Atonement - victor, co-sufferer and example?

I've been exploring ideas around the atonement (as you do on a Monday evening!)-

Christus Victor (the term coined by Gustav Aulen in 1931 to describe the common theology of the purpose and process of Christ's death on the cross in the early Church, "that God, in order to redeem humanity, sent Christ as a "ransom" or "bait" so that the Devil, not knowing Christ couldn't die permanently, would kill him, and thus lose all right to humanity following the Resurrection." - written about by Gregory of Nyssa), Substitutionary Atonement (which develops from the writing of Anselm in the 11th Century - Christ died on the cross as a full payment for sins, which satisfied both the wrath and the righteousness of God, so that He could forgive sinners without compromising His own holy standard.) and Subjective (Moral) atonement (Abelard) which suggests that Christs act of love was primarliy intended to inspire us to love in the same way...

Instinctively I find myself in more sympathy with Christus Victor than I do with (at least) Penal Substitution -  Theopedia describes Christus Victor thus

As the term Christus Victor indicates, the idea of “ransom” should not be seen in terms (as Anselm did) of a business transaction, but more of a rescue or liberation of humanity from the slavery of sin. Unlike the Satisfaction or Penal-substitution views of the atonement rooted in the idea of Christ paying the penalty of sin to satisfy [God's] demands of justice, the Christus Victor view is rooted in the incarnation and how Christ entered into human misery and wickedness and thus redeemed it.

(I came across this old article from Jason Clarke - Christus Victor: Atonement for the Postmodern World? - in which Jason asks some very good and important questions.)

I also sense a creative tension (from which truth may spring?) between Christus Victor and Moltmann's "Crucified God",

Anyone who suffers without cause first thinks that he has been forsaken by God.  God seems to him to be the mysterious, incomprehensible God who destroys the good fortune that he gave.  But anyone who cries out to God in his suffering echoes the death-cry of the dying Christ, the Son of God.  In that case it is not just a hidden someone set over against him, to whom he cries, but in a profound sense the human God, who cries with him and intercedes for him with his cross, where man in his torment is dumb.

God heals the sicknesses and the griefs by making the sicknesses and the griefs his suffering and his grief. In the image of the crucified God the sick and dying can see themselves, because in them the crucified God recognizes himself

Moltmann seems to me to speak of a deep trinitarian experience of the atonement, one in which the whole of God suffers in and with creation... I have to say this seems to make more sense to me and of my experience/understanding of God and is consistent with both the Trinity and the Incarnation... which leads us to respond and follow a la Abelard!  I guess the reality is rich and deep and may even contain some sense of penal substitution, though like many my sense it is has to be far far more than the simple substitutionary account I grew up with and is the 'received wisdom' in the church.

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Comments

[Andrew Dowsett]

I reckon every one of these ideas about atonement is partial, each catching a glimpse of something bigger. For me, the instinctive distaste a lot of people have with regard to the substitutionary model - which is grounded in Scripture as much as the others - is not so much to do with the idea itself as to do with a loss of understanding of covenant. When two people enter, freely, into covenant with each other, an exchange of identities takes place. So, for example, God takes for himself Abram's identity as Great Father, and in exchange the childless Abram is to be recognised as sharing in God's identity as Father of Nations, Abraham. An appreciation of covenant as a central theme running through scripture alongside the theme of God's kingdom (from where we get Christus Victor) enables us to see substitutionary atonement as Jesus choosing to take on our sinful identity (and as such, re-grounds substituionary atonement in the incarnation) and declare that we are to be identified as sharing in his sinless identity in exchange. This choice on Jesus' part to enter into covenant with us also addresses the misrepresentation of God the Father as cosmic child-abuser - that rather sub-trinitarian view of God that has been put forward in relation to the atonement debate in recent years.

[Matt Rees]

The problem I have with many of the various models for the atonement is that they tend to leave us in the place of being an observer rather than a participant. So the cross has become an object for meditation and devotion rather than a process which we must enter and by which all things are being made new. This is particularly problematic in the penal substitution model which basically says 'Jesus died so I don't have to' - in other words all the action is happening somewhere else and my only involvement is perhaps to be thankful for Christ's act but it fundamentally doesn't really involve me.
For me, the transformative power of the cross is revealed when we realise that there's a process going on which I must participate in, not just observe. So - I must die i.e. death is not something I avoid because Jesus died in my place - but I die with Christ and then I'm raised with Christ (or 'in Christ' as Paul preferred to say it). And this process gives meaning to all the many 'deaths' we all go through - in our suffering, our failure, in wrestling with our ego, exposing it and dying to self. These are all ways in which I am participating in the big process of renewal which the cross is all about.
BTW in your review of the models you should also take a look at Irenaeus who I've found very helpful on all this.

[matybigfro]

Andrew's description of Substitutionary attonement seem's to me to resembles the christus victor that Mark's desribes more than the Penal Substitution I remember from my day's in the evangelican cirus. It seem's to me that the substitution of Identity that is being describe is very much a liberating act liberating us from the bondage of a sin labelled identity for christ's sin free identity.

and for most of christianity when talking substitution we're talking a Penal Substitution. I struggle with the validity of the covenantal desciption of substituation when adding a dimension where God identity remains Judge, Jurour abd executioner.

[Tim]

Funny I too have been reading atonement material over the past week - John McLeod Campbell The Nature of Atonement. Some would still consider him to be a heretic. I have found it to be fascinating and very helpful.

[cathryn Thomas]

Nice one Mark....
Bite sized with a lot of chewy meat to savour. Agreed it's not as simple as "pick one"... I also like Moltmann's thoughts..... now i'm in Selah/ponder mode!
Shalom dude....