Where Everybody's Crazy

I have just received an email, out of the blue and with no explanation, which consists of a list of Scripture verses to demonstrate that Arminianism is bad and wrong and we don't actually have free will. Several thoughts on this bizarre occurrence:

• "To list Scripture verses" is another one of those irregular verbs of which I am so fond. It conjugates like this: "I demonstrate the whole tenor of Scripture"; "you are taking verses out of context"; "he is proof-texting".
• In the fight between Calvin and Arminius, back Jesus. He was not a systematic theologian, and I consider this to be a feature, not a bug.
• Theology without missiology is dead. Free will or lack thereof is one of those doctrines that doesn't make a blind bit of difference to the way we do mission, and so fighting over it is pointless. I tend to say that such doctrines have "no cash value" because you can't actually do anything with them.
• Last time Calvinism came up on this blog, I made a throwaway comment about total depravity being obviously rubbish, but despite it being "obvious", I forgot why I thought that. Now I remember. You just apply it to itself. The idea of total depravity came from Calvin's brain. Calvin's brain is, according to Calvin, in a state of total depravity. Why, then, should I trust Calvin's brain on matters of doctrine?
• And the kicker? The person who sent me this list proving that we don't have free choice is from an institution which calls itself "Liberty University". Well, it made me laugh anyway.

So I've said an awful lot about what I don't think about the cross. This is what I do think about the cross.

It's not fair that I can't sleep right now, but that's not what I want to write about. There's been a lot of coverage in the press here recently about the case of Lucie Blackman, who was murdered back in 2000. The murderer, a guy called Joji Obara, was actually acquitted of her murder, but convicted for life for manslaughter and rape of some other girls. Lucie's parents are appealing the not-guilty verdict.

I can understand why they're doing this, but I can't help wondering if it shows a failure to appreciate the nature of justice over here. In the West, it's important for "justice to be fulfilled" and for the guy to get the guilty sentence for everything he's done. It's a matter of principle. Over here, things are a lot more pragmatic, and even though the Blackman case wasn't provable to a reasonable standard, well, shikatta ga nai, the guy's been sent down for life anyway and won't be a danger to the public any more, so there's no sense trying super hard to get a conviction.

I can see the arguments on both sides. It's just that "justice" means different things in different parts of the world.

See also: Recovering the Scandal of the Cross

In the Biblical culture, "justice" meant hearing the cry of the oppressed and giving them a voice; it is more to do with the execution of justice than the value of it. In the parable of the persistent widow, the judge was unjust not because he made a bad judgment, but because he didn't make any judgment at all. Ps 82:3 says "Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy."

So when the Bible talks about God being merciful and just, it's not actually saying two contradictory things. It works out fine in Biblical culture. It's a bit more of a problem in our culture, because, well, "just" means giving someone what they deserve, and "merciful" means not giving someone what they deserve. If you're merciful, you're unjust; if you're just, you're unmerciful. For us to say that God is merciful and just is a problem.

There have been various attempts to hack around this problem, the most persistent one being the whole substitutionary atonement thing. I call it a hack, and I'm surprised that it has been as persistent as it has given that there's so much wrong with it. It's based on the principle that God cannot simply forgive - despite the fact that this is very much what Jesus appeared to go around doing - but that His "justice must be fulfilled" - despite the fact that God is not a Westerner, and this concept doesn't apply in much of the earth. And despite the fact that even those Christians who espouse the concept would encourage people to forgive each other without their "justice being fulfilled". Because actually that's what forgiveness is - a foregoing of justice.

But the biggest problem with it is that it assumes that justice is a transferable commodity. For this justice to be fulfilled, God needed to punish somebody - anybody, just not me! So the story goes that Jesus stands up and says "punish me instead". Look, I can see that letting the guilty one go free is unjust - it's merciful, that's the point - but you don't restore that justice by punishing the innocent. Actually, that doubles the injustice.

A just (by Western standards) judge would tell Jesus to sit down, this doesn't concern him, and punish the guilty. But God is not, by Western standards, just. He is merciful. That mercy is Good News for sinners, which is what Christianity is all about, and that, my friends, is why substitutionary atonement, with its misplaced emphasis on a very Western understanding of "justice", is not the Gospel.

Since we're still using steam-powered televisions here in Wales, I only just caught the End of Days episode of Torchwood.

Just in case you didn't see it, the plot goes something like this: there's something fundamentally wrong, a rift in the universe, which is getting worse; people are tempted to open the rift further, but beneath the rift lies the beast Abbadon who has been sealed away before time and is trying to destroy the world; the man who can't die is taken into an epic battle with the beast; the power of life is more than the beast can stand, and destroys it; everyone thinks that the man is dead, but after a little while he comes back to life; the women see him first, then he pardons the man who betrayed him, before he is inexplicably taken away.

It's a good story, but I doubt it will catch on.

I'm not saying that Russel T deliberately set out to get across any kind of Christian message. Definitely not. He set out to tell a good story, and he did that, either consciously or unconsciously, by evoking some of the great themes from the mythology of our society. As Tolkien put it, the Christian story is a great myth that happens to be true.

On the other hand, I will look forward to seeing clips from the episode again soon at a church near me. And I personally prefer the Torchwood-style Christus Victor (classical) interpretation of the Cross rather than the legal fiction view because, well, they're only interpretations, so let's have the one that makes a better story...

I watched the Narnia film a couple of days ago. Before I launch into some theology, let me say that I really enjoyed it, and it was everything I expected from a film version of the book. Now, boring theological nargery.

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is, as everyone knows, a Christian allegory about the work of Christ. This is no big secret. The interesting bit is that Lewis, to create a good story, used one of the very oldest explanations of the work of Christ, called the "ransom model": that God pays up Christ as a ransom to the Devil to win back the human race, and then it turns out God has tricked the Devil by delivering over Christ to death when Christ was stronger than death and broke free from it. You can recognise that in the Lewis book, and in the film. You will also recognise that it says nothing about judgement, or punishment, or propitiation.

This gives evangelicals a huge headache, although I suspect they don't realise it. You see, they will want to use the film to promote their cause - indeed, I saw that at St Aldate's tonight. They will want to draw parallels between the self-sacrifice of Aslan and the self-sacrifice of Christ. However, during the Soteriology Wars of 2004-5, the evangelicals had some very nasty words for the ransom model, for various reasons: the idea of God doing a deal with the Devil was unreasonable; the business about being stronger than death was just a bit bizarre; and, well, it just wasn't the propitiatory sacrifice model, so it obviously couldn't be right. It is not the One True Model, and we can't possibly use it as an explanation of Jesus' work.

Suddenly, however, the ransom model is actually useful again in communicating culturally. What will evangelicals do? Will they resist the temptation to grab at what they believe to be a flawed model and continue to hold fast to what they believe is true, or will they grasp the opportunity Hollywood has handed them, and integrity be damned?

I have a feeling I know which option it's going to be.