A few more thoughts on Christology

Posted on by Terry Enns

Last night we spent more time discussing issues related to the cross than I had intended. Our comments surfaced a number of questions and issues that relate to why I have been preaching the sermon series that I have been preaching for the past 3 months. In a simple sentence, the cross and the work of Christ and salvation is at stake.

This morning I refreshed my memory by scanning a couple of books that surfaced some of these issues for me while on sabbatical. In a series of articles edited by Mark Baker in his book Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross (I do not recommend this book — it is written in an attempt to undo orthodox teaching about penal substitution), a couple of common themes emerge:

  • a disdain for the penal aspect of penal substitution and an incomplete understanding of the love of God: “…we could say that, on the cross, God let human beings pour out all their bitterness on him, let them spend their wrath on him, if you will, and in the process disclosed what all human beings really are — those at war with the One who loves them. Once the cross truly reveals this to us, we lay down our weapons, weeping, and enter his embrace, so vividly represented in Christ’s spread-eagled arms. God has made peace with us. Not us with God, but God with us.” [p. 52]
  • an inadequate understanding of what Christ endured on the cross, and how we are benefited by the cross: “Jesus went to the cross as the result of the world of violence and rejection we have made. But Jesus came back in love, even after all the pain he endured. In the same way, we are struck in this same broken world, but Jesus offers to free us from it. He endured the worst violence you can imagine…so you wouldn’t have to. He went through all that and forgave those who did it to him. As I already pointed out, we reject God regularly in our choices, and he still forgives us.” [pp. 75-6.]
  • God is not angry about sin and Christ is the victim of the cross, not the initiator of it: “Do we choose to see God as the distanced judge, or as the involved victim and friend? Is God the offended potentate who needs somewhere to vent his revenge? Or is God the fellow victim who suffers, endures, accepts the ugliest and fiercest of human rage and injustice…? Is God the audience waiting for a good performance from Jesus? Or is God-in-Christ the tragic actor; and we are the audience, seeing God pour out his heart, all the while hoping we will truly see, understand, learn, repent, turn, return?

There is so much wrong in each of those statements that it is difficult to know where to begin the critique. Three things should be clear: (1) whatever the reason, they are “offended” by the idea of God being wrathful of Christ, (2) they have a very diminished view of sin and God’s view of sin, and (3) while they speak of peace, forgiveness, and repentance, none of these offers any Biblical means by which someone can be saved —

“God isn’t angry, we are.” If so, how then can He be at peace with those who angrily crucified the Son? Where is justice in that?

God is a God of love, but His love is not expressed at the expense of His righteousness; there is no possibility of forgiveness, no matter how loving God is, if righteousness is not satisfied.

If God is the victim, where is His superiority to raise us out of our circumstance of sin, if He is unable to save Himself?

Of course the question remains, “just why do these writers have such a strong aversion to the penal, substitutionary atonement of Christ?” In his exceedingly helpful (and somewhat technical) book, The Future of Justification, John Piper gives reveals a number of possibilities, including the desire to remove the wall of separation between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. He quotes N. T. Wright (a British pastor and New Testament scholar who rejects penal substitution) as an illustration of the point:

Once we relocate justification, moving it from the discussion of how people become Christians to the discussion of how we know that someone is a Christian, we have a powerful incentive to work together across denominational barriers. One of the sad ironies of the last four hundred years is that, at least since 1541, we have allowed disputes about how people become Christians — that which we thought was denoted by the language of justification — to divide us, when the doctrine of justification itself, urging us to unite across our cultural divides, went unheard. [p. 181.]

In other words, justification as it has been historically understood (as the penal, substitutionary atonement of Christ) has been wrong and that Roman Catholics and Protestants are not different in their theology of salvation and we should all cooperate together. So Wright and others, in their zeal to see people be saved and to stimulate cooperative efforts in spiritual causes, have changed their understanding the gospel to fit their ends.

But truth does not change. And if they are wrong, as it seems clear from the plain reading of Scripture that they are, then there are eternal consequences that sway in the balance. Some things in Scripture we can be content even when consensus about interpretation is not reached. Justification and the cross is not one of those.

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A couple links to other web sites after last night’s discussion:

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Published by Terry Enns