Pleading Guilty to Blasphemy
. . . at least as defined by Dr. Wayne Grudem, a point he makes in the current (6th) installment of Adrian’s interview. Again, he’s not talking about me. I’m just going ahead and pleading guilty under an “if the shoe fits” standard.
I would accept penal substitutionary atonement as one metaphor among many by which we understand the death of Jesus, but not as either the essence of atonement, nor as the primary metaphor for it. I will probably elicit shock and amazement when I say that I’m not going to write a long post about this. I’ll simply link into the early stages of my still unfinished series on Hebrews, starting with the post What is a Priest? which is on my Participatory Bible Study Blog. I will warn you that this isn’t a short response–there are six entries tagged “priesthood” alone.
It appears, however, that by Grudem’s standards, this would make me guilty of blasphemy. In response to a question regarding Steve Chalke, a British evangelical with whom I am not acquainted, who has questioned the penal substitutionary atonement, Grudem says this:
(1) Yes. (2) Yes. (3) Yes. Chalke is denying the heart of the Gospel. Evangelicals in the academic world battled against liberals in scholarly writings about this issue fifty years ago, and I think that evangelicals like Leon Morris won the argument and won the theological battle. Now Chalke is giving away the hard-won victory. He is giving away the heart of the Gospel. I would never agree to give my approval to anyone who denies penal substitutionary atonement to be an elder at a church I attended, or to be a pastor or Bible teacher, or to teach at a theological seminary where I had influence on the appointment.
The third “yes” is to whether Grudem agrees with Piper that Chalke’s words on this topic were blasphemy. Chalke’s criticism of this view of the atonement appears at first glance to be more restrained than my own. Note that I’m not claiming that penal substitution is not a good metaphor or that it should be discarded, but rather that it is one metaphor amongst many, and that many are required for us to understand the heart of the gospel. True understanding actually only comes experientially when we are reconciled to God through Jesus. All doctrines are merely attempts to put that in words.
I also want to take this opportunity to call attention to another old post of mine on the subject of women in ministry, Neither Male nor Female in Christ. That kind of sums up my view on women in ministry very briefly.