Meditation on Easter

    Traditional Christian theology understands God to be both perfectly just and perfectly loving. Human beings, due to our inherent sinfulness (i.e. attachment to the alienated ego and its self-serving fantasies and desires), are separated from God and subject to the consequences of sin, which include spiritual death. To reconcile humanity to himself, God's justice demands a payment for sin, while his love seeks to rescue and redeem humanity. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ is seen as a sacrificial atonement for the sins of humanity. Jesus, being both fully divine and fully human, voluntarily offers himself as a sacrifice to satisfy the demands of divine justice. By undergoing crucifixion, Jesus suffers the punishment that humanity deserves for sin, thus making reconciliation with God possible. Jesus' willingness to endure crucifixion is an act of solidarity with humanity. By taking on human form and experiencing suffering and the worst death, Jesus enters into the human condition fully. Through his sacrifice, Jesus bridges the gap between humanity and God, offering a pathway for reconciliation and salvation.

     The crucifixion is not merely a tragic event but is part of God's redemptive plan. Through his death and resurrection, Jesus triumphs over sin and death, offering humanity the hope of new life and reconciliation with God. The resurrection demonstrates that death is not the final word and that through faith in Christ, humanity can be restored to relationship with God. That is the official version, largely supported in the Gospels themselves (i.e. that is how many or most of the early Christian groupings, especially those with a background of Judaism, understood the crucifixion).

    It’s like God, having made the eternal law that condemns us – not as individuals but as a race (all sinners by nature through Adam) – can’t live with the consequences and out of pity takes the only way allowed by his own eternal law: he allows himself to be sacrificed to the Devil, thus paying the price to get our race out of Hell, or at least such of us that believe in his sacrifice.

   It doesn’t make sense to me that God required his “son” – part of himself translated into flesh and blood – to be tortured to death to build a bridge to us. That the God – who Jesus reveals as Love – would be the source of such a law makes no sense. That the law of God would bind God to make a deal with the Devil to free us makes no sense to me. It doesn’t make sense to see humanity in every case – even children – as damned to hell because of the actions of past generations (Adam) and the unjust, sinful human world that does seem to be endemic to human nature (in its “fallen” state). I don’t deny that something is not right with our race; that we have a propensity to sin. But tracing that back to the sin of our original parents makes sense only if I understand the significance of the apple (the forbidden fruit) as the desire to be “autonomous”: to be the final judge over what is Real, what is Good, what is Beautiful; over how we live, how we “identify”, and how we interpret. That is the fruit of the ego alienated from reality: from other people; from nature (as Creation); from community; from the spiritual life; from God. That is the modern self, pounded into us moderns from birth by our culture. It is born of the twins of the fear of being vulnerable and the desire to protect itself at any cost from pain – at the extreme, by acquiring power over others and the environment, the power to make us invulnerable and the legislators of good and evil.

    But the remedy for this disease is love, wisdom; not God having to give himself over (temporarily) to the Devil (the negative energy that drives the high priests and the damned Romans). At least that makes for sense to me. God freely translating himself into flesh and blood to reveal his true mind to us, insofar as we are capable of understanding it, knowing He would have to suffer for it. That is analogous to a father who leaps into a burning house to save his children. Just leave out the pact with the Devil, the ransom He owed the devil.

 

I think the theology I am criticizing is most intelligible to me as C. S. Lewis depicts it in fantasy, in his novel The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. In the story, the "deep magic" is portrayed as an ancient and unchangeable law that governs the land of Narnia. This "deep magic" represents a form of divine justice and order within the narrative, one that predates the creation of Narnia. Similarly, within Christian theology, there is a concept of divine law and justice that governs the universe, including the consequences of sin. Aslan must sacrifice himself on behalf of Edmund, who has committed treason against the rightful ruler of Narnia. This act of sacrificial atonement echoes the Christian belief in Jesus willingly laying down his life as a sacrifice for humanity's sins. Aslan does not have to power to set aside the “deep magic”, according to which the evil Snow Witch is owed all traitors (sin is conceived as treason against God, the Ruler of the universe). Despite being bound by the "deep magic" to undergo death, Aslan is aware of a deeper magic, a magic of which the servants of evil are blind: that to give your life for love of another brings with it a resurrection after the physical death of the body. Aslan's resurrection embodies the theme of victory over death and the triumph of good over evil. His resurrection brings hope and renewal to Narnia, just as Jesus' resurrection brings hope and new life to humanity in Christian belief. If Aslan is analogous to Jesus, he is one with the Creator of the “deep magic”, the law that requires Hell for traitors (final alienation from God). But as translated in flesh and blood in the physical universe, Aslan/Jesus, though identical to the Creator, did not fully share the mind of the Creator – Jesus because he was human. Thus the metaphor of Father and Son: distinct modes of consciousness. Thus, despite some knowledge of the mind of the Father, faith was required to accept the torture and death as a condition to bring about the forgiveness of the traitor.  

     But the reason the novel was more plausible to me is because Aslan sacrificed himself to save one child, Edmund. The other siblings were not completely innocent but were not “traitors.” But in our current form of human existence, we are all considered sinners (children of Adam, as the creatures of Narnia refer to us) – we are all Edmund. Jesus comes to save our race, which is corrupt. To me that means that we cannot overcome attachment to our alienated egos – egos that define themselves apart from other egos, nature, our own potential souls, and God – even in a difficult rebellion (as, for example, girls who do not conform to the physical standards of capitalist beauty, embodied by the “model”, can sometimes come to find themselves beautiful through a difficult rebellion against the capitalist standards). No, grace is required: the self-sacrifice of Aslan/Jesus/God himself as incarnated in flesh and blood, both embodying the divine mind but as embodied not fully identifying with it. Without that grace / self-sacrifice of God, we would be condemned to inhabit a state of sin (alienation) and no matter how sincere our wish to escape, we would be powerless to overcome it. The most virtuous among us would still be a traitor, a sinner, addicted to the alienated mode of self.

   I can agree with that, understood in a certain way. It’s just the “deep magic” that compels God to be sacrificed, this limit on God’s freedom, that bothers me. He appears primarily to be sacrificed rather than to enlighten (and correct all the false images of Himself as a stern patriarch demanding obedience, punishing disobedience; setting up a system where those who follow the rules (ritual washing, ritual praying, sacrificing, not eating pork, etc.) are righteous (like the elder brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son) are “righteous” and the rest hell-fodder.

    Human beings do on rare occasions sacrifice themselves for someone or someplace even that they love – or even because we see strangers in the same light as we do those we love. Parents sacrifice for their children; a man jumps on the train tracks to save the life of a stranger; soldiers sacrifice for their fellow countrymen, etc. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” To be able to see others as intelligible objects of such sacrifice is also probably a gift of grace: “…he appeared and the soul felt its worth.” People did sacrifice for their own – look at the Spartans. The idea that humanity as such is one metaphorical family – that is a gift of grace. We are programmed by nature and culture to feel normal with our own, with those who are intelligible, familiar to us. We tend to reduce others outside our groups. I find the idea that Jesus in some sense sacrificed himself. But why?

    “Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.” We know from the prophets and from iconic people like Socrates that bearing witness to the truth in a world constructed on lies, fantasies, and ideologies is a dangerous undertaking – constructs upon which power elites rely to justify their power. The God of the high priests and Pharisees was an idol. The true nature of God was unknown. Nature itself partly – millennia of small bands of human beings fighting for survival in environments of scarcity –  and a long history of unjust societies (intensified by the advent of agriculture) formed our unconscious minds. Cultures in which minorities oppress majorities form the egos of people. Cultures in which at a certain time mankind is seen at war with all of nature – bad conditions for knowing God if God is love. And that is what Jesus reveals God to be – contra the entire Old Testament, except for some prophets who picture God as loving his Chosen People but not humanity as such. The priestly construct of “God” has him setting up brutal laws: stoning the adultery to death. Jesus contradicts and asks those who would stone to look into their own hearts. The priestly construct of “God” who commands complete genocide against the peoples living in the lands he promised the Israelites. Jesus contradicts and says love and pray for your enemies. The priestly construct of a “God” who demands sacrifices and obedience. Jesus contradicts and says the Law and the Sabbath are there for people, not people there for the Law and Sabbath (thus undermining the power of the priestly caste). The priestly construct of a “God” who demands group conformity and othering of everyone outside the in-group. Jesus contradicts and tells us the despised Samaritan who helps the injured man is closer to God (again undermining priestly authority).

      However it happened, however you want to interpret it, God (assuming God is real as a personal being who is also absolute – hard to make sense of that) reached out to us through Jesus to correct the idolatrous misconceptions of the pharisees and high priest and reveal whatever of his true nature (his and her perhaps, of their true nature) as we could comprehend. And for that, Jesus took himself into the lion's den, the lions' den being for me a metaphor of the alienated ego and the world constructed by the alienated ego; Satan, at least as metaphor. In that sense, Jesus did have to give himself up to the power of Satan. Overcoming "the world" means overcoming the "fat, relentless ego," it social embodiments, and indeed that part of nature we think of as "dog eat dog" or "eat or be eaten," the part of nature that is probably the source of the alienated ego [reconciling that with the "Creation" is another theological problem.] He had to challenge the powers that be, and they killed him in the worst way.

    In this reading, there is no ransom. God saw a need. God addressed that need at enormous sacrifice. We were elevated by that sacrifice. But there is no need for the “deep magic” here, an eternal justice that demands the ultimate punishment for all humanity. That is a very pharisaic conception of God, one Jesus came to undo. It makes more sense to say that God was moved by compassion alone and not a need to find a way to satisfy his justice. On the gate to Hell in Dante’s Inferno, we can read: “Justice moved my great Creator, Divine power made me.” Sin must be punished – so the Old Testament God.  Jesus says sin must be forgiven, that we may not cast the first stone. God is not a slave to his own commands – which are more like the commands of a Stalin than Jesus. Jesus came to bear witness to the truth, to undo all of that.

    How then did the ransom theory enter into Scripture and Church teaching? Scripture, first, was in the service of church-building. Jesus left no writing. The memory of the Sermon on the Mound, the parables, the story of the adulteress – here we have the pure water of Jesus. But the pure water is muddied by church building, by trying to harmonize Jesus with the Old Testament, to reintroduce the Idol that justified the priestly caste, which then came to justify the Emperor. As Tolstoy put it in his Preface to A Gospel in Brief – I will quote at length:

 

But now to understand the teaching of Jesus it is necessary to know clearly the chief methods used in these false interpretations. The most customary method of false interpretation, and one which we have grown up with, consists of preaching under the name of Christianity not what Christ taught but a church teaching composed of explanations of very contradictory writings into which Christ's teaching enters only to a small degree, and even then distorted and twisted to fit together with other writings. According to this false interpretation Christ s teaching is only one link in a chain of revelations beginning with the commencement of the world and continuing in the Church until now. These false interpreters call Jesus God; but the fact that they recognize him as God does not make them attribute more importance to his words and teaching than to the words of the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles, the Apocalypse, or even to the decisions of the Councils and the writings of the Fathers of the Church. These false interpreters do not admit any understanding of the teaching of Jesus which does not conform to the previous and subsequent revelations; so that their aim is not to explain the meaning of Christ's teaching, but as far as possible to harmonize various extremely contradictory writings, such as the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Gospels, the Epistles, and the Acts-that is, all that is supposed to constitute the Holy Scriptures. Such explanations aiming not at truth but at reconciling the irreconcilable, namely, the writings of the Old and the New Testament, can obviously be innumerable, as indeed they are. Among them are the Epistles of Paul and the decisions of the Councils (which begin with the formulary: 'It has pleased Us and the Holy Ghost'), and such enactments as those of the Popes, the Synods, the pseudo-Christs, and all the false interpreters who affirm that the Holy Ghost speaks through their lips. They all employ one and the same gross method of affirming, the truth of their interpretations by the assertion that their interpretations are not human utterances but revelations from the Holy Ghost.

 

The pure water of Jesus teaching does not give us a church with a priestly caste, but as a teaching that gives us the meaning of life.

    Thus though the resurrection is something I would love to believe – it is not the ‘miraculous’ nature of it that bothers me but the idea of the Old Testament God construct behind it that causes me problems – my ‘faith’, such as it is, would not suffer without it. I agree that Jesus was more than just a wise and good man. Beyond that, I cannot say. I respond to the truth of the pure water of his teaching, as expressed in the Sermon on the Mound, the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, the saving of the adulteress from stoning, the healing of the sick, the feeding of the hungry. The line “For God is love” gets it right.

   A religion of laws, such that the righteous are separated from the unrighteous according to who follows the rules; a religion that divides humanity into two camps: the righteous and the unrighteous (based on who obeys the rules) – that is not for me: “he who considers himself good (i.e. relative to others) will not be good”; that is one form taken by the “fat, relentless ego.”  That is to neglect the prime directive – to love your neighbor as yourself – in preference to man-made laws (e.g. not eating pork, ritual washing, etc.) made to divide a group of so-called “righteous” from the rest of the “unrighteous” – and prop up a privileged caste of priests. The main principle of the alienated ego is here at work: to de-mean the other as a prologue to doing violence against them, or at least not doing good to them. According to all the laws the priestly caste had set up, Jesus - God - was rightly crucified. He flaunted them. 

  Of course, I am speaking personally, as we all must when it comes to such things. (Tolstoy – and I don’t uncritically take over all his theology – has been an important conversation partner for me.)