Greater bibliobloggers have already done their reflections on experiences from the big SBL/AAR meeting in San Diego last month, but I just had to focus on my end-of-the-quarter responsibilities for awhile. Now that the Fall quarter is officially over, my main concern is making sure my doctoral applications are all taken care of and taking some time to reflect. My time at SBL this year was tilted more towards my concerns with the former: I was trying to meet with people (profs and grad students) and get some good advice on PhD stuff. But I also came across some engaging ideas, unrelated to my drive towards doctoral work.

On Friday night (November 16th), I went to what some have called the “Mennonite schmooze fest,” also known as the “Mennonite Scholars and Friends Reception.” It is the answer to the question: “What happens when you fill a room with tons of Anabaptists?” It was my first time doing the SBL/AAR menno-schmoozing, but I heard it may have been the most crowded it has ever been. For the “introduction” tradition, we all stand in a humongous circle and say our name and institution. It seems like the group may have outgrown the tradition, but I’m just a noob.

The next morning continued the menno-fun with the traditional “Mennonite Scholars and Friends Forum.” Last year, it was on Jewish-Anabaptist relations, particularly a discussion on John Howard Yoder, and it hosted Daniel Boyarin for some interesting discussion. This year, the topic was “Reflections on J. Denny Weaver’s Non-Violent Atonement.” Weaver was, of course, there to respond to the reflections. Doing the reflecting, we had Sharon Baker (a prof at my alma mater!), Mark Thiessen Nation (a Fuller PhD grad), and Thomas Yoder Neufeld (who I met the night before at the schmooze fest).

If this had been a presidential candidate debate and we were declaring “winners,” I would have to say that it was hands down Tom Yoder Neufeld. Of course, I’m showing my bias because Tom was the only Bible scholar among them and I’m a Bible guy. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me set the scene a little bit.

Honestly, I wish that this could have been recorded and shown to any and all who have interests in the atonement. Denny’s book has become well-known in that field, but I think many people assume it is the Anabaptist theory of the atonement. If they had come to this little Mennonite debate, they would have seen that there is no unified Anabaptist voice on Atonement and indeed, many Anabaptist folk feel quite uncomfortable with Denny’s views. I hadn’t been all that interested in the atonement before I took the class, “Cross in the New Testament” with Marianne Meye Thompson, because it is just so darn complicated and mysterious. But now that I have a basic understanding of the various views and their implications, I’m more interested in engaging the topic.

At the session, we first had a basic summary of Denny’s book. Going against the grain of some significant Anabaptist theology, Weaver wants to avoid attributing violence to God. If we have a “violent” image of the atonement, in which a wrathful God demands a violent sacrifice of Jesus in order to pay some kind of self-demanded debt, then we may be encouraged to be violent ourselves. Drawing upon the critiques of contexual theologies (such as feminist, womanist, and black theologies) against traditional views of the atonement, Weaver attacks the foundation of the historical “satisfaction” theories (with their roots in Anselm): “Satisfaction atonement depends on the assumption that doing justice means to punish, that a wrong deed is balanced by violence” (225). Weaver instead opts for a modified form of Christus Victor, which is the view that attributes to Christ’s death a cosmic victory over the evil powers of Satan. For Weaver, though, those cosmic forces are representative of historical, human realities. For instance, when describing the cosmic symbolism of the book of Revelation, he notes, “it is clear that the symbolism of conflict and victory of the reign of God over the rule of Satan is a way of ascribing cosmic significance to the church’s confrontation of the Roman empire” (27). In Weaver’s understanding, if we have a violent image of God, that justifies the violent actions of humanity (going against a good lot of Anabaptist theology and especially Old Testament scholarship, which imagines God as the “divine warrior” who fights the battles for humanity).

Then we got into the responses. Sharon Baker, up first, was by far the most positive response. She affirmed Weaver’s reinterpretation of the atonement and reinforced it by arguing that the Christian church has continually changed their views depending on their own particular social and historical situations: indeed, “the tradition,” she said, “is to reinterpret the tradition.” She also affirmed that, while it is difficult to establish causes and effects between social violence and atonement theory, if atonement theories lend legitimacy to violence, we must rethink them. She offered one comment that took me aback for a moment: Baker stated that “narrative Christus Victor [theory] offers a more consistent picture of God.” My question: is the biblical image of God consistent? More on that later.

Mark Thiessen Nation was up next and his response to Weaver was quite negative, but his was a more personal reaction. I know I’m not going to do him justice because I didn’t quite follow his argument. He was interested in the affects of martyrdom generally and even mentioned that he grew up in a racist environment and that part of how he got out of his racist views from childhood was the witness of Martin Luther King, Jr. He suggested that it was the powerful death of MLK that shook him out of racism. In a sense, Thiessen Nation stated more than once, “Martin Luther King died for my sins.” It was an interesting connection, but for me it raised more questions than answers: if we add such significance to the deaths of all minoritized “martyrs,” does that mean their deaths are good and that their killers did the right thing? Of course not.

As I mentioned, Tom Yoder Neufeld (who is, by the way, the son-in-law of John Howard Yoder) was my personal favorite. He did offer some agreement with Weaver: he concurs that the atonement is connected with transformed/transforming living and that the resurrection is not just a generic hope, but a defining act in the cosmos. But Yoder Neufeld dug deeply into problematic biblical texts to suggest that our understanding of the atonement should be more nuanced. Weaver’s criterion for his atonement theory, and Tiessen Nation mentioned this as well, is nonviolence. In other words, it begins with the idea that the atonement must be nonviolent and is thus self-fulfilling. Furthermore, Yoder Neufeld questioned Weaver’s usage of the term “violence.” What do we mean by “violence” related to the death of Jesus? Is God “responsible” for such violence? And if so, is God appropriately labeled “violent”? Yoder Neufeld also emphasized that we must have a fuller picture of the biblical God, who is at times a wrathful judge, to be both feared and trusted.

Yoder Neufeld’s ultimate critique of Weaver is that he has a “truncated reading of the Scriptures, driven by an ideological hermeneutic.” Instead, we should open our views to see multiple possible atonement theories alive within the biblical text. Biblical atonement theories are less mathematical equations and more poetic ways of trying to understand the death of Jesus. Thus, we can include both substitution and Christus Victor in our understanding. (As an aside, this is partially how I understand Joel Green’s “kaleidescopic” view.)

Weaver responded by suggesting that Yoder Neufeld is “comfortable” with the image of a violent God. Yoder Neufeld responded to that accusation by saying that he was simply trying to accurately reflect the biblical texts, which is a far cry from saying that he is “comfortable” with those texts. In response to other comments of Yoder Neufeld’s, Sharon Baker offered that all of our readings of Scripture are driven by an “ideological hermeneutic.” Tom did not disagree.

So, here’s my two cents. True, we are all driven in our interpretive methods by some particular point of view or ideology. On the other hand, it strikes me as more honest to go with a reading that is less “comfortable” to one’s ideology. Clearly, Tom is dedicated to nonviolence and finds the biblical texts attributing some sort of “violent” tendencies to God quite troubling. We need not be trapped by our ideologies. Instead, we should at least attempt to weigh all the evidence and be willing to concede ideological defeat to that evidence. This brings me back to Sharon Baker’s suggestion that “narrative Christus Victor [theory] offers a more consistent picture of God.” I know there are plenty of Evangelicals and fundamentalists out there who will give me flack for this, but the biblical picture of God is not consistent. As the biblical text (and the picture of God found therein) reflects the social situation of various authors in various times and places, even different languages, we should not expect to find one image of God but a variety of human attempts to reflect their experiences of God. I appreciate Yoder Neufeld’s use of “poetic” language. Theology, biblical theology included, is more art than science. For me, that means I will probably never come to a hard and fast singular conclusion about something I cannot ultimately know for sure (i.e., why Jesus died). Instead, I will live with multiple possibilities held in tension, just as the earliest followers of Jesus apparently did as well.