Atonement or Redemption?

Atonement or Redemption?

In one of the recent Lenten meditations, a young theologian (who is my favorite and beloved) opines that “prostration” or “kumbidil” which is very common in the Holy week liturgy, is an act of repentance.  According to him bending and kneeling signify our acknowledgement of sinfulness and getting up points to the promise of life. I appreciate these kinds of efforts to validate our liturgical practices and traditions. But, the problem here is that it gives us the notion that sin is a personal problem to be rectified and the affirmation of life is a private achievement. How do these acts of repentance, whether it is personal or collective (as a church), becomes an act of hope for the ‘socially imposed sufferings’ of the people.  This is not just a problem with some of the liturgical practices; rather it is a fundamental problem inherent in our atonement theories and theologies. The agonistic politics and the theologies of the marginalized have been trying to define sin and suffering in their respective socio-political contexts in order to bring out the social logic of salvation in Christian theology. I think, neither our Lenten liturgies nor our spiritual practices are adequate to force us to the agonistic politics of redemption which invokes us to become a crucified one as it was practiced by Jesus the Christ on the cross.

The atonement theories played a crucial role in christian theology to make suffering a ‘representative act.’ I think, in these theories, the immediate socio-political context of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was neglected and it was rendered as an act of ‘satisfaction’ or ‘penal substitution.’ The feminist/ womanist theologians are very critical of this notion of vicarious suffering where the suffering itself has been valorized and justified. They bring out the contextual difference between the socially imposed suffering and the symbolic/ liturgical act of suffering.  On the basis of these embodied spiritualties and theologies, we need to construct a relative ontology of the Flesh through which we all participate in the process of our redemption along with God who is inherently embodied in the agonistic politics of the crucified as it is exemplified in the Christ-event.  It is here the crucified body becomes salvatory in itself. It is here we are invoked to move from the ‘liturgies of the representative act to the street theaters of the everyday life’ to embody the promise of hope through crucifying our lives.  

Y. T. Vinayaraj

Abstract of the forthcoming article Beyond the Atonement: Re-reading the Doctrine of Atonement in the Postcolonial context of Agonistic Politics and Necropolitics