Satan: Lifting the Veil - Part 10: Desert Temptation

Table of Contents:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Two Case Studies
Part 3: Serpent = Satan?
Part 4: What is Satan's Real Name?
Part 5: Accuser
Part 6: A Son of God?
Part 7: God's State Prosecutor
Part 8: God’s Sifter
Part 9: Azazel
Part 10: Desert Temptation
Part 11: What Does a Jewish Messiah Look Like?
Part 12: Bow Down to the Domination System
Part 13: Proclaiming Jubilee
Part 14: The Evil One
Part 15: The Angels of the Nations
Part 16: The Gerasene Demoniac
Part 17: Further Lessons on Exorcism in the Bible
Part 18: Driving Satan from Heaven
Part 19: The Unveiling of the Beast of Rome
Part 20: Unveiling the Beast Today
Part 21: Jesus and the Domination System
Part 22: Violence
Part 23: Death
Part 24: The Advocate
Part 25: Conclusions?

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My Wilderness Journey 

When I was growing up, I had a very well defined (you might even say rigid) identity.  It was solid, there were rules, easy answers, a group I was a part of, and I had a solid image of the Truth (™). 

But then I reached a turning point.  I realized that the rules and easy answers didn’t always work, the group wasn’t always that great, and I had questions that I couldn’t come up with answers to - at least not within the paradigm of the rigid identity I had grown up with.

Now I didn’t realize it, but this turning point I spoke of was actually a desert, or wilderness journey.  And what I didn’t get at first was that I had to go through the desert - to the other side of it.  But that’s not how I responded at first.  My first response was to leave - to check out, avoid the problems, and retreat in the hopes of finding something better.  

But I needed this time to heal.

After this period of healing, I ended up coming back to my old group.  But at this point, I was really in the group but not of it - I had this detachment, and I talked as if I knew my identity was right, but I was really non-committal about it.  I was there, and I was enjoying the company, but I talked about things as if I was talking about something that was not me.  And during this time, there was an emptiness that I didn’t understand.

And that’s when I hit the real turning point.  And it started by noticing things outside - I looked around and realized that there was this societal disease.  And then, with a certain sense of horror, I realized that I had grown up right in the (metaphorical) center of this epidemic.  I had either had the disease, or I still had it.

You see, I had thought that I made it through the wilderness before, but I had really just avoided it. 

At first, I didn’t understand the disease I had grown up with.  But after some analysis and deconstruction, I realized it was centered on tribal-thinking.  When someone has the disease of tribal-thinking, they pick a team and agree with everything they say, while staying away from all the other teams.  All truth is filtered through this tribal lens.

Before this realization, I could avoid my questions.  But after I realized I was infected with this sickness – though I didn’t fully understand what it was at first – I was thrown into a state of doubt.  Before this point, there were questions that I did not dare ask - or if I asked them I had concrete, easy answers for them.  But now, these questions hung over my head, blotting out the light of the sun.  They demanded that I pay attention to them, like never before.  So I threw myself into these questions for the first time in my life.  And at first, this felt like being caught in the middle of the sea during a violent storm with no anchor.  I questioned what I believed.  I questioned why I believed.  I questioned what it meant to believe.  But, while I did not realize it at the time, I was really questioning: who am I?

The Desert Temptation

Darkness!

The temptation of Jesus in the desert is a story that actually bears quite a few similarities to my situation - though you might not realize it if you’re looking at it through a supernatural lens.  I think that often people miss the point of this story - it’s actually quite scandalous.  They miss the point because of the image of Satan as a supernatural being of pure evil.

Our culture has all these images of Satan where his appearance gives him away - think Satan with red skin, goat legs, enormous horns, and a pitchfork.  Or maybe the Satan of the History channel’s “Bible Series” - what kind of doofus wears a black hooded robe in the middle of the desert?  Oh yeah - Satan.  He’s so evil he’s crazy.

Speaking of the "Satan" character in the Bible Series, I remember the controversy over the fact that some people thought that the actor was deliberately chosen as a way to equate Obama with Satan.  Do you remember how I pointed out in the beginning of this series that we use the President as a scapegoat?

One similarity I noticed, however, was that the Satan of the Bible Series actually resembles Emperor Palpatine.  And that's kind of what we want our Satan to be - we want him to say obviously evil things like "Give in to your anger!  ...Strike me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!"

But when you take what we’ve learned so far about Satan - the image of a son/servant of God who fulfills the role of God’s sifter, and often gets a bit overzealous and carried away in that role, leading him to become legalistic and accusing - and if you realize that "Satan" in this story is actually one of us, the story of Jesus' temptation in the desert actually makes a lot more sense. 

Think about it - if Satan is pure evil, then why would Jesus be delivered to him?  Why place Jesus in ultimate jeopardy?  Why not have Jesus be tested by the Spirit, rather than an agent of pure evil?

We try to make a character out of Satan whom is a representation of all evil in order to make it an easy target, so that we can avoid the difficult questions.  But the image of Satan presented in the Bible has not up to this point presented him as a being of pure, irredeemable evil - Satan is God’s sifter, who tests the resolve of God’s people and refines them!

And that’s where the real scandal of the story of Jesus’ temptation in the desert is revealed - because the temptations Jesus faced were actually the conventional wisdom of Jesus’ day, and if you’re paying close attention, they provide a model for what Jesus is up against throughout his entire ministry.

One of the reasons this is so often missed is that many Christians are taught to believe in the idea of faith as absolute certainty.  This absolute certainty gives these Christians a feeling of invulnerability - they don’t think it’s possible that they, or their tribe, could be wrong.  But one of the more interesting things to come out of modern psychological studies is the knowledge that those who feel they are invulnerable are actually the most vulnerable.  Case studies show that those with the illusion of invulnerability are the most susceptible to deceptive advertising - this ought to make Bible-believing Christians mindful of the doctrine of humility (see Proverbs 11:2, Proverbs 18:12, Proverbs 29:23, Matthew 23:12, I Cor. 4:7, and Philippians 2:6-9 for a few examples).  The conclusion in one of the aforementioned psychological studies states:

Far from being an effective shield, the illusion of invulnerability undermines the very response that would have supplied genuine protection.

So let’s go back to the story of Jesus’ temptation with fresh eyes.

Now, if you read the version of the story in Matthew 4 or Luke 4 with a literalistic lens, there are going to be some problems for you.  First off, one must wonder how it is that someone who was fully human could go without food or water in the middle of a desert for 40 days!  “Oh, but Jesus is God!”  Well, he’s not sounding much like he could be considered human in any, way, shape, or form any more.

However, there is an interesting fact that it seems most Christians don’t know about: most Christians are probably not aware that the temptations of Jesus appear in the Gospel of John, because in this gospel, John the Baptist does not even baptize Jesus, and there is no desert journey afterward (see John 1:19-29).  Keep that in mind, because it might be a clue....

But the same three temptations do appear in the Gospel of John.  Except that in John’s version of the temptation, it’s the people who present Jesus with the tests, rather than “Satan”.  (Actually, I might note that in this story, it’s not even “Satan” at all who tempts Jesus, but “the Devil”.  This word is translated from the Greek word “diabolos” - which means a slanderer, or a false accuser.  So you can see it is a very similar word to “ha satan”.)

Another fact that Christians seem to miss quite often is that the 40 days of fasting in the desert presents a clear parallel to the story of Moses - who fasted for 40 days in the desert and neither ate bread nor drank water before he received the law (see Ex. 34:28).  Understanding the parallel to Moses' fast is key, I believe, to understanding this story about Jesus - the idea that we must empty ourselves before understanding the things of God (see Phil. 2:6-11) is a very important theme to this story.  It is also important to note that Christians saw Jesus as bringing the new law - the law of love (see John 13:34 for just one example).

Also, the three trials of Jesus parallel three trials that Moses faced.  In the first trial, a shortage of food resulted in praying for manna from heaven - this parallels with Jesus' first trial of being tempted to create bread from stones.  Next, both Israel and Moses "put God to the test" with Israel claiming "there is no God among us" in Ex. 17:7 and Moses in Num. 20:10-13 - when Jesus says "do not put the Lord your God to the test" (Mt. 4:7 and Lk. 4:12), it is a direct quote from Deut. 6:16, making the connection explicit.  And finally, the people of Israel turned from God to worship something else in Ex. 32:1-6, which parallels Satan's direction for Jesus to bow to him in Mt. 4:9 and Lk. 4:7.  
 
Another issue we run into if we take the desert temptation literally - how did the gospel writers know of this story?  There are only two ways this story could have come about, as in the story Jesus is alone: either Jesus told the story to his followers (and he was known for telling parables, after all), or they made it up to illustrate truths about Jesus' life.

And one final thing I'd like my readers to consider before we examine this story is how different the sense of the English word "temptation" is from the original language.  The English word "temptation" has the sense of one person trying to get another to do something that one or both of them knows is wrong.  But the Greek word used in these stories - peirazein - meant a test or a trial.  We could imagine calling the SAT's a peirazein and this would not be an improper use of the word.  The Scottish Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism William Barclay wrote in his commentary on Matthew:

Now here is a great and uplifting truth. What we call temptation is not meant to make us sin; it is meant to enable us to conquer sin. It is not meant to make us bad, it is meant to make us good. It is not meant to weaken us, it is meant to make us emerge stronger and finer and purer from the ordeal. Temptation is not the penalty of being human, temptation is the glory of being human. It is the test which comes to those whom God wishes to use. So, we must think of this whole incident as being not so much the tempting as the testing of Jesus.

With all this in mind, let’s examine the temptations one by one.

In the first temptation, Luke 4:3 and Matthew 4:3 have “the Accuser” delivering the exact same line with only a slight change in wording: Matthew says “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread”, while Luke changes it to a singular stone.  Now, as I said before, if you’re interpreting this story through a very literalistic lens, you might notice a problem here - what is so wrong with turning stones to bread?  Jesus has been out here for 40 days with no food or water - he’s starving to death!  Is God really going to be upset about him feeding himself?  And after all - later on, Jesus will feed five thousand through a similar miracle.  So what’s the big deal?

But here the Gospel of John’s version provides a very valuable clue - John 6:30-31 has a similar temptation coming from some of his followers (note how this follower quotes scripture as part of his temptation - much like "the devil" does in Matthew and Luke):

So they said to Him, “What then do You do for a sign, so that we may see, and believe You?  What work do You perform?  Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread out of heaven to eat.’”

The problem here is not the miracle or the bread - it’s that this is a condition for proving that Jesus is the Messiah!  It’s a problem of expectations!  The people expect the Messiah to use power, and to solve all their problems.  

In this period in history, the poverty situation was quite similar to what is happening in America today, with huge inequality between a small few in the upper class and the masses in the middle and lower classes.  Rome had raised the taxes in rural areas to levels that had become hard for the people to bear - in order to build their temples, Colosseums, and cities.  And so the middle class farmers ended up having to take out loans with their land as collateral in order to pay their taxes.  In addition, the lenders had used very unfair lending practices - with very steep interest rates.  And so what would happen is that the bankers would then take the land in lieu of the payments, and then these farmers ended up becoming common workers on their own land, under the management of the new owners.

And the poverty situation kept getting worse and worse over time.  It seemed an impossible problem to solve - and so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Jews, in desperation, might have expected their Messiah to solve their problems miraculously.  But if you pay attention to Jesus’ ministry, his solution to the problem is for the people to come together in unity, giving to each other generously and watching out for each others’ needs - he’s not giving them an easy solution, but teaching them how to solve their problems themselves!  Jesus instructed his disciples to give without expecting in return (Luke 6:35) - undercutting the debt system built on interest payments that was currently crushing Rome’s citizens.  Jesus wasn’t serving the function of superhero who flies in and solves all his followers’ problems for them - he was teaching them how to solve these economic issues by living a life based on unconditional love, which meant living in a way that was extravagantly generous!

To put it as William Barclay did in his commentary on Matthew, to simply give the people food miraculously "would have been to remove the symptoms without dealing with the disease. People are hungry. But the question is, why are they hungry? Is it because of their own foolishness, and their own shiftlessness, and their own carelessness? Is it because there are some who selfishly possess too much while others possess too little? The real way to cure hunger is to remove the causes – and these causes are in human souls. And above all, there is a hunger of the heart which it is not in material things to satisfy."

This gives a bit of clairvoyance to the replies that Jesus gives to the tempter in Luke 4:4, Matthew 4:4, and John 6:32-33.  In his reply to this trial, Jesus is saying that it is not by the supernatural gift of magically appearing bread that their problems will be solved, but through the teachings that Jesus is giving them - the teachings on how to build community through love.
 

In Matthew’s version, the wording of Jesus’ reply (“Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God”) plays right into the Accuser’s next temptation.  Luke, for whatever reason, has the temptations in a different order - with the next two temptations in reverse order from Matthew.

But in Matthew, the Accuser picks right up on Jesus’ statement - which shows his respect for the Logos of God.  And the Accuser takes a position similar to many Evangelical Christians of our time - God’s word is the scriptures, we can pick and choose phrases we like in the manner of a constitutional lawyer, they are to be interpreted in a literalistic manner, and with a rigidity that leaves no room for questioning or nuance!  

Do you see this?  The Accuser is an expert at religiosity.  The Accuser takes Jesus up to the pinnacle (the highest point) of the temple, and quotes the Bible!  As Thomas Merton writes in “New Seeds of Contemplation”: “The devil is not afraid to preach the will of God provided he can preach it in his own way.”  The Accuser is quoting Psalm 91:11-12 here, which speaks of God sending angels to guard His followers - “on their hands they will bear You up, so that You will not strike Your foot against a stone”, he says.  

Look what the Bible says!  You should obey it, right?  Jump off of the temple and prove you are the Messiah!  

Once again - just like in the first temptation - a sign of power is being demanded! 

Again, if you’re interpreting this story through a literal lens, you have some problems - did Jesus and Satan just teleport from the desert to the top of the temple?  And how come no one noticed them up there and started pointing and gawking?  Below the temple would have been a courtyard teeming with people!  Wouldn’t it have been in all the newspapers after that?  (Well, they didn’t have newspapers - but surely someone other than the two gospel writers of Matthew and Luke would have recorded such a newsworthy event?  Two men suddenly appearing at the top of the temple, and then just as quickly disappearing afterwards?)  And - if this story is to be interpreted literally - why isn’t this particular temptation...tempting? 

But again, in the Gospel of John, we can find a similar temptation where it is the people tempting Jesus - in John 2:18, Jesus is in the temple and the people are asking him for a sign, in order to prove that he is the Messiah and has authority.  And so if we look at the Matthew and Luke version of the story with a more symbolic lens, the issues with the story disappear - the Accuser is a representation of Jesus psychologically wrestling with his mission, and is a voice of his culture goading Jesus to try to get him to prove himself to the people in order to kick start his ministry, taking a very literalistic and legalistic approach to the scriptures to try to influence Jesus in this manner.  The fact that Matthew and Luke’s version takes an absurdly literalistic approach to a verse that is obviously not supposed to be taken literalistically almost screams at us: this story is symbolic!!!

But Jesus’ rebuke of this temptation (see Luke 4:12 and Matthew 4:7) shows something very important - to live by the word of God is not merely prooftexting!  The word of God is found within Scripture, tradition, communal discussion and interpretation, way of life / tradition, creed, doctrine, scientific inquiry, experience, and intuition.  In other words, the word of God is found through engaging in all of these areas rather than choosing one to the detriment of all the others.  The word of God is living and active (Hebrews 4:12) - it is something that continually challenges us and makes us uncomfortable; continually calls us to move with God and grow.  The moment you think you can settle down and relax because you’ve figured it all out, that is when you have fallen to the temptation of the Accuser!  To “live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” as Jesus said before in the story means that we don’t fall into the docile model of Christianity that simply waits for Jesus to take care of everything for us - it means that we enter in to the way of life that Jesus modeled!

The third, and final, temptation of Jesus in the desert is perhaps the most important of the three.  Jesus’ response to this trial defines his entire ministry, and the temptation itself is the framing story in which Jesus’ story is set.  So we are going to take another break, in order to spend more time on the last trial.

In my next post, we will examine the context of the Jewish expectations for a Messiah, before moving on to examine Jesus’ last temptation.

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Table of Contents:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Two Case Studies
Part 3: Serpent = Satan?
Part 4: What is Satan's Real Name?
Part 5: Accuser
Part 6: A Son of God?
Part 7: God's State Prosecutor
Part 8: God’s Sifter
Part 9: Azazel
Part 10: Desert Temptation
Part 11: What Does a Jewish Messiah Look Like?
Part 12: Bow Down to the Domination System
Part 13: Proclaiming Jubilee
Part 14: The Evil One
Part 15: The Angels of the Nations
Part 16: The Gerasene Demoniac
Part 17: Further Lessons on Exorcism in the Bible
Part 18: Driving Satan from Heaven
Part 19: The Unveiling of the Beast of Rome
Part 20: Unveiling the Beast Today
Part 21: Jesus and the Domination System
Part 22: Violence
Part 23: Death
Part 24: The Advocate
Part 25: Conclusions?

Satan: Lifting the Veil - Part 9: Azazel

Table of Contents:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Two Case Studies
Part 3: Serpent = Satan?
Part 4: What is Satan's Real Name?
Part 5: Accuser
Part 6: A Son of God?
Part 7: God's State Prosecutor
Part 8: God’s Sifter
Part 9: Azazel
Part 10: Desert Temptation
Part 11: What Does a Jewish Messiah Look Like?
Part 12: Bow Down to the Domination System
Part 13: Proclaiming Jubilee
Part 14: The Evil One
Part 15: The Angels of the Nations
Part 16: The Gerasene Demoniac
Part 17: Further Lessons on Exorcism in the Bible
Part 18: Driving Satan from Heaven
Part 19: The Unveiling of the Beast of Rome
Part 20: Unveiling the Beast Today
Part 21: Jesus and the Domination System
Part 22: Violence
Part 23: Death
Part 24: The Advocate
Part 25: Conclusions?

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Azazel

In my last post, I threw some challenges out at the so-called "Penal Substitutionary Atonement" theory that began to develop with Anselm.  The struggle that many people have with letting go of this theory stems from verses in the Bible that say things like "the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:6) and "he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." (Isaiah 53:12)

But these passages don't bother me in the slightest.  In fact, I affirm them.  And yet I deny that God required a death in order to forgive.  How?

Catholic theologian and priest James Alison put it best, I think, when he wrote that the Penal Substitutionary model of thought "is far too little conservative. I want to put forward a much more conservative account."

I hope that sounds intriguing to you.  So let's explore this thought.

The problem with the Penal Substitutionary Atonement model is that it ignores the liturgy of Jewish sacrifice.  James Alison explains:

Now that doesn't sound like too much of a contrast in our world because we tend to have an impoverished notion of liturgy. And we do not realise how much our dwelling in theory complicates our lives. That in fact having atonement as a theory means that it is an idea that can be grasped – and once it is grasped, one has got it – whereas a liturgy is something that happens at you. I want to go back and recover a little bit of what the liturgy of atonement was about; because when we understand that we begin to get a sense of what this language of “atonement” and “salvation” is about.

The description of this liturgy Alison alludes to is provided in Leviticus 16:1-28.  In the description of this ceremony, the High Priest - whom, if you remember from before, plays a representative and mediating role between God and the entire nation of Israel - would go into the "Holy of Holies" - a section at the back of the temple that was blocked off by a curtain.  Now, the only person who was allowed in this area was the High Priest, and only on certain days of the year.  When he entered, the priest would take along with him one of two goats.  The passage in Leviticus explains that at the entrance of the Holy of Holies, he would choose between the two goats by casting a lot - this would identify one of the goats "for the Lord", while the other would be identified as the scapegoat (verse 8).  Interestingly enough, there is a footnote in most Bible's on this verse which explains that instead of "scapegoat", the name "Azazel" may be used.

What's so intriguing about this is that there is a connection between Azazel and Satan.  This connection is provided by the Book of Enoch.  In Enoch 8:1, Azazel is introduced as the leader of seven evil spirits who taught mankind how to make swords, knives, shields, and breastplates.  Also, he apparently taught man how to make mirrors, paint, and...how to beautify the eyebrows.  Apparently, Grumpy was right: women who use makeup are full of the wicked wiles.  At least, according to the writer of Enoch.

Please keep in mind that for the people during Jesus' day, this book was thought of as Scripture.

Now what's really interesting is that Enoch implies that Satan and Azazel are one and the same.  One has to read carefully to notice this, but you will find Enoch using "Satan" and "Azazel" interchangeably - for example, in chapter 53, verse 5 mentions the "host of Azazel" and then goes on in verse 6 to speak of this same group as the "ministers of Satan".   And furthermore, whenever the "father of all evil" is mentioned within this book, it is "Satan" or "Azazel" interchangeably.
 

A model of the temple.

So keep this in mind as we explore the liturgy of Leviticus 16:1-28.  Back to this ceremony - so the High Priest has cast the lots, identifying one goat to represent the Lord and one to represent Azazel.  Then he would take the goat that was representative of the Lord into the Holy of Holies.  He would do this dressed in a white robe, which represented the robe of an angel.  This signified that at this point he was no longer merely a human, but a son of God.  Not only this, but once he had put this robe on, he would put on a phylactery - a small leather box containing Hebrew texts that was fastened onto the priest by a leather strap.  In this ceremony, the phylactery would contain...the Name.  This was not any name - it was "the name which could not be pronounced".  The tetragrammaton - YHVH.  He would then enter the Holy of Holies wearing...the Name of the Lord.  Do you recall the phrase "blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord"? (See Psalm 118:26 and Matthew 23:39.)

So the priest - wearing the name of the Lord and representing a son of God - would enter the Holy of Holies with a goat representing the Lord.  And then he would sacrifice this goat, and sprinkle its blood all over the place.  James Alison explains:

The purpose of this was to remove all the impurities that had accrued in what was meant to be a microcosm of creation, because the Holy of Holies, in the understanding of the Temple, was the place where the Creator dwelt. The rite of atonement was about the Lord himself, the Creator, emerging from the Holy of Holies so as to set the people free from their impurities and sins and transgression. In other words, the whole rite was exactly the reverse of what we typically imagine a priestly rite to be about.

The high priest - representing the Lord and wearing the name of the Lord - would then emerge from the Holy of Holies.  He would pierce the veil between this place and the rest of the temple - this represented God breaking through the separation between Himself and the rest of Creation.  He would then sprinkle the rest of the blood outside.  What's interesting about this is that at this point, the priest himself represented God, and it was God's blood being sprinkled.  This would purify "Creation" and set it free!  

After this point, he would take the Azazel goat, and this goat would be driven off of a cliff by the people and die - and this represented the people's sin being taken away.


If you keep all of this in mind when you read the story of Jesus, you'll notice something very interesting.  When Jesus was hung on the cross, Christianity proposes that he was the one "who comes in the name of the Lord."  But you might notice something odd - Jesus is also the representative for humanity's sins.  And you might also notice a suspicious absence - where's the scapegoat?  Where's the Azazel?


In the ritual of Atonement, the scapegoat was taken outside the city, and killed there.  When Romans would crucify someone, it happened outside the city.  In "The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction", Peter Rollins writes:

For Roman citizens crucifixion was the most potent sign of someone being rejected by the cultural, political, and religious systems of the day, all of which were seen as divinely established. Those who were crucified were treated as complete outsiders. They were to die naked, alone, and in agony. But the execution meant more than torture and death; it was a sign that the one being killed stood outside of the divinely given order.

In contrast the Crucifixion of Christ today is seen as a key justification of a cultural, political, and religious matrix, a matrix that Kierkegaard called “Christendom.” It is difficult for us today to understand the extent to which this mode of execution signaled the exclusion of the victim from all systems of meaning, because it is so much a part of one for us. The Cross is so integrated into our religious, political, and cultural imagination that its reality as a mode of execution that placed the victim outside of these realms is utterly eclipsed. Instead of being a symbol of standing outside all systems of meaning, the Cross is now integrated into a system of meaning.

Atonement theories have to contend with the fact that the Jewish ritual involved two goats - one for God and one for the people: the scapegoat, or "Azazel" goat.  The latter represented the people, and it was through the death of this goat that the people's sins were atoned.  In the act of the cross, Jesus represented both.  

In Jewish theology, when someone was "hung from a tree", they were cursed.  Deuteronomy 21:23 says that they were cursed...by God.   However, the apostle Paul picked up on the imagery of Jesus on the cross, and wrote in Galatians 3:13:

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”.

Paul is alluding to Deuteronomy 21:23 here.  But did you notice something?  Paul left out the "by God" part of that quote.  That's because the cross is supposed to reveal something: God doesn't curse.  We do.  But God - in His mercy - takes those curses without offering any violence in return, and in so doing, He shows us that our curses only hurt ourselves.

The cross was where Jesus became the outsider and lost all meaning.  And when he was near the point of death, he cried "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mt. 27:46, Mk. 15:34).  Some may try to turn this into some sort of theater - like Jesus was just quoting a Psalm (Ps. 22:1) in order to fulfill a prophecy, but he didn't really think God had forsaken him (as if it were said with a wink at the camera).  But the problem with this interpretation is that Jesus spoke this in Aramaic - which was his native tongue - while the verse was written in Hebrew.  Yes, I'm sure that the author of the gospel narrative meant to give a nod to the Psalm, but he deliberately did it in the wrong language, indicating that Jesus actually felt this way!

In the Jewish ritual of Atonement, there was one goat inside the Holy of Holies, and one on the outside of the city.  But when Jesus dies, there is only one sacrifice - the one Who is outside.  In the temple ritual, after the sacrifice is offered, the High Priest comes through the curtain.  But when Jesus dies, the curtain is torn in two (Mk. 15:38 and Mt. 25:51).  The Holy of Holies represented access to God, for the Jews.  And many theologians have tried to turn the tearing of the veil into a message of Jesus giving us access to God. 

But what if it were indicating something else?  What if the Jewish audience would have realized that this indicated that God was not there.  There was no man behind the curtain - just an empty space.  Where was God?  Out there on that hill; the scapegoat; the outsider; dying from the wounds that the Priestly class had demanded be inflicted on Him; doubting Himself and His own faith.

By offering himself as the scapegoat, Jesus revealed the scapegoat mechanism for what it was - empty and meaningless.  Instead, Jesus instructs us to offer ourselves in acts of extravagant mercy - because this is what God would do.  Jesus instructed us to "take up our cross" (Mt. 16:24), and the apostle Paul instructed us to offer ourselves as living sacrifices (Rom. 12:1).  And even the symbolism of Eucharist points to this truth!  The message couldn't be clearer - we are to stop projecting our violence upon scapegoats, and instead offer ourselves in acts of extravagant mercy!  This is the way to defeat sin and violence - a complete rejection of accusation and the violence that always results from it!

Before Jesus - a completely innocent victim - died on the cross, he said: "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing."  If anyone had a right to accuse, it was Jesus!  But he completely refuses to do this, and reveals that this is the only way to defeat the Accuser!

And consider the story of the Prodigal Son and his brother (Luke 15:11-32).  The Penal Substitutionary theory insists that before we can receive God's forgiveness, we must feel really bad about ourselves and truly believe that God killed His son to pay off the balance of our sin.  But this doesn't fit well with the portrait Jesus paints of the father in the story of these two brothers.  When the Prodigal returns, he has a whole speech planned out to convince his father to take him as a servant.  And it should be noted that this is not true repentance - the son doesn't seem to feel horrible about how he's insulted his father by demanding his inheritance before the father died (basically telling the father: "I wish you were dead").  He's just hungry, and thinks his dad can give him a more comfortable way of life.  But he doesn't even get a chance to give his half-heartedly repentant speech - the father interrupts him in the middle of his speech, ignoring everything he's saying and calls for a robe, a ring, and to kill the fattened calf in celebration.  Imagine how this story would play out in Penal Substitution land - the father would have to say "hold on, we need your older brother to come out here and be killed and you need to accept this before I can forgive you."

And what about the older brother?  The older brother is rarely focused on - but he is a major part of the point of the whole story, as Jesus is telling this story with the background of "the Pharisees and the scribes [...] grumbling and saying, 'This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.'" (Lk. 15:2)  The whole point of the story is that Jesus is trying to get these Pharisees and scribes to see the sin of unforgiveness.  But how does the father respond to the older brother's unforgiveness?  "His father came out and began to plead with him." (Lk. 15:28)  The father pleads with the grudge-holding older brother - he doesn't demand blood before he can forgive this sin!  But Penal Substitution turns the father into the grudge bearer.

The whole concept of Penal Substitution makes no sense at all, and it doesn't mesh at all with the picture that Jesus paints for us - a picture of the heavenly Father unconditionally and continually extending forgiveness!

Yeah, Penal Substitution is kind of ridiculous if you think about it.

The Penal Substitution model tries to make the very violence that Jesus' death exposes as meaningless into something sacred - it tries to tell is that God Himself sanctions acts of violence!  Indeed, this God cannot forgive if He does not get his pound of flesh!  In "Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination", Walter Wink writes:

The God whom Jesus revealed as no longer our rival, no longer threatening and vengeful, but unconditionally loving and forgiving, who needed no satisfaction by blood - this God of infinite mercy was metamorphosed by the church into the image of a wrathful God whose demand for blood atonement leads to God's requiring of his own Son a death on behalf of us all. The nonviolent God of Jesus comes to be depicted as a God of unequaled violence, since God not only allegedly demands the blood of the victim who is closest and most precious to him, but also holds the whole of humanity accountable for a death that God both anticipated and required. Against such an image of God the revolt of atheism is an act of pure religion.

The Christus Victor theory of atonement shows us that it is not God being reconciled to us, but God reconciling us to Him (2 Cor. 5:18).  God breaks down the wall by reaching across to us and allowing us to take everything from Him - and He gives this perfect gift gladly and with no demand for anything in return, and in the process demonstrates to us "that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Rom. 8:38-39 - whereas Penal Substitution states that we are separated from the love of God until and unless we say the magic wordies.)  But to be one with Him, we must enter into this way of being - we must “take up our cross” as well.  The cross was a tool of the Domination System - using fear and shame to control the people.  And when we make death the ultimate evil and survival the highest goal, we play right into the Domination System, as we begin to justify more and more in the name of survival.  

But Jesus taught that we must live the way of the cross - or the way of "no-self" (as the Buddha teaches) and the renunciation of ego (to put it in psychological terminology).  And by entering into the ego-less state which Jesus modeled through the cross, we have defeated death itself - which by default includes a victory over the Domination System, as death is its only tool of enforcement.  But when we say that God had to kill someone - that God demanded death just as Caesar does - we empty the cross of its power.

Anselm's logic for vicarious or substitutionary atonement seems very persuasive - but it relies on faulty presuppositions.  One of these presuppositions is that God's justice involves external punishments rather than internal and natural consequences - as John Dominic Crossan points out in "The Greatest Prayer".  External punishments involve prescribing painful actions that would not have normally occurred in order to frighten someone (and manipulate them) into behaving a certain way in the future - and if you believe that God does this, then penal substitution might make sense to you.  But if your image of God is a loving Father rather than a demanding and legalistic judge, this might not make as much sense any more.  And if the problems created by sin were internal and natural consequences, then what does sacrifice and atonement mean in that context?  Crossan gives the following example to illustrate what sacrifice means:

[L]ate in the afternoon of Wednesday, January 13, 1982, Air Florida flight 90 took off from Washington National Airport and almost immediately plunged into the icy Potomac off the 14th Street Bridge. Of the seventy-nine people on board that Boeing 737 only six managed to escape onto the tail as it stuck up above the surface of the river. The rescue helicopter repeatedly dropped lines to them. Arland D. Williams Jr. repeatedly passed the lines to others and, by the time five were saved, he had slipped under the water from hypothermia.

He was the only passenger who died from drowning, and the only adequate headline for his death would not have been “Man Drowns,” but “Man Sacrifices His Life.” All human life, and all human death, is sacred, but, by giving up his life for others, he had made it specially, emphatically, and particularly sacred, and “to make sacred” is “to sacrifice.” He risked, and unfortunately lost, his life to save others, but gift, not substitution, is the proper interpretation of his action.

The natural consequences of our sin led to a bloodthirsty Domination System - a system where power hungry people sought control over each other and killed those whom in any way threatened that control.  Jesus' death was not a payment to God to satisfy his wrath, but when he forgave those who hung him on the cross, he showed that he was giving his life as a gift in order to demonstrate the futility of Accusation.
 
Another one of the major issues I have with Penal Substitution is that there is a tendency to make Christianity all about having the right ideas.  It's not enough that God killed His son (according to the adherents to Penal Substitution) - I must accept within my head that it makes sense that He did so.

Jesus didn't say we will know whom his disciples are by what theories of atonement they intellectually assent to - he said that they will know by the love his disciples show for each other (Jn. 13:35).  And Jesus also said that if you love him, you will keep his commandments (Jn. 14:15).  The sign of a disciple is not the ideas one claims, but their character, as exemplified by the way they treat others.

George MacDonald - one of the Inklings, and a mentor to C.S. Lewis (who wrote that MacDonald was his "master") - wrote of this problem in one of his "Unspoken Sermons" named "The Truth in Jesus":

Even if your plan, your theories, were absolutely true, the holding of them with sincerity, the trusting in this or that about Christ, or in anything he did or could do, the trusting in anything but himself, his own living self, is a delusion. Many will grant this heartily, and yet the moment you come to talk with them, you find they insist that to believe in Christ is to believe in the atonement, meaning by that only and altogether their special theory about the atonement; and when you say we must believe in the atoning Christ, and cannot possibly believe in any theory concerning the atonement, they go away and denounce you, saying, "He does not believe in the atonement!" If I explain the atonement otherwise than they explain it, they assert that I deny the atonement; nor count it of any consequence that I say I believe in the atoner with my whole heart, and soul, and strength, and mind. This they call contending for the truth! Because I refuse an explanation which is not in the New Testament, though they believe it is, because they can think of no other, one which seems to me as false in logic as detestable in morals, not to say that there is no spirituality in it whatever, therefore I am not a Christian!

Later on in the same sermon, he writes:

It is the one terrible heresy of the church, that it has always been presenting something else than obedience as faith in Christ. The work of Christ is not the Working Christ, any more than the clothing of Christ is the body of Christ. If the woman who touched the hem of his garment had trusted in the garment and not in him who wore it, would she have been healed? And the reason that so many who believe about Christ rather than in him, get the comfort they do, is that, touching thus the mere hem of his garment, they cannot help believing a little in the live man inside the garment.

Walter Wink writes in "Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination" of how the Christus Victor theory began to fall out of favor:

With the conversion of Constantine, however, the empire assumed from the church the role of God's providential agent in history. Once Christianity became the religion of the empire, notes J. Denny Weaver, its success was linked to the success of the empire, and preservation of the empire became the decisive criterion for ethical behavior. The Christus Victor theology fell out of favor, not because of intrinsic inadequacies, but because it was subversive to the church's role as state religion. The church no longer saw the demonic as lodged in the empire, but in the empire's enemies. Atonement became a highly individual transaction between the believer and God; society was assumed to be Christian, so the idea that the work of Christ entails the radical critique of society was largely abandoned.

God did not demand a price, but our resentment and will to kill is what made the cross necessary in the first place - as John 15:25 illustrates.  Raymund Schwager said: “It is not God who must be appeased, but humans who must be delivered from their hatred.”  And the only way to continue to break down and resist this demonic way of life is to enter into the way of Jesus - the way of the Cross.  

We find this idea that God does not demand a price back in the book of Job as well.  In Job 25, Bildad argues that "dominion and fear are with God", and declares that mere mortals - maggots, he calls them - cannot be righteous and pure.  But Job maintains his integrity, and later on Elihu contradicts Bildad in chapter 35 - he asks in verse 6:

If you have sinned, what do you accomplish against him?  And if your transgressions are multiplied, what do you do to him?

And then, in verse 8:

Your wickedness affects others like you, and your righteousness, other human beings.

Elihu then proceeds to introduce the Storm of God, and when God is done speaking to Job, He rebukes Eliphaz, Zophar, and Bildad, "for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has done" - and they go offer sacrifices in repentance (see Job 42:7-9).  But notice that Elihu, who said that our sins do not affect God, was not rebuked as having been one of the ones who misrepresented God!  This makes it difficult to present an atonement theory which states that God must be "paid" for our sins in some sort of pseudo-economic transaction.

By identifying with the symbol of the Azazel goat, Jesus is showing us that when we accuse, we accuse God - because every man and woman is made in the image of God - and we accuse ourselves.  "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Mk. 12:31, Mt. 22:39) combined with the principle taught in the parable of the sheep and goats (Mt. 25:40 - "to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me") and "love your enemies" (Mt. 5:44, Lk. 6:35) reveals that every rule, teaching, and doctrine is summed up in Universal Love (Gal. 5:14).  Jesus has just reversed the dualistic model Man adopted in the Garden of Eden, and rendered all of its effects null and void!  By taking on the symbol of the "one who comes in the name of the Lord" and the Azazel goat, he has completely reversed all effects of the fall (I Cor. 15:22, Rom. 5:18-19, Rom. 11:32, Col. 1:19-20, I John 2:2), rendered all labels and categories null and void (Gal. 3:28), and shown us that all are sons of God (1 John 3:1) and partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:3-4)!

René Girard writes: 

Jesus’ death is a source of grace not because the Father is “avenged” by it, but because Jesus lived and died in the manner that, if adopted by all, would do away with scandals and the victimization that follows from scandals. Jesus lived as all men should live in order to be united with a God Whose true nature he reveals.

Scapegoating and Mimetic Theory
French born historian, philosopher of social science, and anthropologist René Girard has devoted much of his career to studying the scapegoat mechanism, and what he calls Mimetic Theory.  Girard highlights how the accusing nature is the father of lies: 

They [speaking of myths that portray violence towards a scapegoat character or group who serves as the guilt-bearer for that society] are lies, certainly, but the specific kind of lie called for by mimetic contagion... the false accusation that spreads mimetically throughout a disturbed human community at the climax when scandals polarize against the single scapegoat whose death reunites the community.

I'd like to quickly highlight the main ideas behind Girard's Mimetic Theory of the scapegoating process in order to unpack this idea.  Girard's Mimetic Theory of scapegoating consists of 6 steps:

1. Mimetic Desire
   Humans learn by imitating their elders - it's one of our greatest strengths!  But it can also be our greatest weakness.  You see, we learn what to desire by imitation.  And so often, we pick up harmful desires in the process of our growth.
2. Mimetic Rivalry
   This learned desire often turns into a rivalry, when we end up desiring the same things as the ones we imitate, and thus end up preventing each other from obtaining these things.  So this turns into a vicious cycle - the one we imitate first said “be like me: value this object.”  But when we reach out to take it, the one we imitate says “Do not be like me - the object is mine.”
3. The Crisis of Distinctions
   Through mimetic rivalry, the distinctions that formerly separated persons and groups of persons into classes disappear, resulting from them desiring the same things and from the classes ending up with the same pain from not being able to obtain the objects of their desire.  Walter Wink summarizes in "Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination":

   Students seize the administration building, demanding a share in decision-making power that has previously been the sole prerogative of the administrators. Mill workers shut down the plant, insisting on a voice in shaping their new contract. The hierarchical barriers that society has so carefully erected, unjust as they may be, dike society against the flood of anarchy. When these distinctions collapse (as when soldiers in Vietnam refused to obey orders from their officers), that social system faces the possibility of collapse. Collapse can be averted, however, if society can find a scapegoat.

4. The Necessary Victim
   In order to “save” society from the chaos that results from steps 1-3, a victim must be found - towards which all the violence of that society is then directed and released upon.  In order to do this, the society must find a victim which they can all agree is guilty - Girard explains:

   The violent process is not effective unless it fools all witnesses, and the proof that it does, in the case of myths, is the harmonious and cathartic conclusion, rooted in a perfectly unanimous murder.

   Often the victim must have defining characteristics that make them different - a foreigner, a cripple, an eccentric, a communist, a witch, a carrier of the plague, a homosexual, someone who challenges the system (a prophet), etc.  This victim then serves as a release valve - releasing the “steam” of the society’s violence.  If the gospels are revealing the scapegoat mechanism as illegitimate, this will explain Matthew 10:34 ("I have not come to bring peace, but a sword"), as doing so will dissolve the false peace that comes through the scapegoat mechanism.  But to reach the “peace that surpasses understanding” (Phil. 4:7), we must renounce the victimization mechanisms of the old world order in order to join the kingdom of God - in which there is no victimization, even for legitimate offenses.  Do you recall how Jesus instructed his disciples to forgive "seventy times seven" (Mt. 18:22), and the story of the attempted stoning of the adulteress in John 8:1-11?
5. Sacralizing the Victim
   The scapegoat is made sacred by being simultaneously regarded as cursed and life-bringing.  The violence has been survived, and the religious and political structures did not collapse - so the story of the scapegoat becomes sacred and cannot be challenged, or it is a threat to society itself.
6. Sacrificial Repetition
   The violence directed towards a scapegoat releases pressure on society, but only for a time.  And so the type of person who was made the scapegoat in step 4 must be repeatedly victimized and used as a release valve in order to control society’s violence.  This becomes a religious structure of organized violence in the interest of social tranquility.

If you keep this theory in mind, it is fascinating to watch how it plays out during Jesus' trial and execution.  For example, when Peter denies Jesus, we get a window into how violence can act as a contagion through fear - when Peter denies Jesus for the third time, in the accounts of Mark (14:66-72) and Matthew (26:58-75), Peter curses and demonstrates violent anger in his reaction.  It is as if he’s saying “see?  I’m part of your group, because we share the same scapegoat!”  Peter is giving in to fear (peer pressure), and saying "look!  The enemy of my enemy is my friend...."

René Girard writes in regard to this:

Peter spectacularly illustrates this mimetic contagion. When surrounded by people hostile to Jesus, he imitates their hostility. He obeys the same mimetic force, ultimately, as Pilate and Herod. Even the thieves crucified with Jesus obey that force and feel compelled to join the crowd. And yet, I think, the Gospels do not seek to stigmatize Peter, or the thieves, or the crowd as a whole, or the Jews as a people, but to reveal the enormous power of mimetic contagion - a revelation valid for the entire chain of murders stretching from the Passion back to “the foundation of the world.”

Also, during Jesus' trial, no one wants to accept the blame for Jesus' execution - in the depiction of the trial before Pilate, the gospels place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the mob, as Pilate is reported to say “I find no basis for a charge against him”  (see Luke 23:4, John 19:4).  This is a stunning picture of how the Accuser becomes the corporate spirit of a group, and in light of Peter’s denial, one must question how many in the crowd may have also felt that Jesus was innocent, but joined in the accusations because they were afraid of the consequences if they did not.  We might wonder if the “majority” who accused Jesus, in this case, were not even truly a majority, but were merely pressured by a very vocal minority to comply with the accusation.  Or if we accept that this was truly a majority, at the very least we must wonder how it is possible that the same crowd which a few days ago had led Jesus in a triumphant procession through the city (in essence proclaiming him their king) could have so quickly and decidedly reversed their view of this man.  Is it possible that even those who believed in the accusation were unaware of the ways in which they were unconsciously coerced into playing a part in the accusation of the mob?  This seems to be the conclusion of Jesus, as he cried “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34), and the sentiment is later echoed by Peter when he says “I know you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders” (Acts 3:17).

So often, this unconscious coercion works against our own interests!  In "Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence", Walter Wink writes:

Why have women allowed themselves to be despoiled of their rights, generation after generation, despite often being a majority? Why did so many women oppose the Equal Rights Amendment? How can six million whites subjugate the twenty-nine million other South Africans? Why did the lower and middle classes sit supinely by and watch the Reagan administration scuttle the graduated income tax, providing massive tax relief to a tiny fraction of wealthy people while the real incomes of everyone else were in sharp decline? Why do the poor and homeless not unite to form a powerful political bloc to win their universal human right to adequate food and housing?

Could this mimetic behavior be the answer to these types of questions?

As we continue to explore instances in the Bible where the Accuser and demons appear, you will notice that the themes of this post will reappear again and again.  We will continue to explore how Jesus confronted the scapegoating mechanism.

But at this point, we are going to take another break, and in the next post I will begin exploring the story of Jesus’ temptation in the desert.

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Table of Contents:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Two Case Studies
Part 3: Serpent = Satan?
Part 4: What is Satan's Real Name?
Part 5: Accuser
Part 6: A Son of God?
Part 7: God's State Prosecutor
Part 8: God’s Sifter
Part 9: Azazel
Part 10: Desert Temptation
Part 11: What Does a Jewish Messiah Look Like?
Part 12: Bow Down to the Domination System
Part 13: Proclaiming Jubilee
Part 14: The Evil One
Part 15: The Angels of the Nations
Part 16: The Gerasene Demoniac
Part 17: Further Lessons on Exorcism in the Bible
Part 18: Driving Satan from Heaven
Part 19: The Unveiling of the Beast of Rome
Part 20: Unveiling the Beast Today
Part 21: Jesus and the Domination System
Part 22: Violence
Part 23: Death
Part 24: The Advocate
Part 25: Conclusions?