Christus Victor

[Cole]

In this view of atonement the Father wasn’t taking His wrath out on Christ. Moreover, the cross was the end of the temple sacrficial system which was only a shadow of the real thing and was declared inferior and obsolete. The cross was not a parallel to the earthly temple. Jesus was a self sacrifice offering of love. He wasn’t appeasing an angry God but His entire life was a fragrent offering of selfless servant love. He was revealing God’s heart of compassion for us. The entire life of Christ was a sacrifice as He took on the life of a servant. Likewise we are called to bring our lives as a living sacrifice by living a life of selfless other directed love. Jesus came to reveal God’s heart of love and compassion to the broken and rejected. He would gain victory over sin, death, and Satan. We are united to Christ in His death and resurrection as we die to the old self and put on the new self on a daily basis. We let God’s love come into our lives as we enter into a personal relationship with Him. The cross declares that our own self-hatred and the whole cycle of being hurt and hurting others is broken, freeing us from the bondages of sin and death. At the cross Christ suffers with those who suffer revealing the compassionate love of God. Love stood up to death and overcame it. He took on all our sin and hatefulness, died, and was risen as death was overcome and love was risen as victor.

While it was God’s will to hand Christ over to be crucified I don’t see anywhere in the Bible where it says the Father was taking His wrath out on Christ. The closest thing that comes to mind is the word propitiation. Evangelicals follow the Pagan understanding of this word which means to placate an angry deity. To the Jews and the Eastern Orthodox Church the word simply refers to the mercy seat. The sacrifices in the O.T. were never used to appease an angry God but to cleanse one of one’s sin. Moreover, as I already pointed out above, the sacrifices in the O.T. were types and shadows of the self-sacrificial love of Christ. The cross was not a parallel to the earthly temple. Jesus was a self-sacrifice offering of love. His entire life was a fragrent offering of selfless servant love. He was revealing God’s heart of compassion for us as He chose to suffer. The entire life of Christ was a sacrifice as He took on the life of a servant. Likewise we are called to bring our lives as a living sacrifice by living a life of selfless other directed love. We are united to Christ as He takes on our sin and suffers with us and for us becoming a curse as He dies and is raised again defeating sin and death. The cup that Christ drank from was a cup of suffering. He told (I think it was James and John) that they would drink from the exact same cup that He was going to drink from. It makes no sense to say that the cup they would drink from was God’s punitive wrath. God would be punishing them for their sins after He already punished them on Christ which is a double punishment for their sins. This is why the cup that Christ would drink from was a cup of suffering only. Not a cup of God’s punitive wrath.

[Alex_Smith]

To the Jews and the Eastern Orthodox Church the word simply refers to the mercy seat.

I must admit I’m leaning that way myself, but really need to do a lot more reading on the topic. Do you know where the Catholics stand on this?

Welcome to the forum by the way

[Cole]

To the Jews and the Eastern Orthodox Church the word simply refers to the mercy seat.

I must admit I’m leaning that way myself, but really need to do a lot more reading on the topic. Do you know where the Catholics stand on this?

Welcome to the forum by the way

I’m not sure where the Catholics stand. I haven’t done much study of Catholic doctrine.

[byronarn]

To the Jews and the Eastern Orthodox Church the word simply refers to the mercy seat.

I must admit I’m leaning that way myself, but really need to do a lot more reading on the topic. Do you know where the Catholics stand on this?

Welcome to the forum by the way

Roman Catholics, for the most part, hold to the substitution theory of atonement.

[JasonPratt]

I’m not sure either. (Like Byron I know they generally hold to penal sub, although not without most other kinds of atonement theory, too–all the kinds were invented back when the Romans and the East were still in communion with each other. But I don’t know if they acknowledge “the propitiation” to be a description of God’s throne.)

Let me see if I can get the recent Great Catechism to work…

(Welcome to the forum, too, btw, MC. I was hoping you’d follow the link from Victor’s site back here. Things can get kind of acrimonious over there, by no fault of Vic’s.)

[JasonPratt]

No, the term only occurs twice in that whole work (plus its commentary), neither of which even possibly involves the mercy seat per se.

A search for “hilast” as the root of the underlying Greek term (just in case the Catechism was referring to a cognate of the Greek somewhere) turned up nothing at all.

This could be a problem of English translation, though. Checking something else…

Okay, the term “mercy seat” does appear twice in one place (Part 1, Sect Two, Chp 2, Article 2, paragraph 433, i.e. commentary on the phrase from the profession of the Christian faith “And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord”):

The name of the Savior God was invoked only once in the year by the high priest in atonement for the sins of Israel, after he had sprinkled the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies with the sacrificial blood. The mercy seat was the place of God’s presence. When St. Paul speaks of Jesus whom “God put forward as an expiation by his blood”, he means that in Christ’s humanity “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself”.

That whole Article is quite interesting; and for that matter any student of Christian history and theology ought to have the RCC universal catechism at hand–not least Christian universalists, as it was authorized and overseen by a Pope (John Paul 2) and a Cardinal (Ratzinger, afterward the current Pope Benedict) who both had had Von Balthasar as spiritual adviser and who admire him greatly. (Unless I’m mistaken, Balthasar himself survived to have some input in it.)

If we’re going to Protest on some things, it helps to know what things we’re Protesting against anyway.

(I didn’t see anything in that Article, down to the paragraph about the mercy seat, that I would protest against, btw. )

[Cole]

Jason,

Here’s where I found that the term “propitiation” refers to mercy seat of faith. God wasn’t punishing Christ.

Orthodox Apologetics:

Orthodox Christians, by contrast, believe that Christ’s death had nothing to do with satisfying the wrath of God. Rather, Christ’s death served two main purposes. First, Jesus Christ united Himself with humanity in all of its sufferings, sorrows, and pains. He took upon Himself the natural consequence of man’s sin, that is, suffering, rather than the wrath of God the Father for our sins. Second, through His death, Christ annihilated the bonds of death, and in doing so, destroyed the kingdom of Satan.

Protestants appeal to a variety of texts in attempting to prove penal substitution and imputed righteousness. Perhaps foremost among this texts is St. Paul’s argument in Romans 3:25. He writes, “…God put forward [Christ] as an (hilasterion) by his blood, to be received by faith.” In most Protestant translations, hilasterion is rendered “propitiation.” Propitiation would imply that Christ satisfied the wrath of God the Father on the Cross. However, New Testament scholar Stephen Finlan writes concerning this passage, “The hilasterion is the place where the impurity resulting from the sins of Israel is ritually cleansed once a year…what Paul is saying is that God has put forward Christ as a ‘mercy seat of faith’, not ‘an expiation’ [or] a ‘sacrifice of atonement’” [Finlan, 40] That is to say, Jesus Christ has been made the mercy seat for our sins. He is where Christians are purified. He is the place of our union with God, not the means of satisfying an angry Father…In his first sermon, St. Peter preaches the essence of Christianity. He does not preach about imputed righteousness, Sola Fide, or penal substitution. Rather, speaking of Christ’s Cross, He cogently identifies the reason for the Lord’s death. He says in Acts 2:23-24 that “This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.” Death cannot hold the very author of life. Because of this, when it attempted to hold God, God took it and destroyed it, bringing about His own resurrection. St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:21-23, “For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.”

Christ, through His death, has broken death itself. Because He has destroyed death, the kingdom of Satan has fallen and the Church is advancing. The purpose of the Lord’s death has nothing to do with satisfying the wrath of God or shuffling righteousness files in a legal file cabinet. Christ, through His incarnation, death, and resurrection, crushes death, swings open the gates of eternal life, and provides us a means of accessing this life.