WAS CRUCIFIED UNDER PONTIUS PILATE, DIED AND WAS BURIED
(See other posts in this series and check out Edward’s book)
Christianity is a historical religion. The tenure of office of Pontius Pilate, the Procurator of Judaea sets the timeframe during which Christians believe that the incarnate Word of God was crucified. The message of Christianity thus opens itself up to historical validation or refutation.
Now, given that I clearly believe in the historicity of Jesus’ crucifixion (I have written elsewhere in defence of the historicity of the life of Christ), it may be of more value here for me to write a few words relevant to the ongoing dispute among Christians (especially Evangelicals) as to how the crucifixion of Christ actually saves anyone.
Some years ago, as a member of a church team involved in working with internationals within the church, I attended a series of talks in London on cross-cultural mission, which divided human cultures into three broad groups, as follows –
- Innocence-guilt cultures – in which the focus is on avoiding individual guilt;
- Honour-shame cultures – which tend to be more corporate in that the focus is on what others think of you. The Bible was written in the context of an honour-shame culture, and
- Security-anxiety cultures – in which the focus is on the power of evil, especially in the context of evil spiritual beings or forces.
Now, while interacting with an on-line debate about various theories of the atonement – how it is that the death of Christ saves us from our sins – I was reminded of a conversation which I’d had with a friend who was at the conference. My friend had argued that if Christ died for all people, from all different nations and cultural perspectives then surely his death must not only be a ransom payment for our individual guilt (as Western individualists have tended to emphasize [Note 1]) but also a vicarious bearing of our shame and a triumph over the power of evil. I believe that we all need pardon and healing from our sin and shame and bondage to evil, but the existence of differing cultural perspectives on which of these form our greatest need, could help to explain why the different theories of the atonement came into being, and perhaps even help reconcile them.
One thing from which we all need deliverance, regardless of our cultural viewpoint, is death. I certainly recall the moment in the staff tea room at work (I was about 30 years old) when it really dawned on me that I was going to die. I had long known it as an intellectual fact and had even, in a sense, “faced death” as a 1 year old child, while being wheeled into an operating theatre with a ruptured appendix, but, at that moment, it all became terribly real to me. Perhaps it is true, as Freud put it, that, “At bottom no one believes in his own death.” (Sigmund Freud, Reflections on War and Death, 1918)
That the atonement of Christ represents deliverance from death is a view held by the consensus of Christianity from the earliest times. As Athanasius of Alexandria so eloquently puts it –
“The Word perceived that corruption could not be got rid of otherwise than through death: yet He Himself, as the Word, being immortal and the Father’s Son, was such as could not die. For this reason, therefore, He assumed a body capable of death, in order that it, through belonging to the Word Who is above all, might become in dying a sufficient exchange for all, and, itself remaining incorruptible through His indwelling, might thereafter put an end to corruption for all others as well, by the grace of the resurrection. It was by surrendering to death the body which He had taken, as an offering and sacrifice free from every stain, that He forthwith abolished death for His human brethren by the offering of the equivalent. … He has come into our country and dwelt in one body amid the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemy against mankind have been foiled and the corruption of death, which formerly held them in its power, has simply ceased to be.” (Athanasius of Alexandria, “On the Incarnation” Chapter 2, section 9)
Because of the sacrificial death of Christ, all of us have the promise of resurrection to eternal life, although whether or not we will all enjoy that resurrection is a matter for a later post.
NOTE:
[1] Having spoken of the West as an innocence-guilt culture, it should be noted, that in the internet age, shame has made a comeback in the West with a vengeance – not, of course, that it ever completely went away.
(See other posts in this series and check out Edward’s book)