How is the Christian to respond to this claim? The most popular way is to demonstrate that God is some sort of First Cause and that the universe requires him. (Creationism being the worst example of this idea). The atheist, justly, in my opinion, replies that to fill the vacuum of our ignorance with the intellectual baggage that come with our, or any other, notion of God is disingenuous. Any attempt to demonstrate God’s existence must be deemed a failure. However, this attempt must not be rejected simply because it is impossible, rather because it is theologically unwarranted. In trying to prove God’s existence, we would be treating him as an object. (The question about the Christian tradition’s belief in God as creator of the universe and his relationship therefore to the world remains to be discussed at another time). Sagan’s claim is thus irrelevent; we should not be trying to prove God’s existence in the first place.

Why? Because God is sui genris-unlike anything else. Sagan’s example is not applicable in the case of God, as unlike the Dragon analogy, God does not exist like other beings. We cannot extrapolate our experience of existence (ourselves, or another) and multiply that by infinity to understand God’s existence. If by existence we mean that God is a being like other beings, it would be proper to say that God does not ‘exist’, though it would be equally true to say that God does not ‘not exist’. To put it another way, when we talk about a Dragon, even an invisible one we are in fact talking about something extrapolated from normal experience. A Dragon is something like a lizard with added fantastical properties. It remains, nevertheless, very much a creature of our this-world imagination. On the other hand, when a Christian is speaking of God, she should be speaking of him as something ‘wholly other’, not a multiplication of her every day experience. If in an attempt to prove God’s existence, she treats him as an everyday occurrence, it would be a denial of him being God, wholly other. God is never the object but is always the subject; God is always the one acting and not the one acted upon, even in the act of knowing him, he reveals himself to us.

Being ‘wholly other’ is not an additional magic power, as some might claim I am suggesting. A fair minded atheist might then suggest that the Christian God is much like the deists’ God who may have started the world but is now distant from it, and as such consequently of no atheist’s concern. This misunderstanding is at least closer to the truth, as the Christian must not present the Christian God as directly identifiable with the happenings of the world. For God’s relationship with the world is not one of necessity, but of that of grace. He does not have to relate to us. He stands outside the universe. He is not part of it. In that position he has the freedom to choose to relate to the world. That is to say in the language of the Church that this is a relationship of grace. For ultimately the misguided Christian apologist, in an attempt to prove his existence, and the atheist both demand that God is a factor amongst other factors in the world, hence may be subject to any arbitrary normative criteria.

What then is the way forward between the atheist and the Christian? The Christian must ‘preach the gospel’, that is to say that the Church must present the person of Jesus through its message and community. It will not always succeed, it will often fail. However, this is not the point. The point is that in these faltering steps God will himself act. For from the Christian perspective the act of preaching is the place of encounter with living God. God confronts us in the frailty and ignominy of the cross, through word and sacrament. The preaching of the Gospel becomes the point of encounter with God himself.

Atheism is sin in response to the Gospel, not because it is morally worse than religion, on the contrary it is to be seen in many ways preferable. However, in the final analysis, it too demands, like religion, that God’s relationship with us should be one of necessity and not of grace. This is the essence of sin to reject grace. To put oneself outside this relationship there is only death. As Christians we must be thankful for atheists, because they remind us at every point where we ourselves rest on necessity, rather than on the grace of God. Where we would make God a factor of (as opposed to in) the world . Where we too try to domesticate God and in fact serve that which is not God, something that makes the believer more guilty. All of these factors stem from the fact that we prefer religion to faith.

There is always the fact that even faith in God must necessarily take the form of religion in our human sphere. It cannot do otherwise as a genuinely human event. That is necessarily so and consequently should not be an occasion for doubt. God confronts both the Christian and the atheist in the frailty and ignominy of the cross through word and sacrament and confirms us both as sinners, as people who try to evade grace, but who nevertheless have been overtaken by grace.

I’ve nabbed the content from my old blog which should give you something to read.

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To add to the recent flurry of books defending, or rejecting, the penal substitutionary doctrine of atonement Stephen R. Holmes has added his contribution with The wondrous cross. Having read his other work Listening to the Past, I was very much looking forward to Holmes’ take on PSA. The book is not his usual academic orientated work, rather it is an attempt to reach the wider evangelical world.

The core argument of the book is that the Cross is something is such a basic concept that language fails to explain it adequately. Consequently, Holmes argues that different ‘stories of atonement’ are needed to explain what has happened. Thus far, this is not too controversial argument, except for those who believe in a dominant atonement model that all others are merely subsidiaries thereof. This argument sets the stage for his assertion that Penal substitution, while not the dominant story, is an important (possibly necessary) story for understanding the Cross. Moreover, there are aspects of the Cross that this story illuminates that all others do not.

The book proceeds to look at the way scriptures provide an explanation for Christ’s death. He starts with the Old Testament as a types of the new. He then moves onto explore the role of sacrifice culminating in Abraham being commanded to sacrifice Isaac on mount Moriah. He argues that at its bottom all logical explanation falls short for sacrifice is ultimately mysterious.

In the next chapter Holmes naturally moves on to the New Testaments construction of the atonement. In the chapter he makes the frank admission that “There is, as far as I can see, no clearly worked out doctrine of atonement in the New Testament. Instead, there is only the raw material out of which we may and must attempt to construct such a doctrine.” However he does find some key features, such as Jesus acting being ‘ as our example, as our representative, and as our substitute. ‘

Perhaps the most interesting part of the work, unsurprisingly as Holmes is an historical theologian, is his next two chapters survey of the history of the doctrine of penal substitution. Contra Pierced for our Transgressions (a book from the Oak Hill school of theology) the early church is not brimming over with the doctrine of Penal substitution. Indeed, Holmes can find only one fully blown doctrine of penal substitution in the early Church and that in the writings of Pope Gregory the Great. He suggests that many evangelical attempts to find penal substitution in the writings of the Fathers is due there assumption that the terms used by the early church is being used in the framework of penal substitution. He is also keen (as he was in Listening to the Past) to defend Anselm from the charge of being the founder of the doctrine of Penal Substitution.

The potted history of the doctrine is continued by looking at the doctrine of the Reformers to the present day. He suggests that the first real doctrine of PSA is posited by the magisterial reformer John Calvin. He argues that Martin Luther’s doctrine of the atonement leans in that direction but is more concerned with Christ dealing with Law that with the righteous punishment of God. He then notes that this way of speaking about the Cross became the established orthodoxy in the Church. Morever, this was the dominant way of talking about the cross for two hundred years.

Holmes locates the beginning of the questioning of the doctrine by otherwise orthodox Christians (there was some vehement critics, especial Scocinous, however they tended to reject other more core Christian doctrines) to begin in the nineteenth century. As such, he focuses on the eighteenth century’s prevailing wind of liberal theology, not before mentioning “A group of brilliant young Scot’s thinkers – John McLeod Campbell, Thomas Erskine of Linlathlen, and Edward Irving chief among them … . ” Importantly, for though they denied Penal Substitution, Holmes notes, they did not deny the central efficacy and necessity of the Cross. The same cannot be said of the liberal theologians, for whom Christ death was only efficacious in that it influenced others to do good. Strangely, he places R. C. Moberly in this camp (where as, in this authors opinion is distantly related to the ‘young scots’ from whom he borrows though no where construction is not as successfully as McLeod Campbell’s) . Holmes then progresses to twentieth century and to neo-orthodox school , which he notes, ‘members’ were divided amongst the authors on their views on this matter. The influential Christus Victor by Gustaf Allen is mentioned in it centrality of the cross in non-penal terms. Finally, touching on Liberation theology and the cross as the great act of liberation.

Holmes moves on to explorer in detail his idea of stories of the salvation. He argues that evangelicals (and a good few others) have been guilty of seeing there story as being the key one and that all others are merely explanations of this one. In contradiction to this, Holmes argues that biblically this is an unsupportable position. Moreover, these different ‘stories of salvation’ should help to enhance the believers vision of the cross as they each provided a necessary, but limited, perspective on Christ’s atoning work. There a special place is derived from the fact that because ‘…they describe something we have no other grasp of.’ Obviously, this all provides the basis for Holmes’ argument on that penal substitution is one aspect atonement.

Before exploring the strength of the Penal substitutionary atonement it is important to clarify what Holmes believes this is (as there often seems to be an abundance of penal substitutionary doctrines of the atonement). His short definition is that:

“The term penal substitution denotes a way of talking about the cross in terms of crime and
punishment: we have broken God’s law, and deserve to be punished for that, but God in his love provides a substitute, his Son, who will take the punishment so that we don’t have to. As a result, we are freed from [objective] guilt and enabled to become children of God.”

Interestingly, the punishment that Holmes argues that Christ bears is that of death (unlike, some which argue that it is essentially hell). Nevertheless, to argue this creates more problems than it solves as all of us die, irrespective of Christ’s death in our place. However, the fact that Christ died can be seen as receiving the ‘wages of sin’, a punishment arguably, though the thought that this aspect is by itself vicarious is is less so.

Holmes latches upon the metaphor of forgiveness as a way of explaining what penal substitution is about. The cost of Forgiveness is born by the forgiver. Furthermore, he argues that, perhaps, penal substation is the only ‘story of salvation’ that allows the full cost of salvation to be expressed. Holmes does not deal with the possibility of using the ‘cost of forgiveness’ motif as a ‘story of salvation’. Also, he argues that PSA, though not exclusively, declares the free nature of salvation.

Finally by way of epilogue Holmes reviews Steve Chalke’s and Alan Mann’s ‘The Lost Message of Jesus’. He is generally positive about the book. He notes Chalke’s now infamous line that “The fact is the cross isn’t a form of cosmic child abuse – a vengeful Father, punishing his Son for an offence he hasn’t even committed.” To which he makes the response (I wish all defenders of PSA had made) that this is not penal substitution and those who think it is should change there doctrine of PSA. That said he is not so complimentary about some of Chalke’s later comments on the issue.

Holmes ends with a call for tolerance (in the best sense of the word) between evangelicals disagreeing on the ‘how’ of the cross. This is as, our perspective is necessarily limited and our models of atonement are attempts to articulate the ineffable. This conclusion is most certainly the most valuable part of the work. Combined with his assertion that,“Penal substitution was, for Protestants at least, a dominant story of salvation between 1600 and 1800.” For, if one is to reject penal substitution does the writings on the cross by these writers become merely superfluous. Here, Holmes, is at his best reminding the Church of the need to listen to the voices of the church’s past makes an excellent point.

However, here there is another possible direction that Holmes could take. He notes the ‘stories of salvation’ all have proper theological concerns specific to them. Furthermore, Holmes, admits that he has not heard a ‘story of salvation’ that express the concerns of penal substitution in a better way. If such a story existed, and was able to overcome some of the difficulties attached to PSA would that not be better way. Though, it would be incumbent upon the sympathetic critic of PSA to produce such a model. Furthermore, this would not necessary lead to a devaluing of tradition, for the concerns of those (past and present) who assert Penal substitution would be affirmed, while not their specific story of salvation.

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NEXT I. H. Marshall’s new book on the atonement

I went to hear William Lane Craig talk today about is life without God absurd. Interestingly, it is this suggestion by Craig that John Humphrey’s found disconcerting. His case was essentially that with out God there is not point of reference to judge morality by and thus it becomes objectively meaningless. He went through various atheist philosophers to make the point that they to reached this conclusion. I did wonder if they would have agreed in exactly the way they were being used. He continued by showing various non-theistic attempts to construct a morality and showed how they failed.

Overall it was an enjoyable talk and the mainly christian crowed enjoyed it. Unfortunately, there was not much coherent atheist objections. The “that was the whole point of the argument” answer was quite funny, but showed that some atheists hadn’t really understood it. And the “how did you obtain a personal relationship with Jesus” question was cringe worthy in the extreme.

I also asked a question, much to my friends embarrassment. I questioned that If we need and objective source of morality does God not need the same. And if not, why then should human beings need a source of morality outside themselves. (especially to be irksome I called God her). Craig put up an ‘ok’ argument about God being the source of all good. He rejected a voluntarian doctrine of divine Goodness (i.e. God will it there for it is good) holding the contrary view (God wills as it is good). He suggested that the question was similar to, and as nonsensical, as asking whether an orchestra is better than high definition recording of an orchestra. However, he did not really deal with the issue for my money. Essentially, God is the source of morality was a premise rather than a demonstrable conclusion. It certainly is a coherent argument that God is the source of all morality, however, I am unconvinced that it is the only coherent answer.

You may now be asking yourself, “Why all this dissatisfaction from someone who believes that God exists and is the source of all Good?” My major problem is that I am not convinced that reason outside the sphere of revealed truth can ever demonstrate God’s existence. To put it another way there is no independent Natural Theology. All christian apologetics should do, in my view, is to demonstrate the rational coherence of the christian faith. To think that one can do more than this is to fail to appreciate the fundamentally fallen nature of mankind and as such the incapacity of human reason to reach God. I asked very briefly after the talk about whether he wanted to show that Christianity was rationally coherent or that it was rationally necessary to believe in it. He said the most plausible explanation. I am not sure I can agree that this is the task of apologetics. However, Craig also said that he wanted Christians and non-christians to think through the issues. I am sure that this can only be a good thing.

but have responded to adrian, and wayne grudem, here.

Worth a read

Also saw babbons today. They were quite cheeky.

We connect so slowly, when the information passes so quickly.
The substantive but infidecimal element of human existence
becomes subsumed in the mass of contradiction.
The multiplicity of voices allow the belligerent to be all.
When the words increase the dialogue dampens to a whimper.