The Myth of Redemptive Violence

I was looking at our music book and struck by one of the phrases, "the ransom has been paid".  The chapter 11of "Living the Questions - The Myth of Redemptive Violence" challenges this ransom theory.

• the myth of redemptive violence is at the heart of the Babylonian Creation epic called the Enuma Elish.  It tells how the order of the universe is established through "god on god" violence - defeated female deity being dismembered and her corpse strewn about to create various elements of the cosmos.
• as opposed to Biblical witness of Yahweh creating human beings from the dust of the earth and animating them with the very breath of God. 
• the god Marduk from the Babylonian epic executes a fellow god to use his blood to create human beings to become their servants.  A divine hierarchy order was established based on violence and the threat of violence.
• Wink calls it the "original religion of the status quo" - it legitimates power and privilege and hence perpetuates the value of ideas like peace through war, security through strength, and the idea that fear can only overcome through domination.
• this myth has infiltrated our culture, that even our language is overwhelmed with a continual drum-beat of violence, phrases like"shoot me an email" to the "war on poverty" to "he's the bomb" and even "fight for peace" are simply to "die for"; expressions like "to beat a dead horse" by definition is to convey futility that implies if the horse was alive, violence would lead to success.
• St. Augustine out of his sense of guilt and self understanding he began idea of "Original Sin" in the 4th & 5th centuries.  He seek absolution for his early uninhibited sex life and it's not a surprise he would connect sex as the primal transmission of sin from one generation to the next!  That means that the sin is passed on to every generation - surprisingly enough this notion of original sin is not found in the Bible!
• But to make his point, Augustine looked at Roman 5, where Paul set up the argument that Adam's sin necessitated Jesus' sacrifice in order to appease God.  Our inherent sinfulness was so great that God could only be appeased by the violent spilling of blood.
• Paul's efforts have left a lot of room for multiple theories to emerge:
• Satisfaction Theory - derived from ancient Jewish ritual practices (including the Day of Atonement) where animals were sacrificed to satisfy God's need for blood.  The Canaanite religions were not the only ones to sacrifice their children to appease Baal and other gods.  There are number of Biblical examples of Judean Kings and leaders who also ritually sacrificed their children, much to Yahweh's displeasure.  This is popular amongst the Campus Crusade's "Four spiritual laws", the Roman Catholics' sacrifice of the Lamb of God on the altar, and the hymns of American Protestanism : "there is a fountain filled with blood", "Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?" "What can washed away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus".
• Substitution Theory - The death of Jesus was not a sacrifice but a pay-off to God.  Human beings are so sinful that we deserve a horrible and bloody death but Jesus loves us so much that he was willing to step in and be our substitute.  Anselm of Canterbury, monk, philosopher, archbishop, exile and saint, 1097 created this substitutionary atonement or vicarious satisfaction.  His theory is based on the feudal society in his time where feudal lords were unable to forgive so someone has to pay.  It's incorrect on levels extending from cross-cultural anthropology to ordinary everyday language.  The problem is not the words atonement or satisfaction but with the words substitutionary and vicarious.  The death of Jesus was not a divine substitution for punishment due to all of us. It's bad theology and history!
• Ransom Theory - God has to pay off Satan, through Jesus' death,  in order to win our freedom from the devil's sinful 'turf'.
• Victory Theory - not a payment to the devil (which is equivalent of giving in to terrorists), but a defeat in principle of the power of the evil.  Through Jesus' "obedience unto death" he showed he cold take anything that the devil could dish out.
• Moral Theory - Embraces the idea that the real point of Jesus' obedience and death was to provide an example for humanity to follow - to stay faithful to one's convictions even in the face of injustice, brutality, and ignorance.  The universe is structured to deal with consequences - and consequences are not punishment, they're just consequences.  Jesus had to deal with the consequences of his actions and so do we.