The Offering of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction, for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual; and there is none other satisfaction for sin, but that alone. Wherefore the sacrifices of Masses, in the which it was commonly said, that the Priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits.
It's that time of year again. I'm not quite sure when I will receive the first question but some time between now and Easter Sunday, someone will ask me that most ticklish of soteriological questions. How did Jesus save us on the Cross? For the last week, The Dean of St. Alban's, Very Rev. Dr. Jeffrey Johns, has been receiving all kinds of flack from conservative evangelicals before they even read the transcript of his attack on the pet soteriological theory of the post-Reformation Protestant church, penal atonement/substitution. I thought this would be a good time for me to review what the bounds of Anglican orthodoxy might be on this question.
Thesis 1: The life of the Lord perfected in death is salvific, not merely the life, nor merely the death.
After the Nicene Creed describes the creation of the world through Christ, it says of Him, "for us and our salvation, he came down from heaven and became incarnate..." That is, His work toward our salvation is prior to his death and indeed prior to his birth. As de la Taille says, "He placed himself in the order of signs." His life proclaimed Him as the Messiah, the restorer of God's favor to Israel and the bringer of the Gentiles to the worship of the true God. I read on one of the regular blogs recently that His testing by the devil veiled the truth of his being from the Adversary. Sounds good to me. Other points could be made about the necessity of the proclamation of the Kingdom, the instruction of the disciples, the institution of the Sacraments etc.
But the Creed reminds us that the salvific work of life was nothing without the death by repeating (added by the First Council of Constantinople) that He was "crucified for us." And indeed, the Athanasian Creed likewise says, "He suffered for our salvation."
Thesis 2: The "perfect redemption" of which the Article speaks is redemption unto eternal life, analogous to the life of our foreparents Adam and Eve before the Fall, though not homologous.
The Psalmist in Psalm 49 says to those who put their trust in their wealth that they cannot buy their way out of death and live forever and ever. The price is entirely too high. I propose this can be traced to two decrees of God: (1) that by eating of the tree of Good and Evil, Adam and Eve would die, which in itself only puts Adam and Eve under the sway of natural death in sensu strictu; (2) the ground is cursed from whom humans now eat food, eventually mixing more and more of them with a curse and diluting their divine essence, sapping their lifespans as time went on. (2) is directly challenged by Christ. First, He institutes the Eucharist, whereby his divine Body and Blood are given to us as food that we may be restored to the fullness of our humanity by reconciliation with our primal bit of divinity. Second, He is crucified, thereby hanging on a piece of wood and bearing the curse of the ground for us, "Cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree" says the Law. Thus, Christ redeems us in part in this life from the curse that will destroy our humanity and alienate us from our Creator, redeems us at our first death through our incorporation into his Body, and redeems many who died before his coming by his harrowing of hell.
Thesis 3: The "perfect propitiation" of which the Article speaks was required because justice is fundamental to the universe but its form was the forebearance of God to our fallen desires.
In Romans 3:25, the Apostle says of the Lord Jesus, "that God hath set [him] forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;" But why was it necessary for this to be done by ther death of Him who was very God and very man. In the beginning, God legislated mercifully, only putting Cain into exile. But Cain, fearing that his fellows would not be so merciful, asked God's protection. And so at the covenant of Noah, God established the basic form of the Lex Talionis by allusion to the primal order, but surely if it were primal, it would apply to Cain? But indeed it was primal in the sense that retributive justice follows from the natural law. Yet we were not meant to be subject to the fullness of the natural law, i.e. death. But as we mixed more and more with the creation that was good (and likely is good) but became accursed for us, we embraced retributive justice. We embraced scapegoating. We embraced collective punishment. And God could endure it no longer, so the Lord Jesus died in a way that finally could cleanse our consciences, for there is no propitiation of natural justice ("nature red in tooth and claw") so great as offering the Creator. Penal substitution is so sick and twisted as to be supremely fitting, not as a sign to us of God's wrath but to us of our great wickedness to one another and our desire for vengeance. But we also must remember that this is a reciprocal act of love for us. For indeed Abraham gave his son willingly as a sacrifice to God. So should we not feel so beloved by the reciprocal gift?
Thesis 4: The "perfect satisfaction" of which the Article speaks has the same character as the propitiation.
For as Latimer preached in a Homily on Repentance, "For he alone dyd with the sacrifice of his body and blod make satisfaction vnto the Iustice of god for our sinnes." Note further the use of satisfaction in Numbers 35 (KJV) in the context of the treatment of murder and manslaughter, where, on one hand, our desire for vengeance is recognized in the kinship role of the "revenger of blood" but the mercy of God is recognized in the idea of the city of sanctuary. This was to signify Christ, who left the sanctuary of the holy city, Jerusalem, and met death, the revenger of the blood of us all. And likewise we also know that the Lord was the true high priest and thus by his death, he has restored all us miserable offenders, destroyers of ourselves unawares by our disobedience, to the land of our possession.
No comments:
Post a Comment