The Cross and the Climate Crisis

In the spring of 2019, a terrifying realization took hold of me.  I began to believe that our warming planet was pushing the human race towards its own destruction.   Unfortunately, once you believe something you’re stuck with it.   My lifelong assumption that the future would always be better has been replaced by a fear that the news from now on will be an unbroken succession of emergencies. 

A lot of climate scientists call their personal climate awakening their “Oh shit moment.”  My moment happened in a conversation with my son-in-law, Mike.      Mike isn’t a climate scientist; he’s a book acquisitions editor who publishes climate scientists’ books.  He hangs around climate scientists to discuss their work and possible publishing projects.  He takes them out to eat and befriends them.  He knows what they think, or better, what they feel, after two glasses of wine. 

By training, Mike is a theologian.  So, when he and I talked, we also thought about what the climate crisis does to Christian faith.  Climate change is just as destructive of the Christian religion as global heating is of the arctic.  Christian faith talks about people being saved, a wonderful Kingdom breaking into history, a bright future, and an outlook on the human person that sees him or her as bearing the “form and likeness” of no less than God.  It’s all good and energizing.   

Christianity’s optimism evaporates at the thought that wide bands around the middle of our blue planet will dry out like the Sahara desert.   The death of bird species and disappearing honey bees don’t blend comfortably with the Kingdom of God.   It makes little sense to worry about being reconciled with my neighbor when he might not even be my neighbor in a year or so once storms drive us both to abandon our flooded houses.

What Does the Church Say?

What are ministers and church leaders saying about climate change? The short answer is “almost nothing.”   Most congregations appear unfazed by the droughts, fires, and rising water that are becoming increasingly regular news stories. I sit in worship services these days listening to good sermons about the importance of the season of Epiphany and why it’s not a good idea to become a “people pleaser.” 

I’m not moved.  These old topics feel beside the point, despite the fact that I spent years writing sermons on them myself.  I sit in the pew wondering, “what about the thousands of African farmers who have been forced off their farms because the soil no longer can produce enough to live on?” 

One might ask, “Why wouldn’t a minister know right off what his Christian faith has to say about climate change?”  I’ve asked myself, “Why don’t I know where God is in this crisis?”  The truth is that I simply didn’t.  Climate disaster is not only the largest problem humanity has yet faced, it is also a problem unlike any problems we’ve faced.  We’ve dealt with armies, stock market plunges, tyrants, and addiction.  We’ve never dealt with the biosphere being so off kilter that it won’t support life any more.

What Does the Bible Say?

My abrupt awakening last year launched me into a determined quest to figure out what my faith says about the prospect of catastrophe. I’ve been googling, reading, and writing about the climate and Christian faith for several months.  I taught a class on it.   I’ve been following my own hunches about where the Bible might be shedding light on this crisis. 

I’ve clung to a simple idea through this process.  We who are living today have never faced a crisis that threatens existence. But people in the Bible have.  I’ve looked up all the big Biblical crises that I can think of.  I’ve dug into the text and read the stories closely. I’ve consulted commentaries. 

In the process, I’ve been rewarded with glorious insights that I’d never noticed before.   

Noah, for example, faced a flood that wiped out most animal and human life.  I hadn’t payed attention to Noah for years. I lapsed into the assumption that Noah was an artifact of the primitive mind.  Geologists assure us that there was no flood.  Someone built a theme park in Kentucky which featured a life-sized ark to make the point that the story is literally true. My interests have steered clear of the Genesis Flood.

I’ve returned to Noah with fresh eyes.  The story of the flood is eerily like climate change.  Noah is forward-looking like a climate scientist.  As I pour over that old text new details leap out.  God is weeping over the whole disaster.  I hadn’t remembered that detail. Noah’s heroism is inspiring.  When I set aside my forgetfulness and neglect and reconsider Noah’s story and others like it they often speak with fresh power.

Noah is but one example of what I’ve discovered.  I’ve re-read the Creation stories with fresh eyes, the situation of the Old Testament Prophets, the Resurrection of Jesus and the vision of the end times that it fosters. 

After a year of study, including reading of theology, I can say that most of the Bible’s thematic centers give powerful insight into God’s feeling about and the meaning of climate change.  The Bible also makes clear that God calls people to live new lives, which stop ruining the planet.  And above all, Christians need to rush to the aid of those who are already suffering from high water and barren farms.

The Cross of Christ

I just finished Elizabeth Johnson’s, Creation and the Cross: The Mercy of God for a Planet in Peril.  What a perfect addition to my quest to understand how God is active in the global warming crisis!  Johnson has opened my eyes to ways the Cross of Christ speaks to the ongoing unraveling of the natural order.

Probably the chief reason that we don’t associate the cross with the droughts, floods, and heat waves is because we’ve always heard that Jesus’ crucifixion is about personal sin.  Kids learn, even as early as their Sunday School years, that they’ve been bad in God’s eyes.  Their wickedness is too big to be offset by being extra good.  Fortunately, Jesus fixes our alienation from God by taking our place on the cross, or providing a blood sacrifice, or appeasing God’s honor through a satisfaction.  Salvation in this view is a transaction between Jesus and the Father. The crucifixion fixes the sin problem by paying off or appeasing an offended God. The deal throws open the prison doors of guilt so that we can return to fellowship with God.  This sin-to-forgiveness-through-the-Cross formula is probably the core idea for most Christians today.   Small wonder it never crossed my mind that the suffering and death of Jesus sheds light on the climate crisis. 

The opening chapter of Johnson’s book carefully un-couples Jesus’ death with sin.  To do this she zeros in on Anselm of Cantebury, the 11^th century English monk and bishop whose Satisfaction Theory of salvation is the most elaborate and tightly reasoned explanation of how the Cross brings about salvation.

How Christ Walks with Us

Johnson moves to a fresh way to look at the cross by pondering the words of John 1.14: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  The word flesh in this passage is significant because it means more than simply a human body.  The New Testament’s idea of flesh takes in animal bodies and the entire world of breathing, feeling life.  Flesh could correspond with the biosphere, that zone sitting on the earth’s surface that supports all living things. 

Once we understand that the Second Person of the Trinity assumed not simply human being but the being of all living things, we are in a position to understand how God has established a solidarity with the whole living planet. Creation and the Cross is laying out a “theology of accompaniment” which sees Jesus’ public ministry and especially his death on the cross as an act of companionship with the suffering of all sentient life. 

Nowhere is the idea of accompaniment better illustrated than in the relationship between Jesus’ crucifixion and the Jim Crow lynchings in the Southern United States.  Both the lynchings and crucifixion were mob-driven, extra-judicial murders, preceded by torture for entertainment, and carried out to reinforce by violence the dominant social values of a region.  The comparisons are numerous and obvious. 

And almost no one noticed them.  No minister in Alabama ever awakened to the eerie way lynching parallels crucifixion. I envision the Southern preacher dismissing his congregation early so that they could get good seats for the Sunday afternoon hanging of a black teenager.  Never once did the lynching mob see themselves as kin to those yelled, “crucify” or imitators of the soldiers who nailed Jesus to the cross.

But the victim may have noticed.  Southern Blacks noticed.  In noticing, a black community was given a divine grace which communicated that Jesus Christ knew their suffering and stood with them.   

Accompaniment is the heart of Elizabeth Johnson’s message.  As birds, animals, and even insects languish in heat and toxins they are joined by God in solidarity that we may miss, which is on full display in the suffering of Jesus Christ on the cross.

Salvation isn’t so much a transaction but a joining of God with a suffering creation. This solidarity refreshes our imagination as we face the biosphere’s destruction and the looming prospect of animal and human extinction. God is engaged. God loves. God is a co-sufferer. Ultimately, in fellowship with God his beloved co-sufferers can, after Romans 6.5, cling to the prospect of resurrection.

I read Creation and the Cross knowing, almost from the first pages, that it was important and that I needed to give it painstaking attention.  I attempted to restate its ideas in my own words as I read.  I’ve written paragraph-level marginal notes, which I’ve linked to Kindle location numbers.  These are extensive but might serve someone who wants to get a taste of Johnson’s thinking.  Occasionally, Johnson’s ideas would trigger fresh ones in my thoughts.  I captured these as well.  I also wrote a précis after I finished each of the five chapters in order to solidify my grasp of the author’s reasoning.  All of this I’m pleased to share below.

The Book

Introduction

73:          The book begins with Romans 8.18-25.

77:          The author begins by wondering how we can open up a pathway theologically to substantiate what is hinted at in Romans 8.18-25.  The text seems to say that while people await the hope of redemption of their bodies, so also does the whole of creation await its redemption.  Human sin is an obstacle to this cosmic redemption.

81:          People see the redemption from the cross to be directed to sin—which is necessarily a human endeavor.  If the redemption is directed to sin then the rest of creation could not be the object of God’s saving love.

Excursus: Salvation in the creation/chaos scheme appears to be God’s ongoing creational work, which pertains to bringing order back to the created world.  Does ongoing creation address itself to human sin?

89:          Through Church History in Church doctrine, liturgical prayer, and ethical practice, cosmic redemption has no place or is a side issue.

92:          Before the Middle Ages the Church was not in this cul de sac.  The Bible, so she says, speaks of diverse ways of interpreting the cross.  The Christology debates about Christ’s nature were concretized.  Not so, the redemption through the cross.

96.          The Eastern Church sees cross and resurrection as redeeming to all creatures.  The exclusive focus on sin and redemption appears to have emerged in the Middle Ages.  In the Middle Ages, the interpretation of the cross was couched in the metaphor of the legal world.  The law-breaker needed to make up for his or her crime through penalty, recompense, amends, compensation etc. in order to make up for losses caused by the crime.  The power of this focus swept away creation’s cry and groaning and brought the cross exclusively into the service of dealing with human sin.

104:        Anselm’s landmark book, Why God Became Human, established the satisfaction theory of the Cross.

108:        This placed a decisive stamp on the next millennium of Christian history.  The Satisfaction Theory taught that Christ had to die on a cross in order to make good the “infinite offense that had been committed” to restore order.

112:        In later chapters, Johnson will lay out an alternative theory, the theory of accompaniment.  In this theory, God joins creation in its joys and sorrows in order to save it.  Apparently, the book’s plan is to adopt Anselm’s strategy of writing in order to advance her redemption by accompaniment idea, which presumably sees redemption flowing out of God’s accompaniment of the creation.

121:        Anselm was a Benedictine abbot and regularly engaged in theological disputes with the younger Boso.

124:        Anselm’s arguments are cast as a dialogue with Boso.

133:        The dialogue begins as questioning but culminates as the disputants join in a mutual exploration.

140:        Clara will be the interlocutor and dialogue partner with Elizabeth in this book.

148:        This form of dispute permits the inquirer to prod the teacher toward minimal embellishment and background filler.

164:        She states what for me is the obvious: we need the idea of cosmic redemption now more than ever.  This theology should become common place in the prayers, hymns, liturgy, and ethos of the Church.

Introduction Summary

This book seeks to make the promise of God’s redemption of all things a vital part of the Church’s life and mission.  The primary obstacle to accomplishing this task is the Western church’s preoccupation—after Anselm—with human sin as the sole object of Christ’s redemptive work.  Small wonder the quickly emerging climate crisis has caught the Church with little to say and no imperative for action.  Johnson, using Anselm’s rhetorical device of question and answer between student and teacher, aims to expand the Church’s imagination about redemption.  In turn, she wants to substitute an alternative, which she might call “accompaniment” thinking.

Book I: Wrestling with Anselm

171:        Clara believes in Christ’s atonement for sin and she cares about the environment.  She sees little connection between cross and an endangered creation.

181:        Elizabeth makes a statement about the continual need for theology to represent the gospel to a world in new situations.

185:        They want to lay out what Anselm‘s main thread was.

189:        Clara wisely asserts that the way the question is laid out lays down a restriction in the way that the question will be answered. Elizabeth underscores the importance of the premise question.  Here it is: “Why was it necessary for Jesus to die in order for people to be forgiven their sins?” 

194:        Since creation is not part of the premise, its redemption is not addressed.

202:        Much is assumed in the asking of the question.  By the same token, much is left out.  The question further shapes the answer to some degree.

211:        How feudalism shaped the satisfaction theory of atonement.

215:        How did Anselm’s satisfaction theory came to have such influence so to become our dominant way of looking at the cross.

219:        In feudal systems a single local ruler secured the safety of the whole region.

223:        Lawbreakers in the Feudal system made satisfaction by paying a fine.  This, in turn, restored the lord and the society to normal order.  Fines were graduated and calibrated to the social standing of the offended person

232:        To sin, following the feudal legal system, is to dishonor God.

235:        Just to stop sinning is not enough.  One has to provide restitution for the losses suffered from his sin.

260:        It’s important to remember the many NT examples of forgiveness that required no satisfaction.  Nevertheless, Anselm has made a point that just forgiving with no satisfaction is an offense against God’s honor.

273: (1.3)   Grim Dilemma, Gracious Solution.  Clara proposes that sinners can simply repent, receive mercy and perform religious acts for their sin.  Basically, says Anselm, you can never make up for your lapses, especially since we owe God everything.  Secondly, the satisfaction needed is proportionate to the dignity of the offended party.

287:        The sin problem snares people in a predicament from which we can’t escape.

291:        The way out of the dilemma is for God to become a human and make satisfaction for sin.

296:        Anselm’s thinking here is based on Chalcedon, which declared the hull humanity and divinity of Christ.

300:        But, Clara protests, aren’t Jesus’ gestures, like weeping, of infinite benefit?  Why death?  As it turns out, Jesus owed thought, word, deed, obedience to God.  So, his sinlessness kept himself out of indebtedness.  His suffering then could be given for everyone else’s benefit.

309:        Death, Clara declares is intrinsic to life.  Animals die as do people before Jesus came.  This argument may not be answered.

313:        Jesus’ satisfaction was infinite, superabundant.

317:        (1.4)   How Great and Just is God’s…

330:        (11.20)  The book discusses satisfaction as pastoral causing relief and joy in all who hear it.

334:        Satisfaction Theory through History

343:        Of course, Anselm’s theory was both understood and distorted through history.

350:        As penitential practices gained widespread adoption, indulgences were invented.  Likewise, the Council of Trent wove the theory into its guidance on the sacrifice of the Mass.

354:        Priests memorized the rationale behind Satisfaction Theory; Protestants invented the Penal Substitution Theory. Satisfaction became foundation for much Church preaching, liturgy, teaching, etc.

Excursus:             Here I believe is the answer to why there is so much attention to individual salvation.  The answer lies upstream of Luther.  It probably lies with the question that Anselm posed in the beginning.  “Why did Jesus have to die?”

362:        Critical assessments of the Satisfaction Theory today.

367:        Clara doesn’t like Satisfaction Theory and Elizabeth wants to preserve its strongest points.  Wrestling with the Satisfaction Theory leads to new possibilities for a more holistic understanding of salvation.

371:        Positive elements of satisfaction theory: 1) The models does theology in conversation with lical culture, in this case with the feudal system.  2)  The Theory’s goal is to demonstrate God’s mercy.  It’s basically positive which aligns with biblical values.  3) It is still about sin.  It’s not a sinless theory of reconciliation.  This also retains a biblical priority.

379:        Contemporary criticism of Satisfaction Theory.  For one, the God of the Satisfaction Theory seems overly preoccupied with his own honor.

395:        The seeming demand by God for someone to sacrifice to appease him is certainly off-putting.

399:        The contemporary criticism of the Satisfaction Theory makes God morally repulsive.

403:        Clara doesn’t want to be saved at the price of another’s suffering.  How could God need such a thing?

412:        New thought: What if God had already forgiven humanity, and didn’t want the cross even to happen?  What if, further, God uses the crucifixion as creatively as possible, despite its infinite destruction and cruelty?

416:        The Satisfaction Theory has a lot of limitations.  First the God of the Satisfaction theory has some rigid requirements—he can’t help getting dishonored because of our sin.  God appears to be undifferentiated from human behavior.  He can’t forgive unless satisfied.  Terrible image of God is implied.

420:        A second criticism: The theory does not require the resurrection.  In this omission it does not align with the New Testament theories of salvation.

Excursus:             The Satisfaction Theory, lacking both the resurrection, the call to discipleship, and Christ’s teachings does not fit comfortably in with the climate of the Bible.  The third objection (I think) is that it separates crucifixion from ministry of Jesus.

450:        Jesus’ ministry could hardly be seen as carrying out the pre-planned crucifixion, which provided Satisfaction necessary to appease the Father whose honor had been wounded by human sin.  Would it not be more accurate to say that the whole of Jesus’ ministry, his teachings, healings, his challenge of religious authority, and the messianic tone of his ministry led Jesus into conflict with authorities?  The cross was, first of all, a tragic example of human sin, which rebels against whatever God is doing.

454:        Fourth Criticism: Satisfaction sacralizes violence.  Anselm places a blessing on the use of violence because he insists that this violence achieves a glorious end.

467:        Johnson suggests that the sanctification of violence in the Satisfaction Theory was ultimately used as justification to persecute Jews, the alleged murderers of Christ.  This objection criticizes the idea of violence as redemptive.

472:        The fifth criticism is that Satisfaction fosters a morbid spirituality, which elevates pain as the pathway to God.  Joy is squelched.  In turn, death becomes the purpose of Jesus’ life.

477:        Theology and spirituality have shifted of late to a more positive view.

485:        The sixth criticism: Satisfaction introduces an ethic of submission in the face of injustice.  This lets injustice flourish.  God seems to side with the authorities.

493:        People, in subsequent preaching, were urged to be submissive as a spiritual value.  The over-turning of the human verdict by resurrection is lost.

497:        Examples of the sixth critique: Slavery, the poor in Latin America, women subordinated by gender.

501: When traditional interpretations of the cross as an instrument of satisfaction prevail, then Blacks are unable to make the obvious connection between Jesus’ crucifixion and lynching.

545:        The satisfaction approach has been seized upon by oppressors and victims alike and reacted passivity and suffering in the latter.

553:        Seventh criticism: ecological silence in Anselm.  Satisfaction neglects the salvific power of the cross for the rest of creation.  The natural world is merely the stage on which human drama is played.

570:        The Satisfaction fails comprehensively and this critique invites fresh thinking about how God saves through the Cross.

599:        How then do we turn to a non-anthropocentric theory of salvation for the whole cosmos?  She states that we’ve hardly begun to explore this project.

603:        She begins by saying that the world’s creator will be the world’s redeemer.

Book I Summary

Book One focuses on Anselm’s Satisfaction Theory, especially on how it has driven much Church proclamation and practice in the last 1000 years.  Even before considering the content of the theory, we can see that it is dated for two reasons. It uses archaic feudal relationship between Lord and peasants as its prime metaphor.  And more fundamentally, Anselm sets out in the theory to answer a limited question: “Why was it necessary for Jesus to die in order for people to be forgiven their sins?”  The idea that redemption’s scope would reach beyond the individual sinner, much less the entire cosmos, isn’t even addressed.  The theory sees the human relationship with God as transactional.  In exchange for life the human owes God perfect obedience, a crushing indebtedness.  The debt bind is made worse by the sins we commit, which offend God’s honor and burden us with an obligation which is impossible to meet.  Only the Christ, fully human, fully God, can through his superabundant righteousness give people the resource necessary to make up what they owe to God.  Book One’s stance on Anselm is critical, but Johnson lists three of the theory’s virtues: 1) the theory is an example of an organic relationship between theology and the lived experience of people, in this case the society of the middle ages; 2) it does emphasize God’s mercy, a biblical priority; and 3) it faces the reality of sin, another biblical emphasis that ought not be overlooked.  At this point, Johnson gives another virtue to the Satisfaction Theory, namely that it will provide elements for an alternative vision of redemption which embraces the whole cosmos.  The argument cites ways that the Satisfaction Theory undergirds medieval church life, including the practice of penance and the Protestant development of the penal substitution theory of redemption through Jesus’ crucifixion.  The chapter closes with seven contemporary objections to the Satisfaction Theory.  These are: 1) it suggests a terrible image of a God who appears to have a rigid, undifferentiated response to human sin.  Anselm’s God can’t avoid being offended by God’s creatures; 2) it reduces Jesus’ ministry to little more than a march to the cross, leaving out Jesus’ resurrection and 3) his ministry of teaching and calling disciples; 4) Satisfaction makes violence redemptive; 5) fosters a morbid, joyless spirituality; 6) allows for Christians to see as virtuous unwholesome submission to abusive authority; and 7) limits the scope of salvation to human sin.  It neglects cosmic redemption. 

Book II: The Creating God Who Saves

666:        Johnson gives the background of Deutero Isaiah, whose prophecies occurred during Judah’s captivity in Babylon.  Deutero is intent on reminding his people that God’s goodness and redemption was never-ending and would intervene to save them…and the whole world.  Johnson moves to explore Deutero’s two words for God, namely El and YHWH.  El is translated simply as “God.”  YHWH is the “cherished personal name of God.”  It is closely linked with the God who liberated the people from Egypt.

674:        YHWH first appears in the Bible when God revealed God’s self to Moses and is closely related with the release of the Hebrew captives.

683:        YHWH, further, “knows” or participates in his people’s suffering.

691:        The tetragrammaton’s translation (I shall be who I shall be) suggests God’s presence and engagement with his people.  LXX translates YHWH as “Lord.”

695:        The ambiguity of YHWH’s name is clarified by YHWH’s actions following the disclosure at the burning bush.  The name is a verb, not a noun.  What YHWH does is to end the oppression.

699:        YHWH shows his nature by guiding the liberating events of the Exodus, which propelled the Hebrews out of Egypt.  The character of YHWH bends toward the sufferers and aligns against royal power.  Liberation of the downtrodden becomes the meaning of “YHWH.”

704:        Deutero is drawing on the same tradition in invoking the name YHWH.

712:        In the cloud YHWH identifies himself as merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love, forgiving…

716:        YHWH identifies with the last, lowest and least.

720:        The ethic of hospitality is derived by the merciful character of God.

728:        The creed of adjectives continues with YHWH’s anger, not clearing the guilty, but visiting parents’ inequity upon many generations of children.

733:        What, despite the overwhelming love of God, about divine anger?

736:        Johnson understands wrath as ethical and protective of the good.  Righteous anger is a form of divine love.

740:        Johnson uses the example of African American women as examples of creative, loving anger.

765:        Clara voices two questions: First, what about Israel in Book of Joshua expelling Canaanites from Palestine?

772:        Johnson says that all biblical texts are influenced by the context that the author inhabited.  Thus all texts need interpretation.  At this juncture Johnson foreshadows the book’s goal, namely to use God’s loving attributes to move beyond Anselm’s satisfaction thinking.

780:        Now to Clara’s second question, pertaining to the gender of God.  This is especially important in view of the tradition of translating YHWH into “Lord.” 

784:        Lord is in fact unfortunate, not only because it is masculine, but because it moves YHWH, a verb, into being a title or status.  The 7000+ occurrences of the masculine, “Lord” have had the effect of privileging men over women.

792:        Elizabeth, going forward, will revert to the name YHWH.  She will use “God” for Kyrios in the NT.

796:        (2.3 What it means to redeem) Second Isaiah uses the term “redeem.”  What does this mean?  Redeeming is recovering the collateral used to secure debt.  The redeemer is a close relative who sets things aright by buying off a debt.

809:        Excursus: How does God redeem us from succumbing to global warming?  He’ll do this by joining us in suffering from the worst effects.  Is climate like slavery?  Maybe he’ll rescue us from slavery to greed, as he did with Zacchaeus.

817:        Redeem broadened out with time and came to mean helping, rescuing, restoring, forgiving, and taking care of the poor.  (Is this what God will do as the climate worsens?  “Saving” has to do with sickness.

821:        Redeeming as compassion.  Compassion is Hebrew is related to the word for “womb.”

829:        Second Isaiah, speaking of redemption for his people, saw his people being…

833:        The overall strategy here is to move beyond God as a feudal lord who needs to be placated, to God as a rescuing, merciful savior.

842:        Johnson cites texts in Second Isaiah, which are typical of the book’s overall theme of mercy, rescue, etc.  Isaiah 41.14; Isaiah 41.10; Isaiah 43.3; Isaiah 43.4. 

Excursus: Notice as you review texts from Second Isaiah that the good news is expressed to Israel, a collective.  How might any one person receive this?

875:        Johnson points out that YHWH’s loving character shines through powerfully in Second Isaiah.

880:        God’s redemption is like the banquet with free food.  (Is Jesus’ Parable of the Great Banquet dependent on this passage?)

886:        Notice all the natural metaphors.  “…the mountains and hills before you shall burst into song and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” (Isaiah 55.12)

895:        This redemption was in play 500 years before the advent of Jesus and his death.  The Satisfaction Theory, in contrast, suggests a seismic shift that put in place a new redemption that had not existed before.

903:        The natural world is involved with the redemption that fills Second Isaiah.

923:        There is possibly some mocking of the Babylonian fertility deities who neither created nor saved.

955:        There is an extended passage here on the transcendence of YHWH who is qualitatively superior to Babylonian idols.

960:        People as partners in the redeeming work of God.   Through the Scriptures, the work of liberation and justice-making is carried out with the help of faithful people.

973:        Cyrus, though not a believer and unaware of his role, becomes savior-like for captive Israel.  This substantiates how people are agents in what God is doing.  We see this in the servant songs.  The servant can be equated with Israel.

981:        Israel as the servant, is also a “light for the nations” Isaiah 49.6.  This call may entail great suffering.  Excursus:  It also picks up on the vocation given to Abraham to be a “blessing” to all the earth’s families.

1003:     The view of God as essentially merciful and faithful stretches across the entire span of Scripture.  The psalms, for example, reveal Israel’s theology of YHWH’s attributes of love in the form of prayer. 

1015:     Back to satisfaction.  Throughout the Bible redemption comes without the need for someone to die.  Excursus: What Johnson is arguing is that God’s character, seen clearly in Deutero, is essentially loving and redeeming.  Satisfaction thinking places the cross between us and God’s forgiveness.

1046:     God is the same in both testaments.

1054:     After stating that God in the Bible cannot be easily described, Johnson asserts that God is nevertheless the same in both the Old and New Testaments.

1071:     The author brings up the old saw, which sees the Old Testament God as a deity of wrath and the NT God is a deity of love.  This thinking, obnoxious in many ways, also may underlie Christian prejudice against Jews.

1092:     Her discussion aims at substantiating the declaration that God had no personality shift between Testaments.

1096:     The NT simply assumes and adopts the OT (Jewish) view of Creation.

Book II Summary:

Book II, titled “The Creating God who Saves,” employs several interpretative strategies from the Old Testament to show that God didn’t begin the work of redemption with the crucifixion of Jesus.  As with the rest of the book, this chapter works to expand the idea of redemption beyond the simple compensation of a feudal lord God for the individual Christian’s sin debt.  Johnson begins with Second Isaiah, noting that this prophet of God’s love and mercy employed the word YHWH, which carries the nuance of rescue and mercy.  First used as God’s self-designation when he encountered Moses at the burning bush, YHWH is an action word that points to God’s essential being as faithful, nurturing, and loving.   Second Isaiah also makes liberal use of the word redeem and its cognates.  Redeem evolved from being strictly am economic word to being a broad term implying helping, rescuing, restoring, forgiving, and taking care of the poor.  With Second Isaiah’s primary subject, YHWH, and primary verb, redeem clearly defined as words of rescue and faithfulness, Johnson moves to summarize Second Isaiah’s thrilling overall message of reassurance and encouragement.  Clearly, 500 years before the advent of Jesus, God is in the business of tenderly restoring his people.  This happy message is not unique to the last 15 chapters of Isaiah.  It pervades the Old and New Testaments.  Johnson goes further.  She adds that people are always important co-workers with God in the work of redemption.  Israel, for example, is the identity of the redeeming agent who Second Isaiah calls the Servant.  Johnson works to establish in the reader the idea that the OT God is essentially a loving and faithful being who may be counted on like no other.  There is no between testaments transformation of God’s essential character.  God is not angry in the Old Testament and kindly in the New.  Any idea that redemption needed to wait for Jesus to be crucified is seriously undercut in this section of Johnson’s book.

Book III: “Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews”

1108:     Jesus made God’s presence concrete in the midst of people’s struggles in First Century Palestine.  In the context of his earthly ministry, Jesus was executed for reasons that had nothing to do with satisfaction.

1112.     Johnson raises question about the 4 evangelist’s personal paith, which certainly contributed to the character of the gospels they wrote.

1120:     And the gospels were written to inspire faith in their readers.

1128:     I think Johnson is driving home the point that faith—that is, the response Jesus came to awaken—faith is engendered through the chain of witnesses, including the gospel writer, who were inspired by Jesus’ wonderful words and deeds during his public ministry.  Faith doesn’t need to wait for a satisfaction theory.

1152:     The gospel writers select, reduce, explain, and proclaim.  The one insight in this discussion is that an adequate faith can be had during Jesus’ ministry.  We in fact such faith that leads to salvation in say, Zacchaeus.  Johnson wants to say that no narrative of an event in Jesus’ life comes to us unmediated through the gospel narrative.  It’s always mediated.

1161:     Biblical scholarship now has the tools to penetrate back through layers of development to understand some …

1166:     The author cites Jesus’ passion predictions in Mark 8,9, and 10.  Each one added more detail.  The gospel recollection of these utterances, together with the passion narratives themselves are all theologically massaged versions of the events.  When they were actually unfolding they may hot have felt like they were laden with spiritual significance.

1174:     The author is talking about the historical critical method, which she will now use to reconstruct a significantly “de-theologized” video of Jesus living in First century Palestine.  This approach, she promises, will convincingly dislodge the grip which the satisfaction theory has on our thinking about Jesus.

1178:     (3.2) Jesus the Jew under Roman Rule.  She moves to the detail of the placard placed on the cross: “The King of the Jews.”

1189:     The argument moves to a discussion of the crime that Jesus was charged with.  He was king of the Jews.  It must have been some kind of sedition.

1193:     Rome had taken over Palestine in 63 bc and tolerated no challenge to its rule.

1210:     She gives a brief history of sedition and the Roman use of crucifixion.

1214:     Jesus was deeply embedded in Jewish social and cultic life.

1246:     The particularity of Jesus’ circumstances prevent us from seeing him in any universal manner.  He was thoroughly a 1^st century Jew.

1255:     The Jewishness of Jesus’ life may pose challenges to us non-Jews.  The discussion, having reminded the reader of the Jewish character of Jesus’ life, moves to discuss the intertwined concepts of

• Kingdom of God
• Messiah
• Resurrection of the dead

1259:     Kingdom, announced as having arrived early in Mark and the focus Jesus’ most innovative teaching,

1267:     The kingdom, perhaps not as exciting to post-moderns, was regarded with excited anticipation in the First Century.  It was the fulfillment of the Jubilee release.

1272:     Kingship, Kindom, realm, reign, rule are all contemporary expressions developed to describe the joy of God’s inbreaking reign.

1280:     Other elements were variously mixed in with Jewish expectation: restoration of the Temple, new Davidic monarch bringing justice, peace, and prosperity, the casting out or oppressors, banishment of idolatry, the poor vindicated, wicked punished, the dead resurrected, joy made permanent, the Spirit of God poured out, peace established worldwide.  Much of Second Isaiah’s comfort vision is fulfilled in the idea of the Kingdom.

1284:     Messiah.  The person who inaugurated the reign.

1292:     The Messiah would also protect the poor and insure that they get justice in the courts.

1296:     During Jesus’ public ministry people wondered if maybe he was the messiah.  JBap: “Are you the one who is to come? (Mt 11.3).  There were other militant messiahs, some of whom attracted lagre followings.

1300:     With Jesus’ death and resurrection, the Church was unreservedly devoted to Jesus as the messiah.  Christ is the Greek word for messiah.

1305:     Resurrection:  In the years before Jesus’ ministry there was increased hope in resurrection (Isaiah 25.6-9).  Ezekiel’s dry bones passage , Ezekiel 37.

Excursus: Note that Ezekiel in this text equates exile with being in “your graves.”

1318:     During time of oppression by foreign powers, people in Israel found increasing hope in a last day when the Kingdom would come.  We see first clear Old Testament hope in resurrection in Daniel 12.2-3.

1326:     In Jesus’ time resurrection was not universally accepted, but hotly disputed.

1339:     3.4  A ministry that blazed like a meteor.  Jesus’ ministry reacted powerfully with the tenor of his times.  Jesus launched his public life with the message that the kingdom was “at hand.”

1356:     Johnson makes note of the meals eaten during Jesus’ public ministry.  Jesus’ parables called attention to the inbreaking Kingdom of God.  All that Jesus did and said awakened a sense of god’s approach to redeem.

1376:     Jesus’ whole ministry was focused on the coming reign of God.  Johnson states that expecting Jesus to be an environmentalist would be irresponsible.  But we might extend his inclusive concern for the poor and outsiders, to the animals and the whole cosmos.

1384:     Johnson doubles down on the gracious reign of God

1417:     The discussion on the term, “Father,” which is used 4 times in Mark; 15 in Luke; 49 in Matthew, and 109 in John.  This increased usage reflects a church development rather than something essential to Jesus’ ministry.  The historical Jesus was more involved with YHWH that name that is a verb, than with Father, a Hellenistic idea.

1439:     Johnson talks about Jesus bringing the kingdom message directly to Jerusalem.

1438:     Here’s an important point.  Jesus ventured to Jerusalem, a dangerous decision given Rome’s dominating presence.  But life abundant was Jesus’ goal.

1443:     Jesus pressed his kingdom-announcing vocation.  He stayed loyal to what he had always done.  Johnson cites several other heroic people and lifted up their heroic perseverance.  She sees Jesus; trip to Jerusalem in that light. 

1467:     Much like MLK centuries later, Jesus staid his course and, against a high possibility that harm would come to him, went to Jerusalem.

1475:     Doctrinal interpretations of Jesus’ sacrifice, even those in the New Testament, came later.  As for the historical Jesus, he took a chance, went to Jerusalem in service to the people around him whom he loved.

1480:     Pilate would march into Jerusalem for the three pilgrimage feasts, with a large group of troops in order to show pilgrims who held the power over Palestine.

1492:     Pilate, a belligerent leader, appointed the high priest to his office.  The High Priest’s loyalty tended to bend away from his people toward Rome. 

1508:     Jesus came unavoidably to the authorities attention.  The Passover crowd that filled Jerusalem for the holiday was a spirited mob with rebellion on their minds.  This was no good time for a popular messiah figure to be turning over tables in the Temple or heading his own hosanna-filled parade.

1529:     Caiphus’ decision to try to eliminate Jesus made perfect sense as a measure to keep the Passover crowds calm and Rome placated.

1538:     Given the facts shorn of subsequent church interpretations and we see that the charge of sedition made sense.

1579:     The resurrection, while not historically certifiable, is plausible by considering the clear change in the attitude of Jesus’ followers.

1605:     Johnson lingers on the first fruits idea of the resurrection, specifically that Jesus’ rise from the dead inaugurates many more such risings.

1618:     More on resurrection: It means more than resuscitation of a corpse, akin to Lazarus’ temporary life after death.  Neither did resurrection mean simply that Jesus’ movement would keep on going.

1630:     She calls resurrection thoroughly God-centered.  God restores a person to a new form of living.

1634:     Resurrection is connected with Creation.  The idea (per Romans 4.17) is that God creates anew with death.  Belief in resurrection is a form of creation faith.

1651:     Having laid out crucifixion and resurrection shorn of its later interpretation, it emerges that resurrection is another facet of the creator God’s goodness.  Perhaps God repeatedly is bringing alive is bringing the dead to a new form of being.  God, for example, preserved and re-enlivened Israel. 

1660:     Resurrection creates a new future.  Jesus doesn’t receive his life back.  Jesus receives a new being with God.

1668:     Resurrection also entails body.  In Jesus’ case, he received a transfigured body.

1684:     Part of Jesus’ new being is that he is present in several different places—the sacraments, in the Holy Spirit, in the Church.  Therefore Jesus is present with not only his followers, but also with the rest of the created world.

1688:     The new order of being inaugurated by Jesus’ resurrection harks back to the promises we read in Deutero Isaiah.

1697:     When we see cross and resurrection fused, we have a move from an awful disappointing end to life to a glorious re-creation of a human being.  It is the merger of Jesus’ fidelity and God’s creative power that is salvific.

1705:     Anselm’s theory suddenly looks contrived and inattentive to the historical completeness of the Good Friday/Easter story.  Anselm simply skips the resurrection.

By fusing crucifixion and resurrection, the disciples were able to see Jesus’ entire ministry with new, clear, and appreciative eyes.  It became more clear that the Father and the Son were deeply united.

1722:     The resurrection, further, inaugurated the Kingdom.  Jesus was clearly more than a Davidic king.  He was lord of the world.

1735:     Here is introduced the idea of accompaniment.  Salvation is the divine gift of “I am with you,” even in suffering and death.  Redemption is God walking through the world much as we do.  This is a double solidarity, both with Jesus and the Father.

1739:     Jesus knows from having shared this life what human life is. 

Excursus: So by stripping the Good Friday/Easter story of its biblical, churchy, doctrinal accretions w e encounter Jesus as a person.  He moves from being Anselm’s agent of salvation to being our companion in all things.  And as our companion, Jesus sanctifies and makes new our lives.  This is what it means to be saved.  The idea of accompaniment illuminates what James Cone is talking about—the Black community enduring the unimaginable oppression of lynching also is ushered into the recognition that Jesus was lynched.  He also was raised up. 

How is Jesus with us in climate change?  Jesus knows what it means to live under the oppression of the world falling apart.

1748:     Jesus, as a victim of state violence and unjust structures, draws along side of others who live under similar oppression.

1756:     Rather than abandoning those who suffer, Jesus shows up even in the bleakest moment.  This contrary to expectation locates God in life’s gritty realities rather than on high with the powerful and secure.

1760:     Our task is, in companionship with Christ, to draw alongside of those who suffer, namely the poor and rejected ones and intervene on their behalf and assist in relieving their pain.  We become the sacrament of Christ’s presence in the world.

1764:     Actually, sin is far from this discussion.  The sin that contributes to the story is that of the authorities.

1789:     Johnson raises the question of why God did not intervene as Jesus was being crucified.  Excursus: Johnson’s answer here helps with my work with the prophets.  God does not intervene to prevent our sin or its effects. 

1805:     Salvation is the presence of the living God who is revealed to be our companion as we endure our own travail.

1813:     The cross then does not stand in isolation.  Jesus died into God’s loving arms and we will too.    

Book III Summary

This chapter makes the point that Jesus’ execution was an entirely plausible culmination to his politically provocative ministry in the context of Rome’s domination of Palestine.  In other words, if we strip away the layers of interpretation of Jesus’ cross, preeminently interpretations like that of Anselm, we still have a coherent sequence of events that brought Jesus to his death.  Ultimately, Johnson is making the point that satisfaction is neither essential nor helpful.   What we find in our historically reconstructed drama of crucifixion and resurrection is a tale of a very human and familiar series of events.  This gives to the cross a certain universality, where Jesus’ suffering is reassuringly familiar to all creatures who find themselves abandoned, abused, impoverished, and afflicted.  The resurrection likewise becomes a hope for those who find solidarity with Jesus in his suffering.  If God raised Jesus into a new form of being with a fresh future, so might he raise us as we struggle in our own lives.  The solidarity with Jesus is what saves.  Put differently, Jesus accompanies his creatures and thus saves them.  When laid out this way, one realizes that Anselm’s satisfaction theory is far removed from the actual events of Jesus’s passion and resurrection. 

Book IV: Interpretations Blossom

1819:     4.1 those who loved him did not cease

The period following Jesus’ ascension was incandescently creative.  Jesus’ followers needed to sort out what they had gone through and what to do next.

1829:     Josephus’ Jewish History: Even a half century after his death, the original followers evidenced an ongoing love for Jesus.

1841: In this period, interpretations of Jesus’ death emerged:

1. He was seen in the prophetic tradition as a prophet who suffered.
2. He was seen as a righteous man who suffered, but was vindicated.
3. Gentile followers saw Jesus through the eyes of their own cultural forms

The early Christian movement soon was bursting with ideas and themes, most embedded in different cultures’ constructs, which interpreted what God was doing in Christ.  Love was central to most of these.

1853:     At first, the disciples expected an imminent wrap-up of history.

1860:     The growing number of Gentile adherents brought challenges, notably around the question whether one was required to convert to Judaism before becoming disciples of Jesus.

1864:     The Jewish concept of the Davidic Royal Messiah: The scope of the Messiah’s salvation came to extend to the whole world.

1872:     The 70 a.d. destruction of the Jerusalem Temple was analogous to the Exile in the Old Testament.  Israel as a culture plus the Temple cult ceased to exist.  The rabbinic movement filled the void shifting the locus of piety to home and synagogue.

1875: Jerusalem was no longer the center of the Christian movement.

1879:     All of the NT writings after 70 a.d. were interpretations of the meaning of salvation.  It appears that these early Christians continued in Israel’s tradition of seeing God as busy saving the whole world.  The cross didn’t fit.  Interpreting it was still led.

1888:     The NT has no logical theory of salvation. The NT authors instead used metaphors.  They didn’t develop a logical sustained argument.  All that they did was bring insights here and there.

1905:     Metaphors can be powerful

1913:     And many metaphors from different cultures were pressed into service in bringing fresh meaning to the cross.

1921:     We need to maintain many metaphors about the meaning of Jesus’ suffering in order to deprive the satisfaction theory from becoming dominant.  Salvation, which means “healing” is a metaphor.

1934:     The entire NT bears witness to the experience of salvation through the Trinity.  Knowing themselves to be “saved,” the early Christians could turn in love and reach out to their neighbors.

1938:     Some New Testament authors see salvation as deeply connected with sin and rescue from sin’s ravages.  Other authors don’t.

Excursus: This brings up a principle I once developed during my time as a minister when I thought that attention to one’s sin, including the corporate recital of a Prayer of Confession was essential to Christ life.  I might not have contemplated a salvation for the whole world independent of sin.  “All have sinned…”  This ironically functions as a ticket for admission into the Christian experience of being saved.  This being the case, it is absolutely necessary that we not only be sinners, but contrite sinners in order to qualify.

1938:     Paul, who leaves Jesus’ ministry out of the equation, is definitely in the sin-is-necessary category (Rom. 4.24)

1942:     She sees Paul as advancing a salvation that issues entirely from the paschal event (resurrection?).  The Synoptics see salvation as flowing through the ministry of Jesus.  Jesus’ entire being was salvific.

1946:     This chapter appears to be saying that healing is one of many metaphors used to interpret the cross.  The chapter now wants to lay out several metaphors or motifs:

1954:     She calls salvation, healing the medical metaphor.  4.3 Military and diplomatic metaphors

1954:     Victory on the battlefield.  Triumph over evil.  Death is obvious enemy over which the crucifixion /resurrection triumphs.  (I Cor. 15.53-57)

1963:     Victory over evil spirits, principalities and powers.  (Eph. 6.12)

Excursus: Now she is excluding Ephesians from the Pauline corpus.

1967:     The contemporary idea of evil per Walter Wink, is principalities and powers as collective evil.  The spirit of a city or angel of a church idea.  Gustaf Aulen calls this victory motif the classic view of salvation (Christus Victor).

1979:     Reconciliation—the resentment and conflict people feel toward God.

2000:     The peace between humanity and evil forces and God is negotiated.  She provides an interesting reference to the Nobel Prize museum that makes visible how much resistance Nobel Laureates endure in their quests to make a contribution.

2004:     The idea here is that there are a lot of voices that really don’t want people to be reconciled with God.

2008:     (4.4) Financial and legal matters: Paying off a debt to spring someone from the clutches of debt.

2013:     In the Bible, liberation from Egypt and Babylon are prime examples of a whole nation in debt.

2021:     Buying a slave’s freedom.

2025:     It’s helpful to notice here that buying a slave’s freedom is not the same as appeasing or providing satisfaction to preserve honor.

2029:     “You were bought with a price”…doesn’t have a strict logic to it.  The metaphor is loose, but gives the general picture of a grateful community that has been bought back by the value of the sacrificial offering that is costly because of its spotless perfection.

2052:     Redemption is not the most prevalent metaphor in the NT.

The conversation moves to justification as an important metaphor.  Justification means acquittal in a legal sense, is favored by Protestants, is expounded by Paul, and gives us a picture of guilty persons being declared innocent and released from charges by a judge.

2063:     This metaphor’s most attractive part is the new reality that comes into being for the acquitted person.  Justification lifts the weight of guilt and opens the prison doors the courtroom doors to a new life of freedom. 

2074:     Johnson emphasizes once again that justification is a motif.  Paul presents justification as a fruit both of the crucifixion and the resurrection.  It lacks airtight logic.

Excursus: This section clarifies why it is difficult to preach about the salvation that comes through Jesus’ death as an inescapable truth buttressed by irrefutable logic.  The preacher wants to make this clear to the congregation on Sunday morning, yet cannot make it work in the sermon manuscript on Thursday afternoon. 

2085:     Johnson discusses the legal motif of being acquitted and able to be free of condemnation under the law.  Further, freedom, as say, the liberation theologians see it, is related to the forensic approach. 

2089:     Metaphors discussed so far: restored health, victory over oppressive powers, recovery of a lost or broken relationship, redemption from slavery, acq2uittal from legal accusation, are all liberationist.

2093:     (4.5) Cultic and sacrificial metaphors: Johnson explains sacrificial rituals as expressions of the desire to reset the relationship.

2114:     Killing an animal was an act of giving back to God what God gave in the first place.

2154:     The Passover Lamb sacrifice has no reference to sin.  It was a meal in the tradition of the final meal in Egypt before the Exodus.

2171:     It’s important that we not take this too literally so as not to empty the meaning out of it.  There were other sacrificial rituals in ancient Israel that did not have to do with atonement.

2187:     It’s at this point that Johnson explores with precision how sacrifice figures in the restoration of relationship between God and a person.  It’s important to recognize that forgiveness is accomplished by God’s intention and character.  God loves and forgives.  The sacrifice “resets the relationship on the human side.”  God doesn’t need sacrifice in order to forgive sin.

Excursus: Perhaps Calvin’s idea of condescension helps here.  God doesn’t need sacrifice to forgive and reset the relationship, but people might.  Giving up something and going through the motions of offering a sacrifice adjusts something in a person’s psyche, which enables him or her to welcome and live in the new reality.

2191:     Such sin offerings were commonplace.

2196:     Jesus’ cross: In the New Testament Jesus’ sacrifice is likened to and interpreted by the Temple veil, the slaughtered lamb, and the priest.

2220:     The blood is meant to sanctify the people rather than placate God.

2224:     These metaphors really don’t speak to us today.

Excursus: Johnson is carefully deconstructing interpretations of Jesus’ cross that appear to be indispensible, so she can open wide the door to a new metaphor, namely one which lets us see the sacrifice of Jesus as healing for the whole creation, a grace we are in desperate need of today.

2233:     Some of the cross’s power is removed because its bloodiness and violence appear to sanctify violence and bloodshed.

Excursus:  This further relieves us from the interpreting Jesus’ life as a necessary march to the cross in order to fulfill the indispensible task of creating the only way for humanity’s sin problem to be removed.  When necessary-sacrifice-for-sin is asserted, then the history or event of the cross becomes indistinguishable from one particular interpretation of the cross.

2245:     (4.6 Family Metaphors)  In NT times, a person saw him or her self as embedded in a household, rather than as a free-standing individual.  Solitary people were much more adrift then than today.

2258:     Adoption is another metaphor used to interpret the cross.  We come into a family, have status as children, not slaves, have sibling relationships, access to material benefits including inheritance.

2275:     We may also be born into God’s family through a second or a “from above” birth.

2279:     We are given power to become children of God.

2291:     There are several God-as-birthing-mother images in the Bible, notably Isaiah 42.14 and Deuteronomy 32.18.

2296:  Labor and birthing agony are metaphors for Jesus’ death on the cross.  Julian of Norwich has the metaphor of God as a nursing mother.

2308:     (4.7 Metaphor of the New Creation)  The idea that the world was starting over.  “If anyone is in Christ…new creation.”  2 Corinthians 5.17

2313:     Christ as new first light shining in darkness.  Excursus: I’m liking the name of my blog a lot more right now.

2317:     Adam and New Adam—Jesus Christ.

2324:     Johnson re-frames Adam’s “sin” as a misdeed that sets into motion a cascade of trouble.  Christ’s counterbalancing obedience has the opposite effect in allowing “a new start” to ensue.

2328:     (4.8 Your holy servant Jesus Acts 4.30)

Excursus: Is Johnson straying away from the cross as one instance in Jesus’ ministry to his earthly ministry as a whole?

2353:     The 4^th Servant Song of Isaiah suggests that the servant’s suffering benefits all.

2374:     The idea of redemptive suffering may be a way to summarize the suffering servant motif.

2398:     The servant hymn gives the pattern for the Christological hymn in Philippians 2.7-11 and in the Eucharistic words: “…poured himself out.”

2402:     Does emphasis on suffering legitimate the suffering of out-groups and women today?

2411:     Johnson asserts, without proving rigidly that there is something beautiful and beckoning about, say, Oscar Romero’s death.

2415:     (4.9 Let the satisfaction theory retire) Three learnings emerge as we bring this chapter to a close: First, many different metaphors make up the biblical language of salvation.  Second, salvation is culturally specific.  Third, the various metaphors are vivid, playful rather than syllogistic.

2424:     All of the metaphors indicate a transition: i.g. “from this to that.”  From enslaved to free and the like.

2428:     The mixing of metaphors subtlety resists making any one approach absolute.  Sometimes they “tumble over each other in a synergy.”

2436:     The fact that the early Christian community undertook and triumphed with the interpretive task is in itself a small miracle and a major undertaking.

2445:     Anselm’s theory, in view of the rich profusion of ideas launched by early Christians is thin by comparison.

2449:     She argues that Anselm’s premise is a logical error.  In fact, a merciful God, by definition would not require such a satisfaction in order to activate forgiveness.

2453:     The satisfaction theory took hold and hijacked the other metaphors, which came to be seen as forms of satisfaction.

2465:     By dispensing with the Satisfaction Theory today opens contemporary Christians to the rich array of New Testament metaphors.

Book IV Summary

Johnson’s fourth book demonstrates that Christianity possesses several metaphors or motifs, all appearing in the New Testament, that have been eclipsed by the Satisfaction Theory, and need to be brought out from behind its shadow.  These metaphors are different from the Satisfaction Theory in two ways.  First, the fact that the New Testament presents several metaphors suggest that there is no commanding interpretation of the crucifixion.  Second, these various metaphors are not complete logical systems in themselves.  Satisfaction, in contrast, has tended to be elevated in church practice as a final and logically impregnable way to interpret Jesus’ sacrifice.  Johnson provides a leisurely review of the NT motifs showing how they work together, evoke hope, and release meaning.  Several of these have nothing to do with sin.  One motif interprets Jesus’ suffering as healing, another as a victory over evil, another as the payment of a debt, another sees Jesus’ death as a sacrificial offering.   Johnson wants to see Satisfaction retired as a dominating theory so that the array of motifs might have full play in the imaginations of a new generation of believers and pave the way for seeing the crucifixion as saving the entire cosmos.

Book V: God of All Flesh: Deep Incarnation

2475:     A summary of the argument so far:  Johnson has worked historically, noting both Exodus and return from Exile.  Anselm’s theory, which focuses logically on sin needs to be set aside in order for Jesus’ crucifixion to be recruited as one way among many that God is saving the whole natural world. 

2487:     All of this rests on a theology of accompaniment, which is God’s immersion in human struggle, an immersion which God gives freely, is saving, and aims at resurrection.

Excursus:  The lynching victim finds himself sharing the lot of Jesus, who also was strung up and tortured to death before a screaming, mocking crowd.  In his most dire and painful moment, the lynching victim at least is given to see that Christ has not abandoned him, and in this recognition is also able to see God’s judgment and the hope of resurrection despite the overwhelming evil of the moment.  The cross doesn’t take away the suffering.  It gives those in the midst of suffering a sense of God’s opinion and intention. 

2487:     Johnson now wants to extend the saving power of the cross to the entire created world.

2495:     The argument now moves to the extra-biblical insight that all life is intertwined.

2507:     She cites two Christological approaches: one is a Christology from below, represented by the Synoptic Gospels; the other, a Christology from above, represented by John.

2511: Rahner argues that the “below” approach as preferable.  To begin with, the “above” approach requires acceptance of creedal affirmations about Jesus’ divinity and authority of the church.  The thinker must know some grand things about the Christ.  To this point, the book has followed a Christology from below.  Now we go to a Christology from above.

2519:     This approach sees God taking on flesh, which has neither happened or even been thought about before. 

2533:     J wants to define both word and flesh before stating an ecological theology of salvation.

2537:     In the Old Testament basar means “meat” and then expanded means human person, kinfolk (flesh and blood), animals, and the state of earthly existence, which is temporary, vulnerable, etc.  So when Jesus assumes fleshly existence he assumes the lot of animals and beings who are vulnerable, transitory, changeable, and so on.

Excursus: the “friendly beasts,” Jesus’ legendary first worshippers would be recognizing their God in the flesh.  This segment cries out for substantiation in the TDNT.

2546:     The finitude of flesh is natural, while sin, rebellion against God is not natural.

Excursus: Am I remembering correctly that Niebuhr sees sin as rebellion against the finitude structured into created life?

2551:     Jesus’ death on the cross is God’s accompaniment of a murdered world.  As the animals die, Jesus joins them in solidarity.  He dies with them.

2564:     Comment on the Genesis flood.  The Noahic Covemant is with the whold world.

Excursus:  Once we realize that something in the Bible is not precisely historic or borrowed from another culture or religion, we don’t simply discard it.  Instead, we honor it as bearing a truth, which isn’t verifiable or partisan.

2576:     The story of Noah: The animals are clearly the objects of God’s saving intention both before the flood and after in the Rainbow Covenant.  (Gen. 9.16-17)  Throughout the Bible, God’s saving intention is focused on all flesh. (Joel 2.28, Jer. 32.27)

2589:     The conclusion J. is driving towards is that “flesh” represents a range of living beings.

2594:     The NT, especially Paul, may appear to associate flesh (sarx) with sin and evil, but a precise reading shows that flesh is merely subject to, as opposed to essentially, sin.

2598:     The activity of the Spirit is played out in the world of the flesh, it is embodied and in relationships.

2602:     There appears to be a difference between flesh and spirit and body and soul.

2610:     Much of the negativity about flesh crept into Christianity when it expanded into the Hellenistic World, which was clearly more dualistic.

2618:     Greek thought elevated spirit over matter and assigned a hierarchy to the cosmos.  Rocks were at the bottom followed by plants, animals, and people, each being animated by Spirit.  Angels, who are tody-less, rank highly.  Obviously, the more Spirit, the higher the being.

2622:     Humans were viewed dualistically.  Masculinity was more spiritual than the fleshly feminine.  Other hierarchies ensued.  There were ranked ethnic groups and slaves with masters. 

Excursus: Johnson appears to be putting forward the idea that dualism supports hierarchies in society.  How might this be unpacked?  If flesh is a neutral concept, then the value of a fleshly being would correspond to the amount and type of Spirit that is associated with it.  Angels, for example, were construed as all Spirit and no body or flesh.  They then rank highly.  Where humans—and all living beings–are unified (either as embodied spirits or spiritual bodies) then their essential makeup is more or less equal.  If animals could be seen as having souls or being souls, that fact would bring them onto  more of a par with people.

2631:     Christianity never wholly adopted this Greek (Classical world?) pattern but rather continued to affirm the goodness of the physical world, the Creation.

2635:     Spirituality of ascent, fleeing the material world towards the spiritual one.

2639:     She cites the Pope’s statement in “Care of Our Common Home.”  The Pope criticizes dualisms.  There is a strong dualistic thread that runs through Church history. 

2651:     There’s a summarizing statement here where she says that “flesh” covers humans and animals.  I would acknowledge that Christians who embrace such ideas as limited atonement, which sees Christ’s death, while sufficient for the whole world, is “for” the elect only.  This appears to be entirely overturned. 

2657:     She moves to the idea of the Word, beginning with the acknowledgment that the nature of incarnation is a deep mystery.

2666:     She reminds here that Jesus’ suffering was generous and for us.  She says that hochmah and Sophia nurtured our understanding of Christ’s cosmic significance.

2670:     She says a great deal about an association between word and wisdom.

2684:     She moves here to the idea of embodiment or sacrament, which bridges between God’s immanence and transcendence.  These include glory,  spirit, word, Christ, sacraments.  These also mediate God’s presence. 

Prominent in these mediating entities is personified wisdom.  The Torah was an embodiment of wisdom.  Wisdom was instrumental in creating the world and in making people holy and just.  These functions are visible in the wisdom literature. 

2713:     Lady Wisdom has many more activities in the Deuterocanonical book, Wisdom of Solomon.  Again, wisdom is an extension of God’s work in the world and the agent which enables people to live, wise, moral, lives.

2725:     Johnson offers that Wisdom is the feminine functioning of God.

2737:     She summarizes the saying that the Lady Wisdom figure was a way of describing God’s providential presence in the world while maintaining divine transcendence.  This image was used to bring to light Jesus’ importance.

Excursus: Just to get oriented.  Johnson has launched an exploration of John 1.14, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  About flesh she wants to establish that the term embraces all of life.  Flesh is not shorthand for sin.  It evokes ideas of transience, vulnerability, and temporariness.  Humans and animals are flesh.  About word she wants to say that it gathers up the idea of wisdom, which was the mediating, feminine expression of God’s work in the world.  God always uses mediating entities so God can remain transient.  She drives to the idea that Jesus takes up wisdom’s work in the world.

2746:     She moves to cite several passages, which suggest that Jesus embodies God’s wisdom in the world.  I Cor. 8.6, Luke 7.35, Matthew 11.19, 11.2, Col. 1.15-20, Heb. L.2-3.

2755:     Since these texts and this identification of Jesus with the Wisdom of God predated the Church’s formal doctrine of the incarnation, we can see how they contributed to it.

2772:     Basically, she reads John 1.14 as the wisdom of God who became flesh…My question is whether she has established an equivalency between word and wisdom.

2785:     Johnson sees incarnation as an intensification of God’s participation in Creation.

2790:     John reflects here on the character of God’s engagement with Creation.  For example, God becomes part of it as flesh.  I’m guessing that all that is assumed by God in God’s becoming is saved by his dying.  Father Damien.  Father Kolwaski in City of Joy.  God takes humanity’s side and shares its suffering.  Lynching.  It’s when God dies as we do.  Mother Theresa.  Robert Lupton.  These people venture into the poor neighborhood.  The doctors who become the patients.

2805:  Johnson discusses the patristic period when the church wrestled with how Christ’s being could be neither dualistic nor a mixed nature.

2826:     How God accomplishes this is not accessible by way of observation or even logic.  We can’t only say that it is there.  Paul uses self-emptying, Matthew employs divine wisdom, John employs divine Word becoming flesh.  All are used to express God’s being with us.

2834:     The uniting of God and flesh is essential to Christian faith.  It wouldn’t have worked with the classical mind.  This goes to the idea that Christmas may be harder to get than Easter.

2838:     Jesus reveals as much of God as can be done in one life, a disclosure that isn’t different from Israel or the Old Testament.

2842:     Johnson rehearses how Jesus, God become flesh, further identifies with the poor, women, sick etc.  When we do the same we enter into solidarity with God.  This is how Jesus can say that he is the way and the truth and the life.  (These words are all wisdom motifs.)

2857:     Johnson drops a significant point here for our main interest, namely understanding how Christ saves the natural world.  The point is that God saves by assuming fleshly existence.  Johnson moves to an idea which she calls “deep incarnation.”

2862:     To the Natural World: Johnson reiterates the point that scientists are seeing more interrelatedness between humans and the rest of the planet.

Excursus: Why does Johnson go to natural science at this point and abandon the Boble?  In Genesis, the natural world was the wrap-around theater of the human drama.  People were given dominion over animals.  There appears to be some gulf between animals and humanity.

2879:     Niels Gregersen coined: “deep incarnation.”  This idea refers to the divine reach in Christ through humans down to all life processes.

2900:     Humans and animals appear to be constructed on the same paradign.  By this we mean that we mostly have four limbs, we have hands or paws that are similar, yet unique.  Faces look somewhat alike with two eyes, noses, mouths etc located in approximately equivalent positions relative to the other features.  A dog’s face or that of a cow or kitten is familiar enough to engender love from humans. 

2912:     Johnson provides a brilliant rebuttal to my objection that she hasn’t derived her principles entirely from Scripture.  She asserts that just as the Biblical authors used the cultural forms of their time (as did the Church Father/Mothers who borrowed philosophical categories to illuminate theological ideas) so can we draw on our best understanding of the mysteries of the Universe to illuminate the truth of our faith.

2921:     The world of nature is affected by the paschal mystery.

2925:     Jesus’ death on the cross is God’s participation in the human world’s pain and death.  This idea extends to the animal world.

2934:     The suffering of the natural world is the cost of its diversity and beauty.  Pain and death are woven into life’s evolutionary history.  Nature is cruciform.

2942:     The death of Christ becomes an icon of God’s redemptive co-suffering with all sentient life as well as the victims of social competition.  Jesus’ words about the sparrow’s fall pick up on this idea.

2951:     While Jesus’ suffering does not stop the suffering of the world, it signals that God never abandons his creatures.

2960:     The discussion moves to the resurrection.  In the crucifixion of Jesus, God does not make the worldly problem of suffering and death go away.  Instead, God joins us in the experience.  The Resurrection becomes a promise that despite appearances, life will flourish once again and that the whole cosmos will be raised up.

2985:     The Eastern Orthodox traditions, which de-emphasize the cross’s legal implications, (the sinner’s guilt under the law) have a tradition of anticipating the redemption and raising up of all Creation.

3002:     Johnson cites Laudato Si in its passage about the gaze of Jesus.  Pope Francis says that in the splendor of the end of all things, we will join all creatures in praising God. 

3010:     The unity of God and the natural world calls us to protect the planet.

3015:     God, in Christ, has joined the fray and tasted the suffering of the world, affliction has been defeated or overcome.

3019:     Interpreting the cross as Jesus’ participation in the world’s suffering brings to the fore God’s investment and engagement.  In Christ’s resurrection is the prospect that, as N.T. Wright puts it.  God will do for the whole world what he did for Jesus when he raised him up.

Book V Summary

By the time we reach Book Five, Johnson has cleared away the limiting Satisfaction Theory, which sees Jesus’ crucifixion exclusively as a remedy for human sin.  Additionally, she has laid before the reader the array of ways that Early Christians interpreted the Cross of Jesus.  She now plunges into the theology of accompaniment.  Put simply, accompaniment is how Jesus’ torture and death gives God’s companionship and blessing to those who suffer in the world.  The most important biblical insight in this section is Johnson’s exploration of the Greek word sarx, which is translated “flesh.”  As John 1.14 puts it, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us…”   Johnson expands our superficial understanding of flesh as a human attribute.  Flesh is used in the New Testament in a variety of ways, including not only human physicality, but also the whole realm of sentient life, notably animal life.  Jesus’ death on the cross extends this fleshly solidarity with all life to the further solidarity in suffering.   Life, for all its vitality and beauty, is also the center of monumental suffering.  Animals struggle and die.  Their pain is invisible.  The pain that humans inflict on animals multiplies this suffering, usually without human sympathy.  God in contrast is not indifferent to the suffering of the beings he has made.  God wished to save the animal kingdom when he instructed Noah to take breeding pairs aboard the Ark.  Jesus’ solidarity with all flesh that suffers is part of the fulfillment of that saving intention.  Johnson uses the term “deep incarnation” to express how God in Jesus reaches deeply into the interrelated web of life that includes animals and humans alike.  This chapter succeeds in logically showing how God manages to enter into the world of the living and to establish a saving solidarity with all beings that struggle, animals and people included.

Book VI: Conversion of Heart and Mind: Us

3022:     The author begins this section with a summary of the argument so far.  She did this in the last section.  The book’s first large task was to get Anselm and his Satisfaction Theory out of the way in order to be open to the more spacious idea of God’s accompaniment.  Accompaniment, simply put, is God’s sharing of our suffering. 

Excursus: I wonder what the biblical basis is for believing that our sin is sufficient to send us to hell?

3030:     The author is now inviting us to conversion to Creation with which Jesus has joined in solidarity and accompaniment.  Jesus has become the earth’s partner in suffering.

3034:     As we recognize that  Jesus has assumed and suffers with all flesh we too are beckoned to turn away from indifference towards the world. 

3038:     Put differently, our new thinking about Jesus’ Cross and redemption gives us a new heart for Creation.

3047:     Johnson moves to consider the need for action, for active love which flows from fresh insight.

3051:     She cites the story of Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3.7-8  “Then the Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, 8and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land…”)  Knowing is equivalent to participation.

3055:     Johnson cites Pope Francis, Ludato Si with sufficient frequency to indicate that she may be following his thinking.  Francis invites his readers to develop a wonder for and bond with the earth, a kind of knowing, that will issue in engagement.

3060:     Ludato Si is forthright about the fact that greed, gross consumerism, disparity in wealth, delusions of grandeur, self-aggrandizement, and gross injustice are the sins that threaten the earth.

3068:     The shift invited here will be a monumental one.  Much of what people believe will need to be turned on its head.

3076:     She launches now five thought experiments that will rejuvenate our imaginations and prompt tangible ecological commitments.

3085: The Blue Marble.  In this first thought experiment, one should consider the biosphere in its totality, created, sustained, and completed by God.

Excursus: Note how different this picture is from the idea that we are saved from our sins and evacuated from the planet into heaven.

3097:     Expansion on the words of above sentence:

Created: there is God’s hand and therefore a life-giving love at the core of all creation.  All belongs to God

Cared for:  God acts with a loving ethic, which creates community.

Completed:  In Revelation, all creatures agree in community in their praise of the Creator.

3113:     Job sees in the non-human living world sources of insight about God.

3121:     We are united by the fact that we are all creatures.  The living sphere has God at its center.

3129:     She sees the scientific insight that all creatures have a common ancestor as an insight shared with  Biblical people.

3134:     Scientists who observe the world carefully also appear to reverence that world.

3142:     So the first thought experiment is designed to help us see that humans join with all living things as members of the splendid community of Creation.

The Second Thought Experiment, “From Pyramid to Circle,” aims at freeing us from the separation that comes from being on top of the pyramid of privilege.

3150:     Continuing at the top of the pyramid distorts our perception.  For dominant males and people of general, the pyramid structure of reality presses us to see ourselves as domineering, dictatorial overlords of all else in creation.

3155:     Johnson moves to define dominion.  She concludes that dominion is like the situation where lesser authorities are appointed to manage territory on behalf of the king.  This would suggest that they should manage as God would so the territory will be fruitful, multiply and flourish.

3163:     In the second creation story, the human is made of the same material as the rest of life, receives the Spirit breath, and is sexually differentiated.  (I think she makes these points to show that humans are essentially animals.)

3171:     Then there is no more dominion talk throughout the kind of hierarchial organization of society that we’ve seen.

3179:     She illustrates this by citing the beautiful and ecological Psalm 104, which places humanity in the living sphere with animals and plants and life-giving planet.

3188:     The Western world has unfortunately gotten into the habit of seeing the world as made for men to exploit.  Men have occupied the pinnacle of the pyramid.

3196:     Laudato Si speaks against human hierarchy.

3208:     Realizing that human experience is so very small and short in comparison to the rest of the Universe helps us step down from the top of the pyramid.

3223:     The Third Thought Experiment: A Value of Their Own in God’s Eyes. 

This will be the opposite of the pyramid experiment.  This experiment helps us see that other creatures have intrinsic value in their own right.  They are not just instrumental for human use.  In short, we step down and in our imaginations see other creatures and the whole world as lifted up.

3228:     Citing Laudato Si, Johnson observes that creatures have intrinsic value.

3241:     Creatures have intrinsic value because God loves them. 

3254:     The creatures are working through time with us toward the consummation that God is preparing.

3258:     If we really felt our connection to the world, we would experience pain at its destruction.

3266:     The point here is that people have a connection to the rest of creation.  We are able to experience bereavement when part of the natural world is being destroyed.

The Fourth Thought Experiment: God Saves Humans and Animals Alike.

3271:     This fourth mental exercise extends the third one and makes it more concrete. 

3272:     All animals have their own relationship with God.

3275:     Both humans and animals are related to God and are being saved by him

3276:     God addresses the animals in the Creation Story telling them (Genesis 1.21-22) to be fruitful and multiply.  

3280:     The sky and stars, for example, appear to be creatures in biblical thinking.  They proclaim the radiance of “God’s splendor.  Psalm 19 proclaims that “the heavens are telling the glory of God.”

3295:     The comforting the Zion addresses a place as a creature.  Clara ponders comforting a distressed land or waste dump.

3299:     The land can mourn and its creatures languish (Hosea 4.3).

3308:     Johnson concludes that place locations are more than the setting or backdrop for human drama.  They are created too and are participants in the drama of life in God’s sight.

3318:     Psalm 36.6 states explicitly “You save animals and humans alike.”  (There’s a good proof text for those who interpret the Bible that way.)

3334:     The end times vision of ultimate peace includes humans and animals alike.  “the wolf and lamb together.”

3343:     There are a surprising number of places where animals are mentioned as the objects of God’s care and planned culmination

3352:     The Fifth Thought Experiment: Reimaging Ourselves.

3357:     Part of our own transformation is expanding our own thought boundaries.

3369:     This principle can be seen in Psalm 67, which progresses in showing who receives God’s blessing.

3388:     Letting especially liturgical speech include animals and the natural world as creatures like us under God’s care is one start towards transforming ourselves.

3407:     Animals receive from God, not as do humans, but in their own way.

Book VI Summary:

The book has argued brilliantly that God is bringing all created things, especially living things, to their own full goodness, truth and beauty.  All that God has made is being saved.  The final book in Creation and the Cross consists mostly of five “thought experiments” that help to move the reader from an intellectual awareness to engagement.  Summarized more fully above, the thought experiments are ways of retooling our thought processes so our outlook towards God’s redemption does not see it simply as what God is doing for us, or worse, for an elite, elected group.  The thought experiments invite the reader to picture the entire biosphere as a unity of interrelated life forms.  People are part of that web.  Because we share God’s salvation with all created things, we need to locate and abandon ways that we elevate ourselves as God’s favorites.  As we press through the thought experiments we imagine how animals too are receiving God’s blessing and even God’s solidarity with them as they suffer.  Finally, we need to recognize that salvation for a human will be different that salvation for an animal or a place.  God’s greatness is sufficient to provide for all is the culminating thought and a fair summary for the entire book.