Maundy Thursday. Blood Theology
Maundy Thursday
Blood Theology John 13: 1-15
Would Jesus be any deader if he had not been crucified? If the gore of Good Friday had not been so gory? What if Jesus had been beheaded? Killed with a lethal injection? Would it make any difference to the value of our salvation? I mean is it the blood that is important?
Would our salvation be any better, more complete if Jesus had died in a more horrific way? Eviscerated and drawn and quartered?
How does the horror of Jesus death effect our salvation? If there is more horror are we saved sooner, better or more of us?
How much blood does it take to save us.
Crucifixion is not a terribly bloody death; the victim dies of asphyxiation.
The beating of Jesus is limited is a single verse at Matt 26:67, Mark14:65 and Luke 22:63
Then again at Matt 27:26, Mark 15 15 and John 19:1 but not in Luke!
Blood theology has at least two forms: one the resurrected Jesus soaked up all the blood shed in his death and deposited it in heaven where it is used to cleanse those who need it. Hence blood theology.
two God’s anger over the sinfulness of man can only be assuaged by death. Jesus’ pain and death substitutes for us. Hence substitutionary atonement theology. In this way of thinking, God is overpoweringly angry at all human beings and his anger must be appeased. He decided to appease his own anger by sending his son to be killed in our place.
The moral danger of blood theology is that it baptizes violence and bloodshed in God’s name. It is the source in our culture of the desire for retribution, punishment and war all in the name of God. For capital executions, for carrying weapons on the streets of our cities, and for the attacks we are making on the people in Iraq, Afghanistan etc.
Here is what I think of as orthodox soteriology: [soteriology is the study of how people are saved] God sent the Son, God came as a human into our lives to make us one with him, to draw us back into relationship. God became in every way like us. In our hunger, in our temptations, in our pains and anguish. This is called in theological terms: the Incarnation. God did not intend for Jesus to be executed, but SURPRISE he let it happen. Jesus did not have to let himself die. And SURPRISE Jesus was willing. And the big surprise is that God took this horrible human action and turned it one its head: SURPRISE resurrection!
Were are we in this? We are the ones who crucify Jesus. whenever we do it to one of the least of God’s creatures we do it to Jesus. We are also the benificiaries of the cross. The whole of Christ’s passion is for us. Pain and Blood included.
Being a Christian is not an escape from sin, pain or death. Being a Christian is about being like Jesus in this world.
William Porcher DuBose, 19th Century Anglican theologian, wrote in The Soteriology of the New Testament p. 239-40, “...our Salvation consists not in some one’s performing a vicarious act or enduring a vicarious penalty which has the effect of a formal and objective satisfaction to the nature, the justice, or the divine government of God for their moral or abstract guilt; but it consists in some one’s doing, or having done, for us and in us that which will break the power over us of the inherited nature, of the accumulated and consolidated consequences in our nature, which those sins have entailed upon us.”
Blood Theology John 13: 1-15
Would Jesus be any deader if he had not been crucified? If the gore of Good Friday had not been so gory? What if Jesus had been beheaded? Killed with a lethal injection? Would it make any difference to the value of our salvation? I mean is it the blood that is important?
Would our salvation be any better, more complete if Jesus had died in a more horrific way? Eviscerated and drawn and quartered?
How does the horror of Jesus death effect our salvation? If there is more horror are we saved sooner, better or more of us?
How much blood does it take to save us.
Crucifixion is not a terribly bloody death; the victim dies of asphyxiation.
The beating of Jesus is limited is a single verse at Matt 26:67, Mark14:65 and Luke 22:63
Then again at Matt 27:26, Mark 15 15 and John 19:1 but not in Luke!
Blood theology has at least two forms: one the resurrected Jesus soaked up all the blood shed in his death and deposited it in heaven where it is used to cleanse those who need it. Hence blood theology.
two God’s anger over the sinfulness of man can only be assuaged by death. Jesus’ pain and death substitutes for us. Hence substitutionary atonement theology. In this way of thinking, God is overpoweringly angry at all human beings and his anger must be appeased. He decided to appease his own anger by sending his son to be killed in our place.
The moral danger of blood theology is that it baptizes violence and bloodshed in God’s name. It is the source in our culture of the desire for retribution, punishment and war all in the name of God. For capital executions, for carrying weapons on the streets of our cities, and for the attacks we are making on the people in Iraq, Afghanistan etc.
Here is what I think of as orthodox soteriology: [soteriology is the study of how people are saved] God sent the Son, God came as a human into our lives to make us one with him, to draw us back into relationship. God became in every way like us. In our hunger, in our temptations, in our pains and anguish. This is called in theological terms: the Incarnation. God did not intend for Jesus to be executed, but SURPRISE he let it happen. Jesus did not have to let himself die. And SURPRISE Jesus was willing. And the big surprise is that God took this horrible human action and turned it one its head: SURPRISE resurrection!
Were are we in this? We are the ones who crucify Jesus. whenever we do it to one of the least of God’s creatures we do it to Jesus. We are also the benificiaries of the cross. The whole of Christ’s passion is for us. Pain and Blood included.
Being a Christian is not an escape from sin, pain or death. Being a Christian is about being like Jesus in this world.
William Porcher DuBose, 19th Century Anglican theologian, wrote in The Soteriology of the New Testament p. 239-40, “...our Salvation consists not in some one’s performing a vicarious act or enduring a vicarious penalty which has the effect of a formal and objective satisfaction to the nature, the justice, or the divine government of God for their moral or abstract guilt; but it consists in some one’s doing, or having done, for us and in us that which will break the power over us of the inherited nature, of the accumulated and consolidated consequences in our nature, which those sins have entailed upon us.”
posted by Thomas Van Brunt | 2:27 PM
1 Comments:
Could blood theology be not so much what had to happen but simply what does happen?
That is it is descriptive that Jesus died the death he did because (a) some form of history tells us that and (b) aesthetically and theologically a painful death if not a gruesome death is what most of us deal with in our lives. And it is not proscriptive because God didn't intend for Jesus to die a particularly or extremely bloody death, nor are we to be worshiping the blood so much as his desire to live with us and willingness to sacrifice himself.
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