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(1/2) Analysis: The Weakness of God and the Iconic Logic of the Cross by John Caputo

I practice astrology;

voodoo;

am a Pentecostal snake handler;

an evangelical fundamentalist;

Baptist;

Catholic; etc. 

As baffling as it may seem, many people treat their pet superstitions as a badge of courage and normalcy, just look at athletes. I made a sarcastic joke at the end of the last post about how absurd it is to think that Someone repenting on his death bed is somehow more moral than substitutionary atonement, since both are monstrous compared with secular humanism.  There’s a comic strip about an ax murderer getting in to heaven because he repented and the anger of his victims there for such injustice.  Goicoechea takes this logic to it’s absolute conclusion as a Universalist Catholic that we should pray for Hitler to repent as he is currently in purgatory and all flesh will experience the salvation of God (Luke 3:6).

One of the great mysteries of the bible is how we get two very different notions of appeasing God’s wrath: One is substitutionary atonement or fine payment sacrifice as was ubiquitous in the ancient world, and the other is a figurative atonement where a repentant, contrite heart eases the God’s wrath.  I noted last time the connection seems to be found in Aristotle’s Rhetoric.

Aristotle does discuss precisely this idea in his Rhetoric (Book 2, Chapter 3), in the section on what produces calmness or mildness (the opposite of anger).

In the context of explaining how anger is appeased, he writes (in a standard translation):”And [people become calm] towards those who admit and are sorry for a slight; for finding as it were satisfaction in the pain the offenders feel at what they have done, men cease to be angry. Evidence of this may be seen in the punishment of slaves; for we punish more severely those who contradict us and deny their offence, but cease to be angry with those who admit that they are justly punished.”

He immediately follows this with practical advice: one should first deliver a verbal rebuke or preliminary chastisement, “for even slaves are less indignant at [actual] punishment of this kind.” You might think of God sending the Babylonians to destroy the first temple to punish the Jews, which would be followed by eventual reconciliation between God and the Jews.

Aristotle uses the everyday social example of a master punishing slaves (a common Athenian household scenario) to illustrate the general principle about anger.

Physical punishment (kolasis) or material compensation is not what fully calms the anger. In fact, Aristotle notes that masters punish more severely those slaves who deny wrongdoing or contradict them—i.e., beating alone, without remorse, does not suffice and may even intensify the response.

The key appeasement comes from the offender’s admission of guilt combined with genuine remorse or regret (metamelomai—the painful grief or “sorry” feeling the slave shows). Aristotle describes this as providing “satisfaction” through the pain the offender himself feels. The slave’s visible contrition acts as a kind of emotional “payment” or restitution that the master accepts, allowing the wrath to subside. This is exactly the “figurative atonement” I described: the remorse itself functions as the appeasing mechanism, not external acts like money or corporal punishment alone.  Since everything the slave has is the property of the master, they really have nothing else to give but remorse.

This fits into Aristotle’s broader analysis of emotions (pathē) in Rhetoric Book 2. Anger (orgē) arises from a perceived slight and seeks revenge; calmness comes when that desire is satisfied in some way—here, through the offender’s humble acknowledgment and self-inflicted emotional pain. The slave example is presented as a concrete, observable illustration of the principle (not a hypothetical or minor aside), drawn from ordinary social practice.

Modern discussions of atonement, repentance, or divine wrath sometimes reference this passage for exactly the parallel I note: the slave’s remorse as a non-material “currency” that pays what beating or payment cannot.

Aristotle himself is not making a theological point here—he is simply analyzing human psychology for rhetorical purposes (how speakers can calm or excite anger in an audience).So, in short: yes, this is directly from Aristotle’s Rhetoric 2.3, and it matches my description closely. The remorse of the slave provides the figurative atonement that eases the master’s wrath.

Likewise, The claim that “Plato must have read Moses” or that Plato was “Moses speaking Attic Greek” was primarily maintained by early Jewish and Christian apologists. Numenius of Apamea was a 2nd-century CE Neopythagorean philosopher is often credited with this sentiment, famously asking, “What is Plato but Moses speaking Attic Greek?” (a phrase also commonly attributed to Clement of Alexandria).

Clement of Alexandria was a late 2nd-century Christian theologian argued in his Stromata (Tapestries) that Greek philosophers, including Plato, borrowed their best ideas from the Hebrew scriptures.  Eusebius of Caesarea in his work Preparation for the Gospel (4th century CE), he argued the case in great detail, attempting to prove that Plato acquired his knowledge of God and law from Moses.

These early thinkers believed this to explain the parallels between Platonic philosophy and the Genesis narrative, specifically regarding creation and the divine.  Modern scholars often note that there is no primary, direct evidence that Plato ever read or had contact with the Torah. Conversely, some contemporary research by authors like Russell Gmirkin has proposed the opposite: that the Jewish authors of the Bible were influenced by Greek thought, including Plato’s. This drastically changes the dating of the Bible.  Certainly, borrowing in one direction or another would explain how Aristotle’s idea of a figurative appeasement of a master by a servant in the Rhetoric would explain the notion of figurative pleasing of God with a contrite heart rather than sacrifice in the Old and New Testaments.

Of the great social critiques of antiquity, we see the ridiculous lampooning of Jesus’s trial by the Jewish elite constantly transgressing Jewish custom (e.g., meeting on Passover eve) with loophole after loophole to negate this is like contemporary lawyers who are experts in the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law.  And so, like Plutarch’s crucified dead Cleomenes converting onlookers to worship him, the dead Jesus converts the soldier at the cross (the gospels must be second century).  We likewise see the death of the forgiving Jesus in Luke as a literary pair with the death of forgiving Stephen in Acts which led to Paul’s transformation.  Caputo notes:

 The figure of Jesus dead on the cross, it turns out, is not only an icon of the invisible God but also an unforgettable image of the power of the visible world. To meet hate with love and offense with forgiveness, to meet power pure and simple with the power of powerlessness, is mad and dangerous business, which can cost your life. But it is not a question of which of two powerful forces—the power of God and the power of the world—will prove itself more powerful in the end, as in some Manichean war between two competing powers. On the contrary, in the image embodied on the cross, the infatuation with power is exposed as idolatrous and this by means of the completely scandalous idea of divine forgiveness, which is at best, at most, the power of powerlessness. That, on my accounting, is Christianity’s, or rather Jesus’s, stroke of genius. Zlomislic, Marko; DeRoo, Neal. Cross and Khôra: Deconstruction and Christianity in the Work of John D. Caputo (Postmodern Ethics Book 1) (pp. 35-36). Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

It’s an imperative to society to do better, and it worked as we no longer execute noble Socrates-es or sinless Jesus-es – although for Jesus/Paul they wanted to prepare their followers to fit in and act righteously in the coming Kingdom, because for them the world was passing away.  And so, the message here can be taken for what it is, even if as I do you don’t subscribe to the supernatural superstitious part of the story.

Caputo points to the creation story where God does not create reality out of whole cloth but works with what is already there. Such a God can influence and shape but simply doesn’t have the power to eliminate all suffering. Sending Jesus is a sort of catalyst for justice, such as when a group of kids are pulling the legs off of daddy longlegs insects for fun when one of the kids’ moral compasses awakens and the excess of evil opens her eyes to how monstrous she is being.