Inter-Christian Disagreements

I am so lonely I on rare occasions comment on something I hear on YouTube. I did this recently upon hearing one of those fundamentalist American Catholics trashing “liberal” theology – which means any theology that doesn’t make the “ransom theory” the one essentially defining feature of Christianity. I made an argument against belittling a person’s faith based on their theology. We all can be more or less superficial whatever our theology, and even then we shouldn’t belittle the person. I pointed out that Jesus’s teachings are “precious” to some people who can’t accept the “ransom theory.” The will to force their theology on everyone, not with reasoned argument or lived example but with demagoguery and spin, reveals their bad faith. Someone replied, for which I should be grateful even if the reply was meant to demean my answer rather than to take it seriously. Here is this reply:

“Who cares if Jesus said pretty words......if He didn't [LITERALLY] rise from the dead....He's nothing, but a sweet-talk'n conman and we've all been had!”

…"precious words" what does THAT mean? [by the way it was a sarcastic, rhetorical question] BTW McDonalds believe "Big Mac" are precious words! As for the rest....who cares! Maybe Jesus said "precious words"...maybe not....I've read Shakespeare a few times, not really my buzz....but the Perfect Sacrifice, from the Son of God.....that's what matters! The Son of God SAID SO!!!!!!!!....!!!!!”

 

Screaming at me, I suppose, with all those exclamation marks.  But there is a difficult theological issue at stake. Justification by faith alone – that is Protestantism. Luther’s creed. And faith in what? In the “Ransom theory” – and the Incarnation and Resurrection. Through Adam all humanity was fallen. Absolutely cut off from God’s love or at least ability to show us any grace. A sacrifice was needed. Who was worthy? Only God. So God became human to be sacrificed on the cross so that he could forgive us – but on one condition. That we believe that God became human so that he could die on the cross so that he could forgive us. It is alleged that God-Jesus told us this very thing so if we don’t believe it we are following in Adam’s footsteps. If we can’t believe that, Hell. And we can’t believe that because it makes no sense. So God’s grace is required to believe it, which He gives only to the chosen few for his own inscrutable reasons: the southern Baptists; or non-liberal Catholics perhaps – people disagree about who the select few are. Oh, and by the way, while He was here, God-Jesus revealed what we are at the core of our being and how we can most authentically live. But these truths would have meant nothing if he were just a man and died. Only the supernatural sacrifice proved his teachings. Actually, it doesn’t really matter what he taught. Any teaching would do as long as he proved himself the Messiah by rising from the dead.

   More seriously but closely related is the argument made by C.S. Lewis and others. The “moral teaching” of Jesus is not that revolutionary. Different wise men have taught the same in one variation or the other in many different cultural and religious contexts. It is the law written into the Creation by the Creation. Natural reason and virtue suffice to recognize it. The Golden Rule:

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.”

 “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

There are many formulations of the same idea in almost all the civilizations of the world – Confucian, Hindu, Gnostic, Platonic, etc. The Gold Rule was not widely known or practiced. But granted: God did not need to become man – the premise of Christianity – to tell us the Golden Rule. St. Thomas recognized that there could be “virtuous pagans” – Pagans who lived a virtuous life according to reason and the Golden Rule. They are in Dante’s Hell – in Limbo where they are not tormented but exist without hope. Christ just confirmed what the wisest of us already knew and the best of us already practiced – so the gist of this argument.

    Being wise and good was not enough to redeem us, to save us, to keep us out of Hell. The best we could achieve on our own was Limbo. A thought like that was behind my critic’s contempt for the “moral teachings” as opposed to the Resurrection. The “perfect sacrifice” was required to give us a chance to escape Hell – if we only believe Jesus was God and sacrificed Himself. It is not the sacrifice itself, but the belief in the sacrifice that keeps you out of Hell. And that seems to be the only important thing. And for that, God became Man.  

   This doesn’t make human sense on many levels. The whole human race was condemned because of the single act of disobedience of the original human beings. I can understand that symbolically. The idea of the perfect sacrifice requires me to understand it literally. That we as a species had gone wrong, had been cut off from or not yet able to reach our highest potential (which required hope, faith, love) – that I can understand. That perhaps only God could set us right I can understand. That He had to become human to do – given the story's assumptions – makes sense. That setting us right he – as a matter of fact – gave his life, had to suffer, sublimely, makes sense. But in this story so far, Jesus’s teachings about our humanity and the change of consciousness (de-selfing) is the reason he had to become human – a sage or a prophet was not enough because more was required than wisdom or virtue, although extreme difficulty and indeed luck involved in becoming virtuous is part of the reason what God had to help his creations.

   But the “ransom theory” states that Adam and Eve cut us all off from the Creator through disobedience. Life in the garden is gone and cannot be won back. According to the narrative, humanity, represented by Adam and Eve, fell into sin through disobedience in the Garden of Eden. This act of rebellion resulted in humanity becoming enslaved to sin, death, and, by extension, to Satan, who gained dominion over humankind as a result of their sinfulness – which is more than just being “immoral,” as though if mankind had to power to be virtuous and good the problem would be solved. That would overcome the alienation from the Creator. The tendency towards vice and the difficulty of virtue are only the effects of the alienation from God.

     In this context, God, being just and holy, couldn't simply overlook the enslavement of humanity to sin and Satan. However, God also desired to restore humanity to a state of grace and fellowship with Him. To do so, a ransom needed to be paid to liberate humanity from this bondage. (The aspect of the myth that rubs against the image of God many have – who doesn’t need to make deals with the devil.

    Jesus Christ, the Son of God, one of the three personalities – distinct yet indissolubly bound – was sent into the world as the ransom for humanity's sins. The idea is that Jesus' life and, more importantly, His sacrificial death on the cross served as the payment to redeem humanity from the captivity of Satan. Jesus offered His life in exchange for the freedom of humanity. Indeed, Satan was "deceived" by God. Satan, thinking he had power over Christ by orchestrating His crucifixion, took the bait, so to speak. However, because Jesus was sinless and divine, death could not hold Him, and by rising from the dead, Christ not only defeated death but also broke Satan's power over humanity. (Lewis tells the same essential story in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.)  

     The resurrection of Christ represents the ultimate victory over Satan. By paying the ransom with His life and then overcoming death, Christ freed humanity from Satan's hold. Satan was left with nothing, as his power over humanity was undone by Christ’s resurrection – like the snow queen in Lewis’s fantasy story. Well, partially undone. If a person does not accept this story of Christ’s ransom, then Satan still has dominion over that person’s soul. The perfect sacrifice was a necessary but not a sufficient condition of redemption from Satan’s power; in addition, we must believe the ransom story; only then does it have redeeming power. Faith in the story saves. It saves whether you are a thief or a murderer being crucified or a Socrates: in terms of salvation, there is no difference between a Socrates and the thief on the cross. Important is only to believe the story – as my critic stated with many exclamation points. But it only saves for Heaven, in the afterlife. This world is still Satan’s. The perfect sacrifice does not really save the world – contra John 3:16. As C. S. Lewis put it: in this life we live in occupied territory (occupied by the forces of Satan).

   The big difference between what makes sense to me – again, assuming one accepts the basic facts that underpin any theology that can be called Christian – and adherents of the “ransom theory” is this: in one telling, the need for salvation, the alienation from God, was caused by a corruption of human nature, an elevation of the Ego at the expense of the natural order and the Creator’s love. In short, the rise of the autonomous self that determines for itself, contra reality, contra God’s love, what is good and evil, real and unreal. Egoism. Which is contrary to love. Division, which is contrary to the bonds of love and care. It destroys the good of this world, of life in this world. After Christ we can live in this world with hope, faith, and love because he not only told us how to but showed us. Perhaps the original goodness of the world cannot be fully recovered but life on earth can express it to some extent (the ideal community of the Church or the loving family). At least we don’t have to see the world as an unregenerate vale of tears even if we can’t undo our mortality, our being subject to fortune, the perpetuation of our distorted natures through unjust, power-hungry regimes (like American capitalism or Soviet communism). We can know that such regimes are contrary to nature and the Creator. In the other telling, the only important fact was God’s helplessness to save his creatures from the power of Satan – who like Edward in Lewis’s story gave into their lower impulses and put themselves in his power. The rules of the Creation could not be broken, even by God. But he did understand the “deeper magic” that Satan was ignorant of:  if an innocent being willing offered his own life in place of a traitor's, the deeper magic would reverse death itself and restore them to life; and God – born as the man Jesus – was the only innocent being.

     In my telling – I assume many others – God made the sacrifice in order to enlighten us about his own nature and ours, and how we had gone wrong. The enlightenment was no mere human wisdom but a sublime leak from a real that surrounds us and is above us. In the ransom theory, God’s advent in human form was a hostage rescue. In my telling, the truths of the teaching are essential; in the ransom theory, they add nothing to what was already known.

  Both accounts are equally absurd if science is the only measure of the possible. Both are mythical accounts that purport to make sense of certain key “facts” – the fact of Jesus’s life, death, and teaching as known from the gospels. Both are attempts to make sense of that which is way over our heads – God, Creation, our broken state, love, etc. It is not that my version is more compatible with science.

     The ransom theory represents God in a way that doesn’t cohere with other necessary features of God. The ransom theory also implies the myth is also literal, historical truth, logically no different from reporting the event at Appomattox Courthouse in April 1865. The whole account is metaphorical – how could it not be with God involved? There are no witnesses to confirm one way of understanding it rather than another. (I will come to the gospels later.9 Mankind is compared to a runaway child who rejects the love and care of his family because he wants to do his own thing. That is a good metaphor, I think, but only a metaphor. And God, like a father, can’t force the prodigal son to return home. Now metaphorically, having taken his inheritance and run, the prodigal son – humanity – is in a way by definition in the devil’s country i.e. in a state of mind in which not love but his own will drives his life.

    Now according to the ransom narrative, the prodigal son is the devil’s property in a literal sense. There is no way for the Father to have him back according to the laws of Being that God himself made and that bind even him? What would God make such laws? Only God knows. They make no human sense. God would have to offer himself to the devil to get his son back. Well, a good father might indeed do that. But his son could not know the father did that, had to do that. He could only learn that secondhand, from an outside source. And if he didn’t believe what he heard, well, the sacrifice was in vein. Though, as God knew but the devil somehow didn’t, he wouldn’t really have to sacrifice himself since God is eternal.

    My version (the version that makes sense to me) also involves magic. The Father couldn’t go after the son himself, since if the son returned by force, and the appearance of the father would leave him no choice, no change would have taken place in the soul of the son. So he reinvented himself as a man unlike any other man who had ever lived, and sent the man to the son. The man lived and taught the truth of the father, and the lost son recognized the goodness and love of his father in the life and teachings of the man his father had sent. The others in the world the son had chosen to live in were exposed by this man, and killed him – as the father knew would happen. Through his death the son experienced such a loss, as though his father had died. And he felt deep shame and remorse. At this, the man sprang back to life and led the son back to the father, for he had forgotten the way. The father ran out to meet him with open arms.

    That is a parable, not literal history. The parable is close to the one Jesus himself used to make sense of things to his audience. To me it is a better story than the ransom. God doesn’t make laws that will tie his hands and force him to deal with the devil to get humanity back. It is not that I think it just a story. If the story doesn’t gesture towards something metaphysically real, well, we are up shit creek. But we are not quite like dogs watching TV in this case, we can reason about things above us based on things we understand from our lives. But to believe our reason can understand higher levels of being directly – that is an epistemological mistake.

. . .

 

I disagree with a premise of the C. S. Lewis argument – which is the argument of much official Christianity: that the “moral teaching” (the word “moral” is distorting) of Jesus was nothing new; thus the ransom was the only purpose for Jesus’s advent, death, and resurrection.

    It is undeniable that the Golden Rule was in some sense known all over the world (though little followed). After all, natural reason was not wholly corrupted by sin. For doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, loving your neighbor as yourself, is a response of human reason to reality, to the reality of the human being as created by God.

    I have serious doubts that the Golden Rule was understood prior to Christ in the full radicality and universality that he taught it. I am quite sure that there was not so much as the idea of what we abstractly call “human dignity” before Christ: there was dignity in being a Jew, or belonging to the upper class, or being an Athenian or Spartan; there was no dignity in mere humanity. Slavery, oppression or extermination of the conquered – these were the norm, and no affirmation of the Golden Rule in Hinduism, for example, led to the questioning of untouchability or the abolition of slavery in any of the cultures where some sage formulated it. (Correct me if I am wrong.) I suspect most people understood it to apply in practice to one’s family and one’s own people – much like Jefferson’s “all men are created equal” in practice tended to mean Caucasian males, perhaps even propertied Caucasian males.

   When Jesus was asked “Who is my neighbor?” – the question itself is an illustration of my point in the previous paragraph – Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan. Here the full meaning of “created in God’s image” is revealed: we share a common humanity. If we saw each other truly – the way God sees us – we would see each other as brothers and sisters. That is our reality that we are largely blind to and largely fail to live by. So deeply ingrained in this blindness (sin) that even after 2000 years of Christianity Christians are largely as blind as non-Christians, perhaps even more so. Christianity had to adapt itself to power. Had to become ideological, distorted to be embraced by elites. The despicable demonization by MAGA Christians of “the least of our brethren” (the poorest of the poor seeking help in “the New World”) is only a recent example. A common humanity: “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me (Matthew 25:40).” Nothing like that was meant by the Golden Rule before.

    And I am unaware of any teaching that says this (again, as part of the Golden Rule):

“But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you…” (Matthew 5:44)

 

“But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.” (Luke 6:35)

 

That seems crazy. It is sublime. It goes against all our instincts, all our evolution. To respond to hate with hate only begets more hate: a literal devil’s circle. The Israel-Palestine hatred is only the most recent proof of this. Gandhi’s words “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” is a perfect understanding of Christ’s teaching.

  Finally, the meaning of the Golden Rule is expressed in the story of the adulterous woman. The story underscores the idea that Jesus came not to condemn but to offer grace and mercy. While the law prescribed punishment, Jesus demonstrated that mercy is God’s essence. Jesus’ challenge to the accusers – let he who is without sin cast the first stone – highlights that we are all sinners, all blind, all divided from the essential connections. And therefore, none of us are in a position to self-righteously judge others. This invites self-reflection and humility. Jesus doesn’t simply forgive the woman and leave her as she is. He calls her to a new way of living, urging her to “sin no more.” This demonstrates that while forgiveness is freely given, it comes with a call to repentance and transformation. This is another deep expression of a common humanity, of the implications of being “made in God’s image.”

    I say: these deep truths were brought into the world by Jesus alone. His identity with God or his authority to speak for the Father comes from these truths about our nature and the world even more than from any other miracles. On this basis alone people like Tolstoy recognize God in Jesus. I can fully understand that.