The fourth and final installment of this series:
Christus
Victor
That brings us to the final – and
perhaps the oldest – atonement theory. Christus Victor was the primary way the
early church viewed the work of Christ. Story plays a large role here, and all
of us are characters in a grand meta-narrative. Instead of God primarily saving
us from himself, like the satisfaction theories, or from our own clouded
understandings, God saves us from everything that holds us captive; from sin
and death and all of the evil things we do to ourselves, other people, and the
whole of creation. The scope of Christus Victor is wide open. While penal
substitution and moral influence focused on individuals and Anselmian
satisfaction focused on humanity as a species, Christus Victor is truly
universal. Through Christ’s victory, God’s intent is realized: The
reconciliation of all things to himself. However, with such a deep history, the
Christus Victory theory finds many expressions. For the sake of brevity, I will
briefly discuss the ∙historical ransom theory, and then go on to formulate a
∙modern synthesis of Christus Victor.
Ransom
Theory
The historical ransom theory imagines a
world in which Satan has taken humankind captive. We are slaves to evil against
both our will and God’s. For us to be released, Satan, rather than God, must be
appeased by the payment of some debt. So God put on flesh and became incarnate
as Jesus, with the intent of offering himself as the payment for the ransom of
humanity. Satan gladly accepted this exchange. Think of it – exchanging petty
mortals for the eternal God! But Satan could not foresee the resurrection,
which was part of God’s plan all along. Jesus rose from the dead, leading forth
from hell those who had died under Satan’s bondage. Through his resurrection,
Jesus conquered Satan and the power of death, freeing us from slavery and
making it possible for us to be in relationship with God. 1 John 3:8 explicitly
says as much: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s
work.” Hell is our bondage to Satan and his work. It is the separation from God
that resulted from Satan’s conquest of humanity.
I see a few problems with the historical
ransom theory, though. For one, God seems to be impotent to a degree. Why does
God have to “trick” Satan? Why couldn’t he just overwhelm him with his awesome
power? After all, Christianity is decidedly not
Manichean – God and Satan do no occupy equal and opposite positions in the
cosmic power scheme. Secondly, not only the power of Satan, but the very
existence of Satan as a person is up for debate today. The problem, if this is
the case, is we are left without an enemy to be saved from.
The
Modern Synthesis
This is where the modern synthesis comes
in. With the destabilization of Satan as a personal enemy, the question is,
again, what exactly are we saved from then? And why couldn’t God just “zap” it
away?
Even though we may reject a personal
Satan, we cannot ignore the very real role of “the accuser”[1] in
our lives. It is evident that we all sin, and we live lives dominated by the
fear of pain and death. This motif still remains – Christ is victorious over
Hostile Powers. While they may be de-personalized, they are still very, very
real. Paul tells us in Ephesians 6:12 that "Our struggle is not against
flesh and blood, but against the rulers,
against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against
the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (emphasis mine). In Hebrews
2:14-15 we are told that “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too
shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him
who holds the power of death… and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death”
(emphasis mine). So even in the “superstitious” age the Bible was written in,
there were other ways of viewing evil than a personal Satan. And it seems that
these powers hold humanity captive by the
fear of death.
As biological organisms, we have evolved
with an intense fear of death. This is adaptive in the sense that it increases
the likelihood that the species will reproduce, but it is extremely destructive
relationally. Traditionally, physical death was seen as stemming from sin.
However, this view is incompatible with our understanding of biology today. But
the inverse view is not only compatible with our understanding of biology; its
descriptive power is impressive. Maybe we should think of sin as stemming from
our fear of physical death. It does not take too much thought to realize the
slavery that results from this.
Sin is displayed through the power
structures of this world. The fear of death drives us to dominate others, to
try to gain some semblance of control in the light of our inevitable demise. In
Romans 8:1, Paul clearly saw the danger of this fear, saying, "Therefore,
there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through
Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of
life set me free from the law of sin and death" (emphasis mine). There
is no condemnation once we have been set free from the system that says death
is final
We have all had encounters with the
Hostile Powers. The need for self-preservation extends to every aspect of our
lives – from business to social groups and even to church. And the fear of
death is within each of us individually. That fear keeps us from truly being
able to enter into loving, self-sacrificial relationships with others and with
God.
So why did Jesus have to die? Because he
was Love, self-sacrificing Love. Abelard’s theory may be useful here, but the
story does not end with moral influence. The powers that be, full of hatred and
oppression, set out to do what they always do to that which goes against them:
they sought to destroy the opposition through violence in the name of
self-preservation. The powers detected a threat, and they dealt with it the
only way they could. Jesus came to undermine the power structures and to set us
free from the slavery of our mortality – but he did not play by the rules. The
destruction he wrought was non-violent in nature, and radically rooted in free,
grace-filled expressions of love. And from the ashes of the toppled system, he
established his Kingdom in Love. So that final power that no human could
conquer – death – was defeated by Christ. Through death’s death, we are freed
from the bondage, from the hell, of the fear of death. The cross and Jesus’
resurrection are the first glimpses of the reversal and upheaval of the system
of the world.
In this paradigm, we are weak creatures,
held in bondage to our own desires, manipulated by forces outside our control
on a personal and corporate level – rather than evil, intentionally rebellious
sinners who spit in God’s face. We are not only perpetrators of evil, we are
victims as well. Sometimes we are victims because of something we have done;
other times there is really no meaning for this victimhood. But most of all, we
are loved and desired by God.
God is seen as the gracious father who
wishes to set his children free. Not only the cross, but the incarnation itself
is motivated by love. God is not the greatest existential threat to humanity,
as he appears to be in satisfaction theories. Rather, here is a God who is
willing to touch the untouchables, to come and set the oppressed free. And in
setting the captives free, through his free grace, God himself is free. The
mean theologies hold God captive to the laws and systems that Christ came to
destroy. God is a God of both justice and mercy – because justice and mercy are
one.
A
Better Atonement: A Better Hell?
Few things seem more hellish to me than
serving a tyrannical God. As we move away from atonement theories that paint a
picture of a wrathful, petty, legalistic God towards a view of the atonement
that affirms God’s loving and free nature, hell – that which we are saved from
– also changes its form. Hell goes from being something God justly inflicts
upon us to something that he desires to save us from: hell is not about God
getting what he deserves. Death produces sin, fear, and anxiety, but Christ’s
death and victory over frail mortality frees us from this bondage, allowing us
to experience the life of the Kingdom: A life characterized by self-sacrificial
love and reconciliation.
“They regard the father of their spirits as their
governor! They yield the idea of the Ancient of Days, ‘the glad creator,’ and
put in its stead a miserable, puritanical martinet of a God, caring not for
righteousness, but for his rights; not for the eternal purities, but the goody
proprieties. The prophets of such a God take all the glow, all the hope, all
the colour, all the worth, out of life on earth, and offer you instead what
they call eternal bliss—a pale, tearless hell.”[2]
