Atonement sparks discussion at NOBTS forum

One of the aspects of propitiation that is more often forgotten is that propitiation does NOT restore fellowship and it really has NOTHING to do with God's ability to love or not to love.

Rather, propitiation restores the ability of God to exercise His redemption to those whom He chooses.

Christ restored that ability once, for all time, for all people.

However, that restoration does not determine the salvation of all people, nor does it even suggest that anyone is saved.

Propitiation involves both the seat and the blood. (Romans 3:25, Hebrews 9:5, Hebrews 2:17, 1 John 2:2, 1 John 4:10)

 

...My God, My God why have you forsaken me. The love of Father for the Son was eclipsed (perhaps) but not canceled by His wrath until propitiation was fulfilled symbolically illustrated by the darkness that overtook the earth for three hours.

Matthew 27
45 Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour.
46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

HankD

 

Summed up, Wright said that Christ's death and our salvation was a microcosm of God's plan to redeem and restore his creation.

Wrath is coming to destroy this creation, but there is a way of escape. And THAT's the testimony of the Scriptures.

It's no bigger than that. It's no deeper. The Atonement is what happened at the Cross. The redemption of men. Not this creation. God's plan for the rest of this creation is that it be burned up. It's not going to be restored. It's not going to be redeemed. It's not going to be purified.

The salvation of men. THAT is the end of the story. Now tell me again how Christ did not suffer as man's substitute.

 

Had He not voiced the prophetic cry of the 22nd Psalm then I would agree:
Psalm 22
<To the chief Musician upon Aijeleth Shahar, A Psalm of David.>
1 My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
2 O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.
3 But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.
4 Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.
5 They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded.
6 But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.
7 All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,
8 He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.

true the psalmist does not call his suffering the wrath of God but Jesus however only cries out the first line in the Psalm so the dynamics are still unknown.

You have your human logic and I have mine to contemplate the great and glorious mystery of the atonement.

One thing we can both know and cherish is that whatever the details of human redemption involved it was accomplished;

Luke 23:46 And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.

John 19:30 When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.

three days later the resurrection;
Revelation 1:18 I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.

And as the season of the Incarnation approaches : Glory to God in the Highest.

HankD

 

But He only cried out the first line, so that's as far as we can go with what He meant.
In fact there is no statement that He was even quoting the Psalm.
Probably but not certain.

HankD

 

"Wright called for seeing the atonement as "shorthand" for the full biblical story of redemption history and new creation."​

"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."​

"Instead, a "robust Trinitarian theology" is needed to show that Jesus' death radically changed the world and restored the vocation assigned to humans in Genesis 1, 2 and 3, Wright explained."
​

There you go. According to Wright, the redemption of men was not the end. It was only a microcosm of God's plan for His creation. There's no other conclusion.

 

Except this heaven and earth, which will be burned up.

 

OK but I still hold to the wrath of the Father eclipsing His love for the Son for a season of propitiation.

HankD

 

People here know my position on this, so no need for me to repeat it.

 

Only Christ, and Him crucified.

Give it up Jon. The sophistry you desire is not in the Gospel. God has chosen the foolish things to confound the 'wise.'

Jesus came into the world to save sinners. It's that simple.

 

We are given the ministry of reconciliation. We act as ministers to reconcile people to their God. People, not oak trees.

There is some good in Wright's point about not reducing everything to personal salvation; however, Christ's blood which was spilled onto the ground did not redeem the Earth. The Earth will be destroyed and made again, while people, God's elect, will be redeemed.