Religion: Why Did Jesus Die?

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And what will they take away from this unusual dovetailing of Christ narratives? It's always dangerous to predict religious behavior, but it seems likely that before traveling into the uplifting realms of Easter Sunday, they will spend a little more time in the dire valley of Good Friday. When the Roman Catholics among them hear the priest recite the verse from Isaiah--"He was wounded for our transgressions ... by his stripes we are healed"--they may remember that it was with those words that Gibson commenced his reimagining of the scourging of Jesus. When many Lutherans engage in the meditative adoration of the Cross and when congregants at even the least liturgical Protestant churches sing, "Let the water and the blood/From Thy wounded side which flowed/Be of sin the double cure," they too may more vividly imagine the Cross and the blood. And they all may be more inclined to ponder a question whose answer at first seems as though it should be as simple as "Jesus loves me, this I know" but in fact has divided theologians and clergy for centuries, with no end in sight: Why did Christ die?

That is, not who (on earth) killed him or even exactly how much he suffered. But what was the cosmic reason for his agony? What is its purpose, its divine calculus? How precisely does his death, usually referred to in this context as the atonement, lead to the salvation of humanity?

The atonement "is the centerpiece of Christianity, and it's what distinguishes it from all other religions," says Giles Gasper, a religious historian who has written a book about one of the topic's great medieval interpreters. Without at least an intuitive comprehension of atonement, a believer stands little chance of making sense of the faith's promises of redemption and eternal life.

Yet, oddly enough, in many churches the issue of why Christ died is inert, if ever-present. One reason is that any deviation beyond the rote "He gave his life for us" quickly plunges into metaphysical formulations for which all but religious scholars lack the basic vocabulary. "Most people don't live in the theological nuances, including clergy," says Dr. Philip Blackwell of Chicago's First United Methodist Church. And even if we did, says Jack Graham, pastor of the Prestonwood Baptist megachurch in Plano, Texas, a full understanding might still elude us. "There are many mysteries of atonement that we won't understand this side of eternity," he says. Discussion is also stunted by American Christianity's ongoing romance with a friendly, helpful, personal Jesus, which has made detailed discussion of his violent death an increasingly difficult pulpit pitch. Says theologian and broadcaster R.C. Sproul: "You don't hear people preaching about the atonement anymore. I don't think there's any great difference there between Protestant evangelicalism and the mainline churches either."

Well, not until six weeks ago. Thanks to the Gibson movie, "the atonement is back on the agenda of American culture," says Stephen Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University and author of American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon. "This is a major shift. Atonement has been Belief No. 10 for Americans. But they care more now. This is Crucifixion Christianity."