The Meaning of the Cross: part 4, the Atonement
Meaning of the Cross: Atonement
There is one last major component to this whole meaning of the Cross thing. What’s it all for? How does this dying on the Cross work in the forgiveness of sins? How does the act atone for the sins of man? How does it satisfy God’s wrath? How does this act play in the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us? In short, how does it all work…this God-man dying on the Cross for us (Rom 5:6)?
We usually handle this by assuming the questions are controlled by answers which are to be taken uncritically as having to do with mumbo-jumbo. Not mumbo-jumbo as in superstitious fantasy, but from either the skeptic’s point of view or the religionist’s point of view things they define as “spiritual” which generally means without a necessary rational explanation.
These questions, since they don’t supply it themselves, are to them about religious ideas, religious, “spiritual” work of deity far off in mysterious realms of place and mind 1, and therefore must be answered accordingly, without any expectation that a procedural deliberation with facts is going to help them (using, inversely, Mt 27:40,42; Mr 15:30). It was a universal sacrifice for sin, the satisfaction of God’s justice, for which the foreshadowing Jewish sacrifices were types (Heb 10:4; Col 2:17; Heb 8:5; Heb 10:1), or we say Jesus died on the Cross because he loved us and gave our life for us (Rom 5:6-8), purifying our consciences (1Ti 3:9) to live for him, or that he did it to satisfy the righteousness of the Law in one prototypical expression of the Laws essence Rom 8). Or, that we just don’t know how someone dying on a Cross for our sins works, but that we must just take it on faith (C.S.Lewis). We read those passages cited religiously, to determine that Christianity is made up of declarations of truths impossible to verify.
To put it another way, the weakness of each of these statements, although they are all true, is that they deal only with what was done by Jesus to make atonement, but none of them necessarily assumes an equal partner in how these acts in the providence of God were absolutely necessary for a universal plan of redemption and not something else. If you want to just say its because of the Jewish sacrifices then this is circular, because then we must ask the same thing of the Jewish sacrifices. If you say they pointed to Jesus, then this is a piece of my point, but all it does when left as it is to bring us back full circle if biblical typology was only a good technique of religious literature to transmit religious dreams and imagination. I think what we need is to reformulate the answers so that they combine these unavoidable mysterious operations of God with their unavoidable, demonstrated evidence for being nonetheless realities. That is, not mumbo-jumbo. This is because, you know, its all about faith (Heb 11:6) and a belief in the existence of God. If you believe that God is an objective reality, you don’t believe that by fantasy, or because you want to. You believe because pretty much because if your honest the decision has been made for you, by what you know how God has been revealed as an objective reality.
Meaning of the Cross: Faith
At the heart of all this is, after all, is this faith. Our faith. And no matter how much we would want otherwise, the biblical word has nothing to do with our post-modern conception of a belief without a warrant. Faith in the Greek is the noun pis’-tis, πιστις, as here in Strong’s Concordance:
4102 pístis (from 3982/peithô, “persuade, be persuaded”) – properly, persuasion (be persuaded, come to trust); faith.
The word forms of this combine what one believes with that process of mental persuasion, not with blind assent, as in Friberg’s Lexicon:
as primarily an intellectual evaluation believe; (a) with what one is convinced of added as an object believe (in), be convinced of (Jn 11.26).
Now, if this is about knowledge of something, known, thought about and having made an honest decision about, when we bring in Catholic infant baptism, or the effective Protestant infant baptism of a 5-year old that is said “saved” when taught to repeat “Jesus died for me and I asked him to forgive my sins,” we really start to stir the pot. This is how we start the dilution of Christianity back to pagan fantasy. That’s another topic, however. For now, let’s deal only with the implications of this pistis.
We know from this word that the virtue that is called faith in Jesus’ work on the Cross is not a blind assent to some idea or act. If that is true, then any of the above answers as to how the atonement was accomplished and its effects applied to the soul to salvation must needs carry the implication of something for the mind to evaluate behind it, besides the short answers themselves, that demonstrate them as true with reasonable certainty in and to the mental organ of faith.
We know that it impossible, universally or individually speaking, if pistis in these in any way plays a part in the appropriation of the benefits of these assumed facts, that any of these answers could have the competency of standing alone symbolically for any kind of faith that its called virtuous. This is because pistis is not only about some Holy thing or person that we have faith in but a Holy reason why we have faith. In all other forms of thought but religion, it seems, we would be called quite crazy to believe only through hunch or visceral impression that the guy down the street that works at the convenience store who suddenly starts declaring himself the owner of Cadillac Corporation is so, and that if you believe it because he said it he will give you a million dollars. Why do we accept the idea of an effective reception of the righteousness of Christ by faith in his act of dying on a Cross in our place without needing to know anything of his credentials for performing it and what of such performance makes us morally expect it to be organically rooted in, challenging of, and curative to the human psyche? You know, the same way we expect the objective quality of his atonement to be rooted in our souls without the suspicion of our naiveté? Why is such ignorant faith in a bare statement, act or idea thought virtuous?
The fact is that something like “Jesus died a horrible death on the Cross to satisfy the Law, to make a universal atonement as an ultimate form of the Jewish sacrifice” is alone a mere religious linguistic meme. When we put it as both our answer to the mystery and as our faith content of its reality, however true a statement, we in effect say that God requires and the Bible records only religious questions and answers. That God inserts into the world insoluble, unfathomable ideas, instead of both giving and conclusively opening up meaning.
Meaning of the Cross: Romans
We have a problem, which is also the answer we are looking for, to explain why this kind of atonement by Jesus was the only kind possible in order to get something real done about the corrupt human nature in respect to truth. We have the problem only because of stiff-necked religious thinking (Isa 48:4). Religious thinking is and has always been talismanic in nature, and we by all means what to make Christianity into this kind. A talisman is an object or an idea that we think is imbued with supernatural power that by mere handling its virtues are transferred to us. The old religions used rods, trees, stones, water, animals, fire, carved statues, potions, bones of ancestors and the like. We use ideas. Talismanic ideas that are religious are stated, declared true and from heaven, and we become like and become close to the transcendent beings that gave them to us by entertaining them, by mentally handling those ideas and putting trust in them directly as true. To need reasons is to question those beings, so we cant go there.
Its the sin of Eden: a fruit, not the Word of God, will make us like God. But its a poison, because only the Word of God is capable of informing us of him, bringing us to him, making us in any way like him, where objects, both physical and conceptual, can only represent and never contain it to real faith.
The wish of faith as an uninformed assent is not proven by the following passage, as we would want:
Romans 10:9-13: That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
The content of this faith that is described is defined by the context fore and aft:
Romans 10:15-17 And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things! But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report? So then faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
and,
Romans 10:6-8 But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:) Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.) But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach;
What is supplied here is messianic prophecy. In the first instance, we have Isa 52:7 and 53:1. The “Word of God” in v.17 is given, essentially, as messianic prophecy. In v.11 he uses Isa 28:16. V. 13 uses the prophecy of Joel 2:32. In the aft section, v. 6, Paul uses De 30:11-14; Pr 30:4, and in the next verse he says that the satisfaction of the law (De 30:14) by faith comes through these things.
Now we’re getting somewhere far, far away from that talismanism
Meaning of the Cross: The Oracles of Christ
So, if I am right, that the messianic oracles are the internment of the atonement, the informational equivalent of Jesus to faith, and these religious ideas and statements are only its expressions, where does this leave us?
Well, this leaves us first with dealing with two questions; one is about the content, the other about the instrumentality of that content.
1. Why did God require that this act be prophesied in order to make efficacious the atonement universally, and, 2., why should it have been prophesied that Jesus must die so cruelly on a Cross for this to take place?
For the second part, Jesus being whipped, spat upon, nailed and pierced was necessary not because the suffering of the God-man is done in our place, as that language is just pure religious content, albeit true. Why it is true and why that particular thing had to be prophesied is because the Cross, as well as the disgusting punishment inflicted upon the Savior, are symbols of the messianic oracles themselves, which abuse is not only about how the world rejects Jesus but the Jesus of the prophets, which Word the world flogs, relegates, ignores and kills every day as a motivation for both life and religious affection. God had to prophesy it and carry it out as the first means the world ever had of both positively proving God, and positively condemning or saving mankind by a choice between religion and reality. The Atonement could never have been merely performed and then God comes in and says “believe it because I say I did it.” Neither could the resurrection be performed and God comes and says “believe that I am behind this because here is a miracle.” If the atonement were not prophesied and fulfilled, you could never prove that any of this is God acting unless you could show a prediction and a corresponding historical event. The resurrection, if not prophesied, may be a miracle, but how do you know it was Jehovah behind it? No one could be called guilty in their involvement with spiritual things unless there was atonement by the Prophetic Word.
Meaning of the Cross: The sin of Eden
Don’t balk at this. The contradictory, de facto faith paradigm in the church today is over 1800 years old. The church says the oracles do not need to be known for faith and salvation. Others say that they were never really fulfilled anyway. Few on the pew or pulpit even peach on them or derive their theological preoccupations directly from them. Others say they are for the Jews only. Others insist that the bible says that you must have the ignorant faith of a little child, or that faith means not needing any proof. That faith in Jesus is only faith in his person, not in anything else about him. That his work on the Cross is an effective work without it needing to be predicted by the prophets first. I say that I am Jackie Gleason, and if you don’t take my word for it then you are just without the capacity for real faith.
This sin of Eden is dealt with by giving Man a gold standard of all religious affirmations in something that is demonstrably, historically and supernaturally true, from a God of Truth. The sin of Eden is sin by denying the manifest faithfulness of the Word of God from his very mouth in exchange for sensibility around an empty claim from a purely carnal being. But we want to treat the empty claim as revelational, or personally fulfilling, or a means of enlightenment and health, and abuse Christ instead. We are so messed up and so empty that a deeper emptiness that comes in helplessness to know truth except by God does not make us humble. Our response is to make ourselves darker still even when we are given His light. We replace our natural darkness by adding our own manufactured version that looks like light. We supply our own personal reasons for it being true and then are free to revel in it with the help of our new hardened and blinded consciences that operate in a pit so deep that nothing, even God, would dare go and retrieve us.
God required the Cross to be prophesied for all the foregoing reasons. Because he knows us. Because an atonement for the soul is needed, because of the corrupt soul of man in respect to both truth claims and, especially, truth evidence. It’s essentially an epistemic problem, but I mean that in a very narrow sense, for which a very narrow solution is only admissible. The solution to man’s problem is a spiritual, noetic one, and the cure is a spiritual, noetic one. But in order for this to be possible you have to give man not only a certain bar to be voluntarily crossed but one that he could never cross himself, and never even expect.
Meaning of the Cross: A certain choice
The law that Jesus fulfilled is not just the law of performance. This is a possible expression of something much deeper. Anyone can claim that he has never sinned and is perfect in the Law, and, if he hides it well enough, no one will ever know. But for someone to fulfill 50 separate prophecies in one day, most of which he has no direct control over, is not something that can be faked. Jesus was faithful to the end to fulfill his oath to the Father to give the world a particular alternative to talismanic religion that gripped all hearts in so many ways it was otherwise unbreakable. After it is fulfilled, and God’s name was forever vindicated as True, not a fantasy, there would be no possibility of anyone ever laying claim to “Truth” or righteousness apart from it. When we believe, through knowledge, thought, persuasion and honest conviction, that Jesus fulfilled the prophets, the curse of Eden is reversed for us through the faith that is given by this gift of God and the faith that we give to God’s through this His gift.
To be motivated otherwise is to effectively admit Jesus as a fraud, and lay insinuation and abuse upon him. That the meaning of the Cross is that it has no meaning, that God has no meaning, that Christ has no credentials. To become a failed Cross to him, instead of coming to him by his Cross.
Series to be continued…
the Catholic version here, of which several significations are given, one being “it is a sign of the commitment of one’s life to following the poor and crucified Christ,” thus a religious act of self-denial. Not a proven Christ, but a Christ of religion ↩
