atonement

ATONEMENT AND THE FINAL SCAPEGOAT

Ted Peters Pacific Lutheran Seminary, Berkeley CA 94708

How does Jesus save? How should we understand the atoning work of Jesus Christ, the effecting of our reconciliation with God? Up to this point in history, there is no one universally agreed upon way. We have a dogma for Christology. It was formulated at Chalcedon in 451: one person in two natures. But we have no dogma for atonement. And the ways of interpreting it are many.

In the near future, I expect discussions to begin again regarding how atonement works. This will be due in large part to a challenge being posed by a Stanford University scholar who works in fields such as anthropology and literary criticism, René Girard. The Girard project attempts to explain the origin of myth in terms of a historical event in which each community commits mob murder-the murder of a scapegoat~in order to establish the social order. The purpose of scapegoating Jesus was to maintain social order. One of the corollaries of the Girard axiom is that this is not sacrifice. The idea of sacrifice should not apply to Jesus, argues Girard.1 The net impact of Jesus' innocent death is that it reveals the pervasive human lie, namely, that society is founded on violence. His argument is fascinating and profound, even if less than fully convincing.

The thesis I raise up here is aimed at systematic theologians: the Girard interpretation of Jesus Christ as the final scapegoat is protean for theological thinking in general and, further, it may even constitute a helpful model for understanding the atonement.2 En route to assessing the value of the Girard scapegoat theory to systematic theology, I plan to identify briefly five other

*René Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987) 205.

2I use the term model here to describe various ways of understanding the atonement, and I mean by it roughly what Sallie McFague does, namely, a ' 'metaphor with staying power.'* Metaphorical Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982) 23. A model is more complex than a metaphor yet something short of a theory. It belongs at the intermediate level of theological construction. It is protean or heuristic in the sense that it evokes further thinking. Yet it falls a bit short of governing a full-fledged research program, i.e., a full theological system, as Nancey Murphy would describe it. Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1990).

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atonement models that have appeared in the history Christian thought: Jesus Christ as (1) the teacher of true knowledge; (2) our moral example and influence; (3) Christus Victor; (4) our satisfaction; and (5) the happy exchange. We will then turn to Girard's theory and ask to what degree it might lead us to think of Christ as (6) the final scapegoat. The reader will quickly note that this list constitutes an attempt to expand that of Gustaf Aulén, the oft-repeated list of three: satisfaction, Christus Victor, and moral influence. By explicating the atonement in terms of six models, therefore, I wish to make a contribution to atonement theory in a twofold way, namely, I wish to refine the existing list of atonement models and I wish to add the Girardian model as a new one.

A couple of important issues will not be addressed in this treatment, due to the limits of our agenda. First, should we consider the Girard model as the only model or as one among others? This could apply to any of the models, of course. For the purposes of this study, we will consider each model to be one among others.

Another important issue I plan to sidestep for the time being is this: should we engage in atonement modeling at all? Theologians such as Gerhard Forde argue that all atonement theorizing leads us away from the personal challenge that confronts us in Christ. All models, he says, tend to put roses on the cross, that is, they try to insulate us from the tragedy and horror of Golgotha. When we theorize about the atonement, we naturally try to blunt the folly and offense with which all faith must start. The folly and offense is that we ourselves create an image of a God of wrath and then falsely tie Jesus' death to this illusion. This permits us to blame God rather than ourselves. Until the offense of the cross offends us, and until it reveals to us a God of grace and not wrath, we cannot begin to understand how atonement works.3 This would be worthwhile pursuing on some occasion, because Girard also emphasizes that to confront Christ is to confront the revelation that we ourselves are hiding our complicity in Christ's death. The trick of the task of theology is to try to understand the atonement without hiding from the horror of Golgotha.

Starting out from Golgotha with its horror, we will follow a trail through the forest of various understandings of "atonement" until we reach our thesis: Jesus Christ is the final scapegoat.

3"We cannot be saved by a better theology, a better idea of God. God must come to save us. . . . That is the point of a theology of the cross. God cannot come directly to people bound to their own illusions. God can only die at the hands of such piety. God can only be rejected. So it must be if God is to unmask the bondage for what it is." Gerhard Forde, "The Work of Christ," in Christian Dogmatics, ed. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) 2:67.

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THE CONCEPT OF ATONEMENT

The doctrine of the atonement refers to the restoration of the broken relationship between God and humanity that is accomplished by Jesus Christ. The word atonement is one of the few theological terms whose etymological meaning can be discerned almost within the bounds of the English language alone. We break it down into three words belonging together, "at-one-ment." It probably originated in the Anglo-French usage by the Normans after their conquest of the Anglo-Saxons in 1066: être a un, meaning "to agree." Thomas More (1478-1535) is the first we know of to use the term in its modern form. In his The History of Richard III atonement means reconciliation, especially between disputing political powers. Anglican Bibles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries began using atonement to translate the Hebrew kaphar and the Greek hilasmos and katallagê, meaning "expiation" and "reconciliation." In the developing theological vocabulary the term has come to refer to the state of reconciliation between our gracious God and the estranged human race, the state of at-one-ment, accomplished through the work of our savior, Jesus Christ. What makes atonement a theological issue is the question: how is such reconciliation accomplished? The New Testament answer is through the blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ resulting in the forgiveness of our sins and the justified status of otherwise ungodly people.

HOW DOES ATONEMENT WORK?

The question guiding the inquiry that follows is this: how does atonement work? Just what does Jesus Christ do-or what does God do in Jesus Christ—to achieve reconciliation? When we think of the atonement, we have a tendency to think first of Jesus' crucifixion, not his resurrection. Perhaps this is due to the ancient context in which blood sacrifice has meaning. Yet, in the New Testament, the most primitive formulations of the Gospel message treat the death and resurrection as a single redemptive unit. Redemption from sin can be assigned either to Jesus' death (1 Cor 15:3) or to his resurrection (1 Cor 15:17), probably because the two are so closely linked. According to Arland Hultgren, the earliest stage in New Testament redemptive Christology did not distinguish between the cross and resurrection as discrete events. It did not depict the cross as the atoning event and the resurrection as its certification. In fact, the stress at the outset was placed on the resurrection.4 It was the breaking of the chains

4Arland J. Hultgren, Christ and His Benefits: Christology and Redemption in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987) 37. Hultgren does us all a service by locating within the New Testament four discernable atonement patterns, what he calls "redemptive Christologies." Two are theopractic which emphasize that, although Jesus Christ is the agent of redemption, the major actor is God. The other two are


of death that first marked our liberation. Arland Hultgren speculates that the next stage found the disciples trying to interpret what had happened in light of Old Testament scripture, and this led to refinements. For example, Jesus "was handed over to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification" (Rom 4:25). The death and resurrection are two scenes in one dramatic act.

Whether one leans toward greater stress on Good Friday or greater stress on Easter Sunday, Hultgren's work would lead us to say that there is one common focus: Christ and his benefits.5 Our understanding of atonement is grounded in the redemptive purposes of the God of Israel. Even if Christ is the agent of redemption, Christ never replaces the God of Israel. Nor does he perform an action in behalf of humanity over against God. There is no split so that Christ must step in to placate or appease the wrath of an angry God. It was God who appointed him for the task of atonement. Although in some cases the cross alone seems to have atoning significance, in the final analysis cross and resurrection are inextricably tied together. The resurrection signifies a decisive turning of the ages, the entry into a new aeon defined by God's saving activity. This leads to a future orientation. Salvation is both "already" and "not yet."6

The benefit of Christ's atoning work is that we have an "inheritance" kept now in heaven until it be delivered to us at the "end of the age" (Gal 5:21; 1 Pet 1:4; Heb 9:26).

Here I want to press the question theologically: how does it work? Just how is it that the event of cross and resurrection is redemptively efficacious? There is no officially established dogma that answers this question, but there has been considerable theological speculation which has resulted in a variety of working models. Let us turn to a taxonomy of these models.

SIX MODELS OF ATONEMENT

Commentators on the history of atonement theology typically discriminate according to objective and subjective types. Objective atonement models are those which involve the work of Christ in relation to God or the world without reference to the subjective state of any or all humans. The

christopractic and see Christ as the major actor in redemption. What may be tacitly significant here is that the use of multiple models for atonement may be a method applicable both internally to biblical study as well as to systematic theology.

5Ibid., 174.

6Hultgren writes, "the resurrection of Christ signaled not simply the inauguration of a new world within the interiority of the earliest Christians, but the inauguration of a new world into which believers have entered already in part by the transforming power of the Spirit and into which the whole present world will enter when it is transformed by the One who has the power to subject all things to himself." Ibid, 202.


Anselmian satisfaction or Christus Victor schemes are usually dubbed objective. The subjective atonement models, in contrast, focus on the believer's experience of being transformed by Christ's work. Here, what I call the "teacher of true knowledge" and the "moral example and influence" schemes provide examples.7 Upon recognizing the objective-subjective division, some irenic theologians from time to time seek ways to combine the two into some sort of hybrid.

What I find missing in most secondary analyses of atonement theory, however, are queries into the presumed anthropologies of each model. Once the core commitment is made which answers just how Jesus Christ saves, there should follow a corollary œmmitment answering the question: from what are we saved? What is the human predicament from which Christ saves us? If the atoning work of Christ overcomes an existing estrangement between us and God, we need to ask about the nature of that estrangement. To think of Jesus as the teacher of true knowledge, for example, presupposes that ignorance estranges us from God. The Christus Victor model, in contrast, presupposes that we are in bondage to supra-human powers. We should expect that each atonement model belongs to a wider coherent theological theory.

In addition to askingytom what it is that Christ saves us, we might also ask: for whaf!* What is salvation? This is more difficult. The meaning of salvation is less frequently spelled out. Yet it is well worth an inquiry as we delineate the key features of each atonement model in turn.

1. Jesus as the Teacher of True Knowledge The first model for understanding the work of Christ is that of the

premiere example of true knowledge or esoteric wisdom. The framework is one of education, and the picture is that of Jesus as the teacher of the way to

7Are the salvific benefits of Christ's work for all or just for some? Are they universal or exclusive? Edward Jeremy Miller tries to combine objective and subjective components while advocating universal salvation via the idea of solidarity. The incarnate Christ is salvation, he says, and we share solidarity with him. The insertion of God with a human face into history leads him to say this: **grace comes to everyone with the configuration by which a human life is enabled to find everlasting life.'* *'Inclusivist and Exclusivist Issues in Soteriology: To Whom Does Jesus' Saving Power Extend?" Perspectives in Religious Studies 12:2 (Summer 1985): 137. Though Miller has an objective presence of the saving Christ, the possibility of some individuals refusing to appropriate grace subjectively foredooms the accomplishment of any universal salvation.

8*'If the overall purpose of Christ's work was bringing the kingdom of God, theology must focus at least as much on what he saves us for." Thomas N. Finger, Christian Theology: An Eschatological Approach (Kitchener, Ontario, and Scottdale PA: Herald Press, 1985) 2:338. What we are saved for, says Finger, is "communion with God." Ibid., 342.


salvation. Although what Jesus actually taught verbally is valuable, the kind of life he led is the more valuable teacher because it provides a pattern for us to follow. He is the premiere example not because he is the first in history to teach the path to salvation, but because he most fully embodies that teaching. There is a fullness of God's truth in Jesus, a fullness which all of us as humans can and should enjoy. This makes Jesus first and foremost among mortals and warrants our emulation. In addition, the presence of this fullness of true humanity emits a sort of drawing strength, a power of influence that inspires and enables others to follow the path Jesus has blazed. The unmistakable axis around which the model of the true teacher turns is this: Jesus shows us the way, but salvation does not occur until we follow it. Hence, this is a subjective model, emphasizing our personal participation.

There are two overlapping but distinguishable variants on the idea of Jesus as the true teacher: the teacher of truth model and the moral influence model. We will look at them in turn, starting with Jesus as the teacher of the true knowledge.

If one conceives of the fundamental problem of the human condition in terms of ignorance, then atonement would be achieved through proper knowledge. If we are estranged from God because we live in a terrestrial world of darkness, and in this darkness we overindulge in materiality and clobber one another in war because we cannot see the truth, then we would need a celestial teacher who descends from the realm of light to show us the proper way. We would need someone who would do such things as present clearly the divine law, provide an example of how we should live, lead us into philosophical truth, or introduce us to mystical insights into transcendental realities. With such assumptions Jesus would be understood as the great teacher, the gnostic revealer, who saves us through delivering heavenly knowledge. Salvation consists in oneness with God understood as oneness in truth.

This emphasis on Christ as the revealer of transcendental truth energized the work of the early Greek apologists for whom the Logos of the second person of the Trinity is affirmed to be the same Logos that inspired the rational thought of Socrates and Heraclitus. Justin Martyr, recall, goes so far as to call these Greeks "Christians" because they "lived reasonably."9 What we have in the gospel revelation is the same eternal truth but manifesting itself more fully in Christ. There is here no sharp division between faith and philosophy. In fact, the apprehension of the significance of Christ's work yields a Christian philosophy.

Christ as the premiere teacher similarly characterizes Nestorian soteriologe ancient Gnosticism and, in those cases where Jesus is factored in, by New Age spirituality today. In the New Age version of this soteriology such as one might find in transpersonal psychology, the concept of human potential is added. This corresponds to the notion of the divine spark in ancient

9Justin Martyr, Apology /, 46.


Gnosticism. According to the ancient gnostic scheme, the spark of the divine light lies deep within the soul of each of us. But it cannot shine because it is covered over with layers of darkness, with misleading ignorance. According to our New Age version of the gnostic scheme, unlimited human potential lies deep within us just waiting to burst forth. What inhibits it from doing so is ignorance in the form of a false consciousness that causes us to think in terms of categories, stereotypes, and divisions. What we need to do to free this potential is to raise consciousness by thinking wholistically. Atonement consists in gaining true knowledge of at-one-ment with one's true self and with the whole cosmos. This raising of our consciousness can be facilitated by a teacher who has already attained true knowledge. And this teaching combined with our following constitutes the soteriological work. The teacher of saving knowledge followed by New Age religionists could be Jesus Christ or perhaps some other guru who possesses transcendental insight.

New Age spirituality combines Asian philosophy and Western psychology. Benedictine monk and philosopher Bede Griffiths, for example, employs ancient Hindu scriptures in a fashion parallel to the patristic use of Greek philosophy. Just as the New Testament adopted the Old, and just as Justin Martyr adopted Socrates and Heraclitus, so here Griffiths adopts the ancient Upanishads and Bhagavad-Gita of India retroactively into Christian spirituality.10 The accompanying soteriology can be identified visually. In the center of the meditation pavilion at Griffiths' Ashram of the Holy Trinity known as Shanüvanam in southern India sits a life size sculpture of Jesus Christ. Actually there are three Christs in the one sculpture, placed shoulder to shoulder so as to form a triangle. In each case Jesus is sitting with legs crossed, eyes closed, in lotus meditation position. Here the artist is telling us that in Jesus the transcendental truth has fully entered human consciousness. He becomes then our teacher, our guru.

2. Jesus as Our Moral Example and Influence Closely related to the idea of Jesus as the teacher of truth through

example is the moral influence model of atonement. The moral influence notion assumes that we humans need to be enabled to engage in sacrificial love.

10Bede Griffiths seems to combine objective and subjective components, but I believe the latter dominates. On the one hand, Christ is historical and history is sacramental. Christ's sacrifice was "accomplished once in time on the Cross," yet it is "renewed sacramentally day by day under the symbols of bread and wine.** The Golden String (Glasgow: Collins, 1954, 1979) 183. On the other hand, what is key is Griffiths' turn to the interior life. "But the outward thing which is sacrificed can never be more than a sign of inward offering; what we desire has to take place in the centre of our own being, in the darkness of the interior where alone we can encounter the God who is hidden in the depths of the soul." Ibid., 184.


Usually identified with Peter Abelard (1079-1142), this model presupposes something less than a full-blown doctrine of original sin. In his ethical treatise, Know Thyself, Abelard argues that the human race as a whole does not share in the guilt of Adam's sin. Through the use of natural reason we are capable of deciding what is good. What we need is knowledge of what is good and the strength of resolve to do it. This is what we get through the work of Christ. Thus, the moral influence model contends that the atoning significance of Jesus' death is that it provides us with a compelling example to follow. Jesus, in persevering through humiliation and the cross, fully embodies God's own self-sacrificial love. So dramatic is the life and passion of Jesus that it grasps the human imagination and moves the heart so that we are empowered to re-embody that same self-sacrificing love in our own lives. Once we have followed suit, reconciliation has taken place.

Some liberal Protestants have developed variants of the moral influence position in the wake of Immanuel Kant's understanding of Jesus as the moral ideal. It is our duty, Kant writes, "to elevate ourselves to this ideal of moral perfection, that is, to this archetype of the moral disposition in all its purity-and for this the idea itself, which reason presents to us for our zealous emulation, can give us power." Note how Jesus as the moral example provides, first, the ideal we should emulate and, second, how the very reasonableness of it provides the power to do it. Once we voluntarily engage in moral activity that copies Christ then we may "hope to become acceptable to God (and so be saved)."11

According to the moral influence model, reconciliation comes as the result of our own efforts at following Jesus' example, efforts which are aided by the compelling power of that very example.

In the nineteenth century, Friedrich Schleiermacher followed with a variant that pictures Christ as catching the believer up into his own God consciousness. Christ evokes in us the same consciousness of God which he enjoyed. This involves both an act of the Redeemer and an act of the redeemed. "The original activity of the Redeemer is best conceived as a pervasive influence," writes Schleiermacher, with "an attractive power."12

On the other side of the Atlantic, Horace Bushneil viewed the saving Christ as exemplifying--and, hence, inspiring-human love. Love, by Bushnell's definition, is a universal principle of vicarious sacrifice. Those who love are willing to sacrifice for those whom they love. "Love is a principle essentially vicarious in its own nature," he writes.13 When we look at Jesus' sacrifice,

"Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (New York: Harper & Row, 1934, 1960) 54f.

12Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith (Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1928, 1960) 427.

"Horace Bushnell, "The Vicarious Sacrifice, Grounded in Principles of Universal


then, Bushnell does not want us to think the Savior literally takes our sins upon himself. Rather, what happened on the cross is that "God's love broke into the world, and Christianity was born!" God loves as we love. "Christ. . . simply fulfills what belongs universally to love, doing nothing more nor less than what the common standard of holiness and right requires."14 This makes Christ attractive to us. When we see how deeply he entered into our human lot, ho\y he endured sorrow and bitter death, we are drawn to him. Our heart is engaged. We are constrained to enter into loving friendship with our Savior.

The anthropological assumption here is that compassion and the propensity for self-sacrificing love are somehow already built into human nature. It is because we are already compassionate that we recognize compassion in the savior. It is because we are already disposed to self-sacrifice that we are attracted to the sacrifice of Jesus. This is not a soteriology that seeks through the intervention of God's grace to transform human nature, to alter something essential about present human existence. Rather, to save means to accentuate an already existing positive human quality.

Currently the British myth-of-God-incarnate theologians such as John Hick and Michael Goulder tend toward the moral influence theory. The overall objective of their project is the abandonment of making metaphysical claims about the person of Jesus while still affirming that Jesus provides the premiere example of God's self-giving love. He is described as the "archetypal believer" whose self-sacrificing life makes him "the man of universal destiny." Jesus belongs on a continuum with other great leaders such as Churchill, Mao Tse-Tung, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr., who were people of great destiny. The Christian church is founded on the moral influence of Jesus. The existence of the church is testimony to the tremendous influence he has had in human history. We are enjoined to follow his example and live a life of love. This is what salvation is. "To be saved is to love," writes Michael Goulder, who attacks the Christus Victor theory of atonement as an example of "empty

Obligation," in Horace Bushnell, ed H. Shelton Smith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965) 280.

14Ibid., 283. To think of Christ as an example of what is already human opens the door wide for Feuerbach to walk through. This leads Eric P. Levy to reverse the direction of moral influence. Rather than see human compassion as the result of Christ's influence on us, Levy suggests just the opposite. *'[T]he wish to save which Christ incarnates belongs not to God but to the hidden fantasy in human pity: to alleviate suffering by absorbing the helplessness to act which is the essence of suffering. Christ personifies or literally enacts this universal and fervent wish of human pity. . ..** "The Two Natures of Christ: Suffering Victim and Pitying Witness,** Toronto Journal of Theology 5:1 (Spring 1989): 57-58. This position presupposes an anthropology according to which human nature already includes the components of salvation so that Christ at most becomes a vehicle for human self-expression.


speculations" and the satisfaction theory for making "Christ a whipping boy" in the face of a "faceless justice." Then Goulder goes on,

So we do not need an atonement theory to explain what is already explained. We are saved into the community of love, the church, which Jesus founded by a life of love that inexorably ended on the cross . . . by the completeness of his faithfulness unto death Jesus achieved unwittingly the destiny which he had followed all his ministry, the actualization of God's kingdom in a society of love that was permanent. For there are locked within the human psyche strong forces which an event of this quality can set in motion . . . he gives the responsibility of our world, including our church, to us.15

Although Jesus was only a human being, he was the new Adam filled with God-consciousness and revelatory of God's self-sacrificing love. And this consciousness, like a spiritual contagion, has drawn other people up into it and formed the Christian church.

At first glance this position appears to be a form of the Gnostic revealer mentioned above. And in fact Abelard was criticized during the Middle Ages for reducing the work of Christ to that of a mere teacher. But there is an element in the moral influence theory that goes beyond teaching by example. It is the compelling power inherent in the example. Not only does Jesus teach us through word and example, writes Abelard in his Commentary on Romans, but "he has very strongly drawn us to himself through love, so that, inflamed by this great benefaction of divine grace, true love now shrinks not from the endurance of anything whatsoever." There is more to Christ's atoning work than mere moral example. It is also moral influence.

3. Jesus as Christus Victor The third form of atonement interpretation is the Christus Victor model.

According to this model, we are rescued from distress by Christ who, like a brave and victorious knight, has been able to defeat the prince of darkness and free us from enslavement to death. The symbolism here is rich and exciting. Its most vivid biblical image is that of Saint Michael engaged in the great war in

15Michael Goulder, *'Jesus, the Man of Universal Destiny,** in The Myth of God Incarnate, ed John Hick (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1977) 58ff.; cf., 9,36,54,127,163; and Incarnation and Myth, ed. Michael Goulder (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979) 79ff. New age versions of moral influence exist as well. David Spangler, for example, sets the saving capacity of Jesus side by side with Buddha and other religious figures. He holds that the redemptive contribution of Jesus Christ is that he released into history a special presence of divinity that helps in the process of drawing us—not just the church but the whole of humanity—beyond ego consciousness toward communal oneness; it is drawing us toward the Aquarian age. Towards a Planetary Vision (The Park Forest, Scotland: Findhorn Foundation, 1977) chap. 6.


heaven with the devil, whom he is able to defeat and throw down to earth (Rev 12:7-12; Dan 12:1). He comes on a white horse, being called "faithful and true," leading a great army by which he will rule the nations. On his thigh he has a name inscribed, "King of Kings and Lord of Lords" (Rev 19:11-16).

The early church fathers employed a much less elegant figure which was picked up by Luther, namely, that of the worm on a hook.16 The innocent Jesus is the bait which the devil, like a hungry fish, devours. But the devil is only supposed to devour those whose souls have already been given over to evil. By eating the innocent Jesus, the devil has overreached himself and thereby disqualifies himself as the rightful heir to the booty of sin. The divine innocence of the incarnate one was the hook whereby the devil was outsmarted and brought to defeat.

The Christus Victor model was proffered primarily by Gustaf Aulén (1879-1977). In claiming that this is the so-called "classic theory" and reading it back into the works of the ancient fathers such as Irenaeus as well as Reformers such as Luther, Aulén argues that the fundamental problem of the human condition is our enslavement. What we are enslaved to are the powers of sin, death, and the devil. God working through Christ does battle with these powers, defeats them, and the spoils of Christ's victory accrue to our advantage. God is the chief actor in the whole drama, so that reconciliation is achieved apart from human contribution. This model stands in sharp contrast to the gnostic teacher and moral influence theories, wherein atonement is something we accomplish ourselves under the guidance of Jesus' teaching or influence. The overriding emphasis of Aulén 's theory is that God and God alone accomplishes die victory. Therefore, we can and must think of our salvation as a gift bestowed solely through grace alone, sola gratia.

In very recent times a variant on the Christus Victor motif has begun to make its appearance: Jesus the Liberator as proffered by the current generation of liberation theologians. The symbol of the liberator takes its inspiration from such passages as Gal 5:1, "for freedom Christ has set you free; stand fast, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery." There is a shift here, however, in the understanding of what binds us and what freedom means. Whereas concomitant with the Christus Victor symbolism we become liberated from sin, death, and the power of the devil; liberation theologians picture the savior freeing us from political, social, and economic oppression. Whereas St. Paul in Galatians may have thought of the "yoke of slavery" metaphorically as referring to the law which keeps us in sin, the idea of slavery is here being taken metaphorically to refer to economic or political bondage to which the first world subjects the third world. Whereas forgiveness of sins is

16Gregory of Nyssa, The Great Catechism, 24.


said to be abstract, economic and political oppression is said to constitute the concrete bondage from which Christ liberates us.17

People of color and third world peoples invoke the hermeneutic of suspicion when considering Christus Victor symbolism, suggesting that "Jesus as Liberator" should replace it. They question the desirability of the warrior imagery in hymns with lines such as "onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war" or "stand up, stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the cross." The problem is the soldiers, in this case the average Christians, may identify too closely with the victory of their champion. "Be we Christ's, in him forever we have triumphed over all." The military and triumphal imagery comes under suspicion here. Although its avowed reference is to the victory of Christ over sin and in our behalf, the rhetoric of victory can too easily be used to support the coercive conquest of pagan nations by Christian civilization.

Thinking of Jesus as liberator is better than Jesus as victor, say some liberation advocates, because it avoids this problem. Whereas victory would have as its object the enemy that has been conquered, liberation refers us to those set free. The emphasis is on the act of making free rather than on crushing the enemy. It appears that Christus Victor and Jesus as Liberator share the same deep structure, although the symbols are lifted up and interpreted in slightly different directions.

Yet there is another significant difference which is worth noting. We can get at this difference by asking just how the liberation takes place. Whereas Aulén wants to emphasize that the Christus Victor motif requires that we understand the work of salvation as solely God's work, there is among the liberation theologians an added element of the moral example and influence motif. According to Jon Sobrino, for example, the historical Jesus is said to have favored the poor over against their rich oppressors. We should follow Jesus in this regard and carry on the work of liberation. Similarly, Leonardo Boff sees Jesus as Liberator because he taught "loving all as sisters and brothers," which liberates the human person "in body, soul, and all secular dimensions as well." Boff believes Jesus actualized this potential for freedom which lies in every

"This is the point made by Simon S. Maimela in criticizing Anselm's satisfaction theory: "an atonement that exhausts itself in forgiveness of sins without a transformation of the human situation might suggest that God has failed to conquer the concrete objective power of evil which holds men in bondage.*' "The Atonement in the Context of Liberation Theology," Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 39 (June 1982): 49. Maimela would prefer the Christus Victor or classical theory because it deals with "objective** powers, but it needs to be revised to include under the category of Satan the concrete historical forces of economic and political oppression that enslave and from which God seeks to liberate us. James H. Cone makes the same point when expanding on Aulén's classical theory: "The principalities and powers of evil, mythically expressed in the figure of Satan, represent not only metaphysical realities but earthly realities as well." God of the Oppressed (New York: Seabury, Crossroad, 1975) 232.


human being, and so Jesus calls us into the freedom of becoming our true selves. J. Severino Croatto argues for a revolutionary form of Christianity on the grounds that Jesus Christ "has proclaimed the values of justice and freedom that are the basis of socio-political liberation movements." Jesus is more than an example. Through his teachings he is also an influence that goads us into pursuing the task of social transformation, and because of this influence we can think of him as our liberator.18

The Christus Victor model is basically objective in character. Its focus is God's activity in Jesus Christ whereby the chains that bind us are broken. It is God's act with universal consequence. It is not dependent upon one's subjective appropriation. Except, of course, in the case of liberation theology. Here, the present appropriation of God's past act influences our action in society. As we press for social transformation, we continue to share in God's liberating work in Jesus Christ.

Whether in the Aulén version or the liberation version, the Christus Victor model presupposes that the human problem is one of bondage. Classically, the bondage was to the powers, even to Satan. During the Reformation bondage was due to sin, death, and the Devil. In current discussion, the bondage is to political and economic powers.19 Here, grace is key. Whether acting alone or in concert with human resolve, God acts to free us. Salvation consists in breaking the chains that bind us and liberating us for unencumbered communion with God.

4. Jesus as Our Satisfaction The fourth interpretation, the satisfaction model, assumes that the basic

problem is one of disorder. The order of divine justice which governs the cosmos has been disturbed by the introduction of human sin. Consequently, God must perform an act whereby the just order is fulfilled, that is, satisfied. This model is most articulately presented by Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), according to whom our merciful God became incarnate and suffered the cross in order to reestablish the cosmic harmony requisite for human salvation.

Cur Deus Homo? raises the question of the incarnation: why did God become human? In Anselm's work of this title he sought to pursue theology as he had formulated the task of theology, namely, as faith seeking understanding (fides quaerens intellectum). He wanted to understand the why of the

18Jon Sobrino, Christology at the Crossroads (Maryknoll NY: Orbis, 1978) 60, 105, 305, 395; Leonardo Boff, "Images of Jesus in Brazilian Liberal Christianity," in Faces of Jesus: Latin American Christologies, ed. Jose Miguez Bonino (Maryknoll NY: Orbis, 1984) 19ff.; J. Severino Croatto, "The Political Dimension of Christ the Liberator," ibid., 96.

19Cf. Finger, Christian Theology, 1:318-19.


incarnation. He also had in mind an apologetic mission: to demonstrate convincingly to nonbelievers that the doctrine of the atonement makes sense. So he set out to prove the necessity of the incarnation by the use of reasoning alone apart from any prior historical knowledge regarding the work of Christ (remoto Christo). Because Anselm is so frequently misunderstood by contemporary commentators, I believe we should review carefully the essential stages of Anselm's argument.

God's purpose for creating the human race emerges out of God's infinite love and compassion. This is important: right from the beginning God planned for us to enjoy perfect blessedness and happiness. Such blessedness requires the total and voluntary harmony of our own will with the divine will; for it is upon God's will that the very harmony and beauty of the universe rest. But through an act of defiant willing the human race has chosen disobedience, and this has fractured the cosmic harmony and frustrated God's plan for our happiness. Any deviation of our will must be balanced by a deprivation of blessedness. The imbalance can be righted in one of two ways: either through punishment and denial of blessedness or through an act of satisfaction whereby an offering is rendered up that is greater than the act of disobedience. God does not want to follow the road of punishment because the divine purpose is to bestow blessedness. Therefore, satisfaction becomes the preferable solution.

But this leads to a dilemma. On the one hand, unconditional forgiveness is not an alternative, according to Anselm, because such an act would introduce further irregularity into God's universe. On the other hand, no member of the human race can offer any satisfaction to God because each human is already under the obligation of total obedience. If total obedience is already required, then there is no extra moral or spiritual capital available with which we can redeem ourselves from our past or future sins. Therefore, unless something drastic is done about it, the whole human race must suffer the punishment produced by a disharmonious universe and forfeit the blessedness for which we were created.

Up until this point we have been working on the premise of divine love, a love which purposed human happiness and which seeks a solution to the problem created by human sin. But now Anselm moves to a second phase in the argument and introduces another premising factor, God's omnipotence. It would appear that God's purpose for the creation has been frustrated. But this is impossible if God is omnipotent. Therefore, a means of redemption must exist. The offering for satisfaction ought to be made from the human side, but since we have nothing to offer, it cannot be made by us. But God is capable of making such an offering. And since only God is .able to make the offering which we ought to make, it must be made by a combination of the divine and the human. Ergo, concludes Anselm, the incarnation is necessary. We know why God became human.

Anselm proceeds then to tell the Gospel story. The incarnate Son of God freely offers up his sinless life to death in honor of God. But, of course,


death is a form of punishment to be incurred only as a result of sin. Therefore, since Jesus' self-sacrifice is an unwarranted deed which the Father cannot allow to go unrewarded, and since the Son needs nothing for himself, the reward accrues to the advantage of those for whom the Son dies.

Now the Anselmian satisfaction model has been widely attacked for allegedly proffering the image of a God who needs to be appeased by blood sacrifice before reluctantly granting forgiveness and salvation.20 The problem with this criticism is that it seems to miss the mark. Anselm does not work with the notion of appeasement. Anselm's concern is for the restoration of a broken order of justice, because only a redeemed order of justice can yield the blessedness God had originally planned to be the human lot.

Some feminists similarly attack the entire Christian concept of atonement while attacking Anselm in particular, arguing that it depicts God as a divine child abuser.21 They repudiate the idea that suffering on anybody's part can be redemptive; and they do so because they fear this idea sustains social justification for the misguided belief that women should endure suffering patiently. The problem is that the image of redemptive suffering in Jesus Christ negatively affects our culture by promoting victimization by all those who wish to imitate Christ. Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker are categorical in their condemnation.

Christianity is an abusive theology that glorifies suffering. Is it any wonder that there is so much abuse in modem society when the predominant image or theology of the culture is of "divine child abuse"—God the Father demanding and carrying out the suffering and death of his own son? . . . We must do away with the atonement, this

^ t is Hultgren's judgment that such a satisfaction theory cannot be derived from the New Testament. He argues on the grounds that Christ does not "appease the wrath or justice of God." Christ and His Benefits, 175. Like so many critics of Anselm, Hultgren assumes that the satisfaction theory belongs within the framework of appeasement. What he fails to acknowledge is that the framework for Anselm is not appeasement. It is order and the problem of restoring order once sin has brought disorder into the cosmos.

21Rita Nakashima Brock recognizes that atonement through Christ is not appeasement but rather divine grace, and she rejects it. She blames the omnipotent Father for mistreating Jesus, calling it *'cosmic child abuse" because he allegedly "allows, or even inflicts, the death of his only perfect son.*' Journeys by Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power (New York: Crossroad, 1988) 56. Rather than Jesus saving us, Brock believes we need to save Jesus. Therefore, Jesus "is not the locus of the redemptive event." Ibid., 69. Redemption is the task of human community that saves the world from the sins of patriarchy.


idea of blood sin upon the whole human race which can be washed away only by the blood of the lamb.22

This is a double criticism. It presumes that, at least in the satisfaction model of atonement, God demands appeasement. It also presumes a kind of negative moral influence model; it presumes that the Christian doctrine of atonement has either caused or exacerbated the practice of abuse toward women and children. "The image of God the father demanding and carrying out the suffering and death of his own son has sustained a culture of abuse and led to the abandonment of victims of abuse and oppression. Until this image is shattered it will be almost impossible to create a just society."23 The argument seems to be this: if we could eliminate this image of atonement, then we could liberate the victims of abuse.

Feminist theologians who speak up on behalf of the victims of abuse are giving genuine voice to the Christian understanding of God as Emmanuel, of God as present in the midst of human suffering. This is as it should be. Yet, I wonder if in their haste to repudiate the atoning work of Christ they may unnecessarily be making an enemy out of a potential friend. As I have mentioned, appeasement of a wrathful divine father simply does not apply to the Anselmian satisfaction model, or to any other atonement model for that matter. On the contrary, the God of Anselm is a God motivated by compassion for a human race already victimized by injustice—an injustice of humanity's own willful doing, to be sure~who through the incarnation enters the theater of sin and suffering in order to redeem it. This understanding of God seems to affirm rather than deny the feminist concern to liberate those victimized by injustice.

The most noted critic of Anselm's Latin theory of satisfaction has been Gustaf Aulén. He centers his attack on Anselm's doctrine of satisfactio. He does so for two reasons. First, it allegedly depends upon a legalistic structuring of God's relationship to the creation based on the idea of penance and, second, it is allegedly a human being and not God who accomplishes the atonement. But a closer look, I think, would show that Aulén is wrong when he says that the Latin idea of penance provides the explanation for Anselm's understanding of the atonement. If we grant that the root idea of penance is that we must make an offering or payment to satisfy the principles of justice, then it is certainly true that Anselm employs such imagery in his satisfaction motif. But it provides only the framework, not the content. At the absolutely crucial point Anselm deviates from standard penance theology by saying that no human being can make such

^Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker, "For God So Loved the World?'* in Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse, ed. Joanne Carlson Brown and Carole R. Bonn (New York: Pilgrim, 1989) 26.

fed., 9.


satisfaction. Only God can do it; and God does it through the incarnate God-man. Hence, the Latin theory of penance may be necessary to understand Anselm, but it is by no means a sufficient explanation. Anselm offers more.

Aulén 's most forceful attack is a broadside bombardment of the role that Christ plays in Anselm's account of the atonement. Aulén wants the work of redemption limited to Christ as God, not Christ as human.

This is the decisive issue; and, therefore, the crucial question is really this: Does Anselm treat the atoning work of Christ as the work of God himself from start to finish? . . . the contrast between Anselm and the Fathers is as plain as daylight. They show how God became incarnate that he might redeem; he teaches a human work of satisfaction, accomplished by Christ.24

It is becoming clear that the criterion by which Aulén assesses the satisfaction model of atonement is his own particular doctrine, according to which the redemptive acts of the incarnate one were really acts solely of God. God acts in Christ in a way that excludes the thought of any atoning work done by Christ as a human. If by Christ we mean the incarnate one with the two natures and the two wills, the one who is fully human and fully divine, then who is Aulén talking about when he says "God" does it? God as Father? God as Logos but just one half of Christ? Such an extreme emphasis places Aulén in the same camp with the monotheletists, monergists, and perhaps the monophysites and docetists. All of these ancient heresies erred by overemphasizing the role or nature of divinity in Christ to the denigration of the human. Thus, the recoil from firing the cannons of criticism at Anselm throws Aulén further and further back on sola gratia, further and further back on divine initiative and divine responsibility for the atonement, so that eventually the human nature of Jesus becomes jettisoned and Aulén risks backing himself right off the deck of Chalcedonian orthodoxy.

We might ask whether or not Aulén clearly understands the import of what St. Paul says when he writes:

If, because of the trespass of one, death reigned through that one, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one person, Jesus Christ.

Then as the trespass of one led to the condemnation for all, so the act of righteousness of one leads to acquittal and life for all. For as by the disobedience of one many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one many will be made righteous (Rom 5:17-19; ILL).

^Gustaf Aulén, Christus Victor (New York: Macmillan, 1967) 86-88.


What we can find in Aulén that speaks relevantly to this issue is a telling remark he makes about Irenaeus.

The redemptive work is accomplished by the Logos through the Manhood as His instrument; for it could be accomplished by no , power but that of God Himself. When Irenaeus speaks in this connection of the "obedience" of Christ, he has no thought of a human offering made to God from man's side, but rather that the Divine will wholly dominated the human life of the Word of God, and found perfect expression in His work.25

This is certainly Aulén speaking here, not necessarily Irenaeus or St. Paul. The "will wholly dominated" by the divine sounds like monotheletism. Is it not the position of Chalcedon that it is the divine word which acts, but that this word has truly become flesh, so that Jesus Christ acts divine et humane~in a divine and a human manner? And is this not precisely what Anselm himself proposes?

Anselm: Therefore none but God can make this satisfaction. Boso: So it appears. Anselm: But none but man ought to do this, otherwise man does not make this satisfaction . . . (therefore) it is necessary for the God-man to make it.. . . Now we must inquire how God can become man. The Divine and human natures cannot alternate, so that the Divine should become human or the human Divine; nor can they be so commingled as that a third should be produced from the two which is neither wholly Divine nor wholly human.. . . Since, then, it is necessary that the God-man preserve the completeness of each nature, it is no less necessary that these two natures be united in one person . . . for otherwise it is impossible that the same being should be very god and very man.26

What we have in Anselm's satisfaction idea of the atonement is a valiant attempt by faith to seek understanding, a significant attempt at evangelical explication of the biblical symbols. It is doubtful, however, given the hermeneutical question, that we would wish simply to repeat the Anselmian formulation in our own day and expect it to be adequate to the intellectual context of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, we can learn from Anselm. If we can get past the bad press with which recent theologians have questioned his reputation, we can appreciate the seriousness with which he takes the human predicament—the predicament of living in disorder far from God's intended bliss and harmony—and how he employs Chalcedonian Christology to demonstrate the

^Ibid., 33f; Aulén's italics.

26Anselm, Cur Deus Homo? 2:vi-vii.


depth and power of God's compassion expressed in the work of Emmanuel, of God with us.27

5. Jesus and the "Happy Exchange" Sometimes called the "penal substitution" model, the Reformation

understanding of atonement through an exchange is in large part a further development of Anselm's notion of satisfaction. Here, Christ assumes the penalty belonging to sinful humanity and in exchange bestows upon us his justice and his resurrected life. John Calvin, for example, holds that our God of righteousness cannot love iniquity. Iniquity must be punished. Christ the mediator steps in as our substitute and takes the pain and penalties of sin unto himself. God then transfers-imputes-Christ's righteousness to us. This, in Calvin's view, is how Jesus Christ performs his priestly office.28

Aulén does not include the happy exchange motif in his catalog of atonement theories, unfortunately, because he makes the mistake of saying that another Reformer, Martin Luther, flatly rejected the satisfaction theory and relied totally on the Christus Victor motif. The sources do not support Aulén, however. It is true that Luther employed the imagery of the victorious champion, but certainly not to the exclusion of satisfaction. Not only was Luther accustomed to using the term satisfaction and even payment ma punishment when describing the work of Christ, but the notion of satisfactory atonement underlies his doctrine of justification by faith (just as it does for Calvin).

Note how Luther combines Christus Victor and satisfaction motifs, including the notion of payment, in his exposition of the Creed's second article in the Large Catechism.

27John Macquarrie's position is a hybrid which tries to synthesize three of the above into a single atonement theory. He dubs the Anselmian satisfaction theory the objective model and the Abelardian moral influence theory the subjective model. He synthesizes these two into Aulén's Christus Victor model, demythologizes the battle between God and Satan, and arrives at existential meaning for the believer. Atonement, then, is objective because Jesus Christ does it. It is also subjective because it provides a paradigm for us to repeat in our daily life. Principles of Christian Theology (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1966, 2nd ed, 1977) chap. 13.

28 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vols. 20 and 21 of The Library of Christian Classics, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960) 2:xvi:3-6; 3:xi:2. Calvin interpreters frequently stress that the atoning work includes more than substitution. It also includes our transformation. In addition to justification, it includes sanctification. "Atonement does not consist simply in a debt paid, or in the non-reckoning of sin and guilt alone," writes Trevor Hart. "Far from leaving humanity essentially unchanged, the glorious exchange involves a radical transformation of our being." Trevor Hart, "Humankind in Christ and Christ in Humankind: Salvation as Participation in Our Substitute in the Theology of John Calvin," Scottish Journal of Theology 42:1 (1989): 74-75.


He has snatched us, poor lost creatures, from the jaws of hell, won us, made us free, and restored us to the Father's favor and grace.. . . The remaining parts of this article simply serve to clarify and express how and by what means this redemption was accomplished—that is, how much it cost Christ and what he paid and risked in order to win us . . . he suffered, died, and was buried that he might make satisfaction for me and pay what I owed, not with silver and gold, but with his own precious blood.29

We can see here that Luther faced the same problem Anselm confronted, that is, what is the relationship between divine forgiveness and the sufferings of the incarnate Christ? The forgiveness does not consist in a simple non-imputing of sin, as though God could have simply signed a heavenly decree henceforth absolving everybody of everything. If this were possible, then the sufferings of Jesus Christ would become unnecessary and superfluous. God's struggle with the forces of estrangement and destruction would be a mere sham battle. What makes all this necessary, in Luther's mind, is the need for satisfaction of divine justice, that is, the fulfillment of the divine Law.

The mode of satisfaction which Christ makes in behalf of sinners is twofold: (a) he fulfills the will of God expressed in the Law; and (b) he suffers punishment for sin, that is, he becomes a victim of the wrath of God. What Luther means by fulfilling the Law is expressed in popular piety with the notion that Jesus was sinless. He loved God and neighbor. He obeyed when called to minister. He did not yield to temptation. His faith was true, and he remained loyal even amidst great pain and loneliness. He served God completely, even to surrendering his life.

More than this: although he fulfilled the Law, he still suffered the punishment which law ordinarily pronounces against transgressors. He was condemned to death as a law-breaker, as a blasphemer according to Jewish law and as a seditionist according to Roman law. He was innocent yet punished. It is interesting to note here that Luther goes further than Anselm on this point. Anselm distinguished punishment from satisfactioa Luther conflates the two, saying that it is through the punishment of Christ that satisfaction is made.

Luther thinks this through while commenting on what Paul had said in Gal 3:13, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us~for it is written: Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree." The curse of Deut 21:22-23 repeated by Paul is the punishment prescribed for someone who has committed a crime punishable by death. But Jesus Christ is innocent! How does this apply then to him? Luther's answer: he suffers the

29The Book of Concord, ed. Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1959) 414; my italics. John Calvin was even more Latin than Luther in affirming satisfaction "to appease God" which "derives from God's love; therefore it has not established the latter." Institutes, 2:ix:l,4.


curse for us. He receives the punishment for our capital offenses. And by doing so he satisfies the Law and frees us.

At first glance this may appear to stand in sharp contrast to Aulén's Christus Victor interpretation, according to which the atonement victory consists in a triumph over the enemies of God, namely, sin, death, and the devil. For Luther the contest seems to be less with outright enemies of heaven than it is with God's left hand, with the "strange work" (opus alienum) of Law and wrath. God's "proper work" (opus proprium) is grace and forgiveness, and after all is said and done Law and wrath are finally pressed into the service of salvation. The left hand ends up serving the right. Thus demonic powers of wrath such as sin, death, and Satan are not simply and everlastingly God's enemies. At some point they are taken up into another dimension of divine activity and made to serve even if unwillingly God's overall plan. Hence, Paul Althaus can say over against Aulén that for Luther "everything else depends on this satisfaction, including the destruction of the might and the authority of the demonic powers."30

Key here is the exchange of sin for righteousness in the event of justification. Christ takes possession of our sins and bears them.31 In addition to his bearing our sin, the righteousness and justice of Christ become transferred to us. Sometimes labeled the "wonderful exchange" or "happy exchange," Luther describes it with the metaphor of marriage which can apply to the individual through faith or to the Church as the bride of Christ.

[FJaith . . . unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom. By this mystery, as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul become one flesh (Eph 5:3 If.). And if they are one flesh and there is between them a true marriage—indeed the most perfect of all marriages, since human marriages are but poor examples of this one true marriage—it follows that everything they have they hold in common, the good as well as the evil.. . . Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The soul is full of sins, death, and damnation. Now let faith come between them and sins, death, and damnation will be Christ's, while grace, life, and salvation will be the soul's . . . 3 2

^ a u l Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966) 220.

31Martin Luther, "Commentary on Galatians" of 1535," Luther's Works, American Edition (St Louis and Philadelphia: Concordia and Fortress, 1959-1986) 26:278.

32Luther, "The Freedom of a Christian," Luther's Works 31:351; cf. 190; and 26:129f; cf., also Leo the Great, Sermons, 54:4. Trevor Hart, in reference to Calvin, wants to emphasize that it is the relationship we have with Christ itself that is key. Atonement is not restricted to benefits we receive resulting from an external transaction in which Christ is the main agent. Rather, we have been adopted into a relationship with the trinitarian life of God in the Godself. "Humankind in Christ," 84. For Luther as for


Salvation here consists in forgiveness, freedom, justification, and resurrection. In the exchange God binds Godself to us; and we become unbound as we are born anew into the divine freedom. This is how atonement works for Luther.

It is this happy exchange combined with the mysterious unity we share with Christ through faith that underlies the doctrine of justification. If Christ be just, and if his justice becomes exchanged for our injustice, then we become declared just on account of Christ. It is here that we find the heart that pumps life and new life throughout everything having to do with the Christian faith. It is the gospel. In the words of Philip Melanchthon, "the Gospel is, strictly speaking, the promise of the forgiveness of sins and justification because of Christ."33

6. Jesus Christ as the Final Scapegoat Systematic theologians have not been in the habit of speaking of Christ

as a scapegoat. Might they in the future? If so, it might be due to the influence of René Girard and followers such as Raymund Schwager, S.J. The scapegoat theory of Girard is an attempt to explain the origin of myth, yet when applied to the New Testament it yields a fascinating interpretation. To this interpretation we now turn.

People in all societies are constantly threatened with the unleashing of uncontrollable violence. It is Girard's thesis that each society engages in some form of sacrifice which is aimed at stemming the tide of violence and establishing social order. Whether subtle or overt, it is believed that the flood of uncontrolled violence can be damned up and its destructive force averted through a controlled act of ritual violence, that is, through the killing of a scapegoat

The word sacrifice applies here because the party against whom the ritual violence is directed is a substitute for the guilty one. One might begin with the commonplace joke, which is rooted in real experience, about the boss who fires a man; the man goes home and yells at his wife; the wife scolds the child; and the child kicks the dog. Such a chain of displacement resulting in animal sacrifice is classic in form. Ajax, for example, who had fought valiantly in the Trojan war, was one of two candidates eligible to receive Achilles' weapons as trophies of honor. The Greek army voted against Ajax and in favor of Odysseus. His anger having turned to madness, Ajax went on to the battlefield to vent his rage against Odysseus and the soldiers who voted against him. On the field was grazing a herd of sheep, but Ajax mistook them for soldiers and he engaged them in fierce battle, slaying every one of them. When

Calvin, the exchange is possible—it is akin to an ongoing sharing—only because of an ongoing relationship of faith between a sinful person and an innocent Christ.

33Melanchthon, "Apology of the Augsburg Confession," Book of Concord, 113.


he awoke from his madness and realized what a cruel thing he had done to the innocent sheep, he committed suicide. Peace returned to the Greek army who now could live without the threat of Ajax's reprisal. The cost of peace was the sacrificial shedding of the blood of the sheep.

The problem is that once anger is provoked and the urge to commit violence is aroused, there is no stopping it until it has taken a victim. In pre-civil societies where there is no criminal justice system, the law of clan revenge prevails. Inter-family vendettas and blood feuds can gradually decimate two populations. Every act of violence is considered a reprisal. There is no crime that is considered an unprecedented offense; the revenge is always for a prior crime. There is no way to retrieve the first or original crime, to right it, and then put an end to the vicious cycle. So in order to break the cycle, one side or another must offer up an innocent victim. But the victim cannot be the person who committed the last act of revenge in the chain. Someone else must be sacrificed if the cycle is to be broken.

Hence, René Girard concludes, the fundamental truth about violence is that, "if left unappeased, violence will accumulate until it overflows its confines and floods the surrounding area. The role of sacrifice is to stem this rising tide of indiscriminate substitutions and redirect violence into proper channels."34

Thus the purpose of sacrifice is to restore harmony to the community, to reinforce the social fabric. Everything else, Girard thinks, stems from that.

In principle, there is no difference between the sacrifice of humans and animals. The point is that the sacrificial victim must resemble the members of the community but not be identical. Consequently, a given community can sacrifice social undesirables, slaves, small children, or even the king. It is precisely the king's position at the center of society that makes him a social participant yet distinguishes him from the rest and, hence, makes him a potential sacrifice victim. Or, animals that are essential to the community's welfare such as cattle or goats may serve the same purpose. In general, the sacrificial victim does not volunteer for the honor.

We moderns just might perceive our Christian institutions and our democratic society to be founded on sacrifice. Most important here is our modern civil justice system, which is backed up by a strong police force. It appears to make the attempt to punish only the guilty party. Yet it is successful only when it masks, and thereby prevents, revenge. We say of a convicted criminal that he or she owes a debt to society. This is not literally true, of course. The debt is owed to the victim of the crime. The mask is this: in a civil judicial system we transfer the debt to the state in order to eliminate the need for revenge by the victim or the victim's relatives. Today's judicial system

^René Girard, Violence and the Sacred (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977) 10.


replaces yesterday's sacrificial system. Both share the goal of ending the cycle of violence.

Insofar as justice is successful and clan revenge is reduced to a minimum, we no longer sense the public need for sacrifice. But when the criminal justice system is sidelined or fails, this more fundamental psycho-social structure surfaces. Mafia families and ghetto gangs know well what this is.35

The cycle of reciprocal violence proceeds apace until someone quite innocent, someone random or even quite treasured, becomes the victim. Then out of remorse the cycle is broken and a new order is established.

Girard believes that we can better understand the madness of collective violence in our era if we pay attention to the archetype of the scapegoat.36 The scapegoat mechanism is likely to click in when (1) we are confronted by a cultural crisis, such as a plague or a war, which obliterates stable social differences; (2) we are able to make a symbolic accusation, that is, when we can identify the cause of the crisis with some representatives of moral breakdown; and (3) we select certain victims who allegedly embody this moral breakdown, usually people belonging to a minority and having distinctive marks such as color, sickness, madness, religious affiliation, or class status. The line between good and evil is drawn. The just can now be distinguished from the unjust. The result is mob action in an attempt to purge the atmosphere of the evil which precipitated the crisis.37

35Despite the title of the book, Violence and the Sacred, the primordial concept is mimetic desire, not violence. It is the desire for what someone else is or has—it is competition—that propels us toward violence. Cf. Walter Bukert, René Girard, and Jonathan Z. Smith, Violent Origins: Ritual Killing and Cultural Foundation, ed. Robert Hamerton-Kelly (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987) 123. Some interpreters of Girard may find it difficult to get the point. Forrest Wood, Jr., for example, writes, *'by establishing community we alleviate a source of violence." "Averting Violence: Social and Personal," Perspectives in Religious Studies 14:1 (Spring 1987): 37. The source is mimesis. We do not pursue community to alleviate mimesis. Community is the end, not the means, If there is a task to be performed, it would be to establish community without going through the painful process of scapegoating that hides the mimesis.

36René Girard, The Scapegoat (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986).

37In my judgment, Guard's analysis of this phenomenon is a bit reductionistic. He emphasizes that the sole value of sacrifice is the maintenance of social order and that religious interpretations regarding the appeasement of the deities represent a misunderstanding. Nevertheless, he grants that there is an element of mystery regarding the way sacrifice in fact works. I submit that the element of mystery is more important than Girard is willing to grant, and that the religious ritual of sacrifice involves more than the maintaining of terrestrial order. It also orients the society around the sacred center and evokes a sense of transcendent presence.


If the scapegoat archetype in fact provides us with a realistic tool for interpreting the human condition, then what? Girard says Jesus Christ is key here. The martyrdom of the innocent one reveals the oppressiveness of the scapegoat system and the fruitlessness of seeking self-justification through persecution of others. What Christ as the lamb of God does is expose the hypocrisy of the scapegoat mechanism. His death destroys the mob's self-justifying belief in the guilt of the victim. Scapegoats can no longer save because witchhunts and pogroms and persecutions have been demystified. Christ is the final scapegoat, the one who puts an end to the possibility of self-justification through scapegoating.

This leads Girard to what he believes to be the most coherent reading of the New Testament texts as well as the most coherent understanding of where the Christian religion went wrong. It is the best way to interpret Jesus' attacks against the scribes and Pharisees for persecuting and killing the prophets, for shedding the blood of the innocent going back to Abel.

Therefore I send you prophets, sages, and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town, so that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly, I tell you, all this will come upon this generation (Matt 23:34-36).

Going back to Abel? Abel was slain by his brother Cain, and this violent act began the history of clan revenge~the history of justifiable murder-which has lasted down to the present day. Jesus speaks here not merely to the scribes and Pharisees but to the whole history of the human race.38 By speaking thus, Jesus is revealing the hidden truth: our social structures are built to cover our violence. The Word of God Jesus is bringing is this: stop the cycle of violence. Turn the other cheek. Do not repay evil for evil.

The hiddenness of this fact is significant. Jesus describes those who mask violence with the metaphor of the tomb, glistening white on the outside while protecting the rotting flesh of death on the inside. The challenge raised by Jesus is that this hidden death might come out into the open and be revealed. The truth must be protected by a lie. The lie comes from the father of lies, Satan, says Jesus, who was "a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth" (John 8:44). In order to prevent Jesus' revelation from exposing the truth, the dark powers of death rise up to put Jesus to death.39 Jesus is

38Girard, Things Hidden, 159-64.

39Girard*s theory suggests that the scapegoat is normally random. Does that apply here? Not according to Raymund Schwager, S.J., who has attempted to apply the Girard


crucified in an act of legal ritual plus mob violence that seeks to establish peace in the community. How clearly this structure reveals itself in the New Testament texts!

So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, "What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, every one will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation." But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed." He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God. So from that day on they planned to put him to death" (John 11:47-53).

So, to prevent the portending disruption of the social order through reprisals by the Roman army, Jesus must be put to death so that "the whole nation" will not be "destroyed." After sending Jesus back and forth between the Roman and Jewish tribunals, "that same day Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; before this they had been enemies." (Luke 23:12). The social order is founded and maintained on ritual death. The legacy to history, however, is that Jesus' cross reveals the founding mechanism of violence. The New Testament account is there for everyone to read. This revelation itself helps to dismantle the power of social scapegoating in our own time.40

Important to Girard at this point is the contention that what happened to Jesus is not a sacrifice.

There is nothing in the Gospels to suggest that the death of Jesus is a sacrifice, whatever definition (expiation, substitution, etc.) we may give for that sacrifice. At no point in the Gospels is the death of Jesus defined as a sacrifice.41

Why is Girard opposed to the concept of sacrifice? It seems to fit his theory. He answers: because the death of Jesus is supposed to put an end to all further

theory to the biblical understanding of atonement. Schwager sees Jesus as the "necessary" scapegoat because the preaching of Jesus was the cause of his conflict. Must There Be Scapegoats? Violence and Redemption in the Bible (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987) 191. Girard*s own argument seems to lead to Schwager's conclusion.

^Girard, Things Hidden, 192.

41Ibid., 180.


sacrificing, that is, an end to all further scapegoating. Jesus is a scapegoat but not a sacrifice.

To Girard the concept of sacrifice presupposes that the gods are violent. If the human race believes that the divine powers are violent, then scapegoating is justified. The God of Jesus Christ, in contrast to the beliefs common to the world's religions, is not violent. Any attempt even within biblical theology to make God appear violent only constitutes one more act of hiding our murderous propensity.42

To say that Jesus dies, not as a sacrifice, but in order that there may be no more sacrifices, is to recognize in him the Word of God: "I wish for mercy and not sacrifices . . . " the Word of God says no to violence.43

Girard is confident the New Testament Gospels will back him up. When it comes to the book of Hebrews, however, Girard has a problem. "[H]e has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself" (Heb 9:26). Here Jesus is literally described as the single "sacrifice for sins" for all time (Heb 10:12). The author of Hebrews fails, according to Girard, to examine carefully the structure of sacrifice that presupposes a violent deity. Nevertheless, Girard takes comfort in noting that, because Jesus Christ is the final sacrifice, the book of Hebrews forbids any future sacrifices.44

The great sin of Christianity, then, is that it has failed to examine carefully enough the point of God's revelation in Jesus Christ, namely, that our God is not a God of sacrifice and violence. If we persist in picturing God in terms of the mechanism of sacrifice, we will find ourselves justifying prejudice against the Jews or any other group that threatens what we think we have. Christian history has been persecutory and is replete with accompanying

42On this ground Girard is unsympathetic to apocalyptic literature. The apocalyptic vision sees God as the vindicator of his chosen clan, as judging between the righteous and the unrighteous and then clobbering the unrighteous. The Kingdom of God brought by Jesus, in contrast, consists of a voluntary community of nonviolence. Things Hidden, 186, 196, 203.

43Ibid„ 210.

^Ibid., 228. It is obvious that Girard does not grant equal authority to every part of the Bible. James G. Williams comments: *'for Girard there appears to be a threefold canon within the canon: within the Bible, the New Testament; within the New Testament, the Gospels; within the Gospels, certain teachings on love, forgiveness, and nonviolence, particularly the Sermon on the Mount." "The Innocent Victim: René Girard on Violence, Sacrifice, and the Sacred,** Religious Studies Review 14:4 (October 1988): 325.


violence.45 At the same time, due to the revelatory event of the cross, our culture is undergoing a demythologizing of the mechanism of sacrifice, and this is making it increasingly difficult to engage in scapegoating and get away with it.46

Now, where does Girard fit with previous atonement models in the history of systematic theology. It is clear that he would have no sympathy for anything close to a satisfaction theory. Describing this as a "sacrificial pact" filled with "absurdities," he says

God feels the need to revenge his honour, which has been tainted by the sins of humanity, and so on. Not only does God require a new victim, but he requires the victim who is most precious and most dear to him, his very son. No doubt this line of reasoning has done more than anything else to discredit Christianity in the eyes of people of goodwill in the modern world. However acceptable to the medieval mind it might have been, it has become intolerable for us, and it forms the major stumbling-block for a world that is entirely (and quite justifiably) hostile to the idea of sacrifice. . . . 47

Because Girard thinks of Jesus as exemplary, as the scapegoat par excellence, perhaps he would tend toward the moral influence model. He is willing to say that Jesus fulfills an expectation God has for every human being. "Jesus alone has fulfilled a calling that belongs to all mankind."48 What we are to do, according to Girard, is individually decide to listen to Jesus and enter the Kingdom of God by choosing to turn the other cheek.

But this tendency toward moral influence is not all. There are some elements of Christus Victor saliently at work here. There is irony and trickery leading to victory. Violence overreaches itself in crucifying the one who refuses to play the game of violence.

What violence does not and cannot comprehend is that, in getting rid of Jesus by the usual means, it falls into a trap that could only be laid by innocence of such a kind because it is not really a trap: there is nothing hidden. Violence reveals its own game in such a way that its workings are compromised at their very source; the more it tries to conceal its ridiculous secret from now on, by forcing itself into action, the more it will succeed in revealing itself.49

45Girard, Things Hidden, 224f.

"Ibid., 174.

47Ibid., 182.

^Ibid., 213.

49Ibid., 209; cf. 193.


The revelatory power of the crucifixion leads to victory over the mechanism of violence.

There is one more item that tends to put Girard in the Christus Victor camp, namely, Satan. Girard identifies Satan with the mechanism of mimetic desire. It is Satan who strives to shut Jesus up, to blind the human race from the truth. Resistance is not passive. Rather, it comes from a subject in action.

From the moment the sacrificial order begins to come apart, this subject can no longer be anything but the adversary par excellence, which combats the installation of the Kingdom of God. This is the devil known to us from tradition—Satan himself. . . . 50

Key to the Christus Victor model is the adversary over whom the victory is won. Girard has an adversary. He thereby also has competition between the adversary and God. As Girard drifts toward this model, he drifts toward contradiction. God, here, would have to engage in violence leading to apocalyptic defeat of the adversary, would he not?

Does the Girard view warrant the introduction of another model for understanding the atonement? Might we call it the "Final Scapegoat" model? Perhaps yes. But let me offer some suggested clarifications.

I do not believe Girard's categorical rejection of the category of sacrifice when applied to Christ is convincing. This for two reasons, one exegetical and the other logical. Exegetically, we must simply admit that the idea of sacrifice as applied to Christ's atoning work is employed in the New Testament not only by Hebrews but also by Paul. No amount of pressing for a single coherent interpretation can change what the texts actually say.

In addition, there is no logical reason why Girard has to strain so hard to distinguish sacrifice from scapegoating. He works with the assumption that, in the whole history of religions prior to Jesus, sacrifice and scapegoating were one and the same. Ritual murder, understood as the sacrifice of the scapegoat, produced social order. What makes the case of Jesus different? The ritual murder of the scapegoat is the same. The difference is that the God revealed by Jesus is opposed to the mechanism of violence, that is, opposed to both sacrifice and scapegoating. Hence, the symbolic meaning of Jesus' crucifixion is this: no more. No more sacrifices. No more scapegoats. What is true for one is true for the other. On what grounds can Girard approve of the term scapegoat yet deny the term sacrifice?

In sum, for the author of Hebrews to speak of Jesus Christ as the final sacrifice and for Girard to speak of him as the final scapegoat are functionally the same. It is not the case that God approves of scapegoating and disapproves of sacrificing. The Christ event signals that God wants to put an end to both. To

"Ibid., 210; cf. 162.


think of Christ as the final sacrificial lamb is a way to communicate the meaning of atonement.

CONCLUSION

Our question has been: how does Jesus save? We have been working with a myriad of images and symbols that stretch back to the New Testament as well as multiple models employed by theologians for the two millennia since. That Jesus' work is salvific seems to be the agreed point. Yet, just how salvation is accomplished can be formulated in more than one way.

The variety of optional models is not decisive. What is decisive is that God acts in our behalf. Reconciliation is an act issuing from God's grace. Closely allied is the task of revelatioa When God acts in grace, what is revealed is our ungracious behavior. What is uncovered is our sinfulness, our propensity to establish our own security through the shedding of the blood of others. Furthermore, what is revealed is that we resist having this truth revealed. We cover it up. In covering it up, we may go so far as to shed more blood. We may even go all the way to Golgotha to cover it up.

This observation shows both the strength and the weakness of the revealer of true knowledge and the moral influence models. The strength here is that the atoning work of Christ reveals truth. The weakness is that the truth that is revealed condemns us rather than compliments us. Its reconciling power is not found in its ability to inspire us to create a social order founded on humanity's innate disposition for self-sacrificial love. What is revealed is not our compassion but rather our propensity is to kill the revealer. Only after this truth hits home are we ready to receive God's grace.

This observation also shows the weakness and strength of the Christus Victor model. The weakness is the temptation to think of God as belonging to one clan and seeking revenge against the divine enemy, Satan perhaps. God in heaven defeats Satan. The problem is that we on earth might decide that someone belonging to an enemy clan is Satanic and then, in the name of our God, amass our army to strive for victory. Our image of God risks being pressed into our own dream of terrestrial triumph. In short, we might yield to the temptation to use our image of God to justify our own scapegoating. Yet this weakness is balanced by a corresponding strength, namely, the emphasis on God's grace. It is God who is victorious, and we share in a victory God has achieved. We benefit from what God has done.

More to the point of the discussion raised by Girard, the Christus Victor model can be understood as subtle. Note how theologians have been able to avoid the imagery of flamboyant military victory in favor of the more humble hook and worm. The hook and worm image connotes nonviolent trickery. Similarly, in the case of Girard, God overcomes sin with subtlety. When the


violent scapegoating mechanism is employed to snuff out the representative of the Kingdom of God, it opens itself to revelation of the hitherto concealed lie, thereby sowing the seed of its own destruction.

Finally, with regard to sacrifice, Girard is right. God does not demand sacrifice. We do. Yet, in order to hide our own penchant for blood from ourselves, we attribute it to the divine. We create the illusion of a sacrifice-demanding God who does not exist in order to perpetuate the lie. Does the New Testament, then, perpetuate the lie when it describes Jesus Christ as the final sacrifice? No, it does not. Its emphasis is on Christ as the final sacrifice, the end to all further sacrificing on our part. It employs the image of sacrifice but reverses the roles. It is we, the human race, who are appeased by the shedding of blood; and it is God who offers it. This shocking reversal reveals that the mechanism of sacrifice had been illegitimate right from the beginning. To apprehend this truth is to realize that God had been close to us all along. God's love and grace have never been absent. Now that the truth is revealed, the difficult task is for us to accept it without further hiding. Once we accept God's atoning grace, then the work of reconciliation will have attained its completion.

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