WHY DID JESUS DIE?

(Diego Velázquez – “Christ Crucified” – 1632)

This is a theological question, not a historical one. Early Christian theologians debated it seriously, but modern thinkers and believers no longer do. Historically, we know that Jesus died when the Jews and Romans in Jerusalem hanged him on a cross, branding him a heretic or an enemy of the state. Yet Christian theologians have long debated the theological and cosmic meaning of Jesus’ death. Meanwhile, most Christians today give little thought to the real meaning of Jesus’ death on the cross.

At my fundamentalist college and my conservative seminary, we students were taught to think through its implications to a satisfactory conclusion. In college, I was taught to believe the “Substitutionary Satisfaction” view of the death of Jesus, namely that he died as our human substitute to satisfy God’s demand for justice. In that view, the “wages of sin” were said to be eternal death, and Jesus’ death paid the debt for all humankind. Unfortunately, it never explained why this “penal satisfaction” controlled even God, the creator and ruler of the universe. Surely a better explanation must exist.

Alternative theories held that God owed a debt to the Devil, which was paid by Jesus’ death. Again, these theories never explained why or how God would “owe” the Devil anything at all, or why Jesus’ death would “satisfy” either God or the Devil. Most critics of such theories quickly point out that they reflect a limited view of God’s nature, power, and love. It was not until I went to theological seminary and studied under Robert Traina that I obtained a more satisfactory understanding of the New Testament view of the “atonement.” That understanding was focused on the insights of the Swedish theologian Gustaf Aulén in his book “Christus Victor.”

Aulén’s view focused on the New Testament theme that in Jesus Christ God had conquered evil, not by sacrificing his Son on the cross, but by overcoming all forms of evil and death and by demonstrating his eternal love for humanity, not by demanding a “cosmic Sacrifice” but by intervening in human history with a dramatic demonstration of Divine Love in the person and teachings of Jesus. According to Aulén, the point is not to “pay off” any debts but to embody God’s love in the historical person of Jesus so as to teach and exemplify the meaning and reality of God’s love for humanity. The way Jesus died, allowing himself to be crucified by the Roman Government without any sort of struggle, exemplifies his commitment to his own teachings.

By receiving God’s accepting love as embodied in Christ’s life and death, humans can choose to participate in the life God gives through that love. In my view, this new way of life is found in Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.” As Paul says, “In Christ God reconciled the world unto himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19). No one “pays” anyone anything. Reconciliation is the key.

So, that’s the easy part. The harder part is connecting the Jesus of the Gospels with this cosmic redeemer Christ. I must admit that this is no easy task if one is committed to making some sense of the whole Incarnation issue. Clearly, Jesus lived an ordinary human life in Palestine in the early years of what we call the “Christian era.” He taught, fed, and healed many people for a few short years and then was crucified by the Roman government. So, where lies the Divinity of the Heavenly Christ? Traditionally, Christians, theologians, and everyday believers alike have rather superimposed the Divinity of Christ on the human Jesus without seeking to disentangle them.

The central difficulty is that, even though Jesus is clearly a major anomaly within his own culture and time, he was also clearly not above being abused and killed by the Roman authorities. So where does his Divinity lie? Clearly, he was not some sort of Divine “Superman” in his own time and culture. Like the many traditional theologians before us, we still face difficulty, if not physical impossibility, when it comes to connecting these two aspects of the person of Jesus/Christ. Specifically, the uncontested fact that he actually died seems to be the key problem. Are we simply stuck with this puzzle of how to combine divinity and humanity?

My own resolution is that somehow we are supposed to discern the Divine Logos “within” the human Jesus. Trying to combine or separate them, after all, Jesus clearly died, and this is not normal Divine behavior. For me, the only way to reconcile this seemingly self-contradictory puzzle is to conclude that when we have tried to separate the Divine from the human in the person of Jesus, we have failed to appreciate the radical, ingenious truth of the Incarnation: that true spirituality exists only within embodied reality. That is to say, the reality of Jesus’ incarnation of God’s spirit is in fact “within” his embodiment and can only exist in this way. We cannot “take apart” the Incarnation, as previous theologians have sought to do.

In short, there is no “heavenly glow” surrounding the man Jesus. He came into the world of flesh and brought spirituality with him. This, to be sure, is a paradox that admits no resolution. I am not urging some sort of “mysticism” here. For myself, I no longer need to resolve this puzzle. I am prepared, and have been for some 80 years, to simply accept and try to live by the teachings and example of Jesus as found in the Gospels. If that is all there is, I must say that is fine with me. If somehow the puzzle of the Incarnation has led me, along with millions of others, down some “primrose path,” so be it. It is difficult to conclude that trying to follow the example and teachings of Jesus is delusional. Their value speaks for itself. As Luther said, “I can do no other. Here I stand.”      

By way of a more complete answer, I would fall back on my old standby, “mediated reality.” So many of the dimensions of reality come to us through others, just as the meaning of this paragraph and these very words is “mediated” to us through our common understanding of them in the English language. It seems magical because of our long experience with these factors, but if we recall what it was like to be a child or a foreigner, things become much clearer. In the same way, perhaps, we can understand how Jesus’ behavior and teachings can be said to “mediate” divinity and spiritual reality to us – in and through the particulars, we can grasp the whole. That is the meaning of the notion of “Incarnation”; the richer dimension of reality is mediated in and through the more familiar patterns of everyday life and thought. The former cannot be reduced to the latter, but at the same time, in and through our involvement with the latter, we can come to an understanding of the former as it is mediated to us in and through the latter. The one is “incarnated” in the other.

ONCE AGAIN, BACK TO MEMPHIS

I have written several times about my time in Memphis, Tenn., focusing on civil rights activism and my opportunity to teach at a black college. Although I was only in Memphis for three years, it proved pivotal for me, both personally and professionally. Dr. King was murdered in Memphis while I was living there, and civil rights issues were front and center. The Presbyterian college, Southwestern at Memphis, where I taught, was just beginning to explore enrolling Black students, and my family and I joined a Black Presbyterian Church. My son and I marched in the “I AM A Man” march and saw several well-known Black leaders, such as Harry Belafonte and Rev. James Lawson Jr. 

At the heart of my years there was the opportunity to teach part-time at LeMoyne College for three semesters. Needless to say, it was a wonderful, eye-opening experience. For me, that meant 19,000 people at these concerts. The best part was getting to know several of my Black students as personal friends. It was also a very difficult time for my young son and me because my wife left us to marry another man in California. I formed several lasting relationships with my Southwestern students and became active as a publishing scholar. But my encounter with the Black community and its distinctive qualities remained central to my experience there.

Yet, in a sense, the most memorable part of my time in Memphis was attending several Black musical events that featured top-notch performers, each sharing their own take on Soul and Straight-Ahead Black music. My son and I went to three such concerts, and each time we were blessed with performances by the likes of well-known musicians such as Rufus (Walkin’ the Dog”) and Carla Thomas, Eddie Floyd, and various backup sound groups, and, of course, Smokey Robinson himself. One year, Michael Jackson came and showed off his backward-walking routine (“Moon Walk”). Ike and Tina Turner were there, a couple of years before she rightfully went off on her own and became “The” Tina Turner.

For me, the high point of these shows was the closing jazz number by James Brown himself, complete with all his crazy “fall down/get-up” antics and his classic “I Feel Good.” Of course, his “closing number” went on for a good half-hour, with all sorts of pretend collapses and recoveries. In between all this were frequent trumpet blasts from the backup group’s familiar riff: “Na, na, na, and a Na, na, na.” To be sure, the 95 percent Black audience (I kid you not) loved every minute of it, as did we tag-along whites. Of course, Memphis was particularly famous for its rhythm and blues, but the spirit of soul music was taking its place alongside it.

More broadly, the highlight of these concerts was the chance to see and hear Tina Turner take her first steps toward stardom. Her voice and style became a phenomenon in and of itself.

I even got to see and hear Tina in Helsinki, Finland, years later. She was a talent and a symbol all her own. In a way, Tina symbolizes the drive and depth of what we have come to call “Soul Music.” I am so grateful for the opportunity to experience her live and in person back in those days in Memphis. Now all we can do is “sit on the dock of the bay,” along with Otis Redding, and recall those good old days “watchin’ the tide roll away.”