Wednesday 14 June 2006 at 1:28 pm
In Christian blogging, there are three discussions that you can guarantee are never very far away. One is a discussion on the Bible and inerrancy, another is the question of limited atonement (or particular redemption, which is the same thing in practice) and thirdly is the nature of the atonement and penal substitution. UK blogmeister Adrian Warnock has caused a bit of a ruckus over the issue recently after he cited part of a recent sermon by reformed charismatic preacher C J Mahaney:
Who killed Jesus?
The Father. The Father killed the Son.
Adrian's defence of Mahaney's statement drew a lot of fire from both Christians (especially here) and non-Christians alike. Adrian is deeply sincere and passionate about Christ and the Gospel and is greatly respected as a brother in Christ and as a Christian leader, but sometimes I think there are some real difficulties in his presentation of the Gospel that leave it looking rather out of shape. It is as if most of the the pieces of the Gospel are there, but they have been put together in completely the wrong order. If we think of the Gospel as a fantastic and glorious symphony, this particular performance of it is out of tune, out of time, and missing much of the central melody.
One of my problems with Adrian's summary of the Gospel is that apart from anything else, it does not mention the resurrection of Jesus. Take the resurrection out of the Gospel, and not only does it cease to make sense, but there is no Gospel at all. Any attempts to explain wrath, sin, justice, new life, holiness, and love (and so on) without any attempt to factor the resurrection into the equation is like trying to play a Beethoven symphony with a recorder and a pair of maracas. Since Adrian has thrown down the gauntlet, I intend to pick it up - not because I believe he is completely wrong, but that the particular expression of substitutionary atonement that he and some others have advocated are not only unhelpful, but also at times unbiblical and theologically untenable.
In the rest of this post I want to respond to some of the issues that Adrian has raised in this post without, I hope, deviating too much into other areas that need to be blogged about another time.
The Wrath of God
"Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!" (Romans 5:8-9)
i) The central question in the discussion seems to be the question of the wrath of God, and how it relates to the question of atonement. Let me be clear at the outset: any atonement theory that does not take the wrath of God into account is really no atonement theory at all, and should not be seriously entertained as being either biblically sound or theologically sustainable. In all my posting and debate on the atonement, I have never called reality of the wrath of God into question. Where Adrian and I differ is in our explanation as to how Christ deals with God's wrath so as to save us from it and reconcile us to God.
ii) Common illustrations that attempt to explain the atonement and the wrath of God can prove to be deeply unhelpful. God is not an angry judge about to smite humanity when Jesus steps in and says "No! Smite me instead!", with God duly obliging. Neither is God like a bolt of lightning about the strike the earth but while on its way down from the heavens, it strikes Jesus instead, rendering the rest of us safe. These ideas, while popular, are in fact very far from the truth. I suspect (though cannot prove) that these ideas are the kind that Steve Chalke rejected as "cosmic child abuse", and which I too would consider to be a crude distortion of the biblical picture.
iii) Adrian's post raises the question "What is the wrath of God?", before suggesting that it is "our biggest problem". This is not entirely true. Neither is it wholly accurate to say that wrath must be "satisfied" as though it were an appetite or a demand, or that God required some kind of appeasement or persuasion before he was willing to be reconciled with humankind. This particular expression of propitiation is pagan, and not Christian (although that is not to say that all kinds of propitiation are not Christian, quite apart from any debates over how to translate the notoriously tricky hilasterion.)
So what is the the wrath of God, and is it really "our biggest problem?" And if it is, how does Christ's death save us from it? The key passages for beginning to understand the wrath of God are in the opening chapters of Romans. Rom 1:18 declares that:
"The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles." (Rom 1:18-22)
Mankind's "biggest problem" is not, in the first instance, the wrath of God: it is idolatry. Having known and rejected God, mankind no longer worships the true and living Creator, but worships created things instead. Without beholding and worshipping its Creator, humankind ceases to reflect God's image and so becomes depraved, subject to death and enslaved to sin. This is the wrath of God:
"Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them."
The wrath of God is made manifest not merely in some far-off future judgement, but here and now. Furthermore, the wrath of God is manifested not in lightning bolts, burning sulphur, or outer darkness, but by exiling humanity into the captivity of sin and death, as is our just desserts. The wrath of God is made visibly manifest in sinful human behaviour, destroyed relationships, selfishness, a hatred of truth, and a wilful rejection of God. Yet it is precisely this rejection of God and a failure to worship him that is humanity's "biggest problem", the wrath of God is the catastrophic result of this idolatry, it is not the initial issue.
We might consider the example of Israel in the Exile. Being in Babylon was not their "biggest problem", their chief problem was the idolatry and rejection of God that had brought them there in the first place. Consequently any formulation of a doctrine of atonement must not begin with the "problem of wrath", but the problem of idolatry.
iv) Problems with some explanations the relationship between punishment and wrath
I can't speak for Adrian, but I'm fairly certain that both he and those who agree with him would argue that Christ saves us from the wrath of God by somehow absorbing a retributive blow from God the Father, whereby the punishment meted out by the Father upon the Son would be equivalent to the insult that God had received, and with the death of Jesus, God had received sufficient in the way of satisfaction for him to be prepared to forgive humanity. Here's what Adrian wrote:
"The Roman soldiers were surprised; the death itself seems to have been so much part of God’s plan that it happened prematurely at the right moment – presumably when Jesus had suffered just the right amount of punishment that would purchase forgiveness for all that would believe on Him. The job done, it was in a sense in the end a mercy killing, for God was so in control that the process of dying lasted not a minute longer than He had planned and intended for it to do so."
The idea of Jesus purchasing or earning forgiveness in this manner has no biblical basis whatsoever. If anything, it has its roots in a doctrine of penance and merit (such is the unconscious psyche of western atonement theology), and has nothing to do with scripture or really with much of theological tradition.
Apart from anything else, the idea that salvation can be accomplished by equivalent retributive punishment does not really make all that much sense on the basis of what we have seen so far about the relationship between idolatry and wrath. Supposing that God the Father did actually retributively punish Jesus until his wrath had been "satisfied", we would be no nearer being saved than we were before the cross. Why? Because punishing Christ in this way is not transformative. It does not change the Adamic nature of human beings, it does not liberate us from the power of sin. It does not change humanity from the ugly and twisted creatures we saw in Romans 1 into new creations. Above all, it does not reverse the problem of idolatry and restore the true worship of God that was the root cause of the wrath of God.
At its very best this particular notion of punishment is misconstrued, but as is more often the case it presents a crudely distorted picture of God, and a somewhat primitive and misguided of atonement. While perhaps in the broadest sense of sovereignty and redemptive purpose we could (perhaps) speak of "God killing Jesus", it is incorrect to speak of God either killing Jesus directly or through human agents. Despite some attempts to assert that God did actually kill Jesus, by the same logic we would also have to then talk about God betraying Jesus (since he purposed it through the person of Judas) or about God tempting Jesus (since he predestined it to happen through Satan). We should, in all honesty, ditch the term "God killed Jesus" from our presentation of the Gospel rather than passionately defend it as a central proclamation, especially when it is never really a part of the NT proclamation about Christ.
I'll close there before this post gets too long. In the next part I will attempt to explain how Jesus does save us from the wrath of God, and how this relates to the problem of correct worship, and the glorious Good News of new life in Christ. I'd better deal with Isaiah 53 and Galatians 3:13 too, since I fully expect to have both verses quoted at me in the comments section 
Oh, and the resurrection will be in there too...
Monday 12 June 2006 at 12:18 am
This third part of my series on inspiration and the Bible will begin to look at some of the theological issues that are raised in discussions on inspiration and inerrancy. Part 1 considered some of the biblical perspectives on inspiration, whereas Part 2 looked at the question on biblical inspiration in church history.
Inspired Writing and the Church
Inerrancy is a secondary doctrine that is derived from the concept of inspiration, and before we can really say anything about inerrancy we need to have an adequate theological understanding of inspiration. If we take 1 Thess 2:13 seriously, it is clear that the word of God is conveyed through the words of men in the apostolic teaching and tradition, and so we must recognise that inspiration involves both the divine and human. Scripture in turn is both divine and human - but how are we to express and understand this phenomena?
Three common errors occur in attempting to express the divine-human relationship that exists in the scriptures. The first one is to view the biblical texts as the actual Word of God, as another incarnation of the Logos, but I will return to this in the next post. The second one is a form of scriptural docetism, in which the full divinity of the scriptures is acknowledged but without the human element being taken seriously and to all intents and purposes ignored. The third error is similar to the second one but rather than docetism it is a form of apollinarianism, where again the real divine action in the composition of scripture is recognised but expressed in such a way that the human element is either displaced altogether or if it is present, the real humanity of the biblical authors (with all its failings) is overridden. All three of these understandings are common, but in my view none of them can be correct.
The scriptures are a gift to the church, and through the work of the Holy Spirit they shape, uphold, and guide the church. In this way the inspired scriptures are a charismatic gift (in the truest sense of the term) since they have come into being through the charismatic activity of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the men who wrote the scriptures. Thus questions about divine inspiration working in and through human beings can be investiagted in terms of charisms. Admittedly Paul does not list "writing scripture" as a charism of the Holy Spirit (but then, why would he?) but neither does he exclude it. What is clear about charisms is that they are gifts of the Holy Spirit that are given for the edification and building up of the church, and so the inspired writings of scripture cannot be easily separated from the church, since they were created (and I emphasise "created") in and for the church. We should be clear that the scriptures and the church belong together, and that inspiration is a divinely-initiated charism given for the building up of the church through the writing of scripture.
So the church and the scriptures belong together and are mutually constitutive and are both formed by the activity of the Spirit. The Church is given a record of its foundation faith by the inspiration of the Spirit, and the same Spirit works through these scriptures to establish and develop the Body of Christ. There are some implications here, I think, for individuals and groups who use scripture to divide up, or separate themselves from the church, since the church and the scriptures belong together and work together in the power of the Spirit, but I won't develop that here.
What else can we say about the charism of inspiration? A charism does not replace an author's natural writing ability (with both its strengths and weaknesses) any more than the charism of preaching replaces one's own speaking ability. Neither do charisms imply a new and extraordinary revelation, and crucially for our main question, the charism of inspiration does not mean that the author of scripture is receiving new "hot off the press" direct revelation, but rather I would argue that an inspired biblical author is just as able to draw on tradition, experience and memory when writing scripture.
We can make a case for this by analysing Paul's writing on prophecy. He clearly distinguishes between the charisms of prophecy and revelation (1 Cor 14:6, 20-21) and says that he has the gift of prophecy, yet at the same time he says that he is passing on that which he has already received (1 Cor 11:23, 15:3) and which he in turn passes on to those who will come after him (2 Tim 1:13-14). Prophecy and tradition are not mutually exclusive, and both form part of the process of the composition of inspired writing. There is little to suggest that the charism of inspiration replaces or overrides the normal human methods of learning and writing, or that it gives the human writer special access to some hitherto unkown source of knowledge. There are some exceptions of course, but being a divinely inspired writer does not exempt one from the hard work of human research and learning (Luke 1:1-4) or ensure perfect and flawless transmission free from the author's own (conscious or unconscious) development (compare Paul's words in 1 Cor 11:24-25 with the synoptic accounts in Mt 26:26-29, Mk 14:22-25, Luke 22:14-20, for example). We should also not consider that the authors were the only individuals who were so inspired. The charism of inspiration is an ecclesial phenomenon, not simply for a few individuals, and so we might say that those who have compiled and redacted the biblical texts are every bit as inspired as their named authors.
Inspired Text
We cannot deal with all the question simply by talking about inspired authors however, since it is not so much a question of inspired authorship as it is a question of an inspired text, since we are really concerned with the inspiration and inerrancy of the scriptures themselves rather than their authors.
Just as Christ was both divine and human, so too the scriptures are human yet divine in origin (although not in the same way, since among other things, the Bible is not a Person) and we cannot simply separate the human from the divine.As they are divine, we approach them with faith and trust (though not with worship!), but as they are also human we can approach them with all the critical apparatus that we might use. It is the task of the biblical scholar or theologian to always hold these two elements together.
To carry the Christological analogy further, just as Jesus was fully human, so also the Bible is fully human and has all the hallmarks and limitations of human language and communication. The scriptures then do not so much convey value-free objective information, as they also exalt, express, reflect, and invite. We can see this clearly throughout the many varied literary forms and styles throughout scripture. The Bible is human communication of the word of God in human language and as such it cannot itself be the actual Word of God, or indeed the Very Word of God, as though finite and fallen human language were able to hold and convey fully and adequately the infinite person of the Word of God.
It should not seem surprising that we can talk of scripture in this way, even though we hold that God is the auctor of scripture. God is the Creator of the universe, yet he did not extraordinarily create the vegetables that are growing in my garden, he used normal biological processes, and this does not diminish him as the Creator. So also if God used ordinary human methods of research, transmission, and remembered or shared experience to produce the scriptures it does not in any way diminish him as the author of scripture, but it does exclude some of the more naive and fanciful notions of biblical inspiration. God inspires the whole of scripture, not simply its constituent parts, but scripture as a whole.
Scripture as the Word of God
This topic will be taken up more fully in a later post, but this will serve as a brief introduction. All Christians would affirm that scripture is the "word of God," but this does not mean that is a simply a transcription of a divinely dictated monologue. Such a view is purely docetic and completely overlooks the real human side of scripture and the real historical conditions in which it was formed. So what is the word of God?
The Hebrew term dabar and the Greek word logos do not strictly mean "word" as a form of written or spoken communication, but perhaps might better mean "reality" or "event". Ultimately, the Word of God is God's self-communication and self-revelation, though the term can be somewhat ambiguous. It is not correct to suggest (as has been done elsewhere) that I reject all notions of scripture as the word of God. What I would argue, is that it is Christ who is the full and complete embodiment of the Logos, and that the Bible is not the word of God in the same ways as Christ is. That is not to say of course that there is no way in which the Bible is the word of God, because in fact there are several ways in which we might understand the concept of the word of God. Here is a brief list of several, but some will require further discussion in another post:
The term "word of God" refers to:
1. All of God's varied communications with human beings, as an umbrella term.
2. The events of salvation history, such as the "speaking words" by which God saves his people.
3. The spoken words of the prophets, upon whom the Spirit rests.
4. THE Word of God, Jesus Christ, the full revelation of God's self-communication to human beings.
5. The preached and proclaimed message of the church about the Good News of Jesus Christ.
6. Finally, as designation for the Old and New Testament scriptures.
I am not going to develop any of these ideas at this point, as I plan the next post (or maybe the one after) to look at the question of revelation and the Word of God. However, in continuing the overall theme of this particular post, I will briefly outline how I believe we can understand the word of God in relationship to the process of the composition and charismatic inspiration of the scriptures. It is my contention that the scriptures are the word of God not because they are another manifestation (or even incarnation) of the logos, or because the words of the Bible have been, in some sense, uttered by God. Rather they are an inspired human record of the word of God. They are either a record of the Word made flesh in Christ, or a record of the proclaimed and taught word throughout salvation history, or they are a record of the saving activity of God throughout history. Here is the RC NT scholar Raymond Collins to elaborate further:
"The human words of scripture are a manifestation of inspiration but they do not have the ultimacy of the Word of God, nor even of the "very words of God", were it somehow possible for God to communicate with us in this fashion. All human language is a social phenomenon; it is necessarily bound to a time and a culture. Moreover human language embodies conventional symbols; there is a distance between the reality to which the symbol points and the symbol itself If there is a distance between human words and the human experience to which these words, always inadequately, point, there is certainly a distance between human words and the divine-human experience to which they point with an innate inadequacy. The words of scripture point to the Word of God, but they cannot simply be equated with the Word of God."
Here Collins also begins to develop the problem of language and inspiration that confronts us when we talk about scripture as the word of God. The temporality and transitional nature of language cannot completely express the fullness of a Holy God, bound as it is to a time, place, and culture. We can then say that the scriptures are the word of God in that they are a divinely inspired record of God's communication with human beings of of the human proclamation of God's saving activity, but they are not the Word of God in the sense that Jesus Christ is.
This becomes clearer if we consider the differing ontologies of scripture and the Logos. The Logos, made known fully in Christ, is a part of the Trinity, is eternally pre-existent, is the Creator, and is above all a person. None of these things are true of the Bible itself. The Bible is not part of the triune Godhead, and it is not eternally pre-existent. The Logos is of one substance with the Father and the Spirit, but the Bible is not. Ontologically, the Bible is a created reality and not the Creator, and neither is it a divine person. It is a sacrament in the life of the Church, not the object of worship itself. This would not be the case if indeed scripture were the Very Word of God, rather than an attestation to the Word of God and a record of the proclamation about the Word of God, as I am arguing.
We also need to consider the problem of language. While the scriptures form a communication from the divine to the human, they are every bit as much a communication from human to human (say, from Luke to Theophilus, or from Paul to Timothy). They are a communication between humans using human words, and as such are subject to all the limitations and frailties of human language. Human language is culturally and socially conditioned and its meaning changes between place and time. We should expect this to be the case, since any human communication that does not make sense in its own time and place is a pointless and meaningless communication. As far as our big question of inerrancy goes, this also means that scripture has the capacity for error and lack of clarity since it is expressed in human language.
By itself, this is not a problem for the matter of biblical truth and inerrancy since it is not really a case of "inerrancy" versus "errancy", but of truth versus deceit. It is deceit, and not error, which is the opposite of truth. An expectation of a complete and unambiguous freedom from error is not to be expected of a divinely inspired work by human beings, since it is not free of the constraints of time and language. A better way ahead, I suggest, is to stop asking the question "is the Bible inerrant?" but to ask instead "is the Bible truthful?" I believe that it is, but we then need to discuss the concept of truth and what this means for a doctrine of scripture. That'll have to wait until the next post.