Violent Act or an Example of sacrifice? Penal Substitutionary Atonement under attack!
I have just been emailed something written by Roger Oakland about the Emerging Church and their view on the ‘Blood Atonement of Christ’. I thought I would share it for you as it speaks about the movers and shakers of those within this movement and how they have come to re-understand the cross of Christ.
Roger Oakland says this about the ‘Blood Atonement’…
The heart and core of the Christian faith is the gospel of Jesus Christ according to the Scriptures. This foundational belief is under attack by many who are considered to be leaders of the Emerging Church movement that is sweeping the world and “re-inventing” Christianity.
The heart and core of the Christian faith is based upon Jesus Christ’s shed blood at Calvary as the only acceptable substitutionary atonement for mankind’s sins. The Gospel message requires this foundation. The Bible says the wages of sin is death—thus every person alive should receive the penalty of spiritual death because none of us is without sin, since we are born with our sin nature intact. Satan hates the Gospel message. He understands what the Gospel means, and his agenda is to deceive mankind from understanding and believing so they can suffer eternally with him.
The new way of thinking about the ‘Penal Substitutionary Atonement’ stands in stark contrast to what the bible explicitly tell us about the work of Christ and His sacrifice on the cross.
When you read the following from teachers who are considered to be masters at higher cristicism…
The Church’s fixation on the death of Jesus as the universal saving act must end, and the place of the cross must be reimagined in Christian faith. Why? Because of the cult of suffering and the vindictive God behind it. Alan Jones, Reimagining Christianity (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley and Sons, 2005), p. 132.
And this from Alan Jones…
The other thread of just criticism addresses the suggestion implicit in the cross that Jesus’ sacrifice was to appease an angry God. Penal substitution [the Cross] was the name of this vile doctrine.
You gotta ask yourself… why are they re-wording the Word…
I let go of the notion that the Bible is a divine product. I learned that it is a human cultural product, the product of two ancient communities, biblical Israel and early Christianity. As such, it contained their understandings and affirmations, not statements coming directly or somewhat directly from God.… I realized that whatever “divine revelation” and the “inspiration of the Bible” meant (if they meant anything), they did not mean that the Bible was a divine product with divine authority. Marcus Borg The God We Never Knew (New York, NY: HarperCollins, First HarperCollins Paperback Edition, 1998), p. 25.
These movers and shakers say that there is one main bunch of people who are the BIGGEST PROBLEM for them being able to move forward into Ecumenical Unity. In their own words, it is the fundies who are the ones that are the divisive ones, fundies just can’t get over the substitutionary atonement…
Were you to talk to that fundamentalist preacher, he doubtless would insist that you must believe in the “substitutionary” theory of atonement—namely, that Jesus suffered as a substitute for us the punishment due us for our sins. But can you imagine a modern courtroom in a civilized country where an innocent man would be deliberately punished for another man’s crime? … Substitutionary atonement … came a long way down in history in many a penal system. But now it is a precivilized barbarity; no secular court would tolerate the idea for a moment; only in certain belated theologies is it retained as an explanation of our Lord’s death … Christ’s sacrificial life and death are too sacred to be so misrepresented.. Harry Emerson Fosdick, Dear Mr. Brown, op. cit., p. 136.
Funny thing to think that God’s court should even be considered to be a secular one anyway, what’s with that??? I was under the impression that it would be a theocratic one, one ruled by Christ Himself when He comes again! Secular, I think NOT!!!
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