Review of Boersma's Violence, Hospitality and the Cross

SJT 61(4): 494–502 (2008) Printed in the United Kingdom C! 2008 Scottish Journal of Theology Ltddoi:10.1017/S0036930608002032

Article ReviewHans Boersma’s Violence, Hospitality,and the CrossHans Boersma, Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross: Reappropriatingthe Atonement Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004),pp. 288. $29.99.J. Denny Weaver, The Nonviolent Atonement (Grand Rapids, MI:Eerdmans, 2001), pp. xiv + 246. $22.00.

‘It is now regarded as a commonplace in critical discussion of Anselm’stheology of the atonement that he was in unconscious bondage to the ethicalideas suggested by the social order of his age. But those who are quick torecognise the extent of his limitations in this respect are sometimes lesswilling to extend similar principles to the criticism of their own ideas’(D. M. Mackinnon, ‘Atonement and Tragedy’, in his Borderlands of Theology(1968)).

Substitutionary accounts of the atonement have been under attack for along time now – at least since Abelard criticised Anselm for making God’slove dependent on the payment of a debt. In modern theology, it was GustavAulen’s Christus Victor that seemed to set Anselm definitively beyond the pale.Yet the question raised by Anselm in his Cur Deus Homo refuses to go away.Why a God-man? Or more specifically, why a cross? In recent theologicaldiscussion these questions have become even more urgent. Feminist andother theologians have challenged traditional understandings of Christ’sreconciling work on the grounds that they unwittingly foster violence, or atleast glorify suffering and sacrifice in a world that already sees too much ofboth.

Two recent books by Protestant theologians both summarise the recentdiscussion and seek to break new ground. In The Nonviolent Atonement,Mennonite theologian Denny Weaver argues that any theology in whichGod ‘requires’ the death of Jesus is unacceptably violent. The alternative heproposes is a variant of Aulen’s Christus victor theory, but grounded more firmlyin the biblical narrative and with a strong political edge. Hans Boersma’sViolence, Hospitality, and the Cross is much more sympathetic to Christian traditionconcerning the atonement than is Weaver’s book. In a conscious act ofretrieval, he tries to synthesise Aulen’s three types of atonement imageryunder the banner of divine ‘hospitality’. The God of the cross is the Godwho is radically welcoming – but also the God who cannot help but excludeevil from the creation. This emphasis on what might be called the ‘dark side’

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Hans Boersma’s Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross

of atonement stands in sharp contrast to Weaver’s rather more triumphalapproach.

Weaver is guided by one basic, unwavering conviction: substitutionarytheories of atonement are morally repugnant and must be rejected. Suchtheories are nothing less than models of ‘divinely sanctioned violence’(p. 195). Even (or especially!) if Jesus bears our punishment or pays ourdebt, then punishment of a retributive sort must be a good thing. Weavertirelessly makes the point that whereas the older theories keep the status quofirmly in place, the real message of the Bible is liberative. The central portionof the book is devoted to a long summary of feminist, womanist and othertheologians who develop forms of this argument: James Cone, Garth KasimuBaker-Fletcher, Rita Nakashima Brock, Katie Cannon and others. While theirarguments are many and varied, all share a suspicion of traditional theologiesof atonement – and a positive goal of developing morally and politically‘useful’ accounts of the work of Christ.

Weaver’s own constructive position is set out in chapter 2. This is byfar the best chapter in the book, mainly because Weaver here speaks in hisown voice, does more affirming than denying, and sticks close to the textof scripture. He reads a range of New Testament authors as witnesses towhat he calls a ‘narrative Christus victor’ understanding of atonement. It isChristus victor because it tells of Jesus’ triumphs over the demonic powers thatoppress humankind. It is narrative because it takes place in history. The Jesusof this account is the non-violent Jesus, challenging the world’s structuresof evil, but refusing to employ the enemy’s tools in doing so. Some ofWeaver’s exegetical moves are questionable. While his reading of the bookof Revelation is often insightful, he is much too confident about correlatingthe book’s symbols with particular historical events and people (e.g. theseven seals with seven Roman emperors). He also has to squeeze the datato fit his theory, as when he minimises the sacrificial element in Hebrewsbecause it sounds too ‘Anselmic’. For the most part, though, Weaver makes astrong case for the liberation motif that runs throughout the text of the NewTestament. This is not hard to do; the motif is there. Weaver’s evocation ofthe apocalyptic element in Paul makes for especially compelling reading.

That said, this is a deeply problematic book. Weaver’s problem withsacrifice goes beyond just a myopic reading of Hebrews. It inevitably shapeshis whole Christology. The Jesus of this book is the Jesus of the synopticgospels, especially Luke (p. 34), and with the accent placed on the ministryof teaching and healing rather than on the passion narratives. That is, thisJesus is a fairly standard liberal Protestant Messiah: a man who is ‘of God’ andwho ‘embodies the reign of God’ (p. 43). Rather than viewing the kingdomin the light of Jesus, Weaver tends to view Jesus in the light of the kingdom.

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The result is a low Christology and a moralising understanding of salvation.Weaver seems to think that his emphasis on the resurrection (welcome initself) rescues his account from being a version of the moral influence theory(p. 45). I am dubious about this. For Weaver Jesus’s death and resurrectiontogether ‘reveal the basis of power in the universe, so that the invitation fromGod to participate in God’s rule – to accept Jesus as God’s anointed one –overcomes the forces of sin and reconciles sinners to God’ (p. 45). I am notquite sure what this means. It certainly seems to place the ball squarely inour court. While New Testament language concerning faith and the churchcould be construed as our ‘identifying’ with Jesus, as Weaver puts it, surelythe passion narratives are about something rather more strange than that:God’s act of ‘identifying’ with us?

Some of Weaver’s hesitations can be traced back to his free church roots.As an Anabaptist, he tends to dismiss the ancient creeds as typical productsof the Constantinian church: elite, theoretical, morally irrelevant. In Nicaeaand Chalcedon we find ‘nothing . . . that expresses the ethical dimension ofbeing Christ-related, nothing . . . that would shape the Church so that it canbe a witness to the world’ (p. 93). This would have been news to KarlBarth, whose ethics of reconciliation – including a powerful treatment ofthe struggle for earthly justice – is grounded in his Chalcedonian account ofChrist’s person. Happily, not all contemporary Mennonites share this aversionto the creeds.1 Yet if Weaver sees trinitarian theology as morally deficient, hesees the Anselmic tradition as directly culpable. Late in the book he canvassesthe views of contemporary defenders of Anselm, including Leanne van Dyk,Catherine Pickstock and William Placher, only to conclude that their revisionsfail to address the fundamental problem of divine violence:

A version of satisfaction atonement with punishment redefined or witha renewed emphasis on God’s suffering with Jesus is still an imagein which salvation depends on the necessary death of Jesus as a debtpayment; it is still an image in which justice depends on the violence ofpunishment . . . Stressing the voluntary nature of Jesus’ act, rather than theFather’s requirement of it, does nothing for the problem such an imageupholds for those who have born the brunt of direct abuse . . . This is stillan image that makes submission to abusive authority a virtue. (p. 196)

1 In fairness, I should note that Weaver concedes that given a fourth-century worldview,‘the answers of Nicea and Chalcedon are valid answer, and perhaps the best answerswithin the assumed categories’ (p. 96). He claims his protest concerns elevating thecreeds to the status of a universally recognisable and uncontestable foundation thatpresumes to transcend all issues of time and historical context’ (ibid.). It is not clearwho would be so crazy as to make such a claim.

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For Weaver, Jesus is simply a victim of human violence, his fate determinedby contingent human actions that ought not to have been. While it is true thathuman agency contributes in a decisive way to Jesus’s death – i.e. we killedhim – the New Testament also makes it quite clear that nothing in this story isaccidental. Thus Jesus asks the bewildered disciples on the road to Emmaus,‘Was it not necessary (dei) that the Messiah should suffer these things andenter into his glory?’ (Luke 24:25). The same Greek verb is used in Jesus’spredictions of his passion: ‘And he began to teach them that the Son of manmust (dei) suffer many things’ (Mark 8:31). The necessity Jesus speaks ofhere reflects neither an implacable fate nor God’s unwillingness to forgiveapart from a blood ransom. Rather, it is a necessity grounded in who God is.God owes us nothing; in that sense the atonement did not ‘have to happen’. Itis an act of God’s ‘wondrous love’. But it is this love – the Father’s love for theSon in the communion of the Spirit – that freely undergoes what medievalwriters called the ‘wonderful exchange’, experiencing death and judgementso that we might have life. One can acknowledge this without committingoneself to any particular theory of exchange, substitution or satisfaction.That the cross is a sacrifice in some sense is simply written into the storyof a Saviour whose blood was ‘poured out for many for the forgiveness ofsins’ (Matt 26:28). Weaver’s missing of this point is ironic, given his rightfulinsistence on grounding a theology of atonement in the actual text of theNew Testament.2

The theme of Christ’s triumph over the powers is an essential part of thebiblical witness. Recognising it helps us get our understanding of salvationout of the private sphere into a historical, political, even cosmic setting. Thisis an undoubted gain. By itself, though, a theology that focuses on the evilwe experience as victims rather than the evil of which we are the perpetratorsfalls woefully short.3 We need not just to be liberated from sin but to bereconciled to God.4 Failure to acknowledge this results in a sanitised andrationalised understanding of atonement – akin to what Goethe somewherecalls ‘putting roses on the cross’. The resulting picture may be edifying, evenmorally uplifting; but it will not be true.

2 On the relation between atonement theories and narrative see Michael Root, ‘Dying HeLives: Biblical Image, Biblical Narrative and the Redemptive Jesus’, Semeia 30 (1985),pp. 155–169. This brief essay should be required reading for anyone hoping to doconstructive work in the theology of the atonement.

3 In contemporary preaching, no one makes this point more forcefully than the Rev.Fleming Rutledge. See e.g. her sermon collection The Undoing of Death: Sermons for HolyWeek and Easter (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002).

4 Root, ‘Dying He Lives’, p. 157.

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No one would ever accuse Hans Boersma of putting roses on the cross.As the subtitle of his book – Reappropriating the Atonement Tradition – indicates,Boersma proposes to move forward by looking back, integrating oldermodels of the work of Christ into a theology of divine ‘hospitality’.Hospitality, indeed, is his Ur-metaphor for understanding atonement:

Hospitality, like love, refers to the very character of God to which believerslook forward through Christ’s work of redemption. . . The metaphorof hospitality is, therefore, more foundational than any of the threemetaphors of traditional atonement theology. God’s hospitality is likethe soil in which the process of reconciliation is able to take root andflourish. (p. 112)

While both scripture and the church fathers have a great deal to sayabout hospitality, I am less sure the term is suited to playing the kindof central role in the doctrine of reconciliation envisioned by Boersma.Why not grace, love or koinonia? For that matter, why not the Paulineterm ‘reconciliation’ itself? That would at least have strong precedent inthe dogmatic tradition. The choice of ‘hospitality’ seems less motivatedby a strong theological rationale than by Boersma’s desire to enter intodialogue with Derrida and Levinas, both of whom insist on an ethics ofradical hospitality – a moral ideal that, tragically, can never be realised.Canvassing the views of the postmoderns has become practically anobligatory exercise in contemporary theology. Boersma’s discussion of theavatars of difference and ‘otherness’ in chapter 1 is engaging enough, thoughI’m not sure how much it actually contributes to the argument. Whenhe turns his attention to theology the results are more interesting. Inchapter 2 he offers a wide-ranging critique of traditional Calvinism onthe subject of predestination and limited atonement (the ‘L’ in ‘TULIP’).By treating election and rejection as a function of God’s secret will apartfrom Christ, Reformed orthodoxy made God seem arbitrary and wilful –‘violent’ in Boersma’s language. In chapter 3 he draws on Old Testamentsources for an alternative account of election, focusing on the idea of God’s‘preferential hospitality’ towards the poor.

The heart of the book (chapters 4–8) consists in a review of the threestandard models of atonement. There is a good deal to praise here, including afine discussion of Renz Girard (correctly located in the exemplarist camp) anda pointed critique of Denny Weaver, whose attempt to tie satisfaction theoriesto the Constantinian ‘fall’ of the church Boersma effectively demolishes. AsBoersma points out, notions of sacrifice and exchange can be found inthe Church fathers long before Constantine. Thus the early second-century

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Epistle to Diognetus, which states that Christ died ‘a ransom for us, theholy One for transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the righteousOne for the unrighteousness, the incorruptible One for the corruptible, theimmortal One for them that are mortal. For what other thing was capable ofcovering our sins than His righteousness?’5 The idea of the cross as sacrificecan even be found in Irenaeus, usually cited as the prototypical advocate ofthe Christus victor view. Indeed, the bishop of Lyons is in many ways the realhero of this book. Boersma shows how Irenaeus’s understanding of Christ asa recapitulation of the human story incorporates elements of exemplarism,sacrifice and victory over the powers. With Irenaeus’s help, Boersma pushesthe penal dimension of the cross away from the juridical and individualistemphasis characteristic of Protestant orthodoxy, and in a direction Paul mighthave recognised: Christ’s death as a representative act in which all humanitydies and (eschatologically) is given new life.

All this is stimulating and useful. I only wonder why Boersma foundit necessary to retain Aulen’s rather creaky typology as the basis for hisdiscussion. If Aulen’s historical account fails – and Boersma deftly showswhy this is the case – isn’t it time to relegate his categories to the dustbin oftheological history? In this one respect I found Weaver’s book superior: he atleast tries to draw the New Testament evidence together in a consistent visionof what ‘atonement’ means. The narrative remains primary. By contrast,Boersma’s account suffers from a certain eclecticism. The reader is leftwondering whether a theology of reconciliation doesn’t finally come downto a choice among duelling metaphors.

So far I have focused on the ‘hospitality’ of Boersma’s title, his account ofatonement. But this is not just a book about hospitality; it is a book aboutviolence. Indeed, Boersma argues that the two go hand in hand. God is radicalhospitality, and wills to show hospitality to the world in Jesus Christ. Butin order to do this God cannot help but forge certain compromises with afallen and violent world. The cross is a violent act – not just on the humanside, but apparently on God’s side as well:

God’s hospitality requires violence, just as his love necessitates wrath.This is not to say, of course, that God’s violence and wrath are his essentialattributes. God is love, not wrath; he is a God of hospitality, not a God ofviolence . . . Hospitality bespeaks the very essence of God, while violence ismerely one of the ways to safeguard or ensure the future of his hospitalitywhen dealing with the humps and bumps of our lives. Divine violence,

5 Epistle of Diognetus, IX, Ante-Nicene Fathers, I, 28; cited in Boersma, p. 159.

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in other words, is a way in which God strives toward an eschatologicalsituation of pure hospitality. (p. 49)

In short, Boersma’s God is not afraid to get his hands dirty.It is hard to know what to make of all this. At one level Boersma is

clearly carrying on a debate with Yoder, Hauerwas and Milbank, whoseemphasis on the church invites Boersma’s charge that they are giving upon the world. (‘Calvin against the Anabaptists’, is how one friend of minedescribed Boersma’s book.) While Yoder and Hauerwas are pacifists andMilbank is not, all three stress the role of the church in God’s oikonomia inways that blur the difference between Catholic and Free Church insights.By contrast, Boersma advocates a Reformed vision in which violence mayrightfully be employed to defend the innocent. He carries on this debate inchapters 9 and 10, dealing respectively with the church and matters of publicjustice. Boersma is prone to exaggerate the sectarianism of the thinkers hecriticises. Nonetheless, these chapters force us to think. Readers looking forammunition against Radical Orthodoxy will not go home disappointed.

But as the passage quoted above suggests, there is more going on here thanjust a disagreement over pacifism. The issue is God. Boersma could hardlybe more emphatic that the divine ‘essence’ is peace rather than violence.Yet there is a left hand of God, that aspect of God that engages a violentworld violently. This is a very unpopular argument to make in academe, andBoersma should be commended for putting it on the table. The world is aviolent place. This is true not just of fallen human beings but of creationitself; we theologians should read Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek toexorcise any lingering sentimentality we might have about ‘nature’. Thedoctrine of providence says that God is intimately, passionately involved inthis very world. In scripture, death is ultimately the enemy (1 Cor 15) butpenultimately a power that serves the execution of God’s judgement (cf. Rom5:12-14; Rev 6:3-4, 8). If we want to avoid Deism, it is hard to deny the factof God’s involvement in violence. Just as no sparrow falls without God’s will, sowe might say that no violence happens outside God’s providential purpose.

The question to be raised is whether God, beyond the providential turningof violence to his own ends, is in some sense also its active sponsor. Boersma’sanswer is Yes. He is nothing if not consistent about this: willing to affirmthat God employs violence, he also affirms the use of violence by Jesus. Heoffers the example of Jesus’s cleansing of the temple, which resulted in aloss to the moneychangers, and of his prophetic words and actions, which‘were offensive to many and encroached on people’s personal space andwell-being’ (p. 92). Offensive language? Encroaching on personal space?Boersma’s definition of ‘violence’ is so broad as to encompass almost any

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form of discipline, anything that might reasonably be considered a limitationon my freedom or well-being – in short, anything that disrupts my ‘project’.Boersma uses the example of the government forcing a thirteen-year-old toattend school (p. 44). Given this standard, it is not hard to show how Jesusand God are perpetrators of violence. The question is whether the standarditself is not slightly absurd. Osama bin Laden and Martin Luther King, Jr.,both have caused a measure of discomfort in their time; but bin Laden is anagent of violence whereas King was not.

In his chapter on Calvinism, Boersma attacks the older orthodoxy becauseit appealed to God’s hidden will rather than to God’s revealed will in JesusChrist. I wonder if something similar is not going on with Boersma. He readsthe Old Testament and finds it filled with violence. Some of it seems sponsoredby God: the slaughter of the Canaanites, Saul’s killing of the Amalekites –indeed, God disapproves of Saul for not carrying out this commandmentto the letter! To maintain consistency, Boersma feels compelled to predicateviolence of God across the board, including the action of the incarnate Son.Yet surely this is to grasp the hermeneutical stick at the wrong end. JesusChrist is the one, definitive revelation of God. It is in the light of him that weare to read the often dark scriptures of Israel and the church, and the evendarker book of nature – ‘nature red in tooth and claw’. While this classicalprocedure does not mean the elimination of all puzzles, it at least spares usfrom having to posit a sharp division between God’s hospitable ‘essence’ andthe violent means he uses to usher in the kingdom of peace. Boersma’s goalof reading scripture as a unity is laudable; I just think he has gone about itin a wrong-headed way.

If Boersma seems tempted contre cœur to read violence into God, he makes asimilar mistake with respect to creation. Any kind of limit, boundary, alterityor resistance is tainted with the stain of violence. To state it somewhatdifferently, Boersma often treats the Law only from the perspective of its‘first use’: the policing of boundaries to safeguard community in a lawlessworld. This theme even appears in his discussion of the church, whosebounded character reflects the fact that ‘on this side of eternity hospitalityis never extended without the violence of exclusion’ (p. 223). Once again,Boersma has a firm hold on half the truth. He is right to affirm boundariesand limits as aspects of creation, and indeed as provisional aspects of thenew creation: the church cannot serve the world except as it maintains acertain otherness with respect to the world; thus the necessary limitation ofthe Eucharist to the baptised. Boersma is quite eloquent on this point. Yet tocall this otherness ‘violence’ seems an unnecessary concession to the Zeitgeist.It sounds an odd note of political correctness in an otherwise very un-PCbook.

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Both these books approach the theology of reconciliation with apologeticends in view. Weaver seeks to defend Christianity against the charge ofperpetrating violence by rejecting substitutionary atonement and setting amore authentic biblical account in its place. Boersma wants to demonstratethat Christianity is hospitable, not just in a utopian sense but in the real,violent world of the early twenty-first century – the world for which Christdied. Their common strength is their looking outward towards that world.Perhaps their common weakness is that the ‘violence’ thematic tends toocclude everything else. While the Bible certainly knows violence, violence assuch is not a central biblical category. Of New Testament passages I can thinkonly of those violent men who take the kingdom of heaven by force (Matt11:12, cf. Luke 16:16). Surely a contrast is implied here; the biastai wouldenter the kingdom by force, but the true way in is by following him whois ‘gentle and lowly of heart’ (Matt 11:29). The doctrine of reconciliationis best pursued in a consistently christological key, rather than by takingour cues from the violence that too much haunts our lives. The theology ofatonement can have a legitimately contextual edge. But before this it requiresa careful immersion in the narrative of the one who ‘is our peace’, whosebroken body reconciles Jew with Gentile and God with a violent world.

Joseph ManginaUniversity of Toronto

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Review of Boersma's Violence, Hospitality and the Cross