Compassion Theory of the Atonement

Posted on March 13, 2010
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I’ve not done many religious oriented posts of late. I wanted to return to Blake Ostler’s compassion theory of the atonement which he discusses in volume 2 of his Exploring Mormon Thought series: The Problem of Theism and the Love of God. This was by far my favorite volume in the series, although there is a bit in it I disagree with. Since BCC had up a post on Ostler and Levinas I figured I’d make a few comments as well.

Blake’s compassion theory comes out of the very etymology of the term “compassion.” Com meaning “to be with” and passion meaning “to feel with.” I’m not sure the “with” is part of the real etymology, mind you, since our passions often are better described as towards rather than with. But compassion definitely is a kind of being with other people. And the atonement in LDS thought is definitely caught up in God being able to feel what we feel.

Where I think many will have trouble with Blake’s view is a position nearly akin to a Pelegian position. That is the point of Christ’s atonement is to bring about a psychological state in us due to our making a judgment about events. You can see this in Blake’s summation of his theory.

The purpose of the atonement in LDS scripture is to “bring about the bowels of mercy” so that God is moved with compassion for us and we are moved with gratitude to trust him by opening our hearts to him. The result of the Atonement is that we are free to choose to turn back to God, and he is free to accept us into a relationship of shared life.

Now I think the psychological reading of Blake is misleading precisely because he has a notion of “energy” that avoids the charge. “…Christ literally feels our pain because the real energy of pain that we have held onto has been released by us through repentance to be transferred to him.” (237) The psychological charge can only be sustained if one has to take this energy as psychological. Blake recognizes that there is a debate over whether to take energy as metaphoric (258) and sees energy as real. “…there is a spiritual center to our being that is real and eternal and that is characterized by its energy or light.” (259) Further he takes the idea of transference to Christ as literal.

The problem I have with Blake’s view (beyond this nebulous idea of light and energy) is the problem of omniscience. Now of course Blake places big limits on God’s knowledge already. (No foreknowledge) However it seems like Christ’s experience isn’t explained here. Why does his knowing our experience enable this transference of “energy”? Why does our repenting enable this transference whereas if we don’t repent God has the same experience but nothing transfers? The knowledge of God seems extraneous if there is this transference.

To avoid the psychological charge God’s knowledge seems to be a necessary preparatory state to enable us to enact the transference. I think Blake’s model entails the psychology to merely be what “holds” the energy within us. That is in some unconscious way we transfer this energy.

Needless to say many will see Blake’s theory of energy as the biggest issue in his theory.

The damage that we do to ourselves through sin is literally stored in our bodies in the form of painful memories and disease. Our bodies manifest the energy of such pain in the form of heart disease, high blood pressure, ulcers and all kinds of psychosomatic illness and manifestations of our neuroses. The pain of a guilty conscience is real.

I think for many, the psychological reading of this is more plausible than the ontological form it takes in Blake’s actual theory. However it is important not to read Blake as espousing a form of extreme Pelegianism. Rather his theory is the idea that Christ feels all our feelings (experiences these energies) and they transfer if we repent.

While most Mormons buy the idea that Christ had this experiential moment that was a key part of the atonement and I think most think something real happened (i.e. non-psychological) I don’t think the rest quite makes that much sense. That said, I think the elements of compassion that Blake focuses in on most would agree are important parts of the atonement. The common, more legalistic, views of the atonement fail precisely because they miss these shared feelings.

One way of taking Blake’s theory is that elements of psychology are themselves ontological real. Given his view of Libertarian Free Will couched in process theology I think why he adopts this view makes a lot of sense. For those of us who tend to be more suspicious of Hartshorne’s metaphysics there’s less to recommend the theory although I do think it points to a fruitful avenue of investigation. The significant question for me is how to avoid the danger of psychologizing the Atonement if we reject the controversial metaphysics within the compassion theory. That is can we form a compassion theory that is neither psychological nor process theology?