I think The Truth Is … Out There on the Wesley Bros. Blog did a good job of expressing this.
To my liberal brothers and sisters: Yes, I do believe in penal substitution.
To my conservative brothers and sisters: No, I don’t believe in it as the one and only way to believe in or discuss the atonement.
One of the ways. Your mileage may differ. In fact, I hope it does.
Yesterday I posted one of my short stories over on my Jevlir blog. For those who don’t read that blog (its readership is quite low), I wanted to write a couple of notes here. Many churches think they’ll find the solution to the problem of declining membership or financial problems by hiring just the right…
I have had very little time to post on Leviticus over the last few weeks because of my business, in which I’ve been working on three books simultaneously. But Leviticus has not been very far from my mind. The more I read Leviticus, the more I like it. I’ve read through it with a variety…
I tend to harp on hermeneutics. Sometimes that’s precisely what people want me to do. Groups that have me back to speak twice, at least, are generally happy with that topic. But others find it annoying, pedantic, and perhaps intellectually snobbish! “Why can’t we just read our Bibles and get on with it?” they ask….
A Christian game company is producing a game based on the Left Behind series. Their own advertising quotes the New York Times saying that the game “Combines Tom Clancy-like suspense with touches of romance, high-tech flash and Biblical references.” The game puts players in the position of either killing or converting their opponents and includes…
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a great man. Said today, that is a rather unremarkable statement. Back in 1968, when Martin Luther King was assassinated, it would have sparked intense, even violent, debate. To some he was a troublemaker. To others, evil. To yet others, he was a danger to society. And to certain parts…
In a post titled A Very Inconvenient Truth, Ben Witherington throws his weight behind global warming and our need to do something about it. I’m glad he has chosen to do so, and not just because I consider his commentary on Revelation to be one of the best available. And therein seems to lie the…
I can’t believe in PSA myself, because it entails me needing to believe things about God which I am certain are wrong, and which (for me) would make God into a monster. However, there are some people I know (mostly in recovery communities) for whom the only atonement theory which can gain traction in their thinking is PSA. That’s the one thing which stops me condemning PSA outright.
Isn’t a metaphor in one sense something that connects an idea to a person or persons? So the value of the metaphor is in the connection/communication.