The buck stops … over there!

This is a compelling diagnosis of the human condition and our resistance to the whole concept of substitution. We do not want to give up our place as judge. Barth specifically defines the primal human sin as making ourselves judges in order to exculpate ourselves and condemn others. This is pictured in the instantaneous response of Adam and Eve, who, after eating the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, begin blaming each other and the serpent in order to hang on to the illusion of innocence — an innocence irreparably lost. We have usurped God’s place as the only true Judge, and therefore the substitution must happen at that particular juncture. An invasive, displacing movement on God’s part is clearly indicated, but paradoxically, it is the invasion that liberates even as it humiliates.—Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 519