Playing by the Rules

Dorothy Sayers once said that the incarnation and atonement prove that, whatever God may be up to with His world, He is determined to play by the rules.

Paul would have agreed. Stephen Finlan writes (Paul’s Cultic Atonement Metaphors, 101), apropos of Paul’s use of cultic terminology in 2 Corinthians 5 that “God’s generosity is
unbounded, but it seems that God is bound to use cultic forms—even making an
innocent man to become sin—to accomplish God’s ends. The scapegoat
mechanism is a given; it is already in place when God uses it. This places the
cultic form on the divine level. Paul seems to share ancient instincts about cult
as the interface between the human and the divine, and of God acting always
through a cultic pattern. Reconciliation and righteousness apparently require the scapegoat mechanism, the victimization of Christ, who dies for all. Thus,
God reconciling the world with Godself is simultaneously a personal and a cultic
action. God’s personal attitude is emphasized in vv. 18–20, but the cultic
nature of God’s action is shown in the making-sin and the magical
status-reversal for ‘us.’”