On 8 July 1741, the Rev Jonathan
Edwards preached a long sermon in Enfield, Connecticut, which was subsequently
published and became famous. It was
entitled, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. We are told that Edwards was a quiet and
reasonable man. The sermon was not loud
or fiery. It was what the congregation
expected to hear, and it was what Jonathan Edwards and many others deeply
believed. So what did he say?
Jonathan Edwards stood on one
side of a “great gulf fixed” (to this day) in Christian understanding about God
and about Jesus. In Edwards’
understanding we are all “fallen”, defaced, defiled and disqualified by sin,
cast out as Adam and Eve were for their disobedience. God is angry with us, and all our woes stem
from this fallen state, be they plagues and pestilence, malignant disease,
droughts and floods, the rule of tyrants… we are getting what we deserve, the
wages of sin. But God, in his infinite
mercy, sent his Son to be the sacrifice necessary to appease, to satisfy this divine
wrath. In the death and resurrection of
Christ we are accepted again as sons and daughters of God – our debt has been
paid, we have received mercy. If, said
Edwards, we are unresponsive to this sacrificial love, then we die in our sins
and we go to hell. That was Jonathan Edwards
in the mid-18th century, and it is, in various forms, often confused
and watered-down, the theme of much Christian teaching and preaching today – it
is called Substitutionary Atonement.
Some 400 years earlier, Lady
Julian of Norwich taught differently about God.
Hers was a time of waves of Black Death, the terrible Peasants Revolt,
misery, disease and poverty. But she
says: I saw no wrath except on man's
side, and He forgives that in us, for wrath is nothing else but a perversity
and an opposition to peace and to love.
Indeed she added:
From the time these things
were first revealed I had often wanted to know what was our Lord's meaning. It was more than fifteen years after that I was
answered in my spirit's understanding. 'You
would know our Lord's meaning in this thing? Know it well. Love was his meaning. Who showed it to you? Love. What
did he show you? Love. Why did he show it? For love. Hold on to this and you will know and
understand love more and more. But you
will not know or learn anything else — ever.
He came singing love… In
grown-up faith, we review this tribal legacy of an angry God. It does not accord with what we find in Jesus. A just God does not mean a vengeful God. An angry God may be our way of attributing our
anger and frustration to God, thus making God in our image which is
idolatry. Jesus, writes Paul, is the
icon of the invisible God[1],
and in Jesus we find a different God, love truth and justice operating by
changing hearts. God is love,
writes John, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in
them.[2] In contemplative life and prayer we are
setting aside our fears of an angry God – along, one hopes, with all our
idolatries and superstitions. Atonement,
at-one-ment, is atonement in love, by love, for love, since God is love… Θεὸς ἀγὰπη
ἐστίν .
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