Once you wade past the higher critical stuff in the exposition, Forde's section on the atonement in this former textbook of the ELCA is really quite good. I wasn't sure where he was going with his criticism of penal substitution, but when he gets into the main body of the thing, he starts to make more sense. Some of Forde's criticisms of the penal substitution theory are in my opinion quite valid, especially of constructions wherein Jesus makes God merciful or buys God's mercy by dying. That really isn't a biblical idea, and Forde points out the contradiction in saying God sent the Son because of his mercy and saying at the same time that Jesus had to die in order to make God merciful. He criticizes both liberal moral exemplar theories and Western vicarious satisfaction theories for making Jesus the hero of a religious system and de-scandalizing the Cross. Since Forde's big thing is the theology of the cross, his focus is on the Cross as an action of God toward man rather than a transaction between man (represented by Jesus) and God. I don't think I can sum up Forde's treatment with a simple theory, and I think Forde himself would be irritated by any attempt to do so (he hated abstract theories of the atonement). However, I do think that because Forde adopts a higher critical view of the Gospels, he overlooks Jesus drinking the cup of the wrath of God or his own connection of his death with the OT in the institution of the Supper. Anyway, here's a quote I liked:
Jesus has to die, precisely because God proposes to be merciful. God proposes to be merciful concretely and actually in Jesus. God proposes to come to us and say, "Your sins are forgiven." God proposes to open the eyes of the blind, to unstop the ears of the deaf, to make the lame walk, and to preach good news to the poor. We cannot let that happen here. Anyone who intends to carry out such a program must be prepared to die. Where could anyone get the authority to do that? Forgiveness full and free with no strings attached is just as dangerous and criminal here as robbery and sedition. It cannot be allowed. It shatters all order. So he must die, just as the thief and the rebel. But he will not desist. "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children...and you would not!" So comes about his sacrifice. He dies at our hand. Even in death he cries, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." And just so it is for us.
And here's a Luther quote from the same work, definitely an odd one:
Even if one wants to retain the word satisfaction and say thereby that Christ has made satisfaction for our sins, nevertheless it is too weak and says too little about the grace of Christ and does not sufficiently honor Christ's suffering. One must give them higher honor because he did not only make satisfaction for sin but also redeemed us from death, the devil, and the power of hell, and guarantees us an eternal kingdom of grace as well as the daily forgiveness of subsequent sins, and so becomes for us (as St. Paul, I Cor 1:1 says) an eternal redemption and sanctification.
10 comments:
John Stott (in The Cross of Christ) is very good on putting forward an approach to penal substitution that avoids the pitfalls you describe (the merciful Jesus persuading an unmerciful Father to relent; the atonement as a transaction between humanity and God). He talks about God's "self-satisfaction by self-substitution" - in other words, the whole process of the atonement has its origins in the merciful purposes of the triune God.
So I suppose Stott would see the atonement as more "internal" to the Trinity rather than a movement from man to God or from God to man.
Where's the Luther quote from, Josh?
Also, Hamann tackles the question a bit too in *On Being a Christian* pp. 49ff.
Being that I'm writing a dissertation on Forde's view of atonement I must say that his view of God's mercy in Jesus is completely incoherent and contrary to Luther and the Lutheran confessions, not to mention the Bible. In actuality it is based on a the teaching of a 19th century Lutheran Pietist(moderate Liberal) named J.C.K. von Hofmann.
If we accept the distinction between law and gospel as two distinctive activities of God grounded in God's hidden being, it is correct to say that God in Jesus did not need a payment for sins to become merciful. On the other hand, God outside of Jesus isn't merciful- he works death and life and all and all- as Luther say in "Boundage of the Will." God in Jesus therefore must fulfill the law through his death on the cross to defeat the activity of the law. Basically there's no way of getting around it if you want to maintain law/gospel. If you say that God just love and not wrath and law, then you preaching becomes "God is love, so comform to his lovingness"- which is law and not gospel. Forde can't get around the necessity to fulfill the law and it shows in what he actually ends up saying. If you read closely, you'll notice that Forde says that the law still must be fulfilled- God outside of Christ is still relentlessly working all in all in his wrath. So how is God's activity of wrath neutralized? By us having faith. Since faith fulfills the law, we're free from the law when we're doing what the law wants us to do by having faith. So, Jesus engages in a elaborate gesture in the cross and resurrection and gets us into compliance with the law through convicting us of sin and then resurrecting us through maintaining his mercy. Basically this screws up both the law and the gospel- the law I won't go into since it's more complicated (allow me to just say that Forde's position on the preaching of the law is virtually the same, though not directly same was Angricola- who is actually praises in several essays!!!!). On the side of the gospel, it becomes effectively an incomplete promise. Though it is actually God's mercy, the law is still left unfulfilled. The law is only fulfilled when you fulfill it with faith. You don't really get the full effect in the piece in the Christian Dogmatics and the whole thought process behind this unless you read his dissertation "The Law-Gospel Debate." I remember reading the piece in the Christian Dogmatics last spring getting ready to start writing my first chapters (not having read it since Seminary) and just finding it almost impossible to get through it because of it's sheer badness, half truths and persistent emoting instead of reasoning or reading sacred scripture closely.
Lastly, a word on his scholarship in that piece on the NT and on Luther. First, I found it amazing that he said nothing about the OT (this is likely due to his unconscious Pietism and Liberalism- his interest in Barth has to do with the emphasis on predestination in the Old Norwiegen synod and little more). Secondly, his NT scholarship is outdated even for the early 80s and reflects Bultmann mainly. He believes he needs to read past the text to hard, gritty reality of the cross- this is non-sense because the text conveys both the work of the Holy Spirit on the mind of the author, but also how the earliest Christians experienced Jesus as a historical event. One cannot divource the scriptural categories through which they interpreted reality from the reality itself. After all his Gnostic reading past the text, he ultimately gives us an account of Jesus to be found in 19th century Liberalism (being that was taken from the uncredited von Hofmann a Pietist-moderate liberal!). His Luther scholarship boarders on the manipulative and the amazingly silly. First, he keeps on giving summary statements claiming that Luther's position was x, without quoting anything or giving any proof. Then he keeps on claiming (with Aulen and von Hofmann) that Luther denied penal substitution (which is ludicris, as any reader of the Catechisms, hymns, large Galatians commentary, to name only a few, knows). When it gets truly great is when he starts actually quoting Luther. For example, he quoates a passage in which Luther teaches penal substitution in order to prove that Luther didn't believe in penal substitution. There are many other instances of this. In the "Law-Gospel Debate" he quotes Luther as saying that the "law is eternal" in order to prove that Luther did not believe the law to be eternal.
Yeah, I definitely thought Forde's interaction with the OT was lacking and that he crippled himself with an extremely critical approach to the Gospels instead of looking at them as genuine. I should look up the Luther quote. The piece in CD is not all that coherent, I admit, but I thought there was some good stuff in there.
I'm not sure I can be reading either quote aright.
Forde is sounding a bit odd (I find it hard to believe it's the same guy who wrote Theology of the Cross). It's like he's saying that the Father's plan to be merciful "concretely and actually" doesn't properly include the Cross, that the Father didn't will the death of the Son, and that the Son didn't really die willingly. Or have I mis-understood? It's a powerful way to look at the cross, for sure, but it just seems to be lacking something.
And unless Luther is simply attacking the kind of "penal substitution only" people who don't acknowledge the victory over sin, death and the devil, he seems to be tacitly suggesting that saving us from the Father's legal wrath deserves less honour than saving us from the devil's wiles. Again, have I mis-understood?
I don't think you're misunderstanding the Luther at all the quote at all.
Forde does think that Father and Christ willed the cross, but not to pay for the sins of the world. It's merely to reveal to us our sin, so that we can recognize our sin, then repent and have faith. When we have faith, our faith fulfills the law, so we're justified. He quite explicitly doesn't like the idea of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ. There is some imputation, but it's the mercy of God's forgiveness.
One therefore, according to Forde's view of the preaching one just goes around giving people forgiveness- which is good of course, but there's a twist. If Christ didn't fulfill the law, then how can one preach a law which he didn't fulfill? So, you forgive people and it implies to them that they're sinners. Some people get you implication and repent and have faith, others don't and don't.
Phil,
About your interpretation of the Luther quote: I don't think that it's necessarily the right one. Here are the two relevant claims that I get from the Luther quote regarding the issues you're wondering about:
1. Saying that Christ has made satisfaction for our sins is "too weak" and "says too little" and "does not sufficiently honor Christ's sufering."
2. Christ's suffering must be given higher honor, because that suffering was not only a satisfaction for sin, but also redeemed us from death, the devil, and the power of hell, and guarantees an eternal kingdom, daily forgiveness, etc.
How does saying any of the above imply that satisfaction deserves less honor than does "saving us from the devil's wiles?" It doesn't seem to. For here is a clearly possible case, apparently consistent with the above two claims from Luther: saying that Christ's suffering was a satisfaction for sin honors (by itself) Christ's suffering to degree 9 (the number is arbitrary), saying that Christ's suffering saves us from the devil's wiles also honors (by itself) Christ's suffering to degree 9, and so on. So each one honors Christ's suffering equally. It is just that Christ's suffering resulted in all of the various things (mentioned by Luther) being accomplished, and so that suffering's cumulative honor should be (assuming that there are 6 different accomplishments enumerated above, all equal in value) 54. Thus, if one says that Christ's suffering satisfied for sins, one honors Christ to degree 9. That is too weak, too little, and lacks sufficient honor. One should attribute to Christ all of the other honors, too, in order to honor him to degree 54. (There may be an implicit "only" in the phrase, "if one [only] says that Christ's suffering satisfied for sins," and in Luther's phrasing. To me, even the little context we have here, and what (little) I know of Luther, suggests this.)
The above seems consistent with Luther's quote, and a plausible way of reading him (with the exception of the talk of values and so on). It does not at all imply that one accomplishment is of less value than any other; in fact, it denies that.
But perhaps you avoid this response in your caveat beginning with the words, "Unless Luther . . . " In that case, it might be that we agree here, and I just think the scenario described in the clause following "unless Luther" is in fact instantiated.
Jason
Aha… so there really have been people who think that God demonstrated our injustice in this, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for an educational illustration.
As for Luther: well, no-one's perfect, eh? ; )
To clarify, my reply was to Jack, not Jason. The joy of being on the other side of the Atlantic.
Jason: Like you, I hope my "unless" is what was going on; it's just it doesn't, for some reason, quite read like that. The phrase "even if one wants to retain the word satisfaction" makes it appears as if he's responding to an argument which he finds to be sound, that the word—the concept, even?—ought to be ditched.
Over here, we have a commercial with the catchphrase, I saw this and thought of you:
"A thread that runs through so many of these alternative accounts, from Abelard's moral influence view to Gerhard Forde's crucifixion-as-car-wreck, is the reduction of the cross to a revelation of divine attributes. In Abelard's case, God is love. In Albrecht Ritschl's case, God is loving Father. In Forde's case, God is merciful. …
"Gerhard Forde's view reveals in particular the shortcomings of seeing the cross mainly if not exclusively in terms of its physicality. The Luther Seminary professor contends that, rather than bearing God's wrath upon sin, Jesus seeks to persuade people that God's wrath doesn't really exist. Jesus sits there and takes it as "the world that will not have a God that forgives" beats up on him. Forde's Jesus tries to disprove God's wrath by subjecting himself to the wrath of man."
From this article in ModRef by Brent McGuire. (I don't claim he's representing Forde fairly or accurately, but extract the substantive criticism, and I think that's what I was trying to say.)
Post a Comment