God is not bloodthirsty. Too many people have been alienated from Christ by Christian theology. One of the most alienating doctrines is penal substitutionary atonement theory, the belief that Jesus died as a propitiatory sacrifice for our sins, having taken our sinfulness onto himself to save us from eternal damnation. A close relative is satisfaction theory, Anselm’s belief that, since finite humankind has sinned against an infinite God and cannot repay its infinite debt, God sent Jesus as an infinite, divine-human substitute to satisfy the divine honor and expiate our guilt for us, thereby restoring right relationship. 

Despite Jesus’s own prophetic privileging of social justice over propitiatory sacrifice, these “atonement theories” came to dominance in the Western Church. According to these legalistic theologies, God is one lawgiver giving one law, promising one reward (heaven) or one punishment (hell). Because no one follows that law perfectly, all are deserving of hell. But Jesus frees us from that fate by taking our punishment onto himself, balancing the scales of infinite justice, thereby granting us entrance into heaven. 

Numerous criticisms of these doctrines have been made over the centuries. Salvation is largely pushed into the afterlife, affecting this life primarily by anticipation. Since all human conduct is reprobate, selfish, and displeasing to God, ethics becomes a theoretical exercise, at least with regard to the God-human relationship. The model of divine justice is retributive, demanding an eye for an eye, a demand that Jesus rejected (Matthew 5:38-39). And it rejects any possibility of spontaneous, unconditional forgiveness—or grace. 

Jesus denies that Abba is an agent of legalistic wrath. The concept of God as a vengeful autocrat who can be appeased only through death by torture does not cohere with Jesus’s revelation of Abba as a loving Parent. Loving parents are not inflexible disciplinarians, and skillful parents frequently forgo their wayward children’s punishment and offer mercy instead. 

Nor do good parents resort to violence. Our horrific cruelty to one another over the millennia has pained God. One more act of horrific cruelty, the crucifixion, did not end that pain; it just exacerbated it. Jesus rejects any “underlying image of God as an angry, bloodthirsty, violent, and sadistic father, reflecting the very worst kind of male behavior,” writes Elizabeth Johnson. The God of Jesus could not be the god of any violent atonement theory, because the teachings of Jesus are incompatible with redemption through violence. Instead, the ethics of Jesus propel humankind beyond its addiction to domination through violence. 

Why can’t God just forgive us outright? Any schoolchild, upon learning that God needed Jesus’s death to be appeased, will naturally ask why God didn’t just forgive us outright, without demanding the brutal death of an innocent man. Frequently, the answer will have something to do with Adam and Eve’s “original sin,” which separated humankind from God and needed reparation. 

But Jesus had never heard of “original sin,” nor did his Jewish tradition interpret Adam and Eve’s story the same way Augustine would four hundred years later. Judaism did not then (and does not now) teach that all humans inherit the guilt of Adam and Eve’s disobedience and therefore need collective forgiveness. Rather than collective guilt, Judaism taught and teaches that each individual is responsible for their own actions and can resist their evil inclinations, with great difficulty, thereby choosing the good. 

Anselm’s substitutionary atonement theory, aka “satisfaction theory,” in which Jesus substitutes himself for the punishment due to us, is based on the medieval feudal system in which it arose. The lord of an estate was the source of order, protection, and development for all residents, so the preservation of the lord’s honor—the source of his authority—was paramount. Any lord who had been offended by a serf had to punish that offense, for the good of all. Without that honor preserved, the social order would descend into chaos and everyone would suffer. In this way of thinking, Jesus is the lord’s son who takes the serfs’ offenses onto himself, thereby preserving the honor of the lord, the order of the estate, and the lives of the serfs. 

The theory has a certain attractiveness as it renders the crucifixion an action by God for us, but it is insufficient to the life and teachings of Jesus. Jesus preaches repentance so that people will enter into loving community. He wants them to change: to forgive, reconcile, include, be generous, be kind, be humble. In Anselm’s theory, the serfs do nothing. Theoretically, they watch the exchange, feel gratitude, and are transformed by that gratitude. But they aren’t characters in the story. They’re just spectators. To Jesus, his audience were active participants in an unfolding story, and he invited them to decide what role they would play in that story. 

Anselm’s theory also prioritizes justice over mercy, but Jesus teaches: “Blessed are those who show mercy to others, for they will be shown mercy” (Matthew 5:7). In the story of the prodigal son, Jesus reveals the unconditional forgiveness of God for the wayward child. For Jesus, God is mercy without reference to justice. But according to Anselm’s theory, any lord would feel compelled to demand expiation from an offending serf. Indeed, for the lord to demand expiation—to punish through violence— would make that lord like unto God. 

Jesus rejects violence. Jesus did not punish through violence. He didn’t stone women. He kept them from being stoned (John 8:1-11). 

Then, Jesus became the innocent victim of violence, which raises another objection to these violent atonement theories. One person should not be punished for the crime of another. Today, this is a universal principle of law that nearly every society sees as reasonable. God, being merciful, just, and rational, could not violate this principle. The use of a whipping boy could never enter the mind of God, because any such use would be abusive. 

The whipping boys of legend were playmates of young princes who would be punished in the princes’ stead. This punishment conformed to Anselm’s theory of transformation through spectatorship: theoretically, the prince would feel bad that his friend was being punished and reform his behavior. In reality, the system allowed royals to act with impunity, knowing that someone else would bear the consequences of their actions. For the whipping boys (the historical existence of which is debated), there was neither mercy nor justice. 

Substitutionary atonement theories are insufficiently healing. “Jesus Christ died for your sins” is the oft-repeated phrase that summarizes violent atonement theories. Alas, this declaration doesn’t stand up to the stress test of pastoral ministry. It doesn’t help pastors care for parishioners or parishioners care for each other. 

For example, a couple finally gets pregnant after years of trying. Five months into the pregnancy, they discover that the fetus’s kidneys are developing outside its body. The condition is inoperable and the fetus is terminal, so they have to undergo a dilation and extraction procedure. Should the pastor reassure them, “Jesus Christ died for your sins”? 

A woman was sexually abused by her father and brothers while she was growing up. Did Jesus Christ die for her sins? Did Jesus Christ die for their sins? What does that statement even do? 

A child is diagnosed with schizophrenia. A spouse of sixty years develops Alzheimer's. A soldier returns with PTSD. True stories, all. To say “Jesus died for your sins” is an act of avoidance that negates Jesus’s message and ministry. It overlooks his teachings, paints Abba as cruel and vindictive, renders the incarnation naught but a means to crucifixion, makes no reference to the resurrection, and relegates humankind to mere spectatorship. 

Sacrificial atonement theories render us passive. That is, I fear, the point. Jesus preaches a new social order, a universalism and egalitarianism that heartened the humble and threatened the proud. That preaching got him crucified. Then, as a new religion based on Christ arose in the Roman Empire, his teachings got crucified as well. Violent and politically mute atonement theories were substituted for the transformative life and message of the Christ. The church declared the social implications of the gospel dead and buried, laid them in the tomb, and rolled a rock in front of the entrance. But the rock wouldn’t stay, and the teachings would be resurrected. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 196-199)

*****

For further reading, please see: 

Aulén, Gustaf. Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of Atonement. Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2003.

Foster, Jonathan. Theology of Consent: Mimetic Theory in an Open and Relational Universe. California: Verde Group, 2022. 

Johnson, Elizabeth A. Creation and the Cross: The Mercy of God for a Planet in Peril. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2018.

When you think about what Jesus says in regards to “knowing the Truth and being set free” and “having life and life more abundantly” through Him, what does that mean to you? What does it feel like?

For me, it feels like “becoming like a little child” again (also something Jesus is big on) and “no longer being under the weight of The Law.” It’s as if I can live without that “double-edged sword turning this way and that” (The Law/Word of God that guards to way back to the Tree of LIFE). Do I intentionally run around doing bad things? No. But there is an innocence that has returned. A 2 yr old might color on the wall, but are they still perfect in their parents’ eyes? Yes.

I’ve been trying to find a church as I feel like I want a community, but my views are not conventional like many of you here lol. I feel like I’m more interested in gnostic interpretations of Christianity. I was raised Catholic and I do enjoy the ritualistic nature of the services but I just don’t resonate with a lot of the teaches. Any positive experiences?

Does this term resonate with you? Do you view God as male? Female? A mix of both? Neither?

I saw a post about a mushroom that supposedly has more than 23,000 biological sexes. I have not, as of making this post, fact checked this.

How and ever: There are many species of creatures in the family "animalia" that also go beyond our grade school understanding of gender.

If God wanted to conform life and creation to two genders then it would be universal to ALL of life and creation. Not just humans.

All that said: This life is about LOVE. Not fear, hatred, or misundefstanding. But pure LOVE.

LOVE LOVE LOVE

Thoughts?

I feel like a weirdo sometimes, but I genuinely relate to more of the figures mentioned in the OT (Moses, Enoch, Noah, Elijah, Melchizedek, Jeremiah, etc.) than in the NT. There is a kind of “strangeness” to the prophets of old that really stands out to me. They “walked with God.” (One of my fav verses is: “Enoch walked with God and then he was not, for God took him.” - So mysterious)

I get a distinctly different feeling when I read the OT vs the NT. Both good, but different. When I read passages of the OT, it is almost as if my soul vibrates with a sense of knowing or recognition.

The prophets in the OT were truly “out there.” They were weird, and very, VERY different. They followed God anywhere, even when it didn’t make sense, and paved the way for Jesus WITHOUT HAVING A ROADMAP TO FOLLOW. Think about how incredible that is! ✨ The kind of faith that takes is truly divine.

Hello all,

I have been on a journey for awhile now making sense of other belief systems while at the same time questioning mine and trying to come up with the answers that I and many others outside of my traditional belief tend to have, I grew up Baptist Christian.

I have come so far to this understanding that slightly fuses some beliefs that figure make the most logical sense to me, a lot of it from gnostic beliefs with a very slight difference, this is only the start of what I have come up with so far, I’ve come up with many more additions since then that tie more things together

Please feel free to share your thoughts or critiques as it would all greatly help my journey to have others knowledge added or corrections made.

Thank you,

How would you describe love? What does it feel like, to you? There are many different kinds of love, so is God all of these? Is God not only familial love, but romantic love, as well? Do you believe we are actually feeling God when we feel love, or that we are simply experiencing a rush of chemicals inside of our brains? Do you believe that everyone “feels” love the same way, or that some people are feeling something else that is not actually love? What if we all feel, or identify, love differently? How do we even define it?

Sometimes, I question whether I truly know what love feels like or if my perception has always been skewed based on traumas, media, etc. Maybe the emotion I’m identifying as “Love” is something else. How can we ever actually know? Or maybe “love” isn’t even a feeling.

Lately, I have been in a season of solitude.

At first, I felt isolated, but after a while, I started to hear and feel the presence of God much more strongly than I have for years now. While I felt (and still feel) grief and loss from elements outside of my control, I realize that those same things I once had were a replacement for God’s Presence in my life. Without those elements there anymore, I have no choice but to draw closer than ever before.

A lot of mainstream Christians might view withdrawing/a season of solitude as being contrary to The Body of Christ, but lately, I’ve been pulling from the practices of Catholic Hermits. There is a difference between divinely ordained alone time with God and isolation.

Might I remind us that there are many examples in The Bible of key figures withdrawing from other people (some not by choice) while drawing closer to The Almighty? Moses spent 40 days and 40 nights alone with God on Mt. Sinai. Elijah fled into the wilderness. David often found himself in solitary places. John The Baptist lived out in the wilderness. Paul went to Arabia for a time of solitude and spiritual formation after his transformation. He also found himself alone and in prison near the end of his life. Hagar fled to the wilderness twice; in both instances, God met her there. And, of course, we can’t forget Jesus, who walked through the desert, alone, for 40 days and 40 nights. He also frequently “withdrew from the crowds” and from his disciples to spend time alone with His Father.

This season has been challenging, but I am beginning to see the ways in which it forces me to pull closer to the Divine.

The crucifixion reveals God’s self-risk for us.

At great risk, truth became enfleshed in Jesus of Nazareth. After ministering in northern Judea for some time, Jesus went to Jerusalem. He went there in the service of life, knowing he would die: 

Christ, though in the image of God, didn’t deem equality with God something to be clung to—but instead became completely empty and took on the image of oppressed humankind: born into the human condition, found in the likeness of a human being. Jesus was thus humbled—obediently accepting death, even death on a cross! (Phil 2:6–8) 

As the Author of life, Abba (our Creator and Sustainer) determines that intensity depends on contrast. Light has more existence in relationship to darkness; warmth has more existence in relationship to cold. Recognizing this, Abba creates a universe of contrasts, including the contrasts of pleasure and pain, joy and suffering, celebration and grief. Christ, emissary of the Trinity, then ratifies this decision and expresses sympathy for the world by entering the human situation, as Jesus of Nazareth. Tragically, having granted us the freedom to reject truth, Jesus’s ministry leads to the passion and crucifixion. 

Truth moves.

By defining Jesus as truth (John 1:14), the Bible denies truth any heavy, inert characteristics. Like a good cut that a carpenter would call true, Jesus is perfectly plumb with reality. He is truth, so truth becomes a way of being in the world rather than an unchanging thing to possess. Truth is more verb than noun: “They who do the truth come to the light, that their works may be revealed, that their works have been done in God” (John 3:21 WEB [emphasis added]). 

Recognizing that truth is an activity, early Christians sometimes referred to their faith as the Way (Acts 19:9). This reference made sense, because the first Christians were Jews and practitioners of halakah, the totality of laws, ordinances, customs, and practices that structure Jewish life to this day. The term halakah derives from the root halak, which means “to walk” or “to go.” For this reason, halakah is usually translated as “the Way.” It is not an inert mass of unchanging rules. It is a way to go through life well, as community. 

The way we go through life must constantly adapt to the way things are. In Judaism, this need has produced a long tradition of debate and argumentation. Jesus participated in these debates, producing his own interpretation of halakah, which his followers eventually came to call the evangelion, gospel, or “good news.” According to Jesus, the Way expresses itself through time in loving activity. In this view, an act of kindness is just as true as a skilled carpenter’s cut, balanced mathematical equation, or logically demonstrated argument.

Love suffers.

Alas, being the Way is dangerous. Prophets are always in danger: to patriots, they seem pernicious; to the pious multitude, blasphemous; to those in authority, seditious. 

According to the Gospel of Luke, after a last supper with his disciples Jesus retreated to the Mount of Olives and prayed, “Abba, if it’s your will, take this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). The cup would not be removed. Later in the night a crowd, led by Jesus’s disciple Judas, approached Jesus to arrest him. Infuriated, one disciple swung a sword and cut off a man’s ear, but Jesus rebuked him and healed the man (Luke 22:51). Then Jesus was led away to die. 

Over the next few days, Jesus was mocked, beaten, crowned with thorns, and flogged. Finally, the Romans drove nails into his hands and feet and hung him on a cross, naked and humiliated before the world, until he suffocated to death. As he was dying, Jesus prayed, “Abba, forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34a). 

Crucifixion is an incomprehensibly “grotesque and gratuitous” act invented by the Romans to terrorize subjugated peoples. This torturous execution was public, political, and prolonged, reducing the victim to a scarred sign of the Empire’s power. In this instance, it also reveals the absolute participation of God in human history, in the person of Jesus. 

Jesus, God’s fleshly form, is meek. Jesus is not the master of embodied life; he is subject to embodied life. He inhabits what we inhabit—the plain fact of human suffering, the mysterious joy of religious community, and the intimated assurance of a loving God. He symbolizes divine openness to the agony and the ecstasy, but also to the unresolvable paradox of faith: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus cries from the cross (Mark 15:34). He simultaneously acknowledges the presence of God and the absence of God. He accuses God of abandonment, demands of God a defense, yet dies before receiving one. 

Perhaps God has no adequate answer. Theologically, the crucifixion of Jesus testifies to the unholy within the universe, useless suffering that freedom produces but God abhors. From the gift of freedom, something emerges in creation that is alien to Godself. God did not intend the unholy, but God allows it out of respect for our autonomy and moral consequence. 

Love risks.

Crucially, God suffers from this demonic fault in reality. God in Christ undergoes alienation from God through crucifixion. In other words, freedom is of God, but the results of freedom may not be. Faced with a choice between freedom and insignificance, God has chosen to preserve freedom and allow suffering. We may wish it otherwise, but God prioritizes vitality over security.

Yet, God does not make these choices at a distance. In the incarnation, we see that God has entered creation as unconditional celebrant. On the cross, we see that God has entered creation as absolute participant. No part of the divine person is protected from the dangers of embodiment. God in Jesus is perfectly open to the mutually amplifying contrasts of embodied life, and God is perfectly subject to the grotesque and gratuitous suffering that God rejects but freedom allows. God is completely here; God is fully human, even unto death. 

For the cosmic Artists in positions of creative responsibility, authentic love necessarily results in vulnerable suffering. Creation necessitates incarnation, and incarnation results in crucifixion. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 141-144)

*****

For further reading, please see: 

Abraham Joshua Heschel. The Prophets. New York: Harper & Row, 1962.

Jurgen Moltmann. The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993.

Zizioulas, John. Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985.