- Dec 23, 2012
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Moral-exemplar theories of the Atonement say that we are redeemed by Christ by following the example He set. In this basic form, such theorizing leads easily to Pelagianism, so an updated version adds the caveat that Christ's energy is transferred into us to make us capable of following His example, so that without Him we could not have lived up to our appropriate divine ideal in the first place.
Here, however, is another way this all might work out. Suppose that indeed, "all" that Christ did to save us was teach us the Way. As if deontic gnosis were what He gifted us with. You might object that the Way is something inside all of us, to be known by all of us from inside, and I could reply that yes, the kingdom of God is within you, but more to the point, that's not how He taught us. You see, I know from working in the field of education that you don't teach someone just by listing abstractions in sequence for them. So if Christ had simply gone through all the a priori aretaic logic there is for us to infer things with, He'd have helped us understand almost nothing that we might understood alone anyway.
However, I think it's Dostoyevsky(sp.?) who says that the proof of Christ's divinity was His ability to individually relate to all those around Him, to involve Himself so utterly in their particularity (Hannah Arendt attributes this belief to him). This is reflected, for instance, in His spirit of cosmopolitan grace, His respect for the haecceity of every person. Now so far as our moral knowledge consists in both general principles and particular decision-making, then supposing that "all" of us in sin committed this sin by corrupting the origins of that knowledge, then Christ was proving by His innocence and justice what ought to be done by Him in the particular circumstances He faced. That is, He did what had to be done for those who falsified their moral code's application to specifics, in order to the reconstruction of their understanding.
Here, however, is another way this all might work out. Suppose that indeed, "all" that Christ did to save us was teach us the Way. As if deontic gnosis were what He gifted us with. You might object that the Way is something inside all of us, to be known by all of us from inside, and I could reply that yes, the kingdom of God is within you, but more to the point, that's not how He taught us. You see, I know from working in the field of education that you don't teach someone just by listing abstractions in sequence for them. So if Christ had simply gone through all the a priori aretaic logic there is for us to infer things with, He'd have helped us understand almost nothing that we might understood alone anyway.
However, I think it's Dostoyevsky(sp.?) who says that the proof of Christ's divinity was His ability to individually relate to all those around Him, to involve Himself so utterly in their particularity (Hannah Arendt attributes this belief to him). This is reflected, for instance, in His spirit of cosmopolitan grace, His respect for the haecceity of every person. Now so far as our moral knowledge consists in both general principles and particular decision-making, then supposing that "all" of us in sin committed this sin by corrupting the origins of that knowledge, then Christ was proving by His innocence and justice what ought to be done by Him in the particular circumstances He faced. That is, He did what had to be done for those who falsified their moral code's application to specifics, in order to the reconstruction of their understanding.
