...God will search our hearts, not grade our essays...

[Guest]

I subscribe to the daily email entitled gracEmail by Edwad Fudge. Today I recieved this, so I thought I'd pass it on.

God bless!!

ATONEMENT: REALITY AND THEORIES
A gracEmail subscriber writes: "I recently came across some of C. S. Lewis’ comments concerning his denial of the 'penal, substitutionary' view of atonement. I have never heard atonement explained in any other way. This led me to research a former and greatly respected professor who also basically denies the 'penal substitutionary' view. Is this just a minor disagreement or does it involve an essential truth of the Christian faith?"


* * *
Christians everywhere proclaim that through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ the holy God forgives sinful human beings and restores them to right relationship with himself. That accomplishment is called the "atonement." It is a reality which is of the essence of our faith, an "essential truth" in the most literal sense. But while orthodox Christians (those who perpetuate core apostolic Christianity as recorded in the New Testament, whether Protestant, Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox) agree in affirming the atonement, they are not of one mind when asked to explain exactly how Jesus' life and death brought about that happy result. Believers through the centuries have offered a variety of theories about "how" Jesus' life and death reconciled God and sinners.

It should not surprise us that explanations of the atonement differ. We cannot even explain the marvels of God's earthly creation. For example, scientists disagree whether light is best described as a particle or as a wave. And while scientists spin theories, common people continue to see. It is not necessary that we understand light in order to enjoy its benefits. Similarly, we do not trust in any explanation of the atonement but in God who came in Jesus Christ and made it a reality. There is a great difference between trusting in God as Savior and in explaining the intricacies of his saving work. All our explanations are fragmentary at best, for now we see through a glass darkly.


The Apostle Paul contemplated God's strategy to rescue sinners from all nations and confessed: "Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and unfathomable his ways!" (Rom. 11:33). Our reaction might well be the same when we consider any of God's mighty works. We cannot explain how God created the universe, delivered Israel from slavery, became one of us in the person of Jesus Christ, reconciled sinners by Jesus' life and death or raised him from the dead. But that really does not matter. On the day of judgment, God will search our hearts, not grade our essays. Meanwhile, our most appropriate response to God's works is not to spin a theory but to burst forth in doxology. In worship and in awe we exclaim: "From him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! (Rom. 11:36.)

[Guest]

For example, scientists disagree whether light is best described as a particle or as a wave. And while scientists spin theories, common people continue to see.

I disagree with the spirit of the essay.

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

-- Walt Whitman

What Fudge and Whitman are suggesting is that somehow the scientist, and by analogy the Christian who seeks deeper understanding, becomes blind to the simple beauty of the stars.

That's just rubbish.

When the astronomer learns about red giants, white dwarfs, quasars, pulsars, black holes, galaxies, galaxy clusters, and a host of other astronomical phenomena, he doesn't become less awed by the night sky.

He becomes more awed.

Whitman, who's wandered off by himself, is blind to all that.

Contrary to popular aphorism, ignorance is not bliss.

It's just ignorant.

Perry

[Guest]

A gracEmail subscriber writes: "I recently came across some of C. S. Lewis’ comments concerning his denial of the 'penal, substitutionary' view of atonement. I have never heard atonement explained in any other way.

This subscriber's comment was a great surprise to me. I purchased every writing of Lewis of which I could get a hold, and have read them all. I was certainly under the impression that he believed in the "penal, substitutionary" view of atonement.

However, I gave away my last copy of "Mere Christianity" and so am unable, at present, to look it up in his most popular book and prove it.

I would like to see the quote which gave that subscriber such an idea.

[Guest]

I would like to see the quote which gave that subscriber such an idea.

Here's what I think are some relavent passages from Mere Christianity. They are from book II, Chapter 4... The Perfect Penitent.

They seem express Lewis' view of Atonement.

Now before I became a Christian I was under the impression that the first thing Christians had to believe was one particular theory as to what the point of this dying was. According to that theory God wanted to punish men for having deserted and joined the Great Rebel, but Christ volunteered to be punished instead, and so God let us off. Now I admit that even this theory does not seem to me quite so immoral and so silly as it used to;

…

But supposing God became a man--suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God’s nature in one person--then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can do it only if He becomes man. Our attempts at this dying will succeed only if we men share in God’s dying, just as our thinking can succeed only because it is but a drop of the ocean of His intelligence: but we cannot share God’s dying unless God dies; and He cannot die except by being a man. That is the sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all.

I have heard some people complain that if Jesus was God as well as man, then His sufferings and death lose all value in their eyes, “because it must have been so easy for him.” Others may (very rightly) rebuke the ingratitude and ungraciousness of this objection; what staggers me is the misunderstanding it betrays. In one sense, of course, those who make it are right. They have even understated their own case. The perfect submission, the perfect suffering, the perfect death were not only easier to Jesus because He was God, but were possible only because He was God. But surely that is a very odd reason for not accepting them? The teacher is able to form the letters for the child. If it rejected him because “it’s easy for grown-ups” and waited to learn writing from another child who could not write itself (and so had no “unfair” advantage), it would not get on very quickly. If I am drowning in a rapid river, a man who still has one foot on the bank may give me a hand which saves my life. Ought I to shout back (between my gasps) “No, it’s not fair! You have an advantage! You’re keeping one foot on the bank”? That advantage--call it “unfair” if you like--is the only reason why he can be of any use to me. To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself?

Such is my own way of looking at what Christians call the Atonement. But remember, this is only one more picture. Do not mistake it for the thing itself: and if it does not help you, drop it.

[Guest]

Thanks for the quote, Perry.

Lewis's explanation still seems pretty "substitutionary" to me.

[Guest]

What Fudge and Whitman are suggesting is that somehow the scientist, and by analogy the Christian who seeks deeper understanding, becomes blind to the simple beauty of the stars.

Actually, I don't think that's what he's trying to get across. Fudge is certainly no stranger to deep theology, having written many books on various thelological topics. His most famous being a 500 page defense of annihlationism called The Fire that Consumes.


He is merely saying that we don't have to understand it, to benifit from it. And we don't have to understand it the same way, to be brothers. Remember the question he's answering. "Is this [atonement theory] just a minor disagreement or does it involve an essential truth of the Christian faith?"

I read it as a plea for us to understand each other, in our differences, realizing that we all love the Lord, and though we have various theories, let's praise Him for the great truth that we are saved apart from understanding just how it all works. He is explaining the part that is "essential" (in his first sentence) to understand.

Thanks for the comments,

[Guest]

a plea for us to understand each other, in our differences, realizing that we all love the Lord

That's true enough. I come from a background of being in the "one true church". It's impossible to hold such a view without a good deal of cognitive dissonance, and very liberating to get shed of it. There's a great joy that comes with knowing that, despite our differences about certain details, God is doing a mighty work in those who believe.

Though it might not be readily apparent from some of my posts, I'm probably more liberal with those details than the majority. I'm actually in the way of thinking that most of us are gonna make it to a good place in the end. It always hurts a bit when I see the rather casual (sometimes it seems even eager) way which some Christians consign their fellow man to the fires of hell.

Perry