The Atonement and the Problem of Evil – Part II: Revelation

(For Part I go here.)

 

“Jesus answered: ‘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. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.’” (John 14:9-10)

Christians believe that in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God revealed himself to humanity. What does this mean? One way to think of it is to say that Jesus’ life was the very life of God lived out under the conditions of human life. This is affirmed by the doctrine of the Incarnation: Jesus is true man and true God. In everything he said and did, Jesus displayed the character of God.

What is that character? As biblical scholar Luke Timothy Johnson puts it, Jesus exemplified in his life and teachings a “pattern of obedience and self-giving love.” The God revealed in Jesus is one who gives from the depths of his own being to his creation, and who loves his creatures even when they’ve gone astray. Like the Good Shepherd, God seeks out the lost, the outcast, and the sinner in order to bring them back into the fold. It is a central Christian belief that the nature of God’s love is disclosed most fully in the life of Jesus, and pre-eminently in his submission to death—“even death on a cross.”

But what does all this have to do with the problem of evil? It shows that the way we would choose to deal with evil is not necessarily the way God chooses to deal with evil. We prefer to eradicate or at least avoid sinners; God prefers to love and embrace them.

This seems unjust, scandalous even. Why should God let evildoers off the hook? Until we recall that we’re evildoers too. That “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The God of Christianity, as revealed in Jesus, takes evil upon himself, accepts its brutal effects, and suffers under its weight, instead of retaliating, of returning evil for evil. This is what is revealed on the cross, the “crucified God” as Jurgen Moltmann put it.

The good news, then, is that God loves sinners (that is, us) and takes the effects of sin upon himself. We, who have done evil, are loved by the creator and sustainer of the entire cosmos. This is the truth about God that Christians believe has been revealed in Jesus.

But this doesn’t seem quite right. God may love sinners, but has he left them to their own devices, allowed sin’s effects to run rampant in the world? Has the Atonement made any difference in terms of actually putting an end to sin and evil? As I said earlier, the revelatory aspect of the Atonement is just one part of the whole picture. Next up: reconciliation!