Is Good Friday morbid?

"The crucified Christ is a terrible sight, and I cannot help associating it with the sadistic impulse of a physically affected brain" * Such are the honest words of D T Suzuki, a Buddhist writer expressing his revulsion at the Christian "symbol of crucifixion".

No one could reasonably disagree with the first part of that sentence. If we in the West don't experience any particular emotional reaction to the sight of a crucifix, it is only because we've grown overfamiliar with it. I wish we hadn't. But what about the second part? Isn't there something pathological about celebrating a man's brutal, torturous execution? Don't Christians have an unhealthy fascination with blood and gore? Well, perhaps some do. But before you conclude that that's all there is to it, consider the story behind Good Friday. It is natural to ask why God, assuming he exists, doesn't just come down and sort everything out -- put an end to all suffering, violence, injustice and so on. The Christian answer to this question is radical, and not altogether flattering: God did come down. God came down in human form and met us where we were. And when he did, we murdered him. The Good Friday narrative has at times, with tragic consequences, been interpreted as indicting a specific group of people. This is a profound misunderstanding, as should be obvious to anyone who reads the story without an agenda. The particular society that puts Christ to death is an archetype of all human societies, and each of its main parts is held responsible. The State knowingly executes an innocent, on grounds of expediency. The clergy lies and schemes in order to condemn a man who threatens its authority. And the common folk, the 'average joes', bay for the blood of the one they'd worshiped just a week before. Even his closest friends abandon him, betraying him for money or denying that they ever knew him. The universality is inescapable, the verdict unambiguous: there is something rotten, not just in the state of Denmark, but in the state of humanity. To stare at the cross is to look into a mirror of the soul -- small wonder that we do not like what we see. It makes a mockery of our endless litany of excuses and protestations: 'But I'm not that bad! Not like them! I'm nice to others! I'm devout! I'm tolerant! I'm a victim, not a perpetrator!' And it has no patience for Suzuki's more sophisticated response: "There is from the beginning no self to crucify." There can be no sin without a sinner, or any self to sin against. A comforting thought, no doubt. But a false hope, if the message of Good Friday is to be believed. The point of celebrating Good Friday, then, is not to obsess over the details of a particularly violent episode in human history, least of all to derive any sadistic pleasure from it. It is not meant to be pleasurable. It is about being painfully aware that, no God cannot just come down and eliminate all evil, because that would mean eliminating you and I. That isn't how the story ends, of course. But the joy of Easter Sunday is meaningless without the bitter pill of Good Friday. *From Mysticism Christian and Buddhist, DT Suzuki, 1957

A journey to Christian theism

This article is going to be a tad bit unusual. While I wouldn't call it a 'personal testimony', it is personal in that it will explain some of the reasons that brought me to Christian theism, the view of God held by historic Christianity. As such, unlike the other articles on this blog, it will include some measure of biography.

As a child, I did not think much of the biblical stories I was told, at Sunday school or at home. Such stories, as they were taught to me, always seemed to be variations on the (supremely boring) theme of 'Be a good boy, and all will be well; be bad, and there will be trouble'. I found Greek and Egyptian mythology, with its heroes and monsters and wonderfully chaotic gods, to be far more entertaining.

I was fifteen years old when I discovered the New Testament. It was the summer holiday, and we were spending it in Brittany, a cold and wet part of France. This summer was particularly rainy, I think. I needed something to kill the time. For reasons that still elude me, I decided to solve that problem by reading the Gospels, focusing on Mark and John.

There was something intriguing about the central figure unveiled in these texts, the man Jesus of Nazareth. For one thing, his ethical teaching and attitude to life struck me as wise and profound. For another, his apparent aversion to established religion appealed to my teenage mind. But as I look back on that summer, I think that what most captured my attention was the texts' insistence on the very particular and intimate connection between Jesus and God. In a memorable exchange, Philip, one of the disciples, asks him to 'Show us the Father!'. Jesus' response is baffling: 'Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father' (John 14:8-9).

To see him is to see the Father, the Supreme Good and ground of all things. Other writings of the New Testament put it nicely:

"…Christ, who is the image of God" 2 Corinthians 4:4

"The Son is the visible image of the invisible God" Colossians 1:15

"The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word." Hebrews 1:3

There is, as it were, an extremely close 'family resemblance' between the Father and his Son. Thus, the biblical authors tell us that to know the very character God, we need look no further than Jesus.

Why does this matter? Because what we see – indeed, what I saw – when we look at Jesus is a life that overflows with love, mercy and grace. We see a man who embraces those on the furthest margins of society – prostitutes, lepers, foreigners. A man who welcomes those who recognize their failures but rightly rebukes the self-righteous and the powerful. More shocking still, a man who would rather endure shame than to inflict it on his enemies, suffering the ultimate shame of crucifixion out of love for them.

This, the New Testament authors tell us, is what God looks like.

That much I understood fairly quickly. It took me much longer to understand the further, even more radical claim that Jesus is somehow included within God's identity, 'God in the flesh', giving up divine prerogatives in order to take up human weakness and suffering. The early Christian hymn in Philippians 2 puts it beautifully: "though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men" Summer faded away, but my fascination with Jesus did not. My readings and investigations led me to realize that the conception of God expressed in the New Testament was unique and revolutionary. As the late Professor of Indian Philosophy Noel Sheth put it, while the idea of the divine coming as human is present in various religious traditions, "it is this 'folly of the cross' (…) that is uniquely Christian" (2002). Sheth is alluding to St Paul's famous quip that "Christ crucified" is "a scandal to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles" (1 Cor. 1:23). The notion that God would love mankind sacrificially would have been utterly astonishing to all (which, by the way, puts to rest the popular canard that early Christian theology was plagiarized from pagan myths).

I eventually came to the conclusion that Christian theism is not only unique, it is uniquely true.

No doubt, a crucial factor was that it seemed to satisfy deep-seated desires which I share with many (if not all) of my fellow human beings. Most of us want to feel valued, honoured and loved, especially when much of the world around us makes us feel otherwise. It is quite telling that French secular philosophers Lucien Jerphagnon and Luc Ferry have named their short book on the subject, La Tentation du Christianisme, the ‘temptation’ of Christianity.

Admitting as much invites the charge that my conversion was the product of wishful thinking, having irrationally succumbed to the ‘temptation’. Let me first say in my defence that there was plenty in the Christian faith that I did not find appealing. Fifteen year-old boys don’t readily admit that they are in desperate need of redemption. And so much still confused me.

More importantly, I distinctly remember being motivated in no small part by an argument along the following lines. I took it for granted that God, if he exists, is the Supreme Good. That is, the very essence of God is that he is the greatest imaginable good, a being absolutely perfect in all respects. Whether this is a good way to think about God, or whether it is reasonable to think that there exists a Supreme Good, is not the issue here. What matters is that I believed it, and that, given this belief, it was reasonable for me to identify this Supreme Good with the God of Christian theism, rather than, say, Aristotle’s prime mover or the Vedantic Brahman.

Why is that? Because I could not, and still cannot, conceive of a greater good than sacrificial love. Any being, no matter how powerful, wise and so on that failed to exemplify sacrificial love would also fail to qualify as the Supreme Good. But, if Sheth and others are right about the uniqueness of the ‘folly of the cross’, it seems that, at least as far as I am aware, there is only one conception of God on which God exemplifies sacrificial love. At the very least, that the God of Christian theism exemplifies sacrificial love is a powerful reason to prefer it over alternative conceptions, even if this reason is overridden by other considerations, though it wasn’t in my case.

Many objections come to mind here. First, aren’t judgments of goodness wholly subjective? Isn’t what I consider to be ‘greater’ or ‘lesser’ just a matter of personal preference? Secondly, many of my fellow Christians will doubtless chide me for putting the epistemological cart before its horse. Perhaps it is mistaken to rely on intuitions about goodness in order to evaluate alleged divine revelations. Perhaps we should instead allow revelation to shape our ideas of the good. Finally, and relatedly, doesn’t my reasoning seem to imply that we can just ‘reason our way up’ to the Supreme Good, with no need for revelation whatsoever?

It isn’t the purpose of this short article to rigorously articulate and defend the motivation that led me to Christian theism, though I hope to do so another time. I will only offer some brief lines of response to the objections mentioned here.

Regarding the first, it seems to me that at least some kinds of judgments of value are objective. Certainly, judgments about the taste of a wine, or the excellence of a musical performance, will at least partially depend on subjective factor. But I’m not sure I can bring myself to believe that the goodness of, say, consciousness, meaningful friendships and indeed sacrificial love are merely a matter of personal or social preferences and desires. These things, to paraphrase Aristotle, are not good because they are desired, but rather desired because they are good.

The second objection points to a much wider debate about the relationship between reason and revelation. To only briefly describe where I sit in this debate, though I think there is wisdom in not taking one’s fallible intuitions about the good too seriously, I cannot see how one can even accept the contents of any revelation in the first place without relying on one’s rational intuitions in order to decide whether or not to trust said revelation.

Regarding the third, I certainly don’t think that reason, by itself, can give us the ‘full picture’ of God. But I’m inclined to think that rational intuitions are not unlike our capacity to recognize faces. If I haven’t seen you for a very long time, I might forget what your face looks like, and hence be unable to picture you in my mind. If I randomly stumble upon you, however, my mind may be able to recognize you. Likewise perhaps in the case of God: unaided rational intuitions don’t really allow us to know what God is like, but they allow us to, so to speak, know him when we see him – that is, to recognize him when we encounter him through revealed scripture and religious experience.

This, I believe, is what happened as I turned the pages of the New Testament. I couldn’t have imagined that God would be like that. But when I encountered this strange Nazarene -- well, it just had to be him. Noel Sheth, Hindu Avatāra and Christian Incarnation: A Comparison

Luc Ferry & Lucien Jerphagnon, La Tentation du Christianisme

Two conceptions of the atonement

"For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” Mark 10:45 The claim that Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate Word of God, offered up his life for the salvation of mankind, lies at the very core of the New Testament message. In the Ancient Jewish mind, our predicament is that we are estranged from God, the supreme Good and source of all flourishing. The Jewish authors of the New Testament came to believe that the much-needed reconciliation with God -- what theological parlance refers to as atonement -- was achieved through the life, suffering and ultimate death of Jesus the Messiah. How this is meant to work out has always been a matter of some controversy for Christians. Different 'theories of the atonement' have been proposed through the centuries, with varying degrees of success. It has recently dawned on me that contemporary Christians, in their thinking and speaking about the atonement, unknowingly fluctuate between two distinct theories thereof: penal substitution theory on one hand, and satisfaction theory on the other. Let us briefly go through each in turn. Penal substitution theory starts with the assumption that humanity's turning away from God is deserving of a just and severe condemnation. God, in his infinite mercy, longs to forgive and reconcile humanity to himself. But in his infinite righteousness, he cannot let this great sin go unpunished. This inner tension within God's character is resolved through the cross, on which Christ bears the required condemnation in our stead, thereby becoming our substitute. As some Christians like to put it, God, rather than meting out punishment onto us, took the punishment onto himself, out of love. When Christians speak of Jesus 'taking the punishment for our sins' or 'bearing the wrath of God', they are (consciously or not) drawing from the resources of penal substitution theory. This reliance comes out most clearly when they draw an analogy with a judge who sentences a criminal, before paying the penalty himself. The fully-developed penal substitution model seems to have originated with the Protestant Reformers, though I'm told that there are antecedents in Augustine. For a more recent, classic defense of the theory, see John Stott's The Cross of Christ.

Satisfaction theory is subtly different. Here again, humanity's collective turning away from God is the theory's starting point. But here, the focus is not on punishment, but on repentance. It is taken for granted that the appropriate response to serious personal sin is an attitude of repentance, which involves both deep regret and a sincere 'turning around' of one's life towards the good. Unfortunately, given our condition, any repentance we try to offer will be woefully inadequate. Thankfully, Christ, by living a life of sheer sacrificial love for God and human beings, carried out the perfect repentance that we couldn't. He repented on our behalf, thereby achieving atonement. When Christians speak of Jesus 'paying our debt, which we couldn't pay', thereby releasing us from such a debt, they are (consciously or not) drawing from the resources of satisfaction theory. Notice that, as with penal substitution, Christ becomes our 'substitute' in some sense. But he does not become our penal substitute, since he does not take on the penalty that our estrangement from God deserves. Rather, he takes on the repentance that we owe, but cannot give. The satisfaction models seems to have been preferred by medieval theologians, most notably Anselm and Aquinas. For a more recent (and very illuminating) defense, see Richard Swinburne's Responsibility and Atonement.

I have mentioned analogies and manners of speaking which Christians use to explain the atonement, and which, as we have seen, draw on either of penal substitution or satisfaction theory. What I find very interesting is that, often, the same individual Christian will draw on both models at the same time, probably without realizing it. Here's a fun exercise: try asking a Christian to explain the atonement. If she speaks of Christ taking on the 'punishment' that we deserve, she is relying on the penal substitution model. If she speaks of Christ as paying our 'debt', she is likely relying on the satisfaction model. In my experience, many Christians are happy to use both characterizations simultaneously.

To some extent, this is a problem. While one may perhaps accept some elements of each theory, they are not fully compatible. I don't think Christ can both be the willing recipient of the condemnation we deserve, and the author of the repentance we couldn't achieve. These two pictures are very different. Even so, one could try to accept both, while ascribing primacy to the one of them. One way to do this would be to consider one of the models as a literally true (though, as is necessarily the case in theology, incomplete) representation of the atonement, and the other as a useful metaphor. This is the approach I take. I believe that the satisfaction model should have primacy over the penal substitution model. More precisely, I believe that it is literally true that Christ is the author of the repentance we couldn't achieve (this obviously shouldn't be taken to mean that the theory is flawless or complete). In contrast, in my view, Christ took on the punishment we deserved only in a metaphorical sense. Strictly speaking, he did not, he was not condemned in our place. But he certainly did pay the cost of our alienation from God, and this involved great suffering. In that sense, he was 'punished' for what humanity did, though this is a metaphorical sense of the term 'punished'. I will finish with some indications of why, in my opinion, the satisfaction model is the more biblically plausible candidate as an account of the atonement:

1. It demonstrates a better understanding of the Old Testament sacrificial system: time and time again, the New Testament authors liken Christ to a 'sacrificial lamb', referring to the Ancient Jewish practice of sacrificing animals for the purposes of atonement. Hence, for penal substitution theorists, the significance of such sacrifices is that the animal is punished in stead of the offender, fulfilling the demands of justice. But this interpretation seems inaccurate, since, in the sacrificial system, flour could be offered as a means of atonement (Lev 5.11). Surely, the Ancient Jews did not think that the flour was being condemned in our stead! It seems more reasonable to say that the offering of a sacrificial gift was a way of expressing repentance. But if that's right, then the NT authors' characterization of Jesus as a 'sacrificial lamb' fits much better with the satisfaction model, in which Christ's offering of his very life achieves the repentance we couldn't achieve. 2. It explains the relevance of Jesus' life, rather than simply his death, to atonement: it is very important to the NT authors that Jesus lived a morally excellent life, being a 'lamb without blemish' (Heb 9:14, 2 Cor. 5:21, 1 Pet 1:19). This is easily explained in the satisfaction model: Christ's entire life, from the moment he was born to his dying breath, was a life of unparalleled love and grace, and hence a supreme act of repentance, on our behalf. Had it instead been a life of selfishness, it would obviously have fallen short of that. In contrast, the penal substitution model doesn't have the resources to explain this. If the problem is that there must be a punishment for sin, it is entirely unclear why a morally excellent individual (as opposed to, say, Donald Trump) must undergo said punishment in order to meet the rigors of justice. 3. Is it really the same punishment? The New Testament teaches that the punishment of the unrepentant is " eternal destruction, [being] separated from the presence of the Lord" (2 Thess 1:9). Penal substitution theorists argue that Christ experienced this while nailed to the cross, which, to them, explains his cry of despair, " My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mt. 27:46). The obvious problem here is that if Christ was indeed separated from God at that moment, this separation came to an end. In that case, how he could have taken our punishment is hardly intelligible.