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White Horse Inn
Equipped: Defending Hell, Sin, and Penal Substitutionary Atonement
00:40:37
Are doctrines like hell oppressive or outdated? Michael Horton, Justin Holcomb, Walter Strickland, and Bob Hiller unpack why these difficult teachings are not only biblical but also good and necessary. The hosts clarify the doctrine of sin, argue for...
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- [00:00]
Michael Horton
This year marks 1700 years after the Council of Nicaea, and the mystery of the Trinity remains at the heart of the Christian faith. Recovering Orthodoxy in our modern context is vital to the unity of the Church worldwide. Which is why I'm so excited that we here at sola, in partnership with credo, are hosting a special two day conference on the Trinity. Please join US in Washington D.C. this may as we bring together leading Trinitarian theologians for keynote messages and interactive breakout centered around the Nicene Creed. Just go to solamedia.org trinityconference that's solamedia.org.
- [00:46]
Bob Hiller
Hell is, in a certain sense people who have said to God their whole lives, we don't want to be in your presence. And God saying, well, you won't be in my gracious presence then for all of eternity. And we can talk about the presence of God in hell, but the point here is simply heaven is a place where we will be gathered together to worship Christ, where we gathered around the throne and the Lamb. And there are those who have said, I will not do that. I will not worship there. And God says, then that is what you'll get. And there's a justice to this. That is horrifying to be sure, but it's not torture for torture's sake.
- [01:26]
Michael Horton
Yeah, I don't want to come to the party. Okay, well then stay outside. Outside of this glorious kingdom is tragedy forever. But why don't you come to the party? You're invited.
- [01:54]
Bob Hiller
Applying the Riches of the Reformation to the Modern Church this is White Horse Sin A Week roundtable discussion about theology and culture.
- [02:10]
Walter Strickland
I'm always interested in explanations of people's faith because I'm curious to see if anything about it is contrary to our modern sensibilities. Basically, if their faith is made into the image of our culture. Biblical Christianity contains important concepts that contrast the assumptions and sensibility of 21st century American culture. But to be sure, it's not offensive. Just to be offensive or contrarian. Some of the most off putting doctrines are at the core of the Christian faith and salvation through Christ Jesus. A Chief value of 21st century Western culture is being non judgmental. As a culture, we firmly believe in creating judgment free zones, which is okay if you're contemplating if you should have a dessert after dinner or not. But in cases of real problems, when we're thinking about morality in truth, this becomes important. With this in mind, Christians must be equipped to think carefully about doctrines that contrast our cultural ethos, including doctrines like sin, hell, judgment and even the brutality of the cross. So I'M here with Michael Horton, who's an author and professor. Bob Hiller, pastor and author. Justin Holcomb, Bishop of Central Florida, and I'm Walter Strickland, professor, author and pastor. And we're here to do exactly that. Our hope is that this time will help you to think through some of these doctrines that are not in vogue in our culture, but are at the very core of the Christian faith. So let's begin by exploring the doctrine of sin. First of all, what is it? And also, why is its very existence so contested in our culture?
- [03:50]
Justin Holcomb
Sin is a condition of rebellion and estrangement from God that manifests in actions, thoughts, desires contrary to God's will, rooted in our rejection of God's authority, lordship and his grace. One of my friends, Mike Horton, I think I summarized his definition pretty well. But that's a really. Because that's a question I get asked quite a bit like, okay, what's all the sin stuff? It's a condition of this rebellion against God, who is holy because of something inside of us. We're broken. Our wills, our thoughts or actions are not in line with God's.
- [04:26]
Michael Horton
Yeah, it's first of all vertical. It's not a mistake. It's not an oops. It's not, I am not living up to my expectations of myself. It's against you and you alone. Have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight so that you are right when you accuse me? Psalm 51. So that's the first thing. That's what separates sin from every other foible. It's not a foible. It is cosmic treason. Second thing to say about it is it's a condition. We're not sinners because we sin, we sin because we're sinners. It is out of the heart. Jesus said that all this pollution comes, well, deep down, I'm a good person. No, it's out of your heart that all this garbage, this horrible thoughts and actions come. So the heart is desperately wicked. Jeremiah 17, 9. The heart is desperately wicked, and who can understand it? People don't want to hear that. They want to say, okay, I've done some wicked things, maybe, but I'm not wicked deep down. And Christians say, you know what? We all are. Let's be realistic about the human situation.
- [05:48]
Bob Hiller
There's two ways of talking about sin that sound. Maybe they are opposites of each other, but I think they're both quite helpful in the conversation. Luther will talk about sin being an article of faith, by which he means you don't realize how bad it is until it's actually revealed to you. I mean, this is the work of the law. It's like you were just saying, Mike, People say, yeah, I've done some bad stuff, but I'm not. Deep down, I'm pretty good. And the doctrine of sin says, actually, no, the reason you did the bad stuff is because there is a corruption and a corrosion that goes deep down to the core of your being. You're not created bad, you're not created evil. No, the creation is corrupted, and you're evidencing it by the sinful actions. So on the one hand, it's an article of faith. It's got to be believed. It's got to be taught to you because you're not going to see it on your own. While at the same time, GK Chesterton, he's the one who says, if there's any sort of verifiable or demonstrable doctrine within the church, it's original sin. He doesn't take. You know, they're both true. The more you start to study this, the more you're like, wow, yeah, it's pretty bad all around us. And if we're looking for another definition, I've heard sin talked about as something like this. You're turned in on yourself. So if you think you were created by God for two things. To trust God and to love your neighbor. So you were created for faith and you were created for love. But what is sin? Sin is to say, I don't trust God. I'm going to follow my own will, and I'm not going to love my neighbor. I'm going to use my neighbor for my own personal ends.
- [07:23]
Justin Holcomb
We're sinners by deeds that we do sinful things, but we have a sinful nature. So it's nature and deed is we're getting. What I heard from Mike and Bob and you, Walter, is it's a moral thing. It's not an error. It's a moral violation. It's against God because God is holy. And we also secondarily sin against one another because they're images of God. And a sin against them is also a sin against God. It comes from internal. It's a heart thing. It's not just actions. It is actions, but it's also wrong dispositions, thoughts, words and deeds. And it's addictive. And the. The more we. I'm not saying addictions are sin. I'm saying the. I'm not saying they're not either. I'm just saying. I'm saying that sin is addictive, is the more you sin, the more you want to sin. And it gets a hold of you. It wants to destroy you. It wants to go against the way. The way it's not the way things should be. And this is not only from human nature that we see around, as Bob was saying, but Freud. There's a famous paragraph from Freud. Civilization is discontent. I mean, listen to this. He sounds like almost a theologian of original sin. He says men are not gentle, friendly creatures wishing for love who simply defend themselves if they are attacked, but they have a powerful measure of desire for aggression that has to be reckoned with as part of their instinctual endowment. The result is that their neighbor is often to them not only a possible helper or sexual object, but also a temptation to them to gratify their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without recompense, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possession, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill. And he's just saying that's just from the evidence. And he says, who has the courage to dispute this in the face of all the evidence in their own life and in history? This is Sigmund Freud talking about human nature. And then you can look at Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who is talking about the Holocaust, just said, how can you have faith in humanity after the Holocaust? All these people saying, how do you have faith after the Holocaust? He's like, you know, first he said. He answered. He said, where was God in the Holocaust? And he said, he was right there saying, you shall not murder. You shall not oppress your stranger. Your brother's blood is crying out to me. That's where God was in the Holocaust. But where was humanity except doing it? And he said, this comes after Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and Hegel and all of these rationalism ends up here. How can you have faith in humanity after the Holocaust? The real challenge is, is not to faith, but to the lack of faith.
- [09:57]
Michael Horton
Yeah, that's great. I think actually the biblical Pauline, Augustinian doctrine of original sin is kinder and gentler than Freud because Freud there says that it's instinctual. And we would not say that. We would say it's depraved. Depravity. The reason that's such a good word is depravity assumes that what is depraved is good. So it's something good that has been corrupted. You forgot to put your lasagna in the refrigerator, and you look at it, you come home three days later and you see green stuff growing on it. It was great. Lasagna. The lasagna was terrific.
- [10:47]
Justin Holcomb
But.
- [10:48]
Michael Horton
But it's fallen into a condition of depravity. We're not saying it's instinctual. We're not saying human beings are like this intrinsically. We're saying that this corruption that comes from Adam to all of us means that we're born into this world looking away from God instead of toward Him. Not just looking away, but saying we will not have him reign over us. What? A little. Are you serious? A zygote? You're going to say that an embryo is already sinful, not having done anything? Yeah, that's the condition that we're born in. In sin. My mother conceived me. Psalm 51:5. Again, just as sin spread to all people through one man, justification came to all men through one man, Jesus. So the good news here is that, number one, we are salvageable not from our end, but that we have a good nature to save. Now, we're not saved because we are morally good, but God wanted to save us because we are good, because we are naturally good. We are his creatures that he made in his image. That's good. So we're not saying humanity is bad in its intrinsic humanness. On the other hand, we're also saying there's justification to handle the guilt of sin, and there is regeneration and sanctification and eventually glorification to handle the corruption of sin.
- [12:40]
Justin Holcomb
And pastorally, you know, people who are. Because this whole thing's about defending, you know, controversial defending sin. We all know, because it's been done to us, we may have done it. And we know friends who have had this happen, where people who talk about sin are usually talking about the, you know, the speck in someone else's eye, not the log on their own. So the defending sin is getting toward the hypocrisy thing of how people talk about sin. The good news, I mean, this generally of what we're talking about is this flattens out self righteousness. Our teaching of sin is very democratic. All of us, all of us have sinned against God and neighbor by what we've done and left undone in thought, word and deed. Those are 12 categories. God, neighbor, omission, commission, thought, word and deed. It flattens out self righteousness. No one's coming to God saying, hey, weigh my merits. I need you to pardon my offenses. I'm not asking you to weigh my merit. Nobody. And so there's a good side of this, which is this defending of sin is saying, we all, all of us, the religious ones, all of us have a reason to repent before the holiness of God. And we have a Savior who dealt with sin and became sin. So we would be called the righteousness of Christ.
- [13:58]
Bob Hiller
That's the key right there, that if we don't have a strong doctrine of sin, we're not going to have a strong doctrine of salvation. And what's remarkable in all of this is that though we're turned in on ourselves away from our neighbor and away from God, we have a God who has turned towards us in Christ Jesus. And God who comes and says, oh Jesus, here comes Jesus, the friend of sinners of all things. I mean, this is really quite something now that you who are a sinner and have rebelled against God have a friend in Christ Jesus who has come to take your sins away and to wash them clean in his own shed blood. So sin is the truth, it's the reality. But your sin is, no matter how deep and how strong it is, it's not deeper or stronger than the mercy and the grace that Christ Jesus has for you.
- [14:44]
Walter Strickland
And Bob, this is why if you look at history, there's this strong link between brokenness over sin and spiritual awakening. So if you think carefully about just those experiences, these revivals or spiritual awakenings, they usually have this publicly repenting of sin. And the reality is that this comes with a disposition of humility, acknowledging that there's a deviation from God's intended design for our lives. And so now we're going back to God. Heart wrenching confession, often public confession, which is not something that we're really excited about these days, from one Christian to another, but even just of sin that's done or left undone. And so that's a historic, just not a coincidence, it's just a reality that goes together.
- [15:34]
Justin Holcomb
And talking about sin leads us right into the topic of hell. Because does hell exist? If hell exists and I'm a sinner, I belong there and I'm not going there because Jesus took hell for me on the cross. How have Christians talked about hell and how should we be thinking about it?
- [15:55]
Michael Horton
John Stott said you should only talk about hell with a tear in your eye. And I think that's a good reminder for all of us.
- [16:06]
Bob Hiller
The other thing to think about with hell, a lot of folks I have talked to, again, we don't need to go anecdotal, but the concern is that hell is God's arbitrary sort of violence and fire against people who just didn't do what he wanted them to do. And I think what we need to recognize with Hell is that hell is, it's God's justice against sin. And it's certainly not arbitrary. And it's not just torture for torture's sake or something along these lines. I mean, this is where a lot of the stereotypes we have of fiery pits with little devils poking you with, with tridents and things like this are, are not very useful for us. Hell is, in a certain sense, people who have said to God their whole lives, we don't want to be in your presence. And God saying, well, you won't be in my gracious presence then for all of eternity. And we can talk about the presence of God in hell maybe in a little bit. But the point here is simply heaven is a place where we will be gathered together to worship Christ, where we gather around the throne and the lamb. And there are those who have said, I will not do that, I will not worship there. And God says, then that is what you'll get. And there's a justice to this. That is horrifying to be sure, but it's not torture for torture's sake.
- [17:35]
Michael Horton
Yeah, I don't want to come to the party. Okay, well then stay outside of this glorious kingdom is, is tragedy forever. But why don't you come to the party? You're invited. Everything's been prepared.
- [17:58]
Walter Strickland
And Bob and Mike I think, bound up with what you're saying is that a point that we often miss is the common graces that actually make life.
- [18:07]
Michael Horton
Livable here, even for the godly and the ungodly alike, for sure.
- [18:12]
Walter Strickland
So when we are separated from God forever, we are devoid of those common graces.
- [18:17]
Michael Horton
Yeah.
- [18:18]
Walter Strickland
And so that's what is terrifying, I think, about the prospect of the reality.
- [18:23]
Justin Holcomb
Of hell and the way Christians should be talking about hell and many have historically, is going back to what you said, Bob, about justice is just like sin. Like our teaching on sin is that it flattens out self righteousness. Everyone is in the same place of repentance or called to repentance. Same thing with hell is because of our sinfulness and sin, we deserve judgment. Everyone deserves judgment. Those who repent and have faith in Christ get mercy and grace. And so justice is always met. His mercy is what cuts off his justice for us because he has cut himself off for that sake. And I'm always shocked by that first John passage. If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just and just to forgive us our sins because his justice went somewhere else for those in Christ went to Christ. So justice is always met and because justice is met in a substitutionary sacrifice, then it's mercy for those who do not get the justice. But hell has the same thing of flattening things out and being grateful for mercy. Introducing Tell Me a Story, a brand new podcast for children and families. Each episode brings scripture to life with immersive storytelling followed by a short devotional to spark meaningful conversations. Let there be light.
- [20:04]
Michael Horton
The serpent and he tricked me.
- [20:09]
Bob Hiller
It is I, Joseph. I am the brother you sold to the traitors.
- [20:20]
Justin Holcomb
In a world filled with distractions and declining biblical literacy, our children need stories that anchor them in truth. Tell Me a Story weaves the rich narratives of God's promises shown in His Word and the world, equipping parents for discipleship and helping families reflect on the greatest story ever told. Episode one is available now wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [20:46]
Michael Horton
I think it's really hard for us in highly industrialized, advanced societies, economically advanced, I should say, to accept this idea of justice, that there is an ultimate justice that we're all going to face, because that means heteronomy, someone else ruling over me, not autonomy. I determine what the outcomes are for my life. No, you already determined what your outcomes were going to be. This is God's final verdict. This is God's justice. But if you ask people who suffer what they think about God's ultimate justice, their question is, how long, O Lord. Their problem with God is that he seemingly doesn't care. He seemingly doesn't intervene in justice to right all wrongs. We're all victims and victimizers. We're all oppressed and oppressors. God is going to right all wrongs before he can wipe away every tear.
- [22:03]
Walter Strickland
And Mike, what you mentioned about the victimizer, because I was trying to figure out, okay, we live in a increasingly justice oriented culture, but we get very fearful about this sort of ultimate justice being served, you know, especially. Yeah. And so, and the reason why is because, as you said, we are not ultimate. You know, somebody else is ultimate. And so I think that's a very, very interesting dynamic that we see going on in our culture, that we sort of are becoming increasingly justice oriented, but we all also are pushing away from a judgment that's to come, because we're not sitting in the chair of those who are doing the. The judging.
- [22:46]
Michael Horton
Yeah, we had Tim Keller on the program not that long ago, just before he died. And I asked him, how do you talk about hell in New York? And he said, actually, it's pretty easy in New York because the young people especially are all into justice issues. And So I asked them, where do you think that comes from? Where do you think? On what basis do you long for justice in society? And before long you get to, okay, well then do you believe that there's an ultimate justice, an ultimate court that you're going to stand before?
- [23:24]
Bob Hiller
One of the questions that when you start to discuss hell, as people will say, this just seems so unfair. I mean, why would God do this? Why doesn't God do something about hell? Well, that's the gospel, right? That God has sent his son to suffer the punishment. I mean, God's going to be just. God is a just God, and so sin must be dealt with. But Christ Jesus comes to put on our flesh, as Romans 8 says, in the likeness of sinful flesh, that he might suffer and die in our place, and in a sense then suffer that just wrath and punishment that sinners deserve in our place. But even there then, so we say we got a problem with hell and we got a problem with the way God's going to deal with hell with the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. If we could kind of switch gears here and talk a little bit about that, why is it that we have such a problem with the substitutionary atonement?
- [24:19]
Michael Horton
If you don't have the view of hell that we're talking about here, really a penal view, not restorative, but punishment, if you don't have that view of justice at the heart of the doctrine of hell, then there's no reason for Jesus to go to the cross for sinners. There's absolutely nothing that can be done. Was God re educating Jesus as he's hanging on the cross? Was the Father saying, you know what? I know it tastes bad going down, but it's really good for you? No, it was horrible. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Jesus experienced that hell for us. And so if there is no hell like that, then there was no wrath poured out on Jesus and justice hasn't been served. And we are still in our sins.
- [25:21]
Bob Hiller
We're still in our sins, right? This all goes together. The depth of our sin is seen in a certain sense most clearly in the crucifixion of Christ. And yet at the same time, the even greater depths of God's love for the sake of sinners is seen in the dying of Christ on the cross in our place.
- [25:38]
Justin Holcomb
What Mike said and what you just said, Bob, reminds me the famous Richard Niebuhr quote from the Kingdom of God in America. A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without Judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross. That kind of captures all the topics we've talked about so far, but it makes sense going back to what Mike just said about we live in this economically situation where we're all autonomous. And it's kind of weird having this judgment. Well, same thing. I mean, crosses are horrific. The idea of punishment, God's wrath being poured out in judgment. I mean, crucifixion was so bad that in 337 they outlawed it because it was too. It was inhumane. Cicero says crucifixion is the most cruel and hideous of tortures. And then Fleming Rutledge says crucifixion was for the scum of the earth. And so there's a ritual of humiliation. I mean, the cross is offensive not just cause it's bloody, but what's being communicated about it is offensive. Again, if you have two postures of don't need it or thanks be to God for it.
- [26:45]
Walter Strickland
There's a whole family of theories that has come in response to this very penal objective understanding of the atonement. And it's a whole class of subjective theories. And in contrast with these penal substitutionary atonement that offers an objective change between your standing before God, these subjective theories that really focus on the response that this act of Jesus elicits in us, like example theory or moral theory. It's really a way of trying to de. Emphasize the sort of penal nature of this, to try to get away from that. So there's several, you know, out there, who, Peter Abelard being one of the fountainheads of all this. They're saying, you know, it's really to get away from all the brutality. It's not about this, you know, this cosmic child abuse that's not his language, but somebody else's. But it's really more about Jesus being an example of self sacrifice and Jesus being a moral influence on us and things like that. And so let's not be fooled or lulled away from the sacrificial nature of all this. Because as that quote is fantastic, Justin. And so we lose all of that.
- [28:00]
Justin Holcomb
Again, thinking about it pastorally of someone who would be like, hey, I mean, people aren't trying. I mean, some people are, but I mean, think of someone who's really got a real question. They're not just sniping from the cheap seats against Christians, but they're really wrestling with this, going what's so wrong with me that God had to take on human flesh and die? This seems intense, it seems violent. It seems bloody, all this wrath talk. Now, many people might have that question because of the way Christians have talked about sin and hell and things like that where too many times. And we've done this corrective here numerous times. We believe it was called total depravity. And going back to what Mike said when we were talking about original sin and Freud, I made a joke about Freud being philosopher of original sin. That's not original sin and the way we talk about it, but because it's a distortion of an original good. Total depravity says every dimension of humanity is tainted by sin. There's no dimension untainted. But that's different from utter depravity, which says, you suck, you're horrible, and there was never anything good. There is nothing good. And because of that, you're a train wreck and God can't wait to crush you in hell. Like, there's a way that hell and judgment and wrath has been talked about that puts sin and hell and substitutionary atonement in that framework. When what we're talking about is very different. Like the Jesus willingly laid down his life. It's not child. No one takes child abuse.
- [29:28]
Walter Strickland
My life from me.
- [29:28]
Justin Holcomb
He said it repeatedly. I lay down my life. I laid it like repeatedly. I'm laying down my life for this. This is my purpose. I've come to make my life a ransom for the many to serve, not to be served. So he is the great high priest. Who then is also the sacrifice on purpose. This is the will of God. This is where the foundations of creation and the world began. So this needs to be framed with how we talk about law and gospel.
- [29:56]
Bob Hiller
Do you think that there's a. This, this language of cosmic child abuse isn't that inherently Aryan? I mean, it's. It's assuming that the Father is the greater of the two and he's arbitrarily.
- [30:10]
Michael Horton
Choosing one of us or being to.
- [30:12]
Bob Hiller
Suffer as opposed to God taking on the. So Athanasius says God must put on our flesh to die because God can't die. But if the death is going to be enough for the whole creation, Jesus must be God. But his whole point is like, this is God in flesh dying for our sins. This is not some lesser creation doing something.
- [30:32]
Michael Horton
R.C. sproul used to put it, God saving us from God.
- [30:36]
Bob Hiller
Yeah, yeah, good.
- [30:37]
Michael Horton
Calvin also, I find very helpful against the whole cosmic child abuse thing. First of all, he said God did not begin to love us when Christ died for us. Christ died for us because God began to love us before the world was created. That is absolutely important. And then the other thing is that Jesus Christ, who bears this burden is God. And therefore God himself is paying the bill that he requires to be paid. Those two things are very different from the cosmic child abuse idea.
- [31:15]
Justin Holcomb
Yeah.
- [31:16]
Michael Horton
And God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that's for sure.
- [31:23]
Walter Strickland
And Mike, this early Christian idea of perichoresis, which is a concept of the interpersonal cooperation within the Godhead, God is three in one. And all three persons in some way cooperate in God's works. Calvin says it this way. He says it is this. The Father is attributed the beginning of activity and the fountain and wellspring of all things to the Son wisdom counsel in the ordered disposition of all things. But to the Spirit is a sign the power and efficacy of that activity. So basically this is just saying that the Son was not inactive or disengaged in the sort of development of this because God saved us again from God.
- [32:06]
Michael Horton
Yeah, he was the mediator all along.
- [32:09]
Bob Hiller
And I think that it's important to note this too. This is the core. We talk about atonement theories and we'll talk about this as the penal substitutionary atonement theory. It's not really a theory of what went on there. This is what the Scriptures are laying out for us in the dying of Jesus. We're not just making this stuff up. But at the same time, there's also the Christus victor view that Christ is victorious over sin, death and hell on the cross. That's true also. I mean, that's true alongside of penal substitution. It's just that you can't have the victory over sin without sin being dealt with in the dying of Jesus.
- [32:47]
Justin Holcomb
And the Bible puts them together. The Bible says Jesus conquers by being a sacrifice. And this is Hebrews 2. He conquers Satan, who has the fear of death by being a sacrifice. Colossians 2. How does he conquer these enemies? And. And he. Oh, he nails them at the cross and. And it cancels the record of debt on the cross. Revelation 5 is a conquering lamb on a throne. Oh, that was sacrifice and is now standing. And so they go together. The foundation for the victory is the sacrifice. It's not in place of a sacrifice.
- [33:22]
Bob Hiller
So that even then. And Walter, I'm going to. I'm going to plug your book here. I'm working my way through Swing Low right now, which is the tremendous book. And if you haven't bought it, you all should go buy it. It's a wonderful book. But then you get to that moral exemplar of Jesus, that it's not just him, like we should all be like Jesus and go to the cross and die. But when you're in your suffering and when you're dealing with injustice and when you're going through these things, recognize that you have a God who willingly put Himself in that place too. And he now identifies with you and he is there for you. These things all work together. Walter talks about this so wonderfully with the black experience, with the lynchings and things that were going on. How suddenly the suffering of Christ is. Is where they found their identity in the church and where they found a great deal of hope. I hope I'm not misrepresenting it there, Walter, and you can correct me if I'm wrong.
- [34:09]
Walter Strickland
No, that's great.
- [34:10]
Bob Hiller
I think all of this stuff then ties in together, saying, listen, the suffering and death of Jesus as our substitutionary atonement gives us the victory and shows us that no matter how bad the suffering is, he's been there for us in our place and he'll bring us through to the resurrection. So there's. There's hope tied into it.
- [34:30]
Michael Horton
Let's tell the story of the atonement just as you did, Bob. Here's what we shouldn't say when we're talking about the atonement. That God just was so angry, so wrathful towards humanity that instead of taking it out on us, he took it out on his son. That's very close to some descriptions of penal substitution I've heard. Sometimes we have to really just say no to that for the reasons we've already talked about. Here's another point I draw from Calvin that I find really astounding. He says there was no moment at the cross when the Father hated his son. I have heard people say he hated him on the cross because he became sin for us and so forth. Totally separated. I don't know what you do with that Christologically anyway. Totally separated from the Father, hating him and so forth. We've got to be really super careful that we don't exaggerate. I mean, the cross is bad enough for us to exaggerate what happened between the Father and the Son on the cross. It was justice being served, not torture, because he had to get his pound of flesh.
- [36:08]
Walter Strickland
So Gustav Allen was the theologian who proposed Christus Victor as a motif in atonement theories and what have you? One critique I do have of him is I wish there would have been a lot more penal substitutionary atonement language because as we said, rightly, penal substitution is what gives victory. But we've seen a lot of the Christus Victor motif taking off around the world because in other places beyond the west, there's a lot more spiritual warfare going on. So if we're wanting to understand, okay, you know, for us, you know, Christ being Victor, that sounds great, but for the person who has the witch doctor practicing down the road, or for the person who has the witches, you know, real activity going on on the corner, and the person who's in an environment with the occult just thick in the air, Christus Victor is a very, very helpful Christological motif. But insofar as it's not sort of ripped away from penal substitutionary atonement, I think we see this motif really being helpful and useful around the world as we're interacting with non Western cultures.
- [37:22]
Justin Holcomb
Yeah, and there's different types of cultures. I mean, there's the guilt culture, the kind of legal guilt culture. You have honor shame culture, you have power cultures. But like exactly what you said, you don't have to separate those two. And how great that if you're in a power culture with darkness and demons and that's kind of like how the world's interpreted and you get to say, oh, no, no, no, the God of the Bible conquers evil. And then when you say how he conquers evil, that's again going back to the uniqueness that we talked about previous episode of. Oh, he conquers it by doing what? By absorbing it, by being a sacrifice, by then rising from the dead and the things you get to proclaim the gospel and the work of Christ for how he conquered.
- [38:11]
Michael Horton
The solution is as multifaceted as the problem as far the curse is found. What do we need to be redeemed from? We need to be redeemed from the wrath of God. We need to be redeemed from the curse. We need to be curse of death. We need to be redeemed from Satan and his kingdom of darkness. We got to stop thinking in terms of atonement theories and say there's one atonement that solves all of these problems. Glory be to God.
- [38:42]
Bob Hiller
That's right.
- [38:43]
Walter Strickland
So today we've explored several biblical ideas that rub up against modern sensibilities. While these doctrines require Christians to explain some teachings of our faith, it's simultaneously comforting. I'm comforted by the fact that as time marches on, I'm convinced that I don't possess all knowledge. In fact, as I see the world and develop relationships with people from different cultural backgrounds, I find that we all stand to learn from each other, because no single culture has a corner on faithfulness to Christ. So with that in mind, I'm actually grateful when my faith grates against my cultural assumptions, because then it lets me know that I'm not worshiping my culture. I'm worshiping the God of the Bible, who transcends culture, who desires to refine every culture's assumptions for our good and for his glory. I truly hope this little exercise has been productive and helpful for you, as it has been for me. Until next time, Goodbye for now from your friends at Whitehorse Inn.
- [39:50]
Bob Hiller
Weakness isn't a flaw, it's where hope begins. In A Place for Weakness, Michael Horton shows how the cross and resurrection of Christ don't just explain suffering, they overcome it. This isn't a book about cliches or quick fixes. It's about real hope for real pain. Hope that quiets guilt, silences doubt and outlasts every storm. Whether you're grieving or walking with someone else through their grief, A Place for Weakness shows how the doing, dying and rising of Christ, silences the thunder of the law and gives eternal hope in the face of life's hardest questions. Grab your copy today for a donation of any amount@solamedia.org offers. That's solamedia.org offers.