Questions of violence and atonement have generated much discussion in the last several years. Classic atonement images have been attacked as violent, and these attacks have provoked efforts to defend standard atonement images. I enter this debate on the side that critiques the violence of traditional atonement images. The argument has two parts. The first part shows that all standard images of atonement have problematic violent dimensions that render them unacceptable. This particular essay focuses primarily but not exclusively on Anselmian, satisfaction atonement. The argument does not deny that Jesus encountered violence. What is at stake is whether that violence is divinely willed and whether God’s modus operandi presumes or depends upon violence. Counter to a common methodology of attempting to salvage all atonement motifs and integrate them into a supposedly more complete picture of the significance of the death of Jesus, my argument exposes the divine violence intrinsic to any and all forms of satisfaction atonement, and shows that no amount of redefining or reinterpreting or supplementing or amending or enriching the satisfaction motif overcomes that violence. It should be abandoned.
The second part of the argument is then to construct an alternative motif that is thoroughly nonviolent and that avoids all the errors and problems discernible in satisfaction atonement.1 This constructive task is actually more than an atonement motif. It is a way of reading the narrative of Jesus, as well as the history of atonement doctrine, with implications far beyond atonement.
The essay uses broad definitions of the terms violence and nonviolence. Violence means harm or damage, which obviously includes the direct violence of killing—in war, capital punishment, murder—but also includes the many forms of systemic violence such as poverty, racism, sexism, and heterosexism. Nonviolence also covers a spectrum of attitudes and actions, from the classic Mennonite idea of passive nonresistance through active nonviolence and nonviolent resistance that would include various kinds of social action, confrontations, civil disobedience, and posing of alternatives that do not do bodily harm or injury. The goal of such actions is to reveal injustice and violence in ways that enable change and reform rather than attempting to eliminate injustice and violence by more violence and killing.
The standard account of the history of doctrine lists three families of atonement images. Each atonement image attempts to explain what the death of Jesus accomplished, or in popular language, to explain “why Jesus died for us.” But as will become clear in the remarks that follow, it is important to distinguish them as separate and distinct approaches to the question about Jesus’ death. Their different approaches appear clearly when we visualize the object or the “target” of the death of Jesus for each family of images.
Christus Victor, the predominant image of the early church, existed in several forms, each of which involved the three elements of God, the devil or Satan, and sinful humankind. In the ransom version of Christus Victor, the devil held the souls of humankind captive. The devil is thus the target of the death of Jesus, as it becomes the ransom payment that secures the release of captive souls. In the image of a cosmic battle, the devil is less clear as a “target.” But as will become clear, it is significant to see that responsibility for the death of Jesus ends up with the devil and not elsewhere.
Satisfaction atonement theories exist in several versions with varying emphases. For the argument here, it suffices to sketch two versions. In 1098 Anselm published Cur Deus Homo, which constitutes the first full articulation of satisfaction atonement. Anselm wrote that Jesus’ death was necessary in order to satisfy the offended honor of God. Human sin had offended God’s honor and thus had upset divine order in the universe. The death of Jesus as the God-man was then necessary in order to satisfy God’s honor and restore the order of the universe. In other words, God, or some formulation of God’s honor, is the target of the death of Jesus.
A change in this image of satisfaction occurred with the Protestant Reformers. For them, Jesus’ death satisfied the divine law’s requirement that sin be punished. Thus with his death, Jesus submitted to and bore the punishment that was really due to us—humankind—as sinners. Jesus was punished in our place. Jesus substituted himself for us, and died a penal, substitutionary death. This motif is the most familiar atonement image for the entire scope of evangelical Protestantism. In this motif, it is not God or God’s honor that is the target of Jesus’ death. Now it is God’s law that is the object of the death of Jesus, as the substitutionary death satisfies a provision of the divine law.
The third atonement image is moral influence. In this image, the death of Jesus is a loving act of God aimed toward us. God the Father shows love to us sinners by giving us his most precious possession, his Son, to die for us. In other words, the death of Jesus targets “us,” sinful humankind, as its objects.
Reviewing the objects or targets of the death of Jesus makes clear that these really are different images. The death flies off in three separate directions—toward Satan, toward God or a God-related entity, and toward us.
But visualizing the objects of the death of Jesus does more than just distinguish three families of atonement motifs. These theories did not develop as isolated entities. Visualizing the differing objects of the death of Jesus helps clarify how later ones responded to earlier ones.
In the first book of Cur Deus Homo, Anselm specifically rejected the idea that Jesus’ death was a ransom payment to the devil. Satan has no contractual rights that would obligate God to make such a payment. And even though humankind deserves punishment, Satan has no right to inflict that punishment. These considerations make it unworthy of God to deal with Satan via a ransom. Thus Anselm deleted the devil from the salvation equation.2 Rather than seeing human beings as captive to the devil, Anselm made them directly responsible to God. Humans sinned against God; sin offended the honor of God, and thus threatened order in the universe. The death of Jesus served to restore God’s honor and thus restore order in the universe. By deleting the devil from the equation, Anselm shifted the target of the death of Jesus away from the devil and toward God. Later Protestantism then shifted the target from God’s honor to God’s law.
Abelard’s school followed Anselm in rejecting the idea of Jesus’ death as a ransom payment to the devil. But Abelard also rejected the idea of Jesus’ death as a payment to God. Or in my terminology, Abelard rejected God as the object of the death of Jesus. Instead, Abelard saw the death of Jesus aimed at sinful humankind. It was a loving act of God, targeting sinners in order to get their attention so that they could see the love of God for sinners while they were yet sinners.
Visualizing the objects of the death of Jesus raises additional questions that expose the intrinsically violent character of any and all versions of Anselmian satisfaction or penal substitutionary atonement. Note the nuance that appears when we shift from asking about the object of the death of Jesus to inquire, Who or what needs the death of Jesus? For the ransom theory, one might say that the devil clearly needs the death—it fulfills God’s part of the bargain when the devil releases the souls of humankind. For the cosmic battle image, the question makes little sense. For the two forms of satisfaction, it is God’s honor or God’s law that needs the death. Without it, the debt to God’s honor remains unpaid or unsatisfied, or the penalty required by God’s law remains unmet. Finally, for the moral theory, one might say that “we”—sinners—need the death since that is what enables us to perceive the Father’s love shown for and to us.
And now more provocatively, observe what happens when one asks, Who arranges for or is responsible for the death of Jesus? Or put crassly, Who ultimately killed Jesus?
With the two forms of Christus Victor, it is obvious that the devil killed Jesus. But God the Father looks particularly bad in the ransom version—handing the Son over for death as a ransom payment to purchase freedom for God’s other children, or as a debt payment to Satan, who possesses rights in a contractual arrangement with God. One can easily sense Anselm’s distaste for this motif.
But the situation is not ameliorated when one interrogates the satisfaction and moral theories about who arranged the death of Jesus. Satisfaction atonement pictures a debt owed to God’s honor. God’s honor not only needs the death, God also arranges for Jesus to die to pay the debt to God’s honor. It really looks as though God has Jesus killed in order to pay the debt to God’s honor. Here is where we very pointedly see the result of Anselm’s deletion of the devil from the three-cornered relationship involving the devil, sinners, and God. With Satan deleted, those remaining in the equation are God and the sinners who have offended God. Of these two, sinful human beings cannot save themselves by repaying God, which means that only God remains in the equation as an actor with power or agency to change the situation. Thus it is merely an extension of the interior logic of Anselm’s own move of deleting the devil that leads to the conclusion that God is the only actor remaining to orchestrate the death of Jesus in order to pay the debt owed to God’s honor.3 In penal substitution, Jesus is punished by death, in place of killing us. Thus God’s law receives the necessary death that it demands for justice. But again, since sinners cannot pay their own debt, God is the one who arranged to provide Jesus’ death as the means to satisfy the divine law. Some scholars have attempted to blunt the fact that God needed and orchestrated the death of Jesus by arguing that Jesus submitted voluntarily to the death that would satisfy God’s honor or God’s law. But stressing the voluntary character of the death does not change or challenge the overall framework in which God is the only powerful actor, one who needs the death to restore honor or the distorted order of creation, or to fulfill requirements of the divine law. God remains in the role of avenger or punisher.
One might ask, “Weren’t the devil or the mob or the Romans responsible for killing Jesus?” But answering yes to that question within the framework of satisfaction atonement points to a strange juxtaposition or non sequitur. Jesus, who is innocent and who does the will of God, becomes sin, subject to punishment. And the evil powers who oppose the reign of God by killing Jesus—whether understood as the mob, the Romans, or the devil—are the ones who are actually doing the will of God by punishing Jesus or by killing Jesus to provide the payment that God’s honor or God’s law demands. The strange implication is that both Jesus and those who kill Jesus would be carrying out the will of God. Asserting that both claims are true is nonsense. Avoiding the implications of such mutually exclusive claims by cloaking them in a category such as mystery, or by claiming that the acts of God are too big for our categories to contain, renders meaningless any attempt to use theology to express Christian faith.4
Abelard objected to this theory as one that limited God’s capacity to forgive and that made God vengeful. “How cruel and wicked it seems,” Abelard said, “that anyone should demand the blood of an innocent person as the price for anything . . . still less that God should consider the death of his Son so agreeable that by it he should be reconciled to the whole world!”5 But Abelard’s replacement, called the moral theory, really fares no better than the rejected satisfaction theory. Remember that while Abelard rejected the idea that Jesus’ death was a payment directed toward God’s honor, Abelard agreed with Anselm in removing the devil from the equation. But by directing the death of Jesus toward humanity as an act of love, the result is an atonement motif, in which the Father has one of his children—the divine Son—killed in order to show love to the rest of the Father’s children, namely to us sinners.
These observations about the implied role of God the Father in satisfaction and moral atonement motifs help explain why a number of feminist and womanist writers have claimed that atonement theology presents an image of divine child abuse.6 That charge seemed radical and offensive to some Christians. But the problem does not reside with those feminist and womanist writers. Most fundamentally, the observations about the role of God in satisfaction and moral atonement motifs result from drawing out the implications of Anselm’s own move to delete the devil from the atonement equation, leaving God as the only actor with agency in the equation.
The conclusion from our first round of observations about classic atonement doctrines is that they portray an image of God as either divine avenger or punisher and/or as a child abuser, a Father who arranges the death of one child for the benefit of the others. This analysis draws out implications of Anselm’s deletion of the devil from the atonement equation. It reveals an atonement motif in which divinely required and sanctioned violence is the basis of Jesus’ saving work. The following section follows a quite different route to similar conclusions.
The various versions of satisfaction atonement function with the assumption that doing justice or righting wrongs depends on retribution. Sin creates imbalance. Satisfaction atonement assumes that the imbalance is righted or balanced by death.
One contemporary version and one historic version of this assumption make clear its presence in satisfaction atonement. The criminal justice system of the United States operates on the principle of retribution. It is assumed that doing justice means to inflict punishment, which is understood as violence. The assumption is that small crimes require small penalties, while a big crime requires a big penalty. The most severe punishment, namely death, is reserved for the most heinous crimes. The assumption that doing justice is equated with punishment appears in the public disapproval when what is perceived as a big crime receives only a “wrist tap” as punishment. With an apparent imbalance between deed and punishment, it seems that justice was not done. The assumption of retributive justice—that doing justice means meting out punishment—is virtually universal among North Americans and throughout much of the world.7
The assumption that doing justice means to punish underlies satisfaction atonement, and in particular the image of penal substitutionary atonement. This image assumes the necessity of punishment, with innocent Jesus punished in our place. As our substitute, Jesus bore the punishment we deserve.
The motif of Jesus as the substitute object of punishment, which assumes the principle of retribution, is the particular image that feminists and womanists have found so offensive. It puts God in the role of the one who demands retribution. God punishes—abuses—one of God’s children for the sake of the others. And the Jesus of this motif models passive submission to innocent and unjust suffering for the sake of others.
The contemporary assumption of retributive justice has a medieval counterpart in the feudal system. I follow R. W. Southern’s description of the feudal system and how Anselm’s image reflects his feudal worldview.8 The feudal world was hierarchical. A lord at the top held the hierarchy together. Stability of the system depended on maintaining the honor of the lord at the top of the hierarchy. An offense against the lord’s honor incurred a debt that threatened his authority and thus the stability of the system. In order to restore honor and stability, the debt had to be repaid. Simply forgiving the debt or an inability to collect the debt challenged the honor and authority of the lord to maintain the system.
It is not difficult to see that Anselm’s image of the atoning death of Jesus reflects the feudal worldview. Human sin has brought imbalance and disharmony into the universe. The restoration of harmony, order, and balance requires a payment to satisfy the offended honor of God. Anselm understood Jesus’ death as the debt payment that satisfied the honor of God, and thus restored balance and order in the universe. However, understanding the logic of satisfaction atonement does not depend on knowing feudalism. As was previously noted, for example, the modern criminal justice system constitutes an arena that assumes and models retribution. There is thus no need to dispute Southern’s conclusion that feudal society supplies the motif that Anselm elevated to an ultimate image of the way that God maintains order in the universe.9 Maintaining order in the universe depends on maintaining the honor of God, which necessitates a debt payment—the death of Jesus—to cover the offense to God’s honor that was enacted by human sin.
Although Anselm’s understanding of satisfaction atonement differs significantly from penal substitutionary atonement, I have treated them together as two versions of atonement that depict a divine need for Jesus’ death and that thus direct the death of Jesus Godward. Although in different ways, each depends on retribution. The conclusion is inescapable that any and all versions of satisfaction atonement, regardless of their packaging, assume the violence of retribution or justice based on punishment, and depend on God-induced and God-directed violence.
Satisfaction atonement accommodates violence in a third way. It structures the relationship between humankind and God in terms of an ahistorical, abstract legal formula. Thus it concerns a relationship that is outside of human history. Further, when visualizing the birth, life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus, quite obviously satisfaction atonement actually needs or uses only the death of Jesus. These elements—positing a transaction outside of history and involving only the death of Jesus—make satisfaction atonement an image that (with one exception treated below) implies little or nothing about ethics, and contains nothing that would challenge injustice in the social order. It is an a-ethical atonement image—it projects an understanding of salvation that is separated from ethics. That is, salvation in satisfaction atonement does not envision a change of status in history or in life on earth; rather it envisions a change in one’s status outside of or beyond this life. This a-ethical orientation makes it quite compatible with exercise of the sword, or with accommodation of slavery and racism. And as will be explained shortly, it actually contributes to one kind of violence in history.
The particular significance of these observations about the ahistorical and a-ethical dimensions of satisfaction atonement appears when they are considered against the backdrop of the so-called Constantinian synthesis. Among other things, the exercise of the sword can represent the change in the status of the church from a contrast to an accommodation of the social order. Whereas before Christians did not wield the sword and pagans did, now Christians wielded the sword in the name of Christ. Rather than defining what Christians did on the basis of what Jesus said or did, the operative norm of behavior for Christians became what was good or necessary to preserve “Christian society.” And in determining what was good for society, the emperor rather than Jesus became the test case.10
I suggest that satisfaction atonement reflects the church after Constantine that had accommodated the sword rather than the early church, which was primarily a pacifist church. The abstract, ahistorical, a-ethical formula permits one to claim Jesus’ saving work while wielding the sword that Jesus had forbidden. Similarly, James Cone, founder of the black theology movement, notes how the abstract formulas allowed slave owners to preach a salvation to slaves that preserved intact the master-slave relationship.11 In other words, stated generally, satisfaction atonement separates salvation from ethics. In contrast, the atonement motif presented in what follows both reflects the nonviolence of Jesus and understands ethics as an integral dimension of salvation.
We have thus far observed three levels of violence in satisfaction atonement. First, removing the devil from the atonement equation, as did Anselm and Abelard, leaves an image of God who saves by violence, and of an innocent Son who passively submits to that violence. That is, its image assumes God-orchestrated and God-directed violence. Second, satisfaction atonement assumes and depends on the violence of retribution, with God in the role of the one who orchestrates that retribution. Finally, the abstract, ahistorical character of satisfaction does not challenge and indeed accommodates violence and violent practices in the social order.
In addition to these arguments about the inner logic of the satisfaction atonement formulas and the image of God they portray, it is also important to examine the image and role of Jesus in these formulas. The importance of this question appears when Jesus is accepted as a reference point for ethics—whether one thinks in terms of the quickly recited “What would Jesus do?” or a very profound discussion of discipleship.
In satisfaction atonement, Jesus is a model of voluntary submission to innocent suffering. Since the Father needs the death of Jesus to satisfy divine honor, Jesus voluntarily agrees to submit to that violence needed to satisfy the honor of God. Or Jesus voluntarily agrees to undergo the punishment deserved by sinful humankind in order that the demand of divine justice be met. In either case, Jesus is a passive and innocent victim, and his role is to submit to that unjust suffering. Because Jesus’ death is needed, Jesus models being a voluntary, passive, and innocent victim who submits to suffering for the good of another.
It is important to underscore for whom these images of Jesus as an innocent and passive victim pose a particular concern. As Joanne Carlson Brown, Rebecca Parker, Rita Nakashima Brock, and others point out, it is an unhealthy model for a woman abused by her husband or a child violated by her father, and constitutes double jeopardy when attached to hierarchical theology that asserts male headship.12 A model of passive, innocent suffering poses an obstacle for people who encounter conditions of systemic injustice, or an unjust status quo produced by the power structure. A short list of examples includes the segregated South prior to the civil rights movement; the de facto housing segregation that still exists in many places; and military-backed occupation, under which land is confiscated and indigenous residents crowded into enclosed territories called “reservations” in North America, “bantustans” in South Africa, and “autonomous areas” in Palestine. For people in such situations of an unjust status quo, the idea of “being like Jesus” as modeled by satisfaction atonement means to submit passively and to endure that systemic injustice. James Cone linked substitutionary atonement specifically to defenses of slavery and colonial oppression.13 Delores Williams calls the Jesus of substitutionary atonement the “ultimate surrogate figure,” which would validate all the unjust surrogacy roles to which black women have been and still are subjected.14 Such examples show that atonement theology that models innocent, passive suffering does have a specific negative impact in the contemporary context.15
A victim is controlled by forces and circumstances beyond himself or herself. A victim surrenders control to others and accepts the injustice imposed by others. Jesus in satisfaction and substitutionary atonement models victimization. When Jesus of this motif is the model for people who have experienced abuse or exploitation, the model underscores their status as victims. For them, being like Jesus means to continue to submit to unjust suffering, abuse, or exploitation. And it should be obvious that since satisfaction poses an image of submission to oppression, it poses no specific challenge to the acts of those who oppress and exploit.16
Emphasizing the passivity in Jesus’ atoning work points to another problem with satisfaction atonement. That problem is that it focuses on Jesus’ death as the culmination and high point of his life, and with the focus on his death, that particular moment becomes the moment that defines his work. Additional problems accompany the focus on a passive death.
For one, if Jesus’ death is the purpose and culmination of his existence, then his life and teaching are rendered peripheral to the task of providing the death required by divine honor or divine law. As was the case with Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo, it is indeed possible to discuss the saving work of Jesus without mentioning any specifics of his life or teaching at all. Stated another way, the effect if not the intent of focus on Jesus’ death as the saving element of his work is to relegate his life (along with his teaching) to an elaborate means of getting him killed, so that the death can fly Godward to satisfy divine honor or divine law.
Second, considering and valuing Jesus’ death apart from the story of his life contributes in a major way to portraying it as passive submission to innocent suffering. His death appears much less passive when examined as one particular incident in the context of the entire scope of his life, including his resurrection. As the story is told in the Gospels, his life is assertive and confrontational, as becomes clear in the sketch below of narrative Christus Victor.
When the death of Jesus is pictured in the light of his active and activist life, it appears that death is not the culmination. His mission was to make the reign of God visible, which is visible and present in his person and in his teaching and in his life—his acts. Thus the incarnation itself has an activist agenda—to make God’s reign present and visible in our history. Seen in this light, the death of Jesus—the cross—is not the goal or the culmination of the story. Jesus’ death is the result of faithfully carrying out his mission of making God’s rule present in the world. His death was not something desired by God to balance a cosmic equation. Rather it was willed by the forces that were threatened by the presence of the reign of God in our history. The idea of the incarnation is an active, activist idea, if the life and teaching of Jesus have any meaning. The passive image of the death of Jesus actually contradicts the activist purpose of the incarnation.
A number of scholars have attempted to defend Anselmian or satisfaction atonement against the kind of critiques just stated. Whereas I treated satisfaction and penal substitutionary atonement as different but parallel atonement motifs, others have attempted to use the difference between these two images to defend or salvage satisfaction atonement. One version of this argument claims that the image of penal substitution so distasteful to feminists and womanists is a distortion introduced by later Protestantism. True satisfaction atonement as articulated by Anselm does not picture an angry God who punishes, but rather an image concerned with a defense of God’s honor.17 Thus the argument goes, the death of Jesus is not about having Jesus bear punishment actually merited by human beings, but about restoring order and harmony in the universe. A similar, common salvage effort accepts some version of satisfaction or penal substitution as biblical while also acknowledging the problems pointed out above, but then develops other themes and emphasizes them to blunt or smooth over satisfaction’s problematic dimensions.18
A parallel argument claims that the versions of satisfaction atonement harmful to women and children are because of turning “an aneconomic order of charity, plenitude, and ceaseless generosity into a merely human economy of debt, lack, and... life in the mode of donation and gift.”19 When rightly understood, the argument goes, Jesus’ sacrifice is not any kind of transaction involving debt payment but is rather about restoring humanity “to participation in the divine life,” and “thus Christ’s sacrifice becomes the donation of obedience and praise (the return of love) offered by the son to the Father.” This is a “substitutionary” role, as the “Son offers worship” to the Father on our behalf that we cannot offer.20 Daniel Bell develops this understanding of Anselmian atonement as a response to exploitative capitalism. Jesus’ model of refusing to cease suffering, Bell argues, becomes the model that Christians should follow in defeating capitalism.21
Such defenses of satisfaction atonement abound, more than can be addressed here individually. However, once one has such defenses in mind, it is not necessary to address each one individually in order to address them as a whole. As long as the death of Jesus is aimed Godward, one cannot avoid either the implication that the powers that killed Jesus perform a service for God or that death is the means through which God enables reconciliation. Whether Jesus’ death is a matter of restoring the order of creation or God’s honor or holiness, or offering obedience and worship to God, the death is still directed Godward. And that is true for any future efforts to find other emphases and nuances and redefinitions not yet contemplated. Changing the emphasis or definition within the framework of the satisfaction image does not deal with the implication of Anselm’s deletion of the devil, which leaves God as the sole actor with agency in the salvation equation. One can distinguish Anselm’s language from penal substitution, and one can claim that the death restores obedience and worship rather than restoring honor or paying a debt, but it is still death that accomplishes the saving work. And someone still has to kill Jesus in order for honor or worship to be offered to God on behalf of sinners. No amount of nuancing and redefining and reemphasizing this or that element will rescue satisfaction atonement from its intrinsically violent orientation, and from the image of God as the ultimate agent behind the death that satisfies God—because satisfaction in any form retains only God as the actor of agency to engineer the saving act of Jesus.
Bell’s use of a refurbished satisfaction occurs in the midst of a critique of capitalism and response to liberation theology and merits much more discussion than the brief treatment here. I resonate with his critique of capitalism and his arguments that the church should be an alternative to the state and that violent resistance to oppression only continues a cycle of violence.22 However, real problems accompany Bell’s application of Anselmian atonement. When he says that the oppressed resist oppression by a “refusal to cease suffering,” which is modeled on Jesus’ refusal to cease suffering, Bell is simply reflecting the focus on passive submission to suffering and death in Anselmian atonement. Bell tries hard to say that this suffering is genuine resistance and that it is not merely a rationalization of victimization and redemptive suffering. He admits that his case is difficult.23 Just how difficult and ultimately unconvincing his argument is becomes evident when one sees that narrative Christus Victor provides an alternative that answers all the problems posed by satisfaction atonement.
Richard Mouw took an entirely different tack in defending satisfaction atonement against the charges of violence. Mouw acknowledged the intrinsic violence of satisfaction atonement, and that atonement theology can be used to further the suffering of women. His primary defense of satisfaction atonement is to explain why the violence of atonement is not a model for emulation. First, following the analogy of just war theory, it uses only the violence necessary to deal with sin—thus it should not contribute to the excessive violence some women experience. Second, the once-and-for-allness of atonement gives it “a kind of ethical-inimitability corollary,” meaning that Jesus is not an ethical model, at least not at the point of submitting to unjust violence. Further, he distinguishes between the redemptive suffering of Jesus and masochistic suffering, which is harmful to women. Finally, Mouw revises punishment to become “wrath.” This wrath is then not physical punishment, but the experience of being cursed for sin, which Jesus was already experiencing during his life as he identified with humanity, and experienced most profoundly on the cross as he asked, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Human beings cannot imitate this experience of the wrath of God.24 These arguments are then said to absolve God of the image of divine child abuser.
Mouw leaves us with the image of a God who uses violence, and with the claim that the actions of Jesus Christ are not a model for Christians, the people supposedly identified by his name. In other words, Mouw leaves us with a view of Jesus that is not useful for ethics and with images of God and of salvation that many have found offensive, but recasts these problems as supposedly unproblematic. But alongside the issue of separation of Jesus from Christian ethics, one must also wonder if continual contemplation of divine violence that supposedly is not imitated may not have the same kind of impact on psyches that concerns psychologists and parents when impressionable young people immerse themselves in violent movies and violent video games—whether through violent theology or violent entertainment people are being conditioned to accept and eventually to practice violence.
Some writers have appealed to the Trinity to defend satisfaction atonement against the claims that it poses a harmful model for abused or oppressed people. According to this argument, the unity of the Persons of the Trinity means that the Father suffers with the Son. Thus rather than having the Father cause Jesus to suffer, one has God the Father both identifying with the suffering of Jesus and also suffering himself for sinful humankind rather than exercising judgment.25 However, this appeal camouflages but does not deal fundamentally with the abusive imagery of satisfaction atonement. Returning to the earlier questions about the object of Jesus’ death and who needs and arranges the death shows that the death of Jesus is still aimed Godward. This appeal does change the image, however, from the Father abusing the Son to the Father engaging in self-abuse—which might be called divine suicide.
Another trinitarian argument defends divine violence by claiming that the violence of judgment is God’s role while Jesus the Son has a different role. Without elaborating, it is sufficient to say here that that argument violates the standard understanding of the relation of the Persons of the Trinity to one another within the Godhead. According to standard interpretation, each Person in some way reveals the fullness of God, and there is nothing in the Godhead or in any of the Persons of the Trinity that is not in the others. Following that logic, it is not possible for God to exercise violence while Jesus is only nonviolent, and if Jesus is nonviolent, then the Godhead is also nonviolent. In particular, this point addresses the argument of Richard Mouw, who assumes the violence of God.
None of this discussion about violence and the image of God in atonement motifs and about Jesus as passive model of innocent suffering matters if Jesus’ life is not related to what it means to be a Christian, and if being saved is a status separated from ethics. However, if the life of Jesus is relevant as a norm for ethics and if being saved and being Christian have expression in how one lives, then the discussion of image of God and of violence in atonement images and of Jesus as model of passive innocent suffering have profound importance. If we take Jesus seriously as a model and a norm for Christians, and if in his person and in his life Jesus is the presence of the reign of God in our history (this is a statement of incarnation), then how we understand atonement is an image of how God works in the world and how we understand what it means to be a Christian in the world. Satisfaction atonement in any of its forms pictures God as a God whose modus operandi is retributive violence and it presents an image of Jesus that models passive, innocent submission to abuse and oppression. This image of God, this image of atonement, and this image of being a Christian in the world should be abandoned.
Obviously, that conclusion raises a big question. What would I put in its place? I have a suggestion, which can be only sketched here.
My solution to the atonement question is to restore the devil to the equation. But that restoration is not merely putting Satan back into Anselm’s equation. It brings the battle of Christus Victor down to earth in the recovery and development of a biblical image that had fallen from view long before Anselm. I have called the result “narrative Christus Victor,”26 which identifies the victory of Christ in terms of the narratives of the Gospels and Revelation while also distinguishing it from classic Christus Victor. It is an explicitly nonviolent image, and it avoids all the problems of violence identified with classic atonement and christological imagery.
The twelfth chapter of Revelation features the specific image of a heavenly battle between the forces of Satan, represented by the dragon, and the forces of God led by the angel Michael. This battle follows the birth of a baby who was snatched up to heaven after the dragon tried unsuccessfully to kill him. The image of the baby snatched up to heaven clearly refers to the death and resurrection of Jesus, which means that the woman with a crown of twelve stars is Israel that produced Jesus and then the church. The dragon is called “the Devil and Satan” (Rev. 12:9), but the seven heads, ten horns, and seven crowns identify it as a symbol of Rome. There is here then an image of the reign of God in the person of Jesus confronting the evil of the world, symbolized by Rome—a confrontation that is continued by the life of the church. The so-called cosmic battle is really imagery that gives the cosmic significance of the confrontation in history between the Roman Empire and Jesus and his church—narrative Christus Victor.
The same interpretation applies to the seven seals in Revelation 6 and 7, which I suggest correspond to the seven imperial regimes between the crucifixion of Jesus under Emperor Tiberius (14–37 CE) and the reign of Domitian (81–96 CE), during whose rule the book likely was written. Each seal contains a symbolic reference to an event during the reign of the corresponding emperor.27
The “conquering and to conquer” of seal one is a subtle reference to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, and the emperor rider’s failed attempt to conquer Jesus. In seal two, the blood-red horse and threat to take peace from the earth recall the threat to Jerusalem in 40 CE, when Emperor Caligula (37–40 CE) commissioned a statue of himself in the form of a god and ordered an army commanded by Petronius to occupy Jerusalem and to install the statue on the high altar of the temple. Caligula died before that order was carried out, and the city was spared.
Seal three has symbols of famine, which was widespread under Emperor Claudius (41–50 CE), and cross-referenced in Acts 11:28. The double ugly riders and the multiple means of spreading death and destruction in seal four certainly represent Emperor Nero (54–68 CE), whose legendary cruelty still reigns. The vision of the heavenly altar in seal five parallels an eighteen-month break in the succession of emperors in 68–69 CE, when three rivals—Galbo, Otho, and Vitellius—each claimed the imperial crown but did not survive long enough to consolidate power.
The imagery of astronomical collapse and earthly chaos and devastation in seal six has been frequently interpreted as a description of the end of the world. It is not. This imagery actually depicts a mundane event, but one that seemed like the end of the world to those who experienced it. In 70 CE, an army commanded by Titus, son of the reigning emperor Vespasian (69–79 CE), invaded Jerusalem and sacked the city. Images of celestial chaos and terrestrial pandemonium together symbolize the breakdown of order and the feelings of loss and devastation when the army of the occupiers utterly destroyed Jerusalem and the temple.
Opening the seventh seal does not occur until chapter 8. The opening was followed by “silence in heaven for about half an hour” (v. 1). After Vespasian, his son Titus (79–81 CE) had a short reign as emperor. Domitian followed, ruling from 81 to 96 CE. Since the sequence of emperors ends here, it indicates that Revelation was most likely written during the reign of Domitian, with little of note to symbolize during the rule of Titus.
The important point in interpreting the seals is that the worst events in the first century—including the sack of Jerusalem in 70 CE—are not the end of the story. The entirety of chapter 7 also belongs to the sixth seal. Here one encounters the renowned image of the 144,000, which constitutes 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel. Obviously 144,000 is a symbolic number, obtained by squaring the number 12, which symbolizes Israel, and then multiplying by the large number of 1,000, a biblical number used to mean a very large number. One thousand would have seemed much larger to a first-century reader than to us in the computer age who routinely encounter extremely large numbers. One thousand ought not be read as a number of mathematical precision any more than it is mathematically precise today when a busy person proclaims that she has “a million things to do.” The author, John, has provided a symbolic way to display God’s people, who descend from Israel, as a boundless multitude.28
The vignette of the exceedingly large number of God’s people descended from Israel is followed immediately by another “great multitude that no one could count” (v. 9), composed of people from every conceivable nation and tribe and language of the earth. When one understands the symbolic character of 144,000, it should be apparent that the two multitudes are comparable in size—each a symbolic depiction of the people of God, one emphasizing continuity with Israel, the other making the point that no ethnic or national group is excluded from the people of God. They proclaim that “salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb” (v. 10). In verse 14 the reader learns that this white-robed throng has “come out of the great ordeal” and their robes have been washed “white in the blood of the Lamb” and they are pictured as worshiping God “day and night” while the “Lamb at the center of the throne” protects them. What does it mean that this worshiping throng is juxtaposed with the devastation so graphically depicted in the first scene of seal six?
That chapter 7 is four times longer than the scene of devastation indicates relative importance. More substantively, the juxtaposition of scenes of devastation and celebration displays the rule of God, revealed triumphant in the death and resurrection of Jesus, as victorious over the worst imaginable devastation meted out by the forces of evil—symbolized by Rome. With eyes on the resurrected Jesus as the living and embodied representative of God, those who have come through the “great ordeal” of Rome, including the mayhem and destruction of Jerusalem, can celebrate life in the reign of God, where salvation is found. Here is narrative Christus Victor.
Of particular importance is the observation that the victory of the reign of God over the evil symbolized by Rome occurs nonviolently, through the life, death, and most significantly, the resurrection of Jesus, and through the witness of the church, which maintains its witness in the face of adversity and death. This victory through the resurrection is obvious in the vignettes of the seals in Revelation 6 and 7 and the heavenly battle of chapter 12. It bears pointing out specifically for the image of the rider on the white horse in chapter 19, which is often appealed to in order to show the supposed violence of God and the ultimately vengeful and violent attitude of God toward evil. I simply note that the rider’s robe is dipped in blood before the supposed battle and that his name is “The Word of God” (v. 13), which clearly identify the rider as the resurrected Jesus. Then note that there is no actual battle depicted; rather the armies of the kings of the earth are defeated by the sword that extends from the rider’s mouth (v. 21), which makes it the word of God and not violence that defeats evil. Ephesians 6:17 and Hebrews 4:12 also use a two-edged sword as an image for the word of God. The vivid image of the rider on a white horse conveys a message about the nonviolence of the reign of God. It is another statement that in the resurrection of Jesus, the victory of the reign of God over evil occurs without violence.
The Gospels present the same story as that told in Revelation, but from a different standpoint. Revelation tells the story of Jesus and the confrontation of the rule of evil by the reign of God from the perspective of the heavenly throne room and the future culmination of the reign of God. The Gospels narrate that same confrontation from the earthly vantage point of the folk who got dust on their sandals as they walked along the roads of Palestine with Jesus. Nonetheless, when Jesus’ person embodies God, then his person, life, and teaching are the reign of God confronting the rule of evil in human history.
In Nazareth Jesus announced his mission as one “to bring good news to the poor . . . to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free” (Luke 4:18). That is an active, not a passive, mission to make God’s reign visible. In Walter Wink’s interpretation of Jesus’ well-known statements about turning the other cheek, giving the cloak, and going the second mile, these admonitions are activist, nonviolent resistance strategies rather than injunctions to passive submission, as usually interpreted.29 Past the Sermon on the Mount, there are stories that show Jesus in conversation with women when that is not expected; in these instances he challenged some accepted conventions, and thus raised the status of women. Choosing a Samaritan as a good example in the parable of that name, and the story of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, confront racism against Samaritans by raising their status. Jesus’ teachings show concern for poor people. Jesus cast out demons or healed mental illness and he stilled a storm. These accounts portray dimensions of the authority of the reign of God made visible and present in the teaching or acts of Jesus.
Luke 6:6-11 recounts Jesus’ healing of a withered hand. A dominant feature of the story is that the healing occurred on the Sabbath day, in defiance of conventional expectations. And the defiance of expectations was clearly deliberate—Jesus had the man come to a prominent spot where everyone could see him, and he looked “around at all of them,” drawing their eyes to him before he acted. This event of restoring the Sabbath to a day of restoration and healing made visible the reign of God.
Other stories in the Gospels have similar features. One of the most striking is often referred to as “the cleansing of the temple.” We need not engage in the debate about the nature of the particular offense that Jesus encountered in order to know that he was upset with what he found. He knocked over tables and cracked a whip and chased animals and told the money changers to get out because they had made the house of prayer into a “den of robbers” (Luke 19:46). When placed in the context of his teaching and other actions, this very assertive act of chasing out the money changers, salesmen, and their animals ought not come as a surprise. Nonetheless, it was the event that made the authorities so mad that they started plotting how to kill him. The plot met with success as the Romans, the ultimate political authority of the day, executed Jesus. But as is also well known, the success was momentary. Three days later, God raised Jesus from the dead, a triumph of the reign of God over the worst that the evil powers could do, namely to deny Jesus his existence. When the rule of evil confronted the reign of God in Jesus, the reign of God was victorious in the resurrection of Jesus.
Both the Gospels and Revelation locate the victory of the reign of God on earth and in history—narrative Christus Victor—and make quite clear that the triumph occurred not through the sword and military might, but nonviolently through death and resurrection. The intrinsically nonviolent character of the victory eliminates what is usually called “triumphalism of the church.” As intrinsically nonviolent, its stance to the other or toward those who differ and are different can only be nonviolent. To be otherwise is to cease to be a witness to the reign of God and to join the forces of evil that oppose the reign of God.
Reading that story in the Gospels shows that Jesus was not a passive victim, whose purpose was to get himself killed in order to satisfy a big cosmic legal requirement or to restore worship to God on our behalf. Rather, Jesus was an activist, whose mission was to make the rule of God visible. And as was suggested above, his acts demonstrated what the reign of God looked like—defending poor people, raising the status of women, raising the status of Samaritans, performing healings and exorcisms, preaching the reign of God, and more. His mission was an activist mission to make the reign of God present in the world in his person and in his teaching, and to invite people to experience the liberation it presented.
And when Jesus made present the reign of God, he was killed by an array of forces that represent the rule of evil. These forces included imperial Rome, which carried ultimate legal authority for his death, with some assistance from the religious authorities in Jerusalem, as well as Judas, Peter, and other disciples who could not even watch with Peter, and the mob that howled for Jesus’ death.
As sinners, in one way or another, we are accomplices with those sinful forces that killed Jesus.30 Jesus died making the reign of God present for us while we were still sinners. To acknowledge our human sinfulness means to confess our participation in the forces of evil that killed Jesus, including their present manifestations in such powers as militarism, nationalism, racism, sexism, heterosexism, and poverty, which still bind and oppress.
But because God is a loving God, God invites us to join the rule of God in spite of the fact that we participated with and are captive to the powers that killed Jesus. We cannot compensate for or undo our participation with the powers that killed Jesus; but God invites us to participate in the reign of God anyway. That participation, despite our guilt for opposing the reign of God, is grace. It is also grace because under our own power we cannot resist and overcome the powers of evil. Only God can do that, and if we are resisting and overcoming, it is because God enables it. One can call that predestination. At the same time, we are free moral agents and we have to make a choice whether to remain in league with the forces that oppose God or to accept God’s invitation to join with the reign of God. One can call that free will. Together these two impulses express Paul’s paradox of grace: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them—though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Cor. 15:10).
God invites us to join the struggle of those seeking liberation from the forces that bind and oppress. This invitation envisions both those who are oppressed and their oppressors. When the oppressed accept God’s invitation, they cease collaborating with the powers that oppressed and join the forces that represent the reign of God in making a visible witness against oppression. Although they may still suffer as a result of the struggle, they have ceased being victims who submit willingly to unjust suffering. And when the oppressors accept God’s invitation, they cease their collaboration with the powers of oppression and join the forces that represent the reign of God in witnessing against oppression. Thus under the reign of God as depicted in narrative Christus Victor, former oppressed and former oppressors join together in witnessing to the reign of God.
Earlier it was indicated how Anselmian atonement correlates with the ecclesiology of Christendom. It is now also possible to say that narrative Christus Victor belonged to, and only makes sense when perceived within, the ecclesiological status of the early church in relation to the Roman Empire and the social order. As is clear from the symbolism of Revelation, the church in that setting perceived itself to be different from the empire, to maintain itself as distinct from the prevailing social order. My reconstruction of narrative Christus Victor that makes visible the church in Revelation and the life of Jesus in the Gospels simply reflects the status of the church in the first century and beyond. I note without elaboration that this church was a pacifist church whether that stance was because Christians did not wield the sword and shed blood or because of the idolatrous nature of the army’s religious commitments.31
It was this sense of being distinct from the social order that disappeared with the Constantinian synthesis. And with that accommodation, historical dimensions of narrative Christus Victor were no longer true, and cosmic imagery did not match the political reality. Thus eventually the motif I have called narrative Christus Victor could fade away without a sense of loss, to be replaced by Anselm’s satisfaction motif, which reflected the medieval social and ecclesiological conditions.
This essay has used material from the Gospels and Revelation, the two ends of the New Testament. Some readers will no doubt suggest that the writings of Paul tell a much different story and provide a reading in line with satisfaction atonement. I disagree, although I do recognize that one can certainly read Paul in line with Anselmian or satisfaction language. But my argument is that this is not the only reading of Paul, and that Paul can be read just as well within the trajectory of narrative Christus Victor that goes from the Gospels to Revelation. Space permits only one brief example, the text of Romans 3:24-26, which is often suggested as proof of Paul’s satisfaction orientation. It reads:
They are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.
First, I have been helped by J. Christiaan Beker and Raymund Schwager, who read Paul in apocalyptic and nonsacrificial perspectives.32 Second, recall that the sacrifices of Leviticus happen in times of joy as well as failure, and therefore cannot be interpreted as rituals that required blood as the necessary payment for sin. Thus even if “sacrifice of atonement” is modeled on Old Testament sacrifices, it need not be read in an Anselmian manner. Sacrifice can be understood as a self-giving without it being any kind of payment or restoration of honor or worship to God. However, Jesus’ faithfulness even unto death did reveal his righteousness, and the result of this self-giving death was reconciliation between God and sinners, when sinners come to accept God’s invitation to join freely—that is, through grace—the reign of God. And as noted above, when God accepts that sinner into the reign of God, sins are certainly passed over, by grace, and the sinner’s faith in Jesus reconciles that sinner to God.
The image of narrative Christus Victor avoids all the problematic elements in classic atonement images, particularly those of satisfaction atonement. In contrast to the focus on death in satisfaction atonement, depicting the reign of God as made visible by Jesus in narrative Christus Victor requires use of the entire life and teaching of Jesus, culminating with the resurrection. The culmination of Jesus’ work in death versus in resurrection makes clear one of the significant differences between satisfaction atonement and narrative Christus Victor.
Narrative Christus Victor is grounded in assumptions of nonviolence—the nonviolence of Jesus—rather than violence. Earlier questions posed of atonement motifs were, “Who needed the death of Jesus?” and “Who arranged for the death of Jesus?” Posing these questions of narrative Christus Victor brings to the foreground the profound difference between it and satisfaction atonement. The questions have nonanswers in narrative Christus Victor. God is not put in the role of chief avenger or pictured as a child abuser. The death of Jesus meets no divine requirement because narrative Christus Victor does not rest on the idea of retribution where death makes right the problem, however the problem is defined. In narrative Christus Victor, the death pays God nothing and is not Godward directed. And thus there is no basis for God to arrange to have Jesus die or be killed to restore something to God. Death is rather what the forces of evil—“the devil”—do to Jesus. Rather than a divine requirement, the death of Jesus is the ultimate contrast of methodology between the reign of God and the reign of evil.
Jesus did suffer and die a violent death, but the violence was neither God’s nor God directed. Suffering and dying were not the purpose or goal of Jesus’ mission. Death resulted when Jesus faithfully carried out his life-bringing and life-affirming mission to make the rule of God present and visible. Since saving his life would have meant abandoning his mission, his death was necessary in the sense that faithfulness required that he go through death. However, even when Jesus’ death was necessary in that sense, death was neither the goal nor the purpose of his life. Perhaps one can understand how death was a by-product of faithfulness rather than the goal of his actions when one recalls the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. King anticipated his death and was killed because of his work, but getting killed was in no way the purpose of his work. Surrendering to fear and saving his life would have meant abandoning his life’s work.
I want to make very clear here that I am not denying that Jesus was killed, nor am I removing his death from the Gospel story. Rather I have suggested a different understanding of the role of Jesus’ death in the story of salvation, and a different understanding of whose violence killed Jesus. I am arguing that his death was not willed or needed by God. His death did not pay off or satisfy anything. On the contrary, it was a product of the forces of evil that opposed Jesus and opposed the reign of God. The real saving act of and in and with Jesus is his resurrection.
Narrative Christus Victor understands Jesus as the one whose person and mission make the reign of God present in our history. It pictures Jesus with an activist mission, as a model of liberation. Those who accept the invitation of God join the movement that witnesses to the nature of the reign of God in contrast to the forces of evil that bind. This motif thus features salvation that begins in history to the extent that the reign of God is present in history.
This essay has demonstrated the extent to which presuppositions of violence as well as overt violence are intrinsic to supposed standard Christian theology, both through failure to challenge violence and through actual accommodation of violence and injustice. This combination of intrinsically violent elements and lack of challenge to injustice in the social order mean that it has been possible throughout much of Christian history for Christians to profess allegiance to Jesus and to claim salvation as depicted in classic Christology and atonement while simultaneously pursuing the violence prohibited by Jesus’ teaching and life.
If Christians are uncomfortable with Christianity as a violent religion—and currently there seem to be many supposedly Christian voices joining the national war chorus—the first step is to recognize the extent to which formulas of classic theology have contributed to violence both overt and systemic. This essay provides some data for that acknowledgement. The second step away from Christianity as a violent religion would be to construct theology that specifically reflects the nonviolence of its namesake, Jesus Christ. As a suggestion I offer narrative Christus Victor as both nonviolent atonement and narrative Christology. Finally, step three would be to live out the theology of its nonviolent namesake. That commitment challenges every Christian.
1. The most extensive product of my work on atonement is the book The Nonviolent Atonement (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001). The essay in hand draws on that book.
2. Anselm, “Why God Became Man,” in A Scholastic Miscellany: Anselm to Ockham, ed. and trans. Eugene R. Fairweather, The Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1956), 107-10.
3. Anselm himself did not deal with the specific question of whether God was responsible for the death of Jesus, although he does discuss whether the Father willed the death of the Son. Anselm wanted to portray the necessity of the incarnation and of Jesus’ death as a payment to God’s honor, but without appearing to place limits or obligation on God. To deal with this dilemma and to absolve God of responsibility for seemingly unjust acts, Anselm developed the category of “fitting” or “fittingness” to describe what was necessary for God but without placing necessity or obligation on God. R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 201-2, 206. For Anselm’s use of “fitting” and “unfitting,” see Anselm, “Why?” 115-21.
4. The question of who killed Jesus and the image of God the answer implies play prominently throughout James Carroll’s important book on the theological roots of anti-Semitism. Carroll notes that Constantine shifted the focus from resurrection to the death of Jesus as the saving event, which set in motion the dynamic that made “the Jews” the focus of Christian hatred through the centuries. A kind of theological culmination was reached with Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo, in which Anselm sought to prove the necessity of incarnation and the death of Jesus by reason alone. With Boso as a stand-in for Jews, Anselm thus rendered Jews unreasonable or irrational. As a result, Jews ended up as both unreasonable for rejecting the saving death of Jesus and as the ones who were blamed for providing the event that makes Christian salvation possible. See comments throughout James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), especially 54-56, 190-94, 284-89.
5. Peter Abailard, “Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans,” in A Scholastic Miscellany, 283.
6. Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker, “For God So Loved the World?” in Christianity, Patriarchy and Abuse: A Feminist Critique, ed. Joanne Carlson Brown and Carole R. Bohn (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1989), 1-30; Julie M. Hopkins, Towards a Feminist Christology: Jesus of Nazareth, European Women, and the Christological Crisis (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 50-52; Rita Nakashima Brock, Journeys by Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 55-57; Carter Heyward, Saving Jesus from Those Who Are Right: Rethinking What It Means to Be Christian (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), 151; Delores S. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993), 161-67.
7. One of several problems with retributive justice is that it does nothing for the victim or to restore the relationship fractured by the offender. For an analysis of retributive justice, with restorative justice as the suggested alternative, see Howard Zehr, Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1990).
8. Southern, Saint Anselm, 221-27.
9. Ibid.
10. For the seminal treatment of the changes in the church symbolized by Constantine see John Howard Yoder, “The Constantinian Sources of Western Social Ethics,” in The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 135-47; as well as John H. Yoder, “The Disavowal of Constantine: An Alternative Perspective on Interfaith Dialogue,” in The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical, ed. Michael G. Cartwright (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 242-61; and John H. Yoder, “The Otherness of the Church,” in The Royal Priesthood, 53-64. H. A. Drake has shown that Constantine himself pursued a policy of tolerance, and that the changes he symbolizes and the move toward enforcing one prescribed faith actually occurred in the decades following Constantine. H. A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000).
11. James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed, rev. ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997), 42-49, 211-12.
12. Brown and Parker, “For God So Loved the World?”; Hopkins, Towards a Feminist Christology, 50-52; Brock, Journeys by Heart, 55-57; Heyward, Saving Jesus, 151.
13. Cone, God of the Oppressed, 211-12.
14. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness, 60-83, 161-67, 178-99.
15. One of the most explicit examples of innocent suffering for another is the vocation of “victim soul,” which was a prominent feature of some Catholic religious orders, primarily for women, in the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century. See Paula M. Kane, “ ‘She Offered Herself Up’: The Victim Soul and Victim Spirituality in Catholicism,” Church History 71, no.1 (March 2002): 80-120.
16. One might perhaps argue that the satisfaction atonement demands and models retribution for the victim. However, this retributive justice does nothing to restore the victim. See note 7.
17. Catherine Pickstock pushes this argument the farthest, but Margo Houts and Nancy Duff also use it. See Catherine Pickstock, After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998), 155-57; Margo G. Houts, “Atonement and Abuse: An Alternative View,” Daughters of Sarah 18, no. 3 (Summer 1992): 30; Nancy J. Duff, “Atonement and the Christian Life: Reformed Doctrine from a Feminist Perspective,” Interpretation 53, no.1 (January 1999): 24.
18. For different, recent versions of this approach, see Joel B. Green and Mark D. Baker, Recovering the Scandal of the Cross: Atonement in New Testament & Contemporary Contexts (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000); William C. Placher, Jesus the Savior: The Meaning of Jesus Christ for the Christian Faith (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 136-37, 142-49; and Colin Gunton, “One Mediator . . . The Man Jesus Christ: Reconciliation, Mediation and Life in Community,” Pro Ecclesia 11, no. 2 (Spring 2002): 151-52.
19. Daniel M. Bell Jr., “Sacrifice and Suffering: Beyond Justice, Human Rights, and Capitalism,” Modern Theology 18, no. 3 (July 2002): 344.
20. Bell, “Sacrifice and Suffering,” 345-46; Daniel M. Bell Jr., Liberation Theology After the End of History: The Refusal to Cease Suffering (London: Routledge, 2001), 147.
21. Bell, “Sacrifice and Suffering,” 346-49; Bell, Liberation Theology, 146-53.
22. Bell, Liberation Theology, 70-74, 149-51.
23. Ibid., 189-95.
24. Richard J. Mouw, “Violence and the Atonement,” in Must Christianity Be Violent? Reflections on History, Practice, and Theology, ed. Kenneth R. Chase and Alan Jacobs (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2003), 159-71.
25. For versions of this argument, see William C. Placher, “Christ Takes Our Place: Rethinking Atonement,” Interpretation 53, no. 1 (January 1999): 16-17; Thelma Megill-Cobbler, “A Feminist Rethinking of Punishment Imagery in Atonement,” Dialog 35, no. 1 (Winter 1996): 19-20; Leanne Van Dyk, “Do Theories of Atonement Foster Abuse?” Dialog 35, no.1 (Winter 1996): 24; Houts, “Atonement and Abuse,” 29.
26. Thanks to Leann Van Dyk, who suggested this particular name for the motif that I was developing.
27. For a detailed discussion of the seven seals, see Weaver, The Nonviolent Atonement, 20-28.
28. M. Eugene Boring, Revelation, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1989), 130-31.
29 Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, vol. 3, The Powers (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 175-84.
30. Two reasons make it important to underscore our participation in the forces of evil that killed Jesus. Theologically, it asserts universal sinfulness as well as stating the link that enables us to share in the victory of Jesus’ resurrection over those powers of evil. Historically, it is important to lay responsibility for resistance to the reign of God and the death of Jesus on all of humanity, beginning with the Roman political establishment that had the final human responsibility, as a counter to the claim that “the Jews” killed Jesus, which became the basis of anti-Semitism through the centuries since Constantine. See Carroll, Constantine’s Sword, 71-88, 175-76.
31. David G. Hunter, “The Christian Church and the Roman Army in the First Three Centuries,” in The Church’s Peace Witness, ed. Marlin E. Miller and Barbara Nelson Gingerich (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 161-81; David G. Hunter, “A Decade of Research on Early Christians and Military Service,” Religious Studies Review 18, no. 2 (April 1992): 87-94; David M. Scholer, “Early Christian Attitudes to War and Military Service: A Selective Bibliography,” TSF Bulletin 8, no. 1 (September-October 1984): 23-24.
32. J. Christiaan Beker, Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), 135-212; Raymund Schwager, Jesus in the Drama of Salvation (New York: Crossroad, 1999), 160-68.