New Year's Resolution

It was over Christmas this year...with four days off....that I really started to look into the atonement in a more serious way. It has encompassed writings on sacrifice, human violence and other dark elements of human beings. This was written at Christmas time.


December 26, 2006
I have spent a lot of time in the livingroom...on the couch...on the computer reading. It was a quiet Christmas (if you don't count the trip to the mall on the 23'rd....omg.....baking cookies on Christmas Eve morning.....and a midnight church service on Christmas Eve....and a rather loud, mean spirited "discussion" with Keith about the atonement) I have found a couple really cool blogs....and read a lot about the atonement....which has left me with answers....but as often happens, more questions than when I started. It is my New Year's resolution....to search this out and read about it and pray about it and understand as much as God is willing to reveal to me....and as much as I am able to understand. Some of the theories use awfully big words and concepts!!! I do not find any shred of truth in the substitutionary atonement theory of Anselm and Aquinas. I find truth in the words of J Denny Weaver called the Non Violent Atonement. For Weaver, the efforts of Anselm's defenders amount to little more than theological gymnastics which cannot erase the model of violent punishment at the root of his atonement motif. He bluntly asserts: "Make no mistake about it. Satisfaction atonement in any form depends on divinely sanctioned violence that follows from the assumption that doing justice means to punish"

and the logic of another quote I copied and pasted but forgot to include the source

The logic of punishment was a logic of equivalence (the wages of sin is death); the logic of grace is a logic of surplus and excess.

There are a lot of theories....some I have never heard of by lesser known theologians. The main three that I have been looking at are:

Moral Influence associated with Abelard and Finney

Christus Victor - associated with Aulen, Origen (and sharktaco at the Rebel God site...one many of us are familiar with)

And the Mimemic theory of Renee Girard which was recently, briefly discussed on this list and which others have taken up....

I think the atonement is not one view...but multidimensional....and includes aspects of most of the theories....except for the penal substitution model....which I find repugnant. Anyway....here are a couple of the blogs I came across as I was searching....that came up in google with articles/writings on atonement. They looked interesting and thought you might want to check them out. These are the home pages for the blogs. Some of the atonement writings are in the archives. I am going to copy and paste the series of 4 entries from the experimental theology blog on Girard's theory (in the form of a critique of a book called Saved From Sacrifice by S Mark Helm)

http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/

http://www.jesuscreed.org/

http://theogeek.blogspot.com/