Diagnosis

I love the show House. I only watch it sporadically, but it's always fun.

The character Gregory House is loosely based off of Sherlock Holmes, detecting disease instead of crime.

House is a diagnostician. People come to him with the most confusing cases and he figures out what's wrong with them, often in the craziest ways.

The diagnosis dictates the treatment.

In our atonement conversation, we spent some time thinking about the cause of our separation from God: sin.

But it's too easy to say that the problem is sin. How does sin separate us?

Working from Ephesians 2, we looked at three different answers to this question, each of which map onto a historical theory of the Atonement.

Sin separates us by empowering the devil, killing us spiritually and making us guilty before God.

To say it another way, the problem of sin is located in the devil, in us, and/or in God.

Each of these locations, each of the facets on the problem has provoked a number of different historical responses.

In the early church view, Christ made the atonement happen by conquering the devil and the forces of evil. His resurrection was a sign of his triumph.  He was our champion, our soldier.  This approach to the atonement came to be known as the Christus Victor, Christ the Conqueror.

Over time, people started noticing another layer of imagery in the Biblical language about the atonement.  The problem of sin isn't merely located with the devil and his power.  It also is located with God.  Controversial, I know.  But our sin makes us guilty before God's justice.  We become debtors, criminals and God is honor-bound to punish us.  Christ made the atonement happen by placating the wrath of God, paying our debt and suffering in our place.  He is our lawyer, our advocate.  This approach to the atonement came to be know as Penal Substitution.

In our current day and age, people are clicking along with another theory of the atonement, one also found in Scripture.  The Bible tells of sin breaking us, killing us spiritually.  The problem is me.  And you.  Our sin renders us incapable of receiving divine love, of engaging in relationship with God.  Christ makes the atonement by healing and restoring our broken souls. He is our doctor, the Great Physician. This approach to the atonement is called Healing.

Theologians debate which of these views deserves prominence.  But they all have a deep flaw.

What happens to the soldier after the battle is over?
What do we do with the lawyer once the trial is over?
What does our relationship with our doctor look like once the illness is over?

If Christ is our soldier, lawyer, or doctor, we don't need him once we're saved.  How, then, does our theology impact our ethics?