Creation/Redemption

4. Redemption

So the first decision not to love God has been irrevocable apart from redemption:

Romans 5:6	"While we were still weak	Christ died for the ungodly."
vs. 8	"While we were yet sinners	Christ died for us."
vs. 10	"While we were enemies	we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son."
Matthew 9:12f.: "Those who are well don't need a doctor, but those who are sick do.... I didn't come to call righteous people, but sinners."

     It was a decision made by all humanity, however small the number of humans at the time, and it affected the whole cosmos around us. To redeem, God makes "a new creation" (2 Corinthians 5:17; Revelation 21:1). But by his grace the new creation includes the old creation. He does not discard or destroy the old creation. The original goal, the existence of creatures who can love (and are therefore "other wills"), is still sought. The possibility that the human creature will not love God obviously still exists and is carried out. Redemption is not the sort of deal that God offered Moses (in effect, "let me get rid of human rebellion and start over") and then did not carry out.
     God carries out redemption, in fact, by restoring to humanity that freedom to return his love. He thus makes it possible for people to escape deception by the powers of evil and thus to regain a story understanding of their existence: movement is now possible. The atonement is thus God's defeat of the powers of evil and restoration of freedom to human wills that have been enslaved to those powers.
     Freedom thus restored is real freedom. The restoration is universal, though the appropriation and exercise of it are not. God's goal of having his love returned still, and always, includes human freedom not to return God's love. Apokatastasis or other forms of universalism eventually eliminate this freedom from the picture.
     God has defeated the powers of evil by means that appear paradoxical in this world because of the conception of "power" that exists in this world under the control of the "powers." God did not defeat the powers not by exercising power, which would be to grant the truth of the lie told by the powers. *God defeated the powers, instead, by emptying himself, by adherence to his free decision not to use violence or coercion, adherence that has gone as far as the cross.¹ This seeming paradox follows the pattern of creation:

In creation	Similarly, in redemption
God placed limits on the exercise of his sovereignty	God in Christ "emptied himself"
(though he still had all his sovereignty),	(though he still possessed all that he had before),
to create those who could love him.	to restore our freedom to love him.
He thus exercised his sovereignty over the eschatological end of the story.	He will therefore be recognized eschatologically as Lord by all.

God continues to accomplish his goals by means that allow the exercise of the human freedom to reject him, and even to kill him.
Redemption is appropriated by those who accept the confession of the community of redemption as their own. The confession is, in fact, the one story of creation and redemption, where God has consistently acted paradoxically, when judged by the standards of the powers. Conversion comes when a person understands that story as his or her own and thus rejects the standards of the powers and the lie that subjection to the powers is inevitable and unavoidable. So the seeming paradox of God's manner of redemption extends to the manner in which redemption is appropriated by individual humans. There is a reversal of what in this corrupted world is expected because the myth of power is rejected: "the first will become last"; "only the sick need a doctor." Those who mourn a loss that others only gloss over are those who receive God's comfort. Romans 7-8: from frustration to certitude. Salvation is not won by grasping resources one already has (in analogy to Christ in Philippians 2 & 3; Luke 14).
But again, human freedom, even restored by the atonement, is not absolute. The decision whether to appropriate redemption is strongly influenced, even though not completely determined, by such factors as whether a person was raised in a Christian home and community or never heard the gospel or was incapable of understanding it in even the simplest way. Again, absolute or nonexistent are not the only possibilities for such influential factors. Human community, that place where God's image is most clearly seen, has also become the setting that keeps humans from choosing redemption. I am inclined to give some weight to New Testament suggestions that judgment is in accord with knowledge, that is, to be generous with the benefit of my ignorance. Fortunately none of us needs to know precisely how to distinguish sheep and goats. That is a matter for God to deal with. And if there is any caprice in the distinction, it is not God's (see "Multiplicity and Extension" on predestination) but that of the world affected by human sin: all the hindrances in the way of a person's choice for salvation (their lack of freedom in that sense) are ultimately part of living in a world affected by sin.

Creation and Redemption

4. Redemption