Connect the Kingdom to Atonement: the Relationship Between Cross & Crown
How does the Kingdom of God connect to the Atonement? In what ways should we look to keep the tension between the Cross and Crown?
The Vineyard movement, via the influence of John Wimber and other early leaders, is widely known for embracing kingdom theology as it's theological center. Our approach to “signs and wonders” is built on our understanding of King and Kingdom, the foundation for our beliefs and practices. Jesus announced the in-breaking of his kingdom and then spent his public ministry focused on proclaiming and demonstrating the power and presence of God in relation to that kingdom. As followers of Jesus, we believe we are called to continue his ministry, sharing his words and works.
But what does the Vineyard believe about the atonement? Which biblical metaphors and which Atonement metaphor is the Vineyard approach? Should we embrace the substitutionary view, as advanced by those often connected to the Reformed tradition? Or would the Christus Victor model, promoted by people like Greg Boyd, be a better fit? And what about the Healing model, as Bruce Reichenbach suggests? What about Joel B. Green's Kaleidoscopic view? Many new to the Vineyard have asked me this question and it’s likely applicable to many who are in the Charismatic Tradition.
The answer to each of these questions, I believe, should be "Yes,” which is to say that I think there is a lot of strength to Green’s Kaleidoscopic view. The Kaleidoscopic view seeks to emphasize all of the biblical metaphors as important. As Green states:
"… no one model or metaphor will do when it comes to the task of articulating and proclaiming that significance [of the atonement] in the world today."
We need the substitutionary model, the healing approach, and the Christus Victor emphasis if we want to do justice to the atonement metaphors that are fleshed out in Scripture. All of the metaphors are articulated in the Bible and each has found advocates throughout church history. Each provides helpful theological insights into the powerful and beautiful complexities found in the Cross of Christ. This is a perspective that Steve Burnhope has offered, which I encourage you to explore (see a podcast I did with him as well as his book Atonement & the New Perspective).
The Mistake of Reactionary Theology
There are many challenges facing the Vineyard today and many of them seem to be our resistance to our past commitment of “keeping the tensions.” Addressing all of these is outside the scope of this article, but we really should place a higher value on keeping the tensions. One might even say it is our sine qua non, though many seem to have abandoned this commitment.
Keeping the tension within atonement theology seems to imply keeping the tensions found within both emphasizing and applying our understanding of the Cross. There is a tendency for some pastors, leaders, and thinkers to find aspects of Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) as so problematic that they swing to the point of rejecting all forms of substitution in an attempt to make, for example, Christus Victor the only model that receives attention. This is understandable in that the Christus Victor model emphasizes the triumph of Jesus over sin, death, and the devil and language like that connects well with Charismatics!
But I think this is a huge mistake. Each atonement metaphor provides a necessary lens in order to comprehend the beauty and nature of Jesus' work on the Cross. Reactionary theology is far too often guilty of ignoring crucial elements of one view in an effort to bring another view to the forefront and it easily becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Moreover, reactionary theology is often guilty of ignoring facts and the careful work that scholars have offered. So again, I suggest we embrace every biblical metaphor (model) that is found in Scripture and, as others have suggested, keep the tensions. We need substitution. We need the triumph emphasized in Christus Victor. We need healing. And we'd be wise to follow Green's advice of integrating them all as we look to offer a comprehensive biblical theology. Any Vineyard approach to the Atonement needs to be embrace all biblical metaphors! Can I get an amen?
Yet while I am all for embracing all biblical metaphors, I think there is a reason why Charismatics tend to embrace Christus Victor as our primary lens for understanding the Atonement. Let’s consider why and then reflect on a way forward…
Toward Uniting the Kingdom to the Atonement
As far as I can tell, the primary way in which the Vineyard roots its emphasis on "signs and wonders" and "doing the stuff" is through a robust understanding of the "now and not yet" approach to the kingdom of God. We believe that healing, prophecy, the gift of “tongues,” demonic deliverance, and all other expressions of the charismata occur because the kingdom of God broke into our present time and space in the first century when Jesus came on the scene.
We rarely root our understanding of our charismatic practice in our understanding of the Atonement. So what about rooting our understanding of "doing the stuff" in our understanding of the Cross? The Vineyard, and other advocates of the “Third Wave,” generally avoid our understanding of "signs and wonders" and our understanding of the Atonement because we have sought to avoid making the same mistakes as some of the early Pentecostals and advocates of Word of Faith theology that built their healing theology on the Atonement.
To explain this further… the issue boils down to whether healing is guaranteed by or provided for through the atonement. These may appear to be subtle differences, but they make a huge impact on praxis. If healing is guaranteed by the atonement the explanation for why someone isn’t healed is that there must be a lack of faith or that person must be in sin. If healing is provided for in the atonement, there's room to explore the "not yet" nature of the kingdom as it relates to healing. At least that's what the Vineyard and Third Wave theologians has argued in the past.
This is why we need to explore the relationship between the Kingdom of God and the Atonement. Third Wave theologians, and the Vineyard by and large, has generally been less articulate in exploring the relationship between Atonement and the theology of the Kingdom. When we discuss the Kingdom of God, we rarely spend much time exploring the ways in which our understanding of the Kingdom might benefit and build upon our understanding of the Atonement.
Don't misunderstand me, the Vineyard loves the Cross of Christ and we value the reality of Jesus' death in many ways. Yet we've not been as articulate in how and why the kingdom and the Cross should be united. For example, in Derek Morphew's classic Vineyard book Breakthrough, the Atonement isn't a primary focus and understandably so. Nor does the Atonement doesn’t feature as a major focus in most any of the Vineyard books that I have on my shelves or in my Kindle library. And believe me, I've checked! This is likely due to the fact that most of the Vineyard theology was built upon pre-existing Evangelical theology and likely just borrored from it’s predecessors, folks like Wayne Grudem, etc.
I believe we need to really explore this a bit more because it can make a difference in both our theology and our praxis. And while I'm a fan of Tim Chester's book Crown of Thorns that looks to explore the relationship between the Kingdom and Atonement, I think he overlooks the value and importance of kingdom theology in relation to "signs and wonders" as expressions of pushing back against the kingdom of darkness. We in the Vineyard could really provide a helpful way forward toward articulating the ongoing nature of both inaugurated eschatology and the benefits of Jesus' victory through the Cross and Resurrection! At least I hope someone in the Vineyard does this! Paging Dr. Burnhope!
More specifically, I'm speaking specifically about our need to unite our Kingdom Theology to specific aspects of Christus Victor. After all, Christus Victor is explicitly related to this topic:
"... the Christus Victor paradigm understands the work of Christ primarily in terms of his conflict with and triumph over those elements of the kingdom of darkness that, according to the New Testament, hold humanity in their clutches, that is, Satan and his demonic hosts, the sin power, death, and even, particularly in its cruse elements, the law. In addition, the harrowing of hell motif has fed into the Christus Victor theme from ancient times." (The Nature of the Atonement, 12)
Since Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8), and the Cross and Resurrection is where the defeat of Satan's kingdom is powerfully demonstrated, might we want to unite our theology of the kingdom with our theology of the atonement? I believe so.
John Wimber, the most well known leader in the Vineyard, primarily articulated his understanding of the Atonement through the standard substitutionary approach, yet he definitely understood that Jesus came to “plunder” the “strong man.” He wrote:
"In all these battles, Jesus was, and continues to be the victor. In Matthew 12:22-31, Jesus makes it clear that the struggle in which He is engaged is not a civil war within a kingdom. It is rather a battle between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of the devil. The strong man, Satan, is bound so that his house (Satan's kingdom) may be plundered. Satan's power is curbed, but he was not rendered completely powerless (see Matthew 16:23; Mark 8:33; Luke 22:3)." (The Way In Is the Way On).
The natural question arises as follows: How did Jesus plunder Satan's house? I think I'm on good ground when I join the chorus of the Church by answering at the Cross and Resurrection. Jesus was the victor. The clash between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of heaven was brought to a decisive end when Jesus was crucified, buried, and raised from the dead.
Hmmm. That sounds a lot like the Christus Victor approach to the atonement, as well as our understanding of Inaugurated Eschatology. And because of this approach and understanding of the Cross, we might follow Greg Boyd's advice:
"Jesus thus gives to all who will in faith receive it his authority to break down the gates of hell and take back for the Father what the enemy had stolen, just as he himself had done (Mt 16:18). Now that the strong man has been bound, it is a task we can and must successfully carry out. In doing all this, we the church are further expanding the kingdom of God against the kingdom of Satan, and laying the basis for the Lord's return when the full manifestation of Christ's victory, and of Satan's defeat, will occur." (God at War, 214).
So while we faithfully embrace all that God has for us, especially that which is revealed in Scripture, I suggest we explore more fully how the Cross and the Kingdom intersect, influence each other, and inform how the two topics should shape the way that we "do the stuff" by continuing Jesus' ministry as the "word worker" par excellent.
By integrating Christus Victor with our theology of the Kingdom, we are by no means suggesting that the Bible doesn’t teach substitution and we’d be wise to work toward an integrative approach to the topic. We need to explore how we see the Cross informing the kingdom and the kingdom informing the Cross. We need to really dive into why keeping the tensions is important in our biblical theology and practical ministry. And we need to really work toward understanding the relationship betweein Christus Victor and our approach to prophecy and tongues!
What do you think?
[This is an updated version of an article I previously published on a blog. I think you may enjoy James Bryan Smith's The Kingdom and the Cross as a spiritually formative way of engaging some of the issues related to this subject and I would also like to again thank Aaron McCarter, lead pastor of Maryville Vineyard Church, for inspiring me to actually write some of these ideas down!]
About the Author
Luke Geraty is a pastor-theologian in northern California. With a few theology degrees and nearly twenty-eight years of church leadership experience, Luke loves the Bible, theology, fly fishing, coffee, and books. All opinions are his own and not the views of any other organizations he’s affiliated with. You can follow him on Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe to his YouTube.
I love this! I've never been comfortable connecting healing to the atonement, but thinking about it in this way helps to reconcile things. Thank you!
This is an important topic. It brings us to a related and central issue: the role of the believer's cross, the believer's or disciple's death. More and more folks are (rightly) trying to bring discipleship and transformation back to the center of the Church's mission. Jesus implied that there are many things we do regularly--prayer, service, etc. But I can only recall one thing he explicitly said would need to be the daily practice of his disciples: deny themselves, pick up their cross and follow him. This is to be a daily appropriation and embrace of the death of our former selves, enacted in our baptism (See Romans 6). What we see in that Romans 6 passage is that we leave the dominion or reign of sin through embracing and agreeing with God's judgment of death upon our old lives, which is what was placed on Christ. We learn to embrace that death on our old life to live a new one. We can't live two lives at the same time. We drop one to pick up the other. We leave the reign of sin and enter the reign of God through death and new life. We lose our life for Christ's, to find it anew with and in him.
I'm reminded of a common prayer among Charismatics for God to "fill me with your Spirit." I believe the chief impediment to this prayer is that we are often already too full, with no training on how to regularly empty ourselves, and embrace and appropriate the death to our old lives to pick up the new. Since Dallas Willard's strong praise for the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous over 20 years ago, I've slowly made the move into using the steps as a path for discipleship. They work by training people to identify when we're living the old life, centered on self, and drop that life in favor of the new. In other words, the steps train people to do what Jesus said they'd have to do daily. The steps train us to live our baptism. The old man, the old life, can't do God's will, live in his reign. It is trapped in the dominion of sin and death. But the new man is already joined to Christ and the Father through the Spirit, eager to do God's will in union with God. We have all these strategies for making ourselves whole and at peace. But Jesus says that anyone who tries to save themselves (make themselves whole, safe, at peace) will lose their lives. But whoever loses their lives for Christ will find them. We need the training and practice of identifying our old lives as we start to live them, so that we can drop them for the new life. We embrace our death, our cross, to find new life. In so doing, we leave the dominion of sin, for the reign of God.