What is the Good News?
I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be.
In the First Reading today, in his inaugural sermon, St. Paul concludes by summarizing the Good News, as follows:
We ourselves are proclaiming this good news to you
that what God promised our fathers
he has brought to fulfillment for us, their children, by raising up Jesus,
as it is written in the second psalm,
You are my Son; this day I have begotten you.
What is the Good News? God has fulfilled what he promised by raising his Son: “You are my Son; this day I have begotten you.”
If this seems a bit strange to you that’s because in the last five hundred years, because of the influence of voluntarism and nominalism and legalism (i.e. bad philosophy) come home to roost in the Protestant revolt, a heretical conception of what Christ came to do has taken over.
(To be fair, it was because of the sins and abuses of the members of the Church and errors they had taught that this revolt happened — and the Lord has used that revolt, which could not keep itself from sin and abuse and error, to “reform” the Church, even when those reformers separated themselves from the Church, tragically but not finally, for God will achieve a reunification of those who seek the Truth but are divided on account of human sin in his time and in his way, one day. I should add that as for what follows here, “Protestant” is an inexact description, used for the sake of convenience. There are in fact many different Protestant theologies of redemption, just as there are many different Protestantisms, some closer to and some farther from Scripture and Tradition.)
That heretical conception, which emerged during the time of the Protestant revolt, says that what happened on the cross was tricking a vengeful God who otherwise would have condemned us, the objects of his wrath, for our sins. Jesus took our place, taking on our guilt and substituting himself as the object of divine wrath, paying the penalty but somehow still — presto chango! — surviving because of his divine nature. If we believe in him, somehow his righteousness is imputed to us, covering our wickedness, and as long as we keep believing, we will be let into heaven, where we will enjoy eternal bliss, whatever that means, in no way a consequence or reward for what our earthly life was.
In effect, the death of Christ on the cross becomes all-important, because it cancelled out our guilt. What comes after the death of Christ is far less important, if not incoherent: the Resurrection remains as a kind of vestigial fragment. If one is a liberal Protestant, it remains as a kind of myth that the pre-scientific early Christians invented, valuable for symbolic purposes only. If one is a conservative Protestant, it remains as a kind of proof that Jesus was divine and could not really be killed, showing that his penal substitution for us worked, but of little importance outside of apologetics. Either way, Christ’s death on the cross becomes more important than the Resurrection, which shows we have gotten it backwards.
Many deleterious effects have come from idea. Among many, but worst of all, is the consequence that the Life of the Spirit that Christ came to give us is not received by Christians as it should be, or not at all. In effect, we continue living the old life of fear and resentment and despair: the new life that Christ came to give is not obtained.
Penal substitution is plainly unbiblical, and rests on a misunderstanding of a small number of verses in Scripture that were misinterpreted and set above the rest of Scripture, the rest of which is eventually ignored or forgotten. (What is Redemption? by Fr. Philippe de la Trinité is the best book on this topic.)
The Catholic understanding of redemption is different.
Christ indeed took our place, but not in order to deflect or absorb the divine wrath. He took our place to begin a New Creation as the New Adam, to do for us and in us what we, in the first Adam and in our own lives, did and could not do, having been enslaved by sin. But because God loved us and mercifully willed to bring good out of evil — not magically, by a trick, because evil can only lead to evil, but morally, by freedom, bringing good out of good, until evil no longer remains — he sent his Son to overcome evil by a sacrifice of love, not skipping over it but reversing its effects from within. If sin is selfish pride taken to its highest degree, then the cross is selfless love surpassing that height, changing the heart of stone to a new heart of flesh. The first Adam tried to save his own life, seizing the gift of life as if it were his own, trying to take the place of God; the New Adam gave up his life, did not seize it but emptied himself, surrendering it, obeying God and trusting in him.
In a word, it was Love that saved us, Love that showed how far Love goes if it can; and a love of eternal power goes all the way in order to make all things new.
God could have saved us by mere eternal decree. But it was better, befitting who God is and not just what he can arbitrarily do, that he saved us through his Son doing what should have been done to begin with, and in a way that does not erase or cancel all the history of sin but redeems it, changes it, inasmuch as it can be transformed. Whatever cannot be transformed, the residue of Satan and the evil wills that follow his lead, will glorify God’s justice through eternal punishment in hell. But the cosmos and all that God made (predestined, rightly understood) to be his will be transformed.
That transformation was always God’s purpose to begin with. That transformation is not interrupted by sin, put on the shelf while a legal trick is performed until we can “get into heaven.” Rather, that transformation becomes the means of repair. Deification, becoming a sharer in the eternal life of the Son, “partakers of the divine nature,” is both the description of what we were created for and how we are saved from eternal death.
What Jesus did on Easter Sunday, therefore, is the culmination and perfection of his Passion. Indeed, we should not even look at the cross the same way, because of the Resurrection. We see it now as glorious, brilliant, the Tree of Life.
From all eternity, Jesus has been the good son. He always is receiving everything from the Father, not seizing what he has been given, but always receiving it in gratitude, an eternal Eucharist, making the gift of everything he has in return in Love. That Love the Father and Son share (itself a divine person, but perhaps better described as a Drama than an Individual, so real that it eternally subsists just as the Father and the Son eternally subsist) is richer and deeper and more wonderous and expansive than all the cosmos, which is only its reflection, a share in that glory. God made us to share that glory, to be sons and daughters in the Son, receiving a gift wholly beyond what we deserve — but doesn't Love go that far? O happy fault, that showed how far Love would go, even when the beloved had turned away in pride and hatred? How greatly God is glorified by healing sinful creation through love and not destroying it through wrath!
You are my Son; this day I have begotten you.
What the Father did on Easter Sunday was prove his faithfulness, the source of all blessing. He proved his faithfulness through the long preparation of the covenant with Israel, the template of his plan to redeem all mankind, we who must learn in our freedom, like Israel did, the hard way, to trust the Father, to stop trying to seize the gift. He proved it by the New Israel, his Son, who shows that the Father’s plan was not a bad one but always the best one, the risk of making creatures who could fail, but also who could learn their lesson and be forgiven and redeemed.
Our free participation in God’s plan — the culmination of which is the Resurrection of Jesus, the historical instantiation (i.e. Incarnation) of his eternal birth (being begotten) from all eternity — our choice to follow Jesus and receive the transformation of holiness, becoming saints, the long and difficult work that brings such a glorious result: this proves God’s faithfulness.
The Passion and Resurrection of Jesus is our destiny. He is the way, the truth, and the life. He came to make all things new. He is that New Creation, and we (and everything that God made for himself) are made new in him.
“For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me; and this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up at the last day.” (Jn 6:38-39)
“But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead came also through a human being. For just as in Adam all die, so too in Christ shall all be brought to life, but each one in proper order: Christ the firstfruits; then, at his coming, those who belong to Christ; then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to his God and Father, when he has destroyed every sovereignty and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death, for ‘he subjected everything under his feet.’ But when it says that everything has been subjected, it is clear that it excludes the one who subjected everything to him. When everything is subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who subjected everything to him, so that God may be all in all.” (1 Cor 15:20-28)