quote:

---

Bishop Wright criticised the BBC for allowing such a prominent slot to be given to such a provocative argument. "I'm fed up with the BBC for choosing to give privilege to these unfortunate views in Holy Week," he said.

---

quote:

---

Christian theology has taught that because humans have sinned, God sent Christ as a substitute to suffer and die in our place.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by andreas1984:
It says it was last updated on 31/3 so this might not be an April Fools' "news" story.

What I find appalling is this phrase:

quote:

---

Christian theology has taught that because humans have sinned, God sent Christ as a substitute to suffer and die in our place.

---

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by anteater:
OK I find the idea of God as his own "scapegoat" really rather odd, but hardly psychopathic.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by andreas1984:
Well, it's not actually God Himself, but the Son of God who gets crucified in the flesh... God's Son alone got crucified; not God.

---

quote:

---

Well, it's not actually God Himself, but the Son of God who gets crucified in the flesh... God's Son alone got crucified; not God.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by anteater:
God went to some third party and decided to punish him instead.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by andreas1984:
Well, it's not actually God Himself, but the Son of God who gets crucified in the flesh... God's Son alone got crucified; not God.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mudfrog:

quote:

---

Originally posted by andreas1984:
Well, it's not actually God Himself, but the Son of God who gets crucified in the flesh... God's Son alone got crucified; not God.

---

I can't remember what heresy this is - is it docetism?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mudfrog:

quote:

---

Originally posted by andreas1984:
Well, it's not actually God Himself, but the Son of God who gets crucified in the flesh... God's Son alone got crucified; not God.

---

I can't remember what heresy this is - is it docetism?

---

Orthodoxy, assuming that by 'God Himself' in this context, Andreas is following the dominant NT use of 'God' as meaning 'the Father' (Karl Rahner wrote a very good essay on this).

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mudfrog:
The divine also suffered on the cross otherwise there was no incarnation, merely possession.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by andreas1984:
Of course one of the Trinity got crucified... The question is why he got crucified... The ecumenical councils say "for us"; the concept of a God who demanded for absolute justice was not a concept they had... On the contrary, their God was one who can forgive for free. No retribution needed. No retribution asked for by God. He offers forgiveness for free.

---

quote:

---

John 12:31 Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mudfrog:
No, the incarntion means that the divine and human natures were united. The Son, being in the form of God, took on the form of a man and it is this incarnate God who suffered on the cross.

---

quote:

---

We were detained in bondage by the Evil One, sold under sin, and receiving pleasure in exchange for wickedness. Now, since a ransom belongs only to him who holds in bondage, I ask to whom was this offered, and for what cause? If to the Evil One, fie upon the outrage! If the robber receives ransom, not only from God, but a ransom which consists of God Himself, and has such an illustrious payment for his tyranny, a payment for whose sake it would have been right for him to have left us alone altogether. But if to the Father, I ask first, how? For it was not by Him that we were being oppressed; and next, On what principle did the Blood of His Only begotten Son delight the Father, [snip]

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mudfrog:
No, the incarntion means that the divine and human natures were united.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by MouseThief:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mudfrog:
No, the incarntion means that the divine and human natures were united.

---

I never took you to be a monophysite. They were united, but they were not combined.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Anselm:

It strikes me as incredibly insensitive and unnecessarily provocative to give (and broadcast!) such talks in the lead up to Easter.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Anselm:
It strikes me as incredibly insensitive and unnecessarily provocative to give (and broadcast!) such talks in the lead up to Easter.
By all means debate the issue, but to do so in the week before Easter, knowing that it was an understanding significant for a large part of the church, seems almost spiteful.

---

What's this? Asking us to examine our beliefs and dogmas about the nature of the crucifixion during Holy Week?

Is outrage!! Why can't they just let us get on with believing what The Experts tell us we ought to believe, then there would be no need for all this nonsense!!
 

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Posted by Liverpool fan (# 11424) on :
 
Oh moi oh moi. So the only thing to do in Holy Week is to present one way of understanding the cross. Doing anything else is being insensitive?! Oh excuse me while I listen to the sound of millions being quiet on behalf of those who get offended by people who have different views.

Nah, Jeffrey John's a star. He's spot on both in what he says and when he's saying it.

Even as a conservatively brought up kid I had problems with this what I later came to call 'this substitution atonement business'. The whole thing of God needing someone to suffer to suit his own system of belief was, even then, alien to me.

Well done Jeffrey John. Those who call him or his views names are in error.
 

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Posted by barrea (# 3211) on :
 
I agree with Mudfrog.
 

---

Posted by andreas1984 (# 9313) on :
 
The Law was a pedagogue to Christ. It was not the measure of absolute justice... The Law was made for man, not man for the Law... Saying that the ransom was paid to the Law misses focus on what the Law actually is. There is nothing that prevents God from forgiving for free.
 

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Posted by Most Moved Mover (# 11673) on :
 
I'm looking forward to hearing it - it seems to me that this week is precisely the week when we should be discussing this sort of thing.

I also reckon, that PSA is an idea that has increasingly had its day. There is often a delay of a generation or so between an idea becoming popular among those who teach theology and its becoming mainstream in the pews. I know a few people who do teach in what, once upon a time, were solid conservative evangelical colleges who are seriously opposed to PSA and my, admittedly anecdotal, experience would suggest their views are no longer in a minority.
 

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Posted by Emma. (# 3571) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mudfrog:

...

Many arguments against Christian doctrine start from a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the original Biblical thinking. There is too much store placed on church fathers and not enogh placed on the original and plain meaning of Scripture. A careful study of the Bible shows .....

---

I cant quite believe the arogance of this post. It does suggest that how **your** read the bible is to understand it accurately but how anyone else does is a misrepresentation or misunderstanding.... including the early church and plenty of denominations today. Has it not occured to you that others think the "Plain meaning" of scripture is not the one that you see?!?!

Arent we lucky to have you, who must somehow have special insight to see a different meaning in scripture to what I/ many theologians/ early church see, here to enlighten us. Gah.
 

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Posted by Spawn (# 4867) on :
 
I've always tended to think of PSA as a metaphor - a way of attempting to understand atonement. It's not a metaphor which I find helpful, and not an easy way nowadays for people to approach the cross. It's rather depressing that too many of my fellow evangelicals seem to want to pin down the mechanics of salvation, thereby, IMO, losing something of its mystery.

The BBC have done nothing wrong in hosting such a debate, especially in Holy Week. However, Jeffrey John really should know better. He seems to want to entrench division by insulting proponents of PSA and taking a tilt at strawmen. There are many better, more subtle, and helpful ways of opening up the debate especially when you've been given such a great opportunity by the BBC.
 

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Posted by Komensky (# 8675) on :
 
Right. So if Jesus did not die for our sins, why did he choose to die on the cross and why on Earth would anyone be a Christian? It seems to me that one cannot have it and not have it.

Or did I just miss something....

K.
 

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Posted by andreas1984 (# 9313) on :
 
The Jews and the Romans did not give Him many options...

Like Melito of Sardes in the second century said: He had to suffer, but not by you.

[ 02. April 2007, 10:53: Message edited by: andreas1984 ]
 

---

Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
Spawn, does this mean you know ahead of time what JJ is going to say?

Or are you getting your retaliation in first?

You can add me to the list of folk who have grave misgivings over PSA. I used to think it was the only possible way of seeing the cross - because that was what I'd been taught. And yes, it is off-putting. And yes, the cross is supposed to cause offense. But no, PSA is not the cross. It is needlessly offensive.
 

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Posted by andreas1984 (# 9313) on :
 
To speak on the thread's title's terms, the Easter Message is Easter Itself, not Great Friday.
 

---

Posted by Komensky (# 8675) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by andreas1984:
The Jews and the Romans did not give Him many options...

Like Melito of Sardes in the second century said: He had to suffer, but not by you.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Komensky:
Right. So if Jesus did not die for our sins, why did he choose to die on the cross and why on Earth would anyone be a Christian? It seems to me that one cannot have it and not have it.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Liverpool fan:
So the only thing to do in Holy Week is to present one way of understanding the cross.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by leo:
Wright and Rod are quite wrong in saying that PSA is the fundamental gospel message.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by humblebum:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Liverpool fan:
So the only thing to do in Holy Week is to present one way of understanding the cross.

---

Not at all. But you can present a variety of ways of understanding the cross without crassly attacking one that many believers consider to be important. Having heard Jeffrey John speak at Greenbelt a couple of years ago, I thought he was better than that.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Spawn, does this mean you know ahead of time what JJ is going to say?

Or are you getting your retaliation in first?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by andreas1984:
Jesus Christ did not choose to die on the Cross.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Liopleurodon:
I'm inclined to agree with JJ in theological terms, but I don't think this was the time to make such a controversial move.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Teufelchen:
Maybe he is. He hasn't given his talk yet.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Komensky:

quote:

---

Originally posted by andreas1984:
Jesus Christ did not choose to die on the Cross.

---

So the answer to my question is 'yes', you think Jesus was either a liar or deluded.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Komensky:
Right. So if Jesus did not die for our sins, why did he choose to die on the cross and why on Earth would anyone be a Christian? It seems to me that one cannot have it and not have it.

---

quote:

---

Matthew 16:25 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.

Mark 8:35 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.

Luke 9:24 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.

Luke 17:33 Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.

---

quote:

---

As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Matthew 12.40

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. John 3.14

And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself. John 12.32

Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it produces much fruit. John 12.24

The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many. Mark 10

Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day. Luke 24.46

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by humblebum:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Liverpool fan:
So the only thing to do in Holy Week is to present one way of understanding the cross.

---

Not at all. But you can present a variety of ways of understanding the cross without crassly attacking one that many believers consider to be important. Having heard Jeffrey John speak at Greenbelt a couple of years ago, I thought he was better than that.

---

quote:

---

Jeffery John says:
Christ was crucified so he could "share in the worst of grief and suffering that life can throw at us".

---

If that's the only reason that Christ was crucified, then where is the hope, the joy, the celebration of the resurrection? This reduces God down to someone who can sit with us saying "Yeah, life can be shit. What just happened is really horrible; I know cos I've been through it" and do nothing more. Having a God who has been through the worst that life can throw at us, and so can understand it all is emphatically a Good Thing™. But He needs to also be bigger than us, and be the One who can conquer fear and darkness and pain and death, be the One who can heal and free us, be the One who can bring us home, not just the One who can empathise with us.

Like I said, I'm assuming Jeffery John won't be saying that's all the crucifixtion is about; it's just polarizing journos sensationalising a story

Sarkycow
 

---

Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:
Mudfrog, leaving aside your dubious scriptural exegesis, is your argument supposed to do anything to convince those of us who simply don't agree with you about how the authority of scripture relates to the authority of the Church?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by andreas1984:
The Law was a pedagogue to Christ. It was not the measure of absolute justice... The Law was made for man, not man for the Law... Saying that the ransom was paid to the Law misses focus on what the Law actually is. There is nothing that prevents God from forgiving for free.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by andreas1984:
Komensky:

Jesus Christ did not choose to die on the Cross. He chose to live His entire life with His wills open to other people and God instead of living with his wills becoming self-centred.

To sin and not to know God is to have your wills return back to you. By dying Jesus lived and gave us life.

"Lord, and if your Son had to suffer, and this is your will, let Him suffer, but not by me. Let Him suffer by people of a different race. let Him be judged by people who are not circumcised. Let Him be put on the Cross by a tyrannical hand, by me no."

"You, Israel, have not cried such a voice to God. Neither did you get obedient before the Lord. Nor did you feel shame and reverence before His works."

"You have been cheering, while He was starving."

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by andreas1984:
Do you think that God is restricted by blood? That God needs blood?

---

The blood represents the life being given - we're not speaking about red liquid.

 

---

Posted by andreas1984 (# 9313) on :
 
This is the impression I get:

You seem to think that the bible is God's revelation to mankind.

The way I see it, the bible is different than God's revelation. God reveals Himself to the Saints. They try to guide others in their way, so that they too get born from above, and in doing so some of them produced the Scriptures. So, the scriptures are guidelines on one's way towards God. They are shades, instructions; not the plane expression of the revelation.
 

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Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by andreas1984:
This is the impression I get:

You seem to think that the bible is God's revelation to mankind.

The way I see it, the bible is different than God's revelation. God reveals Himself to the Saints. They try to guide others in their way, so that they too get born from above, and in doing so some of them produced the Scriptures. So, the scriptures are guidelines on one's way towards God. They are shades, instructions; not the plane expression of the revelation.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by andreas1984:
This is the impression I get:

You seem to think that the bible is God's revelation to mankind.

The way I see it, the bible is different than God's revelation. God reveals Himself to the Saints. They try to guide others in their way, so that they too get born from above, and in doing so some of them produced the Scriptures. So, the scriptures are guidelines on one's way towards God. They are shades, instructions; not the plane expression of the revelation.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mudfrog:
And don't give me the rubbish about 'the church' writing the Scripture because it didn't.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mudfrog:
I would rather be guided by revealed, objective truth, than by the subjective thoughts of people who lean on their own understanding.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by humblebum:
But you can present a variety of ways of understanding the cross without crassly attacking one that many believers consider to be important. Having heard Jeffrey John speak at Greenbelt a couple of years ago, I thought he was better than that.

---

quote:

---

This part of the article really confuses me. I have read a number of Tom Wright's books, and if he believes that Penal Substitionary Atonement was the fundamental gospel message, you really wouldn't tell from his writing. A worked out theology of atonement (of any variety) is the one conspicious omission from his books.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mountain Man:
The Bible was written my man to interpret God.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Any Gospel that says Christ did not die for our sins is not a Christian belief.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Why is my exegesis dubious? Can we read your exegesis of Mark 10 v 45 please?

---

quote:

---

Mark 10.45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”

---

quote:

---

John 5:21 The Son gives life to whom He will.
John 6:33 For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
John 6:54 Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life
John 10:10 I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
John 11:25 “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.
John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by andreas1984:
This is not what real life shows. Real life shows various Protestant groups fighting with each other over what the bible really says.

---

And real life shows various Orthodox groups fighting each other over what tradition says.

At least we set our sights higher.
 

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Posted by andreas1984 (# 9313) on :
 
You mean that tradition for some Orthodox can take the place scriptures occupy for some Protestants? I am shocked!
 

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Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Freddy:
... PSA, which Jeffrey John seems to assume to be the only explanation of the crucifixion's significance in Christianity ...

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by ken:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Freddy:
... PSA, which Jeffrey John seems to assume to be the only explanation of the crucifixion's significance in Christianity ...

---

If he thinks that after all these years studying the New Testament and preaching on it, and all those expensive theology courses, than he must be a lot stupider than he sounds.

He might think that it is a false explanation of the significance of the crucifixion, but I would be astonished if he thought it was the only one.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by andreas1984:
You mean that tradition for some Orthodox can take the place scriptures occupy for some Protestants? I am shocked!

---

Considering what Jesus said about tradition in Matthew 15 and Mark 7 I would think that you would look for a different word.
 

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Posted by andreas1984 (# 9313) on :
 
No, I am not. Revelation happens face-to-face between the One true God and a Saint. It is not what the Saints wrote in the scriptures or what the Saints wrote after the scriptures. Revelation is one thing, guidelines to it is another.

[ 02. April 2007, 14:24: Message edited by: andreas1984 ]
 

---

Posted by MouseThief (# 953) on :
 
I always hated the elocution, "Christ died for our sins." No, Christ did not die for our sins. Christ died for US. He died to free us from our sins. If anything, he died against our sins, not for them.

There are many ways of interpreting Mark 10:45 without PSA. Most of them much, much older than PSA.

Mudfrog, if the church didn't write the NT, who did? Are you saying Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, and James weren't the church? Or at least part of it, anyway? I'm amazed. And certainly the church lovingly copied the books of the NT, preserved them when so many other records from that time and age were lost, and decided in council, sometimes quite painfully, which of the books it had preserved counted as Scripture and which did not. Them's the straight historical facts. I wonder if you could tell us your alternative spin on how Scripture came to be?
 

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Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Teufelchen:
I'm not sure what Freddy means in the line you quote, ken. It's quite evident from the OP (etc) that Jeffrey John thinks pretty much the opposite of what Freddy suggests.

---

quote:

---

In a BBC Radio 4 show, Mr John, who is now Dean of St Albans, urges a revision of the traditional explanation, known as "penal substitution".

Christian theology has taught that because humans have sinned, God sent Christ as a substitute to suffer and die in our place.

"In other words, Jesus took the rap and we got forgiven as long as we said we believed in him," says Mr John. "This is repulsive as well as nonsensical. It makes God sound like a psychopath. If a human behaved like this we'd say that they were a monster."

---

So, right, I agree with JJ in wanting to revise this. I'm not sure that I agree with his alternative explanation, but there are lots of alternative explanations.

Thanks for the correction, T and Ken.
 

---

Posted by moonlitdoor (# 11707) on :
 
I don't like a penal theory of Atonement, but surely the idea that there is some kind of connexion between the shedding of Jesus's blood and the forgiving of our sins isn't a Protestant invention.

Words of Institution from the Roman Missal

'Take this, all of you, and drink from it:
this is the cup of my blood,
the blood of the new and everlasting covenant.
It will be shed for you and for all
so that sins may be forgiven.'

and from the liturgy of St John Chrysotom

'Drink of it, all of you: this is My Blood of the New Testament,
which is shed for you and for many, for the remission of sins.'


Or do these words mean something quite different from what they appear to mean ?
 

---

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by MouseThief:
Mudfrog, if the church didn't write the NT, who did? Are you saying Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, and James weren't the church? Or at least part of it, anyway? I'm amazed.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by moonlitdoor:
Or do these words mean something quite different from what they appear to mean ?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by moonlitdoor:
Or do these words mean something quite different from what they appear to mean ?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Freddy:
The idea, I think, is that God wrote the books of the canon.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Freddy:
The idea, I think, is that God wrote the books of the canon. That's the idea behind the concept of "canon." So whether or not they were the church, or part of it, is not the issue.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by andreas1984:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Freddy:
The idea, I think, is that God wrote the books of the canon.

---

This idea is utterly incompatible with the view that there is no similarity whatsoever between the created and the Uncreated.

Human words do not show anything about God (analogia fidei). Created beings do not show anything about God (analogia entis).

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by MouseThief:
I find this whole "God wrote the Bible" thing really insulting to humanity,

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Freddy:
This is also the *ahem* traditional view of Christianity.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Teufelchen:
At this point, I will sharply stop agreeing with andreas. Created beings do show the nature of God

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by MouseThief:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Freddy:
The idea, I think, is that God wrote the books of the canon. That's the idea behind the concept of "canon." So whether or not they were the church, or part of it, is not the issue.

---

Hmm. If you look at the history, the criterion they used to determine if a book was canonical or not was whether or not it had Apostolic authorship, not divine authorship. I find this whole "God wrote the Bible" thing really insulting to humanity, and quite contrary from the way God does things in Scripture, where people are allowed to act without the Divine hand on their puppet strings, often screwing things up (think David and Bathsheba), but nevertheless, and sometimes in spite of themselves, accomplishing God's will.

I think it quite interesting that God had such a different vocaulary and style when dictating to Paul than when dictating to John. I find that much more explainable if I accept that Paul wrote Romans and John wrote his gospel, than if I maintain that God wrote both.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Teufelchen:
This is why it is proper to say that only Jesus Christ, and not scripture is the Word of God - the bible does not directly partake of the divine nature, but Jesus himself did.

---

quote:

---

The Bible not only contains the word of God; it is the word of God. The primary author is the Holy Ghost, or, as it is commonly expressed, the human authors wrote under the influence of Divine inspiration. It was declared by the Vatican Council (Sess. III, c. ii) that the sacred and canonical character of Scripture would not be sufficiently explained by saying that the books were composed by human diligence and then approved by the Church, or that they contained revelation without error. They are sacred and canonical "because, having been written by inspiration of the Holy Ghost, that have God for their author, and as such have been handed down to the Church". The inerrancy of the Bible follows as a consequence of this Divine authorship. Wherever the sacred writer makes a statement as his own, that statement is the word of God and infallibly true, whatever be the subject-matter of the statement.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by andreas1984:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Freddy:
This is also the *ahem* traditional view of Christianity.

---

Again, a failure to take into consideration the universal (both in time and in space) church...

---

Yes. Good point. Sorry. I meant "Western Christianity."

But are you really sure that Eastern Christianity does not recognize the Bible as the word of God? Does it really make its traditions of equal authority to Scripture? If so then there is a deeper gulf than I thought between the eastern and western church.
 

---

Posted by Anselm (# 4499) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Anselm:

It strikes me as incredibly insensitive and unnecessarily provocative to give (and broadcast!) such talks in the lead up to Easter.

---

As I've said already, there seems perfectly good reason to do this - in order to communicate the Easter gospel effectively we need to respond to popular worries about it. Chief amongst these is PSA.

---

quote:

---

If we are to spout anything other than pietistic drivel in our public Easter communication, we need to engage with this issue. And what better time to do it than Holy Week. I have certainly preached about PSA not being the only show in town during Passiontide. In fact last Sunday I heard an Anglican bishop* do the same.

But the basic point is this: for huge swathes of Christendom, Fr John's views are not 'controversial', 'upsetting' or disturbing to faith. The attempt to paint them as such is indicative of an aggressive and ecclesially imperialistic conservative evangelicism which seems to be ascendent within Anglicanism at the moment. It is sad that Bishop Wright seems to fancy himself as a cheerleader for it.

*A PEV, as it happens, which might suggest that opposition to PSA is not part of some uber-liberal conspiracy.

---

quote:

---

"This is repulsive as well as nonsensical. It makes God sound like a psychopath. If a human behaved like this we'd say that they were a monster."

---

quote:

---

My Duck said:
Is outrage!! Why can't they just let us get on with believing what The Experts tell us we ought to believe, then there would be no need for all this nonsense!!

---

quote:

---

Liverpool fan said:
Oh moi oh moi. So the only thing to do in Holy Week is to present one way of understanding the cross.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Komensky:
Right. So if Jesus did not die for our sins,

---

quote:

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Originally posted by andreas1984:
This idea is utterly incompatible with the view that there is no similarity whatsoever between the created and the Uncreated.

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Human words do not show anything about God (analogia fidei). Created beings do not show anything about God (analogia entis).

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Originally posted by ken:
What do you think it means to say that we were created in God's image?

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True but God's words can accuratly talk of God, and God can choose to reveal God in the creation.

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:

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Originally posted by Komensky:
Right. So if Jesus did not die for our sins,

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Assuming that Fr John takes a mainstream non-PSA Catholic position he is not claiming we are not saved from our sins through Jesus' life, death and resurrection. He is merely taking issue with one account of how this salvation is brought about.

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That is a charitable way to see it. That is how I am thinking he meant it as well. Hope we are right.
 

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Posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf (# 2252) on :
 

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Originally posted by Anselm:
If you are going to use words like "aggressive" to characterise an position, you'd have to say that John falls into this category.

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Originally posted by MouseThief:
I think it quite interesting that God had such a different vocaulary and style when dictating to Paul than when dictating to John. I find that much more explainable if I accept that Paul wrote Romans and John wrote his gospel, than if I maintain that God wrote both.

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Originally posted by andreas1984:
Revelation happens face-to-face between the One true God and a Saint. It is not what the Saints wrote in the scriptures or what the Saints wrote after the scriptures.

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Originally posted by andreas1984:

I think you will find fr. Romanides' take on that very enlightening as to what I also believe:

http://www.romanity.org/htm/rom.02.en.the_cure_of_the_neurobiological_sickness_of_rel.01.htm#s3 paragraph 3 and forward...

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Originally posted by ken:
That's a heretical load of tosh.

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Originally posted by Freddy:

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Originally posted by Teufelchen:
This is why it is proper to say that only Jesus Christ, and not scripture is the Word of God - the bible does not directly partake of the divine nature, but Jesus himself did.

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While I agree about the inadequacy of human language, western Christianity has always seen the Bible as the word of God. As authoritatively reported in the Catholic Encyclopedia:

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The Bible not only contains the word of God; it is the word of God. The primary author is the Holy Ghost, or, as it is commonly expressed, the human authors wrote under the influence of Divine inspiration. It was declared by the Vatican Council (Sess. III, c. ii) that the sacred and canonical character of Scripture would not be sufficiently explained by saying that the books were composed by human diligence and then approved by the Church, or that they contained revelation without error. They are sacred and canonical "because, having been written by inspiration of the Holy Ghost, that have God for their author, and as such have been handed down to the Church". The inerrancy of the Bible follows as a consequence of this Divine authorship. Wherever the sacred writer makes a statement as his own, that statement is the word of God and infallibly true, whatever be the subject-matter of the statement.

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So while I think that it is true that properly speaking only God Himself is the word of God, this does not mean that Scripture cannot also be called the word of God - as has been done throughout its history.

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Originally posted by Freddy:
The point that some of are making is that PSA, which Jeffrey John seems to assume to be the only explanation of the crucifixion's significance in Christianity, is not the only or best explanation.

The other alternative is that Jesus did die on the cross, and He did die to save us from our sins, but He did not die as payment for our sins. Rather He died as part of the means of defeating the power of hell with humanity.

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While we wait for the broadcast on Wednesday, I'd like to follow tangent this if I may.

Many here are assuming that the crucifixion of the Christ is primarily about atonement. Why then did the crucifixion not occur at the feast of the atonement, in the autumn, but rather in the spring, at the feast of the passover?

Atonement (the festival) is about sins being removed. The passover is about being set free. Mudfrog mentioned it when referring to Romans 6 earlier on the thread. This is language of passover, of being set free, and though the Bible does use atonement as a way as describing the significance of Christ's death, as I read the Scriptures I find that language of the people being set free is not only the major theme, but also more helpful to me.

Yes there are different ways of describing the significance of the atonement, but the significance of the sacrifice of Christ is not limited to atonement.
 

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Posted by andreas1984 (# 9313) on :
 
Balaam
 

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Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on :
 
I have never said that God wrote the Bible.
I have said that the Church didn't write the Bible.
Individual men, drawing upon their own skills, research, eywitness accounts, interpretation and spiritual convictions wrote the various books of the Bible, which ultimately is God-breathed - ie it originated with God and flowed through the men who committed what they knew and saw to 'paper'.

Saying The Church wrote the Bible suggests collaboration, committee authorship, editing, a brief to write to, accepted themes, etc. The fact is that all the books of the Bibnle are Apostolic in origin, are genuinley written by the authors they say they are and are in total agreement. Church authorship would have made sure the church fathers were included an treatise nd books specifically written to order.

The very fact there is a canon of Scripture shouts from he house tops that it is authoritative and is the yardstick by which all other teaching must be measured. The fact that there is so much stuff - including the theory of ransom - which is off the mark suggests that even with this canon, people soon started to beloieve what their itching ears wanted to hear rather than submitting to Scriptural truth.
 

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Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on :
 
I woud also want to say that whilst I agree with PSA, I also agree with the other theories as well. Each has merit and we must rcognise that they all have limitations.
 

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Posted by andreas1984 (# 9313) on :
 

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Originally posted by Freddy:
But are you really sure that Eastern Christianity does not recognize the Bible as the word of God? Does it really make its traditions of equal authority to Scripture? If so then there is a deeper gulf than I thought between the eastern and western church.

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Originally posted by andreas1984:
Do you think that we are separated for more than a thousand years for something insignificant?

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I guess you are right.

But when Father Gregory was here the differences did seem insignificant.
 

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Posted by andreas1984 (# 9313) on :
 
In the synod of Ferrara-Florence, before the synod got started, Saint Mark of Ephesus asked the King how he wanted him to begin, combatively or diplomatically. The King replied " combatively". Afterwards, when the King saw that the Kingdom was going to fall because the Latins were not going to help, he changed his approach, silencing Saint Mark.

I think that there are two attitudes... And pastors can use either, as they see fit, judging in each instance how they are going to speak...
 

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Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :
 

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Originally posted by Gracious rebel:
I just wanted to hear what your thoughts were on this apparent desire to bring a theological debate to a secular audience - I just don't understand the point and what he is trying to achieve.

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Originally posted by Freddy:
But are you really sure that Eastern Christianity does not recognize the Bible as the word of God? Does it really make its traditions of equal authority to Scripture?

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Originally posted by Josephine:
Your questions, Freddy, don't even really make sense from an Orthodox POV. They are questions that only make sense from within your paradigm.

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Originally posted by Mudfrog:

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Originally posted by andreas1984:
This is the impression I get:

You seem to think that the bible is God's revelation to mankind.

The way I see it, the bible is different than God's revelation. God reveals Himself to the Saints. They try to guide others in their way, so that they too get born from above, and in doing so some of them produced the Scriptures. So, the scriptures are guidelines on one's way towards God. They are shades, instructions; not the plane expression of the revelation.

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Well indeed. Scriptural authority is very important to us Protestants. I would rather be guided by revealed, objective truth, than by the subjective thoughts of people who lean on their own understanding.

If you have such a low view of Biblical inspiration then it is no wonder that you will not agree with those who do.

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Originally posted by Mudfrog:
The fact is that all the books of the Bibnle are Apostolic in origin, are genuinley written by the authors they say they are and are in total agreement.

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Originally posted by andreas1984:

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Originally posted by ken:
That's a heretical load of tosh.

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I don't have a problem with you objecting... We don't share the same faith. No big deal. So long as the distinctions are preserved...

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Originally posted by andreas1984:
How could a Church that was experiencing the faith, the faith that was once delivered to the Apostles, get led into PSA?

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Originally posted by andreas1984:
How could a Church that was experiencing the faith, the faith that was once delivered to the Apostles, get led into PSA? How could people who claimed to be Christians get involved with feudalism in the first place? How could they not see that God is not like that? Why? This why is what concerns me.

.......
This is my great concern: Are our differences due to ignorance of each other and bad will, or because the way was somehow lost in the Western part of the Roman Kingdom somehow because of specific historical reasons?

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Originally posted by Freddy:
The point is that if the Orthodox tradition does not see it that way then it is simply at odds with the Catholic and Protestant traditions, which do.

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Originally posted by JArthurCrank:
It just occured to me that I think I understand why some evangelical/fundamentalists are reacting so hysterically to Canon John. My experience with evangelicals - quite limited - were with the InterVarsity and Campus Crusade crowd in college. I was not a part of them, but I went in to observe them in action out of curiosity - not without some pompous arrogance as a (then) ultra-reactionary Anglo-Catholic that they had nothing to teach me. While the Christian fellowship of these groups was quite impressive, they confirmed my own prejudices as to the relative thiness of their theology. There was no emphasis on the resurrection, nothing on the Incarnation, little of any of the articles of the Creed, no transfiguration, nothing about being partakers of divine nature, but lots of "washed in the blood of the Lamb," "Jesus is my personal saviour, glory and praise," and happy, happy Christian families. In fact, I was struck by the fact that the theology of evanglicals on college campuses were almost as thin as the liberal Anglicans I so abhored, just on different subjects.
The pedagogy of their interpretation of the Good News was more or less exclusively predicated on the PSA. It is a quite effective and moving "bait" to get someone to accept of the Christian gospel - if one accepts the premise of PSA. But, if one rejects it, the evangelicals quite literally had nothing to offer as they had no other peg upon which to hang their hat. Since the evangelical enterprise (at least on American college campuses) seem to stand or fall on PSA, I can see the angry reaction. There is, of course, being more to Christianity than that.

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Originally posted by Alogon:

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Originally posted by Gracious rebel:
I just wanted to hear what your thoughts were on this apparent desire to bring a theological debate to a secular audience - I just don't understand the point and what he is trying to achieve.

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If Britain is anything like the U.S. televangelists are on the airwaves all the time. We even have stations dispensing religiosity 24/7.

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Originally posted by mirrizin:

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Originally posted by Freddy:
The point is that if the Orthodox tradition does not see it that way then it is simply at odds with the Catholic and Protestant traditions, which do.

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Umm...I'm a Protestant (technically speaking), and I don't think God wrote the bible.

Make of that what you will...

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Originally posted by Triple Tiara:
My goodness, mudfrog, I just noticed your sig. Pope Benedict himself would approve!

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Originally posted by leo:


PSA puts people off Christianity so John is being more of an evangelist than Wright or Ron..

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a) Which churches that do not teach PSA are experiencing major growth?
b) Even if PSA 'puts people off Christianity' surely that is irrelevent if it is true. What are you suggesting-that you should lie so as to attract people into the church?
 

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Posted by Josephine (# 3899) on :
 

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Originally posted by Freddy:
The point is that Mudfrog was relying, incorrectly from my point of view, on the authority of Scripture. Andreas' response seems not to accept the authority of Scripture. Hence the misunderstanding.

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Originally posted by moonlitdoor:
I don't like a penal theory of Atonement, but surely the idea that there is some kind of connexion between the shedding of Jesus's blood and the forgiving of our sins isn't a Protestant invention.

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Originally posted by moonlitdoor:
I don't like a penal theory of Atonement, but surely the idea that there is some kind of connexion between the shedding of Jesus's blood and the forgiving of our sins isn't a Protestant invention.

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Words of Institution from the Roman Missal

'Take this, all of you, and drink from it:
this is the cup of my blood,
the blood of the new and everlasting covenant.
It will be shed for you and for all
so that sins may be forgiven.'

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and from the liturgy of St John Chrysotom

'Drink of it, all of you: this is My Blood of the New Testament,
which is shed for you and for many, for the remission of sins.'

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Or do these words mean something quite different from what they appear to mean ?

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Originally posted by andreas1984:
How could people who claimed to be Christians get involved with feudalism in the first place?

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Originally posted by Mudfrog:
[QUOTE]Originally Which is why most evangelicals will happily preach on the other theories of atonement as well. We are not as narrow as you think.

My Good Friday service and open air witness will probably not feature PSA at all. But I still believe it.

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Originally posted by MouseThief:

quote:

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Originally posted by moonlitdoor:
I don't like a penal theory of Atonement, but surely the idea that there is some kind of connexion between the shedding of Jesus's blood and the forgiving of our sins isn't a Protestant invention.

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No, of course not. By his stripes we are healed.

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Exodus 24.7 Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read in the hearing of the people. And they said, “All that the LORD has said we will do, and be obedient.” 8 And Moses took the blood, sprinkled it on the people, and said, “This is the blood of the covenant which the LORD has made with you according to all these words.”

Zechariah 9.10 He shall speak peace to the nations; His dominion shall be ‘from sea to sea…because of the blood of your covenant, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.

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Revelation 12:11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.

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John 6.56 “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. 56 He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.

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John 15:7 If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.

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John 6:63 The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.

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John 18.37 For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.”

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Originally posted by Freddy:

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John 15:7 If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.

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Isn't it obvious here that it is all about hearing and obeying His words?

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3. For what I received, I passed on to you as of first importance; that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4. that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures ...

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Originally posted by MouseThief:
It is plain to me that that is NOT what abiding in him means, or he wouldn't have conjoined them with "and" -- there is abiding in Him, and there is his words abiding in me. Whatever the first means, it can't mean the second.

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Originally posted by MouseThief:
But you leave unanswered what exactly the link between blood and forgiveness of sins is. Why not have forgiveness of sins tied to, say, a fruit offering, or pouring wine on the ground? What's so special about blood?

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Isn't blood often seen as our essential life? When we obey God and do His will, and not our own, we are giving up our blood and taking on His. To sacrifice blood is to give up what we think in favor of what God teaches. Jesus' blood is the truth that He gives us, so we drink it in the Eucharist because wine has a similar meaning.
 

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Posted by MouseThief (# 953) on :
 
Our blood is our life, sure. But we are not saved by the shedding of our blood, but by the shedding of His.

Is the whole blood/life thing set up throughout the OT just so we will understand Christ's action on the cross? Or is it the other way around? It seems to me it has to be the other way around. But then the whole blood=forgiveness thing just looks arbitrary. Why not beer? Why not tree sap? Why not anything? Why blood?

I object to your equating spirit with blood. That seems quite foreign to the plain meaning of Scripture. The spirit gives life; the flesh kills. Spirit is opposed to the bodily; not identical with it.
 

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Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 
Alexis those are all good objections. I don't know the answers - at least not ones that aren't complicated. I'm sure others have some suggestions.
 

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Posted by infinite_monkey (# 11333) on :
 

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Originally posted by Komensky:
Right. So if Jesus did not die for our sins, why did he choose to die on the cross and why on Earth would anyone be a Christian? It seems to me that one cannot have it and not have it.

Or did I just miss something....

K.

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Originally posted by infinite_monkey:
[Just speaking personally, I think my love of Christ and appreciation of Christianity have skyrocketed since I realized that PSA wasn't the only dog in the race.

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Originally posted by Balaam:
Many here are assuming that the crucifixion of the Christ is primarily about atonement. Why then did the crucifixion not occur at the feast of the atonement, in the autumn, but rather in the spring, at the feast of the passover?

Atonement (the festival) is about sins being removed. The passover is about being set free.

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Originally posted by Mudfrog:

quote:

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Originally posted by infinite_monkey:
[Just speaking personally, I think my love of Christ and appreciation of Christianity have skyrocketed since I realized that PSA wasn't the only dog in the race.

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But PSA never was the only dog in the race.

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It just happens to be the one that wins the race?

 

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Posted by Mr Clingford (# 7961) on :
 

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Originally posted by Mudfrog:
But PSA never was the only dog in the race.

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Is the whole blood/life thing set up throughout the OT just so we will understand Christ's action on the cross? Or is it the other way around? It seems to me it has to be the other way around. But then the whole blood=forgiveness thing just looks arbitrary. Why not beer? Why not tree sap? Why not anything? Why blood?

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Originally posted by Mr Clingford:

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Originally posted by Mudfrog:
But PSA never was the only dog in the race.

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There appears to be quite a lot of people who don't know that, Christian and atheist.

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Originally posted by Mudfrog:

quote:

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Originally posted by infinite_monkey:
Just speaking personally, I think my love of Christ and appreciation of Christianity have skyrocketed since I realized that PSA wasn't the only dog in the race.

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But PSA never was the only dog in the race.

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Originally posted by Barnabas62:
We can argue til the cows come about the process by which Christ died for our sins; I find it odd that anyone should argue it wasn't a foundational belief that he did just that.

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Originally posted by moonlitdoor:
But Andreas seemed to be saying that Jesus just died because some people decided to kill him.
I quoted them to suggest that traditional teaching implies that in some way his death and our forgiveness are linked.

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Originally posted by MouseThief:
He died for us. He didn't die instead of us

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Originally posted by Dinghy Sailor:
Jesus dies; we don't.

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Originally posted by andreas1984:
But my impression remains that the know-how concerning man's getting born from above was not passed down to the new peoples.

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:

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Originally posted by Dinghy Sailor:
Jesus dies; we don't.

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If only this were true my diary would be a lot emptier. All those funeral services.

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Originally posted by Dinghy Sailor:

quote:

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:

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Originally posted by Dinghy Sailor:
Jesus dies; we don't.

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If only this were true my diary would be a lot emptier. All those funeral services.

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You know very well what I mean.

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Originally posted by ken:
If that is really what you believe then you are a Gnostic, and not Orthodox.

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Originally posted by Dinghy Sailor:

quote:

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:

quote:

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Originally posted by Dinghy Sailor:
Jesus dies; we don't.

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If only this were true my diary would be a lot emptier. All those funeral services.

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You know very well what I mean.

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John 11:25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

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Luke 14:26 “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.

Luke 17:33 Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.

John 12:25 He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

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Originally posted by Freddy:
Surely it is clear that He is saying that if we value our natural life, and the good things of this world, too highly, we will lose our spiritual life.

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Originally posted by andreas1984:

Natural life for natural life's shake is dismissed. Not natural life in general. Christ does not introduce a dichotomy between the spirit and nature. He introduces a dichotomy between selfishness and selflessness.

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all we can do is add our misery

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That's what I call a divinely-inspired typo, Barnabas! Jesus said, "Without Me, you can do nothing."

Mary
 

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Posted by andreas1984 (# 9313) on :
 
Exactly Barnabas... And this is where PSA or SA in general cannot give answers touching the existence of man. Christ's Crucifixion was not a magical act that achieved something. Christ on the Cross crucified selfishness once and for all, but we are to carry our own cross in order to follow Christ. Synergy. "videtis quoniam ex operibus iustificatur homo et non ex fide tantum" (James, 2.24)
 

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Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by MouseThief:
Is the whole blood/life thing set up throughout the OT just so we will understand Christ's action on the cross? Or is it the other way around? It seems to me it has to be the other way around. But then the whole blood=forgiveness thing just looks arbitrary. Why not beer? Why not tree sap? Why not anything? Why blood?

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Genesis 9:4 But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.

Deuteronomy 12:23 Only be sure that you do not eat the blood, for the blood is the life; you may not eat the life with the meat.

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Leviticus 17:11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.’... 14 for it is the life of all flesh. Its blood sustains its life. Therefore I said to the children of Israel, ‘You shall not eat the blood of any flesh, for the life of all flesh is its blood. Whoever eats it shall be cut off.’

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Revelation 1:5 To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood,

Revelation 7:14 and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

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Genesis 49:11 He washed his garments in wine, And his clothes in the blood of grapes.

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Numbers 23:24 Look, a people rises like a lioness...and drinks the blood of the slain.”

Ezekiel 39:17 Gather together from all sides to My sacrificial meal Which I am sacrificing for you, A great sacrificial meal on the mountains of Israel, That you may eat flesh and drink blood. You shall eat the flesh of the mighty, Drink the blood of the princes of the earth, Of rams and lambs, Of goats and bulls, All of them fatlings of Bashan. You shall eat fat till you are full, And drink blood till you are drunk, At My sacrificial meal Which I am sacrificing for you.

Zechariah 9:15 The LORD of hosts will defend them; They shall devour and subdue with slingstones. They shall drink and roar as if with wine; They shall be filled with blood like basins, Like the corners of the altar.

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John 6:53 Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.

Matthew 26:28 For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.

Mark 14:24 And He said to them, “This is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many.

Luke 22:20 Likewise He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you.

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John 16.12 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth"

John 16:25 “These things I have spoken to you in figurative language; but the time is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figurative language, but I will tell you plainly about the Father."

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"videtis quoniam ex operibus iustificatur homo et non ex fide tantum" (James, 2.24)

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quote:

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Originally posted by andreas1984:

quote:

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Originally posted by Freddy:
Surely it is clear that He is saying that if we value our natural life, and the good things of this world, too highly, we will lose our spiritual life.

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No, it is not clear... My understanding is that Jesus said that those whose wills are returning back to themselves, those who are selfish, do not share in the life He offers, which is to be selfless. Lose your self, he said, so that you can find your authentic self.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Dinghy Sailor:

quote:

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:

quote:

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Originally posted by Dinghy Sailor:
Jesus dies; we don't.

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If only this were true my diary would be a lot emptier. All those funeral services.

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You know very well what I mean.

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Originally posted by andreas1984:
Christ on the Cross crucified selfishness once and for all, but we are to carry our own cross in order to follow Christ. Synergy. "videtis quoniam ex operibus iustificatur homo et non ex fide tantum" (James, 2.24)

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Originally posted by MouseThief:
JArthur, can you please explain what "thin" means in this context?

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:

quote:

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Originally posted by Dinghy Sailor:
You know very well what I mean.

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No. I for one believe that we die,

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DOD did you see my post in response?
 

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Posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf (# 2252) on :
 
You are right to note a metaphoric use of the word 'life' in the Johannine books of the New Testament. Metaphors, however, are just that.
 

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Posted by humblebum (# 4358) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by andreas1984:

quote:

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Originally posted by moonlitdoor:
But Andreas seemed to be saying that Jesus just died because some people decided to kill him.
I quoted them to suggest that traditional teaching implies that in some way his death and our forgiveness are linked.

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Well, of course, if the Jews had followed Him the entire history of mankind would be different! Were they not free to accept his teachings? The fact that some did shows that all could have done so, had they not been so "of this world"...

The links, imo, exists between the selfless love He showed and our regeneration. Our regeneration means that we turn our selves towards the other people / God. God is like that, selfless.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Mr Clingford:

quote:

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Originally posted by Mudfrog:
But PSA never was the only dog in the race.

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There appears to be quite a lot of people who don't know that, Christian and atheist.

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quote:

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Originally posted by humblebum:
Other people throughout history have also shown us what it means to live selflessly, even to the point of death. Is it conceivable then that the sacrifices of such people are just as salvific and regenerative as Jesus death is?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:
You are right to note a metaphoric use of the word 'life' in the Johannine books of the New Testament. Metaphors, however, are just that.

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quote:

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Originally posted by andreas1984:
Jesus gives salvation to us by his birth/life/teachings/death/resurrection/ascension/sending-the-Spirit.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Freddy:

quote:

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:
You are right to note a metaphoric use of the word 'life' in the Johannine books of the New Testament. Metaphors, however, are just that.

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Eternal life is not meant, I think, as a metaphor. Doesn't it count as "life"?

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quote:

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Originally posted by humblebum:
I was trying to work out if there was something about Jesus sacrifice that went beyond other examples of self-sacrifice.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:
'Life after death' is certainly 'life' (or strictly, I would say, the life of the risen body is life; I would understand any kind of existence of the soul between death and resurrection as 'life' only analogically).

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quote:

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:
But I take 'eternal life' in the Johannine material to be rather more all-encompassing than 'life after death', It is an already-present reality, explaining through the metaphorical counterposition of 'life' to 'death'.

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quote:

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Psalm 133:3 It is like the dew of Hermon,Descending upon the mountains of Zion; For there the LORD commanded the blessing— Life forevermore.

Isaiah 38:16 O Lord, by these things men live; And in all these things is the life of my spirit; So You will restore me and make me live.

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quote:

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Matthew 7:14 Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.

Matthew 10:39 He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.

Matthew 19:17 If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.

Matthew 25:46 And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

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quote:

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Originally posted by The Undiscovered Country:

quote:

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Originally posted by leo:


PSA puts people off Christianity so John is being more of an evangelist than Wright or Ron..

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a) Which churches that do not teach PSA are experiencing major growth?
b) Even if PSA 'puts people off Christianity' surely that is irrelevent if it is true. What are you suggesting-that you should lie so as to attract people into the church?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Freddy:

quote:

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:
'Life after death' is certainly 'life' (or strictly, I would say, the life of the risen body is life; I would understand any kind of existence of the soul between death and resurrection as 'life' only analogically).

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OK. I see. So you're saying that physical life is the only real life, and that life in heaven is analogy or metaphor.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:
I'm saying there is no such thing as 'life' apart from a particular way of being alive, and that the way of being alive proper to human beings is a rational embodied way.

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quote:

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Originally posted by andreas1984:
I respect that sense of mystery, so I wont go further than just say that while people like Socrates had to undergo even death to get salvation to an extent, Jesus did not do it for himself as he was not the one needing salvation...

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quote:

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Originally posted by Freddy:

quote:

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:
I'm saying there is no such thing as 'life' apart from a particular way of being alive, and that the way of being alive proper to human beings is a rational embodied way.

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Wouldn't that suggest that either Jesus is not alive, or that His body is stowed away somewhere where we haven't yet found it?

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Originally posted by leo:
I don't think people give Christianity serious consideration because the noisiest voices they hear are those espouding PSA.

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quote:

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Originally posted by A Feminine Force:
Hey Freddy,

What about another alternative: He is alive and embodied, walking around today?

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You're confusing Christ with Elvis...

--Tom Clune
 

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Posted by JArthurCrank (# 9175) on :
 
I think the average unchurched person knows about as much about PSA as the Immaculate Conception of Jesus.


 

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Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:
Well, speaking personally, I believe that he rose (bodily) on the third day and is now reigning in glory at the Father's right hand. Quaint, I know.

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Quaint, but right on. Works for me. Thanks.
 

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Posted by A Feminine Force (# 7812) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by tclune:

quote:

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Originally posted by A Feminine Force:
Hey Freddy,

What about another alternative: He is alive and embodied, walking around today?

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You're confusing Christ with Elvis...

--Tom Clune

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Hey, they don't call him The King fer nuthin'.

LAFF
 

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Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by JArthurCrank:
I think the average unchurched person knows about as much about PSA as the Immaculate Conception of Jesus.

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Is this a joke? Or did the Immaculate Conception spread while I wasn't looking?

--Tom Clune
 

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Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by tclune:

quote:

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Originally posted by JArthurCrank:
I think the average unchurched person knows about as much about PSA as the Immaculate Conception of Jesus.

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Is this a joke? Or did the Immaculate Conception spread while I wasn't looking?

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Well it just shows what the average unchurched person knows...
 

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Posted by infinite_monkey (# 11333) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Mudfrog:
It is you who want to believe anything but PSA who are causing the public uproar. I am not telling you what you shouldn't believe, but you are trying to tell me.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Any Gospel that says Christ did not die for our sins is not a Christian belief.

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quote:

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Zec 12:10 I will pour on the house of David, and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplication; and they will look to me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for his only son, and will grieve bitterly for him, as one grieves for his firstborn.

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quote:

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Originally posted by doulos12:


God is love, yes, but He's also just.

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quote:

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originally posted by Mudfrog: I mean we all sing There is a Green Hill. We all sing When I survey. We believe all the theories that have inspired the hymns.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:
I'm always minded to sing 'there was no other God enough/ to take away our sin'.

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quote:

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Originally posted by doulos12:
When Adam & Eve needed their sins covered, their own attempts failed, so God provided the sacrifice (q.v. Abraham & Isaac) by the shedding of blood (thus the skin clothing). The Old Testament is rife with such atonement types, Isaiah's suffering servant notwithstanding.

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quote:

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I've studied the anti-PSA theories and just can't see how they can be accepted without tossing out major sections of the Bible.

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quote:

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God is love, yes, but He's also just.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

All explanations start from the idea that Christ dies and so we receive eternal life.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jolly Jape:

Far more troubling, for me, is the otherwise excellent, "In Christ alone", which is a terrific song, apart from the sixth line of the second verse, at which I, at least, remain resolutely silent.

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quote:

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originally posted by doulos12
God is love, yes, but He's also just.

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quote:

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Originally posted by doulos12:
I've studied the anti-PSA theories and just can't see how they can be accepted without tossing out major sections of the Bible.

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• 1. According to PSA why would Jesus have said that the purpose of His coming is to "bear witness to the truth"? Why would He have said that He came to "judge" the world and "cast out" the "ruler of this world"?
• 2. According to PSA what is the "work" that Jesus says that He came to accomplish?
• 3. How does the PSA understanding of "redemption" fit with the typical biblical usage of that term?
• 4. How does PSA fit with the prophecies that Jesus would "put down the mighty from their seats"?
• 5. PSA teaches that salvation happens only by the imputation of Christ's righteousness. How is this reconciled with Christ's words about salvation? How is "imputation" a biblical concept?
• 6. How can PSA be reconciled with the idea of a loving God?
• 7. PSA employs a concept of "justice" that is drawn directly from the Old Testament. How is this consistent with what Jesus taught about justice, as in Jolly Jape's post above?

quote:

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originally posted by Komensky
Despite the claims of the OP, 1 Peter 2:24 claims that Christ died for our sins: "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed".

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quote:

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Originally posted by Komensky:
Despite the claims of the OP, 1 Peter 2:24 claims that Christ died for our sins: "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed".

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quote:

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And was surely was the realisation of the prohet Isaiah (53):

[snip]

The words 'and the Lord has laid on him' ought to settle the matter. Am I missing something? (it won't be the first time).

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quote:

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Originally posted by Petaflop:

quote:

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Originally posted by Jolly Jape:

Far more troubling, for me, is the otherwise excellent, "In Christ alone", which is a terrific song, apart from the sixth line of the second verse, at which I, at least, remain resolutely silent.

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I spotted that one too only the other week! It's not just tied to PSA, but IIUC it also gets the feudal imagary wrong, in that 'satisfaction' is a process applied to restore honour, not to appease wrath. So 'The honour of God is satisfied' would work, or 'The wrath of God is propitiated'. I'm not sure how 'wrath' can be 'satisfied', but maybe there is a usage I'm not aware of.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
What you're missing is that there is a jump from "the LORD has laid on him" to "He died for our sins".

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quote:

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Originally posted by Seeker963:
"atonement" which is simply the idea that God and humanity have been reconciled.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Komensky:
The words 'and the Lord has laid on him' ought to settle the matter. Am I missing something? (it won't be the first time).

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quote:

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John 10:17 I lay down My life that I may take it again. 18 No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.

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quote:

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originally posted by Seeker963
As to the song: "And on the cross where Jesus died, the love of God was magnified."

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quote:

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Originally posted by andreas1984:

quote:

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Originally posted by Seeker963:
"atonement" which is simply the idea that God and humanity have been reconciled.

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Not for Orthodoxy... Mankind needed to reconcile with God. Not God with mankind. God was always "reconciled". Nothing we did led him separating from us. No reason for Him to reconcile but for us to accept what he was always giving us.

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quote:

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What position is occupied by the cross within faith in Jesus Christ? .....the universal Christian consciousness in this matter is extensively influenced by a much coarsened version of St Anselm's theology of atonement.... To many Christians, and especially to those who only know the faith from a distance, it looks as if the cross is to be understood as part of a mechanism of injured and restored right. It is in this form, so it seems, in which the infinitely offended righteousness of God was propitiated again by means of an infinite expiation. It thus appears to people as the expression of an attitude which insists on a precise balance between debit and credit; at the same time one gets the feeling that this balance is based nevertheless on a fiction. One gives first secretly with the left hand what one takes with the right. The "infinite expiation" on which God seems to insist thus moves into a doubly sinister light. Many devotional texts actually force one to think that Christian faith in the cross visualises a God whose unrelenting righteousness demanded a human sacrifice, the sacrifice of his own Son, and one turns away in horror from a righteousness whose sinister wrath makes the message of love incredible.

This picture is as false as it is widespread. In the Bible the cross does not appear as part of a mechanism of injured right; on the contrary, in the Bible the cross is quite the reverse: it is the expression of the radical nature of the love which gives itself completely, of the process in which one is what one does, and does what one is; it is the expression of a life that is completely being for others. To anyone who looks more closely, the scriptural theology of the cross represents a real revolution as compared with the notions of expiation and redemption entertained by non-Christian religions, though it certainly cannot be denied that in the later Christian consciousness this revolution was largely neutralised and its whole scope seldom recognised. In other world religions expiation usually means the restoration of the damaged relationship with God by means of expiatory actions on the part of men. Almost all religions centre round the problem of expiation; they arise out of man's knowledge of his guilt before God and signify the attempt to remove this feeling of guilt, to surmount the guilt through conciliatory actions offered up to God. The expiatory activity by which men hope to conciliate the divinity and to put him in a gracious mood stands at the heart of the history of religion.

In the New Testament the situation is almost completely reversed. It is not man who goes to God with a compensatory gift, but God who comes to man, in order to give to him. He restores disturbed right on the initiative of his own power to love, by making unjust man just again, the dead living again, through his own creative mercy. His righteousness is grace; it is active righteousness, which sets crooked man right, that is, bends him straight, makes him right. Here we stand before the twist which Christianity put into the history of religion. The New Testament does not say that men conciliate God, as we really ought to expect, since after all it is they who have failed, not God. It says, on the contrary that "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself" (2 Cor 5.19). This is truly something new, something unheard of - the starting point of Christian existence and the centre of New Testament theology of the cross: God does not wait until the guilty come to be reconciled; he goes to meet them and reconciles them. Here we can see the true direction of the incarnation, of the cross.

Accordingly, in the New Testament the cross appears primarily as a movement from above to below. IT does not stand there as the work of expiation which mankind offers to the wrathful God, but as the expression of that foolish love of God's which gives itself away to the point of humiliation in order thus to save man; it is his approach to us, not the other way round. With this twist in the idea of expiation, and thus in the whole axis of religion, worship too, man's whole existence, acquires in Christianity a new direction......

Letting God act on us - that is Christian sacrifice.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jolly Jape:
I think that you are reading too much into what Seeker wrote. To say "God and humanity have been reconciled" is not to imply anything other than that reconciliation has taken place. Actually, I agree (and I suspect Seeker might also agree) with your substantive point, that we need to be reconciled to God, rather than that God needs to be reconciled to us, as if He was ever estranged from us.

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quote:

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originally posted by Seeker963
I most emphatically do believe that God has never stopped extending forgiveness to us and I preach this almost every Sunday. A slightly different angle on it, but it is not our repentance that causes God to offer his love and forgiveness; it's God's love and forgiveness that causes us to repent and to love God.

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Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Hmmmm. So does NO ONE here believe that there is no sacrifice for sin without blood? That we are all righteously condemned to death for being post-fall humans? Wow!

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quote:

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Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Hmmmm. So does NO ONE here believe that there is no sacrifice for sin without blood? That we are all righteously condemned to death for being post-fall humans? Wow!

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quote:

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Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Hmmmm. So does NO ONE here believe that there is no sacrifice for sin without blood? That we are all righteously condemned to death for being post-fall humans? Wow!

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quote:

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
most people I know (myself included) appear to be not bad enough for Hell, but not good enough for Heaven either.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Mudfrog:

I believe that we deserve hell

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quote:

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Originally posted by Triple Tiara:
I am going to jump in here and quote from a very influential modern theologian. It's a bit long, but please do read it - it's quite helpful (at least, I found it so)

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Quite good. Which leads me to wonder at all of the jerking knees over Canon John. I suspect that the uproar has everything to do with certain people's rage over Canon John's sexual proclivities and making money over selling papers.
 

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Posted by humblebum (# 4358) on :
 
I don't think that's entirely fair.

It might be a motivation for the sensationally minded newspaper editors; but a more realistic issue here seems to be whether doing a radio broadcast on why "Christ Did Not Die For Our Sins" during Holy Week is in poor taste or not.

It is of course possible that the tone of the broadcast has been completely exaggerated by the media hype. We'll have to wait and hear the broadcast to work that one out. (Unfortunately I can't do Real Audio here at work ).

Thanks for the link Triple Tiara - it was indeed thoughtful.
 

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Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Jolly Jape:

quote:

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originally posted by Komensky
Despite the claims of the OP, 1 Peter 2:24 claims that Christ died for our sins: "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed".

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I don't think the Peter quote necessarily means that Christ was punished by God for our sins, that, if you like, He was the subject of the Father's wrath in our place, which is PSA as commonly understood. Rather it's a restatement of the Pauline doctrine of being crucified with Christ, of dying to sin, and being raised with Christ in His resurrection, in the context of unjust suffering. The thrust is rather more Abelardian Exemplar than PSA.

The Isaiah 53:5 verse is the one reference in the whole of Scripture (as far as I can make out) which refers (prophetically) to Jesus being punished, and if we include verse 6, punished by the Father, though it is possible to exegise the two verses separately. This seems a pretty shallow foundation upon which to build the definative theory of Atonement which those most committed to PSA seem to believe it to be. Of course, if the tenor of the whole of scripture were in favour of PSA, then the Isaiah verses would be valuable support, but, isolated as they, I believe, are, we should have a very cautious attitude towards them. We know that, from the earliest patristic era, from Philip onwards, these verses were favoured by evangelists. It seems strange that it should take so long for these "killer verses" to attain their current clinching role.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:

quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

All explanations start from the idea that Christ dies and so we receive eternal life.

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Not at all. I would start from the fact that Christ lives, and so we share in his risen, divine and human, life.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:
Mudfrog, so let's be absolutely clear: you believe that every human being 'deserves' Hell? Does the use of the word 'deserve' here have any continuity with its everyday use, and the related everyday ethical notions of desert?

If I say that I believe that those who drive over the speed limit deserve life imprisonment, most people would think that I am an authoritarian maniac. Yet, we are supposed to believe, God makes me look like a liberal by comparison.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:

quote:

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Originally posted by doulos12:


God is love, yes, but He's also just.

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What is the source of this 'justice' which, apparently, binds God? Is it something outside of God (in which case god seems not to be God, so to speak)? Or is it God himself? In which case how is God the source? Does his 'justice' issue from his decrees? In which case why is he not just an arbitrary despot suffering from bloodlust? Or is there some sort of eternal conflict between his love and his mercy - in which case he doesn't seem worthy of worship, but rather in need of psychiatric treatment? Then, of course, there is the doctrine of divine simplicity.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Shema oh Yisroel adonai elohenyu adonai yachad.

One God. Not 'just' the Father. One triune God.

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quote:

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Originally posted by andreas1984:
Um, perhaps I shouldn't have made this post... I guess it might sound pretty confusing to many people... Anyway. Always in good will. God help what is lacking.

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Yes, andreas, once again it sounds as if you are saying that the Father is God and Jesus isn't. Just as earlier in the thread it seemed that you were saying that the Orthodox do not believe that the Bible is divine revelation.
 

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Posted by Jolly Jape (# 3296) on :
 

quote:

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originally posted by The Revolutionist
But for the Christian, that apocalyptic moment of resolution isn't a fiction, but a reality. Just as justice and love are one in the nature of God, so he made them one on the Cross. No compromise of love, no compromise of justice. Sin is dealt with, forgiveness is offered. That's the miracle of Jesus sacrificing himself for our sins, and that's why PSA rings true for me, because justice and mercy are made one, rather than being compromised. The idea that God could "just forgive" seems to me to lessen the glorious unity of justice and love in his nature and on the Cross.

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But "just forgiving" is, surely, morally superior to exacting (retributive) justice. Why else would we hold up as examples people like Gee Walker or Donald Wilson. The very essence of forgiveness is that it is the complete antithesis of (retributive) justice. There is a gloriouys unity of justice and forgiveness on the cross, but it is because God sees justice in restorative terms.

WRT the rest of your post, I accept that much criticism of PSA comes from a crass oversimplification of the doctrine. However it is the core element, that we deserve death and that therefore God is obliged to deliver that death, in the absense of some escape mechanism that I find repulsive. Who says that God must behave in a way which, in our best moments, we would be ashamed of. Who says He can't "just forgive". We might well all deserve death. What is at issue is whether God would give us what we deserve or give us what we do not deserve. I think that Jesus demonstrates that it is the latter.
 

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Posted by andreas1984 (# 9313) on :
 
Dear Freddy

Our dialogue has to begin with something. If I don't speak in fear of not being understood, then no two-way communication, no sharing of each other's faiths will be possible. If I only speak within the framework many non-Orthodox Christians use, then no intra-Christian dialogue is possible!

As for the bible, the way Orthodoxy approached it can be summed in what the Apostle said. The writers spoke in human terms, because of the limits of the people they spoke to. It's a guide, not Revelation. If you want revelation, look at what happened in Pentecost. That's the only revelation there is. One can only repeat what happened in Pentecost in his personal life.

"I believe in one God the Father.... and in one Lord Jesus Christ... true God from true God... and in one Holy Spirit... in one holy catholic and apostolic church... I confess one baptism... I expect the resurrection of the dead and life of the age to come."
 

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Posted by Triple Tiara (# 9556) on :
 
andreas, are you sure you are representing Orthodoxy fairly here? I cannot find any Orthodox writers who back up your assertion that the Holy Scriptures are "a guide, not Revelation".

Secondly, are you absolutely sure that Orthodoxy proclaims the Creed in the way you are doing, namely "I believe in one God - the Father" rather than "I believe in one God: the Father..... Jesus Christ .... the Holy Spirit"? I am intrigued by this interpretation of the Creed you are presenting and want to know if this is the general Orthodox view, or simply your particular understanding.
 

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Posted by andreas1984 (# 9313) on :
 
Dear father

I have written in the past that even when I say "God exists" I mean "in my opinion and according to my personal experience God exists". I do not speak for anyone but myself.

Your questions are valid. I can point you to other people who express those views as well, but to me this does not make much sense, because even if I point you to one or two priests, to one or two Saints, to one or two councils, this can still be the private opinion of a few people.

As far as revelation is concerned, and because you are a man of knowledge, I will ask you: is analogia fidei and analogia entis Orthodox approaches? If they are not Orthodox, then what does the term revelation mean to Orthodoxy?

As far as God is concerned, I will ask you how you understand monarchy. What is monarchy?
 

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Posted by Triple Tiara (# 9556) on :
 
These are really matters for another thread (no, please do NOT start one ).

I understand where you are coming from concerning monarchy, and the questions you are asking concerning analogia entis and analogia fidei. But the more substantive part of my question has to do with whether this is a general Orthodox perspective you are espousing, or just your own. That's because your statements were in the context of saying something like "these things everyone is discussing only make sense within the framework of the non-Orthodox", suggesting that what you go on to say is from within the framework of Orthodoxy.

[ 04. April 2007, 19:58: Message edited by: Triple Tiara ]
 

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Posted by andreas1984 (# 9313) on :
 
Since father Triple Tiara asked for backup, I will quote Athanasius as far as the Creed is concerned, because he is a man respected by almost all Christians on these boards.

In his work Contra Sabellianos (I am using Migne's Patrology), he begins that work saying:

quote:

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??????????? ??????????? ???? ???????????, ??? ?????????? ????????, ????' ?????????? ???? ????????? ??????.

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quote:

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?????????? ?? ??? ???? ????????????? ??? ??? ????????????? ??? ???????????? ??????????????· ???, ??? ??? ???? ????? ???? ???????????, ???? ???? ??????????? ?????????? ????????· ???? ???? ????? ??????????· ??? ????? ???? ????????, ??? ?????? ????????? ?????? ??????? ????? ????· ????' ??? ??????? ?????? ??? ???????? ??????? ????? ??? ?????? ??????????.

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quote:

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3) That "it is impossible to express God and even more impossible to conceive Him."[ 14 ] In other words there is no similarity whatsoever "between the created and the uncreated." Anyone who thinks that Biblical expressions convey concepts about God is sadly mistaken. When used correctly Biblical words and concepts lead one to purification and illumination of the heart which lead to glorification but are not themselves glorification. An integral and essential part of knowing these foregoing three keys is the fourth key:

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http://www.romanity.org/htm/rom.02.en.the_cure_of_the_neurobiological_sickness_of_rel.01.htm#s4

I think that the above passages show that I am not alone. But as to how representative they are of the whole Orthodox Church, I guess we can discuss that...

It seems that while I was translating Saint Athanasius, fr TT you made a new post...

Well... You pose a difficult question... When I implied of an Orthodox framework, I was talking primarily about the purification-enlightenment-glorification way of living in Christ and about the absence of analogia entis and analogia fidei. See the "five keys to the bible" by father Romanides in the above link.

[ETA] Hey, why isn't the ancient Greek text shown properly?

[ 04. April 2007, 20:15: Message edited by: andreas1984 ]
 

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Posted by welsh dragon (# 3249) on :
 
We just listened to the talk. A droll anecdote about the dour Welsh Calvinism of his childhood. An emphasis on the love shown by Jesus rather than a punitive idea of a vengeful God. Nothing very controversial, it seemed to us - I rather liked it. What do you think?
 

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Posted by Triple Tiara (# 9556) on :
 
I think it's excellent - one could swear he was one of Ratzinger's students!
 

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Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
It is the Easter message - orthodox, congruent with the gospel accounts and set in a wider Biblical context. Tying it in with Christmas, too. Good work, I say.

Is this the right time to air such a message? Yes, of course. Sunday's coming...
 

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Posted by doulos12 (# 12502) on :
 

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Originally posted by Freddy:

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Originally posted by doulos12:
I've studied the anti-PSA theories and just can't see how they can be accepted without tossing out major sections of the Bible.

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Doulos, I don't think that Christus Victor tosses anything out of the Bible. In my opinion, the passages typically used to support PSA have better explanations. What are you thinking that these anti-PSA theories toss out?

By contrast, I think that PSA ignores much of what the Bible says about the purpose of the Incarnation. For example:

• 1. According to PSA why would Jesus have said that the purpose of His coming is to "bear witness to the truth"? Why would He have said that He came to "judge" the world and "cast out" the "ruler of this world"?

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2. According to PSA what is the "work" that Jesus says that He came to accomplish?

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3. How does the PSA understanding of "redemption" fit with the typical biblical usage of that term?

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4. How does PSA fit with the prophecies that Jesus would "put down the mighty from their seats"?

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5. PSA teaches that salvation happens only by the imputation of Christ's righteousness. How is this reconciled with Christ's words about salvation? How is "imputation" a biblical concept?

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6. How can PSA be reconciled with the idea of a loving God?

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7. PSA employs a concept of "justice" that is drawn directly from the Old Testament. How is this consistent with what Jesus taught about justice, as in Jolly Jape's post above?

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Not that I haven't heard, or that we haven't discussed, answers to these questions. I just don't think that the answers are satisfactory.

PSA seems to me to subvert huge portions of the Bible for the sake of giving an easy answer to why Jesus died that fits with the Old Testament idea of sacrifice and a few New Testament references to it.

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Originally posted by welsh dragon:
We just listened to the talk. A droll anecdote about the dour Welsh Calvinism of his childhood. An emphasis on the love shown by Jesus rather than a punitive idea of a vengeful God. Nothing very controversial, it seemed to us - I rather liked it. What do you think?

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Originally posted by welsh dragon:
We just listened to the talk. A droll anecdote about the dour Welsh Calvinism of his childhood. An emphasis on the love shown by Jesus rather than a punitive idea of a vengeful God. Nothing very controversial, it seemed to us - I rather liked it. What do you think?

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It just doesn't make sense to talk about a nice Jesus down here, placating the wrath of a nasty, angry Father God in heaven. Christians believe Jesus is God incarnate. As he said, 'Whoever sees me has seen the Father'. Jesus is what God is: he is the one who shows us God's nature. And the most basic truth about God's nature is that He is Love, not wrath and punishment.

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As Julian wrote,

wrath and friendship are two contraries… For I saw that there is no manner of wrath in God, neither for short time nor for long;-for in sooth, if God be wroth for an instant, we should never have life nor place nor being.

The cross, then, is not about Jesus reconciling an angry God to us; it's almost the opposite. It's about a totally loving God, incarnate in Christ, reconciling us to him. On the cross Jesus dies for our sins; the price of our sin is paid; but it is not paid to God but by God. As St Paul says, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. Because he is Love, God does what Love does: He unites himself with the beloved. He enters his own creation and goes to the bottom line for us. Not sending a substitute to vent his punishment on, but going himself to the bitter end, sharing in the worst of suffering and grief that life can throw at us, and finally sharing our death, so that he can bring us through death to life in him.

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Originally posted by The Revolutionist:
What kind of love would God for all those who suffered and died in, say, the Holocaust if he just patted the perpetrators of such inhumanities on the head and told them it didn't matter?

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Originally posted by John Holding:
Interesting, then, that according to Thinking Anglicans, a couple of well-known "junior bishops of the Church of England" of an evangelical bent criticized it soundly. And then admitted they'd neither read it or heard it before they uttered. I gather the identities of the two bishops in question are easy to discern.

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Originally posted by leo:

In 53:5 - wounded "for our transgressions" isn’t quite faithful to the Hebrew, which has the sense of "because of our rebellious sins." i.e. one man can atone for another’s sins; "with his stripes we are healed." – many Jews interpret that as the healing is the end of the sickness of anti-Semitism that the nations will experience when they have this enormous revelation about the Jews at the End of Days.
53:5 "But he was wounded from (not “for”) our transgressions, he was crushed from (not “for”) our iniquities." Whereas the Gentile nations had thought the Servant (Israel) was undergoing Divine retribution for its sins (53:4), they now realise that the Servant's sufferings stemmed from their OWN actions and sinfulness against the nation. This theme is further developed throughout the Jewish Scriptures - see, e.g., Jer. 50:7; Jer. 10:25.

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Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Especially as it gives their names. One is a well-known and well-respected shipmate: perhaps he'll be along in minute to explain what was hopefully a momentary lapse of reason.

(edited for speeling)

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let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger

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Originally posted by doulos12:

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Originally posted by Freddy:
3. How does the PSA understanding of "redemption" fit with the typical biblical usage of that term?

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I suppose that depends on your definition. I define it as "stepped in for another and made payment." Fits perfectly.

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Deuteronomy 7:8 The LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

Deuteronomy 9:26 Your people and Your inheritance whom You have redeemed through Your greatness, whom You have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand.

Deuteronomy 24:18 But you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and the LORD your God redeemed you from there;

1 Kings 1:29 “As the LORD lives, who has redeemed my life from every distress,

Nehemiah 1:10 Now these are Your servants and Your people, whom You have redeemed by Your great power, and by Your strong hand.

Psalm 25:22 Redeem Israel, O God,Out of all their troubles!

Psalm 55:18 He has redeemed my soul in peace from the battle that was against me.

Psalm 69:18 Draw near to my soul, and redeem it; Deliver me because of my enemies.

Psalm 72:14 He will redeem their life from oppression and violence; And precious shall be their blood in His sight.

Psalm 106:10 He saved them from the hand of him who hated them, And redeemed them from the hand of the enemy.

Isaiah 1:27 Zion shall be redeemed with justice, And her penitents with righteousness.

Isaiah 50:2 Is My hand shortened at all that it cannot redeem? Or have I no power to deliver? Indeed with My rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a wilderness;

Jeremiah 15:21 “ I will deliver you from the hand of the wicked, And I will redeem you from the grip of the terrible.”

Micah 4:10 There you shall be delivered; There the LORD will redeem you From the hand of your enemies.

Micah 6:4 For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, I redeemed you from the house of bondage;

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Luke 24:21 But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel. Indeed, besides all this, today is the third day since these things happened.

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Originally posted by The Revolutionist:
I can understand why people react against the idea of God being angry at sin. It is not something pleasant to have to face up to; as sinners, it challenges us at a very deep level of our being. In the face of the ways in which the nature of God has often been distorted into something hateful and unloving, it's unsurprising that people should react strongly against it.

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Originally posted by Triple Tiara:
If anything, the Cross is God's way of saying "stop trying to give me blood! I do not want any more! Here - I'll shed my own to show you!"

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YES!
 

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Posted by andreas1984 (# 9313) on :
 
I was listening to a series of discussions on Orthodox and non-Orthodox Christian theology, when the speaker mentioned the way Thomas Aquinas dealt with the issue... He said that on the one hand, Anselm was Thomas' teacher, so he couldn't just disregard what he said, so, he came up with a cute answer "Yes, God could have done differently, God could have just forgiven us without the Cross, but it was more fitting that Jesus got crucified".

I did a bit research today, and I found that on the Summa:

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4046.htm#2

(articles 2 and 3)

Quoting from him:

"Therefore, speaking simply and absolutely, it was possible for God to deliver mankind otherwise than by the Passion of Christ"

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Even this justice depends on the Divine will, requiring satisfaction for sin from the human race. But if He had willed to free man from sin without any satisfaction, He would not have acted against justice. For a judge, while preserving justice, cannot pardon fault without penalty, if he must visit fault committed against another--for instance, against another man, or against the State, or any Prince in higher authority. But God has no one higher than Himself, for He is the sovereign and common good of the whole universe. Consequently, if He forgive sin, which has the formality of fault in that it is committed against Himself, He wrongs no one: just as anyone else, overlooking a personal trespass, without satisfaction, acts mercifully and not unjustly. And so David exclaimed when he sought mercy: "To Thee only have I sinned" (Psalm 50:6), as if to say: "Thou canst pardon me without injustice."

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I answer that, Among means to an end that one is the more suitable whereby the various concurring means employed are themselves helpful to such end. But in this that man was delivered by Christ's Passion, many other things besides deliverance from sin concurred for man's salvation. In the first place, man knows thereby how much God loves him, and is thereby stirred to love Him in return, and herein lies the perfection of human salvation; hence the Apostle says (Romans 5:8): "God commendeth His charity towards us; for when as yet we were sinners . . . Christ died for us." Secondly, because thereby He set us an example of obedience, humility, constancy, justice, and the other virtues displayed in the Passion, which are requisite for man's salvation. Hence it is written (1 Peter 2:21): "Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example that you should follow in His steps." Thirdly, because Christ by His Passion not only delivered man from sin, but also merited justifying grace for him and the glory of bliss, as shall be shown later (48, 1; 49, 1, 5). Fourthly, because by this man is all the more bound to refrain from sin, according to 1 Cor. 6:20: "You are bought with a great price: glorify and bear God in your body." Fifthly, because it redounded to man's greater dignity, that as man was overcome and deceived by the devil, so also it should be a man that should overthrow the devil; and as man deserved death, so a man by dying should vanquish death. Hence it is written (1 Corinthians 15:57): "Thanks be to God who hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." It was accordingly more fitting that we should be delivered by Christ's Passion than simply by God's good-will.

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25. He said to them, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26. Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?" 27. And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

28. As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus acted as if he were going farther. 29. But they urged him strongly, "Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over." So he went in to stay with them.

30. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. 31. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. 32. They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?"

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Originally posted by andreas1984:
But the kind bishop and Shipmate in his statement implied that it was not possible, that there was a need for Christ to suffer in order for man to be set free.

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There are two or three stages here.
Firstly, we have Anselm. Anselm explains Christ's passion as the redress due to a feudal lord. The idea is that there is a contract between God on the one hand and humanity on the other. If one human breaks the contract, then all of humanity have broken it. Likewise, if one human meets the terms of the contract on their own, then the rest of humanity don't need to worry.

Since Anselm lived in a society in which that made sense, it made sense to the people who lived in that society. It became the standard metaphor.
It has its faults - as Aquinas says God can perfectly well pass up on what he is owed - but the same faults apply to 'ransom to the devil' theories. So long as we see it as one metaphor among others we're ok.

Now feudal society starts to break down. We get an individual or personal concept of justice and responsibility. Instead of seeing sin as breaking a covenant between God and humanity, we begin to see sin as an individual's crime against God's moral law. But the old metaphorical language from the feudal area continues to apply. It doesn't make sense, since you can't punish one person for another's wrongdoing. Anyway, this is now penal substitution proper.

I have seen conflicting accounts of Luther's theology here. On the one hand, he is one of the first people to use the new language of penal substitution. On the other, he uses it as one metaphor among others and Gustaf Aulen argued that when he wants to give a definitive statement, as in his catechisms, he uses the language of the church fathers.

I suspect that John Calvin had a lot to do with making penal substitution the definitive account among the Reform tradition. As C.S.Lewis says of him, he took themes from earlier theologians, asked the dark questions and gave the dark answers.
Anyway, many people in the Reformed tradition found that Calvin's interpretations matched their experience of sin and salvation, and so penal substitution became the standard language. Furthermore, within that tradition over the past two hundred years, there has grown up a tendency to draw lines in the sand to prevent the encroachment of godless liberal ideas, and even worse, Roman Catholicism. Penal substitution has become one of those lines in the sand.

Dafyd
 

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Posted by Trudy Scrumptious (# 5647) on :
 
The Revolutionist:

for bringing in the Doctor Who comparison (and for getting to interview RTD). There should be a corollary to Godwin's Law which says that anyone who brings a Doctor Who analogy into a discussion or debate should get an automatic

I have mixed feelings about a lot of things in this debate but I lean towards the side of "PSA is not the only explanation of Jesus' death but it is one valid one that should not be forgotten." The anti-PSA argument seems to me to be informed by a couple of beliefs I don't share:

1) the belief that Biblical references to "Hell" refer to a place of unending conscious tormet; if you believe that is what Hell is (rather than just death, which is our lot as mortals) then I can see how it would skew your concept of the justice of God, and

2) the tendency to look at "forgiveness of sins" only from the perspective of the sinner rather than of the sinner's victims. I don't see why it's so magnanimous of God to automatically forgive rapists, mass murderers, child abusers, etc., without expecting some form of justice or payment. (Of course you could still argue that God's saying, "Yes, this sin is heinous! It deserves to be punished, and I took the punishment myself!" is unjust, but I think it's a lot more powerful than saying, "No reparation is needed for this" which implies the sin was never that big a deal). I think the Doctor Who analogy was quite a good one in pointing out that justice and mercy are two very powerful forces -- not that they are necessarily in opposition, but that they may demand different responses, and that the cross can be seen as bringing both together.

[ 05. April 2007, 09:56: Message edited by: Trudy Scrumptious ]
 

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Posted by Mystery of Faith (# 12176) on :
 
It strikes me - having flicked through a number of the posts here though not having read them all - that some of the negative reaction seems to be based simply on the Telegraph headline which, perhaps unsurprisingly was slightly sensationalist "Easter message: Christ did not die for sin" and I think misrepresents what Jeffrey John actually said: http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/lent_talks/scripts/jeffreyjohn.html.

There is also the possibility that there is bias creeping in simply because of Jeffrey John's name, reputation and known liberal stance, but I hope most would reflect on this properly before simply writing it off.

Equally, this is hardly exactly a revolutionary new way of understanding Christ's purpose and death on the Cross, so what's the deal about being up in arms about it being an insenstive time to say such things? It strikes me - at a time of year when perhaps non-Christians are more conscious of the faith than at other times - that to push forward an alternative way of understanding the Cross than penal substitution(a theory which for so long kept me away from faith and I'm sure does many others) now is a good thing.

Christianity is a broad camp - or at least should be - and personally I think it is disappointing to see someone such as Tom Wright(assuming he hasn't also been misrepresented) - and others on here - wading in as though penal substitution was the central doctine of Christianity and always had been. Clearly, it's not. It's one way of understanding things which works for many.

In my view it doesn't work for many more and we need more people like Jeffrey John speaking up.
 

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Posted by andreas1984 (# 9313) on :
 

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Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
"No reparation is needed for this" which implies the sin was never that big a deal).

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Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
the tendency to look at "forgiveness of sins" only from the perspective of the sinner rather than of the sinner's victims. I don't see why it's so magnanimous of God to automatically forgive rapists, mass murderers, child abusers, etc., without expecting some form of justice or payment.

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Originally posted by GreyFace:

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Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
the tendency to look at "forgiveness of sins" only from the perspective of the sinner rather than of the sinner's victims. I don't see why it's so magnanimous of God to automatically forgive rapists, mass murderers, child abusers, etc., without expecting some form of justice or payment.

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I don't understand this. Maybe it's a character fault, but I've never really understood how revenge puts things right.

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originally posted by the Revolutionist
I can understand why people react against the idea of God being angry at sin. It is not something pleasant to have to face up to; as sinners, it challenges us at a very deep level of our being. In the face of the ways in which the nature of God has often been distorted into something hateful and unloving, it's unsurprising that people should react strongly against it.

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Originally posted by GreyFace:

quote:

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Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
the tendency to look at "forgiveness of sins" only from the perspective of the sinner rather than of the sinner's victims. I don't see why it's so magnanimous of God to automatically forgive rapists, mass murderers, child abusers, etc., without expecting some form of justice or payment.

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I don't understand this. Maybe it's a character fault, but I've never really understood how revenge puts things right.

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Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
That's the LAW.

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Anyway, many people in the Reformed tradition found that Calvin's interpretations matched their experience of sin and salvation, and so penal substitution became the standard language.

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It has its faults - as Aquinas says God can perfectly well pass up on what he is owed - but the same faults apply to 'ransom to the devil' theories. So long as we see it as one metaphor among others we're ok.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
Since Anselm lived in a society in which that made sense, it made sense to the people who lived in that society. It became the standard metaphor.

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Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
If there is NO sacrifice for sin then YOU have no saviour. YOU are dead in your sins, are carrying a letal rotting corpse bound to your back. You're dead. Forever. Because the law is more powerful than life.

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But love, mercy, grace is more powerful than death.

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If you were the only person on Earth you would HAVE to scourge and crucify Christ to live forever.

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Originally posted by Mystery of Faith:
It strikes me - having flicked through a number of the posts here though not having read them all - that some of the negative reaction seems to be based simply on the Telegraph headline which, perhaps unsurprisingly was slightly sensationalist "Easter message: Christ did not die for sin" and I think misrepresents what Jeffrey John actually said: http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/lent_talks/scripts/jeffreyjohn.html.

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Originally posted by Josephine:

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Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
If there is NO sacrifice for sin then YOU have no saviour. YOU are dead in your sins, are carrying a letal rotting corpse bound to your back. You're dead. Forever. Because the law is more powerful than life.

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I could be wrong, but I think that the Scriptures say that if Christ is not risen from the dead, we are still dead in our sins. Not if Christ was not sacrificed, but if he is not risen.

Furthermore, the Law was a gift from God, to help us begin to learn how he wants us to live. But Life -- Our Lord and Savior said that he is the Life. He's not bound by the Law. He's not subject to the Law. The Law has no power over the Lawgiver.

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But love, mercy, grace is more powerful than death.

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Exactly.

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If you were the only person on Earth you would HAVE to scourge and crucify Christ to live forever.

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Nope. Not a chance.

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In yet all Christians to this day remember His sacrafice to this day in the forms of Mass , Eucharist , Communion etc and there are two elements that we remember in particular His body broken and His blood shed. People are prepared to accept that Christ's blood is important in a ritual but do not wish to think on the implication / other ramifications of His blood? Or is His blood simply shed that we may have a ritual?

Christ suggested to His disciples that His blood was important for the remission of sins - Matthew 26 v 28

Please also quote the Bible verse/s that says we are still in our sins if Christ had not risen, so that I can study it further.

I can give you many more verses showing that "Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15 v 3)or that He died for us etc.
 

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Posted by MouseThief (# 953) on :
 
1 Cor 15:17

And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.
 

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Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
Yes it is Andreas. For 2445 years before the schism. And then some. 6000 easily. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. I couldn't give a fiddler's fart about ecclesiastical history, who wrote what when, when the bible is plain on the matter from beginning to end. As in many other matters that our schizophrenic old bag lady of a ma has NO authority over, is second rate.
 

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Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
And Josephine, a Resurrection without a Crucifixion is meaningless, is the sound of one hand clapping. The former without the latter means you're a forgiven corpse. You DID kill Him any way. So did I. And we both died AND rose in Him.
 

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Posted by Papio (# 4201) on :
 
I assume you speak metaphorically?
 

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Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
Oh aye. Especially about the fart. I'm not a fiddler. And wrongly. Mousethief correctly says no resurrection : no forgiveness.
 

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Posted by Fauja (# 2054) on :
 
The answer to the rhetorical question in Jeremiah 13:23 appears to be "No, a leopard cannot change his spots." but Galatians 3:13 is just one example of grace-theology opening the door to an understanding of a salvation that cannot be attained by self-effort. The heart of the gospel message is that Christ died for us because he loved us that much. The atonement aspect of the cross is not a matter of satisfying some kind of cosmic legal equation but rather the living demonstration of God's unconditional love - Christ and God the Father are totally united in resolve to make the greatest sacrifice of all so that we can receive the salvation that Christ has bought for us with His own blood.
 

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Posted by Papio (# 4201) on :
 
Martin, I'm sure that would be more helpful if I understood it a single word of it.

Sorry.

I can understand the view that, by doing Bad Things, one metaphorically kills Christ. I'm not sure whether or not anyone believe that they literally killed Christ, though.

I used to think I understood your type of christianity, Martin. Then I lost my faith. Now is just baffles me utterly. Sorry.

[ 05. April 2007, 21:58: Message edited by: Papio ]
 

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Posted by andreas1984 (# 9313) on :
 

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Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Yes it is Andreas. For 2445 years before the schism. And then some. 6000 easily.

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Dear Martin

I will speak reasonably. And I would like you to tell me if I am being unreasonable here. The way I see it, the most ancient recorded interpretation of the bible to accommodate for PSA comes from feudal Western Europe. Before that, no Christian had put that faith in writing. On the contrary. That faith was rejected by those whom God glorified. Their understanding was different.

You say that the scriptures are clear. I say they are not saying what you think they say. And the entire Christendom can back me up on this, at least till feudalism.

You say people before that believed so. I say you do not have a record that they did. On the contrary. So, it's your interpretation of what the bible clearly says versus mine. It's not me versus the bible. It's my interpretation versus yours.

Now, since I have not received Christianity by means of a book sent from the skies, but from other Christians, Christians who are part of the Church, I listen to what they have to say. After all, I wanted to join the Church to which they already belonged. So, it's not an issue of authority. But of getting taught by those advanced in the matters of faith, by people whom God glorified.

You say the Old Testament is clear. I will point out that except for the Orthodox Christians, the Jews do not wait for God Incarnate to get punished for their sins. They, too, read the bible and respect what the bible says. What I am trying to say is that if the Jews believed so in the past, but neither the Jews that became Christians believed so, nor the Jews that remained Jews believe so, then you should show that a change took place within Judaism, in order for you to justify your claim that the bible always said so.

You can't just say "it's clear" but not show me who believed this that is so "clear". Who believed in PSA before feudalism?

Also, one last point: Revelation of the Immanent God is Immanent and Transcendent. It cannot be put down to words. This is not the way those advanced in the issues of faith used the bible. I recall a story about Anthony the Great. He was asking a few monks what a passage from the scriptures means. Each monk was saying his opinion. Last, but not least, he asked the youngest among the monks. He replied "I do not know". Saint Anthony the Great said "Truly I say to you, that he is much more advanced in faith than you are, for he said 'I don't know'"

Knowing that we do not know is the first step in the journey we call Faith.

Hope this all makes sense.

Happy Easter, Martin!
 

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Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
Rats Papio. Rats. I'M sorry. My type is broken, faulty, erratic, submission to my primitive, unintegrated, incoherent understanding. As a vessel for the spirit I am a cracked leaking sewer pipe under a whore house. Peace Papio. Peace to you my brother.
 

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Posted by Papio (# 4201) on :
 
Contrary to what you may think, Martin, I neither despise you nor think you are an idiot. I get the impression that is what you think of me, though, but hey ho. I get frustrated, sometimes, by my own inability to understand you is all.

Happy easter, anyway.
 

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Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
More than reasonable: gracious, Andreas. But I still take issue. But not tonight! As you said, Happy Easter and Peace to you my brother Andreas.
 

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Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
Look Papio, you're going to have me in tears of contrition in a minute. Less. Please forgive me for failing to meet you at least half way, for failing to try and reach you - how bloody condescending that sounds - where you are. The fault is NOT yours. Wrong, wrong, wrong as you are
 

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Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
Damn and blast man! Please forgive me for making you think that Papio. I am sorry.
 

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Posted by Papio (# 4201) on :
 

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Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Damn and blast man! Please forgive me for making you think that Papio. I am sorry.

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Originally posted by andreas1984:

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It has its faults - as Aquinas says God can perfectly well pass up on what he is owed - but the same faults apply to 'ransom to the devil' theories. So long as we see it as one metaphor among others we're ok.

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'Ransom to the devil" and PSA are not the only options available! In the East we knew neither the one nor the other, yet we have been doing Christianity for two thousand years!

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Can culture influence the gospel? Can culture influence the view we have of God?

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quote:

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I come from a tradition that confesses the faith given to the Apostles once, the faith kept by the fathers and the people always. How can I accept that for centuries many Western Christians had a view of a God like that? I mean, how can I be in communion with them when our view of God is so opposing?

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quote:

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These questions are important to me as I am exploring what happened in Western Europe over the past centuries...

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quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
It's my impression that 'ransom to the devil' was known in the East and West since the origins of Christianity. Paul uses the metaphor of Christ giving his life as a ransom.

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quote:

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Originally posted by MouseThief:

quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
It's my impression that 'ransom to the devil' was known in the East and West since the origins of Christianity. Paul uses the metaphor of Christ giving his life as a ransom.

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To the devil? Where did Paul say the ransom was to the devil?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:


If you were the only person on Earth you would HAVE to scourge and crucify Christ to live forever.

That's the LAW.

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quote:

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Originally posted by andreas1984:

quote:

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Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Yes it is Andreas. For 2445 years before the schism. And then some. 6000 easily.

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Dear Martin

I will speak reasonably. And I would like you to tell me if I am being unreasonable here. The way I see it, the most ancient recorded interpretation of the bible to accommodate for PSA comes from feudal Western Europe. Before that, no Christian had put that faith in writing. On the contrary. That faith was rejected by those whom God glorified. Their understanding was different.

You say that the scriptures are clear. I say they are not saying what you think they say. And the entire Christendom can back me up on this, at least till feudalism.

You say people before that believed so. I say you do not have a record that they did.

<snip>

You can't just say "it's clear" but not show me who believed this that is so "clear". Who believed in PSA before feudalism?

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quote:

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For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved" (S. John 3:17). All mankind had formerly incurred the sentence of the Law, and were guilty criminals; but the Word of God took upon himself the punishment to be inflicted, and thus justice was satisfied; and, by undergoing punishment in our nature, He applied to our persons the redemption wrought by it. And this was what S. John meant when he exclaimed, "The Law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ" (S. John 1:17). How much more excellent is grace than the Law, and how far superior is truth to a shadow of it.

---

-Athanasius, Orations Contra Arius 1.60

Of course you may not like what he is saying here, but it is a very clear statement of the idea that Jesus takes upon himself the punishment we deserve, dying in our place.
 

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Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
Dear Martin

I will speak reasonably. And I would like you to tell me if I am being unreasonable here. The way I see it, the most ancient recorded interpretation of the bible to accommodate for PSA comes from feudal Western Europe. Before that, no Christian had put that faith in writing. On the contrary. That faith was rejected by those whom God glorified. Their understanding was different.

Dear Andreas - Morning has broken and I'm back atcha! The above is code for an Hellenocentric view of the Church I don't share. Not even code: 'The way I see it, ...'. PSA is explicit throughout the bible and was understood by the apostles. Is the way I see it. The fact that Orthodoxy does not and sees other things that aren't there, like Mary's perpetual virginity, assumption etc, is neither here nor there. Well kit is actually.

You say that the scriptures are clear. I say they are not saying what you think they say. And the entire Christendom can back me up on this, at least till feudalism.

Andreas - I say that post-apostolic, Byzantine Christianity is not sufficient backup to overturn the faith once delivered.

You say people before that believed so. I say you do not have a record that they did. On the contrary. So, it's your interpretation of what the bible clearly says versus mine. It's not me versus the bible. It's my interpretation versus yours.

Andreas - Paul did. That's good enough for me. 1000 years of Greek saints don't outweigh him. History's winners write history. Luckily the Bible is not tainted by propaganda, spin, heresy.

Now, since I have not received Christianity by means of a book sent from the skies, but from other Christians, Christians who are part of the Church, I listen to what they have to say. After all, I wanted to join the Church to which they already belonged. So, it's not an issue of authority. But of getting taught by those advanced in the matters of faith, by people whom God glorified.

Andreas - Greek Christians, Orthodox Christians. They are no more advanced in matters of faith - God's gift and work - than any other branch of the post-apostolic church. The errors of the Church are legion. The errors of the Bible none.

You say the Old Testament is clear. I will point out that except for the Orthodox Christians, the Jews do not wait for God Incarnate to get punished for their sins. They, too, read the bible and respect what the bible says. What I am trying to say is that if the Jews believed so in the past, but neither the Jews that became Christians believed so, nor the Jews that remained Jews believe so, then you should show that a change took place within Judaism, in order for you to justify your claim that the bible always said so.

Andreas - the Jews apart from those who became Christians have always been blind to the suffering servant, to He who was more marred than any man.

You can't just say "it's clear" but not show me who believed this that is so "clear". Who believed in PSA before feudalism?

Andreas - Paul - ah but he was Roman wasn't he? Not Greek The other apostles and NT writers. All of them. Peter, John, James - Jesus half blood brother that is.

Also, one last point: Revelation of the Immanent God is Immanent and Transcendent. It cannot be put down to words. This is not the way those advanced in the issues of faith used the bible. I recall a story about Anthony the Great. He was asking a few monks what a passage from the scriptures means. Each monk was saying his opinion. Last, but not least, he asked the youngest among the monks. He replied "I do not know". Saint Anthony the Great said "Truly I say to you, that he is much more advanced in faith than you are, for he said 'I don't know'"

Knowing that we do not know is the first step in the journey we call Faith.

Hope this all makes sense.

Andreas - Another good irrelevance to the subject.

Happy Easter, Martin!

Once again Andreas
 

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Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on :
 
Fascinating. I've stayed out of this discussion so far, but I couldn't resist sharing something I read this morning. I was reading one of Austin Farrar's Good Friday sermons, "Atoning Death", and came across this:

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If St Paul did not say that Christ propitiated God's wrath for us, still less did he teach that God poured out his wrath on Christ, or cut him off from grace, as a substitute-sinner on the Cross. Nothing of this sort is to be found in the Bible.

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For the punishment of the cross was due to us; but if we had all been crucified, we would have had no power to deliver ourselves from death [...] There were many holy men, many prophets, many righteous men, but not one of them had the power to ransom himself from the authority of death; but he, the Saviour of all, came and received the punishments which were due to us into his sinless flesh, which was of us, in place of us, and on our behalf.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Leprechaun:
I have done the whole PSA discussion before, so I just want to say this.

Those of you advocating a different model of the atonement might want to see if you can find one that people can actually understand!

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quote:

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Originally posted by Leprechaun:
I have done the whole PSA discussion before, so I just want to say this.

Those of you advocating a different model of the atonement might want to see if you can find one that people can actually understand!

I'm not trying to be cheeky, but I haven't read on this thread, or elsewhere, a view of Christus Victor that doesn't, in the end, lead you back to PSA or become completely unintelligible to the layperson.

I am convinced of PSA from Scripture, but the reason I think it has caught on is because people can understand it: all of this talk about Jesus showing unconditional love by dying and turning death inside out etc just doesn't make sense to people. I'mn in trouble, someone else took the rap for me, for all the philosophical questions it raises, is relatively straightforward to understand!

I consider myself relatively well educated and have (unlike most people I meet) having thought in theological terms before. I couldn't make head nor tail of Jeffery John's Lent talks.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Leprechaun:
....Those of you advocating a different model of the atonement might want to see if you can find one that people can actually understand!

I'm not trying to be cheeky, but I haven't read on this thread, or elsewhere, a view of Christus Victor that doesn't, in the end, lead you back to PSA or become completely unintelligible to the layperson.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Leprechaun:
I am convinced of PSA from Scripture, but the reason I think it has caught on is because people can understand it: all of this talk about Jesus showing unconditional love by dying and turning death inside out etc just doesn't make sense to people.

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quote:

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Originally posted by MouseThief:

quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
It's my impression that 'ransom to the devil' was known in the East and West since the origins of Christianity. Paul uses the metaphor of Christ giving his life as a ransom.

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To the devil? Where did Paul say the ransom was to the devil?

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quote:

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Originally posted by leo:

quote:

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Originally posted by Leprechaun:
....Those of you advocating a different model of the atonement might want to see if you can find one that people can actually understand!

I'm not trying to be cheeky, but I haven't read on this thread, or elsewhere, a view of Christus Victor that doesn't, in the end, lead you back to PSA or become completely unintelligible to the layperson.

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The Christus Victor model works very well with people who have psychological or addiction problems. Christ has delivered them, broke the bonds of, their particular hell.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Seeker963

quote:

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Originally posted by Leprechaun:
I am convinced of PSA from Scripture, but the reason I think it has caught on is because people can understand it: all of this talk about Jesus showing unconditional love by dying and turning death inside out etc just doesn't make sense to people.

---

No, of course, it doesn't make sense to people. Because people want salvation whilst holding onto their sinful paradigms of good and evil. We don't want to forgive our enemies at all, but if we are going to do it, then we are going to make darn well sure that somehow our enemies have been tortured beyond recognition before we forgive them. And we want a God who does the same. So we cry. "Forgiveness can't happen until someone is tortured!"

It's not a matter of not being able to understand. It's a matter of not wanting to understand. It's a matter of wanting a Superman God and not a God who genuinely forgives people.

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Originally posted by Tubifex Maximus:
I have recently discovered that if I want to escape from my own private Hell I have to forgive myself and all the other people who I hate so much but deny that I do, even to myself. This is not a comfortable piece of news to accept but it is Jesus crying from the cross that has taught me that it is so. His victory over Sin leads us to our own victories. I don't want to do it, but I know now that it is the only way and I needed someone telling me that it was so when I couldn't see it for myself.

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--Tom Clune
 

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Posted by Seeker963 (# 2066) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Tubifex Maximus:
I have recently discovered that if I want to escape from my own private Hell I have to forgive myself and all the other people who I hate so much but deny that I do, even to myself. This is not a comfortable piece of news to accept but it is Jesus crying from the cross that has taught me that it is so. His victory over Sin leads us to our own victories. I don't want to do it, but I know now that it is the only way and I needed someone telling me that it was so when I couldn't see it for myself.

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To Tom's s may I add my s
 

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Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Seeker963:
To Tom's s may I add my s

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I'll see your s and raise you two s...

--Tom Clune
 

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Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by MouseThief:

quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
It's my impression that 'ransom to the devil' was known in the East and West since the origins of Christianity. Paul uses the metaphor of Christ giving his life as a ransom.

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To the devil? Where did Paul say the ransom was to the devil?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

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Originally posted by MouseThief:

quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
It's my impression that 'ransom to the devil' was known in the East and West since the origins of Christianity. Paul uses the metaphor of Christ giving his life as a ransom.

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To the devil? Where did Paul say the ransom was to the devil?

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He doesn't. I don't think it takes a great leap of the imagination to decide that the devil is the one to whom the ransom is being paid.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Seeker963:


It's not a matter of not being able to understand. It's a matter of not wanting to understand. It's a matter of wanting a Superman God and not a God who genuinely forgives people.

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Seeker, this is almost hellworthy. How enlightening to discover that the reason I believe in PSA is because I don't really want to understand the atonement. This sort of superscilious crap that reminds me why me brief flirtation with liberal theology ended after the first date: because it involves telling evangelicals that they don't really love the Bible, we are just too wilfully stupid to understand it.

JJ - I always appreciate your posts on this issue. But can't you see that concepts like these:

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It is God in Christ releasing the full power of the eternal creator, and showing that this full power can only reach its climax by an act of ultimate humility.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Leprechaun:

quote:

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Originally posted by Seeker963:


It's not a matter of not being able to understand. It's a matter of not wanting to understand. It's a matter of wanting a Superman God and not a God who genuinely forgives people.

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Seeker, this is almost hellworthy. How enlightening to discover that the reason I believe in PSA is because I don't really want to understand the atonement. <Snip>

JJ - I always appreciate your posts on this issue. But can't you see that concepts like these:

quote:

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It is God in Christ releasing the full power of the eternal creator, and showing that this full power can only reach its climax by an act of ultimate humility.

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actually make no sense at all to most professing Christian laypeople, never mind those with no Christian background whatsoever?

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quote:

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Originally posted by leo:
Today's Church Times carries an extract from a book by Rowan Williams making the same point as Jeffrey John.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Leprechaun:
How enlightening to discover that the reason I believe in PSA is because I don't really want to understand the atonement. This sort of superscilious crap that reminds me why me brief flirtation with liberal theology ended after the first date: because it involves telling evangelicals that they don't really love the Bible, we are just too wilfully stupid to understand it.

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quote:

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Originally posted by MouseThief:

quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
He doesn't. I don't think it takes a great leap of the imagination to decide that the devil is the one to whom the ransom is being paid.

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Except that that's blasphemous, and "imagination" is not the way to do theology. I can imagine a lot of things but that doesn't make them true, let alone revealed truth.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Mystery of Faith:

quote:

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Originally posted by leo:
Today's Church Times carries an extract from a book by Rowan Williams making the same point as Jeffrey John.

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At the risk of breaching copyright here is a snippet of what Rowan Williams has to say. The images he refers to at the outset are the various different ways that have been attempted to explain Jesus' death including sacrifice, ransom and triumph:

"It is important to be aware of all these images, and to try to see why they are used. It is equally important, though, not to treat them as if they were theories that explained why Jesus died. The single central thing is the conviction that, for us to be at peace, Jesus’s life has to be given up. It isn’t that a vengeful and inflexible God demands satisfaction; more that the way the world is makes it unavoidable that the way to our freedom lies through the self-giving of Jesus, even to the point of death.

In the kind of world that you and I inhabit, the kind of world that you and I make or collude with, this is what the price of unrestricted love looks like. Hang on to that, and the jostling images and theories are kept in perspective."

I would say that the overall emphasis - expressed in different language of course - is fairly similar to that of Jeffrey John.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jolly Jape:

quote:

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originally posted by the Revolutionist
I can understand why people react against the idea of God being angry at sin. It is not something pleasant to have to face up to; as sinners, it challenges us at a very deep level of our being. In the face of the ways in which the nature of God has often been distorted into something hateful and unloving, it's unsurprising that people should react strongly against it.

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Wellt his is an oft-repeated argument; I've heard it from various pulpits, I should think, a hundred or so times. But to be quite honest, I don't buy it. I just don't think that whether or not God is angry at us as sinners (which, I suspect, is the concept which you were seeking to convey, rather than the impersonal anger at sin itself) has any effect on whether or not we confront sin in our own lives. A far more potent motivation is personal devotion to God, and it seems to me that the biblical principle of repentance as a fruit of, rather than a precusor of, forgiveness is not lessened one whit by the rejection of the notion of the "angry God"™ paradigm. And of course, overarching all these pragmatic arguments is the question, "Is it true". My perspective is that God sees sin rather as a surgeon sees cancer. Sure, He's angry about it, but that anger is expressed by a determination to do something about it, and compassion, not anger, towards its victims.

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Originally posted by andreas1984:
Like the fathers and mothers who love all their children. Even when a child does injustice to his brother or sister, the father and the mother does not stop loving him/her. Neither does the parent demand for justice.

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Originally posted by Triple Tiara:
Where objections arise is the idea of a kind of "bloodlust" in God - he needs blood, blood, blood in order to be calmed down. It's not his anger with sin, it's his inability to be placated other than by shedding human blood that is the problematic bit.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Leprechaun:
Seeker, this is almost hellworthy. How enlightening to discover that the reason I believe in PSA is because I don't really want to understand the atonement.

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Leprechaun: To me, "the atonement" means "that which brings God and humanity together". I do not think that I said anything at all about you (enlighten me as to who "you" is, too, please?) not wanting to understand the atonement.

Also, as far as I'm concerned, the atonement was done by Christ. Whether you or I understand it matters not a jot. All the theories about atonement are human beings talking about what was done and which theory is "correct" (probably none of them) matters not a jot.

In my opinion, we are "saved" because of Christ, not because we understand any theory of atonement.

But thank you for telling me what I meant to say.
 

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Posted by Fauja (# 2054) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Leprechaun:
I am convinced of PSA from Scripture, but the reason I think it has caught on is because people can understand it: all of this talk about Jesus showing unconditional love by dying and turning death inside out etc just doesn't make sense to people. I'mn in trouble, someone else took the rap for me, for all the philosophical questions it raises, is relatively straightforward to understand!

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jolly Jape:


On the substantive point, I accept that it isn't "Two Ways To Live"; I'm not a professional wordsmith. But whatever the shortcomings of the presentation, is the concept really that much more obscure to a layman or a person with limited contact with Christian thinking than a PSA based account. There is nothing, per se, more obscure in talking about being set free, than about being forgiven. Eternal life is eternal life, whether we inherit it by judicial acquittal or by jailbreak, so to speak. Where tha latter does score (leaving aside the rival claims to scriptural fidelity, about which we disagree) is that it's easier to convey the idea of a loving Father, who will rescue His child, or even a loving brother who will rescue His sibling, at whatever cost, and whatever crimes the child may be guilty of, than of a somewhat ambivalent figure who will forgive only through punishment (nevr mind who is punished), and who holds others to a higher moral standard that that to which He holds himself.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Seeker963:
Leprechaun: To me, "the atonement" means "that which brings God and humanity together". I do not think that I said anything at all about you (enlighten me as to who "you" is, too, please?) not wanting to understand the atonement.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Leprechaun:
I am convinced of PSA from Scripture, but the reason I think it has caught on is because people can understand it: all of this talk about Jesus showing unconditional love by dying and turning death inside out etc just doesn't make sense to people.

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Jesus turning death inside-out not making sense? Isn’t this one of His most basic messages?

quote:

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Matthew 10:39 He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.

Matthew 16:25 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.

Mark 8:35 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.

Luke 9:24 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.

Luke 14:26 “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.

John 12:25 He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Luke 17:33 Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.

Revelation 12:11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.

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quote:

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John 10:17 “I lay down My life that I may take it again."

John 12:24 "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain."

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quote:

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John 10:11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.

John 10:15 As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep.

John 15:13 Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.

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Mark 10:29 So Jesus answered and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My sake and the gospel’s, 30 who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time—houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions—and in the age to come, eternal life. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”

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quote:

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Luke 12:23 Life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing.

John 6:27 Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.”

John 6:63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.

Matthew 6:19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.

Luke 12:21 “So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”

Matthew 6:24 “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

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quote:

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Matthew 13:22 Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful.

John 8:23 And He said to them, “You are from beneath; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world.

John 14:30 I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me.

John 18:36 Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from here.”

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quote:

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John 12:31 Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out.

John 16:8 And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: 9 of sin, because they do not believe in Me; 10 of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; 11 of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.

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quote:

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John 12.23 But Jesus answered them, saying, “The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. 24 Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. 25 He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor.
27 “Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour…
31 Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. 32 And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.”

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quote:

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originally posted by Leprechaun
I remember once being in a discussion with an avowed atheist with a friend who was a more liberal Christian than I.

The conversation went like this:

Atheist: Why does Jesus dying matter?
Christian: It sets is free from the power of death.
Atheist: how?
Christian: by taking death in our place.

Leprechaun (whispering): er..., about 30 seconds ago, you didn't believe in that, what happened?
Christian: It's just easier to explain that way.

So, how does Jesus death bring us "at-one-ness" with God, in terms a normal non-religious person can understand?

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quote:

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Originally posted by riverfalls:
It shows what a sick and peverse world we live in when something as vile as this man gets head line news.

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quote:

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Originally posted by riverfalls:
It shows what a sick and peverse world we live in when something as vile as this man gets head line news.

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quote:

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Originally posted by MouseThief:
I don't think Christ died in my place. I reject both the penal and the substitutionary.

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quote:

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Originally posted by andreas1984:
Dear Martin

I will speak reasonably. And I would like you to tell me if I am being unreasonable here. The way I see it, the most ancient recorded interpretation of the bible to accommodate for PSA comes from feudal Western Europe. Before that, no Christian had put that faith in writing. On the contrary. That faith was rejected by those whom God glorified. Their understanding was different.

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quote:

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If one that was himself a king, beholding a robber and malefactor under punishment, gave his well-beloved son, his only-begotten and true, to be slain; and transferred the death and the guilt as well, from him to his son (who was himself of no such character), that he might both save the condemned man and clear him from his evil reputation; and then if, having subsequently promoted him to great dignity, he had yet, after thus saving him and advancing him to that glory unspeakable, been outraged by the person that had received such treatment: would not that man, if he had any sense, have chosen ten thousand deaths rather than appear guilty of so great ingratitude? This then let us also now consider with ourselves, and groan bitterly for the provocations we have offered our Benefactor; nor let us therefore presume, because though outraged he bears it with long-suffering; but rather for this very reason be full of remorse.

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quote:

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Originally posted by riverfalls:
It shows what a sick and peverse world we live in when something as vile as this man gets head line news.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jolly Jape:


Well, firstly, I don't think your liberal friend, in saying that Christ died in his place, was necessarily embracing PSA. The destinctive, and, to me, problematic feature of PSA is not that Christ died in my place. I know he did that, though I probably wouldn't use that precise terminology, because it carries with it quite a bit of baggage. The bit that I have a problem with is that this death was a punishment, exacted, of an albeit willing, but nonetheless innocent, victim.

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quote:

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Originally posted by riverfalls:
It shows what a sick and peverse world we live in when something as vile as this man gets head line news.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Leprechaun:
I am convinced of PSA from Scripture, but the reason I think it has caught on is because people can understand it: all of this talk about Jesus showing unconditional love by dying and turning death inside out etc. just doesn't make sense to people.

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Proof, if proof were needed, that we live in a fallen world.

Actually, I think you may be right. Spawn said earlier that con evos were the anoraks of the evangelical world, much more interested in the mechanics rather than the mystery of salvation. Whether or not this is fair, the appeal of PSA is that it works on this kind of mechanical level. Mankind stands bereft before the chocolate machine of salvation with no change so God condescends to become the coin that can be dropped into the machine, thus releasing the chocolatey goodness of divine grace. Or something. If one wants a mechanical explanation then PSA works pretty well. We live in a world of instrumental rationality, after all. The only problem is, to paraphrase Henri de Lubac, that Christianity is nothing if it is not rational. But instrumental rationality is the antithesis of the Gospel.

If we are looking for that sort of understanding then Sabellianism is better than Trinitarianism and unitarianism is better than either. Equally quite a lot of Christological heresies are rather less counter intuitive than the Definition of Chalcedon. Conservative Evangelicals, by and large, - to their credit - tend not to abandon these particular beliefs. As Mousethief pointed out both the Trinity and the Incarnation require a reasonably high degree being able to cope with mystery and it would be odd if the atonement was the odd one out among Christian doctrines.
 

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Posted by Seeker963 (# 2066) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
BOTH apply. But let's not pretend that PSA doesn't because it's not nice kiddies.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Callan:
Whether or not this is fair, the appeal of PSA is that it works on this kind of mechanical level.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:

Isaiah 53:5 But he was pierced for OUR transgressions, he was crushed for OUR iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mudfrog:
It seems to me that this whole rejection of PSA stems from a couple of things:

1) I do not want to be seen as a sinner.
2) I do not like the idea that God can be offended by my sin.
3) I do not want to beieve that I need a Saviour.

---

• 1) I do see myself as a sinner.
• 2) I am happy to see sins as an offense to God.
• 3) I very much believe that I need a Savior

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mudfrog:
I might buy that book.

It seems to me that this whole rejection of PSA stems from a couple of things:

1) I do not want to be seen as a sinner.
2) I do not like the idea that God can be offended by my sin.
3) I do not want to beieve that I need a Saviour.

...

I would want to ask WHY do you not think your
And finally, why did God, who so loved the world, send his Son to die in the context of condemnation, if God is not a condemnatory God unless a substituionary Saviour is provided?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Touch'e Seeker963. Every one understands the primitive, the primal. Every one understands blood sacrifice. I can EASILY see PSA ONLY in "... that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures" (1 Cor 15:3)

In Romans 5:6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

In II Cor. 5:15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:10 He died for us ...

and perhaps above all by the UTTERLY CHRISTIANLY INCONTROVERTIBLE:

Isaiah 53:5 But he was pierced for OUR transgressions, he was crushed for OUR iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

So please feel free to dilute, rationalize, diminish that. To promote another gospel of another Jesus. And leave the debate. Wither off the vine. The debate becomes WHY does God operate like this? Why does He define love, how IS He Love, in such ferocious terms? In such appalling, lethal, dreadful, bloody terms? Some are struggling with THAT reality here. I do to. But to PRETEND that the gutting God of the Bible is not the God we HAVE to deal with is gutless.

The simplicity of Christ and him crucified is for the simple, for the sick, not for those who don't need it in their unfallen, pure, intellectuality. It's for NORMAL, ordinary people to be able to think Christianly. Not intellectualist esoterica.

Savage Amazonian and Papua New Guinean stoneage tribesmen are brought to Christ by this simplicity. Iraqis will be in the Resurrection. The vast ignorant mass of humanity will.

Because of the stark, affective power of Christ's dying for their, our, your, my SIN.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Freddy:
I think that the main problem that I have with PSA, aside from portraying a God who is somehow satisfied by the blood of His own Son, is that it is inexplicably accepting of sinful behavior.

As I understand PSA, it implies that we are all sinners who are incapable of reforming - and that therefore refraining from immoral and evil behavior is not a central point of religion. PSA teaches, instead, that faith will miraculously take away the desire for sin. It therefore nullifies the biblical refrain "Cease to do evil, learn to do well."

It makes more sense to me to think that the Bible teaches that we are capable of reforming with God's help, acknowledging that without Him we can do nothing. The Incarnation is therefore about making this happen - God leading humanity in freedom to turn and follow Him by breaking our chains and teaching us the Way.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Sin, as taught in the Bible, does indeed make us to be sinners who are incapeable of reforming.

---

Where does the Bible say this? Are you saying that the Bible is not constantly urging us to reform?

quote:

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Originally posted by Mudfrog:
If all we needed was reformation, do you think it would have be necessary for Christ to die? If all we needed was behavioural reformation, the the Torah is perfectly sufficient.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Mudfrog:
PSA is not accepting of sinful behaviour. It recognises that because of my sin, Christ died. How then can I continue to sin?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mudfrog:

It seems to me that this whole rejection of PSA stems from a couple of things:

1) I do not want to be seen as a sinner.
2) I do not like the idea that God can be offended by my sin.
3) I do not want to beieve that I need a Saviour.

I would want to ask WHY do you not think your sin is imprtant enough for God to want to remedy it?
WHY do you think Jesus had to die a criminal's death - why not in a war or in an accident?
And if God is NOT angry about sin, then what exactly does he feel about it?
And finally, why did God, who so loved the world, send his Son to die in the context of condemnation, if God is not a condemnatory God unless a substituionary Saviour is provided?

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
So please feel free to dilute, rationalize, diminish that.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Isaiah 53 is ALL that's needed for PSA.

---

quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mudfrog:
It seems to me that this whole rejection of PSA stems from a couple of things:

1) I do not want to be seen as a sinner.
2) I do not like the idea that God can be offended by my sin.
3) I do not want to believe that I need a Saviour.

I would want to ask WHY do you not think your sin is important enough for God to want to remedy it?
WHY do you think Jesus had to die a criminal's death - why not in a war or in an accident?
And if God is NOT angry about sin, then what exactly does he feel about it?
And finally, why did God, who so loved the world, send his Son to die in the context of condemnation, if God is not a condemnatory God unless a substitutionary Saviour is provided?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
JJ - this is hard stuff. Then YOU, like me, like ALL of us, find God REPUGNANT.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Touch'e Seeker963. Every one understands the primitive, the primal. Every one understands blood sacrifice. I can EASILY see PSA ONLY in "... that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures" (1 Cor 15:3)

In Romans 5:6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

In II Cor. 5:15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:10 He died for us ...

and perhaps above all by the UTTERLY CHRISTIANLY INCONTROVERTIBLE:

Isaiah 53:5 But he was pierced for OUR transgressions, he was crushed for OUR iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

So please feel free to dilute, rationalize, diminish that. To promote another gospel of another Jesus. And leave the debate. Wither off the vine. The debate becomes WHY does God operate like this? Why does He define love, how IS He Love, in such ferocious terms? In such appalling, lethal, dreadful, bloody terms? Some are struggling with THAT reality here. I do to. But to PRETEND that the gutting God of the Bible is not the God we HAVE to deal with is gutless.

The simplicity of Christ and him crucified is for the simple, for the sick, not for those who don't need it in their unfallen, pure, intellectuality. It's for NORMAL, ordinary people to be able to think Christianly. Not intellectualist esoterica.

Savage Amazonian and Papua New Guinean stoneage tribesmen are brought to Christ by this simplicity. Iraqis will be in the Resurrection. The vast ignorant mass of humanity will.

Because of the stark, affective power of Christ's dying for their, our, your, my SIN.

---

• In the beginning, God made us and gave us one simple rule - we screwed up and broke it.
• God gave us a covenant based on a law we could understand - we screwed up and broke it.
• God sent us prophets to re-explain the law and help us turn back to God - we screwed up and ignored them.
• God sent us his only Son to live for us and with us and show us who he was - we screwed up and killed him.*
• God raised him from the dead to show us that it was all for us that he came here in the first place. He also sent his spirit because, you know what? Even though we have screwed up so much and Got It Wrong ™ every single step of the way, God still loves us and God still forgives us.

quote:

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Originally posted by mirrizin:
And in the Jewish system, He was the final sacrifice that ended the tyranny of the Talmud (and possibly the Torah), but that's not the same thing as PSA, to my eyes.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by PhilA:


[*]In the beginning, God made us and gave us one simple rule - we screwed up and broke it.
[*]God gave us a covenant based on a law we could understand - we screwed up and broke it.
[*]God sent us prophets to re-explain the law and help us turn back to God - we screwed up and ignored them.
[*]God sent us his only Son to live for us and with us and show us who he was - we screwed up and killed him.*
[*]God raised him from the dead to show us that it was all for us that he came here in the first place. He also sent his spirit because, you know what? Even though we have screwed up so much and Got It Wrong ™ every single step of the way, God still loves us and God still forgives us.
[/list]
In that sense, Jesus died for us. Jesus died, in part, to get our attention because we wouldn't listen any other way. 'God so loves the world that he sent his only Son', and even though we stripped him, nailed him to a cross, spat on him and told God we didn't want him, God still loves us and still forgives us and still stands there with open arms waiting for us, all of us who 'believe on him', so that we 'shall not perish but have eternal life'. God doesn't love us because we killed his Son, he loves us in spite of it. As Jesus himself said; 'Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.'

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:

And, DODdy, do you find the God of the OT repugnant?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mirrizin:
[POSSIBLE TANGENT]
I was going partly on my reading of the Gospels, and a commentary I've read. If you know more about this than I do, please share.

My observation was that Jesus was condemning (or at least criticizing rather vigorously) the Pharisees who had built these incredibly complicated commentaries and extensions of the Law and set them up as an expression of God's will unto themselves. And according to the reading I've done, some of them took this law so far as to say that people who didn't do it exactly as they did were obviously "lesser Jews." Rather than consider the purpose of the Sabbath, they enforced very strict, sometimes ridiculous rules governing what one could and could not do not the Sabbath (just as an example).

When I typed "Talmud," I was referring to this practice of micromanaging exegesis, of expanding the law in preposterous ways so that everybody knew exactly what God's hypothetical will would be in every situation. The Talmud hadn't been written yet, but the foundations were there. I'm also criticizing a particular style of exegesis that is associated with what I suppose to be some Talmudic thought, not criticizing the Talmud itself.

And yes, I'm making a bit of a straw man out of the Pharisees to prove that there's a negative extreme that Jesus was against. I don't mean to say that they all felt this way, but I think it was one current of thinking at the time, and continues to be one today (and not only among Jews, I've heard of neo-pagans who can get caught up in this kind of thing). It's also one expressed many times in the Gospel, so I figure there's something to it.

I think one of Christ's points was that sin is not a matter of proper obedience to the Laws written by man, but of proper obedience to the Law written by God, and this is based on loving your neighbor and loving God, rather than refusing to turn the lights on on Saturday, for instance (no disrespect to Orthodox Jews intended, that's just a statement of my belief).

Tyranny? I think tyranny refers to human things. The "tyranny" of God is just the way things are in and of themselves. As much as we interpret it, there is only one reality.

If I had to pick a tyrant, I think Christ makes a pretty good role model for one, for he said that in order to truly lead one would have to be a servant of all.

Does that clarify where I'm coming from?
[/POSSIBLE TANGENT]

---

It seems to me that you have not read much. if anything, of the Talmud. You have also bought into the criticism of some pharisees as if it was a criticicism of all pharisees. Jesus also criticised gentiles and future church leeaders too.
 

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Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
ME a dualist? Duellist yes. So the Flood is our misinterpretation? Misattribution of the last bout of global warming to God? No Death Angel came to the Passover? I mean, what's LEFT of the OT if you take the illiberal nasty bits out?
 

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Posted by GoodCatholicLad (# 9231) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by MouseThief:
I don't think Christ died in my place. I reject both the penal and the substitutionary.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
I mean, what's LEFT of the OT if you take the illiberal nasty bits out?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:


True. Then I must ... and I must ... unreservedly apologize.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mudfrog:
I might buy that book.

It seems to me that this whole rejection of PSA stems from a couple of things:

1) I do not want to be seen as a sinner.

---

quote:

---

2) I do not like the idea that God can be offended by my sin.

---

quote:

---

3) I do not want to beieve that I need a Saviour.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mudfrog:
I might buy that book.

It seems to me that this whole rejection of PSA stems from a couple of things:

1) I do not want to be seen as a sinner.

---

Wrong. At least, I don't like the idea, but I believe it's true.

quote:

---

2) I do not like the idea that God can be offended by my sin.

---

As above

quote:

---

3) I do not want to beieve that I need a Saviour.

---

As above.

Actually, Mudfrog, I want an apology from you for this series of unfounded allegations. You have simply turned a theological disagreement into an opportunity to attack, denigrate and belittle the faith, honesty and integrity of the people you disagree with. That is, frankly, disgusting.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
... Isaiah 53:5 But he was pierced for OUR transgressions, he was crushed for OUR iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

---

I'm no fan of PSA: as many non-Christians have said, taking something that sounds like "God wants to kill us because we do wrong, but decided to let us off and kill Jesus instead" literally doesn't make sense, morally or otherwise. It's also completely at odds with the parable of the prodigal son, unless you make out that Jesus was the fatted calf

And yet... the verse above that Martin (PCN&SBH) pointed out does lend itself very much to a PSA interpretation. Could someone from the less PSA side of the fence say how they understand this verse? I think Martin's point was a good one, and no-one has really answered this.

- Chris.
 

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Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by mirrizin:
leo:

I never said I was an expert. And I admitted that I was making a straw man based on some familiar biblical passages. At the same time, it's probably true that the Pharisees captured in the Bible don't speak for the entireity of the movement.

Could you unpack what you said a little? What, in your opinion, is the relationship between these books and the crucifixion? And where did Jesus criticize the Gentiles?

And yes, I'll be the first to plead ignorance, though I appreciate the reminder.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by sanityman:
And yet... the verse above that Martin (PCN&SBH) pointed out does lend itself very much to a PSA interpretation. Could someone from the less PSA side of the fence say how they understand this verse? I think Martin's point was a good one, and no-one has really answered this.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by PhilA:
If you put the cross and resurrection in the context of the whole of salvation history, PSA simply doesn't explain it. It is like taking the whole of a play and saying it means one thing, but the final scene means something totally different.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by sanityman:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
... Isaiah 53:5 But he was pierced for OUR transgressions, he was crushed for OUR iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

---

I'm no fan of PSA: as many non-Christians have said, taking something that sounds like "God wants to kill us because we do wrong, but decided to let us off and kill Jesus instead" literally doesn't make sense, morally or otherwise. It's also completely at odds with the parable of the prodigal son, unless you make out that Jesus was the fatted calf

And yet... the verse above that Martin (PCN&SBH) pointed out does lend itself very much to a PSA interpretation. Could someone from the less PSA side of the fence say how they understand this verse? I think Martin's point was a good one, and no-one has really answered this.

- Chris.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by sanityman:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
... Isaiah 53:5 But he was pierced for OUR transgressions, he was crushed for OUR iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

---

I'm no fan of PSA: as many non-Christians have said, taking something that sounds like "God wants to kill us because we do wrong, but decided to let us off and kill Jesus instead" literally doesn't make sense, morally or otherwise. It's also completely at odds with the parable of the prodigal son, unless you make out that Jesus was the fatted calf

And yet... the verse above that Martin (PCN&SBH) pointed out does lend itself very much to a PSA interpretation. Could someone from the less PSA side of the fence say how they understand this verse? I think Martin's point was a good one, and no-one has really answered this.

- Chris.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by sanityman:
Is sin so awful to god that he can't bear to be in its presence? This seems to underly a lot of the disagreement, including Mudfrog's contentious list.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by GoodCatholicLad:
My priest once said on a lecture on Fundamentalism that if Jesus' only reason for being on this earth was to die for our sins, ie his ministry, his teachings, his love were not that important. Mary should have smacked him in the head with a rock soon after he was born.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by sanityman:
As a tangent, a tributary of the PSA argument is the axiom that "God cannot look upon sin," usually proof-texted with "but your iniquities have separated you from your God" (from memory: reference?).

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quote:

---

As a tangent, a tributary of the PSA argument is the axiom that "God cannot look upon sin," usually proof-texted with "but your iniquities have separated you from your God" (from memory: reference?). This seems to make god out to be someone who wouldn't have us in the house if there's the slightest thing wrong between us (I've even heard it said that all sin is equally bad in god's eyes, effectively equating dropping your chewing gum with genocide - both ridiculous and morally indefensible).

---