The key event in Christian history is Jesus’ Resurrection. That moment signaled God’s triumph over evil. Of course we see evil all around us today, and God’s triumph has not been completed on our earth yet. But the Resurrection shows us that good will win out, that God’s reign is real. The triumph will eventually be realized in our physical world.
This is what gives us hope to carry on in the face of what sometimes appears to be defeat for the good. Evil often wins battles in our world. But our knowledge that God is on our side and that the good will triumph is what keeps us going.
Gustav Aulen in his 1931 book Christus Victor explained this situation, and also showed how Christians’ view of Christ’s role became diverted from this original view (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christus_Victor). Most Christians later adopted a “satisfaction theory”. In that view, God demanded punishment for our sins, and God sent himself to earth to take the burden of that punishment, so that humans could be reconciled with God.
Not only is the satisfaction view not in line with the original interpretation of Christ’s role, but it makes no sense if you think about it. If God is the highest authority, doesn’t God define what is sin and what is needed to be right with God? Why do we insist on thinking of some abstract concept of righteousness and then of sin, apart from our relationship with God? Evil is purely the breaking of relationship with God or with other beings. So the idea that God would need someone to be punished to restore a relationship with God is absurd.
Jesus’ death should be seen as evil’s pouring out its fury at the goodness of God. Good Friday should be a day when we are angry at evil. That day reflects our own experiences of the seeming crushing blows of evil. When someone we love dies, or when our expectations are dashed, we should think of Jesus’ sharing our kind of experience, as he did on the cross. But we need to immediately turn to the victory God demonstrated in the Resurrection. That victory is ours, even if we can’t see it in our immediate experience.
I’ll have more to say on evil later. Few people embody evil relatively purely–we see few Hitlers in our world. We all participate in evil to some extent. Hence God’s victory is something all of us must struggle with.
April 8, 2007 at 1:22 pm |
[...] for me the fundamental message of Christianity. Christ has conquered through his resurrection (see my earlier post on this). But his victory is not at all apparent now. We trust that the final victory will come one day. [...]
May 6, 2007 at 9:33 am |
[...] the original central concept of Christianity, which was that God’s resurrection of Christ was the first fruit of God’s ultimate victory. Jesus’ death on the cross was the result of evil’s fury unleashed against him. The [...]