The end of the beginning
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
T S Eliot, Little Gidding (Four Quartets)
Chaplain's day retreat today at Little Gidding.
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Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
In an increasingly secularised society few people have a good working knowledge of the Bible. Yet a great deal of our culture is built on stories or ideas that come from the Bible. Literature, art, music, language and even the fabric of our society - such as our justice system - are built on Christian concepts and biblical references. The Writing on the Wall provides a fascinating introduction to the Bible's best-known, and most influential, stories. Each chapter gives some background to the text of the Bible, and shows how the stories have become enmeshed in Western culture. Adam and Eve, the ten plagues of Egypt, The Prodigal Son and Mary Magdalene all feature - along with how the Bible has influenced everyone from Shakespeare to Monty Python, and Caravaggio to Banksy. 
Giving It Up explores the Lenten idea of 'giving up', taking it beyond the traditional idea of simply abstaining from something, and suggesting instead that what we need to give up is our existing ideas about God. With a daily readings for each day of Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, it follows the heroes of the Bible who had to give up their own too-small ideas about God.
This is Maggi’s bestselling book of daily readings for each day of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. Advent is the beginning of the Church year, and marks the anticipation of the coming Messiah. These readings explore how beginnings and endings in our own lives are illuminated by the different Gospel narratives of Christ's coming.
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Couldn’t agree more, Maggie, both on the atonement debate (or should that be debacle, the way certain Christian groups get so uppity and self-righteously indignant over it?) and on Giles Fraser. Whenever I hear Giles on R4 Thought for the Day I find myself actually having something to think about: thank you.
I heard someone say recently that to have a purely judicial understanding of the death of Christ is to misunderstand his death – Christ’s death is to be understood relationally – through his death he extends the relationship that already exists within the Trinity to include us. I think that brings some balance to the view that the “wrath of God was satisfied” through his death.
There’s a very good book actually called ‘The Nonviolent Atonement’ (http://tinyurl.com/cywj2j), by Mennonite theologian J. Denny Weaver. James Alison has also written illuminatingly about this. And I hope I’ll be forgiven for mentioning the DLT book I co-edited, ‘Consuming Passion’ (http://tinyurl.com/dj3kak).
Yes, Simon, I like Weaver’s book. Yours I haven’t seen yet…
As it happens, I have a copy of Simon’s book in stock at LST – can beat Amazon’s price too: £8.50, UK post free: just say the word! (Sorry – I am a bookseller!)
Maggi,
The issue isn’t about having a purely judicial or sacrificial view of the atonement, the issue is about attempting to entirely expunge such a view. That’s why Fraser’s column is sloppy – it’s just bad theology and involves completely ignoring key sections of scripture.
Thanks for this, Maggi. I’ve recently completed a dissertation on this, arguing against violent retributive forms of atonement on ethical grounds, so this is most helpful!
I find a good way of approaching this with congregations is to use Sir Arthur Conan Doyles Sherlock Holmes story, the Final Problem:
http://sherlock-holmes.classic-literature.co.uk/the-final-problem/
Plug for Denny Weaver. Plus, a theological college principal whom I greatly respect told me recently he had noticed that if you find yourself sufficiently close to a group of students and lay out, say, 11 leading theories of atonement which can be grounded in the NT, people of a Conservative cast of mind often pick 2, not 1; one that is pure grace (God does it all) and one of which is pure “you need to work your socks off”.
Transactionality is a famous and genuine problem, but one that won’t go away; we just have different ways of picturing it to a Feudal society. Its glory is that it puts substance into what changed; its limitation that it raises moral issues on a meta level – But I have to confess I just find it impossible to get away from entirely, given human nature, the reality of our condition, and our need to account for sin in terms of justice.
I think it entirely more likely that it was us, rather than God, who wanted a sacrifice.
Does the whole atonement debate look different if we take seriously the one-ness of the persons of the Trinity? Self-sacrifice is a diffrent thing entirely to requiring sacrifice.
Of course, one naughty rumour around is that Evangelicals have long since stopped believing in penal substitutionary atonement, but still preach it for the mere entertainment of watching how the liberals react. Never ceases to amaze me how they fall for it every time! As the Rolling Stones used to sing: “I can’t get no…”
Hi Maggi,
An interesting post and I can understand why people don’t like the penal substitution theory of atonement but we must be careful not to lose the link with Temple sacrifice in the OT. We also need to keep in mind that God himself in Christ bore our sin, and that God didn’t demand that of someone else. That is an awesome gift to us and I think we should be wary of diminishing that.
Maggi- you’ve said here what I’ve been trying to say to others for ages and haven’t been able to any where near as brilliantly…thank you