I’m just tickled. Tickled that I found Walter Wink and that he’s been saying things I’ve been dancing around for years. Tickled that the answers always have been in Christ. That’s so very cool.<\/p>\n
Kenneth Burke identifies the same tragic compulsion in humanity that Wink finds. Wink blames a pagan myth, Burke blames Scripture. Wink says Christ ended it. Burke says Christ cemented it. In the Old Testament, Wink finds the same scapegoating mechanism as Burke but identifies God with its victims, not the conquerors. And in the New Testament, \u201can entire collection of books written from the point of view of the victims\u201d so that \u201cthe scapegoat mechanism is fully exposed and revoked.\u201d<\/p>\n
That the ultimate Victim, Christ, is painstakingly portrayed as innocent, Wink argues, undercuts this scapegoating mechanism, rather than reinforces the cycle as Burke argues. But the early church, too overwhelmed at the revelation that scapegoating was always counterfeit, reified the tragedy rather than overturning it. They concluded that \u201cJesus was sent by God to be the last scapegoat and to reconcile us, once and for all, to God.\u201d Paul\u2019s portrayal is contrary; he describes Christ as the \u201cend of sacrificing.\u201d Since God is a tender parent and not a severe judge, \u201cChrist\u2019s sacrifice doesn\u2019t appease us to God, it sets us free to run to God.\u201d<\/p>\n
In other words, while the early church thought Christ\u2019s crucifixion was for God Himself, Paul paints it as a perfect critique of the foolishness of scapegoating. While the early church emphasized the God of wrath, Paul describes a God of mercy. The former\u2019s divinity is violent and exacting; the latter is peaceful and merciful. Even the Catholic Mass itself is a continuous sacrifice\u2014a recrucifying of Christ\u2014not a reminder of the end of sacrifice.<\/p>\n
So, to Wink, Holy Writ offers a solution <\/strong>to tragedy, not its reification. Any rehearsing of tragedy is a human problem, not a divine mandate. Even Wink\u2019s calling the same drama of tragedy a \u201cmyth\u201d distances it from naturalizing and underscores its merely created status.<\/p>\n So it’s finished. No need to continually punish–our Others, our children, or ourselves. Christ declared it all bankrupt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m just tickled. Tickled that I found Walter Wink and that he’s been saying things<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-think"],"yoast_head":"\n