CONTRA FATUM

Jesus with a sword in his mouth. Not in his hand. When we discuss the atonement there are two issues which seem quite unrelated. The one is the traditional discussion within protestantism on whether the atonement is limited or unlimited (i.e. did Jesus die for the salvation of all human beings, or only the elect?). The other is the question whether Jesus died as a payment to an angry God (protestantism) on the one hand, or whether he was God's ransom paid to death (not God) out of love, thereby defeating death, on the other (classical, pre-medieval Christianity).

“[...]are you not ashamed, you little clay doll, soon to be dust, blown up like a bubble with your own momentary puff, full of pride, all swollen with inflamed delusion and inflating your mind with empty conceit? Do you not see at each end the limits of human life, how it begins and where it ends? Yet you glory in your youth, you look to the blossom of your fresh years, and you boast of your full bloom, because your hands are strong for lifting, your feet agile for jumping, your curls blow about in the wind [...] Yes, perhaps you look even to your shoes, carefully polished with blacking and smart with extravagantly stitched lines, yet do you not look at yourself? I will shew you your reflection, who you are and what you are. Have you not seen in the burial ground the mysteries of our existence? Have you not seen the heap of bones piled on each other, skulls stripped of flesh, staring fearsome and horrible from empty eye-sockets? Have you seen the grinning mouths and the rest of the lim

“[...]how the Word becomes flesh; how life is mingled with death; how by his own stripe our calamity is healed; how by the weakness of the cross the power of the Adversary was overthrown; how the invisible was revealed in the flesh; how he redeemed the captives, being himself both the purchaser and the price (for he gave himself as a ransom to death on our account); how he died and did not depart from life; how he shared in the condition of a slave and remained in his kingly state.” (Songs, GNO VI, 255-256, ch. 8, p. 269)