I’m not actually going to try to answer the question of why Jesus died. But Adrian Warnock has reopened the controversy on this issue in the way that he has started his new series on the atonement. In doing so he has ruffled a few feathers, including making Dave Warnock write “It seems I have no gospel”, and has apparently suggested that Steve Chalke, Spring Harvest and the Evangelical Alliance teach that “Christ Did Not Die for Sin!”
…except apparently to those which agree with him and with Dr Grudem.
He outlines his new comment policy in what has now become a footnote to every posting on his blog:
Comments posted since 15 Dec 2006 have been approved by Adrian Warnock or an associate but do not necessarily reflect his opinion. Please be cautions of older comments and content on sites with links from or to this blog. …Comment moderation introduces a delay to discussion, and due to the volume of comments, many will be rejected. Writing a post on your own blog with a link to this page may be a good alternative.
Well, I am here taking up his last suggestion.
But what does his new policy mean in practice? I wrote a comment on part 7 of Adrian’s interview with Dr Wayne Grudem, actually before this new policy came into force (which means that it should have been approved because it met the policy in force at the time), which was rejected. I asked Adrian why, and submitted a revised comment, but this was also rejected. The comment was entirely on topic and of general interest, as Adrian appears to accept. And for once I was agreeing with and supporting Dr Grudem’s position. But it seems that Adrian will not allow me even to refer to the fact that Dr Grudem has rejected the positions which I hold on other issues.
Adrian’s blog has become one of the most respected in the Christian blogosphere. Does he now want to “castrate” it (see the PS below re such language), turning it into a forum for himself, Dr Grudem and others who agree with them to pat one another on the back? At least this kind of castration is reversible, although it needs to be reversed quickly if Adrian is not to lose his reputation as a good blogger.
Here is my comment on part 7 of the Grudem interview, in its original form as posted 12/14/2006 10:55:16 PM and then deleted:
Well, having been condemned by Grudem for being a “feminist” and again for not accepting that penal substitution is a complete description of the atonement, I am glad not to be condemned a third time for being in a paedo-baptist denomination, the Church of England!
But actually in fact the C of E in practice, and semi-officially at least in our diocese, recognises dual modes of baptism and allows them to continue in parallel. In my congregation, it is up to each family whether they want their child to be baptised as an infant; in practice most church members choose instead to have a dedication service, whereas it is outsiders who want a proper infant baptism! Adult believers are encouraged to come forward for baptism by immersion (in our church in a borrowed portable baptistry), or if they have already been baptised as an infant for “renewal of baptismal vows”, which comes to almost the same thing, usually immersion in the same water, but cannot be officially called baptism. Alternatively, some are baptised as believers at other churches, camps etc, as I was before there was a “renewal of baptismal vows” service; and no one complains as long as we don’t teach publicly that everyone should do the same. Indeed a friend of mine who was baptised in this way, and didn’t hide it, was recently accepted for ordination in the C of E. We are not allowed to teach that infant baptism is invalid, but we can opt out of it for ourselves. We cannot insist on believers’ baptism as a condition for church membership – but then most UK Baptists don’t either.
While this kind of compromise is certainly not ideal, it does seem to work in practice. Of course the C of E loves compromises, and this one is much more acceptable than some of the others!
Adrian rejected this, and I asked him why. I understand that there could be a problem with the word “condemned” in the first paragraph. I wrote the following to him in an e-mail (links added):
Well, what can I say? Would you prefer “damned”? As far as I can tell that is what Grudem is trying to say, about both “feminists” and Chalke supporters. Not exactly bridgebuilding! But I will leave Suzanne to complain about this. Grudem was not quite so explicit in what he actually wrote. He did say, completely without foundation, that “Chalke is denying the heart of the Gospel.” But he doesn’t quite say that Chalke is going to hell, and so he might not say the same about me.So how about “Well, having had my beliefs rejected by Grudem for being a “feminist” and again for not accepting that penal substitution is a complete description of the atonement, I am glad not to be rejected a third time for being in a paedo-baptist denomination, the Church of England!”? If I start the comment like that, will you accept it? Well, I’ll try it and see.
And the answer quickly came back: no, Adrian would not accept this. Why not? He gave me a rather unconvincing reason, which I will not publish because this was in a private e-mail. But it seems to me that the real point is that he doesn’t want any reference on his blog to any disagreement with Dr Grudem. He just wants to post Grudem’s propaganda without allowing for any proper discussion of its validity.
Adrian, if I have misrepresented you in any way, you are welcome to comment, but I will be convinced only if you open up your blog again to proper discussion of the issues you raise.
PS: Here is another comment I made, this time on part 5 of the Grudem interview and in response to Donna L. Carlaw’s comment on that post of 14 December, 2006 23:38, which Adrian has at least not yet accepted:
Donna wrote “a good help mate will see when her husband needs her gentle intervention. She can do that without further wounding him by castration.” Then she explained this with “I do believe that a woman can be a strong help mate without seeking to knock her husband out of the leadership role in the marriage. That is what I meant by “castration”, removing him from his God-given position because of his handicap.” (typo corrected)This is an example of one of the worst logical fallacies and methods of argument, labelling one’s opponent’s position with a highly pejorative label (like “castration”), when it has no connection at all with the literal meaning of that label, and implicitly arguing that the position is wrong because it bears that label.
Donna, how would you react if I wrote something like the following: “An egalitarian man does not rape his wife”, in a context implying that complementarian men do, and then explained this with “by ‘rape’ I mean ‘exercise a leadership position over'”? Of course I would not dream of using such language. Maybe some egalitarians have done so, but not in this discussion. Please let’s keep this kind of rabble rousing argument out of this blog.
“No need to apologize“, you think, Donna? On the contrary, every need, for your explanation has made your slur worse, rather than better. If your mother can take the lead over your invalid father “without making a man feel like less of a man“, without castrating him physically or presumably in the non-physical sense you have in mind, then why can’t the same happen in a marriage in which the couple agree on an egalitarian relationship? Note that I am not talking about a case where a wife “assumes authority” or “usurps authority” over her husband (something which Paul rightly did not allow, although he reserved “castrate” for the Judaising false teachers of Galatians 5:12) but where this relationship is agreed between the couple.
I didn’t write what I could have done (but which would surely have guaranteed the rejection of this comment), that Dr Grudem also uses the kind of argument by attaching pejorative labels which I objected to Donna using. One of Grudem’s favourite pejorative labels is “feminist”, which is not as bad as “castrate”, but by arguing in this way at all he is encouraging others down the “slippery slope” into using labels like “castrate”. Actually I wouldn’t be surprised if someone finds that Grudem has also used “castrate” in this way, but I don’t have any evidence for this.
Well, if Adrian’s new policy introduced 22 minutes after Donna’s comment stops people making generalised slurs of this nature on egalitarian women, and refusing to apologise for them, then maybe the policy is not all bad. But if he allows comments like this to be made, he should allow replies to them – if he doesn’t apply his new policy to them retroactively by deleting them, as he did to the original version of my comment, as copied above, posted 43 minutes earlier and then deleted.
UPDATE: Adrian has now accepted an even further weakened version of my comment on part 7 of the Grudem interview. So the answer to the question I put to him in a private e-mail:
Or is your policy in fact that you will not allow any mention that anyone might disagree with Grudem?
must in fact be “No”.
I realised that the opening of my posting above, “…except apparently to those who agree with him and with Dr Grudem”, was grammatically confused as “those” appeared to refer back to comments rather than to people, but was then followed by “who”. I considered correcting this to “…except apparently to those made by people who agree…” But it now seems clear that in fact Adrian’s policy is not directed at individuals, but the content of their comments. So I have corrected this to “…except apparently to those which agree…”
When I was as Christian student in Cambridge in the 1970’s I was encouraged to look to Charles Simeon as one of my heroes. He had faithfully preached the evangelical gospel in that city for more than 50 years, and was one of the main leaders of the evangelical awakening in the Church of England which started started in the late 18th century.
Another Christian hero of mine is John Wesley, the great preacher of a generation before Simeon. But he is considered suspect in some circles as an Arminian and for his teaching on Christian perfection.
And so I was interesting to see this account on Adrian’s blog of a conversation between Simeon and Wesley. Simeon starts by saying
Sir, I understand that you are called an Arminian; and I have been sometimes called a Calvinist; and therefore I suppose we are to draw daggers.
But after asking Wesley some questions, he concludes:
Then, Sir, with your leave I will put up my dagger again; for this is all my Calvinism; this is my election, my justification by faith, my final perseverance: it is in substance all that I hold, and as I hold it; and therefore, if you please, instead of searching out terms and phrases to be a ground of contention between us, we will cordially unite in those things wherein we agree.
Would that Calvinists and Arminians today could agree so easily! Almost all evangelicals today can agree on the points which Wesley and Simeon agreed on – although perhaps for some including myself
so depraved that you would never have thought of turning to God, if God had not first put it into your heart
is something of an overstatement.
But the difficulty today comes when Calvinists go beyond what Calvin taught, and Scripture teaches, into teachings like limited atonement (Christ died only for the elect, contra 2 Corinthians 5:14) and double predestination (some are predestined not to be saved, contra 1 Timothy 2:4 and 2 Peter 3:9); and when Arminians drift towards Pelagianism, the equally unbiblical teaching that people can bring about their own salvation. While I am sure there will continue to be disagreements about some of the details (and I hope to look for resolution of some of the issues when I continue my Kingdom Thermodynamics series), there should be sufficient common ground here that all evangelicals can work together in harmony.
Meanwhile Adrian is starting a campaign for an electronic edition of “the massive 21-volume set of Simeon’s sermons that form a commentary on the Bible”. If you are interested in getting this, please let him know.
Adrian Warnock has been reporting on the Desiring God 2006 conference, entitled “Above All Earthly Powers: The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World”.
Now let me first say that I have a lot of respect for the ministry of Desiring God and its leader John Piper. They are doing a great work by emphasising the importance for Christians of desiring God and seeking “a passion for the supremacy of God in all things”. I also greatly appreciate Piper’s support for exercise of the gifts of the Spirit in a properly balanced way.
But Piper is not as careful as he should be at distinguishing between biblical standards and the cultural norms of conservative America. I am not the only one to suggest this. For example, Suzanne McCarthy has referred to a list of roles which Piper considers as suitable for women. I commented as follows on her posting:
Are these rules supposed to be Christian and derived from the Bible? It sounds to me as if they come from a 19th century manual of etiquette. That doesn’t make them necessarily wrong, but nor does it make them right. Piper, Grudem and friends need to distinguish between Christian values and old-fashioned conservative cultural ones. A good course in cross-cultural evangelism, or some in depth first hand experience of a very different culture, would do them a world of good.
and also:
I just read the first half sentence of Piper’s book, and I think this gives the real key to his thinking. That first half sentence is “When I was a boy growing up in Greenville, South Carolina“. It was in that conservative environment, around 50 years ago (according to Wikipedia he was born in 1946, actually in Tennessee), that his cultural values were formed. In the second paragraph we learn that they attended a Southern Baptist church, and that of course further explains the formation of his cultural values. He goes on to describe supposed differences between men and women which he claims “go to the root of our personhood“, but which it seems to me are at least very largely conditioned by the specific cultural and religious context in which Piper grew up. …To summarise, Piper is making the mistake which I am afraid is so common among Americans, especially conservative ones but not only Christians, of simply assuming that their own cultural values are objectively and absolutely right, … There is a woeful failure to understand the distinction between cultural norms and absolute morality.
So, I was really interested to see that Desiring God was taking on the issue of relating to a postmodern world whose cultural norms are very different from those of the conservative South in which Piper grew up.
And what do I find? I am basing this mainly on Adrian’s rather brief summaries of others’ reports, but these are the points which some have considered significant. I have also looked at some of Tim Challies‘ more detailed first hand reports.
The controversial preacher Mark Driscoll spoke about: (as summarised by Adrian, condensing a report by Ricky Alcantar):
Nine issues to contend for:
1) The Bible.
2) The sovereignty of God.
3) The virgin birth of Jesus Christ.
4) We must argue against pelagianism, a denial of original sin.
5) We must contend for penal substitutionary atonement.
6) The exclusivity of Jesus.
7) We must contend for male and female roles.
8) We must contend for hell.
9) We must contend that kingdom is priority over culture.
John Piper, in comments on Driscoll’s talk, spoke as follows about these nine issues (as reported by Josh Harris and quoted by Adrian):
He referenced a point Driscoll had made in his talk about the importance of holding certain unchanging truths in our left hand that are the non-negotiables of the faith while being willing to contextualize and differ on secondary issues and stylistically (these are “right hand” issues).
In principle Piper is making an excellent point here on relating to postmodern culture. But I find it very interesting that what Piper affirms as “the non-negotiables of the faith” are apparently these particular nine points listed originally by Driscoll. Most of these nine points I can accept as important and non-negotiable (although I would want to ask for clarification about point 4, and I would argue that penal substitutionary atonement is only one among several good biblical models of the atonement). But this list is revealing both for what it includes and for what it omits.
For example, it omits any mention of several things which are clearly taught and commanded in the New Testament as norms for all believers, such as baptism and the Lord’s Supper. I refer not to the details of how these are to be administered and what they mean, but their very existence. If such things are not listed as non-negotiables, does that imply that they are secondary issues on which we can differ and which we can abandon for the sake of “contextualisation”, in other words in order to make our Christian faith more palatable to, for example, a postmodern generation? Or are they simply additional non-negotiables, thus implying that this list nine points is to be consider as incomplete?
But my main point here is the inclusion in this list of one item, “7) We must contend for male and female roles”, which seems to me totally out of place here. Tim Challies‘ version of this is “6) We must contend for gender distinctions”, but he actually lists this before “7) We must contend for the exclusivity of Christ”, as if gender roles more important than the exclusivity of Christ! Well, what exactly are the “male and female roles” or “gender distinctions” which we must contend for? Ricky Alcantar’s report says a little more here:
7) We must contend for male and female roleswe’re different. Male elders are to govern. We do not endorse homosexuality.
If Driscoll and Piper’s main point is that Christians should oppose homosexual practice and same-sex “marriage”, I would not disagree with them. But I would wonder why opposing these is listed as a “non-negotiable of the faith” when there is no mention of opposition to any other sins, such as heterosexual sex outside marriage, or greed, or pride. Why is homosexuality considered to be a much worse sin than these others? Is there really a biblical basis for this, or is this a case where (despite “non-negotiable” 9) cultural values are being put before kingdom values?
But it seems that what Driscoll and Piper largely have in mind is gender distinctions in the church, that “Male elders are to govern.” Now it is well known to regular readers here and at Better Bibles Blog that I differ from Piper, and implicitly also from Driscoll, on such issues and on the principles of interpretation of Bible passages which are alleged to teach this. I won’t repeat those arguments here, but will restrict my comments to wondering why they make such a big thing out of this. After all, there are in fact only a very few passages in the New Testament which teach about such gender roles. There is probably more teaching which favours slavery, but I don’t see “We must contend for slavery” among the non-negotiables! It might well have been on similar lists in the early 19th century, but anyone looking at such a list today would recognise how dependent it was on cultural norms which have now been abandoned.
There are many issues which are given far more prominence in the Bible than gender roles but have been omitted from this list of non-negotiables. For example, Paul devotes two long chapters of 1 Corinthians to spiritual gifts, and commands elsewhere
Do not put out the Spirit’s fire. 20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt 21 but test them all; hold on to what is good, 22 reject whatever is harmful.
(1 Thessalonians 5:19-22, TNIV)
But Driscoll and Piper do not list acceptance of spiritual gifts including prophecy as a non-negotiable. Why not? Piper accepts these gifts himself, but maybe he is afraid of upsetting a large part of his audience, cessationists who disagree on this, by stressing their importance. But he doesn’t seem afraid of upsetting those who reject his approach to gender issues. Or is it because he accepts that cessationist arguments are strong enough that this should be considered a legitimate area for disagreement among Christians? Well, the cessationist arguments, largely an indefensible interpretation of 1 Corinthians 13:10, seem to me much weaker than the arguments for alternative interpretations of passages on gender roles in the church. So why can’t Piper and friends accept that here too there is a legitimate area for disagreement among Christians?
It seems to me that Driscoll and Piper are picking and choosing among biblical commands, and not to find issues which really are central to the Christian faith and should really be considered non-negotiable. Instead they have selected a list of points which fit with their personal presuppositions about what is central to the faith, based on their culture as much as on the Bible. Their approach on such matters seems to be similar to that of the scribes and Pharisees of Mark 7, who no doubt justified their teachings from Scripture, but of whom Jesus said:
You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.
(Mark 7:8, TNIV)
So, what should we do? I nearly finished this post here, but decided that this was too negative. I would challenge Driscoll and Piper (if they would listen to me!), and others who might agree with them, to go back to the drawing board and reexamine what really are the central non-negotiables of the Christian faith, the points which are not culturally relative and which are also central to the Good News of Christ. And these are the things which I would recommend them to concentrate on in their preaching to a postmodern generation. Then there will be other things which they will also hold as non-negotiable in principle but in practice might allow to take a less prominent position; here I might include baptism, the Lord’s Supper, spiritual gifts, and (from Driscoll’s original list) the virgin birth and hell. Finally, I would remind them to base their contextualisation on Paul’s biblical model:
Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. 20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. 21 To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. 23 I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.
(1 Corinthians 9:19-23, TNIV)
One of the most important lessons I learned for my Christian life was that Jesus is fully human. I had recited that as part of the Creeds since childhood, and I had believed it at least in theory. But in my first few years as a Bible-believing Christian, in an environment where good Bible teaching was highly valued but the Holy Spirit was mostly ignored, the humanity of the second Person of the Trinity was also given little attention.
I did of course learn that it was necessary for Jesus to be human for him to take on the cross the punishment deserved by the rest of humankind. But the idea I had of Jesus living on earth was of a divine being with superhuman powers in a human form, perhaps with an actual human body. This Jesus was portrayed as someone entirely unique, someone whom ordinary Christians could not aspire to be like. And Jesus now reigning in heaven just seemed to be totally divine.
Let me first make a disclaimer to avoid any misunderstanding. I accept and believe that Jesus is the divine Son of God, fully God as well as fully human. The Bible clearly teaches this. But it also clearly teaches the other side of the picture, that he is fully human.
It was only after I experienced the Holy Spirit for myself (I received the so-called “Baptism of the Holy Spirit” and spoke in tongues) that I started to understand the wider significance of Jesus’ full humanity. Perhaps this is because I started reading books with a rather different perspective. I started to understand that Jesus is the perfect example for us to follow. Paul wrote, “I follow the example of Christ”, and on this basis told the Corinthians to “Follow my example” (1 Corinthians 11:1, TNIV). Thus Jesus is an example even for us to follow.
You may ask as perhaps I did, how can this be? Jesus is the sinless Son of God, and we are sinful people, so how can we aspire to follow his example? The answer comes here:
we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.
Hebrews 4:15 (TNIV©, American edition)
What an encouragement! Jesus faced the same kinds of trials and temptations that we do, and emerged victorious through them all! If he did, so can we. This is made clear here:
let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.
Hebrews 12:1-2 (TNIV©)
The word translated “pioneer” here means something like “the first to follow a path”, perhaps “trailblazer”. Jesus was the first to run the race and to live the life of faith, and, because he did, we too can. (Yes, I know it is theologically controversial to suggest that Jesus had faith, but I won’t go into that issue just now.)
Furthermore, if we are called to follow Jesus’ example, that must mean that we should expect to do the same kinds of things which Jesus did. This is confirmed in John’s gospel, where Jesus said:
Very truly I tell you, all who have faith in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.
John 14:12 (TNIV©)
Note that although this was spoken to the twelve apostles, the promise is not restricted to them, or even to those who lived in their lifetime, but is a promise to all who have faith in Jesus. There is no room here for cessationism.
What kinds of works is Jesus talking about here? The answer just came as a surprise to me. Jesus is talking about the very same works which, in the previous verse, he was appealing to as evidence that “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:11, TNIV). He is not referring to acts of kindness which any person can do, but to the miraculous signs which proved that God had sent him, signs such as turning water into wine, “the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory” (John 2:11, TNIV), and feeding the five thousand, a sign which caused many to believe in him (John 6:14). It seems that Jesus expects “all who have faith in me” to do not just similar works but even greater ones.
The objection that I would have made to this argument is that Jesus performed his miracles, and especially these great signs, because he was divine and so omnipotent. There is, I thought, no way that we humans can do anything even remotely comparable, because we are limited to what our natural human bodies can do. This argument might seem to be decisive, but the Bible clearly does not allow us to take this position. Firstly, it is contradicted by John 14:12, as we have already seen. And then, from a quite different angle, it is also contradicted by this passage:
But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
Mark 13:32 (TNIV©)
Jesus didn’t know something, so in his ministry, at least at this point, he was not operating in his omniscient divine nature. Yet he did know that the angels didn’t know this, something which was not known to everyone. How did he have some supernatural knowledge but not all knowledge? The only answer, it seems, is that he was operating in his human nature but the Holy Spirit was revealing some divine truth to him. (I have taken this argument from Confronting the Powers by C. Peter Wagner, pp.129-130.)
It is of course no coincidence that Jesus’ ministry began soon after he received the Holy Spirit. Before his baptism, Jesus seems to have lived a normal life. No childhood miracles are recorded in the biblical gospels, although some implausible fables are found in non-canonical gospels and in the Qur’an. The young Jesus was an exceptional student (Luke 2:46-47) but showed no special powers. Then at his baptism the Holy Spirit came upon him, and immediately led him into the wilderness to be tempted (Mark 1:9-13). Only after that did he begin to preach and to heal in the power of the Spirit (Luke 4:14-15, Matthew 4:23), and to drive out demons by the Spirit of God (Matthew 12:28).
The implication seems clear: Jesus carried out all of his ministry as a human being filled with the Holy Spirit. He exercised the gifts of the Spirit, such as prophecy in his prophetic preaching, healing and miraculous powers. The divine Son of God had voluntarily “emptied himself” (Philippians 2:7, RSV) of his divine attributes like omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence and submitted himself to the limitations of a human body. But as a perfect human, perfectly filled by the Holy Spirit, he could operate perfectly in the gifts of the Spirit, and so do the great works which proved that God had sent him.
So what of us? We too, as Christians, have received the Holy Spirit – whether or not we have had a specific experience of the Spirit’s power. We are not perfectly filled with the Spirit because of our sinfulness, and need to seek continual new filling (Ephesians 5:18; the verb “be filled” is in the present continuous tense). But the same Holy Spirit who filled Jesus also fills us, and so in the power of the Spirit we can do the same works that Jesus did, and indeed even greater works, probably because there is, or should be, not one person but the whole church for the Spirit to work through.
This is not all a matter of great miracles. Through the Spirit we can experience the same close relationship with the Father which Jesus experienced. We can hear the Father speaking to us and let him speak through us. We can aim to be like Jesus in this:
the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
John 5:19 (TNIV©)
And as we do what we see the Father doing, as revealed to us by the Holy Spirit, we will find ourselves, together as the church, doing even greater things than Jesus did: bringing his power, his compassion, and his saving message not just to one small country, as he did during his life on earth, but to the whole world.
The idea that God as a just judge sentences sinners to eternal death is a difficult one for us who live in countries which have abolished the death penalty for even the most serious crimes. But a recent case in my home town, Chelmsford, has reminded me that here in Britain we still have the death penalty – for animals! And we probably need it – for, despite this posting, I am not an animal lover.
The story, reported in the local newspaper Chelmsford Weekly News (29th June), is about Casper, a beautiful Weimaraner German hunting dog. Casper had bitten boys on three occasions, and his owner had failed to muzzle him after the first incident. The owner was fined and banned from keeping a dog. But, because there was no other home for Casper, his sentence was to be death – until at the last minute a court officer personally offered him a home, and the judge accepted this.
This is perhaps a model of the Atonement, or at least a picture of how it works. We, all humans, had a bad master or owner, Satan, as Casper had, and are guilty of wrongdoing, as Casper was. The penalty which the Law prescribes for us, as for Casper, is death, and our Judge would be just to apply this penalty. Casper was saved by a last minute personal intervention by a court officer; we are saved by the personal intervention of the Judge himself, not at the last minute but as part of his eternal plan. Casper was taken from his old owner and given to a new master, the court officer; we have been set free from slavery to Satan by our Judge, who has himself become our new master or Lord. Casper received a new home with his new owner; we have been promised a new home where God himself will care for us for ever.
Of course this model is not complete; there is no sign that Casper repented (although the problem may have been more with his old owner), and the court officer did not have to die (let’s hope Casper doesn’t draw his blood!), whereas Jesus had to die for us to be saved, and we are expected to repent. Nevertheless, this is an interesting case as a real example of how a life was saved by a personal intervention in a court, in a parallel with how we have been saved through Jesus Christ.
What does it mean for us Christians to say that we have been “redeemed”, that Jesus has provided “redemption” for us? There is an ongoing discussion of this on the Better Bibles Blog. I have made some comments there. Now I want to write something a bit less technical about it, so I am doing so here.
Eugene Nida, the pioneer of “dynamic equivalence” Bible translations like the Good News Bible (which was the main Bible in my church until last year), wrote in his 1977 book Good News for Everyone (p.74, as quoted on Better Bibles Blog):
The fact of the matter is that the terms “redeem” and “redeemer” have lost very much of their earlier significance in English. For many people “redeem” is associated more with trading stamps than with the biblical theme of deliverance and salvation.
Well, trading stamps have gone out of fashion since the 1970’s, at least here in the UK (it shows my age that I remember Green Shield stamps), but we still have all kinds of vouchers which we can redeem, which even have a “redemption value” (usually 0.001p!) printed on them.
But how does this relate to the Christian idea of “redemption”? In Ephesians 1:7 (TNIV) we read:
In [Christ] we have redemption through his blood…
Does this mean that the blood of Christ is like a voucher paid to someone as a purchase price for us? And if so, to who? This is indeed one line of Christian thinking on this subject, but the conclusion had to be the unsatisfactory one that Jesus’ blood was paid to Satan. Yes, we were slaves to Satan and we are no longer, but God did this not by making a business arrangement with Satan, but by defeating him and destroying his power.
But we are on the right track with the idea of Christians being set free from slavery. For the Greek word translated “redemption”, apolutrōsis, was commonly used in relation to the setting free of slaves. Sometimes a slave was freed because someone paid a price to buy the slave, and the Greek word for this price was lutron or antilutron, accurately translated “ransom” in Matthew 20:28, Mark 10:45 and 1 Timothy 2:6 (TNIV and many other translations). In other cases slaves were set free by their masters without any payment being made, for example as a reward for faithful service, but the process was still known as apolutrōsis. And the same word was used for release of a prisoner, as in Hebrews 11:35, where there is no suggestion of any payment being made. So, although apolutrōsis is derived from lutron, it does not necessarily carry the idea of payment or redemption; it can just mean “freedom” or “release”.
So what should we make of this? The Bible certainly speaks of Jesus giving his life as a ransom (lutron or antilutron), Matthew 20:28, Mark 10:45 and 1 Timothy 2:6. There is a similar picture in 1 Peter 1:18-19 (TNIV):
18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.
Here “redeemed” represents the Greek verb lutroomai, derived from lutron, and a better translation might be “ransomed” or “set free by a ransom”, something for which silver or gold might be used. But this cannot be understood as in any way literal, for Christ’s blood was not paid to anyone, nor did he become Satan’s slave taking the place of others – that would be a rather inadequate view of the Atonement. So, the idea of a ransom must be taken as a model of the underlying spiritual reality, and one which like all models of the Atonement should not be pressed beyond the rather limited scope given to it in the Bible.
Thus it is better to take the word apolutrōsis as meaning not “redemption” but “release” or “freedom”. This works well every one of the ten times that the word is used in the New Testament. I offer my own translation, modified from TNIV, of these ten occurrences in their context:
…because your liberation is drawing near (Luke 21:28).
…through the freedom that came by Christ Jesus (Romans 3:24).
…as we wait eagerly for our adoption, the release of our bodies (Romans 8:23).
…our righteousness, holiness and freedom (1 Corinthians 1:30).
In him we have freedom through his blood… (Ephesians 1:7).
…until the release of those who are God’s possession… (Ephesians 1:14).
…with whom you were sealed for the day of release (Ephesians 4:30).
…in whom we have freedom, the forgiveness of sins (Colossians 1:14).
…now that he has died to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant (Hebrews 9:15).
…refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection (Hebrews 11:35, TNIV unchanged).
And similarly for some related words:
…because he has come to his people and set them free (Luke 1:68, lutrōsis).
…looking forward to the liberation of Jerusalem (Luke 2:38, lutrōsis).
…but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to liberate Israel… (Luke 24:21, lutroomai).
…who gave himself for us to set us free from all wickedness (Titus 2:14, lutroomai).
…but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal liberation (Hebrews 9:12, lutrōsis).
The only other occurrences of “redeem” and “redemption” in the TNIV New Testament are in Galatians 3:13,14, 4:5 and Revelation 14:3. In these places “redeem” represents a quite different Greek word group, agorazō and exagorazō, which mean “buy, purchase”. These words are also used of Christian “redemption” in 1 Corinthians 6:20, 7:23, 2 Peter 2:1, Revelation 5:9, 14:4, where TNIV translates “buy” or “purchase”; also arguably Ephesians 5:16 where TNIV correctly interprets “making the most of”.
If “purchase” is acceptable in Revelation 14:4, it should also be used in 14:3 where it would be much clearer. This leaves Galatians 3:13,14 (the Greek word in v.13 is translated twice for clarity) and 4:5. In the latter case the reference is to freedom from slavery, but the Greek word has clear connotations of purchase. In 3:13 the point is that we were cursed and have now been set free from the curse. So I would suggest the following, modified from TNIV:
Christ set us free from the curse of the law… He set us free in order that… (Galatians 3:13-14).
…to purchase those under the law… (Galatians 4:5).
…the 144,000 who had been purchased from the earth (Revelation 14:3).
So we are left with a modified TNIV New Testament without the poorly understood words “redeem” and “redemption”, which to me would be great improvement. Similar changes to the Old Testament might also be beneficial, but I won’t go into that now.
As noted on the Better Bibles Blog, the Good News Bible (Today’s English Version), the Jerusalem Bible, the Contemporary English Version, the New Living Translation and The Message have mostly avoided the words “redeem” and “redemption”. But other recent versions like TNIV have, sadly, kept to a traditional wording which is poorly understood and misleading. As Christians we can claim to be redeemed, but how much clearer is this wonderful truth when we express it as “Jesus has set us free!”
Duck asked in a comment on my posting Models of the Atonement:
But what does it say about your theology that a good Jew or Hindu will be damned to eternal suffering but a bad Christian will be saved?
Well, I have not quite said this. First, I have not mentioned “eternal suffering”, and there is an ongoing debate among Christians over whether those who are not saved suffer for ever or are simply annihilated. I don’t intend to get into that debate now. But more importantly, by God’s standards there is no such thing as a good Jew (except for Jesus), or a good Hindu, or for that matter a good Christian. All people have done wrong things and fall short of God’s standards. As a result none deserve to be saved or receive anything good from God. It is God’s free gift, his “grace”, to offer salvation although it is not deserved. And this is his offer to everyone, including Jews and Hindus. But God doesn’t force anyone to accept this gift, and many people don’t. They are not saved because they reject the offer of salvation. That is not God’s problem but theirs – and yours, Duck.
I accept that there is an issue here about those of other religions, or none, who have never heard the Christian message. Just as Abraham was saved for responding in faith to what he had heard of God’s message, so also I believe that many who do not profess Christianity now will be saved because they have responded to the light about God which they have received, through God’s general revelation and to some extent through other religions. They are not saved by their other religions, but only through the death of Jesus Christ. But I believe they can be saved without explicitly calling on Jesus Christ, and certainly without changing their outward religious identity to become Christians. However, this is no excuse for those who do clearly hear the good news about Jesus and reject it.
This is a very brief summary of a very difficult issue!
I remember a conversation which I had at the University of Cambridge, about 30 years ago. I was a student of physics, and I was talking to a friend who was studying theology, and was like me an evangelical Christian; his background was more “Reformed” than mine.
I explained to my friend how in physics there were many things, such as the nature of light, which could not be understood directly but which were studied by means of models. For centuries there was debate over whether light was made up of waves or of particles. It is now understood that light is in itself neither one nor the other, but something more complex which goes beyond direct human understanding. For some purposes it is helpful to use the model that light is waves, and for other purposes the model that it is particles. But neither model can explain everything about light; each model is useful within a certain field but becomes misleading if pressed to logical conclusions outside that field.
I suggested to my theological friend, in the context of a debate on some theological issue, that we should not expect to be able to understand it fully, because it is too deep for human understanding, but we should look at it through models, in the sense used in physics. I remember my friend suddenly catching on to what I was talking about and realising its significance for his own studies.
My friend later became a professor of theology, indeed for a time he held a highly prestigious chairs in theology at a very well known university. He has been described, admittedly by his publisher, as
one of Britain’s finest systematic theologians and teachers of dogmatics.
I hope that the insight I gave him about models helped him to attain such distinction. But I mention this not to boast or drop names (in fact I am deliberately withholding his name!) but because it seems to me that other “Reformed” Christians also need to understand models. Read on…
The Atonement, the way in which God dealt with the problem of sin through the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ, is the great and central mystery of the Christian faith. As mortal and sinful humans we cannot hope to understand it completely. Nevertheless, from what has been revealed in the Bible and with the help of our God-given human reason, we can get some way towards understanding it. And to use the language of physics, we do that by using models. The Bible provides us with the starting material for these models.
Theologians have put forward at least four major theories of the Atonement (see this Wikipedia article, which is convenient although not necessarily reliable): “Christus Victor”; satisfaction or substitutionary; moral influence; and governmental. Each of these has various flavours. And there is some support for each in the Bible. The “Christus Victor” theory was favoured by the early church, and has also had modern proponents (and I rather lean towards it). But the satisfaction theory has been dominant in western theology since the 11th century.
As careful theologians have long realised, no one of these theories fully encapsulates the truth about the work of Christ. Each of them, if pushed to their logical conclusion as if they were literal descriptions of what happened, ends up in conflict with the Bible – just as treating light simply as a particle, or simply as a wave, ends up in conflict with observations. It is impossible to get around this completely by adjusting the description; instead one is forced to realise that the description is only a model, and not a literal description of the truth.
The problem comes when some theologians and Bible scholars try to insist that their favoured view of the Atonement is not just a model but literally and objectively true. Among those who have been guilty of this are many in the “Reformed” tradition. For example, according to Adrian Warnock, Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones, in his book Great Doctrines of the Bible, discussed and rejected “false theories of the atonement“. As I don’t have this book I can’t be sure which theories the Doctor was so confidently rejecting and on what basis. But he should be very careful about claiming that such theories as “Christus Victor” are objectively false. No doubt he can find Bible verses which don’t entirely support “Christus Victor”, but in response others can find for him Bible verses which don’t support his own favoured substitutionary theory. For it it seems that if any one of the theories of the Atonement is pressed beyond the biblical evidence to its logical conclusion, it leads to absurdity.
This is what we have seen in the recent debate over whether God killed Jesus. Careful and well-trained theologians have agonised over theories of the Atonement. Those in the “Reformed” tradition have been especially attached to the substitutionary theory. But the best of them have realised that this is only a human model and approximation of a divine truth which is beyond human comprehension. As a result they have been careful with their statements, avoiding pushing the model to logical conclusions beyond the limits of what is clearly supported in the Bible. The unfortunate problem is when less careful students of the Bible, or students of “Reformed” writings, treat descriptions of models as if they were literal truth, go beyond what is written in the books they are studying, and start to teach things which clearly cannot be the truth about our just and loving God. This becomes an especially serious problem when in the process they manage to confuse outsiders into thinking that their repulsive teachings are the true Christian message.
“Do not go beyond what is written” (1 Corinthians 4:6 TNIV).
After posting on the issue of whether God killed Jesus, I wondered in fact this kind of posting was appropriate in such a public forum. I criticised Adrian Warnock for the negative impact of one of his postings on a non-Christian; but could my own postings have a similarly negative impact on readers? I certainly need to be careful what I write.
First, let me clarify that when on this blog I disagree with my Christian brothers and sisters I am doing this out of genuine love and concern for them. I certainly don’t want to stir up controversies and divisions among Christians. My intention is to guide others gently into finding out the truth for themselves. I accept that I don’t always do this perfectly, for I am an imperfect and sinful man. And I am open to gentle correction from my readers, on or off blog. (You can find my e-mail address at my personal website.)
It seems to me that the essence of the problem here is the excessive reverence, sometimes close to worship, which some Christians have for their favourite preachers and teachers. It was, as I see it, this kind of reverence which led Adrian to jump to the defence of CJ Mahaney when his words were being attacked by a non-Christian. He would have done better to pause and reflect on whether, if Mahaney actually said that the Father killed the Son (the whole thing is an unverified quotation from a sermon in an anonymous blog posting), he might have said a little bit more here than he really intended, or more than was justified from the Bible. Instead Adrian’s unfortunate reaction was to jump in as if questioning a favourite preacher of his was a direct attack on the gospel. And once having taken that tack he seems unwilling to back down, even though he now wonders if he is alone in taking this position.
The reason why I am treating this matter so seriously is that I am so passionate that everyone comes to hear and respond to the good news that Jesus loves them, so much that he died for them, and that they can respond, turn from wrong things, and receive the forgiveness and freedom which they crave for. So I react strongly, perhaps too strongly (but then Paul’s reactions were similar e.g. in Galatians 2:11-14, 3:1-10), when I hear other Christians perverting that message, for example into something immoral and repulsive like “the Father killed the Son”. The repulsiveness of that version of the message is evident from Duck’s reaction. But the true gospel, although sometimes veiled, is never repulsive or immoral in that way. But it has power from the Holy Spirit to break down the barriers which some people, sadly within the Church as well as outside, put up to hinder its progress.