Most Protestant Christians are adherents of a theory of atonement known as Penal Substitutionary Atonement. While many are not familiar with this formal theological terminology, however, when defined many immediately recognize and identify with this view. This view espouses that Jesus died on the cross as a substitute for our sins, and because of that, we are in turn forgiven our debt (sin) and can partake in God’s eternal rest. Of course, I hope and pray all Christians believe that Jesus as our substitute is true as that is a central tenant in the Christian faith. However, the Penal Substitutionary view goes beyond that by stating that instead of punishing humanity for their sins, the Father instead vents His wrath for the sins of humanity on His Son. While that sounds biblical and true, there are some problems with this view. From an Orthodox/Catholic view and some Protestants, this view puts the myth of redemptive violence at center stage. So at that moment of time when Christ is hanging from the cross, God’s choice to resolve the problem of sin and bring His creation back into fellowship with Him is done through violence (horrendous violence) the killing of His Son. Now, when you think about that, it propagates this myth that violence solves the problem of sin and separation; and this is how every religion and cult throughout humanity has elected to solve their problems of sin—they have this demonic intuition that in order to appease the gods some children or adults need to be sacrificed. Now I am NOT asserting that those who hold to this view of atonement are under demonic influence, but it brings to light how humanity thinks sin should be resolved.
A second problematic feature of this view is, does God really need to vent His wrath on His Son to forgive us? For many throughout history this has painted a view of the Father as a God enraged at His creation, and He is so mad that He needs to vent His wrath on someone (i.e. the Son) so Jesus steps in and says, take Me. So in turn, God unleashes all of His wrath and fury onto the Son, and afterwards, He is satisfied and says, okay, now I can accept humanity. This view, in my view, presents a dichotomy, because we are told in the New Testament that Jesus reveals the love of the Father; so you can see how this is a troublesome view. That is why whenever or wherever this view has been popularized as a dominant view there has been a sense in which the Son is clung on to but the Father is kept at a distance. For example, Martin Luther was terrorized by the Father, but loved and clung to the Son, and even before an atonement view was theorized there was a heretic named Marcion that saw such a dichotomy between the Father and the Son that he sought to eradicate the Old Testament from the Bible. But doesn’t perfect love cast out fear (1 John 4:18)? When Saint Paul is writing to the church in Corinth he says, “. . .namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.” (2 Cor. 5:19) Another question that arises from this view is that if the Father has to vent His wrath against the Son to forgive us, does He really forgive us? When we think about the forgiveness of sins there is a release of debt that takes place. If you owe me something and can not repay me, I can forgive you and the debt—I have the power to do that; and this forgiveness is permeated throughout the gospels. However, in the case of Penal Substitutionary Atonement the debt is simply transferred from humanity to the Son. Lastly, in this theory of atonement there is this idea that the Father is too holy to be in the presence of sinners, and sin, even one sin, is so bad that God can’t possibly have fellowship with us, and that’s why we cannot have fellowship with Him. However, If you’ve even done a cursory reading of the New Testament then you know that Jesus (the incarnate God) was not like that. In fact, it was the sick and sinners that Jesus hung out with the prostitutes, the tax collectors and the high-handed sinners. What a startling contrast from the picture of God that is painted in the Penal Substitutionary Atonement view! And in 2 Corinthians 5:21 we read the God became sin! How can a God that cannot touch sin become sin? There are other problems with this view such as how can someone else become responsible for another person’s sin? So if someone sins and does something wrong how can someone else be held responsible for that sin. But the bottom-line of this view is that a “legal” transaction takes place somewhere up in heaven, and somehow that gets us off the hook. And that is a huge problem that has enormous repercussions because it doesn’t really change us or inspire us to live different lives because the gospel is a "transaction". In other words, it is something done to us but not in us. And that is why when new studies come out revealing the shallow nature of most Christian lives today, it is almost always because people think of the good news as a "transaction" and not a transformation or new life. These are not pot shots at this view of atonement but real questions and problems with it. In the next blog, I will lay out the position known as the Christus Victor view of atonement.
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Just how important is it to know ancient history when reading the Bible? It has been rightly pointed out that most biblical commentaries would be about two thirds smaller without people like Flavius Josephus (a first century writer) and many others. After all, if you crack open almost any New Testament commentary you will immediately encounter these words: According to Josephus. . .that’s because Josephus and many other contemporary non-Christian writers of the time give us box seats to the world that Jesus and His followers lived in by filling in the blanks to certain New Testament texts that might otherwise leave us in the dark. Here’s a really quick example. In Saint Matthew 14, we read that Herodias the wife of Herod the Tetrarch asked for the head of John the Baptist. It was actually Herodias’s daughter that was dancing who was told to ask Herod for John’s head, but what was her name? Thank you, Josephus. According to Josephus, her name was Salome, and because of Josephus, we know John was imprisoned in Herod’s fortress Machaerus located on the northwest corner of the Dead Sea. Now the New Testament doesn’t disclose this information to its audience, but people like Josephus and other contemporary authors give us additional information that is both corroborative and insightful to a fuller understanding of the New testament. Of course there are many other contemporaneous writers during that time that aid in our interpreting of what might otherwise be difficult passages. One such work is Ephesiaca, by Xenophon of Ephesus.
Ephesiaca, is a work from the ancient city of Ephesus which dates to around 52 AD, roughly the same time Saint Paul would have been headquartered in Ephesus—which is immensely helpful in our understanding of first century Ephesus. Ephesiaca, is a dramatic love story between a young couple Anthia and Habrocomes who fall in love in Ephesus and encounter all sorts of crises. Now until recently, this work has largely been overlooked because early on many scholars dated it to the third or fourth centuries, but new scholarship and fresh insights have rightly placed it in its proper era of the mid- first century, Ephesus. But what’s really fascinating about this document is that it speaks about wealth in first century Ephesus, and it has an abundance of correlations with Saint Paul’s letter to Saint Timothy who was residing in Ephesus in the early 60’s AD, which in turn better helps us understand women in the church setting. So why were women told to dress a certain way? Why couldn’t they braid their hair or wear gold? Why were they instructed to remain quiet and submissive? Why were they not allowed to teach? And how can a woman be saved through child bearing? Well, believe it or not, Ephesiaca actually addresses and helps answer all of these questions from a socio-cultural setting because of the role women played in Ephesus to the goddess Artemis, in the Temple of Artemisium. Let’s look at the text. Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, 10 but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness. 11 A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. 12 But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. 13 For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. 14 And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. 15 But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint. --1 Timothy 2:9-15 NASB Now I’m know authority in koine Greek, but I do know that 1 Timothy 2:9-15 contains some of the most difficult language in all of the New Testament. What I mean by that is, many of the words in this passage are ambiguous because they aren’t found anywhere else in the New testament; so what scholars do is, they move out to the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) and then on to other non-biblical Greek writings to find out what these words mean. This is where Ephesiaca becomes extremely helpful because nearly every word of 1 Timothy 2:9-10 appears in Ephesiaca. So without being tedious and boring, I’m going to get right to the point. In ancient Ephesus there stood the Artemisium a temple where Artemis ‘the mother of all life’ resided, and people from all over the world would come to visit this wonder of the ancient world as told by Pausanias (this was likely why Paul set up camp in Ephesus as his home base of operations). In the Artemisium there were women priests, and these women priestesses would braid or wear their hair in this coiffure hair style in the temple precincts as a form of piety to Artemis. These priestesses would also recite prayers and incantations quite loudly in the temple so everyone could hear them. We know from Ephesiaca that during the religious festival to Artemis women adorned themselves gold and fancy attire. So here you have women that are trained from a young age to promote that Artemis was the mother of all life but now converting from paganism to Christianity. Of course the correlation in 1 Timothy is blatantly obvious as these women in Ephesus who were converting to Christianity from paganism were bringing aspects of the Artemis cult into the Church. So by contrast in verses 9-11 of 1 Timothy, women such as Anthia in Ephesiaca who once showed their allegiance to Artemis have since shifted that towards God by changing their outward adornment as they did to Artemis to being pious and conservative demonstrating their deeds to the One true God. The societal and cultural pressures on these women must have been tremendous as Artemis was a greatly feared deity in Ephesus who controlled fertility as well (more on that in a minute). So what did Saint Paul mean when he said, “But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became the transgressor.”--1 Timothy 2:12-14. I have explained my position regarding women teaching and having authority over men in a previous blog, so I won’t expand on that here. However, I will say this, since joining the Orthodox Church, I humbly stand beside the teachings of the Church and accept their position of male headship in the Church. With that being said, the most significant person aside from Christ Himself, is the Virgin Mary. So why does Saint Paul bring up Adam and Eve? Again in order to really appreciate what Saint Paul is getting at here we need to turn to Xenephon and Ephesiaca. In the Artemis Isis cult we discover a warped view of the creation of man and woman. In the Artemis myth we are told that woman was the author of man and that in this creation account Ra (the man) was the one who was deceived. So as Gary Hoag points out, Saint Paul seems to be demythologizing the Ephesian’s thinking and setting the record straight. So to appeal to this text as Saint Paul using Adam and Eve as an object lesson as to why a woman cannot teach seems unlikely. And lastly, a woman will be saved through childbirth? Again, we revisit Artemis, ‘the giver of all life’, ‘the goddess of childbearing’, ‘the goddess of vengeance’ and ‘the goddess in whom all women trust’. Well, women who chose to turn to the God of Christianity felt their lives were at risk and that they might die during childbirth—suffering the wrath of the goddess. However, Saint Paul is also aware of this myth and offers hope in that while the pressure from their old religious setting was strong; they could approach pregnancy without fear by placing their faith and trust in God without the fear of vengeance from Artemis. |
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