A Time to Laugh

Andrew asked under The Drama of Grace 2 post that if Christ sets us free to be comedians, then why did He have to die in the first place? The question seems to be a big enough one in Protestant theological discussions that I thought I’d draw more attention to it.

It seems that this is another false dichotomy that fundamentalism feels the need to cling to. Either Christ’s death was a necessary ransom to be paid to Satan (people actually say this!), or you don’t believe in the Gospel. Either God has to hit and only then hug, or else He’s a wimp. Or either God hates the sin(ner) or He loves you. Well. . . . no.

I’ll defer to the seminary professor to explain (emphasis mine):

The cross of Christ shows the gravity of our sins. It is true, because the cross was necessary. It shows what God needed to do in order for us to enjoy forgiveness. In light of his opponents arguing it was not necessary for God to become a man and die, Anselm said, “You have not yet considered the seriousness, the severity of sin.” That is exactly the problem. It is certainly the problem of modern men and women who conceive of God along the lines that Packer called, “A Santa Claus theology.” God is the great grandfather in the sky who loves everybody and certainly is not holy and just and would never judge anyone. The Bible’s picture is far different. God is both holy and just—and also loving—and He bears in Himself the brunt of the punishment that our sins deserve. The cross shows many things, the love of God, the Justice of God, the wisdom of God, and so forth. It also shows the depth of our need. It shows our sins, offense to God who did not spare His own Son to save us. . . .

There was and it still continues an anti-legal atmosphere whereby the legal notions of the biblical faith were attacked: God as Judge, sin as violation of the law of God, the atonement understood in penal terms, and a notion of the Last Judgment and God as Judge. Now, it would be unfair, it would be a misrepresentation of the Christian faith, to say any one of those is the only way of looking at God, sin, the cross, or the Last Judgment. But it is also wrong to try to purge that element out. That actually constitutes creating our own religion and making the Bible answerable to our own likes and, in this case, dislikes. I give Louis Berkhof a lot of credit. He has the legal-penal dimensions all the way through his theology book—although he overplayed it a little bit—but for the most part he has a richer and fuller treatment, whereby those things do not dominate. He does not define sin only as breaking the law. In his day, it would be easy to do it because of the attacks on the legal aspects of the Christian faith. Law is one of the ways God presents Himself as Law-giver, as our need, as Christ meeting our need, and as salvation in terms of justification. You take law out of justification and it is meaningless. Justification is God the Judge declaring guilty sinners righteous because of the Son of God. And likewise, there is a big last judgment motif in Scripture in which God’s people will be publicly justified and declared righteous and the wicked will be publicly condemned. God will settle accounts; He will do things right. . . .

There is a godly sense in which God needed to be propitiated, not in the pagan sense of propitious, of God demanding His pound of flesh or some notion of a blood-thirsty deity, but in the fact that God is holy and just and is unable to forgive without satisfying His own holy anger. Does it not make you just very thankful for the cross and for what the Savior did? When you look your sin in the face you see the punishment that you deserve, namely hell, and then see Jesus taking the equivalence of hell. Obviously, if He was still suffering eternal conscious unishment on the cross, He could not save anybody so there was a substitution. In three hours, the God-man suffered the equivalent of eternal punishment. It is because of who He is, the infinite-finite one, the Creator-creature, the God-man, that He was able to make that substitution. I am not pretending to understand the divine mathematics in the matter, but there was a substitutionary atonement. There is a sense in which God needed to be propitiated, as seen in Romans 3, and which He was propitiated. There is, of course, a sense in which He did not need to be propitiated, and that would be pagan notions of propitiation.

The legal metaphor to describe Christ’s death is in the Scripture and in the Christian tradition that followed. I wouldn’t dismiss that. I couldn’t. But there are other metaphors. Scriptural metaphors. Gustav Aulén is more thorough than I could be on a blog. He highlights the early Church’s preference for Christ as Champion. Little did I know that this idea is making a resurgence in theologically conservative circles. And it makes me smile! Some use the idea of a new “drama” with Christ as the Hero. Timothy Keller is “entering the culture’s stories and retelling them with the gospel.” Sound familiar?

Lest you think I’m blindly jumping on the latest theological bandwagon, I’m aware of the criticisms. There are some caveats, of course. Metaphors, like theology, are always imperfect. That same seminary professor nuances it even further when he describes Aulen’s book Christus Victor:

This is the most influential book on the cross in this century. Gustav Aulén is from a Scandinavian thematic school of theology and the theme that he picked up was that of victory. He correctly saw that Christ’s death was presented as victory in the New Testament. He set that against the reigning liberal notion of his time, which was the moral influence theory. He also, unfortunately, set it against the reigning conservative view at the time that Christ died to pay the penalty of our sins and in terms of a legal picture. He was right in seeing victory, and the words “Christus Victor” mean “Christ the Champion.” Those words have come into Christian theology. We talk about a Christus Victor—Christ the Champion—motif. They have just come in, and as the blurb on the cover of the book says, “This is a theological modern classic.” It has problems as well. The good thing is he emphasized a theme that had been neglected by liberals and conservatives alike. The bad part is he said it was the only theme in Irenaeus, in Luther, and in the New Testament. He says that Hebrews is mainly about Christ the Victor. No, Hebrews is mainly about Christ the Priest and the Sacrifice. So there is a reduction in his method, but still there is a lot of good and it is a very important book. He certainly did not argue for the importance of the moral influence theory. He argued for the importance of the Christus Victor theory. He called it the dramatic theory in which Christ in His death, and especially resurrection, conquers the powers, the world, Satan, the grave, hell, the law, and any other enemy you could name—and he is right. He simply overemphasizes one correct idea to the disparagement of other correct ideas.

So Aulén recovers an ancient metaphor that was cast aside. He may be a little careless with a few facts, but his product is a good one.

Awhile back a friend recommended the Jesus Storybook to me. And as we’ve read about Goliath, Daniel, the three Hebrews in the fiery furnace, and today Joshua, I’ve used this book with my boys. My friend filled me in on another little factoid about the author today: she’s writing from this Christ as Champion perspective. No wonder the stories sound so refreshing! They all point to Christ as our Hero and what God has done for us in liberating us from tragedy!

Like I said in a previous post, insisting on foregrounding a single metaphor for Christ’s atonement isn’t really the point. The Text Itself uses several. And I just have to agree with Derek from Shark Tacos on this one (and I concluded as much in my previous conversation with Andrew):

I would say that the adequate plea for forgiveness is (apart from any theory of the mechanics we may have) simply that God offers forgiveness in Jesus Christ and we accept that offer acknowledging our need as sinners. It is not ultimately our job to explain how God brought about our salvation, it is ours to respond to it in faith.

I just love to tell the story . . . .of Jesus and His love!!