Easter commemorates the central event of Christianity: the death and resurrection of Jesus.
St Paul says that our beliefs about this are a scandal to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks. Today, we could say a scandal to Islam and foolishness to the new atheists.
A few weeks ago, Mr Badger asked for a discussion on the crucifixion – or rather, on the reason or reasons Jesus was incarnated in order to be crucified. (By the way, this conversation will stall on the doorstep if you insist on debating the central premise that Jesus was the Son of God, and was incarnated in order to be crucified. Can we please save that argument for another day, and instead stick to discussing the pros and cons of the various explanations that have been proposed?)
I’ve suggested shaping the discussion around three explanatory memes: ransom, judicial, and narrative – and I’ve since thought of a fourth, sacrificial, and a fifth, evolutionary. There is support for all of these in the Bible, and in the writing of the early Fathers and the Doctors of the Church.
I can think of no particular reason why there needs to be only one explanation – though they may well be ranked according to whether they are necessary to the mechanics of salvation or necessary to the psychology of salvation. In my considered view, no explanation is completely true, and all have something to offer. Different explanations will appeal to different people and at different times.
In the end, the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection can’t be fully explained – to paraphrase KA, I am content to know there are some things I can’t yet understand. But it is interesting to speculate, and perhaps we may learn something from one another.
I propose to write a brief paragraph on each, then open the discussion to the floor. Then, maybe, in coming posts, I can add a bit here or there – from my own ramblings or from stuff I’ve found written by other people. I’m concerned I’ve summarised to the point of incoherence, but I hope you’ll bear with me and help me tease the ideas out in the comment box.
In the ransom and judicial models, I take it that the incarnation was a necessary prelude to his death. in the sacrificial, narrative and evolutionary models, the incarnation is part of the explanation. The resurrection is part of the explanation in all five models.
Ransom
The ransom explanation basically suggests that we have sold ourselves to the sins of our choice, and through them to Satan. Our sins give Satan the right to demand our death (and, according to some accounts, our souls). Christ’s death, being the death of the incarnate God, is sufficient to pay the fee for all human beings throughout time. By this explanation, I take it, we can accept or refuse to be ransomed. But the price has been paid, nonetheless.
The resurrection is a natural consequence of someone completely innocent willingly paying the ransom in full consciousness of what He was doing – Jesus couldn’t stay dead because He had not bartered Himself away to Satan.
CS Lewis had a particular affection for this explanation, using it in his Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe story, and in the sf series that began with Out of the Silent Planet.
I’ve also come across a variant, the down payment explanation – the suggestion that Jesus paid our first instalment, making it possible for us to stay out of spiritual debt long enough to build up some credit ready for the final reckoning.
Judicial
The judicial explanation is one of St Paul’s favourites. We have done things we ought not to have done, and left undone things that we ought to have done. These failures of will – these acts of selfishness and pride – make us unable to approach God. We will be judged, and we will be found guilty because we are guilty. Christ’s death – the acceptable penalty for our crimes – won for us a pardon, if we wish to accept it.
Thus, when Satan – the prosecuting lawyer – outlines all the reasons we have earned our banishment from Heaven, saying ‘guilty’, Jesus – our Judge – will respond ‘pardoned’.
The resurrection is a sign that we are forgiven, a promise of things to come – our sins stay dead, but after the judgement, we rise again.
Sacrificial
The sacrificial explanation has deep roots. The idea that God or the gods can claim our first fruits is an old one in most cultures. The idea that the King dies for the people in order to bring new life haunts our Indo-European mythic history.
In some ways, then, the sacrificial model is a non-Christian explanation for the power of the Easter story. Nevertheless, it is an explanation that was used from the very earliest days. Jesus was recognised as the High Priest who offered the Sacrifice and also as the Sacrificial Lamb. By this explanation, Jesus was the sin offering required in the law to remit all penalties and cleanse the giver. Our acceptance of this offering makes the offering apply to us.
The incarnation – giving up Heaven to become human – was part of the sacrifice. The resurrection is a sign that the sacrifice is acceptable, and that we too shall be raised.
Narrative
The narrative explanation holds that God tells us stories through the lives of those who serve Him, and Jesus is the greatest story He has ever told. This one rings very true to me; we chattering hominids learn best through stories and example, and it is in our shared stories that we find and reinforce community.
From His incarnation, through His life, death and resurrection, to His ascension and Pentecost, the Christ story tells us ‘God loves you’, ‘God shares your pain’, ‘God thinks you matter enough to die for’, ‘Death is not the end and it will be worth it’. Other messages are there too: everyone is worthy of respect, everyone deserves another chance, love one another, forgive those who hurt you, don’t give up.
The incarnation and the resurrection, in this model, may have been part of the plan even without the Fall.
Evolutionary
The evolutionary explanation suggests that we were always intended to be more than we are now, but that the next step in becoming truly human required the freely-willed co-operation of an adult human being that had not experienced the confusion of sin. This model sees suffering as being the crucible that forges the new species, the sons and daughters of humankind. Jesus came to finish the task that Adam failed – to take the next step on our behalf. Since then, the spiritual equivalents of genes have been passed on to the faithful through the sacraments, having greater or lesser impact according to the degree of openness to grace of the recipient.
In this model, the incarnation was required by the Fall, and the resurrection is part of our new nature.
.
“Evolutionary
The evolutionary explanation suggests that we were always intended to be more than we are now….”
Declares Joyful.
In fact, it suggests no such thing.
Evolution merely indicates that we shall continue to change.
We may well actually get ‘worse’ whatever that means, although we all have a reasonable idea.
Nobody, or nothing, intended us to be anything, as far as Toad can see.
“The other categories are silly, he thinks.
Although this part of ‘Narrative’ rings very true to him;
“… We chattering hominids learn best through stories and example, and it is in our shared stories that we find and reinforce community.”
Says Joyful, and Toad agrees wholeheartedly. And things get reinforced and stupider and stupider in the telling.
It is something Manus, and his affection for Fatima, might consider?
Oh, and poor old C.S.Lewis gets dragged out of his coffin and dusted off yet again – the only Christian (not even Catholic!) with a certified ‘brain’ for the last 80 years – what a liability!
(Apart, of course, from the poor old creaking Chesterbelloc.)
(And didn’t Anscombe kick Lewis’s butt!)
Toad says,
“– the only Christian (not even Catholic!) with a certified ‘brain’ for the last 80 years – what a liability!
(Apart, of course, from the poor old creaking Chesterbelloc.)
(And didn’t Anscombe kick Lewis’s butt!)”
To which I ask, if Lewis was a ‘brain’ and the devout Catholic Anscombe kicked his butt, how then can Lewis be the only Christian ‘brain’ of the last 80 years??????????????????????? Seems like a daft conclusion.
In terms of Christian thought of all stripes in the last 80 years, there have been much deeper thinkers than C.S Lewis
What about Karl Rahner?
What about Hans Balthasar?
What about Joseph Ratzinger?
What about Karl Barth?
What about N.T Wright?
What about Paul Tillich?
What about Thomas Merton?
What about Hans Kung?
What about Rudolph Bultmann?
What about Dorothy Day?
Nice post JP. All these memes shed some light but I think they all miss the point.
Jesus was crucified because he made a decision to take on the religious and political authorities of the time, knowing full well what the consequences were going to be.
He had finally been found to be such a threat to the religious authorities that they tried to kill him. He then retreats from Judea with his disciples to Galilee.
Lazarus dies so he returns to Bethany (only 3km outside Jerusalem) to raise Lazarus. Before leaving Galilee he takes 2 days to prepare for what he knows will be the consequences – certain death.
Having raised Lazarus he marches on Jerusalem on Palm Sunday as messianic King. The religious authorities correctly perceive this to be the threat to their power and authority that it actually is.
He then enters the temple and drives out the traders and then takes over the temple precincts and starts teaching the crowds – in opposition to the religious authorities.
Inevitably they arrest him and hand him over to the political authorities who correctly see Jesus as a political threat and execute him.
[If a modern day prophet marched on the Vatican, drove the businessmen out of it and took over St Peters and started teaching the crowds, I imagine the response would be somewhat similar although thankfully we’ve got over the death penalty nowadays].
Jesus responds non-violently, forbids Peter to defend him with the sword, heals Malchus, forgives those who kill him, promises paradise to the repentant thief, and converts even some of the bystanders and soldiers.
Finally he rises from the dead on the third day, defeating death in history’s greatest ever act of civil disobedience to state authorities who wanted him dead. He breaks the law and comes back to life.
http://ncronline.org/blogs/road-peace/jesus-illegal-holy-week-activity
One can see this as non-violent civil disobedience for religious reform and social change, as ransom, judicial, sacrifice, narrative or evolution, and these are all part of it.
But the central theme is none of these.
The central theme is Love.
It is non-violent, self-sacrificial Love which saves and heals.
Jesus could have just retired to Nazareth, settled down and lived a quite and holy life. As the movie The Last Temptation of Christ put it. So could each of us. But Love inspired him to change the things that needed to be changed and to put his own life on the line to help do it.
The challenge is for the rest of us to do likewise.
Venceremous.
God Bless
Chris, you make some good points, but miss the chief drift of the post. The reasons why the authorities wished to kill Jesus are not relevant. And that Jesus died for Love is undoubtedly true. But the question is why Jesus’s incarnation, death, and resurrection were necessary for our salvation.
…foolishness to the new atheists.
Yes well, you would say things like “The evolutionary explanation suggests that we were always intended to be more than we are now.” This would have not only the new atheists tearing out their hair but ‘old’ atheists such as Darwin spinning in their graves so how can you be surprised when they consider you foolish?
The evolutionary explanation makes it very clear that we are far from perfect and that is a very natural result of unguided evolution. There is absolutely NOTHING in evolution that indicates a designer or guiding force, in fact quite the opposite, and so logically, it is also very clear that there is no indication that we are intended to be more than we are now.
As for saying “There is support for all of these in the Bible, and in the writing of the early Fathers and the Doctors of the Church”; I would challenge the quote ‘authorities’ grasp of basic biological and evolutional principles. Certainly their understanding of cosmology and the creation of the universe has fallen very much out of favor unless you happen to be a fundamentalist Christian in America.
The evolutionary explanation of the incarnation and crucifixion, Toad and Seeker.
I’m tempted to say ‘please try to keep up’, but guess I should take responsibility for not being clearer.
I am using the term in precisely the same way as I use the term ransom, judicial, sacrificial, and narrative, to refer purely to an explanation of the central event of Christianity, and not with any other meaning or context.
I did ask you right at the beginning of the post to try to discuss this as if you accepted the Christian POV.
Sigh.
The word evolution wasn’t coined by Darwin. Since biological evolution is not under discussion there is no need to tear your hair out. You are absolutely right about the fallacy of assigning “purpose” to biological evolution, so I sympathise, but it just isn’t what this discussion is about.
JP,
I’d dispute that Jesus’ incarnation, death, and resurrection were necessary for our salvation.
To claim that they are seems to be yet another attempt to put God in a box and constrain his omnipotence and his omnipresence by theological constructs.
I think God is perfectly capable of bringing about salvation by means other than the incarnation, death and resurrection.
All salvation needs is divine love and mercy. It does not need the incarnation, death, and resurrection.
Yes, that was the way God did it and that’s the way man responded (by crucifying). So, yes, that’s the way in panned out.
But isn’t God big enough to have done it another way if he so chose ?
I suppose one could say that Jesus’ dying is a consequence of FULLY entering into the human condition, as most of us get to die. I suppose you could say that the crucifixion is very probably the natural reaction of religious and state power to the incarnation (and we’d probably do it again today – in fact we ARE doing it again today). And I suppose that the resurrection naturally follows because Love is more powerful than death.
But necessary ?
I think not.
God Bless
The evolution analogy is interesting. It’s one the Holy Father uses in his recent book Jesus of Nazareth vol 2:
God Bless
” I believe God is perfectly capable of bringing about salvation by means other than the incarnation, death and resurrection.”
Says Chris.
But he didn’t use other means, did he? So, if we can resist the temptation to play clever games with linguistics, could we just discuss the topic? What does this central event mean? What were the incarnation, death, and resurrection for?
Your answer, if you’re still of the same mind, is ‘Love’. Which is, of course, the reason – but not, I think, the purpose.
JP,
Now you’re starting to sound like Toady 🙂
You asserted that the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection were NECESSARY to salvation. I disputed that. You objected but didn’t address whether or not they actually are necessary. This isn’t a matter of liguistics at all. It’s a question of theology – soteriology. The Jews of Jesus’ day were perfectly comfortable with the idea that God could save all of Israel without any incarnation, crucifixion or resurrection of God and they had been for millenia.
And I’d be a little hesitant to assert that God doesn’t also use other means to bring about salvation. We don’t know for sure that he does, but we don’t for sure that he doesn’t.
If an alien race never experienced the fall, would the crucifixion be necessary for THEIR salvation ? Would the incarnation of God as HUMAN be salvific for an ALIEN race or would God need to become incarnate also in that alien race ?
There are limits to what we really know for sure here. Catholic dogma doesn’t extend this far, and neither does it pretend to have a full and complete understanding of the Easter events. Much of this remains shrouded in mystery.
I’d still stick with Love as the purpose. They were for Love. To complete and fulfill Love. Love’s purpose is not complete until the beloved is complete, fulfilled, brought to perfection. Love itself is in some sense missing something sans universal salvation. The Holy Father’s quote touched on this.
I do like your evolutionary meme but your picture needs some more evolutionary beings after the cross.
God Bless
“I do like your evolutionary meme but your picture needs some more evolutionary beings after the cross.” says Chris.
Yes, it does, doesn’t it? Not my picture – I can’t draw for toffee.
Chris, you might like this: http://catholicismpure.wordpress.com/2011/04/18/love-and-the-cross-a-reflection-for-holy-week/#comment-6474
Thank you, Chris, for helping me to clarify my language.
I realise, of course, that what I’m trying to discuss here is the mechanics of salvation through the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. The mechanics.
Saying Love makes it all work is perfectly true, I believe.
But if I wanted to discuss how a combustion engine worked, saying ‘steam’ would be only the beginnings of an answer.
JP,
I think we only have the beginnings of an answer. Which is not to say that a great deal more could be said than has been said on this little thread.
But the dogma as I understand it is that man will never fully comprehend the ways of God, not even in heaven.
As I understand the dogma, the Catholic Church doesn’t have a fully worked out understanding of exactly how the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection work. There are a bunch of different theological approaches, some more helpful than others, but not a whole lot of dogmatic statements about the exact mechanics and exactly how and why it was salvific.
God Bless
Yes, Chris. As I said in the post above:
“In the end, the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection can’t be fully explained – to paraphrase KA, I am content to know there are some things I can’t yet understand. But it is interesting to speculate, and perhaps we may learn something from one another.”
Great post JP.
One might suggest that “a” reason for the crucifixion is the incarnation. That is, the incarnation collapses the distance between God and man. But a “sojourn” on Earth doesn’t do that. Only fully participating in the ultimate human experience (death) can complete the incarnation.
Yes, and I think that is in part what Chris is driving at. God is no longer safely ‘up there’ – and we humans find that really threatening!
Some very holy men didn’t die but were assumed into heaven (Enoch, Elijah). That forms the basis of some Jewish and Muslim objections to the crucifixion – how come God allowed such a holy man as Jesus to suffer the indignity of death ? Some Catholics reason along similar lines that Mary never died but was assumed before death.
I think that the incarnation was complete just by being the incarnation. Because God is infinitely holy any sacrifice, no mater how small, he makes, is infinitely redemptive. Merely the self limiting of the incarnation would have been suffering enough and redemptive enough for the salvation of all. Or even his first cry of hunger after birth.
The fact that Jesus did die, and die horribly when he could have chose not to, has been and remains a great inspiration and source of spiritual strength to Christians who suffer, especially those martyed for justice.
To have a God who actually suffers and enters into our own suffering is a God of much greater power than any other “gods”.
God Bless
“The fact that Jesus did die, and die horribly when he could have chose not to”
In your account, why didn’t he choose not to?
Mr badger,
I don’t know for sure; neither does the Church from what I can tell.
A few ideas, just for starters…
1. Self limiting to not use his divine powers ie be fully human.
2. Not using his divine powers just to save himself.
3. Nonviolence – the having 12 Legions of Angels at his disposal (and legion is clear military language) but not deploying them. The command to St Peter as first Pope to put back his sword (wouldn’t Church history be rather different if all the Popes had actually followed that command?).
4. Redemptive suffering.
5. Christ’s human discernment of his father’s will.
6. Following thru on the OT passages and the psalms.
7. Faith in his resurrection.
8. The ability to convert souls in the process of his crucifixion (eg Simon of Cyrene, the centurion, the good thief).
God Bless
What do you mean by redemptive suffering, Chris?
“I’d dispute that Jesus’ incarnation, death, and resurrection were necessary for our salvation.
To claim that they are seems to be yet another attempt to put God in a box and constrain his omnipotence and his omnipresence by theological constructs.”
I don’t agree, in fact I think the shoe may be on the other foot. The necessity of those things is presented to us by the Gospel and the Church. Your response —
“well I don’t think all this stuff could be necessary, after all I can think of alternatives”
is based on your preconceptions about God and how God interacts with the world, that is the passion CAN’T be necessary because it wouldn’t suit the box you’ve put God in.
*I should have said “your response— (which is, in effect)” since what follows is a summary, not a quote from Chris. My bad.
To redeem a slave is to pay the price necessary to set him free. Sometimes that’s hard cash to buy him, most often it’s the hard struggle for justice to secure his liberation.
In Egypt our people were slaves exploited under hard labour to Pharaoh.
Our redemption was the act of God thru Moses to set them free and lead them to liberation.
Doing that always costs us something whether it’s braving the riot squad and rugby thugs at Hamilton in 1981, or being arrested on Waitangi Hikois, or marching and sailing boats for a nuclear free Aoteroa, or time and strike action and lost pay to build strong trade unions, to getting spat upon for justice, putting up with people who want to deport you, who call you a “traitor”, or getting abused as a “heretic” for doing what needs to be done.
It cost Moses something. It cost Jesus something. It always costs the beloved disciple something.
There comes a time in most peoples lives when you just have to stand your ground, to hold the line, and accept the cost whatever it may be, even your life.
That’s to be fully human.
And if one shrinks from doing it, as all the male apostles did, then one is really just doing this:
One by one they answered “surely, it is not I, Lord?” because it was each of them, one by one, who stepped down, who ran away, who couldn’t hold the line, who wouldn’t stand their ground, whatever the cost. Instead they argued about who would get the power when Jesus was killed, they almost drowned the Church in the bloodbath of armed insurrection by drawing swords at Gethsemane, Peter denied 3 times he even knew Jesus.
But some did stand their ground and stood with Jesus on the cross and they were the ones to see the fruit of the resurrection and to be commissioned as apostles to go and tell the 11, who didn’t believe them.
God Bless
I accused Chris early of linguistic games, and I stand by that. He objects to the term ‘necessary’ on the basis that God could have saved us some other way. It isn’t obvious to me that this is true; nor is it obvious that it is untrue.
What is obvious is that the incarnation, death and resurrection were for our salvation.
This is in the Nicene Creed, “who for us men and for our salvation, came down, took flesh, was made man; and suffered. ”
And in the words of Jesus himself: “even as the Son of man is not come to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a redemption for many” (Matthew 20:28)
Or of St. Paul, “Because in him, it hath well pleased the Father that all fulness should dwell; and through him to reconcile all things unto himself, making peace through the blood of his cross, both as to the things that are on earth, and the things that are in heaven.” (Colossians 1:19-20).
My Badger,
The necessity of those things is presented to us by the Gospel and the Church.
I don’t think that the gospel or the Church actually say that those things were NECESSARY.
Can you quote any dogma to that effect ?
What they say is that this is what actually happened.
To say that history NECESSARILY had to turn out the way it did doesn’t seem to rest on a very solid foundation.
It doesn’t seem to allow much in the way of possible alternatives, of the omnipotence of God to do it other ways, or the free will of man to make different choices (eg not to kill Jesus).
Theology likes to say that “it was fitting that …” but we overstate the reality to insist that the it always HAD to be the way it was.
God Bless
JP,
Good points.
Neither scripture, the creeds, nor dogma say that this was NECESSARY for our salvation in the sense that this was the only possible way it could have worked out.
If God allowed the Sanhedrin and Pilate free will, which he did, then it obviously wasn’t necessary that they crucified Christ because the could have chosen not to kill him.
Pilate did want to kill him anyway and soon after the Sanhedrin seems to have given up crucifying anyone with the Talmud instituting very strict legal requirements which in practice all but ruled out the death penalty in practice.
I’ll add getting rid of the death penalty as point 10 on my list, with 9 being standing one’s ground as being fully human.
Often the way to defuse violence, as Ghandi taught, is to let your opponent do his violence all over you so he realizes the horror of what he’s getting into and steps back from it.
God Bless
Oops…
That should be “Pilate DIDN’T want to kill him”.
God Bless
“Sanhedrin seems to have given up crucifying anyone”
They had no power to carry out crucifixions anyway. It was reserved to the Roman authorities in the time of Jesus. They didn’t “give up” crucifying people.
“I don’t think that the gospel or the Church actually say that those things were NECESSARY.
Can you quote any dogma to that effect ?
What they say is that this is what actually happened.”
With respect to the Gospels, when I imagine adding a footnote to the Gospel of Mark stating “oh by the way the crucifixion was just a contingent event, he could well have moved to Cyprus and become a cobbler”, I tend to find it jars with the entire message of Mark. — Jesus moving toward his destiny on the cross. This is why he includes his triad of predictions given by Jesus before he arrives in Jerusalem. Marks view is pretty clear.
With respect to the Church, the Church always means what you want it seems, so there’s no point.
Mr Badger,
Granted that the Sanhedrin didn’t have POWER under the Roman occupation but it does seem that they subsequently tightened their rules to give up executions. They could well have chosen not to try to get Jesus executed.
In fact, given the disaster of 70AD, keeping Jesus alive as an anti-war voice would have been in their own best interests.
If Pilate had listened to his wife, then he could well have decided not to crucify. I would have thought that having a powerful prophet alive with a mass following preaching love, tolerance and non-violence might have its advantages from the Roman point of view.
I think Mark was written about what actually did happen, so of course such a footnote would jar with Mark’s account. That doesn’t bear much on NECESSITY.
If the Church thinks it really was NECESSARY that it happen the way it did, then she’ll likely have a dogma asserting that. Instead of lazily accusing me ofsuch and such, why not do the hard work and search the dogmas ? That’s what they’re there for, you know !
God Bless
Chris,
Granted, when I said:
“With respect to the Church, the Church always means what you want it seems, so there’s no point”
it was a bit snippy and unconstructive. Sorry for that.
When I said earlier:
“The necessity of those things is presented to us by the Gospel and the Church”
I meant something that I still assert. I cannot quote a dogma stating that the Church teaches the necessity of the Passion of Jesus. Very well, but the understanding of the Church has always been that of St Paul and the four evangelists — the death and resurrection of Jesus was an intrinsic part of salvation history, not a contingent event such as the tragic murder of Thomas Becket.
So was the passion necessary in the strongest sense? I don’t know, but certainly the witness of Christian tradition has been that it was.
You said:
“I think Mark was written about what actually did happen, so of course such a footnote would jar with Mark’s account. That doesn’t bear much on NECESSITY.”
Mark wasn’t simply writing a list of events. He was telling a story with a climax that was an integral part of his story. It bears on his theology, and therefore on his clear belief in necessity.
The crucifixion was a serious sin (at least material sin).
To argue for it’s necessity is to argue for the necessity of serious sin.
I don’t see the Church ever buying into that argument.
In fact, that WOULD be contrary to defined dogma.
We believe that it is NEVER valid to do evil that good might come from it. And scripture DOES teach that (Romans).
To deliberately kill an innocent man is intrinsically evil (JPII infallibly defined this in EV). God does not do, or will, or arrange for intrinsically evil acts to happen, even if they might save the entire universe.
God Bless
.
Toad has only now seen Mr. Badger’s earlier post.
What about Karl Rahner?
What about Hans Balthasar?
What about Joseph Ratzinger?
What about Karl Barth?
What about N.T Wright?
What about Paul Tillich?
What about Thomas Merton?
What about Hans Kung?
What about Rudolph Bultmann?
What about Dorothy Day?
The above list seems to make Toad’s point. Mostly theologians and little known outside that field. No mention of Greene and Waugh?
But this argument will get nowhere.
So Toad agrees there have been lots of well known Christian writers and thinkers as in the last few years as good as Sartre, Camus, Russell, Orwell, Wittgenstein, Koestler, Bellow, Ayer, Updike, Roth, Powell, Amis (K),Rorty, Rawls, Nagel, Scruton, Larkin and Beckett.
Haven’t there?
C’mon Toad.
A) I restricted myself to the generally well known
B) You ignored your C.S. Lewis fallacy, given that Anscombe was Catholic your point self destructed.
Not your best.
“No mention of Greene and Waugh?”
I forgot Waugh, I did think of Grahame Greene but then I thought you might suggest that your very point was made if THAT was one of the best recent Christian writers I could think of. 🙂
Chris, God’s foreknowledge is the result of eternity – it is in no way a contradiction of free will to say that God knew exactly what would happen as a result of the incarnation.
I found this good description of the judicial model:
“Anselm’s answer went as follows. God originally created man in order that he might enjoy eternal blessedness. Man in a certain sense frustrated God’s intention by rebelling against Him and introducing sin into the world. In order for the demands of justice to be satisfied, man must be punished for his sin against God. Yet his offense against the all-good God is so great that no punishment he might suffer could offer Him adequate recompense. Whatever punishment he did suffer, moreover, would have to be so severe that at the very least he would have to forfeit eternal blessedness, but since eternal blessedness was God’s plan for man in the first place, such a punishment would undermine God’s purposes yet again. ”
“The reason that God cannot simply forgive man’s sin in the absence of some form of punishment is that when man rebelled against God he disturbed the moral order of the universe. That moral order must be repaired. God’s honor must be restored, and that restoration cannot occur so long as the rupture of the moral order that occurred as a result of man’s rebellion remains in existence.”
“Since man still owes restitution to God but is incapable of making it, while God could vindicate His own honor through a gratuitous act (but should not), the only way that atonement for original sin can take place is through the mediation of a God-Man. Thus does Anselm provide a rational account for the need of the atoning death of Jesus Christ”–(pp195-196 “How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, Thomas E. Woods, Jr.).
Regarding the dogma that Christ’s death was necessary, the CCC has this to say:
CHRIST’S REDEMPTIVE DEATH IN GOD’S PLAN OF SALVATION
“Jesus handed over according to the definite plan of God”
599 Jesus’ violent death was not the result of chance in an unfortunate coincidence of circumstances, but is part of the mystery of God’s plan, as St. Peter explains to the Jews of Jerusalem in his first sermon on Pentecost: “This Jesus [was] delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.”393 This Biblical language does not mean that those who handed him over were merely passive players in a scenario written in advance by God.394
600 To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of “predestination”, he includes in it each person’s free response to his grace: “In this city, in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.”395 For the sake of accomplishing his plan of salvation, God permitted the acts that flowed from their blindness.396
“He died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures”
601 The Scriptures had foretold this divine plan of salvation through the putting to death of “the righteous one, my Servant” as a mystery of universal redemption, that is, as the ransom that would free men from the slavery of sin.397 Citing a confession of faith that he himself had “received”, St. Paul professes that “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.”398 In particular Jesus’ redemptive death fulfills Isaiah’s prophecy of the suffering Servant.399 Indeed Jesus himself explained the meaning of his life and death in the light of God’s suffering Servant.400 After his Resurrection he gave this interpretation of the Scriptures to the disciples at Emmaus, and then to the apostles.401
So, yes, presumably God could have made another plan. Perhaps He could have zapped this planet with another large meteor and started over. Perhaps He could have died an even more horrible death somewhere/sometime else. Who knows? In the sense that He cannot be constrained, the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection are not necessary.
But Chris seems to be suggesting that God couldn’t have planned the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection because that would have been an infringement of free will.
And that seems to me to be absolutely nonsensical.
I’m not suggesting that JP. I agree God could have forseen the outcome of human free will.
I do suggest that insisting that the crucifixion was NECESSARY does deny free will because it makes salvation dependent on a particular set of human choices to do mortal sin. God can’t be dependent on human choice like that, especially where salvation is at stake.
Having a plan to do things a certain way doesn’t mean that it was NECESSARY that this particular plan had to be followed and not some other possible plan.
Fray Luis de Granada doesn’t seem to think the crucifixion was necessary :-
Death is not salvific. What’s salvific is the outpouring of love, of life. In Hebrew 1st Century religion, blood did not signify death, it signified life itself. That’s why it was forbidden to eat blood (even by the 1st Ecumenical Council at Jerusalem). Blood was holy. Sacred. The stuff Moses sprinkled on the people, the priest sprinkled on the altar and the stuff the people spread on their door lintels and jambs at passover. That’s why we drink his blood – his life.
It was the gratuitous pouring out of God’s very life all over us and for us that is salvific, not his death. The death was part of the means to do that but not the essential cause.
I’m not a great fan on Anselm’s medieval atonement theology.
God Bless
Chris, I’ll take your Fray Luis de Granada and raise you a Benedict XVI: in his latest book he says no one should be blamed for Jesus’ death, since, as he argues, the crucifixion was necessary for God’s plan of universal redemption.
By the way, I dispute that God has foreknowledge.
That implies that He knows things that haven’t happened yet.
From God’s perspective, all of human history (and any other kind of history, for that matter) is current, present, and any other term you can think of to say happening now.
JP, I’ve read the Pope’s book. Can you quote where he said the crucifixion was necessary ? I missed that in my reading.
If all of human history (and any other kind of history, for that matter) is current, present to God then God has foreknowledge because the future is present to God.
God Bless