This attachment about the PS was awesome. I’ve rarely read a refutation of it offered so logically and convincingly. thank you!
Also I think the main point (as I see it) turns on whether God uses Christ to receive well deserved punishment or whether Christ’s participation – albeit only as a victim, not as a perpetrator – of our sin/cruelty is crucial. Moltmann was very useful for me here. When he wrote in The Crucified God that Jesus became “brother of the damned” he articulated something I had already intuitively felt. It was by sharing the consequences of our sin, being in the same place we get to when we’ve sinned – that we are ABLE to know we’re loved anyway and thus ABLE to trust him and thus ABLE to turn our lives around. As was pointed out, WE needed that assurance, that reassurance that even in our worst – he was there. It is like God joined an AA group if you like, experiencing the full affects of life-long alcoholism or addiction – and sharing the pain of withdrawal and recovery – although he never took a drink. Seeing him at that meeting, we can know a) he understands and b) we’re not condemned and c) just how much we matter to him! Moreover, as hard as the route is out of hell, we’re never alone. Otherwise despair is way too tempting! We fail so often and even, more horribly, want to fail – that without him always being where we are we’d give up on ourselves in a heartbeat. The ressurection suggests that his love is more powerful than our despair and even though all we do (as Julian of Norwich wrote) is sin, so long as we keep letting him pick us up and repent and keep going we’re going to get there because nothing can separate us from the love of God that is ours through Jesus Christ. Thus my sin just doesn’t have the stamina – endurance, however willed or entrenched, once I fully trust the One’s whose love is always stronger. My sin can’t compete with his Love – and i think that is what the PS misses and what this wonderful critique of it affirms. Exactly, salvation is from sin, not from punishment. That is a critical distinction – and if we are saved from punishment, then must keep on avoiding sin. But i think the point is here that it is not God that punishes us – which again, the PS strongly suggests (if not outright states). It is an ontological point really – sin is its own punishment. It is an act or state or thought or way of being which is against Life/Love and therefore will inevitably and eventually (because the consequences may very well not be immediate) hurt, maim, kill us. Sin hurts us more in a way than the one we sin against. It is like sin is a virus or infection that unless treated, will make us sick – it is not that God ‘does the sickness to us’ any more than if we throw ourselves off a cliff God makes the ground attack us. Punishment may simply be not preventing the outcome of our actions. In the ‘off the cliff’ analogy we may think someone is not suffering for what s/he’s done because they haven’t hit the ground yet. The flight down may even be enjoyable! Our vision of a person’s entire life is truncated. We see only parts of lives and even of our life. If we are indeed immortal beings – then ‘inevitable’ acquires whole new resonance. But trust in Christ makes it possible both to see that we are sitting in sin (because we’re loved and accompanied anyway) and get out of it (because Christ knows away out of hell, a way past the cross and he gave us proof of life beyond the suffering of ‘getting better’ – new life, resurrected life, abundant life. In short, he gives understanding, forgiveness and hope.
Whatever – gone on here – sorry! Just loved this explanation. Thank you again Bob for such a well thought through rebuttal to a doctrine that I believe misrepresents both God and Christ! How could God be other than Christ when Christ said, ‘when you see me you see the father’ and at the same time, also said, ‘when you do it for the least of these, you do it for me’. Yahweh, or the I AM, that Christ also claims to be – is with ‘the least of these’ – not just Jesus, the individual. That is one of the most damning (sorry) elements for me in the PS – it seems to separate God and Christ.
xoSasha
Sasha