Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.09.2007, Blaðsíða 18

How does it work? Without forgiveness of sin, the guilty cannot live, for
they have lost all their self-identity and consequently also their self-respect.
But there is no forgiveness without atonement. Yet atonement is not possi-
ble for human beings, because the wrong, that has been done cannot be
made undone or “made good” by any human act. Only God can reconcile
guilty people with their past. How? The Suffering Servant of Isaiah takes
away the sins of the people by “carrying the people’s sin”. By ’carrying”
and “bearing” human sin, God transforms their aggressions into his suffer-
ing, giving them a new beginning of life. Our God is a “bearing” God
(Bonhoeffer), not ruling from above but carrying from below, bearing us
“on eagle’s wings”.
Christ is the brother of the victims, and the redeemer of the guilty. He
“carries” on the one shoulder “the sufferings of the world” and on the other
shoulder “the sins of the world”.
Both sides of Christ belong together for the redemption of the world,
but they are not equal. Victims have a long memory, for the traces of suffer-
ing are deeply etched into their souls and often enough into their bodies
too. People who have committed the injury always have short memories.
They don’t know what they have done, because they don’t want to know.
They are dependent on the memory of the victims if they want to see who
they are and be reconciled. They must learn to see themselves with the eyes
of their victims.
Reconciliation is not an individual act between “me and my God” but
a communal act between God, the perpetrators and the victims of evil.
When I wrote THE CRUCIFIED GOD I turned the traditional ques-
tion upside down. The question traditionally asked is the soteriological
question: what does the cross of Christ mean for our redemption? My
question was the theological one: What does the cross of Christ mean for
God himself? And I came face to face with the pain of God the Father of
Christ who suffered with him. For if Christ - son of God - dies with the
cry of Godforsakeness, then in God the Father there must be a correspond-
ingly profound experience of his bereavement by his beloved Son. A cer-
tain Peter Dudeney from Boston wrote me recently: “I remember, while
reading THE CRUCIFIED GOD, being struck by the realization that