Crucifix
as icon of child abuse
As in the Garden so on Golgotha,
the Abrahamic god’s abusive parenting
is continued. Jesus’ death “satisfies” His Father
for the offense of Adam. This is a really strange and weird theology—articulated
most fully by St. Anselm—that comes to be the foundational
soteriology of the Christian tradition, that is, its theory of salvation.
It
is a common denominator belief shared by most Christian sects.
The “Satisfaction
theory” states that God the Father is “satisfied” by
Jesus’ agony on the Cross. (Satisfaction is also accounted
for in terms of a Divine Economy wherein Jesus pays Adam’s “debt.”)
The father-son relationship is the
interpretive model for this Satisfaction theory of salvation. “This
is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” Matthew 17:5
Would anyone want to say that a sane,
normal and loving father is satisfied in respect to how much
his son is tortured and suffers
the convulsions of crucifixion?
That at the
base of the father-son relationship there is a primal equation
of arithmetic justice? One that goes beyond
a tit for a tat and plunges into the perversions of
child abuse?
Meditating upon a Crucifix, isn’t there a place for the question:
What type of fatherhood is manifested here?
When pressed, Christian Abrahamics plug the phrase “divine
mystery” into
the gaping black hole which this question exposes.
But, remember that Big Stories are primal and culturally primary
communications.
Continue—Crucifix
