Actuality of Atonement: Chapter Three

In Chapter Three, Gunton addresses the metaphor of victory for the cross. Here we see the benefit of metaphor in advancing knowledge and refection on seemingly disparate objects, as a cross could never have been seen as a victory in the first century for the one who died on it.

Gunton begins by affirming that the victory of the cross is both human and divine. The ministry of Jesus is the divine victory over sickness/death/demonic, ushering in the Kingdom of God. The fact that the combination of physical and spiritual is seen in this victory only continues the tight connection between Old and New Testaments, where physical saving from Egypt follows the mythological victory of God at creation, brooding over the deep.

Gunton then explores the language of demons. After the New Testament, the early church becomes more comfortable in speaking of The Devil, an individual being that Jesus conquered by the cross. We see the development of the ransom theory, with Gregory of Nyssa's notion of the fishhook. Gunton says that this is an example of a metaphor being taken too literally to become a myth. He notes that Paul's language of principalities and powers is about earthly powers, but one's that "cannot be described in everyday empirical terms" (65). (Gunton also includes "the law" as a metaphorical way of referring to human religious bondage for Paul; I think he's wrong, but I think he's stated quite well the wrong position. Of course, this is published before the NPP starts taking off.)

The question is whether or not demonic language needs to be demythologized or whether it is irreducibly metaphorical. Gunton opts with the latter: evil and demons is a metaphor necessary to describing the irrationality of evil that captures the momentum it builds and its control over people. So, the New Testament can describe political powers as created good, but also becoming demonic. The cross is a victory over the demonic because it is the conclusion of Jesus' life and ministry refusing to exercise his power demonically; refusing to engage violence with stronger violence. The cross is the final confrontation of Jesus' life with the demons that waged war against him, with him refusing to fall under their influence.

This means that victory, the metaphor, doesn't just change our picture of the cross, but that it itself is changed. What is true victory? It "is the kind of thing that happens when Jesus goes to the cross" (79).