My Heavenly Father,

I thank You, through Jesus Christ, Your beloved Son, that You have protected me, by Your grace. Forgive, I pray, all my sins and the evil I have done. Protect me, by Your grace, tonight. I put myself in your care, body and soul and all that I have. Let Your holy angels be with me, so that the evil enemy will not gain power over me.

Amen.

Martin Luther

O God,

Come to my aid.
O Lord, make haste to help me.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
 as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
 world without end.

Amen. Alleluia.

St. Benedict

Here's a dilemma: I'm going away for three days tomorrow morning and I may not have the internet when I get back (I'm moving house and it's being turned off), so rather than post nothing at all I'm going to write my concluding post on the atonement but make it very short and to the point, so excuse the brevity. Part one here.

1. The punishment that Jesus bears

i) I'm not backtracking here from what I wrote in the previous post. Jesus saves us from God's wrath, which as I argued is a result of humanity rejecting the one true God and turning to idolatry. However, the notion of equivalent suffering or retributive punishment that Adrian suggested is both incorrect and inadequate to a) force us to come to the conclusions about new life and freedom from sin that the NT proclaims and b) to deal effectively with sinful human nature. Equivalent punishment visited upon the Son by the Father suggests a crude formula whereby the offence against God = X which can only be alleviated by Christ enduring punishment Y. As soon as Y = X then reconciliation and atonement have taken place and the wrath of God is alleviated. This grossly distorts both the nature of God and the nature of sacrifice, and also imports alien concepts of punishment that are unhelpful in our explanation of the Gospel.

ii) Isaiah 53 - the classic proof from scripture for the doctrine of penal substitution:

Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.

5 But 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.

6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

First of all, it does not actually state that God was the agent responsible for piercing and crushing Jesus, and only that "we perceived him to be", not that he actually was, but that's not really relevant here and in any case is somewhat tenuous. What is more important is the background of the Isaiah passage. All the prophets have their roots firmly in the Torah, and they seek to apply it afresh and with divine insight to Israel as her history unfolds, and Isaiah is no exception. How then does this affect our understanding of the "punishment that brings peace"?

The Torah prescribed a series of punishments and curses for Israel that would occur if she were to become disobedient. In fact we see at the end of Deuteronomy that both God and Moses fully expect Israel not to obey God and enjoy blessing, but to disobey him and fall under the divine curse. Now each of the punishments that Israel was to endure were sent not to appease God, or to balance out a scheme of divine justice, but to purify God's people so that they would become pure of heart. Consider Leviticus 26:14ff for example, God sets out a series of punishments that are designed to correct his wayward people. Notice how after each punishment/curse there comes the refrain ("and if you still will not listen to me...") which makes clear that God's intended purpose behind punishment is not simply to "uphold his justice" or to appease his wrath by means of retribution, but to produce a people who will love him and worship him. A people who do not worship idols but who worship God and so who are holy, a people who will listen to him. Also in Deut 30:1-14 it is clear that God will have a pure and obedient people with a new heart but only after they have been judged and punished because of their disobedience.

This concept is not only the foundation for the new covenant and new heart anticipated by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, but also for the new messianic future envisioned by Isaiah in Isa 40-66. Here then in Isaiah 53 the "punishment that brings us peace" is not a retribution or a means of balancing out a cosmic equation of divine justice, but it is a foreshadowing of what will ultimately take place in the mission of the Messiah. The punishment and judgement of God is designed to bring transformation and new life out of what is old, idolatrous and sinful. It is always orientated towards the future. We might consider Heb 12:4--11 as a good case in point. Indeed the Hebrew word mishal ("punishment") here denotes not an eye for an eye style retribution, but a correction or discipline whose stated purpose is to bring shalom.

ii) Gal 3:13 - I wrote my undergraduate thesis on this passage so if you want to read up on that then click here. Essentially, Gal 3:13 is simply following the Torah tradition found in Isa 53 and elsewhere. The "curse of the law" is not some general sense of divine ill-favour towards human beings, but quite specifically it means the curse of the Torah, which as we have seen is not concerned with balancing out equations of justice, earning forgiveness, or placating an angry Yahweh, but with producing a holy people who will have circumcised hearts. This has of course all taken place in the person of the Messiah himself. He has undergone the curse of the law, but in doing so will bring about the blessing that God intended from the beginning.

iii) We should not view the cross in isolation from the resurrection. The cross is a punishment - but it is a corrective and forward-looking punishment that will ultimately produce new life and a holy people through the power of the resurrection and the sending of the Spirit. The relationship between the cross and the resurrection is completely absent from Adrian's definition of the Gospel, and is its biggest (and ultimately fatal) weakness. Without this in view, the view of punishment becomes somewhat deformed and deficient and we find ourselves talking about Christ appeasing God's anger, God killing Jesus to satisfy his wrath, Jesus being a whipping boy in our place, or even Jesus suffering just long enough to purchase forgiveness for us. Such concepts of punishment are a million miles away from the concepts of punishment found in Isa 53 and Gal 3:13.

I'd like to see the back of these three bits of circular reasoning:

Exhibit 1.

a) The Gospel is offensive. 

b) What I say/preach/teach/write causes offence.

c) Therefore, whatever I say/preach/teach/write is the Gospel.

Exhibit 2.

a) True believers will be persecuted and criticised.

b) I am being persecuted and criticised.

c) Therefore, I am a true believer and everything I believe is correct. This is confirmed by the fact I am being criticised.

Exhibit 3.

a) The Gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing.

b) People don't like what I say/preach, and/or they disagree with it. 

c) Therefore i) I am right because ii) they are perishing, and are also iii) obviously foolish.

The Daily Gazelle locks horns with Guardian writer Polly Toynbee over the issue of the pursuit of happiness:

The pursuit of happiness as essential to being human is so ingrained in American consciousness that even Christians tend to believe it to be based on the Bible (rather than a product of the deistic philosophy of Thomas Jefferson). A poll of the average Evangelical American Christian (a different category from American Evangelical Christian, or Evangelical Christian, or even American Christian) would probably find a fair percentage who believe that the 'pursuit of happiness' can be found in Scripture. It seems Toynbee is one of their number.

Read the full article here.

1. Love your enemies, and do good to those who hate you.

2. The measure with which you judge others will be the measure that is used to judge you.

3. Judgement without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful.

4. If anyone says "I love God", but hates his brother, he is a liar and walks in darkness.

5. If you do not forgive those who sin against you, you will not be forgiven.

6. Divine authority is given for building up, not tearing down.

7. True wisdom is considerate, full of mercy, impartial, and sincere.

8. Who are you to judge your neighbour? God is the only true judge.

9. Take the log out of your own eye so that you can see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

10. Slander no one, be peaceable and considerate, and show true humility before all men.