Baptist Chat UK

Dear Friends at the EA,

I was saddened and disappointed by the stance taken by the EA over penal substitution in your article "Atonement & Unity" in the March/April issue of IDEA.

I endorse wholeheartedly the belief that Christ died in my place, that he paid the price for my sin. I disagree intensely with the insistence that the concept of penal substitution is essential to our understanding of what that means.

In making the concept of penal substitution a cornerstone of its belief the Evangelical Alliance is doing precisely what the Pharisees did of old: planting a hedge around the law. To take this route is to take an isolationist stance and the EA ceases to be an alliance of evangelicals: it becomes an exclusivist body representing but one sector of evangelicalism. Rather than leaving "scope for diversity", the Board of the EA is essentially closing the door on dialogue and giving a green light to witch hunters. It is a sad day indeed for the EA.

Penal substitution is a model for interpreting our understanding of what Christ achieved on the cross. It is not an absolute. The absolute is far simpler: God was in Christ reconciling us to himself.

Precisely how he did that remains an open question: but we know that Christ died outside the city wall, not within the artificial confines of any human constructions, dogmas or doctrines. I find myself standing as a leper outside the community but I know that at the foot of the cross Christ accepts me and cleanses me -- and continues to welcome sinners irrespective of any so-called "core truths". Did Jesus ask that thief crucified alongside him about his core beliefs? Were any of the early disciples asked to sign statements of faith?

I urge the EA: don't go down this isolationist route, don't put up barriers to belief. Fling wide the doors and proclaim the evangel, the outrageous good news of God's grace that brings us all together, grace great enough and generous enough to tear down every barrier: grace that emerges not from our belief in God but his belief in us, his reaching out to us in mercy rather than in wrath.

Let us ask the questions and hold the debates about the mechanics of the Cross, but let us not pretend to have arrived at any absolute understanding of the mystery of God's love. It's the same arrogance that nailed Christ to the Cross in the first place which seeks to nail down our understanding of how the Cross works: once again Christ is crucified by his own people.

May God have mercy on us all.

Yours in Christ,

Pilgrim

You put things well as usual Pilgrim, but it will not surprise you that I disagree and am pleased with the EA's stance (which I wasn't aware of till I saw your post.)

Because the Bible makes it so very clear in so many ways and quite explicitly that Jesus was being punished on the cross for our sins, it is indeed a cornerstone of any true understanding of how sinners can be redeemed.

To reject it is to reject vast tracts of the Bible.

You yourself say:



The wages of sin is death, and Christ paid that price for us.

He was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

He was punished. By God. For us. And he was God, so this dreadful punishment was something God in the person of Jesus Christ took upon himself for us.

Such love.

As you say, Buzby, I'm not at all surprised that you disagree. But it's your interpretation of the Bible that makes things, as you put it, "so very clear", not the Bible itself.

The penal substitution model of the atonement is not universally accepted by Christians (Google "penal substitution model of the atonement" and work your way through the 39,000+ search results to get a perspective on how wide ranging the debate is) and rejecting it is not rejecting the Bible; it is a rejection of one particularly narrow reading of the Bible.

You seem to be adopting a stance whereby anyone who interprets the Bible in a way that differs from your interpretation of the Bible is rejecting the either the entire Bible or huge tracts of it. Some, perhaps, may be doing so: but I for one am not. I take Scripture every bit as seriously as you, Rebekah, James or anyone else on this forum — but I disagree profoundly with your hermeneutics.

You quote Isaiah 53 as though that settles the issue of penal substitution. It doesn't, not by a long shot. Have a read of this paper, presented at the EA/LST Symposium on the Atonement in 2005, to get a handle on the complexities of the passage: Why Did Christ Die? An Exegesis of Isaiah 52:13–53:12 (pdf, 150k). Be warned: it's 31 pages of fairly heavy-duty analysis of the Hebrew text.

I don't know how Christ's death on the cross deals with our sin: all I know is that, by God's grace, it does.

I've read the first seven pages so far, but really must hit the sack now. I shall return to it tomorrow, and will come back here too clutching more passages from the Bible.

In the meantime, let me just say a couple of things.

I find this whole debate quite bizarre. I do not understand where it has come from; any normal reading of the Bible tells us that:

1 God is angry about sin and with sinners (all of us)
2 Sinners will be punished when they die
3 God came into the world in the form of Jesus and took our punishment
4 By repenting and having faith in Jesus and what he did, we are redeemed or ransomed. We are justified.
5 If we don't repent, we will be punished.

"It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" as Paul says in Hebrews.

What I can't fathom is WHY it is so important to those on the other side of the argument to reject this. If you don't accept what Isaiah 53 appears to be saying, then what is your explanation of what it is saying?

The following statements are hopefully beyond doubt:

1. Jesus Christ was sinless
2. Jesus Christ suffered a terrible, cruel, unjust, painful death
3. That's what he came for.
4. It was God's plan, prophesied from the time of the fall.
5. Because of the death of Jesus, we can be saved.

So... if God planned for the guilt-less Jesus Christ to die in agony when he had done nothing wrong, so that we can be saved, what do you call it?

Is the deliberate painful death of an innocent man not an unjust punishment? If crucifixion isn't punishment, then what are we going to call it instead?

Did Jesus Christ not take our place so we could be reconciled to God?

Doesn't punishment + in our place = "penal substitution"?

And when the Bible has so much to say about how the death of Jesus deals with our sin, why do you want to try to find another explanation and say you don't know how his death deals with our sin?

Oops.... that was a long couple of things, but at least it's not 31 pages.

PS Just got tempted to read more of that paper before logging off, and I think I started getting to the heart of what presumably is coming:



That could be summed up by the word "empathy" and while Jesus certainly empathised with us - that's very Biblical - he did not save us with empathy. He saved us by being punished in our place, as the Bible teaches.

A few lines further down we have:



Nonsense. The first part is an inversion of Biblical truth. Make no mistake, this is tantamount to a nuclear attack on saving faith in Jesus Christ.



Nonsense. How could the spotless lamb of God ever be "identical with the sinner". If there was a even subatomic particle of truth in that statement, he could not have died for us.



He makes union with God possible by dying in our place, taking upon himself the punishment due to us.

I'm still only half way through...... no doubt there will be more interesting material to consider.

PS The views expressed above are mine and I come here to express my views and debate with those who disagree. Please, please don't take offence.

Forgive me if I wax lyrical:

Was anything accomplished
When Christ was crucified
Or was it our Creator
Committing suicide?

As I see it, one of the biggest problems with penal substitution as a model for understanding the atonement (and I emphasise again that what what we're talking about here is models for our understanding) is that it presents us with a sort of major deity taking out its wrath on a minor deity.

If we believe in one God then the notion of God the Father punishing God the Son is patent nonsense, unless you're arguing simply that God was punishing himself? Perhaps he was. Was the Cross God's way of accepting responsibility for humanity's failings, like a potter accepting responsibility for a misthrown pot? Questions, questions...

God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself — again, I don't claim to understand how the atonement works. I simply thank God that it does and fall on my knees at the foot of the Cross, "lost in wonder, love and praise".

Yes indeed Pilgrim, that is the whole point. God did it all for us because we are completely unable to redeem ourselves. He came into the world himself and rescued us, in the person of Jesus Christ. It's not major and minor deities, it's one God taking on different roles. It was the only way justice could be satisifed and it is the supreme example of love in all of time and eternity.

To Pilgrim,

We have already had what I consider a misguided posting from David suggesting that a war was about to break out on this site between postmodernist unbelievers and Bible believers, a position that I disagree with. Personally, I don’t mind free and open debate about what the Bible teaches and hope that it continues, provided it is done in a spirit of good grace. But good grace doesn’t mean we have to agree.

Your posting on this site of an open letter to the Evangelical Alliance where you strongly object to the doctrine of Jesus Christ’s penal substitution in the place of sinners, can only be construed as an open invitation to Bible believers on here to respond to you in disagreement. Therefore it should not come as a surprise to you when those of us who do believe the Scriptures defend our position equally strongly as you defend your unbelief. For us to stay quiet against such heresy would mean that we were failing in our duty as Christians.

It won’t surprise you that I totally disagree with your refusal to accept Christ’s penal substitution for our sin. In fact, I find it difficult to understand how anybody can claim to be a Christian whilst disbelieving so much of Scripture.

It seems to me that your strong objection to Christ’s penal substitution is possibly rooted in two presuppositions:

1. Your “inclusive” broad way approach is possibly based on an unbiblical panentheistic understanding that all of creation, including men, is basically good, but men have simply lost their way – hence the broad way, accept everybody philosophy.
2. From the above, because we are basically good, God isn’t a God of wrath or vengeance; therefore He doesn’t require a payment or substitutional sacrifice to atone for sin.

Right at the beginning in that unbelievable book of Genesis we find that Adam and Eve enjoyed personal fellowship with God. God warned Adam and Eve that if they sinned they would die – the penalty for sin. They sinned, so they died twice; first they died by losing fellowship with God and experienced shame at their nakedness, they were also banished from Eden where the tree of life was. Their second death was evidenced in the decay that slowly took over their bodies until they physically died. Until they sinned they saw no death or decay around them, but after, they witnessed the whole of creation become subjected to futility because of their sin.

At this beginning we see God providing a blood sacrifice for sin by providing skins to cover their nakedness and shame. Even at this early stage it is clearly demonstrated that sin requires a blood sacrifice, where the death of an innocent is to pay the price for the sin of the guilty. Until this point in time there hadn’t been any death; it must have been a real shock to Adam and Eve to see the result of their sin. We also see in the Genesis account that enmity is to exist between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, where the woman’s seed shall eventually be triumphant. Enmity speaks of acute division and a diametrically opposed purpose. This deep rooted enmity doesn’t allow for a belief that goodness exists within all things; it suggests warfare for the souls of men between God’s Holy righteousness and the forces of evil.

A little later in Genesis we read:

Gen 6:5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Here we learn just what God thinks of men; we are wicked because of our sinful nature from Adam, and EVERY imagination tends towards evil. There is nothing here about any inherent panentheistic goodness that should be widely accepted into God’s presence.

Then we learn that it grieved God that He had made man:

Gen 6:6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

Next we learn that God’s grief was such that He would work out His wrath and destroy every living thing on earth apart from Noah and his family:

Gen 6:7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

So right at the beginning of the Bible we see God’s Holiness being unable to tolerate sin in His presence. And we see God acting in wrath towards sinful men.

Paul tells us in Rom 3:10-12
There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

Again, from this it is clear that there is no inherent goodness in any of us.

Then Ezekiel tells us:
Eze 18:20. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.

And again from Paul in Rom 6:23:
For the wages of sin is death.

God’s Holiness demands that sin shall result in death. In this day of grace we have the choice of accepting God’s provision in His Son Jesus Christ, who received in His body our wages for sin, or we shall pay the price ourselves when resurrected for judgment at the second death.

The truly born again believer has nothing to fear from this second death:

Rev 20:6. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.

But those who reject God’s gracious provision by His Son’s propitiation for sin shall suffer the second death:

Rev 21:8. But the fearful, and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

Scripture refers to Jesus Christ’s substitutional death on the Cross as a propitiation for our:

Rom 3:25. Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;

Propitiate means:
To conciliate (an offended power); appease with sacrifice: propitiate the gods with a sacrifice. To propitiate means penal substitutional sacrifice.

Leviticus chapter 16 describes the annual ceremony of Atonement for Israel’s sin against God. After the High Priest has gone through a strict regime of cleansing himself and offering sacrifice for his own sins he takes the two goats that Israel provides for the nations sin. One goat is killed before God by the High Priest, and the sacrificial goat’s blood is spread about the Holy place by the hand of the High Priest. The High Priest has to kill this sacrifice with his own hands and watch and listen to the goat die before he presents it to God inside the Holy place beyond the veil. All the time the High Priest is performing his duties, the people of Israel are waiting outside to see whether their sin offering has been accepted by God, because if he hadn’t performed the ritual correctly then the High Priest would have died. After Israel’s sin sacrifice had been accepted then the people’s sin was laid upon the second goat, the scapegoat. This scapegoat is then taken far from the camp and let go free. The point here is that when God accepted the first goat’s substitutional blood sacrifice for Israel’s sin then the second goat was seen to take Israel’s sin far away never to be seen again.

Jesus said in John 10:30. “I and my Father are one.”

He also said in John 14:9. “… he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”

Heb 13:8. Tells us “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.”

Jesus Christ makes it very clear that He and the Father are perfectly one, and neither do they ever change. The same God who instilled in Israel the need for an innocent penal substitutional sacrifice to atone for sin also provided Himself as an innocent perfect blood sacrifice to atone for the sins of those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God. To reject this offer of a penal substitutional sacrifice of grace is to reject God’s only provision for sin.

At the end of the day, what we like to agree or disagree with doesn’t change anything; what counts is what God says in His word, and the Bible makes it quite clear from beginning to end that sin requires a sinless penal substitutional sacrifice be made to atone for sin before personal fellowship with a Holy God can be restored.

You can object as loudly as you please that you disagree with a God who requires a penal substitutional death penalty be paid for sin, but on that judgment day described in Revelation, only our acceptance, when on earth, of Jesus’ substitutional blood sacrifice on the Cross at Calvary in our stead will turn God’s wrath away from those of us who believe God’s Word.

2 Ti 4:3 – 4.
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.[

Jimbo, brother, as you say, I'm not in the least bit surprised by your response. And I'm sure you won't be surprised when I say that I've heard it all before.

I'm not going to wear out my keyboard with a line by line reply: you are at liberty to interpret scripture in any way you choose. I say to you exactly what I said to Buzby:

You emphasise the importance of free and open debate carried out in a spirit of good grace. I wholeheartedly agree.

Please therefore refrain from insulting me or others of similar persuasion by calling us "postmodernist unbelievers" in contrast to your own so-called "Bible believers" position: this is a false dichotomy.

I have no interest whatsoever in defending unbelief: I am every bit as much a believer as you are and I take the Bible every bit as seriously as you do.

Thank you.

In support of Pilgrim, I'm another of those so-called 'postmodernist unbelievers' and have to say that calling us unbelievers is not helpful. There is more than one way of believing and understanding.

Please understand that for some of us there is a profound difference between 'disbelieve the Bible' and 'understand the Bible differently'; and that many Christians feel that there is not just one set way of understanding the Bible. Wishing to explore a range of biblical perspectives from a variety of viewpoints, and coming to considered conclusions or indeed being happy to live with questions and uncertainties is not a sign of a lazy, insincere or less passionately held faith; it's often a sign of an engaged faith.

Thanks Boopy.

To me the Bible is a record of humanity's ongoing struggles to understand its relationship with God — and I, like Jacob, wrestle with God, I wrestle with the biblical text, I wrestle with my own mind.

Sometimes it's a dance, fluid and graceful; sometimes it's a brawl, and I walk away limping: but I've seen a stairway to heaven, with angels ascending and descending, and I want to climb it.

Let's climb it together, people, not gang up on one another to see who we can throw over the edge.

Ah but Pilgrim, Boopy... you must have known us fundies long enough to know that for us it's not just a question of believing something, but what you believe.

At least you can't say it's not challenging on here. Never a dull moment! This is exciting stuff and I believe a good microcosm of a debate that needs to take place in the church.

In any debate between liberals and whatever we call non-liberals, there is going to be the issue that liberals are easy-going about many shades of opinion, and fundamentals, by definition, are not becaue we don't believe God is either. That goes with the territory so to speak.

I don't mean fundies can't tolerate hearing them and debating them, or getting along perfectly well with people who hold them: but of course we will never be able to accept that it doesn't matter what you believe.

Boopy, Pilgrim,

Sorry, I don’t see what the problem is, Boopy. You have readily admitted that you don’t believe the Bible to be the inerrant word of God. You see it as a collection of human writings and experiences and not the inspired word of God. You don’t believe the Genesis account to be literal; to quote you:

“Frankly I'm absolutely astonished that anyone today could take Genesis as an historical record, and I mean no disrespect by saying that, it is just not a view I have often encountered.”

You have explained that you don’t believe the Bible speaks prophetically of future events. There is so much from the Bible that on your own admission you don’t believe.

Neither you, Boopy, nor you, Pilgrim believe that God will exercise wrath or vengeance. Neither of you believe the Bible requires penal substitution for sin.

Pilgrim, you posted your letter voicing disapproval with the Evangelical Alliance for their stand on penal substitution, then you cited a document above in this thread that you used to disbelieve the Isaiah 52 - 53 description of Christ’s penal substitution for our sin.

To quote you again, Boopy:

“I am just not able to engage with the idea of the necessity of a blood sacrifice - well not so much can't engage actually, I just think it is not true. To me this is a perception that comes out of a culture where blood sacrifice was normative; to me, that doesn't make it an eternal truth or necessity, but personally it presents an anthropomorphic picture of a cruel God who is less generous than human beings. For me that's not a tenable position. I do think however that Jesus leads us into quite new ways of living and loving; for me that's tremendously important.”

You say you think it is not true; that means you don’t believe it!

In short, on the foundational points of Scripture, you disbelieve it.

Buzby: I doubt if there's anyone here who would say it doesn't matter what you believe. Of course it matters what we believe: we wouldn't be having this conversation if it didn't. Our beliefs shape our lives, govern our relationships and attitudes, make the difference between those who hijack a plane and fly it into a skyscraper and those who risk their lives by running into a burning building to save someone trapped inside.

Please don't try to tar those of us whose beliefs differ from your own with the same brush as those who say it doesn't matter what you believe: that's a different issue.


Jimbo: You're doing it again, arguing from different beliefs to disbelief. If only life were that simple, everything in black and white — but it isn't, there are shades of grey, then all the colours of the rainbow, God's promise, arching overhead, always beyond our reach.

Unlike Boopy, I'm not astonished, just saddened, that there are so many people who regard the Genesis myths as literal history. That doesn't mean that I disbelieve the book of Genesis: it means I have different beliefs about it.

I'm not sure how you've worked out that I don't believe in the wrath of God; I'm quite sure that apart from Christ I would certainly face the wrath of God.

But I don't believe that the Bible requires me to believe in the concept of penal substitution; that's simply one way (which happens to be your way) of interpreting some of the biblical evidence, an interpretation that I don't share: and that, again, is an entirely different proposition.

You're doing the same thing with Isaiah's Servant Song: I disagree with your interpretation of that passage; you assert that I disbelieve.

I also happen to share Boopy's reservations about the concept of blood sacrifice. That doesn't mean I don't believe what the Bible says about it: it means that I read it in its historical and cultural context.

I suspect that when you refer to "the foundational points of Scripture" you're actually referring to the foundational points of your theological framework. Perhaps this is where the confusion arises? You seem to equate your theology with Scripture, so whenever someone disagrees with that theology they are, by default, disagreeing with Scripture.

To me, Scripture is an open book, an exploration of a relationship, a doorway to conversation. Please don't close it in your brothers' and sisters' faces by pretending there's only one way to read it.

Thanks Pilgrim.

Thinking out loud, it might help here if at some point those with views other than what appears to be the obvious message try to set them out for us.... what you actually believe about salvation, what's necessary for it and how it is achieved. And who Jesus was, what his purpose was in coming, how he achieved that purpose .... and what the cross was all about. I genuinely think it would be helpful.