I Can’t Believe Jesus Died, For Me | The Atonement – Part 1

For a large part of my life, Jesus’s death didn’t really hold any significance to me. I knew that it was an important aspect of my faith, but Jesus dying for me, didn’t make me feel anything. When I was young, I remember hearing people’s testimonies, and feeling envious of the gushing appreciation, and wide-eyed amazement they had, when they proclaimed, “I can’t believe that Jesus died, for me”. It seemed as if Jesus had personally taken a bullet for them, diving heroically in front of a hitman who had been tasked with assassinating them. I understood the meaning of Jesus’s death and the atonement intellectually, that it meant that I was saved from God’s wrath towards my sin, but I didn’t have an emotional response to it.

 

But perhaps I was more like those gushing, wide-eyed Christians than I realised. Like them. I suppose that I couldn’t believe that Jesus died for me, but in the sense that Jesus giving his life, seemed excessive in terms of the childish sins I had committed, such as not wanting to finish my dinner and feeding it to the dog, or not tidying my room when my parents asked me to. As I got older and started to accrue more serious sins, and the more I heard this view of the atonement, the more it did begin to mean something to me, and I did start to feel something, but it wasn’t excitement, awe and gratitude, it was fear, guilt, and anxiety. The fear of God because he hated the sin in my life, guilt because Jesus was made to suffer and die in my place, and the anxiety because I could still face God’s wrath if I failed to be a good Christian.

 

I know I’m not alone in feeling this way, and many people have spoken out about this view of the atonement, known as Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA). I carried this meaning of Jesus’s death for a long time, and it was only when I was in my late twenties that I heard anyone speak against PSA. A friend who was a theology student was arguing with another friend about this view, and in an effort to get a rise out of him, he quoted the popular author and speaker, Steve Chalke, who at that time, had upset the religious apple cart by expressing the opinion that this view of the cross was tantamount to “cosmic child abuse”. This wasn’t exactly how I felt about the cross, but it was in the right area. PSA didn’t seem right in what I had experienced of God, it made me feel distrustful of God’s goodness, but also, it still didn’t really make a lot of sense to me. Despite this, I continued to carry this view with me. It was an understanding which I have held my whole life. It was given to me as a child and was impressed upon me as truth. It was only sometime later that I understood there were other meanings to Jesus’s death.

 

I started to reject the PSA view of the cross a few years ago, but it was something that I did have to actively reject. At the time we were part of a church which regularly proclaimed this view and each time they did so, I was filled with all the same feelings I had felt before, but which had become stronger over time, and I constantly felt I had to fight and argue against this view of the cross. It feels odd to talk about rethinking or rejecting aspects of your faith and I worry that it can sound like it’s purely academic, that a new piece of evidence has come to light, and you are reassessing your understanding based on the new information. There is an element of that I am sure, but for me, the reasons for rethinking my faith, have been much more visceral. I’ve had anxieties about certain beliefs, and when I have heard people preach those things, I have felt that anxiety rise within me. Over the years, it felt like there wasn’t anything I could do, it wasn’t like I was being presented with other options, and so I just had to suck it up and deal with it, because that was the truth of the Bible. When I did hear other views and biblical interpretations though, it wasn’t just a feeling of intrigue and curiosity at the prospect of new ideas, it felt like a weight was lifted from me, it was freeing and it gave me hope that God might actually be better than I had thought.

 

So, when it comes to the atonement, and I say, I can no longer believe that the wrath of God was satisfied through the death and punishment of Jesus, I am careful not to say that I don’t believe it, like I’m changing my point of view for academic reasons, or deciding I don’t want to believe that is who God is, because it isn’t politically correct or cool. I say that I can no longer believe it, because of the way it makes me feel towards God, because it fills me with anxiety and fear, and because I literally find this view of God difficult to stomach. When I was a worship leader, I always steered away from picking songs that contained this theology, because I physically couldn’t sing the words. If particular songs were ever played in church, then I would stand with everyone else, not wanting to look like there was something wrong with me, but instead of singing along, I would be silently wrestling against the theology of it, whilst everyone around me had their eyes closed and hands raised, clearly at peace with, or actually delighted with this view of God. The fact that I was the only person who apparently struggled with this view of God, made me feel quite alone, and it was one of the main reasons I left our last church. This theology came up so frequently, and whenever it did, I would have to reason against it with an understanding which I felt was truer, so I felt I was constantly fighting against the teachings of the church.

 

I know that we don’t get to decide who God is, I don’t have to like or understand some of the things that God does, but my problem with PSA is that it has often been pushed with what feels like an oppressive certainty, it has been presented as absolute biblical truth, and as something sacred which isn’t up for debate. The other problem I have with it though, is that I don’t think it is a watertight biblical theory. If I look at the life of Jesus, if I look at his teachings, and look at the way he spoke about his death, I just don’t see it, and it just doesn’t add up. However, PSA is a prominent doctrine in many churches, and it is central to the faith of many Christians. It is even held by some to be the “supreme revelation of God”, a statement which carries a certain superiority, and a feeling that you shouldn’t really question it, However, it isn’t the only view of the atonement. There are many different atonement theories including, Recapitulation Theory, Moral Influence Theory, Moral Example Theory, Ransom Theory, Christus Victor, Satisfaction Theory, Governmental Theory, Embracement Theory, and Shared Atonement Theory.

 

Note that these are all theories, they are all theoretical ideas and none of them are absolute.

 

There isn’t a whole lot of evidence concerning atonement theories in the early church. There were different ideas being kicked around, but the earliest ones to be widely popularised were by the silky bearded Bishop, Irenaeus (130-202 CE). Irenaeus put forward both the Ransom and Recapitulation theories of atonement. The Ransom Theory proposed that Jesus died as a ransom sacrifice, which was paid to Satan. Jesus’s death paid for the sin which humanity inherited from Adam and Eve, and which caused us to be sold over to the devil. Once Satan was paid, God freed us from the hold which was over us. This theory went alongside the Recapitulation Theory, which saw Jesus as the second Adam. Jesus succeeded where Adam failed, and he reversed the fallout of Adam’s actions, and led humanity to eternal life and moral perfection. This understanding of the atonement is still held in the Eastern Orthodox tradition.

 

These theories, particularly Ransom Theory, remained into the 11^th century, which is when the Satisfaction Theory was popularised by Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109 CE), whose beard status is unclear. Anselm modified the Ransom Theory, believing it was flawed because God could not owe a debt to Satan. His Satisfaction Theory viewed God as a feudal landlord, and sin as an injustice against God, and because of that, humanity owed a debt to God. Through the death of Jesus, the debt was paid and the justice of God was satisfied.  

 

The beardless French philosopher and theologian, Peter Abelard (1079-1142 CE) also objected to the concept of debt within the Ransom Theory, but additionally objected to the Satisfaction Theory, and the idea that Jesus died to pay a debt which was due to God’s honour, and so he popularised the Moral Influence Theory, which said that Jesus’s life, teachings and death, brought about a moral change in humanity, leading people towards a more ethical and loving way of living. Jesus died as a demonstration of God’s love, and the moral example which he presented, would lead sinners back to God.

 

PSA Theory, which we have already met, came out of the Protestant reformation in the 16^th century, and was advocated by the baby-faced Martin Luther (1485-1546 CE), and the conically bearded John Calvin (1509-1564 CE). PSA was a modification of the Satisfaction Theory, where Jesus’s death satisfied God’s need for a punishment to be given to humanity, but instead of humanity being punished in God’s wrath, Jesus took our punishment, and the justice that God required was fulfilled. This theory is similar to the Satisfaction Theory, because it shares the idea of a debt being owed, but here, God needs a punishment to be given, in order for his justice to be satisfied.

 

The Christus Victor Theory was put forward by the bald-faced Swedish Bishop and theologian, Gustaf Aulén (1879-1977) and is a reinterpretation of the Ransom theory. Aulén argued that Ransom Theory had remained the prominent view throughout church history, until Anselm, but that theologians had misunderstood the view held by the early church fathers, and that the death of Jesus was not a business transaction to pay off the devil, but instead it liberated humanity, defeated death, evil and Satan, and released humanity from their bondage. No payment was made through the death of Jesus, but the powers of evil were defeated because of it.

 

Just so you know, it appears that there is no correlation between beard status and theological understanding, although based on the evidence we have, Irenaeus is the winner of the best beard competition.

 

Whilst the Christus Victor and Ransom theories of the atonement may have been the most prominent throughout church history, PSA is by far the most well-known theory, because it is the view of salvation that is shouted the loudest. It is the atonement theology of most evangelical mega-churches and ham-faced TV evangelists. It is the view that is taught in churches as being the biblical truth of salvation, and because of that, it is an understanding of God that keeps people in churches through fear, and simultaneously pushes them away from faith. It is also the atonement theology that most people outside the church understand to be true, and consequently, when they think about God, they see a petty, angry deity who is incapable of forgiving sin, unless his own son is punished and his blood is spilled.

 

I have heard some people try and diplomatically argue that there is truth to all the atonement theories, and together they provide a rounded view of God, but this seems a bit of a stretch to me. I think there is truth to all the different theories, because they have been true for people at certain points in history, or they remain true for certain people because of the experience and understanding they have of the world. They can also all be biblically true, and they can all be backed up with Bible verses, but I don’t think the views can be all equally right, all at the same time, and they can’t all be equally correct. I don’t know how you hold them all together in a way that makes sense of who God is. You can’t have the Penal Substitution God, and the Christus Victor God because they are in opposition to each other. One God requires justice and satisfaction through punishment in order to satiate divine wrath, and the other defeats sin, death and Satan in an act of divine love. In order to make sense of the cross, you are forced to choose a view of God.

 

Text taken from “Unanswerable: Exploring the Complexities of the Christian Faith and Biblical Truth”, which is available from Amazon, and from all good book shops. An audiobook is also available at https://mindmole.bandcamp.com/music