orthodox Christianity. The truth is, there is no doctrine about which those who believed it differ more than the explanation of the atonement of Jesus.

In the early centuries of the Christian church, the church fathers generally held that by Adam’s sin, and by our own, all humankind was lost to the Devil. Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, ransomed men and women from the Devil through the atoning death on the cross. But even though ransomed to the Devil for all humankind, the Devil could not hold him because God was sinless. The Devil was tricked and Jesus arose from the dead.

But this doctrine began to bother some thinking persons. It was a nagging theological concept to believe that there was a being, the Devil, almost as powerful, if not as powerful, as God himself. Such a conclusion amounted to believing that there was more than one God. It was just as disturbing to think that God, in cheating the Devil of his ransom, was guilty of the type of sharp practice for which a merchant would be [written up] by the Better Business Bureau.

Then along in the 11th century, Anselm, a noted scholar, formulated a new view which attempted to get around these difficulties. Anselm said that man owed a perfect obedience to God. But because the human was by nature sinful, because he was of Adam’s seed, he/she was incapable of perfect obedience. Therefore, men and women could not pay their just debt of perfect obedience to God. So God, in his yearning and love for the human family, became man and ... Jesus was able by his death on the cross to pay the debt of perfect obedience. “Not my will, but thine be done.... Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

This was accepted by many. It is still the basic atonement theory for some schools of thought. But again, when we look at this calmly, there are many objections. To each proposition, the question “why?” can be asked without a satisfactory answer. If God were all-powerful, every proposition of Anselm’s scheme seems a useless sort of thing, other than God was playing an amusing game with himself.

Other theories have made appearance. You would not want me to take time to speak of them at length. There was the so-called criminal law theory that god by his nature was forced to punish men and women for depravity and sinfulness. But God in Christ became a willing substitute and accepted the punishment which was deserved. Therefore there was no further claim on any sinner who became a believer.

But all of these and other various schemes of supernatural atonement have at least three serious flaws. First of all, they attribute to God a poorer character than we look for in a good person. A human being of honor does not kill the innocent so that the guilty may escape their just punishment. Neither does a just person exact punishment against the son for moral wrong committed by the parent. Are any of these complex, not to say, primitive ideas about the atoning death of Jesus any real credit to a god many think of as love? Sir Oliver Lodge, speaking years ago of an old theory of atonement, said, “none but a cur will ask for the punishment due him to fall on someone else, nor rejoice if told it had already so ‘fallen.’” (HIBBERT JOURNAL, Jan. 1914) For God to decree that Jesus must bear the punishment for my sins or your is just morally irresponsible.

The second flaw in these supernatural theories of the atoning death of Jesus is that the nature and character of [mankind] is misrepresented. Our generation needs no particular reminders that men and women are not perfect. They are guilty of enormous errors and evils. Certain gross burdens that humanity bears like war, treachery, and intolerance seem to be handed generation to generation. Yet to infer from such evidence that men and women are depraved by nature and incapable of achieving salvation is to conclude more than facts warrant. Children are born without moral stain. They are born with the urge to struggle for food and comfort; they are born with the urge to be loved and to love; they are born with physical, genetic inheritance that can be molded or led in many ways. But babies are not squirming bundles of original sin.

If the human family’s long history of misdeeds and the long list of persons who have bent toward evil is evidence for human depravity, what about the much longer list of good people – the “millions who humble and nameless the straight hard pathway trod?” There are more good people than bad people in every generation. Were that not so, human society could not have continued. So if it may be submitted that humanity’s many misdeeds are evidence for depravity, may it not also be submitted that the greater score of goodness is evidence for the essential worth and potentiality of the human personality?

The third mistake in all these miraculous atonement ideas is that they make all meaning to Jesus’ life conditional on three ideas: belief in his alleged miraculous birth, his crucifixion, and his alleged physical resurrection. It makes salvation dependent on belief in these three events. Only one of these events, the crucifixion, has probable historical truth. This third mistake is perhaps the most serious problem, because it separated Jesus’ death from his life. Jesus’ death is important to us only because of the kind of life he lived. It is doubtful Jesus ever said much about death. He said a great deal about life. “Which one of these sons did the will of his father? Go then and do likewise.” He healed the sick, he did not say you will be healed because of my atoning death which is to come. Is it not our verified experience in all the tide of events that make up our lives that it is not alone what we believe, but what we do, that changes things[?]

We know that people who accept the miraculous supernatural salvation schemes are not necessarily better for it. Many times persons will keep their religion in a tight compartment and never permit any religious principles to leak out and change the course of their conduct for the better. The so-called believer may be no more trustworthy in the everyday affairs of life than the person who makes no loud claims for his “saved” condition.

But even though these difficulties exist with the various atonement issues, most of us respond with the emotional feeling of considerable depth to this holy week. We feel the impact of the triumphal march into Jerusalem, we long to participate in the feeling of splendid fellowship that marked the last supper, the gloom and defeat of the cross of execution touch our hearts with sorrow, and the new life, the triumph of Easter cause Christians to affirm, “alleluia.”

We thrill at the events in Passion Week even though we are aware of the origin of the ceremonies. Our historic Christian worship is a blend of the Jewish worship and custom and the worship practices and customs of the Grecian-Roman-Asian world. The blending took many centuries. The Yom Kippur [CJW note: at a different time of y] was and is a Day of Atonement for the Jewish people. The Greco-Roman world worshiped many dying-rising savior gods. They observed the vegetable and plant life of the world of dying in the [season of] Fall. They were dependent upon this vegetation. When spring came and new shoots came through the ground, the people rejoiced. The god of growing things was born again. The[y had] vegetation gods, and they had various names for various times and lands: Osiris, Attis, Adonis, is to name but a few. The early Christian missionaries blended the Jewish and Pagan festivals into the new Christian religion. It was the melting pot brewing, just as the melting pot in America has blended many peoples and their customs.

But back of the social origins of the spring festivals of dying atonement and living resurrection, there is a reality. When we lose touch with this reality we may lose touch with what is both wonder-full and poignant in the affairs of human beings.

This is the reality – that whenever persons are made redeemed [CJW note: made better], whenever good is made to flower from evil, whenever persons are made whole and more honorable, there is always suffering and sacrifice by those who are the keepers of the dream. Always when there are human beings who have sought to free persons from the chains of ignorance, or the slavery of tyranny, or the dungeon of low ideals, or the post-house of selfishness – these saviors of humankind have always generated conflict, hatred, and bloodshed. The persons who seeks to bring light of knowledge and to extend the hand of justice – it is he or she who is crowned with thorns and lynched on the Calvarys of the world.

John Murray Atwood always emphasized that “anyone who undertakes to teach or advocate new truth, running counter to traditional doctrine, always encounters opposition. If he/she persists and is faithful, opposition becomes bitter; first there are attempted bribes, then threats, and if he/she still persists the outcome may be death.”

It has always been so. We may predict with some assurance that it will always be so. Four hundred and fifty years before Christ there lived in Athens a poor, homely, fat man. He was a teacher and he tried to impart to his students the inquiring mind. He taught them to ask questions. He asked questions. He questioned the tyrants of his day who demanded complete and unquestioning loyalty. And so he was silenced: he was ordered to die in the fashion of his time. So Socrates died with creeping paralysis caused by the cup of hemlock. Yet his sacrifice, his atonement, if you please, is one of the reasons why our civilization has had the great advantage of the gains that were achieved by minds that were free.

Look at the saviors of humankind – the have suffered for you and for me. They have atoned for us. When the Swiss confederation was seeking its political independence, in a day when political independence was unknown, they had much to overcome. The armies of the Holy Roman Empire were well-armed and well-trained. The Swiss had few arms and smaller armies. In one battle the Swiss were armed only with axes and they marched toward enemies who came towards them armed with long lances. It would seem that the long lances would cause death and defeat before the brave Swiss could get close enough to struggle hand to hand. Then one of the Swiss patriots suddenly dashed forward and gathered into his one body a number of the lances. The line was breached, the Swiss were able to close in, and win this battle for their freedom. Arnold von Winkelried was a savior for his nation. In his death, his countrymen were freed. He atoned.

So with Jesus. He came into the city whose welcoming cheers were to turn to shouts of “crucify him.” He was the same man, whether applauded or stoned. He was faithful to the vision he saw and tried to make it real by his personal example and his teachings. Throughout the bitterness of the mockery that was called a trial, then along the painful way to the cross, he did not forget his family, his friends, his ideals, or his God. His was the nobility of all the faithful who perform sacrifice that humanity may be healthier, better, and live in a more just society. This was sacrifice of a man who remained true to the best. By his sacrifice, he like another later savior, Lincoln, “belongs to the ages.”

How much more moving is this real atonement of human beings to whom life is sweet. There is no sorrow or tragedy if an all-powerful God merely comes to Earth and Judas, Peter, and Pilate are but puppets being yanked hither and yon playing their pre-determined roles. The old idea just does not identify God closely enough with the moral struggle.

The reality for us is in seeing that the atonement, whether by Jesus or any of the other great friends of mankind, is actually a disclosure of unconditional caring working in and through human efforts.

The reality of the atonement is that suffering has moral power, when a great cause demands suffering.

[CJW note: King: “unmerited suffering is redemptive.”]

We live in an age which is making what may be a great and tragic mistake. So many slide into the rut of thinking that religion is for the purpose of curing little pains, of making people feel self-satisfied and comfortable. The reality of the atonement is that the cross is not merely an exciting word for people who let religion get to their emotions. [CJW note: pre-empted meaning] The cross is the symbol of the inescapable way that the world is made better by the willing devotion, faithfulness, trust, and sacrifice of humankind’s known and nameless saviors. The reality for them is that they become aware of what atonement really is – at-one-ment with the moral fiber of the universe, at-one-ment with the God they worship, or at-one-ment with the difficult but necessary goals of justice, mercy, and love.