Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Soteriology

  • In Which My Wife Uses the Language of PSA

    This morning as I was listening to my wife’s message for our Running Toward the Goal podcast, I heard her use some distinctly PSA-like language. I thought I’d link to it. Today’s podcast was first broadcast on local radio here in Pensacola on July 21, 2003 and is titled I Surrender All. This is the first time it has been podcast. (The speaker is my wife, Jody Neufeld.)

    Those on the PSA side who also are complementarian may not want to listen to a woman teach, but I’m fullly egalitarian and enjoy sharing both blogs and platform with my wife.

  • Notes and Links on Atonement

    I’ve gotten severely behind in reading the current atonement debate, but I haven’t ceased being interested. I note that Adrian has taken to throwing passages at his opponents, ones which we’re sure to have read before, including Isaiah 53, and 2 Corinthians 5. Because I accept substitution and even penal substitution as valid metaphors, but not as the key or sole metaphor, I am not surprised to find some substitution in scripture.

    I wrote two items on the atonement in partial response to the debate. The first is an entry for my wife’s devotional list, which was posted this morning and expresses my view that understanding the details of doctrine is not nearly as important as many seem to think. The second is a few notes on Isaiah 53 and the suffering servant.

    There is quite a bit of good stuff on the atonement going around the web right now. I got a link to Is Your Gospel Robust Enough, and I wish I could give a hat tip to the right person, but I can’t find where I got the link. The post discusses our excessively individual view of salvation, a problem that is common to many advocates of PSA–and to many of the rest of us as well.

    Dave Warnock is preaching from Ephesians 2:11-22, one of my favorite passages, and is doing a wonderful job of it. At the same time Peter Kirk is keeping active, with a post titled UCCF Director contradicts the Bible and the Apostles’ Creed which he starts from a comment he made here.

    I plan to get back to talking about literary genres tomorrow, but I may be tempted to say more about the atonement. You can always hope not!

  • Narrowing a Doctrine: Penal Substitution and Isaiah 53

    In a previous post, Adrian Warnock said there were two reactions to his interview with the authors of Pierced for our Transgressions. I’m guessing he referred to the favorable and unfavorable, and intensely so in each case. In the rest of that post, he implied pretty strongly that those of us who are opposed to PSA [as the sole metaphor for the atonement I would add, but Adrian did not] are not spending enough time with the scriptures.

    I also note two sets of reactions. I see one set of reactions that deal with the actual position of opponents, and one set of reactions that prefer to make accusations. I don’t want to spend much time on this, but let me just quote one example, from Grave Updates

    Isn’t off how it is always those with robust theology who are told to become broad and drop our distinctives, as if the greatest sin is to offend those who hold to vague and are like those Paul speaks of in 2 Timothy 3:7, “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.”:

    I would simply like to note here that my position on PSA has nothing to do with avoiding offense to anyone. I’m also not afraid of giving offense to the proponents of PSA as the exclusive or “real” teaching of the atonement when it is, in fact, one metaphor for the atonement. I am quite open in saying that such teaching is wrong and presents a stumbling block. It’s very easy in Christian circles to attribute “truth value” to being persecuted, and to give great credit to teachings which are exceptionally offensive. After all, the gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing (1 Corinthians 1:18). But Paul never said that every stupid and offensive thing thereby automatically became God’s truth. It is crucially important, I believe, for us to make sure that it is the gospel that is offending people when they are offended, and not our behavior or our made up teachings.

    Now Adrian hits us with Isaiah 53. It’s not a bad chapter to use in discussing the atonement, but I find it amazing to have Adrian quote it and let it “speak for itself” as though nobody who rejects his view of PSA has ever read the passage. Well, I have read, memorized, studied, and restudied that passage many times. Having Adrian quote it one more time is unlikely to change a thing, unless he can point out how that scripture challenges my view that:

    1. Substitution is broader than penal substitution
    2. Atonement is broader than substitution

    I have never denied substitution. I took a class Exegesis of Romans (from the Greek text) from a professor who believed in the moral influence theory. He tried to teach it from Romans. It didn’t work. He massacred Paul’s teaching. I did my very best to see it his way. I was inclined to see it his way. I liked the professor and enjoyed his lecture style. Nonetheless, I just couldn’t do it. Nonetheless there is an element of moral influence in the atonement.

    There is also an element of substitution in Isaiah 53, though very little of it is penal in nature. Isaiah 53 needs to be viewed in the broader context of the servant passages of 2nd Isaiah (40-55), but even that is not the primary point. I’m not arguing that Jesus is not described here, though that interpretation will not work as an exclusive look at the chapter. That is another debate. But let’s look at the substitution in this case:

    Notice in verse 4 that it is the people in general who esteem the servant “smitten by God.” They view him as suffering for his own sin, and thus under the wrath of God when in fact the servant is suffering for their sin. The servant gets all the suffering for the guilt of the whole people, and he submits to it. That is absolutely substitution, but there is no indication that God’s anger is directed at the servant. He certainly dies as a substitute, but the notion that God turns his anger purely on the person of that righteous person is simply not there.

    The debate here, at least with me, is not that Jesus did not suffer and die for our sins. It is rather with the penal aspect, and with the exclusivity of either substitution or the penal aspect. I see nothing whatsoever in Isaiah 53 that denies my position. Even verse 10, that especially in the ESV sounds most like penal substitution can be read quite easily and appropriate as the Lord allowing the stroke to fall on the servant rather than the whole nation.

    Incidentally this goes well with the view that the servant is in the first instance the remnant of Judah, taken into exile, and viewed as the greatest transgressors by those left behind. But they were the ones God was using to preserve the future of his people. In the second instance, Jesus fulfills the remainder of the prophecy as the pure remnant, the final representative of the people who took the punishment on himself. It is consistent both with God’s action and with the action of Jesus in laying down his own life (John 10:18).

    The problem I see repeatedly here is that texts that fit well with more than one view of the atonement are being cited as exclusively supporting one narrow view. I do not regard this approach to interpretation as scriptural. That is my problem with PSA. It cuts a square inch out of a large tapestry and then declares the square inch to be the whole. That’s too close to idolatry for me.

  • Slippery Language on the Atonement Debate

    Adrian Warnock is again posting on the penal substitutionary atonement (PSA) issue, now about an interview with the authors of Pierced for Our Transgressions.

    Now I’m not going to post on PSA today in detail. But Adrian manages to demonstrate some aspects of this discussion from his side of the fence that annoy me-no, that’s not strong enough. I think these statements are just plain wrong.

    At the end of his post Adrian says:

    Where do you stand? Will you join arms with Andrew, Steve, and a whole generation of those of us who feel this issue is quite literally one of life and death?

    Or will you seek to compromise, maybe downplay the importance of precisely how Jesus saves us, and adopt a gospel message that, whilst sounding more acceptable to the modern ear, is in the opinion of many of us nothing less than “another gospel.”

    The stakes couldn’t possibly be higher.

    I’m willing to allow most of the first paragraph. My answer to that would be a resounding NO!. I do not in any sense stand with them on this issue. But I do think that for some people it may be an issue of life and death. Those who malign the character of God through their doctrine may well have to answer before God for those they have driven away. I don’t want to overplay that point, however, because as imperfect humans I suspect we all have those moments and even years when we do not perfectly represent the gospel of Christ. Nonetheless, grace abounds! Where is there evidence that such grace is comprehended on the PSA side of the debate?

    But my major concern here is with the second paragraph: “Or will you seek to compromise . . .” This is the method of extremist madness. You dismiss the opposite extreme, and divide the rest of the world into people who are right and people who have compromised. The compromise, of course, is with that unmentionable evil that has been cut out of the spectrum. It’s “us good guys” versus the compromisers.

    Adrian continues with “maybe downplay the importance of precisely how Jesus saves us . . .” Downplay? Who’s downplaying? I reject absolutely and utterly the notion that precisely how the atonement is accomplished is a critical piece of knowledge. I call that view “salvation by correct doctrine” and I reject it along with all other human based systems of salvation. However Jesus did it, he did it.

    And again: “and adopt a gospel message that, whilst sounding more acceptable to the modern ear, is in the opinion of many of us nothing less than ‘another gospel.’” Of course I adopt what Adrian and many others regard as “another gospel.” Why? I regard what they are preaching as dangerously close to “another gospel.” The only reason I don’t call it another gospel outright is that I think many people sincerely grab hold of the message of PSA and are saved, never understanding any other aspects of atonement. The preachers of PSA are grabbing a part and making it the whole, and it gets twisted on the way. But even further, I do not adopt my view because it is “more acceptable to the modern ear.” I adopt my view because I believe it is right. I believe scripture teaches a multifaceted understanding of the atonement and I also believe scripture teaches that we should realize that we don’t fully comprehend any doctrine, but most especially the incarnation and the atonement.

    I’m not heading again into writing on PSA in detail right now. I’ve written a few things before. My response here is simply to the dismissive type of language that tries to pretend opponents are not working from conviction, but rather from a desire to be more acceptable to the modern world, and to “compromise,” that compromise being with something that is dismissed without discussion.

    Almost Instant Update: Just after I hit the “Publish” button, my RSS feed showed a new post by Peter Kirk which is well worthwhile reading.

  • Doctrine and Reality – The Need for Balance

    In a recent post Dave Warnock looks through the preface by John Piper to Pierced for Our Trangressions, and quotes the following:

    This is how I feel today about teachers of Christ’s people who deny and even belittle precious, life-saving, biblical truth.When a person says that God’s ‘punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed’ would be as evil as child abuse, I am angered and grieved. For if God did not punish his Son in my place, I am not saved from my greatest peril, the wrath of God.

    (The whole post by Dave is worthwhile reading, but this post is just a tangent from that.)

    The more I read about this the more I realize that I will be reading this book eventually. But right now I’m not trying to review the book, or even directly to argue with John Piper. He has written and said much that I value, and also much with which I disagree. Often I even value the disagreement more than the agreement.

    But I want to respond to this point of doctrine. It is clear from scripture that good teaching is a good thing. In other words, it does matter what we teach. At the same time it’s very easy to make our doctrine, especially detailed doctrinal issues into something that stands instead of God. If Christ did not die for me, I am still in my sins, but if I fail to understand in a detailed way just why Christ died for me and how the atonement was accomplished, that does not diminish the fact that Christ died for me.

    This is where I am troubled by the teaching about Penal Substituionary Atonement (PSA). It is not that I think the teaching in and of itself is wrong, it is that it seems to be taking the place of the reality in some people’s theology. PSA is a metaphor, a limited human expression of the meaning of the atonement. As with most metaphors, it conveys some of the meaning of the atonement, but it can easily obscure other parts of that meaning.

    But in conversation with many advocates of PSA I can’t simply affirm my acceptance of PSA as a single metaphor among many for the atonement. I am asked to affirm that PSA is the central meaning of the cross, essentially making it the reality, rather than a metaphor. That I will not do, because I believe that is not worthy of the cross. That reduces the cross to a sense of human retribution and punishment, and reduces God to a human judge. It does not adequately express the trinitarian view of God himself becoming one of us and dying for our sins. It does not adequately express the depth and breadth of God’s love and forgiveness. Seeing it in that light, for me–and I reemphasize for me–it would be idolatry to put a lesser thing in place of the reality that is God, in Christ, reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19).

    There is no language to adequately express the incarnation and atonement. No matter how well we express it, we run up against the difficulty of describing and encompassing infinite God with finite human expressions. Our doctrines on this and every other topic will always contain some taint of the traditions of men.

    For that reason, we need to allow our doctrines and our perceptions to constantly come up against the scriptural presentation and against our experience of God’s presence. This is true whether those doctrines be modern, liberal, post-modern, conservative, or any other label we might put on them. It is true even if we believe our doctrines are scriptural.

    I read a report by a committee in the PCA, examining the New Perspective on Paul and another movement to see if they are in accord with the Westminster Standards. In explaining how they do this, and also elevate scripture above the standards, they wrote the following tortured paragraph:

    In addition, we are a confessional church. The PCA has affirmed that “the Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms of the Westminster Assembly, together with the formularies of government, discipline, and worship are accepted by the Presbyterian Church in America as standard expositions of the teachings of Scripture in relation to both faith and practice” (BCO 29-1; cf. 21-5.2; 26-1; 39-3). The church has historically understood that this claim does not elevate the Standards over Scripture itself; and yet, our Constitution does recognize the Standards as our “standard expositions of the teachings of Scripture.” Because this is the case, the main focus of our study will be to determine whether the views of the NPP and AAT/FV are in conformity with our Westminster Standards.

    It’s not my intention here to criticize the PCA any more than specifically John Piper. The question I have is whether you can say that a certain set of standards is not elevated above scripture, and at the same time make the assumption that those standards define what scripture says. The NPP scholars believe they have found good, new interpretations of Paul, and they think their interpretations are closer to Paul’s intention than were earlier studies. Would not the correct question be this: Are these new interpretations more accurate? If you ask instead whether those interpretations are in accordance with the standards, does that not place the standards in the superior position?

    I grew up as a Seventh-day Adventist, and the writings of Ellen G. White were frequently placed in that position. In seminary I began to forcefully reject the claim that Ellen White was not above scripture, and yet when I went to interpret scripture, what Ellen White said was supposed to be definitive. If the Bible was superior, then I could test Ellen White by scripture, not the scripture by her.

    I feel the same way about doctrinal statements and confessions. Confessions are good for denominational unity, but if I am ever studying a proposed new interpretation my question will not be whether it is consistent with a particular confession, but whether it is more accurate. The confession can be adjusted.

    I think that all metaphors and all doctrines (as a subcategory of metaphor) need to be subject to revision at any time. Many have been and will be reaffirmed over and over, but the examination is still good. I think God will be grieved if we don’t allow his presence to shatter our limited understandings.

  • Dave Warnock Reads PFOT

    …. Pierced for our Transgressions, that is.

    Taking his own advice about reading books with a viewpoint opposed to his own, he is working his way through this book. I’ve read other materials on penal substitution (Justification by Faith Alone, for example, which maintains that the forensic nature of justification is critical to salvation by faith), and thus will not punish myself in this way, but Dave’s notes promise to be interesting.

    Here are the entries thus far:

    I’m quite in tune with Dave’s statement in his starting point post:

    I value Penal Substitution as one theory of atonement within a range of theories that have been considered orthodox teaching within the Christian Church, while recognising that different groups within the Christian Church have different views on various theories of atonement and that there is not total agreement (and probably never has been). I do believe that there is potential for penal substitution to teach us something about the cross and about God.

    But I struggle with certain theological aspects of Penal Substitution. Particularly the concept of God’s wrath being on Jesus and the potential for the need for justice and punishment being more powerful than God. Most importantly for me are concerns that Penal Substitution enshrines violence (that I do not see in Jesus, his incarnation, his life, his teaching, his death, his resurrection, his ascension and his second coming) into the nature of God.

    I too see some value in Penal Substitution as a metaphor for atonement, but as I’ve commented before any time you get the metaphor put in place of the reality the remainder of your theology will begin to get off balance. Recent PSA advocates appear to me to place their particular metaphor in place of the reality of the atonement, a reality that requires many metaphors, and cannot even be described adequately by all the metaphors we have available.

    When I point this out, I am often told that yes, there are many metaphors, but penal substitution has to be there, or it’s more important. No, it doesn’t have to be there. All that has to be there is God’s love made manifest through the incarnation. No human explanation is essential. Helpful, yes; essential, no.

    I do, however, sympathize with the “other” Warnock, Adrian, when he says of Dave:

    I am often quite surprised that people who hold views like Dave’s want to self-identify as evangelical. In the past, I rather suspect they would have worn the label “liberal” and been quite content to do so.

    I am willing to wear the label moderate or liberal without complaint. Some try to label me evangelical, for reasons passing understanding, but if I ever claimed that label for myself, I’d have to spend all my time trying to explain how some of my views are actually evangelical, while they manifestly are not. So go ahead and color me liberal. 🙂

    And just so I’m not dodging the obligation to put my own views on the line, let me give links to two complementary essays I have written: A Fruitful Faith and Focusing the Atonement.

    Update: It occurred to me after I posted this that those interested in this topic might be interested in my review of J. Louis Martyn’s commentary on Galatians and related links to material I wrote during my study of Galatians using that commentary.

  • Focusing the Atonement

    Peter Kirk has been involved in some extended debates about the atonement, and you can read about it here and here. Peter has written some good stuff on understanding the atonement. I have generally just been saying that we must recognize our ways of explaining the atonement as metaphors, and not as the reality. A metaphor is good, and is the only way we can talk about God, but when you place the metaphor above the reality, or make the metaphor into the reality, you get into a sort of doctrinal idolatry. I say that not to provoke, but simply because there is an important similarity. In the idolatry that involves the worship of a physical image, the danger is that one mistakes symbol for reality, and starts to give adoration to the created thing, rather than the creator. This in turn tends to get everything else out of balance. The same thing happens with a metaphor, which will better illustrate some things than others. If the metaphor replaces the reality at the center, then one’s entire vision can get skewed.

    So what do I believe must be at the center of our view of the atonement? Since we are always short of speaking absolutely correctly about God, there is a danger in defining this, but if I can grab something from all of the metaphors and all of the Biblical writers it would be this: God did it. That is the focus of scriptural statements. Protecting that one fact is the focus of many Biblical rebukes. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul didn’t say that it’s OK for you to do a few extra works, just so long as you also trust in Jesus. He said that putting your trust in those works meant that you were denying Jesus (Galatians 5:2).

    Elsewhere, however, he said that he would become “as one under the law” (1 Cor. 9:20) to reach those who were under the law. The circumstances were different at the church in Corinth. There was even a party there (“I am of Christ” – 1 Cor. 1:12) that made a special point of pride of being followers of Christ. What’s wrong with that? Well, if you set yourself up as superior to others because of your status, then there’s very much wrong with it. The whole first epistle to the Corinthians stands against the notion that any physical, temporal thing about us makes us superior to others.

    A key fact about the “foolishness of the cross” (1 Corinthians 1) is that I don’t get to be at the center any more. I’m saved by grace, pure grace, and I am not superior to anyone else spiritually. I can know more about some things. I may be able to do some things better, but as far as being God’s child, I have nothing whatsoever to boast about.

    The very human temptation, however, is to make me feel superior. This temptation comes in many ways. Doctrines of holiness can easily become means of making a superior category of believers. I’ve encountered churches where the intercessors were an exclusive club of superior believers. These folks had made their call to pray for other people into a badge of superiority. But our desire to be superior for any reason has been eliminated, because God broke past the barrier between infinite and finite in the person of Jesus Christ. That profound thought led Paul to say,

    (26) You’re all God’s children through faith in Christ Jesus. (29) For as many as have been baptized into Christ are wearing Christ as a garment. (28) There is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave or free, male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (29) For if you belong to Christ, then you’re Abraham’s seed, and according to the promise–heirs! — Galatians 3:26-29 (my translation)

    Our distinctions have been wiped out in the incarnation. We want to revive them. We want to feel more special than others. But all our versions of “special” have been torn apart, bulldozed, leveled in the cross of Christ. We are all equally recipients of grace. I teach a doctrine I call infinite ignorance. God is infinite, there is an infinite amount to be known about him. I know something of God, but when you subtract any finite amount from infinity, infinity still remains.

    The same thing goes for grace. Infinite grace has been poured out on us. My brother or sister in the faith may have required more grace than I, but when you subtract that difference from infinity, infinity remains. Our distinctions are meaningless under the infinite outpouring of grace.

    Now if we can keep focused on that one point, I think we will get less out of balance. It doesn’t mean that right and wrong doctrine don’t matter for anything. It doesn’t mean that right or wrong behavior don’t matter. It’s just that they don’t matter for salvation, because that is God’s business. It means that they don’t make me or you closer to God.

    We try to escape this in so many ways. For Paul in Galatia it was folks who thought that Gentiles needed to become Jews first in order to be Christians. They had to keep Torah, be circumcised, obey the food laws, keep feasts, and so forth. Paul had no problem with Jews being Jews. He had a problem with that distinction being made important for God’s salvation.

    The individual believer pursuing holiness is placed in danger of seeing that holiness as a way of earning God’s favor. The fact is that holiness is part of the grace that God gives. It is a result of God’s favor, unearned by you, and not a badge of distinction.

    We can try to make our position superior by means of doctrine. Doctrine learned and taught as our best efforts to understand and receive from God is wonderful, but when we try to make our doctrinal knowledge a badge of superiority over someone else than we have fallen short of the reality of grace. That includes my own doctrine. These words are just my stumbling way of trying to express the experience of the grace of God, and I can recognize how poorly I express it even as I write it. But even when I think the words are flowing beautifully, when I feel my writing is inspired, if I believe that makes me superior to the person who teaches a view of penal substitutionary atonement that makes my blood boil, I have fallen short of the mark set by God’s grace.

    I can’t earn it by spiritual discipline, I can’t earn it by theological knowledge, I can’t earn it by a life of ethical decision making. I can only receive it by grace, with no point of pride left to me whatsoever.

    There’s the scandal of the cross. Christians are confronted at various times with the dilemma of a mass murderer who, with his final breath, accepts Jesus Christ as savior. “Will that man go to heaven?” we are asked. Too often we stumble. It’s too hard to accept that the mass murderer might find himself in heaven next to a saint who spent a lifetime giving and suffering. But such is the reality of grace. Such is the scandal of the cross. God is about redemption, not about punishment. This doesn’t mean there are no consequences, and no punishment. It does mean that in God’s view vengeance isn’t in the driver’s seat; grace is. If that person sincerely seeks God’s forgiveness and receives God’s grace with his last breath, no matter how horribly evil he has been, he receives. Infinite grace always trumps finite evil. If that’s too scandalous for you, you need to spend some more time at the cross.

    In Turkey recently three Christian workers were brutally murdered. The widow of one of them has expressed forgiveness in an interview on Turkish television (source – scroll down to bottom or search text for April 20, 2007). That’s grace in action. That’s not easy. Humanly, I suspect it’s not even possible. But there it is.

    The cross is a scandal. Live with it!

  • God Doesn’t Forgive?

    OK, this is shocking.

    Peter Kirk reports that:

    I interrupt my normal programme to bring you this shocking quote. Yes, the news is going round that Richard Cunningham, director of UCCF, said

          God never forgives – he punishes.

    Apparently he said this during a talk at the recent Word Alive conference, the same one which is separating from Spring Harvest.

    Go to Peter’s blog and read his discussion on this.

    This looks to me like an example of the problem we get into when we regard a metaphor as the actual core of the truth. Substitution, even penal substitution is a good metaphor, but it remains one metaphor. When you put it at the center of your doctrine of the atonement and then build everything else around that, oddities like this result.

    At the center of our doctrine of the atonement should be the amazing love of God who became human in order to redeem us, and made such a complete and thorough job of it that he died like one of us. Then you can build on why with various metaphors, but perhaps keep a better balance.

  • More on the Atonement

    Peter Kirk has collected a series of his comments into a single post along with links to various blogs that can bring you up to date on the atonement wars. I weighed in with a post over on my Participatory Bible Study blog. I see that Coops hasn’t posted in his atonement series since March 19th.

    I know how it can go. One can get really, really tangled discussing the atonement!

  • Just in time for Easter

    Adrian Warnock has started another round of the atonement wars. Peter Kirk and Dave Warnock have responded, both with very constructive posts.

    Peter Kirk goes over some of the T4G language and also looks at a couple of folks that Adrian believes are not in accord with that doctrine. I know Peter accepts the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, and so do I, for that matter, though the devil is definitely in the details on that point. Simply stating that Jesus died for our sins is not sufficient for many people; one has to believe that Jesus not only died for our sins, but did so in a specific way, accomplished specific things by it, and also that this idea of substitution is the most central and important aspect of the whole doctrine of atonement.

    In fact, I think it is very easy to replace “salvation by works” with “salvation by doctrines” instead of with “salvation by faith.” It looks to me like Dave Warnock has this very problem in mind with his post on the atonement.

    This whole problem was brought to my attention forcefully when reading The God Delusion over the last few days. (I’m writing a response to that and will probably post it on Monday.) In chapter 7, “The ‘Good’ Book and the Changing Moral Zeitgeist” Dawkins spends a bit of time on the atonement (pp. 250-253). Now any theologian is likely to be dismayed by the superficial overview involved here, but if you’re honest, you’ll admit that you’ve heard it from the people in the pews, and even from some theologians. There are so many variations on this doctrine, that it is hard to tell a non-Christian that they have it wrong; generally they merely have someone else’s expression.

    There are two points I have on this. First, if the gospel is to be an offense, please let it be the gospel that is the offense, and not all the extras we like to stack up over and around it. We’ve been playing with metaphors to use in talking about atonement for centuries, surely we can admit that we’re doing just that–playing with metaphors–most of the time. Playing with metaphors is not bad in itself. It becomes bad when we forget that we’re dealing with metaphors, and mistake them for reality. Second, let’s try to state what we do mean by the atonement as carefully as possible. The problem here is that “cosmic child abuse” is indeed something that can be gotten from some of our statements, and unfortunately I think it is fair in some cases.

    I’m certain I’ll say more about this in the next couple of weeks, but right now I have to get back to writing my review of The God Delusion before I have to return the book to the library where someone else has it on hold.