Over the Easter weekend, Matthew Parris published an article complaining that the exaltation of victimhood, based in the victimhood of Christ, is ruining society. I do not think he was entirely wrong. At the very least, I have big questions over the application of the word 'victim' to our Lord in his death; whilst the NT does present Christ as the sacrificial victim, the fact that it also presents him as the offering Priest rather heavily qualifies the sense of victimhood. It seems clear to me, at least, that the contemporary use of victimhood cannot be applied to the Lord Jesus. I think that in some cases where this language is used of Christ contemporary progressive politics rather than the gospel is setting the agenda, or perhaps it is just an over-egging of the Dominion thesis. That Scripture shows God as being on the side of the weak and marginalised is certainly true; that it somehow makes weakness and marginalisation a virtue is false.
Anyway, Parris has now followed up with a second article, this time in the Spectator, in which he argues that "the whole atonement thing is a terrible muddle". "Trying to make sense of it", he thinks, "is a waste of time". And yet, many millions of people seem to think that it does make sense, that it is coherent and powerful as an idea, and moreover that it is a liberating and saving reality. Parris advances very weak arguments for his position, but since they are in public it may be worth briefly taking the time to refute them, to which end I offer the following analysis.
After an initial complaint about the language of Christian doctrine, which he suspects is meaningless even to many believers, Parris makes his first substantial(ish) point, about authority. "Where does the doctrine of atonement through Christ's crucifixion find its roots?" Parris is surprised to find that Jesus said nothing on the subject; I am also surprised to hear this, since I find in my Bible that Christ clearly taught that he had come to offer his life as a ransom for many. Matthew Parris, presumably not seeing this and similar verses, advances the tired old argument that it was really St Paul who invented the idea of atonement. Now, I will cheerfully grant that some of the clearest teaching about the atonement in the Bible comes from the pen of the Apostle Paul, but this simply does not mean what Parris thinks it means.
The argument that 'Jesus never said anything about that', even granted it were true (as in this case it is not), will not carry the weight Parris puts on it, and it's worth thinking through why because of course this argument is used in other cases. Christians do not treat the words of Christ as somehow a canon within the canon, as if it is the words of Jesus which have the real authority. No, we see that the whole of Scripture bears witness to the work of Jesus. So behind the gospel narratives stands the whole Old Testament history of sacrifice as a means to cover guilt and gain access to God. It is inconceivable that when the gospel authors record the tearing of the temple curtain at the point of Christ's death that they are not thinking of his death in terms of sacrifice, propitiation, the removal of the sin and guilt which prevents sinful humanity from gaining access to God. We do not need specific words of Jesus to draw this very clear inference. And in fact that is all that St Paul is doing when he writes on the atonement; seeing Jesus as the Messiah, the fulfillment of all the Old Testament story, and drawing out the meaning of the death of Christ in that way.
Moreover, by way of an aside, I would point out to Mr Parris that in fact the church does teach that the Apostle, in his writing of Scripture, "could never have been wrong". But even if it were not so, the understanding of Christ's death in terms of redeeming sacrifice is demanded by the events themselves as seen against the backdrop of the Old Testament. So much for the question of authority.
The second part of the argument, if I've followed it correctly, is that Paul was essentially a salesman, and needed a hook to get the Gentiles interested in Jesus. Salvation "from our own misdeeds" was the offer, and a powerful one, since everyone has conscience troubles. But for Parris this means the crucifixion was not about justice, but about "rescue from justice". This account ignores two things. Firstly, that St Paul was not an obvious choice for salesman to the Gentiles. How did he come to want them to believe in the first place? The idea that this devout Pharisee just suddenly decided to break out of the bounds of Judaism is utterly implausible; the only possible answer is that Mr Parris is incorrect when he asserts that Paul never met Jesus! Second, Parris ignores the Apostle's careful argument about God's justice in the Epistle to the Romans. The point of the cross, according to Paul, is that by it God can be both just and the one who justifies those who trust in Jesus. The crucifixion of Jesus upholds God's justice, and if that doesn't look like justice as Mr Parris imagines it, I suspect that the Almighty's notions will outlast his.
The third part of the argument returns to the question of meaning. How does the ransom metaphor apply? Is ransom paid to the devil? What about propitiation? Who is propitiated and why? These are old questions, much kicked around in the history of Christian theology; but there are quite clear answers for anyone who wants to hear them. Yes, ransom is a metaphor, and therefore of course it doesn't carry over to the reality one-to-one; it represents liberation at cost, and carried thus far is a powerful image. No need to bring the devil into it; nobody owes him anything. The logic of propitiation - of turning away wrath through substitution - makes perfect sense if one grasps both the doctrine of the Trinity and the holiness of God. The holiness of God demands judgement for sin (that Parris thinks that "The God we've fashioned over the millennia is not like that" demonstrates that part of his difficulty is that he's trying to make sense of the atonement on the presuppositions of a very liberal theology, which is of course rather difficult; suppose we stick to the God who has revealed himself rather than the idol that we've spent millennia fashioning, everything will be clearer). And once we grasp the nature of the Trinity, we can see the wonder of the cross: that God propitiates himself, the Son willingly taking on our nature and our guilt so that the wrath of God might be borne away in his Person.
Contra Matthew Parris, it all makes a lot of sense. It is in fact our sinful notions of God, justice, and the nature of the human condition which constitute a hopeless muddle. But certainly neither Jesus nor Paul can be blamed for that.
