(See here and here for previous posts.)

Next to Anselm’s, Peter Abelard’s atonement theory may be the most criticized in Christian history, though usually by different people. Beginning with his contemporary Bernard of Clairvaux and continuing to evangelicals in our own day who uphold the indispensibility of satisfaction or penal substitution atonement models, Abelard’s theory has been characterized as “exemlarist,” “subjective,” and even “Pelagian.” In chapter seven of his Past Event and Present Salvation, Paul Fiddes sets out to rehabilitate Abelard, realizing though that there are shortcomings in his account that need to be corrected.

In Fiddes’ view, a more “subjective” account of the atonement is what we need. Not because God wasn’t acting in Jesus to redeem us, but because sin is a power that grips us from which we need to be freed. In Fiddes’ (and Abelard’s) view, we are the obstacles to reconciliation, not God. Abelard points out that it’s hard to see how the death of Jesus could have satisfied God’s justice and made him better disposed toward us since the murder of the Son of God is surely a far worse sin than Adam’s disobedience! For Abelard, we should think of atonement as first and foremost an act of God’s love, not an act constrained by some external factor like the demands of justice or the supposed rights of the Devil.

The most persistent criticism of Abelard has been that he sees Jesus as simply providing an edifying example of love which we are then called to imitate. If this is right, then he would seem to fall into the trap of Pelagianism, since such a theory would presuppose that we’re able to imitate Christ’s example. But Fiddes is at pains to show that Abelard’s theory is more “objective” than he’s been given credit for. The life and death of Jesus doesn’t just provide an example; it empowers us to repent and turn away from sin because God’s love is poured out through Jesus.

Abelard’s perception is that the showing forth of the love of God in the life of Christ is at the same time the pouring forth of love into the one who beholds it. Christ ‘illuminates’ us by his teaching, and by such aspects of his life as patience in suffering, discernment into evil, persistence in prayer, perfect obedience to God, humility in the face of malice and finally his selfless sacrifice for others in death: ‘Dispelling our shadows with light, he showed us, both by his words and example, the fullness of all virtues, and repaired our nature.’ As Abelard moves from the word ‘showed’ to ‘repaired’ he is trying to express his insight that the love disclosed is at the same time the love which recreates. … Abelard is not simply saying that the revelation of love saves us; he is saying that love as it is revealed saves us. (p. 145)

The crucifixion of Jesus reveals to us both the consequences of human sin, inciting repentance, and the depths of God’s love, thus enkindling love in response. In Fiddes’ view this is a more adequate view than some of the other traditional views because it recognizes that sin isn’t an impersonal debt that needs to be paid off, but a broken relationship that needs to be healed. God enters into our condition to bestow his love upon us and to incite a response of love in us.

Abelard is surely right that sin is a matter of the rebellion of our hearts against God, not some impersonal debt to paid off outside us, but rather a broken relationship to be healed within us. Salvation must be a healing of our wills which are resisting God here and now in the present. (p 152)

[…]

We have seen Abelard’s great insight to be that the revelation in Christ, when received by the human mind, is at the same time an actual infusion of love. The exhibition is a restoration. The manifestation is a transformation. (p. 154)

Fiddes recognizes some problems with Abelard’s account. One is that it seems too individualistic. Where is the sense that the Incarnation and Atonement have implications for the human condition as such, not to mention the broader social and even cosmic implications? Another is the role of the Holy Spirit in Abelard’s account. What role does the Spirit play in bringing us to repentance and new life in light of God’s act of reconciliation? Abelard seems to say, Fiddes says, that the Spirit prepares us for the reception of God’s revelation of love, but how does this relate to Abelard’s insight the love of God is poured out into us from the event of Christ’s life and death itself?

Finally, there is the question “why was love shown in a death?” We may be able to see how God’s love is revealed in Jesus’ teaching, healing, forgiving, and other acts, but how does his death display God’s love? It would seem that it only could if the death accomplishes something for us and, therefore, Abelard’s account would have to piggyback on some more objective account like Anselm’s.

Fiddes’ response is that the Incarnation and the crucifixion are God’s entering into our condition and predicament and undergoing the suffering that is part of human life. “God, we may say, shows his love by enduring to the uttermost the estrangement of his own creation. This is the depth of God’s identification with us” (p. 157). Fiddes recognizes that this response was not available to Abelard since, like the majority of the Christian theological tradtion, he viewed God as impassible and unable to suffer. But Fiddes says we should follow recent theologians in seeing this as a Greek imposition on the Biblical concept of God.

Quite apart from the philosophical questions this rasies (I’m less happy than Fiddes about jumping on the passibility bandwagon of recent theology; David B. Hart has some very trenchant criticisms of Robert Jenson on this score in his Beauty of the Infinite), one might ask why suffering as such is an expression of love. Surely suffering is only valuable if it’s necessary to some greater good. There’s something a little disconcerting about the desire in recent theology to make sure God suffers too! Is it true that we can only love God if we see him suffering?

It might be more accurate to say that suffering is (as Anselm said) simply the natural result of God entering into our fallen world rather than something that has intrinsic value. Death on the cross is the inevitable (in some sense) outcome of the life of perfect obedience to the Father that Jesus lived. Following this path to the bitter end “even to death on a cross” is the way that Jesus united humanity to divinity in his own life, or “God’s identification with us,” as Fiddes puts it. And the Resurrection and outpouring of the Spirit are both the Father’s response of this gift of the Son and the way in which we are incorporated into the life of the Trinity.

Further Thoughts (6/25):There may be a Luthean twist that can be added here. Luther is usually taken to adhere to either a Christus Victor or satisfaction model of atonement, but I think there’s a case to be made that, for Luther, our problem with God is that we don’t trust him. This is our original sin – that we refuse to trust God and his purposes for creation. The unrevealed God is always a God of wrath for us, because we don’t know what he’s up to. In order to create faith and trust, then, God comes to us in the form of the suffering servant, forgiving our sins and healing us. The “love” of the unrevealed God is always an abstract and unknown quantity. So God comes to us concretely in Jesus and (as Gerhard Forde put it) does God to us. He pours out his love on us in the messy, concrete details of our lives. This may have been, Forde says, the only way for God to get through to us.

Fiddes is right, then, to defend the Abelardian from the charges of exemplarism for, as he points out,

The humble love of God, in which he opens himself to pain and joy in the world, is not just revealed like a fact in a scientific textbook. The revealing of his love is at the same time God’s opening of himself, for revelation can be nothing less than the self-unveiling of the being of God. … Only God can link the revelation of love and the outpouring of love, because revelation is always an encounter with the ‘person of God speaking’. (pp. 160-1)

God’s coming among us and identifying with us in our human condition is at the same time God’s pouring out of his forgiving love upon us. And it’s that love which empowers the human response, which creates faith and trust. So, I think the charge of Pelagianism is also avoided.