Christus Victor, Hell, and Why Evil is Not Something and Not Nothing

#ReadingRutledge Week 6

Last week we spent our time reading Chapter 9 on the Christus Victor theme of atonement and we started Chapter 10: “The Descent into Hell.” We will finish the hell chapter in today’s reading. Remember that I have posted the weekly reading schedule at the end of this post.

I continue to enjoy Rutledge’s keen theological insight and impulse towards equipping preachers to preach the foolishness of the cross. I found the chapter on Christus Victor helpful as I have tended to preach the gospel, somewhat unintentionally, without the use of this biblical metaphor. Seeing how prevalent this theme is throughout the New Testament has encouraged me to preach more consistently on the triumph of Jesus over the powers of Sin and Death through his crucifixion.

Christus Victor

Rutledge framed Jesus’ victory over the Powers in the context of the apocalyptic, God’s unveiling the new thing God intends to do. The tearing of the veil mentioned in Mark’s and Matthew’s gospel was an apocalyptic sign that the death of Jesus implied a new beginning, a new birth, a new way of seeing the world. “The ‘apocalypse’ of the cross and resurrection, therefore, was not an inevitable final stage in an orderly process, or an accumulation of progressive steps toward a goal; it was a dramatic rescue bid into which God has flung his entire self” (355).

Apocalyptic theology is a way of seeing, which has immediate implications for ethics and how we read the Bible. For Rutledge “Discontinuity between the old age and the age to come is a principal characteristic of apocalyptic” (359). While there is a continuity between the promise made to Abraham and the death of Jesus, Rutledge argues there is discontinuity as well. I admit that I struggle to see the discontinuity in Paul in particular. For example, Rutledge cites Romans 10:5-6 with the contrast between a righteousness by the law and a righteousness by faith. Rutledge calls this a “radical reworking of the Old Testament” (360), but a reworking and a rethinking of Old Testament themes is not necessarily discontinuity.

The apocalyptic view lays the foundation for Rutledge’s review of Gustav Aulén’s Christus Victor motif which describes Jesus death as a “victory over the Powers which hold mankind in bondage: sin, death, and the devil” (365). This is Aulén’s definition. Sin and Death have, according to the Apostle Paul, been reigning over humanity (Romans 5:21). Death is no longer lord (Romans 6:9). Sin is no longer lord (Romans 6:14). Eternal life is made possible by “Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23)! With this transfer of authority from Sin/Death to Jesus, we are no longer enslaved.

Rutledge commends N.T. Wright’s critique of a view of the cross that becomes individualized and sentimental, lacking its true political and anti-imperial nature. But she laments that Wright “de-radicalizes Paul” by underestimating the cosmic effects of the cross. I’m not sure this critique is an accurate depiction of Wright’s view of Paul. While she is correct that Wright dislikes apocalyptic readings of Paul, I do believe Wright as a cosmic vision of Paul but it is a Jewish vision that is “earthed” in particular human situations. In Paul and the Faithfulness of God, Wright writes:

So where does this leave us? We have discussed the aims and intentions of Paul in relation both to his explicitly stated plans and his self-description as having been entrusted with the ‘ministry of reconciliation’. This, I have suggested, is ultimately a temple-vision: Paul believed that the One God was establishing his presence by his spirit in all the world….Since that reality is all about reconciliation, between God and the world, God and humans, and not least humans with one another, the large-scale cosmic vision cannot help being earthed at every point in the actual life, the actual human tensions, of actual churches and individuals. (1515)

You can read Rutledge’s critique of Wright in footnote 43 on page 367. I have tried for the most part to skip footnotes, but as a pastor shaped by Wright’s theological perspective, I felt compelled to jump in and respond to this one!

She continues with the Christus Victor motif by noting the struggle in Gethsemane as the Son taking on the dread of judgment that has fallen on humanity. Jesus came to defeat the Powers, the rulers of this age, the cosmic Powers of Sin, Death, and the Devil. She draws upon imagery from Miroslav Volf at the end of Exclusion and Embrace of the reign of Jesus as the Lamb of God. She includes this moving quote from Volf:

The most surprising thing about [Revelation] is that at the center of the throne, holding together both the throne and the whole cosmos that is ruled by the throng we find the sacrificed Lamb….With the Lamb at the center of the throng, the distance between the “throne” and the “subjects” has collapsed in the embrace of the triune God. (382-383)

[Side note: I was so moved by this quote because my new book Centering Jesus uses the language of “the Lamb at the center” in a way to renew our focus on Jesus as the Lamb of God. I regretted that I had not included this line from Volf in my book, but then I remembered that my book was still in the copywriting/layout phase. I emailed my copy editor and she said there is time to add this quote to the book! I was so excited. I added the above lines from Volf to the last chapter of my book, entitled “The Reign of the Lamb” and I thanked Rutledge in a footnote. You can pre-order Centering Jesus here.]

The motif of the victory of God over the Powers through the death of Jesus is at the heart of the gospel because, in the words of Rutledge, “the gospel is a message of deliverance from the grip of evil and Death. Although it is true that in a certain sense the devil is a symbol, the symbol encompasses a reality. New Testament apocalyptic gives us a peerless account of reality. Reality is about evil, and suffering and ultimately victory over suffering” (389). While an apocalyptic reading of the New Testament does offer an honest picture of reality, so does a thoroughly Jewish reading of the New Testament in the way of N.T. Wright.

Hell…No

The next biblical metaphor to explore is Jesus’ descent into hell also known as the “harrowing of hell.” The Apostle’s Creed includes a reference to Jesus’ descent— “he descended to the dead,” but oddly enough the Nicene Creed makes no mention of it. This chapter in The Crucifixion, which we will finish in our reading this week, discusses the biblical words for hell and the nature of evil itself.

Rutledge notes that there is a tendency among modern people to dismiss any version of hell that includes damnation “since our sense of accountability to God as our Judge has been weakened to the point of invisibility” (401). I read this observation as one for more progressive and liberal Christians. She continues to exhort us to wrestle with the biblical idea of hell understood “metaphorically rather than literally” (401). This exhortation I see as one for more fundamentalist and some evangelical Christians. We need an honest and sober understanding of eschatological judgment that avoids minimizing it on one hand and grossly exaggerating it on the other hand.

The biblical words for hell are sheol (Hebrew) and hades and gehenna (Greek). Hades is the word for sheol in the LXX and both denote the abode of the dead. Gehenna, the word primarily used in the gospels to refer to “the valley of the sons of Hinnom” (401), a metaphor for eschatological hell fire and final judgment. Jesus' victory over the Powers of Death and Sin feature predominately in 1 Peter 3 and Ephesians 4. Death as Hades is personified through the New Testament as a prison master and Jesus is the great liberator!

Hell as judgment is never mentioned by Paul, though he uses the metaphor of the “wrath of God” to denote final judgment. Jesus who conquers Death and hell demonstrates his authority. Jesus reigns as the Lord of heaven and hell. For years now I have been preaching hell more as an experience than a place, an eschatological experience of loss and loneliness outside of the presence of the kingdom of God in the age to come. Rutledge similarly describes hell as a domain, “We need to understand hell, not as a place to be sure, but as a domain where evil has become the reigning reality — an empire of death, as Cyril called it” (417).

Evil, Not Something and Not Nothing

The last subject is last week’s reading in the chapter on Jesus’ descent into hell focuses on the nature of evil. I have done little theological work over the years on theodicy, that is the classic “problem of evil,” so I found Rutledge’s philosophical and theological exposition of evil extremely helpful. “Evil,” she writes, “cannot be explained but can only be denounced and resisted wherever it appears” (419).

The Genesis narrative sets the scene for what God intends to do in response to evil, but does not give us the origin story of evil. Leaning on Augustine, Rutledge contends that evil does not have ontological existence but is rather a negation of being. As I mentioned above, I have tried to avoid her footnotes, not because they are unimportant, but to keep a steady pace in my daily reading. However her quotation from Gregory of Nyssa on pages 422-423 was profound.

Derek Vreeland @DerekVreeland

Only @flemingrut can get me to highlight a footnote! This one from Gregory of Nyssa on evil’s lack of substance is 🔥🔥🔥. #ReadingRutledge

Gregory’s logic is solid and its rhetorical appeal is one I haven’t considered.

P1: God is the creator of all things and God is responsible for what God has created.
P2: Evil is nonbeing without subsistence and not created by God.
C: God is not responsible for evil.

God is not responsible for that which lacks existence. This claim is not to say that God, who is mercy, isn’t concerned with the effects of real evil in God’s good creation. Rather this claim shows logically that God is not the originator of evil.

Evil is, as expressed in Latin, privatio boni, a privation of good, just as darkness is the privation of light. Moreover this claim does not imply that evil is nothing. A hole in the middle of a soccer field might be the absence of solid ground, but its presence can trip up soccer players if they are unaware of its presence!

So how do we reconcile the goodness of the one true Creator God with the presence of that which lacks substance, but is nevertheless a present destroyer in God’s creation? For Rutledge, most theodicies fall short — “theodicies are, almost by definition, unsatisfactory because they are constructed out of human notions of God, thereby negating the theo- in theodicy” (432). So while we cannot explain the origin or purpose of evil in a way that is intellectually satisfactory, we can and must resist it.

Biblically the devil, or the satan, (which I prefer not to capitalize) is personified as the “will to negate,” the personification of privation and ontological nonbeing (437). In this way, we in our limited understanding can have some kind of framework to understand evil as personified in this malevolent force called “the devil.” Sin, Death, and the Devil (Rutledge prefers to capitalize “devil”) are the unholy Trinity from which God the Holy Trinity comes to destroy in and through the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus our Lord.

This week we will finish up the chapter on the descent and move on to the metaphor of substitution, perhaps the most common metaphor used within evangelicalism.

Continue to stay strong with your reading this week. We will wrap up our reading week after next during Holy Week. The end is near! Keep up the good work.

Here is the reading for this week:

Monday, March 27: Pages 455 - 472
Tuesday, March 28: Pages 472 - 489
Wednesday, March 29: Pages 489 - 505
Thursday, March 30: Pages 505 - 521
Friday, March 31: Pages 521 - 535
Saturday, April 1: Pages 535 - 553
Palm Sunday, April 2: Holy Week begins! We will finish our reading on Maundy Thursday.

Grace and Peace to you.