The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Christus Victor

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.

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 :sunglasses:

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

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

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. :slight_smile: 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. :slight_smile: I was hoping you’d follow the link from Victor’s site back here. :smiley: Things can get kind of acrimonious over there, by no fault of Vic’s.)

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

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”):

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. :smiley:

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

Jason,

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

Orthodox Apologetics: