More and more evangelicals believe Christ\u2019s atoning death is merely a grotesque creation of the medieval imagination. Really?<\/p>\n
=======================<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve just been told that I\u2019m too Atonement-centered.\u201d<\/p>\n
My sister in Christ was serious, humble, and a little confused. I said, \u201cWhat do you mean \u2018too Atonement-centered\u2019?\u201d I had never heard the charge.<\/p>\n
A Christian friend told her that she talked too much about Christ\u2019s death, which dealt with our guilt due to sin. I responded that knowing and accepting this truth was the only way to a relationship with God, and that I didn\u2019t think it was possible to be \u201ctoo Atonement-centered.\u201d<\/p>\n
Few other doctrines go to the heart of the Christian faith like the Atonement. Congregations sing at the top of their lungs: \u201cMy sin, not in part but the whole, has been nailed to the cross, so I bear it no more, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!\u201d (\u201cIt Is Well with My Soul\u201d). The priestly work of Christ separates Christianity from Judaism and Islam. Not surprisingly, the Cross has become the symbol for our faith.<\/p>\n
Still, God\u2019s work on the Cross leaves us with plenty of questions. In fact, there have always been a few Christians who question whether we need the Atonement, including, in recent years, some evangelicals who have challenged the dominant understanding of Christ\u2019s death on the Cross as the substitute for our sins.<\/p>\n
At stake is nothing less than the essence of Christianity. Historically understood, Christ\u2019s Atonement gives hope to Christians in their sin and in their suffering. If we have any assurance of salvation, it is because of Christ\u2019s Atonement; if any joy, it flows from Christ\u2019s work on the Cross. The Atonement protects us from our native tendency to replace religion with morality and God\u2019s grace with legalism. Apart from Christ\u2019s atoning work, we would be forever guilty, ashamed, and condemned before God. But not everyone these days sees it that way.<\/p>\n
DIFFERENT CROSSES<\/p>\n
Christians have understood the Bible\u2019s abundant Atonement language and imagery by means of various theories. J. I. Packer, in his classic 1973 lecture, \u201cThe Logic of Penal Substitution: What Did the Cross Achieve?\u201d outlined three sets of theories, or visions. Each vision sees humanity\u2019s main problem differently, and each theory explains how Christ\u2019s death solves that problem.<\/p>\n
The first set of theories argues that humanity\u2019s main problem is that we are trapped and oppressed by spiritual forces beyond our control. Christ\u2019s death, then, is seen as a ransom that frees us from captivity. His death and resurrection defeats the evil spiritual forces. These theories are generally summarized under the heading of ransom theory or CHRISTUS VICTOR (Christ the Victor).<\/p>\n
The second set of theories deals with the subjective need of all people to know God\u2019s love for us. These theories emphasize that Christ\u2019s death on the Cross demonstrates God\u2019s love so dramatically that we are convinced of his love and are now able to share it with others. This set includes the moral-influence theory of Abelard, among others.<\/p>\n
A third set of theories assumes that our main problem is God\u2019s righteous wrath against us for our sinfulness, which puts us in danger of eternal punishment. These theories argue that Christ\u2019s perfect sacrifice for our sins is necessary to satisfy God\u2019s righteousness. Christ\u2019s death bore a divine penalty that we deserved. By taking our penalty upon himself, God satisfied his own correct and good wrath against us. Theories in this set, such as the satisfaction theory and the penal-substitution theory, emphasize how Christ represents us.<\/p>\n
The new wave of criticism has targeted this last set of theories, especially the view of Christ as a penal substitute \u2014 a theory long central for most Protestant groups, especially evangelicals. The criticism follows a path laid by others throughout history, from Abelard to Socinus to Schleiermacher to C. H. Dodd. In 1955, English Methodist theologian Vincent Taylor noted the \u201cclearly marked … tendency to reject theories of substitutionary punishment.\u201d Roman Catholic dissenters have turned from emphasizing the cultic rituals of sacrifice to the ethics of imitating Christ\u2019s sacrifice. In Lutheran circles, Gustav Aulen\u2019s Christus Victor (1931) led the charge to replace a substitutionary understanding of the Atonement with what he called the \u201cclassical\u201d understanding \u2014 Christ as liberating us from spiritual forces who have enslaved us.<\/p>\n
HEARING THE CRITICS<\/p>\n
Critics, past and present, usually raise four main objections to substitutionary Atonement.<\/p>\n
1. NOT ENOUGH? Many current mainline Christians \u2014 such as William Placher, \u201cChrist Takes our Place\u201d (Interpretation, Jan. 1999), and Peter Schmiechen, Saving Power (Eerdmans, 2005) \u2014 say penal substitution is, at best, inadequate. They say the true focus of Atonement doctrine lies beyond achieving forgiveness.<\/p>\n
For example, Stephen Finlan represents the stream of Christian thought following Abelard and Schleiermacher that stresses the Incarnation rather than any particular understanding of the Atonement. In his dissertation, The Backgrounds and Content of Paul\u2019s Cultic Atonement Metaphors (Brill, 2004), and in his book Problems with Atonement (Liturgical Press, 2005), he sees the whole framework of \u201csatisfaction\u201d as medieval, coming to us not from Paul, but from Anselm. Finlan acknowledges that \u201csacrifice\u201d and \u201cscapegoat\u201d are images rooted in the Old Testament, images which Paul and the writer of Hebrews use, but he says only later theologizing led Christians to theorize about the Atonement. In the end, Finlan concludes that Christians should realize that the Atonement is secondary to the Incarnation. He argues that we should think about Atonement as THEOSIS, as growing in God-like spirituality and conduct, thus sharing in the life of God.<\/p>\n
The Eastern Orthodox have long accepted THEOSIS as the main result of Christ\u2019s death. Reflecting on 2 Corinthians 3:18, Ephesians 4:13, 2 Peter 1:4, and other passages, many have suggested that God\u2019s work in us through Christ is best understood not by language of penalty, payment, ransom, and satisfaction, but by language of love, inclusion, growth, and deification. Seen this way, the church becomes an extension of the incarnation of God in Christ, and biblical images of the church as the body of Christ take on a more realistic hue.<\/p>\n
2. IRRELEVANT? Other critics, concerned with clearly communicating the gospel, charge that substitution does not make sense to modern cultures, does not mesh with most of what is in the Gospels, and glorifies unforgiving, abusive behavior. Joel Green and Mark Baker, in Recovering the Scandal of the Cross (InterVarsity Press, 2000), say, \u201cWe believe that the popular fascination with and commitment to penal substitutionary Atonement has had ill effects in the life of the church in the United States and has little to offer the global church and mission by way of understanding or embodying the message of Jesus Christ.\u201d Such critics argue that modern cultures, which are far removed from religions that offer blood sacrifices, find substitutionary theory irrelevant and distasteful.<\/p>\n
3. INDIVIDUALISTIC? Green and Baker also argue that penal substitution has encouraged individualism, because it seems to focus on individual guilt and forgiveness. As such, say these critics, it has blinded the church to social issues like materialism, racism, and nationalism. British scholar James D. G. Dunn has argued, \u201c[Substitution] smacks too much of individualism to represent Paul\u2019s thought adequately.\u201d<\/p>\n
4. TOO VIOLENT? Perhaps the most powerful criticism of penal substitution has come from a swelling chorus of scholars who decry its violence. Inspired by French scholar Ren\u00e9 Girard, many modern theologians have denied the need for divine violence as part of redemption. They reject God\u2019s apparent double standard in doing what he forbids others to do \u2014 take life.<\/p>\n
Roman Catholics have debated this last point for 30 years. But only recently has this concern penetrated evangelicalism, steeped as it is in the substitution-rich language of Watts\u2019s and Wesley\u2019s hymns. Some evangelicals have taken to the work of Anthony Bartlett, J. Denny Weaver, Steve Chalke, and Alan Mann, who decry the language of violence in substitutionary Atonement. Two years after publishing his controversial book The Lost Message of Jesus (Zondervan, 2004), Chalke wrote, \u201cThe church\u2019s inability to shake off the great distortion of God contained in the theory of penal substitution, with its inbuilt belief in retribution and the redemptive power of violence, has cost us dearly.\u201d Chalke and others say that substitution, at worst, produces a twisted justification of violence and encourages selfish, individualistic abuses of power.<\/p>\n
Green and Baker warn against suggesting that God the Father did something to God the Son. In popular church discourse, sermon illustrations of Christ\u2019s sacrifice on the Cross have fueled complaints about substitution. For example, there is the story of the railroad operator who learns that the bridge ahead is out, so he prepares to switch the tracks to save the lives of hundreds on a fast-approaching train. But at that moment, he sees his son playing in the gears, and he pauses to reconsider. Here, many a preacher has meditated on God\u2019s love in ways that border on the grotesque \u2014 we\u2019re told that the man decided to go ahead and sacrifice his son\u2019s life in order to save those on the train. Such an unwitting sacrifice has led to the charge that the Atonement is divine child abuse.<\/p>\n
SUBSTITUTIONARY SCRIPTURES<\/p>\n
Substitutionary Atonement has indeed been misapplied. The railroad analogy above, for example, is inadequate because it does not include the Holy Spirit. But even more to the point, Christ willingly offered up his life; he was not blindsided by the Cross. And the Bible does include many different ways of talking about Christ\u2019s death. But it remains odd how many writers these days downplay or even deny the doctrine of penal substitution, because it is the dominant Atonement imagery used in the Bible. The following paragraphs may be a bit Bible heavy for a magazine article, but I include them to suggest how central this theme is to the scriptural witness \u2014 and I\u2019m barely scratching the surface.<\/p>\n
The regulations for Israel laid out in the Book of Exodus, for example, frequently mention atonement being made for the people by means of sacrificial bloodshed. The regulations assume that God is holy and that people owe God obedience. Thus, action is needed to facilitate a peaceful, reconciled relationship. But these atonements were things that people did, following God\u2019s command.<\/p>\n
The writer of Hebrews referred to these sacrifices and said that the law \u201ccan never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins\u201d (Heb. 10:1-4).<\/p>\n
Against this background, God says to his people in exile, \u201cThen, when I make atonement for you for all you have done …\u201d (Ezek. 16:63). How would God do that?<\/p>\n
In Hebrews 2:17 we read, \u201cFor this reason [Jesus] had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement [hilaskesthai in the Greek original] for the sins of the people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paul\u2019s statement in Romans 3:25 is another crucial Atonement text: \u201cGod presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.\u201d Again, the word \u201catonement\u201d is related to the verb for \u201cpropitiate\u201d or \u201catone,\u201d hilasterion. Recent commentators have continued to differ over the best interpretation of the word, but all agree that some sort of substitution is indicated. Douglas Moo of Wheaton College Graduate School affirmed that \u201csacrifice of atonement\u201d is a good rendering \u2014 neither too restrictive, nor too vague. Thomas Schreiner of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary prefers \u201cpropitiation\u201d in order to retain a clear reference to God\u2019s wrath, which is alluded to in the preceding chapters of Paul\u2019s argument.<\/p>\n
Such language is not limited to Paul. The apostle John, too, refers to Christ\u2019s death as an hilasmos (1 John 2:2 and 4:10), an atoning sacrifice or propitiation.<\/p>\n
The New Testament also includes bloody images of sacrifice and religious ritual (Eph. 2:13; Col. 1:20; Rom. 5:9-10). Such images remind us that Christ accomplished something with his physical death. Other Atonement language borrows economic images from the marketplace and the prison, where something is purchased or redeemed for a price (Luke 24:21; Gal. 4:5; Titus 2:14).<\/p>\n
The language of propitiation specifically implies God\u2019s hatred of sin and emphasizes the gracious work of Christ as sin-bearer (Rom. 3:25). The Bible further includes the forensic, legal language of justification (Rom. 3:20-26, 4:25, 5:16-18). These images make clear the reality of our guilt and the required penalty.<\/p>\n
Yes, relational language is also used to describe the effects of Christ\u2019s death (Rom. 5:8-10), but often with substitutionary overtones: God has reconciled us, dealing with the barrier of hostility between himself and humanity by means of Christ\u2019s death (2 Cor. 5).<\/p>\n
Even the language of warfare and victory (John 16:33; Col. 2:15) is imbued with substitutionary overtones. These passages recognize the reality of the spiritual struggle that we are involved in and present Christ\u2019s death on our behalf as a crucial element in God\u2019s victory.<\/p>\n
PROBLEMS WITH PROBLEMS<\/p>\n
Many critics of substitution get around this \u201cproblem\u201d \u2014 that such language and imagery is found everywhere in the Bible \u2014 by downplaying its importance or reinterpreting it in ways that I believe do violence to the plain meaning of the text. Scot McKnight, for example, in his recent Jesus and His Death (Baylor, 2005), does lots of careful work with the Gospel text. Nonetheless, he assumes that the last phrase in Mark 10:45 \u2014 \u201dFor even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many\u201d \u2014 reports not Jesus\u2019 original words but Mark\u2019s theologizing. And while admitting that the idea of substitution is strongly suggested here, he finally rejects it.<\/p>\n
Further, McKnight uses Christ\u2019s words to interpret Atonement passages in Paul, Peter, and Hebrews \u2014 even though the Epistles provide the most sustained discussions of Christ\u2019s Atonement. He again acknowledges that such passages might carry along with them \u201cthe notions of penal substitution and satisfaction,\u201d but in the end says, \u201c[they] need not.\u201d Thus he goes to what seem to be great lengths to avoid the plain meaning of these passages. At one point, he says that Jesus is \u201cboth representative and substitute,\u201d but his interpretation so transforms the idea of substitute as to rob it of its traditional theological meaning.<\/p>\n
Stephen Finlan also seems to pit one portion of Scripture against another. He writes in Problems with Atonement, \u201cIt is a mistake to identify Atonement as the central Christian doctrine, although it is central to the Pauline tradition, to First Peter, Hebrews, First John, and Revelation. But these books in their entirety compose only 39 percent of the New Testament.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even if one were to grant Finlan\u2019s premise (which I certainly don\u2019t), 39 percent of the New Testament can hardly be swept away or ignored. For those of us who maintain that the apostles\u2019 writings bear equal authority to Jesus\u2019 words in the Gospels \u2014 and that they are themselves inspired by the Spirit of Jesus (see John 16:12-15) \u2014 substitutionary, sin-bearing language must be accepted as the dominant Atonement metaphor in the Bible.<\/p>\n
MANY-SPLENDORED ATONEMENT<\/p>\n
Still, why pit these theories against each other and discount, ignore, or diminish biblical language that describes the death of Christ? While a victor may have moral influence on those for whom he conquered, may he not also be a substitute? While Christ\u2019s example of self-giving love may also defeat our enemies, may he not, by the same act, propitiate God\u2019s wrath? Each of the theories conveys biblical truth about the atoning work of Christ.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t doubt that we have more to learn from Christ\u2019s death than simply the fact that he died as a substitute for us, bearing our grief and carrying our sorrows (Isa. 53:4). Peter, for instance, teaches that we should follow Christ\u2019s example of suffering for that which is good (1 Pet. 3). Any biblical understanding of the Atonement must take into account our having been united to Christ by faith, adopted and regenerated in him. As those who belong to him, as his temple and his body, we expect the fruit of his Spirit to be evident in us. Because of the Atonement, we expect a new quality to our lives (Rom. 6; 2 Cor. 5; Gal. 5; 2 Pet. 1). The Atonement is not merely moral influence, but it surely results in moral improvement.<\/p>\n
Rather than pitting these theories against one another, couldn\u2019t they be evaluated together? A Christ who wins victory over the powers of evil, whose death changes us, and whose death propitiates God is not only conceivable, he seems to be the Bible\u2019s composite presentation. Frank Thielman of Beeson Divinity School states a traditional view of the Atonement in his recent summary, Theology of the New Testament (Zondervan, 2005). But Thielman, a scholar who has focused his work more on Paul than on the Gospels, also presents the Cross as a defeat of those cosmic powers opposing God \u2014 Christus Victor. As Hans Boersma wrote of Atonement theories in Books & Culture (March\/April, 2003), \u201cBy allowing the entire choir to sing together, I suspect we may end up serving the interests of God\u2019s eschatological shalom.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, when we give attention and authority to all parts of the New Testament canon, substitution becomes the center and focus of the Bible\u2019s witness to the meaning of Christ\u2019s death, and the measure of God\u2019s redeeming love. As New Testament theologian George Eldon Ladd said, \u201cThe objective and substitutionary character of the death of Christ as the supreme demonstration of God\u2019s love should result in a transformation of conduct that is effected by the constraining power of that love.\u201d Theologian Donald Bloesch is in line with this when he insists: \u201cEvangelical theology affirms the vicarious, substitutionary Atonement of Jesus Christ. It does not claim that this theory does justice to all aspects of Christ\u2019s atoning work, but it does see substitution as the heart of the Atonement.\u201d<\/p>\n
NO SACRIFICE TOO GREAT<\/p>\n
And what about that charge of being \u201ctoo Atonement-centered\u201d? We must center our lives around Christ\u2019s Atonement. We don\u2019t want to encourage violence, marginalize the gospel, or promote individualistic passivity. But I haven\u2019t seen sinners who are gripped by Christ\u2019s substitutionary death respond that way. Instead, I\u2019ve more often observed responses like C. T. Studd\u2019s famous statement: \u201cIf Jesus Christ be God, and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for him.\u201d Charles Spurgeon put that point well: \u201cIt is our duty and our privilege to exhaust our lives for Jesus. We are not to be living specimens of men in fine preservation, but living sacrifices, whose lot is to be consumed.\u201d<\/p>\n
In C. J. Mahaney\u2019s new book, Living the Cross Centered Life (Multnomah, 2006), he shares with us his advice to his young son, Chad. \u201cThis is what I hold out to my young son as the hope of his life: that Jesus, God\u2019s perfect, righteous Son, died in his place for his sins. Jesus took all the punishment; Jesus received all the wrath as he hung on the Cross, so people like Chad and his sinful daddy could be completely forgiven.\u201d Like Chad, we would do well to accept our guilt and admire God\u2019s grace, to let the Holy Spirit encourage us by the Savior\u2019s self-denying love to follow his example, and to savor God\u2019s love to us in this almost incredible sacrifice.<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
Mark Dever is senior pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington, D.C., and executive director of 9Marks (www.9marks.org), a ministry for pastors and local churches.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2006 Christianity Today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
More and more evangelicals believe Christ\u2019s atoning death is merely a grotesque creation of the medieval imagination. Really? ======================= \u201cI\u2019ve just been told that I\u2019m too Atonement-centered.\u201d My sister in Christ was serious, humble, and a little confused. I said, \u201cWhat do you mean \u2018too Atonement-centered\u2019?\u201d I had never heard the charge. A Christian friend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[714,92,712,633,713,597,715,345,245,142,570],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7882"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7882\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}