Churches urged to think again about Mel Gibsons Passion -Mar 12, 2004

On the release of Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ" churches are being urged to use the film not simply as a tool for evangelism but, in the light of the graphic violence surrounding Christ's death within the film, to use it as an opportunity to think again about their own ideas of Jesus and the meaning of his life, death and resurrection.

On his recent visit to the UK last week, J. Denny Weaver, one of the best-known Mennonite scholars in North America, presented the main arguments of his book "The Nonviolent Atonement". At a seminar at the London Mennonite Centre he issued a challenge to rethink what many Christians see as the heart of their faith.

Questions of violence and the death of Jesus have generated much discussion in the last several years. Classic atonement images have been attacked as violent, and these attacks have provoked efforts to defend standard atonement images. Weaver has suggested that traditional images and ideas of atonement as Christians have come to understand them, have violent problematic dimensions that render them unacceptable.

The standard account of the history of atonement doctrine lists three families of atonement images. Each approach to atonement attempts to explain the impact of Jesus' death, or what the death of Jesus accomplished, or in popular language, to explain "why Jesus died for us."

1. Christus Victor, the predominant image of the early church, included a "ransom" version in which the devil held the souls of humankind captive. Jesus death became the ransom payment that secured the release of captive souls.

2. Satisfaction atonement theories also exist in several versions with varying emphases. In 1098 Anselm published Cur Deus Homo, which constituted the first full articulation of satisfaction atonement. Anselm wrote that Jesus' death was necessary in order to satisfy the offended honour of God. Human sin had offended God's honour and thus had upset divine order in the universe. The death of Jesus as the God-man was then necessary in order to satisfy God's honour and restore the order of the universe. A change in this image of satisfaction occurred with the Protestant Reformers. For them, Jesus' death satisfied the divine law's requirement that sin be punished. Thus with his death, Jesus submitted to and bore the punishment that was really due to "sinners". Jesus was punished in their place. Jesus substituted himself, and died a penal, substitutionary death. This motif is probably the most familiar atonement image for the entire scope of
evangelical Protestantism.

3. The third atonement image is of moral influence. In this image, the death of Jesus is a loving act of God aimed toward us. God the Father shows love to us sinners by giving us his most precious possession, his Son, to die for us.

Such views of atonement have been taken up by reviewers of the film. For example, Roger Ebert wrote: "No race, no man, no priest, no governor, no executioner killed Jesus; he died by God's will to fulfill his purpose, and with our sins we ALL killed him."

All three sets of ideas however are problematic in that they imply that God at the very least had a hand in arranging Jesus' violent death.

This has led scholars such as Weaver to suggest that traditional atonement theories need to be re-considered in the light of Jesus' commitment to non-violence.

Weaver himself has also suggested a way forward with the recovery and development of a biblical image that had fallen from view long before Anselm. He has called the result "narrative Christus Victor", which identifies the victory of Christ (against the forces of evil, including the earthly powers that oppress people) in terms of the narratives of the Gospels and Revelation while also distinguishing it from classic Christus Victor. In this view, the life and resurrection of Jesus are more important than his death and God does not in some way orchestrate the death of Jesus. It is an explicitly non-violent image, and it avoids all the problems of violence identified for classic atonement and christological imagery.

Speaking about the release of Mel Gibson's passion, Vic Thiessen, director of the London Mennonite Centre which hosted J. Denny Weaver's visit said; One of the challenges to Christians and churches that the Passion film lays down through its depiction of the violent death of Jesus is to consider an alternative motif that is thoroughly non-violent and that avoids the problems discernible in traditional atonement theories."

"This constructive task is broad, ranging from Genesis to Revelation. It is actually more than an atonement motif. It is a way of reading the entire biblical story, as well as the history of atonement doctrine, with implications far beyond atonement."