| This word [truth] is one of the dominant notes of the Fourth Gospel. We meet it again and again. Here we can only briefly gather together what John has to say about Jesus and the truth. (a) Jesus is the embodiment of the truth. He said: "I am the truth." (Jn 14:6 ) To see truth we must look at Jesus. Here is something infinitely precious for every simple mind and soul. Very few people can grasp abstract ideas; most people think in pictures. |
For years, scholars have debated whether God’s wrath, as taught in the New Testament is personal or impersonal. That is to say, whether ‘wrath’ is some that can be ascribed directly to God, describing something of his hostility towards sin, or that it merely describes the inevitable consequences of sin, the misery and self-destruction that it brings.
Writing in Aspects of the Atonement, I. Howard Marshall, finds the following points ‘decisive’:-
1. To allow that sinners bring calamity upon themselves does not exclude the idea that the calamity is not from God. …
In Aspects of the Atonement, I.H. Marshall discusses the NT terminology of judgment, wrath and punishment.
1. The language of punishment features occasionally (Matt. 24:43–51; Luke 12:45–48; Matt. 25:46; 2 Thess. 1:9; Heb. 10:29; 2 Pet. 2:9.
2. Vengeance, or revenge, occurs in Luke 18:1–8; Rom. 12:19 (citing Deut. 32:35); 1 Thessalonians 4:6; Luke 21:22; and 2 Thessalonians 1:8.
3. More frequent is the use of wrath or anger. Orgē and related terms are found in Matt.…
‘Admittedly,’ (writes I.H. Marshall in Aspects of the Atonement) ‘the vocabulary of punishment does not figure all that prominently in the New Testament and those who would downplay the term “penal” understood in terms of punishment can point to this fact. A half-dozen is the sum total of references to divine punishment, and they are associated particularly with the day of judgment. In the parabolic teaching of Jesus, wicked servants will be punished when the master returns (Matt.…
I. Howard Marshall, in his book Aspects of the Atonement, helpfully sets out some of the questions that need to be asked about the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement:-
1. What is the place of penal substitution in the teaching of Scripture? There are four distinguishable views:
• The principle of penal substitution does not figure in the New Testament at all.
• It is there, but it is only one of the pictures/metaphors/analogies used in the New Testament to express the significance of the death of Jesus Christ.…
Text: Matthew 6:1-18
Everybody has an outside and an inside; a public exterior and a private interior. On the outside are all the things that other people can see and hear: the actions you perform and the words you say. On the inside is that collection of thoughts, feelings, motives, and attitudes that we call ‘the heart’. Yes: each person has an outward appearance, and an inner reality. But to what extent is that outer self that we present to others a true representation what we really are, deep inside? …
Christian writers of a certain stripe seem to be queueing up to say pretty much the same thing: the Old Testament contains texts that have repeatedly been used to legitimate violence in the form of colonialism, abuse of women, and genocide. We should not ignore these texts, nor yet try to justify them. We should see, rather, how they have been thoroughly subverted by the teaching and example of Jesus Christ.
One such writer is Eric Seibert, in The Violence of Scripture: Overcoming the Old Testament’s Troubling Legacy.…
With regard to the parts of the Old Testament that record, encourage, or even command violence, a frequent response is that we should interpret them with a ‘Jesus hermeneutic’. Trouble is, Jesus didn’t seem to find these accounts nearly so problematic as we do.
Distinguished Old Testament scholar John Goldingay (not exactly a dyed-in-the-wool fundamentalist) puts it like this:-
…‘Many modern people don’t like the way the book portrays Joshua’s leading Israel in killing many Canaanites, but there is no indication that the New Testament shares this modern unease.
In his book Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did, Derek Flood claims that OT texts which represent God as encouraging, or even commanding, genocide ‘have been used repeatedly by Christians to justify genocides, beginning with the crusades and continuing up to present times.’
Flood mentions the Crusades, the killing by Oliver Cromwell of large numbers of Irish Catholics, the slaughter of many native Americans, and the killing of nearly a million Tutsies in the Rwandan genocide. …
It is often thought (and taught) that the early church knew nothing of the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement. This view seems to have been popularised by Gustav Aulen, in his celebrated book Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of Atonement (trans. A. G. Hebert; New York: Collier, 1969 [1931]). Aulen found mere ‘traces’ of this doctrine in the early fathers.
Many modern opponents of the doctrine of penal substitution tend to follow Aulen uncritically at this point: if this doctrine was not ‘discovered’ until about 500 years ago, how can its proponents claim that it provides an inescapable (possibly central) explanation of what God achieved in Christ?…
