Jesus rose because he’s God

Greg Schilling passed on a reading that his son, Andy, said raised some issues with a recent reflection that I wrote. I think so, anyway. The email string, and the earlier reflection, aren’t really important to this week’s reflection. They are just the reason I wrote the following.

The reading Andy passed on to Greg, and then onto me, was an excerpt from Richard Rohr’s Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi. It sounds like a terrific book. The excerpt, however, presents a weak argument to a very large problem about why Jesus died, and what his death means for us. Maybe Rohr wanted to say what I’m saying. Maybe the rest of the book fills in the huge blanks left from this excerpt. 

Richard Rohr agrees with the statement that nothing is more faulty in Christian theology than an unfortunate supposition claiming Jesus needed to be sacrificed as a debt payment to God for sin. Richard names this notion as the “substitutionary atonement theory.” Just like theory of evolution, this theory was the result of evidence revealed. It’s a formed conclusion from some very early Christian preachers. Rohr disagrees with this theory, formed formally by Anselm of Canterbury somewhere in the 11th Century. The atonement theory explained by Rohr (and you can read it here), presents a limited Jesus, standing in for us as a sin substitute.

The explanation from Rohr, though, continues the confusion. He drops extremely important issues about sin. Rohr rightly wants Christians to recognize the “real” reason that Jesus died (to love us back to him), but he throws the baby, the soap, the tub and the towel out with the bath water. Somebody has got to at least catch the baby. That’s what I want to do here.  I’m a shower guy, so this analogy has to end here.

False assumptions in the atonement theory say: first, that God cannot love us until a atonement for all sin is to happen; and second, that God “needs” a proper death payment for sin, because all sin leads to death. 

Rohr’s explanation of the failure of the atonement theory is a claim that Jesus should not be identified as the substitute sacrifice for our sin. I don’t believe that’s true. Richard properly disagrees with the two things above. He incorrectly assumes they are essential to the substitutional atonement theory. I don’t think that’s true either.

In fact, Richard is correct to dissuade folks that such a silly set of expectations could exist. God’s love does not depend on sacrifice. God gave plenty of insight on the limits of sacrifice, using the human desire to satisfy God as a template for how he would eliminate that need in us. It is, however, important that the chasm between us and God be bridged through atonement, a reconnection. God does not require a payment from us for our  accumulated debt of sin. Sin, however, separates us from God, and remaining in our sin will continue the separation. That’s how I would clarify this.

The signs of atonement as substitutionary for us by Jesus, and the payment of the debt (eliminating the consequence of eternal death) for sin by Jesus descending into the depths of the ultimate separation from his Father (hell itself) are still appropriate concepts. They don’t, however, have anything to do the two assumptions above.

I’m not one to challenge Richard Rohr’s great mind and heart, so I’ll simply say that in this narrow definition of atonement as limiting God’s love he’s correct. In the larger understanding of atonement, though, he states the argument improperly. Rohr’s claim about substitutionary atonement is similar to saying we should not place the deer crossing signs near highways in order that deer no longer attempt to cross the road at those places. The deer aren’t following the signs. The signs simply reveal where the deer migrate. 

Rohr does not present a more acceptable theology. He just makes a “not that” statement, which is unhelpful. Rohr doesn’t address any of the scripture that says all this important stuff about Jesus’ atonement and reparation. Not really. Rohr focuses upon a clever correction to a conundrum that he himself seems to have created. He says that Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God, not the other way around. Somehow, he believes a whole host of folks think that Jesus came to change God’s mind. Even if these folks exist, their goofy thinking doesn’t eliminate atonement and debt. Jesus came to change the consequences of our sin, which we can’t relinquish. We can’t personally destroy the evil that seeks to destroy us.

By chastising atonement theology, Rohr mistakenly and poorly condemns a merit-based atonement, a sacrifice of substitution, and a reparation of a fallen world. He can judge that way, but it is dismissive. He thinks that what Jesus actually did is “not” a certain set of things, and the only replacement theology he posits is that God loves us “because God is good.” 

His “God is good” baseline leaves out the needed perspective of God living in us. But, in fairness, I get his desired point. He wants to clarify against God wanting payment for sins in order for him to be able to love us. To believe such a thing is not just backwards, it does not properly identify who God is. 

To then say that we should not focus on sin but rather than upon the suffering of God is a bit insincere. Sin is the sign of why we suffer. It is real. Sin has consequences, which unless we grasp forgiveness we can’t know God’s love. Jesus overcomes the consequences of sin. He “atones” for sin, making us all at one with him, the Father, and the Spirit. It’s perfectly fine for Jesus to do that atoning. He does so without changing the Father’s loving character, or Jesus’ place in the Trinity. He does so in order that the Holy Spirit can come upon us, when we agree to accept God's love. We shift our trust to God from our selves, or from some other entity.

Here’s where Rohr is right on. We shouldn’t focus on sin as something we need to remove, but since we will always operate in it we need to know that God is there with us all along. What’s really going on (which he probably says in his book) is that God proves to us that he loves us by going all in on becoming one of us, and promising to never leave us. Because God is God he remains God, even as he became human. His becoming one of us had a lot to do with atonement, sin, and repair. Atonement means being at one, or in harmony with someone. That’s what Jesus did. He was, as a human, at one with God.

Jesus died for being who he is. Loving, the ultimate authority, the Messiah, and every other name that defined his deity and his sinless humanity. The bloody part of Jesus death did not please God. It broke God’s heart, to be separated in death from his oneness. Jesus was killed because he was God and man. He wasn’t killed because he was one of us trying to please God. All humanity could do was kill the man. So, why did God go through this? It was not a charade. It was very real suffering for a permanent, at-one-ment reason. The separation of us from God met its apex with the crucified Christ separated from the Father. 

God’s dying was an atonement, a willing sacrifice within the dark reality of our broken, sinful, deadly (we all die) world. Jesus didn't have to be a sacrifice, but we left God no other way to reconnect us. It was our reliance upon our own will, and our inability to reconnect to God that drove Jesus to the cross. God made creation (Adam and Eve) perfect. The creation wasn’t made to die. The first creation, though, bought into the lie of being able to replace God with themselves. This separated them from God, which God allowed. God has never broken the promise for us to be free, at liberty.

God traverses that separation with a ready presence, but we cannot. We cannot pass back to paradise. No one has been able to reconnect properly to God when in the state of sin. It’s an impossibility for us to “merit” God’s presence, or recreate the world that God made for us. We can’t do it. We cannot atone/correct/repair our sin, or reform the universe. All sin leads to separation from God, and death. Only Jesus could “merit” a return, a oneness to God.

We can’t ignore sin, but we can do as Rohr says and reach back out to God, over and over and over … God’s reach surrounds us. We can find him everywhere. Sin fades in our relationship to God.

God’s love has everything to do with the atonement requirement, but not that God is ever unable to love us. God respects and honors his creation so much that he didn’t want to force anyone to love him. So, he loves us. He joined the migratory path of the deer, got run over and killed, and then leapt back to life on his own. And, only he could do it. He conquered death.

The cars keep coming. The deer keep crossing the road. The deer sign isn’t a marker that directs deer how to live better and not get run over. It’s not just a faulty location for the sign, either, where God screwed up by putting the deer sign smack dab in the direction of 55 mile per hour traffic.  

This analogy has considerable limits, but the general idea is there.

God’s rising from the dead was a reparation, a repair of our ultimate end, which he turns into a transformation. We now know that we only die to “this” life, but we have to more than believe that God exists. We have to yearn for him. He yearns for us. When the feeling is mutual, we leap.

His presence has been shown to us. God died because he loves us. He wasn’t accidentally killed, or killed by a Roman band of terrorists. He was killed by the very people to whom he had revealed himself. And, they engaged the Romans into their rejection of Jesus. He wept over this faithless, heart hardened character of his creation. His person, his miracles, his prophesied life meant nothing. Even those who wanted desperately to believe him still became despondent over his death, and left him. His death was proof of our twisted desire to not need God.

His rising melted the fog away. The joy of his risen presence changed the world. Jesus repaired us to himself, allowing in each of us his life, in the Eucharist and in the indwelling of his Spirit. Set, game, and match. (That tennis analogy ends there!)

A “debt” is a built up credit line that we take from but none of us are able to put back anything to clear it. We can’t take away the effects of our sin. When we sin, we mess up the universe. When we die, we cannot raise our self to live again. God holds the universe together, though. He turned the credit line into a free-flowing waterfall of grace. We can only assume that God’s goodness never disqualifies his honor and faithfulness to our will. Beyond that, its over all of our pay grades. We fall on our knees and eagerly let him love all over us.

The atonement part of the early Church teaching, then, even if it disappoints Rohr, is still a correct understanding, but for a completely different reason than God holding back love. Atonement, sacrifice and reparation could only happen with God, but they still had to happen. Atonement and debt payment didn't require Jesus death. We did. Jesus asked the Father if there was another way. Could he create the internet back then instead of later? Could he make a movie of himself better explaining who he was? Could he stop and simply make them all understand? No, was the answer. 

His rising changed the game. The early church followers then ran to their very similar martyred deaths with stunning excitement. They knew that eternal life awaited them. Jesus lived in them and gave them both peace and courage. In fact, the Kingdom surrounded them even in this life. Their death was a leap across the chasm. That’s a true change in trajectory.

The reality is that humankind, and the universe itself, requires a reparation that only God can provide. Scripture isn’t just peppered with this notion but simmered, deep-fried, and smoked in it. 

Now, I’m going to have to read the rest of his book and see that he was saying all this, all along.