Edgework

6. The Gospel is the Good News of the Kingdom: When Jesus began his ministry he called on people to repent for the Kingdom of God was at hand. This was a message that called for changed allegiances and practices right here and now. He didn’t announce that he was preparing a way for people to escape from this world but that he was offering a new and qualitatively superior life to those who would follow him. For too long, it has been the practice of evangelicals to promote a theology of atonement based solely on Pauline writings with little reference to the gospel record of what Jesus said and did. In other words, we have been reading Jesus in light of Paul instead of Paul in light of Jesus.

When we actually go back to the gospels to begin our quest for understanding the Good News it is striking how prominent the call is to be saved from our present sins and to follow in the way of Jesus right where we are. And even when we read the account of the early drama of the rapidly expanding Jesus movement in the Acts of the Apostles the consistent call is to repent and follow Jesus. Conversion implied embarking on a radically new life here and now.

Many evangelical commentators have suggested that Paul’s main concern in his letters was to delineate a gospel that was sure to whisk people away to heaven at the point of death even though that is not the focus in the Gospels and Acts. A healthier approach is to understand that he is defending the good news as announced by Jesus and cleaning up the mess that it created. For example, instead of seeing Romans as a theological treatise on how to avoid hell and get to heaven when you die, it should be read as an attempt to get both Jewish and Gentile believers to catch the vision of a church that has room for both.

That is not to say that the gospel offers no hope for life after death. But the hope it offers is basically an extension of the new life that is found here and now if we repent of self-centered living and follow Jesus in his way. In that sense you might say that hope for life after death is a secondary concern in the New Testament; a corollary to the main focus of calling people to follow Jesus in the way of the Kingdom on this side of the grave.

So when we speak of atonement, that is how persons can be reconciled to Jesus, we must primarily be thinking about how the life, death and resurrection of Jesus helps people enter that way of life. Making the gospel primarily about escaping from this world is to put the proverbial cart before the horse.

7. Some Things Will Remain Shrouded in Mystery: It seems to me that all the theologizing the church has done for nearly 2000 years around the question of atonement has been an attempt to understand more clearly just exactly what transpired in the Jesus event. One of the problems we encounter in this endeavor is that of putting into human words and concepts what is happening in the world of the divine. The prophet Isaiah reminds us of this difficulty by writing, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD, For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9). The Apostle Paul said it another way: “For now we see through a glass darkly…” (I Corinthians 13:12). And again, “For who has known the mind of the LORD so as to instruct him” (I Corinthians 2:16)?

Many theologians are sure they fully understand how atonement “works.” Usually such certainty emerges when they latch on to one biblical metaphor and run with it while ignoring all the others. When attempting to discern what precisely happened from God’s point of view in the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus it is best not to be too dogmatic. No matter how eloquent we are in holding forth a particular “theory” or perspective, we must concede that in the end some things will remain a mystery to us mortals.

So when we study and discuss the topic of atonement, we should expect that at the end of the day we will have to admit that some things will remain a mystery. To try to nail down one view and close our minds to all other possible interpretations demonstrates our unwillingness to allow some things of the spirit to remain a mystery.

8. The Trinity Must be Kept Intact:  One of the foundational concepts emerging from the New Testament is that God should be thought of as a Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus frequently spoke of his Father, even claiming that he and the Father were one, and promised the coming of the Holy Spirit to empower and teach the new community of Christ followers. Paul speaks of God being in Christ reconciling the world to himself, in other words the two are in agreement and work in harmony to save us from our sins.

Any view of atonement that pits the Father against the Son in the process of accomplishing God’s work should be suspect. It would even be fair to say that if the Father and the Son are placed in a sacrificial relationship, Trinitarian relationships are being conceived within a pagan framework. If it is true, as some claim, that the Father turned his face away from Jesus while hanging on the cross, that would mean a fundamental disruption occurred in the eternal dance of love within the Trinity. This we cannot allow because we cannot conceive of the breakup of the Trinity, even for a relatively short time.