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emperor at 10:09pm on 21/03/2004
emperor at 10:09pm on 21/03/2004I spent quite a lot of time on retreat thinking about the theology of salvation; one thing I thought would be interesting would be to see what other people think on the subject. I'm mostly expecting Christians or Christian-leaning people to participate (but if you want to participate otherwise, do feel free).
[Poll #266362]
To explain what I mean by the terms in the above question:
- The cross as sacrifice
- The Cross is a sacrifice in the manner of the Old Testament sacrifices, only a perfect and effective sacrifice made once for all. Christ is able to effect once the sacrifice necessary to free mankind from its sin
- The cross as a victory
- Christ fights against and triumphs over the evil powers of the world, under whom mankind is in bondage and suffering. Often referred to as Christus Victor
- The Cross as a basis for forgiveness
- Christ is able to represent mankind on the cross, be obedient unto death although blameless. He is therefore able to restore rightness to the world, and we can participate in this through faith
- The Cross as a moral example
- The Cross serves as an example of God's love for mankind
If you want to quibble with my definitions, feel free. In particular, a clearer expression of the difference between the Cross as sacrifice and the Cross as enabling devine forgiveness might be good - I have an idea of the difference, but haven't expressed it well...
Theological
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Some of the The-cross-as's seem to be things that I never understood, or could convince myself that there was anything to understand. This makes it a rather big sticking point, as it seems to be the big distinct thing about Christianity. Other religions have their teachings and their estabilishment of a church and maybe a political power as a result of the actions of their founder, but nothing analagous to this, it seems. No sense that the world itself has changed...
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I see the cross as being a bi-directional sacrifice, if you like. In the light of the Incarnation. And an actualising sign of the utter, complete gift of Love.
I also have universalist tendencies when it comes to salvation. Been reading too much Teillhard de Chardin.
Is it weird to do this poll while listening to Fields of the Nephilim?
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When I was doing it, the Sisters were singing "such things I hear they don't make sense, I don't see much evidence..."
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I'm now predominantly an atheist, but with pagan influences from time to time. I pick which gods I give attention to, create my own belief system, operate a fairly general and liberal moral code, and that suits me.
I think the cross is an important Christian symbol if you are a Christian because, among other things:
1. It gives a sense of mutual identity - it means the same everywhere in the world
2. It's a symbol of the core belief of your religion, i.e. Jesus's sacrifice and subsequent resurrestion
3. It's a symbol you can take pride in, i.e. it defines you as a Christian and is a mark of everything you believe in
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Atheist, but I thought you might be interested in a non-believer's point of view. If asked to summarise the New Testament, then I'd say your 'cross as a victory', and also a case of (Jesus) leading by example. As in, the NT is a story of someone who does what they believe to be right, tries to demonstate the Right Thing to other people by kindness and example, and sticks to their guns to the very end; a noble moral victory but rather a tragic one.
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The Cross - I can see it in many ways. (Ticked lots of boxes). I tend to agree with C.S. Lewis that in a sense, it doesn't matter how the Cross 'works' in bringing about human salvation, freeing us from sin, the important thing is that it does. So people may have different conceptions that they find helpful in understanding Christ's passion.
I think my own favourite way of looking at it is that the cross wasn't so much something that made God's forgiveness possible, in some transactional sense, but that it is where God's forgiveness happened - that Jesus, as God and man, forgave those who crucified him, abandoned him, cheered for his death, etc., and in doing so, as God and man, forgave the whole of humanity, and thus freed us from sin.
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The Cross as a Milestone: I don't believe in the resurection or that there is a God for Jesus to be the son of, so most of the above interpretations make little sense to me. What I do believe is that Jesus was a rather charismatic, well spoken individual in the right time at the right place to spread a philosophy which was roughly: "Don't be shit to each other". The cross represents the point at which everything started going wrong in this whole affair; Jesus was turned into a faultess matyr; people started speaking for him and using the supernatural to enforce their views and interpretations as the "right" one. So the cross seems mainly a transition to me, where christianity goes from the teachings of a guy who had some pretty good ideas to a fully blown religion with all that goes with it.
I won't claim to be any sort of biblical scholar so I may well be contradicted on this by somebody who's actually sat down and read the bible but that's what I think. Details and semantic quibbles have been skipped over as I think they're unimportant and detract from the core argument.
You did say you wanted to know what we thought.
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O dear...
What flavour of Christian am I? I think the best answer is probably 'idiosyncratic' - having been baptised and confirmed in the CoE, and spent a number of years as an 'evangelical atheist', I've found a home in the Methodist Church.
I don't really know how I'd describe my theology - certainly not evangelical, charismatic, conservative or Orthodox (I assume deliberately with a capital?), but at the same time, not liberal in that my theology is often not that much like that of the set of Christians who call themselves 'liberal Christians', if you see what I mean. I guess if I had to come up with a phrase, it'd be Wesleyan, but that's not quite right either.
As to the last, when I looked at the tickyboxes, there were many I would have ticked, save that I read the explanatory text first, and now I think I need to do some serious thought about how I define those things, so I can post something a bit more coherent about how I would define some of them. I will, I promise, but not tonight...
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I ticked "Orthodox" for the third question, because I felt that in some sense this was the non-confusing answer, but I would also describe my theology as liberal, evangelical and charismatic, and I would certainly also want to add the word "Catholic". I think the mainstream description for the sort of theology I do would be "Conservative Catholic", although I also have tendencies towards "Radical Orthodox".
Naturally I ticked the first five boxes for the last question. I believe in the Crucifiction as eschaton, as the completion of God's work, death destroying death, a perfect sacrifice once for all. The Cross is a royal banner, a tree of life, the throne of God, the altar re-presented in every Mass.
I agree with Sam, and with C S Lewis.
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In the Incarnation, God took our humanity upon him. He did this that we might come to him, because his divinity so transcends our comprehension that, unless he came down to us, we should never manage to ascend to him. In becoming fully human and fully divine, Our Lord took humanity up into the Godhead, opening a path to the Father that we might walk in. He also allowed us, as creatures of flesh, to see God in flesh. It is crucial for the success of Christianity that the Incarnation, whereby God becomes flesh, that we might see and touch him, and thereby come to know that which is beyond comprehension, is not only a historical event, allowing the salvation of a few Galilean fishermen, but an ongoing process. We also perceive the Godhead made flesh every time we attend Mass when we can see with our eyes, touch with our hands, and, more wonderous still, actually physically take God into ourselves.
Any way, I digress, but theology is one. Death being intrinsic to the human condition, Our Lord had to encounter death to perfect his humanity, and therefore to perfect humanity. The Cross marked the ultimate kenosis of divinity, the final humiliation of Christ, and therefore the completion and perfection of the process whereby Christ revealed God to Man, and in doing so transformed the nature of Man.
I hope that's clear. Of course, the Cross is a mystery of the faith, which we can never fully penetrate.
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This means inter alia I can't just see the Bible, the creeds or whatever as "things to be believed". They are human attempts (however inspired) to state truths. And that makes answering your last question very difficult. I believe that "sacrifice" is a relevant category for understanding the cross only because the cross completely redefines what sacrifice is. (Btw, if you read the Hebrew Bible you'll see that most of the Jewish sacrifices aren't good pictures for understanding Jesus' death. Look at the Peace Offering in Lev 3. Even the Sin Offering is only for unwitting sin; eg walking over a grave.) And the NT seems to suggest our problem is not so much sin as the sinful context in which we live. The cross is rescue.
The major category I think you miss is the cross as complete self-identification with humanity in its state of bondage to satan. This allows a corresponding identification we can have with the risen Christ. There is an awful lot in Paul (using various bits of imagery) of the idea "he became what we are so that we can be what he is".
I think also it's a powerful reminder that even meaningless suffering can be given meaning and be redeemed, and in that we can even become like the Creator in making something new and good.
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For the final question I realise that I've answered incorrectly. I read "Which of these statements is true: The Cross as ... [foo]" in which case the Bible says each of them (in some form or other, so they're all true). However, looking again I realise that your question actually says "The Cross' Role in Salvation?" (rather than "The Cross' Role") the Cross as moral example is not the Cross' Role in salvation, but as example post salvation, so I shouldn't in fact have ticked that box.
It's not my day