Jonathan Brink hits the nail on the head when he says:
One of the real, valid criticisms of this process is that much of the (emergent) conversation was a deconstruction process. In other words, we were tearing down an old story but nothing new was offered to take its place. I get that concern. It’s easy to criticize what’s wrong with something and never offer something different. But I would also offer that the removing the old story was necessary for us to see something new.
In response to, and in addition to this conversation that Jonathan has started anew in this post and in his new book, I am going to re-post something I wrote back in February of this year with a few edits. I sayswant to address the "Ransom" theory afresh and put in in the context of the Patristic literature and in the the Eastern Orthodox liturgy. The critical piece is that the Church Fathers did not agree that God had to pay anything for human sin. Moreover, it is also clear that Adam and Eve are interpreted not as literal man and woman, but as representative of the universal condition of man and woman and the human nature. It is clear that in this tradition, counter to evangelicalism or the Reformed tradition, that the human will is indeed free even if that freedom is severely impaired.
In a previous post of mine on original sin, the discussion inevitably lead to the atonement. I have voiced my disagreement with the satisfaction theory of the atonement before.
To heal the issue of an imperfect liberty in human nature which we see active in Adam and Eve, God becomes incarnate in order to fuse the divine nature with human nature and to fuse divine will with human will in a perfect union. It is in the hypostatic union of Christ that we see the image of what God intended humanity to be. It is not about satisfying God's law of death as a payment for sin on the cross that human nature is redeemed. It is rather in the act of God condescending to human nature that this nature becomes what true human being that always intended to be. Hence, the words of this hymn (my emphasis):
The King of the heavenly hosts wears a crown of thorns. The One who clothed the heavens in clouds, is wrapped in mock purple. He who freed Adam in the Jordan, is buffeted with blows. The bridegroom of the Church is transfixed with nails. The virgin’s Son is pierced with a lance.
We worship Your passion, O Christ. (3x)
Show us now Your glorious resurrection.
The cross is not God satisfying God's law through death, but of true humanity emptying itself of its own will to submit to the will of God in absolute obedience – an obedience that results in death.The cross is of the hypostatic union of humanity and the Triune God where Jesus willfully empties himself of divinity in submission to the world. This kenosis as Paul calls it in his letter to the Philippians, does not occur on the cross alone as if Christ had not emptied his human will for the sake of the divine will before this point. Christ empties his human will at his baptism and it is in this self-emptying action which begins his ministry, his death of human will in submission, that Adam's nature is redeemed. If Adam was alienated from God in disobedience, it is here where Christ reveals his perfect union of God and human in absolute obedience.
Sin is not a simple act of disobedience or some metaphysical nature, it is the bondage of the will, imprisoned by the conditions of an imperfect and contingent world. The first act of disobedience shows that humanity sold out to everything not God and re-imaged it to be God in the most heinous act of idolatry. If sin is what holds the human will captive, it is the obedience of Christ that sets it free.
If we are only set free with some kind of payment rendered on the cross, who is being paid the ransom to set us free? And if it is only this event that gives the gift of freedom, does the union of God and human in the person of Christ mean little until that occurs? Christ is not required to strike some legal bargain as if it is the Law that is the foundation of the world.
It is Christ himself who is the foundation of the world. The satisfaction theory divides and confuses the being of the Triune God in order to serve and unify a Law that does not save, but condemns and enslaves (Romans 7:6 for one). Through obedience as a direct result of the Incarnation, Christ fulfils the Law and releases humanity from the captivity of sin replacing it with a new Law of love and grace received through faith. As Gregory of Nazianzen wrote:
To whom was that blood offered that was shed for us, and why was it shed? I mean the precious and glorious blood of God, the blood of the High Priest and of the Sacrifice. We were in bondage to the devil and sold under sin, having become corrupt through our concupiscence. Now, since a ransom is paid to him who holds us in his power, I ask to whom such a price was offered and why? If to the devil, it is outrageous! The robber receives the ransom, not only from God, but a ransom consisting of God himself. He demands so exorbitant a payment for his tyranny that it would have been right for him to have freed us altogether. But if the price is offered to the Father, I ask first of all, how? For it was not the Father who held us captive. Why then should be blood of His only begotten Son please the Father, who would not even receive Isaac when he was offered as a whole burnt offering by Abraham, but replaced the human sacrifice with a ram? Is it not evident that the Father accepts the sacrifice not because he demanded it or because He felt any need for it, but on account of economy: because man must be sanctified by the humanity of God, and God Himself must deliver us by overcoming the tyrant through His own power, and drawing us to Himself by the mediation of the Son who effects this all for the honor of God, to whom He was obedient in everything… What remains to be said shall be covered with a reverent silence… (In sanctum Pascha, or. XLV, 22’, P.G., t 36, 653 AB, quoted in Lossky, Mystical Theology, p. 153.)
The followers of Christ have been in a wilderness in the new Exodus, wandering in the desert of humanity performing the same errors in generations past. The witness of Christ's work and personhood are to be our guide and foundation, not adherence to the Law as if to suggest we are to ignore the work of Christ to fulfil it. Time for Christians to act like the free and forgiven people they espouse to be. Forgiving others and forgiving ourselves while acting with compassion and grace towards others is the only sign that Christians have an understanding of this, the true meaning of the Gospel.
Much of the problem with American Christianity, and in particular Protestant traditions, is an amnesia of things that happened between Paul and Augustine, and then between Augustine and Luther. In my own training in a "flagship" Protestant seminary, we learned short versions of the ante-Nicene Church fathers, but failed to grasp the depth of their own processing of God's revelation to them. This has resulted in a theology with shallow roots. Rather than deconstruct tradition, as Jonathan notes was perhaps necessary, it is indeed time to re-root ourselves in the rich soils of the Holy, Apostolic, and Catholic body of Christ in history.
I argue that it must begin with a re-commitment to the doctrine of the Trinity as formulated by the Church Fathers and Mothers and preserved in Eastern Orthodoxy. Since Protestantism exists in relationship to Medieval Catholicism, this segment of Christianity has been silenced in all of our debates, until only recently. The economy of God as kenosis and the economy of humanity to seek union with God as a result of that divine kenosis is central and a ground to the Christian faith.
In the words of Athanasius, "God became man so that man might become a god." May we feed off of this mystical theological tradition that the Body of Christ may unite all who the Holy Spirit calls to being and new life.
