A Phenomenological Theory of Atonement
By: Nathan Smith
Tags: Christianity, Philosophy, Mormon, Spirituality, Religion

The French artist Gustave Moreau’s “Christ in the Garden of Olives” (c. 1885–1889) reminds me a good deal of something I like about classical Chinese art: the latter was known for its nature shots, wherein, if humans feature at all, they are off in a corner or otherwise not at the center. One could compare that to a good deal of European art, which placed the person at the very center. The difference is that classical Chinese art — expressing Taoist and Buddhist ideas — saw the human subject not at the center of nature, but as a part of a holistic whole of which everything is a part.

Though obviously not influenced by classical Chinese art, it seems to me that in this piece Moreau is drawing on a similar concept, though in Moreau’s piece Christ is nested not in an idyllic nature. Instead, the air is bleak, the atmosphere suffused with dread. This makes sense, given the scene is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, presumably just prior to his arrest and execution. In some of the Gospels, Jesus is here depicted as wrestling with the death he knows is coming (eg, Mark 14:34). The Greek term for his suffering (agōnia; Luke 22:44) is one used for athletes before a match. It describes Jesus’ ultimate dread as one of anticipation, a natural death anxiety triggered by his own imminent fate. He’s also depicted as suffering a good deal more, of course, before and especially after this moment, physically, emotionally, psychologically.

Though much of that suffering is, of course, outlandish and unimaginable, none of it is supernatural; which is to say that none of the things Jesus experienced are entirely outside of our own capacities for suffering. Violent deaths are unfortunately not unheard of in our era. And the general sufferings of having our bodies harmed, our preferences thwarted, and our inevitable deaths projected to the fore of our conscious attention are hardly unique to Jesus’ time or situation. Perhaps it’s not so much the degree of Jesus’ suffering that is unique.

In Mormonism, the Book of Mormon repeatedly describes Jesus not only suffering in a general sense, but as experiencing the very suffering of every creature capable of suffering (eg, 2 Nephi 9:21). The descriptions provided are not comparative to, but reflective of our suffering. What interests the Book of Mormon, it seems, is not that Jesus suffered tremendously or even unimaginably, but that he suffered what every human being suffers — what we might call the natural vicissitudes of life as a conscious being. With that in mind, Moreau’s “Christ in the Garden” seems to add a finer point to the idea: that suffering is natural to the world which produced us, in which we live, of which we are inescapably a part, and back into which we will dissolve as we arose.

The earliest Christians seemed to have experienced Jesus’ death and resurrection first as rejection by humanity and subsequent vindication by God (Acts 3:13, 5:30, 10:39–40). The understanding to follow from that, perhaps drawing on the more militaristic messiahs of the era, was one of conquest. They saw Jesus as having overcome something in his death and resurrection (Acts 2:24, Galatians 3:13, 1 Peter 2:24), which they described in varying terms such as “sin and death” (eg, Romans 5:17, 1 Corinthians 15:57). The Book of Mormon, too, uses these terms (eg, Mosiah 21:30; Alma 12:16, 22:14), as well as others, such as “temptations,” “pains,” and “sicknesses” (Alma 7:11).

What’s intriguing is that, while Jesus does ostensibly overcome these experiences, he begins his conquest by first leaning into them. Returning to that scene in the garden: in the midst of his suffering, Jesus prays, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will” (Mark 14:36, English Standard Version). The subjective preferences of a conscious being are what distinguish pain from pleasure. Suffering, by its very nature, is an experience we do not want to have; otherwise it would be pleasure. And yet we all suffer, and we will continue to suffer to some degree.

In the Garden, Jesus experiences the full anticipatory force of his imminent fate. He knows what’s coming. Many of us, in similar circumstances, may be naturally inclined to flee from that: we may try to ignore it, lose ourselves in fantasies, or list all the reasons we shouldn’t have to go through this. Jesus does otherwise. The Letter to the Hebrews says he was tempted like all of us (Hebrews 4:15); what was exceptional about Jesus was not supernatural immunity to the natural desire to be free of suffering, but the extraordinary courage he exhibited in setting aside that desire and facing the inevitable — in a word, reality. As John Cobb demonstrates in Jesus’ Abba, Jesus not only experienced a deep relationship with God, but expressed this through the affectionate Aramaic term abba, a tradition which carried on to later Christians (Galatians 4:6, Romans 8:15); the reality to which Jesus sacrifices his will is not the harsh lord or taskmaster of popular religious imagination, but a father — a papa. Borrowing from Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s translation of the Quran, we may substitute here “the Real” for terms such as “abba, father” and “God” in order to further foreground the content and intention of Jesus’ sacrifice here.

The Book of Mormon describes Jesus’ suffering as granting him empathy and compassion for others (Alma 7:12, 3 Nephi 17:7; cf. Alma 26:37, 34:15–16; “bowels of mercy,” a Hebrew idiom for a heart swelling with the suffering of others); it also describes his experience as “having ascended” and “breaking the bands of death” (Mosiah 15:9), overcoming “that awful monster, death and hell” (2 Nephi 9:26). In this way, I believe Moreau’s piece captures the essence of the Christ event (what Mormons typically call “the Atonement”): not a glorious victor emerging unscathed from an empty tomb or an iridescent redeemer transfigured at the right hand of God; but a person no different from ourselves, huddled under a tree in waiting for his captors and executioners, allowing himself to sit with his own fear, anxiety, and dread. Allowing himself to be present for the very worst experiences his life will give him, the very things we ourselves to some degree or another experience, and from which we may be inclined to flee in apathy, entitlement, or maladaptive daydreaming. In this sense, then, Jesus is indeed victorious; he is even, perhaps, a conqueror, though not of life, but of everything that may tempt us to live our lives only in part (cf. John 16:33). He overcame every natural inclination to divide life into “yes” and “no,” and to cling to the former while fruitlessly attempting to escape the latter; he achieved this victory by ceasing to divide and instead granting the whole of life — in all its givenness — an unequivocal and unilateral “yes.”

However, far from a once-and-for-all moment, the Christ event is not redemptive by its own virtue or nature; further, it is not achieved by metaphysical means per se, but what one may call psychological or phenomenological ones. The New Testament describes the feats of Jesus as not at all beyond humanity (cf. Luke 10:37); indeed, others may even surpass him, he says (John 14:12; cf. D&C 130:10–11). The Book of Mormon articulates this in the Nephites’ ritual complex as taking upon oneself the “name of Christ” (2 Nephi 31:13, 21; Mosiah 5:8–10, 14–15; Alma 46:15, 18, 21; 3 Nephi 27:5). With tongue only somewhat in cheek, one may say that Jesus is not so much extraordinary as he is extra ordinary. The superlative character of Jesus is not that he is unlike anything we could ever be, but that in his full embrace of his own life — especially at the most pivotal moment when any one of us (Jesus included) may be most tempted to reject our experience — Jesus did not “shrink” (cf. D&C 19:16–19). In so doing, he put on full display the very terminus of human potential, intimating greater strength and courage beyond even his own (Romans 3:21–26).

In two weeks, on the first of December, Advent will begin. As Christmas approaches, many Christians will contemplate what came into the world in the birth of Jesus. As the narrative goes, Mary was a virgin when she conceived Jesus — an odd story to modern ears. Yet whether this story is literally so is rather irrelevant, as its symbolic force persists. The human mother conceives a child with the divine father — a mythic signifier. What could it mean? That through the very womb of the mundane — of all we are used to, all that is ordinary and “makes sense” — will be born something altogether extraordinary. Undercutting the dualism of a heaven “out there” and an earth “down here,” or any temptation to demean our conscious experience by stringently dividing time into “this life” and the “afterlife,” the story of Mary and her extraordinary child invites us to look within ourselves for that messianic capacity. Experiencing the very Spirit which sealed Jesus and Mary to God — that drive which carried Jesus into, rather than away from suffering; and which conceived in Mary that same savior — we too may conceive within ourselves and bring forth into our world something messianic.