Jesus shared in our fallen human nature, that we might share in his healed human nature. This understanding of Jesus comes from Early and Eastern Christianity. This page — Section 101 — will help you understand the story of Scripture, and how Jesus fits into it.

101: Definitions

101: Lesson

  • What is the Bible about? What are we supposed to get out of reading it? Sometimes it gets treated like a list of rules about what Christians should and shouldn’t do, and while there is some of that, it’s only a small part. Most of the Bible is a story–a grand narrative about God’s relationship with humans. It starts with the beginning of our time here on Earth, where the first humans lived in harmony with God, each other, and the world around them, and ends with a vision for the future where everything will be made right again.

    Atonement

    But why does everything need to be made right again? If everything started out good, what went wrong? And if everything ends up good, how does it get fixed? What happened in the middle of the story? These are the questions that theories of Atonement try to answer. If we break down “atonement” into its syllables, at-one-ment, we can get a good idea of what the word means for Christians: at some point, the relationship between God and humans was damaged, and Atonement is about how that damage gets repaired.

    Implications

    These questions lead to others that get at the heart of the Christian faith. What is God like? How does he feel towards us? Why did Jesus become human? What was the purpose of his death and resurrection? What does God want us to do in response? Different theories of atonement have different answers to these questions, and our answers inform how we live our lives, how we share our faith with others, how we think about ourselves and our own relationship with God, and so much more. Our theory of atonement is the foundation for the rest of our thinking about our faith, so it is worth investigating to find the best answers that we can.

  • Part of the Anastasis Center’s mission is to proclaim the healing atonement of Jesus (sometimes referred to as “Medical Substitution”). What do we mean by that?

    Jesus shared in our fallen human nature so that we could share in his healed human nature.

    Human evil and immorality are bad, but they are symptoms of a deeper problem: a disease in human nature that messes up our desires and leads us towards wrongdoing. Any lasting attempt to defeat evil, bring justice into the world, and restore humans back into right relationship with God must deal with that root cause by first healing human nature. And that’s exactly what God has done through Jesus. Scripture tells a rich story about this.

  • A short version of the Bible’s story through the lens of healing atonement would be something like this: 

    God made humans to be in perfect relationship with Him, each other, and the rest of Creation. But humans damaged those relationships and corrupted human nature with a sin-disease, which became the primary cause of evil and suffering in the world. God partnered with a group of people — ancient Israel — to help them diagnose the sickness and try out a cure. But over time, it became apparent to them that they could not fully heal themselves. So God became human as Jesus, taking on our diseased human nature to heal it as one of us. In his life, he battled against the sickness, and through his death on the cross, he dealt the finishing blow. He rose from the dead with a fully healed human nature, and he offers that healing to us through relationship with Him. The Christian mission is to partner with Jesus to spread his healing and restoration throughout the world. One day, Jesus will return to fully restore Creation and defeat evil.

    To illustrate the Bible’s story in the Healing Atonement framework, we use the Five C’s: Creation, Corruption, Clinic, Cure, and Completion. For each of these Five C’s, you can find additional resources to explore below.

101: Confirm What You Learned

This is corroboration, from the art of storytelling, about why characters retell earlier stories, or why songs retell musical patterns. Choose one or more of the following, and enjoy!

Tricia Aurand, Brian Bitner, and Alex Calleros, Iron Man vs. Captain America — The 11-Year Character Arc. Lessons from the Screenplay, May 29, 2020. You will enjoy this 17 minute YouTube video especially if you are a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They focus, brilliantly, on the character arcs: Tony Stark and Steve Rogers embody certain qualities, are forced to grow towards what the other embodies, and then have to confront their earlier selves and recapitulate their earlier stories — especially their mistakes or character flat-sides. In Scripture, human beings must retell their own stories when repenting, and sometimes the stories of their predecessors, for the sake of personal growth but also because God is committed to resuming the Eden story — where humans partner with God to spread the beauty of the garden across the planet, and grow in beauty themselves.

Morten Lauridsen, How He Wrote “Dirait-On”. Classical Chops, Jun 13, 2012. Alternatively, from the art of musical composition, watch this 7 minute video. Composer Lauridsen discusses in musical terms how to use repetition, inversion, etc. to explore a chord/phrase of music which is made very memorable as a result. This process of creation and musical structure is a valuable parallel to the literary craft involved in biblical storytelling. He took the sound of an early French folk song, from Ravelle and Debussy. He says, “This particular chord… went on to provide all the material I needed for the composition of Dirait-On.” Transposing this musical composer’s insight to the art of literary composition: In the biblical story, God took the “chord” of creation which provided all the material he needed for the composition of His responses to humanity and the world.

The Bible Project, Design Patterns in Biblical Narrative. The Bible Project, Mar 29, 2018. This is a 6 minute YouTube video. Tim Mackie and The Bible Project team do an excellent job explaining design patterns. They examine the “new life through water” motif of God's creation drawn from Genesis 1, and the “see-take” motif of human sin drawn from the primal Fall story of Genesis 3. They trace both of those motifs through the rest of Scripture to see the design pattern.

101: Put It Into Practice

Consider how to tell your transformation story. In chapter 1 of Jesus and the Healing of Our Sin-Sickness: Evangelism in the Restorative, Healing Atonement Paradigm, we point out that, Jesus partners with us to retell our stories, just as he retold the stories of David, Israel, and Adam and Eve. Consider telling one thread of your story in three stages.

101: For More Inspiration

Explore the idea of atonement through the arts. Although the stories below do not come from the Bible per se, the stories can serve as analogies and illustrations.

  • The Hero’s Journey and the Defeat of Evil as Atonement and Salvation‍ (link to YouTube video) ‍

    This video is part 7 of our series on The Theology of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. It offers us as an illustration of a healing atonement. The hero’s journey is a successful retelling of the past stories of tragic heroes. The hero’s resistance to external evil and defeat of internal evil is atonement and salvation. Just as Gandalf retold Saruman’s story, Aragorn retold Isildur’s story, and Frodo retold Smeagol’s story (almost), Jesus retold Israel’s story, David’s story, and Adam and Eve’s story. He had to: they set up the conditions of sin-sickened humanity, exile, and conflict that we all inherit and must struggle against.

    Our video series, The Theology of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, is found on our Arts and Theology page and our YouTube channel, where we put brief descriptions of each video. It’s a great way to engage people who have an appreciation for the stories. Each video has questions for group discussion and/or personal reflection.

  • What Made Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa Heroic — And His Vision for Wakanda’s Gift (link to YouTube video)

    This video is part 4 of our series on The Theology of Marvel Studio’s Black Panther, which offers us an illustration of a healing atonement. We discuss the parallels to Jesus, where T’Challa’s descent and ascent is rooted in his willingness to suffer again, for others, and even to honor others. That is unlike Killmonger’s refusal to suffer again. T’Challa is therefore a Christ-figure, in the framework of resisting the lure of Empire, and wanting to wisely share the gift from above. Jesus’ determination to lead his people to give to the world the gift from above — the Spirit of God — was the only real option for Israel and the good Creator God who called Israel into partnership.

    Our video series, The Theology of Marvel’s Black Panther, is found on our Arts and Theology page and our YouTube channel, where we put brief descriptions of each video. It’s a great way to engage people who have an appreciation for the movies, especially if they are also activists at heart, and wonder why we firmly argue that Christian faith is not a “white man’s religion.” Dr. Vince Bantu, Assistant Professor of Church History at Fuller Seminary and Founder-Director of the Meachum School of Haymanot, joins Mako Nagasawa to appreciate Marvel's Black Panther.

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