I’ve written before about how I think the most distinct characteristic of Christianity is the doctrine of God’s incarnation in Christ, rather than the Reformation’s adage of salvation by grace alone and faith alone.  Some people might want to say, why not both? While I certainly agree that forgiveness and grace are always unearned gifts, I would push back on “both/and” just because I think the preoccupation with salvation in the first place is the oversight of the Reformers.  Of course they probably had this focus largely because of their late Medieval Catholic context.  But fortunately for us, we’ve moved beyond that – well beyond it, I hope.  As Tripp Fuller recently commented in a Homebrewed Christianity podcast, “Calvin’s Institutes were awesome like five hundred years ago, but [some people] are still repeating it today, and it just keeps getting worse.”

Last week Richard Rohr wrote the following in his daily meditations:

This is Christianity’s only completely unique message. Full incarnation is what distinguishes us from all other religions. This is our only real trump card, and for the most part, we have not yet played it. History, the planet—and other religions—have only suffered as a result. Incarnationalism does not put you in competition with any other religions but, in fact, allows you to see God in all things, including them! It mandates that you love and respect all others.

In other words, God bridges the divine-human gap – not primarily because of a theory of atonement, but because of Emmanuel itself, “God with us.”  Obviously this doesn’t mean atonement has no place, but the atonement can only be understood appropriately in light of the incarnation.  This is especially true for making any sense of suffering and the reason for which Jesus also suffered.  I’ve written about this before as well, but I think it’s worth repeating often.

The second lesson from incarnation according to Rohr has more to do with the truth of Christianity itself and its relationship to other faiths.  It should be very clear I think that Rohr is not insinuating that all religions are equally true, that they’re all saying pretty much the same thing, etc.  In fact I doubt Rohr would have any problem admitting that he finds the Christian faith to be most compelling in a universal way.  But the point is, he doesn’t really need to say that, because the gospel was never supposed to start a competition for truth to begin with.  All truth is God’s truth, and we shouldn’t be surprised when it shows up in unexpected places.  Hopefully it can be revealed anywhere and everywhere!  As Christians, however, we simply maintain that the Christ-form is the normative example of this – historically, cosmologically, anthropologically, and theologically.

The form of Christ in all its diversity and depth is always trying to get itself known and shown.  Who would ever want to limit that?  Certainly not God, right?  Only a narrow, un-universalized reading of the creeds and the great church tradition could warrant a restrictivist or exclusivist view of salvation.  This is the big mistake made by popular preachers and authors like David Platt and Francis Chan (see this video, for example), I believe, who, despite their welcomed challenge for American Christians to embrace the call of discipleship more seriously, have really thrown the baby out with the bath water when it comes to their understanding of the meaning of salvation and how non-Christians might receive it.  It would really help Christian leaders like Platt, Chan and others if they would recognize a distinction between the historical Jesus on the one hand and the cosmic Christ, or second person of the Trinity, on the other.  Instead though, theirs remains a black and white, individualist understanding of the good news reverting back to early stages of faith development, and I think that, despite the admirable and genuine zeal and fervor, they’re stuck in a form of therapeutic Christianity.  

For these guys, salvation still mostly means something like “heaven (instead of hell) when we die” because of a “payment” (see my post on this here), even if we’re also called to discipleship in the meantime as an expression of our gratitude.  This isn’t the “biblical” picture of salvation though.  Salvation is about “heaven coming to earth.” It’s about being healed and extending healing in this life, to everyone – not just Christians – even if it costs us the certainty and security of “heaven when we die” as a fall back.  We can still have faith and courage in the face of fear, faith that God will preserve and redeem everything of value that has ever existed – particularly that which seems to be perishing, including the planet.  I actually think this is essential.  But so far as we know, there’s no escape plan.  There’s just faith and hope in an “already/not yet” story.  The stage of the drama is right here and now, and it’s an unfinished one that we get to have a hand in writing.

This story by Carl Medearis makes a similar argument, and I like the way he gets there:

Medearis makes some other interesting remarks in this other video as well about how he doesn’t think belief in universalism (or not) should change the way we live.  It makes me think of the following quote from Calvin himself: “Even if there was no hell, because [a Christian] loves and revers God as [Creator and Caretaker] and honors and obeys [God as Lord], he [or she] would spurn the very idea of [God].”

I’m not one to downplay God’s judgement of sin — at all! — but I do think we’ve missed the point if we think salvation is primarily about avoiding that judgement.  I think the world is ready to hear a better gospel — one that is principally about repentance and forgiveness, yes — we need this — but equally about fidelity to the vision and mission of a making a more just, peaceful and grace-filled world.

Related articles

• Ask a Priest – Can Atheists Go to Heaven? (reflectionsofalaycatholic.com)
• An Incarnational Gospel: A Review of Prodigal Christianity’s Sixth Signpost (abnormalanabaptist.wordpress.com)
• Images of Salvation (XV) (frted.wordpress.com)
• Who Limits the Atonement? (abrahamsseed.wordpress.com)
• Evangel-lies #2 (mobiusfaith.wordpress.com)
• Images of Salvation (III) (frted.wordpress.com)
• Jesus Christ as Mediator (thechristiangazette.wordpress.com)
• Immortal Diamond – Take Eight! Probably the most controversial section of Rohr’s book (yliapu.typepad.com)
• Even The Demons Believe (thehallowedpath.wordpress.com)

Below I’ve included some keypoints from the introduction to a chapter entitled “Confessing Christ in Context” in Daniel MiGloire’s Theology textbook, Faith Seeking Understanding.  It seems to me that, much as Paul Tillich perhaps pointed out best with his theology of correlation, Christians are constantly struggling here and usually erring on the side of either universality or particuarlity with regard to “gospel proclamation.”  This is no new philosophical quandry, but I can’t help but still suspect that the state of things is especially polarized today, at least in North American Christianity, between naïve and ideological conservative-exclusivist universalists on the one hand, and reactionary, progressive-inclusivist particularists on the other (not that the former can’t be reactionary or the latter naïve and ideological — this is just the tendency I notice).

By “universalists”, here I mean those who trust in the applicability of “the gospel” for all times, people and places.  Conversely, particularists are for my purposes here roughly those who either refuse or hesitate to say much about whether “the gospel” is for everyone in light of pluralist, postmodern, postcolonial, and other political, contextual, and epistemological concerns — many of which are valid in my view.  I know there are others somewhere in between, but they seem so much less known, noticeable and/or appreciated.  I do not think, however, that the solution in this case is a mere balancing act of moderation.  Rather, I believe that when the universal and particular are worked out concretely and through praxis, there can be a transformation into a qualitatively new kind of community that is at once robust in its Christian identity and radically inclusive.  This is what Brian McLaren writes about in his latest book.

Here are MiGloire’s simple but very helpful assertions on this front:

All theology is contextual.  Historical and cultural context is a factor in all Christian life, witness and theology.

Many Christians in Asia, Africa and Latin America are convinced that their theological reflection must attend to their own distinctive non-Western cultures and forms of thought.

Just as God’s decisive self-communication is through incarnation in a particular human life, so the transmission of the gospel message by the church makes use of concrete and diverse languages, experiences, philosophical conceptualities, and cultural practices.

For example, we have not one but four Gospels, each of which proclaims Christ in a  distinctive way that is shaped by its particular context.

Paul declares that he has become “all things to all people” that he might “by all means” save some (1 Cor. 9:22).  This does not mean, of course, tailoring the gospel so that it no longer offends anyone.  It does mean, however, that the labor of interpretation is necessary if gospel is to be proclaimed clearly to different people in different cultural settings.

The true scandal of the Gospel must be distinguished from false scandals created by the assumption that only one language and one culture can be vehicles of the gospel message.

On the one hand, if we seek to emphasize the universality of the gospel by generalizing its message and stripping it of all historical contingency, we lose sight of the gospel’s own particularity and its power to receive and transform human life in all its historical particularity and diversity.

On the other hand, if we emphasize one particular expression of the gospel to the exclusion of all others, we lose sight of its universal power.

Robert Schreiter states the problem the way: “In the midst of the tremendous vitality that today’s Christians are showing, one set of problems emerges over and over again: how to be faithful both to the contemporary experience of the gospel and to the tradition of Christian life that has been received.”

This past Palm Sunday at First Baptist Austin, pastor Roger Paynter confessed his confusion and discomfort with the penal substitution theory of the atonement.  In attempt to nonetheless make sense of what God was doing through Christ’s willingness to suffer, however, and after making illustrative reference to the witness of Archbishop Oscar Romero’s death thirty years ago, Paynter suggested that, “only as goodness is willing to involve itself with evil is there any hope of evil being turned around.”

This got my attention.  I’ve written about atonement before (here and here) and what I’ve learned about the importance of seeing it not just as forgiveness for sin but as the protest of oppression, God’s solidarity with the victims of history, and the overcoming of unjust death.  This year for Holy Week though, I’m wondering once again about atonement as forgiveness.

I think I’ve slowly come to believe that death as a result of unconditional, unselfish love is something different from death for the purpose of appeasing God’s wrath.  The Prodigal Son parable is perhaps the best illustration of this (see the post below).  This is obviously not to deny that God is depicted as wrathful in the Bible or that God’s anger is justified against humanity’s sin.  Nor is it to downplay the significance of warning about judgment or the language and metaphor of sacrifice.  But whereas the appeasement of wrath is a transaction intended to satisfy the requirements of a strict accounting of what is due, unconditional love is a donation of abundant generosity and giving rather than of necessity. The idea of a “wrath absorbing sacrifice,” as I’ve heard many preachers call it, still answers to the law rather than to grace and mercy.  The cost is still “covered”, not forgiven — even if someone else more suitable makes the payment.

In this way then, the death of Jesus is not so much sacrifice of or violence against himself but the consequence of living self-exhaustively for the sake of others. As Ingolf Dalferth expresses it, Jesus’s death is a life lived

so unrestricted that even [his] own self-preservation does not present itself as an obstacle or limit to this love . . . [Christ’s] death is neither the end nor a means of what [he] does, but is rather taken as an unavoidable collateral damage, so to speak, in abiding under all circumstances by the love of neighbor (from the International Journal of Philosophy of Religion, 2010, 68:77-94: “Self-sacrifice: From the Act of Violence to the Passion of Love”).

In his book Economy of Desire, Daniel Bell argues that

God needs nothing and no necessity compels God to act as God does in redeeming us from sin.  Already the standard interpretation of the cross is in trouble, insofar as it asserts that some necessity compels God to exact compensatory suffering as the penalty for sin . . . Indeed as Anselm argues, in the work of atonement God in Christ both dismisses every debt and gives a gift that far exceeds any settling of accounts, since in Christ we are renewed even more wonderfully than we were created (p. 149).

In other words, yes, sin is an offense to God’s honor and holiness, but only in the particular sense that it is not fitting that God’s will or intention for humanity be thwarted, Bell says.  Put another way, Christ is less our offering to God and more of God’s offering to us (Romans 5:8) – despite humanity’s frequent rejection of it.  In Christ God reconciled the world (2 Cor. 5:18) by refusing to render to humanity what it has brought upon itself.  Instead God graciously endures humanity’s rejection and violence, ever extending to a guilty human race the redemption and reconciliation of Jesus (Romans 3:25).  Bell explains that Paul makes the same argument by referring to Jesus as the justice or righteousness of God, as the incarnation of God’s faithfulness to the redemptive promise made to Abraham for the sake of the Jew and Gentile alike.

Moreover, God does not merely forgive us as though we were guiltless, leaving us left otherwise unchanged (this is what penal substitution seems to say).  A purely negative pardon would mean that humanity remains unable to enjoy blessedness.  But this is of course not the case.  Instead, we are invited into transformation and restored relationship with God and others as demonstrated with the unconditional love of God in Christ.  Christ’s death and resurrection is the grand impetus for this, which is what we are really celebrating during Easter.

As Bell concludes, “Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice is an instantiation of the divine plenitude and superabundance that creates, sustains and now enables us to return to our source to get to participate in the divine life – in the reciprocity that is the triune circle of love, and that is our true purpose in and for which we were created” (p. 152).

What is salvation?  What does Jesus accomplish on the Cross and in the Resurrection?

For me, salvation is fully accomplished in the work of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  It was God in the hands of angry sinners – that’s the phrase that I would use.  I’m not a penal substitutionary guy.  But I am a substitutionary guy.  But I don’t see the Father pouring out his wrath on the Son.  I see the human race pouring out their wrath on the Son.  So I see the only hope for the entire cosmos is what the Son chooses to accept, crawling up on the instrument of our greatest wrath.  He met us at the deepest, darkest place.

That still gives every single person an eternal and ongoing right to reject this affection.  But I don’t think it changes the relentless affection.  God’s pursuit of me is eternal in nature.  That’s what Romans 8:38-39 is talking about.  Read the list of things that cannot separate you from God’s love, and you’re going to run smack into this: nothing [can separate us].

But the Bible is replete with language of divine wrath, not just the Old Testament but the New as well.  What do you make of that?

I am not opposed to wrath at all, but what’s changed for me is this: I grew up inside a paradigm that said wrath was punitive and retributive in nature.  I now see it as restorative.  And part of that is affective.

Having children changed a lot for me.  If my son was an amphetamine addict, I would like to be a fire and burn that out of my son’s life.  If I had a daughter who believed a lie about her value, I would want to be a consuming fire – absolutely.  I’d want to get inside of that and burn it out.

So to me, fire is something everybody has to deal with, because we all have crap.  It needs to be dealt with, and it’s going to be.  To some degree we’re dealing with it in this world, but we’re going to deal with it at some point.  But it’s because of love, not because we fail to live up to expectations.

So do you believe in the Last Judgment — with emphasis on last?

Yeah, probably.  If you read C.S. Lewis‘s introduction to The Great Divorce, in a beautiful way he acknowledges that he and George MacDonald and other writers are dealing in speculation.  The only certainty I have come to with regard to any of this is that I’m now way more certain about the kindness and the goodness of God, even if it’s also a fire.  I’m certain of his goodness.  But I don’t know how it all works out.

One question I get, of course, is, “Are you a universalist?”  I’m not, because I don’t think you can make that step doctrinally.  I don’t think Scripture is that obvious.  There is this respect for the human creation’s ability to say no.  God will not force love.  And we still have to choose to be reconciled.  But Colossians says that’s what we are to be praying for, that everything gets reconciled back to him.

Taken from the interview by Mark Galli in Christianity Today, March 2013 Issue

I recently got to discuss this passage with the students in the “introduction to theology” class that I’m teaching.  Terrence Tilley, the author, explains how parables are stories that “upset worlds.”  According to Tilley, the parable of the prodigal son is doing just this, and perhaps in more ways than we might expect.

Jesus calls God abba.  We translate this Aramaic word as “father,” although it suggests the intimacy of “papa” or “dad.” Although Jesus not unique in addressing God this way, it is surely a distinctive and central piece of Jesus’ prayer.

The question becomes what sort of “father” is God?

[This] parable is often taken by critics as being a response of Jesus to those who criticize him for consorting with the wicked.  Yet that doesn’t seem to get to the point of the story.  Others treat it as exemplifying the forgiveness of sins or as a typical “reversing-our-expectations” parable.  Yet this is the only parable in the New Testament in which the chief protagonist is the father.  Although we have called it by another title, consider this story of a father who had two sons.  Read the parable here.

This longest and richest of Jesus’ parables is surely open to many interpretations.  Not only do we hear many ideas in it, but the first hearers likely did, too.  I think that it is indubitable that this parable makes allusions not only to the people whom Jesus consorted with, but also to the free forgiveness of sins.  It also reverses one’s expectations in that the father freely forgives the son who was lost and bestows on him gifts to celebrate with joy his return.  But let’s look at what the father does.

First, he split up the property with his younger son.  Since Jewish law provided for inheritanec rights only to the older son, this was not an unexpected procedure.  Apparently many families did this to provide the younger son with some capital.  Nothing exceptional here.

Second, he saw his prodigal son returning and was moved to tears.  This father has a heart. But, then, that is not unusual.  Most fathers would rejoice at the return of a son who had wandered.  Most fathers would see him coming down the road, be overjoyed with the return, and sit and wait for the son to apologize and then forgive the one who has asked forgiveness.

It is the third action that is unexpected here and was likely unexpected then.  Instead of sitting and waiting, the father ran to him, embraced him and received him before he said anything.  Then, when the son tries to recite his prepared apologetic request, the father interrupts him and gets ready to throw a party! . . .

The final thing the father does is also crucial.  The elder brother is outside, complaining and moaning as the story notes (imagine a hard-working brother getting home from the graveyard shift about five in the morning doing the same thing).  Again the father gets up and goes out to him.  He does not leave him in the cold.  He does not demand that the elder brother enter.  He not only doesn’t issue commands from his chair, but also goes out and pleads with him, too, explains the situation, and tries to draw him in.  The father also performs an unexpected gracious action for the elder brother as well.  Again an unexpected action.

It would be allegorization — reading the parable as if it were an allegory — to say that the father in this story stands for the Father of All.  Yet this is the only parable of Jesus which presents a father interacting with his children.  Jesus’ disciples may have heard this parable as revealing the actions of Jesus’ Father.  If this sort of hearing reveals the distinctiveness of the parable and fits the parable as well as other interpretations, then it is one legitimate way to hear it.  And then, may a Christian at least hope that this is the way a heavenly Father will act, too?

taken from Story Theology by Terrence Tilley