Did it have to happen?
2 April 2007 - 15 ניסן 5767 by Huw
I know that one view of the Atonement is that Christ had to die to satisfy God’s Anger at us for our sin. It’s not my favourite view but it shows up in miniscule places in even the Eastern Liturgy. But what I’m wondering about today is did he have to die?
We have this interesting quote from St John Chrysostom, talking about Palm Sunday. I’ve modernised the language, forgive me. The “Church Fathers” set is just too convoluted to make sense.
But some one will ask, “Yet if it was written that He was to suffer these things, was is Judas blamed for them?. Judas only did the things that were written [in the prophecies - DHR].”
But it was not Judas’ intent to fulfil prophecies: what he did, he did from wickedness. For if you fail to ask the about the motive of actions, eventually you will even forgive the Devil of the charges against him. Yet these possibilities are not to be: For both Judas and the Devil are deserving of countless punishments, although the world was saved in their actions.
It was not the treason of Judas that works out salvation for us. Rather is is the wisdom of Christ, and the good contrivance of His fair skill, which uses the wickednesses of others for our advantage.
Ok, so now you will ask, “Even if Judas had not betrayed Jesus, wouldn’t another have had to betray Him?”
What as this to do with the discussion? Easy:
“If Christ has to be crucified it must come by the means of someone’s action. So if it has to be someone, it makes sense that it is a person as this. But if all the disciples had been good, this thing that was done for us would have been stopped.”
And after setting up all this - that it needn’t have been Judas - John says:
Not so! For the Allwise knows how He shall bring about our benefits, even had this happened. [i.e. even had Jesus never been betrayed - DHR] For His wisdom is rich in contrivance, and incomprehensible.
And - to be clear - John Chrysostom does not say this, but he seems to open the door to the possibility that Jesus did not need to die on the Cross. I don’t mean to enter into debates about substitutionary atonement - which, again, I realise is in even the Eastern Rites, as well as St Paul. The question is, however, is all theology hindsight? If things had gone differently: would we have seen different prophecies in the OT, traced a different doctrine of salvation? Would our Palm Sunday service be all about the ushering in of the Peaceable Kingdom instead of the Treachery of the clergy?
If all of the Christ Event - from Prehistory to Judgement Day - is the history of our salvation, need we have thrown the blood of Christ before God the Father on the Altar of Mother Earth at all.
If the answer is yes, this had to happen - even if we follow John Chrysostom and admit that it needn’t have happened *exactly* as it did - then we absolve ourselves of the guilt: implicate only Judas and those clergy and politicians around him.
But if the answer is no: we needn’t have done this.
For the Allwise knows how He shall bring about our benefits, even had this happened. [i.e. even had Jesus never been betrayed - DHR] For His wisdom is rich in contrivance, and incomprehensible.
Then we are daily guilty of doing it again, and again, again again: of celebrating the mistakes we made and attributing them to God, instead of simply saying God made the best of our worst.
[shrugs] Theology is all hindsight, with some attempts at foresight and insight.
However, if the West is right, then St. John is partly wrong. If, as CS Lewis insists, there was a “deeper magic” at work, then the world itself was created in such a way that it led to that “deeper magic” of the innocent being unjustly condemned and thus “breaking the altar of sacrifice” on the injustice of that act.
We are dealing in the area of speculative theology. It is here that St. Gregory Palamas indeed had a point. When we, or even St. John Chrysostom, cross the line into what might have happened if, then we are crossing the line into an attempt to know the unknowable and to discern what Isaiah warns us are ways beyond our understanding.
[Side note: I think St. Gregory Palamas had some good points to make. It is his extreme followers that make me foam at the mouth.]
The rejection of the West (even to long before the schism) by many in the East deprives us of that other lung which lets us see the fullness of the arguments and the fullness of the attempts of the Fathers to try to discern and to explain. It also deprives us of a rounded view of when they hit the unknowable and had to stop or begin totally contradicting each other.
It might just be that God doesn’t waste His time (it’s all his, I guess…) doing stuff He doesn’t have to. Like becoming incarnate, suffering in the flesh, dying, rising. Ascending. Coming again. I tend to think He must have a good reason for it. It’s like asking whether I *had* to get up this morning.
incarnation perhaps always, atonement perhaps only because it is the lesson that impacts us most in our humanity and confounds us most in our vanity.
How often do we think of some work that is beneath our dignity, and fail to reflect on the dignity He set aside in order to serve us?