Redemption 2

I'm going to have to put "Christian Theology" in the label box below and I almost hate to. This is as much wordplay as anything, but who knows what it will grow into?

Also--and I really am serious about this part--one of the wonderful things that happens when I find a good strong metaphor and ride it until we are both exhausted, is that I sometimes get to my own home by a route that is entirely strange to me. Now THERE is a buzz I recommend for anyone. You are entirely alone and in entirely strange territory and then you come around a little bend and there, right in front of you, is home. That has happened several times in this exercise.

I started all this back during Advent, when I noticed that Jesus' parents took him to the temple to "redeem him." Knowing that he is "the Redeemer" in our theology, it struck me as odd. The reason he needed to be "bought back from God" was that he was a first-born male--not a first-born male child, but a first-born male anything. They all belonged to God by virtue of being born first and God, who passed over all the first-born of Israel when they were in Egypt, has a permanent claim on them. As a rationale, that seemed oddly weighty to me; fundamental.

As I began to pursue the word--in Greek, there is a collection of words beginning with lytr- with meanings like "ransom," and "redeem"--I discovered that the reason given for the redemption of an Israelite in slavery or any of the land of Israel that had been bought by an Israelite from another tribe of by a Gentile, was that the Israelite and the land of Israel belonged to God through the Covenant. The act of redemption is not really about them. It is about restoring to God what belongs to God, both the land and the people.

Now is the time I climb on the back of the stallion and he takes me wherever he wants to go.

So if, according to the Old Testament, Israelites must be redeemed so that God is not defrauded of his people, and if, according the the New Testament, all who put their faith in Jesus Christ are "his people" and "belong to him," then on what grounds should we speak of the redemption of any others?

The big time theological question is often put as "Who then can be saved?" See Mark 10 among other places. That's not the question I am asking. Were I the most narrow of fundamentalists or the most broad of universalists, I would still need to ask the question of rationale. If others, beyond Israel in the Old Testament and "the church" in the New are to be saved, on what gounds. Do they "belong to God" more than by creation? Are they "children of God" in some way so that, as the Israelite slave, their redemption is "not about them?"

It's a puzzle and there are a lot more where that one came from. Let me try one more. In the tidy little blueprint I devised to help me think through this, there are five elements: initial condition, redeemer, ransom, current owner, and final condition. In the case of the Israelite slave ransomed by a kinsman, that would be: slavery, redeemer, payment, slave owner, freedom. It's so palpable; the steps are so discrete.

But there is a lot of New Testament language that travels in the wake of these images. Here's one. Paul says, in 1 Cor 7:23, "You have been bought at a price; do not be slaves now to any human being." The context is confusing. Paul is addressing Christians in the church at Corinth, some of whom were free and others of whom were slaves. His argument here is that the members should stay in the social condition where they currently are. Why? Well, those of you who are actual slaves are metaphorically "free in the Lord" and those of you who are actually free are metaphorically "slaves of Christ."

I'm not objecting to the theology, but the argument is so convoluted that it makes me yearn for the bad old days when "a slave" was a person who had been bought by someone else and when "free" meant that you weren't a slave any more.

It could be argued, as Paul does elsewhere, that we are "slaves to sin" and that we are redeemed from sin to be slaves of Christ. But this changes the momentum of "redemption" entirely. In the bad old days (BOD?), "free" meant "free from." You were not a slave anymore; you could go where you would and do what you could. The weight of Paul's use is on "free to." In the BOD, you were a slave of sin and were not free to live as you wanted to live or as you should have wanted to live--Paul was a pastor; he had to deal with both those conditions--but now you are free to live as a member of the body of Christ and of the family of God. "Free from" is only a precondition. It's "free to" that Paul wants to talk about.

The Israelite kinsman who redeemed a slave would have been dumbfounded if, on every day after becoming free, the former slave went back to the home of his old master and took up again the work of his servitude. But, as I said, Paul was a pastor and he did see the newly freed of his congrgations go right back to their servitude. He was incredulous. Or at least he pretended to be. "How can you DO that!?" he asked.

It's a good question.