Part 2: A Discussion with Joshua Sherman re: The Fall, Atonement, Curses, Sin, Death, Evangelism, and Fundamentalists.
Part One can be found here:
I forgot to mention that Joshua has a podcast here:
Part Two of the Discussion:
Rob: The amount of damage being done by that view of God/Christianity [we discussed at the end of Part 1] is HUGE.
Joshua: For "progressive Christians", too. Yes. I think it's driving all the deconstruction we're seeing. I think that much of America needs to be re-evangelized.
Rob: Two sides of the same coin, so to speak. Although I think the progressives are nearer to understanding the love of God than some fundamentalists are.
They've just gone too far in the other ditch. But their core idea that God wants to accept people is closer to accurate than the fundamentalist view.
Fundamentalists basically push God as outright hating sinners because they commit bad acts. Which, IMO, is a real problem...
Because Christians also commit bad acts. That results in LOTS of accusations of hypocrisy in the church. And rightly so.
Joshua: Yeah, you’re right there
Rob: Ah yea... one more related issue.
A major problem with the fundamentalist mindset is their inability to understand that words acquire unintended meanings. And they can't see past the meaning the word has acquired in their context.
The fundamentalist says, "Repent" and that means "feel bad because you’ve sinned"... when what the Greek word actually means is "change your mind".
Likewise, they hear the word "lust" and they immediately think "sinful sexual desire".
But the Greek word translated to “lust” just means “strong desire”. It’s not directly connected to sex and can mean a strong desire for anything. Jesus "lusted" (same word is used) to eat the Passover meal with the disciples in Luke 22:15. The prodigal son “lusted” to fill his belly with the pods the swine were eating in Luke 15:16.
And that misunderstanding (and likely misinterpretation of the passage addressed in this link) has resulted in substantial damage - especially to young males. An excellent analysis by Dr. Jason Staples:
“Whoever Looks at a Woman With Lust”: Misinterpreted Bible Passages #1
One other related thought...
Jesus described sinners as in need of a physician. That's very different from the fundamentalist evangelical approach.
Joshua: That reminds me of this [Rob: I excerpted some of it below]:
“In Orthodox thought God did not threaten Adam and Eve with punishment nor was He angered or offended by their sin; He was moved to compassion.[3] The expulsion from the Garden and from the Tree of Life was an act of love and not vengeance so that humanity would not "become immortal in sin" (Romanides, 2002, p. 32). Thus began the preparation for the Incarnation of the Son of God and the solution that alone could rectify the situation: the destruction of the enemies of humanity and God, death (I Corinthians 15:26, 56), sin, corruption and the devil (Romanides, 2002)…
God and human nature, separated by the Fall, are reunited in the Person of the Incarnate Christ and redeemed through His victory on the Cross and in the Resurrection by which death is destroyed (I Corinthians 15:54-55). In this way the Second Adam fulfills the original vocation and reverses the tragedy of the fallen First Adam opening the way of salvation for all.
The Fall could not destroy the image of God; the great gift given to humanity remained intact, but damaged (Romanides, 2002). Origen speaks of the image buried as in a well choked with debris (Clement, 1993). While the work of salvation was accomplished by God through Jesus Christ the removal of the debris that hides the image in us calls for free and voluntary cooperation…
The Roman idea of justice found prominence in Augustinian and later Western theology. The idea that Adam and Eve offended God's infinite justice and honor made death God's method of retribution (Romanides, 2002). But this idea of justice deviates from Biblical thought. Kalomiris (1980) explains the meaning of justice in the original Greek of the New Testament:
‘The Greek word diakosuni ‘justice', is a translation of the Hebrew word tsedaka. The word means ‘the divine energy which accomplishes man's salvation.' It is parallel and almost synonymous with the word hesed which means ‘mercy', ‘compassion', ‘love', and to the word emeth which means ‘fidelity', ‘truth'. This is entirely different from the juridical understanding of ‘justice'. (p. 31)’
The juridical view of justice generates two problems for Augustine. One: how can one say that the attitude of the immutable God's toward His creation changes from love to wrath? Two: how can God, who is good, be the author of such an evil as death (Romanides, 1992)?…
Because of the theological foundation laid by Augustine and taken up by his heirs, the conclusion seems unavoidable that a significant change occurs in the West making the wrath of God and not death the problem facing humanity (Romanides, 1992, p. 155-156).
How then could God's anger be assuaged? The position of the ancient Church had no answer because its proponents did not see wrath as the problem. The Satisfaction Theory proposed by Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033-1109) in his work Why the God-Man? provides the most predominant answer in the West[5]. The sin of Adam offended and angered God making the punishment of death upon all guilty humanity justified. The antidote to this situation is the crucifixion of the Incarnate Son of God because only the suffering and death of an equally eternal being could ever satisfy the infinite offense of the infinitely dishonored God and assuage His wrath (Williams, 2002; Yannaras, 1984,
p. 152). God sacrifices His Son to restore His honor and pronounces the sacrifice sufficient. The idea of imputed righteousness rises from this. The Orthodox understanding that "the resurrection...through Christ, opens for humanity the way of love that is stronger than death" (Clement, 1993, p. 87) is replaced by a juridical theory of courtrooms and verdicts.
The image of an angry, vengeful God haunts the West where a basic insecurity and guilt seem to exist. Many appear to hold that sickness, suffering and death are God's will. Why? I suspect one reason is that down deep the belief persists that God is still angry and must be appeased…
In simple terms, we can say that the Eastern Church tends towards a therapeutic model which sees sin as illness, while the Western Church tends towards a juridical model seeing sin as moral failure. For the former the Church is the hospital of souls, the arena of salvation where, through the grace of God, the faithful ascend from "glory to glory" (2 Corinthians 3:18) into union with God in a joining together of grace and human volition. The choice offered to Adam and Eve remains our choice: to ascend to life or descend into corruption. For the latter, whether the Church is viewed as essential, important or arbitrary, the model of sin as moral failing rests on divine election and adherence to moral, ethical codes as both the cure for sin and guarantor of fidelity…
Sin as missing the mark or, put another way, as the failure to realize the full potential of the gift of human life, calls for a gradual approach to pastoral care. The goal is nothing less than an existential transformation from within through growth in communion with God. Daily sins are more than moral infractions; they are revelations of the brokenness of human life and evidence of personal struggle. "Repentance means rejecting death and uniting ourselves to life" (Yannaras, 1984, 147-148).
In Orthodoxy we tend to dwell on the process and the goal more than the sin. A wise Serbian Orthodox priest once commented that God is more concerned about the direction of our lives than He is about the specifics. Indeed, the Scriptures point to the wondrous truth that, "If thou, O God, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand, but with Thee there is forgiveness" (Psalm 130:3-4). The way is open for all who desire to take it…
A Romanian priest found himself overhearing the confession of a hardened criminal to an old priest-monk in a crowded Communist prison cell. As he listened he noticed the priest-monk begin to cry. He did not say a word through his tears until the man had finished at which time he replied, "My son, try to do better next time." Yannaras writes that the message of the Church for humanity wounded and degraded by the ‘terrorist God of juridical ethics' is precisely this: "what God really asks of man is neither individual feats nor works of merit, but a cry of trust and love from the depths" (Yannaras, 1984, p. 47). The cry comes from the depth of our need to the unfathomable depth of God's love; the Prodigal Son crying out, "I want to go home" to the Father who, seeing his advance from a distance, runs to meet him. (Luke 15:11-32)."
Ancestral Versus Original Sin: An Overview with Implications for Psychotherapy
Rob: Yep. Just posted an article about Augustine's bad translation [leading to the erroneous “original sin” doctrine] in the Divine Council FB group. Pete Enns has covered that a couple different times.
Joshua: Yes he has, on the Romans 5:12 Augustine debacle
Rob: The typical evangelical gospel isn't actually very "good" news. I mean it provides for a savior, but it's view of humanity in general is awful. The path we're investigating is way better news.
Joshua: YES.
Rob: A fundamentalist would ask, though:
"If we don't scare people with God's hatred of sin and with eternal conscious torment, then how will we convince them to repent?"
And I'd respond:
"Is scaring people because they're sinners in the hands of an angry God likely to lead to a selfless change of mind about who they're serving... or to a selfish way to "go to heaven"?
I mean if your change of mind is based on your own desire to avoid eternal conscious torment, isn't that self-focused rather than God-focused?
Joshua: Yeah, seriously. I honestly don't understand the people that are all about God's "secret" vs "revealed" wills. I do think something like this is true - but not in the sense that God's secret will contradicts His revealed will, the way some Calvinists see it.
That way lies madness and blasphemy. I have been considering the question of directionality for a while now, too. It seems that most Protestant writers - NT Wright being an example - tend to see solving the sin problem as the linchpin that solves everything else.
Whereas with Orthodox writers, the directionality does seem to almost run the opposite direction. I'm less clear on the Roman Catholic perspective.
One of the other questions is...
Are we talking about dealing with sins as a singular thing?
Or is there a difference between dealing with:
1. Sin (almost an embodiment of it).
2. Individual sins.
3. The taint of sins on creation.
4. The taint of sins on individual people.
I think just about everyone would agree when discussing the expiatory/cleansing aspect of Christ's blood - though some fail to see the need for - and provision for - the cleansing of creation more broadly.
It's the dealing with Sin vs sins that gets more contentious and more complex.
Rob: Heiser has pointed out that the focus should be on Christ's resurrection not His death - because the resurrection is what fixed OUR death problem. Which is caused by sin, of course.
But viewing it the way Heiser does explains how Abram, Naaman, and others were "saved" with no mention of them confessing/forsaking sins.
Joshua: Yes. I also think there is an aspect of dealing with sins that is connected. Christ as the "goat for Azazel", delivering all sins at the doorstep of Hades. That one is a bit fuzzier, but it does seem to me that it fits the pattern.
Then it's less that Jesus died to pay for our freedom with His death. And more that He died to conquer death.
With the delivering of the bundle of sins, like Frodo with the ring of power in Mt. Doom - demonstrating the worthlessness of them, and breaking their power. But also not a payment in the proper sense of providing something that actually has value, in exchange for something else.
This is where Hebrews 2:14-15 is really key.
“Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.”
And Revelation 1:18:
“I [Jesus] died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.”
If a big driver of sins is our fear of death, then having Christ conquer death removes that barrier. It ALSO is removes a barrier to escape from slavery to the powers of darkness.
People would not abandon the worship of the gods they had worshiped, out of fear that they would be subject to retribution and even death. So breaking that fear is HUGE.
So, too...
Why would someone continue to worship a dead image of an impostor god, when they have seen the revelation of the glory of the True Image Of God, in Jesus on the cross?
The demythologized version of all this is also really problematic.
If Jesus conquered death, why do people still die? If we see death the way our society does, that doesn't make sense.
But if we understand that Jesus conquered Hades, and we can't be contained there anymore, and when our bodies "fall asleep", we go into the presence of God to await the ultimate conquering of death, in the general resurrection, that makes more sense of it.
Rob: The common fundamentalist approach is to focus solely on sin as bad/immoral deeds.
But it's far more than that.
See: unintentional sins in Leviticus being the focus of the sacrificial system.
I mean the average fundamentalist does not even consider unintentional acts to be sin at all.
Because we moderns have come to view sin as "breaking criminal laws" (God's "criminal" laws).
And for good reason - modern conceptions of criminal law typically require a "mens rea" or bad intent in order to be convicted of the crime in question. And that's a good thing in re: actual crimes.
(There's a scary move the last few decades to remove the mens rea requirement from a lot of criminal laws... not good).
But what if "sin" is about a lot more than criminal/bad/immoral acts?
If it includes merely failing to accurately represent (image) YHWH, then a person could (theoretically) quite literally live their entire life without committing a sin of the "criminal" type, and yet go to hell (or be annihilated, if that’s your thing) because they have failed to represent God accurately (or more accurately didn't switch their loyalty to Him).
The question is how to get the average fundamentalist to change the way they think about the definition of "sin". And "repent". And "atonement". And a bunch of other keywords.
Joshua: Yes. All of that.
Rob: There's a bizarre disconnect for fundamentalists. Maybe I said this before...
Hebrews 11 is chock full of followers of YHWH who committed sins AFTER becoming followers of YHWH... sins which are often far "worse" than the average "sinner" today has or will ever commit.
In some instances, there's no evidence that the person in Hebrews 11 explicitly "repented" of those acts.
But they remained loyal to YHWH.
Thus, focusing on preaching "against sin" seems misplaced.
I just found Scot McKinghts book, "The King Jesus Gospel" at the used bookstore. 50 pages in, he seems to be headed down the same direction as our discussion.
His focus is on how the evangelical approach to evangelism in not actually presenting "the gospel" but rather the "plan of salvation".
And he's asserting that merely focusing on the plan of salvation (making a decision for Christ, largely... with a focus on sin) rather than the larger gospel results in a lot of "converts" who don't actually become disciples.
Joshua: YES.
I'm writing something right now that is designed as a quick contrast of common models of "the gospel" with a more full-fledged view of it. Something that people can digest quickly. Without a bunch of theological training. I'll share as I go. It would be great to have your feedback.
I'm calling it "The Gospel of the Image of God".
After the initial chapters that lay out this fuller view, the implications, and that compare with alternatives, showing why they fall short...
Rob: Mmm... sounds interesting. Will definitely want to take a look.
Joshua: I'll be doing more work to show how central the Image of God is to the story of Scripture - in ways that people don't often see.
I want someone that is stuck in those other ways of thinking to see an alternative and the implications without needing to read a whole book on it.
And I want someone that has deconstructed (or is about to), to catch a glimpse of the alternative in short order, too.
Then, for those that want to push back, I want to provide a more thorough treatment that establishes it on firm Biblical ground. That way, it can have maximum impact.
Rob: Yep. Once I heard Heiser present imaging as a function of humans, I searched the Bible for support.
Once you start looking, it's ALL OVER THE PLACE. Starting with Jesus explicitly saying that He is the image of God.
Joshua: YES. It's MUCH BETTER than taking the approach that Anselm, Calvin, the Puritans, and subsequently, most fundamentalists take - starting with the question of "how can God deal with sin?"
Asking, rather, "why did God create humanity?" first.
Rob: The pastor of the church I grew up in taught that God literally hates sinners.
That John 3:16 is past tense.
Which makes zero sense when you think about it. God isn't limited by time. And if He loved "the world” at some point, why wouldn't He love the world before/after that point.
And, of course He loved us while we were yet sinners.
It's difficult to make that "past tense" because lots of people who would live to be sinners weren't even conceived yet.
Joshua: Wow. I mean... being under God's wrath is no joke. But people seem to have taken that so literally/anthropomorphically that they can't hold it together with the idea of God loving at the same time. Sigh...
And they seem to be incapable of recognizing the right hierarchy of things that define God's relationship with creation and humanity. As our Creator, and the One who gave us His Image, He is FATHER first.
Yes, He is also judge - but that is in service of His creative/redemptive work, not an attribute of His existence.
If we invert those, bad theology always results.
Rob: God hates the effect sin has on people. He hates that they’re harming themselves and others. He doesn't hate the people. I mean He created them.
Joshua: It's just hard to get some people to move past proof texts that make it seem like He does.
Things like...
Psalm 11:5
“The Lord examines the righteous, but the wicked, those who love violence, he hates with a passion.”
Rob:
“Yep. Esau I have hated...”
Joshua: Oh yeah. I forget about that one, sometimes, because I see it so differently. LOL.
But that is the first one people shoot out when they are in "quick draw proof-text" mode.
Rob: I think you'll find this episode interesting.
"Episode: What was the sacrifice of Jesus for the NT Jewish authors? A barbaric execution? A violent bloodletting of a scapegoat? Christian Eberhart claims that the NT authors did not conceive or talk about the crucifixion as a primarily violent act. Rather, they conceptualized it as a sacrifice, in the same conceptual world of oil, wheat, salt, and livestock. Dru Johnson and Christian Eberhart discuss Eberhart’s work more generally on this question, specifically his book The Sacrifice of Jesus: Understanding Atonement Biblically."
Christian Eberhart – The Sacrifice of Jesus
Joshua: I got to listen to that last week. His book should be arriving before the end of the day. There really is nothing better than someone saying “BBQ” with a distinctly European accent.
I’m trying to leave very few pebbles unturned I’m looking at how Christ redeemed us. I think there are many aspects to it. But it’s hard to circumscribe and map out every detail. I don’t think we can.
I just know that the people that think they have a simple equation like Penal Substitutionary Atonement (by itself) are wrong.