Why did Jesus die on the cross?

PROPHECYKID said:

So do you want to clarify you previous statement.

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MacDonald rejected the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement as developed by John Calvin, which argues that Christ has taken the place of sinners and is punished by God in their place, believing that in turn it raised serious questions about the character and nature of God. Instead, he taught that Christ had come to save people from their sins, and not from a Divine penalty for their sins. The problem was not the need to appease a wrathful God but the disease of cosmic evil itself. George MacDonald frequently described the Atonement in terms similar to the Christus Victor theory. MacDonald posed the rhetorical question, "Did he not foil and slay evil by letting all the waves and billows of its horrid sea break upon him, go over him, and die without rebound—spend their rage, fall defeated, and cease? Verily, he made atonement!"

MacDonald was convinced that God does not punish except to amend, and that the sole end of His greatest anger is the amelioration of the guilty. As the doctor uses fire and steel in certain deep-seated diseases, so God may use hell-fire if necessary to heal the hardened sinner. MacDonald declared, "I believe that no hell will be lacking which would help the just mercy of God to redeem his children." MacDonald posed the rhetorical question, "When we say that God is Love, do we teach men that their fear of Him is groundless?" He replied, "No. As much as they fear will come upon them, possibly far more. … The wrath will consume what they call themselves; so that the selves God made shall appear."

However, true repentance, in the sense of freely chosen moral growth, is essential to this process, and, in MacDonald's optimistic view, inevitable for all beings. He recognized the theoretical possibility that, bathed in the eschatological divine light, some might perceive right and wrong for what they are but still refuse to be transfigured by operation of God's fires of love, but he did not think this likely.

In this theology of divine punishment, MacDonald stands in agreement with the Greek Church Fathers St. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and St.Gregory of Nyssa, although it is unknown whether MacDonald had a working familiarity with Patristics or Eastern Orthodox Christianity. At least an indirect influence is likely, because F. D. Maurice who influenced MacDonald knew the Greek Fathers, especially Clement, very well.
George MacDonald - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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PROPHECYKID said:

Well you said you agree when I said that faith is not something comes automatically but originally you kinda said it did. So I was asking if you were going to clarify that.

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George MacDonald on Faith and Works

No one who knows George MacDonald should be surprised that his Christian thinking is expressed not only in his sermons but in everything he wrote. He hated piety of the type that set Sunday aside with ostentatious strictness and then saw the rest of the week as somehow less under the eye of God. He had a particular dislike of calling church worship “Divine Service”. For him the only divine service was love and care for one’s neighbour. He held that since it is impossible for a man to do anything immediately for God, God has placed him among his neighbours for whom he can do many things. As Jesus made clear, God regards what is done for the least of them as being done for him. It is from this basic principle that two of the ever-recurring themes of MacDonald’s stem: that man’s only way of knowing God is to do his will; and that the good pagan will enter heaven more readily than the disobedient Christian.

Because of such teaching, MacDonald was often, as a young preacher, in hot water with his congregations who were on the whole composed of orthodox Calvinists. I am sure we have a personal reminiscence in this anecdote from his novel “What’s Mine’s Mine”:

“A certain young preacher in Scotland some years ago, accused by an old lady of preaching works, took refuge in the Lord’s sermon on the mount. “Ow aye!” answered the partisan, “but he was a varra yoong man whan he preacht that sermon!”

The humour of this should not blind us to the fact that strict Calvinism, fleeing a counting-house view of merit and good works, had driven some of its followers into an equally false view of faith. and when MacDonald tried to oppose the exaggerated claims of a faith which often meant bare belief by, for example, quoting St Paul’s words: “Though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing,” he was often accused of preaching salvation by works and found himself excluded from the tabernacles of “the unco guid”.
George MacDonald (2) Faith and Works | Reid and Write

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PROPHECYKID said:

But still though, do you believe that Jesus didn't pay the penalty for our sins?

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