Episode 012 – Atonement: Sacrificial Payment or Gift?
In this episode we talk about the concept of atonement. Was there a debt that was paid on the cross that Jesus died on? Was His death on the cross a symbol of mercy instead of a financial transaction? Was it also an act of selfishness? And why did Tom Green make a rap video? Join us as we pour through these challenging but interesting topics.
Here are some show notes:
What is the doctrine of Atonement?
What assumptions are made about the death of Christ within such a doctrine? Biblically? (Rom. 3:21-26
?), Theologically (Anselm: Curs Deus Homo – 1033-1109) Culturally & Historically? (Jewish Tradition, Ancient Traditions).
Sacrifice: Is it problematic (from a modern day ethical point of view, to understand Jesus’ death as a sacrifice? Is it problematic to our view of an omnipotent God?
What is the logic of sacrifice? Debt & Payment in order to fulfill a kind of cosmic economy?
What is the logic of gift? Self-Offering in spite of all economies. (Mat. 9:1-13)
Terms:
- Atonement/Sacrifice/Propitiation (Rom 3:25): Greek = hilasterion: meaning “means by which sins are forgiven”.
Links:
Google Book: http://cli.gs/MXRuzN
Tom Green Rap: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ctc4daiIZU
Quoteable Quotes:
“God’s order is preserved through his own assumption of the conditions of estrangement; his mercy is imparted in the acceptance of Christ’s voluntary death; the highest law of God’s inviolable justice is boundless mercy; God’s sovereignty necessitates his condescension; the goodness that condemns the sinner requires that sin be forgiven. This is not because Anselm sees God as divided against himself: rather, he has come to see Christ’s sacrifice not as an economic gesture (meant to insure the stability of a universe foundd on unyielding laws of equivalence and retribution), but as belonging instead to the infinite motion of God’s love, in which justice and mercy are one and can never be divided one from the other; he has recognized Christ’s act as an infinite motion towards the Father, belonging to the myster of the Trinity, and simply surpassing all the arrangements of debt and violence by which a sinful humanity seeks to calculate its “justice”. — D.B. Hart, Beauty of the Infinite, 370-371.
“the contagion of merit and intercession, though it was still, and crucially, a trade of sorts, was an impossible and miraculous trade in the infinite, a seeking to restore, by all and for all, the repayments of a debt due which is nothing but an infinite free accepting. Just for this reason, Aquinas insisted that human forgiveness could not wait on a human penance which it could not, like divine forgiveness, guarantee; instead, forgiveness, as negative cancellationonly attained through positive enabling and substitutionary undergoing, had to be freely and infinitely offered without price to the neighbor, as the gospels demanded. Therefore forgiveness obeyed no ordinary, calculable economy, since it was without finite price.” John Milbank, Being Reconciled, pg. 47
This episode is 56 minutes long and you can listen to it here:
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