As Holy Week progresses some blogs (Fr. Jake among others) are visiting the usual theologies of the atonement. Responses tend to fall along fairly predictable lines…

So–I’ll throw something completely different in the mix but in a similar vein: a thought about Lent. As you know, the First Sunday in Lent always features the Temptation account. Under the old system it was always Matt 4:1-11. Gregory’s sermon is a fascinating one. He skips his usual line-by-line approach, preferring instead a more thematic approach. What he does is to talk about the Fall in the Garden. Adam, he says, fell prey to three temptations and so humanity fell under the devil’s control. By way of contrast, Christ–the second Adam–was tempted not in a garden but in a wasteland. There he faced the same three tests but instead of being overcome, overcame. Christ in that exchange conquer the devil’s three greatest temptations by purely human means, preeminently in the correct and appropriate interpretation of Scripture.

By constructing his interpretation this way, Gregory shows the temptation episode to be one of Christ’s salvific acts. While it may not be atonement in the conventional sense, it certainly does cut to God’s victory over the devil and the liberation of humanity. Furthermore, it highlights the salvific acts that occurred throughout Christ’s life–not just at the end.

Think on these things, on the imitation of Christ and the cultivation of virtue in these final days before Triduum…

Update:  More people have jumped in on this conversation on other blogs. I just want to hold one minor thing up for our recollection… We’re the Episcopal Church, right? The one where it’s often said that we have no fixed theology, we just agree to worship with the same texts? Yeah, well, whenever things heat up between the substitutionary atonement and moral influence crowds, I like to remind them that there really is a classical Anglican position on this and here it is:

Almighty God, who has given thine only Son to be unto us both a sacrifice for sin, and also an ensample of godly life; Give us grace that we may always most thankfully receive that his inestimable benefit, and also daily endeavour ourselves to follow the blessed steps of his most holy life; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

That from the 1662 BCP, appointed for the Second Sunday of Easter. You’ll find in in the ’79 book at Proper 15…