Darrin W. Snyder Belousek, "Atonement, Justice & Peace"

I thought this was quite interesting. I love deconstruction. 

Does—or should—atonement theology have practical implications for the church’s mission in the world today?  Is penal substitution the only, or even the best, biblical understanding of the cross? 

Scot has invited me (Darrin W. Snyder Belousek) to introduce my book, Atonement, Justice, and Peace: The Message of the Cross and the Mission of the Church(Eerdmans 2012).  This book challenges the church to rethink the cross—to reexamine the standard evangelical theology of penal substitution atonement and to reorient our thinking about justice and peace from the perspective of the cross. 

My first intuition that something was not quite right with the penal substitution theory—the idea that God has dealt with our sins by having reckoned our sins against Jesus and punished him with death in our place on the cross—came about twelve years ago, while questioning the death penalty. 

I had become convinced, based on Jesus’ teaching (“Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone”), that Christians should not support capital punishment.  But I was wanting to press the question deeper, to the core of Christian faith—the cross.  Jesus’ death, after all, was a death penalty.  If there was a definitive Christian answer on the question, it must be found there. 

The only atonement theology I knew was penal substitution.  I could thus reason: If God had already punished Jesus for our sins, then we who were spared by the cross from the death penalty we deserved had no right to insist that others deserved death for their sins.
That made sense, but it didn’t seem right.  I soon figured out why. 

The penal substitution theory is based on retributive justice: sin must be “repaid” with death, and God “repaid” our sins by punishing Jesus.  But so also is capital punishment: the murderer must be “repaid” his crime with the penalty of death. To affirm penal substitution, therefore, is to affirm the same logic that justifies the death penalty.
I faced two problems.  First, the penal substitution theory couldn’t address the question: you can’t overcome the logic of retribution (capital punishment) with the logic of retribution (penal substitution). 

Second, the penal substitution theory didn’t square with Jesus’ teaching of God’s kingdom, which is not ruled by retribution: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ but I say to you…” (Matthew 5).  If the cross is the cross of Christ, I thought, our interpretation of the cross ought to be consistent with the teaching of Jesus.
The more I thought it through, the more the conundrum grew.  

According to Paul’s gospel, Christ’s cross is both the revelation of God’s justice (Romans 3:21-26) and the demonstration of God’s love (Romans 5:6-11).  According to penal substitution, God’s justice is satisfied in retribution, Jesus punished for our sins.  Yet according to Jesus’ teaching, God’s love transcends retribution: He blesses righteous and wicked alike with sun and rain (Matthew 5).  How could the cross be both God’s justice by retribution and God’s love beyond retribution?  Is this God’s love—that God punished Jesus instead of us? That didn’t seem right, either.  I needed to begin again.

For the rest of the post, click HERE.

--Nick

McKnight/ Yoder on the Death Penalty

I am still undecided on the biblical case in support of the death penalty. I think I lean towards situational cases in support of the death penalty, but I view this as a last resort if anything. 

Undecided is the easiest way to view this for now, I guess. 

Most humans conceive of the death penalty in legal terms. That is, whether one if “for” or “against” it, the argument is legal: it is just or it is unjust. Those Christians who are “for” it often contend that “life for a life” is just, while those who are against it, Christian or not, often argue that at least one reason against it is that we are not smart enough and infallible enough to take the life of another — better err on the side of mercy and caution that put to death an innocent person. 

Is the death penalty Christian? Would Jesus support the death penalty? 

John Howard Yoder, in a new book expertly edited by John Nugent, called The End of Sacrifice, contends that the death penalty in the Bible was not so much connected to justice as it was to sacrifice. Namely, a human was sacred since she or he was made in God’s image, and the whole “life for a life” was about expiation and not justice restored or balanced. 

Yoder then adds this point: if sacrifice has realized its end, namely, has found its completion in the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ, it therefore has come to an end. The cross of Christ as the completion of all atonement has meant that the sacred act of expiation is no longer needed. Thus, he sees a redemptive trend or a salvation-historical plot that brings to end death as expiation for murder. 

He argues other points:1. That the law, even Genesis 9:6′s “by man shall his blood be shed,” is to be read like Exodus 21:24-25 (law of retaliation’s limit) — that is, as putting the limit of punishment and not as a commandment to exact the death penalty. 

2. Within the pages of the Bible, and Jewish texts fill this out, most punishments were becoming fines and imprisonment and not death penalty. 

3. John 8, though disputed as a text in canon but not as an event in the life of Jesus, shows that Jesus posed the death penalty over against two issues over which the death penalty fell short: the more authority of the judge or executioner and the authority Jesus had to forgive. Thus, death penalty is put in the context of expiation and not penal judgment. 

4. Society has move increasingly away from the death penalty and has discerned an increasing number of mitigating factors, like insanity, etc.. We do not make these judgments infallibly; our criteria are not entirely justifiable; etc. In other words, development has led to reduction — why not go all the way and end sacrifice completely? 

5. Romans 13′s sword is not about death penalty but is the symbol of judicial authority. Jesus’ words in Matt 5 show that the lex talionis is put on an entirely different order. 

6. Following Jesus is what Christians do and they do this all the time, not just when they are being private or being Christians. 

7. If Jesus is Lord, truly, then he is Lord now over all and that means Christians are to live under his lordship and advocate for kingdom ethics, not “realistic” ethics. 

8. The theory of deterrence is useless; the death penalty does not deter violence. Those States with the death penalty have more murders; those without it have less. Countries without it have fewer than countries with it.

For the entire article -- McKnight and Yoder

--Nick