The atonement

The death of Christ should not be seen as the expression of divine anger or even wrath, but as the expression of divine love. It is the gift of God’s son and, at least in some sense, the gift of God’s own self: “God was in Christ . . .” (2 Cor 5:19; MJG). If that is the major emphasis from the satisfaction/sacrificial/penal kind of atonement models, then there may also be room for the satisfaction and penal components as minor sub-plots in the atonement narrative, but only if they can be clearly found in New Testament texts, and only if they retain their minor role in relation to divine, covenantal love.— The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant, page 226

<idle musing>
I give a hearty AMEN to those sentiments! I can't really fathom how Penal Substitution, an idea which isn't even mentioned by the Church Fathers, has come to dominate so much of modern theology of the atonement. Well, that's not true, I can. Sadly.

First, you take a Latin/Roman view of justice, mix thoroughly with a misunderstanding of the curses in Genesis 3, add a healthy dose of shame and works, and what do you get? A mad god who needs placating or he'll blow you to pieces before sending you to hell...

There's a popular saying, "The god of the philosophers is not the God of the Bible." Perhaps we should modify that, "The god of the Penal Substitution model is not the God of the Bible." What do you think?

That's the final excerpt from this wonderful book (with many thanks to Wipf & Stock for the copy). Hope you enjoyed it.
</idle musing>

Necessary but not sufficient

The same new Testament writers who use new-covenant language also use the language of sacrifice. forgiveness of sins via the sacrifice of Christ is an essential, but not a sufficient, dimension of an atonement model rooted in the New Testament texts. To suggest that the new-covenant model and the sacrificial model are mutually exclusive would be to ignore the evidence of the New Testament itself. The prophetic promise of a forgiven covenantal people is realized in the sacrificial death of Christ.— The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant, page 225

Cross-shaped witness

So what is an appropriate politic for those who claim allegiance to the crucified Messiah? It is the task of every Christian community, in each and every time and place, to seek the will of God, the mind of Christ, and the guidance of the Spirit in discerning how to be such a community of the new covenant within the host culture, which is to say in the “world.” That world, is both the object of God’s love and the locus of human rebellion against God. The church’s presence in the world, as an alter-culture, including its alternative politics, is thus grounded in the twin realities of divine love, on the one hand, and human sin and need, on the other. The world, or the human city (in Augustine’s words), is therefore both the focus of the church’s cross-shaped mission and the source of the church’s cross-shaped suffering, its temptations and trials. The church is salt and light. Its cruciform voice will be double-edged, like that of the prophets, offering both critique and hope, judgment and salvation, with both aspects of its message shaped by the cross.— The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant, page 221

Seeking the welfare of

Members of the new-covenant community are still to seek the welfare of the city in which they reside, as Jeremiah told the exiles (Jer 29:7). But this must be a good they seek in cruciform mode. Their lives should be a living presence and voice that reflect the cross of the crucified Messiah. This is not, I would submit, the way that most discussions of Christians and politics (or public witness) proceed. If politics as it is normally understood and practiced is at least in part about the exercise of power, Christians have far too often sought to share that secular power, to control the political and/or public realm, and even to participate in the exercise of power in ways that are antithetical to the cross. As we all know, in fact, at times the cross has ironically and idolatrously become the symbol of such un-cruciform power, whether in the execution of medieval crusades, or in so-called “cross-lightings” by the KKK, or in contemporary popular war propaganda in which crosses and American flags are merged into a single blasphemous icon.— The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant, page 221

Who's on trial?

For all kinds of reasons, members of the new-covenant community should operate with a hermeneutic, an interpretive posture, of suspicion vis-à-vis the powers, since those powers crucified Jesus. The Gospel of John reminds us that political power is often blind to the truth of God and, we should probably say, to truth more generally. in John’s passion narrative we have the famous scenes of Pilate coming in and out as he exercises his political power, in deference to the crowds and the emperor, by questioning Jesus and having the innocent man flogged and eventually crucified (John 18:28—19:16a). But when Jesus identifies himself as being on a divine mission to witness to truth, Pilate asks, “What is truth?” (John 18:38). For readers of John, this is not the sincere question of a philosopher-king but the question of a blind politician so caught up in the web of imperial untruth that he cannot recognize truth when it is standing in front of him, the incarnation of truth, the one who is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). Thus, as Raymond Brown said, “the tables are turned; and Pilate, not Jesus, is the one who is really on trial,” for his question about truth is “in reality a decision for falsehood.” [A Crucified Christ in Holy Week, 10].— The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant, page 219-20

Loyalty to whom?

The New Testament proclaims that the reign of God has already begun in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Therefore members of the new-covenant community formed by his death constitute an alter-culture (an alternative culture) within whichever host culture they find themselves. This theme runs through the New Testament, from each of the Gospels, through Acts and Paul and other letters, to Revelation. Members of the new covenant live in a kind of exile, as resident aliens, constituted by a different charter, the word of the cross. That is, we are a politic before we have a politics. Our primary political activity is to be the church, the new-covenant community shaped by the cross: to worship God truly and to live out the demands of the kingdom of God and the lordship of Jesus.

The primary group identity of all members of the new-covenant community is that they belong to their common Lord and to one another across the globe. Thus their primary allegiance is to that common Lord and to one another, not to any other group or entity, including any nation-state. In other words, the death of Jesus means, for his followers, the death of every form of nationalism. Participation in the new covenant means a change of loyalty.— The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant, page 219 (emphasis original)

Ongoing change

The close relationship of the Spirit to the cross, that is, to atonement, means that, whatever else the cross does, it connects people to God and to one another in a transformative way. To be saved by the cross of Christ is not only to be forgiven but also to be changed; it is not merely to believe in a past one-time act but to participate in its ongoing, transformative effects—all by the workings of the Spirit.— The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant, page 212

An invitation

For Paul, we have seen, peace and peacemaking are constitutive of Jesus’ identity, his father’s identity, the Spirit’s identity, the kingdom’s identity, and the church’s identity. That is, the Triune God is the God of peace, and the peace of God is a fundamental mark of God’s reign and God’s people. To make peace, empowered by the Spirit and in the shape of the cross, is to be like Christ and thereby like God. It is to participate in the mission and identity or, better, the missional identity, of God. Paul is fully in sync, therefore, with the words of Jesus in Matthew: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Matt 5:9, similar in vocabulary to Col 1:20). This Jesus is, for Paul, the Lord of peace, the one who made and who makes peace on behalf of the Father and in the power of the Spirit. Similarly, for Luke, Jesus is the one who inaugurates God’s reign of shalom and invites his followers, both before and after his nonviolent, peacemaking death, to follow in “the way”—the way of God, salvation, and peace: the way of Jesus himself.— The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant, page 201

From beneficiaries to instruments

Those who are beneficiaries of God’s peace become instruments of God’s peace. This peace, we must remember, is the comprehensive shalom promised by the prophets, inclusive of restorative justice and coterminous with the kingdom of God.— The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant, page 195

Non-retaliation and the Christian

Practicing peace is therefore a form of bearing witness to the gospel in the most difficult circumstances, the expression of the teaching and example of both Jesus and Paul to refrain from retaliation and to love one’s enemies. By obeying and imitating both their apostle and their Lord in this regard, believers would become a living exegesis of the gospel of peace. Such peaceful relations with outsiders would include the rejection of violence toward them, apparently even in self-defense, for as Richard Hays has put it, “There is not a syllable in the Pauline letters that can be cited in support of Christians employing violence.” Non-retaliation, for Paul, is not an option for peacemakers in Christ; rather, it is the way of Christ.— The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant, page 190

Example or presence

Paul does not merely hold out Christ as an example, but points to him as a living presence with and in whom the church has koinōnia inasmuch as it practices peace—the peace of the crucified and resurrected Messiah. he is the Lord of peace, the son of the God of peace.

Peaceableness/peacemaking is, therefore, practicing the presence of God and of Christ or, more precisely, it is allowing the present Christ, the Lord of peace, to do in the community that which he has done and wishes to continue doing for the sake of the people of God and for the entire world.— The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant, page 188

Both and

It should be stressed that Luke does not portray Jesus’ death as an act of peacemaking rather than an atoning sacrifice. it is both, with forgiveness of sins being the factor common to both aspects, and to the death’s effectiveness in inaugurating the new covenant. Indeed, the identity of the new-covenant community depends on its participants receiving forgiveness and peace, and then sharing forgiveness and peace with others.— The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant, page 183

The new covenant

Jesus identifies the cup as “the new covenant in my blood” (22:20). In this statement and his acceptance of suffering just noted, Jesus is forswearing the use of violence to bring about the kingdom of God; he is prepared to shed his own blood, rather than that of his enemies, to accomplish God’s plan for salvation, for peace. By sharing his body and his blood, his very self in its crucified reality, he invites his disciples to share in his mission and his fate. “There is ‘no communion’ between partaking of the bread and cup, sharing in the body and blood of Jesus, and drawing the sword.” [Swartley, Covenant of Peace, 180] The new covenant is coming about through nonviolent means, by Jesus’ accepting rather than inflicting violence.— The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant, page 180

We kill the peacemakers

Ironically, then, the one who seeks peacefully to bring good news to all will be perceived as, and eventually crucified as, bad news—a threat to peace and security. This is, paradoxically, both true and false. On the one hand, because Jesus’ way of the cross, in all its counterintuitive and countercultural dimensions, challenges the very notion of Roman peace and power to its core, that Roman “peace” and power will have to deal with the threat. On the other hand, the very thing Rome needs in order to have true peace and security is the nonviolent, topsy-turvy power of God that arrives in Jesus. He is, in other words, both Rome’s problem and Rome’s solution.— The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant, page 179

Jesus as peace

For Paul, then, Jesus is “the Messiah, our peace” (cf. Eph 2:14) by virtue of his peacemaking death that has made God’s enemies into God’s friends, and has also made people who are naturally quite different and even estranged into one body, one reconciled people of the (new) covenant. This is a reality, a divine and messianic gift. The promised peace has arrived, in all of its dimensions. At the same time, however, it has not arrived in its fullness and, for that reason, it is a peace that needs to be embraced and embodied day to day. That is, Jesus the Lord of peace continues the work of peace in the present. We need, then, to consider Jesus as the present Lord of peace, and thus to peace as ecclesial practice.— The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant, page 178

The cross—again

This love the Messiah had and has for the world and for the church is not, for Paul, only a reference to Jesus’ deep concern for individuals’ salvation in the sense of their reconciliation to God—though it is clearly and emphatically that. Indeed, everything Paul thinks and says about peace is grounded in and flows from his theology of the cross. For him, there can be no true and lasting peace among humans without reconciliation with God, without a common embrace of the cross. Yet there can be no doubt that for Paul “the love of Christ” manifested on the cross refers not only to his compassionate desire to restore humanity to fellowship with God, but also to Jesus’ deep concern to effect reconciliation of people to one another. That is, the purpose of Christ’s death on the cross is to create a people of the covenant—the new covenant promised by the prophets in which people live in peace with God and with one another.— The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant, page 175

It's in Luke from the start

These first three peace texts in Luke—first the promise of imminent peace to be brought by the Messiah (Luke 1:79); then, immediately, the inauguration of peace in the birth of the Messiah (Luke 2:14); and then, immediately, the confession of Simeon (Luke 2:29–30)—are programmatic for Luke’s Gospel and his entire theological project. They tell us what the ministry of the Messiah consists of: inaugurating the age of peace and thereby creating a community, a people, of shalom—a covenant community that experiences and practices God’s peace and justice.— The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant, page 164

The Messianic age

Righteousness and faithfulness, peace and security: these are the traits of the Messianic age. In 11:10–11 Isaiah extends these benefits beyond Israel to the Gentiles; he internationalizes the messianic peace.— The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant, page 158

Messianic age

The phrase “Peace and righteousness (or justice)” is frequently shorthand for the eschatological or messianic age in both the OT—including Isaiah specifically—and in at least some Second Temple texts. Paul both knows this slogan and develops it, as Rom 5:1, 14:17, and several other texts make clear.

For Paul, then, Jesus is indeed the Prince of Peace, the one through whom God has made and is making the messianic shalom a reality, the covenant of shalom to which the scriptures of Israel bear witness.— The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant, page 160

A strange Messiah

As we have examined the practices of faithfulness and love that the predictions of Jesus’ death generate, and that are the essence of participation in that death, we have seen that these practices are all counterintuitive and countercultural. They are also inherently political, if we define that word as referring to the public life of a community. Moreover, these practices also clearly represent a politics of nonviolence, of suffering and of suffering love. This politics would support neither a theology of Roman, imperial domination nor a theology of messianic hatred and violent overthrow, since the “Lord” and the “Messiah” of the passion predictions, and of the New Testament writings more generally, is the Lord who willingly dies at the hands of the imperial authorities after subverting their theology and practices in his life and teaching. A strange sort of Lord and Messiah indeed.— The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant, page 131