Western Christian theology grew like a rogue branch splitting off the main trunk of the Christian community, like this branch on this tree. Photo credit: O12 | Pixabay.

Introduction

The Anástasis Center draws from Early and Eastern Christian theology to address problems in Western Christian theology. We highlight two interrelated issues. First, defining God’s justice in a way that is not compatible with the Triune nature of God — as retributive, not restorative. Second, defining Jewish exile as God’s retributive response to Jewish rejection of Jesus. Augustine of Hippo lies at the source of both of these problems. In addition, we take an egalitarian-equality position about women in leadership, but this was not only a problem in Western Christianity.

The Trinity and Divine Justice

Convictions rest on a foundation. The convictions that God’s justice is restorative, not retributive, and that Jesus’ atonement is a medical, not penal, substitution, rest upon the foundation of the doctrine of the Trinity.

Who God is defines everything God does. So who is God? Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — and thus love by nature. The love within God — or the love God is — is the eternal relations and activity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

God is fundamentally other-centered. The biblical writings and story bear witness to God being motivated by other-centered love in both creation and redemption.

Therefore, divine justice must be restorative, not retributive. For the motivation projected onto God — that God must “satisfy His retributive wrath” — is a self-centered motivation. But God, by definition, is not self-centered. He always desires and wills the highest good of all His creatures with their partnership. As the biblical witnesses tell us, Jesus’ work of atonement is a healing of human nature, i.e. a Healing Atonement, or a Medical Substitution, not a Penal Substitution.

That is just one reason why the Triune God, as taught by the Christian leaders at the Council of Nicaea, is the source of our convictions.

Our Study Guide introduces the beginner to the Nicene Creed and also engages the experienced student of theology.

This Study Guide shares some material with the section of our website on God’s Goodness. However, God’s Goodness explores God’s Triune nature in the biblical story and in our understanding as we respond to God. The Theology from Nicaea Study Guide discusses the early Christians’ struggle to articulate their experience of God, and highlights the split between East and West, starting with Augustine of Hippo.

Sadly, Augustine contributed to another problem in Western Christianity:

Antisemitism and Zionism

Examine three major biblical themes — land, enemies, and temple — and the role of Calvinist theology in the formation of Protestant Christian Zionism. Shared prosperity is a daunting task, but the Bible is not the obstacle. See the full set of blog posts here or scroll through, below.

In this blog series, now one of our Courses, we examine Western Christian (Catholic and Protestant) anti-semitism and also Protestant Christian Zionism. There were various factors that contributed to both problems. But Augustine was a major contributor to the former, and John Calvin — who built his theology on Augustine — was a major contributor to the latter. The following is a quote from the third post in the series:

“Augustine (354 - 430) famously assigned Jews the status of witness in two senses.  The Jew, he said in City of God, "must be allowed to survive, but never to thrive" so they could bear witness positively to the fact that the prophecies existed before Christ came to fulfill them, while their dispersed, outcast status among the nations would bear witness negatively that they were receiving the "proper punishments for their refusal to recognize the truth of the Church’s claims."  To Augustine, this meant dispersion and dishonor among the gentile nations, albeit with some significant protections.  This did have some practical benefit:  Pope Gregory the Great (pope from 590 - 604), influenced by Augustine’s writings, directed the bishop of Palermo not to destroy a Jewish synagogue, which reflects Augustine’s influence on medieval Christian teaching on the Jews, as it was oft-cited.  In the medieval period, Jews even appealed to church and civil authorities for their physical safety based on this view. 

“However, Augustine got his facts wrong — not that he was unique in this mistake, but I speak of him in this sense as a representative of other Christian leaders.  The Jewish exile and diaspora began with the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles of 721 and 586 BC, not the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70.  Why did Augustine, among others, connect Jewish exile to the death of Jesus?  The death of Jesus certainly discredited the Roman and Jewish leaders of Jesus’ own day (Matthew 26 - 27; Mark 14 - 15; Luke 20 - 23; John 18 - 19; 1 Corinthians 2:6; Colossians 2:15), which served to position Jesus as the innocent and righteous Messiah not only to gentiles but to the Jewish diaspora.  Irenaeus of Lyons, in the second century, for example, understood this quite well, as I will explore in the next chapter.  But conceptualizing the Jewish exilic diaspora as God’s retributive response to Jesus’ death, rather than Jesus’ death and resurrection serving as God’s restorative response to the Jewish exile and the basis for mission to the Jewish diaspora, and therefore also the gentiles, is precisely backward.  It reversed cause and effect; it portrayed divine justice as retributive, not restorative.”