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Friday, July 06, 2007
"Suppose you owe me $100 but can't pay it. If I won't let you off the hook until I get my $100 from someone or another, I never really forgive the debt. I got my payment.
So too, if God won't forgive unless someone or another (his Son) pays off the debt, then God never really forgives. He gets his payment." Gregory Boyd
What do you think? Is Boyd right that the understanding of penal substitution - as presented above - implies a non-forgiving God? Is there another way to perceive forgiveness?
I confess that, whilst I'm no big fan of penal sub, I've never "seen" its problems from this angle.
In case you're wondering if there's any alternative to the above 'traditional' view of the Cross, there is: Have you seen the Chronicles of Narnia? When Aslan died, it wasn't "divine justice" that killed him, but the evil Queen. What the evil Queen didn't know was that there was a 'deeper magic' involved, and somehow by killing Aslan she had been tricked by Aslan himself, rendering him victorious over her.
If we apply this to the Cross, it's like Jesus let Himself suffer and die at Satan's hands as a ploy to defeat Satan via the 'deeper magic' of love.
It was NOT because the Father demanded perfect payment or 'holy blood' to appease His wrath. It was NOT because God just HAD to punish/kill someone failing which His holiness remains insulted/offended (this is, in fact, quite pagan).
It was because God so loved the world, His only begotten Son had to die so Satan - the really bloodthirsty one! - can be defeated.
Posted at 11:40 am by alwynlau
 | Posted by Dominic @ 07/22/2007 04:26 PM PDT | | | yes, sure, feel free to quote me | |
| Posted by Alwyn @ 07/20/2007 02:23 PM PDT | | Hi Dom, see why i suggested another posting? It's this whole thing about "theological argument" - it keeps getting longer, people's positions get entrenched, and in the end not many ppl are very much better off than before, :)
I'll pick out what I think is the most helpful portion of your post, which is yr summary of the atonement issues which talks about the *fundamental ethical intuition* which people have. I actually AGREE that we all have this 'intuition' inside us, that justice must be done, that order must be restored, that wrongs must be righted/avenged, even violently if necessary.
But it is at this point that I believe God surprises us:
- with the cross and that 'mad' all-loving sacrifice (c'mon, this is a GOD dying for non-Gods; does it 'fit' our 'fundamental ethical intuition'?); Calvary is how God 'flexes His muscles', so to speak...what kind of God does this?
- with his mercy and love which lasts for a lifetime, as opposed to His wrath (which lasts but for a moment); this 'breaks into' our worldview of revenge, eye-for-an-eye, me-first, etc. and shows us that the Supreme Person is *not* a despot but a lover at heart...
What I'm trying to say is maybe the story of Christ should challenge us to question our 'natural understanding' of what justice and power should be just as it spurs us to love and give MORE than the 'acceptable' level we're normally used to.
You're right: we both read the same Bible but we see things differently. I see the Cross, I see Jesus' suffering, I see God's goodness to the outsiders in the OT, I see God's cries and pleadings via the Prophets, I see His patience, His mercy, His much-delayed and reluctant judgments and I 'conclude' that understanding God is somewhat more complicated than starting with His 'awesome glory and holiness' and working from there towards everything else. I reckon from all this that God wouldn't HAVE to control everything to ensure victory, He wouldn't HAVE to even know everything to steer history towards His appointed goal, He wouldn't HAVE to demand a legal payment without which He couldn't truly forgive, etc.
I prefer to start with the Cross, leave out the abstracts/speculations, and ask myself what kind of person, what kind of love (compared against, of course, human love as I've experienced and read about), what kind of power, what kind of glory, would do this.
Not surprisingly, I suppose, I would end up with a different view of God than you, one that is unlikely to change with *argument* per se.
I also appreciate your philosophical arguments for determinism (though of course I think you've overstated your case and presented a couple of strawmen here and there); maybe one day when I'm in Singapore or you in KL we could get together for some coffee. We could go round and round for hours, cover much more ground and clarify a lot - that's the boon of speech over email, I guess. In the meantime, I've actually written a longish post a few years back at http://www.angelfire.com/journal/althehare/unconditionality.html
As for the atonement and 'down-to-earth-ness', the Christus Victor view allows us to see each and every action as an implementation of God's victory over Satan, as an embodiment of His kingdom. Every kind word, every sacrifice, every act of generosity, every triump over injustice, falsehood - basically our lives are lived in Christus Victor style.
Btw, may I quote you in future posts? I just thought it might be nice if other people 'listened in' on our conversation.
Blessings,
Alwyn | |
| Posted by Dominic @ 07/20/2007 11:05 AM PDT | | I think I shall address this from the end of your reply to the front.
To make it more relevant, why I ranted so much (haha, yes, I realize I am rather rantish!) about differing values, the absolute overwhelming value of God’s glory and holiness is because, I believe, that at the heart of most attempts to find an alternative explanation to PSA is the fundamental unconscious belief that God’s glory cannot consist of His vengeance, that being wrathful is inconsistent with divinity and love and so on, as can be seen from your remark that,
“It was NOT because the Father demanded perfect payment or 'holy blood' to appease His wrath. It was NOT because God just HAD to punish/kill someone failing which His holiness remains insulted/offended (this is, in fact, quite pagan).”
But my point of emphasising the awesome glory of God as revealed in His terrible wrath and vengeance to all forms of ungodliness and impurity and even unrighteousness is that it will be of uttermost value to the saints. As Isaiah puts it, the saints will worship God and they will see His enemies perishing by the gnawing of the worms, and in His terribleness, all shall tremble and fall to their knees in worship and adoration.
So, PSA, as compared to Christus Victor theories, is more appealing to lay people, speaks more directly to their hearts, is because of the fundamental ethical intuition in most of us of retribution against wrong-doing, and when most of us reflect on our wrong-doing, we tremble at the future vengeance of God, but when we learn that God has sent His son to die for us, to save us from vengeance, to take it upon Himself, we rejoice at God’s love to save us from His wrath, and this is a real, “rescue” from damnation, to which we can give thanks and are utterly relieved. Because of the great terribleness of God’s vengeance, the utter hopelessness of being able to escape it, the relief that shall come from being rescued from it will be greater. And the resultant atonement, the ability to approach Holiness is the joy of the Christians.
As I have pointed out in my previous entry, Christus Victor at most addresses the “defeat” of evil is some vague sense, the victory of Christ over Satan and so on, but it is far away and remote from our daily experience. How does the defeat of Satan address the problem of our sin? What does that have to do with us? Satan is defeated, therefore...? I think you certainly have to make it "more to the ground" rather than in such abstract academic terms of "metaphor" and "imagery" and "narratives" or whatever. Otherwise, it will be simply the theory of the academic elite.
Having spoken about atonement, let’s look at your questions:
Why does God want to control every iota? To the praise of His glory? Haha… But, then again, this will be difficult to discuss as we do have different conceptions of what God’s glory consist in. (Me, His terrible wrath and glorious Love, you ONLY His love)
Secondly, I don’t deny I have choices, make decisions, think, reflect and ponder. I just do it in accordance to God’s eternal decrees and I am not free from God’s predetermination. Of course I have choices. They are just not free choices. I don’t deny that I have responsibilities at all. I think it is merely a linguistic confusion. Let’s take two usage of the word “responsibility” (sorry, I’m actually a philosophy minor, you have to forgive some nit-picking, hee hee)
(1)The wind was responsible for messing my hair
(2)Parents are responsible for looking after their children
What’s the difference between (1) and (2) use of the word “responsible”? The first use of the word “responsible” is simply a “causal” responsibility, the wind was responsible for the messing of my hair in the sense that the wind *caused* my hair to be messed up.
In (2), the word here certainly does not mean the same thing as in (1). In (2), patents are “responsible” for their child’s well-being only in the sense that they ought to look after them, that they have a duty to look after them. Thus, they are “responsible” in the sense that they have a duty to look after the children (not that they always cause their child well-being, even if they don’t they are still responsible for their child’s well-being, whereas if the wind did not cause the messing of my hair, then the wind will not be responsible for messing my hair)
So, of course I am responsible to obey God, love my neighbours, etc. Because I have a duty to and I ought to do it due to a divine command. Whether or not I was predetermined to do so is irrelevant to the existence of the duty. The duty exists in so far as the system of norms exists. If God did not command Jonah to preach to the Nineveh, then Abraham does not have a responsibility to do so, if God did command, then Jonah, then he does have the responsibility to do so. The existence of responsibility depends on the existence of norms, not on the capacity to fulfil it.
As to your charge that it is incoherent, well, maybe you would like to point out where the incoherence is?
And what’s wrong with God being a despotic being? You speak of it as if it were a bad thing. But since I think God is ruler and King of the universe, well, that fits in pretty nicely. If God was not in control of the universe, if He did not regulate it with an iron rod, I’ll be pretty worried as to whether God’s good purposes will be fulfilled and I will have no security or trust that God can fulfil his good purpose.
As to God is love and can’t deal with scripture passages with God relating to people, why not? I suspect, again, that we are simply going to talk pass one another simply because we have different conceptions of love. Why does the fact that God predetermines everything entails that God can’t relate to people?
It may go against your understanding of freedom, responsibility and accountability and prayer, but it certainly does not go against mine. I have already explained how responsibility and accountability works. As to prayer, I hinted already that I can pray with confidence to God for the salvation of souls, the accomplishment of events, because God is in control of all things. I think it is pretty pointless to ask God to save someone if ultimately that person’s salvation lies in his own freewill and not God’s actions, so God can’t do a darn thing about it, so why ask Him? | |
| Posted by Alwyn @ 07/20/2007 12:27 AM PDT | | But why, to your mind, would God want to have creation in which He controls every iota? In which freedom is an illusion? (which leads me to ask: what *else* is an illusion in creation?)
Have you considered the possibility that maybe He has given you genuine self-determination, RESULTING IN your ability to resist him, make mistakes, *decide* for or against Him, be responsible, think of various options, reflect/ponder, etc.? Why does the latter option not seem to appeal to you?
I guess I hardly need to elaborate why your determinism doesn't appeal to me. Surely you've heard the arguments that it's (almost)
- incoherent,
- presents an almost despotic kind of being,
- is inconsistent with "God is Love" (creating souls only to be damned eternally doesn't bother Him?),
- can't deal with Scriptural passages which shows God RELATING to His people (and even pleading with them, see the OT prophets),
- goes contrary to our understanding of freedom, responsibility, accountability, the need to pray, etc.
Perhaps you could do some postings on your blog about this topic, as we've verved completely off course from 'Aslan Theology'(!).
It's been wonderful dialoguing with you here and I look fwd to further chats elsewhere.
Blessings,
Alwyn | |
| Posted by Dominic @ 07/19/2007 12:43 AM PDT | | Yes, they all did according to the eternal decrees of God's determination.
Yes, God determined some to sin greatly, some to be damned eternally.
Absolutely correct. | |
| Posted by Alwyn @ 07/18/2007 07:16 PM PDT | | Dom, I know you've probably thought about this, but so according to your theory of freewill, Alwyn was not free to be inclined towards the Christus Victor view, just as Hitler wasn't free when he executed those Jews, just as the very people whom God raged, wrathed-ed and venged towards were not free - they did exactly what God wanted them to do.
And God was angry/wrathful/offended by the very thing He determined that they should do.
In other words, God decided that some/many people would sin and sin greatly, and He decided that they would perish eternally.
Correct? | |
| Posted by Dominic @ 07/18/2007 06:57 PM PDT | | Hello,
For the record, I don’t believe we have freewill. To put it in Luther’s terms, “By an eternal, immutable infallible will, God foresees, purposes and effects all things, by this thunderbolt, freewill is destroyed forever”. Proverbs 16:4 tells us that, “The LORD has made everything for its own purpose, Even the wicked for the day of evil.” God forces the evil spirit into Saul. Proverbs 16:9 tells us that “The mind of man plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps.”
So, yes, I do not bite my tongue in declaring that we don’t have freewill. God made man to display His glory, whether His glorious grace by which He demonstrates in those whom He saves, or His terrible, glorious justice in the damned. God does all things for His glory, for His name sake, not for our sakes. (Ezekiel 36:22, “Therefore say to the house of Israel, 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went.”) As Romans 9 passage puts it, the purpose of the hardening of the heart of Pharaoh and the preparation of vessels of wrath, is that God might display His wrath and make His power known. And Ephesians says that the predestination of the elect is done, to the praise of His glorious grace. To put it in the most crude way possible, the chief end for which God acts, is to enjoy glorifying Himself, whether in the terrible damnation of the reprobate, or in the blessed salvation of the saved.
So you see, given our very very VERY different concepts of values, it will be very hard to discuss what a loving God would do, seeing that we shall disagree on a very fundamental level what a loving God values. Because ultimately, I think that God’s love consist in His own love and zeal for His own glory, even above His love for us, for God to be loving is for God to love His glory and therefore, the terrible infinite insult which is done to God’s glory by disobedience which God loves with all His being can only be restituted by an equally terrible vengeance. His love for us comes only after His love for His own glory. For me, I think that God’s love for man consist in His commitment to save us, His hesed love implies that He will be committed to us no matter what our sins and so on, that He will exercise His power and reap success in our salvation save us. And, as a Calvinist, I don’t believe that God’s love is universal. So I say that God’s love for His elect implies that He will vindicate their martyrdom and the wrong done to them at the hands of the reprobate by His fierce vengeance.
I know that this conception of God’s love is certainly going to be repulsive to the modern mind. But given wide disparity of what God’s love consist in, it is possible to dialogue on whether a loving God would exact vengeance?
As for your claim that wrath is not towards those who have ‘offended’ His glory, that’s so strange as throughout the Old Testament, isn’t that always the case? Even more strange is the claim that wrath is not towards those who have failed to appease Him, because that’s even more evident!
Take Ezekiel 25:16-17, “I will execute great vengeance on them with wrathful rebukes; and they will know that I am the LORD when I lay My vengeance on them”
We see here that God’s execution of vengeance so as to let them know that God is the LORD.
Psalm 7:11 tells us that God is a righteous judge who expresses His wrath everyday. Ezekiel 5:15 tells us that Israel will be a “reproach and a taunt, a warning and an object of horror” to the nations around them when God inflicts punishment in anger and wrath. Ezekial 7:8 again tells us that God will pour out His wrath and judge them according to their conduct and repay them for their detestable practice.
I mean, just do a word search for ‘wrath’ and you can see it all.
And how can it be that the wrath of God does not demand death and suffering? Why the whole Old Testament is filled with gory images of how God’s anger ‘tramples’ that of the sinners (Isaiah 63:3, “"I have trodden the winepress alone; from the nations no one was with me. I trampled them in my anger and trod them down in my wrath; their blood spattered my garments, and I stained all my clothing.”; Isaiah 66:23-25, “And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the LORD. And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.) and of burning and so on… why, it would not be wrath unless it was tormenting to the disobedient.
I suspect that this aversion to wrath as demanding torment stems from having drunk from the wells of modern ethical theories and trying to apply these conceptions of goodness to God. Modern ethics tells us that retribution is “primitive”, vengeance is “barbaric”, that everyone has some natural inalienable right against suffering which even God must himself respect, and if He does not, He better have a good reason! (Like the granting of freewill). I think we need to read more carefully Job where God visits disasters on Job for no other reason then for His own name sake, and God answer to Job can simply be summarized as, God is God and He can do whatever He darn well likes, the Lord giveth and taketh away, blessed be His name.
I think one of the primary reasons why the Christus Victor theory is unpopular amongst the lay folk is precisely in its lack of details. Its very hard to see precisely what’s so great about God’s defeat of Satan, given that the majority of us already has a conception of God’s omnipotence which implies that we all already know that God can defeat Satan without much fuss, and to the lay mind, the Christus Victor theory just seems to be a roundabout way of going about it. Or at most, according to Christus Victor, the atonement is simply a “process” by which Satan is defeated, nothing really amazing intrinsically. It seems to be something which will only appeal to the academic elite who wants to shun “pop” theology and what they deem to be “primitive” conceptions of God as a wrathful angry God who is blood-thirsty and who can think in terms of metaphors and imageries and narrative of “deep love” which can “defeat” “evil” by “overcoming it and so on. Unfortunately, although these may have currency in the academia, the lay people can’t quite appreciate such things, especially if you simply want them to grasp it at the level of metaphors.
(For the record, I do think that God is terrible, wrathful, full of vengeance, utterly pure and holy, whose nature “breaks out” in fury at impurity, a Being whom we are to approach with fear and trembling, see Nahum 1:2)
On the otherhand, the PSA or divine satisfaction wrath theories will be closer to the heart of the masses, especially in asian societies, retribution and vengeance is a primary ethical experience (consider for example, the recent Arts Central animae entitled “Hell Girl” who delivers vengeance on your behalf in return for your damnation. And, at the lay level, many of us can sympathize with the value of retribution and vengeance against wrong-doing, so much do we value vengeance that the characters in that animae would even choose damnation as long as they can get their vengeance. Although the academia elite would turn up their noses and scoff these as “barbaric” or whatever) and the fact that God sent His son to take on the vengeance due to us on the cross and thereby delivering us from the vengeance of God does cause the lay people to be glad. Thus, it is easier in the minds of the lay person to see the cross as a true “sacrifice” to us to save us from God’s wrath.
So, unless the Christus Victor account can offer something more than this very thin explanation, and trying to excuse its thinness by making a blanket claim that the bible uses a lot of imageries and metaphor, it’s very hard for the lay person to truly celebrate the cross and value it with such a vague and thin explanation.
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| Posted by Alwyn @ 07/18/2007 02:47 PM PDT | | Hi Dom,
Regarding your view on freewill, a huge problem with it is that which plagues most determinists: how to account for the evil-doing in the first place. Wasn't the evil a result of freewill in the first place? And if it is, then isn't your phrase "granting freewill to evil-doers" a misnomer? (And, just as an aside, wouldn't Calvinism more or less collapse if evil-doers were free?)
But if you can accept that God has given self-determination to agents (who may or may not do evil), the question then becomes the purpose for which He's given it. If it's LOVE (as per my view) for which freedom is granted, then maybe the Lover would not be overly eager to annihilate, destroy, etc. the beloved as urgently as you might feel.
It really becomes UP TO GOD to decide when the amount of evil committed is 'too much', compare this against the contexts, evaluate the various influences on said evil-doer's life, etc.
The point is, Dom, I think your determinist view needs to fully appreciate the complexity of freedom, its (partial) irrevocability, its relation to love, the dimension of growth, of 'hardening', etc. - wait till you become a dad! (smile)...being a 'happy slave' sounds cool, but one has to CHOOSE to be one, no? (Are we even discussing the same thing here? i think we're straying a little from the original question of why a God WHO IS LOVE would require an 'infinte payment' for sins...)
(Skipping some paras for now), I fully agree with you that God's love is manifest in His wrath and, yes, that He sometimes (and slowly!) does His 'strange work' (see Ezekiel) because of the ones wronged, for disciplinary purposes, and because some people - due to freewill - have chose over and over again not to love Him back. This is NOT wrath towards those who 'offended' His glory or failed to appease Him, etc.
It's a judgment meted out ON BEHALF of the wounded, the victims, etc. against persistent unrepentance. As such, God is playing His role as governor failing which evil is left rampant and continuous. (I may even mention then repentance usually begets non-judgment i.e. God 'forgets' the evil, puts it as far away as East is from West...)
Now, this is NOT the kind of judgment which:
- demands death and suffering (let alone the blood of the innocent),
- seeks to uphold some abstract eternal law-and-order court (hence the TONS of mercy being shown - that's the point: God's MERCY is very 'unfair', legally speaking! God does not LIKE to judge and punish!)
- "calculates!"
*Notice how different this understanding of judgment is from the PSA account*, where you've got holiness as separate category which CANNOT TOLERATE the slightest infringement (correct?), which demands death to appease it.
How Christ dramatically defeated evil on the Cross is, unfortunately for the christus Victor theory, not 'filled in' with details. It goes 'something like'
a) Satan was 'winning' in the world
b) Christ came to rescue the world
c) Satan killed Christ (or thought he did)
d) The murder was a self-defeating blow to Satan
Proponents of the view don't, however, see the explanatory lack as a huge problem because all the 'descriptions' in Scripture are metaphors anyway(!) e.g. 'nailed powers/principalities to the Cross', "Son give His life as a RANSOM for many', 'God was reconciling the world', etc.
That's why, I guess, Boyd had to recount CS Lewis' story of 'deeper magic', to help us 'get it'.
But thanks for raising this point; I plan to blog a little more on the atonement, esp on the COMMONALITIES in all theories, then their distinctives, what we (perhaps) can and cannot say i.e. our limits to speaking of the Cross.
I suspect that we won't know what 'fully' happened on Calvary this side of death, one reason perhaps why Paul had to use so many metaphors from so many facets of life(!).
But what do you think?
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| Posted by Dominic @ 07/17/2007 10:16 PM PDT | | Hello,
If I may, I want to pick out a couple of assumptions. First, why is the granting of free-will to evil-doers a manifestation of love? You assume, as do most philosophers, that it is morally better to give freewill to evil-doers than to not give freewill, therefore, your implicit assumption is that since it is morally better to give freewill and self-determination to evil-doers, this is what a loving God would do.
But my conception of what a loving God would do is different. I think a loving God would defeat and annihilate evil-doers without much ado, that God manifests His love is His glorious crushing of evil-doers and His protection of the saints.
So ultimately, your contention that my account ‘elevates’ God’s power over His love is simply that we have different conceptions of what love consist in and what love would do. For you, you think that freewill is morally valuable which a loving God would respect, for me, I don’t think there is any moral value in freewill and that a loving God should not respect it, especially if it is used for evil. Therefore, on my conception of what love is, I think that God manifest His love precisely in His exercise of His omnipotence. I recommend Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov for an excellent critique of the moral value of freedom, where he argues, in short, it is better to be a happy slave than a miserable free person.
Also, I didn’t really comment on your view that
“God's love could be SO DEEP that when pure innocence/holiness is 'crushed' by evil (such as what have occured on the Cross) that this could've RESULTED IN the defeat of evil which intended to destroy Love embodied in the first place.”
because I don’t really understand it. What does it mean to say that when holiness is crushed it can result in the “defeat” of evil? In what sense does the trampling of holiness result in the defeat of evil? I don’t really understand how this is suppose to work, maybe you can elaborate more?
Again, your argument that God’s love must overcome His wrath has already encoded an implicit value judgment of the elevation of love over wrath, as if God’s love is necessarily opposed to His wrath, that you can’t see why God cannot simply ‘trump’ His wrath by His love, because you see that they are opposed.
I think God’s love is manifest in His wrath and as Jonathan Edwards has argued, God’s anger at evil-doers stems precisely from His love for those whom the evil-doers have wronged, and those whom the evil-doers seek to destroy. God’s anger is kindled against evil-doers precisely because He loves those objects which the evil-doers seek to degrade and destroy.
So, again, its not wrath versus love, which you seem to construe it as.
You mentioned that I associated ‘blood’ with punishment and legal payment. I may have expressed myself badly, but that is not what I mean to do. Rather, I prefer to speak of God’s “vengeance” rather than legal punishment, because “vengeance” is a concept which is more closely related to conceptions of “purity” and “defilement” in relation to holiness, a much more primitive notion of God’s holy nature that “breaks out” against the unholy and which can only be appeased by shed “blood”. It might be useful to explicit it in terms of legal categories, but I shun this route.
As I said before, I prefer to explain “Holiness” as a sui generis category, not to reduce it to legality or love. The system of concepts which best explains it are purity and defilement, thus God’s wrath (or passion) is almost a “natural” reaction against defilement and unholiness (thus the breaking out language). If there is another system of concept by which an explicate can be made, it will be Anselm’s honour system, whereby insulted honour is to be avenged. Again, not a system too far from the Old Testament talk of God’s vindication of His name and His glory, etc.
I think ultimately, our different views stems from our differing conceptions of values, love and morality, not that I elevate God's justice, God's power or whatever over God's love, its just that I conceive of God's love differently.
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| Posted by Alwyn @ 07/17/2007 07:10 PM PDT | | Hi Dom,
Thanks for the comments.
I said that on your view (at least in your comment to me) God's power seems over and above his love because of your note that God can simply annihilate them at will. That you bring them up suggests that you don't think much of God granting evil-doers self-determination (aka free will!) in the first place(!), such that annihilating them 'just like that' is out of the question.
Also, you don't seem agree with (but haven't quite countered) the view that God's love could be SO DEEP that when pure innocence/holiness is 'crushed' by evil (such as what have occured on the Cross) that this could've RESULTED IN the defeat of evil which intended to destroy Love embodied in the first place.
All of the above are thinking-exploratory points w.r.t the Christus Victor view which you may wish to muse upon.
As regards PSA, the reason I/Boyd think that it's not real forgiveness (i.e. not real love) is because it's predicated upon the need to appease God's wrath. WHY God's wrath MUST be appeased by death, failing which the guilty will 'go to hell' is something which baffles those who read Jesus commanding us to forgiven unconditionally, commanding us to love, etc.
The need for the appeasement is the very heart of the matter which, if I'm not wrong, is ON PAR with God's love. Somehow God's love cannot 'overcome' His burning need for an appeasement, can it? But why not?
I'm glad you mentioned Heb 9:22 but I wonder if we haven't "read" the penal sub into such verses. OT sacrifices are, IMO, too complex to infer conclusively that it's about appeasing God's wrath, about God REQUIRING *death and suffering for crimes* failing which He cannot forgive.
In short, I think you've unnecessarily associated 'blood' in the verse with punishment, legal payment, etc.
Btw, have you read the book? It's good, :)
Keep writing, I appreciate the input...Alwyn | |
| Posted by Dominic @ 07/17/2007 11:42 AM PDT | | Hi,
I am not quite sure exactly how does my account elevate God’s omnipotence such that it surpasses His love. Maybe you want to explicate this a bit.
I think I am going to grossly misunderstand you here, but your questions seem to misconstrue the role and purposes of vengeance. There are available various philosophic accounts on the nature and purposes of punishment and vengeance, purposes which would be defeated if God simply snapped His fingers (i.e. manifestation of objective correction of moral values, public vindication of insulted honour, etc.) For instance, there is no public vindication of divine authority if God merely privately snapped His fingers.
Maybe you want to check out the Stanford encyclopaedia of philosophy for more on the substitutionary atonement.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/christiantheology-philosophy/
In any case, I am not quite sure how does the Christus Victor demonstrate God’s love any less than the penal sub. Penal sub advocates also argue that God’s love is demonstrated by Christ willingness to take on our horrendous punishment, whereas Christus Victor argues that God’s love is demonstrated by the defeat of Satan. So, I don’t think the Christus Victor, at least based on how you present it, gives it any edge over the penal sub account. Maybe you want to explicate how the Christus Victor show God’s love more clearly than it does for penal sub account?
For the record, I am not a full-fledged penal sub advocate, in the sense in which our moral debts are “transferred” to the cross or anything. But I do hold to an Anselmian divine wrath satisfaction and divine honour vindication theory of the atonement, whether that entails that moral debts are paid on the cross or is simply forgiven, I incline towards the latter.
As to how does one construe holiness, I simply think it is a sui generis, value-category, of its own. It is not to be reduced to either love or legal perfection, but it is simply perfection of its own. To me, it seems that, although I am not too sure, the contrary of holiness is impurity or defilement, which could encompass lawlessness, but is more than just lawlessness.
However, I find the main weakness with all other accounts of the atonement, be they moral exemplar or Christus Victor or ransom is that they cannot account for the basic biblical fact of Hebrews 9:22
“And according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”
It seems that the “shedding of blood” or suffering of Christ is a necessary prerequisite to forgiveness, and this is a requirement demanded by God, and the other accounts, I believe, does not do justice to this basic biblical principle. The other accounts, either ignores the shedding of blood as a prerequisite to forgiveness or, they construe it in such a way that this is demanded by someone else.
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| Posted by Alwyn @ 07/17/2007 12:14 AM PDT | | Thanks for the comments, Dom. I think it's better to think of it as the *Christus-Victor* theory, the theory that God triumped over Satan in a way which both exposed the latter's deep evil/malice AND revealed the great creative love of God.
Still, your view also raises question. E.g. you seem to have elevated God's omnipotence to a level which, presumably, surpasses His love. I could even ask you why God has to bother with the Cross since He's all-powerful, right? Why does He have to be concerned about appeasing His own wrath via suffering? Why can't He appease it by snapping His fingers?
Of course you'll say that God's holiness has demands but this only shows how all theories seem to highlight a divine priority OTHER THAN mere power. For penal sub, it's holiness understood as legal perfection, for Christus Victor it's love.
Power, really, isn't everything. | |
| Posted by Dominic @ 07/16/2007 08:01 PM PDT | | Yes, it is the random theory of the atonement. It seems that old theories don't die, like the gnostics, they are simply revived after a few centuries.
As St. Anselm has so brilliantly pointed out a few centuries before when the ransom theory was in vogue, Satan being a criminal has no rights in the justice courts of God. The most Satan has is a de facto power over mankind, but certainly no de jure authority or right to demand a ransom. Saying that God must respect the rights of Satan over mankind is as ridiculous as saying that the government must respect the rights of a terrorist holding hostages. The terrorist has no 'property right' over the hostages since they are acting illegally, just as Satan has no property right since he is also acting illegelly. What both Satan and the terrorist has is at most a de facto control, which God, unlike the government, can annhilate immediately without much ado given that God is omnipotent, but there will be no 'injustice' in this since the terrorist are acting illegally anyway. | |
| Posted by Alwyn @ 07/11/2007 09:49 AM PDT | | | Thanks again for the comments, Uliang. Ok, will be emailing you...cheers, Alwyn. | |
| Posted by U-liang @ 07/11/2007 08:56 AM PDT | | Dear Alwyn, my responses are interlaced with yours and in brackets. If you wish to continue this correspondence, I suggest email. uliang6482@gmail.com
" Dear Uliang, thank you VERY much for the well-thought out post.
[Thanks, I try to respond as well as I could to what I understood. Seems I didn't]
I fully agree that analogies will always miss out some aspect of reality, but - I'm sure you agree! - this IOU analogy is one of the most frequent ones used in church, no?! :)
[I cannot vouch for that as I have been in Singapore for the last 5 years already. I honestly don't hear the IOU analogy a lot across the causeway]
I hear you when you say we shouldn't forget Jesus as Son of God, but I'm not sure how exactly you'd apply that to the 'problem' at hand which, to reiterate is: Why would God require a punishment, a 'kill', in the first place?
[My understanding about Greg's 'problem' is this: If God receives payment, then he doesn't forgive. His analogy is to demonstrate this implication. What I am questioning is the validity of this implication and analogy]
[As for why God requires punishment, I do not want to say that it's clear from the Bible, but for lack of sophistication in my theological leanings, I must]
[As for how Jesus being God relates to the problem: Since Jesus is God, we can say that God sets the rules of the game, and takes it upon himself to satisfy the requirements himself. God doesn't set the rules of the game, and expect somebody else to play according to his tune. If God requires sinners to be punished, and himself is willing to punished for something He didn't deserve, forgiveness can be seen as encompassing this substitution (act). My suggestion is that you take time to digest this because first impressions are often wrong]
And when we raise that, I'm also unsure of how your comments about God forgiving us 'from His heart' is relevant to the issue, thought I FULLY AGREE that there is more to the whole forgiveness thinggy than just some payment. And for sure, there are many BEAUTIFUL ways by which God demonstrates forgiveness.
[refer to above]
To quickly clarify, I don't think anyone (least of all, Boyd) is saying that the Cross is *unnecessary*(!!!) or that forgiveness involves ONLY legal payment, which SEEMS to be the point you're contesting (but correct me if I'm wrong).
[no to the former but in the latter, I understood Boyd as implying the forgiveness only involves legal payment, which I understood from the IOU analogy he gave. Which is why I wrote the comment in the first place.]
Boyd is challenging the traditional understanding of God's Son suffering God's wrath because He is the only One who can appease it, because God MUST have a 'kill' failing which He cannot forgive.
[Again, as I am not an English graduate, I must have misread Boyd's post, which I construed from context as talking about forgiveness and not a challenge per se to the need for Christ to suffer]
On this issue, I - and doubtless, Boyd - have yet to get a satisfactory answer." | |
| Posted by Alwyn @ 07/11/2007 07:11 AM PDT | | Dear Uliang, thank you VERY much for the well-thought out post.
I fully agree that analogies will always miss out some aspect of reality, but - I'm sure you agree! - this IOU analogy is one of the most frequent ones used in church, no?! :)
I hear you when you say we shouldn't forget Jesus as Son of God, but I'm not sure how exactly you'd apply that to the 'problem' at hand which, to reiterate is: Why would God require a punishment, a 'kill', in the first place?
And when we raise that, I'm also unsure of how your comments about God forgiving us 'from His heart' is relevant to the issue, thought I FULLY AGREE that there is more to the whole forgiveness thinggy than just some payment. And for sure, there are many BEAUTIFUL ways by which God demonstrates forgiveness.
To quickly clarify, I don't think anyone (least of all, Boyd) is saying that the Cross is *unnecessary*(!!!) or that forgiveness involves ONLY legal payment, which SEEMS to be the point you're contesting (but correct me if I'm wrong).
Boyd is challenging the traditional understanding of God's Son suffering God's wrath because He is the only One who can appease it, because God MUST have a 'kill' failing which He cannot forgive.
On this issue, I - and doubtless, Boyd - have yet to get a satisfactory answer. | |
| Posted by uliang @ 07/10/2007 07:46 PM PDT | | Hi, I read the context of Greg Boyd's post, and he was talking about forgiveness. I actually agreed with his thoughts, including the whole $100 analogy. (Hey, that didn't come out right, but haha...)
But as far as analogies go, if all we were stuck with is God (the Father) who gets paid (by his son, Jesus) then yeah, I would agree something is wrong.
But there is more going on. Stuff that that simple analogy does not capture, and was not meant to capture anyway. It is very pertinent that it was God who died on the cross, God in the person of Jesus. It is also very pertinent that I don't confuse Jesus as the Son of God and Jesus as the son of God. So that's one point.
Another is to answer the assertion that getting paid for a debt precludes the 'emotional' aspect of forgiveness using Greg's own words. Obviously God's moral outrage against a sinner (this is deliberate) does not compare to a $100 debt. So in my understanding, God also forgives us from the depth of his heart, as much as he requires restitution, which, as similar as it is to pagan thought, does not automatically render it inhumane or wrong. Put in another way, God demonstrates forgiveness not only in witholding punishment, but also lavishing on us love and riches beyond what we can imagine-including giving us 2nd chances. Who of us, even if someone paid up a debt would continue to lend to a loan-defaulter?
So until I can get answers to the two points I raised above, I have to think that Boyd got it wrong. | |
| Posted by sk @ 07/07/2007 02:31 PM PDT | | | I've always had a problem with the penal theory. | |
| Posted by peiling @ 07/07/2007 01:06 PM PDT | | | thank God for c.s. lewis! | |
| Posted by Alwyn @ 07/07/2007 11:51 AM PDT | | | It's more of the 'Christus Victor' theory...we REALLY have to discuss the 4 Views of Atonement, man! :) | |
| Posted by Alex Tang @ 07/07/2007 02:54 AM PDT | | | hey, isn't this the ransom theory of atonement? | |
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