A Violent, Dramatic & Holistic Model

Although the CVM provides an explication of soteriology in the overall life of Jesus, this does not denigrate the on-going centrality of Christ’s passion. Aulén is right to note that if the earthly life of Christ as a whole is to be regarded as a continuous process of victorious

conflict, it is His death that is the final and decisive battle.875 It is only the CVM that sees this final event as a battle, or at least presents it in a manner consistent with the normative use of warfare terminology.876 The CVM presents itself, therefore, as the only model to explain both the ontological and cosmic nature of the atonement whilst also engaging with and integrating the concept of divine violence.

873

Aulén, Christus, ix.

874

W.C. Placher, ‘Christ Takes our Place – Rethinking Atonement’, Interpretation 53:1, 1999, 5-20, 16.

875

Aulén, Christus, 30.

876

battle > n. 1. a sustained fight between organized armed forces. 2. a lengthy and difficult conflict or struggle. > v. fight or struggle tenaciously with an opponent or to achieve something. ‘battle’, A. Stevenson and M. Waite (eds.), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, Twelfth Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, 115.

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All the atonement models agree that the problem is humankind’s radical and complete falling away from God’s best purposes; relationship between them is shattered and division

engendered, with no possibility of human rectification.877 A divine paradigm shift had to occur if the way was to be opened for God and humankind to be back in right relations - a new epoch had to be heralded. Indeed, the mark of this new era is, according to Moltmann, the crucified Christ, or as he calls this event, the specific thing about Christian theology, both as regards its identity and as regards its relevance. For Moltmann, Jesus Christ on the cross does not merely stamp its content, but rather gives Christian theology its form and its Sitz im

Leben.878 The theological and historical paradigm shift was brought about, for Moltmann, through this particular Christ-event and so in regard to an authentically Christian future and sense of hope the starting point lies in faith’s fundamental recognition that the anticipation of the divine future took place in the crucified Christ.879

In a similar vein, Boyd notes that humans are reconciled because the cosmos has been

reconciled and this because the rebel powers have been put in their place in order that humans can once again be presented “holy and blameless” before God.880

This emphasises the spiritual and cosmic nature of the problem and its solution – a situation that only God could rectify and then only with the exercise of positive violence, albeit reluctantly and in a primarily spiritual context; for God alone can atone, because only God can bear the cost of atonement.881

In his explication of what happened in this ‘spiritual context’ Wright notes that when Jesus explained the meaning of his forthcoming death, he did not give his followers a theory, neither did he give them a set of scriptural texts; instead, he gave them a meal.882 This Passover meal, Wright contends, was not one in which they only looked backwards to the miracles by which God had released the Jews from Egypt; but rather it was a meal which also pointed forwards to the great sacrifice by which God would rescue His people from the bonds of their ultimate slavery. This, he argues, would be the real Exodus and one in which the

877

“Creation involves risk, and this risk in turn issues in sin and evil which threaten the creatures with dissolution and distortion.” Macquarrie, Principles, 268. Fiddes notes that the backdrop to a universally comprehensible concept of salvation is the assumption that, “…the life of human beings and that of the wider natural world is distorted, self-destructive, or failing to reach its true potential.” Fiddes, ‘Salvation’, 176.

878

J. Moltmann, The Future of Creation, London: SCM Press, 1979, 60.

879 Moltmann, Future, 57. 880 Boyd, ‘Christus’, 33. 881 Hanson, ‘Grace’, 154. 882 Wright, Simply, 176.

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tyrant defeated would not be Rome, but rather the dark power standing behind that great, cruel empire.883

Wright further delineates what, or rather whom, this ‘dark power’ would be, arguing that somehow, Jesus’ forthcoming death will constitute his victory, or rather God’s victory, over ‘this world’s ruler’, who is not merely the Caesar, but rather the power that stands behind the Caesar, using him for its dark, destructive purposes.884 Likewise, in assessing salvation in the book of Revelation Grimrud observes that the veneer of respectability and claim for divine support for the way of empire is torn away and that John’s intent is to reveal the ‘beastly’ nature of Rome and thereby to lay bare the actual source of Rome’s power – not God at all but the Dragon, the Satan, himself.885

Whereas other atonement theories are by their own definition and understanding

metaphoricalthe CVM is instead, we again assert, simultaneously both a metaphor and an actual representation of the ontological, cosmic and spiritual reality that there is a Devil who reigns and rules over a dark kingdom. On the other hand, Wink, in his consideration of the eventual overthrow of various systems, such as Eastern Europe and China, by means of their new desire to embrace democracy, compares them to a time when God’s system will replace the Domination System, a term which he has previously closely associated with Satan – and by “Satan” he is referring to the world-encompassing spirit of the Domination System.886

This will be a ‘replacement’, Wink argues, not achieved by violent confrontation, but rather by means of a movement whereby increasing numbers of people find themselves drawn towards the values of ‘God’s system’.887

This optimistic, humanistic and profoundly metaphorical perspective finds a parallel with MIT and is a representation of a means by which God will ‘overcome’ a conceptual evil via a bloodless and peaceful ‘coup’; there is, of course, no ontological enemy for Wink and therefore no need to confront and defeat this ‘adversary’ in anything other than a metaphorical sense.

Conversely, we assert that in his Virgin Birth, life, teaching, example, death and resurrection and not at the cross as an isolated event, Christ actually overcame and defeated this being, the Satan, literally and violently wresting back from him the humans that he had previously

883 Wright, Simply, 176-177. 884 Wright, Simply, 178. 885 Grimsrud, Atonement, 222. 886 Wink, Engaging, 9. 887 Wink, Engaging, 58.