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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: At-one-ment. ONLY one?
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
I thought it might be helpful to start this thread, following the er... "exotic" growth on the Ecclesiantics one '"In Christ alone" the wrath of God ' about the Stewart Townend hymn. A lot of tangential debate seemed to swirl there around PSA.
The specific relevance of all this to that thread was the worry that, since Townend seems to be explicit in his intention to make all or most of his hymns refer to Penal Substitutionary Atonement, this rendered it difficult or impossible for people with other views of the atonement to sing it wholeheartedly.
ISTM that the tangents were focusing on whether PSA can ever simply be one among many perspectives on what God was doing in Christ's incarnation, death and resurrection, or whether PSA necessarily claims to be such a complete theory of the atonement that to hold it is to claim that it exhaustively explains what God was/is doing in Christ.
Some of the possible positions seem to be:
1) PSA is the Scriptural doctrine of the atonement. It draws together all the threads exhaustively. Any other perspectives on the atonement are of the nature of poetic or ornamental elaborations of aspects of the story, and can't claim, rival or sustain the status or completeness of PSA.
2) (Relatedly, but not quite the same) Only a PSA doctrine of the atonement deals satisfactorily with the issue of sin.
2) PSA takes up the central strand of sacrifice which runs through both testaments. It's the way in which its advocates principally understand the atonement, but of course there are other valid ways of speaking of it.
3) Sacrifice is certainly a hugely important theme in Scripture, but there are many kinds of sacrifices, and a number of them are explicitly applied to the Christ-event in the NT.
4) There are several overlapping understandings of the atonement: sacrificial, "moral influence", Christus Victor and others. You have to do justice to the theme of sacrifice,but you also have to take into account the rich profusion of ways of talking about what God was/is doing in Jesus Christ, and PSA is reductionist, and effectively excludes other perspectives.
5) PSA is a depiction of a cruel, vindictive and sadistic God who is happy to punish the innocent so that the guilty can arbitrarily go free. This is an obscene distortion of the Christian faith.
Etc. etc. etc.
These are overstatements and simplifications, and are not meant as an accurate or exhaustive classification even of what appeared on the Ecclesiantics thread.
However this is clearly a live topic - there are other open threads on it in Purgatory. The only justification of another (apart from taking the strain off Ecclesiantics) is the specific issue of whether PSA is logically and necessarily an exhaustive treatment of the atonement (that is, you either hold it, in which case you understand all other ways of speaking of atonement as satellites of it - or you don't, because you object to its totalizing claims) or whether something approximating to a rounded Penal Substitutionary Atonement theory can be co-ordinated meaningfully with other developed understandings of atonement.
That's it launched. If it dies, it dies... ![[Frown]](frown.gif)
[ 05. November 2010, 00:07: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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PhilA
shipocaster
# 8792
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Posted
If there is a theory of atonement that is The™ actual one, then we are too far removed from it to know it.
Any and all theories of atonement must be Biblical in origin because that is the only source of the narrative of the atonement story we have. It could be argued - quite successfully - that the entire Bible is the atonement narrative.
I personally find PSA to be unhelpful because it raises more questions than it answers, but I wouldn't go as far as to say its untrue. I personally find Christus Victor to be more helpful, but again, I find it an atonement theory I can wrap my head around and it be internally sensible. But just because I understand it doesn't mean I think it more true than any other, it just makes more sense to me.
I find the idea of being able to fully understand God and his ways to be unbiblical and bordering on blasphemous. I am quite happy with the 'many different paths' approach and think the discussions are purely academic rather than truth gaining.
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To err is human. To arr takes a pirate.
Posts: 3121 | From: Sofa | Registered: Nov 2004
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Carys
Ship's Celticist
# 78
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
2) PSA takes up the central strand of sacrifice which runs through both testaments. It's the way in which its advocates principally understand the atonement, but of course there are other valid ways of speaking of it.
3) Sacrifice is certainly a hugely important theme in Scripture, but there are many kinds of sacrifices, and a number of them are explicitly applied to the Christ-event in the NT.
Now this is what I was talking about mixing theories. Sacrifice is different from Penal Substitutionary Atonement but many advocates of the later (and here non-advocates) conflate the two.
CArys
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O Lord, you have searched me and know me
You know when I sit and when I rise
Posts: 6896 | From: Bryste mwy na thebyg | Registered: May 2001
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
I'm not a massive fan of PSA - though I'm more sympathetic to it than I used to be - but I've always seen its proponents strenuously deny that they regard it as a complete description of the atonement.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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Jessie Phillips
Shipmate
# 13048
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Posted
Good thread. I don't mean to sound unsympathetic, but it's only a song ....?
Personally I see it all as allegory anyway. The idea that there's a divine being who was angry with people, and who needed a sacrifice to be reconciled with those people, is by no means peculiar to modern Christianity.
Reading this source on the subject does make the idea of "Penal Substitutionary Atonement" sound rather antinomian to me. But that's just me I suppose.
Personally, I suspect that you can't argue that it's the only valid scriptural kind of atonement without resorting to some serious games of exegetical sophistry.
So, point by point:
1) If PSA was "exhaustive", then there would be no risk of it being perceived as antinomian. Since that risk does exist, and since Paul speaks out against antinomianism in the letter to the Romans, it therefore follows that PSA is (probably) not exhaustive. It's all a game of exegetical sophistry to me, and I find it hard to take it seriously.
2) "the way in which its advocates principally understand the atonement" - I would find it hard to believe that it's that primary, although maybe I haven't fully understood it properly.
But it seems to me that it's missing the whole point of "sacrifice". You're supposed to sacrifice the best cuts of meat, not the entrails that can't be used. By a similar reasoning, the thing being sacrificed cannot be tainted with sin; it's not a good sacrifice otherwise. So if sacrifice is conceived of as a "punishment" against whatever or whoever it is that is being sacrificed, then it isn't actually a sacrifice at all.
It's a bit like saying that the sentence passed on convicted criminals constitutes a "sacrifice". It's absurd!
Having said that - the concept of PSA isn't a million miles away from what happens in Euripides The Bacchae, or the 1973 film The Wicker Man.
The sacrifice of the innocent does appease the gods, and it does strike out the sin of the guilty - but it's not because the innocent somehow takes on the sin of the guilty.
It's not the passing of sin from one party to another that makes the sacrifice "substitutionary". The thing that makes it substitutionary is simply that one guy has died for some other guy's benefit; nothing more than that. The death of the war heroes who "fought for our country" is therefore "substitutionary" by the same reasoning.
3) Agreed.
4) Agreed.
5) Not sure if I would agree with that. Is God cruel, vindictive and sadistic? Or is he just the ultimate sovereign? These are knotty issues, and I don't think they're easily solved by turning Christianity into a "fluffy bunny" religion, which bangs on about how much "God is love" but is a million miles removed from the reality of everyday suffering.
Still, just my views so far.
Posts: 2244 | From: Home counties, UK | Registered: Oct 2007
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Dinghy Sailor
Ship's Jibsheet
# 8507
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Posted
Sorry, why should the theology of PSA be thought to be necessarily exclusivist? I don't see the link here.
On a slightly different note and to carry something over from the other thread, you (Psyduck) said that
quote:
I welcome the obvious corollary of that, that you feel able to work with other models of atonement.
which implies that you thought I was some sort of exclusivist fundie beforehand, no? I feel like I've been guilty until proven innocent, especially since I've never said anything to imply I'm an exclusivist, since I'm not.
Be very careful of interpreting people's words in the least charitable fashion. That way lie reds under the beds. I'm afraid all this is part of my little Mickey Mouse psych model that Seeker rubished other the other thread - you see PSA exclusivism everywhere because you want to see it and because it gets talked up.
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Preach Christ, because this old humanity has used up all hopes and expectations, but in Christ hope lives and remains.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Nunc Dimittis
Seamstress of Sound
# 848
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Posted
quote:
Not sure if I would agree with that. Is God cruel, vindictive and sadistic? Or is he just the ultimate sovereign? These are knotty issues, and I don't think they're easily solved by turning Christianity into a "fluffy bunny" religion, which bangs on about how much "God is love" but is a million miles removed from the reality of everyday suffering.
This is the standard response of proponents of PSA to those who say it paints God as a vindictive child abuser etc etc etc.
I want to point out that just because those of us who are against the pernicious doctrine of PSA are at pains to try to expunge the picture of a vindictive God doesn't logically involve a denial of pain and suffering, or turn Christian faith into fluffy bunnies.
Far from it: I think of Moltmann's view of the Trinity, which, far from seeing God the Father as the just All-Holy whose wrath needs to be appeased by sacrifice, sees God, Father, Son and Spirit united in the sundering event of the cross. In the death of Christ, all pain and suffering is taken into the heart of God. This view of atonement rightly (in my view) points out that salvation is not just achieved by the death of the Son, but is the achievement of the Trinity.
Or take another view, that of James Allison (albeit that this is a modified and in some ways revisionist view of PSA). That Jesus' (self-sacrificial) death was the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, and that far from God needing to be appeased, it is the brokenness of sinful society which demands a scapegoat which needs to be appeased. He is therefore OUR sacrifice.
I have mixed feelings and opinions about both approaches. However, I mention these two as ways of seeing a faith which is not founded on PSA as nevertheless taking seriously the ideas of sacrifice and even substitution without the two having to be conflated, and without needing to subscribe to PSA. To my mind, faith which takes seriously the concept of sacrifice, and which realises the reality of pain (remember, Moltmann's theology was wrought in the concentration camps, and Allison's is formed by his experience of being a gay Roman Catholic), faith which proclaims the triumphing transforming love of God - this is not fluffy bunny religion.
So there!
Posts: 9515 | From: Delta Quadrant | Registered: Jul 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jessie Phillips:
It's not the passing of sin from one party to another that makes the sacrifice "substitutionary". The thing that makes it substitutionary is simply that one guy has died for some other guy's benefit; nothing more than that.
Wrong. You can do something for somebody else's benefit without substituting for them. If I buy a bike for my son, that is for his benefit, but I'm not substituting for him in any way. This is one of the chief logical errors made by the PSA folks. They take all the language in Scripture in which Christ's death is for our benefit and twist it to mean that it is in our stead. The two are patently not the same thing. I'm amazed you fell into this trap.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Starlight
Shipmate
# 12651
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Posted
I have seen a lot of advocates of PSA claim that they support and endorse other views of the atonement along with it. However their explanations of their positions have always led me to believe exactly the opposite.
As example is John Stott in his book The Cross of Christ. He adopts PSA as his overall model of that atonement. He then points out that a person holding PSA can affirm that Christ defeated the devil, or that that love of God was demonstrated in the atonement. He tries to convince the reader that to affirm such statements is the same as also holding the atonement models of Christus Victor and Moral Exemplar. His view then is that anyone who affirms PSA automatically gets CV and ME thrown in for free too.
I believe that Stott, and the others who take such a position are fundamentally wrong in their claims that they are endorsing multiple atonement models. They say the phrase-snippets that someone who holds another atonement model might say. But atonement models are fundamentally about explaining the reality behind the phrase-snippets. The whole issue of the atonement is that the NT has a large number of phrase-snippets and atonement theories attempt to provide competing explanations of the reality behind the phrase-snippets. So to say that a PSA advocate can endorse the key phrase-snippets of Christus Victor or Moral Exemplar, is a statement implying that PSA is a complete theory in and of itself, with such great explanatory power that it can even explain the presence of seemingly non-PSA phrase-snippets in the NT. To claim this is to deny that the Christus Victor or Moral Exemplar views of atonement make true statements about the reality behind the phrase-snippets they purport to explain.
So, I have seen many many PSA advocates claim to hold other atonement theories in addition to PSA. However, when I examine their claims, all I have found is the precise opposite - they deny the reality of the other atonement models.
Posts: 745 | From: NZ | Registered: May 2007
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Dinghy Sailor: quote:
On a slightly different note and to carry something over from the other thread, you (Psyduck) said that
quote:
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I welcome the obvious corollary of that, that you feel able to work with other models of atonement.
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which implies that you thought I was some sort of exclusivist fundie beforehand, no? I feel like I've been guilty until proven innocent, especially since I've never said anything to imply I'm an exclusivist, since I'm not.
Be very careful of interpreting people's words in the least charitable fashion. That way lie reds under the beds. I'm afraid all this is part of my little Mickey Mouse psych model that Seeker rubished other the other thread - you see PSA exclusivism everywhere because you want to see it and because it gets talked up.
First off, enough with the personalized moral indignation already. I was - and am - opening a valid line of argument here which has nothing to do with my personal percepitions of your personal position.
The OP tries to co-ordinate an examination of two things: (1) a thesis, that PSA is a theory of the atonement which by its own internal logic cannot but claim to be complete in itself, and (2) assertions by adherents of what they hold to be a form of PSA that they do not believe that they hold a doctrine of the atonement which is exclusve of other atonement perspectives. In the Ecclesiantics thread, you asserted (2) and I took you at your word regarding your assertion, but that still leaves me free, without impugning you in any way, to hold (1) - the belief that PSA is necessarily exclusive of other atonement perspectives.
That means that I am gratified, and completely believe you, when I hear you assert (2), but I'm still free to argue that, while I'm sure that you are being completely honest about your own position regarding PSA and other atonement perspectives, you are actually mistaken about the internal logic of PSA not necessarily being exclusive.
In other words, I can say - as have several other posters, here and there - that all we have are assertions. It's no more "personal" than that. Please don't try to make it so.
Just for clarification:
ISTM that PSA claims the following:
1) That there is a certain moral situation in the universe, created by two things:
a) Humankind's participation in a guilt incurred by an original act of rebellion, and necessarily reinforced by each individual's participation in that act of rebellion, against God's will, and
b) God's inability to overlook or mitigate the punishment for this rebellion without being untrue to his divine nature and the inexorable demands of his holiness and goodness.
2) The logic of 1a and 1b above lead to the prescription of a particular penalty. This is often described as death, though in fact it is physical death from the created universe followed by separation from God in Hell.
3) 1 and 2 above contribute to a situation in which God wills two contradictory things - the punishment and salvation of humanity.
4) The resolution of this impasse is that God's Son should undertake to be born into a humanity untainted by 1a, and should, undeservingly but freely, take upon himself the guilt of 1a and the punishment specified in 2 above.
Now that's a potted summary, and it's deliberately terse enough that it exposes some of the difficulties that I acknowledge PSA thought also recognizes, and moves to tackle. In particular, I've collapsed the relationship of sacrificial and legal, and indeed of religious and juridical law, in a way that indicates the problems here but not some of the solutions that have been suggested.
That said, have I really left anything out from the inner core of PSA?
And my point is this. If you believe that that is what's really happening on the cross, then what's left for any other perspective on the atonement to acount for?
Is speaking of Jesus as the Victor over enslaving forces of sin, which hold a world captive, really anything more than describing a Q.C. renowned for legal aid work as a doughty battler for the poor? He's still Perry Mason, not Simon Bolivar! And if I refer to the great Q.C.'s saintly character and love of the poor, ("moral influence")he's still Perry Mason, not Mother Teresa. And he's still fighting injustice in a courtroom, not an oppressed land or a despairing, loveless world.
I say again: you can assert all you want that PSA is not exclusive - let's see an argument.
[ 25. June 2010, 04:58: Message edited by: Psyduck ]
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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Starlight
Shipmate
# 12651
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Posted
There were a few comments made in the original thread in Ecclesiantics that I would like to respond to...
quote:
Originally posted by shamwari:
I go for the one first espoused by Peter Abelard. Its is that the Cross is a demonstration of an amazing love which will not cease to love even when crucified.
As I have pointed out before, Peter Abelard was not the inventor of a new atonement theory. The key passages in his writings which espouse the love of God and a moralistic view of atonement are quotes from Augustine. Quoting Augustine and deriving ideas from him was pretty much universally done by the theologians of the medieval period. And, in turn, the reason Augustine was espousing a moralistic view of the atonement was not because he invented it, but because Christians earlier than he had taught it.
In the second and third centuries a view of the atonement focusing on moral transformation can be found across all Christian documents (well, all those sufficiently detailed to touch on the atonement). While some Christian writers of this early period hold other ideas such as Ransom from Satan or Recapitulation in addition to a Moral Transformation viewpoint, the majority of the Christian writers of this period appear to hold a Moral Transformation view of the atonement as their sole and complete view.
That is to say, they believed final judgment to be based on the moral character of humans and saw the primary/sole purpose of Christ as improving the moral character of humans through his teachings, examples, martyrdom, founding a movement to continue his work (the church), sending the spirit to help etc. In this moralistic paradigm the focus lies on the moral transformation of people, with the purpose of Christ's work being to further that moral transformation.
It is arguably true that Peter Abelard is guilty of a certain 'narrowing' of this moralistic paradigm. Since Abelard was quoting Augustine, he did not see himself as inventing a new view of the atonement. As such, he did not bother to espouse it at length in a book-length treatment of the subject (like Anselm did with his view, for example). He merely included several quotes from Augustine on the subject in his Commentary on Romans. As a result, the Moralistic paradigm as it appears in Abelard's writings is rather stunted and narrowed, as the presentation of it is incomplete. So in a sense, Abelard did end up inventing a new model of the atonement - insofar as people who read Abelard to see what 'his' model of that atonement is see a 'new' model - a tiny screwed up snippet view of what was earlier a comprehensive Moralistic paradigm. Thus, many people today have wrongly come to believe that Abelard invented the 'Moral Exemplar' view of atonement which allegedly teaches that Christ killed himself to show how much he loved us.
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
The thing is whether the gospel is transfomative in that it actually alters one's basis of existence, or whether it is actually about Jesus as an example for believers to emulate.
I did a double take on reading that, since I call my view of the atonement Moral Transformation. I see the main contrast between Moral Transformation and PSA being that MT actually involves real change, real transformation, whereas PSA involves only a change of status in the eyes of God. In various descriptions of PSA, when God looks at us he sees Jesus' righteousness rather than our sin, or he knows the debt of our guilt is paid. Either way what has changed has to do with the knowledge of God rather than a real-world change. In contrast Moral Transformation is about humans having a real-world change of character, their real selves undergoing radical change. So when I compare Moralism with PSA I think of it as being real transformative change versus a status change which is intangible and non-transformative. It intrigues me then to see Jamat trying to compare them oppositely, saying that PSA is about 'real' transformation whereas Moral Transformation is about emulating Jesus' example (which apparently doesn't result in 'real' moral change?!).
Psyduck,
In light of the original post, it may interest you to hear why Moral Transformation did not exclude other atonement models in the early church Fathers, despite it being a complete standalone Christian paradigm. Moral transformation was strongly tied to God's view of humans - God wanted humans to be righteous and would judge them accordingly at the final judgment. Therefore if the question was "how do I pass God's final judgment?" the answer was "through moral transformation to become the type of person God judges as righteous". But the Fathers were able to add other atonement models in addition to this one by focusing on 'problems' other than passing the final judgment. Two other 'problems' that the Fathers focused on, apart from "God's opinion of humans at the final judgment" were "Satan's power" and "eternal death outside of God's control". The Fathers convinced themselves that Satan was sufficiently powerful to be a serious threat to humanity in this life and/or in the afterlife. Depending on how they constructed this threat to humanity, they needed Christ to do certain things to save humanity from it. This would then be seen part of the function of Christ (ie part of the 'atonement'). Whatever the particulars of their proposed Christ-solutions to the threat from Satan (and they varied widely), they were by their nature entirely independent of their view that humans needed to be morally righteous for the final judgment and that Christ had assisted this moral transformation. Thus by seeing independent 'problems' facing humanity, they could see different parts of Christ's incarnation, life, death and resurrection as solving multiple 'problems' facing humanity, and their atonement models thus added together nicely rather than conflicting or being in tension.
I suppose that, in theory, there is no reason that a person could not do exactly the same thing with PSA. PSA solves the 'problem' of humans passing God's final judgment, exactly like Moral Transformation does. Those two, therefore, are mutually exclusive as they propose conflicting solutions to the same problem. However a PSA advocate could in theory also believe there were other serious 'problems' of eternal significance facing humanity and adopt other corresponding atonement models to solve those problems in addition to solving the final-judgment problem. So, maybe I've answered your question: All atonement theories which purport to solve the theological 'problem' of humans passing God's final judgment are inherently mutually exclusive, but all atonement theories which solve other theological 'problems' can be added without conflict.
Posts: 745 | From: NZ | Registered: May 2007
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Starlight: Thanks for that. My own position is a modification of "moral influence," understanding it as centred on the incarnation, and the question "How would the coming of God in incarnate fullness necessarily play out in a universe like this?" I completely agree that when you set the scope of atonement this broadly, you can co-ordinate all the scriptural perspectives on and insights into what God is doing in Christ, including the sacrificial ones, and deal completely with all the crucial issues, including human sinfulness.
I also think it's very enlightening to contemplate the attitude of Duns Scotus, developed by the Franciscan tradition, that the incarnation would have happened anyway, had there been no fall, as I understand it because the Son would have offered the Father the fulness of incarnate worship anyway, and also because God would always have revealed himself in love to his creation in this incarnate way.
I think that undercuts PSA, which always seems to me to be a band-aid solution to a problem generated by a situation that God didn't want, a construal which is only saved by making God want the situation-he-didn't-want in some way.
I think this - and the inadequate answers to it - contribute one of the really big problems PSA faces. It takes God's problem and makes it the world's problem, rather than vice-versa. There are solutions to this, I acknowledge, but I don't think any of them are convincing or even stable.
But I don't want to divert from the central point that PSA is necessarily an all-or-nothing perspective, unlike the others.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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Leprechaun
Ship's Poison Elf
# 5408
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
But I don't want to divert from the central point that PSA is necessarily an all-or-nothing perspective, unlike the others.
I'm not really sure what you are looking for here. Generally speaking PSA advocates do look to the model as the central understanding of what is going on in Jesus' death. Jesus dealing with our punishment is the key to unlocking all the other blessings his sacrifice brings: eg, its because it's Jesus doing something about our objective problem that it has moral influence on us.
None of that means that I can't sit through a sermon on Jesus victory over sin wherein punishment for our sins is not mentioned and say a hearty Amen.
If this is what you mean by exclusivist - that the model you think is central dictates how you interpret other models - then all the suggested models are exclusivist. For example, your own rejection of PSA centres on the model of the atonement ("modified moral influence") that you have chosen to adopt.
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He hath loved us, He hath loved us, because he would love
Posts: 3097 | From: England - far from home... | Registered: Jan 2004
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Leprechaun: quote:
For example, your own rejection of PSA centres on the model of the atonement ("modified moral influence") that you have chosen to adopt.
Actually, no. The moral influence model isn't really a model at all. It simply predicates everything on the incarnation of God - as does PSA. However, in PSA the real function of the incarnation is to guarantee the eternal worth of the atoning sacrifice as payment for sin. In a moral influence perspective, the whole articulation of the being of God in Jesus Christ, his Word, is recognized. Also, moral influence allows a full exploration of all the sacrificial themes of Scripture, and the other perspectives on atonement found there. It doesn't organize by excluding.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
I wondered whether to post this here or not, but it follows on somewhat from what Leprechaun says. I tripped over this blog entry and responses looking for something else entirely, but it seems to back up something Psychduck was saying on the Ecclesiantics thread.
Part of the discussion is around the view of the crucifixion discussed in a sermon which says:
quote:
The terrible things that happened to Jesus at the end of his life were the result of human actions. They were not engineered by God. If we believe that God would do such a thing we end up worshiping a god who is nothing less than a heartless monster.
One of the responses in the comment section:
quote:
Jonathan is a heretic who, while taking the name of Christ, leads people to hell. So I am pleased that he may no longer have a pulpit from which to spew lies.
As someone else says further down the commments - a blog about someone losing their job turns into a discussion about PSA - which sounds horribly familiar.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Leprechaun
Ship's Poison Elf
# 5408
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
Leprechaun: quote:
For example, your own rejection of PSA centres on the model of the atonement ("modified moral influence") that you have chosen to adopt.
Actually, no. The moral influence model isn't really a model at all. It simply predicates everything on the incarnation of God - as does PSA. However, in PSA the real function of the incarnation is to guarantee the eternal worth of the atoning sacrifice as payment for sin. In a moral influence perspective, the whole articulation of the being of God in Jesus Christ, his Word, is recognized. Also, moral influence allows a full exploration of all the sacrificial themes of Scripture, and the other perspectives on atonement found there. It doesn't organize by excluding.
I don't understand this discussion then. Not only are you now claiming that the model you have adopted isn't even a model, merely self evident truth based on believing the incarnation, but now you claim it is the only model that allows a full exploration of Scripture. I charge you that your approach is, in fact, rather exclusivist!
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He hath loved us, He hath loved us, because he would love
Posts: 3097 | From: England - far from home... | Registered: Jan 2004
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Curiosity killed quoted ...
The terrible things that happened to Jesus at the end of his life were the result of human actions. They were not engineered by God. If we believe that God would do such a thing we end up worshiping a god who is nothing less than a heartless monster.
I completely agree with this.
And would like to add that those of us who say that 'God is only love and demonstrates only love' is not a fluffy bunny position.
Love (even human love)is tough and strong, can bear a great deal, suffer deeply and bring about amazing change. It is not the easy option.
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Johnny S
Shipmate
# 12581
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Wrong. You can do something for somebody else's benefit without substituting for them. If I buy a bike for my son, that is for his benefit, but I'm not substituting for him in any way. This is one of the chief logical errors made by the PSA folks. They take all the language in Scripture in which Christ's death is for our benefit and twist it to mean that it is in our stead. The two are patently not the same thing. I'm amazed you fell into this trap.
Wrong.
What is at stake are the many NT references to the fact that 'Christ died for us / for our sins'.
If what you were trying to say is that such phrases can be interpreted as either 'in our place' or 'for our benefit' then fair enough.
However that is not what you said. Instead you tried to imply that the correct translation has been established as 'for our benefit' and not 'in our place'. That is simply false.
As to the question of where the idea that 'Christ died for us' should re rendered as 'Christ died in our place' came from in the first place - I see that no one has taken up my offer in kergy to look closely at Isaiah 53.
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Johnny S
Shipmate
# 12581
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
I charge you that your approach is, in fact, rather exclusivist!
But that's where these endless threads always end up. At least we've got here on page one!
I appreciate the honesty of Starlight and psyduck here - they are being clear about their desire to remove PSA from orthodox Christianity.
These discussions always begin with a complaint that PSA is exclusionist and they always end with the clear desire to exclude PSA.
Posts: 6834 | From: London | Registered: Apr 2007
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Johnny S : quote:
I appreciate the honesty of Starlight and psyduck here - they are being clear about their desire to remove PSA from orthodox Christianity.
These discussions always begin with a complaint that PSA is exclusionist and they always end with the clear desire to exclude PSA.
I have no "desire to remove PSA from orthodox Christianity." Actually that post isn't just a bit disingenuous - it conflates sacrificial language and the perception of the reality of sin with PSA as things "we" want to get rid of - it's a dead giveaway! What "we" want, ISTM - and it's certainly what I want - is to give the whole rich sacrificial language and conceptuality its due place in the exposition of what God was doing with Christ. What you are saying here, albeit in a disguised fashion, from my POV, is that a theory which abstracts selectively from Scripture and constructs an exclusive rationale for the crucifixion is to be admitted on its own terms - which, we argue, start with the sufficiency of PSA as a theory of the atonement. "We've" begun to state the case - but ("as usual" ![[Biased]](wink.gif) ) what we get back are liminally personal recriminations that we're so nasty and unfair to PSA advocates and their theory - with the added innuendo no doubt in the mail that as liberals, we're being hypocritical in demanding freedom of expression for everybody but conservatives! There - I concede you aren't saying that (though I caught a whiff of implication, I thought) but I thought I'd head this off at the pass.
Just state how one can hold a full PSA theory and grant the full validity of other approaches, and we've got a debate.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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The Revolutionist
Shipmate
# 4578
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Posted
Hi Psyduck - thanks for starting this thread. How different atonement models can be related together is an interesting question, and the ever-controversial PSA model is a particularly tricky example.
I believe both that PSA is essential to a proper understanding of the Cross, and also that many other atonement models are essential to a full and rounded understanding of Jesus' death and resurrection.
I can understand to a point why you say that "PSA is necessarily an all-or-nothing perspective, unlike the others", because I believe that PSA gives a unifying basis from which to relate other models of the atonement to each other.
You might see this as exclusivist, but I don't think it is. There's a difference between PSA excluding other models, and PSA affecting the interpretation of other models.
Because I believe in PSA as a model of the atonement, my understandings of Christus Victor, Moral Example and so on are modified as I bring them into relationship with each other - but that goes the other way too. Other models deepen and inform my understanding of PSA - they complement each other.
You seem to me to have made two contradictory arguments against PSA. On the one hand you claim that PSA doesn't leave anything for any other perspective to account for:
quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
If you believe that that is what's really happening on the cross, then what's left for any other perspective on the atonement to acount for?
But you then go on to make another argument, that PSA doesn't explore other themes and perspectives:
quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
The moral influence model isn't really a model at all. It simply predicates everything on the incarnation of God - as does PSA. However, in PSA the real function of the incarnation is to guarantee the eternal worth of the atoning sacrifice as payment for sin. In a moral influence perspective, the whole articulation of the being of God in Jesus Christ, his Word, is recognized. Also, moral influence allows a full exploration of all the sacrificial themes of Scripture, and the other perspectives on atonement found there. It doesn't organize by excluding.
You seem to be implying that PSA doesn't allow a "full exploration of all the sacrificial themes of Scripture, and the other perspectives on atonement". This seems to me to answer your earlier question.
If PSA is to be exclusivist, it must give contradictory answers to the questions that other models each try specifically to answer. But if PSA doesn't give a full exploration of all the themes of Scripture regarding the atonement, then this leaves room for it to co-exist alongside other models in a complementary fashion.
I agree that many themes and perspectives are not explored by PSA, which is why I believe PSA can be part of a broad understanding that includes the messiness of multiple metaphors.
quote:
Originally posted by Nunc Dimittis:
I think of Moltmann's view of the Trinity, which, far from seeing God the Father as the just All-Holy whose wrath needs to be appeased by sacrifice, sees God, Father, Son and Spirit united in the sundering event of the cross. In the death of Christ, all pain and suffering is taken into the heart of God. This view of atonement rightly (in my view) points out that salvation is not just achieved by the death of the Son, but is the achievement of the Trinity.
I'd agree entirely with that, and see no contradiction with PSA, except for the implication at the start that it is incompatible with the idea of a wrathful God. Our understanding of the atonement can and must be deepened by an understanding of doctrines such as the Trinity, Incarnation and so on.
I think PSA makes more sense within a full theological context rather than less sense - it's only when its over-simplified and not put in a full theological context that you get a "monstrous" God.
quote:
Originally posted by Nunc Dimittis:
Or take another view, that of James Allison (albeit that this is a modified and in some ways revisionist view of PSA). That Jesus' (self-sacrificial) death was the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, and that far from God needing to be appeased, it is the brokenness of sinful society which demands a scapegoat which needs to be appeased. He is therefore OUR sacrifice.
I would agree that Jesus' death was also an appeasement of the demand for a scapegoat made by a sinful, broken society, as well as satisfying God's justice.
I believe the reason we as sinful human beings look for scapegoats is because we have an instinctive awareness that we are guilty before a holy God, and so try to appease God on our own terms by our own unholy sacrifices, though we rationalise it in other ways.
Jesus' death is the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, not as a demonstration that there was never any need for sacrifice, but as a demonstration that the self-sacrifice of God has been made, which was the only sacrifice possible that is adequate.
So I think there's a lot in what Allison, and others such as Girard, have to say about scapegoating. But I think that such insights can be reconciled in a modified way with PSA.
quote:
The terrible things that happened to Jesus at the end of his life were the result of human actions. They were not engineered by God. If we believe that God would do such a thing we end up worshiping a god who is nothing less than a heartless monster.
I'm not sure how that fits with Acts 2:23, where Peter preached that Jesus was "handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge, and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death", which seems to imply that Jesus' death was both an act of human wickedness and part of "God's set purpose and foreknowledge".
I must say I find it rather funny that those on the more conservative end of the theological spectrum seem happier to accept insights from other atonement models, whereas people who reject PSA are very "all or nothing" about it!
Posts: 1296 | From: London | Registered: May 2003
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Carys
Ship's Celticist
# 78
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
As example is John Stott in his book The Cross of Christ. He adopts PSA as his overall model of that atonement. He then points out that a person holding PSA can affirm that Christ defeated the devil, or that that love of God was demonstrated in the atonement. He tries to convince the reader that to affirm such statements is the same as also holding the atonement models of Christus Victor and Moral Exemplar. His view then is that anyone who affirms PSA automatically gets CV and ME thrown in for free too.
Exactly. Thanks for mentioning John Stott's book; I'd forgotten it but it is where a lot of my perception of how PSAers view the atonement comes from. I might try and find a relevant quote at some point.
Carys
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O Lord, you have searched me and know me
You know when I sit and when I rise
Posts: 6896 | From: Bryste mwy na thebyg | Registered: May 2001
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shamwari
Shipmate
# 15556
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Posted
Seems to me that, apart from the idea of appeasing a wrathful God etc, the PSA breaks down on a simple fact.
Guilt cannot be transferred. It can only be forgiven.
And the Cross, to my mind, shows what it cost God to offer us a free forgiveness.
Posts: 1914 | From: from the abyss of misunderstanding | Registered: Mar 2010
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
The Revolutionist said:
I must say I find it rather funny that those on the more conservative end of the theological spectrum seem happier to accept insights from other atonement models, whereas people who reject PSA are very "all or nothing" about it!
I would say this is because of all the many (imo untenable) assumptions that lead to PSA - like, for example, that there is a personal 'devil' to be defeated.
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras
Shipmate
# 11274
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Posted
Can PSA be completely consistent with a full, orthodox Trinitarian view of the Godhead? ISTM that PSA tends toward a view of Christ that, while identified as "Son of God", is less than "God the Son". My limited experience with members of stronly PSA-oriented denominations is that they don't place much emphasis on Trinitarian theology - even if they nominally confess belief in a Trinitarian God - and tend toward adoptionist views or to the Incarnation as involving something less than a true hypostatic union of deity and humanity. A Chalcedonian understanding of the Incarnation to me seems to make PSA rather nonsensical because it creates a situation in which God is sacrificing Himself to appease Himself. Rather, the scriptural figure ofJesus seems to allude to the Incarnation as a rescue mission. Pauline theology seems to me to modify the emphasis found in the gospels, especially in John's gospel, in a PSA direction, though I'm unsure that the Pauline epistles are at all consistent, perhaps partly due to their authorship by multiple sources. ISTM that an understanding of the atonement along Christus Victor lines is consistent with the vision set out in the gospels and by the early Fathers. ISTM that the Pauline epistles are working on a theology of the atonement and an understanding of the incarnation that would only be more clearly and definitively defined by the Church over the ensuing few centuries.
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Starlight
Shipmate
# 12651
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
My own position is a modification of "moral influence," understanding it as centred on the incarnation, and the question "How would the coming of God in incarnate fullness necessarily play out in a universe like this?" I completely agree that when you set the scope of atonement this broadly, you can co-ordinate all the scriptural perspectives on and insights into what God is doing in Christ, including the sacrificial ones, and deal completely with all the crucial issues, including human sinfulness.
I also think it's very enlightening to contemplate the attitude of Duns Scotus, developed by the Franciscan tradition, that the incarnation would have happened anyway, had there been no fall, as I understand it because the Son would have offered the Father the fulness of incarnate worship anyway, and also because God would always have revealed himself in love to his creation in this incarnate way.
From that, I am left a little unclear on what you think, or if we agree or not. I tend to like my terms simple and precise and the logic clear, so when you start talking about "fullness of incarnate worship" I'm left a little confused as to how to unpack that. It's not clear to me what you mean when you say your paradigm involves 'moral influence'.
In my paradigm, Jesus' teachings, example, his movement and martyrdom, and the holy spirit all work to morally transform people's lives leading them to pass a moral-character based final judgment. There is a fairly simple and clear progression of human sinfulness -> moral change -> human righteousness. I think this paradigm is the NT paradigm, and I believe it to be the best explanation of the various salvation metaphors, sacrificial language, etc in the NT. I would definitely call it an atonement model, and would say its a fairly exclusive, complete, straight-forward, and non-mystical one. So I'm a little confused when you say your version of the moral influence view is 'not a model'. And you talk of 'predicating everything on the incarnation of God', which seems strange to me, since I doubt the first Christians saw Jesus as God (so more ideal in my mind is an atonement model that doesn't require Jesus' divinity but is consistent with it (such as my one)).
quote:
Originally posted by Johnny S:
These discussions always begin with a complaint that PSA is exclusionist and they always end with the clear desire to exclude PSA.
I personally don't have any problem with PSA as a theory being exclusionist. I would say my own Moral Transformation view of the atonement is exclusionist. The truth is often exclusionist. It is kind of annoying however when advocates of PSA are exclusionist toward other people - ie it is unpleasant when they try to exclude me for not conforming to their beliefs.
quote:
Originally posted by the Revolutionist:
Because I believe in PSA as a model of the atonement, my understandings of Christus Victor, Moral Example and so on are modified as I bring them into relationship with each other - but that goes the other way too. Other models deepen and inform my understanding of PSA - they complement each other.
It seems to me you are doing the same word-trick as John Stott: 'modifying' the other atonement models in order to 'fit them into' PSA. When in reality, I suspect, you're denying the essence of those other models and taking phrases from them and using those phrases with a PSA-supplied meaning behind them. If you think otherwise, perhaps you could explain in detail the relationship you see between the theories you hold and tell me how you really do hold Christus victor and Moral Example models rather than merely steal their key-phrases.
quote:
I must say I find it rather funny that those on the more conservative end of the theological spectrum seem happier to accept insights from other atonement models, whereas people who reject PSA are very "all or nothing" about it!
Well, I find conservatives are happy to add phrases to their list of things Jesus did but not to add ideas. So a conservative PSA advocate is happy to add the phrase "Christ defeated the devil" to his creed, and feels piously happy at gaining yet another way of speaking of Christ's penal substitutionary atonement. But the conservative PSA advocate will refuse to add the idea behind that phrase - they will not, for example, adopt the belief that after Christ died on the cross he entered hades with an army of angels and fought the legions of the devil and defeated them. They will instead use the idea of PSA as their theological explanation for why the new phrase "Christ defeated the devil" is true - they will say that Christ taking the punishment for sin frees the believers' conscience and thus they can no longer be taunted by the devil (or somesuch). Thus they will adopt a new atonement-phrase and tie it into PSA but will reject new atonement-ideas.
Posts: 745 | From: NZ | Registered: May 2007
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
The Revolutionist: quote:
I must say I find it rather funny that those on the more conservative end of the theological spectrum seem happier to accept insights from other atonement models, whereas people who reject PSA are very "all or nothing" about it!
Well, that's rather the point! "Accepting insights" from other perspectives on the incarnation is a bit like "accepting insights" from, say, contemporary culture. Jesus is the vanquisher of the forces that hold us captive, Jesus is the revelation of God's love, Jesus is the captain of the team, Jesus is the pilot of the ship, Jesus is the truthful newsreader, Jesus is the leader of my gang...
The point which still isn't getting addressed here is the charge that PSA must necessarily present itself as the only real understanding of the atonement, and it has to do this by reducing other understandings - including a complexified sacrificial understanding - to illustrative material that you can "accept insights" from.
What's fascinating, with respect, is that people who say that they are PSA adherents just don't seem to see this, and the reason seems to be that they consistently conflate PSA and sacrificial perspectives - or they conflate PSA with the issue of "having to deal satisfactorily with sin."
It's in some ways analogous to the arguments that used to rage around the respective validity of Anglican and Presbyterian orders in Scottish ecumenical debate bck in the 60s. The Anglicans would speak of each side receiving something from the other in the proposed rapprochement - but without giving up the insistence on the validity of Anglican orders and the implication of the invalidity of Presbyterian ones.
Prof. Ian Henderson characterized this perception as like two lifeboats meeting in the sea after a shipwreck, one with two barrels of water, and one with two gramophones. After the meeting, each lifeboat would have a barrel of water and a lifeboat. But it was obvious who had given the vital thing to the other and who had just enhanced the onboard entertainment.
The advocates of PSA do sound a lot to me like people saying "Have our life-giving water - we insist! And of course we respect your lovely little gramophones..." ![[Help]](graemlins/help.gif)
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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Dinghy Sailor
Ship's Jibsheet
# 8507
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Posted
Thankyou Psyduck for your last four posts. Until those, I also felt that all I'd got was assertions that PSA was exclusive, which I couldn't engage with further than to simply deny. So, to engage...
I think there's a lot of sloppy wording on this thread. Do we see models/theories of atonement as theories or as models, or even as metaphors?
Theory: A proposed explanation of a mechanism functions. Once explained and proven/accepted, no further explanation is necessary.
Model: A simplified explanation of a phenomenon, describing one aspect of how it works.
Metaphor: An implied comparison with something else to give an idea of how the phenomenon in question works, because its function is similar to the more familiar example in the metaphor.
If we're talking about theories of atonement here, of course PSA is exclusive because all the other theories are exclusive as well. Just as (neo)Darwinism excludes Lamarckism, so would Lamarckism have excluded Darwinism had the former turned out to be true. That's not the fault of either theory, it's how logic works.
If, on the other hand, we take them as models, we can run explanations parallel to each other. Each is a simplified description of one or more aspect(s) the full atonement, which stands as what it is and is not confined within any of the models. Did Jesus pay for our in on the cross? Yes he did. Did he conquer death? Yes he did. Did he provide us with an example to follow? Yes he did. Did he come down from God to man, living with us, sharing our sorrows and bridging the gap downwards in a way that we couldn't achieve upwards? Yes he did, and none of these contradict any of the others. My work is in modelling, I can run any number of models of a situation and their results don't invalidate the other models' results but they can they inform them and give me extra insight into the phenomenon under test.
So, which is it to be? Is PSA a complete description, a theory, in which case all the other theories are also complete descriptions with no room for manoeuvre? Or is it a model, an incomplete description, in which case it can't invalidate another description as that would be outside its competence?
[X post - make that your last FIVE posts]
[ 25. June 2010, 11:48: Message edited by: Dinghy Sailor ]
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Preach Christ, because this old humanity has used up all hopes and expectations, but in Christ hope lives and remains.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Posts: 2821 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Starlight
Shipmate
# 12651
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras:
Can PSA be completely consistent with a full, orthodox Trinitarian view of the Godhead? ...A Chalcedonian understanding of the Incarnation to me seems to make PSA rather nonsensical
Bear in mind that historically, the Chalcedonian declarations about the relationship of Jesus' Godhood and manhood were a product of the popularity of Athanasius' Recapitulation model of the atonement. ie Belief in a particular model of the atonement caused the Chalcedonian definitions.
As such, I think it is totally unreasonable to judge other atonement models based on whether they meet the Chalcedonian definitions. If those different models of the atonement had been popular at the time of the council of Chalcedon then the Chalcedonian definitions would have been different. So to hold the Chalcedonian definitions up as a standard against which to judge the atonement models is to get cause and effect backward. By definition the Chalcedonian definitions will pair best with the atonement model they were defined in order to defend - Athanasius' Recapitulation model.
Posts: 745 | From: NZ | Registered: May 2007
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seasick
...over the edge
# 48
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Posted
But the Chalcedonian definitions are what they are: they are the faith of the church. If - for whatever reason - PSA doesn't fit with them, then the problem is with PSA not with Chalcedon.
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We believe there is, and always was, in every Christian Church, ... an outward priesthood, ordained by Jesus Christ, and an outward sacrifice offered therein. - John Wesley
Posts: 5769 | From: A world of my own | Registered: May 2001
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Dinghy Sailor: quote:
I think there's a lot of sloppy wording on this thread. Do we see models/theories of atonement as theories or as models, or even as metaphors?
Theory: A proposed explanation of a mechanism functions. Once explained and proven/accepted, no further explanation is necessary.
Model: A simplified explanation of a phenomenon, describing one aspect of how it works.
Metaphor: An implied comparison with something else to give an idea of how the phenomenon in question works, because its function is similar to the more familiar example in the metaphor.
I don't think there's any ambiguity at all. Out of sheer interest, I collated all my uses of the term theory, and I think they are all completely consistent, and consistent with the OP - and also with the usage you outline.
Here they are: quote:
whether PSA necessarily claims to be such a complete theory of the atonement that to hold it is to claim that it exhaustively explains what God was/is doing in Christ.
quote:
whether something approximating to a rounded Penal Substitutionary Atonement theory can be co-ordinated meaningfully with other developed understandings of atonement.
quote:
PSA is a theory of the atonement which by its own internal logic cannot but claim to be complete in itself,
quote:
a theory which abstracts selectively from Scripture and constructs an exclusive rationale for the crucifixion
quote:
the sufficiency of PSA as a theory of the atonement.
quote:
what we get back are liminally personal recriminations that we're so nasty and unfair to PSA advocates and their theory
quote:
Just state how one can hold a full PSA theory and grant the full validity of other approaches, and we've got a debate.
For the record, I'm familiar with the concepts of theory, model, metaphor, and paradigm, both from the work on science and theology of Ian Barbour and also from Thomas Kuhn. I think the point you make is irrelevant. You ask:
quote:
So, which is it to be? Is PSA a complete description, a theory, in which case all the other theories are also complete descriptions with no room for manoeuvre? Or is it a model, an incomplete description, in which case it can't invalidate another description as that would be outside its competence?
I say PSA is a theory, in your terms. I've said so consistently, and I've asked to have the contrary proven to me. Which is it to be? You tell us.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras
Shipmate
# 11274
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Posted
In the thread on Eccles that spawned this one, I argued that PSA imagery may provide a psychological "fit" for some persons. I'd tend to see it as an expression of the so-called "paranoid-schizoid position", in which the infant mind bifurcates its "objects" (persons, actually) into all-good/nurturing/idealised images on the one hand, and bad/sadistic/hated-feared/hostility-laden figures on the other. This psychological operation of "splitting" (which continues to be present even in the "normal" adult to some degree and much more so in various states of disturbed mental functioning)serves to preserve an entirely happy image of the object(s) to which one can psychologically return, albeit at the expense of maintaining a competing image of a bad, hostile and punitive object. In reality, of course, our objects are ambiguous - neither fully good nor fully bad - but the operation of splitting allows us to escape coming to terms with the painful reality that we have no state of unambiguous non-frustration to which we can return. As long as the paranoid-schizoid position is maintained, we fail to mourn the painful and frustrating realities with which we are confronted. This coming to terms with the inherent frustrations encountered in our object relationships is termed the "depressive position", in which we realise difficult realities of ambivalence, ambiguity, irrevocable choices, unreconcilable contradictions, and the like. The more primitive paranoid-schizoid position involves a great deal of projection (the hungry/collicky infant is angry at the frustrating, unavailable breast/mother, rather than - usually - the breast/mother deliberately frustrating the infant). I would submit that PSA is an expression of this kind of splitting and projection of our own primitive hostilities onto the image of God as a parent-figure. Yet by contrast the mission of Christ is to show us that "God is love".
Posts: 7328 | From: Delaware | Registered: Apr 2006
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Starlight
Shipmate
# 12651
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by seasick:
But the Chalcedonian definitions are what they are: they are the faith of the church. If - for whatever reason - PSA doesn't fit with them, then the problem is with PSA not with Chalcedon.
The faith of whose church precisely? The vast majority of Christians today have probably never heard of them. I suspect lots of denominations in theory hold to them but don't in practice.
Not to mention that this council anathematized about one quarter of the Church (ie the Oriental Orthodox). And today even Eastern Orthodox scholars admit the council got it wrong and that the Oriental Orthodox do really believe the same thing as them.
I'm sorry, but the Byzantine councils were subject to so many ridiculous unchristian political shenanigans that I can't take them very seriously.
Dinghy Sailor,
I haven't been using your terms thus far, but given your terms I would say that PSA is a theory, as is my own Moral Transformation view of the atonement. I think a lot of PSA advocates try to pretend that it is only a model for them when really it is a theory.
As I explained earlier it is possible to hold more than one theory of the atonement. It just requires that those theories be dealing with completely separate issues. eg the theory that Christ invaded hades with an army of angels can coexist together with the theory of PSA.
Posts: 745 | From: NZ | Registered: May 2007
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Johnny S:
As to the question of where the idea that 'Christ died for us' should re rendered as 'Christ died in our place' came from in the first place - I see that no one has taken up my offer in kergy to look closely at Isaiah 53.
I offered but you didn't respond.
Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Leprechaun: quote:
I don't understand this discussion then. Not only are you now claiming that the model you have adopted isn't even a model, merely self evident truth based on believing the incarnation, but now you claim it is the only model that allows a full exploration of Scripture. I charge you that your approach is, in fact, rather exclusivist!
Hang on! I've never used the word "model" on this thread at all, except to deny that my version of "moral influence" is a model - to complete my thought, I would call it a "perspective" which is consistent with my usage elsewhere.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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The Revolutionist
Shipmate
# 4578
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Posted
Well, I think most of those who are arguing for PSA see it as a model or metaphor - a true but partial description - rather than an exhaustive theory.
quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
The Revolutionist: quote:
I must say I find it rather funny that those on the more conservative end of the theological spectrum seem happier to accept insights from other atonement models, whereas people who reject PSA are very "all or nothing" about it!
Well, that's rather the point! "Accepting insights" from other perspectives on the incarnation is a bit like "accepting insights" from, say, contemporary culture. Jesus is the vanquisher of the forces that hold us captive, Jesus is the revelation of God's love, Jesus is the captain of the team, Jesus is the pilot of the ship, Jesus is the truthful newsreader, Jesus is the leader of my gang...
The point which still isn't getting addressed here is the charge that PSA must necessarily present itself as the only real understanding of the atonement, and it has to do this by reducing other understandings - including a complexified sacrificial understanding - to illustrative material that you can "accept insights" from.
Again, I'd say you're confusing PSA excluding other models with PSA affecting the interpretation of other models.
As I said before, I don't think that PSA is an exhaustive account of the atonement. I believe it is a true description that forms a necessary part of understanding the Cross, but is still a partial description. As I also said before, I believe that other models give explanations that PSA doesn't give. They have worth in themselves, not just as further insights in PSA.
I agree that some adherents of PSA take the approach you're describing, but I don't think I'm one of them.
quote:
Well, I find conservatives are happy to add phrases to their list of things Jesus did but not to add ideas. So a conservative PSA advocate is happy to add the phrase "Christ defeated the devil" to his creed, and feels piously happy at gaining yet another way of speaking of Christ's penal substitutionary atonement. But the conservative PSA advocate will refuse to add the idea behind that phrase - they will not, for example, adopt the belief that after Christ died on the cross he entered hades with an army of angels and fought the legions of the devil and defeated them. They will instead use the idea of PSA as their theological explanation for why the new phrase "Christ defeated the devil" is true - they will say that Christ taking the punishment for sin frees the believers' conscience and thus they can no longer be taunted by the devil (or somesuch). Thus they will adopt a new atonement-phrase and tie it into PSA but will reject new atonement-ideas.
Any attempt to bring together different perspectives together involves letting them inform each other, and reconciling differences between them. This involves adapting ideas, but it is possible to bring different ideas together into a larger, integrated understanding without doing violence to the individual ideas.
I don't think that many people would insist that Christ literally kicking demonic butt in Hades with an army of angels is an essential part of the Christus Victor model - that's a red herring.
Aulen argued that Christus Victor gives a narrative account of the atonement, a drama rather than a systematic theology. So I don't see that it's in competition with PSA. They are explanations in different genres, different modes of metaphor, and so can co-exist happily.
[ 25. June 2010, 13:49: Message edited by: The Revolutionist ]
Posts: 1296 | From: London | Registered: May 2003
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Leprechaun
Ship's Poison Elf
# 5408
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
Leprechaun: quote:
I don't understand this discussion then. Not only are you now claiming that the model you have adopted isn't even a model, merely self evident truth based on believing the incarnation, but now you claim it is the only model that allows a full exploration of Scripture. I charge you that your approach is, in fact, rather exclusivist!
Hang on! I've never used the word "model" on this thread at all, except to deny that my version of "moral influence" is a model - to complete my thought, I would call it a "perspective" which is consistent with my usage elsewhere.
Which totally misses the point. You are using your "perspective" to rule out alternative "perspectives" with which it conflicts. Which is all any PSA advocate is doing.
Really, this does just seem to boil down to "wa wa wa, evangelicals do what we all do, but in an infuriatingly evangelical way."
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He hath loved us, He hath loved us, because he would love
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Interesting.
It never occurred to me to question PSA one iota during my full-on evangelical/charismatic phase ... which lasted around two decades.
I found John Stott's 'The Cross of Christ' utterly convincing when I first read it and, in fairness, it did help me over and away from some of the more grotesque language and imagery used by PSA advocates in popular worship and evangelism.
I was aware of Christus Victor and aware that many charismatics had moved more towards this position than the full-on evangelical PSA one. In my more Reformed, Calvinistic moments, I felt they'd moved too far away from what I took to be the central scriptural model of the atonement.
Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones doubted that C S Lewis was truly 'saved' as Lewis was squeamish about PSA and not rigorously wedded to any particular atonement model.
I wouldn't have gone as far as that.
If I'm honest, I am reluctant to abandon PSA wholesale ... such is its power as a shibboleth. Sure, I can see the pitfalls, particularly in popular sound-bite evangelism and dumbed down contemporary worship. I don't know why this should be. If I shrugged it off completely I'd either feel intensely liberated or else some sense of loss.
It's funny, peculiar, but there it is.
I'm sort of post-evangelical (pre-catholic? ) these days but the whole evangelical thing is part of the warp and woof of where I've come from. So even though I feel increasingly alienated from much evangelical worship and discourse, I retain elements of its ethos.
If my memory serves me correctly, Stott was effectively saying, 'all these other models are fine as far as they go and contain much truth, but the main point is that God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself and the means with which he did that was through a penal substitutionary sacrifice of God the Son.'
So, yes, that does sound pretty exclusivist. I suppose, to mix metaphors, he's not so much saying that PSA is 'first among equals' but much more than that ...
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
And this is all that seems to come back: quote:
You are using your "perspective" to rule out alternative "perspectives" with which it conflicts. Which is all any PSA advocate is doing.
Really, this does just seem to boil down to "wa wa wa, evangelicals do what we all do, but in an infuriatingly evangelical way."
Can we step back from this mirroring, and maybe address the issues? You accuse me of advancing an exclusivist - well I think you mean "theory" in Dinghy Sailor's terms, and I've said that "perspective" in my book doesn't mean that, but you say that my perspective is as exclusivist as PSA.
I'm saying that if you start off from a "moral influence" perspective, all you do is to start from an assertion that Jesus' death on the cross says something about God, and something about us - how we are, and how we should be. That's really all that a stripped-down moral influence perspective contains.
Now, nobody holds it in such a bare form - but notice how it gets fleshed out. It can become the decisive exemplar of God's love, so that we can see the lovelessness of our own lives, and respond by changing. Or you can say that in Jesus, God is showing us what true humanity in and before God should be. Or you can say both. You can take it a step further and say that God's love is shown in interaction with the reality of a fallen world, a world in which inhuman and maybe superhuman systems of domination hold us fast. Now at that point you clearly need to supplement it with another perspective. Or you could - I'd say certainly would - have to take into account the perspective out of the Old Testament into the New in which the community of God's people is conceived in terms of both sacrifice, and law. You'd also want to treat the understanding of the Exodus that leads through the Passover - but you wouldn't want to confuse that or conflate it with the (other) sacrificial themes, because it is quite separate. And you'd want to do a whole lot more, and you could.
But - and I'm repeating myself here - if you start from a PSA perspective, then you start from a situation in which everything necessary for our salvation is boiled down to a transaction which is defined in terms of a single theory. If you slacken the theory, you don't have PSA. You have sacrificial imagery dealt with in a way not unlike it is from other perspectives, as a highly important dimension of the Christian understanding of what God was doing in Christ. But you don't have PSA.
The danger is that people step into PSA and back out of it at will - into it when they want to talk about what's really going on in the Bible, and back out of it when they want to counter the accusation that they don't give enough space to the rest of the testimony of Scripture.
The test of this is still the same. Expound a recognizable PSA doctrine, then tell us what else it demands to make it complete.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Leprechaun: BTW - this is a fascinating post. quote:
Really, this does just seem to boil down to "wa wa wa, evangelicals do what we all do, but in an infuriatingly evangelical way."
Did you mean to make PSA a touchstone of evangelicalism?
And FWIW, I'm not only delighted when evangelicals do things "our way", it often delights me to see evangelical influence disseminated through other traditions. ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
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Dinghy Sailor
Ship's Jibsheet
# 8507
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Posted
Psyduck, this 'PSA' thing you keep talking about is starting to confuse me. You (and LSV and seasick) have given a very pedantic, tightly defined account of PSA that according to you is exclusive of any other model of atonement, then asked people to disprove this. Your 'PSA' is, however, not the penal substitution that I know. Whenever people who believe in PSA have told you that's not what they believe and set out why that's the case, you've come back and said that's not really PSA.
I'm afraid that's not how this works. PSA is arguably 'that which is believed by people who believe in PSA'. The believership gets to define PSA, not you. You may say that PSA is automatically exclusive but if a goodly proportion of its believers (all of the ones on this thread, for instance) don't treat it as exclusive, it's not. I'm afraid I don't see that it matters very much whether it's exclusive when held to the theoretical principles of Psyduck, what matters is whether Lep, The Rev. et al treat it as automatically exclusive. It is noticeable, once again, that PSA is being defined a lot more tightly by people who don't believe in it, which begs the question of why eg. LSV seems so desperately want to make it seem heretical. Does someone want to get rid of it, by any chance?
The sloppy language thing wasn't aimed at you by the way, I saw the two words being used interchangeably elsewhere on the thread.
That's all from me, I'm off for the weekend.
[X posted with Psyduck's last post]
[ 25. June 2010, 14:44: Message edited by: Dinghy Sailor ]
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Preach Christ, because this old humanity has used up all hopes and expectations, but in Christ hope lives and remains.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Dinghy Sailor: quote:
I'm afraid that's not how this works. PSA is arguably 'that which is believed by people who believe in PSA'. The believership gets to define PSA, not you. You may say that PSA is automatically exclusive but if a goodly proportion of its believers (all of the ones on this thread, for instance) don't treat it as exclusive, it's not.
Sorry, but that's just wrong. PSA is a reconized, closely defined doctrine, with some variants as mentioned above, but the core of it isn't some sprawling pick n' mix construct, still less "what evangelicals believe."
Anyway, I'm posting far too much, and reactively. I'll away and see if someone actually puts up a recognizable PSA, and defends it from the charge of exclusivism as outlined above. That's all that's needed.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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The Revolutionist
Shipmate
# 4578
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
If I'm honest, I am reluctant to abandon PSA wholesale ... such is its power as a shibboleth. Sure, I can see the pitfalls, particularly in popular sound-bite evangelism and dumbed down contemporary worship. I don't know why this should be. If I shrugged it off completely I'd either feel intensely liberated or else some sense of loss.
Yes, the way that PSA is mishandled in some songs and evangelism annoys me terribly! There's some dreadful mishandling of the doctrine and bad explanations of it.
I'll have a go at explaining what PSA doesn't say, what it leaves to other models. First of all I'll quote Psyduck's summary of the theory:
quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
ISTM that PSA claims the following:
1) That there is a certain moral situation in the universe, created by two things:
a) Humankind's participation in a guilt incurred by an original act of rebellion, and necessarily reinforced by each individual's participation in that act of rebellion, against God's will, and
b) God's inability to overlook or mitigate the punishment for this rebellion without being untrue to his divine nature and the inexorable demands of his holiness and goodness.
2) The logic of 1a and 1b above lead to the prescription of a particular penalty. This is often described as death, though in fact it is physical death from the created universe followed by separation from God in Hell.
3) 1 and 2 above contribute to a situation in which God wills two contradictory things - the punishment and salvation of humanity.
4) The resolution of this impasse is that God's Son should undertake to be born into a humanity untainted by 1a, and should, undeservingly but freely, take upon himself the guilt of 1a and the punishment specified in 2 above.
And my point is this. If you believe that that is what's really happening on the cross, then what's left for any other perspective on the atonement to acount for?
The first point I'd make is that this only make sense if the doctrinal basics - trinity, incarnation and so on are in place.
A low Christology leads to the problem of "cosmic child abuse", whereas a trinitarian understanding of PSA sees Jesus' death as a willing self-sacrifice, with Father, Son and Spirit working together to redeem the world.
On the other hand, neglect Jesus' full humanity, and it doesn't make sense how he can stand in our place as our representative. It is by being fully human, by being the new Adam, that he is able to die in our place on the Cross.
The second point is that PSA focuses on our standing before God, our relationship with him. But the Cross wasn't just about the forgiveness of individual souls, but a whole bunch of other stuff too that PSA doesn't directly deal with.
We see in the different models of the atonement different aspects of Christ's threefold ministry of Prophet, Priest and King reflected. PSA mainly describes his role as priest, but not so much prophet and king.
Christus Victor tells of the cosmic impact of the Cross - that Jesus defeated Satan, death, and evil. If you only had PSA as a model, then you could believe we'll be zapped off to heaven while creation goes to hell in a handcart, but CV tells us that "the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of the Lord and of his Christ" (Rev 11:15). This describes the kingly aspect of Christ's death and resurrection.
Scapegoating theories of the atonement, such as that proposed by Girard, show the social impact of the Cross, that it is the sacrifice to end all sacrifices and exposes the cycle of violence and scapegoating in society. This reflects both on Christ's priestly role and his prophetic role.
Moral Exemplar tells of the ongoing impact of the Cross on believers lives. PSA tells us how we are forgiven, while Moral Exemplar shows us how our lives should be transformed. This reflects the prophetic aspect of the Atonement once more.
Other aspects that could be expanded on would be the idea of Union with Christ and also of the Resurrection, which aren't developed in detail by PSA, but are necessary for a full understanding of the Atonement.
Posts: 1296 | From: London | Registered: May 2003
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Jessie Phillips
Shipmate
# 13048
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Posted
Hmm. So summary of the main things I've picked up so far:
Psyduck says
quote:
ISTM that PSA claims the following:
1) That there is a certain moral situation in the universe, created by two things:
a) Humankind's participation in a guilt incurred by an original act of rebellion, and necessarily reinforced by each individual's participation in that act of rebellion, against God's will, and
b) God's inability to overlook or mitigate the punishment for this rebellion without being untrue to his divine nature and the inexorable demands of his holiness and goodness.
I can see how if these two things are taken as the starting point, then PSA might seem to be the only atonement theory that works properly.
Dinghy Sailor says
quote:
PSA is arguably 'that which is believed by people who believe in PSA'. The believership gets to define PSA, not you.
Good point. But the trouble is, we end up going round in semantic circles. If we can't even reach an agreed definition of what PSA actually is, then how is it possible to judge its merits by any other yardstick - be it the Bible, or the creeds, or modern psychotherapy?
The Revolutionist says
quote:
The first point I'd make is that this only make sense if the doctrinal basics - trinity, incarnation and so on are in place.
A low Christology leads to the problem of "cosmic child abuse", whereas a trinitarian understanding of PSA sees Jesus' death as a willing self-sacrifice, with Father, Son and Spirit working together to redeem the world.
On the other hand, neglect Jesus' full humanity, and it doesn't make sense how he can stand in our place as our representative. It is by being fully human, by being the new Adam, that he is able to die in our place on the Cross.
The second point is that PSA focuses on our standing before God, our relationship with him. But the Cross wasn't just about the forgiveness of individual souls, but a whole bunch of other stuff too that PSA doesn't directly deal with.
All good points. Even after you've explained it like that, though, I for one still think that PSA tends to lead to antinomianism, whereas other atonement theories - in particular, theories of moral influence - don't have this problem quite so much.
Having said that, I appreciate the point that evangelical teaching isn't entirely encapsulated in PSA. It may be sufficient as a theory of atonement, if you happen to believe that it's okay for a theory of atonement to leave the door open for antinomianism. But if you think that atonement theories should exclude antinomianism, then, since PSA does not exclude antinomianism, it is therefore not sufficient.
Still, that's just my view.
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Jay-Emm
Shipmate
# 11411
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by shamwari:
Seems to me that, apart from the idea of appeasing a wrathful God etc, the PSA breaks down on a simple fact.
Guilt cannot be transferred. It can only be forgiven.
And the Cross, to my mind, shows what it cost God to offer us a free forgiveness.
The modern economy is based on precisely the opposite theory*...although that might show it doesn't work well, and perhaps relate it to it's followers?
Actually reading your last paragraph that seems very similar..but [with a description of the trinity that brings out more features that it shares with Modalist view of God than those it shares with a Polytheistic view of God.]
(to my experiences of what I'd call PSA, ]
*In the psa picture, forgive us our sins becomes very much forgive us our debts.
[ 25. June 2010, 17:50: Message edited by: Jay-Emm ]
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Jessie Phillips
Shipmate
# 13048
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Posted
Thanks to Jay-Emm for flagging up shamwari's previous point:
quote:
Guilt cannot be transferred. It can only be forgiven.
I guess this will be the point at which the Penal Substitutionary theory relies on other, potentially contradictory theories in order to argue that the substitution is real.
Which brings us back to the point about the difference between substitution and benefit.
mousethief said way back:
quote:
You can do something for somebody else's benefit without substituting for them. If I buy a bike for my son, that is for his benefit, but I'm not substituting for him in any way.
Agreed. Forgive me for the loose use of language, but let me use war heroes as a metaphor.
When a heroic soldier has died on the battlefield, the fact that he was part of an army that eventually saw off an enemy successfully means that he has died for our benefit. However, has the soldier died in our place? That's a point that you could argue either way.
However, if the way you see it is that if the army hadn't organised themselves and fought the enemy off, then the enemy would have sacked our towns and cities, killing us all - then, yes, in a very real sense, the soldier has died in our place.
I'm of the opinion that this concept of substitutionary military sacrifice was probably spelled out in detail in classical Athenian literature, by the contemporaries of Plato (if not actually Plato himself) - and it probably made use of similar Greek language vocabulary to that which was subsequently used to explain the meaning of the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.
Admittedly, there is also something of a reliance on the concept of sacrifice in both Jewish and ancient Greek religion, and I dare say Egyptian religion too. When you do something that annoys a divine being, you have to make a sacrifice to that being in order to reconcile yourself to him or her. That sacrifice can part of your livestock, or it can be one of your children. It can even be your own life. (And I think there's evidence from the tragedies of Euripides that the sacrifice of warriors on the "altar" of the battlefield was sometimes thought of in the same way.)
So, going back to Psyduck's two points:
quote:
a) Humankind's participation in a guilt incurred by an original act of rebellion, and necessarily reinforced by each individual's participation in that act of rebellion, against God's will, and
b) God's inability to overlook or mitigate the punishment for this rebellion without being untrue to his divine nature and the inexorable demands of his holiness and goodness.
Point a) - we have really really annoyed God. But by point b) - as well as what the letter to the Hebrews says - we have sacrificed Jesus to God, and God is now happy. More than that, because Jesus was the best sacrifice ever that it was possible to make, it therefore won't be necessary to make any other sacrifices ever again
Was Jesus ever "ours" to sacrifice to God in the first place? It seems to me that from the PSA perspective, the answer has got to be "yes". But that doesn't mean to say that God can't give you a gift which you then sacrifice back to God. The deer in the legend of the sacrifice of Iphigenia springs to mind.
So - Jesus was God's gift to us, and we sacrificed him to God, and that made God happy. But hang on a moment, you may ask - surely if God was that angry, he would never have made a gift in the first place? That's the clever bit, because PSA adherents are able to say that the gift of Jesus shows that in spite of his anger, God really did love us all along.
Or something like that. I don't know really. Too much speculative pattern-spotting in myth on my part, perhaps. Maybe I've completely misrepresented PSA - but then, I don't claim that I necessarily believe in PSA myself. I do think that its faults get overstated sometimes though.
[ 25. June 2010, 18:14: Message edited by: Jessie Phillips ]
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
God's inability to overlook or mitigate the punishment for this rebellion without being untrue to his divine nature and the inexorable demands of his holiness and goodness.
This is the premise I reject. I think the idea of God having to punish somebody in order to forgive is out of keeping with the spirit of the New Testament. I don't think God "punished" the animals in the OT sacrifices. So the idea of them being a substitution is fallacious.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Jessie Phillips
Shipmate
# 13048
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Posted
Thanks for mousethief's comment. Just to clarify a couple of things from my last post:
Firstly, God was angry with us, and he was going to punish us - but his anger was appeased when we sacrificed Jesus to him. So whilst that means that Jesus did die in our place, what it does not mean is that what God did to Jesus constitutes a "punishment" of Jesus. Nevertheless, if that substitutionary sacrifice had not been made, then the thing that God would have done to us as a result would have constituted a "punishment".
I don't know whether that's what traditional PSA teaches or not, though. Perhaps it can be considered a variant on PSA - however, I think it still follows logically from Psyduck's first principles. So, question is, does the thing that happened to Jesus need to be thought of as a "punishment" in order for the atonement theory to qualify for the name of "Penal Substitutionary Atonement"?
Secondly, whilst I can point to examples of sacrifice in the Old Testament, Homer and Athenian literature that form the backdrop for this, I'm not yet able to do the same with anything surviving from ancient Egypt. I think I'll have to look into that one a bit more.
Posts: 2244 | From: Home counties, UK | Registered: Oct 2007
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Carys
Ship's Celticist
# 78
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
If my memory serves me correctly, Stott was effectively saying, 'all these other models are fine as far as they go and contain much truth, but the main point is that God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself and the means with which he did that was through a penal substitutionary sacrifice of God the Son.'
It's a long time (nearly 11 years) since I read the Cross of Christ but I recall something similar. On a quick scan I've found the following:
quote:
In Part Three we looked beyond the cross itself to its consequences, indeed its achievement in three spheres: the salvation of sinners, the revelation of God and the conquest of evil. As for salvation, we studied the four words 'propitiation', 'redemption', 'justification' and 'reconciliation'. These are New Testament 'images', metaphors of what God has done in and through Christ's death. 'Substitution', however is not another image; it is the reality which lies behind them all. We then saw (chapter 8) that has fully and finally revealed his love and justice by exercising them in the cross. When substitution is denied, God's self-disclosure is obscured, but when it is affirmed, his glory shines forth brightly. Having thus far concentrated on the cross as both objective achievement (salvation from sin) and subjective influence (through the revelation of holy love), we agreed that Christus Victor is a third biblical theme, which depicts Christ's victory over the devil, the law, the flesh, the world and death, and our victory through him (chapter 9).*
Carys
*The Cross of Christ John Stott. Conclusion p. 338-339 (second edition with study guide)
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O Lord, you have searched me and know me
You know when I sit and when I rise
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
God's inability to overlook or mitigate the punishment for this rebellion without being untrue to his divine nature and the inexorable demands of his holiness and goodness.
This is the premise I reject. I think the idea of God having to punish somebody in order to forgive is out of keeping with the spirit of the New Testament. I don't think God "punished" the animals in the OT sacrifices. So the idea of them being a substitution is fallacious.
The confusion is perhaps between the punishment of sin and the punishment of Jesus.
The model conflates the two if you are not careful to hold the ideas separate.
One cannot object to the judgement of sin, but certainly, one can object to the judgement of Christ.
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
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