In the last newsletter, we looked at the words "expiation" and "propitiation" and how each word’s use reflects upon the nature and character of God. We found the word "propitiation" paints a picture of an angry God to whom sacrifice must be offered to appease His anger and reconcile Him to humanity. The word "expiation", however paints the picture of a loving God who provides a sacrifice to cover sins and reconcile humanity to God. We found "expiation" to be consistent with the revelation in the Bible of the God of Israel's loving action toward humanity; and, we saw how the use of the word "propitiation" reflected the despotism of pagan gods such as Molech, whose worshippers believed they must burn their children in fire to appease Him anger.

As we can see from the example of Molech, the idea of an angry god who sought bloody sacrifices existed prior to the advent of the Church. It was Gnostic philosophy, however, which was at least partly responsible for finding a doorway into Church doctrine with the concept of a God who delighted in such sacrifice.

According to Walker's A History of the Christian Church (4th Edition) the Gnostics perceived reality in terms of two distinct, parallel worlds: the spiritual and the physical. "The light-world is made of spirit (pneuma), whereas the lower world is made of soul (psuche) and matter (hule). By the same token, the worlds are headed by two different deities" (page 64). In Christian Gnosticism, the Lord God referred to in the Hebrew Scriptures is the "Fashioner (Demi-urge)" of the lower, physical world. According to the Gnostics, the Lord God "is a copy – a kind of second rate imitation - of the mind from which the spirit world and its inhabitants [the Gnostics] came". One inroad into the Church for Gnostic philosophy came around the year 139, when a man named Marcion "joined the Roman [Church], making it the substantial gift of two hundred thousand sesterces for its charitable work, and began teaching his own understanding of the Gospel, which was based on an interpretation of the letters of Paul" (page 67). After reading Paul's letters and comparing them to Hebrew scriptures, Marcion concluded "that the God of the Mosaic covenant [the covenant with Israel through Moses] and the God of Jesus and Paul were two quite different things. The latter was a God of love and mercy. The former was a God of harsh justice – arbitrary, inconsistent, and even tyrannical" (page 68). Parallel to Gnostic teaching, Marcion concluded that the God of the Hebrew scriptures "must be seen as a second, inferior deity, distinct from and opposed to the true God" (page 68). Though the Roman Church eventually rejected Marcion's teaching, which resulted in his excommunication and the return of his money in 144, Marcion left with a healthy group of followers and established churches which competed with the mainstream Church into the fifth century. More importantly his teaching, which might be summed up in the phrase "God of anger / God of love", influenced the mainstream Church to the point that we can still see clear and pervasive manifestations throughout Christianity today.

One such manifestation may be seen in the Christian Doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Often, within the framework of this doctrine, the Father appears as Marcion's God of "arbitrary justice"; the One who demands that justice be done - that is, humanity must be eternally separated from God in the lake of fire for their sins. On the other hand, the Son appears as Marcion's God of "love and mercy"; or "sweet Jesus" who graciously dies to appease the wrath of the angry Father so that humanity may be saved from God's wrath.

In this framework, Jesus is co-equal to the Father and, in a practical sense, the Father and the Son operate independent of each other: a transaction takes place between the Father and the Son in which the Son offers His blood to appease the Father's anger and reconcile the Father to humanity. While, with the backing of centuries of Christian tradition, this transaction may sound reasonable, it does not stand up against the test of the Scriptures. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus is careful to always place the Father in a position greater than His own. Jesus says, "I am the true vine and My Father is the vinedresser" (John 14:1) and "I go to the Father; for the Father is greater than I" (John 14:28b). This is important because Jesus says He only does what He sees the Father doing and whatever the Father does, these things the Son does also (John 5:19). From these statements we can see that if the Father demands sacrifice to appease His anger then Jesus will do the same thing. And, if we see in Jesus love and mercy, then we must confess this is only a reflection of the love and mercy of the Father. The truth is that the God of Israel is "compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and faithfulness; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin, yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity on the children and the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations" (Exodus 34:6-7). It is these same characteristics, then, that we can expect to see in His Messiah, Jesus. We must realize that any attempts to divide the name and attributes of God between the Father and the Son falls short of the unity that the scriptures are careful to represent. The Father as the loving One who offers up His Son on our behalf and the obedient Son who, in all things, even death, submits to the will of the Father and who is the complete image of the invisible God.

In the next article, we take another look at the teachings of Christianized Gnosticism to discover how they have effectively replaced the concept of the Kingdom of God in Christianity today.

[ Published: August 1994 ]