God Talk
More talk about god and be found on my Faith in Jesus web log...whose posts encourage faith and grace.
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When we talk about God, we refer to entities that we do not
understand. We use words that lend the talk, at first, credibility, and,
later, notoriety. Our talk becomes notorious for not achieving a
knowledge that satisfies our search for (or away from) God. In the best
cases, we talk about God in a way that sounds as if we have overhead God
talking to us. We are humbled and excited; confident of the value of
the expression and yet reluctant to overgeneralize.
My interest is not to be doctrinally correct. While libelous heresy
is of course to be rejected, so is the assumption that we can both
understand and explain God in a codified, systematic manner. In my
experience, the phrase "doctrinally correct," often belies an idol of
the mind that thrives on gaining the approval of a subset of the body of
Christ at the expense of intellectual humility.
My interest is in discovering meaning and beauty in, chiefly, the
canonical writings about Jesus. If someone can show me a non-canonical
writing that is different from and yet is as illuminating as the
canonical writings (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), I'll be happy to
read it. If anyone is concerned about being doctrinally correct instead
of literarily accurate, please find a different page to read, because, I
assure you, the internet and the presses are full of that kind of
discourse.
Recognizing these things, we do the best we can . . .
.
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No sooner did Jesus appear than also did formulations of his
identity. Before his birth, an angel (a non human messenger from God, no
wings necessary) called him "God with us." About thirty years later,
after he began preaching from town to town, Jesus asked his own
disciples about the current theories:
When Jesus
came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples,
saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?
And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist:
some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.
He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?
And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ,
the Son of the living God.
And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou,
Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but
my Father which is in heaven. (Matthew 16)
Here are the titles provided by this passage:
- Son of man
- Christ
- Son of the living God
I'll return to these, but want to look forward in time to note that
the question of identity was at the center of many debates, leading to
careful formulation of creeds, along with some martyrdom and other
violence that, however you label him, you can be sure Jesus eschews.
Many formulations maintain the paradoxical edges of Jesus' identity
by pronouncing outright that he is perfect God and perfect Man. This is
a paradox because we cannot imagine the perfection of the infinite and
the perfection of a finite being contained in one person—an
eternity that lasts exactly one hour, or something like. These
paradoxical edges prevent us from ever being able to define him, which
isn't a bad thing, the goal for a disciple being not to define Jesus but
to be defined by him.
By contrast, definitions of Jesus that at times emphasize either his
humanity or his divinity do so at the expense of the other. The wondrous
aspect of a human who walks successfully by faith from his first breath
to his last, who feels everything everyone else feels, who is vulnerable
to the point of sweating beads of sweat like drops of blood—all
this is lost when the humanity is overlooked. The hope and confidence
that there is a spiritual door through which we can pass that takes us
into the presence of God with a new identity for ourselves—all
this is at risk of being lost when his divinity is overlooked.
The plea of this piece is to keep the paradoxical edges. Avoid the
temptation of reducing him to something marketable, whose value is all
on the surface. The authors of the gospels could have reduced his
identity to the three-word sentence that is common today among
evangelicals ("Jesus is God"), but they chose not to. In a few instances
the phrase—which is certainly easy to write in Greek, "Θεóς
Ιησους"—is almost used, but not quite.
Here is on example of a near equation (reduction) between Jesus and
God. Note that it takes place in the mind of a man who has just
experienced a miraculous event in the presence of Jesus. The gospel of
Mark (chapter 5) has Jesus urging the man whom he had just delivered
from numerous demons to "tell people what the Lord has done for you,"
and the man immediately tells people what "Jesus had done" for him. It's
a nice passage. Jesus, as recorded from Aramaic into Greek, used the
word ὁ κύριός, "the Lord," when he said "what the Lord has done for
you."
This word (κύριός) applies to both humans (in positions of power) and
God (in the position of power). The Jesus-is-God equation then can be
loosely inferred from this passage. But equally well the
Jesus-a-human-in-a-position-of-power can be inferred. However—and
this is my main point—either interpretation is not sufficient to
describe Jesus. He was not a magician, just as he was not a
mini-God-the-father who was living both outside of time and inside of
it. He was not pretending to be only a man. He was not pretending to be
only God. He was being Jesus, the son of his earthly mother and
the son of his heavenly father.
Another instance where the definition approaches a simple equation is
in the beginning of the gospel of John. It states,
In the beginning was the Word [ὁ λόγος], and the Word [ὁ λόγος] was with
God, and the Word [ὁ λόγος] was God. The same was in the beginning with
God.
This is perhaps as close as the New Testament gets to the three-word
sentence that sprinkles so many sermons these days. Most readers would
agree that the logos refers to Jesus, before that name (Jesus)
was given to him. And from that observation some would construe that it
is the same as saying, "Jesus is God." The passage, however, complicates
matters where it states, "The same was in the beginning with God." Put
into contemporary phrasing, this second part would be similar to
Christians saying, "God is Jesus." That's a phrase one doesn't often
hear, because it sounds, even to those who do not respect nuances,
reductive.
The fact that the equation doesn't work equally well in both
directions suggests that it suffers from oversimplification. Looking
again at the opening of John, we can see something else at work:
being with and being. Being with suggests
separateness (x is near y), while being suggests an equation (x
is y). This paradox, I maintain, reveals a much more interesting
arrangement, one that is happily relational and unpredictable (assuming
we cannot predict things we do not understand).
The opening of John can be paraphrased something like this, "In the
beginning was the expression of God. The expression was with God and the
expression was God. And, conversely, in the beginning was God, and God
was with the expression and God was the expression." Not being sure
what this means, I imagine the "expression" or "logos" has to do with
time and space. Expression, in a human language, occurs that way, at
least. The system of meaning and the plenitude of thought might be in
the divine mind all along, but only with the expression does it happen,
does it become limited in that it is no longer potentially about
everything but is actually about something.
The poet's pen, according to one of Shakespeare's characters, takes
"forms of things unknown" and gives to "airy nothing a local habitation
and a name." This might approximate the role of Jesus in bringing
infinitude into what humans consider existence (within space and time),
giving every known thing a local habitation and a name. Whether this is
the difference between God and the logos (the logos being the
intentional limitation of the infinite) or not, the difference clearly
cannot be reduced to a simple equation.
Two final examples of near-equations between Jesus and God occur in
Paul's letters to the Colossians and the Philippians. We should
remember, these are written by a person who clearly distinguished
between the Son and the Father, a distinction that prevents simple
equations. I cannot be my father, because in that case I cannot be
myself. I derive my sonship from my father, and my father derives
fatherhood from me. With this admission of difference, we can appreciate
the unique role Jesus possesses. Paul writes:
Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the
firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that
are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether
they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things
were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by
him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church: who
is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he
might have the preeminence. (Colossians 1)
Here is "the image of the invisible God" who is part of a race (first
born) that he created and sustains, who is clearly divine, and yet who
is never confused with the invisible God, the God who, earlier in the
same passage, is the Father who places us in the kingdom of his dear
Son.
The passage in Philippians, using different terminology, refers to a
"form" (μορφῇ—external appearance) instead of an "image"
(εἰκὼν—portrait), both words suggesting that when one sees Jesus,
one sees God:
Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery
to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon
him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And
being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient
unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly
exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name . . . .
(Philippians 2)
This Jesus can claim equality with God in some sense, but chooses not
to and instead submits himself to the conditions that an infinite being
would never be able to experience. As a result, this Jesus is exalted,
not by himself, but by "God" who gives him a name which is above every
name. It is that "name" that the paradoxical edges protect; it is a name
that is unique, neither a simple equation with "God," nor a name that
puts him in competition with the Father.
That "name" is neither a secret nor dependent upon a particular sound
or spelling. It is a functional name. It includes "Jesus" (which derives
from the Hebrew for "deliverer") and "Christ" (which is Greek for
"messiah," the anointed one). It is a unique name that has no
equivalent, on earth or in heaven. We could use the name that Jesus
applied to himself, "son of man," which reminds us that less is more and
that humbler is higher. Or we can imitate Peter, who was having an
extraordinary moment, with "son of the living God." Peter's phrase is
less ironic and more triumphant than "son of man." Any one of these
names confers importance and uniqueness on this person from Galilee.
The final aspect of the unique, functional name of Jesus is that we
cannot obtain the significance by pure intellection or training or any
human effort. "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath
not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven." More
revelation and less equivocation is what we all need.
God bless you with eyes to see and ears to hear. May you be filled
with his spirit, and experience the hope of glory—Christ in
you.
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Jesus taught that we were to pray to the Father in his name. By
contrast, if one listens to public prayers in un-scripted Christian
gatherings, one often hears things such as,
God, we thank you for today. Oh, Spirit, please guide
us. Father please have mercy on us. Jesus thank you for your mercy.
Jesus we love you and we pray for these things inJesus' name, amen.
First God, then the Spirit, then the Father, then Jesus, and then the
prayer is offered in Jesus' name. If I understand doing something in
someone's name means acting on that person's behalf. If so, to pray to
Jesus in Jesus' name is tantamount to Jesus speaking to himself. Clearly
some role confusion is occurring.
These prayers are common among Christians (at least among evangelical
ones). Anyone wondering who is being addressed in this prayer is welcome
to conclude that it is the Pseudonymous Being, who goes by different
names without reason—except perhaps that the address usually
begins giving attention to the Father but soon shifts to the Son and
stays there.
It is not that I think God incapable of—or unwilling
to—translate these utterances and respond to them. Accurate
wording alone doesn't effect a miraculous change. Conversely, some of
the worst wording may convey reality-changing faith. No doubt, some
outbursts of swearing have come closer to God's heart than many
perfectly worded prayers.
But name shifting mid-sentence is sloppy. It might belie something
about our perceptions of the distant Father vesus the understanding Son.
It may also bring to the surface the difficulty of talking to an
invisible being. If addressing one name doesn't establish a feeling of
reality perhaps addressing a different name will. In other words, it may
be a case of crying out, "Is anyone listening?"
I think it is all these things. And—getting back to
"sloppy"—I think it is often a matter of inattentivity. A few
formulaic phrases construct our prayers instead of a true knowledge of
whom we are addressing and how. The most striking example of
inattentivity occurred for me when praying with a friend in high school,
when we would rebuke the devil frequently in our prayers. As soon as he
prayed, he looked up embarrassed, and we laughed. I cannot remember
whether he said, "I rebuke you Jesus," or concluded with "we pray in
Satan's name." Either way, we inwardly had the assurance that many of
our prayers seemed to go unanswered and that, statistically, this one
had a good chance of being ignored, too.
If prayer helps us appreciate the roles of the Father, the Son, and
the Spirit, it is worth while. I recall reading something like the
following in C. S. Lewis (perhaps in a couple of places): when a
Christian kneels to pray, it is Christ within him or her, praying
through the Spirit, to the Father.
Finally, there must be a way for us to talk to Jesus, and to talk to
Jesus in a way that knows we are borrowing his life to do so, but that
only with his life could we do so in any meaningful way (since our
life/nature tends to distort reality to easily). So whatever the role
confusion may be in many of our prayers, the ability to talk to Jesus
should never be doubted.
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Jump to...
Crucified
Section 2: Why Die if Not to Satisfy God's Justice?
Crucified Section 3: Clarifications
Crucified Section 1: the Origins of Human Sacrifice
It was Jesus who told the religious leaders, "go and
learn what this means, 'I have desired mercy and not sacrifice.'"
My concern—Who Sacrifices Jesus for Whom?—arises
from the assumption that human sacrifice is a specifically human
behavior that is practiced to meet specifically human needs. The problem
is that many times the sacrifice of Jesus is attributed to something God
needed to assuage his wrath instead of its being attributed to, once
more, a group of humans singling out another human for a collective
killing.
Apart from the murder of Jesus, most moderns, even religious moderns,
have no problem seeing the specifically human origins of human
sacrifice. Consider ancient civilizations and tribes who sacrificed
humans, including children, kings, and strangers. Frequently, it is
assumed that the community believed a god or other divinity required the
sacrifice. Accordingly, those who carried out the killing were, in the
minds of the community, doing the will of god(s). Nearly everyone walked
away with a clear (religious) conscience. Most moderns, however, do not
agree with the community's perception. Rather, they feel outraged that
the participants thought they were doing the god a favor.
Why the god needed a sacrifice in the first place isn't necessarily
discussed. Perhaps because it happened so often in primitive societies
(think of the Aztecs, among others) it has become just a given, an axiom
that cannot be questioned. But a question of such importance (the
question of why a divinity needs human blood) should seek an answer.
It is fortunate that the work of René Girard hypothesizes the
actual mechanism from which this sacrificial impulse arises. Simply put,
the community finds itself in a state of escalated tension (rivalries,
greed, vengeance—conflict that creates disorder, then, even as it
does now). At a certain point where the contagious violence is reaching
a crescendo, turning all against all, a new organizing pattern emerges:
the group identifies an individual or an individual group as the
underlying source of disorder. Once identified, the source becomes the
target of the community's wrath. The tension and violence that seemed
uncontrollable have found a solution: remove the individual and remove
the underlying threat.
The source is either killed or expelled. This transference of blame
toward the source has united the community that was formerly in a state
of disorder. A coalition of allies is formed as the alleged source is
identified and isolated from the group. This is the first transference,
to demonize the victim.
A second transference occurs when the
source (dead or expelled) is credited with having healed the community.
The causality seems clear: after the killing, tension receded and order
was restored, implying that the victim was somehow an agent of the
divine. This second transference, over hundreds of occurrences,
increasingly associates divine characteristics with the sacrificial
victim. The victim begins to represent a divine plan, whereby a need
that seems larger than the community is met through the offering of a
victim. Although all the conditions for the sacrifice are immanent in
the human condition, they appear to be transcendent (i.e. god's will).
This is the second transference, to divinize the victim.
Double Transference: This mechanism of double transference
that I have sketched highlights the specifically human impulses that are
behind human sacrifice. Even though primitive or pagan explanations
refer to gods in whom very few of us believe, we let them stand in the
stories as givens instead of as a creation of the violence itself. The
mechanism starts on the human plane, with angry humans. It then extends
to the mythological plane of angry gods. Understanding the mechanism
allows us to reverse the terms: instead of an angry god demanding a
sacrifice, it is the sacrifice that demands an angry god.
Most of
us agree that human sacrifice meets a set of human needs arising from
the human condition, instead of meeting a divine need arising from a
menagerie of blood-demanding divinities. Examples gross as earth exhort
us that human sacrifice has been performed time and time again to
placate the alleged anger of the perceived god, all the while
functioning as a kind of pressure-relief valve for an unstable community
with an unstable mentality. We can recognize that the process is
self-validating: shift all the blame to one person and the rest of the
community will feel divinely forgiven or acquitted.
Christianity, keeping at its core the story of a human
sacrifice, may interpret Jesus' death in one of two morally opposite
ways: either
- depraved humans exercised the poorest judgement in
history by selecting the most innocent man as the object of their blame,
hostility, and need for a victim, or
- God, like primitive gods,
needed to find a suitable object upon whom to vent wrath in order to
protect the rest of humanity from God's punishment.
The
first interpretation is perfectly moral regarding God's role. It allows
us to see God in terms of Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount." Here, Jesus
portrays his Father as perfectly good, causing the sun to shine
on both the wicked and the righteous—a god free from the need of a
victim, and overflowing with forgiveness and love by nature. The second
interpretation is inconsistent with "Christian" morality in that it
portrays God as behaving in ways Jesus taught against in his
exhortations to refuse to return evil for evil. Far from advocating for
the peace of the mob, Jesus advocated for the singled out individual,
such as the woman caught in adultery. The second interpretation portrays
God acting on an impulse that most legal systems prohibit and most
psychologists would seek to cure.
Christians, one might think, have historically sided with the
perfectly moral God, the one who is free from the need of a victim. But
one would be (half) wrong. Christians usually combine the two morally
opposed interpretations. Their God is a god of love who normally offers
forgiveness (making God better than humans), but who, in order to fully
execute this forgiveness, must satisfy an additional requirement of
justice that involves expressing wrath and punishment. This wrath can be
poured out on humanity or on a single (but perfect) living being.
Their God is both alarmingly moral in the forgiveness he offers and
morally alarming in the wrath he needed to express on someone.
Only unquestioned acceptance that sacrifice is necessary allows
the believer to be happy with these terms. In other words, as long as
the sacrificial enterprise remains unquestioned, the need to express
wrath remains acceptable.
What feeds these contradictory currents? For one, the scriptures
themselves provide a basis for both views of God.
The alarmingly moral aspect of their God is supported by many
portions of Judeo-Christian teachings. These present God as being full
of light, wisdom, love, and truth. Like the Sermon on the Mount, Psalm
23 provides a good example. God is good: he is illustrated as the best,
most courageous and caring shepherd. In light of many passages such as
this, of course God is perfectly righteous, full of truth, light,
and loving kindness. The best indicator of God's character is revealed
in Jesus, the visible image of the invisible God. It is Jesus' refusal
to return evil for evil that challenges all murkier representations of
God's character.
The morally alarming aspect of their God is also supported by some
unforgettable scriptures, mostly but not exclusively from what
Christians call the old (or first) testament. It is often these earlier
representations of God that help create the morally ambiguous God that
many Christians espouse. In some passages God is represented as the
author of what today would qualify as genocide, where the elimination of
women and children along with the warriors is commanded.[1] To the extent these passages are accepted as
accurate representations of God—to that extent it is likely that
the sacrifice of one person in exchange for millions may seem
acceptable. (It did to one of Jesus' executioners.[2])
If, however, a Christian admits that some scriptures act as a
corrective to others,[3] then
there must be an additional reason for the view that God needs to punish
his son in order to satisfy a sense of justice. Put differently, every
believer plays down certain scriptures in favor of others—why are those
concerning the sacrificial nature of God so popular? The God who desires
sacrifice and not mercy may derive from several elements, including,
- tradition (sermons, hymns, songs, sayings, and assumptions
passed within and between communities of believers),
- the
hidden sacrificial impulse in each of us that is relieved to find out
that even God has such an impulse and that therefore it must not be such
a terribly dark impulse,
- the unfolding role of sacrifice and the passover in Jewish
tradition,
- the portrayal of Jesus as the fulfillment and
completion of the sacrificial tradition within early Christian
scriptures (including the Epistle to the Hebrews),
- the
engrained sentiment that fighting violence with violence works when it's
God's violence at work, and, perhaps most importantly,
- the inability to appreciate the death of Jesus if it wasn't to
satisfy God's sense of justice.[4]
The advantage of combining the
two interpretations is that the received, sacrificial interpretation of
the scriptures remains intact (allowing one to be orthodox or free from
raising troubling questions) while the moral difference between God and
primitive gods remains demonstrable. However, this effort to combine the
God of "justice" with the God of love remains a juggling act. The more
one focuses on the need for a violent expression of wrath (sin being so
damaging to humanity), the more difficult it is to focus on the God of
love, "the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow
of turning" (James 1:17, NKJV).
One of my favorite Christian teachers performs this juggling act
spectacularly. So good a job he does that, were I not convinced that
human sacrifice is a purely human practice arising from a need to
contain and transfer blame, I would subscribe to his view. Teaching on
the passage that "God set forth [Jesus Christ] as a propitiation by His
blood" (Romans 3:25, NKJV),[5] Mr.
Cook states:
This is what we cling to, this
wonderful good news of how the heavenly Father has taken up our cause,
has taken all the wrath and the judgment for us, has taken even the
wrath of Satan and the wrath of the world, and his own wrath upon
himself [in the person of Jesus].[6]
What is spectacular is how "wrath" multiplies in this quotation:
- general ("the wrath and judgment"),
- Satanic ("the wrath of Satan"),
- worldly ("the
wrath of the world"), and
- divine ("his own
wrath").
However (characteristically) faithful Mr. Cook attempts to be to the
passage, he is compelled to bring in two or three types of wrath not
mentioned by Paul (Satanic, worldly, and perhaps general).
It's "the wrath of Satan" that points to the true nature of
sacrifice. If he had felt the liberty to do so, Mr. Cook could have made
his point by focusing exclusively on the wrath of Satan. Also called
"the accuser" in the New Testament, Satan is the one who first blames
unjustly the victim, and then directs wrath against that victim.
Finally, the "father of lies" (another name for Satan) distorts the
reason for the violence, keeping in place a misunderstanding of God's
character that persists today.
Instead of multiplying types of wrath, we should interpret the "wrath
of God" as biblical shorthand for the concept that humans will always
suffer at the hands of humans so long at they disobey the God of love,
that this suffering, standing in opposition to their plans, will seem to
humans like God's anger, and that, in order to extinguish the wrath that
their own nature brought about, humans will, at times, find a
sacrificial victim that helps them both lessen the strife within them
and obtain a clear conscience about their role in that strife.
The "wrath of God" is the "wrath of the absence of God" and
occurs whenever humans run with their impulses unhindered by restraint.
God is involved in the violent outcomes, but not as executioner. God is
involved as the source of light that exposes the lies that so often
dominate human thinking. The involvement is God refusing to bruise a
bent reed or quench a smoldering flax, much to the resentment of humans
who want and don't want God's involvement. Refuse his kindness and all
that's left is human competition, fueled by greed and masked by one
transference of blame after another.
Not only could believers interpret wrath as biblical shorthand, but
often believers do, with statements such as, "We are not punished for
our sins, but by our sins." Many pieces of the puzzle of biblical
coherence fall in place when we allow for such shorthand. The phrase,
"wrath of God," understood as the inevitable self-destructive
consequences of immorality has great value. It helps us recognize both
the consequences of immorality (scapegoating being among them) and the
grandeur of a loving God.
The reason for the shorthand is likely
that it takes time, hundreds or thousands of years, for the divine light
to dispel lies that have both created and maintained cultures. The
shorthand has the advantage of getting one's attention concerning his or
her responsibility in this world. If one is in a theater and smells
poisonous gas, one may likely cry "fire!" (instead of "I'm smelling
poisonous gas") to save lives, only to explain later that urgency and
the need for widespread comprehension outweighed accuracy at the
time.
Mr. Cook's muliple types of wrath illustrate how hard it is to align
the morality of Jesus's Father (illustrated in the Sermon on the Mount)
with the theory of atonement as an exercise in divine wrath. What Mr.
Cook avoids—much to his credit—is glibly accepting a thin
version of the crucifixion whereby a perfect God must, for legal
reasons, punish somebody, charitably killing his son to spare all the
guilty parties. Mr. Cook's version requires wrestling with the cost of
Jesus' life.
As long as Christians view God as being sacrificial (well-intentioned
but nevertheless sacrificial), they will be in a situation similar to
what Mark Twain ascribed to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
where "a sound heart & a deformed conscience come into collision."
Applied to the crucifixion, the sound heart arises from the life of
Jesus and his portrayal of his Father in the Sermon on the Mount. The
deformed conscience arises from the received tradition that God must
punish someone in order to express forgiveness to everyone.
One expression of sacrificial theology is this: "God is so holy that
he cannot be in the presence of sin. Therefore, he must sacrifice his
son to make us sinners acceptable in his presence." The obvious flaw to
this statement lies in the fact that Jesus, Holy Jesus, was at home
spending time with sinners, and often the more "sinful" the person, the
more time he invested. This is the same Jesus who did only what he saw
his father do. If there's a shred of truth in the concept of a holy God,
it is that we cannot enjoy being with holiness, not the reverse. It was
Peter who said to Jesus, "Depart from me for I am a sinful man." It was
not Jesus who said, "Depart from me for you are a sinful
man."
The goal of the rest of this message (and perhaps of my life) is to
assert and hopefully explain how Jesus' death reconciles humans to a God
who never needed and never will need a victim to satisfy his sense of
justice. It will apply the rest of Mark Twain's quotation to the
Christian's dilemma, with the result that "conscience suffers a defeat":
Jim the slave is befriended in spite of the received tradition of
slavery, and God is recognized as the Misunderstood One who always sided
with the victim, who always saw the need to deliver this race from its
misdeeds, including its projection of its own sense of justice on
God.
If Jesus did not die to appease his Father's anger or to satisfy his
Father's sense of justice, then why was it so important and inevitable
for him to die? Put differently, what was achieved by the death of
Jesus?
Many passages, notably in the Gospel of John and in Paul's letters,
claim that the death of Jesus is a most important event for the
redemption of humanity.[7] The
benefits of that death include:
- the introduction of forgiveness on a large, unambiguous, scale
- this is not the same as freeing God the Father to be forgiving; it
is freeing the human race to have a picture of forgiveness that is so
clear as to prevent rejection on the basis of a confused conscience
- the separation of humans from their moral and spiritual
imperfections (aka, sins)
- the human race descending from Adam (whether Adam is a type or an
individual) is diseased, only to be cured by dying and rising again as a
new race
- the reconciliation of humans with God
- the positive side of being freed from a lineage of alienation from
God, the resurrection of Christ started a new race (making him the
"firstborn among many brothers and sisters" [Romans 8])
The death of Jesus (along with the resurrection) is the event that
transformed Jesus from a local phenomenon in first century Israel to a
life that provides individuals from all parts of the world, across
history, the opportunity to obtain a new identity.
The reason Jesus died is because people chose to kill him for various
reasons—fear and envy being among them. The gospel narratives of
the betrayal, arrest, trial, and sentencing of Jesus place the
responsibility squarely at the feet of some (but not all) of the Jewish
leaders. The rest—the mob who shout "crucify him" and the Romans
who execute the business—are accessories to the crime.
God knew what would would inevitably happen to a truth-telling
emissary. Not only from his omniscience but from the history of the
treatment of prophets, God knew the messenger would be mistreated. What
happens to the emissary is a violent reaction by those threatened by the
truth. A violent episode could work out for the good—the greatest
good—in spite of the fact that this God takes no pleasure in
sacrifice.
It was Jesus who told the religious leaders, "go and learn what this
means, 'I have desired mercy and not sacrifice'" (Matthew 9:13). He was
quoting an old testament prophet (Hosea 6:6), and he knew that the
sacrificial urge would soon shift its attention from tax collectors,
prostitutes, and Roman occupiers to himself. He would be the new
sacrifice, one that placated the fears of the Jewish leaders, one that
lent significance to the mobs who wanted to shift the blame outside
themselves, and one that proved convenient to the Romans who wanted
amicable relations with the lands they occupied if these relations could
be obtained through the loss of a few individuals.
This fate of Jesus would have been anticipated by God, who lives
outside time, and it would serve the need to put an effective end to the
perpetuation of a violent and disbelieving humanity. In this light,
Paul's statement makes perfect sense, whether one interprets "princes"
as worldly rulers or as fallen angels: "But we speak the wisdom of God
in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the
world unto our glory: Which none of the princes of this world knew: for
had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory" (I
Corinthians 2:7-8). What an extraordinary statement! If the agents of
Jesus' death had known the ultimate outcome—the spiritual beginning of a
new race—they would have sought to keep him alive.
The result of the death of Jesus is that one way or another he was
the representative human being (the last Adam and the second man,
according to Paul). In dying he put the human race to death. In rising
from the dead he provided a new identity for humanity. This identity
consists of his righteousness, and it allows those who believe in him to
be his brothers and sisters. The death is therefore efficacious, not in
pacifying his Father but in giving humanity a way out of the world and a
way into the kingdom of heaven. All this of course is a matter of faith,
and is not realized physically in the present. What counts for those who
want to be free from a deformed conscience, though, is that it is moral,
consisting of an extraordinary individual placing himself in harm's way
and then sharing the reward of that obedience with those who need the
benefits of that obedience.
The gospel that is based on the death of Jesus often takes the form
of a promise. It can be summarized in this way: if you are willing to
put your confidence in the life, death, and resurrection of
Jesus—if you are willing to let those experiences count in place
of your own—then you are, truly, a part of Christ. You are what he
is: righteous, new, one with God. You need only to allow his life to be
the starting and ending point of your thoughts and decisions, and as you
do, your daily, earthly self will be imbued with his spirit.
All of the above is truly good news for those who are discontent with
their earthly life. It is perhaps all one needs to know and think about
to experience peace, love and joy in this life and the life to come. It
is a good stopping place for the discussion.
Earlier in this article, I listed the following as reasons that many
Christians entertain a sacrificial theology:
- tradition (sermons, hymns, songs, sayings, and assumptions passed
down and around communities),
- the hidden sacrificial impulse in each of us that is relieved to
find out that even God has such an impulse and that therefore it must
not be such a terribly dark impulse,
- the unfolding role of sacrifice and the passover in Jewish
tradition,
- the portrayal of Jesus as the fulfillment and completion of the
sacrificial tradition within early Christian scriptures (including the
Epistle to the Hebrews),
- the engrained sentiment that fighting violence with violence works
when it's God's violence at work, and, perhaps most
importantly,
- the inability to appreciate the death of Jesus if it wasn't to
satisfy God's sense of justice.
The non-sacrificial responses would be:
- By tradition, I refer to Christian traditions, which are as
susceptible to corruption as are Christians, perhaps more so since
traditions are enlisted for the survival of organizations, with the
result that any tradition that promises the survival of an organization
is likely to be protected at all costs. In Christianity, we have a
glaring contradiction: the message (also known as the "gospel" or "good
news") that was intended to free people from guilt has,
historically, been converted into an instrument of guilt. One
reinforcement to this guilt is the image of God who is sacrificial and,
because of our wayward nature, turned his wrath on Jesus. This image
imbues our existence with danger: (1) we all went astray (true), (2) we
forced God's hand, causing him to act out of character and kill the
least deserving human (false), and (3) we repeatedly go astray by not
trusting this God who, obviously, is, one way or another, capable of
choosing a victim to keep the machinery of the universe running
(twisted).
There are, of course, many other reasons Christians do
not trust in God, many of them needing ownership and renunciation—my
only point is that we will do better not to weigh ourselves down with
images that lessen the character of God as Jesus revealed it (saying,
"if you see me, you see my Father").
- That we all have a sacrificial impulse is not in question. Whether
we fight it or not, we all know that we are relieved to find out that
we are not being blamed for something, that the blame has gone
elsewhere (justly or unjustly). However, the extent to which this
impulse cultivates in us a sacrificial interpretation of God is hard to
examine. It may not occur, or it may be so deeply hidden that we simply
canot see it. If misery likes company, divine misery likes divine
company. So it is logical, but not demonstrable, that our own
sacrificial impulse is what causes us to tenaciously hold onto the idea
that God's justice requires the destruction of a living being. One could
argue that while we hate the idea of human sacrifice, we, against our
temperament, feel compelled by our conscience to embrace the validity of
that concept at least once in history. And that concession is
understandable until we start suspecting that we've been mistaken about
God's role in the crucifixion.
- The Jewish tradition of sacrificing animals was preceded by
Abraham's experience on Mount Moriah where the Lord provided a ram for Abraham to sacrifice in
order to spare Abraham's son; the Jewish tradition that thus focused on
animals shuttled humanity away from human sacrifice, a first major step
toward understanding the Father of Jesus.
- As a consequence of God's weaning humanity away from human sacrifice
to animal sacrifice, Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice in Hebrews in this
way: his death unmasked the kind of agents who kill victims and in
unmasking them, his death declared that the human approach to pleasing
God was wrong all along. It was less wrong when animals were substituted
for humans, but it was wrong, nevertheless. Coming late in the tradition
of Hebraic animal sacrifice, Jesus' death, once more a human sacrifice,
was what could highlight the injustice once and for all of the
sacrificial implulse. In this respect, the Father supported the
crucifixion, not as something to satisfy his wrath but as something
needed to demonstrate once and for all the difference between human and
divine justice, the difference between the great "I am" and all the
manufactured gods of this world.
- Only time will remove the engrained sentiment that fighting violence
with violence works when it's God's violence—this article
being one more attempt to free us from that misconception.
- The death of Jesus gains more value, not less, when the sacrificial
veil is pushed aside; love and justice no longer compete with each other
but conspire together to give the human race a second chance at
achieving the peace and unity that human sacrifice only hinted at.
Summarized in different words, the non-sacrificial gospel can
be worded this way:
The biggest problem in Christianity is the transference of blame for
the death of Jesus onto God himself. From its inception, Christianity
had to work with a language colored by sacrificial thinking, and it had
as its original audience a people whose survival and coherence had
depended upon sacrifice. The "divine" desire for sacrifice and not mercy
was hard to escape. As a result, an ambiguous version of God was adopted
among Christians: God could never forgive people apart from having
someone to punish. The death of Jesus is appreciable only to the extent
that he is being punished by his Father in place of our being punished
by his Father.
The misconstructions placed on God would include the following:
- God desires sacrifice
- God is violent
- God's
wrath—righteous indignation—resolves itself by putting
someone to death
- the Father acted in a way that is contrary to the
Sermon on the Mount (i.e. acted contrary to passages such as "If you,
then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who
ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to
you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets").
The claim that God needed to punish humanity but punished his Son
instead misconstrues the nature of God as being like ours—a nature
inclined toward retribution. These sort of claims license humans to do
ungodly things in the name of Christ, spanning from engaging in wars
based on religious differences to forming groups that honor God by
discriminating against a selected group of victims, the Ku Klux Klan
being exemplary of this kind of theology.
The "wrath of God" taken in light of Jesus as a representative of God
must mean God's willingness to allow humans to refuse his spirit and to
go their own wretched way, destroying each other in the process. When
human violence expresses itself without restraint, it takes on
characteristics that seem superhuman: it is inescapable, irresistible,
easier to join than to denounce. It does seem divine. If Jesus
came to show any one thing, it may have been to expose the delusion that
the wrath of God emanates from God. It reveals the wrath of God as the
dangerous state of allowing humans to rule over each other, selfishly,
compulsively, religiously.
Similar to the "wrath of God" is the concept of the "blood" of Christ
in the New Testament. The shedding of Jesus' blood is inextricably
linked to our salvation. Because it points so clearly to the scapegoat
and the sacrifice of Passover (the weekend Jesus died), I still wrestle with it. At this point, I can only say I
don't understand its significance nearly enough, and having said that, I
add that whatever the significance is, it does not cause me to doubt
that God is above any secret law or compulsion to shed blood in order to
forgive.
We need Jesus to save us from our versions of God. Because Jesus
said, "I do only what I see my father do," we must allow his life
to re-define his father fully. Otherwise, we will continue to ascribe to
God the same characteristics that myths ascribe to their gods, who are
satisfied when a victim is either expelled or put to death. It is ironic
and also unavoidable that the greatest misunderstanding about God has
been re-applied to God's greatest effort to dislodge that
misunderstanding.
If we refuse to explain things about the death of Jesus that we do
not understand, we will be walking away from sacrificial theology.[8] We can believe the death of Jesus
somehow worked for our benefit, without thinking for a minute that the
Father to whom that death unites us has anything but love and mercy for
all involved.
____Footnotes____
[1] For a single
example, see 1 Samuel 15:1-3..."Samuel also said unto Saul, The LORD
sent me to anoint thee to be king over his people, over Israel: now
therefore hearken thou unto the voice of the words of the LORD. Thus
saith the LORD of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how
he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt. Now go and
smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them
not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep,
camel and ass."
[2] "Then one of them,
named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, 'You know
nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one
man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.' (John
11:49-50)"
[3] Hebrews 1 lends
itself to the notion that the scriptures can correct themselves. It
makes clear that Jesus, "the heir of all things, by whom also God made
the worlds," provides the clearest representation of God. The exaltation
of Jesus in that chapter concludes at the beginning of chapter 2 with
the warning, "Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the
things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip."
According to the non-sacrificial gospel, to "give the more earnest heed"
means to give the representation provided by Jesus the final say in
matters concerning God's character.
[4] In brief response
to these reasons,
(1) tradition takes the sacrificial
interpretation and disperses it in the fabric of the Christian
experience, making it difficult to see where essential elements of faith
stop and optional elements begin, with the result that only a concerted
effort, a kind of reformation, can dislodge the sacrificial thinking.
(2) The hidden desire for sacrifice is, in myself at least, fully
hidden, and only noticeable by how convincing the sacrificial
interpretation seemed in spite of the fact that the gospels offer an
alternate explanation, one that any open-minded reader cannot miss
("He's been set up and murdered...").
(3) The role of sacrifice in the Jewish tradition can be understood
as a weaning process during which the Lord
first exchanges animal for human sacrifice and later begins to move the
religious community away from animal sacrifice to the sacrifice of
praise, the one wholly moral form of sacrifice.
(4) Thus, when Jesus is figured as the perfect sacrifice, the
intention in Hebrews is to show that he brought an end to sacrifice, but
Hebrews does not dwell on how that can be, leaving it to the reader to
choose between (a) perfect satisfaction of a sin offering or (b) perfect
demystification of the role of sacrifice in the human economy of
violence.
(5)Any engrained sentiment is by definition difficult to dislodge,
being a sub-conscious response, including the circular argument that if
God does something it is right. Of course if God is perfect, everything
God does is perfect. What the sentiment does not allow for is the
possibility that on a fundamental level, God did not do what it is
assumes he did (vent his wrath).
(6)Finally, our inability to appreciate the death of Jesus
non-sacrificially is the chief concern of the next
section, because it is the absence of purely moral reasons for
Jesus' death that allows sacrificial theories to occupy our
thoughts.
[5] It appears
inevitable to slip into sacrificial language when referring to the death
of Jesus. That language has "significance" written all over it. Paul
goes in both directions in his writings. He uses sacrificial language,
but he is able to discourse at length about the love of God in Christ
Jesus our Lord, and about Jesus' role as the last Adam and the second
man, which expresses the value of the crucifixion more clearly to me
than anything.
It is perhaps Paul's use of ἱλαστήριον (hilasterion) that provides the
strongest inclination for Christians to view the crucifixion as a
propitiation—the English term referring to placating or
appeasing an angry god. Hilasterion occurs in Romans 3:25 and
Hebrews 9:5. It is translated as propitiation or atonement (in Romans),
and mercy seat (in Hebrews).
The emphasis in "propitiation" is on
God's need for appeasement, while the emphasis of both "atonement" and
"mercy seat" is on the human need for purging (expiation) or mercy. In
light of the specifically human origin of human sacrifice, my argument
leans heavily toward the need for mercy, not appeasement.
My
argument interprets the death of Jesus as being like a man throwing
himself in front of a motorcycle to stop it from running over a child
(instead of the man offering himself to be killed by the motorcycle
driver to prevent the driver from being angry at the child). The
difference between propitiation and an offering of mercy may be
characterized as the difference between Jesus entering the human race to
take punishment and Jesus entering the human race to first be
contaminated by its disease and then to be able to offer a vaccine.
[6] From the first
minute of this talk by Colin Cook:
http://www.faithquestradio.com/radio/E073_HIH_021113.mp3 (Rom. 3:21-25
"The Epicenter Of The Gospel").
Mr. Cook understands the pagan
and therefore unholy history of propitiation. He devotes an entire talk
to the subject, http://www.faithquestradio.com/radio/E069_HIH_020513.mp3
(Rom. 3:25 "Jesus Isn't Trying To Convince God"). He claims the 19th
century promoted a "horrible, horrible caricature of God" wherein the
Father was angry with the world and only the peaceful and charitable
Jesus prevented judgment by presenting himself to receive the brunt of
God's wrath.
Mr. Cook's resolution to the caricature is to say
that Jesus is one with God so God is appeasing his own wrath, "taking
all the full brunt and punishment and judgment of sin upon himself"
(8:45). The Father is outraged, not at humans, but at sin and its
damages. This anger cannot be concealed and so is directed to himself
through the incarnation and the crucifixion. "The difference between a
pagan propitiation and this propitiation is that we, in the pagan
propitiation, try to appease god by animal or human sacrifices. We try
to quieten god down. And the Christian propitiation is that God offers
the sacrifice. He quietens himself down. He appeases his own wrath. That
is the difference." (12:00)
From Mr. Cook's point of view, the
God-sacrifices-only-God theory allows Mr. Cook to emphasize the
devastatingly destructive acts of humans, while representing God as
being passionately in love with mankind, ready to do anything need for
redemption. And, I admit, this is as well said and as significant as any
version of sacrificial theology I've encountered. From my point of view,
this re-direction of wrath nevertheless provides a different caricature,
that of an angry, frustrated teenager who, refusing to hurt others, cuts
him- or herself. Violence must be expressed, but not against others.
Finally, Mr. Cook admits, "I do and I don't" follow this, "it being
beyond our comprehension." While I disagree with the need of God to
appease God's wrath, I appreciate the passion and honesty Mr. Cook
exercises here and elsewhere.
[7] For example:
John 3:14-15 - Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness,
so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have
eternal life in him.
John 10:17 - The reason my Father loves me is
that I lay down my life—only to take it up again.
Romans 5:6-8 - You
see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died
for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person,
though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God
demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners,
Christ died for us.
No question about it: the death of Jesus changed
everything, according to the gospel. The only question is whether that
death was another instance—the backfiring instance—of humans
finding and killing a victim, or whether it was a unique instance of God
violating his character and insisting on retribution.
[8] "Sacrificial
theology," a phrase reminiscent of René Girard's Things
Hidden from the Foundation, Book 2, where he explicates the four
gospels according to a non-sacrificial theology. This is the book that
showed me a way out of sacrificial thinking.
Things Hidden
Since the Foundation of the World, René Girard, Translated by
Stephen Bann and Michael Metteer, Stanford Press, 1987.
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The phrase "in the
flesh" is bound to be misunderstood if we expect language to say only
one thing—that is, if we expect language to be univocal.
Unfortunately, the New Testament, depending on the translation, uses
the phrase in three senses. Maybe not altogether unfortunately, but also
provokingly. Life is like that: more than meets the eye and the I, it
urges us beyond both the visible and the individual.
In the Flesh means Failure
We can start with the least attractive meaning. To be "in the flesh"
is frequently contrasted to being in the spirit. The flesh isn't the
body so much as it's the self that develops apart from the love of God.
The flesh is selfish, obsessional, destroying either others or itself,
either actively or passively. This is the self that we grow up
considering the real "me," the person who is shaped by family, culture,
and its own psychology; the person who is a mixture of evil and good,
and whose good (and sometimes evil) is often an attempt to please or
appease others. The person who is trying to be good, but in the process
relies on the isolated self—this person is in the flesh... the
harder she/he tries, the greater the frustration.
The worser half, as Hamlet might say, are those who are so
comfortable in the flesh that they don't even realize their
shortcomings. Among these are those who plotted for the death of
Jesus... just as he mentioned to his disciples, these thought they were
doing God a favor when their behavior sought to destroy a part of
God.
A person can never get out of the flesh of his/her own accord. Like
being caught in quicksand, being in the flesh is only worsened by
attempting to not be in the flesh... the focus becomes increasingly
misdirected. The spirit isn't even a consideration.
In the Flesh means Pleasure
By pleasure I mean the beauty of this life being experienced through
the senses, the highest pleasure perhaps that being shared between two
people on a physical plane. The capacity for pleasure, of course,
entails the capacity for pain. That's all part of being sentient, of
having complex nerves.
To live in the flesh in this sense is to live in a body, to be
embodied—to have skin, hair, a heart, eyes, the works. And this
allows you to know someone in the flesh, to become one with another
person through the miracle of the sexual union. In the New Testament,
nobody ever has casual sex. Every mating is a meeting of minds and
spirits no matter how effaced or disparate they are. To be in the flesh
is to know someone in the flesh, with an emphasis on
"know" and "flesh," the invisible and the visible.
Flesh in this sense is good. As G. K. Chesterton wrote, whereas
Buddha said only "seek first the kingdom of heaven," Jesus said "seek
first the kingdom of heaven and all these things [clothing, food,
shelter] will be added to you." Similarly, C S Lewis wrote, "God likes
matter; he made it." The incarnation is the in-fleshness of the son of
God. When Jesus spoke of flesh and blood, he noted that it was not equal
to the life of the spirit, and at the same time, when he touched flesh
and blood, he always healed it.
In the Flesh means the Highest Life
The most wonderful aspect of being "in the flesh" is the story of the
incarnation (which is another word for in the flesh).
The spirit from whom all material and energy proceeds—all life,
all rocks, all frogs, all photons, all things great and small—this
spirit becomes flesh and lives in this world. Living under the same
conditions of the creation, this part of the creator fully weds himself
to humanity. This is a mystery.
The spirit (from whom both sexes come) takes the body of a man, but
takes no wife, no woman. That would have to wait for a new relation
altogether, a relation as surprising as the incarnation itself. In
rising from the dead, having become a regular human, his resurrection
raises humanity to a new height. He is a groom, pursuing not a woman but
a race, entering into that world to know that world and lead it to a new
home. Humanity is a bride. The romance is on for eternity.
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For those who have studied both feminism and
the gospels, the role of the gospels is recognizably complex.
On the congenial side:
- The protagonist of the gospels treated women far better than
did his culture as a whole.
- On many occasions, the women treated the protagonist far better than
most of the men, and this beneficence shown most clearly at the most
desperate hour of the crucifixion.
- The portrayals of both the mother, Mary, and the friend, Mary
Magdalene, illustrate a depth of appreciation for women and womanhood
that cannot be ignored.
On the disconnected side:
- The language of the gospels and the New Testament is at times
sexist (patriarchal), referring to sons even when women are among those
being described.
- The language of feminism at times (but not always) assumes that
difference = inequality, with the corollary that inequality necessarily
invokes a relationship of dominance (master-slave, oppressor-oppressed).
In places the New Testament recognizes the dangers of difference
creating hierarchy, stating that in Christ there is neither male nor
female. But in other places, it accepts difference as natural and
acceptable, even in its hierarchical form (husbands submit to Christ,
wives to husbands).
The alliances and differences between the gospels and various
feminist theories are incredibly consequential.
The disconnect between traditional Christianity and feminism is so
deep and wide that it is hard for me to imagine anything short of the
end of the world and the coming of a new world to bring about a shared
vision. Those Christians who unquestioningly adhere to patriarchal
values at any cost are not following their Master who clearly broke with
such values whenever they conflicted with the rule of love. Those
feminists[1] who categorically pit
their beliefs against the gospels are engaging in an argument with straw
men and are exempting one piece of human history and culture (the life
of Jesus and his followers) from the proposed narrative that celebrates
diversity, that invokes love and not power, freedom and not
exclusion.
There is nothing simple about the relation between Christianity and
Feminism, both terms representing a vast array of beliefs and practices,
both groups being divided among themselves as well as often being
divided from each other, no matter the shared values at the heart of the
best expressions of each.
____Footnotes____
[1] Mary Daly exemplifies the
reductive reading of the gospels that replicates, instead of corrects,
the chauvinism she rejects. She remarks that no essential differences
exist between God the Father and the godfather. The phonetic
resemblances are convenient (and witty), and no doubt the historical
resemblances between appropriations of the gospel and the gospel of
appropriating power are worth noting. But no close study of the gospels
would support the likeness her phrase implies.
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With the medieval Thomas Aquinas, I assume the
ground of all existence can be spoken of by analogy only.[1]
Even my phrase "ground of all existence" is probably an analogy drawn
from logic or philosophy instead of from religion (which has its own
term, "God"). Over "ground of all existence" and "God," I prefer like
"Creator" because it escapes both the abstractness of "ground" and the
glib usage which "God" often undergoes. "Creator" also encourages the
discussion to glance at the magnificent realm of nature, which is a good
start. But all terms are drawn from the human experiences of finite
entities whether they be fathers, mothers, artists, or energetic forces.
It's all analogy. That's not good or bad. That's that.
If each analogical name for God brings out a particular likeness
between God and the visible world, then both God the Father and God the
Mother should express something unique. And, more significantly, if we
do speak and think about the most important aspects of life
through analogy, then we should feel free to experiment with language
and bend our habits of thinking.
God as a mother conveys a sense of warmth and safety that arises out
of an eternal womb that protects its offspring long before they realize
a need for protection. Near that womb, accordingly, is that
heart—that source of concern—that beats before the birth of
the world, during, and long after.
It is in the best interests of Jesus' believers to listen to
alternate names and descriptions of the one Jesus called his Father.
Jesus died in part for calling this being his Father. He obviously
wasn't upholding any sacred beliefs at the time. His murderers were the
ones with the sacred beliefs. He instead had a relationship and an
unpopular way of expressing that relationship. Translated into current
practice, I will listen to those who want to talk about mother god, or
Mother God, or even the supreme godmother (which does sound better than
the supreme godfather). I can learn from these analogies, even if, like
the word "God," these expressions do not enter much into my
vocabulary.
There is one threshold, however, where gender is not entirely
arbitrary. When the Creator placed itself into the creation—into
finitude, time, and humanity—the Creator necessarily committed
itself to some biological and, inevitably, some cultural lines of
sexuality. In overshadowing Mary with its procreative power, the spirit
of the Creator cast itself necessarily into the role of father. And in
allowing this "holy thing," this child to become representative of
humanity with eternal consequences, the role of father in one aspect
goes beyond analogy. It can go beyond analogy is because it is one role
that involves the divine in human affairs—instead of the usual
involvement of the human mind in divine attributes.
Sometimes I wonder about the outcome of the incarnation had there
been two X chromosomes, giving birth to a woman. This is where the
"cultural lines of sexuality" referred to above has bearing. Anyone who
reads the gospels should see that a male messiah was ultimately
intolerable to the system; a female messiah would have been immediately
intolerable and may have been silenced before even speaking. This may
not be the only reason for the son, but it is certainly a practical one.
Those who follow messianic prophesies from the Old-First Testament
probably have independent arguments for the sonship.
____Footnotes____
[1]"Therefore it must be said
that these names are said of God and creatures in an analogous sense,
i.e. according to proportion." Summa Theologica, Part 1,
Question 13 (The Names of God). Index of online source.
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