THE GOOD FRIDAY DIVIDE

By Uwe Siemon-Netto

UPI Religious Affairs Editor

WASHINGTON, April 7 (UPI) — Editor’s note: Part three of the UPI series on the schism running horizontally through most Christian denominations addresses the very center of the Christian faith—the Good Friday question: Why did Jesus die on the cross? Diametrically opposed views on original sin separate the parties in this dramatic dispute.

As the world’s 2.2 billion Christians entered this year’s Holy Week, ABC contributed one of its most astounding programs ever—Peter Jennings’ three-hour report on Jesus and Paul.

Eminent theologians assessed Christ and the church’s first theologian from many perspectives. Jesus was portrayed chiefly, though not exclusively, as a social reformer; Paul—correctly—as apostle to the gentiles. “Was Paul a homophobe?” the sages were asked. Was he misogynous? Was he an anti-Semite?

To their credit, they answered these questions mainly in the negative. But amazingly they barely touched on the crucial aspect of Paul’s ministry—his explanation of what Christ’s sacrifice was all about.

“Righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe,” reads Paul’s liberating message. “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through the faith in his blood” (Romans 3:21–25).

This is what orthodox Christians of all denominations bear in their hearts as they strip their altars, say their prayers, and chant their mournful hymns on Good Friday. This is also the very text whose rediscovery by Luther brought about the 16th-century Reformation. It is the very essence of the Reformers’ doctrine of justification by grace through faith, which Roman Catholics have also affirmed in 1999.

Contrast Jennings’ oeuvre with Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ, whose very motto reads:

“He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5),

and you have contemporary Christianity’s horizontal schism in a nutshell.

The underlying issue is none other than original sin—in the sense of man’s purposeful disobedience to God—a fundamentally theological conception that must not be confused with moral “sins,” which are the fruits of original sin, just as good works are the fruits of faith.

The disparity between progressive and traditionalist theologians of the same denominations on this topic is severe.

On the one hand, there are the likes of John S. Spong, the former Episcopal bishop of Newark, N.J., who declared:

“Human beings did not fall from perfection into sin, as the church had taught for centuries; we were evolving, and indeed are still evolving, into higher levels of consciousness. Thus the basic myth of Christianity that interpreted Jesus as a divine emissary who came to rescue victims of the fall from the result of their original sin became inoperative.”

On the other hand, most believers—especially the faithful of the burgeoning churches in the southern hemisphere, whose theologians Spong often belittles as intellectually backward—agree with this doctrine articulated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

“Only the light of divine revelation clarifies the reality of sin and particularly of the sin committed at mankind’s origins.”

The Augsburg Confession of 1530 defines sin as the innate inability to fear and trust God, plus concupiscence (desire). To this Paul Tillich added another important element—hubris, or self-elevation: man puts himself in the place of God.

Theologically speaking, spiritual darkness, nihilism, and hatred for one’s fellow man are expressions of sin. This is why God makes himself small and goes to the cross for suffering humanity—why he suffers with us, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer phrased it. Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall calls this gift most Christians commemorate on Good Friday “Christ’s priestly act of solidarity.”

On the other side of the theological divide—which is numerically withering—secular culture has eclipsed and virtually displaced the Christian concept of sin, as theologian Robert R. Williams observed already more than 20 years ago:

“Secular culture perceives evil no longer as a theological problem but rather as a problem of human institutional and social arrangements. Divine aid is felt to be either unnecessary or not among the real possibilities available to resolve the problem. Instead, evil calls for intelligent human action.”

“Thus while orthodox Christians continue to see themselves as sinners in need of a gracious God,” says the Rev. Christopher Hershman, a pastor and psychologist, “revisionists have bought into a therapeutic notion. They don’t see sin as a violation of God’s rules but as a glitch on the track of self-actualization.” The objective, in other words, is simply to get back on the road to self-fulfillment.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church addresses precisely this point:

“Without the knowledge revelation gives of God we cannot recognize sin clearly and are tempted to explain it as merely a developmental flaw, a psychological weakness, a mistake, or the necessary consequence of an inadequate social structure.”

In this context the orthodox side of the horizontal divide within the Church would doubtless agree with a quip by Lutheran theologian Louis Smith: a Christian’s task is not so much to “understand scripture as to stand under scripture.”

There is no room for accommodation here with views such as the one expressed by the Rev. Mark S. Hanson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, at a recent pastors’ theological conference. According to participants, Hanson said his denomination was not going to make decisions on homosexuality based solely on seven Bible verses—which prompted one minister to tell a colleague:

“Seven verses? That’s more than we have on the Lord’s Supper.”

Ordinary Christians don’t buy into man-made formulae for salvation.

The North American and Western European churches dominated by theologians, bishops, and ministers denying the reality of sin are all shrinking dramatically. At the same time, confessional groups within these denominations are growing.

The same goes for conservative groups, such as the Presbyterian Church in America, which is rapidly expanding, in contrast to the more liberal Presbyterian Church USA.

More stunning still is the growth of Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and other churches in Africa, where the concept of original sin makes a great deal of sense to everybody, says Yale University church historian Lamin Sanneh.

“It makes sense because it has always been part of popular religion,” explains Sanneh, a Gambian nobleman and convert from Islam. “In African thought—including pre-Christian thought—sin has three characteristics: One, sin haunts you. Two, sin contaminates. And three, sin can be cleansed by sacrifice. Therefore, Africans find it easy to relate to Christ’s sacrifice for human sin.”

On this Good Friday, hundreds of millions of Africans will commemorate this sacrifice without wasting any thought on therapeutic solutions to evil, just as Europeans have for almost 2,000 years—until a concept such as Spong’s sprang up: a belief in an evolution to higher levels of consciousness.

In the eyes of Christopher Hershman, this is an immensely foolish notion:

“The human condition is the same as 3,000 years ago. We are still struggling with the same issues and still need a gracious God.”

On the other hand,

“What Spong says is of no relevance in Africa,” according to Sanneh.

What is it, then, that attracts Africans to Christianity?

“The message of the Bible—unfiltered by the West,” he says.

END