Nature of the Atonement

While I still lean towards believing that Paul sees sin as a "force", an independent "thing", I do not think that this position is really all that central to what I was hoping to explore.

I have stated that God used Torah to "lure" sin - whatever kind of thing sin is - into Isreal and then finally into Jesus where sin was condemned. I will now begin to make the Scriptural case.

Consider the always enigmatic Romans 5:20:

The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more

I think Paul means what he says - God uses Torah to make Israel more sinful.

And then we get this in Romans 7:

Did that {Torah, by context} which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful

The "in order that" and the "so that" (both the same greek word) indicate divine intent. God has, as per Romans 5:20, given Torah to Israel with the intent of bringing sin to its full height of expression in Israel.

Why would God do such a thing? I think that one looks to Romans 8:3 one can glimpse the solution - He (God) is luring sin out "into the open", concentrating in one "place" (Israel)before it is finally concentrated into the flesh of one man - Jesus - and then condemned on the cross.

Remember: Romans 8:3 tells us that it was sin that was condemned on the cross.

For those who do not share this view, precisely what sense do you make of Romans 5:20 where Paul could not be more clear - Torah was given to make sin increase in Israel. How do you accomodate this is in your theology?

 

Not really. Sin does not have to be a force to have the property of being "concentrated" - it can be any kind of "commodity". I use the word "lure" in the context a supposition that sin is a force - a supposition that I still think is probably correct. But the proposition of sin being specifically a force is not necessary to the argument. As long as it can be concentrated and localized, I suggest the argument still works.

I have spent lots of time doing this very thing. 99 % of the ideas I am putting forward come from theological works. I only wish I could up with such insightful ideas.

Yes, but what do you think is the reason why God used Torah to increase sin? There must be some reason, and any complete theology cannot really leave this issue hanging.

 

Somehow I am not succeeding in communicating the fact that just because a scripture "A" is consistent with your position, that does not mean that your position is right - other scriptures are sometimes needed to disambiguate between 2 competing interpretation of scripture "A", both of which are consistent with that first scripture.

I tried to explain through the example of the "you cannot put too much water on the nuclear reactor" example, but apparently, we still do not understand each other.

I have not denied this - I have tried to give a picture of the mechanics of this that is true to the scriptures. I am saying - or rather I am suggesting that Paul is saying - that sin is a quantity that can be localized, first in Israel, and then in Jesus. This does not deny the basic idea that the cross is the place where sin is dealt with. Instead, it gives a model of what that process actually was all about.

If I understand you properly - and perhaps I do not - you are suggesting that Jesus was in some sense "punished" or condemned on the cross. Romans 8:3 seems to rule that out. It is sin that is condemned on the cross, not Jesus. But this does not mean that Jesus' death does not fully and sufficiently procure our justification:

For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man,...

Please tell us what you think God was up to in giving Torah to Israel to make sin increase.

 

I will keep trying to explain this. Those texts, while consistent with your position are also consistent with other positions that are at odds with your position. Let me ask you a question and please do not take this as condescending. If a witness to a crime says "the killer was over 6 feet tall", this statement is consistent with both of the following:

1. The killer is Fred, who is 6 feet 6 inches;
2. The killer is Joe, who is 6 feet 4 inches.

Obviously, at least one of the above statements is false. The texts you provided have this same feature. While they are workable within your interpretive scheme, they are also workable in mine. I do not think think the same is true of Romans 8:3, which seems to clearly speak against the view that "Jesus was punished in our place". Why? Because Romans 8:3 clearly states that it was sin that was condemned on the cross, not Jesus.

But you are not being entirely faithful to what the Romans 7 text says (at least in part). And your interpretation here is at odds with Romans 5:20.

Romans 5:20 says that the Torah made sin increase or abound. And in Romans 7, Paul says that Torah does not merely show us sin, he clearly indicates that "sin would become utterly sinful" - the Youngs literal version has sin becoming exceedingly sinful.

The Romans 5 text is clear - the sin not only is shown to be sin, it is increased. And while there may be some slight ambiguity, the Romans 7 text makes the same claim. Over and above "shining a spotlight" on sin, the Torah increases sin. This is a distinct, although related point.

I politely suggest that your exegesis does not take Paul seriously enough. While it is indeed true that Torah, as you say, exposes how sinful we are, the language in Romans 5 and 7 is clear that something more is being asserted - sin is actually increasing and growing in national Israel.

 

One of the questions that I want to explore is this: Do the scriptures teach a fundamentally different thing about the nature of the atonement than what appears to be the mainstream position? I understand the mainstream position to be consist in the idea that there is some of universal "law" or principle that requires that someone must be punished in order for sin to be forgiven. And Jesus is uniquely qualified to serve in that role because He led a sinless life. This position seems to be grounded in notions of moral culpabilty and the demands of a morally rooted system of justice, where the demands of this system do not allow God to forgive sin without someone paying the price. Of course, it does seem odd to many that God cannot simply decide to forgive sin - why must someone die? Can't God forgive our sin the way we forgive each other's sin. When my friend sins against me, I do not need to "punish" him (or anyone) in order to forgive him. So why can't God do this?

This is a very abstract model of atonement. We have the moral category of sin and we have the abstract idea that sin cannot be forgiven unless punishment is meted out to somebody. I am not saying that this idea is absurd. However, we really have a hard time making sense of it - we have no sense of why things are this way. In other words, we have a hard time making sense of the idea that someone's death 2000 years ago is connected to my sin of today. Again, this mystery alone does not render the concept unworkable, although I do think it should stimulate us to explore other possibilities.

And it simply will not do to declare that "that's the way it is - that is what the scriptures say". I will point out again that the scriptural texts about this matter should not be assumed to unambiguously drive one to such a conclusion. Let me try again to make this point. Suppose we all forget the tradtional ideas about this and assume that the only scripture about the atonement is this: "Man will die because of his sin but Jesus rescues man from this fate by dying on the cross". Does this force us to the kind of system as described in the first paragraph?

No it does not. This hypothetical atonement text indeed works with such a view. But it also works with the "disease-cure" interpretation - that sin is like an infectious virus that would ensure our ultimate death, but on the cross, Jesus defeats this virus and hence cures us". This model - this interpretation - works perfectly well with the text in question. We do not need to think in terms of "moral culpabilty" and "justice", we can think in terms of "disease" and "cure".

At the end of the day, either view is a model - it is a metaphor that we use to make sense of what happened at Calvary. I am inclined to think that the "disease" - "cure" metaphor fits better with the overall scriptural picture, not least with Romans 8:3 in particular which does great damage to the standard view by its clear assertion that it is sin, not Jesus, who is condemned at Calvary.

This is a complex question and I am not suggesting a black and white answer. I suspect that there are elements of both these models, if not others, at work.

In future posts, I plan to argue for the notion that sin has the property of being subject to localization and concentration. First, God concentrates sin in national Israel through the strange action of Torah. And then sin is further concentrated down to the point where it is localized in the flesh of one person - the faithful Messiah Jesus.

 

I do not see how this works. Mere awareness of the sin, by itself, does not increase sin. If Fred commits 100 sins on Monday and is unaware of this, and then on Tuesday Fred is made aware of his sin, his sin does not actually increase unless he commits more than 100 sins on Tuesday. I am only taking Paul at his word. And in Romans 5 and 7 he says that sin increased through the action of Torah.

No doubt, Torah also makes us aware of sin. But that is a conceptually distinct matter. When I become aware of 5 deer on the lawn, this awareness has no influence on the number of deer on the lawn. Same thing here. Torah both makes Israel aware of her sin and it actually increases her sin.

I politely suggest that one should give Paul - an educated Pharisee - the benefit of the doubt re being able to say what he means. And in Romans 5:20, he does not say that Torah makes us aware of sin - although that is indeed true - he tells us that Torah made sin increase or abound.

 

I assume that the ground rules are that that we take the text and consider whether it can be made to work with my interpretation. I assume that you understand that it is entirely possible that a single text can indeed work with 2 interpretations. All that this means is that there is some ambiguity - the text needs other texts to disambiguate it.

If you are going to argue that it is simply not possible for a single isolated text to be consistent with 2 different and competing interpretations, then you misunderstand the very nature of language and we have a bigger problem to deal with.

Here is the block from Galatians 3:10-14

All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law."[c] 11Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, "The righteous will live by faith."[d] 12The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, "The man who does these things will live by them."[e] 13Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree

Does this text require us to conclude that Jesus is being personally ascribed the guilt of all our sins and then specifically punished by God in order to satisfy some judicial framework that requires someone to be punished?

Of course it does not. In fact, this particular text, while indeed perhaps consistent with such a view - the view that Jesus is punished in our place - is more consistent with the view that I am proposing.

Suppose that God is interested in de-activating or otherwise "blasting" sin to smithereens. And suppose that the only way this can occur is for the sin of the world to be "collected" into one human being. God then blasts sin but in the process cannot help but also kill the human being who has courageously stepped forward.

This is entirely consistent with the statement that Jesus "became a curse for us".

As I have already pointed out, note how the word "curse" is used in Genesis 3:

Cursed is the ground because of you;

What happens to the ground? It gets cursed. What does it mean for the ground to get cursed? Is God telling us that the ground is being held judicially responsible for Adam's sin? Not likely. Instead we are being told that the ground - the very fabric of creation is damaged because of sin.

What happens to Jesus as per the Galatians text? He is cursed.

We need to let scripture interpret scripture. The use of the term "curse" naturally sends us back to this original sin passage where it is clear that "to be cursed" is not to be "ascribed blame" or punished, but rather to be damaged or broken.

And that is what happens at Calvary. Jesus is broken or damaged unto death as God attacks the thing he really wants to condemn - sin. Again, I repreat Romans 8:3 which shows that it is sin that is the target of God's wrath, not Jesus:

For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature,God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man

 

Increase means what it means - to get larger in magnitude. If you re-define increase to mean that "become aware", then you are really saying that awareness of X makes X increase. This is simply not true. When something increases, it increases. Being made aware of something achieves something, of course, but it does not cause the thing you are being made aware of to increase.

The Law does make people aware of their sin. But we need to take Paul at his word - it also makes sin abound or increase.

Consider a bathroom scale. You weight what you weigh whether you know it or not. Suppose that you weigh 150 pounds and do not know it. You then buy a scale and step on it. You discover that you weigh 150 pounds - you become aware of your weight. But the purchase of the scale and what you learn by stepping on it does not make your weight increase.

No one would write - paralleling Romans 5:20 - "the scale was added so that your weight will increase".