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Yesterday I wrote about the significance of the theory of evolution for the view of evil, particularly whether physical death is the result of human evil. Understanding Christian views on this topic requires some knowledge of the doctrines of creation and the fall, and secondarily of redemption. One of the most contentious issues in [...] Today I went on a sort of odyssey through a couple of theologically conservative blogs. My journey started at Adrian Warnock’s blog, where he has another quote from somebody supporting penal substitutionary atonement (PSA): While not denying the wide-ranging character of Christ’s atonement, I am arguing that penal substitution is foundational and the heart of the atonement. — Tom Schreiner, quoted by Adrian Warnock I quote this because I have been misunderstood on this point. My objection to PSA as I see it taught is not merely that there is more to the atonement than PSA, but also that PSA is simply one among many metaphors by which we discuss the atonement, and is not central. That, however, is not my topic. Following a link from Adrian’s blog, I read this interview with Tom Schreiner on Against Heresies, in which, after being asked how he would approach a student or professor who disagreed on this topic, he said: I would be patient with a student and try to persuade them of the biblical standpoint. Patience is initially the right stance for a professor as well. But if a professor comes to a settled conviction against penal substitution, he should be removed from his position in my judgment. In other words, accept penal substitionary atonement as the basis of forgiveness or get out. (You can find Dr. Schreiner’s quote on this in the interview itself.) Two additional recent posts, not to mention the name of the blog–Against Heresies–support the same approach, and I would hardly regard it as a particularly virulent form of the species. The blog’s mission statement says it’s a “thinking blog” and I note that the tone is much more constructive than some organizations and sites I encounter. The current dust-up over PSA, however, leads me to think just a bit. I’m quite certain that these folks believe they are fighting the devil. One must guard the standards lest false brethren come along and derail the faith. But it’s interesting just how frequently these false brethren seem to turn up, and how many of them are dedicated Christian workers, and even missionaries and evangelists. I have wondered once or twice why I bother responding to issues of the atonement, considering how far I am from the position of these reformed scholars. And yet I care about this issue, I care about the Christian faith, and I care about those in ministry who may pay a higher cost for marginal disagreements than I ever will. I am not suggesting that the Christian faith, or any community within it, should not have any boundaries at all. Community requires commonality, and commonality will require some definition, especially when the community is larger than a handful. At the same time, there is a level of doctrinal tenseness that can easily become destructive. At the congregational level, it can manifest itself in a critical attitude toward the less theological church members, such as those who might read the wrong books from time to time, or who listen to preachers from a different tradition. Here in Pensacola, I experienced it in connection with the Brownsville Revival. I personally have a number of theological issues with some things that occurred in connection with that revival. I could certainly debate quite a number of those points. But frequently new believers, or people who were becoming involved in church life for the first time, were cut down by the doctrinal watchdogs of their various congregations without a chance to work into fellowship. This sometimes came from fundamentalists. One student of mine was told he wasn’t saved because he had heard the preaching of the gospel from something other than the King James Version. But more commonly criticism came from evangelicals and even mainliners. There the issues were sometimes social. The behavior of people at the revival was embarrassing, and their theology lacked intellectual rigor. Thus rather than disciple people that came to them, other churches filtered people doctrinally and drove them out by criticizing the experience that had led them that far. On the congregational level, I think this type of speaking can be much more destructive than the errors it proposes to expose and root out. Rather than learning by studying and listening to the Holy Spirit, people are expected to jump through the appropriate doctrinal hoops, get their house in order, and then join a church. New members are looked upon as a threat, rather than as a blessing. Who knows what doctrines they have brought? Perhaps we should keep them from taking any position in the church until we have thoroughly checked them out! As an illustration, let me continue with the next post from Adrian’s blog, this one from C. J. Mahaney: . . . very small errors in a person’s understanding of the Gospel seemed to result in very big problems in that person’s life.” What about small errors in the presentation of the character of God? Are they important as well? If someone presents PSA in such a way as to display God as a vengeful tyrant rather than as the author of the plan of salvation, should I be just as worried about that? What if your terror of legalism results in someone believing they have permission to behave as they wish, ignoring ethics, again something I have personally encountered? Frequently, I see people who are very concerned with the most minor detail of the atonement who are completely unconcerned with the picture they give of God, yet this doesn’t seem to be a major issue for many who are very rigorous about doctrine in general. Mahaney continues, still as quoted by Adrian: . . . legalism is essentially self-atonement for self-glorification, and ultimately for self-worship. But in vigorously combatting their concept of legalism, it seems to me that this same group has gotten into a new variety of salvation by something other than God’s grace–salvation by correct doctrine. That is the notion that in order to be saved, one must understand some detailed set of doctrines with precision. In fighting legalism, I believe some have introduced this as a new form of legalism. I had such a person come to my house once. He concluded that he was concerned for my salvation. Why? Was it because I did not confess Jesus as Lord and Savior? No. It was because I failed to express the completeness of Christ’s work on the cross (in which I do believe), and repudiate works in vocabulary which matched his. That person was the product of destructive theology, and while repudiating works as a means of salvation, he was completely comfortable substituting intellectual understanding for works. Now C. J. Mahaney, who talks about the need to understand this precisely, is one of the authors of the Together for the Gospel statement, which, in Article XVI, somehow seems to make rejection of women in teaching roles an essential of the gospel. Is this also a boundary to be enforced? Actually I don’t need to ask that question. It already is a boundary enforced in many places, and is itself a travesty on the gospel, a denial of one of God’s purposes in it. I note with interest that so many people who come from a tradition that called for “the Bible only” now find it necessary to write length confessions, and then to enforce those on other people studying the Bible. It seems as though the Bible may not be quite as good a guide to faith and practice as they thought. One has to fence in the seminary professors lest they wander from the pasture, a pasture defined not by the Bible, but by doctrinal statements. Is this a problem with the Bible? Is it not rather a problem with over-defining Christian doctrine so that honest seekers after truth can no longer truly explore all the possibilities opened up by God’s multifaceted word? I firmly believe it is the latter. You see, when I read the comment by Dr. Tom Schreiner about removing a professor from his post for disagreeing on the issue of PSA, two words came to my mind: Academic freedom. Now a number of people will find it quite inappropriate that I bring this point up right here. Academic freedom, after all, is for secular institutions, not seminaries. In this country, we push academic freedom primarily for institutions that are government supported in some way. And let me be clear: I don’t question the right of private institutions in general, and religious institutions in particular, to set their own standards. I’m not suggesting that the government come in and enforce some kind of academic openness on seminaries. I don’t questions their right to do so, but I do question whether it is right. But in my view academic freedom is more principle than policy. When I read the works of a scholar who works at an evangelical school that requires endorsement of a particular doctrinal statement, I have a certain potential discount. It depends, of course, on the detail of the doctrinal statement. An institution might, for example, simply require that professors belong to their particular confessional group of churches. The more detailed the statement, however, the more I question. Could a professor at a college that accepted the affirmations and denials of the Together for the Gospel statement discover an egalitarian meaning in Galatians 3:28? (In practice I think there are a large number of evangelical scholars who do not merit such a “discount.” There are, however, a number of others who do, in my view.) I have previously discussed this in relation to the doctrine of inerrancy. Acceptance and rejection of inerrancy are not two equal platforms. In each affirmation from a Biblical writer that I consider I have the option of determining that it is without error–or not! A person who has signed a declaration in favor of Biblical inerrancy is restricted to discovering the explanation that supports inerrancy. I do not mean that nobody can both do good scholarship and accept inerrancy. There are many who do. The question is whether their belief in inerrancy is a conclusion they have adopted, or an external standard imposed on them. As a result, in trying to fight off the devil and “maintain standards” I believe that Christian institutions frequently fall into the trap of suppressing the mind. They are more concerned that the theological ducks line up in a row and quack in unison than that the ducks survive and grow. It’s a distinction that is difficult to maintain in theology, which lacks the empirical testing of a scientific field. I would suggest coming down clearly on the side of tolerance. Jesus reserved his most vigorous criticism for those who upheld the doctrinal orthodoxy of the day. I found Theo Geek via Peter Kirk, and it was a very worthwhile find. Peter links to a number of posts in Andrew’s review of Pierced for our Transgressions. Having read them all, let me commend them to you. (I must disclose that I have not yet read PFOT. I do intend to as [...] I spent a little bit of time today reading Eastern Orthodox material after some comments on previous posts caught my interest. So here’s an interesting quote that I found. I wonder how this sounds to other western ears? That Augustinian conception about a compulsory salvation or damnation is something inconceivable for Greek Patristic [...] I want to promote some comments so that more people see them. Mark Olson (Pseudo-Polymath) commented on an earlier post: If you have the time, could you relate this statement First, no matter what stream of Christianity one belongs to, the atonement comes out somewhere near the center. With this: On the subject of the atonement, the Eastern Orthodox tradition has some quite different ideas to the Protestant tradition, and the whole paradigm of salvation tends to be very different. Many of the essential protestant concepts such as original sin, penal substitutionary atonement, and salvation by faith are not present, and instead other very different ideas tend to be utilized. The Eastern Orthodox church traces its tradition and teachings very strongly to the writings of the church fathers of the first millennia. Thanks, whether or not you choose to take me up on my question. Not take the question on? This is the sort of topic I live for, especially because it takes me well out of my normal lines of study. The link above is to a category, but the quote comes from a most interesting post, Guest Post: The Doctrine of the Atonement in the Early Greek Fathers. As I commented later in that thread, I read straight over the link, and thus asked Mark for more links. Here is my original response: I may need some clarification on the question. My argument for several weeks has been that the atonement is not defined by penal substitution, but rather that PSA is one metaphor among many and not the central metaphor. When I say atonement is near the center, I do not mean PSA. I see the incarnation as absolutely the center, expressed liturgically through the Eucharist and ethically through the two laws (love for God and love for neighbor) which get their Christian meaning from the incarnation. Atonement follows immediately from the incarnation, and can be described in various ways. Penal substitution isn’t even the only version of substitution. As an aside, were I asked to explain why Jesus had to die as Brian McLaren was, I would say that the incarnation would be incomplete if Jesus didn’t share all characteristics of his brethren, and experiencing death is an integral part of that. Thus I am rather happy to hear that the Eastern Orthodox tradition does not use penal substitution. I would love to read some of what they do. Could you recommend some eastern church fathers I should read and particular references? I’m more acquainted with the western fathers, though friends often tease me that I don’t know anything that happened after 100 AD. They’re not entirely wrong, either. This is a subject I’m always happy to discuss. As noted, I withdraw the request for links, though additional material would be helpful. I would like to quote a section from that same blog post as follows: The basic paradigm of salvation universally held by these writers [Greek fathers of the period 100-400 AD] is as follows: 1. Humans have free will to engage in either vice or virtue, and the ability to become more or less virtuous over time. OK, this sounds a great deal like Pelagianism, another view for which I have expressed some sympathy, though not total sympathy. I’ll have to try to get more precise on the comparison. It looks to me like I would differ from this formulation on a number of points, though not nearly by as much as most evangelicals would differ. This formulation leaves substantially less room for acceptance of PSA even as one metaphor for atonement. I don’t think it changes the basic notion of having atonement, derived from the incarnation, somewhere at the center of Christianity. It simply uses different metaphors, both of which I recognize and accept, to describe how atonement takes place. I hope by promoting these comments to a new post I will generate discussion. I’m really terribly weak on my acquaintance with eastern church fathers, though I’m working on remedying that. Somehow it seems as thought advocates of penal substitutionary atonement (PSA) as the key model of the atonement (I’d prefer metaphor) can’t stay kind and respectable. I wonder why it is that those of us who think that one needs to consider the character of God in terms of love, mercy, and forgiveness as well as justice, and who are concerned with careless formulations, are somehow less pious. I was really not planning to post any more on this topic for awhile, but then Adrian Warnock quoted this from J. I. Packer: Since all this was planned by the holy Three in their eternal solidarity of mutual love, and since the Father’s central purpose in it all was and is to glorify and exalt the Son as Saviour and Head of a new humanity, smartypants notions like “divine child abuse”, as a comment on the cross, are supremely silly, and as irrelevant and wrong as they could possibly be. [emphasis (color) from Adrian's quote] But it’s not theologically educated opponents who are generally missing the point here. It is careless formulations that are being heard regularly in the pews as something very similar to cosmic child abuse. Some people like it, because it allows them to proclaim a tough God. They want the God of justice to put fear into the next generation. Others are driven away by it. It’s not the critics who have a problem here. It’s the proponents. I understand the trinity and the incarnation quite well. That’s why I’m disturbed by formulations that do sound very much like cosmic child abuse. It’s pointless for theologians who are writing for a lay audience to say things like “God’s wrath was poured out on his innocent son instead of on the guilty people who deserved it” and then complain that if people really understood the trinity, they’d realize it is really God pouring his wrath on himself. If people don’t understand the trinity–and you’ll find a crowd of folks in the pews who don’t–then they’re going to hear that sentence incorrectly and get the wrong idea about God. In fact, if they really do understand the trinity, I think they’ll have to see that PSA must be a metaphor. It elucidates part of the problem, but if you try to make it stand on all four, it just doesn’t fully make sense. Now not fully making sense isn’t entirely a bad thing. That just shows that a full understanding of the atonement remains outside our human grasp. If you want to call that a “smartypants” response, that’s your privilege and also Packer’s. But I think that dismissive attitude is dangerous. (Note that much of Packer’s article itself avoids the difficulties in phraseology to which I’m referring. He simply seems to ignore the problem of other formulations to which critics may respond. Of course, I still do disagree with him on making PSA central, but I do think he formulates PSA appropriately.) After having been annoyed by that quote, I also read this one by Peter Kirk. I think he deals well with Carson’s material. I would simply add that I prefer the word “metaphor” to “model.” “Models” need to be worked together into a single whole, or at least that is the feeling I get with the word. Metaphors can illustrate different parts and need not necessarioly stand on all four feet. It has probably seemed a little odd that I, as a non-evangelical, would follow the atonement discussions as closely as I do. To the extent that I have managed to do so, it has been for two reasons. First, no matter what stream of Christianity one belongs to, the atonement comes out somewhere near the center. If it does not, then I have to wonder if we’re talking about Christianity at all. Second, some of my best friends are evangelicals. Seriously, they are! I have been frequently told that I could be an evangelical if I wanted to, and I have even met people who call themselves evangelicals who are somewhat more liberal than I am. Nonetheless I prefer not to try to defend my use of a label for myself, so I’m going to stick with the twin “passionate moderate” and “liberal charismatic” labels that make so many people crazy, and allow others to define just what an evangelical is. I was interested in two posts by Adrian Warnock today. The first one dealt with the emerging church and the Emergent Village. There are a couple of points I want to engage in that post. The first is simply the statement of penal substitutionary atonement (PSA). Bluntly I think advocates of this position are either a bit careless with their vocabulary, or they do believe in a doctrine that is dangerously flawed. Adrian is doubtless right that this problem is one that is not limited to the UK. While it was not so public an issue, I was part of a discussion group in seminary in which we debated some of these issues, and my seminary days are more than several years ago. Since Adrian’s post consisted largely of an extended quote from an article by Brett Kunkle on Resurgence, I will quote and work directly from that article. I am operating on the assumption that Adrian quoted this article approvingly. The article covers a great deal of ground and does so very carefully and so far as I can tell, fairly. I should note that in making my own judgment of fairness, I am working from what appears to be a weaker knowledge of the Emergent Village (EV) than Kunkle’s. My response is to his comments, and not intended either as a critique or endorsement of specific EV views. Here’s the first key quote: . . . Carol, a Christian, answers with a summary of substitutionary atonement: “Well, I believe that God sent Jesus into the world to absorb all the punishment for our sins. That’s what the cross was all about. It was Jesus absorbing the punishment that all of us deserve. He became the substitute for all of us. As he suffered and died, all our wrongs were paid for, so all of us can be forgiven.” . . . [quote footnoted to Brian McLaren, The Story We Find Ourselves In (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003), 101.] Please note that I have grabbed a piece of a paragraph. In order to limit the size of the quotation, I’m making the dangerous assumption that you will check the broader context. My reason for quoting this is that, as stated by Carol, the fictional character in McLaren’s book, PSA would, in fact, be divine child abuse. This statement of PSA ignores the doctrine of the Trinity, in my view, and carelessly states the doctrine of substitution as though God found some other person, an innocent person and had that person absorb the punishment for the rest of us, making forgiveness possible. At the same time, the idea that such “absorption” made it possible for all of us to be forgiven is troubling, at best, in terms of theology. Do the advocates of PSA truly believe that God is universally locked into this Medieval sense of punishment and satisfaction, so that he will somehow believe that justice has been done when an innocent person has been punished? Do they believe that he is unable to create the universe in any other way? That short statement, without a broader context, displays an impotent God, caught off-guard by our sin, and unable to resolve the matter except through this odd mechanism of killing an innocent person. Yet this is a description I have frequently heard in churches. It is precisely how many older Christians understand atonement. I am in no way surprised that McLaren would have the character in his book find injustice here–it would be hard to miss–and would look for better formulations. In response, however, Kunkle quotes two scriptures: Let me say three things in response. First, does McLaren actually think Jesus did not know why he had to die? What about Matthew 20:28? “…just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” Or what about Jesus’ words to his disciples at the Last Supper? “And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.’” Surely Jesus knew why he had to die. One cannot read the New Testament and conclude otherwise. Now this is one of the things that disturbs me in these debates even more than someone’s position on the issue of the atonement. Texts are trotted out, and we are told to assume they mean a certain thing when they don’t mean anything of the sort. Matthew 20:28, for example, is not a PSA text at all, it speaks of a ransom. Discussing to whom the ransom was to be paid has generated a whole string of weird theories over the years, which illustrate the problem when an illustration or a metaphor is extended beyond its intended use. Barclay comments eloquently in the Daily Study Bible on the parallel passage in Mark 10:45. His whole comment is worth reading, but let me just quote briefly: He had come, He said, to give His life a ransom for many. This is one of the great phrases of the gospel, and yet is is a phrase which has been sadly mishandled and maltreated. People have tried to erect a theory of the atonement on what is a saying of love. It was not long until people were asking to whom this ransom of the life of Christ had been paid? . . . . . . Suppose we say that freedom can only be obtained at the price of blood, sweat and tears, we never think of investigating to whom that price is paid. . . . [Barclay, Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of Mark, pp. 268-269] The second text likewise simply tells us that the blood is poured out for the forgiveness of sins, but fails entirely to tell us why this was necessary, or even that the pouring out of blood was absolutely necessary, or how such atonement would work. The advocates of PSA are trying to make the mechanism of the atonement be the key issue, when it should be the fact of the atonement. God, however he did it, has made reconciliation possible. Certainly, the two texts Kunkle has cited do not challenge McLaren’s approach (or mine) in any way. It seems to me that there is a greater concern amongst certain people about not merely understanding the mechanism of atonement (a task I believe we human beings will never accomplish this side of heaven), but in making sure that the mechanism is understood in a specific way. In so doing, they are happy with statements that include the mechanism, Jesus dying for our sins, even though those statements impugn God’s character. In his second post, Adrian makes quite a number of comments. I simply want to look at two: As we finally draw near to the conclusion of this long-running series on the atonement, it has struck me just how the lines are being drawn. On the one hand there are those of us who feel PSA is essential to the Gospel. It’s not that we think it’s the only thing—or indeed that every Gospel presentation must major on it. It’s just that we think it’s essential, and that Gospel presentations can’t deny it. This is succinct, and I must state my disagreement. The mechanism of the atonement is never an essential. The fact is. There is no requirement for theological understanding as a part of salvation. Thus, while I can state that PSA, carefully phrased, is a valuable metaphor for atonement, I believe it is also a very dangerous one, because it can so easily be stated in such a way as to look like injustice and abuse. I would say that my position on this issue has hardened, because I truly had not been aware that there were so many careless, and in my view dangerous, statements of substitutionary atonement from people who ought to know better. Wherever you stand on all the debates that fly around the blogosphere, I hope we can journey together for awhile and learn from each other—if nothing else, we should at least be able to gain an accurate view of what we both believe. I do believe that if we each focus on moving from where we stand one step closer to the God of the Bible, we will find ourselves gradually drawing closer together in what we believe. I have been far out on the periphery of what seems to be more a conservative evangelical debate. Nonetheless I have enjoyed the opportunity to interact even in a small way with this debate, and to hear what my more conservative brothers and sisters (I am an egalitarian after all!) are saying on an important topic. The translator’s difficulty with this passage arises from the lack of a single English verb to express both “do right” and “be right with God”; of a noun that means both “righteousness” and “acceptance with God as righteous”; and of an adjective to describe the man who is both “righteous” and “accepted as [...] A community must have some sort of definition in order to exist. This may seem fairly obvious, but often in discussions of religion we lose sight of that fact in efforts to be inclusive. It’s important to remember that there is a difference between saying somebody is a bad person and saying that they [...] Peter Kirk has a post, The personal relevance of the atonement, that expresses what I have been trying to say about the atonement much more precisely than I have managed to do it. I commend it strongly. At the same time, Adrian has posted again regarding a review of Pierced for Our Transgressions. Since I haven’t gotten hold of a copy of the book yet, I’m not going to comment on the review itself, but Adrian said one thing that has left me wondering. It is ironic that the more inclusive the evangelical movement in the UK aims to be – by including people who attack or minimize PSA the more they seem to exclude those who hold a more traditional evangelical position. I don’t call myself evangelical, but after talking to a few evangelicals from the UK I probably could. (I’m absolutely not going to fight over labels.) I’ve even encountered a few folks on this side of the pond who call themselves evangelical and appear to be even more liberal than I am. But even from my more liberal perspective I have no desire to exclude those who hold a “strong view” of PSA from any tent. They believe that God has provided redemption through Jesus Christ. I know of none of them who reject the incarnation. The feel I get from Adrian’s post is that if one doesn’t join in excluding the more liberal elements on this issue one must be excluding the more conservative. It would be a total denial of my view of the importance of non-essential doctrines (and I regard the specific metaphor used for atonement as a non-essential) for me to deny someone the one expression of the atonement that best brought the message of God’s reconciling grace home to them. I’m wondering if it’s really true that any evangelicals in the UK want to exclude advocates of PSA from their big tent. Could any of my UK readers help me with this? |
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