A note to second year doctrine students

I just thought it might be a good idea to jot down a little note about last week's possibly mystifying class, since it was an addition to the published notes.

The basic claim I was making is that the atonement (remember, that word is a catch-all for what goes on on the cross) is essentially a relational thing - it is a narrative, or better a drama between PERSONS. Scripture uses metaphors like sacrifice and redemption as mediating terms to explain what happens relationally between God and human beings in Jesus Christ, the God-man to produce the goal of atonement or reconciliation.

Now, at this stage I pulled out Greimas' actantial analysis which was developed to analyse folk stories. Remember Little Red Riding Hood?

I can't replicate it here alas.

But what our discussion revealed was that, according to the passages we looked at,

1- human beings were often both the receivers and the opponents.

2 - God himself was the sender but was also (because of the identity of Jesus as both God AND man) the agent.

3 - in a strange way, God himself is also the opponent.. well, kind of. That is: he has to meet in some way the conditions of his own wrath against sin.

That is: the atonement means an outworking of something that seems in tension in God's own character: his wrath and his mercy. Many readings of the atonement can't really cope with this, and can only have God on one side of the equation, not really understanding that our opposition to God means his opposition to us: our enmity towards him means, without the cross, his enmity towards us.