Lessons from ‘a sinless society’

Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised

OK, a bit of a mis-leading subject – I’ve been reading “Atonement for a ‘sinless’ society” by Alan Mann. I don’t have loads to say about it, but a couple of thoughts have stayed with me:

The first is comes from his comments on the Holy Spirit. It’s hard to quote without confusing, because the discussion comes towards the end of the book and assumes a lot of the preceding argument. So, I’ll try and summarise a little: The essence fo the books argument is that the atonement has relevance for post-moderns because Jesus is the only one with narrative or ontological coherence (which is what we seek and are most aware of our failing in). Sin is characterised by ‘the absence of mutual undistorted, unpolluted relating’ to the ‘Other’ (i.e. other people and God). Jesus shows a life characterised by the opposite of this.

(All of which is an interesting approach and helpful as long as it adds to other perspectives, rather than replace them. I don’t believe Mann is looking to replace, but to supplement.)

Anyway, in coming to the Holy Spirit, Mann says

… Jesus is ultimately enabled in his relatedness to the ‘Other’, and in his own narrative coherence, by the relationship he already has with the Spirit. Or, to simplify: Jesus’ ontological coherence comes ultimately not from his ‘godness’ as the second person of the Divine Trinity, but because of his relationship to the third person — the Spirit of God. By implication, this must also be true of all who seek a similar liberating narrative. We are freed form our self-seeking and self-justifying and enabled to love and be loved by the presence of the Spirit in our lives…

What stuck me was the idea of enabling coming from relationship. It seems to me that although Christians are keen to emphasise that the Holy Spirit is a person not a ‘force’, when talking about being empowered by the Spirit, it can be an impersonal force that we have in mind. The idea that it is in the relationship that empowering is found makes a lot of sense and fills in gaps in the picture.

The second is easier to discuss. Mann makes the point that our descriptions of atomement must not be ‘thin’. We should have ‘thick descriptions of the human plight and of God’s atonement’. (That quote actually from Robin Parry, but only because I know how to find it quickly!) We should make sure that what we say encompasses the full problems that we see and the depth of God’s solution. We shouldn’t reduce it to short and shallow statements. I think this is an important thing to remember.

Interestingly, I was struck by the last point in our church meeting today. We had an excellent apologetic preach (by Toby Skipper — not that you will know him, but it was good enough for me to want to name-check him!) This included the traditional problem-of-evil statement: In order to create a world with love in it, God had to give people freewill; people then used that freewill to go against Him, hence ‘the fall’ and evil enters. The emphasis is always on freewill in morality and breaking of the ‘moral law’.

Before today, I have always wondered if this statement implicitly made love a moral concept by explicitly linking love and moral choice; which seemed a bit narrow. Today I wondered if the statement is a good starting point, but is limited in a different way. It assumes that the result of ‘the fall’ is limited to morality and hides the fact that the problem fans out into all of life — everything falls apart, not just morality. Maybe we should retain the idea, but note that love is primarily a relational concept; so the centre of the ‘falling apart’ is not morality, but our inability to have mutual undistorted, unpolluted relating with God and others.

What do you know, I’m back to Alan Mann again. Hummm, maybe I did have a lot to say after all.

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A final comment. The book has an interesting addition — Robin Parry adds clarification questions which Alan Mann responds to. Mann seems a little uncomfortable with this at first, but I have to say it help enormously. I think it should be welcomed. It would be good if others took a similar approach. It’s nice to start debates on a amicable note!

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Permalink | February 25th, 2007

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