Christ crucified

Christian Century, March 7, 2001 by S. Mark Heim

Crossan's work fits well with a widespread disinclination to dwell on Jesus' death, either in fact or theory. As fact, represented in tradition, literature and art, many find it a morbid theme. In Australia, a state education department recently banned a passion play--a ruling, an official said, which showed that the state "will not tolerate violence in the schools." Ironic as it might seem after a glimpse of the TV, movies and video games that surround us, Christians can find the crucifix an embarrassing, primitive barbarism. And the theory or doctrine most strongly associated with emphasis on the cross evokes its own uneasiness.

That doctrine, substitutionary atonement, can be summarized this way: We are guilty of sin against God and our neighbors. The continuing sins themselves, the root desires that prompt them, and the guilt we bear for making such brutal response to God's good gifts--all these together separate us from God and are far beyond any human power to mend. Someday we might finally become truly righteous; our wills might finally be remade to trust God with delight; we might even reverse the mortality that followed from sin. Even if that happened, this perfected love, faith and hope would not change the past, nor would they make restitution of anything but what we owed God to begin with. The criminal who becomes a saint can never undo the terrible loss of his victims.

We can conceive a kind of crude recompense that adds something on the other side of the scales, as it were: the reformed offender can now sacrificially treat some people much better than simple justice would require, as before he treated some much worse. However, it is not possible to do this with God, since we owe everything to God to begin with. Thus a gap, a price, remains to be reckoned with. Christ stands in this gap, pays this price, bearing the punishment we deserve and he does not. In so doing, Christ offers something on our behalf that could never be expected or required, Christ offers the "over and above" gift that clears the slate and brings sinners into reconciled relation with God.

THERE ARE many reasons to be uncomfortable with the doctrine of substitutionary atonement and with atonement theology generally. First, few can be unaware that the cross has been the keystone of Christian anti-Semitism. The libel that charges Jews with Jesus' death draws its virulent strength from the companion assumption that this death was somehow uniquely horrible and uniquely important.

Second, the language of sacrifice to many people is either empty because it is unintelligible, or offensive because it is morally primitive. The first time I visited the Kali temple in Calcutta, I literally stepped in pools of blood from a sacrificed goat. I was shocked, but I saw the irony in that shock. I have attended worship services all my life that talked and sang regularly about blood. I had never walked away with any on my shoes before.

Most people are no more likely to regard Christ as a sin-offering who removes our guilt than they are to consider sacrificing oxen on an altar in the neighborhood playground as a way to keep their children safe. We can hardly imagine God planning the suffering and death of one innocent as the condition of releasing guilty others. And it would be worse if we could do so, for a God about whom this is the troth is a God we could hardly love and worship. A good part of atonement theory today for Christians consists in conjuring up some idea of sacrifice that we can half-believe in long enough to attribute meaning to Christ's death. Once it has served that transitory purpose, we drop it as swiftly as possible as, at best, a metaphor.