AN UNFREE GOD?

I have been rereading the Franciscan Richard Rohr’s “Immortal Diamond” and would like to share with you some of his thoughts about death. Everything that follows below is directly quoted from his book.

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The crucified one is God‘s standing solidarity with the suffering, the tragedy, and the disaster of all time, and God‘s promise that it will not have the final word. 

The Risen One is God‘s final word about the universe and what God plans to do with all suffering.

ABOUT DYING

In all of nature, one form has to die and decay for another to take over, so this pattern should be obvious and clear, although it is largely not — until you really observe or actually study the patterns of almost everything. Again, we appear to be in gross denial.

Jesus’  own dying has to be made quite clear and forthright in the gospels; in Mark, it is almost half of the text. His. “ necessary death” had to be made visible and compelling, because we all want to deny death and avoid the obvious. Quite unfortunately, we made Jesus‘ necessary dying into a mechanical atonement theory demanded by a “just” God, which had the side effect of keeping the spotlight away from our own necessary dying. Jesus indeed became our scapegoat, but not at all in the way that he intended. Avoiding our own necessary “pattern of  dying” (Phil 3:11), we constructed instead, a kind of metaphysical transaction, called “paying the price“ or "opening the gates,“ that was necessary for Jesus to complete. Then we worshipped him for doing this, which is understandable, but also avoids the point that we all have to pay the price for growing up and for loving.

Is God really unfree?

Jesus never said, “worship me,“ but he often said, “follow me.“ We have wasted a lot of good energy on “vicarious substitutionary atonement theories“ and created a punitive and petty God in the process —  a “Father God“ who was incapable of forgiving “without blood.“ Is God that unfree? Remember, the ego likes contests of win and lose, and cannot even comprehend anything like win-win. Jesus became our substitute in losing, hoping it would let us off the hook, I guess.

Fortunately, we Franciscans never officially believed this common substitutionary atonement theory. We were always a kind of alternative orthodoxy inside Catholicism. In the teaching of John Duns Scotus, Jesus was pure gracious gift, and not necessary at all. God operated out of total and absolute freedom in the gift of Jesus and the Christ to the world. 

Incarnation, the birth in Bethlehem, was already God‘s unconditional choice and gift of himself to us. Incarnation was already redemption. And why would a free gift be less beautiful than a necessity? Why would an act of a violence be necessary to redeem the world? For us, Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity, but to change the mind of humanity about God. It is “simple and beautiful;” as Einstein said great truth would always have to be. (136)