It is not uncommon these days for scholars to criticize traditional Christian doctrines for the ways in which they purportedly promote and reinforce unhealthy social practices. Someone will reject the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, for example, not on the grounds that it is “unscientific” to believe in a miracle of that sort, but because it promotes an image of passive and servile femininity. Or the idea of divine transcendence will be attacked for the way in which it reinforces “hierarchicalism” in human relationships.
One topic that has come in for special attention in this regard is the atoning work of Christ. The suggestion is made that the idea of a father punishing his son, as it is incorporated into the ways in which traditional theologians have thought about the work of the Cross, features imagery that promotes abusive relationships among human beings. Obviously, such a critique is directed toward a theme that is central to orthodox Reformed teachings. It is important to think carefully about this way of dealing with theological issues.
How would we go about deciding whether a Reformed view of the atonement actually “promotes” violence and abuse? I have a pretty good idea, I think, about how I would decide whether, for example, Mennonite views of the atonement promote violence and abuse. As I read many Mennonite theologians I regularly find them formulating their understandings of the atoning work of Christ in such a way as to rule out any espousal of violence and abuse. The Cross is, according to the Mennonite thinkers that I read, a paradigmatic display of non-violence. To understand the atoning work of Christ properly is, in a very direct way for them, to adopt specific views about the fundamental impropriety of any Christian involvement in practices of violence and abuse.
I also think I could come up with an intelligent response to the question whether Roman Catholic theologies of the atonement promote violence and abuse. I have read newspaper articles during Holy Week about Catholics in the Philippines who have themselves nailed to crosses. These seem to me clearly to be acts of self-inflicted violence and abuse. Furthermore, they also seem to be directly linked to the ways in which these Catholics think about the atoning work of Christ. Of course, I know enough about Catholic soteriology to know that such practices are not advocated by Catholic academic theologians. But I do think one could make a case that there are motifs in Catholic thought that lend themselves to such acts, even if they are distortions of those motifs. Self-crucifixion, along with, say, the valuing of stigmata, certainly makes more sense in a context shaped by Catholic theology than it would in, say, a Lutheran or a Quaker setting.
Now, my initial instinct is to say that Reformed views of the atonement do not connect with issues of violence and abuse in either of these ways. That is, I am tempted to point to the fact that Reformed thinkers do not typically say, in the manner of Mennonite thinkers, that because of what happened on the Cross our attitudes toward violence and abuse ought to be such and such. And I am also tempted to argue that it is difficult to find––as we do in some manifestations of Catholicism––popular Calvinism engaging in violent and abusive practices that are in some sense shaped by theological motifs––even distorted theological motifs––with regard to the atonement.
But I know that I cannot finesse the issues in that manner. Certainly my Mennonite friends will not allow me to get away with such an easy disclaimer. They might well insist that my Reformed view of the Cross also deals with issues of violence and abuse in a paradigmatic manner. If it is true, as traditional Reformed theology has put it, that the transaction of the Cross necessarily involved Jesus being punished by the Father for our sins, then Reformed soteriology does indeed insist that violence and/or abuse is an essential feature of the atoning sacrifice of Christ––an insistence, they might go on to point out, that has clear implications for Christian attitudes towards questions regarding the permissability of violent activity. And any Catholic who knows the history of popular Reformed attitudes regarding violence might rightly suggest that it is not fair to contrast “high” Calvinism with “low” Catholicism. Reformed Christians have often been militantly violent––and in such a way that their violence has been grounded in a context shaped by Reformed motifs.
I think that each of these responses is helpful in clarifying the issue. In reflecting on the ways in which Reformed views about the atonement might actually promote violence and abuse, I am prepared to concede both that the Reformed way of understanding the work of the Cross does have implications for our perspectives on violence and abuse, and that popular Calvinism has often encouraged violent and abusive practices in a way that has been shaped by the Calvinist way of thinking about God’s dealing with humankind. I do want to suggest, however, that it does not follow from these concessions that Reformed views about the atonement promote violence and abuse. Let me explain this first of all with regard to the latter concession regarding the violent attitudes often associated with popular Calvinism.
Calvinists have often not been very nice people. They have been intolerant, often to the point of abusive and violent actions toward people with whom they have disagreed. The record of Calvinism in its treatment of the Anabaptists is an obvious case in point in this regard. I think we must also acknowledge abusive practices in family contexts. Calvinist husbands and fathers have often been unspeakably cruel to their wives and daughters––this fact has been well documented for example, in a recent empirical study of the topic commissioned by the Christian Reformed Church.1
It is important to ask, though, whether these practices are in some sense “promoted” by Reformed understandings of the atonement. It would be interesting to find out, for example, whether, say, Old Amish fathers and husbands have also often abused their wives and daughters. If so, we might have to explore the possibility that abusive practices occur in theologically shaped cultures in spite of what those cultures might teach regarding the implications of a theory of the atonement with regard to violence and abuse. My own sense is that the attitudes toward violence and abuse in popular Calvinism have more to do with a more general picture of a God who has often been experienced as a very “distant” male authority figure––and one who is seen as being fundamentally and unalterably angry, from all eternity, with an identifiable subgroup of the human race–– than it has to do with anything specifically associated with the work of the Cross. Indeed, my own theological prescription would be to appeal to the doctrine of the atonement as an antidote to this distorted view of the divine personality, by bringing the general motifs of a Reformed psychology of the divine mood and disposition into line with a very central emphasis on the work of the Cross.
But, then, what about the seemingly violent-abusive themes contained within the Reformed view about the Cross itself? Doesn’t the Reformed perspective view punishment as an essential feature of the atoning work of Christ? I think it does. It is difficult to avoid the sense that the teaching that Christ in some important sense suffered the divine wrath against sin is a non-negotiable component of the Reformed view; this theme is repeated consistently in the confessional formulations: for example, in the Heidelberg, the Scots Confession, Westminster, the Second Helvetic, and the 1967 Confession.
But the real question is: does this Reformed view promote violence and abuse in human relations? I think not, and I offer two considerations in support of this contention.
First, it is important to recognize the significant link between the Reformed perspective on the atonement and Reformed tradition’s ethical teachings regarding the use of violence. We often refer to this as our Calvinist version of “just war” doctrine, but the scope of Reformed teaching in this area is not strictly speaking limited to military activity. The doctrine really has to do with an understanding of the use of violence as such: on the Reformed view, violent activities are permitted only with specific moral boundaries. As John Howard Yoder has argued, just war teaching originated, not in an argument with pacifists, but out of a desire to place moral limits on the use of violence as over against the unbridled militarism of pagan cultures2––and I am convinced that the Reformed version of the teaching fits this pattern.
In any event, this much seems clear: the Reformed tradition has insisted that violence is permissible only if certain moral guidelines are in effect. And it is interesting and important to think about how these guidelines apply to, say, questions regarding domestic violence. In the Institutes Calvin warns magistrates that when they are considering a military venture, they ought not to give “vent to their passions even in the slightest degree.” Let them not, he says, “be carried away with headlong anger, or be seized with hatred, or burn with implacable severity”; indeed, it is necessary that they cultivate “pity on the common [human] nature in the one” whom they are thinking about attacking (4.20.12).
To the degree that the transaction that took place on the Cross does contain some element of violence, we should expect that it would conform to the kinds of moral criteria associated with the more general Reformed teaching regarding the proper use of violence. And my clear impression is that it does so conform. God is seen as engaging in a “last resort” remedy for the ravages of human depravity; the punishment is proportionate to the end being sought, and so on. Furthermore, God is not being carried away by the kinds of illicit passions against which Calvin warns. There seems to be nothing here, then, that would “promote” the kind of gratuitous abusive behavior that is associated with, for example, domestic violence.
Second, it is also helpful to attend here to the important Reformed emphasis on the “once-for-all” character of the atoning work of Christ. My own sense is that as a general rule Calvinists have not been very attracted to “imitation of Christ” type spiritual or ethical motifs. This certainly seems to be true with respect to any notion of specifically imitating the work of the Cross. The Calvinist pattern here stands in stark contrast to both the Mennonite and Catholic examples that I mentioned earlier. Calvinists are not inclined to see the helplessness element of Christ’s atoning work as a thing to be imitated––Calvinism has seldom erred in the direction of encouraging a “victim” mentality in its adherents. Nor have Reformed Christians exhibited any obvious fascination with stigmata or other crucifixion-type manifestations in the Christian life.
The once-for-all theme in the Reformed understanding of the atonement suggests that even if there was an element of the kind of violence on the Cross that, if it were to show up in human relationships, would be deemed highly abusive, there is no reason to think that Calvinists would be quick to pick up on that imitative possibility. When Calvinists have been abusive, I suggest, they have taken whatever theological cues that have motivated them from some other area of Reformed thought than the theory of the atonement.
In making these two points I mean to be engaging in a kind of soteriological apologetics. Against the possible charge that Reformed views of the atonement promote morally reprehensible acts of violence and abuse I suggest that these two factors serve as theological safeguards against such a connection. Reformed thought has insisted that violence must take place within strict moral limits, and it has generally not fostered a notion that the Cross is a reference point for our imitative activity.
Again, this is not to deny real patterns of Calvinist abusiveness. Nor is it to rule out the possibility that some depraved Calvinists have so twisted their understanding of the work of the Cross that they have in fact made a connection between what God did to accomplish our redemption and what we must do to accomplish our own perverted aims. But I do not think that in such cases the fault lies with Reformed views of the atonement. Indeed, I am convinced that a proper understanding of those views provides us with significant spiritual and moral resources for combatting such abusive behaviors.
This article first appeared in Theology Matters, Vol. 3, No. 4 (Jul/Aug 1997).
