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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: One Atonement
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Only Jamat is saying that PSA-as-foundation is the only reasonable way to read the texts, that those who disagree are not reading the bible, that his view is orthodox Christianity and that everyone else is a hopeless liberal.
Well, What I thought I said was that the 'penal' element of the atonement cannot be dismissed as 'unscriptural'. The 'PSA' as a theory or model, is not really something that I am specifically batting for.
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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)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Gamaliel: he is struggling to understand alternative arguments and scenarios
Gamaliel, once again,you want to patronise a viewpoint that disagrees with yours. If am such a dumbass, then ignore what I say.
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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)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Only Jamat is saying that PSA-as-foundation is the only reasonable way to read the texts, that those who disagree are not reading the bible, that his view is orthodox Christianity and that everyone else is a hopeless liberal.
Well, What I thought I said was that the 'penal' element of the atonement cannot be dismissed as 'unscriptural'. The 'PSA' as a theory or model, is not really something that I am specifically batting for.
Well, then, you need to reread your posts. For example, this one (emphasis mine):
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
the way I see the Bible metanarrative, you cannot have the others, ransom, CV and moral influence, without the foundation of PSA .
[ 11. May 2017, 23:37: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Only Jamat is saying that PSA-as-foundation is the only reasonable way to read the texts, that those who disagree are not reading the bible, that his view is orthodox Christianity and that everyone else is a hopeless liberal.
Well, What I thought I said was that the 'penal' element of the atonement cannot be dismissed as 'unscriptural'. The 'PSA' as a theory or model, is not really something that I am specifically batting for.
Well, then, you need to reread your posts. For example, this one (emphasis mine):
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
the way I see the Bible metanarrative, you cannot have the others, ransom, CV and moral influence, without the foundation of PSA .
I refer constantly, though, to the fact, not the theory. Reading for content is a good option.
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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)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Mr Cheesy: How exactly is Christ's death a payment? It has never made any sense to me. In what possible way does someone (usually God or Satan) somehow get paid off by Jesus' death
Betrays once again the anrhtopocentric misunderstanding of the atonement and mistakes the truth behind the human metaphor, for the literal reality of the image,thus creating the straw man.
God is not 'paid off', it is more that Christ has accomplished a means to restore the original fellowship God had,and still desires to have, with humankind. God,because of the atonement,can now legitimately view us, as righteous, if of course,we accept his offer. Put succinctly by Paul in Phil 3:10 who states that though Faith in Christ, he has a 'righteousness' which is from God.
Beware, if you continue to mock what God offers you, you will be prevented from experiencing it.
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
Not only does PSA make sense of many passages which other models don't, but there is no inherent reason why a doctrine believed and taught in the Bible could not be more or less immediately set aside after the NT era, and then rediscovered many generations later.
In fact we have seen just such an exegetical and hermeneutical phenomenon occurring in recent decades, with countless studies purporting to demonstrate that neither gender differences in ministry, nor barriers to homosexual practice (including marriage), are found in the NT, despite both restrictions being taught and enforced from the very beginning of church history.
The point is not the DH issue of whether these recent assertions are right or wrong, but that we all from time to time revere or ignore the long-term teachings, practices and silences of the church as it suits us.
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Only Jamat is saying that PSA-as-foundation is the only reasonable way to read the texts, that those who disagree are not reading the bible, that his view is orthodox Christianity and that everyone else is a hopeless liberal.
Well, What I thought I said was that the 'penal' element of the atonement cannot be dismissed as 'unscriptural'. The 'PSA' as a theory or model, is not really something that I am specifically batting for.
Well, then, you need to reread your posts. For example, this one (emphasis mine):
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
the way I see the Bible metanarrative, you cannot have the others, ransom, CV and moral influence, without the foundation of PSA .
I refer constantly, though, to the fact, not the theory. Reading for content is a good option.
I rest my case.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Betrays once again the anrhtopocentric misunderstanding of the atonement and mistakes the truth behind the human metaphor, for the literal reality of the image,thus creating the straw man.
No, it is an attempt to wrestle with a theory of the atonement. And an explanation of why it makes no sense to me.
quote:
God is not 'paid off', it is more that Christ has accomplished a means to restore the original fellowship God had,and still desires to have, with humankind.
Actually, the Ramson theory - which I was referring to - is a payment, hence the term ransom.
If you don't believe me, try reading the the wikipedia page
quote:
God,because of the atonement,can now legitimately view us, as righteous, if of course,we accept his offer. Put succinctly by Paul in Phil 3:10 who states that though Faith in Christ, he has a 'righteousness' which is from God.
Or perhaps it is that the atonement is part of God's redeeming work of all things and that "Christ's death defeated the powers of evil, which had held humankind in their dominion" and that Jesus' life, death and resurrection was to "bring positive moral change to humanity".
Maybe it is entirely possible to believe in the power of the atonement whilst rejecting the ways that you insist I have to understand it.
quote:
Beware, if you continue to mock what God offers you, you will be prevented from experiencing it.
Yeah. Because obviously anyone who has a brain and uses it to discuss and disagree with your half-baked theological theories is obviously mocking God.
![[Mad]](angryfire.gif)
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arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Not only does PSA make sense of many passages which other models don't, but there is no inherent reason why a doctrine believed and taught in the Bible could not be more or less immediately set aside after the NT era, and then rediscovered many generations later.
I'd be interested to discuss how PSA makes sense of passages which others don't if you have the time.
I'd generally agree that understanding has developed and that it is possible that ideas have been "set aside" after the NT era and rediscovered later.
The question is whether the atonement is really one of those things and whether one can have any certainty that in the NT era they believed in PSA.
There is no evidence whatsoever that this is the case.
quote:
In fact we have seen just such an exegetical and hermeneutical phenomenon occurring in recent decades, with countless studies purporting to demonstrate that neither gender differences in ministry, nor barriers to homosexual practice (including marriage), are found in the NT, despite both restrictions being taught and enforced from the very beginning of church history.
Well, I guess the detail of that is a DH subject. However it is clearly true that something like slavery, which is arguably not condemned as an institution in the NT has been part of a developing hermeneutic which changed from a belief that it was inevitable, through the idea that it was somehow an order dictated to organise humanity from God and ended up as obviously something that disgusted God.
quote:
The point is not the DH issue of whether these recent assertions are right or wrong, but that we all from time to time revere or ignore the long-term teachings, practices and silences of the church as it suits us.
I suppose the point I'd argue is the extent to which the changes are because they suit us. I'd argue that the majority of these cases are nothing to do with liberal convenience and everything to do with a developing sense of justice and love of neighbour - which after all are major themes of the teaching tradition in the NT.
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arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Only Jamat is saying that PSA-as-foundation is the only reasonable way to read the texts, that those who disagree are not reading the bible, that his view is orthodox Christianity and that everyone else is a hopeless liberal.
Well, What I thought I said was that the 'penal' element of the atonement cannot be dismissed as 'unscriptural'. The 'PSA' as a theory or model, is not really something that I am specifically batting for.
Well, then, you need to reread your posts. For example, this one (emphasis mine):
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
the way I see the Bible metanarrative, you cannot have the others, ransom, CV and moral influence, without the foundation of PSA .
I refer constantly, though, to the fact, not the theory. Reading for content is a good option.
I rest my case.
Fantastic you can also dictate the verdict.
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Betrays once again the anrhtopocentric misunderstanding of the atonement and mistakes the truth behind the human metaphor, for the literal reality of the image,thus creating the straw man.
No, it is an attempt to wrestle with a theory of the atonement. And an explanation of why it makes no sense to me.
quote:
God is not 'paid off', it is more that Christ has accomplished a means to restore the original fellowship God had,and still desires to have, with humankind.
Actually, the Ramson theory - which I was referring to - is a payment, hence the term ransom.
If you don't believe me, try reading the the wikipedia page
quote:
God,because of the atonement,can now legitimately view us, as righteous, if of course,we accept his offer. Put succinctly by Paul in Phil 3:10 who states that though Faith in Christ, he has a 'righteousness' which is from God.
Or perhaps it is that the atonement is part of God's redeeming work of all things and that "Christ's death defeated the powers of evil, which had held humankind in their dominion" and that Jesus' life, death and resurrection was to "bring positive moral change to humanity".
Maybe it is entirely possible to believe in the power of the atonement whilst rejecting the ways that you insist I have to understand it.
quote:
Beware, if you continue to mock what God offers you, you will be prevented from experiencing it.
Yeah. Because obviously anyone who has a brain and uses it to discuss and disagree with your half-baked theological theories is obviously mocking God.
Well, surprise,surprise! More personal mockery! Don't worry mate,laying the man is also a Time-honoured tradition on SOF.
[ 12. May 2017, 07:33: Message edited by: Jamat ]
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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)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
Sorry Mr Cheesy, that was supposed to be 'playing' the man.
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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)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Sorry Mr Cheesy, that was supposed to be 'playing' the man.
No, I wasn't playing the man, I was expressing annoyance with the way that you were claiming some kind of special significance for your theory and closing down discussion of it by suggesting that I was mocking God.
Which, to be honest, I regard as the absolute lowest form of theological discussion. Congratulations.
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arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
The question is whether the atonement is really one of those things and whether one can have any certainty that in the NT era they believed in PSA.
There is no evidence whatsoever that this is the case.
That's amusing. Looking at the scriptures, I'd say there was no evidence they believed in anything OTHER than an atonement which involved a penal element.
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
That's amusing. Looking at the scriptures, I'd say there was no evidence they believed in anything OTHER than an atonement which involved a penal element.
Have you ready any of the above thread? Do you not appreciate that it takes more than you making claims to make a theological case for something?
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arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Thing is, Kaplan, if there were doctrines held universally scores all the Christian communities of the first few centuries that were later abandoned at some point only to be recovered at the Reformation say, or in the 18th, 19th or 20th centuries ...
Then the onus is on you to find the smoking gun.
Nobody has so far demonstrated to me at what point the early Christians moved from a PSA style understanding of the atonement to a Ransom Theory approach or to Christus Victor (which is a more modern iteration by Gustav Aulen of earlier models) ...
When did that take place?
As I understand it, it didn't.
What happened was that in certain places and at certain periods in response to certain developments and conditions, certain aspects or emphases were marshalled in support of particular positions.
Why was there a Protestant revolt, as it were, in Western Europe in the 16th century but not in the Christian East, for instance?
They were all reading the scriptures, weren't they?
Of course, there were others things going on and not just a case of Luther opening his Bible one day and thinking, 'Of course! Justification by faith ... Why haven't we all seen that before? Eureka! And while I'm at it I'd better tear out the Epistle of James in order to make things fit ...'
Of course, I'm teasing, but I am trying to make a serious point ...
Meanwhile, @Jamat, forgive me but I don't think you are a dumbass. Far from it. You strike me as someone who is fiercely intelligent and committed, only in a somewhat brittle way and with particular tramlines that you've laid down and from which you find it impossible to deviate ...
But then, I get accused of banging the same drum or piping the same tune here on Ship with my particular beefs and hobby-horses ...
@Kaplan, yes, PSA does neatly resolve some problems - and that's part of its appeal ... But in so doing, it seems to me - and others here with whom I don't necessarily agree on all issues - it raises additional problems ...
Contra Jamat, I don't believe that everyone who has sincere or genuine issues with PSA is being anthropocentric or squeamish about the seriousness of sin - nor, as he seems to suggest, in peril of their mortal souls ...
Rather, it's because they don't see how it resolves the issues as neatly as PSA proponents consider it to do.
For my money, some non-PSA proponents can and do let themselves down by caricatures and the setting up of straw-men ...
However, one has only got to read the posts of the most ardent PSA supporter here to see that they are full of ad hominems, of proof-texting, special pleading, a lack of historical perspective and threats of eternal damnation ...
Sure, not all PSA proponents are so lacking in nuance but it tells us something of the way this particular mindset operates - or can operate.
I rest my case.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
The question is whether the atonement is really one of those things and whether one can have any certainty that in the NT era they believed in PSA.
There is no evidence whatsoever that this is the case.
That's amusing. Looking at the scriptures, I'd say there was no evidence they believed in anything OTHER than an atonement which involved a penal element.
Then at what point did they modify or abandon that?
At what point were they ever SOLO Scriptura?
You are anochronistic and assume that because your conservative evangelical tradition interprets the scriptures in a particular way then everyone else must have done the same until somebody or other deviated from it at some point.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Not only does PSA make sense of many passages which other models don't, but there is no inherent reason why a doctrine believed and taught in the Bible could not be more or less immediately set aside after the NT era, and then rediscovered many generations later.
In fact we have seen just such an exegetical and hermeneutical phenomenon occurring in recent decades, with countless studies purporting to demonstrate that neither gender differences in ministry, nor barriers to homosexual practice (including marriage), are found in the NT, despite both restrictions being taught and enforced from the very beginning of church history.
The point is not the DH issue of whether these recent assertions are right or wrong, but that we all from time to time revere or ignore the long-term teachings, practices and silences of the church as it suits us.
This fascinates me. PSA is a given in the Bible for me - nurtured in a legalistic Judaistic cult as I was - and C1st Jewish Christianity and ignored OR tacit in Greco-Roman Christianity and beyond.
PSA did not compute for non-Jewish culture for some reason OR was so obvious there was no need to address it.
Non-Jewish Christianity was as visibly obsessed with sin and salvation as any solo PSAer and as damnationally deranged, so what difference does it make?
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Whatever the case, I think it's pretty obvious that PSA isn't a 'given' unless you are part of a tradition that regards it as such.
I've had discussions with those 'irrelevant' people, the Orthodox, in which they furrow their brows and stroke their beards because it isn't immediately obvious to them - although those who were Western Christians of some form before crossing the Bosphorus obviously understand it and why it's been seen as such a big deal in the West.
This intrigues me and begs several questions ...
If it was so immediately and controvertibly obvious, how come they overlooked it for so long?
The knee-jerk Jamat-style answer would be:
'Because they didn't read the Bible / understand the Bible / Satan hardened their hearts / Satan deceived them ...' etc etc
The Kaplan Corday answer would be, 'Well, it is possible for truths to lie buried in God's holy word until somebody or other cottons onto them ...'
Ok.
But could it not also be because?
- There are other ways of understanding these things?
- We all understand the scriptures in the context of our own particular traditions. We wear those lenses when we read them. This happens so unconsciously that we may not even be aware that we are wearing spectacles in the first place.
It doesn't do any violence to a 'high' view of scriptural inspiration to acknowledge the incontrovertible fact that reading includes interpretation and that interpretation is coloured and filtered by whatever Christian tradition has influenced us the most.
I don't see why that should be such a threatening idea, unless one has invested a stupendous amount of emotional and nervous energy in one's own tradition as so incontrovertibly correct that it's not even discerned or recognised as a tradition or template at all ...
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
This.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
So, PSA infected the West and wasn't even rejected in the East. That has to be cultural. Linguistic.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
The question is whether the atonement is really one of those things and whether one can have any certainty that in the NT era they believed in PSA.
There is no evidence whatsoever that this is the case.
That's amusing. Looking at the scriptures, I'd say there was no evidence they believed in anything OTHER than an atonement which involved a penal element.
Then at what point did they modify or abandon that?
At what point were they ever SOLO Scriptura?
You are anochronistic and assume that because your conservative evangelical tradition interprets the scriptures in a particular way then everyone else must have done the same until somebody or other deviated from it at some point.
Listen good Gamaliel. To me this is not a contest of traditions. It is a battle for souls. Take Timothy, he was enjoined by Paul to maintain the apostles teaching and rebuke those ho deviated.
The evangelical tradition is NOT mine. I am actually a cradle Catholic. That might surprise you but pretty well every one of the reformers was actually a Catholic priest who recognised through reading the scriptures the error of Catholic teaching on the various doctrinal pillars. The deviation from the very beginning of the faith was AWAY from the apostles teaching after they died.
Personally, I am not influenced by evangelical teaching at all. I am not an evangelical Christian I am a converted Catholic. As such, I find most affinity with people who personally celebrate a personal relationship with the Lord because I share that. Catholics have this powerful push of guilt. That is why they have the sacrament of penance. When a Catholic actually is lifted up by the reality of the Lord, when he or she recognises that the liturgical edifice they were born into is actually leading them towards more bondage rather than heaven, the feeling you can know the Lord,hear the Lord and serve the Lord independently of it, is actually like waking out of a dark night.
One think you quickly learn is the authority of the Bible and central to that authority is the power of the atonement. It is not confession or as they now term it 'reconciliation' the sacrament that cleanses. It is the Biblical atonement. And the power of the atonement, the heart of it, is the revelation that Jesus, once for all was the sacrifice as the book of Hebrews states so clearly. You do not need an ordained so called 'priest' celebrating 'mass' for you to experience it or benefit from it. What you need is a trust in the blood of Jesus.
That blood is the engine room of the transformation of the individual. It is what defeats the enemy by changing the ownership papers on the lives of believers. Why is it so powerful? Hebrews tells us when it says without shedding of blood,there is no forgiveness of sins. Now why would that be? It is kind of obvious, Christ, the lamb, the real lamb of God was our Passover,sacrificed for us. There was judgement,there was wrath,the blood of Christ has turned it aside.
It is unfortunate that the word penal has had to come into the deal as a kind of intellectualisation of it but the outcome doesn't alter. Somehow Christ absorbed that judgement, diverted that wrath and restored the relationship of humanity to its creator. That is the heart of the faith.
If you do not have a revelation of that and an acceptance of it, you are not a Christian. All the traditions that have ever been or ever will be cannot change your eternal destiny. Go play games with the Orthodox Gamaliel. Go light a few candles and get yourself an icon or two. Why, buddy, maybe you could even grow a beard. It won't change you.The atonement can..but has It?
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
Turn or burn. Accept Jamat's theology or fry in the Eternal Rotisserie.
How could I have been so blind?
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
I always enjoy the statements, 'if you do not ... then you are not a Christian'. Yes, I suppose it's also frying tonight, and we still use beef fat.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
The evangelical tradition is NOT mine. I am actually a cradle Catholic. That might surprise you ...
Personally, I don't think it's surprising at all. I think it explains a great deal.
The suggestion that salvation might be dependent on a "proper" understanding of something like the atonement, on the other hand, I find astounding.
quote:
...but pretty well every one of the reformers was actually a Catholic priest who recognised through reading the scriptures the error of Catholic teaching on the various doctrinal pillars.
Calvin was a lawyer, not a Catholic priest.
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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
Posts: 2833 | From: On heaven-crammed earth | Registered: Sep 2009
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
PSA's infection in the West does not even have a patient zero in Augustine: "by His death, the one most true sacrifice offered on our behalf, He purged, abolished and extinguished ... whatever guilt we had." can be read as PSA if you're wearing those anachronistic glasses.
No . one . was .
Anselm 700 years later is hardly further infected. Just feudal.
The infection is genetic. Mutational. Selected by environment. Aquinas 200 years later adds punishment WITHOUT penal substitution. Calvin goes the whole hog after another 400 years but WITHOUT the Son appeasing the Father (NAUGHTY Steve Chalke!) but only for the 'Elect'. Mutations.
Is the peacock's tail or the neck of the giraffe true or false?
As Western society evolves, so do the atonement models. Still. There are living fossils. There are emergent forms. The living fossil analogy is false actually, Jamat is an emerging modern form as in his YECism, using all the style of modern discourse to support universal application of a literal understanding of ancient texts.
Only one thing is for sure, Jesus is our Earth local atonement.
[ 12. May 2017, 12:23: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Jamat, of course I am aware that you were a cradle Catholic. You've said so on these boards.
Of course I know that many of the Magisterial Reformers - and some of the Radical Reformers such as Menno Simmons - were former RC priests or 'religious'.
I am very aware of the history of the Reformation. I am reasonably well-read on aspects of RC theology.
I am not a Roman Catholic nor do I have any desire to cross the Tiber.
I can well understand the sense of palpable relief that someone might feel had they been brought up with the whole panoply of RC penances and so forth on undergoing an evangelical conversion. I've known plenty of people who have done so and ended up in evangelical churches of one form or other.
I am not doubting the reality of your experience nor the reality of your conversion.
Please do me the courtesy of not harbouring doubts about mine.
I grew up as a nominal Anglican and drifted away from the whole thing when they started the confirmation classes. Later, at university, I had a full-blown evangelical conversion. I was 'born again'.
I don't doubt the authenticity of that experience - and neither, I might add, do any 'High Church' or more sacramentally inclined people that I know.
I may frame it in somewhat different terms at times than I would have done when I was 19 or 20 ... but I see no reason not to take it at face value - that it was a definite point when I consciously turned from agnosticism and unbelief to faith in the Risen and Ascended Christ.
Now, that doesn't mean that I have to go round with a tub of whitewash painting out icons or treating the RCC as the Whore of Babylon and so on ...
I can well understand the 'rawness' of your position - you felt cheated and short-changed by Catholicism and felt illumined and made whole, renewed on your life-changing experience as a 'converted Catholic.'
Fine.
But does that give you the right to sit in judgement on other people's experiences, understandings and explorations?
Who are you to say whether the atonement has had any effect on me or not?
What qualifies you to do so?
One might just as easily reverse the whole thing around and point the finger in your direction. What difference has this atonement that Jamat speaks of made to him when it's clearly turned him into some kind of overly literalistic and judgemental fundamentalist? Where's the life, joy and freedom in that?
Look. I have my faults. There are plain here on these boards for all to see. I can be a windbag. I fence-sit, prevaricate, annoy people. I do all of that and much worse besides.
But 'I know him whom I have believed ...'
I explore things, I discuss, I hope I learn from everyone here - irrespective of their perspective and tradition.
What I don't do is set myself up as judge and jury on the eternal destiny / salvation of anyone else.
I seem to remember some clear biblical teaching in that respect ...
Criticise me, criticise my theology - be as fundamentalist as you like and then some - but just remember those words, 'judge not lest ye also be judged ...'
As Good Queen Bess said, 'The Lord hath not given us windows into men's souls ...'
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
The evangelical tradition is NOT mine. I am actually a cradle Catholic. That might surprise you...
It will surprise no one who has spent any time in a conservative evangelical church. Within our evangelical subculture we ALL have seen this mentality a 1000 times. We (evangelicals) all know a 1000 ex-Catholic evangelicals (emphasis on the "ex") who sound precisely like you. It's the "convert" syndrome-- no one is more doggedly committed to a cause-- often to the point of blindness to it's flaws-- than the convert. And no one is more virulent in opposition to alternative perspectives than the one who has converted away from that perspective (look at me re Calvinism). It's a mentality that is both lovely and deeply deeply flawed.
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
...but pretty well every one of the reformers was actually a Catholic priest who recognised through reading the scriptures the error of Catholic teaching on the various doctrinal pillars. The deviation from the very beginning of the faith was AWAY from the apostles teaching after they died.
As I'm constantly reminding my students (often ex-Catholic evangelicals with the same "convert syndrome") Luther et al (but not "all") were protesting the 16th century Catholic Church. Not the 4th c Church, not the 5th c Church and certainly not the 20th or 21st c Catholic Church. To gloss over that fact is to rewrite history.
[ 12. May 2017, 13:41: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
It will surprise no one who has spent any time in a conservative evangelical church. Within our evangelical subculture we ALL have seen this mentality a 1000 times. We (evangelicals) all know a 1000 ex-Catholic evangelicals (emphasis on the "ex") who sound precisely like you.It's the "convert" syndrome-- no one is more doggedly committed to a cause-- often to the point of blindness to it's flaws-- than the convert.
Speak for yourself, chum. I don't know a thousand ex-Catholics and the most committed Evangelicals I know were never anything else.
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arse
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cliffdweller
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# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
It will surprise no one who has spent any time in a conservative evangelical church. Within our evangelical subculture we ALL have seen this mentality a 1000 times. We (evangelicals) all know a 1000 ex-Catholic evangelicals (emphasis on the "ex") who sound precisely like you.It's the "convert" syndrome-- no one is more doggedly committed to a cause-- often to the point of blindness to it's flaws-- than the convert.
Speak for yourself, chum. I don't know a thousand ex-Catholics and the most committed Evangelicals I know were never anything else.
"thousand" may be hyperbolic but certainly the difference between ex-Catholic evangelicals and born-to-the-tribe evangelicals among every evangelical church I've been a part of has fallen along the lines I describe. Are there fewer ex-Catholic evangelicals cross-pond? It's very very common in the US and even more so in Latin America and among Hispanic immigrants.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Pond difference.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
"thousand" may be hyperbolic but certainly the difference between ex-Catholic evangelicals and born-to-the-tribe evangelicals among every evangelical church I've been a part of has fallen along the lines I describe. Are there fewer ex-Catholic evangelicals cross-pond? It's very very common in the US and even more so in Latin America and among Hispanic immigrants.
I'm trying to think if I've ever met an ex-Catholic in an Evangelical setting. I have met ex-Catholics, but the only times I've come across them are in not-particularly Evangelical Anglican parish churches.
It might just be the circles I've moved in - Evangelicalism is spectacularly divided in the UK and dependent on location, social class, etc.
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arse
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Gamaliel
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# 812
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Posted
I was once a member of a Baptist church where I computed that around a sixth of the membership had grown up as Catholics. Most of them had become evangelicals at university or later ...
Their views about the RCC ranged from unremittingly hostile through to an acknowledgement of both strengths and weaknesses ...
Most of those I knew well had a lot of time for individual priests, monks or nuns - some of them their relatives - that they'd known even if they were quite dismissive of the RCC as a 'system'.
I was always seen as a 'closet Anglican' as my eucharistic theology was rather more 'developed' than the standard Zwinglian memorialism that tends to prevail in Baptist circles.
One of the house-group leaders - a former RC - was horrified when i outlined my views and accused me of believing in Transubstantiation ...
![[Biased]](wink.gif)
In fairness, this same guy once gave me a section out of the Roman Missal to read when it was our house-groups turn to lead the monthly communion service ...
Nobody noticed and the roof didn't cave in ...
It was a fairly eclectic and fairly 'emergent' Baptist church ... with some charismatic and conservative evangelical leanings in the mix.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Jay-Emm
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# 11411
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Why was there a Protestant revolt, as it were, in Western Europe in the 16th century but not in the Christian East, for instance?
You could possibly put the Iconoclasts/Iconodule conflicts as an earlier variant. I think that was more single issue, and the Iconoclast's didn't break away, (instead Rome did, again, and Islam had a pile of ready converts). There'd be a lot to compare and contrast.
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
That's an interesting parallel, Jay-Emm.
I don't know a great deal about the Iconoclast controversy but my understanding was that it wasn't so much Rome that 'broke-away' but Rome which had a hand in the eventual resolution of the matter in favour of the Iconodules rather than the Iconoclasts.
I do wonder what Orthodoxy would have looked like - literally - had the Iconoclasts won the day ... I can't imagine Orthodoxy without icons. Would it have looked more 'Protestant' or simply more 'Jewish'?
The synagogues I've visited have tended to be quite richly decorated even if the arts and crafts are less figurative than in Christian settings.
It's an interesting thought ...
Coming back to Jamat's dig at me to 'go' play with the Orthodox' and buy an icon or two or grow a beard ...
Well, I do have a few icons already, including an unusual one I commissioned from a local iconographer. It depicts St Gwynllyw, a South Walian Saint.
I've got some less than designer stubble at the moment which I'll shave off soon ...
Before Jamat dies of apoplexy or comes round to my house with a tub of whitewash, I would reassure him that if I am to be saved at all it isn't going to be in the basis of my works, whether I've venerated icons or not or whether my beard is stubbly, bushy or as bald as a baby's bum.
It'll be on the basis of Christ's atoning work however that's understood. If any of us are to be saved at all, we are saved by Christ - through his life, death, resurrection, ascension and continuing intercession.
I've heard Orthodoxy dismissed as 'salvation by Liturgy'. Whether the Orthodox themselves see it that way is another issue. A lot of them appear poorly catechised but that's not the impression I get for all that ... But then, what do I know?
Jamat obviously knows more about my spiritual state than I know myself.
How silly of me not to have realised that already ...
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Thing is, Kaplan, if there were doctrines held universally scores all the Christian communities of the first few centuries that were later abandoned at some point only to be recovered at the Reformation say, or in the 18th, 19th or 20th centuries ...
Then the onus is on you to find the smoking gun.
Nobody has so far demonstrated to me at what point the early Christians moved from a PSA style understanding of the atonement to a Ransom Theory approach or to Christus Victor (which is a more modern iteration by Gustav Aulen of earlier models) ...
When did that take place?
As I understand it, it didn't.
What happened was that in certain places and at certain periods in response to certain developments and conditions, certain aspects or emphases were marshalled in support of particular positions.
Why was there a Protestant revolt, as it were, in Western Europe in the 16th century but not in the Christian East, for instance?
They were all reading the scriptures, weren't they?
Of course, there were others things going on and not just a case of Luther opening his Bible one day and thinking, 'Of course! Justification by faith ... Why haven't we all seen that before? Eureka! And while I'm at it I'd better tear out the Epistle of James in order to make things fit ...'
This is just rhetorical flourish which evades the point which I was making.
Obviously it is impossible tp 'prove" that the NT writers believed and taught PSA, after which it was promptly lost, to be resurrected long after.
But if, as countless evangelicals and non-evangelicals believe, the NT does self-evidently teach PSA (along with other models), then its sudden demise in the era of the Apostolic Fathers, and its delayed rediscovery,, cannot be "disproven" either.
It is irrefutable as at least a possibility.
I was simply making the point, using other, non-evangelical, examples such as the recent alleged rediscovery of NT approval of female ministry and homosexuality, that the prolonged absence of a belief from church history is not the polemical clincher that some anti-PSA obsessives appear to naively imagine it to be.
[ 13. May 2017, 00:22: Message edited by: Kaplan Corday ]
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
If you do not have a revelation of that and an acceptance of it, you are not a Christian. All the traditions that have ever been or ever will be cannot change your eternal destiny.
Well said, Jamat, and substantially true, but it is important to realise that the RC and Orthodox traditions both rest ultimately on a soteriology of grace, even if its expressions and vehicles are lamentably opaque at times.
I treasure these words from a Roman Catholic priest, the late Richard John Neuhaus:_
“When I come before the judgment throne, I will plead the promise of God in the shed blood of Jesus Christ. I will not plead any work I have done, although I will thank God that he has enabled me to do some good. I will plead no merits other than the merits of Christ, knowing that the merits of Mary and the saints are all from him; and for their company, their example, and their prayers through my earthly life I will give everlasting thanks. I will not plead that I had faith, for sometimes I was unsure of my faith, and in any event that would be to turn faith into a meritorious work of my own. I will not plead that I held the correct understanding of ‘justification by faith alone,’ although I will thank God that that he led me to know ever more fully the great truth that much misundertood doctrine was intended to protect. Whatever little growth in holiness I have experienced, whatever strength I have received from the company of the saints, whatever understanding I have attained of God and his ways…these and all other gifts I will bring gratefully to the throne. But in seeking entry to that heavenly kingdom, I will look to Christ and Christ alone.”
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
It is irrefutable as at least a possibility.
That is one of the most nonsensical things I think I've ever read here.
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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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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jay-Emm:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Why was there a Protestant revolt, as it were, in Western Europe in the 16th century but not in the Christian East, for instance?
You could possibly put the Iconoclasts/Iconodule conflicts as an earlier variant. I think that was more single issue, and the Iconoclast's didn't break away, (instead Rome did, again, and Islam had a pile of ready converts). There'd be a lot to compare and contrast.
Except we grew out of our "variant" and the West has yet to do so. How long, O Lord, how long?
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I've heard Orthodoxy dismissed as 'salvation by Liturgy'.
That sounds like something stupid said by an ex-Orfie with an axe to grind. Or by an iconoclast Protty with the same disease.
quote:
Whether the Orthodox themselves see it that way is another issue. A lot of them appear poorly catechised but that's not the impression I get for all that ...
You know we don't see it that way. For starters we don't see salvation as a single event but a lifetime struggle, a process which we call "theosis."
As for poorly catechized, yeah, plenty of that.
quote:
But then, what do I know?
Quite a lot. So much that your protestations of ignorance fall flat.
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
If you do not have a revelation of that and an acceptance of it, you are not a Christian. All the traditions that have ever been or ever will be cannot change your eternal destiny.
Well said, Jamat, and substantially true, but it is important to realise that the RC and Orthodox traditions both rest ultimately on a soteriology of grace, even if its expressions and vehicles are lamentably opaque at times.
Nobody is claiming traditions can save. They are claiming that ancient traditions that don't have PSA demonstrate that it is not the only way to read the NT. Which seems pretty self-evident. Maybe you two don't care that your position is so easily refuted. That's your look-out.
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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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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
It is irrefutable as at least a possibility.
That is one of the most nonsensical things I think I've ever read here.
If you can't cope with something as obviously true - and in context, relevant - as this, then you should stay out of the discussion.
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Nobody is claiming traditions can save.
But grace can and does, and the point was that fortunately it is discernible outside as well as inside evangelicalism.
quote:
They are claiming that ancient traditions that don't have PSA demonstrate that it is not the only way to read the NT.
Agreed, and agreed what's more that people can be saved and be Christians without acknowledging PSA.
For goodness sake stop and think before you respond, instead of just flying off the handle every time something presses one of your buttons.
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
My protestations of ignorance were a rhetorical flourish aimed at Jamat, Mousethief.
I was being ironic. The point I was making was that Jamat appears to presume that he can pontificate about people's eternal destiny and to know my own spiritual history better than I know myself ...
This thread ain't all about you, you know ...
Meanwhile, yes, I like that RC quote Kaplan and it accords very well with what I've heard from RC clergy I know - and yes, the Orthodox emphasise grace too - it's there all the way through their liturgies ...
That doesn't mean that they understand these things in the same way as evangelical Protestants.
Nor does it mean that you'll get an evangelically acceptable explanation of it from all RCs or Orthodox - but that doesn't necessarily mean they don't believe in grace or think they can be justified by their own efforts.
On the 'Salvation by Liturgy' thing, that came, somewhat to my surprise from a cathedral chorister whose husband was an organist and who later went onto produce a popular BBC religious programme.
She was fairly well appraised about the various Christian traditions. I suspect, though, that the contacts she'd had with Orthodoxy was through converts who were waving the Liturgy around to prove how Orthodox they'd become.
I wasn't having a dig at the Orthodox. I am simply observing that a lot of the rank and file don't appear particularly well catechised to me - which is a common complaint I hear within Orthodoxy itself and also something I've come across with RCs. That said, I've come across plenty of RCs and Orthodox who are pretty well-versed both in their own and other people's traditions.
Coming back to the OP ...
Sure, I can certainly see how and why people arrive at PSA from reading the NT - and from applying a particular interpretive framework onto parts of the OT - particularly Isaiah 53.
But I think it's a bit of a jump from that to assuming that everyone was on the same page with that for some unspecified period until it then became mysteriously submerged and lost somewhere in the sub-apostolic period.
Jamat seems to suggest that everything went to pot following the death of the last apostle - which would imply that things were only on track for 30 or 40 years before they went pear-shaped.
In which case, things had all gone wrong way before the canon of scripture had been formalised and that those who did so had no understanding of the very scriptures they were canonising.
That seems a complete stretch to me - and the sort of thing that someone could only come up with if they'd has a nuance bypass operation.
Or if they were someone who'd converted from a rather rigid and rote form of Tridentine Roman Catholicism to an equally rigid form of Protestant fundamentalism.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
On the apparent absence of PSA from sub-apostolic writings and the Fathers ... although some do selectively cherry-pick quotes to demonstrate the opposite - I don't see that as a 'polemical clincher' either ...
I'm simply saying that it should at least give the PSA-only crowd some pause for thought.
However, it doesn't appear to do that. They simply try to find ways around it. 'Oh, everything went pear-shaped after the death of the last apostle ...' (as if everything was perfect while they were still alive) or by the 4th century or whenever else ...
Of course, there's a similar and parallel fundamentalist tendency on the other side of the fence. 'We have icons because St Luke painted one of the Theotokos ...'
The issue, it seems to me, is one of reductionism and fundamentalism.
Things have to boil down to nice neat 'onlys'.
As if any of this stuff can possibly stand alone.
'By grace alone, by faith alone ...' well, they might add the caveat that the 'faith that saves is never alone', but ultimately it's reduce,reduce, reduce, cut back, cut back ...
It has to boil down to one thing, one particular certainty. No PSA, no salvation.
Which is what Jamat is saying.
None of the other PSA supporters here are saying that - they are putting PSA alongside other models - and they are acknowledging that there are other ways to understand these things.
I'm surprised Jamat hasn't challenged them about the reality of their faith or the efficacy of the atonement in their particular cases. Perhaps it's because they haven't indicated a penchant for icons ...
Or because they remain within the footprint of what he finds acceptable within the canon of the Gospel according to Jamat.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
The question is whether the atonement is really one of those things and whether one can have any certainty that in the NT era they believed in PSA.
There is no evidence whatsoever that this is the case.
That's amusing. Looking at the scriptures, I'd say there was no evidence they believed in anything OTHER than an atonement which involved a penal element.
Then at what point did they modify or abandon that?
At what point were they ever SOLO Scriptura?
You are anochronistic and assume that because your conservative evangelical tradition interprets the scriptures in a particular way then everyone else must have done the same until somebody or other deviated from it at some point.
Listen good Gamaliel. To me this is not a contest of traditions. It is a battle for souls. Take Timothy, he was enjoined by Paul to maintain the apostles teaching and rebuke those ho deviated.
The evangelical tradition is NOT mine. I am actually a cradle Catholic. That might surprise you but pretty well every one of the reformers was actually a Catholic priest who recognised through reading the scriptures the error of Catholic teaching on the various doctrinal pillars. The deviation from the very beginning of the faith was AWAY from the apostles teaching after they died.
Personally, I am not influenced by evangelical teaching at all. I am not an evangelical Christian I am a converted Catholic. As such, I find most affinity with people who personally celebrate a personal relationship with the Lord because I share that. Catholics have this powerful push of guilt. That is why they have the sacrament of penance. When a Catholic actually is lifted up by the reality of the Lord, when he or she recognises that the liturgical edifice they were born into is actually leading them towards more bondage rather than heaven, the feeling you can know the Lord,hear the Lord and serve the Lord independently of it, is actually like waking out of a dark night.
One think you quickly learn is the authority of the Bible and central to that authority is the power of the atonement. It is not confession or as they now term it 'reconciliation' the sacrament that cleanses. It is the Biblical atonement. And the power of the atonement, the heart of it, is the revelation that Jesus, once for all was the sacrifice as the book of Hebrews states so clearly. You do not need an ordained so called 'priest' celebrating 'mass' for you to experience it or benefit from it. What you need is a trust in the blood of Jesus.
That blood is the engine room of the transformation of the individual. It is what defeats the enemy by changing the ownership papers on the lives of believers. Why is it so powerful? Hebrews tells us when it says without shedding of blood,there is no forgiveness of sins. Now why would that be? It is kind of obvious, Christ, the lamb, the real lamb of God was our Passover,sacrificed for us. There was judgement,there was wrath,the blood of Christ has turned it aside.
It is unfortunate that the word penal has had to come into the deal as a kind of intellectualisation of it but the outcome doesn't alter. Somehow Christ absorbed that judgement, diverted that wrath and restored the relationship of humanity to its creator. That is the heart of the faith.
If you do not have a revelation of that and an acceptance of it, you are not a Christian. All the traditions that have ever been or ever will be cannot change your eternal destiny. Go play games with the Orthodox Gamaliel. Go light a few candles and get yourself an icon or two. Why, buddy, maybe you could even grow a beard. It won't change you.The atonement can..but has It?
Then you and Kaplan have a nice time in heaven, alone. The rest of us will be doing just fine in Hell with Jesus.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Come now, Martin60. Kaplan has conceded / acknowledged that there will be people in heaven who didn't accept PSA as an atonement model ...
I suspect that even Jamat believes that too, even if people don't consciously 'sign-up' to PSA I would imagine he believes that PSA is efficacious irrespective of whether people actively acknowledge it or not ...
Which doesn't stop him asking those who may differ from him whether the atonement has been effective in their case or not ...
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
Might I ask, which aspect of the atonement rids me of my guilt?
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Might I ask, which aspect of the atonement rids me of my guilt?
That's an interesting question. I've often reflected on the response to the Lord in the gospels and how remarkably lacking in self-loathing and guilt the depicted characters appear to be.
My conclusion is that on meeting the Christ, it wasn't so much that individuals had the guilt "taken away" so much as that it didn't matter any more. I suspect Zacchaeus felt a bit guilty about ripping people off, that the mother of James and John felt a bit guilty about pestering the Lord about giving them a special ministry in the kingdom. In those and other situations, I don't see the Lord saying "it's ok guys, I'm going to take away that guilt you are feeling" as much as he refocussed them onto something else. Come down Zacchaeus, I'm hungry. Nope, Mrs mother-of-James-and-John, that's the wrong question. Nope, person previously paralysed, lady with problematic background, blind person, leper, man at well. This isn't about how awful you are, stop worrying about that and be whole.
Even Paul, who one presumes would be carrying a lot of guilt doesn't seem to waste a lot of time on it nor seems to be particularly focussed on the atonement as a reason of it being taken away IIRC. He's struck blind for a few days then gets up and gets on with it.
Which makes me think that this whole "you're really sinful and awful and God can't possibly get close to you in that state - you horrible little man - so go and get washed in the blood of the lamb and come back when you are properly cleaned of all your guilt" is a load of bunk.
Simply not the way Jesus operated.
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arse
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
That's a good question, but it begs a few others in my mind.
Why do you need to know?
Why do we need to fillet it in the first place?
'Model X of the atonement delivers me from death, whereas Models Y and Z free me from the power and guilt of sin ...'
It also raises the question of how PSA deals with our guilt. Is our guilt imputed to Christ? That he, being innocent, accepts our guilt in our place?
The ins and outs of that have been discussed at length here.
If I came to your house and stole a leg of beef ('Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief / Taffy came to my house and stole a leg of beef ...') and you magnanimously decided to forgive me for doing so and let me off with a reprimand, say ...
What happens to the guilt in that instance?
I'm still guilty of stealing your leg of beef.
But you have graciously chosen to forgive me for that.
Does that mean that you then have to hand yourself into the police and offer to serve a prison sentence or pay a fine on my behalf?
Now, don't get me wrong ... I can see where you're going with this one but one could argue that it's the wrong question to ask. It presupposes a very juridical model for one thing and also that guilt is something that can be transferred in some way.
I stole your leg of beef. You didn't steal it.
In that sense my guilt remains whether or not you choose to forgive me for nicking your Sunday lunch.
You see, already we're getting tied up in knots trying to make that fit into an atonement model.
I understand the model. But it depends on how far we want to stretch it.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
I think, mr cheesy, that there is a difference between being guilty of something and feeling guilty about something.
If I stole a leg of beef from Mudfrog I'd certainly be guilty. Whether I felt guilty about that or not would be a different matter. I rather hope I would (just as I hope I wouldn't steal a leg of beef from him in the first place) ...
Feeling guilty doesn't achieve a great deal though, unless it leads to repentance and restitution.
I'm not saying Mudfrog is wrong to pursue this particular line of enquiry, but I do think it can often lead to guilt-manipulation on the part of certain types of preacher - both evangelical and from the Catholic end of the spectrum ... as in the famous and terrifying Hell Fire sermon in Joyce's 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.'
Of course, things may have swung too far in the other direction in wishy-washy milk and water forms of Christianity, but the tradition of guilt-inducement and trying to put the fear of God into congregations by making them feel guilty of the most trivial apparent infringements is something to avoid - in my view.
I once had an interesting cassette tape of testimonies and stories from the Lewis Revival of the 1950s which had been produced by a very conservative evangelical group in Ulster.
I don't doubt the reality of the Revival nor the depth of the faith and experience of those converted through it ... however, one sweet old dear on there was saying how she'd been reading The People's Friend and was struck with conviction when she attended a Kirk service and heard the minister declare, 'Some of you here today have the Bible in one hand and The People's Friend in the other ...'
'Oh dear,' she thought to herself, 'I am undone ...'
The People's Friend for goodness sake ...
We aren't talking about hard-core pornography or '10 Ways to Murder Your Relatives' ...
Now, I know the whole evangelical and Holiness thing - properly understood - isn't all about guilt-inducement and pernicketiness - and that the Confessional in the RC tradition could cultivate an equally unhealthy approach to life ...
But I'm happy to accept that the Atonement deals with all aspects of the human condition in terms of reconciling humanity to God. I don't go around with a spirit-level, theodolyte and set of set-squares trying to measure it all out and determine which aspect of the Atonement deals with what particular condition ...
Heck, that way lies madness. It reminds me of some of the extreme Penties and extreme healing evangelists I came across back in the day who used to say that this, that or the other of Christ's wounds or sufferings dealt with this, that or the other ailment ...
The Crown of Thorns dealt with mental issues, the nails in his hands and feet dealt with sins carried out manually or by going to places we shouldn't ... the stripes on Christ's back dealt with something else ...
Etc, etc ...
It almost gets medieval.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
I'd generally suggest that guilt is an issue that has commonly gone together with the most staunch advocates of PSA. The notion that one should be feeling permanently guilty for sin has grown alongside the idea that PSA gives a mechanism for taking it away.
In a different way it is a bit like the idea of whether one is "sure of my salvation". It seems to me like a whole lot of effort has gone into Calvinists showing that salvation is assured to the believer and a whole load of other effort gone into the other side showing that it might be lost.
And alongside this belief has grown the fear of being unsure in one's salvation and being scared that one isn't properly saved.
To me it just looks like a whole lot of asking-the-wrong-question and unhealthy doses of woe-is-me-a-terrible-sinner.
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arse
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