“We are justified by the blood of Christ and reconciled to God, in that through the singular grace displayed to us by the assumption of our nature, by his instruction of us by word and example, and by his perseverance even to death, he has by love bound us more closely to himself, so that, thanks to the ardor of so great a divine blessing, the true love which is now ours should draw back from no suffering for his sake.” – Peter Abelard (1079-1142)
A contemporary of Anslem, Peter Abelard has proven to be deeply influential on many thinkers who, to this day, ascribe to a subjective - or symbolic - view of the atoning work of Christ; a paradigm which suggests that nothing essentially ontological or objective was remedied through the death of Christ (such as the achievement of the forgiveness of sins, defeat of death, reversal of the universal consequences of the Fall, etc.). Rather, this view would hold, it is the personal influence that this sacrificial act has upon us, as we observe it, that is of singular importance. In Abelard’s view, it is thought that as we gaze upon such an act of profound self-sacrifice, as the culmination of the perfectly lived life of Christ, that the divine love should consequently be caused to well up within us such as to propel us into lives of genuine righteousness and similar self-giving love. This is our salvation; not that we are somehow freed from some ontological or universal debt, but that Christ’s example is so stirring as to awaken us from the blindness and slumber that has heretofore entrapped us in patterns of sin and death, and to inspire and guide us into the life that we have been created to live.
While wrestling with the understanding of what was accomplished through the atoning work of Christ in his death and resurrection certainly constitutes a mystery that presses us against the limits of language itself, I believe that the paradigm suggested by Abelard, and those who would follow him in this regard, is fundamentally flawed. It sounds nice enough, and manages not to disturb us too greatly with thoughts of what sort of universal void there might be that would need to be appeased by the sacrifice of the Son of God himself for our sake. In the end, however, this is only – to quote C.S. Lewis – ‘soft soap’ thinking. The underlying problem of a subjective view of the atonement is that it requires the death of Christ to be of inherent value, apart from any consideration of a deeper ontological reality. These thinkers still want to look upon the crucifixion and stand in awe of the fact that one such as Jesus would love us so deeply as to die for our sake. This sort of thinking, however, attempts to inhabit the high-rise penthouse suite while disbelieving that any lower stories exist, or are even necessary. Simply put, if the death and resurrection of Christ did not actually accomplish anything objective, or beyond itself, in what real sense did Christ die ‘for us’?
Surely there is great heroism, and much to be valued, in the death of a man who throws himself in front of a moving train in order to push another out of the way and save them. In what esteem, however, ought we hold a man who steps in front of that same train, not because there is actually someone to save, but simply as an ‘example’ for the rest of us? In what sense ought we be inspired to be like him? If the sacrifice of Christ did not actually, in and of itself and apart from our subjective perception of it, accomplish our salvation, then to think of that death as having been ‘for our sake’ is to beg the question; we are simply casting a pointless and grotesque tragedy in a retrospectively positive light. As such, the subjective paradigm of salvation by ‘inspiration’ essentially undermines itself.
