Monday, November 30, 2020
The Inevitable Necessity of Christ's Death Wasn't "Required"
"The idea that a God of love ever required a sacrifice to forgive His creation is a false one." - some guy named Barry Smith on Facebook.
I associate "required" with "necessity." I think if Christians associated necessity with "that which is inevitable" rather than with "should" and "ought" and "must," then a whole lot of other things would change, too. For the better. To that point, seen here is a screenshot from an online etymology dictionary:
I'm thinking of when my architecture professor used to semi-regularly say, "Necessity means death, that which is inevitable." Of course, to consider that in terms of a question of soteriology - i.e. when considering the statement, "It is a lie that a God of love requires sacrifice" - is to have at least two constructs in the background that so predominantly shape our paradigmatic interpretive lens for the world and our selves as to generally be taken for granted:
1. a metaphysical or spiritual transaction that occurs at the cross when we mentally assent to the "truth" of it, in which we go from rejected to accepted, and
2. universal rules for right conduct imposed at a distance from a transcendent position above, which we are obligated to follow and which rightfully serve as the basis for a properly ordered legal system of what ought or should be the moral standard of human action (i.e. Kantian ethics, which depend on a Kantian metaphysical construct of reality and a Kantian anthropology of the 'transcendent subject'; i.e., we're talking about "legalism").
When we put the two constructs together, we can say that our predominant way of functioning assumes that Christian spirituality is basically assumed to be oriented around God's "grace" for us in light of our having broken His "rules." "Grace" here is conceived, or at least imagined, almost exclusively as getting treated differently from what we deserve, i.e. being accepted or forgiven for the breaking of God's rules. Of course, being God's, the "rules" are a "just" set of them, and one of them is that a sacrificial offering is "required" as an offering to appease Him in order to obtain His "forgiveness" and thus (re)acquire right standing with Him. The blood of the sacrifice here is conceived as a symbol of the death that is "required" or "necessary" for the appeasing.
HOWEVER, in the background of my imagining "necessity" as "that which is inevitable" is INSTEAD a conception of "grace" that isn't first, and thus much less exclusively, "being treated better than we deserve." Grace IS, however, first and primarily God's desire for relationship with us, God's desire for relational connection (he "came" in the fullness of grace and truth - John 1: 14). Here, God's desire for us is an overflow and outflow of mutual divine desire for and of relationship within the Trinity itself. "Personal relationship" isn't here diametrically opposed to the binding "obligation" to communal relationship, because they are essentially one and the same.
So, when the God who is Life reaches out for and in loving relationship with a people who are bent towards death, and when part of what this means is God's showing us that His love is non-coercive and non-violent and instead is simply the overwhelming of death and destruction in His very person that He shares with us through the Spirit out and because of His divine desire for us, then the death of the God who is revealed, in said death, to be the God of Resurrection Life, is seen and revealed to be just as inevitable as the death of the humans who kill him in the sin that is the "animating" principle of their death (if we can call the principle of death "animating"). I.e., "Necessity means death, that which is inevitable."
The blood of the sacrifice here is conceived, instead of as a symbol of the death that is "required" or "necessary," the very life-blood of the animal, in and by which we share in the divine desire for His life that is characterized by Love that takes a certain and particular shape at the cross (Phil. 2:1-11). The "blood" here is thus a sign of the work and action of the Spirit's actually and functionally sharing God's life with us, i.e. the Life of "grace" in discipleship ๐
Noticeably, here:
1. There is no "metaphysical transaction." There is simply a person who dies, lives, and will come again.
2. There are no "rules" "from above." The "rule" is "established" in the life and death of the person we see revealing to us our own very life and death. God isn't a legalist, because God is a person.
Also, noticeably, then, "sin" here is obviously taken very seriously. Just not in the same way as in our popular Christian imagination that is shaped by the above two constructs that I laid out.
I should also, of course, then note that an additional image that "overflows" from this different conception of the grace of God is that, if you look at the etymology of "necessity" - "condition of being in need, want of the means of living" - it helps us in our imagination to tie this "inevitability" of God's death to the vulnerability of Jesus as he reaches out for and towards relationship with us - imaged in his nakedness before us at his birth, his baptism, and his death.
This, in turn, means that - seeing as how we're talking about "necessity" in the first place and thus also about our "needs," i.e. about our economy - our desires for economic security are also our desires for life itself and are a sharing in God's desire for life with us, in the face of our death that is, in our sin that disorders our economic desires, inevitable. I.e., our desire for economic security is a response to the threat of death that is overcome in the life of God that He shares with us in the person of Christ through the Spirit (foreshadowed in the typology of Isaac and the ram).
For my Catholic (and perhaps Reformed or Lutheran "Two Kingdom"?) friends, one implication here is thus that the bifurcation of the ordered ends of the church towards spiritual salvation ending in life in heaven, as compared to the ordered end of the State towards the meeting of human "needs" on earth, is apparently a false one (btw the early church Fathers, on whom this interpretation I'm articulating of the person and life of Christ relies, generally lived and taught before the predominance of the Constaninism that "necessitated" and makes sense of the bifurcation in question of the ordered ends of church and State). Both "ends" are ordered by and in that which is "inevitable" by and in the person of Christ's shared life with us. Is that "inevitability" in Christ our life or our death? The "needs" that are met by the State in the reigning bifurcation are articulated, are written, into the very death of the Word. The story of God's resurrection thus tells us that those needs are actually met in the non-bifurcated person of Christ, shared with us by the divine desire of grace in, by, and through the Spirit. In other words, the missio dei can't be birucated into earthly and heavently ends.
Tying this unity of the person of Christ to the story of our very life and death also, of course, ties the "sin offerings" of the O.T. to their entire economic system. Which, of course, ties the Resurrection Life of Jesus to ours (does "ours" here refer to our economic system or to our life and death? ๐ ) ๐
My being cleaves to the dust.
Give me life as befits Your word.
- Psalm 119: 25
I associate "required" with "necessity." I think if Christians associated necessity with "that which is inevitable" rather than with "should" and "ought" and "must," then a whole lot of other things would change, too. For the better. To that point, seen here is a screenshot from an online etymology dictionary:
I'm thinking of when my architecture professor used to semi-regularly say, "Necessity means death, that which is inevitable." Of course, to consider that in terms of a question of soteriology - i.e. when considering the statement, "It is a lie that a God of love requires sacrifice" - is to have at least two constructs in the background that so predominantly shape our paradigmatic interpretive lens for the world and our selves as to generally be taken for granted:
1. a metaphysical or spiritual transaction that occurs at the cross when we mentally assent to the "truth" of it, in which we go from rejected to accepted, and
2. universal rules for right conduct imposed at a distance from a transcendent position above, which we are obligated to follow and which rightfully serve as the basis for a properly ordered legal system of what ought or should be the moral standard of human action (i.e. Kantian ethics, which depend on a Kantian metaphysical construct of reality and a Kantian anthropology of the 'transcendent subject'; i.e., we're talking about "legalism").
When we put the two constructs together, we can say that our predominant way of functioning assumes that Christian spirituality is basically assumed to be oriented around God's "grace" for us in light of our having broken His "rules." "Grace" here is conceived, or at least imagined, almost exclusively as getting treated differently from what we deserve, i.e. being accepted or forgiven for the breaking of God's rules. Of course, being God's, the "rules" are a "just" set of them, and one of them is that a sacrificial offering is "required" as an offering to appease Him in order to obtain His "forgiveness" and thus (re)acquire right standing with Him. The blood of the sacrifice here is conceived as a symbol of the death that is "required" or "necessary" for the appeasing.
HOWEVER, in the background of my imagining "necessity" as "that which is inevitable" is INSTEAD a conception of "grace" that isn't first, and thus much less exclusively, "being treated better than we deserve." Grace IS, however, first and primarily God's desire for relationship with us, God's desire for relational connection (he "came" in the fullness of grace and truth - John 1: 14). Here, God's desire for us is an overflow and outflow of mutual divine desire for and of relationship within the Trinity itself. "Personal relationship" isn't here diametrically opposed to the binding "obligation" to communal relationship, because they are essentially one and the same.
So, when the God who is Life reaches out for and in loving relationship with a people who are bent towards death, and when part of what this means is God's showing us that His love is non-coercive and non-violent and instead is simply the overwhelming of death and destruction in His very person that He shares with us through the Spirit out and because of His divine desire for us, then the death of the God who is revealed, in said death, to be the God of Resurrection Life, is seen and revealed to be just as inevitable as the death of the humans who kill him in the sin that is the "animating" principle of their death (if we can call the principle of death "animating"). I.e., "Necessity means death, that which is inevitable."
The blood of the sacrifice here is conceived, instead of as a symbol of the death that is "required" or "necessary," the very life-blood of the animal, in and by which we share in the divine desire for His life that is characterized by Love that takes a certain and particular shape at the cross (Phil. 2:1-11). The "blood" here is thus a sign of the work and action of the Spirit's actually and functionally sharing God's life with us, i.e. the Life of "grace" in discipleship ๐
Noticeably, here:
1. There is no "metaphysical transaction." There is simply a person who dies, lives, and will come again.
2. There are no "rules" "from above." The "rule" is "established" in the life and death of the person we see revealing to us our own very life and death. God isn't a legalist, because God is a person.
Also, noticeably, then, "sin" here is obviously taken very seriously. Just not in the same way as in our popular Christian imagination that is shaped by the above two constructs that I laid out.
I should also, of course, then note that an additional image that "overflows" from this different conception of the grace of God is that, if you look at the etymology of "necessity" - "condition of being in need, want of the means of living" - it helps us in our imagination to tie this "inevitability" of God's death to the vulnerability of Jesus as he reaches out for and towards relationship with us - imaged in his nakedness before us at his birth, his baptism, and his death.
This, in turn, means that - seeing as how we're talking about "necessity" in the first place and thus also about our "needs," i.e. about our economy - our desires for economic security are also our desires for life itself and are a sharing in God's desire for life with us, in the face of our death that is, in our sin that disorders our economic desires, inevitable. I.e., our desire for economic security is a response to the threat of death that is overcome in the life of God that He shares with us in the person of Christ through the Spirit (foreshadowed in the typology of Isaac and the ram).
For my Catholic (and perhaps Reformed or Lutheran "Two Kingdom"?) friends, one implication here is thus that the bifurcation of the ordered ends of the church towards spiritual salvation ending in life in heaven, as compared to the ordered end of the State towards the meeting of human "needs" on earth, is apparently a false one (btw the early church Fathers, on whom this interpretation I'm articulating of the person and life of Christ relies, generally lived and taught before the predominance of the Constaninism that "necessitated" and makes sense of the bifurcation in question of the ordered ends of church and State). Both "ends" are ordered by and in that which is "inevitable" by and in the person of Christ's shared life with us. Is that "inevitability" in Christ our life or our death? The "needs" that are met by the State in the reigning bifurcation are articulated, are written, into the very death of the Word. The story of God's resurrection thus tells us that those needs are actually met in the non-bifurcated person of Christ, shared with us by the divine desire of grace in, by, and through the Spirit. In other words, the missio dei can't be birucated into earthly and heavently ends.
Tying this unity of the person of Christ to the story of our very life and death also, of course, ties the "sin offerings" of the O.T. to their entire economic system. Which, of course, ties the Resurrection Life of Jesus to ours (does "ours" here refer to our economic system or to our life and death? ๐ ) ๐
My being cleaves to the dust.
Give me life as befits Your word.
- Psalm 119: 25
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