Adrian and Dave Warnock on the Atonement

So far as I know, no, they’re not related.

Adrian is concerned with the suggestion that anything in the Bible might be culturally conditioned. Wake up and smell the coffee, Adrian! Practically all of Hebrew scriptures is about leading people from here to there. The narrative is built around the exodus, about physically moving from here to there, and then that becomes a metaphor for spirituality. On what basis would one imagine that what God taught them would be anything other than culturally conditioned?

But there is explicit scripture for this as well:

I also gave them statutes that were not good, and judgments by which they could not live. — Ezekiel 20:25, my translation

The whole context of that verse is worth studying, as is the entire book of Ezekiel. In fact, looking at Ezekiel and Jeremiah as they deal with the Babylonian exile is a theological exercise well worth the time. The exile did not occur with its theological context all ready to go. These prophets, and 2nd Isaiah after them, had to build that context in the people’s mind. The success of this enterprise is demonstrated by the survival of Judaism.

I think Paul reflects this somewhat with his concept of the law as a schoolmaster (Galatians 3:24). God’s revelation is not always intended to be eternal in the form in which it was given. Even Jesus, God in the flesh, had a temporal context in which he spoke and acted.

Dave Warnock, however, responds to this in somewhat more detail and with some excellent scriptures. I commend his post, Sub-Biblical arguments against Steve Chalke to you for study and thought.

Now that you did that (you did go and read Dave’s post, right?) let me just comment that one doesn’t honor scripture by pretending it is something it is not, and was never intended to be. One honors scripture, I believe, by taking it as it is, as much as one is able.