Feminist Philosophical Theology of the Atonement

Introduction

Atonement theology addresses Christ’s work on the cross, and that work is violent, unsettling and entrenched in patriarchal theology. From this uncomfortable starting point, feminist voices begin the lengthy and costly work of separating true aspects of the atonement from male-dominated assumptions couched in the language of orthodoxy. The household of atonement theology must be reframed and entirely re-worked, and although particularized viewpoints are more problematic (penal substitutionary, for example), others such as Christus Victor will serve as points of utilization for a more accurate feminist view of the atonement.

After a thorough investigation of the atonement, I found myself intrigued and challenged by the notion of the limited writings on atonement from a feminist perspective, yet their voices are valuable contributions to this conversation. This article will no doubt pull from constructive theology, but my hope is that this article will also address what a philosophical theology on the atonement would look like from the critiques of women. Hierarchies are inevitable realities and the subjugation of women can in no way be linked entirely to the atonement. That being said, previous views on the atonement construed a male-dominated, misogynistic God that can be accused of committing ‘divine child abuse’ with abandonment of Jesus on the cross. It is worth noting that feminist methodology rarely coincides with philosophical or analytic theology. Feminist approaches are often based on entirely different approaches than logic and reason; in many ways, it is a reaction to orthodox theology’s patriarchal roots. This approach is no more accurate than in the theology of the atonement. Rather than summarize the traditional views of atonement, as has already been discussed at length, this article will explore in depth the feminist critiques of the atonement and then attempt to form a constructive feminist perspective on the atonement.

Feminist Critiques

To begin, I will work with what is considered the original feminist critique of the atonement. Their work begins with equating the experience of women in church and society with the Suffering Servant role:

Christianity has been a primary – in many women’s lives the primary – force in shaping our acceptance of abuse. The central image of Christ on the cross as the savior of the world communicates the message that suffering is redemptive. ¹

Although some might object to the total validity of this claim, the basis that aspects of Christian theology are used to subjugate women stands. Suffering is glorified within Classical Christian views of the atonement, views which have suggested that Jesus’s gruesome death is essential to salvation. Nevertheless, this leaves the question of why this form of atonement was necessary, and if Jesus’s suffering was necessary it asks questions regarding whether the suffering of all people, especially in this case women, is necessary. This line of thought led some original feminists’ critiques of the atonement to classify it as ‘divine child abuse’ – ‘God the Father demanding and carrying out the suffering and death of his own son’. ² If this claim has any merit, then it has a great effect on how the God–human relationship is conceived, as well as human–human relationships, particularly in families. Rita Nakashima Brock similarly works with this pivotal language of child abuse, saying that atonement theology urges the graces of God only at the expense of ‘one perfect child’. This grace, for her, is a sense of relief at ‘being relieved of punishment for one’s inevitable failings and not in a clear sense of personal worth gained from an awareness of the unconditional nature of love. The shadow of the punitive father must always lurk behind the atonement’. ³ Whether it be the Suffering Servant role or the ‘one perfect child’ given over to an abusive, vindictive God, both of these sadistic theories make for a violent patriarch out for blood.

Reacting against some traditional atonement theories such as Christus Victor, Moral Influence or Satisfaction, the feminist critique stands in line with other critical traditions and intends to emphasize overlooked aspects in the atonement. One part of God’s nature that the feminist (as well as the liberationists, poststructuralists, process voices, etc.) desires to highlight is the fact that God suffers to some degree with creation. It may be that God’s suffering happens in creation, alongside creation, or it may be that the suffering of creation is also the suffering of God and the two cannot be separated. Feminist voices like Carter Heyward and others would emphasize that if there is room to discuss the suffering of God, this helps eliminate the notion of a blood-thirsty, vengeful God. Women are particularly sensitive to the manner in which orthodox theology has privileged certain metaphors of God because of the patriarchal nature of theology historically. With the selection of certain notions of God found in orthodox Christianity, particularized privileges have been accorded to men within the Christian tradition over the years. It becomes impossible for atonement theology and its metaphors of God not to influence ideal characteristics in human relationships as well. This metaphor spoken of is one of God as powerful patriarch of the greater household of the human family, where God demands absolute allegiance and punishes all disobedience. As Mary Grey clarifies, ‘the idea of a God so needing to have “his” wounded honour satisfied by the death of a beloved Son is at the root of the wish to distance from the tradition’. ⁴ Grey connects this historic view with the tradition established by Anslem where individualized salvation can only be achieved through death. Feminist theologians believe that, from this model, God’s wrath becomes a key tenet in orthodox Christianity and God’s punishment of his son is a part of his character and need to satisfy parental honour and sense of justice.

Women are particularly sensitive to this notion because of their experience in broader society. Heyward writes, ‘Women . . . have invariably played that role within the family and vis-à-vis man in the larger society’. ⁵ For her, the role she is speaking of is the role of victim and this is why the Suffering Servant image from Isaiah has perpetuated the separation and dichotomy between women and men in society. For Heyward and others surveyed in this work, the feminist critique of the atonement is based on the connection between the power that the images and Christological interpretations have imparted on Church and society, particularly in marginalizing women. Accepting such an interpretation further allows women to, in her words, ‘participate in their own crucifixion’ and continues to give men permission to escape from the responsibility of bearing their own burdens and thus coming to terms with their own sin and guilt. Instead, feminist theologians like Heyward would want to emphasize that Jesus’s life and ministry of justice challenged any sort of idea of a sadistic God:

The image of a Jesus who, in the prophetic tradition of Israel, despised the blasphemous notion of a deity who likes sacrifice, especially human sacrifice, can assure us that we are not here to give ourselves up willingly to be crucified for anyone’s sake, but rather to struggle together against the injustice of all human sacrifice, including our own. ⁶

A vision of a dualistic heaven and earth, where a perfect and holy separated heaven stands opposed to a sin and death-filled earth, stands in contrast to the live and ministry of Jesus Christ. In the incarnate Son, we see heaven crashing into earth, with all parts of creation entering into the redeeming work of God.

Other critiques, be it the dynamics of human and divine love, the maleness of Christ or the false notion of an entirely broken world, also merit attention from feminist theologians in considering the problematic elements of the atonement. For brevity here, the focus centred on violence, suffering and the wrath of God as key inaccuracies in atonement theology. This may not entirely explain why the doctrine of the atonement is the central cause of the patriarchal nature or oppressiveness of Christianity, but it does lay the foundation for a reimaging of Jesus and God in their relationship and in its implications for the atonement.

After giving a bit of introduction to the feminist critiques, now we can proceed with the necessary premises. Another way to frame this conversation regarding atonement for feminist theologians, particularly through the philosophical theology framework, would proceed as follows:

This appears to me as a helpful framework in beginning the conversation. For the brevity of this article, premise 1 is taken as proven significant elsewhere, where the doctrine of the Incarnation is substantiated. Premise 2 relates to the nature of evil in the world and whether or not creation needs to be redeemed, but for the sake of the feminist critique, let us accept that the orthodox notion of original sin can be questioned and humanity is good. If the following premises are accepted, there then becomes room for the critique of classical theories of the atonement. Many within orthodox Christianity would take issue with premise 2, since the doctrine of original sin is widely accepted, but feminist voices would question why an entirely good God would create a world with any intent or awareness of its future destruction or need for repair. Further discussion of this notion is beyond the scope of this article, but many feminists attempting to work within the Christian tradition would begin with questioning some orthodox tenets of theology, such as original sin. The sins that feminist theologians identify as significant and in need of redemption come from the structures of sin that have permeated our world – sins like racism, classism and sexism – which women would see as byproducts of a patriarchal world. Heyward would see this framework as extending beyond ‘divine child abuse’ into God as a sadomasochist, with the Father serving as a sadist who wilfully inflicts punishment, and the Son as the one willingly suffering it as the masochist; likewise, her work assessing the implications of the classical atonement by Anselm and its development into the penal substitutionary model today. ⁸ This appears to legitimize abuse, returning to the critique of the Suffering Servant model, and lead the abused to submit to their own victimization.

Other metaphors, such as God as medieval king or feudal overlord, seem to stem naturally from the Anselmian view and result in creating specific hierarchies that subjugate women. One other feminist perspective raising the critique of the atonement, but from an entirely different angle, is that of Dorothee Soelle. She speaks of the problem of ‘rich complacent white Christians who benefit from the violence of an oppressive world’. ⁹ If the primary Christian message is one of humanity as powerless sinners who can only receive redemption from above, then this re-enforces a ‘spirituality and ethic of passive collaboration with the powers of violence and oppression’. ¹⁰ A rejection of a patriarchal God and that God’s system as a system of domination is what Soelle believes is essential in a renewed crafting of atonement theology. For her, the cross insofar as a method of death (crucifixion) is not necessary or in itself universally redemption, but a symbol of redemption. Such a symbol carries on wherever resistance to injustice and mutual service of God are centrally placed within humanity.

Another voice to help frame the original feminist critique of the atonement is that of Darby Kathleen Ray, in her work Deceiving the Devil. Green and Baker find this the strongest and most substantial feminist critique and work with it extensively in their atonement survey, Recovering the Scandal of the Cross. If the heart of the atonement is a liberating, scandalous notion with a variety of implications, authors like Green intend to highlight as many and as varying voices as possible so that the full picture of the atonement can be best understood. ¹¹ If one is rejecting the retributive justice model, a model based on punishment being equal to the crime committed, stemming from the ‘eye for an eye model’, then there begins to be a space for questioning the need for God to make things right through the sacrifice of his son. ‘Ironically, the very doctrine whose job it is to attempt to understand and articulate God’s response to evil perpetuates evil in the lives of many women, men and children’. ¹² Her concern is one that balances both the standards of orthodoxy, but also its experienced effects on the least within society. This is a methodological position, one that believes that the rule of faith holds based on a variety of claims related to the Gospel. This is a theology that also takes serious the mission of the Church and the everyday experiences of Christians in a host of contexts around the world.

From her position concerning the evil effects of the atonement, Ray sees three possible responses:

Ray believes that the atonement can be spoken of in a way that the action begins the process of reconciliation between God and the world, one event that confronts evil in a decisive way. She affirms the centrality of the atonement in this process of reconciliation and the key role that Jesus plays in this event, and thus she believes that position 2 is not viable for her. Ray sees that in large part the problem with the atonement for women is the distortion of language, particularly in the satisfaction/penal substitution model, or in her words the Anselmian tradition, and the moral influence theory, stemming from Abelard. ‘The implications of the Anselmian view . . . imply a model of relationship based on the unilateral power of one over another that not only mirrors situations of systemic violence and person abuse, but also offers them divine sanction’. ¹³ Ray goes on to explain how the Abelardian model is also problematic, because it views sin in terms of disobedience and wilfulness, which lead to cultural and religious assumptions of male authority and prerogative.

If we are to accept Ray’s third response as our only way forward in altering the evil effects of the atonement, then language serves as a helpful starting point. In Mary Grey’s words, ‘If we are imprisoned by the language of “expiation” and “atonement”, is it not possible to speak of “reconciliation” in terms which bridge the barriers to authentic community?’ ¹⁴ Language like ‘sacrifice’ and ‘expiation’ opens itself up to the marginalization and exploitation of the most vulnerable, and that so often includes women. Tradition sustains memory, yet it can also often further narratives which perpetuate subjugation.

There exists a complicated and convoluted diversity in the various typologies of the atonement. Kathryn Tanner admits the differences in who is responsible for the crucifixion, which entity causes the change from the atonement or what has changed via the cross make such conversations difficult. In her words, is the cross ‘an interruption, a changing of course . . . a winning us back from the devil or an expression of the loving character of God?’ ¹⁵ To what degree this was the intention of God all along relates to the nature of God’s culpability in the crucifixion. God’s character appears as too one-sided or limited in the scope of its concern for Jesus Christ. Tanner’s greatest critique is the degree to which these various models leave out significant aspects of the gospel story and major dimensions of Jesus’s life. Whether it is slighting the importance of the resurrection (in the moral influence or the satisfaction model) or lessening the incarnation (in the penal substitution) or the broader critique that the public ministry of Jesus is left out of all of the models, Tanner believes that the death of Jesus can never be separated from the entire vision of Jesus’s public ministry.

Constructive Feminist Atonement

A constructive feminist view of the atonement typically reworks the Christus Victor model, and voices such as Ray have paved the way for this cosmic vision. What proceeds here will build primarily off of her work, which I believe is the strongest, while also including aspects from other feminist thinkers as well. As a Quaker and a pacifist myself, I also find J. Denny Weaver’s The Nonviolent Atonement helpful, where it expands the Christus Victor model as well as aligns itself with feminist visions against violence in the atonement. ¹⁶ A constructive feminist view of the atonement affirms a shedding of the sacralization of death and the manner in which it is used as ‘a weapon of control by abusers who play on the religious sensitivities of their victims’. ¹⁷ Martyrdom, a vision and model that has in many ways served to further the faithfulness of the Church and the spread of the Gospel, can also stem from Jesus’s perfect self-sacrifice and has led to cycles of victimization and justified violence. In order to confront the realities of injustice such as, but not limited to, slavery, unjust wages, racism, sexual abuse, domestic abuse, torture and political oppression, Christianity must not equate quiet passivity to a faithful Christian witness. Part of this stems from a limited perspective on sin and evil. For feminists like Ray, new reconstruction begins at expanding the definition of sin beyond disobedience, rebellion and pride. ¹⁸ Feminists would begin by expanding the definition of sin and evil to better begin a conversation on the language of atonement. Sin would also include society’s broader unjust structures, or what Walter Wink calls the ‘structures of sin’, and ideas such as the numbing of the self, betrayal or lack of trust, alienation and distortion of the self’s boundaries. In confronting these types of sins, the atonement must therefore ‘empower concrete acts of resistance to evil and that yields moments of genuine transformation and hope’. ¹⁹

Building off of the traditions of Irenaeus and Gregory of Nyssa, a constructive feminist model, what I will call the feminist Christus Victor, must meet the following criteria:

The four premises lead the Christian to now find themselves open to the possibility of no longer being enslaved to evil. Following Gregory of Nyssa,

God’s response to evil is to expose and dramatize the violence and greed [of the devil] at its root . . . allowing the force of its own avarice to discredit it in the eyes of the Divine community and empowering that community to embrace power guided and limited by compassion and justice. ²¹

Evil is complex and full of nuance, and yet this building upon the Christus Victor model takes seriously the cosmic nature of evil and sin and also acknowledges sins that are broader than the actions of any individuals, particularly individual males. This does not discredit the non-cosmic aspects of sin, or the individual accountability for sin, but also expands sin and evil to entire systems stacked against the vulnerable and marginalized. What complicates any feminist development of thought on evil and the atonement is the acknowledgement that evil will be been overcome in the eventual eschaton, but is still currently a major aspect of the lived reality of women. Feminist Christus Victor offers the strength of evil as an abuse of power and does not see the atonement as privileging the already privileged. Evil has a historic and ahistorical reality to it, reminding all of humanity of the manner in which we are stuck and bound by the powers of evil, yet we can use our agency to work against it as part of the victory of the Kingdom of God. Redemption, as made possible by the atonement, now contains both an individual and an institutional detention of being freed from the enslavement to evil.

The feminist view also extends in a similar vein to that of liberationist views on the atonement, one of the key attributes of which is the individual and society’s ability to no longer be enslaved to the bondage of evil:

Even as this model highlights the unfinished nature of the struggle against evil and the necessity of locating that struggle within the finite world – that is, within the realm of human activity and responsibility – it also recognizes that human effort alone is insufficient. ²²

Jesus is the means by which God confronted evil and rather than using violence to perpetuate violence, now the atonement is understood as the tool for exposing and unsettling that violence. The title of Ray’s work, Deceiving the Devil, speaks to the manner in which the life of Jesus and the final act of crucifixion was an act of ‘strategic cunning’. In her words, ‘Jesus’s encounter with human evil uses courage, creativity and the power of truth to uncover and disrupt the hegemony of power-as-control, serving as a prototype for further strategies and action’. ²³ Rather than seeing Jesus as the moral exemplar, and merely a willing participant in his subjugation, he now serves as the model of how to confront unjust structures and respond to evil.

Accuracy to the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth leads her towards an atonement metaphor constructed from the Nazareth Manifesto. Similar to the thoughts of Ray, Rosemary Radford Ruether believes that, rather than viewing Jesus as the one that God sent to ‘come to suffer and die’, Jesus serves as the one who offered entry into the Kingdom of God to all, especially those on the underside of the dominant system of religion and state of his time. The crucifixion was not the path to be sought and accepted as a means of redemption, but instead redemption occurs through resistance to the sway of evil. Similar to Parker and Brown, Ruether writes, ‘if God wills the unjust violence of poverty, sexism, racism and anti-Semitism, then God is a sadist and a criminal’. ²⁴ Instead, she believes that the God of the cross must represent just and loving life in mutual sharing and submission, building off the works of Soelle and others, to stress the value of life. This God reminds us that the resurrection means a moment, a singular event, which says ‘No’ to unjust death and ‘Yes’ to the Johannine vision of life abundant for all in the Kingdom of God.

The ministry of Jesus, the everyday work of redemption, must never be divorced from the atonement. Expanding on the thinking from Brown, Carlson, Ray, Grey, Soelle, Ruether, which I have highlighted here, and others as well, Kathryn Tanner stresses that a feminist Christus Victor also integrates the public ministry of Jesus into the broader significance of the event of the atonement. Jesus’s obedience to God’s mission – through his healings, acceptance of sinners and practices of inclusive table fellowship, to name a few – is ‘pointedly displayed’ on the cross. ²⁵ Rather than see Jesus’s death as part of the need to satisfy the wrath of God, Tanner echoes other feminist theologians that focus on the reality of human sin, and with it the entire religious and political situation impacted by sin, and that ‘a brutal bloody death suited exclusively to a world of sin . . . is fully compatible with quite traditional and long-standing criteria for the evaluation of atonement theories’. ²⁶ This similarity with other atonement theories over the horrific nature of Jesus’s death only differs in regards to why such a death was necessarily God’s judgement or the natural consequence of the structures of a sinful political and religious world. Tanner proposes what she titles an ‘incarnational model of atonement’ that works with feminist theologies of the atonement and also expands upon the Christus Victor model. ‘Union with God in and through Jesus Christ who is one and the same being with God’, Tanner writes, ‘belongs to the inner heart of the atonement’. ²⁷ If the incarnation is taken as seriously as it should be in the atonement, then Tanner believes that the satisfaction and penal substitution models no longer hold up. The atonement stems from the ‘at-one-ment’ of humanity and the divine in Jesus, and this happens in the moment of the cross as well as everywhere else in Jesus’s life, and this must be truly what salvation is about. The atonement cannot be most concerned with legal or contractual interpretations, or it makes God’s saving action seem as a later act instead of a part of the ongoing saving action God has been doing from the very beginning of the Word becoming flesh. What happens on the cross is not done in order to evoke God to save, but ‘those saving acts flow to the humanity of Christ in virtue of an already present community with that humanity . . . a community that holds prior to the meeting of any conditions’. ²⁸ The power of the incarnation shows that Jesus as the Word makes our cause his own and does what we cannot do ourselves. The incarnation is the whole human life and death of the Word and therefore serves as an underlying precondition for Jesus’s death. The incarnation, when taken seriously in the atonement, offers immediate saving consequences and ‘salvation, what the incarnation brings about, takes time . . . and is a process of temporal, historical proportions involving struggle with the forces of sin and death’. ²⁹ Humanity needs to be changed and now Tanner believes she presents a God who works for all of humanity’s benefit in the incarnation and puts no value on death and suffering. The cross must have a saving component, an area where Tanner differs from many feminist theologians, but she does agree with them that there is nothing saving about suffering, death or victimhood in and of themselves. Christ going to the cross is not a necessary condition in salvation, but when the incarnation is taken seriously, then everything about Jesus’s saving life involves intimacy with the human condition for the sake of saving it.

Potential Criticisms to the Constructive Feminist Atonement

Feminists who attempt to work within the Christian tradition and not reject the atonement completely have a difficult task finding the manner in which a newly constructed atonement still acknowledges the breadth and depth of what Christ’s work on the cross does. Green and Baker rightly introduce a variety of criticisms to the feminist atonement theory, and although the two authors acknowledge the vast amount of room to critique both the penal substitution and moral influence theories of the atonement, they do not see feminist atonement work as strong enough to hold across the ages as a substantive view of atonement on its own. One major area of weakness is the degree that a feminist atonement must still address the doctrine of the Trinity. Although the ministry and crucifixion of Christ is given a great deal of attention in the feminist circles, the doctrine of God and the work of the Holy Spirit need to be developed at greater length. ³⁰ It is also difficult to understand completely what the work of Christ effects in the moment of the crucifixion and the resurrection, though without a doubt something of great significance is happening in that event. The critique that I see as valid is one where the work of Jesus in some way needs to be distinct from the work of humans in entirely dismantling evil. What is it, objectively, that the atonement does, one is forced to ask, as opposed to the subjective experiences of women resulting from incomplete language speaking of the atonement? In their words, ‘[Ray] does not explore how Jesus’ atoning work addresses alienation rooted within one’s own being, nor does she significantly develop how the cross provides for the possibility of restored relationship with God and others’. ³¹ Admittedly, no single model of the atonement present in the Christian tradition does this entirely. However, a stronger feminist construction on the atonement also must communicate the necessity and the promise of the atonement thinking, particularly for those on the ground who have encountered marginalization by the Christian tradition.

Tanner admits that the weakness in the Christus Victor model in general is that it fails, per se, to address the mechanism of the atonement. How the cosmic battle is directly won, exactly, is an area where greater attention is needed in order to support the claim. She sees how the incarnation becomes only a necessary prerequisite for the greater battle, and ‘God has to enter into the sphere of sin and death, by becoming human, in order to fight sin and death’. ³² The atonement does need to highlight the horrors of the cross, which is where Tanner critiques other feminist models, but now sees in her emphasis on the incarnation that the atonement must show that the cross demonstrates the urgency of reappraising the religious and political reasons behind the crucifixion and the healing that is still needed in this sinful world. Such healing is only possible because of the incarnation of the Word. The feminists do raise significant points about the social and political circumstances surrounding the death of Christ and stress where too much attention on sacrifice tends to overemphasize the death of Christ.

One other critique of the feminist constructions of the atonement worth noting is that of Flora A. Keshgegian, who believes that feminists must take a more careful and nuanced reading of Anslem’s theology. She believes that Anselm’s work should be read within the contexts of dynamics of power in situations of abuse and oppression. ‘Anselm and feminist theologians share concerns about right relations and the use of God’s power to make it right’. ³³ Although they may differ on how they understand what has to be made right, Anselm should not be read as crafting an abusive God, in Keshgegian’s opinion, by seeing that there must be an exercise of both power and responsibility in regards to human sin which can take soteriology and anthropology more seriously in the scope of the atonement. Her reading encourages us to pay careful attention to historical theology and cautiously critique the misuse of the voices which have emerged within tradition.

Conclusion

In summary, there is something deep in the human heart that says to fix a horrible situation will be costly. In large part, how the cross ‘speaks’ to a particular people is in part dependent on what they are able to hear based on their particular contexts. The atonement is difficult to discuss because it reminds the Church of the limits of language. Atonement theology in practical Christian ministry has become literalized in song, sermon and so forth, but the feminist critique is valid insofar as it reminds the Church of the ability of metaphor to both reveal and conceal. The feminist voices on the atonement clearly find the most substance and the strongest theory to be a version of the Christus Victor, one that takes seriously the public life of Jesus, stresses Christ’s incarnation, does not speak of God in vengeful, wrathful metaphors and sees the structures of sin in this world as historical and cosmic at the same time. These aspects leave other models as seriously lacking, though the critiques of the role of the Trinity, the mechanism of the atonement and a true reading of Anslem all merit greater attention. But, overall, I assess that the feminist critiques and subsequent constructions of the atonement are valid and hold up based on the grounds of philosophical theology.