Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Premodern/Postmodern Atonement

Apologies, it has been a month since the last post...life has been on the wild and crazy. Where we left off, Greg posted a critique of penal substitution atonement. So continuing with thoughts on the atonement, here is a paper I wrote for a class. Warning - this is for those who want to Nerd Out with your Geek Out!




Irenaeus a Shepherd of the Atonement for a Post-foundational Society

            Singular modes of causality increasingly are called into question because of an expanding understanding of the complexity and interconnectedness of reality. This, coinciding with the apparent collapse of foundationalism, has contributed to the complexity of postmodern-matrix thinking. Theological thought has not been exempt from these trends. This paper proposes that Irenaeus’ use of the “Good Shepherd” metaphor is beneficial and relevant for communicating an understanding of the atonement to a post-foundational society, as it ties together incarnation, persuasion, and empowerment, as a web of foundations using image and narrative rather than abstract linear sequences of causality.            Prior to articulating the benefit and relevance of rediscovering imagery of the Good Shepherd for a post-foundational mode of thought, an overview of Irenaeus’ understanding of the atonement and post-foundationalism will be outlined after which these two concepts will be drawn together.
            Irenaeus’ atonement theology is largely written as a polemic against Gnosticism. It was “the gnostic who sought to give a philosophical interpretation to Christian ‘mythology’ and so developed a highly intellectual system in which gnosis and ritual, the conceptual and the symbolic, while sharply distinguished, were religiously correlated.”[1] Against this division of concept and symbol, Irenaeus attempted to rearticulate a grounded Christian belief that was not solely abstraction. While the Gnostics denied the Incarnation of Christ and his bodily resurrection because of the material properties involved,[2] Irenaeus retorted, “he [Christ] too had flesh and blood, recapitulating in himself the original work of the Father, not something different, and seeking what was lost.”[3] In this statement, Irenaeus not only affirms the physicality of Christ, he draws in a large understanding of what constitutes the atonement. For Irenaeus, the atonement is threefold: incarnation, obedience, and recapitulation.
            Incarnation is often assumed in discussions of the atonement, but for Irenaeus it figures prominently. It is the incarnation that begins the work of atonement; it is not simply a preconditioned requirement for Jesus’ later experience of the cross. In the incarnation, “the Logos “assimilated himself to man and man to himself” in his life and in his passion.”[4] This radical joining of God and humanity in one person begins the process of reconciliation. Incarnation acted as the beginning point where “the disobedience of the first Adam was undone through the complete obedience of the second Adam, so that many should be justified to attain salvation.”[5] In this way, Irenaeus affirms the actions of the life of Jesus to be part of the undoing of Adam’s disobedience. Further, “the incarnation makes recapitulation possible. Through the incarnation Christ becomes humanity’s representative.”[6] Against the Gnostics, this representative was not an abstract idea, but tangibly present in the person of Jesus.
            For Irenaeus, obedience, actualized throughout the incarnation, also functions prominently in the atonement. The effect of Jesus’ obedience is most clearly seen where Irenaeus utilizes Paul’s imagery of Christ as the second Adam. Irenaeus draws the comparison, “just as through the disobedience of one man sin came in, and through sin death prevailed (Rom. 5:12, 19), so also through the obedience of one man, justice was brought in and produced fruit of life for the men formerly dead.”[7] It is in the actions of obedience that, “Christ became the example for men, as Adam had been the example for Christ; being the Logos of God, Christ was not only the example, but the exemplar and prototype of the image of God according to which man had been created.”[8] Through this exemplar understanding, combined with a deeply held belief in the incarnation, Irenaeus conflates the physical and cosmic realms. In this conflation “Irenaeus emphasises the true humanity and obedience of Christ in the face of temptation, he [then] can combine cosmic struggle with the human struggle here on earth.”[9] In doing so, one can appreciate how temporally-located actions have implications in the cosmic sphere, something Gnostic understandings could not conclude. Thus, through this conflation Irenaeus is able to state, “By living as the obedient, true human being, Jesus is able to place us once again on the road from which we have strayed, so that we are restored in fellowship with God and receive incorruption and immortality.”[10] This restoration finds its fuller articulation in Ireneaus’ understanding of recapitulation.
            “Irenaeus’s doctrine of recapitulation can be read as the most profound theological vindication in the second and third centuries of the universal ideal of the imitation of Christ.”[11] In this sense, it is the culmination of the obedience of Jesus and the participation of the believer. “By his active obedience the Last Adam ‘recapitulates’ the history of the first Adam. He takes up the human race into himself and takes it back to the beginning of its moral history.”[12] Thus, recapitulation is Christ returning humanity to its beginning, so that he can lead humanity in the right way. Jesus’ action is both the example and the enabler. With this understanding Irenaeus diametrically opposes Gnostic dualism as Christ actually is “the reconstituted humanity, in whom we can all find our renewed identity and so achieve reconciliation with God.”[13]
            The Good Shepherd leading a flock encapsulates Irenaeus’ threefold undstanding of the atonment, as it is incarnate, active, and encompassing imagry. In the image of Shepherd, “God is a loving being who creates the world and humankind, not out of a necessity nor by mistake – as Gnostics claimed – but out of a desire to have a creation to love and to lead, like the shepherd loves and leads the flock. From this perspective, the entirety of history appears as the process whereby the divine shepherd leads creation to its final goal.”[14] This image is one of active wooing, the shepherd coming near so that humanity might follow. In this image there is the affirming the physical, an active example, and the encompassing of all history - and all reality these entail.
            If recapitulation of all history occurs through Christ, the question of reality and how one apprehends and understands it becomes important. To answer this question humanity has classically built understandings of reality on foundations of certitude. Thus, foundationalism functioned on the premise that there is “the existence of indubitable, universal axioms”[15] that can be known and built upon; or at least there is “the commitment to foundational beliefs[16] on which people build a worldview that explains reality. Yet foundations have become untenable as it has become impossible to prove one can know a foundation with indubitable certitude.[17] As a result, concepts of reality exist within post-foundational frameworks.
            Structuralism and post-structuralism assist in understanding the arch to post-foundationalism and postmodernity. In this scheme, “structuralism operates a bridge between modernism and postmodernism, undermining faith in autonomous reason and radical individualism.”[18] As abstract foundationalism began to collapse, structuralism arose as a final modernist bastion. “Structuralism asserted that language shapes the way humans think, but that the words themselves are arbitrary.”[19] This conception is modernist in that “structuralists assumed that the human mind, no matter the culture, has an innate, universal structure.”[20] This structure acted as the foundation and therefore humans could examine it. The critique soon followed, as “post-structuralism asserts that there is nowhere to stand outside of our language in order to objectively investigate it.”[21] In this step the human observer once again becomes enmeshed into the subject being investigated.
            Enmeshed theories and the realization that the human is not somehow outside observing, but partakes in the observing process, have been incredibly influential in moving to post-foundationalism. Post-foundationalism thus reacts “against the idea that indubitable truth can be objectively perceived by reason alone.”[22] Without indubitable certainty in any one foundation, one is confronted by the reality that “no theory ever stands alone. Every theorist confronts the world with a whole web of theoretical and non-theoretical beliefs.”[23] Some people have reacted negatively to this criticism because they see it as “a discourse that in all its claims to uproot the so-called objectivity of science has done so at the expense of its central subject - the human."[24] Yet, an alternative reading of such theories is possible, one which praises the enmeshedness of the human into the web of theories and observation, as a return to an incarnational conception of reality.
            In the same way Irenaeus’ understanding of the atonement confronted the Gnosticism of his era, it continues to confront the Gnosticism of modernism, foundationalism, and structuralism. In contemporary society, the “modernists [have] nevertheless developed their own brand of Gnosticism when they established that the mind could reach disinterested truth totally apart from the body.”[25] This was the Gnostic form of one type of foundationalism, whereby objective axioms are known with certitude. Another Gnosticism occurs when one speaks of God via structuralism as the speaker will have stated “a belief that was as much about the godlike power of the mind as it was about the truth of Christ.”[26] These abstractions have become isolated from reality and perverted into their Gnostic absolutes.
Gnosticism can be further witnessed when complex matters that ought to be articulated via post-foundational understandings are communicated via reductionalist-foundationist sequences of causality. This has become a contemporary problem with conceptions of the atonement, which often are reduced to: “humanity owed God infinite reparation because sin against God is an infinite crime. Hence, either humanity would have to pay for their wrongs by suffering in eternal hell, or God himself would have to pay for this wrong. This is what God did by becoming a man and dying on the cross.”[27] It is not that these ideas are not true, in that they have no correlation to reality. Rather, to the extent they are conceived of as either maximally the case, or represent an absolute minimum, one finds the Gnosticism of foundationalism. These forms of Gnostic foundationalism are often communicated in refrains of “it may be more, but certainly not less.” Such conceptions do not take seriously the post-foundational web.
Freud acts as a precursor to post-foundational thinking in his conception of overdertermination, which can assist in comprehending Irenaeus’ understanding of the atonement. Overdetermination conceives that there is more than sufficient cause for any event.[28] Therefore, an event may have any number of causes, none of which needs to be considered “the foundation.” Also no one cause must be included in an articulation of causality, if the others articulated are of sufficient cause. Thus, for Irenaeus the incarnation itself can be understood as sufficient cause for atonement, as God identifies with humanity. “It is this identification that atones for humanity’s apostasy by affecting their ontology so that through instruction and empowerment humanity might identify with Christ.”[29] Other “causes” for atonement are not void; yet they need not be mentioned. Nonetheless, within the apparent singularity of Jesus’ incarnational identification with humanity a post-foundational web emerges, as Jesus affects multiple foundations such as human action through instruction and an ontological shift which empowers change. Thus, although this paper has not focused specifically on the cross, it does not cease to be one of the plethora of foundations in an atonement post-foundational web, yet it need not act as the sole foundation either.
            The metaphor of the Good Shepherd mixes well with the post-foundational metaphor of a web. The Good Shepherd is an image of atonement which shows how “God restores humanity’s freedom from the tyranny of death, and instead of using coercion redeems what is rightfully his “by means of persuasion,” as exhibited in his use of instruction and empowerment.”[30] Thus, the coming of the shepherd changes the paradigm, as it participates in “a grand vision of history, [where] the divine purposes unfold through it. The focal point of that history is the incarnation.”[31] One might conceptualize the incarnation as the shepherd walking into the web of a multi-foundational reality. As the shepherd leads, exhibited in the obedience of Christ, the entire web moves; all enmeshed foundations and persons start to move, everything is realted, thus begining the recapitulation of all history.
            In many ways this image is similar to the moral influence atonement theory, yet contains an important difference from a reduced forms of moral infulence theory. The location agency lies differs. In a simplistic moral influence theory, Jesus only was the ulitmate example; yet in Irenaeus’ conception, Jesus acomplished more than only being the example. Through the incarnation, and his subsequent obedience, he had the agency to recapitulate all of history, and now the Christian participates in a new reality, not only following an example while remaining in an old paradigm.
            The Good Shepherd is a beneficial relational metaphor for communicating an understanding of the atonement, similar to Irenaeus’ understanding, to a post-foundational society as it draws together incarnation, persuasion to obedience, and empowerment to participate in recapitulation. The image is a shepherd leading a flock – or stuck to a web – drawing all towards reconciliation with God. This understanding challenges contemporary Gnostic abstractions by affirming the complexity of a post-foundation web, which deeply incorporates the physical human into conceptions of reality.

[1] Douglas Kelly, “Atonement in Irenaeus of Lyon,” Journal Of Christian Reconstruction, no. Winter 1982 (January 1, 1982). pp. 63
[2] Ibid. pp. 58
[3] Robert M Grant, Irenaeus of Lyons (London; New York: Routledge, 1997). pp. 169
[4] Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition : A history of the Development of Doctrine, vol. Volume 1 (Chicago u.a.: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1971). pp.144
[5] Ibid. p.144
[6] Hans Boersma, Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross : Reappropriating the Atonement Tradition (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2004). pp. 122
[7] Grant, Irenaeus of Lyons. pp. 139. Italics mine.
[8] Pelikan, The Christian tradition, Volume 1:. pp.145
[9] Boersma, Violence, hospitality, and the cross. pp. 189
[10] Ibid. pp. 123-124
[11] Pelikan, The Christian tradition, Volume 1:. pp.144
[12] Kelly, “Atonement in Irenaeus of Lyon.” pp. 67
[13] Boersma, Violence, hospitality, and the cross. pp. 200
[14] Justo L González, The Story of Christianity: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation., vol. Volume 1 (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984). pp. 68
[15] Crystal Downing, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith : Questioning Truth in Language, Philosophy and Art (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2006). pp. 100
[16] Ibid. pp. 100-101 Italics original
[17] Nicholas Wolterstorff, Reason within the Bounds of Religion, Second ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub., 1984). pp. 54
[18] Downing, How postmodernism serves (my) faith. pp. 125
[19] Ibid. pp. 125 Italics original
[20] Ibid. pp.125
[21] Ibid. pp. 126 Italics original
[22] Ibid. pp. 102
[23] Wolterstorff, Reason within the Bounds of Religion. pp. 43
[24] David Ross Freyer, “Introduction : Symbols of the Human, Phenomenology, Post-Structuralism, and Culture,” Listening 38, no. 2 (Spring 2003): 78–83. pp. 78
[25] Downing, How postmodernism serves (my) faith. pp. 23
[26] Ibid. pp. 111
[27] Gregory A Boyd and Paul R Eddy, Across the Spectrum : Understanding Issues in Evangelical Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2009). pp. 125
[28] Edward Erwin, The Freud Encyclopedia : Theory, Therapy, and Culture (New York: Routledge, 2002). pp. 407
[29] Brad Jersak et al., Stricken by God? : Nonviolent Identification and the Victory of Christ (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub., 2007). pp. 452
[30] Ibid. pp. 439
[31] González, The Story of Christianity: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation., Volume 1:. pp. 71

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