In response to a specific conversation I've been having, I wanted to explore a problem of current Christian atonement ideas. Specifically, the idea that a holy God could not forgive sin without a penalty being paid. As I understand this aurgument, it seems that it is based on the idea that a sacrifice or penalty muct be paid in order for God to be just. This is a problem. One can not placing limits on what God could do and still be just without subverting God to our socially constructed conceptions of justice.
Where do our conceptions of justice originate? In the theological realm, we often begin with legal analogies for atonement, or start with a view of the atonement from the perspective of a transaction. The transaction is either between: God and Man, God and Satan, God and Himself, or God and another sovereignly existing abstract concept. the latter is perhaps most problematic. Is it possible that we are beginning with a concept of justice and atonement rooted in human systems and socially created (yes byt his I absolutely do mean relative) conceptions of right and wrong. We must consider that our concepts of right, wrong, and justice could potentially be among the more fallen of human systems. Perhaps this is why Jesus’ logic seemed so upside down to us. The option of beginning from sovereign social constructs of humanity is prone to clash with God.
A better option is to begin with the Christ event as God’s as the ultimate revelation and the view it as the standard he gives us for constructing a better starting point for truth, justice and goodnes. If the cross seems unjust, or appears to make God in anyway less good, then we must begin by redefining our concepts of justice, goodness and love from God’s perspective and realign them with the cross rather than human social norms. We know aboce all that God is good and just, the starting point for this must be what God has done in Christ.
Many current conceptions of justice often crystallize around a belief in justice existing on its own as an unchanging entity. To say, God could not forgive sin with out some penalty being paid, is to be rooted in human concepts of justice. This understanding might create a fair transaction in the cross between God and someone (either man, Satan, God, or soverign human concept of justice), but equating justice and fairness is very problematic. A fair transaction may not always be just. As we hold on to this concept of what justice is, the result is that we submit God to our social construct of justice. Our flawed ideas of justice become god over the true sovereign God.
If God wanted to do something that seemed unjust to us, then we say “no, God can not do that, it would be against his character”. Yet on what basis do we make these statements about God’s character. In the Bible, we find God commanding Israel to commit genocide. Does this make God unjust and inconsistent, maybe even evil? Absolutely not! Rather it exposes human inability to make blanket statements about what is right and wrong. Most of our auguments of right and wrong are really only masked terms hiding our personal preferences. Schopenhauer says that God is a projection of humanity's unreachable desires. Perhaps he is observing correctly the god often communicated by Christianity is more a projection of human social norms the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible and the cross is far more dynamic than the divine slave of human social norms which we often prefer and convince ourselves to proclaim.
For a Christian, true conceptions of rightness and wrongness, justice and unjustness must originate with God alone and not from our social preferences, social constructs of right and wrong can not constrain God. This is a troubling issue, because it takes moral relativism and subjectivity to the extreme in suggesting that even genocide is morally subjective. Although all of right and wrong are subjective, it is all subjective to God and I take great comfort in that.
Romans affirm this.
Paul’s point in Romans is that God can not be unjust. Not because God is incapable of acting outside our idea of justice, rather Paul attacks peoples’ attempt to bind God to any of our ideas of fairness. Can God be unjust? No! Can God be unfair? Yes, its called grace, which he gives freely to anyone he chooses, and on the basis of the cross, I now think grace to be superior to fairness. In light of the cross the idea of what is fair got tossed out the window, and justice as revealed in the cross can not be about a fair transaction or social construct proceeding from humanity. Justice in the cross was shown as God doing what was ultimately good, loving and graceful. This brings justice more into harmony with grace, because now at the cross, fairness is only valued as a canvas for the divine portrait of grace.
God did not have to gracefully paint on top of that fair canvas with his blood. God would still be God, and we would be whatever God wanted to make us. But he did choose the cross as the center of his redeaming story, and therefore I will determine the truth about what is good and just from the reference of that cross.
