Nouslife: Retelling Atonement Forgiveness-centred (8)

01 April 2013

Retelling Atonement Forgiveness-centred (8)

Eikonic forgiveness explored further

In my last posting I outlined a way of thinking about the Cross of Christ as an eikon of forgiveness. In this one I'm hoping to begin exploring whether a well-connected and more widely plausible account is possible sufficient to make this a usable model.

Incarnation and atonement are integral

In a sense what the Eikonic approach is suggesting is that the atonement is part of incarnation and not a mere precursor: it is the incarnation of God's forgiveness -or more accurately of God's paying the price for forgiveness. Now, when I write 'paying the price' this needs to be heard not in the way that substitutionary theories tend to use the phrase but rather in an analogous way to when in the language of sports or professional training we might talk about paying the price for excellence or paying the price for peak performance which is a way of metaphoring the effort, endurance, determination, pain and self-discipline as a cost -the price- for the prize of achievement of goals.

In this way 'paying the price for/of forgiveness' is saying that a forgiver can't pardon without it requiring effort, determination, endurance of pain and self-discipline on their part. It is then saying that for God to forgive those things are also part of what it entails and that where that 'paying' goes on and can be seen and accessed is precisely in the Cross of Christ.

There is a related precedent idea in Karl Barth's thought - see historicisation of God's being (a previous posting which very briefly outlines the current series of posts). In that article we're reminded that Karl Barth wrote:

in the resurrection of Jesus Christ we have to do with a movement and action which took place not merely in human history but first and foremost in God Himself, a movement and action in which Jesus Christ as the Son of God . . . [is] a pure object and recipient of God [the Father's] . . . free and pure grace which as such can only be received, and the historical fulfilment of which is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I'm suggesting that this applies also to the Cross: it takes place not only in human affairs but in God's own being: God's will to forgive is graciously expressed in the Christ's free acceptance of passion and death. More: God's willingness to bear the cost of forgiving, to refuse counter-mimesis, to deny the recirculation of detriment into human affairs, is given effective, operational, expression in the life or rather end-of-life of Jesus.

Resurrection is also integral

One of the criticisms of PSA theory is that it needs no resurrection; its internal logic is entirely about the Cross. And I think that this is a significant issue because any theory of the Atonement needs to integrate the Resurrection very firmly since it is clearly the central matter of the Easter event.
Kim Fabricius reminds us (emphasis mine):

Karl Barth called the resurrection “a paraphrase of the word ‘God’”. The resurrection defines who God is: God is the God who raised Jesus from the dead. And in raising Jesus God identifies himself with Jesus and vindicates the cause that got Jesus killed – championing the poor and the shafted, challenging the rich and the powerful, rejecting the way of violence of good guys and bad guys alike.

Thus, if we understand the Cross to be about the enfleshment of God's forgiveness, then vindicating the 'cause that got Jesus killed' would translate to affirming the genuineness of the forgiveness and the demonstrating that the possibility of personal relating is still open beyond the forstalling of counter-mimesis. The Resurrection is the handshake offered once the pardoner has decided for forgiveness and bearing the cost of it.

'Rejecting the violence' is at the heart of the refusal to perpetuate the recirculation of detriments into human affairs. So, the Resurrection shows God to be the God who creates life beyond the death-dealing of recirculating detriment and beyond human personal (willed, agentive) wrong.
Previous post.