THEORIES OF THE FALL AND OF THE ATONEMENT

St. Paul tells us that, "As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive," (I Cor 15:22) and there is a close connection between the question, "What difference does it make to me what Adam has done?" and the question, "What difference does it make to me what Christ has done?" With that in mind, I am going to talk not only about various ways of looking at the Fall but also about various ways of looking at the Atonement.

(Notice that the English word "atonement" does not mean "compensatory suffering" or anything of the sort. It comes from "at-one-ment", and means the re-uniting of those who have been parted. When I first heard this, I assumed that it was simply a preacher's fanciful play on words, exploiting an accidental similarity. But I checked the dictionary and found this to be the true origin of the word. The Greek word translated "atonement" in the King James Version has a similar meaning. The meaning of Hebrew word is a little more complicated. The root meaning is "to cover, to overshadow," and hence it is in some contexts taken by some translators to mean, "to annul, to blot out.")

Christians believe that the Fall of Adam created a breach between the human race and God, and that the Death and Resurrection of Christ has bridged that gap. However, they are not at all agreed on how this works, or even what it means. (For example, although they are committed to belief in Christ as an actual historical person, some of them are not so sure about Adam.)

THE ANSELMIC THEORY

I am going to discuss various theories of the Fall and the Atonement, beginning with the one that most people know best. This theory is the forensic theory (meaning, so to speak the courtroom theory -- you remember that Quincy on TV practiced forensic medicine), usually known as the Anselmic theory (named for St. Anselm of Canterbury, although many scholars insist that it differs significantly from what St. Anselm actually taught). According to this theory, men deserved to be punished for their sins, but Christ offered to accept the punishment on our behalf, and so we are accordingly pardoned.

A preacher addressing an audience of English schoolgirls during the Second World War put it more or less like this:

The magnitude of an offense depends on the rank of the person that the offense is committed against, Thus, for example, let us suppose that you make a face at the girl sitting next to you. That would be a very unladylike thing to do, and I hope that you would never do it, but it would be far more serious if you were to make a face at the Reverend Mother Superior, because she is a person of greater rank than the girl next to you. On the other hand, the magnitude of a penance depends on the rank of the person doing the penance. Thus, for example, suppose that we win the war, and one of the conditions of the peace treaty is that Hitler must walk from London to Birmingham carrying a placard that says, "I AM A HEEL." Now suppose that Hitler sends us a telegram saying, "What about having Goering do that London-to-Birmingham walk instead. Won't that do just as well?" Naturally we telegraph back saying, "No, of course it won't do just as well. We don't want Heel Number Two. We want Heel Number One."

Now apply this to our offense against God. Since God is of infinite rank, our offense against him is infinite, and calls for an infinite penance. But the only person who can perform an infinite penance is a person of infinite rank, and that means God himself.

OBJECTIONS TO THE ANSELMIC THEORY

As the Anselmic theory is often worded, God's Mercy disposes him to spare us the punishment due our sins, but His Justice demands that sin be punished, and the death of Christ satisfies both requirements. Many persons, however, do not find this at all a tolerable explanation, and complain that is satisfies neither Justice nor Mercy. As one writer put

"According to this theory, God wanted to damn everybody, but his vindictive sadism was satisfied with the torture and death of his own son, who, being completely innocent, was a particularly attractive victim."

Suppose that you are the father of two small boys, Billy and Sammy. You tell them, "Boys, you must not take any cookies from the cookie jar -- if you do, I shall have to spank you." Shortly thereafter, you catch Billy with a cookie in each hand and another in each cheek. You say to him: "Billy, you have disobeyed me, and I cannot overlook that fact. It would be an offense against justice if I did. You deserve to be spanked and it would just not be right for me to let you off. However, I love you and do not want to hurt you. I know what I will do -- I will spank Sammy instead!"

Would this be just? Would it be merciful? Would it be logical? Would it be sane? Would it have anything at all good to be said about it?

It is not only those outside the church who view the Anselmic theory with a jaundiced eye. I have heard of a little girl who came home from Sunday School to report to her parents what she had learned. She said:

"God is the judge. He sits up on the bench and says that everyone is guilty and that we all have to go to jail forever. Jesus is our lawyer. He stands up for us and promises to pay everyone's fine out of his own pocket. So we all get to go home free. I like Jesus, but I don't like that mean old God."

So the forensic theory states that Christ was punished for our sin. But it also states that we are punished for Adam's sin. Ever since Adam ate of the forbidden tree, we are told, he had an overwhelming tendency to do wrong, a tendency which he has passed on to all his descendants, so that since his time all men have been evil by nature. Most non-Christians find this theory irrational, incomprehensible, and morally repellent. Thus one writer:

The Name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin.

A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If a man is evil by birth, he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man's sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man's nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. Yet THAT is the root of your code. Do not hide behind the cowardly evasion that man is born with free will, but with a "tendency" to evil. A free will saddled with a tendency is like a game with loaded dice. It forces man to struggle through the effort of playing, to bear responsibility and pay for the game, but the decision is weighted in favor of a tendency that he had no power to escape. If the tendency is of his choice, he cannot possess it at birth; if it is not of his choice, his will is not free.

Ayn Rand, ATLAS SHRUGGED (Random House, 1957) 1025f (ppb 951f)

Let us consider the following dialogue:

GREEN: You think that we are punished for the sin of Adam. That is a horrible doctrine. Suppose that you are brought into court and the judge says, "Your great-grandfather was a horse-thief, and the penalty for that is hanging. I therefore sentence you to be hanged." But then John Smith steps forward and says, "I volunteer to be hanged in Charlie's place." The judge sets you free and hangs John Smith instead. Now someone says to you, "Aren't you grateful to John Smith for taking your place, when it was really you that deserved to be hanged?" Surely you would reply, "I am grateful to Smith, but the judge is a homicidal maniac! He was out to hang an innocent man (me), and now he has actually hanged another innocent man (Smith). He is the one that should be hanged, or at least locked in a padded cell for life." Isn't that what you would say?

BROWN: Oh, but it's not a matter of my being hanged for my great-grandfather's crime. Suppose that my great-grandfather was a horse-thief, and he taught my grandfather to steal horses, and he taught my father, who taught me, and now I am about to be hanged for the horses that I stole with my own hands. That's a different situation entirely.

GREEN: But suppose that your upbringing has been so bad that you can't help stealing horses -- you have no choice in the matter. Is it fair to hang you for that?

BROWN: Oh, I think I've got a choice.

GREEN: Look around the room and pick out some stranger, someone you know nothing about. Now, are you prepared, without ever meeting the man, to tell me that he has at least once in his life done something wrong, and therefore will go to hell if he does not accept the saving work of Christ? You are? All right, now if you are so sure that he has gone wrong, how can you tell me that he had a choice in the matter and could have gone right? Back to the courtroom, buddy. The judge asks the prosecutor, "Have you any evidence that Charlie has stolen any horses?" The prosecutor says, "No, Your Honor, but you remember what his father was like." The judge says, "Ah yes, a man rotten to the core. If you were brought up by him, it stands to reason you would be a horse-thief -- there is no way on earth that any kid could have the strength of will to resist the effects of that kind of upbringing and turn out decent. It therefore stands to reason that you are a horse-thief, and I sentence you to be hanged." Is that fair?

BROWN: Whether it's fair depends on whether I have in fact stolen any horses.

GREEN: Do you believe that all those in heaven acknowledge Christ as their Savior?

BROWN: Certainly.

GREEN: If a boy dies at the age of six months, does he go to heaven? And is it correct to describe Jesus Christ as that boy's Savior?

BROWN: Yes to both questions.

GREEN: Does that mean that the boy would have gone to hell if it were not for the atoning work of Christ?

BROWN: Yes, because that boy has been born with a sinful nature, and nothing with a sinful nature can enter heaven until it has been cleansed by the blood of Christ. GREEN: Then we are back in the courtroom again. This time, you are only four years old. The judge says, "Your great-grandfather was a horse-thief. You have never stolen any horses yourself, because you are too young to do so, but you have inherited a horse-thieving nature from birth, and for that I sentence you to be hanged -- unless, of course, John Smith volunteers to be hanged in your place." What do you think of the judge?

BROWN: He's a homicidal maniac.

Now, the point I want to make is that there is a serious problem here. I am not saying that the Anselmic theory is morally detestable, but I am saying that people often understand it in terms that really are morally detestable. And this is something that as Christians we have a duty to be concerned about. There are people who have utterly turned their backs on the gospel, not because it calls them to be good and they don't want to be good, but because they regard it as a moral horror. As a Christian, you have a duty to proclaim the Good News of Christ to your non-Christian neighbors. But if you are going to tell them about Christ in a way that makes God out to be some kind of crazy sadist, far better that you kept still altogether.

In some ways, I am concerned less about those who hear an immoral theory about God and reject it than I am about those who hear it and accept it. In many households, the little girl who repeated what she had been told about the Atonement and said, "I like Jesus, but I don't like that mean old God," would be told, "Hush! You mustn't call God mean. That is a wicked thing to say. God will be very angry with you. Probably He will punish you for talking like that." And at this point the little girl subsides and either (1) becomes a secret atheist or rebel against God or (2) comes to believe that God is in fact good, but that "good" really means "too powerful to be criticized." Having noted that, in the 1950 May Day speeches in Red Square, one can count on finding only favorable things said about Stalin, she is prepared to obey God as a kind of cosmic Stalin. Of the two reactions, the former is more Christian. It is far better to be an atheist than a devil-worshipper.

IS THE ANSELMIC VIEW THE ONLY CHRISTIAN VIEW?

At this point (or earlier) a believer in forensic substitution (the Anselmic theory) may wish to say:

"What I have been hearing from you is simply an attack on Christianity. Take away the doctrine of the Atonement, the Good News that Jesus Christ has died for our sins, and there is nothing left of Christianity. If you are an enemy of Christianity, then at least have the common honesty to say so openly!"

To this I reply:

"I agree that without the Atonement there is nothing left of Christianity. What I deny is your position that without the forensic view of the Atonement, there is nothing left of the Atonement."

To this the Anselmist may say:

"I object very strongly to your speaking of 'the Anselmic theory' as if it were one of many theories of the Atonement that we as Christians are free to choose among. Forensic substitution is not a theory about the Atonement. It is simply the doctrine of the Atonement as plainly taught in the Scriptures."

I reply that of course the Anselmist's argument that the Scriptures back his view, and the Scriptural proof-texts that he offers to bolster his case, must be given a full and fair hearing. However, I ask both him and those who hear him to remember the distinction between saying, "Text A plainly affirms Theory T," and saying, "Text A is capable, without violent twisting, of being understood as referring to Theory T, and those who have long accepted Theory T, and are deeply committed to it, will quite naturally and honestly assume that to be its true meaning."

More specifically, I ask them to note the distinction between substitution and forensic substitution. Every theory of the Atonement, so far as I know, implies substitution. It teaches that God became man for our sakes in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, that He was crucified, dead, buried, that He rose from the dead, and that by doing this He freed us from sin and death. Clearly this implies that the Incarnation brought us immeasurable benefits. Clearly it also implies a cost to the benefactor. Crucifixion hurts. On ANY conceivable theory of the Atonement, whether it be the Anselmic, or the Abelardian, or one of those we have yet to examine, or another theory altogether, it remains true that Christ suffered to bring us joy; that we are bought with a price; that we are redeemed, not with silver or gold, but with the blood of the Eternal Lamb; that though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich. From His pain comes our gain.

Given this fact, it is natural, it is inevitable, that Christian writers, both in the pages of Holy Scripture and elsewhere, should find themselves expressing the point by using the language of exchange and substitution, should say that Christ took on Himself the consequences of our sins, that He paid our debts, that He suffered in our stead. And they are right. Most true it is that He was bruised for our iniquities, that by His wounds we are healed. But since a Christian writer would be bound to describe the reconciling work of Christ in those terms whether he believed in forensic substitution or not, the Christian reader must not take such language as evidence that the writer is talking about forensic substitution. The Christian doctrine is that, by the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, God has reconciled us to Himself.

If we then ask, "What is the connection? Just how does Christ's death make us better off?" there are various possible answers. The answer of forensic substitution is that Divine Justice demands a legal penalty of suffering for sin, but (under some circumstances) does not require that the sinner and the sufferer be the same. However, those who suppose that this is the only possible answer usually do so (in my judgement) because they have never considered other possible answers, or even been made aware that other answers exist or have been offered. One purpose of this paper is to broaden their horizons.

These general remarks are not intended as a substitute for examining the Anselmist's proof-texts. This I propose to do as soon as I have explained one other theory of the Atonement. If I were to examine the texts now, I should have to keep saying, "But why does that text fit the Anselmic theory better than some other possible theory?" which is a vague question. I propose, instead, to ask: "How does that text fit the Anselmic theory better than the Abelardian? or the Odoic? or the Gregorian?" Hence, I do not evade the examination, but I postpone it. I can hardly ask an Anselmist to give up his theory until he sees what the alternatives are.

I mention, in passing, that the Scriptures repeatedly say that in Christ, and through His work, we are reconciled to God. If the forensic substitution theory were correct, so that the death of Christ was needed to appease God's wrath or satisfy His justice, then one would expect to hear it said that the Crucifixion reconciles God to us. But that language is never used. It is always wrath on our part that needs to be overcome. And in this I say that the Abelardian theory of the Atonement conforms with the words of Holy Scripture in a way that the Anselmic theory does not. It is to the Abelardian theory that we turn in the next post.

Abelard's interpretation

THE ABELARDIAN THEORY

I have suggested that perhaps the hanging-judge version is a distortion of the Anselmic theory rather than being the theory rightly understood, and this is a point we will come back to, but right now I should like to consider a second theory of the Atonement. It is called the Abelardian theory, after Peter Abelard. If you want a descriptive word for it, then, just as we called the Anselmic theory the forensic theory, we may call this the beau-geste thory. Abelard says that in the crucifixion, God invites men to return to friendship with him, and does so by a dramatic, costly, and generous gesture of love, a gesture that makes a loving response easy. Let me illustrate.

Suppose that I have quarreled with my best friend Oscar, and that the quarrel is entirely my fault, and I know it, but I am too stubborn to admit it and apologize. I am unhappy, but unwilling to give in. I wander into a bar and order a drink. I sit there, sipping it and feeling sullen and sorry for myself. Oscar walks in and we see each other but do not speak. He sits at the other end of the bar and orders a drink. Then a couple of rowdies begin to push me around and rough me up. Oscar proceeds to step in and bail me out, getting himself a broken nose in the process. The result: instant and complete reconciliation.

Now you will note that the broken nose is an important part of the process. If he had simply stepped to the door and shouted for the police, or if he had asked the bartender to tell the rowdies to behave on penalty of not getting any more drinks in that bar ever, and the bartender and then the rowdies had complied, or if he had pulled out a gun with tranquilizing darts and put the rowdies to sleep, I assume that I should have unbent enough to thank him politely, but his action, though welcome, would nevertheless be the sort of thing one might do for a complete stranger. It would not have cost him anything. The broken nose is what mends the broken friendship.

Now, on Abelard's view (though he expresses it a bit differently), the Crucifixion is God's taking a broken nose for us. It is his way of saying to the human race: "We have quarreled, and you are unwilling to come to me and end it. Very well, I will come to you. I love you. I want a right relationship to prevail between us. I want our friendship restored. And I want it enough to lay my life on the line for it." And just as the shock of seeing Oscar with blood all over his face breaks through my shell of stubbornness, so God's action at Calvary breaks through the shell of sulky, petty, arrogance that the human race has erected against God's love, and makes a reconciliation possible.

(Let me state for the record that the above story is fiction -- I am not a barfly. It is just that when I tried writing, "I walk into a soda fountain and order a strawberry malted," the story did not seem right, somehow.)

ANSELM VS. ABELARD

This, in brief, is the second, or Abelardian theory of the Atonement, and the first comment I have to make about it is that many persons who think they are Anselmists are really closer to Abelard. Some years ago I read a tract handed to me on the street, which began by explaining the Atonement in the strictest possible (I almost said the worst possible) Anselmist language -- straight forensic substitution. We all deserve punishment, but Christ has agreed to be punished instead, and that satisfies justice. But then the second paragraph went on to give an illustration.

At a summer camp run by Christians (said the tract) there was a boy who was a deliberate trouble-maker. He was a thief and a vandal, and the mere existence af any rule whatever was a challenge to him to break it. He was not a Christian, did not seem likely to become one, and the camp experience did not seem to be doing him any good, even in secular terms. Meanwhile, he was making life impossible for the counselors and for the other campers. The staff met and considered sending him home, but decided instead to try a last-ditch effort to get through to him. They called a camp meeting, and announced that Joe was on trial. They read off a several-page list of his misdeeds, none of them in dispute, found him guilty, and sentenced him to be flogged. His reaction was sneering defiance. "Do your worst. I can take it." Then one of the counselors stepped forward and said, "I volunteer to take the flogging instead of Joe." He was accordingly stripped to the waist and tied to a beam, and the flogging began. As the welts rose on his back and it was obvious that the flogging was real, Joe tried to intervene and stop the flogging, but two counselors held him back. He then tried to run out of the room but was again stopped. He begged the flogger to stop, and even to flog him instead, but to no avail. By the end of the flogging, he was sobbing hysterically. From that night on, he was a changed guy. No more theft, or vandalism, no more trouble for trouble's sake. He had been told that the counselors cared about him, and had dismissed it as a con job. Now, he accepted the fact that they did care about him, and came to accept the idea that God cared about him. And the flogged counselor, sleeping on his stomach for the next week or so, said, "It was rough, but it was worth it."

Now you will notice that that story is not Anselmic at all. It is Abelardian to the core. And I strongly suspect that many people who are accustomed, if someone asks them, to explain the Atonement in Anselmic terms, really view it in other terms, usually Abelardian, without realizing that they are doing so.

Let me offer another illustration.

Most of you, surely, have read THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER. If it has been a while, and the details are hazy in your mind, I suggest that you give yourselves a treat and re-read it. The passages I am particularly concerned with at the moment are chapters 3(25-40), 6(70-100), 7(37-100), 10(95-100), 12(0-10), 12(80-100), 17(0-20), 18(55-100), and 20(0-100). Here 3(25-40) means chapter three, a passage beginning about 25% of the way through the chapter and ending about 40% of the way through.

Tom falls in love with Becky Thatcher, and they agree to be engaged. But Becky learns that Tom has been engaged before, and quarrels with him. Thereafter, they take turns, each making overtures to the other, being rejected, and going away full of hurt pride and redoubled anger. When each has finally determined to hate the other for life, Becky accidentally tears a valuable book belonging to the schoolmaster. He is interrogating Becky, when Tom leaps to his feet and shouts, "I done it!" He receives the whipping of his life, and Becky and he are reconciled.

Now an Anselmist might wish to take this as an illustration of the way in which Christ bears the penalty for our sins. But this interpretation violates the spirit of the book completely. It reads the book as follows: "Becky has done wrong by tearing the book, thus putting her and the schoolmaster at odds. The problem is how she and the schoolmaster are to be reconciled and school discipline maintained at the same time. Having set up the problem, we now bring in Tom and flog him to solve it."

But that is not at all the way the book reads. Say rather: "Becky and Tom have quarreled. Both are unhappy as a result, but wounded pride stands in the way of any steps toward reconciliation. Then Becky gets into trouble, and Tom gets her out of it, at considerable cost to himself. His gesture of generous love elicits from her a response of love, and the quarrel is forgotten forever." And this is atonement in the pure Abelardian sense.

Note that it is unimportant that Becky's trouble results from a misdeed on her part and takes the form of a threatened punishment. If Tom had pushed her out of the way of a falling rock and had broken his leg in the process, the course of true love would have run substantially the same. The schoolmaster is not really perceived by the reader as a person -- he is just one of those natural ills, like hornets and measles, that constitute the darker side of childhood, and no reader cares about or expects anything that we would call a "reconciliation" between the schoolmaster and Becky or any other pupil.

The reader may object that in the quarrel between Tom and Becky, both are at fault, whereas the Christian maintains that in the quarrel between God and man, the fault is entirely on man's side. I grant the point. I say only that Tom's method of ending the quarrel is like Christ's, not that every detail of the story illustrates the union of Christ with his Church. It is true that Tom undergoes a sort of death-and-resurrection, once (on the island) without Becky and once (in the cave) with her, and that the latter adventure is directly responsible for the final destruction of evil, as represented by Injun Joe. But I resist the temptation to try for a full-fledged allegory (Amy Lawrence, whom we first meet in Sunday School, as a symbol of the Mosaic Covenant?), and content myself with the point about the nature of reconciliation.

(Digressive note: A parable is a story whose central point illustrates something. An allegory is a story in which all or at least many points illustrate something. Example: If you read the story of the Good Samaritan as a parable, you say that the moral is that everyone who needs my help is my neighbor. If you read it as an allegory, you say that Jerusalem is the City of God, and Jericho is the City that God has judged worthy of utter destruction, and that the man who goes down (the direction is significant) from Jerusalem to Jericho represents mankind forsaking God and falling into sin. Sacrifices and offerings (the priest) cannot help him. Oberving the law (the levite) cannot help him. Only Christ (the Samaritan) can do so, pouring into his wounds wine (the redeeming grace bought at Calvary with Christ's blood) and oil (the sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit), setting him on his own beast (assuming a fleshly body in order that we may be like him) and bringing him to an inn (the Catholic Church), and instructing the innkeeper to care for him, giving him two pence (the Major Sacraments), with reference to a supplementary payment (the Minor Sacraments -- but some would interpret this as a reference to the Treasury of Merit), and so on. I am taking the book TOM SAWYER to be a parable, not an allegory.)