Violence in Christian Theology

Cross Currents, Summer, 2001 by J. Denny Weaver

A second question shifts the nuance again and produces a much more controversial answer. Observe what happens when one asks, Who arranges for or is responsible for the death of Jesus? Or put most crassly, Who ultimately killed Jesus?

With the two forms of Christus Victor, it is obvious that the devil killed Jesus. But God the Father certainly does not look good-handing the Son over for death as a ransom payment to purchase freedom for God's other children, or as a debt payment to Satan, who possesses rights in a contractual arrangement with God. One can easily sense Anselm's distaste for this motif.

But the situation is not ameliorated when one poses the question for satisfaction and moral theories. Satisfaction atonement pictures a debt owed to God's honor. God's honor not only needs the death. God also arranges for Jesus to die to pay the debt to God's honor. It really looks as though God has Jesus killed in order to pay the debt to God's honor. Here is where we very pointedly see the result of Anselm's deletion of the devil from the three-cornered relationship involving the devil, sinners, and God. With Satan deleted, remaining in the equation are God and the sinners who have offended God. But these sinful human beings cannot save themselves by repaying God themselves. Thus it is merely an extension of the interior logic of Anselm's own move that leads to the conclusion that God is the only one left to orchestrate the death of Jesus in order to pay the debt owed to God's honor. [3] In penal substitution, Jesus is punished by death, in place of killing us. Thus God's law receives the necessary death t hat it demands for justice. But again, since sinners cannot pay their own debt, God is the one who arranged to provide Jesus' death as the means to satisfy the divine law.

One might ask, Weren't the devil or the mob or the Romans responsible for killing Jesus? But answering "yes" to that question within the framework of satisfaction atonement points to a strange juxtaposition or non sequitur. Jesus, who is innocent and who does the will of God, becomes sin, subject to punishment. And the evil powers who oppose the reign of God by killing Jesus -- whether the devil, the mob, or the Romans -- are the ones who are actually doing the will of God, by killing or punishing Jesus to provide the payment that God's honor or God's law demands. The strange implication is that both Jesus and those who kill Jesus would be carrying out the will of God. In fact, asserting that both claims are true is nonsense. Avoiding the implications of such mutually contradictory claims by cloaking it in a category such as mystery, or by claiming that the acts of God are too big for our categories to contain, renders meaningless any attempt to use theology to express Christian faith.

The moral theory fares no better. Remember that while Abelard rejected the idea that Jesus' death was a payment directed toward God's honor, Abelard agreed with Anselm in removing the devil from the equation. The result is an atonement motif in which the Father has one of his children -- the Son -- killed in order to show love to the rest of the Father's children, namely to us sinners.