“Have We Gotten Atonement Wrong?” with Fred Anderson

Shownotes:

This episode goes deep into the theological concept of atonement. You may not know what atonement is (broadly, the reconciliation of the relationship between God and people through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ), but today’s guest is here to help. Fred Anderson, author of Why Did Jesus Die and What Does That Have to Do with Me?, is pastor emeritus at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City. He retired after forty-two years in ministry, but also served in the Air Force during the Vietnam War and is the author of hymn texts.

His book, Why Did Jesus Die…, looks at atonement biblically, theologically, historically, and sacramentally to give us a more holistic view of--and perhaps a better way to approach--the concept, which has come to mean more about what we can do to make things better, rather than what God has already done to reconcile our relationship with God.

Resources:

Buy Why Did Jesus Die and What Does That Have to Do with Me?

Transcript:

Chris McAlilly 00:00 I'm Chris McAlilly.

Eddie Rester 00:02

And I'm Eddie Rester. Welcome to The Weight. Today we're talking with Fred Anderson. He's the Pastor Emeritus of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City. He retired after 42 years of ministry. He was a second career. He had, I believe, had a vocal degree. He served in the US Air Force during Vietnam. And he's written an incredible book that was sent to us. Chris, what do you think?

Chris McAlilly 00:30

What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. That's what we're talking about. But it's actually a very deep, deep conversation about not just the blood of Jesus, but the death of Jesus, the work of Jesus on our behalf. And this is a, I would describe this as a very, very deep theological conversation, meditating on what it means that Jesus has died. And what does that mean for me? And some of the ways in which we've had kind of readings through the centuries, some of them seem very odd and strange--sacrifice and all of the rest. Maybe you've never thought about those things. Maybe you thought about those things a lot. Maybe those are the reasons you're not a Christian. Maybe those are the reason you're a Christian. Nevertheless, it's just a fascinating conversation about a man who's thought about this stuff his whole life and has written a book kind of at the end of his career, to help the church of the next generation think about what it means that Jesus died for us.

Eddie Rester 01:35

Yeah, this is one of those moments where a listener sent in a name to us, and we didn't know anything about Fred, but he talks a little bit about the different theories of atonement. We're going to talk about what atonement is. So if you're already, like, lost in language. You're like, "Eddie, I don't know what's going on." We're gonna talk, we're gonna help define things. But then when he really begins to talk about why this matters, why how we think about this matters, then the lights go on. About what it matters, why how we think about this matters.

Chris McAlilly 02:15

Yeah, and you get, even if you disagree with them on the backside of this whole conversation, I think it's worth your time, because what you see is the way in which theological convictions that the church has are connected to ethical implications in the world for him. He was in the Air Force during Vietnam. So he's thinking about the connection between a violent death of Jesus and his experience of the violence of war. So we talked a little bit about that. He talks about just the ways in which, you know, a lot of times what you hear in church is half the gospel, and he thinks there's a more full, rich and robust gospel that Fred feels like he's got a handle on, and he wants to tell you about. We enjoyed the conversation, I think you will as well. And if you do like it, share it, send it to your friends, leave us a review. We always love having you with us on The Weight podcast. Eddie Rester, do you have any last closing words before we send it to the interview today?

Eddie Rester 03:14
Enjoy. Enjoy and share it, and we'll see you again next week.

Chris McAlilly 03:18
[INTRO] Life can be heavy. So heavy, in fact that the weight we carry can sometimes cause us to lose hope.

Eddie Rester 03:27
But we've all come across those people in life who seem to be experiencing the same world we live in, except they maintain a great depth of joy and hope.

Chris McAlilly 03:35
A former generation called this gravitas. It was their description of a soul that had gained enough weightiness to be attractive, like all things with a gravitational pull.

Eddie Rester 03:47

Those are the people we want to talk to. On this podcast, we talk to pastors, entrepreneurs, artists, mental health experts, and many others.

Chris McAlilly 03:56
We'll create space for heavy topics. But we'll be listening for a quality of soul that could be called gravitas.

Eddie Rester 04:03
Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO] We're glad today to have Fred Anderson with us. Thank you for taking some time to be with us this afternoon.

Fred Anderson 04:14
It's terrific to be with you. Thank you for the opportunity.

Eddie Rester 04:16

Well, you have written a new book, "Why Did Jesus Die and What Does That Have to do with Me?" It's a pretty, pretty explicit title. I mean, pretty direct there. Tell us a little bit about the background of this book. You're retired after 42 years of pastoral ministry. What is it that rose up in you and said this, this is what I want to spend some time exploring?

Fred Anderson 04:43

Well, I grew up a very conservative, fundamentalist Baptist, and so part of my journey has been through this whole process, but it was really not until after I was ordained that I really began to challenge this whole notion of penal substitution or the atonement. It was, frankly, the only one I knew. Yes, I had studied them in class, in seminary. But you know, I was drinking out of a firehose trying to figure out what atonement was. And so, but the longer I preached, and of course, for 42 years, every Good Friday, I was preaching, "And what does this cross mean?" And by the time I got the New York City, I just couldn't, I couldn't justify what I was doing. And so that's when I began to read more deeply. Also, I belong to a professional association of liturgical theologians. And I was in the eucharistic prayer group and a Roman Catholic priest, Father Robert Daly, had written a book called the "Sacrifice Unveiled." And he confirmed my hunch that the problem was we don't understand sacrifice as sacrifice functioned in Israel's life when the temple was there. That we've really packed a lot of 20th century thought about sacrifice into what was going on in the first and second century before the Christian era, and then just kind of spin that out. So that's what started it. And I started teaching it. And it went from there to that question that was asked by one of my very, very fine elders, what does Jesus's death have to do with me? Okay, we've got an answer.

Eddie Rester 06:35
As we have the conversation today, I want to make sure that we're defining terms, because I think when we get into theological conversations, sometimes people, you know, they're not trained that way. We haven't, as pastors sometimes we don't talk to them with deep theological terminology. And the term you've already used is "atonement." So how do you--and I know we're gonna get into different looks at atonement--but just kind of a basic definition. What is atonement?

Fred Anderson 07:05

First of all, atonement isn't a biblical word. Here's part of our problem. It's really the word that Tyndale used in his translation to deal with reconciliation. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. Now, in that notion of reconciliation, whatever it is that has separated us from God, and we'll simply call that sin at the moment, became a barrier to our having fellowship and relationship with God. And so Paul, ini writing that to the Corinthians and saying, "This is what God has done in Christ and brought us back together." Now, of course, Paul is arguing for reconciliation himself with the Corinthian congregation at that point. But atonement became a word in the English language that tried to represent reconciliation. But the word itself went through changes, and it meant reparation, what had to be done, so that we could make atonement. Whether you think about the movie "Atonement," or whatever else it is, atonement in contemporary English means what I have to do to make things better, rather than what God has to enable us to come into fellowship with him. So I say in the book, perhaps the best way to get to it is to put a hyphen between the AT and -onement. So it's at-onement, what God did to bring us together. And of course, the emphasis here is on what God does in atonement. But the problem has been, the emphasis has usually been made in the church on what we have to do. Even if that's as simple as believe in Jesus. It's something we have to do before we can come back together. So atonement, reconciliation.

Eddie Rester 08:53
What's the problem that atonement, reconciliation is trying to resolve for humanity? What's at issue? What's the need for reconciliation?

Fred Anderson 09:06

Well, there's a need on two sides. If I can talk about a "need" from God's side, let's put that in quotation for a moment but God desperately wants to be in relationship with us. God created us. God loves everything God created, and is dealing with the things that are keeping us from being in that relationship with God. From our side, the whole issue is what that distance, what that alienation from God has driven us into or keeps us constrained, the word is slavery. Slave to sin. And whether we like it or not, we are and we do. And a professor in seminary, I think I quoted him in the book, Diogenes Allen, who said, you know, sin is like, gravity. We just can't jump out of it. So this is what God does to enable us to break free from it. We don't have to do it. The devil doesn't make us do it. Let's put it that way.

Chris McAlilly 10:07

And something has to be done. And I mean, I think part of it is the sense that the person and the work of Christ is, if there's a separation, perhaps it's on us. There's an estrangement, it's on the human side of the equation. And yet, there's something that God must do to make the situation right again. And so, you know, there's a lot of... I mean, there's several different ways in which the New Testament talks about this. There's not just... I think that's one of the things that I think people underestimate, or flatten, the diversity of imagery that is used in the New Testament to talk about the work of Christ, whether it's the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, so that leans in this kind of Eucharistic direction. Or whether it's, you know, I think this more kind of legal frame, that's a more juridical set of ideas, that we're guilty, Jesus must stand in our place and be the substitute for us. And so you get, especially on the western side of--if the church is broken into the Western and the Eastern kind of branches--you have in the West, this development of these ideas, that's really a juridical understanding of salvation, that Jesus is the innocent one. He stands in our place. We're guilty. And it's really trying to deal with the guilt that accompanies sin, you know, and so that Jesus kind of steps in as the innocent one, we can never get to a point where we were not guilty, but it's all within that legal frame. And...

Fred Anderson 11:51

And it's a legal framework no longer works. Of course, it began with the legal framework of ... in terms of scholasticism. But as you follow this, and the book tracks the development of how legal theory changes, to get to the point you're talking about Christopher, where we are miserable sinners, there's nothing that we can do about it, and we're gonna die under the wrath of God unless we accept what God has done for us in Jesus. And of course, what God has done for us in Jesus in that system is he's died so we don't have to, rather than he's died so the power of sin can be broken in life so that we can live in fellowship with God.

Eddie Rester 12:33

You and I were talking before we started recording, that when I went to seminary, I went with one idea of what the life of Jesus was about. Just one. And then I remember in my Christian theology class, taught by Geoffrey Wainwright, great scholar, great theologian.

Fred Anderson 12:53 Wonderful guy, yes.

Eddie Rester 12:54

He's incredible. And one day, he started lecturing on the theories, plural, of atonement, and I was like, what? What are you talking about? So help us think about what are some of those, just throughout history, you kind of talked about how things changed as we move through history, as sacrifice and legalism changed. But what are some of the big theories of atonement that we know about, that the church has kind of worked on and worked through?

Fred Anderson 13:30

Well, there are about nine of them, Eddie. And the oldest one really goes back to Jesus says he gives his life a ransom. Now, ransom is both a noun and a verb. And it's a language that came out of the time in which it was a life to free people. You ransomed slaves in the slave market. So initially, the church looks at Jesus's death, and this is primarily Pauline theology, that Jesus doesn't have it taken from him, he gives it up in order to free us from the power of death. Well, it doesn't take very long before people start saying, well, who did he give it up to? And why? And of course, the whole issue of the devil is looming large in this whole process. Did he give it to the devil or did the devil take it from him? He said, well, it's not taken from me. I give it. Well, why did he give it to the devil? Did the devil deserve it? And so we're back in the garden. Okay, and so it's a payment for what happened there, and really for the first 500 to 800 years the church is wrestling back and forth with is Jesus's death a payment of the devil or a payment to the Father? Missing the whole point that it's not payment that all. What Jesus meant was he is setting us free. Now, there were a couple of other theological understandings of atonement. You go back to Irenaeus and finally to Athanasius, and that's one of the ones that I'm trying to retrieve here, is that Jesus has come among us, to be one of us, so that we can become one with God and him. You know, Athanasius says, Jesus became God, God became human in Jesus. So we can become gods, little lowercase gods. I like to say godly in that translation. You and I can become godly through what we receive from our relationship, our union with Christ. And so the whole notion of union there is very much a part of atonement theology, as well. And the irony is that by about the 10th century, you've got Anselm, who's just fed up with the whole debate over is it paid to the devil or is it paid God, and why. And so he develops a philosophic concept. His book is called "Cur Deos Homo," why did God become human? And he's the one that, operating out of the legal theory of the day, says, okay, the Lord's majesty has been violated. Now, you can repair that one of two ways. Okay, you can pay for it. Or you can be punished for it. And from that point on--now, Anselm never, ever meant what became of his theory, but he called it a vicarious substitution. Okay? So, but we hear that language very differently today than the way it was being used by Anselm.

Eddie Rester 16:41

Say a little bit more about that. Because I think, explain a little bit when you say penal substitutionary atonement theory, what does that mean? Because I think people probably sing about it. They hear it talked about. And how is it not scriptural?

Fred Anderson 16:41

Anselm, by the way, his theory is not a biblical theory. And here's one of the major problems with so many of the theories that emerge thereafter: they abandon the biblical narrative. And I often say to folks, one of my chief problems with penal substitutionary atonement is it's so anti- scriptural. It doesn't understand what the Bible and the biblical narrative tells us. First of all, the scripture has never, never portrayed what Jesus does as something that is, he's being punished on our behalf. He says, "No one takes my life from me, I lay it down on my own." That's the ohana Jesus. Let me go back to your question. Penal substitutionary atonement means Jesus is being punished in our place. He's a substitute. He's taking on the death that rightly is ours because we are sinners, and there's nothing we can do about it. And that his blood has somehow washed out our sin. Now, by the way, no concept of how blood functions. In Old Testament blood is a source of life, not the source of death. But by the time you get into the New Testament, the imagery of blood just kind of, in our heads, we contemplate death rather than life. So my argument is that, as that concept finally came to its fruition during the Reformation, and it was John Calvin, who was a lawyer, who by the time the concept had developed, now Roman law is in place, and it means that every infraction has to be punished, and everyone has to be punished. And Jesus is bearing that punishment, for the elect. Not for the non-elect, the elect. Now let's leave Calvinism behind for a moment. Because even Calvin, it doesn't really become a serious problem until about 100 years later, when the, quote, Dutch Calvinists begin to lock it in to a legal theory. But it's also important to say that Anselm didn't, Anselm's answer wasn't the only one. There was Abelard who came along and said no, this death is a demonstration of the love of God for us. And if we commit ourselves to that, that power can change us into people who love God the way God loves us. And so that whole Abelardian tradition, you could say that, on the one hand, what Anselm was up to and on the other what Abelard was, and those two different theories kind of do point-counterpoint with one another right into the early 20th century. And then you've got Christus victor. You got Luther coming along and saying, Oh, no. God in Christ has destroyed the devil, has overcome the devil. Actually, by the way, Luther really doesn't have a theory of atonement. He's talking about reconciliation, again. So. So you've got, and this just kind of spins out into the 19th and 20th century, but it really gets nailed down the hard in the reformed side of the church, in Protestantism, in the 19th century. Charles Hodge probably taught more ministers out of Princeton, the old Princeton theology, old school theology. And I've often said, Hodge hadn't a clue what sacrifice was about in Israel's life. But he thought he did. Nor did he have a clue what blood did in sacrifice, in Jesus's life, but he thought he did. So I outline, the book outlines about nine different approaches to atonement.

Chris McAlilly 21:10

Yeah, and so just I want to make sure that I'm catching this. So you mentioned kind of things get kicked off really with this idea of ransom. And I know that that also gets picked up by Origen, it gets picked up by Gregory of Nyssa. This idea in early Christian thought that the death and resurrection of Jesus are a ransom that they're paid to the devil, the adversary in exchange for the release of humanity from bondage to sin. So that's kind of one theory. And then you mentioned the satisfaction theory that gets kicked off with Anselm in kind of the middle ages, this idea that the atonement is the sacrificial death of Jesus that is going to satisfy God's need, or that within God which is just, and...

Fred Anderson 22:05
We begin to worry about God's justice, not God's love.

Chris McAlilly 22:09

Yeah. So but that there's a sense that human sin is a violation. For--I'm just trying to make sure that I'm catching the concepts--that, you know, that human sin, the reason that you would need God's justice to be satisfied would be that sin is a violation in the theory, and the death of Jesus would then be a repayment, and a satisfaction for that offense.

Fred Anderson 22:35

And propitiation is the technical word, as you know.

Chris McAlilly 22:38 Right.

Fred Anderson 22:39
I say, "propitiation" and people's eyes grow.

Chris McAlilly 22:42 [LAUGHTER] Right.

Eddie Rester 22:43 Yeah. That's right.

Chris McAlilly 22:44
And then you move toward...

Eddie Rester 22:45
I got it right in seminary. Yeah.

Chris McAlilly 22:47

You move for... I'm still trying to catch it. Right? So there's, so then you move forward to John Calvin, and you talked about penal substitutionary atonement, this idea that the death of Jesus is a substitute for the punishment that humanity rightly deserves.

Fred Anderson 23:02
We deserve it. We deserve it.

Chris McAlilly 23:04

Right. And so if God is both going to be just and merciful, then Jesus must take on the penalty for our sin, so that...

Fred Anderson 23:11
And now you've got a philosophic concept that's legal, you don't have a biblical story of a love of God who was constantly forgiving Israel its sin.

Chris McAlilly 23:22

And so then, and then you also mentioned the Christus victor. And that's the idea that Jesus's victory over the powers of sin and death and evil... It's the victory of Jesus over those powers. The death and resurrection are the conquest of the forces of darkness and death and evil.

Fred Anderson 23:40
Gustaf Aulen, in his book. Yeah.

Chris McAlilly 23:42

And so there's this liberation there. And are there others that were missed? I mean, you said there were about nine. Are there others that you would lift up, just making sure if somebody's gonna get the atonement in this podcast, we want to make sure that they get all of it. So what are the other? What are the other ones that you would lift up?

Fred Anderson 24:04

Let's go back behind it. Let's go back into Isreal's sacrificial system and what it was about. Israel was never paying God over its sin. It was what is called these--by the way, there are five major sacrifices in Israel's life and only one of them has to do with sin. It's an offering that's given to God, a joyful giving to God. Sin in Israel's life was dangerous because God would withdraw if that sin wasn't somehow dealt with. And so the sacrificial system, as far as sin was concerned, the function of the blood was to wipe out the corrosive power of sin. And so a sacrifice of an animal was offered. There's life in the blood. Remember? Remember the whole notion there's power in the blood. The power in the blood is not forgiveness, the power in the blood is giving life. And so they would manipulate the blood. It was never a sense that anyone was being published, punished, excuse me. It was simply that this was being done so God would not withdraw God's presence from the people. Carry that into what Jesus is doing as the one who is either a prophet like Moses or who is, in fact, initiating a new liberation from slavery, not in Egypt now, but a new Passover. Slavery from the sin. Those things function, but by about the end of the first century, we stopped talking about the dynamic of living together in the presence of Christ to start worrying about punishment. And ransom ceases to be an action, and it becomes a payment. And now you've already talked about the payment is to the devil or the payment is to God. There's another one. Reconciliation in or, excuse me, recapitulation. And here's Irenaeus and later Athanasius, that God comes to be the second Adam. God comes to do what Adam couldn't do to set things free and make things right so that you and I can become new creation. So you have a whole new creation theology of Paul, and God is reconciling...

Eddie Rester 26:35
Which does have its roots in Scripture.

Fred Anderson 26:37 Absolutely.

Eddie Rester 26:38
That's one that Paul, really... That's Pauline theology right there.

Fred Anderson 26:43

Well, as I said, most of my problem with... My problem with most theories of atonement is they are not scriptural enough. They are not deeply rooted in the whole of scripture, especially Old Testament. One of our problems is that we take the language of sacrifice out of the Old Testament, and we impute everything we think about sacrifice in the 21st century into it when it had nothing to do with it.

Chris McAlilly 27:13 Yeah...

Fred Anderson 27:14
You were about to say something.

Chris McAlilly 27:15

No, it's okay. I'm, I'm, I'm tracking along here. You know, I think the other... I guess one of the things if I were going to, you know, I think I guess the charity that I have for the theological tradition of the church, is that every age, yeah... There's a book I remember a few years ago by Richard Lischer. And he was talking about, I can't remember the passage of scripture that was being looked at, but he kind of traces it through all these different moments in church history, where... It was something very basic, like the Good Samaritan story, to take it out of the language of sacrifice and blood and atonement, and just kind of, you know, here's one particular passage of one of the parables of Jesus that is about three individuals coming by a man in a ditch. And then the way in which that gets read through time, and some of them look quite bizarre, you know, and perhaps you would say, unbiblical, or, you know, it's imputing, a certain set of categories or a way of reading or interpreting the text based on what was going on third century or the eighth century or the 12th century. And, you know, there's one way of saying, you know, they missed the mark. They're bringing to bear concepts and ways of interpreting the texts that are, you know, that are not a faithful reading. I don't know, I think I have some hesitation in saying that the majority of Christian history hasgotten it wrong. You know, what I mean? There's a sense of, there's a charity, I think, in looking backwards on Calvin or looking back at Anselm and saying, he's reading this stuff wrong. I'm not saying that we ought not change the way we read it today, or that there's a way of reading it today that might be, you know... More helpful or healthy or whatever. I do think there's a need to kind of rehabilitate the reading of these things through time. And I think that what you're doing is kind of offering the church a way of doing that. But I don't know. I'm, I think I'm just thinking out loud about how, just because, you know... You kind of have to read the text on the basis of the categories that you have in your era, if that makes sense. So there's a sense in which, you know, Martin Luther King would have seen something in the Good Samaritan story that Irenaeus wouldn't have seen. And their readings would have been very, very different. And yet, yeah, I want to say that both of you know, Irenaeus and Martin Luther King probably are reading that faithfully. I don't know. I guess I'm just struggling.

Eddie Rester 29:17 More helpful.

Fred Anderson 30:01

Let me challenge that for a moment because, you and I, the three of us have theological educations, and that's why we got them. So we don't get trapped into reading them eisogetically instead of exegetically. And so our tech, our task is to find out what it meant then and what it meant as a result of that, and what it could mean now or what it does mean. And by the way, Chris, man, I'm sorry, Christopher.

Chris McAlilly 30:28
You can call me Chris. I go by Chris.

Fred Anderson 30:31
You call me Fred. I'll call you Chris.

Chris McAlilly 30:32 There you go.

Fred Anderson 30:33
Remember that the Eastern Church never bought into it.

Chris McAlilly 30:37 Sure.

Fred Anderson 30:38

The Eastern Church has kept the whole notion of Christ beginning a new creation and their whole notion of theosis, so being filled with the presence and the power of Christ, that, as Paul says, we're being changed from one degree of glory to another. All of that is possible because of what God did in Christ. The problem was, so many of the other forms of atonement theology that I come across is the emphasis is not on what God is doing. The emphasis is upon what we are doing. But when I want to come back to say, I think we have a responsibility to start to clarify what our folks are thinking and singing, because part of this is so much of this has been wrapped up into hymns that we all love to sing. I'm working on an article called, "Hymns I Can No Longer Sing."

Chris McAlilly 31:33

Yeah, there you go. I, you know, I guess one of the things that I mean, just you brought up the Eastern Church, I think it's worth studying. I think, because... And I mean, we're down in... I don't know. If you're not really engaged in a theological conversation, I apologize. This is probably not the podcast for you. You probably already stopped listening. But if you're still with us at this point, then I'm just gonna go even deeper, because I do think, you know, one of the things that I'm learning about... I guess one of the reasons why this particular kind of argument arises within reformed and Presbyterian conversations, and that it hasn't presented itself in the same way to me. I'm... I guess I just wasn't quite as... I wasn't formed in the same kind of way, by fundamentalist either Baptists or reform theology in my younger days, and then I had to kind of find my way out of it. I think, you know, one of the things I'm learning about kind of Wesley's understanding of the work of Christ is it was very much infused or influenced by the eastern side of the house. And so this idea that salvation was really about the healing of our humanity, rather than this kind of more juridical, or... You know, I mean, certainly, that was a part of it. He was a part of the Western Church. It's running through the Anglican, both hymnody and the prayer book, this kind of other kind of alternative or Western idea of atonement, but it is kind of folded in. I mean, Randy Maddox, he's got a book, "Responsible Grace," where he talks about this, that there's this therapeutic understanding of salvation. And then tucked in is this more juridical understanding, this more Western understanding of salvation. As you look back on your life and career, it's a very important thing. You want to make sure that we get this particular dimension of the work of Christ right. And I guess just, if you could articulate what's at stake, I think that'd be helpful. And the healing, the healing of our humanity by the person and the work of Christ is really emphasized in the Eastern Church, this idea that we can become like God or Christ-like or that we can be healed from the inside out. It's not just this imputed work of Jesus. Jesus stands in our place, we're ransomed to take care of the justice and the anger of God. Like all of that, just I don't know. It just seems... It's very important. And yet for me, I guess I've just found it to be... I guess I'm curious about it. Because I mean, there's a lot at stake in your book, and you want to make sure to get this right. And I just, I guess I'm trying to understand exactly what's at stake in this, as you work this out.

Fred Anderson 34:27
Well, I have to go back to my childhood religion in which you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior and frankly, didn't have to do much else.

Chris McAlilly 34:37 Right.

Fred Anderson 34:37
Now. It got pretty legalistic in the centers, of no smoking, drinking, dancing, you know... Playing... Oh, no. You could play biblical cards, but you couldn't play poker.

Eddie Rester 34:44 Playing cards.

Chris McAlilly 34:50
Biblical cards. That's awesome.

Fred Anderson 34:52

This whole missing dynamic that in Christ, God is making not just us, but the entire creation, but cosmos, new. There is an opportunity for us to be different. You know, having my sin forgiven is one thing. Having been told that I am being made new in Christ is quite another. And we're missing the good news. In the Presbyterian tradition, you have a confession of sin every Sunday. And at the end of it, you know, who's in a position to get there? Only Christ and Christ died for us. Christ rose for us. Christ reigns in power for us. Christ prays for us. Friends believe the good news of the gospel and everybody says, "in Jesus Christ, we are forgiven." And I said, that's only half of the gospel. "And being made new." We are members of God's new creation. And God is... I love, I've forgotten who the paraphrase was, that all of creation stands on tip toe, waiting for the revelation of the sons and daughters of God. That's what God did in Christ to make us one with Him so that we could be members of that new creation and make a difference, rather than falling back into the notion, okay, war is the only answer. You know, violence is somehow redemptive. That's what comes out of penal substitutionary atonement, that a certain group of people deserve to be punished. Talk about women, talk about people of other color who have been abused by the powerful, all of that lies behind penal, substitutionary atonement, and it's not the gospel. That's... I'm sorry. I'm a little passionate.

Chris McAlilly 36:40

No, no, no, I'm so glad I pressed you on this, because you're, that helps me see what's at stake for you. What's at stake for you...

Fred Anderson 36:48 Oh, yes.

Chris McAlilly 36:48

It's the whole shootin' match. You know, it's that if you only receive the forgiveness of Christ, if you're only pardoned, if you're only justified, that's not the whole gospel, you know. It's not the good news. There's this...

Fred Anderson 37:05

It's not the good news and the day we live, you know, whatever happened to sin, oh, sin. Let's talk about a generation that doesn't understand the name we put on their alienation. Let's talk about the kind of alienation--nobody wants to call that alienation sin anymore. And yet, we've got people killing themselves because they don't want to live any longer, not knowing there's a chance to live in a whole new way. Now, folks in Alcoholics Anonymous understand. Now, they use a different kind of language. But this is about God redeeming and transforming what God loves and using us as agents. As Paul says, you are ambassadors for Christ.

Chris McAlilly 37:55

I found this translation...I'm sorry, Eddie was to jump in. But this translation you mentioned, "the entire universe is"--I've never heard this before, this translation. "The entire universe is standing on tiptoe, yearning to see the unveiling of God's glorious sons and daughters."

Fred Anderson 38:10 Amen.

Chris McAlilly 38:11
This is Romans 8.19, and it goes through 23, in the Passion translation. I've never heard of the Passion translation.

Eddie Rester 38:19
I've never head of the Passion translation.

Fred Anderson 38:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's terrific. You know, Romans, by the way, I taught Romans a number of times in the course of doing all of this. And so I'm really convinced that something happens somewhere around the loss of the Second Temple around the 70 AD, and our theology begins to move away from how sacrifice was functioning in Israel's life and how it was functioning. I mean, Paul went to the temple and offered sacrifices. You know, he knew what he was doing within the context, when all the sudden the temple's gone, we haven't got a clue what's going on. And then it's all about sin. And it's all about debt. And it's all about what we have to do so we can stand before God and not have to fear his wrath and thunder.

Eddie Rester 39:13

I'm just sitting here thinking that when Jesus presents his mission, when he takes the scroll, and reads it, he reads, "free the prisoners, sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed." And then the word...

Fred Anderson 39:32 The year of Jubilee.

Eddie Rester 39:33
The year of Jubilee, the word that we flattened out as salvation and be saved is "sozo" which...

Fred Anderson 39:42 Sozo, wholeness.

Eddie Rester 39:43
Which means wholeness, which means healing.

Fred Anderson 39:46 Yes.

Eddie Rester 39:47

He came that we might be not just saved from sin, but healed and made whole and complete. And this is where for me, when I really started digging into John Wesley, the founder of our tribe, in seminary and began to understand his coupling of justification and sanctification that at the moment, he says that you are justified, the journey of sanctification, being made holy and whole and complete, begins. But we continue, I think in our world, I don't know if it's because we want to simplify things, or it's just easier to get people across one finish line. Let's get them saved. And then we cut off, we slice off the rest of the journey, which is the good part.

Fred Anderson 40:47 It's the purchase of power.

Eddie Rester 40:49

I am preaching this weekend about the talents and "come into the joy of your master." This is what we're missing, is that there's this journey of great joy for us as we grow in our willingness to give away what's been gifted to us.

Fred Anderson 41:09

The other piece here, and as Methodists, you'll understand the sacramental dimension of this book and the sacramentality being so important. Our unity and union with Christ, as Paul says, in baptism, we put him on, like we put on a cloak. But it's more important than that we take him in, and he begins to work inside of us. And he transforms us, and then of course, the Lord's Supper, in giving himself. But all of these are means of keeping us in communion with him. A lot of the language for the Lord's table, it's communion. But this whole notion of if it's just about what happened back there, and I don't have to worry about it anymore... We're missing all of this issue that we are designed to be in this relationship with God that is filled with joy. But the first through third century church never portrayed Jesus on the cross. When they talked about the cross, he was the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for his sheep. But in any kind of iconography in those first, well, really the first 500 years, Jesus is never depicted on the cross. If there's a cross there, he's standing before with his hands raised in victory or beside it. A crucifix doesn't show up until the 10th century. Well, know what's going on? We've had the hordes from the north coming down. We were in the dark ages, all of that stuff, missing the point that for the first two to 300 years, the emphasis in the church was on Christ's risen presence within us, and among us, and what that was doing for us.

Eddie Rester 42:56

I just want to say, I so much appreciate that last chapter of the book, where you really tied into what's Jesus doing now, when Jesus is present in our baptisms. Jesus is present when we come to the table as the body of Christ. And for me, that was unexpected.

Fred Anderson 43:19 Ah, okay.

Eddie Rester 43:20

I mean, it was, I think I approached your book as he's gonna give us theories of atonement and help us see more clearly what they are and what they aren't. But for you, your heart is, okay, how does this really play out when we begin to understand what it means that we have been reconciled in Christ? And so you lay out for us these means of grace as Father Wesley would call them.

Fred Anderson 43:52

Well, and don't really, and don't forget Scripture as a means of grace. Don't forget preaching as a means of grace. For Luther, preaching was a sacrament. Let me talk about another dimension to this personally that will help you see why I got to where I was the last chapter. What's he doing now? He's still showing up. By the way, in the first draft, I had a long chapter on the ways in which the resurrection appearances continued well into the 20, 21st century and it had to go. It was it was getting too... It was getting a little too long. He shows up all the time. But he shows up in you and me. That's what we're called to be and that's what we're called to do. "Christians" means "little Christ." Now, all of this came out of also, might as well talk about this, my experience in terms of Vietnam and coming back from Vietnam. And Jesus, Paull saying, you know, "three times I've asked you to take this," whatever his thorn in the flesh was and the response is, "My power is made perfect in weakness." And it caused me to focus on the cross at a moment of abject weakness which God transforms into victory, and how that relates to you and me. So that, too, is part of what's going on here. So we're not returning evil for evil. We're overcoming evil with good. If you want to talk what about the cross is, it's that classic overcoming evil with good or God using evil for good if you go back to Genesis 50. So those are also a part of this as well.

Chris McAlilly 45:35
So did you say, you said that you were in Vietnam?

Fred Anderson 45:41

I was in the Air Force. And we were flying over Vietnam every day. I talk about Southeast Asia most of the time, because I was not on the ground. The plane we were flying was far too vulnerable to be on the ground. But yes, the Vietnam experience is part of my heritage.

Chris McAlilly 45:58

I wonder, I appreciate you mentioning that. And do you, I mean, are you comfortable in the asking you just a follow up question about that?

Fred Anderson 46:06

Sure. Go ahead.

Chris McAlilly 46:06

Yeah. So you know, I think one of the things that, you know, folks who are coming into the Christian faith, they are trying to understand what is going on, particularly around the death of Jesus. It is a violent death. And then in the background, I think, you know, people's experiences with violence, or kind of how you come to terms with the fact that there is violence in the world or there is war. You know, we're having this conversation.

Fred Anderson 46:32 Right in the middle.

Chris McAlilly 46:33

Yeah, right in the middle of conflict, both between Russia and Ukraine, and then also now between Hamas and Israel. I think, you know, how did those experiences? Why? I appreciate you mentioning it. How did those experiences just inform the way that you... The fact that there's violence and war in the world and the death of Jesus does something to overcome that. I guess, how do you, for someone who's really struggling with those two realities, how do you offer the good news to them just kind of, in light of everything that you've read, and everything that you've thought about, related to Jesus's work on the cross?

Fred Anderson 47:23

Whoa. Well, first of all, war. War is the devil's business. There is no such thing as just war. Just war is just war. And that's what the Vietnam experience taught me. It took until Iraq for me to really understand it and come fully round and understand that nothing, nothing is achieved by the use of violence except planting the seeds for the next war. You know your history. You understand what I'm talking about. Secondly, that it is in absorbing the violence--and truly it is a violent death. There's no question about it. But that's the way of sin in the world. And who are you going to serve? You're going to serve the power of sin? Are you going to allow yourself be freed from the power of sin to become the servant of the servant? Are you going to allow yourself to be a disciple of the one who offers up his life, trusting that God's power has overcome it? You know, we are all going to die. And dying is part of what this is all about. And as someone once said, I'd rather die for something than from something. So those are the pieces. But let me see if I can tie this together, Chris, just quickly for you, because I got my eye on the clock like you do. People, I think, don't understand. The people who are contemplating the faith and say, "This is crazy. There's nothing more unjust than an innocent person dying for someone else." Talk about the innocents that are dying in Ukraine. Talk about the innocents that are dying in Gaza. Talk about the innocents that died in Israel. All of that is a way of saying redemptive... Violence is redemptive. Violence is not redemptive. Violence is deadly. And I remember saying to the president of Union Seminary, who was writing a book on war, I said, "Don, war is just war." And that's the only way... You know, when you step into it, you're stepping on the devil's playing field and no one is more delighted than the devil. So okay.

Chris McAlilly 49:45 Yeah.

Fred Anderson 49:45 We need to wrap this up.

Chris McAlilly 49:46

Yeah. Well, I think I have a way of doing it. Let me just try it out. You know, I think the place where this all comes to bear for a person who's just coming to church Sunday after Sunday, is when they come, they come to Communion. And when we invoke the Holy Spirit in the prayer, and we say, "pour out Your Holy Spirit on all of us gathered here and on these gifts of bread and wine, may they be for us the body and blood of Christ, that we may be the body in the blood of Christ, for the sake of the world."

Fred Anderson 50:22 Exactly.

Chris McAlilly 50:22

And in that action, what we're doing is we're asking not just to see in this Eucharistic act that we're partaking of the body and blood of Christ, we're trying to become the kind of people that can offer our lives in and for the life of the world. And there's a way in which, with the help of the Spirit, we're trying to participate in overcoming the separation that's there between God and the cosmos, God and all of creation. And so when we get up and we leave, after we've had the meal, after we've partaken of the body and the blood of Christ, we go out into the world to feed the hungry, and we go out into the world, you know, to offer mercy and grace to those who are deemed...

Fred Anderson 51:09 To bear in Christ.

Chris McAlilly 51:09 Yeah, yeah.

Fred Anderson 51:10
To be Christ. He feeds us with a gift of himself so that we can give him to those we encounter, and we can give ourselves as he does.

Chris McAlilly 51:20

And I think particularly, you know, I guess the thing that this raises up in me is the sense that there are people that we feel separated from, that we feel like we're not reconciled with, that there's a sense that there's pain, there's suffering, there's a sense of... There are those who are deemed unclean or impure. And there's a sense in which what we're being authorized to do on the other side of the table is to go out as the body of Christ to offer ourselves for the life of the world, it doesn't mean that putting ourselves in a violent world, that we're not going to get hurt, that we're not going to suffer, that we're not going to have pain. And yet we can participate in this overwhelming work that God wants to do to reconcile the world to himself. And sometimes that's going to be easy. And a lot of times it's going to be hard. Because the work is hard, you know. But it's worth it. I mean, the thing I'm holding on to from this conversation is this tiptoes thing, this, the entire universe is standing on its tiptoes yearning to see the unveiling.

Fred Anderson 52:23

Waiting for the revealing of the children of God. This is the other thing, if you think about penal, substitutionary atonement, you know, I've got my life insurance with its fire rider. I got it stuck in my back pocket. I don't have to do anything else about it, rather than this is what enables me to go and be a peacemaker. This is what enables me to go and feed my brothers and sisters. This is what drives us to have soup kitchens and pantries. And this is what causes us to stand with the oppressed. And this is what God's life is about in us. And we're here. You want to have a purpose in life? You really want to make a difference? Become part of God's people.

Chris McAlilly 53:09 Come on, Fred Anderson.

Eddie Rester 53:11 Amen.

Chris McAlilly 53:12
Let's go. Preach the Gospel. Yes. Amen. Praise Jesus.

Eddie Rester 53:17

This has been glorious. This has been glorious, and thank you. Thank you for your spirit. And thank you for writing this book. Again, the name of the book is "Why Did Jesus Die and What Does That Have to do with Me?" I just appreciate your time today.

Fred Anderson 53:34

Well, thanks to the two of you. And thanks for helping to get this out. I, you know, I wrote this because I hope to see the church of the future be able to embrace what we're talking about, instead of what I really want to leave behind in the past.

Eddie Rester 53:52
[OUTRO] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, the best way to help us is to like, subscribe, or leave a review.

Chris McAlilly 53:58

If you would like to support this work financially or if you have an idea for a future guest, you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]