Simon the Heretic

Apparently I am.


I was preaching on 1 John 4, and went off on a sideline on the atonement (from v 10). Chasing definitions of atonement, expiation and propitiation, I came across this at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/propitiation: "The propitiation does not procure his love or make him loving; it only renders it consistent for him to execise his love towards sinners"

That set me thinking. I had always seen it as changing us: dealing with our sin by removing or covering it. But the above definition seems to imply that it does something on God's side as well: it makes him consistent within himself. Now: can God be changed? No. So this "renders it consistent for him to..." must be an eternal thing. So I wrote into my sermon:

"It is only in the eternity of Christ’s moment on the cross that God can be internally whole. God can only be God because of the cross."

And not everyone agrees!

So here's some of the discussion.

I am accused of making the existance of God dependant on a human action. And it is a valid point to make!

But my response goes along these lines.

In eternity:

• God is just
• God is loving

Therein lies the issue - his justice requires the punishment of sin, his love requires it's forgiveness. This is where the atonement renders it consistent for him to love sinners, as above.

My opponents say that before creation there was no sin, so there was no conflict between God's love and justice.

But I also say that in eternity:

• God is eternally creator
• Therefore I can't imagine a creator God without a creation: I can't imagine this 'before creation' state - even if it wasn't physically present, it was there in the mind of God, in every gory detail. (1 Peter 1:19-21 ...Christ.....was chosen before the creation of the world)(Ephesians 1:4 ... he chose us in him before the creation of the world)
• His creation eternally includes free will
• It is eternally inevitable that free will leads eventually to sin. (Murphy's law.)
• Before creation existed physically God knew that in creating he would also create the problem, so eternally as the creator God he was eternally aware of the love/justice issue and so he also eternally created the atonement. (as per my references above)
• The eternal nature of the eternal creator means that all of the above stuff in the mind of God is eternal (like the letters in a stick of rock), so the problem of love/justice and atonement is part of his eternal mind.
• ergo: it is only in the eternity of Christ's moment on the cross that He can be internally whole. He can only be God because of the cross.

Now I think I should turn the second sentance around to read "The cross is an inevitable consequence of the existance of God", but this doesn't convey the eternal nature of the atonement.

I don't think God was surprised by Adam's sin, as some of my opponents suggest. I think he planned for it all along, knowing that his ultimate goal was greater. Which is better: walking beside man in the Garden, or indwelling redeemed man?

The lies of the Devil

In my previous post I responded to a post by Rev Sam that argued against Penal Substitution. He responded thus, and in the comments on that post Macrina said “The Christian God cannot be anything other than love poured out, endless compassion”

In my mind the Devil has two main lies.

The first is “God is nothing but a strict despotic tyrant”

The second is “God is nothing but love”

The first lie is used to trap people into guilt, rebellion, and sin. It is sometimes expressed as “You’re too sinful for God to forgive”

The second is to blind people to guilt, rebellion, and sin. It is sometimes expressed as “Don’t worry, God loves you anyway”

The most effective lies are 90% truth.

It is true that God is all-powerful, intolerant of rebellion, punishing those that disobey. He killed Uzzah for touching the ark. He killed Nadab and Abihu for offering unholy fire. He brought plagues on his people Israel, sent snakes among them, war, and finally exile, as punishment for their rebellions. He killed Ananias and Saphira for lying to the church. And in the end he will cast all those judged by their recorded deeds into the lake of fire.

It is true that God loves his creation dearly, and chooses not to hold our sins against us. The Bible’s case-book of forgiveness anecdotes is too long to list here.

The fact is, both these opposite perspectives are true.

Yet how can God be 100% intolerant of our sin, and also 100% tolerant of our sin?

Mystery.

God is trinity. Three in one. Father, Son, Holy Spirit – separate beings, yet one God. This kind of thing becomes possible when you are dealing with infinity – the normal rules we expect don’t apply (as any quantum physicist will tell you)

If God can be three/one, then he can also be tolerant/intolerant.

The fact is, both these opposite perspectives are true, and the real deep truth lies in the interface between them.

It is only in the cross of Christ – a brief moment in eternity – that these eternal characteristics of God meet. It is only in the cross that his love and mercy are congruent with his indignation and vengeance. It is only by the mystery of the cross, where I am in Christ and Christ is in me, that as God punishes me it falls onto himself. It is only in the cross that where God loves himself it falls on me. God takes onto himself my rebellion. And not thus tolerating himself God separated from himself-Christ who cries out for us all to hear that God has forsaken him – yes – impossible, but true. The cost of my sin was Christ’s separation from himself-God – the very fabric of the trinity torn asunder.

So let us not fall for the Devil’s lies.

“You will not surely die” says Snake to Eve – he’s right because he knows God loves. But there is a death because God clothed them in animal skins in the first blood sacrifice for forgiveness of sin. The punishment promised by God – death – still occurred but fell on the substitute. And sacramentally that animal was Christ.

Yet the Devil is also the accuser. “You sinned, now you will die”. But we won’t. He constantly goes to God telling him that Christians have sinned. For God’s word is law, and when the law is broken there must be death, and the devil insists, demands, that God be true to himself and implement his law, implement execution. He’s right - and God does implement execution on those Christians because they are in Christ on the cross.

Brothers and Sisters – our forgiveness is not free. Our forgiveness is not outside the law. Our punishment is paid by Christ-God to himself-God, a terrible blood price, required by law, prosecuted by the devil but with Christ as our advocate. The Judge is satisfied. The devil is defeated, left speechless. Christ-God is Victorious, speaking words of Love.

Hallelujah!

Praise Him!

On being saved

Rev Sam has an interesting post On being Saved.

He raises soime good points about Salvation as an experience rather than a philosophy, saying this is why athiests don't get it.

Unfortunately, he also misses the point on sin and salvation.

To be fair to Sam, I have not had time to read in detail everything he has said together with comments, responses, and subsequent related posts. But I think I have got the gist right enough.

He follows the increasingly popular view that penal subsititution is not a good way to describe what happens. This starts off because his definition of sin neglects the fact that sin is primarily sin against God himself. He reduces it to sins against the self - the things that enslave us.

Once you have conveniently dispensed with the fact that God is the one we have offended, you can also leave out the notion of God being a little narked about it, and this leaves the door open for more socially acceptable doctrines of salvation.

In another post "Some notes on divine forgiveness" Sam goes further to misprepresent penal subsititution. He falls for the usual idea that this is cosmic child abuse. He can't understand that the forgiveness achieved for us by Christ through Penal substitution is a genuine forgiveness. He thinks that Penal Substitution means a trinity at war with itself, even though it is obvious that all members of the trinity collaborate through penal substitution to bring justice and mercy together, satisfying both of these inherent characteristics of God together in one act. Sam also misquotes that verse "Go and learn what this means, I desire mercy not sacrifice." Becasue in the place that this comes from, Hosea 6v6, it is clear that it it means "Don't think you can do evil and then get away with it just by bringing a token sacrifice. Following the letter of the law this way won't help - I want you to do what is right in the first place". Hence, following the detail of the law is not the point, which is why Jesus raises it in Matthew when speaking to cold-hearted legalists. And the verses quoted, even on Sam's blog, all speak of God's anger and judgement on those people for their sins. Where is the mercy in that? So that verse does not mean that God himself sidesteps his own prescription for a sacrifice to atone for sin - it just means that the system is not there to be abused.

So God the father loves us and wants to forgive. In the form of Jesus, he takes onto himself his own frustrations at our sins. And he gives us a full and free forgiveness through this mechanism.

Sam wants an Islamic type of forgiveness that occurs without sense at the whim of God. he calls this 'out of the box' - I call it 'black box' - you can't see what is going on. But in penal substitution you see the strong evidence for your forgiveness and you also see the cost of it. What Sam is proposing really doesn't make any sense to me.

Apart from anything else, If God wanted to simpy forgive in the way that Sam describes, then there is no need for the cross at all. All his stuff about defeating the devil is all there, but doesn't need the cross, it could have happened differently. The cross is not fully explained by these ideas. It was for our sins that Christ died (1 Cor 15 v3). Penal Substitution fully explains the cross, why we celebrate Eucharist, how we are saved, what it cost, etc.

Sam says:

"This is a salvation issue. That is, it seems to me - and I have seen much too often - that if the doctrine of penal substitution is heartily believed then salvation is prevented. The believer in this doctrine does not experience redemption and the forgiveness of sins. They may feel better for a short while - the ways of the human heart are undoubtedly mysterious - but this underlying rottenness will come to the surface eventually.

For the diabolical doctrine states: God doesn't really love you. He hates you because you're a sinner. But he's been bought off by the bloody sacrifice on the cross. He's like an abusive parent kept at bay by a restraining order. There is always the fear that one day he'll come back. And so the soul remains crippled. God's true character is obscured and occluded."

As a hearty believer in Penal Substitution, I say:

1 My salvation is not prevented - it is enabled.
2 I fully experience redemption - permanently
3 I fully experience forgiveness - permanently
4 there is no underlying rotteness -i am washed by the Holy Blood of Christ, i am a new creation.
5 God really does love me
6 He does not hate me because of my sin - he loves me despite it and has washed my sin away
7 he has not been 'bought off' - he has devised an ingenious plan to miraculously reconcile the apparently conflicting aspects of his nature
8 he is not an abusive parent, but a loving, caring and providing one.
9 he is not kept at bay by a restraining order - of his own loving initiative he has sorted out the issues, within himself, without recourse to external parties
10 he will come back as promised, and I look forward to the joyful union
11 my soul is not crippled; it is healed, restored, forgiven
12 God's true character; a just and merciful God who by his grace loved me and found a way to forgive me while I was still a sinner, is revealed and made visible.

13 Sam, sometimes you are great but sometimes you talk bollocks

14 If you call this a 'diabolical doctrine' - I point you to Matthew 12 v 24-32 - If you attribute the work of God to the devil you could be in serious trouble.

And while i am ranting, please drop this idea that we must do good work for our salvation - that is true slavery - good work is the fruit and goal of salvation, not the path to it. If we do not do good work, clearly we have not been saved. No good work, no salvation. But the salvation itself comes from forgiveness, not from the good work.

Acknowledging that Sam's work is eloquent and mine is garbled, I rest my case.

Recanting recanting.

I was telling my son about Cranmer putting into the flames the hand that had signed a document recanting his protestant faith.

I was about to recant some of my previous post - it was too harsh, to critical, with not enough room for variety in the church. But then I read in the Church of England newspaper that some senior American theologian with support from her bishop has said she sees no reason why a muslim could not be a minister in the Epsicopal Church, and that the Jesus she has been following has been leading her into Islam. So does she not understand Islam, or does she not understand Christ? Or more likely, neither?

So I recant recanting. I believe what I believe, and if your core beliefs are congruent with mine we can have fellowship, and if you believe something else, then obviously fellowship can't exist becasue we were never fellows, regardless of labels that try to lump us together..

Am I a Christian?

Well, yes, but only in a co-incidental sort of way - it's not a label I pay too much attention to.

Let me explain.

I believe the stuff in my 'Bullets of truth' down at the bottom of my sidebar. I believe that God, incarnate in Jesus, took on himslef the punishment he had decreed for my rebellions agianst him, on the cross, and that this is revealed in the Scripture, together with an indicatio of how I should respond.

Having decided all this, I then take stock and look around, and find that this set of beliefs falls within a very broad set of religions collectively known as 'Christianity'. So i am a Christian.

But I also find that there are a lot of people, whose religion is fundamentally different to mine, or has only some peripheral overlap with mine, who are also called Christians, becasue the definition of 'Christianity' is so broad that almost anyone born coincidentally in Europe or America fits in.

And then, beacuase Jesus appealed for unity, i am expected to be united with this bunch of people who are really members of different religions, which just happen to have the same label attached.

And if I make noises that, well, I'm not actually the same as them, it sounds as if I am promoting schism. But i'm not - I never was anything to do with them, I just wonder how it is that the same labels came to be attached. I'm not asking for division, I'm aking for it to be recognised that I was never united to them. I'm not asking for divorce, i'm asking for annulment. There was never a valid marriage. Apart from a broad belief in Jesus - which even demons share - I'm nothing to do with them.

I have the beliefs I have stated. I have fellowship with those that share them or something reasonably similar (Although I recognise that often they will not express them in these terms). People that don't share them, are (frankly) a different religion. Please don't put me in the same basket.

Fixed Penalty

Yes, I got one.

I could argue the mitigating circumstances - that the gap I went for closed up on me and I had to take evasive action or get smashed (which is why the police saw me shoot between the cars) and that was why I was still going to fast when we got to the roadworks. However, I have had it coming for a long time, and even if it was a bit unfair today, i accept it for all the times I have deserved it and got away with it.

But in the light of current discusion as to the nature of Christ's atonement, and whether the penalty he paid was a simple consequence of our sins or a judicial punishement for our breaches of God's law, perhaps I should have asked the policemen whether the my fixed penalty notice was a judicial punishment for breaking the speed limit or whether it was just nature taking its course.

(I suspect the natural consequences of speeding would be a traffic accident, whereas a fine seems strongly judicial).

Put simply - in common language and in theology a 'penalty' is a punishment for breaking the law.

Substitution

Imagine the scene.

Following several high-profile cases of child abduction, rape and murder in the UK a few years ago, there was a media campaign to name known peadophiles. Vigilante mobs of outraged parents scoured the streets looking for them. A lady doctor, advertising as a paediatrician, had bricks thrown through her windows becasue the mob confused peadiatrician and peadophile.

Now, strange as this request may be, place yourslef in the mind of the paedophile. He cowers in his home, hearing the angry mob outside and seeing bricks come crashing in. and understand that this man - foul though he is - represents you. Yes his sins are more identifiable than yours, but sin is sin. And the mob outside is an embodyment of God's own outrage at the sins of the paedophile. (Not that God is a vigilante - he acts within the law - it's just the sense of justified outrage that I'm trying to picture)

So there we have it - the sinner confronted with the anger his sin has caused.

At this moment, in my picture, Christ appears in the house. he takes on the appearence of the peadophile, opens the door, and walks out. The shrill roar of the crowd reaches a crescendo, and christ is enveloped in a flurry of beating hands, kicking feet, spit, sticks, bricks - until his lifeless body is dragged away.

This illustration has many serious theological flaws eg having a wild mob to represent God's wrath, and it plays to the Girardian atonement concept that I have criticised before, and doesn't mention resurrection - but the picture of Christ taking my deserved punishment has been powerful for me these last few days.

Thank you, Lord Jesus!

Girardian Scapegoatism

Buck Eschaton has introduced me to the Girardian concept of atonement and scapegoatism.

While it raises some valid points, and rightly denounces any form of mob lynching, it requires you to suspend a consistent interpretation of scripture, zooming in on the bits that support the theory but disregarding those that don’t.

This idea reduces the death of Christ to a mere mob lynching (it was a lynching but that is only one aspect of it).

It denies that God is angry at sin. (He’s not much of a God if he will watch Hitler and Pol Pot without getting a little hot under the collar…)

It denies justice for the victims of sin. Unqualified forgiveness is an insult to the victims. (See recent press reports of English Vicars who sexually abused choir boys and the church forgave without taking disciplinary action. These cases have now blown up 20 years later.) In true Christian Atonement, the perpetrator is punished by God in Christ, and so from the victim’s perspective, bearing in mind that He forbids us from taking revenge but says "Vengance is mine, I will repay", justice is received from God.

It denies the divine origin of the Old Testament sacrificial system, in particular the scapegoat ritual. (It makes this section of the OT to be a product of Josiah’s reforms.)

It introduces a non-biblical “Oh, well, never mind, forget it” concept of forgiveness which has more in common with Islam than Christianity. (as above)

It insults the heroes of our faith, and makes Joshua to be guilty of lynching Achan, when he was following God’s orders in a state execution.

The whole idea is a classic case of theological invention, and a poor one at that, which would be laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous. In fact, blasphemous. It interprets the work of God as human sin.

Some of you will no doubt follow my links, read it and be taken in. I urge you see instead the gaping flaws in the logic.

For example – in one of Buck’s posts he denounced Joshua for sentencing Achan without the evidence of two or more witnesses. Well, he confessed, and when a group of men went to his tent they found it was true, ie there were more than two witnesses, and the legal requirement was fulfilled. If this is the quality of the Girardian case, it is clearly weak.

The strength of this rant gives it more credit than it is due.

Christ takes responsibility

This is an idea that has been cooking in my brain for a while, and I'd appreciate your thoughts as to whether it is a well known idea, a slightly different take on a well known idea, or something more novel.

We talk about what Jesus was actually doing on the cross, and we can get into Christus Victor and substitutionary redemption and all those different theological ideas - which I should be able to list by now but I'm not that clever.

The image that I want to look at is more of a politician. In the UK and no doubt similar hings happen elsewhere, we are used to the press, media, and opposition MPs calling for Government ministers to resign becasue something has gone wrong in their department. And of course usually the minister in question denies it all vigorously, and the afair drags on for weeks while he hopes it will all die down, and of course it doesn't and in the end he is forced to resign after all. And it would have been better if he had resigned right a the very beginning.

This initial resignation would not mean that he himself has done wrong, only that the error has happened within the department for which he is repsonsible. It is on his patch. His watch. Therefore it is his responsibility, even if he didn't actually do it. And that is why he should resign anyway, as a matter of course.

And so we come back to the crucifixion.

In my illustration, God is the government, and Jesus is the minister.

The world says:
What about suffering?
What about natural disasters?
What about wars?
What about disease?
What about children taht die?

Jesus says:
I didn't do it
It's not my 'fault'
But it is my responsibility - it happened on my patch, my watch, so i am responsible.

His response is to 'resign', willingly, not waiting to be forced out of office. But the extent of the problem is such that a simple resignation, or abdication, is insufficient. In accepting responsibility, he takes on board the full consequences, and that means that he, the innocent and infinite God, takes on limited mortal flesh and dies, taking on himself - accepting responibility for - the sins of the world.

What about suffering? --- Jesus accepts responsibility and dies
What about natural disasters? --- Jesus accepts responsibility and dies
What about wars? -- Jesus accepts responsibility and dies
What about disease? --- Jesus accepts responsibility and dies
What about children that die? --- Jesus accepts responsibility and dies

So, am I a genius, a heretic, or just regurgitating stuff others have already thought of?