Did God Kill Jesus?: Searching for Love in History's Most Famous Execution by Tony Jones

Author:Tony Jones
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-03-23T23:00:00+00:00

“Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

“Where, O death, is your victory?

Where, O death, is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.10

But Jesus’ victory is over death, not Satan. Satan, if such a being exists, may be as alive as ever, but he is surely not God’s equal.

Anselm, in developing substitutionary atonement, found more than a few holes in the Victory model. For one, he argued, Satan is an outlaw with no bargaining power; God didn’t need to cut a deal with Satan to get the human race back. In fact, God had never allowed Satan to be in charge in the first place.

For another, what “deep magic from the dawn of time” binds God to act in a certain way? It seems that if God is the Creator of all that is, then God can act any way that God deems appropriate. It seems rather unlikely that God would set up the cosmos in such a way that Satan could gain the upper hand and force God to negotiate a deal. But in the Victory theory, God does seem to have given up a significant amount of power. In fact, God is reduced to a sparring partner with Satan.11 We’ve got to believe that if Satan were the real problem, God could crush him in an instant under his proverbial thumb.

Victory theory redeems the atonement in many ways, releasing God from the legal and judicial commitments to which Payment binds him. It portrays a God who is fighting for us, whether it be against opponents metaphysical or metaphorical. But it’s just too reliant on a premodern view of the cosmos, populated by spiritual beings at war, to be very helpful to many modern people. In Victory, God is too small and Satan is too big. And human beings are merely pawns in a spiritual battle over which we have little sway. It’s hard to see how a life of following Jesus is a journey of self-discovery and spiritual maturation if the real action is taking place in the clouds. God’s love for us is preeminent in the Victory model, but at the cost of human agency, and that’s a price too high. Jesus called his disciples to follow him, not into battle, but into fullness of life and into a relationship with God.

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