Moral Influence Theory: Demonstration of Love

Lent Points to a Point

The forty days of Lent are a substantial length of time, all pointing towards a future (and already achieved) reality, a broad sweep of days to evoke the memories of the forty years of groaning in the wilderness. The triumphal entry with palms, the Passover, the cross, the empty tomb, all await us on that other side of the River Jordan.

We look so differently towards that Promised Land compared to our early Christian brothers and sisters. Our steeples, our necklaces, our Bibles, our hymnals, our Christian iconography holds one of the most dreadful instruments of execution ever devised as the most prominent symbol of our faith. In the early centuries we were mocked and ridiculed because our savior died in such a ghastly and dishonorable way. The cross was laughable and foolish. The fish was adopted as our first symbol, representative of the mission Jesus gave us to be fishers of men.

If any symbol should be the focal point of Christianity, the empty tomb is about as good as it gets. We should be thankful that the Reformers were adamant, about 500 years ago, that Jesus isn’t on the cross anymore. That was a step in the right direction, to finally take him down, so that the reality that there is a second part to that story can firmly take hold.

But the ghastly cross hasn’t gone away. That is because it holds value. It represents a moment in time when the whole of creation was changed. It partners with the empty tomb to be the greatest thing that has ever happened and ever will be, short of creation itself.

Fortunately, the whole Church (that being the whole of Christianity by ecumenical council or consensus) has never in its history taken it on to define what the cross is or exactly what it did. This has been deeply wise. Leaving that door open has allowed the cross to be something like an onion. There are totally separate layers, totally separate theories. When they come together, they make something beautiful. That’s why the cross has enduring value. The mystery, the way so many competing theories fit together, the richness of it all makes it a sight to behold.

Atonement

Why a cross? What did the cross do? Why did Jesus have to die on a cross? Why did Jesus have to die? Did it have to be such a gruesome death? It would be really easy for somebody to be a faithful churchgoer their whole life and still be tripped up or flummoxed by these questions.

When we consider the effects of the cross, the name for such pondering is the ‘theories of the atonement.’ Atonement is something that is emphasized in the Book of Leviticus. Moses prescribes that annually there must be a day of atonement when the high priest shall go about the tent of meeting (or Temple in later times) and offer a pretty long laundry list of sacrifices “because of the uncleannesses of the people of Israel and because of their transgressions, all their sins.”(Leviticus 16:16) The day of atonement was made to cleanse the people (Leviticus 16:30-31):

Leviticus 16:30–31 ESV

For on this day shall atonement be made for you to cleanse you. You shall be clean before the Lord from all your sins. It is a Sabbath of solemn rest to you, and you shall afflict yourselves; it is a statute forever.

The English word ‘atonement’ comes from a interesting place too. It’s the combination of two Greek words from Acts 7 where the life of Moses is being recounted (Acts 7:23-29):

Acts 7:23–29 ESV

“When he was forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brothers, the children of Israel. And seeing one of them being wronged, he defended the oppressed man and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian. He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but they did not understand. And on the following day he appeared to them as they were quarreling and tried to reconcile them, saying, ‘Men, you are brothers. Why do you wrong each other?’ But the man who was wronging his neighbor thrust him aside, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’ At this retort Moses fled and became an exile in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons.

When Moses went to the brothers and tried to “reconcile them,” earlier English renders those words ‘at onement.’ Understanding where the word ‘atonement’ comes from gives us a preliminary glimpse of what the cross is being considered to do.

For the past two millenia, there have many ideas put forth for what the cross did. Through the centuries those ideas have coalesced into about 4 or six workable theories that have gained traction, each of them vetted by different supports in Scripture. God is more complex than to have one simple answer to such a big question.

The first theory up for consideration is the most simplistic and perhaps the least fulfilling. It has never really been championed in classic Methodist doctrine, but it may in fact have been the most popular notion of the 20th century. Regrettably, some bodies of Christians, when considering the cross, never never get any deeper than this theory. Certainly you’ve heard it crop up before, that Christ is to be lifted up as an example as articulated in 1 Peter 2:21, that we “might follow in his steps.”

In the cross, when we examine the moral influence (or sometime it is called moral example theory), we find that the sincerity of Jesus’ teaching was confirmed by his willingness to accept a martyr’s death for it. The cross was seen as an act of moral heroism, the ultimate example of love and patience in the midst of suffering. Jesus’ death was a moment in time that brought about positive change for humanity, acting as a catalyst to reform society.

The Problem that the Cross Solves is Ignorance

In each of the theories for Jesus’ death on the cross, there is an underlying problem associated with humanity, something that needs to be solved. The moral influence theory identifies that the problem with humanity is ignorance. Christ came into the world, fully God, fully man, in order to teach about how to live, how to act, how to treat other people. Even when things got ugly and other people didn’t like Jesus, he still said “Father, forgive them” and took death on a cross without compromising any of his ideals for how to act.

The champion of the moral influence theory was a twelfth century French theologian by the name of Peter Abelard. He makes the theory sound much deeper and more noble than most who have followed him:

through this unique act of grace manifested to us— in that his Son has taken upon himself our nature and preserved 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.

And we do not doubt that the ancient Fathers, waiting in faith for this same gift, were aroused to very great love of God in the same way as men of this dispensation of grace, since it is written: “And they that went before and they that followed cried, saying ‘Hosanna to the Son of David,’” etc. Yet everyone becomes more righteous— by which we mean a greater lover of the Lord— after the Passion of Christ than before, since a realized gift inspires greater love than one which is only hoped for. Wherefore, our redemption through Christ’s suffering is that deeper affection in us which not only frees us from slavery to sin, but also wins for us the true liberty of sons of God, so that we do all things out of love rather than fear— love to him who has shown us such grace that no greater can be found, as he himself asserts, saying, “Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Of this love the Lord says elsewhere, “I am come to cast fire on the earth, and what will I, but that it blaze forth?” So does he bear witness that he came for the express purpose of spreading this true liberty of love amongst men.

Buddah and Muhammad

Fascinatingly, there is a great deal of parallel between the moral influence theory and the emphases of many other world religions. Even if we haven’t been very exposed to Buddhism or Islam, most of us are probably aware that both the Buddha and Mohammad were regarded by their followers are first-class teachers (if in fact either of those characters even existed at all). We find that when we go down this road, and we elevate Jesus’ role as teacher, or moral exemplar to being his ultimate purpose, we’re left with a religion that cannot surpass Islam, Buddhism, or the rest of the buffet of options out there.

Luther’s River

Martin Luther’s criticism of the moral influence theory envisioned a watery scene. Imagine you’re on the bank of a river, where the roads and highways have ended. All you see is water ahead of you and you’re not able to get across. Would it help you to have a guide to point out to you that your goal is getting across? No, it wouldn’t. That wouldn’t help at all.

Others have also used the examples of water to critique the moral influence theory. If a friend is drowning in a lake of water, and another friend jumps in, saves the original victim, but perishes himself, the rescuer would be hailed as a hero. But the metaphor only works when there is somebody else to save. If instead, somebody goes in to a body of water, just to follow the example of the hero with nobody to save, the perishing of that person would be sheer madness or folly.

Christ Exemplar

For certain, Christ’s life serves as a shining example. There’s no doubt that he taught us how to live, the necessity of repentance, the beauty of the Law. We could do well striving to live more and more like Jesus. Let us take up our own crosses with as much patience and love. Let us love our enemies. Let us forgive those who wrong us.

But let us be left with the realization that the theory of lifting up Jesus as the ultimate or teacher can only scratch the surface of what the cross did. There are or were problem with humanity far greater than just ignorance. The cross has the capacity, like a layered onion, to deal with those other problems too.