Not Just Important, Not Even Just VERY Important. "Of FIRST Importance."
In my blog post a week ago, I wrote that I thought Andy Crouch’s book had missed the point of the cross and therefore of the gospel. His is not the first book about which I’ve said that. Actually, one of my jobs here at 9Marks is to read books (and watch videos) that have become popular among evangelicals, and review them. For whatever reason, the critique that the cross has been redefined—or even is missing—seems, sadly, to be a common theme in those reviews.
What really surprises me, however, is the response I run into from people who leave comments here or post responses on other blogs. Time and again, what I see is self-described evangelicals defending authors or video-makers for their shoddy treatment of the atonement---even when those video-makers say things like "The cross was about...." or "This is what the gospel's about..." or they title a section of their book "Gospel." In other words, it's not that the author isn't talking about the cross because the book isn't about the gospel or the cross; it is in fact about the cross, or at least they mean it to be; they just want to articulate a new understanding of the gospel or the cross. Moreover, it’s not that the responses I hear point to some section of the book and say, “Look, there. A clear explanation of penal subsitutionary atonement. You must have skipped that page.” No, it’s usually something more like “I’m sure he wouldn’t deny penal substitution if you asked him. He just doesn’t focus on it here.” Or “Why should we have to talk about penal substitution anyway? That’s only one image of the cross, and I think the image of reconciliation communicates better to my generation.”
A few years ago, it seemed to me that people like Brian McLaren might actually manage to reshape evangelical thinking about the gospel. I was worried about it because I saw so many young men my age being swept up by his way of thinking. Over the last two or three years, though, I’ve become pretty well convinced that evangelicals have effectively cut the legs out from under “emergent” theology, considered as a system. First Don Carson’s Becoming Conversant, and then Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck’s Why We’re Not Emergent were the one-two knock-out punches, it seems to me, that finally convinced people that there was no “there” there in emergent theology.
Even so, I think there are a few barbs from emergent theology that have managed to hang on in evangelicalism, some of them more worrisome than others. I am convinced that one of those—and without a doubt the most dangerous—is the temptation among many young evangelicals to rethink and rearticulate the gospel in a way that makes its center something other than the substitutionary, wrath-enduring death of Jesus in the place of sinners for their sin. I see that happening in a couple of different ways, depending on what you’re reading—or watching.
Sometimes that impulse works itself out in authors simply
shunting the cross over and (wittingly or unwittingly) making the center of the
gospel story something else entirely.
Maybe it’s Jesus’ lordship, or God’s kingdom, or God's purpose to remake
the heavens and earth, or His call for us to join him in his work of
cultural transformation. Time after time, in book after book coming off of
Christian presses, the highest excitement and joy is being ignited by something
other than the sin-bearing work of Christ on the cross, and the most fervent appeals are for people
to join God in doing this or that, rather than to repent and
believe. In the process, the story of the gospel is made to be (deliberately or not) rather
cross-less. That's one dangerous problem.
Another problem is not so much the shunting of the cross out of the
center, as the remaking of it into something other than the substitutionary, wrath-bearing death of
the Savior in the place of sinners for their sins. Thus Jesus’ death is often said to be the result of human evil or
greed or power-lust or culture-making or any number of other things coming to their
lowest, worst, most concentrated point and killing Jesus, who then conquers that
worst-of-all-evils through his resurrection.
Don Carson hit on this in a blog-post some time ago when he wrote that,
“In recent years it has become popular to sketch the Bible's story-line something like this: Ever since the fall, God has been active to reverse the effects of sin. He takes action to limit sin's damage; he calls out a new nation, the Israelites, to mediate his teaching and his grace to others; he promises that one day he will come as the promised Davidic king to overthrow sin and death and all their wretched effects. This is what Jesus does: he conquers death, inaugurates the kingdom of righteousness, and calls his followers to live out that righteousness now in prospect of the consummation still to come.”
Carson calls this presentation of the Bible’s narrative
“painfully reductionistic,” and he’s right. There is no understanding here (explicit understanding,
anyway) that sin is an offense against
God rather than just an unfortunate circumstance humans have brought on
themselves. There’s no sense of Jesus standing in the place of sinners to take
the punishment that rightly should fall upon them. And for that matter, there’s no sense that there’s any
punishment involved at all---just consequences. No divine wrath, just bad results. In other words, such a presentation of the gospel essentially leaves out of the
meaning of the cross exactly what
the Bible makes central to it: A)
that Jesus was dying in the place of his people, and B) that on the cross he
endured punishment for their sin (not just the results of it—the punishment
for it), meted out by God the Father in his
righteous wrath.
It’s amazing to me how willing many evangelicals are to
excuse both those moves—the move to de-center the cross and the move to make it
something other than penal and substitutionary. It's just a thought, but I wonder if the impulse to do (and to excuse) those things might come
from the bare fact that the world just doesn’t like the cross as it’s presented in
Scripture. At best they think it’s
a ridiculous fairy tale, and at worst a monstrous lie. Add to that the fact that we really want
the world to be attracted to Jesus, and you
can see where the enormous pressure comes from to find a way not to have to
talk about “bloody cross religion” quite so much. So we shade toward a gospel that centers on world-renewal rather than the cross, or at least toward a cross that has nothing to do with Jesus taking God's wrath and punishment for another's sin, all in the hope that the world will perhaps think us a little less crazy.
I’m not going to make a sustained case for penal
substitutionary atonement here. I
and others have done that elsewhere, over and over and over again. I will, however, assert (again) that penal
substitution is not just one more image
of the cross among many, from which buffet we may pick and choose depending on
what we think will communicate best at any given moment. It is, rather, the underlying reality
upon which all the other images depend and are built. So, you say you prefer to talk about the cross in terms of
reconciliation instead of penal substitution? Great. All I
ask is that you be honest about it and trace that image all the way down. Why, for starters, is reconciliation needed in the first
place? Don't tell me you can avoid talking about anger by talking about reconciliation---reconciliation presupposes that somebody is mad at somebody else. So then, is reconciliation needed because we
are angry at God, or is it because God
is angry at us? And
exactly how is reconciliation with an angry God effected at the cross? Is it by
something other than Jesus taking the wrath that was owed to us, becoming a curse for us, the just dying for the unjust? You see? You can talk about “the Bible looking at the cross from a
multiplicity of perspectives” all you want, but all those perspectives, when
you trace them down, come right back to Jesus taking the punishment his people
deserved—that is, to penal substitution.
And if you argue for something short of that, you are missing the point of the cross, and therefore of the gospel, entirely. (Of course you can—and people have—simply made up a few perspectives
that don’t trace back down to penal substitution. But that’s beside the point. We’re talking about biblical images here.)
At the end of the day, and really in the face of all the
comments to the contrary, Scripture makes it clear that the cross—that is, the
death of Jesus in the place of sinners, taking the punishment they deserved—must remain at the center of the gospel. We cannot move it to the side, we
cannot replace it with any other truth, and we cannot reimagine it as something
less offensive than it really is.
Otherwise, we present the world with something that is not saving, and
that is therefore not good news at all.
Think about what Paul said about all this in 1 Corinthians. He knew the message of the cross
sounded, at best, insane to those around him. He knew that by proclaiming the message that “Christ died
for our sins” (1 Cor 15), he would incur the world’s ridicule. But even in the face of that sure
rejection, still he said, “I preach Christ crucified.” In fact, he resolved to “know nothing
among you except Jesus Christ and him
crucified.”
That’s because, as he put it at the end of the book, the message
that “Christ died for our sins” was not just important, not even just very
important.
It was “of first importance.”
There are quite a few evangelicals out there who could stand to give that some serious thought.
Great post. Well said and I hope it is well heeded by our generation.
Posted by: Brent Hobbs | Aug 22, 2009 6:54:48 PM
I have another option for you: Substitutionary atonement as of first importance simply isn't what we were taught.
Long before Emergent was the Jesus Movement, which seems to me to have been composed almost entirely of folks who fell upon Jesus outside of the existing structure of the church and were kept out because of their intuition that the gospel wasn't primarily about hair or music. As a result they were also deprived of the benefits of longstanding orthodox theology and cobbled together what they could as best they could. That cobbling together then becomes "orthodox" for later generations in that same tradition. Speaking as a part of the generation that inherited that kind of theology, I can say with confidence that it takes a lot to jar a person into pursuit of something more solid. And even then, unless you have the benefit of falling immediately into a church that actually ties all of its teaching directly to a right understanding of the cross, it takes a long, concerted effort before you can train your ear to distinguish the difference between liberal theology, tradition-based fundamentalist conservatism, and actual cross-centered evangelical orthodoxy.
Posted by: Kyle | Aug 23, 2009 5:17:24 AM
Greg,
Thank you for this excellent articulation of the importance of penal substitution. Very helpful. Made me think about how easy it is get off track but to do it in such a way that sounds agreeable. And, before you know it, you are miles away from the Gospel. And that's the big take away for me. I agree with everything you said, but I realize that I need to think more deeply and critically about how Christian culture has effected my articulation of the Gospel. I suspect there are times when I unwittingly have been "painfully reductionistic" as Carson says.
Thanks again!
Brad
Posted by: Brad Evangelista | Aug 24, 2009 8:15:51 AM
Let me be clear: I am not advocating any theory of atonement to be primary other than penal substitution, and I don’t know that Andy Crouch has. Thus, I believe he may have been unfairly lumped together with emerging theology. While not as noble a cause as defending the gospel, I believe it to be worthwhile as a matter of integrity and truth for me to defend his work.
I do this having read dozens of books by Don Carson (including Becoming Conversant…) and not a one by Brian McLaren. I am not squeamish regarding the doctrine that says the Son died to propitiate the Father’s wrath. I also think including creation, the kingdom, lordship, and “the restoration of all things” in gospel presentations with the cross at the center is pertinent to evangelizing the biblically ignorant (something Carson has said also), not a violation of “knowing nothing but Christ and him crucified.” Compare “Two Ways to Live” with “The Four Spiritual Laws.” So, I may read Crouch wrong or too charitably, but I’m not caving in.
You’re right, Greg, in that Crouch does not articulate propitiation in Culture Making. It’s just that I don’t think that an absence of overt reference to penal substitution in Culture Making should earn it a “Danger: Emergent” label. Here’s why.
1. Crouch’s focus is on how the biblical storyline explains culture, not personal salvation.
You didn’t buy this angle before, but let me try again. Here’s a lengthy quotation from the conclusion of his section titled “Gospel”:
“Now that we have finished this all-too-short tour of the way culture is woven into the story of Scripture, perhaps it’s time to step back and sum up what we’ve found.
“To put it most boldly: culture is God’s original plan for humanity—and it is God’s original gift to humanity, both duty and grace. Culture is the scene of humanity’s rebellion against their Creator, the scene of judgment—and it is also the setting of God’s mercy. At Babel the nations try to insulate and isolate themselves from God through a city, where culture reaches critical mass—but beginning with Abraham God forms a nation that will demonstrate the goodness and faithfulness of dependence on God. Jesus himself, a descendant of Abraham, is both a cultivator of culture, dwelling in and affirming much that is good in it, and a creator of culture, offering dramatically new cultural goods that reshape the horizons of the possible and impossible for Jews and Gentiles alike. He is crushed by culture, experiencing the full weight of its brokenness on the cross—yet his resurrection begins a slow but inexorable redemption of culture, offering a down payment on the hope that culture’s story will not have a dead end but rather a new beginning. In the ultimate vision of that new beginning, the City is central, ushering all the best fruits of human love and labor into eternal, concerted praise.
“In sum, the only story that can truly be named the ‘good news’ is absolutely, completely saturated with culture.” (175-6)
If we pay attention to the sentences that bracket the large paragraph, we see that Crouch is not saying (as you claimed), “This is what the gospel is about” in a way that redefines the cross as all about culture. He is noting the presence of culture in all parts of the biblical story, and using the history of redemption to explain culture: where it came from, how it should work, why it doesn’t now work, what God has done and is doing to restore it, and what we can and cannot do.
If you lift the sentence related to the death and resurrection of Christ out of this context, it looks pretty weak indeed—no penal substitution or propitiation here. That would be true of each of the other sentences as well, but, for example, he’s not trying to explain what sin is, nor does he redefine it. He does not define the Fall as an act of failing to make good culture and nothing more—he’s simply pointing out that culture is the “scene” and “setting” of rebellion, judgment, and mercy.
Similarly, the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection is not redefined as or reduced to culture. He is describing how, in his death and resurrection, Jesus was affected by and continues to affect culture. That’s fair enough, in light of what his book is about. He never says anything to the effect of “Personal salvation doesn’t matter—it’s all about redeeming the cosmos.” Yet we still don’t have a theory of atonement to point to. This leads me to…
2. An emphasis on a different atonement motif is appropriate to the question of how Jesus’ death and resurrection relates to culture.
I have already said that Crouch does not include penal substitution overtly. I believe he denies the Moral Influence theory of atonement in his book, explicitly stating that Jesus is way beyond being a “good example” (140). If anything, he may emphasize a Christus Victor view of atonement, which highlights Christ’s victory over the powers of darkness. This is one legitimate motif of the atonement, though I would agree with you that it is not central. Is Crouch making it central? I don’t know—he doesn’t deny penal substitution as he did with Moral Influence, and it would seem natural to highlight Christus Victor here as it would suit his chosen theme of how Christ on the cross addresses culture. It’s more universal than individual.
Even though you and I may agree that penal substitution is the best and central motif of atonement, Christus Victor is not heresy. Irenaeus, Athanasius, Chrysostom, Augustine, and plenty of other church fathers referred to the atonement in these terms. If I knew Crouch was advocating a shift to Christus Victor, I’d want to debate him, but not condemn him. Since I don’t know if that’s what he was attempting to do, I’ll settle for mere caveat and caution. I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt because…
3. Crouch does not redefine sin, wrath, judgment, hell, or salvation.
If Crouch wanted to go liberal with this book, he blew it. He doesn’t soften the hard edges of the gospel. He describes the first transgression of Adam and Eve as “disobedience” and “sin” (114), and says, “From the fig leaves onward, culture becomes intertwined with sin—indeed, it is the place where humanity acts out their rebellion from God and their alienation from one another” (115). “Babel amounts to a massive declaration of independence from God: a defiantly human effort…” (117). The great flood of Noah’s day is an expression of “God’s wrath” (124). Sin is not presented as mere misguided choices with tragic consequences—it is against God, prompting his righteous anger and judgment. Redemption is not described as merely dealing with the effects of sin. That would be a problem, as your quotation of Carson indicates, of which I am in full agreement.
In his chapter, “To Revelation,” he writes: “A final, honest and true judgment is rendered on every human being’s works. Nothing finally escapes God’s notice, and nothing wrong escapes his wrath. Every cry for justice is heard and accounted for. Then another book is read, the ‘book of life,’ a book based not on works but on faith. […] All ‘whose name was not found written in the book of life’ are cast into a sulfurous lake of fire (Rev 20:15). But those who survive that severe and gracious census pass into an astonishing new beginning” (162-3). This section clearly refers to individual judgment and destiny, though his focus is still on culture. I don’t see the words “guilt” and “punishment,” but this is not salvation redefined in terms of cultural transformation.
In Culture Making, Andy Crouch is not teaching heresy, and it is not clear that he advocates a different central motif of atonement for personal salvation. You will not find penal substitution or propitiation here, and you will have to decide whether its absence is problematic. Its absence makes it an argument from silence for both you and I, Greg. You can make the charge that anything that is “of first importance” should never be absent, but I believe that, for the reasons I have given, his silence can be explained and should not to be interpreted automatically as apostasy.
Posted by: Bruce McKanna | Aug 24, 2009 10:08:41 AM
Bruce,
Thanks for your comment above. I really hope this post doesn't get stuck on Andy Crouch in particular. I mean it to be a broader exhortation than that, because I see these trends in many, many more books than just Crouch's. But about your comments on Crouch specifically:
1) I am not at all saying Crouch is "apostate," either automatically or after much thought.
2) I do think Crouch is doing something more in his book than simply saying that the biblical storyline has alot of culture in it. Really, who would deny that? When he reads the meaning of the cross in terms of culture, and goes on to exhort the church to act in a certain way given his "cultural reading" of the Bible, there's something more going on than just a simple observation that the Bible has culture in it.
3) I'm glad you can see that, at best, all one can say is that Crouch "doesn't deny" penal substitution in this book. I agree with that. But I still maintain that he DOES articulate a theory of the atonement that is often (always?) set in opposition to penal substitution--that it was something else (in this case, culture) that "crushed Jesus" rather than God's wrath. And even more to the point: No, it's not an explicit denial of penal substitution, but when you title a section of your book "Gospel," I'm not sure a mere lack-of-explicit-denial is quite enough.
4) That's why I, as a pastor, would not recommend the book to church members under my care. I want the Christians in my church to be reading things that will reinforce their understanding of and embrace of Jesus' death on the cross in their place. And I think it would be in fact "dangerous" to hand them a book that says (even in the title of that one section) that it will be articulating "Gospel," but which then goes on to say that what happened on the cross was that culture crushed Jesus. That may be an interesting-ish observation, but it should not be confused with "Gospel." Again, a book that simply does not deny penal substitution--and in fact articulates a different explanation altogether of what happened on the cross--is not one that I'd hand to my congregation.
Any of that make sense?
G
Posted by: Greg G | Aug 24, 2009 11:22:44 AM
If we eliminate all books that don't explicitly teach (or further, don't make their central focus) the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement, what are we left with? Would we allow our church members to read Wisdom literature? Not just Proverbs, what about James? In fact, I think it would be a difficult case to make that the four books of the Bible labeled "Gospels" would make this their central theme. While it's obviously there, do the authors (or should I say, did the Holy Spirit) fail to adequately explain the doctrine? It seems that you would have us wonder why they talk about healings, exorcisms, and parables so much when the majority of the book should be about substitution?
Please don't mistake me. I dearly hold to the doctrine, its foundation for salvation, and its centrality to every dimension of the atonement. In fact, I have a very close friend who just finished his dissertation (from a Reformed Seminary) defending substitutionary atonement from Luke/Acts. We spent many hours talking over lunch about the way Luke develops this idea in his works. But let's face it, it would have been a much easier dissertation to write if the doctrine was as explicitly spelled out in Luke as you think it should be in all "profitable" Christian literature.
Greg, please understand my tone. I'm sympathetic to your concerns and your cause. You, Carson and others are doing great work to defend this doctrine against modern-day liberalism. But as one who was raised in Fundamentalism, your critiques sound eerily familiar. If something's not of first importance, does that make it of no importance?
Posted by: Brian | Aug 24, 2009 12:38:34 PM
Brian,
Thanks for your comment, but you're obviously running away with what I said.
First, I've never once said that all "profitable" Christian literature has to be about the atonement---or even explicitly articulate a theory of the atonement. That would be a silly thing to say. You can write a profitable book about any number of things and not make it about the atonement. (Though if it's meant to be a Christian book, I don't know why you'd want to avoid mentioning the cross, and if you're going to mention it, I can't think of a good reason why you wouldn't want to be clear about it...)
Second, I'm not talking about books of the Bible, and I'm not talking about books that don't claim to be explications of the Gospel. I'm talking about books and videos--alot of them these days--that very much DO claim to be articulating the gospel, or introducing people to the Christian faith, or giving us the storyline of the Bible, which then either redefine the cross or shunt it off to the side.
Third, I also did not say that things that are not of first importance are of no importance. Of course they're not; that would be a silly thing to say, too. I'm saying that if you write a book or make a video that's supposed to be articulating the Gospel or introducing people to Christianity or explaining the story of the Bible, that which is of first importance needs to be in it.
Honestly, is that such a controversial statement?
G
Posted by: Greg G | Aug 24, 2009 1:04:34 PM
Thanks, Greg. I appreciate 9Marks and you in particular on this blog. I’ll try to make this comment shorter.
We see this differently—I don’t believe Crouch is doing anything more than educating American evangelical Christians who talk a lot about “culture” solely in terms of politics and popular media, and “changing the world” through those channels. He is showing us that culture is more basic than we often recognize, and the Christian faith speaks not only about certain moral issues, but also about creation, vocation, and society (which do have moral dimensions).
I don’t think thereby that he is reducing the gospel to its creational/social dimensions, but he is bringing them necessarily (for the book's purposes) to the forefront. The ubiquity of culture may be obvious, but it needed to be said, and I think he develops this more deeply, and with connection to the biblical story (not just biblical principles) than other works out there.
So, who or what killed Jesus?
a) The Father
b) The Son (offering himself)
c) Satan
d) Sin
e) Judas
f) Jewish leaders
g) The Jewish mob
h) Pilate
i) The Roman soldiers
j) Humankind
k) You
l) Me
Nope, culture is not a possible answer—or is it?
What killed Jesus?
a) cross
b) nails
c) spear
d) military personnel
e) government executives
f) civic leaders
g) politics
h) religion
Crouch is not saying that sin and sinners (or the Father, for that matter) are uninvolved in the crucifixion, or that culture and cultural artifacts are the reasons why Jesus died, simply that the crucifixion took place in a setting “saturated” with culture.
Pastorally speaking, I can see where you’d be cautious about recommending this book. However, I see this more along the lines of a worship song. You don’t get all your theology in one song, and sometimes a song will focus on one dimension—say, my delight in the glory of God. I could critique it by saying, “This song is not about God. It’s all about me and my experience of God. It’s not worship.” Or, I could say, “This is a great song for what it deals with, but I want to make sure we give our people some objective truth about God to affirm along with celebrating the subjective experience of him.”
I’m giving my people a strong and steady diet of substitutionary atonement and propitiation. The value of this book in its lessons on culture make it something that I am happy to share with others whom I know are grounded in good soteriology and the atonement in particular. I believe this will enrich their understanding of the gospel and its implications, not lead them astray.
At another level of pastoral ministry, I appreciate that you are working to steer pastors and others to good resources. I’m just concerned that we not “red flag” something too quickly, as the digitally viral world we live in creates blacklists faster than ever.
Posted by: Bruce McKanna | Aug 24, 2009 1:07:10 PM
Thanks Greg for this post. Keep writing brother.
Posted by: Nick Hill | Aug 24, 2009 1:19:36 PM
I can not tell you, nor do I need to, how exactly on the nose this post is.
I am starting my second year at a rather liberal Seminary in the Midwest, and I can not express how much of this theology runs amuck there. It makes my stomach turn, and finding your post on this (through Justin Taylor's blog) has revived something inside of me in a HUGE way! I am more passionate than ever to continue to preach this horrible and terrific news to my campus!
Posted by: Luke | Aug 24, 2009 2:35:30 PM
Greg,
Once, commenting on a neo-Calvinist "Is Our Gospel Too Small?" blog entry, I responded to the post by referring to 1 Corinthians 15:3-5. A professor from Covenant Theological Seminary replied to me and said that I must be writing from a "Reformed Baptist" perspective, because the "Reformed redemptive-historical" understanding of the passage is not that Paul is referring the entire Biblical Gospel when he speaks in terms of "of first importance" here. Your thoughts?
Posted by: Christopher Lake | Aug 25, 2009 1:59:49 AM
Of course, I meant to type, "referring *to* the entire Biblical Gospel.."
Posted by: Christopher Lake | Aug 25, 2009 2:01:29 AM
I agree with Bruce wholeheartedly on this. I'm beginning to be a little concerned with the polarization I see on both sides of the cultural engagement debate. For some, if you even drop words in a positive manner like culture, kingdom, Starbucks, or indy rock, or give more than a passing nod to God's concern for the physical world, you are immediately branded a sell out, in love with emergent theology, and on the highway to old school liberalism. You're giving into the pressure of culture to adjust the gospel in order to make it more palatable.
On the other side, if you dare to speak of sin, wrath, and blood, or are backward enough to think of salvation in personal terms, you're unconcerned with connecting to culture, over influenced by Greek philosophy, and in general just plain uncool. Whenever there is error, there is always a reaction. And history tells us that generally that reaction is a bit overboard. I wholeheartedly agree that we should preach, cherish, and guard penal substitutionary atonement. That's why I sympathize with Greg. I can't imagine a truth more precious, comforting, transformative, and life-giving. I'd gladly give my last breath to proclaim its truth. I just think we need to take a breather sometimes and discern whether our positions are reactionary and pejorative.
I happen to know quite a few guys who read their Bible and say, "Wow, Jesus is all about the kingdom. Why don't we talk about that more?" They are interested in cultural engagement not out of pressure from society, but out of a desire to be fair to the whole of Scripture. I'm sure there are many who fit Greg's description, and I'm concerned about them as well. But there are many who do not. I'd just be real careful about attributing motives.
And not recommending Crouch's book because it doesn't mention penal substitutionary atonement. Seriously? I recommend books all the time to my people with caveats about things I disagree with. I tend to think Philippians 2 is explicitly about the gospel, but not a word about penal substitutionary atonement. It's all humiliation and exaltation. Sure, substitution is assumed, but it's not explicitly mentioned. I don't think Paul would say that text isn't really about the gospel. When it comes to lumping people together, labeling certain camps, and censuring certain people, I think caution is in order.
Posted by: D Strong | Aug 25, 2009 9:35:02 AM
To use the "church as a body" metaphor, I have noticed an unfortunate trend lately where the Hands criticize the Mouth for being too outspoken, criticize the Brain for being too out-of-touch, criticize the Liver for being too judgmental, criticize the Stomach for being too selfish, etc.
Ultimately, the 'hands' of the church are criticizing the rest of the body for not being more hand-like.
Or, much more disturbingly, they adopt the language of non-Christians and use it as ammunition against the rest of the church.
Does the church deserve some criticism? Of course. We continuously fall short of our calling. Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, and those whom He loves, He reproves and disciplines.
However, our ultimate goal (like the Apostle Paul's) should be to please God, not man. We must be sensitive to God's chastening, not the hollow criticisms of a broken culture.
Yes, we want to make our appeal to a fallen world. But rewriting the gospel to make it more palatable to that fallen world is the height of folly.
"This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance: that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost." 1 Tim 1:15
Posted by: Andy | Aug 26, 2009 9:56:03 AM
Greg, Choosing Crouch's book was not your best foray into this subject - because: his book was not evangelistic, it was directed at a pretty narrow topic, it's (admittedly) cursory treatment of the Gospel was directed by the subject matter, it was not meant to wade into the atonement debate. So based on the focus of the book itself, whether or not Crouch would de-centralize penal substition from the Gospel is an open question. Assuming that he does looks like thinking the worst and not giving him the benefit of the doubt. Now there are plenty of books in which you shouldn't have to 'give the benefit of the doubt' - where the author, given the nature of the book, is derelict in duty to not succinctly make clear the center of the Gospel. But Crouch's book, in my opinion, was not one of those.
I support entirely and applaud your efforts and 9Marks efforts to keep the Gospel clear and keep penal substitution central, as it is biblically. The work you are doing is invaluable. But, I repeat my belief that your criticism of Crouch's book was a poor choice to address this subject. It just confuses the issue and opens you to attack for assuming the worst and criticizing what a book doesn't say instead of what it says. Again, for some books, such criticism for what is not said would be warranted. But criticizing this one just looks nit-picky. Saying you wouldn't recommend it to your congregation for that reason looks reactionary.
I debated about writing this comment to you (and waited to write it for the debate to die down) because I do appreciate your work and the work of 9Marks. But because I appreciate the work you do and because I don't want to see 9Marks go down a negative trail, I thought I would comment.
Posted by: Matt Foreman | Aug 29, 2009 9:00:54 PM
Matt,
Thanks for your comment. I think I'd answer you with the same points I made in response to Bruce above.
I'd just add that Crouch's treatment of the Gospel is not "cursory." He has a whole section of the book titled "Gospel," which is 83 pages long. That's not a cursory treatment; it's a thorough one. The problem isn't whether it's cursory; it's whether it rightly explains what the cross was about.
G
Posted by: Greg G | Aug 31, 2009 1:37:57 PM