Stricken by God?

I have to admit that I have different reactions when I open up a new book and start to interact with it. For instance, I’ve been using a book for my Old Testament class at ACC by Ronald Youngblood. When I first opened it and read the chapter titles, the book told me what to expect—and as I plodded through it, it did not surprise me. It’s the same old classic Calvinistic approach to sovereignty and election—and it makes the classic mistake in Old Testament studies of assuming you can understand it in its own context apart from a Christocentric emphasis. Even my students have commented that it has very little to do with my class.

The book I’m reading right now, Stricken by God? Nonviolent Identification and the Victory of Christ, is providing exactly the opposite experience. The book is deconstructing the classical Anselmian view of the atonement (propitiation), also known as the Penal Substitution view. That view states that God, in response to sin, is full of wrath. This wrath is the kind that can only be satisfied through violent retributive justice towards those who have incurred it. Thus, God is violently angry at sinners—but has mercifully offered the solution to that situation in the suffering of his son. In that event, God fully unleashed his wrath upon Jesus—Jesus stood in the way and “took our punishment” on himself. Few verses provide more impetus for this view than the suffering servant passage of Isaiah 53:4.

I’ve had the book on my currently reading list for several weeks, but have only just now had time to really open it. And I was looking forward to it. But having only competed one chapter, not only am I looking forward to it—I believe it may be a life-changing type of read for me (similar to what happened when I began reading the open theists). And the list of authors (including N.T. Wright, Richard Rohr, C.F.D. Moule, and Miroslav Volf) intensifies the anticipation of the great things to come (not to mention the blurbs from René Girard, Stanley Hauerwas, Brian McLaren, and my favorite, Gregory A. Boyd). It is doubtful I could find a book with as many exciting theologians.

Brad Jersak—editing with Michael Hardin, opens up with a chapter explaining the title of the book beautifully. He defines the theological stakes, “In the midst of our wondering, we run into a relatively recent dogmatization of penal substitution as the evangelical atonement creed. No longer content to call it a theory, many preach it as the required content of belief in order to be ‘saved.(18-19)’” And songs like “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” and “In Christ Alone” ("and on the cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied") emphasize how deeply this doctrine has been ingrained in our theology. But should it be?

Jersak establishes these three themes in the book as a challenge to penal substitution: 1) God’s nonviolence in Christ at the cross—this is especially relevant when one considers how much nonviolence is a part of Jesus’ teaching, 2) Christ’s identification with humanity in incarnation and suffering, 3) the victory of Christ over Satan, sin, and death (19).

To me, the most exciting of those themes is identification, as this has been a theme of my own theology and teaching for some time. Later in the chapter, Jersak discusses the notion of God “turning his face away” from Jesus on the cross as he cried “eloi, eloi, lama sabacthani.” For some time, I’ve been teaching that Jesus is not responding to God’s absence from him but is identifying with the human condition as it is expressed in Psalm 22. Jesus is fully experiencing death, suffering, and the violence of our sinful world. Jersak defines that thought on page 37-38.

Most exciting, however, is his treatment of the suffering servant passage. On page 29 he begins to deconstruct the traditional juridical understanding of sin and punishment. He charges that sin is NOT something that God cannot see or look at—this would remove God’s knowledge of MOST of history! Hence, the cross is not a case of God’s punishment, but of his healing of our sin (31). God is not acting his violence out on his son instead of us—he is suffering in an experience of our situation in order to defeat it and heal it. He is identifying with us this way:

• “At the Cross, Christ identifies and unites with all humanity in his incarnation and identifies with every victim (crying, ‘My God, my God’ with all who have experienced abandonment) and perpetrator (‘he numbered himself with the transgressors’).
  
• “We begin appropriately by identifying with those who crucified him. We put him there. Isaiah 53—we thought he was smitten by God, but it was our sins that put him there.
  
• “We repent by choosing to identify instead with Christ in his commitment to actively resist the powers, but in his way (nonviolently and with forgiveness). Not the substitution of him dying instead of us or experiencing God’s active punishment for us, but rather, dying with him (Romans 6) so that we might also live with him… (32)”

In the cross, rather than the violent retribution of God , we see the response of humanity to the message of God’s love. As Irenaeus said, God “does not use violent means to obtain what he desires…(34).” It is people who are violent. And the Bible is very clear that it is not God who is crucifying Jesus, it is humanity!

As I said, I am excited for what this book has in store. Jersak’s deconstruction of the classical interpretation of Isaiah 53:3-5 (36) is a simple yet brilliant reason why I think this book is going to be life-changing! Highly recommended!