{"id":3760,"date":"2015-04-11T17:14:26","date_gmt":"2015-04-12T00:14:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/?p=3760"},"modified":"2020-01-09T04:15:10","modified_gmt":"2020-01-09T11:15:10","slug":"the-ongoing-enabling-power-of-the-atonement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/2015\/04\/the-ongoing-enabling-power-of-the-atonement\/3760\/","title":{"rendered":"The ongoing enabling power of the atonement"},"content":{"rendered":"

The below is a work in progress in my continuing effort to articulate a theory of the atonement. Feedback needed and welcome.<\/em><\/p>\n

I remember it well. What had once been one of the most powerful doctrines of the Gospel for me had become now a challenging open sore through which doubt flowed into me. If God was loving and good, why would he punish his son for our sins? Why would he require such a punishment? It had been my faulty assumption, based on the idea that Christ acted as a substitution for the penalty affixed by God, which had led to my hurt and my doubt. It had created distance between myself and God and undermined the power and efficacy of the atonement in my life.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say I had not felt the power of the atonement before then, but as my perception of how the atonement worked was shaped, I began to confine it to certain parameters within which it could be utilized, and thus boxed it in. Further, when I had inevitably thought through some of the implications of my misconceptions, it left me troubled and eroded my faith. However, because I persevered and studied and prayed and took it to the Lord with fasting and prayer and a leap of faith, I believe I came to a better understanding of the atonement and became more empowered to feel its power in my life.<\/p>\n

This is why I think it is important to have a clear understanding of the atonement and to study beyond the basic assumption that it is penal substitution. I believe we study the atonement because we yearn to better apply it to the challenges of life and to make Christ and Heavenly Father more accessible. The risk, of course, is that in studying the atonement, we end up with a conception formed by man, and miss experiencing the event itself.<\/p>\n

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That said there are many theories of how the atonement works, most benignly created by well-meaning people focusing on particular metaphors in the scriptures, and I don\u2019t pretend to have any more access or privilege to direct knowledge to how the atonement works than they do. What I do have is access and knowledge to all those who have gone before, from scriptures, apostles, philosophers and lay theologians. With that in mind, I would like to attempt to put forward a view of the atonement which I feel connects the elements I have learned.<\/p>\n

First, as a guiding principle, I think any explanation of the workings of the atonement should have at its center the capacity to make the atonement more meaningful and powerful in our lives. Thus any proposition of the atonement which does not have a practical capacity toward beneficial utilization is a non-starter. The atonement needs to be able to make a difference right now.<\/p>\n

I am driven to this idea by a number of things, but most recently by reading the urgent rendering of Romans by Adam Miller \u201cGrace is not God\u2019s Backup Plan\u201d. (http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Grace-Not-Gods-Backup-Plan-ebook\/dp\/B00U1WBCXQ<\/a>) This excellent little volume kept me up until deep into the morning, reminding me that grace abounds around us and we must wake up to God\u2019s rescue in our lives. This is difficult and challenging for us because it means accepting we are not the star of the show and are at best, in supporting roles. Jesus Christ is the star of our story and if we can support him in that casting, only then can the story successfully move forward. For Jesus to be the star of my story, he needs to be actively present in that story. If the atonement happened as only the prize at the end of the trudge, it does not put the Savior at the center of my life now. The atonement as a historical event completed 2000 years ago does not put the Savior at the center of my life now. It makes me think of NT Wright\u2019s central message in \u201cHow God became King\u201d. The Kingdom of Heaven is here and now. For me at least, that means the atonement is here and now as well.<\/p>\n

In \u201cWrestling the Angel\u201d, Terryl Givens reviews two partial theories on how the atonement is here and now. The first is B.H. Roberts centralizing the atonement in the importance of free will, and the second, focuses on Christ\u2019s influence on us. I\u2019d like to focus on his second theory given, which is really not his, but the masterful work of Eugene England. England puts forth a powerful rendering of what is generally referred to as the moral influence theory. A central idea here is that it is not God\u2019s sense of justice that requires punishment but our own sense of justice. We are after all, the ones who crucified our Lord when he failed to come with swords and wrath. So in taking to himself all the pain and suffering in the world, he thus transfixes us with the event, and we psychologically shift our minds towards peace and goodwill- even today. In England\u2019s own words \u201cThe effects of the atonement were not metaphysical but moral and spiritual.\u201d There are three flaws in this. 1. If this is the atonement, it failed, because we haven\u2019t made the turn toward God. 2. If it merely intellectually influences us via the story of it, it didn\u2019t need to happen. 3. If we could have intellectually arrived at the same conclusion without the event happening, then it loses its necessity.<\/p>\n

These are common problems with the Moral Influence theory, but I still believe England\u2019s addition to our understanding of the atonement is a great starting point. If we take this and add to it some of the work of Blake Ostler in his \u201cExploring Mormon Thought\u201d series, we can expand the \u201cmoral and spiritual\u201d influence of God to see that by suffering, God incorporates into his experience our experience as an immanent spirit that is instantly acted upon by us and acting upon us. If we look at the work of Jacob Morgan we can add that because of this immanence from Christ there is an additional halo-effect where we are each imbued with light and knowledge from Christ, which we term conscience or the light of Christ. If we borrow from the online discussions of Geoff Johnston and Jonathon Stapley, which especially focus on Alma 7, we see an emphasis on Christ taking to himself our sins and other faults so as to imbue himself with authentic experience and understanding, enabling his knowledge to convert to divine wisdom.<\/p>\n

This gets me back to Adam Miller\u2019s \u201cGrace is not God\u2019s Backup Plan\u201d. If I can paraphrase and perhaps ultimately butcher Miller\u2019s thoughts, grace came first- God\u2019s love for us and help for us to become as he is and to be in a loving relationship with him in a meaningful sense came first. He knew we would need to turn to him and rely on him to do this, and so established the world, the commandments, and the ordinances for this express purpose- to turn us toward him. He knew we would fail to live up to the expectations in these and gave us Christ so that when we failed, we would not give up, but would further turn toward him. Sin is ultimately rejecting this connection with him, which Christ, in atoning for us, exposes to us moment by moment, reaching out to us still.<\/p>\n

Where I believe this gets us is that Jesus Christ, through his taking to himself humanity and especially his supernal experience going from Gethsemane through the resurrection, was able to position himself as an ongoing influence on humans to help them through the challenges of life and to bring them toward a transcendent state of being (in an I-Thou relationship with God) they would otherwise be unable to accomplish on their own.<\/p>\n

Christ could not have the influential power on us in the moment if he could not authentically connect with each and every one of us in compassion and loving kindness with a perfect understanding and authentic capacity to show us he did endure with us the trials we faced with the limitations we face them with. We would not accept Christ\u2019s empathy and compassion if we did not feel in our spirits that he had genuinely suffered each and every issue we now faced. So Christ ultimately suffered in order to offer us hope and power to move forward in any situation as we turn toward him and accept his help in the moment.<\/p>\n

Thus to practically apply the atonement more fully we need only call upon Christ\u2019s aid with faith and the Holy Ghost will deliver authentic, soul to soul succor and strength from Christ to us, which gives us peace, happiness, and love in this life and in the eternities. This capacity to carry on is infinite in scope, impacting both the living and the dead, enabling the resurrection, not preventing our sins of commission or omission, and not eliminating the consequences here in life, but rather standing in as a mediator for us, acting as the responsible party to release us from the pain of being sinned against and the self-deception, selfishness and self-destruction of sinning against others.<\/p>\n

Through this the Atonement is a ransom from the traps we set for ourselves, it is Christ victorious, and it is Christ taking our licking for us. It is the mediator easing our debts. It is Justification and Sanctification. The Atonement is governmental and moral influence. It is all the flavors of atonement soup found in the hymns and scriptures. They are metaphors of course, and imperfect snapshots, but all express a form we can understand. It is Christ doing all he can for us to be at one with the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. It is Christ doing all he can for us while we suffer the vicissitudes of the mortal fallen world.<\/p>\n

It is Christ actively being a part of every moment of our life knowing exactly what we need as the situations arise, mourning with us as we mourn, comforting us when we are in need of comfort, and standing as the great witness of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that we may be in, even until death, that we may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection that we may have eternal life.<\/p>\n