Atonement sparks discussion at NOBTS forum

"Wright warned that today's culture thinks Christianity teaches that an angry God had to be assuaged, a teaching Wright called 'a lurch toward … pagan narratives in which an angry God demands an innocent victim.'"

I agree with Wright here. I have encountered theology that leans toward the idea that the Atonement centers on the appeasement of an angry God by way of an innocent sacrifice. This is not what is taught in the Old Testament, but it is an idea that permeates pagan doctrine.

Gathercole's observation that Romans 5 focuses on a "life for a life" exchange is not, IMHO, accurate to the text. Christ dying for the unworthy is not necessarily an exchange in terms of a substitution. Christ dying for the unworthy, the just for the unjust, is sacrifice as the righteous is offered to save the unrighteous but this does not have to be a substitution.

 

True. When we read the OT we can't miss that it came through an ANE worldview. But even through that worldview there were differences. For example, the idea of a temple through which man would draw a god to a city or a people is not the same as the Tabernacle. Pagan sacrifice is not the same (although it is similar) to biblical sacrifice. I suppose what has to be decided is whether or not this pagan idea of appeasing a god is something that belongs to the Atonement, or if (like with the tabernacle and with sacrifices) it means something else.

Either way, we seem to agree that the idea of appeasing an angry god through sacrificing the innocent is in fact pagan narrative. We just may disagree that it is also biblical narrative.

 

While I agree that offering an innocent victim to satisfy the demands of an angry god would be a propitiation, I disagree all of those elements are inherent in the Word. Propitiation adverts undesired consequences. It is an appeasement. You have expanded the definition to incorporate more than the word actually means.

 

Psalm 7:11 God judges the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day.

Psalm 80:4 O LORD God of hosts, how long will you be angry against the prayer of your people?

God being angry with us may not be all that pagan a concept!

 

I guess it depends somewhat on how one understands this anger.

 

Sorry, I may have misunderstood you.

My point is that the word "propitiation" does not mean appeasing an angry god by sacrificing the innocent. When you made the error of stating I did not know the meaning of the word I took the comment as a rejection of my statement.

Christ was an atonement for sin to, in part, save us from God's wrath against sin (to save us from the consequences of sin which is death).

 

Yeah, I guess that is why Jonathan Edwards never wrote a sermon entitled "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." Maybe he didn't understand what God was angry about.

 

I agree. Maybe he didn't.

 

I suggest reading it.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards

 

After Bill forgot his wife’s birthday, he tried to propitiate the situation by purchasing her the pearl necklace she always wanted.

Does this mean Bill appeased an angry god? No, it doesn't.

And I have not explained my view of propitiation many times. I believe you may be thinking of my rejection of Calvin's theory of the atonement, not propitiation itself.

Here is my definition of propitiation in terms of the work of Christ - I believe Christ's life and death was an atonement that, among other things, averted God's wrath. We all have sinned and the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. I don't think this is a difficult concept.

Whatever happened to addressing the article?