#kaddosh

In the Abelardian view, reconciliation between God and human beings - that is, atonement - is brought about by love, the love of God that Jesus the Christ perfectly embodies. This love is so potent that when human beings encounter it, we are actually inspired to emulate it, to love God as Jesus loved God, and to love one another as Jesus loves us.

Thus in the Anselmian model [of atonement], sinful humanity comes up against the hard wall of divine justice, which holds it unremittingly accountable for its disobedience, dishonor, and disorder. Divine compassion does not eclipse or even soften the demands of divine justice and the moral order of the universe. Compassion is born of justice, not vice versa. Divine mercy is circumscribed by the demands of justice, and justice demands that debts be paid, honour be restored, order be maintained; otherwise, the gravity of sin is treated lightly and human responsibility for evil becomes a farce. ... Divine mercy is indeed without restrictions, claims Anselm, but only in its eschatological fullness: “I do not deny that God is merciful ... [but] we are speaking of that exceeding pity by which he makes humans happy after this life” (emphasis added). Human sin, the unfortunate hallmark of this life, puts God’s justice and mercy at odds with each other, and the claim of justice, according to the Anselmian model, is absolutely nonnegotiable.

The challenge, it seems to me, is to make this claim in a way that can account for the complexity, tenacity and pervasiveness of human evil, on the one hand, and the miracle of grace that empowers concrete acts of resistance to evil that yields moments of genuine transformation and hope, on the other hand. This has always been the task of Christian theology - to seek to understand and shed light on both the tragedy and the stubborn hope, the agony and the ecstasy, the fragility and the fullness of human existence; and to keep alive the dangerous memories of evil defied, of violence eschewed, of hardness of heart transformed, so that glimpses of redemption might open up vistas of possibility for the confrontation and transformation of evil.

Reconciliation with God and one another depends upon a sober sizing up and taking on of the evil that separates us from and sets us against one another. It requires analysis and action, theory and practice, narrative and engagement.

The cross, the symbol at the heart of Christianity, signifies the clash between good and evil, life and death, love and hate; it represents, finally, the event of atonement in which good and evil, justice and injustice, are paradigmatically defined for Christian peoples. The cross reminds us of the power of human evil to crush life, to punish and murder the righteous. At the same time, however, the instrument of cruel and unjust death is understood by Christian tradition to be an indispensable part of the story of redemption from human evil, of liberation from bondage. Somehow, Jesus’ death on the cross bespeaks the hope of new life.

For more than five hundred years, the poor and the disenfranchised of Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa have been victimised by colonialism, capitalism, and cross; they have been, and are, “crucified peoples”.

In Christian tradition, atonement (at-one-ment) is most broadly defined as “reconcilation”, whose root, katallage, means “making otherwise”. Implied is a situation of separation, distortion, brokenness between God and the world. ... Atonement refers to the process by which those who are separated are brought near, what is distorted is untwisted, and what is broken is mended and made whole.

Understandings of atonement are as varied as the people who articulate them. At the heart of most construals of atonement, however, are two convictions: first, that things are not as they should be between God and world; and second, that this situation can be resolved, that right relationship is possible.