Response from Weaver

Further to my post on A nonviolent atonement and Paul Ede's comments that, "I'd be really interested if you could help me trace the logic of this, because I haven't yet figured out whether its necessarily the case that it follows that if there is violence in the atonement, then we can't be pacifists. Is it not possible that we can be pacifists precisely because of the violence of the atonement? i.e. Christ takes the punishment so that we don't have to punish ourselves or others? If I think that penal sub is a meaningful portrayal of the atonement, does that actually mean that ethically I am compelled to be committed to redemptive violence? " I invited Weaver to give a response, which he has. so below is Weavers response, I'd alwayd surprised and encouraged by the willingness of people like Weaver to enter into conversation like this. So my thanks to Professor Weaver for this..

one argument for preserving what I call a violent atonement is that presented by Ede, namely that because God has enacted violence and punishment in Jesus, we ourselves need not exercise violence. Several prominent theologians make this argument. I do not accept it for several reasons. For one, I think that this argument ignores the significance of saying that God is revealed in the life and work of Jesus. If Jesus is nonviolent, and that is certainly what the story of his life portrays, then the God who is fully revealed in Jesus cannot be a God who sanctions or works through violence, or who needs violence to accomplish the divine will. Further, the idea that Jesus’ death was a sacrificed offered to God, or needed by God, is not found in the story of Jesus itself. That idea is carried in from elsewhere. Then there is the point about helping God. Here the link from divine violence to our violence is indirect. If God needs to have Jesus punished so that we do not have to undergo punishment, then people have to carry out God’s need to have Jesus punished. In the case of the crucifixion, it was the Romans, with help from a few religious authorities, who were God’s “helpers” in punishing Jesus for our benefit. This puts divine violence at the heart of God’s universe. This makes divinely needed violence—the punishment of Jesus on our behalf—the “grain of the universe”, to use a phrase first give currency by John H. Yoder. And if divine violence is the “grain of the universe,” sooner or later human beings who claim to follow that God are going to get the idea that they can/should “help” God. [Here it would be possible to launch into caustic comments about US presidents who claim to be Christian while launching wars, etc]

This is a very brief response to what I am coming to see as the real endpoint of the discussion about atonement. The most important question about atonement is not about the death of Jesus; it is about the image of God we are holding. And if the story of Jesus portrays a nonviolent Jesus, then the God revealed in Jesus is a nonviolent God. And then if God is nonviolent, that shows that the “grain of the universe” is nonviolent (John H. Yoder’s point), and we should be rethinking atonement theology to reflect this nonviolent God. This argument does not automatically convince everyone to be pacifist. But what I hope to show is that it is a complete distortion of Christian faith to claim that its theology supports violence

Comments

[Paul Ede]

Thanks Brodie for following up my question and Prof Weaver for responding. Thats a very helpful and succinct explanation! Can I ask some further questions (which Brodie you yourself may be able to respond to). If we conceptualise the atonement as non-violent in terms of God's will towards Christ, how do we explain the fact that it was distinctly violent in both means and result? How do we explain Hebrews 9, and the need for the shedding of blood for the forgiveness of sins? Shedding blood is clearly central to the atonement in NT thought, and historically the gospels show that Jesus did indeed bleed and die. If this is true, then violence was inherent in the atonement (it was not bloodless). And it was clearly God's will that the cup of wrath be drunk by Christ (see Gethsemane). I therefore still can't really square this circle, if we are to throw out some form of penal substitution altogether.
Can we really tell the full story of the atonement if we admit the following ingredients are biblical:

1. Blood must be shed to forgive sins
2. Shedding blood is inherently violent - the body must be transgressed
3. Jesus begged god to take the cup away from him (i.e. Jesus understood that God the Father wanted him to suffer unto death if necessary)

For me, an atonement which tells the story as if God did not want Jesus in some way to suffer the violence of the cross (for our sakes) risks avoiding these crucial issues and begs the question, why did Jesus need to die anyway? I think it avoids a central tradition in Hebrew thinking and would agree with Tom Wright that penal sub has to have some place in our understanding of the cross. For me, Prof. weaver needs to explain this sentence "If Jesus is nonviolent, and that is certainly what the story of his life portrays, then the God who is fully revealed in Jesus cannot be a God who sanctions or works through violence, or who needs violence to accomplish the divine will." Because I see God intimately involved in sanctioning violence in many places in the OT, and because its not only about how Jesus lived his life that reveals God's will, but also how Christ chose to end it...he submitted to violent death despite wanting it to be taken from him, because he considered it to be his father's will.

But maybe I am missing something?

Paul

[brodie]

Paul - thanks for commenting and raising some grat questions and points. I will briefly indicate an answer to them here and then when I've more time give a fuller answer in apost of it's own.

With regards to Hebrews and chapter 9 in particular Weaver devotes several pages (p61 -66), so comments here are a poor summary of his position. This treatment of Hebrews follows a brief analysis of OT sacrifiecs. Weaver notes that "rather then dying in place of the worshiper, the animal's blood goes to God, 'representing the life of the person who will henceforth live for God'". The blood of the aninal is therefore symbolic of the worshipers life and this ritual is undrestood in terms of self-dedication and self-giving of the worshiper to God.
with regards to the OT practice of the scapegoat, Weaver rightly point out a fact often overlooked in these discussion that the goat is not killed but bears the sins away into the wilderness.
BAck to Hebrews....Weaver notes that this book "obviously uses the language of sacrifice, [but] the important questions concern how the rhetoric of sacrifice in Hebrews functions" (p61-2). His main argument is that the writer of Hebrews is either subverting or being critical of the cultic sacrificial system, that Jesus given his mediating function is not compared ti the sacrificial lamb but of the high priest, thus he is not so much offering as offerer. Weaver also argues that Hebrews treats Jesus' death as "exemplary rather than substitutionary" (p64). For Weaver Hebrews overturns rather than supports satisfaction atonement.

with regards to your other points I'll try and get to them soon, but needless to say if you want to understand Weavers argument then best read the book rather than my poor reproduction of his argument.

[Paul Ede]

Hiya Brodie! Really appreciate you taking time on this. I think I better get the book :-) I have to say that I am really attracted to non-violence and Yoder/anabaptist thinking at the moment (influenced by Urban Expression, the Anabaptist Network and Stuart Murray, who was Steve Chalke's batman at the 2004 EA atonement debates). But I am really wrestling with some of these atonement issues. I'm really looking forward to Rob Bell tonight. I cant really figure out how Christians can both protest outside faslane and be submarine commanders on nuclear subs (I know of one Glasgow Christian who does this for a living).

It sounds like weaver is arguing for a non-substitutionary atonement. I agree that Hebrews may be arguing for a subversion of the cultic system, but I can only see Christ's death first and foremost fulfilling the total meaning of what that system was pointing towards, before subverting it. Weaver says that "with regards to the OT practice of the scapegoat, Weaver rightly point out a fact often overlooked in these discussion that the goat is not killed but bears the sins away into the wilderness." This is true, but there are two goats, one most definitely gets sacrificed, the other goes into the wilderness. For me, the meaning of the day of atonement in Leviticus has to be central to understanding hebrew thought, but I don't think I agree with Weaver on his interp (as far as I understand it just now), because it doesn't really do justice to the context of leviticus, in which God commands Moses to have the community kill blasphemers, murderers etc, and for which there was no sacrifice that was sufficient (only christs was sufficient for these crimes).

Also, even if Hebrews foregrounds christs mediating function, how do we explain John 1:29 “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Here Christ is clearly portrayed as a sacrifice. Finally, What about all the violence that Christ brings on his return? I understand that Volf in Exclusion and Embrace argues against Derrida's thesis that perfect hospitality and reconciliation is possible in the eschaton, and would agree with that. Embrace can only truly happen once the "violence" inherent in sin has been named and judged. Its not guaranteed that people will repent once that judgement has been issued, and will therefore condemn themselves. Also, if god created the sacrificial system, he did actually include men in some form of violence in bringing about redemption...so maybe I disagree with Yoder on this one.

So I reckon that some extreme forms of (penal) substitutionary atonement are definitely wacko, but that we have to see violence and substitution as one of the core meanings of the atonement.

What we keep forgetting is that wills of God and Jesus are intimately bound together in the violence of the cross. Its almost like God was committing suicide (heresy alert!). What I mean is, its not god crushing some innocent man, but God in Christ and in the power of the Spirit choosing to die in this way in order to bring about redemption. The violence here cannot sanction violence imposed on others, but it does recognise the existence of violence in the redemptive process.

I do think the way humans have created a myth of redemptive violence is distorted, but that doesn't mean that God's approach to it all sanctions this distorted, creaturely approach. I think that somehow God's approach to the cross does involve God intimately in violence, but that doesn't necessarily need to cause us ethically to buy into redemptive violence brought about by our own means.

Hope this isn't too convoluted (or boring)... It helps to think through my thinking like this