Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Atonement

  • 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!

  • Galatians 3:2: AKOE PISTEOS

    Or should I make that AKOH PISTEWS? Note that a similar question can be asked in Galatians 3:5, but I will assume due to theme that one will give the same answer in both places.

    Writing an exegetical article on this verse could be quite lengthy, but I agree with J. Louis Martyn in his commentary on Galatians when he says:

    . . . Paul is not asking the Galatians which of two human acts served as the generative locus in which they received the Spirit, a decision on their part to keep the Law or a decision on their part to hear with faith. On the contrary, he is asking rhetorically whether that generative locus was

    • their act in becoming observant of the Law or
    • God’s message (akoh).

    — page 288 [some punctuation/formatting including Greek rather than transliterated text is mine-HN]

    The specific translation of akoh pistewj depends on two factors. First, should the word “hearing” be active or passive, in other words is the thing that generates the reception of the Spirit the act of hearing, or the content of what is heard, the message? The second is how does faith relate to the message. Is it a message that is faith, or is it a message that elicits faith? Martyn (op. cit.) Romans 10:16-17, where the message is much more clearly established as that which elicits faith, and the word akoh is also pretty clearly established as passive in intent.

    So how do translations compare on this. Here are some examples, showing the variety on these two points:

    • TNIV – Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard. [This agrees with the NIV, which is surprising considering the accusations of Calvinist bias in the NIV translation.]
    • REB – did you receive the Spirit by keeping the law or by believing the gospel message?
    • NLT – Did you receive the Holy Spirit by keeping the law? Of course not, for the Holy Spirit came upon you only after you believed the message you heard about Christ.
    • ESV – Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?
    • CEV – How were you given God’s Spirit? Was it by obeying the Law of Moses or by hearing about Christ and having faith in him?
    • TEV – did you receive God’s Spirit by doing what the Law requires or by hearing the gospel and believing it?

    I don’t see any translation that gets quite the nuance that I see in this passage, though perhaps I’m being a bit too tense. In this case, I think the NLT actually has the best translation with the CEV and TEV following very close after.

    Of course, it’s hard for translations to get everything right. In this case, however, I think that formal equivalent translations, such as the ESV really leave the English reader hanging, because “hearing of faith” cannot possibly elicit the same semantic ranger as akoh pistews, with unfortunate results.

  • Galatians and Penal Substitutionary Atonement

    It will generally surprise nobody that I am not a fan of penal substitutionary atonement, as I’ve written about it before. I do believe that PSA is one valid metaphor that helps us understand the greater truth that is the atonement. What I object to is making this particular metaphor the central fact of the atonement.

    One pillar on which PSA stands is the idea that justification should be understood primarily in a judicial sense. In commenting on this on Compuserve Religion Forum, I brought material in from J. Louis Martyn. The following is quoted from my message there:

    At an earlier time I would have granted the notion that Paul’s use of “justification/justify/righteousness” was related to the language of the courtroom, but I am changing my mind on that point.  I have been reading Galatians through in Greek for my devotions, along with J. Louis Martyn’s commentary from the Anchor Bible series.  He makes some serious points on understanding Paul’s usage of the terms, starting from the basic early Jewish-Christian (Christians of Jewish birth) understanding, through the concord between the Jewish and Gentile missions, and from there to the specific approach of the teachers against whom Paul argues in Galatians.

    Let me just quote a short portion:

    “. . . All of the translation options listed above [he has listed the major English translations-HN] have one weighty liability: they are at home either in the language of the law– where “to justify” implies the existence of a definable legal norm–or in the language of religion and morality–where “righteousness” implies a definable religious or moral norm.  As we will see, Paul intends his term to be taken into neither of these linguistic realms. . . . ”  — p. 249-250, commenting on Galatians 2:16

    It would be well beyond the sort of effort I’m willing to put in to quote all the relevant arguments, not to mention it would bring up questions of copyright, but I think Martyn does an excellent job of discussing these points.  In fact, those who read “justify” in a legal context fall into part of the error of the teachers who are the target of Paul’s wrath.

    I would commend reading Martyn’s work on Galatians and also from his collection of essays Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul.  I have to admit that I have had to shift a number of my previous viewpoints on Paul’s views through reading these two books.  As another example, Martyn argues convincingly that Paul never speaks of Judaism as such in Galatians.  When he refers to Jerusalem as Hagar (Galatians 4:21-31) he does not mean Jews and Judaism, but rather the church of Jerusalem and specifically the mission that was claiming its support in a mission to the gentiles that required Torah observance of gentiles.

    I have to add this now to my short list of books that have fundamentally shifted some portion of my Biblical understanding.  Jacob Milgrom’s Leviticus is first, then Gordon Fee’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, Brevard Childs’ Isaiah, and now Martyn’s Galatians.  All of them powerful pieces of writing.

    Feel free to comment either here or in the Religion Forum thread as linked above.

  • Continually Translating the Message

    A post-Easter meditation.

    Translation it is that openeth the window, to let in the light; that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel; that putteth aside the curtaine, that we may looke into the most Holy place; that remooveth the cover of the well, that wee may come by the water, even as Jacob rolled away the stone from the mouth of the well, by which meanes the flockes of Laban were watered. Indeede without translation into the vulgar tongue, the unlearned are but like children at Jacob’s well (which was deepe) without a bucket or some thing to draw with: or as that person mentioned by Esay (Isaiah), to whom when a sealed book was delivered, with this motion, Reade this, I pray thee, he was faine to make this answere, I cannot, for it is sealed. (The Translators to the Reader, King James Version)

    I thought of this passage when I read this easter post on Monastic Mumblings, which points at the empty tomb and parallels it with the empty throne between the cherubim above the ark. There are many minor points about idolatry in the Bible, but the major one is simply this: You cannot represent God by anything whatsoever in the material world.

    We are no longer all that anxious to create images of God, though we sometimes do head in that direction. But it is not that common for someone to decide that they need a statue of God himself to grace a shrine in their house, for example. But we still seek after images. Now these images are not necessarily material. They are things that we have created in our minds, ways in which we imagine that God must act, or how God must look, or where God must be. I’ve blogged on this before, suggesting that we need to constantly have our images of God shattered by encounters with the divine.

    The connection with the empty tomb really struck me. The disciples saw the empty tomb. They saw the risen Christ, but it was up to them to translate that message for the remainder of the world. The gospel commission calls on us to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19). Now in order to make disciples of Jesus, we have to somehow present the message of Jesus and do so in a way that will be understood.

    On the one hand this relates to Bible translation, and the constant search for better ways to communicate the message in translation. It relates to preaching, and the ways in which we find better ways of proclaiming that message. It also relates to living, because the only way some people will ever understand the message is if they see it in the life of a disciple.

    Translation is not something that happens once in a while when a committee gets together to translate the words of scripture. It happens any time one witnesses to Jesus with the power of the Holy Spirit.

    Translation is a continual process for all of us.

  • 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.

  • From Word to Study

    (Continuing my series on word studies.)

    From time to time in conversation with my wife I’ll jump topics. My brain does that to me, as one thing suggests another thing, often related only in the most distant way. Suddenly she’ll stop me and say, “I need a context for that.” I’ve said something that she can’t understand clearly because she doesn’t know what it relates to. It might be “What are we going to do about that meeting?” If she doesn’t know what meeting I’m talking about, when it is, or why we need to do something about it, she has no basis on which to react.

    Similarly in Bible study, we always have to have a context. I know that I hammer this point repeatedly, but I do so because it is so often neglected. Much too much use of Bible texts in Christian teaching, preaching, and conversation results from looking for a set of words that fits whatever the person wanted to say. There are a lot of phrases in the Bible, a lot of clauses, a lot of sentences. If you ignore context, you can find one that is useful for you.

    We’ve already discussed one of the primary dangers of word studies, that a person looks for a series of definitions, and then plugs in the one that suits his theology without regard for the immediate context. Now I’m going to talk about some practical ideas for studies you can do with words that can improve your understanding.

    All of these are based on a single principle: A word study should start from a usage in context, and end with a usage in context.

    If that is a bit unclear, think of it this way: The word study doesn’t provide you with a meaning that can be dropped into place like a puzzle piece. Rather, it provides you with options. In order to get at those options, you have to understand each usage of a word in its particular context, and then compare carefully. Differences in the context may imply differences in meaning. Someone who knows the source languages is protected to some extent by use of lexicons, knowledge of various forms of the word that provide natural categories of usage, and the fact that he has just the source language word’s semantic range to deal with. When working in English, or any other non-source language for the Bible, you need to be doubly careful to understand each particular context.

    I’m going to do a brief application of this idea using the word “propitiation” because it has become a key word in the ESV Bible debates. I’m going to use my Logos Bible Software solely to look up words in the ESV, and display ESV text, but I’m going to use Goodrick and Kohlenberger’s NIV concordance (hereafter GK), keyed to the Greek and Hebrew words to track ideas further. This means I’m working today with two English versions, the NIV and the ESV.

    Let’s say my study starts from Hebrews 2:17:

    17 Therefore he had nto be made like his brothers in every respect, oso that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest pin the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. [1] — Hebrews 2:17 (ESV)

    What I want to discover in this study is what it might mean to “make propitiation.” One thing I’m not going to do here to save space, but that I would recommend doing normally, is to compare this text in many English translations. This will help give you a better idea of what the semantic range of the Greek word behind this is. Another critical step is to find out just what the book of Hebrews says Jesus did about the sins of the people. I’m going to leave that aside for the moment. Right now we want to get a better idea of this one word. But remember, if you are studying through Hebrews, that before you settle on a definition for “propitiation” in this verse, you need to understand how this verse relates to the rest of the book.

    In order to work with GK I need to find the text in the NIV. There I find that my key phrase is “make atonement for.” Now depending on my theological background, I may already be more comfortable than I am with propitiation, but if I look in an English dictionary I will generally find that “propitiation” is a narrower and more precise word than “atonement.” (Your results may differ, depending on your dictionary. For example Merriam-Webster says “reconciliation” is obsolete, but that meaning is still used in theological writing, I believe.) Another approach in GK is to simply look up “propitiation” and find the reference at that point to “atonement.”

    Again in order to keep this study limited, I’m going to stick with the New Testament. First, that keeps all my source words in one language. There is value in comparing words as used in the Old Testament with those in the New Testament, especially when studying a book that quotes the OT as much as Hebrews does, but it is more complicated. I find that “atonement” is listed in GK only 3 times in the New Testament, Romans 3:25, Hebrews 2:17, and Hebrews 9:5. Add to this 1 John 2:2 and 4:10 which use “atoning.” So we have a rather manageable list there.

    The source language words are numbers 2661, 2662, and 2663. Now here’s where you can get into serious trouble, and if you don’t know Greek well, you should be very tentative with your conclusions and spend even more time on context. (Did I say that before?) In this case, however, the proximity of the three words indicates that they are cognates in Greek, etymologically related. Words that are etymologically related generally developed from similar roots. It’s easy, however, to make what’s called the “etymological fallacy” here, and assume that their meanings must be either the same or very similar. Words can be closely related etymologically, but very differet semantically.

    Nonetheless, since the NIV translators have provided us with similar English translations, let’s hope we can find at least some relationship. Word 2661 is hilaskomai, and occurs twice (all according to GK) translated once as “make atonement for” and once as “mercy on.” Word 2662, hilasmos (see the similarity?) occurs twice and is translated as “atoning sacrifice” both times. Word 2663 is hilasterion and occurs twice translated once as “atonement cover” and once as “sacrifice of atonement.”

    Where are these? Well, you can find them in GK because the lexicon doesn’t provide definitions, but rather lists of how each word is translated in the NIV. Thus you can look up the words in translation in turn, and find out where and how they are used. Of course, all those definitions using “atonement” or “atoning” should already be on our list. Using this method, let me list the uses of these words:

    • 2661
      Hebrews 2:17 (our primary text) and Luke 18:13 (Aha! Fresh meat!). Note that I located the second verse by looking up the word “mercy” and scanning for the number 2661.
    • 2662
      1 John 2:2 and 4:10. We know these are all the cases, because it lists two occurences, both with the same translation.
    • 2663
      Romans 3:25 and Hebrews 9:5, which we already had located.

    Now let’s go back and use our ESV for a moment. Since I’ve already looked at Hebrews 2:17 (that’s my starting point), let’s look at the only use of precisely the same word in the New Testament. Luke 18:13 reads:

    But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” [1] (ESV)

    Knowing Greek, I can say that there is a difference of form, but that is beyond the scope of this discussion. We have here two possible meanings: “make an atoning sacrifice for” and “have mercy on.” Use of an English dictionary will expand the list, but I’ll leave that to you, especially as you consider what “atoning” means in connection with “sacrifice. You can try dropping these two defnitions into Hebrews 2:17 and see what the results are in context. When you do that, however, I suggest you look very clearly at what the author of Hebrews believes is involved in atonement. Does he believe God simply “has mercy on” or does he believe there must be a sacrifice?

    Similarly try dropping these definitions into 1 John 2:2 and 4:10. Consider both verses before you make your selection, and realize that this is a different Greek word, even though it is related to the word used in Hebrews 2:17.

    Finally, word 2663, hilasterion also occurs twice. In Romans 3:25 the ESV uses “propitiation” saying that God put Jesus forward as a “propitiation” (atoning sacrifice?) for our sins. The NIV goes right to my parenthetical suggestion and uses “sacrifice of atonement.” But Hebrews 9:5 is a bit different. Here we read “mercy seat” in the ESV and “atonement cover” in the NIV. The covering of the ark, which is the item in consideration, is often called the mercy seat, and was the place where God manifested his presence in the tabernacle. Interesting that Merriam-Webster (Tenth Edition) suggests that “reconciliation” is an obsolete meaning of “atonement” because it appears that Bible translators may still be using that meaning partially.

    Given these various options, it would now be time to go back and study your text in context, and keep your mind open to the possibilities. Is it possible that when the author of Hebrews uses related words in 2:17 and 9:5 he may intend to connect the sacrifice of atonement and the place of atonement and God’s presence? Those are possibilities for further study.

    Let me make one more comment on the etymological fallacy. This is terribly pervasive. I even found just such a fallacy in my devotional reading as an author used the Greek “dunamis” to connect to cognate “dynamite” and from there to read “explosive” back into a text. At the same time, I think the quite proper emphasis on fighting that fallacy can result in a sort of “anti-etymological fallacy,” the notion that etymology doesn’t contribute to discovering meaning. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it’s all we have. With the three related Greek words involved in our study today, we have so few instances in the New Testament that we may be required to use etymology as seed for ideas. The key is to start from a word in context and end with a word in context.

    An excellent route for those who have access to the appropriate tools is to carry this study beyond the New Testament. How was the word used in the Septuagint, for example, and what Hebrew words/concepts did it translate. Again, particularly in Hebrews, we have an author who quotes extensively from the Old Testament, and many of his quotations are taken from the Septuagint. Thus that provides an interesting background. We can also look into the broader Greek world and literature to get additional ideas. But all of that is beyond the scope of this post.

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    [1] The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001. Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.