Consistency Between Atonement Theory and Biblical Narrative

[WrongClub_Lucius]

I think this post will land me squarely in the the "controversial" camp.

I'll start out slow, just asking if anybody has noticed that the Biblical narrative is not always consistent with the Penal Substitution atonement theory?

Penal Substitution says that God is [righteously] angry with us for sinning, thus we [justly] deserve eternal death. But God also loves us, so he came up with a clever plan to save us [from himself]! So God send Jesus, who is a part of God, to die in our place, creating a loophole that allows God to loves us in spite of our sin.

I must point out that this theory states that God constructs an elaborate plan to injure himself (i.e. Jesus), and that injury then inhibits his ability to notice that we are still sinful...and we presume this self-deception will last for eternity. God doesn't notice we are still sinful, yet he is still omnipotent?

I assume everyone knows this theory, and most agree with it. It's an idea that's been around for 1,000 years, after all.

This idea was designed to push back against the previously held Ransom Theory of Atonement, which says that the Bible tells a story about God maneuvering around/ negotiating a conflict with Satan. They thought that Satan was given too much power, so they created a new narrative where Satan plays no significant role. They decided that the Bible is actually a story about God maneuvering around his own characteristics/ qualities in his pursuit of allowing himself the ability to escape from the necessity of his own judgement against us.


The above is a summary of established theology...but what if we read the Bible as a story? I think it is a story. And what should happen in a story is that all the events in the story have significant meaning and their meanings are all connected. But if this is true, how is Revelation connected to Genesis, aside from one being the beginning, and the other being the end?

But even putting Revelation aside, what about Genesis? Why is Satan in the Garden in the first place? I noticed that someone started a thread claiming that Adam = Satan, but....don't be ridiculous. When I was a kid, like in 4th grade, I asked my teachers at a Lutheran school why God didn't just get rid of Satan before he could mess up life on earth? I only mention that I thought it as a child, because it is such an obvious question! God is all powerful and all the rest, so he knew all along....and God allowed it. Why?

So....anybody ever noticed how inadequate Penal Substitution is in answering why God allowed sin into the world? God knew, and he must have known...and God allowed it to happen, since it happened; it was only possible with God's permission, since Penal Substitution says that Satan has no power over God, added to the fact that most believe God created Satan in the first place!

So the point. Yes, I'm proposing that the narrative that emerges from the Bible, if it can be read without tradition being imposed on it, presents a pattern of events that is quite inconsistent with Penal Substitution.

Have you noticed this?

 

[Doug Melven]

God created man with freewill.
So, I would ask the question, "Do we have freewill if we are not allowed to exercise it?"
Freewill without the ability to reject is not freewill.
If you put someone in a room with no way out and tell them that they can leave whenever they want, then you return after some time and find them still there.
Did they stay of there own freewill?
God allowed Lucifer to have freewill, and he exercised it to deceive Eve and Adam followed of his own freewill.
And all were punished for not obeying God.

 

[Winken]

I think this post will land me squarely in the the "controversial" camp.

I'll start out slow, just asking if anybody has noticed that the Biblical narrative is not always consistent with the Penal Substitution atonement theory?

Penal Substitution says that God is [righteously] angry with us for sinning, thus we [justly] deserve eternal death. But God also loves us, so he came up with a clever plan to save us [from himself]! So God send Jesus, who is a part of God, to die in our place, creating a loophole that allows God to loves us in spite of our sin.

I must point out that this theory states that God constructs an elaborate plan to injure himself (i.e. Jesus), and that injury then inhibits his ability to notice that we are still sinful...and we presume this self-deception will last for eternity. God doesn't notice we are still sinful, yet he is still omnipotent?

I assume everyone knows this theory, and most agree with it. It's an idea that's been around for 1,000 years, after all.

This idea was designed to push back against the previously held Ransom Theory of Atonement, which says that the Bible tells a story about God maneuvering around/ negotiating a conflict with Satan. They thought that Satan was given too much power, so they created a new narrative where Satan plays no significant role. They decided that the Bible is actually a story about God maneuvering around his own characteristics/ qualities in his pursuit of allowing himself the ability to escape from the necessity of his own judgement against us.


The above is a summary of established theology...but what if we read the Bible as a story? I think it is a story. And what should happen in a story is that all the events in the story have significant meaning and their meanings are all connected. But if this is true, how is Revelation connected to Genesis, aside from one being the beginning, and the other being the end?

But even putting Revelation aside, what about Genesis? Why is Satan in the Garden in the first place? I noticed that someone started a thread claiming that Adam = Satan, but....don't be ridiculous. When I was a kid, like in 4th grade, I asked my teachers at a Lutheran school why God didn't just get rid of Satan before he could mess up life on earth? I only mention that I thought it as a child, because it is such an obvious question! God is all powerful and all the rest, so he knew all along....and God allowed it. Why?

So....anybody ever noticed how inadequate Penal Substitution is in answering why God allowed sin into the world? God knew, and he must have known...and God allowed it to happen, since it happened; it was only possible with God's permission, since Penal Substitution says that Satan has no power over God, added to the fact that most believe God created Satan in the first place!

So the point. Yes, I'm proposing that the narrative that emerges from the Bible, if it can be read without tradition being imposed on it, presents a pattern of events that is quite inconsistent with Penal Substitution.

Have you noticed this?

"The Logic of Penal Substitution" by J.I. Packer

 

[WrongClub_Lucius]

God created man with freewill.
So, I would ask the question, "Do we have freewill if we are not allowed to exercise it?"
Freewill without the ability to reject is not freewill.
If you put someone in a room with no way out and tell them that they can leave whenever they want, then you return after some time and find them still there.
Did they stay of there own freewill?
God allowed Lucifer to have freewill, and he exercised it to deceive Eve and Adam followed of his own freewill.
And all were punished for not obeying God.

I wasn't really looking to start a free will thread....

I dislike how "freewill" is often wielded like a weapon, being used to justify all manner of things. But what is free will? If it is the reality of making choices, it is self evident and adds nothing to a debate. Even a Calvinist makes choices and knows he is making choices!

The Garden, in my view, was created to give Adam and Eve an opportunity to make a choice. I say this because we know there are two trees, and in story telling, the inclusion of two things always represents a choice. We understand that one tree was Satan's, so by process of elimination, the other tree was God's tree. Furthermore, we see that both God and Satan freely entered the garden and interacted with Adam and Eve. I might say they both had equal access, but that's a bit speculative...

Once Adam and Eve chose Satan's sales pitch, God kicked them out of the garden, explicitly preventing them from gaining access to the other tree. So again a choice, and choosing one means not having the other.


So okay, there are choices. Yes, I agree there are choices.

But what I am asking what is the story created by these choices (i.e. narrative), and is this story consistent with Penal substitution atonement? I say no.

 

[~Anastasia~]

Of course I've noticed that penal substitution as a theory of stonmenent doesn't make sense ... but I just wanted to say that I like the way you've pointed out certain stretches of logic within it, and I wanted to welcome you to CF. I know you've been here a while, but I haven't seen you around, and I wasn't sure if you'd been away or mostly lurking.

Anyway, belated welcome, and looking forward to see if your thread shapes up.

And it's not technically controversial, btw, though certain folks will probably consider it so.

 

[WrongClub_Lucius]

"The Logic of Penal Substitution" by J.I. Packer

Deferring to authority is not a great start, but I did look at the article.

He says: "Penal substitution, as an idea, presupposes a penalty (poena) due to us from God the Judge for wrong done and failure to meet his claims."

I am questioning this presupposition. I do not care about the mountain of abstractions heaped upon this presupposition by theologians. They are irrelevant.

 

[Winken]

Failure to acknowledge Jesus Christ as Savior-Lord results in the penalty of eternal life outside of the embrace of God. That's eternal hell.

 

[WrongClub_Lucius]

Failure to acknowledge Jesus Christ as Savior-Lord results in the penalty of eternal life outside of the embrace of God. That's eternal hell.

Yeah, the Bible does talk about acknowledging God, so I'm good with that.

I like to talk of allegiance to God, because it seems a bit more descriptive? I see the conflict between God and Satan, and by default our allegiance is to Satan. I am convinced that is what happened in the Garden! And I would say our salvation comes through giving our allegiance to God. Specifically, allegiance comes by agreeing that God's law is good...the Apostle Paul tells us this is the key to our salvation!

 

[jax5434]

Penal substitution has a role in the Cross but I do not think it is complete story. Personally I think the "Christus Victor" view of the Eastern Orthodox Churches has a lot to recommend it.
God Bless
Jax

 

[WrongClub_Lucius]

Penal substitution has a role in the Cross but I do not think it is complete story. Personally I think the "Christus Victor" view of the Eastern Orthodox Churches has a lot to recommend it.
God Bless
Jax

This "Christus Victor" is one theology that confuses me! Isn't it basically saying that we know we win, even though we don't really understand how it works?

But an impartial observer and the skeptic would say that Christ is dead, and not only did he die, but he was completely humiliated, with is death being a waste. That is how it appears.

What I see is the long awaited fulfillment of prophecy finally arriving, and it became the greatest disappointment of the Jews. In anticipation of the promises, the people developed an idea of what their savior would be like. But Jesus was nothing like what they imagined. Yet when Jesus was alive, they were tempted to believe that something amazing would happen anyway. But instead, Jesus was crucified; Jesus allowed himself to be crucified! Their hopes were dashed. Even those closest to Jesus were despondent afterward!

I believe that Jesus is ultimately victorious, but I don't think that victory is complete. Not yet.

Instead of the cross being a great victory for Christ, I think it happened according to Satan's desire. It was what Satan wanted.

God once said concerning the sacrifice of children that it wasn't his idea, and it had never entered his mind. So who imagined this child sacrifice? If God didn't imagine it, it could only be Satan who demanded it.

So even though our salvation comes through the cross, it seems naive to call it an unqualified victory. That seems to devalue Jesus' suffering.

 

[~Anastasia~]

Christus Victor is about Christ defeating death - which He did do (past tense) when He was resurrected.

Death - the separation of the physical body from the soul - is an unnatural state for man. It was not how God created us. Death entered creation through one man - Adam - as a result of his sin. Because God IS the source of life, when Adam sinned and in a sense cut himself off from God, he made himself subject to death.

Death was not a punishment for sin. God didn't say "in the day you eat of it, I'm going to kill you". Rather, it's like a man who closes himself into a metal box out in the bright sunlight. If the sunlight is a metaphor for God, who IS life, and man voluntarily shuts himself into a solid metal box - a metaphor for choosing to sin and so cutting himself off from God - the man can make himself in complete darkness. Cut off from all light. Cut off from the source of life. And so ... the man can die.

Death so entered the world, and as a result, all men die. But this is not God's design.

However, death reigned. It needed to be destroyed.

Christ IS God Himself - the very source of Life. As such of course, God cannot die. One of the things Christ did by becoming incarnate in human flesh - was to make Himself able to die - at least the flesh. He accomplished other things as well, of course. There are elements of truth within other theories of atonement (of which there are some number). But the early Church did view Christ's victory over death as a primary one.

There are many beautiful sayings by the Church Fathers. I especially like - "Death swallowed a man - and encountered God". And God being the source of life, of course would overcome death. Some teachers have used a balloon to illustrate the point. Like a balloon that is meant to contain only a certain amount of air, death swallowing God Himself was like a balloon which is overinflated to try to hold that which it cannot - and bursts. Christ-God (the source of life) could not be contained by death, thus the resurrection.

(Remember too how some bodies resurrected from the dead as the result of Christ's death? Matt 27 - 50 And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. 51 And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split.52 The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; 53 and coming out of the tombs after His resurrection they entered the holy city and appeared to many. 54 Now the centurion, and those who were with him keeping guard over Jesus, when they saw the earthquake and the things that were happening, became very frightened and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!”)

Yes, we still die. But the way has been opened that at the end of the age, God will physically resurrect everyone's body, and all souls will be restored to physical bodies. After that the judgement, and then the life of the age to come, in which bodies will no longer be subject to decay and death.

Glory to God!


I hope that helps s little?

 

[WrongClub_Lucius]

Christus Victor is about Christ defeating death - which He did do (past tense) when He was resurrected.

Death - the separation of the physical body from the soul - is an unnatural state for man. It was not how God created us. Death entered creation through one man - Adam - as a result of his sin. Because God IS the source of life, when Adam sinned and in a sense cut himself off from God, he made himself subject to death.

Death was not a punishment for sin. God didn't say "in the day you eat of it, I'm going to kill you". Rather, it's like a man who closes himself into a metal box out in the bright sunlight. If the sunlight is a metaphor for God, who IS life, and man voluntarily shuts himself into a solid metal box - a metaphor for choosing to sin and so cutting himself off from God - the man can make himself in complete darkness. Cut off from all light. Cut off from the source of life. And so ... the man can die.

Death so entered the world, and as a result, all men die. But this is not God's design.

However, death reigned. It needed to be destroyed.

Christ IS God Himself - the very source of Life. As such of course, God cannot die. One of the things Christ did by becoming incarnate in human flesh - was to make Himself able to die - at least the flesh. He accomplished other things as well, of course. There are elements of truth within other theories of atonement (of which there are some number). But the early Church did view Christ's victory over death as a primary one.

There are many beautiful sayings by the Church Fathers. I especially like - "Death swallowed a man - and encountered God". And God being the source of life, of course would overcome death. Some teachers have used a balloon to illustrate the point. Like a balloon that is meant to contain only a certain amount of air, death swallowing God Himself was like a balloon which is overinflated to try to hold that which it cannot - and bursts. Christ-God (the source of life) could not be contained by death, thus the resurrection.

(Remember too how some bodies resurrected from the dead as the result of Christ's death? Matt 27 - 50 And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. 51 And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split.52 The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; 53 and coming out of the tombs after His resurrection they entered the holy city and appeared to many. 54 Now the centurion, and those who were with him keeping guard over Jesus, when they saw the earthquake and the things that were happening, became very frightened and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!”)

Yes, we still die. But the way has been opened that at the end of the age, God will physically resurrect everyone's body, and all souls will be restored to physical bodies. After that the judgement, and then the life of the age to come, in which bodies will no longer be subject to decay and death.

Glory to God!


I hope that helps s little?

Well, I understand your point of view, but I don't see how it fixes any of the problems I would like to address. You say that death is unnatural, but that is a presupposition that opens a whole can of worms! It is primarily abstractions built on presuppositions, which I object to.

What I want to do is throw out all the presuppositions, and evaluate what we actually know.

We should be building our ideas on the things we do know, not the things we assume to be true. You say that death is unnatural, like God did not intend for things to die? But everything we know about God forces us to accept that God knew what was going to happen, and he had the ability to create it any way he liked! So we are forced to conclude that the world is like this, because it is what God wanted.

The challenge is in understanding WHY God wanted it this way.



The standard narrative of the Garden is that God created a "perfect" world that was perfect in every way, with "perfect" people, and out of nowhere these "perfect" people sinned, ruining it all. Oh, and btw, the personification of evil was allowed to roam freely in this perfect world?

When I read Genesis, I don't see any justification for the standard narrative of perfection being corrupted by sin. This is an assumption that is deeply embedded in doctrine and ideology. But I am questioning the basic assumptions.


Saying the world used to be "perfect" is to me a lazy way of dealing with the problem of sin and evil.

The effect of this idea forces us to believe that the earth, which is a self-regulated and balanced system, was created to have a fundamentally different balance. And when Adam and Eve sinned, the fundamental rules of reality were changed, which created a completely different, yet completely balanced, system. But how was it balanced? Life and death is what balances the world now. Were trees just supposed to grow to a certain height, and stay that way forever? Isn't it contradictory to say "no death", but animals are eating plants...which causes injury, suffering, and death to the plant?

Die hard Creationists insist that all animals were vegetarian before the fall, and predation only began after the fall.

Is this possible? Sure, we can speculate that anything happened. But when we look at the words of the story, there is nothing in the Bible that indicates any of this! God told Adam and Eve that their life would be different--they would have to work to survive! This is pretty obvious stuff, given the fact that they were leaving a garden that provided food for them, without them having to do any work.

If we think for just a moment about what it is like to live in the natural outdoors, there are plenty of causes of pain. Mowed lawns and perfectly flat ground are not natural. Stepping on rocks or roots or plant stems would cause pain...yet we're somehow allowing ourselves to believe in a form of perfection where there is no pain? Granted there is a big difference between pain and death, but most people would expect perfection to be free of pain.

--------

Where does this idea of the garden being perfection come from? Back around the time of the reformation, when protestantism really took off, people in England, and in Europe in general, had an idea about what a garden was. The richest and the nobility had vast gardens manicured by armies of gardeners, and the gardens they created were an expression of status and power/ control over nature. In a word, they were attempts to create "perfection", even their own personal heaven. These gardens were often filled with religious symbolism, and sometimes the obscene. More than anything else, they were havens of hedonism, pleasure, indulgence, etc.

The persistent image of The Garden we have inherited is very much like these gardens. And looking through this lens, the idea of the garden becomes an erotic and hedonistic place. That's what people were thinking, because that's what they were familiar with. The people that wrote most of theology that is accepted today had a very specific idea of what a Garden was, and I think we need to take this into account.

 

[~Anastasia~]

Well, I understand your point of view, but I don't see how it fixes any of the problems I would like to address. You say that death is unnatural, but that is a presupposition that opens a whole can of worms! It is primarily abstractions built on presuppositions, which I object to.

What I want to do is throw out all the presuppositions, and evaluate what we actually know.

We should be building our ideas on the things we do know, not the things we assume to be true. You say that death is unnatural, like God did not intend for things to die? But everything we know about God forces us to accept that God knew what was going to happen, and he had the ability to create it any way he liked! So we are forced to conclude that the world is like this, because it is what God wanted.

The challenge is in understanding WHY God wanted it this way.



The standard narrative of the Garden is that God created a "perfect" world that was perfect in every way, with "perfect" people, and out of nowhere these "perfect" people sinned, ruining it all. Oh, and btw, the personification of evil was allowed to roam freely in this perfect world?

When I read Genesis, I don't see any justification for the standard narrative of perfection being corrupted by sin. This is an assumption that is deeply embedded in doctrine and ideology. But I am questioning the basic assumptions.


Saying the world used to be "perfect" is to me a lazy way of dealing with the problem of sin and evil.

The effect of this idea forces us to believe that the earth, which is a self-regulated and balanced system, was created to have a fundamentally different balance. And when Adam and Eve sinned, the fundamental rules of reality were changed, which created a completely different, yet completely balanced, system. But how was it balanced? Life and death is what balances the world now. Were trees just supposed to grow to a certain height, and stay that way forever? Isn't it contradictory to say "no death", but animals are eating plants...which causes injury, suffering, and death to the plant?

Die hard Creationists insist that all animals were vegetarian before the fall, and predation only began after the fall.

Is this possible? Sure, we can speculate that anything happened. But when we look at the words of the story, there is nothing in the Bible that indicates any of this! God told Adam and Eve that their life would be different--they would have to work to survive! This is pretty obvious stuff, given the fact that they were leaving a garden that provided food for them, without them having to do any work.

If we think for just a moment about what it is like to live in the natural outdoors, there are plenty of causes of pain. Mowed lawns and perfectly flat ground are not natural. Stepping on rocks or roots or plant stems would cause pain...yet we're somehow allowing ourselves to believe in a form of perfection where there is no pain? Granted there is a big difference between pain and death, but most people would expect perfection to be free of pain.

--------

Where does this idea of the garden being perfection come from? Back around the time of the reformation, when protestantism really took off, people in England, and in Europe in general, had an idea about what a garden was. The richest and the nobility had vast gardens manicured by armies of gardeners, and the gardens they created were an expression of status and power/ control over nature. In a word, they were attempts to create "perfection", even their own personal heaven. These gardens were often filled with religious symbolism, and sometimes the obscene. More than anything else, they were havens of hedonism, pleasure, indulgence, etc.

The persistent image of The Garden we have inherited is very much like these gardens. And looking through this lens, the idea of the garden becomes an erotic and hedonistic place. That's what people were thinking, because that's what they were familiar with. The people that wrote most of theology that is accepted today had a very specific idea of what a Garden was, and I think we need to take this into account.

Well, I can't speak to medieval theology. I do actually have an interest in the evolution of theologies, beginning from the Apostles and working forward.

If I can help I will, but it's difficult for me to start in the middle to explain things.

All I CAN tell you is that this is what the early Church believed and taught, and it didn't derive from medieval gardens obviously.

If one brings in creation vs evolution that is a huge confounding factor to the discussion. I can simply say that there are possibly ways, theologically, to avoid addressing it so that the rest if the narrative can be focused on exclusively.

If you wish rather to incorporate it, then you must begin by overlaying one side or the other onto Scripture and make certain assumptions ... but one way or the other, you necessarily begin with a set of presuppositions.

By the way, I'm not looking to argue you into or out of anything at all. That's really not my interest. I'm always happy to discuss, and you mentioned that you didn't understand Christus Victor, so I was attempting to explain.

The idea of applying logic and human understanding to interpret the Scriptures to come up with new ideas is an approach that became popular with Catholic theologians, and has been enthusiastically embraced by some others. With no other recourse available, I do understand that is the reasonable course to take. But Scripture didn't develop in a vacuum, but within the context of the early Church, and there is a very great deal of information available (though not all translated into English) that helps us to understand how they understood it. I just find my time better spent pursuing that, as I've spent decades going down rabbit trails of all sorts otherwise, but the elegant simplicity and harmony that one tends to find in early interpretations makes everything fit so much better.

Ah, there, forgive me. I have a tendency to tell "both sides".

My point is that I respect the need and desire some have in such pursuits, but I'm not inclined to follow them myself anymore.

Why did God allow evil, the fall, if He knew in advance? That is a question of the ages. I think you might have said you don't like the answer of free will, but there it is. Obviously God knew - Christ is "the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the earth".

And the fact is, just as God allowed the angels to have free will, and some chose to rebel, so He gave man free will. It is a dignity He allows us. We are created in His image and likeness, which means ultimately that we must be free to choose. I know that can seem unsatisfying to our minds right now, but ultimately God wishes us to grow into beings in full loving union with Him, partakers of the Divine nature through Christ, and if we were mere puppets, that would be meaningless.

I suspect this doesn't satisfy your questions, but it's the best I can do. I believe it to be true, and it's what the early Christians taught. Ultimately, some things are something of a mystery to human minds.

God be with you, and bless you in your seeking.

 

[mkgal1]

I'll start out slow, just asking if anybody has noticed that the Biblical narrative is not always consistent with the Penal Substitution atonement theory?

Penal Substitution says that God is [righteously] angry with us for sinning, thus we [justly] deserve eternal death. But God also loves us, so he came up with a clever plan to save us [from himself]! So God send Jesus, who is a part of God, to die in our place, creating a loophole that allows God to loves us in spite of our sin.

I must point out that this theory states that God constructs an elaborate plan to injure himself (i.e. Jesus), and that injury then inhibits his ability to notice that we are still sinful...and we presume this self-deception will last for eternity. God doesn't notice we are still sinful, yet he is still omnipotent?

The PSA theory never sat well with me....but for a long time, that's all I ever knew or heard. I had to ignore large parts of it in order to accept it (and, in doing so, I think that kept me distant from God).

A few years ago I learned of the theology of John Duns Scotus...the theory that God's plan of incarnation *couldn't* have been formed as a back up plan out of the sinfulness of man....it had to have been formed out of His love for us. That's a small adjustment...but it seems to me to make a huge impact in how we see God and His nature. In the theology of Scotus:

"It was not Adam who provided the blueprint or pattern that God used in shaping the humanity of Christ.

It was the other way around, insists Scotus: Christ was the model in God’s mind according to which Adam and Eve, as well as the rest of the human race, were created. We can rightly say, therefore, that the Incarnation was not simply some kind of “Plan B arrangement,” or “last-minute cure,” to offset the sin of Adam and Eve. On the contrary, it was God’s “Plan A” from the beginning."~John Duns Scotus: His View of Christ

"According to Scotus, God’s first intention — from all eternity — was that human nature be glorified by being united to the divine Word. And this was to happen regardless of the first humans’ innocence or sinfulness. To say that the Incarnation of Christ was an afterthought of God, dependent on Adam and Eve’s fall, would be to base the rich Christian theology of Incarnation on sin! Theologians could do better than that — and Duns Scotus did."~John Duns Scotus: His View of Christ

Given humanity’s sin, the way Christ eventually came was in the form of a savior whose great act of love and self-surrender set us free.

This idea was designed to push back against the previously held Ransom Theory of Atonement, which says that the Bible tells a story about God maneuvering around/ negotiating a conflict with Satan. They thought that Satan was given too much power, so they created a new narrative where Satan plays no significant role. They decided that the Bible is actually a story about God maneuvering around his own characteristics/ qualities in his pursuit of allowing himself the ability to escape from the necessity of his own judgement against us.

Satan has power (I believe that) or maybe persuasion is a better word.....but God is victorious in the end.

I found this PDF file this morning and think it has a lot of great ideas that I agree with. I especially agree with the author's explanation of Satan. His way of describing Satan's way of counterfeiting Christ, imo, is spot on.

"Originally, God used imitation is a positive way. Man as an image reflected and displayed the character of God. In fact, imaging did not start with man! According to Col. 1:15, even before creation the divine Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, was the image of God: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created; … .” The creation of man in God’s image imitates the imaging relation between God the Father and the Son.

Now Satan is a counterfeiter. He counterfeits God the Father by producing a counterfeit “son,” the Beast. The Beast is clearly the counterfeit of Christ the Son. Satan aspires to be God and to control everything for himself. He has a plan, analogous to the Father’s plan. He will work out this plan through his executor, the Beast.

Is there then a counterfeit of the Holy Spirit as well? There is, in Rev. 13:11-18. Another beast comes out of the earth (13:11). This beast is later identified as the “false prophet” (Rev. 16:13). This False Prophet works “miraculous signs” (13:13), reminiscent of the miraculous signs worked through the Holy Spirit in the Book of Acts. Through miraculous signs the Holy Spirit draws people to worship Christ. Analogously, the False Prophet promotes worship of the Beast (13:12). As “another Counselor” the Holy Spirit has the authority of Christ (John 14:16, 18). The False Prophet “exercises all the authority of the first beast on his behalf” (Rev. 13:12). The Holy Spirit guides us into the truth (John 16:13). The False Prophet deceives (Rev. 13:14)."~The Returning King: A Guide to the Book of Revelation

"Satan attacks the church directly through deceit and doctrinal confusion. He tries to turn away the church from the truth (12:15). But he also raises up underlings, in the form of the Beast and the Prostitute, who attack the church in specific, complementary ways. The Beast represents worship of state power and the threat of persecution for those who do not worship. It attempts through threat, pain, and death, to terrorize Christians into giving in to an idol. It stirs up fear of what will happen if you don’t give in. We can generalize this tendency: we worship what we fear, whether the scorn of human beings, or physical pain, or poverty. The remedy, of course, is fear of God, awe of him such as drives out the fear of man and of adverse circumstances."~The Returning King: A Guide to the Book of Revelation

The above is a summary of established theology...but what if we read the Bible as a story? I think it is a story. And what should happen in a story is that all the events in the story have significant meaning and their meanings are all connected. But if this is true, how is Revelation connected to Genesis, aside from one being the beginning, and the other being the end?

I absolutely believe we ought to read the Bible as a story. I think Revelation is connected to Genesis in the way that what once was (the Garden....where humanity was in full allegiance to God)..will be (but, in the end, it's going to be with our eyes fully opened....a perfect allegiance to Him). This verse seems to be the main plot:

So the point. Yes, I'm proposing that the narrative that emerges from the Bible, if it can be read without tradition being imposed on it, presents a pattern of events that is quite inconsistent with Penal Substitution.

Agreed.

We should be building our ideas on the things we do know, not the things we assume to be true. You say that death is unnatural, like God did not intend for things to die? But everything we know about God forces us to accept that God knew what was going to happen, and he had the ability to create it any way he liked! So we are forced to conclude that the world is like this, because it is what God wanted.

.....but it doesn't end here. We haven't gotten to His ending. I believe God has allowed humanity to choose between an allegiance with Satan....or an allegiance with Him. I am hopeful that God's love will be victorious as He's promised.

***Whew.....sorry this is SO LONG. I had a few thoughts.***

 

[mkgal1]

And the fact is, just as God allowed the angels to have free will, and some chose to rebel, so He gave man free will. It is a dignity He allows us. We are created in His image and likeness, which means ultimately that we must be free to choose. I know that can seem unsatisfying to our minds right now, but ultimately God wishes us to grow into beings in full loving union with Him, partakers of the Divine nature through Christ, and if we were mere puppets, that would be meaningless.

Well stated.

The way I see it....Adam and Eve didn't know any different than to love God prior to eating from the tree of knowledge. Their loyalty was blind---but ours (in the end) will be with our eyes completely opened.....knowing what evil is (and choosing God....fully believing His ways are good).

 

[mkgal1]

Die hard Creationists insist that all animals were vegetarian before the fall, and predation only began after the fall.

I believe this. There would be death and suffering, if that weren't so.

I also believe that sacrifices aren't God's idea, but instead, God appealing to man's understanding (like "scapegoating"). This article is far better at expressing what I mean by that:


----->In Leviticus 16 we see the brilliant ritualization of what we now call scapegoating, and we should indeed feel sorry for the demonized goat. On the Day of Atonement, a priest laid hands on an “escaping” goat, placing all the sins of the Jewish people from the previous year onto the animal. Then the goat was beaten with reeds and thorns, and driven out into the desert. And the people went home rejoicing, just as European Christians did after burning a supposed heretic at the stake or American whites did after the lynching of black men. Whenever the “sinner” is excluded, our ego is delighted and feels relieved and safe. It sort of works, but only for a while. Usually the illusion only deepens and becomes catatonic, blind, and repetitive—because of course, scapegoating did not really work to eliminate the evil in the first place.

Jesus came to radically undo this illusory scapegoat mechanism, which is found in every culture in some form. He became the scapegoat to reveal the universal lie of scapegoating. Note that John the Baptist said, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin [singular] of the world” (John 1:29). It seems “the sin of the world” is ignorant killing, hatred, and fear. As Blaise Pascal so insightfully wrote, “People never do evil so completely and so cheerfully as when they do it with a religious conviction.” [2] We see this in much of the United States in our own time, with churches on every corner.

The Gospel is a highly subversive document. It painstakingly illustrates how the systems of both church and state (Caiaphas and Pilate) conspired to condemn Jesus. Throughout most of history, church and state have sought plausible scapegoats to carry their own shame and guilt. So Jesus became the sinned-against one to reveal the hidden nature of scapegoating, and we would forever see how wrong power can be—even religious power! (See John 16:8-11 and Romans 8:3.) Finally Jesus says from the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing” (Luke 23:34). The scapegoat mechanism largely operates in the unconscious; people do not know what they are doing. Scapegoaters do not know they are scapegoating, but they think they are doing a “holy duty for God” (John 16:2). You see why inner work, shadow work, and honest self-knowledge are all essential to any healthy religion.~https://cac.org/jesus-reveals-lie-scapegoating-2016-10-13/

 

[bling]

Atonement is a huge topic and takes lots of scriptures to understand, but I do like to discuss the topic since I see it as extremely significant.

In one since there is “limited” atonement since not everyone’s’ sins are atoned for and in another since the atonement sacrifice was made for every sinner so the sacrifice of Christ on the cross was for all.

The way to reconcile these two truths is in the understanding (definition) of “atonement”.

The Jews, especially the men, Jesus and lots of the New Testament was directly addressing, had direct individual experience with atonement through going through the atonement process for unintentional (minor) sins. God provided that wonderful education which we can only read about in Lev. 5 and try to imagine the experience for ourselves. We would also realize if we have to go through all this for “minor” (unintentional sins) than rebellious disobedience sins would require something unbelievably greater.

First off: the atonement sacrifice itself (Christ going to the cross) does not complete the atonement process since there is a part the sinner plays (again this would be understood best by those Jews who had experienced the atonement process for unintentional sins). Jesus and God have both done their part in the atonement process, but the individual sinner has to complete their part or atonement is not completed and if atonement is not completed the forgiveness is not assured. (God’s forgiveness for minor (unintentional sins) came after the correct completion of the atonement process (Lev. 5)).

Secondly: The part the sinner plays is nothing: worthy of anything, righteous, deserving of anything, or honorable. It is more like criminal, horrible and disgraceful, but necessary.

Christ Crucified is described by Paul, Peter, Jesus, John and the Hebrew writer as a ransom payment (it is not even said to be like a ransom payment, but it was a ransom payment).

I find the ransom description more than just an analogy and an excellent fit and I am not talking about the “Ransom Theory of Atonement”

(The “Ransom Theory of Atonement” has God paying satan the cruel torture, humiliation and murder of Christ but: Does God owe Satan anything? Is there some cosmic “law” saying you have to pay the kidnapper? Would it not be wrong for God to pay satan, if God could just as easily and safely take back His children without paying satan?)


Would a ransom as those in the first century might understand it (it was well known Caesura at 21 had been kidnapped and a ransom paid for him) included the following elements:


1. Someone other than the captive paying the ransom.

2. The payment is a huge sacrificial payment for the payer, who would personally prefer not to pay.

3. Since those that come to God must come as children, it is the children of God that go to the Father.

4. The payer cannot safely or for some other reason get his children any other way than making the payment.

5. The kidnapper is totally undeserving.

6. The kidnapper can accept or reject the payment.

We can agree on most of the parts with the atonement process being just like a ransom experience: The children of God be held out of the kingdom; Deity making the huge sacrificial payment; Christ’s torture, humiliation and murder on the cross being the payment; and the freedom given the child to enter the kingdom after the ransom is paid. But who is this unworthy kidnapper God will pay to release His child.

We can only come to our Father as children, so who is keeping the nonbeliever in the unbelieving state (who is this kidnapper)?


There is the one ransom, but could there be many unworthy kidnappers holding the children of God back?

Does not the nonbeliever himself hold the potential child of God (within them) back from the kingdom?

If the kidnapper does accept the payment has he/she done something worthy or virtually criminal?

You do have a substitute at the cross, standing in for you, but is it those that cried crucify him, the religious leaders, the Roman soldiers, one of the thieves, or maybe one of the disciples who ran away. To say: “Christ took my place” is extremely bold on your part, although you can be crucified “with” Christ like a deserving thief and join Christ in paradise.

Look at a real “Christ crucified” sermon and he says nothing about Christ taking our place on the cross.

That is just an introduction to think about

 

[hedrick]

There's little question that substitution in some sense is part of the atonement. But the specific model described in the OP, penal substitution, is a late development, and seems to be held primarily by conservative Protestants. I don't believe Eastern Orthodox agree. Even Catholics don't hold it in quite the form described. Liberal Protestants generally don't, and questions are starting to arise among evangelicals as well. I mention this because the OP seems to assume that it's generally held among Christians.

 

[WrongClub_Lucius]

I don't think I can do justice to everyone's comment, so I thought I would list out the explicitly stated "facts" that I am building off of. I said I object to presuppositions, yet it is typically assumed that these are the best we can do. But I think we can assemble a convincing backstory, without relying on presuppositions, that sets the stage for a different story than the one we are used to hearing.


My list of explicitly stated facts:

-God created the earth (obviously...)
-God is king of heaven
-There is a rebellion in heaven, challenging God's claim to the throne
-Satan told a lie that sparked this rebellion (i.e. Satan is called "The Father of Lies")
-Approximately 1/3 of the angels embraced the lie and were cast down to earth (Revelation: 1/3 of the stars fall from heaven)
-Satan already has or easily obtains permission to do whatever he wants on earth (story of Job, also Jesus' warning to Peter)
-Demon makes the claim to Jesus that he has a right to be here ("have you come to torment me before the time?)
-Satan tempted Jesus by offering the world, in exchange for Jesus bowing to him. (Somehow this would achieve Satan's goal, alleviating his need to influence the world)

-Two trees in the garden representing a choice, one is God's, one is Satan's.
-Satan had free access to Adam and Eve before "the fall"
-God also had access to Adam and Eve in the garden.
-Eating the fruit is equivalent to signing a contract, demonstrating the choice
-Adam and Eve kicked out of garden after choosing

-God "...declares the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying my council shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure."
-God repeatedly proclaims he is the only true God (others are claiming to be gods)
-God claims to profess perfect wisdom, rather than to be the author of wisdom
-God claims unlimited power, but he is very limited in expressing his power in this world.
-God has some surprising conversations with sinners, not condemning them, like with Cain, Abimelech

-Revelation reveals the angels watching in amazement (something that happens is not obvious to them)
-The angels and the saints applaud God's judgement, which is ultimately condemning satan and the fallen angels, and everything evil in the world
-Paul says every knee bows to Jesus--implies a choice is made. (If it is reflex, then it doesn't mean anything)
-Paul writes that we will judge angels
-Paul writes that we are free from the law if we agree with the law, that the law is good


Important questions:

-Why did God create the world?
-We believe God must have knwon of Satan's rebellion before it happened, and he has the power to intervene, so why didn't God intervene?
-Why doesn't the Bible describe the assumed dramatic alteration to the fabric of the earth caused by "the fall"?
-Why is all this evil and disruption caused by the unremarkable action of eating a piece of fruit?
-The Bible says that the truth of God is made evident through creation, but what is this truth? What is it that God professes to be a fundamental truth, that is evident through creation, that is undeniable to everyone. (If they all deny it, then it is deniable...)
-What is the nature of the conflict between God and Satan?
-How would Jesus bowing to Satan end the conflict between God and Satan?


I see these references like puzzle pieces. I'm going off the top of my head, but I think I'm remembering everything right. But please point out any objections you might have. It's easier to do it now than after I put the puzzle together.

Also, does anybody have any additional factual/ explicit claims they think are relevant to be included? Any additional questions that need explaining?

 

[sparow]

I think this post will land me squarely in the the "controversial" camp.

I'll start out slow, just asking if anybody has noticed that the Biblical narrative is not always consistent with the Penal Substitution atonement theory?

Penal Substitution says that God is [righteously] angry with us for sinning, thus we [justly] deserve eternal death. But God also loves us, so he came up with a clever plan to save us [from himself]! So God send Jesus, who is a part of God, to die in our place, creating a loophole that allows God to loves us in spite of our sin.

I must point out that this theory states that God constructs an elaborate plan to injure himself (i.e. Jesus), and that injury then inhibits his ability to notice that we are still sinful...and we presume this self-deception will last for eternity. God doesn't notice we are still sinful, yet he is still omnipotent?

I assume everyone knows this theory, and most agree with it. It's an idea that's been around for 1,000 years, after all.

This idea was designed to push back against the previously held Ransom Theory of Atonement, which says that the Bible tells a story about God maneuvering around/ negotiating a conflict with Satan. They thought that Satan was given too much power, so they created a new narrative where Satan plays no significant role. They decided that the Bible is actually a story about God maneuvering around his own characteristics/ qualities in his pursuit of allowing himself the ability to escape from the necessity of his own judgement against us.


The above is a summary of established theology...but what if we read the Bible as a story? I think it is a story. And what should happen in a story is that all the events in the story have significant meaning and their meanings are all connected. But if this is true, how is Revelation connected to Genesis, aside from one being the beginning, and the other being the end?

But even putting Revelation aside, what about Genesis? Why is Satan in the Garden in the first place? I noticed that someone started a thread claiming that Adam = Satan, but....don't be ridiculous. When I was a kid, like in 4th grade, I asked my teachers at a Lutheran school why God didn't just get rid of Satan before he could mess up life on earth? I only mention that I thought it as a child, because it is such an obvious question! God is all powerful and all the rest, so he knew all along....and God allowed it. Why?

So....anybody ever noticed how inadequate Penal Substitution is in answering why God allowed sin into the world? God knew, and he must have known...and God allowed it to happen, since it happened; it was only possible with God's permission, since Penal Substitution says that Satan has no power over God, added to the fact that most believe God created Satan in the first place!

So the point. Yes, I'm proposing that the narrative that emerges from the Bible, if it can be read without tradition being imposed on it, presents a pattern of events that is quite inconsistent with Penal Substitution.

Have you noticed this?

Narratives or the big picture are very important as they determine how scripture is interpreted. I do not take the creation story literally and I believe this world is a penal colony and we are here because of the war in heaven and for the purpose of reconciling with God or else the second death. Now if this was your big picture can you imagine how differently you would understand scripture.