Contemporary Christologies: A Fortress Introduction

Chapter 2: Jesus as Moral Exemplar

33 Peter Abelard (1079–1142) is the name most often associated with what has come to be known as the moral influence theory of atonement. According to Abelard, the atoning significance of Jesus’ death should be understood as follows: We have been justified by the blood of Christ and reconciled to God in this way: through this unique act of grace manifested to us—in that his Son has taken upon himself our nature and persevered therein in teaching us by word and example even unto death—he has more fully bound us to himself by love; with the result that our hearts should be enkindled by such a gift of divine grace, and true charity should not now shrink from enduring anything for him.1 In this way of understanding Jesus’ saving significance, Jesus saves by making people more loving through the transforming power of his example. The beauty of Jesus’ life and death moves people to actualize more fully their own potential to love, and his example guides people’s action by modeling what love is. Here Jesus saves by his moral influence on people.2 CHAPTER 2 u Jesus as Moral Exemplar Rosemary Radford Ruether, Carter Heyward, Mark Lewis Taylor 34 Contemporary Christologies In the preceding chapter, we noted how an “immanent frame,” or worldview, has come to characterize contemporary Western societies. This view sees the world as shaped by human action and the impersonal forces of nature but has no place for miraculous divine interventions like Jesus’ resurrection.3 This chapter will look at the Christologies of Rosemary Radford Ruether, Carter Heyward, and Mark Lewis Taylor. All three accept this immanent frame and interpret the saving significance of Jesus within it by utilizing versions of Abelard’s moral influence theory of the atonement. The way Jesus is understood to save here can be illustrated with a scene from the movie How the Grinch Stole Christmas. As the Grinch is about to dump the Christmas presents he has taken from the residents of Whoville off the top of a mountain, he pauses to hear their cries when they awake to find their presents missing. Instead, he hears them singing and celebrating Christmas as always. The beauty of their unexpected response and their song changes his understanding of Christmas and causes his heart to grow “three sizes” bigger. This change in his “heart” moves and enables him to save their presents through extraordinary effort and then leads him to return them and join the Whos in their celebration. The evil overcome here lay within the Grinch himself . His lack of love and his misunderstanding of Christmas prevented him from fulfilling his potential to love. This lack and misunderstanding were remedied through his being moved to love by the beauty of the Whos’ celebration of Christmas even after he has stolen their presents. Ruether, Heyward, and Taylor each see Jesus as having a similar transformative influence on people. In their theologies, the principal evil that Jesus saves people from is a misapprehension of God and a lack of concern for the victims of society. Each sees Jesus as overcoming this lack of love and moral concern by moving people through his moral influence to act in greater conformity with God’s will. This moral influence theory is a predominantly “subjective”4 theory of the atonement. It is subjective in that it emphasizes the change Jesus effects in people. Like the revelational model studied in the previous chapter, it sees Jesus overcoming people’s alienation from God by changing their apprehension of reality. However, the moral influence theory does not address a lack of awareness of God’s presence but a lack of love and a faulty understanding of God. The three authors studied here who employ versions of it do not see secularism or unawareness of God’s presence as problematic in the way that the authors in 35 Jesus as Moral Exemplar the preceding chapter did. For Ruether, Heyward, and Taylor, the key problem in their historical context is not atheism or a lack of belief, but idolatry.5 There is also an emphasis on action in the moral influence theory that is not always present in the revelatory theory. The difference is subtle but significant. In the latter, Jesus saves by revealing God’s presence to people. The new awareness he gives should find expression in their actions, but it still has a saving significance...