What is Catalyst?
Four issues of Catalyst are mailed each academic year to some 5,000 UM theological students in more than 100 seminaries in the U.S.A.

AFTE
Catalyst is a project of A Foundation for Theological Education (AFTE).

What is the John Wesley Fellowship Program?
Each year AFTE awards up to five John Wesley Fellowships to assist gifted United Methodists in their doctoral studies at the finest universities.

Back Issues
Several back issues of Catalyst are now available on-line.

Subscriptions
Subscription is free for UM seminarians, and is available to all others for $5 per year.

CLASSICAL ATONEMENT IMAGERY: FEMINIST AND EVANGELICAL CHALLENGES

In a recent exercise, a number of candidates for ordination were invited to address the following question:

You are teaching a young adult Lenten class on the Gospel accounts of Christ’s passion. Jerry, a newcomer to the church, asks, “Why did God’s Son have to die? I don’t understand why God couldn’t just forgive our sins without the death of Jesus.” Present Jerry with three distinct ways the church has understood the doctrine of the atonement, evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each, and indicate which explanation you find most helpful and why.

No matter how well versed one may be in various models of the atonement (dramatic, ransom, satisfaction, moral influence, penal substitution, governmental, incarnational, dynamistic), Jerry poses an unsettling question: Why did Jesus have to die? There are no pat answers. There are only theories which try to assimilate a wide array of biblical images, theories which try to explain a mystery, theories which fit some cultural milieus better than others, theories which all have their flaws and glitches, theories all seeking to make sense out of the strange juxtaposition of divine forgiveness and violent, unjust death.

Recently, certain feminist theologians have voiced concern over the practical effects of making divine forgiveness contingent upon the death of an innocent victim. Their critique of traditional atonement theology is set within the broader critique of patriarchy as a structure that feeds violence against women and children. Broadly, two objections have been raised by feminist theologians against atonement theory.

The first objection revolves around God’s character and what atonement imagery communicates about it. Some feminists believe that atonement imagery projects onto God the powerful role of patriarch in the extended human family who demands ultimate allegiance and punishes disobedience. Where God assumes the role of punitive patriarch, Jesus’ sacrifice, suffering, and death are not a paradigm of divine love, but a paradigm of divine child abuse; God is the patriarch who punishes the divine Son in order to satisfy parental honor and wrath.

For R.N. Brock, the theory that God must exact punishment before God can forgive is intolerable, for it characterizes God as One whose wrath is prior to love, who is by nature punitive (Journeys by Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power [Crossroad, 1988] 55). Beverly Harrison and C. Heyward charge that the atonement represents the sadomasochism of Christian teaching at its most transparent: God is a sadist who inflicts punishment, and Jesus is the masochist who willingly endures it (“Pain and Pleasure: Avoiding the Confusions of Christian Tradition in Feminist Theory,” in Christianity, Patriarchy and Abuse: A Feminist Critique [ed. J.C. Brown and C.R. Bohn; Pilgrim,1989] 153). Mary Grey articulates a recurring feminist conviction that God must not be held up as the instigator of Jesus’ suffering: “His death is not to be seen as the wrath of God against a guilty world, for which Jesus was punished, but is interpreted as the culmination of the great refusal and blockage of the dynamic of mutuality-in-relation—the outstanding feature of the way Jesus related to the world” (Feminism, Redemption and the Christian Tradition [Twenty-Third Publications, 1990] 157). For D. Solle, the God who causes suffering is not to be justified even by lifting the suffering later” (Suffering [Fortress, 1975] 149). Rather, the cross is a sign of tragedy where God’s grief is revealed, where God shares in Jesus’ suffering, but does not cause it. For these feminists, to hold God responsible for Jesus’ suffering and death is to make God abusive and therefore unworthy of worship.

The second feminist objection follows from the first. Imagery which makes God an abusive Father can perpetuate a cycle of victimization, violence, and abuse in human relationships. Abuse in the heavenly domicile sanctions abuse in the home. The penal and sacrificial aspects of atonement imagery can therefore put children and women at risk, as can other images of human sacrifice: Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac, Jephthah’s sacrifice of his daughter, David’s sacrifice of Saul’s seven male descendants, and the self-sacrifice of the Maccabean martyrs.

Feminists agree that the symbol of sacrifice must never be abstracted into a norm for the Christian life. Such abstracting has in the past imprisoned battered women and children in their cycles of abuse. They disagree, however, as to whether Jesus’ example of unjust suffering and ultimate sacrifice can be appropriated by women. In concert with liberation theologians in general, most Christian feminists choose to differentiate between redemptive and masochistic suffering. They find in Jesus’ unjust suffering encouragement for their own unjust suffering.

But more radical feminists refuse to accept unjust suffering on any basis, alleging that the glorification of anyone’s suffering is the glorification of all suffering. In their article, “For God So Loved the World?” (in Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse), J.C. Brown and R. Parker reject the way of liberation theology in which Jesus’ suffering becomes a symbol for the conflicts which are inevitable when people fight for justice. Further, they maintain that when a victim is made the core symbol of a religion, the values of a victim are inevitably idealized: sacrificial love, passive acceptance of suffering, humility, and meekness. These are the very traits which patriarchy holds up to women as the model for their Christian behavior, the traits which encourage women to participate in their own victimization.

I am grateful for the alarm which feminist theologians have sounded with regard to abusive aspects of atonement theology. These feminists warn us about the power of raw atonement imagery, and about the fact that atonement theories which fail to address socio-political structures do not speak to the situation of victimized women. In the very least, these warnings should heighten pastoral sensitivity when formulating an answer to Jerry’s question.

I have studied with interest feminist proposals for a new vision and new language of at-one-ment. Unfortunately, these proposals tend to stray far from the biblical record. (For my response to J.C. Brown, see “Atonement and Abuse: An Alternate View,” Daughters of Sarah 18 [1992] 29-32; see also E. MoltmannWendel’s analysis, “Is There a Feminist Theology of the Cross,” in God—His and Hers [SCM, 1991] 77-91.) Nevertheless, I am convinced that we must take seriously the concerns these feminists raise by purging abusive aspects of traditional atonement imagery from our theology and doxology. One glaring example is the hymn text, “0 Christ, What Burdens,” by AR. Cousin, cited by J.R.W. Stott in The Cross of Christ ([InterVarsity, 1986] 150):

Jehovah lifted up his rod;
      O Christ, it fell on thee!
Thou wast sore stricken of thy God; 
       There’s not one stroke for me.

As Stott points out, when our image is one of Christ persuading God or of God punishing Christ, the character of the first person is denigrated as reluctant to suffer and slow to forgive, and the unity of the Godhead is threatened inasmuch as the first and second persons operate with separate wills.

On the contrary, the Bible teaches that both God and Jesus were subjects, not objects, of the atonement (2 Cor 5:18-20; Rom 8:3; John 10:18; Gal 2:20; Eph 5:25). Nevertheless, popular images of atonement frequently characterize one or the other as objects (God the object of Christ’s persuasion, or Christ the object of God’s wrath). The unfortunate result is that God’s character is maligned and Christianity comes to be caricatured as an abusive religion. While caricatures of Christianity are nothing new, the allegation of abuse should induce us to reexamine the images and metaphors which circulate in our churches in order to make sure that they are biblically faithful. If the biblical record has subsequently been skewed by theoretical accretions, rational extrapolations, and Constantinian presuppositions, we have an obligation to come up with more faithful theories.

It must be noted that a good many evangelicals reject the penal substitution theory (not the substitutionary metaphor per se). Thus, H.D. McDonald’s conviction that substitution inevitably carries penal associations (The Atonement of the Death of Christ: In Faith, Revelation, and History [Baker, 1985] 354) is hardly uncontested. Recent refutations of penal substitution include: P.S. Fiddes, Past Event and Present Salvation: The Christian Idea of Atonement (Westminster/John Knox, 1989); C.E. Gunton, The Actuality of Atonement: A Study of Metaphor, Rationality and the Christian Tradition (Wm.B. Eerdmans, 1989); and J. Driver, Understanding the Atonement for the Mission of the Church (Herald, 1986).

Finally, let me comment on the work of ON. Kraus (Jesus Christ Our Lord: Christology from a Disciple’s Perspective [Herald, 1987]), whose missionary setting in Japan compelled him to contextualize the message of the atonement for his audience. Kraus knows that each biblical metaphor, as well as each atonement theory, is rooted in a particular historical and cultural milieu, and that when the historical-cultural situation changes, the framework of atonement adapts in order to remain relevant. One example would be the demise of the battlefield metaphor and the rise of the satisfaction theory after the Constantinian shift (see J.D. Weaver, “Atonement for the NonConstantinian Church,” Modern Theology 6 [1990] 307-323). Kraus develops the thesis that an emphasis on shame and vicarious identification would be more meaningful in Japanese culture than the penal metaphor which is based on legal definitions of guilt. It would also, he claims, be more biblical. Significantly, Kraus believes that he is able to retain the objective side of atonement without recourse to penal substitution. His detractors, however, are not convinced. They insist that punitive imagery alone can safeguard the objective side of atonement and the biblical portrait
of sin, law, curse, holiness, and wrath.

It is beyond the scope of this article to debate the merits and demerits (and if the feminists are right, the dangers) of the penal substitution theory. I believe its weaknesses outweigh its strengths. In any case, let those who will be answering Jerry’s question in their congregational settings (1) guard against using atonement images which carry abusive and tritheistic overtones, (2) be ready to explain the historical and cultural influences which have shaped each atonement theory, and (3) offer a response which is contextualized.

Paul Fiddes (above) suggests that the paradigm of alienation rather than guilt suits our modern context and that images of healing, reconnection, and overcoming fragmentation are therefore important for depicting the atonement in a relevant way. The feminist emphasis upon wholeness, solidarity, mutuality, connectedness, right relationship, intimacy, and participation seems to bear that out. While his is certainly not the last word, Kraus has provided an important hermeneutical model for evangelicals anxious to be both biblical and relevant as we share with others the mystery and liberty of God’s atoning work in Christ.

By Margo G. Houts, Ph.D. cand., Fuller Theological Seminary; Houts has developed her thoughts further in “Atonement Symbolism, “ presented to the American Academy of Religion, Evangelical Section,1991.