I read the last fifty pages of a book by Garry Wills, What Jesus Meant, yesterday in the emergency room as my three-year-old received fluids intravenously. In these pages, Chapter 6 and on, Wills recounts the final days of Jesus' earthly life: the raising of Lazarus, the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the betrayal by Judas, Gethsemane, Jesus' sacrificial death and how we benefit eternally by it.

On the eve of Holy Week, in the wake of the publication of the gospel of Judas, at the side of my son's hospital bed, the parallels between the words of these historic events and my present circumstances nearly made me cry. Days before, I felt like Mary in the pietà whenever I carried my little boy around the house. I carried him everywhere. He was too weak to walk. And he is weak again even after a night in the hospital.

The soteriology, beginning on page 114, in this slim, devotional book is compelling. Wills lays aside Anselm's image of an angry God and, quoting Girard, insists that violence is not cured by violence. Most of his soteriology is based on Paul's letters which all but lack the "logic of appeasement sacrifices" [p 116]. He tells a personal story:

My young son woke up with a violent nightmare one night. When I asked what was troubling him, he said that the nun in his school had told the children they would end up in hell if they sinned. He asked me, "Am I going to hell?" There is not an ounce of heroism in my nature, but I instantly answered what any father would: "All I can say is that if you're going there, I'm going with you."

Reactions to his personal story:
(1) Wills had been in seminary with an eye towards the priesthood but left. He draws spiritual insight from his personal interactions with his immediate family.
(2) As many issues as Wills may have with the institutional church, he sends his children to Catholic school where, presumably, the sisters still say scary things.
(3) Rationally speaking, how can Wills join his son in hell? How can he make God send him there?

But, on that last question, I knew the answer because of my present situation. I knew that I would be with my son all night, to see him through this sickness. Telling a parable from Chesterton, Wills shows that we may talk of God rescuing us from ourselves and from the consequences of our errors and sins. But, we ought not think of our salvation by Christ's sacrifice as appeasement or propitiation.**

** I know this is a contested point, especially wrt the translation of the Bible into English. The Catholic Bible uses “expiation” instead of “propitiation” in the following NT verses: Rom. 3:25, Heb. 2:17, 1 John 2:2, 1 John 4:10, for the reason given in footnote 8 on verse 25: “this rendering is preferable to ‘propitiation,’ which suggests hostility on the part of God toward sinners. As Paul will be at pains to point out (Romans 5:8-10), it is humanity that is hostile to God.” While the English words may in fact be synonyms, it is a significant aspect of Catholic theology that God is love, as Benedict’s first encyclical proclaims.