12 April 2022,
Rev Dr Patrick McInerney
Thank you for the opportunity to share with you.
I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands where we are variously gathered. I pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging.
Our topic is “Understanding the Crucifixion Today”. We cannot “Understand the Crucifixion Today”, if we do not “Understand the Crucifixion of Yesterday”, specifically, what happened on Golgotha 2,000 years ago.
Sadly, populist Christian ministers often propound heresy, if not outright blasphemy, when preaching about the crucifixion of Jesus. What I refer to is captured in grisly detail in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ”, where the impression is given that what saves us is the suffering which Jesus underwent, in obedience to the Father, where what really matters is the love with which he underwent that suffering.
The 11th century mediaeval scholastic theologian, St Anselm of Canterbury, proposed a theory of satisfaction to understand the crucifixion: that the infinite majesty of God was offended by human sin, and only the suffering of a God-man could ‘satisfy’ what was due to God. The theory may be sound in its time and in its highly-nuanced scholastic form—I am not competent to judge—but it certainly is not satisfactory in today’s world. It smacks of a sado-masochistic plot. That the Father is pleased with the Son’s suffering is simply abhorrent. It contradicts the basic Gospel affirmation: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.’ (Jn 3:16) The Father did not need the Son’s suffering to convince Him to love us and to grant us salvation. He was already on our side; for us, not against us (Rom 8:31). God did not need the crucifixion of Jesus! Besides, God’s love is eternal; God is faithful; and God does not change - so the crucifixion does not effect any change in God!
So what is the crucifixion of Jesus about? How can we understand Jesus’s sacrifice? ...Read more
