Atonement and Gethsemane

a comment I added to
http://bycommonconsent.com/2012/01/22/atonement-and-mormonism-cultural-over-belief-and-a-poll/

The author of Luke-Acts portrayed a very saintly Jesus who never lost his cool, and seemingly out of nowhere, in Lk 22:43-44 we have him needing the help of an angel and sweating blood. IMHO, the f13 group of manuscripts place these 2 verses, as well as the pericope adulterae, in much more logical places within the gospels. Even then, we still deal with the possibility of a fraudulent insertion.

Outside of that scripture, other NT references to Christ's blood atonement seem to refer directly to the cross. And the meaning of said atonement seems to vary from author to author. Luke seems to indicate that God will vindicate us after we feel guilt for our sins (recognizing our guilt via Christ's innocent death), and seek forgiveness, are baptized, and live a saintly life thereafter. Christ's death only "atones" with the likely late addition of Lk 22:19b-20. (Elsewhere, Luke seems to intentionally rewrite or remove references to Christ "atoning" with his death: Lk 23:47 vs Mk 15:39, Lk 22:26-27 vs Mk 10:43-45. Seems like Luke prefers the perspective that God had the power to forgive all along). Paul indicates that all are guilty, and Christ's atonement reconciles us to God if we believe in his resurrection / participate with him in the resurrection through baptism.

The Book of Mormon says Christ will bleed from every pore (literalizing the "as it were" of Luke) because of "his anguish for the wickedness and the abominations of his people" (Mosiah 3:7), not necessarily because of taking upon himself their sins at that point. It could reasonably fit the role of strong apprehension at what is about to take place, similar to the rest of Christendom. The anguish seems to come in large part due to knowing the true nature and consequences of wickedness -- exactly the kind of which Christ is about to experience (and the Book of Mormon makes clear in Alma 28:14 and throughout, that needless death, destruction, and loss follow sin). Alma 7:11-12 jumps straight from His going "forth, suffering pains, and afflictions, and temptations of every kind" to his taking "upon him death". It seems there that his sufferings were the experiences of mortality, experienced through his life as a mortal rather than something extra happening in Gethsemane. The big deal in this regard throughout the Book of Mormon seems to be that God Himself will choose to become mortal and experience the afflictions of mortality, whereas nowadays we take for granted that a God would become mortal (because after all, aren't mortals gods in embryo?) and maybe thus interpret that God had to do something extra special, like suffer every last pain and wrong in the universe in Gethsemane, for it to be all that special. Alma 7:13, to me, indicates that in His role as a sacrificial substitute, He takes upon Himself our sins, as He dies in our place. The point is driven home in Alma 34:8ff, that since God Himself sacrifices His life ( = His atonement), the sacrifice is thus infinite and eternal, and thus accomplishes everything it needs to.

Moving on, D&C 19 introduces some new ideas, and leaves plenty of room for some interesting interpretations. 19:16 leaves room for the possibility that God suffered "these things" once for all, and v.17 indicates to me that those who sin must suffer in the same way. Verse 18 indicates the type of suffering required of the unrepentant is the same kind of anguish Christ experienced in Gethsemane (it may be argued, not the physical side effects). It follows from above that this anguish is knowledge of what might have been versus what is, due to wickedness. As Joseph Smith later said, "A man is his own tormentor and his own condemner.... The torment of disappointment in the mind of man is as exquisite as a lake burning with fire and brimstone. I say, so is the torment of man." (HC 6:314).

I don't think that such anguish really has to do with atonement per se. I don't know why such anguish was so intense immediately before the atonement happened on the cross, but it certainly makes a few points clear. One is that it points to the importance of what Christ did for us, so that we need not feel such anguish. Instead, we can be forgiven of our sins and have things righted so that the gap between what is and what could have been no longer smarts. (I tend to think of the "cosmic" nature of atonement from Judaism wherein sin reverses God's divine ordering of the cosmos, and leads to chaos, and the blood of the atonement, as applied to representations of heaven and earth in the temple, restores the divine order once more). Another is that suffering has its place, but so does joy. Christ was certainly capable of fully comprehending and mourning the effects of sin at any time of His life, but He chose to do so only at the end, in preparation for what was to come. It's great to know that we need not dwell on the negative.

I fear we mythologize sin, and suffering, in church culture. In turn the nature of the atonement has been complicated in a harmful way. We turn an infinite atonement into an incomprehensible one. Whereas, the only "incomprehensible" thing mentioned in the scriptures is the joy the sons of Mosiah experience in their missionary work (Alma 28:8). And it's incomprehensible to me why we've done this. As if complicating God brings us nearer to Him (which is the approach *ahem* that classical Christianity seems to take).