megashift-january-february-1993

MEGASHIFT , ...

Toward a Kinder, Gentler Theology

modernREFORMA TION © is a production of CURE Publications Ltd.

Editor-in-chief

modern REFORMATION

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1993

Michael S. Horton

Managing Editor

MEGASHIFT

Shane Rosenthal

Assistant Managing Editors Paul Gelormino Doug Hoisington

Layout Design

ARTICLES

Doug Hoisington Shane Rosenthal

What Is the Megashift?

Production Supervisor

by Michael S. Horton

Alan Maben

Writers Michael S. Horton Dr. Robert Godfrey Alan Maben Kim Riddlebarger Rick Ritchie Dr. Rod Rosenbladt

Artists Paul Swift John Deerstyne Tina Stiles

CURE Board of Directors Douglas Abendroth Howard F. Ahmanson Cheryl Biehl Robert den Dulk Dr. W. Robert Godfrey Richard Hermes Michael S. Horton

1

Glossary of Terms

2

God's Sovereignty and Man's Free Will

3

by Dr. Robert Strimple

8

How Wide Is God's Mercy?

by Michael S. Horton

Haven't We Seen This Megashift Before?

14

by Dr. Robert Godfrey

24

The Legal Nature of the Atonement

by Michael S. Horton

33

Theology at a Glance

Executive Leadership Team President Michael S. Horton

Executive Vice President Kim Riddlebarger

DEPARTMENTS

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Vice President of Communications Alan Maben

Vice President of Development Dan Bach

Vice President of Media & Production Shane Rosenthal

Treasurer Micki Riddlebarger CURE is a non-profit educational foundation committed to communicating the insights of the 16th century Reforma­ tion to the 20th century Church. For more information, call during business hours at: (714) 956-CURE, or write us at: Christians United for Reformation 2034 E. Lincoln Ave. #209 Anaheim, CA 92806

Book Review: See "How Wide Is God's Mercy?"

Interview: with Clark Pinnock

8 19

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J

1nodern REFORMATION

What

Is the

MEGASHIFT?

By MICHAEL HORTON ,

"A kinder, gentler" theology: Who wouldn't want that? Who wants to be identified with a cruel, unjust theology?

Imagine yourself having coffee with your next-door neighbor, who is a Moslem. Or let's say you have gotten to know a wonderful Jewish co-worker.

Perhaps your Christian daughter has just announced that she is engaged to an believer who is "open to spiritual things," and points out his fascination with New Age ideas for evidence. If these situations strike any chords with you, chances are you will have to face the issues we are discussing in this edition of Modern

Reformation.

graciously decided to redeem untold numbers from the mess and make them his own children, co-heirs with his only­ begotten Son who purchased them at the cross in time and space history. Against the horror ofhell as a backdrop, the cross of Christ becomes the hell that our substitute, our Second Adam, endured for all who trust in him alone for their redemption.

We just don't seem to be asking the questions the Bible answers these days.

The universal issue is not "How can I be happy?" but "How can I be saved?"

Let's face it, there are a lot ofthings we find in the Bible that we do not like one

bit. There is a great deal in the Christian

message that offends us. God is supposed

to exist to see to it that I get what I want;

that I'm happy. The cross is supposed to

show people how much God loves us and

. wants us to imitate Christ's love and

compassion. It is there to boost our self­

esteem and show us how much we're

worth. But how can hell make people

happy? How can it reform people?

But there is what some theologians are We just don't seem to be asking the questions the Bible answers these days. calling a "megashift" in evangelical According to Scripture the universal issue theology. As we will see in this issue, it is is not "How can I be happy?" but "How .not the first reaction against the difficult can I be saved?" Gqd created us in his parts of the biblical message within the image, gave us a beautiful creation' free . Christian community itself, and it is not from pain or evil. But humanity has likely to be the last. This debate cuts to rebelled and brought God's ' just the very heart ofwhat you believe about condemnation down upon its collective God, Christ, the gospel, salvation. \ head. Individuals are born with Adam's Our critics will argue that our position is "legalistic," that it subverts the love and curse and corruption and contribute their own debt daily. And yet, God has fatherhood of God for the image of a

cruel judge who takes account of us for our sins. If indeed we are "legalistic," it is because we can never feel right with God until we know we're right with God. We can never rest until our timid consciences hear the pronouncement, "Not guilty!"

We have to be cleared of each and every charge against us before we can get on with the business ofloving God or trusting him as a father. And, ironically, it has been those who have insisted on this so­ called "legalistic" version who have been the greatest critics of legalistic attitudes toward the Christian life. Augustine said, "Love God and do as you please." Luther said, "Do whatever you wish. Now, what do you wish?" Once justified in court, the legalism is forgotten, but until that verdict is heard from the bench, we expect to be, and we expect all sinners to be, terrorized by the law's just and unrelen ting sentence.

Ultimately, we believe that the debate at hand is the debate ofthe ages. Assuming different titles throughout history, it is the age-old struggle between grace and works, justification by imputation versus justification by transformation, the priority of objective versus subjective schemes. It is the struggle for souls and the stakes are higher than mere theological speculation.

Soon after a 1990 Christianity Today cover story on "The Evangelical Megashift," CURE held a conference at Christ College in Irvine (tapes of which are available in the CURE Resource Catalogue) to debate the subject with the principal players who contributed to the CT article. Since the CT article and the CURE Conference, however, there has been a growing debate in the evangelical community. We offer this issue, therefore, to contribute to further discussion on this very important topic.

Michael Horton is president of CURE and the author ofPutting Amazing Back Into Grace, Made InAmerica, and is the editor of Power Religion, and The Agony of Deceit.

JANUARYIFEBRUARY 1993

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lnode rnREFORMATION

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': A~~~stinialii~~ {~~o~efet~e4~~~;as O!~H6del); ;rhe s~h~of~f~oiight.ibflJ~nced~Y:§t,AJ§iJ$ti~~

... (4t~\ century), . eIllph<tsi?irigthe)~gahc·~~~ast~rof salvatiQn.G?d, is a+udgewhose . ch~ac.ter . (lern£1t9S . .•.; ~ayment for ,sir;yrhis require11)entis ' rllet, !?~~ri~t}Vh? . iSthE . ~eli~yer'ss~crifice:lJ~ed th~oug~outthis '

debate assy:n~nym()¥s with(~Qld iU~d.d"ev:n.gdicalism, it is:h~ :basis for ,theological'reflection'fe(,the entir~ . este~~ehurch, ',whether .:Rom,anpatholi~ or PfQt~§ta!1t~/\.ugustin~eemphasized, againstPelagius, thatsa1v~tiolJ:was 'a J;ift9f,G od alone,given So the, ~le~t on t he basis of G:hrist's righteousness:

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C;hristus Victor: Deve!opedby'(iustafAulen .( 20thcentury) in his work,,' CnristusVictor. It drawsupon

the' Eastern fathers alJq m?dern libe~alisfu, ..aswell a.s~si1;lg more,evang~li~al soui~es.Thiss~eory pf the atone~entcenterso~he~ing~ar~er thanf()rgiveness. The probletn is notso~uch the debt of sin as the power .·. ·~fsitl t1iatw~rpso~r lives, deterioJ:ateso~rbodies,and' c{)rrupts the universe. Whit~ sacrifice may be asub~them~, .the .central pointis,.t,ha~ Chris~has . conquet:~d~~e .po\¥:ers ofdarkness~denions, the devil, death, an:d belLh is sometimesr~latedtothe .ran§qmthe()iy, where Christ's deathis viewed as God's payment toth~ devil for ollTsalvatio1;l: . ' Goy-ernmehtal Theorr:TIie vie~yof atonement 'arguing that C hrist's de~th was accepted byGod as sufficient for the maintenance of HIS just government,.but that it did not actually atonefor' eachand every sin. The cross is a token of how seriblls1yGod took si11, butw~s not 41iteral paYni~ntfor sin.

the

:MoraLlrtfluence Theory:The idea that the .chiefobjective ofthe~tonementis .to ·ToveLl~ . to 'lov~ :and goodness, It is the supreme ex;ampleof love and sacrifice, but doe~not actu~lly accomplish anything beyond serving as a motivation to moral improvement. It; too; is prominent in modern liberaIis lTl. .

.

N ew Model: The school ofthought emphasizing the relationalnature of God's love. God is seena~ ~ loving father whose nature is tolove all human beings, but sin makes this relationship difficult. The .' emphasis is on the subjective ahd relational whiIe t he objec:tiye and legal aspects are downplayedand often denied. .

Paradigm: A grid or system that makes sense out of the individual facts. It's the box top thattellsyou what the puzzle is supposed to look like. .

Recapitulation Theory: Though developed by the Westein' father Irenaeus(Zl1d century), "recapitulation" shaped the Eastern church's conception ,qf:s-alvation. Chrisr,rhe Second Adam, 'takes ~p into himself a lost humanityso that there canbe a second chance for the human rac~. I t ism\;lrked by a strong·emphasis on vict()ry over sin and evil through the life, death,resurtectionand. ascension '9fChiist.

SacrificelSatisfaction Theory: Exegeted by Augustine in the 4th and 5th centuries, fleshed o uthy .. '

Anselm in the J 1th,and improved by the 16th century Protestant Reformers, this theorymairitains .that"

the main interest ofthecrossisJo propitiate (turn aside, satisfy) God's wrathtoward sinners sacrificing a substitute in the sinner's place. PaYiUentfor each ,and every sin was secured and the

righteousness of Christ is, therefore, imputed to the sinner's account as thollgh he had satisfied God's

legal demands himself.

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I1lode rn REFORMATION

God's Sovereignty

& Man's Free Will

By Dr. ROBERT STRIMPLE

I have been asked to consider the age­ old question ofthe relationship between God's sovereignty and man's free will from the standpoint ofcurrent trends in evangelical Christian theology. When given that topic I immediately thought of one group of evangelical scholars, college and seminary teachers for the most part, who certainly think that they represent a most significant new trend in evangelical theology. Indeed, they like to call themselves "New Model" evangelicals; and when Christianity Today, the influential evangelical magazine, published an important article in the February 19, 1990, issue that introduced many Christians to this theological movement, it entitled that article" Evangelical Megashift."

However, it is my contention that the doctrines of the so-called "New Model" of our time are not really" new" at all but are heresies examined long ago by our Reformation forefathers in terms of God's self-revelation in the Bible, and found to be wanting, found to be out of accord with the biblical revelation. But although I don't think their teachings are new, they are important, and extremely dangerous, because they represent, as Christianity Today put it, not a minor revision but a "megashift" in evangelical theology, so much so ,that how it can be called a form ofevangelical theology at all is an important question.

The focus of the New Model attack is on what it most often refers to as "Augustinian'~ theology-which is just to say Protestant theology, at least to the extent that Protestantism remains true

I

to its Reformation roots. And in that attack on so-called "Augustinian" theology, the New Model has departed from orthodox Christian doctrine at almost every point, as one writer put it: "Ranging the whole spectrum, from our doctrine of God to our view of the Christian life." I want here to concentrate on its doctrine of God, but let me just

four authoritative sources for the authentic Christian story, to be held always "in creative tension:" Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience.

Pinnock denies the Reformation watchword, solascriptura, and insists that, while the Scripture is the primary, it is not our exclusive authority. Pinnock acknowledges, "I see no great difference in principle between Protestants ... and Catholics in regard to the second level of authority." And, as a result, Pinnock insists that "beliefin plenary inspiration, vicarious atonement, the deity ofChrist, etc." should not be "the litmus test" of what is true Evangelical theology.

The second book that I find so revealing was published in 1987. It is entitled Jesus Christ Our Lord and is written by C. Norman Kraus. Again, deI" ot newmo Krauswantstopresenta " Evangelicalism, specifically an "Anabaptist theology," which he says should be seen as an alternative to Protestant theology. I find it both very interesting and more honest than Pinnock that Kraus puts it that way: an alternative to Protestant theology.

Kraus says that the evangelical Christ « of the substitutionary sacrifice for the guilt of sin ... has dominated the world missionary enterprise" (p. 27) and that must change. What also must change (according to Kraus) is the notion "that the whole New Testament is a verbally inspired, inerrant record and witness to Jesus as the Son ofGod" (p. 30). Modern Christians, he writes, "need not feel bound to" the Chalcedon definitions (Christ is true God and true man, two natures in one person) "as we attempt to translate the biblical message into all the various modern cultural contexts" (p.

48). The fact is, Kraus asserts, that any difference between Jesus' being the son of God and our being the sons ofGod is just a matter of degree!

When he comes to discussing the meaning of the cross, Kraus tells us that the one who needs to be "justified" is not f'

The truth is that the absolute sovereignty of God, far from rendering meaningless the freedom and personality of men and women, guarantees that their actions will be full of . meanIng. refer you quickly to two important "New Model" publications that deny, among other things, the orthodox doctrine of Scripture, and the orthodox doctrine of the person and work of Christ.

The subtitle of Clark Pinnock's 1990 volume, Tracking the Maze, is "Finding Our Way Through Modern Theology From an Evangelical Perspective," ~ut in that book he defines the gospel as « the joining of myth and history" and insists that we must recognize not just o!,\e but

JANUARYIFEBRUARY 1993

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1110dernREFORMATION

man but God! Remember, this is a self­ proclaimed "evangelical" writing. Kraus asks: "What ethical right has God who created a world in which evil exists and in which sin is an inevitable concomitant of existence to establish a law of perfect justice by which to judge his creatures?

This is the primary problem to which the cruciftxion of Christ speaks ....Such an act ofsolidarity tells us that God accepts fully his responsibility for creation" (pp.

148-9, 158). For, " ... as Paul wrote in Romans 5:8, somehow-in the cross itself as a 'proofof[God's] love,' (NEB) [God] .. . is justified in his dealings with humankind" (p. 152).

I have said that I am going to concentrate on the allegedly "new" doctrine ofGod being put forward by the new evangelicals, but we must ftrst see just how much is at stake in the debate with the new model evangelicals­ nothing short of the whole of our Christian faith. The Church of our Lord Jesus Christ is at another important crossroads, it seems to me, in the history ofher battle against unbelief; and one of the greatest dangers of our time is the "fifth column" movement of unbelief that masquerades as "evangelical" in the churches, the colleges, and the seminaries.

I especially want to alert you now to what these New Model evangelicals are teaching about God, and how their doctrine compares with the biblical doctrine. On two occasions I have participated in debates with Richard RiCje, who teaches at Loma Linda University in Redlands and who has become the chief spokesman ofthe New Model movement with regard to the denial ofthe sovereignty of God. It is Rice's book, originally entitled The Openness ofGodand re-titled in the new edition God's Foreknowledge andMan sFree Wil~ which Clark Pinnock now acknowledges to have been the most influential in changing his own thinking about God. Rice's position can be stated very briefly, and it should by contrasted with 4

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both Calvinism and Arminianism.

Calvinism (Augustinianism) teaches that God is the one who has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass, and therefore he foreknows whatsoever comes to pass.

Arminianism denied that God has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass, but wished to affirm God's foreknowledge of whatsoever comes to pass.

The Socinians (pronounced So-sin­ ians) you may never have heard of. It was a small group that arose shortly after the Reformation-in Poland especially; and later the Socinian movement spread to England where it was soon absorbed into Deism and disappeared as a separate movement. Actually, Socinianism is usually remembered, I suspect, not for its heretical doctrine of God but for its denial of the deity of Christ, and its denial of the need for a substitutionary atonement and for justification by the imputed righteousness of Christ.

Socinianisffi, therefore, was a heresy regarding the person and the work of Christ. '(And I've alerted you as to how those heresies are taken up, in our day, by such aNew Model evangelical as C. Norman Kraus). But Socinianism also held to a heretical doctrine of God. Against the Arminians, the Socinians insisted that logically the Calvinists were quite correct that the only real basis for believing that God knows what you are going to do next is to believe that he has foreordained what you are going to do next. How else could God know ahead of time what your decision will be?

Like the -Arminians, however, Socinians insisted that it was a contradiction ofman's freedom to believe in the sovereign foreordination of God; and so they went "all the way" logically, shall we say, and denied both that God has foreordained and also even that he foreknows the free decisions offree agents.

That is precisely what New Model evangelicals such Rice and Pinnock are teaching in books like the one I

mentioned by Rice and in Predestination & Free Wil~ ed. by David and Randall Basinger (Clark Pinnock writes the ~ chapter, "God Limits His Knowledge") and in the more recent volume edited by Pinnock, The Grace ofGod, The Will of Man. Rice writes the chapter denying God's foreknowledge in that volume, and the book is subtitled: "A Case for Arminianism." It needs to be made clear, however, that to call this New Model doctrine ofGod a form ofArminianism is to confuse and is to unfairly give Arminianism a bad name-I mean even worse theologically than it should have .

Rice and Pinnock want their doctrine of God to sound very modern by dressing it up with references to Process Theology, but it is just the old Socinian heresy rejected by the C h ristian Church centuries ago!

Right down to some of its most basic arguments and ways ofputting things, it is Socinianism all over again: For example, the affirmation by Rice and Pinnock that they believe in God's '--../ omniscience, but that, after all, omniscience equals knowing all that is knowable, and that the free actions of free creatures are not knowable.

I think it is important to recognize that this allegedly "New Model" doctrine of God is not new--not because being an old view makes it necessarily a wrong view, but simply because we should not get the notion that the New Model proponents are presenting now some new idea which, if our Reformation forefathers had only known about, might have rethought their position. No, our Reformation forefathers were presented with Dr. Rice's arguments-Lelio Socinus pestered Calvin and Melanchthon with letter after letter in which he set forth his views-and they rejected those views.

With that said, what, positively, is the classical Reformation position in response? First of all, let me emphasize that the Bible never presents the fact

1110dern REFORMATION that God orders all things according to the council ofhis sovereign will as a threat to man's freedom. Rice sees a great tension, even an impossible contradiction, between any affirmation of God's sovereign foreordination and an affirmation of man's true freedom. The Bible does not.

I do not want to be discourteous at this point, but I must say that frankly I find Rice's and Pinnock's presentation of a tension here strangely like the concern that has been the driving motivation of modern atheism, whether in Feuerbach (who influenced Karl Marx so strongly), or in Nietzsche, or in a 20th century Existentialist such as Jean Paul Sartre. I call it the seesaw, or teeter-totter, conception: that if man is to "go up," if man is to be recognized for all that he is as significant and valuable, then God must go down. God is viewed as the greatest threat to the autonomy, the dignity and freedom ofMan. The biblical view, I want to emphasize, is diametrically opposed to that notion.

Modern atheism answers that alleged threat and solves the supposed tension by declaring that God does not exist. Deism, you may remember, had earlier removed the alleged threat to man's freedom posed by a sovereign God by removing God from his creation once he had gotten the ball rolling so to speak. Dr. Rice, on the other hand, presents a limited removal of God from the picture. He writes repeatedly of the fact that God does not know all the "details" ofthe future, "some" actions are not under God's control; namely, those actions that are the results of man's decisions.

But just how ÂŤlimited" is this removal of God from the scene? How many significant occurrences in our world are not the results ofactions by human beings?

Since this world is personal to the core, that realm to which God's response can only be reactive, according to Rice, is far \___ more pervasive than he suggests-so pervasive, indeed, that Dr. Rice's confidence that God can eventually work

all things out for good, even though he cannot ordain according to his plan any action of man, angel, or demon, seems without solid foundation.

In order to make the sharp contrast between Rice's contention-ifGod were truly sovereign and ultimately in control, it would destroy man's genuine freedom-and the biblical perspective, let me tell you a little fish story.

One day it occurred to this fish as he swam in the vast ocean with all this water

The doctrines of the so-called "New ¡ Model" of ¡our time are not really "new" at all .bul are heresies examined long ago by our Reformation forefathers. all around him, on every side, that this water was hemming him in, cramping his style, limiting his freedom and his opportunity to fulfill the full potentialities of his "fishness." And so he swam over near the shore, and he huffed and he puffed and he threw himself up on the beach; and he shouted: ''I'm FREE at last!" But you and I know what was really the case. Almost with that very shout he was not free but dead! That water all around him was not limiting his freedom as a fish nor making it impossible for him to fulfill all the potentialities of his fishness. On the contrary, that water was the very element in which he lived and moved and had his being as a fish. I t was the necessary and perfect environment in which he was to fulfill his fishness.

For us as human beings created in

God's image, it is in God, as the Apostle Paul emphasized, that we live and move and have our being. A common misunderstanding is that humankind's freedom conflicts with God's sovereignty.

The truth is that the absolute sovereignty of God, far from rendering meaningless the freedom and personality of men and women, guarantees that their actions will be full of meaning.

The Existentialist, for example, has every reason to conclude that human actions are meaningless, with no ultimate significance, given his atheistic premise.

But the fact is that man does not live in the kind of universe in which man's actions take place in the vacuum of the unknown. He does not live in that kind ofuniverse at all. He lives in God's world in which God has decreed that the decisions and actions ofhis image bearers (men and women) shall have eternal significance.

The relationship between God's sovereignty and men and women's responsibility is never presented in the Bible as a "problem." In Romans 9, for example, the objector to Paul's teaching tries to set it up as a problem. In verse 19 Paul writes: "One ofyou will say to me: Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?" Ifeven Pharaoh was "raised up" by God (v. 17) so that through his hardness ofheart God's power might be demonstrated and God's name proclaimed throughout the earth, then who can be said to be doing anything other than the will of God? Pharaoh certainly was. Judas Iscariot was. How then can God justly find fault with them?

Pharaoh and Judas were two of the greatest servants God ever had.

But to think this way, of course, is to confuse the decretive will of God, by which he has indeed foreordained everything that happens (including Judas's treachery) with the perceptive will of God, that revealed Law of God that tells us that in which our holy God delights. It is God's perceptive will, found JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1993

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lnodern REFORMA-TION in the Bible, which is to be the guide for our life, which we are responsible to obey and justly held guilty for breaking. This is a very important principle to remember.

Our Lord Jesus Christ announces, in Luke 22:22, that he, the Son of Man, will go from that last supper with his disciples to his arrest and crucifixion, "as it has been decreed" by God in his sovereign decretive will by which he has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.

But does this fact of God's sovereign foreordination in any way lessen man's responsibility and guilt? Not at all! Our Lord makes this clear as he immediately adds: "But woe to that man who betrays him. " Woe to him because he will be held accountable for his sin; he will be judged by God, the holy Judge; and he will be punished.

The instructive conjunction of these two truths, of God's sovereignty and man's responsibility appears again in Acts 2:23. The handing over ofJesus of Nazareth to those responsible for his execution was "by God's set purpose and foreknowledge"-amost clear and strong affirmation of the sovereign divine ordination of this the arch-crime of human history, the crucifixion of the Lord of glory-continuing verse 23 we read that it was "with the help ofwicked men"-wicked, notice, because they are responsible for their action and guilty of the sin-that "you put him to death by nailing him to the cross."

Acts 4:28 is quite similar. Herod, Pontius Pilate, the Gentiles, and the people ofIsrael, when they met together to conspire against God's holy servant, Jesus, "did what (God's) power and will had decided beforehand should happen."

There is absolutely no suggestion that those wicked sinners were anything but responsible and guilty for that reason that they will suffer the penalty spoken of in Psalm 2 which Peter appeals to here. And coming back to Romans 9, remember Paul's answer to the objector 6

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JANUARYIFEBRUARY 1993

in verse 20. The objector whom Paul brings into the"debate" here in Romans 9 has asked in verse 19: "Why does God still blame ,us?" Why does God hold us responsible? "For who resists his will?" If by his decretive will God has foreordained whatever comes to pass, then none of us has ever done anything but what God has willed! What is Paul's response? Does he say something like this: "You know, you have a good point there. I never thought of that. I guess God's foreordination and foreknowledge cannot include the free actions of free creatures, because if it did those actions would not be truly free and human beings would not be responsible before God for them?" Is that the kind of answer which the Apostle Paul, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, gives? Not at all. This is his answer: "But who are you, 0 man, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?'" (Rom.

9:20).

Now, it is true, that for our limited, creaturely understanding it does present us with an ultimate mystery, in the sense that we cannot perfectly see through the way in which our acting as free, responsible agents ' is inter-related to God's acting.

But that mystery exists for our limited minds simply because of the two truths that the Bible everywhere sets before us, sometimes in the same verse, as we have already noticed in Luke-Acts: 1) God is the eternal God who has foreordained (and therefore foreknows) whatsoever comes to pass, and 2) man his creature is a person, that is, a free agent who acts on the basis ofdecisions that are his own and for which he and he alone is therefore responsible.

And those two truths are the truths that "light up," so to speak, all reality and all our experience, so that this is a mystery that does not puzzle us or distress us, but rather reveals to us what we need to know in order to worship and serve our God correctly.

For example, the Holy Spirit's

"breathing out" the Scriptures (2 Tim. 3: 16), "carrying along" the writers so that they spoke from God (2 Pt. 1:21), reveals to us so clearly that there is absolutely no tension between the complete sovereign control of God and the complete freedom of man. Indeed we might say that men were most perfectly free when they were most totally controlled by the Holy Spirit.

Let me repeat my first point, then.

The fact that God is sovereign is not our problem. That is not what limits our freedom and our fulfillment of all that we should be as God's children. The all­ embracing sovereignty ofGod is as much (more!) our proper element as God's creature as the sea is the proper element of the fish. Our problem, as the Bible consistently sees it, is our sin. And this is my second point.

For our Reformation forefathers in the faith, the "problem" of man's free will was a theological (an ethical) problem, not a philosophical (or metaphysical) one. When Luther and Calvin spoke ofman's will being not free but in bondage, they did not at all mean that it was bound and not free because the sovereign Creator and Sustainer of the universe has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass. Rather, they were speaking of the fact that man, who 'was created holy (perfectly holy according to Col. 3: 10, Eph. 4:24, Gen. 1:31 and Eccl.

7:29), made poor use of his free will, losing both himself and it (as Augustine said). That is, by his willful, voluntary sin, disobedience, and rebellion against the sole authority of his Creator and Lawgiver, man became guilty before his God, incurring the penalty for his sin: death (psycho-physical, spiritual, and eternal death); and is in slavery to his sinful, depraved heart.

We must emphasize, then, that it is not the fact ofGod's sovereignty but the fact of man's fall that has cost man the freedom of his will, according to our Reformation fathers in the faith. But

1nodern REFORMATION again, this must not be misunderstood.

Note this well. Even the fall did not alter the fact that man is a free agent instead of being a robot or an instinct-driven animal.

His decisions are determined by his own will. This is true offallen men and women just as much as it was true ofAdam. You see, as Luther put it, there is a vast difference between an enslaved will and an annihilated will.

Luther and Calvin, however, preferred to use that term "freedom" the way the Bible uses it when it says an. 8:36) that if the Son shall make you free, then you shall be free indeed. Luther and Calvin preferred to use that term "freedom" when speaking of that freedom that is freedom indeed: freedom to do the good, freedom to do that in which God delights.

This is what we mean when we speak of the freedom of God, or of the freedom of the saints in final glory. It is obvious that we cannot define the essence of their freedom as the so-called ability to do good or evil, right orwrong. True freedom ~ is freedom, or power, to do the truly good.

And that is what fallen men and women have lost and need to have restored by the grace of God and the power of the risen Christ. Yes, fallen men and women are still human, still persons, still "free" in that sense. But since their decisions are from the "heart," and since that heart is now a sinful heart and, as Jeremiah says, ÂŤ desperately wicked," the decisions of that heart may be many and various; but they are all tainted by sin and cannot, apart from God's saving grace, be anything different.

Notice the "cannot" in the following Bible passages-not just "do not" but "cannot:" " The sinful mind (i.e., every mind outside of Christ and his Spirit) is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so." (Rom. 8:7) And, "The man without the Spirit does ',--" not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them,

because they are spiritually discerned."

(1 Cor. 2:4) As our Lord taught, (in the parable of the good tree and the good fruit and the bad tree and the rotten fruit) what is needed is a new heart. And a new heart is God's gracious gift, not man's attainment. (Ezekial 36:26).

Let me repeat my second point, then.

As the Bible sees it, our problem is sin and we need the Savior and his liberating, life-giving Spirit. True freedom is not simply a metaphysical attribute of man.

T rue freedom is God's gracious gift to

We must emphasize that it is not the fact of God's sovereignty . but the fact of man's fall that has cost man the freedom of his will those whom he, by the Spirit, makes his bondslaves in union with Christ. It is nothing short ofamazing that Dr. Rice's book about the freedom of man's will is totally silent on both counts. It does not speak about the effects ofsin or about the need for a Savior. Nowhere in his book does he reflect on the fact that men and women, apart from the special grace of God, apart form Christ, apart from the Holy Spirit, cannot make the right decisions. Reading his book, you would think that sinners on their own can do all that is necessary to please and obey God. As a matter of fact, pleasing God and obeying God do not even seem to concern him.

Someone might still want to ask, "After all is said and done, what difference does it make whether I view God as

foreknowing all things or not? Perhaps this matter of whether or not God's omniscience is 'limited' is one of those esoteric questions that professional theologians get paid to debate, but that 'regular people' need not concern themselves?"

The importance of any point of biblical doctrine is that biblical theology "hangs together." The Reformers, on the basis of their biblical doctrine of God, presented a biblical doctrine of salvation. Not justJohn Calvin, you see, but Martin Luther also saw the doctrine of God's sovereign, eternal, personal election in Christ at the heart of the biblical doctrine ofsalvation. A Socinian view ofGod leads inevitably to a Socinian view ofsalvation. Not the good news of salvation by God's free grace-by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone-but rather a message of salvation by one's own efforts, a false gospel that is no good news at all.

Dr. Robert Strimple is professor of theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Escondido, California, and is noted for his work in Anslem studies.

End Notes 1. Kim Riddlebarger, "Is the 'Old Model' Roman or Biblical?," Modem Reformation, NovlDec 1990.

2. Clark H. Pinnock, Tracking The Maze {New York: Harper &Row, 1990), pp. 152,179,40, &184..

3. C. Norman Kraus, Jesus Christ Our Lord (Scottsdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1987), see pp. 16-17.

4. Richard Rice, God's Foreknowledge & Man's Free Will (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1985).

S. David & Randall Basinger, eds., Predestination & Free Will (InterVarsity Press, 1986) 6. Clark H. Pinnock, ed., The Grace ofGod, The Will of Man (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1989.)

7. I first heard this story told by my teacher at Westminster Seminary, Cornelius Van Til.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1993

â&#x20AC;˘

7

!nodern REFORMATION and even though we know, deep down, that Jeremiah was right when he said, "The heart is more deceitful than any­ thing else" aero 17:9), we persist in reducing salvation to sentiment: If the heart is right, God will accept us. The problem is, the heart of every person is wrong. Ifsalvation depends on the con­ dition ofour hearts, we are all in trouble.

For in that dark cavern I have commit­ Is Faith in Christ Absolutely Necessary? ted sins that have never made it to my hands. It is the last place to look for any

By MICHAEL S. HORTON hope of salvation.

During the apostolic era, the Refor­ Nobody has a problem with Hitler in said of Gandhi's fate, "I hope the Lord the hands of an angry God; it's Gandhi would judge his heart and if he was a mation, the Great Awakening and the we have a problem with. Regardless of good man and he knew to live an honest glory days of the modern missionary what we say we believe, it is difficult to life and was generous and loving, maybe movement, the message was clear: The accept the idea of hell as a place where the Lord would take him." Another: "I creatures God made in his own image even "good" people go. can't imagine a loving God being so cruel have turned against him and he must One-third ofthe evangelicals surveyed forever and ever. It is an awfully long execute his just wrath. And yet, he was said they believed that "all good people time for someone to be unhappy." Hunter so moved by his own compassionate will go to heaven, whether they have aptly concludes, "Intellectually grasping character to redeem the lost and rescue embraced Jesus Christ or not." Another the soteriological demands of orthodox his enemies that he put his own Son in 11 percent weren't sure. "Surprisingly Christianity is one matter; emotionally their place to bearthe sentence ofdivine little difference on this matter surfaced accepting them is quite another."2 justice.

Even though we have much in Scrip­ in the views of those who attend church But religion has become increasingly services and those who do not." George ture to confirm our own self-knowledge shaped by modernity. Demanding their Barna, the author ofthe study, concluded: about our being turned in on ourselves rights of sovereignty and self-determi­ "What is being taught in our r;:::::====================================================::::;-] nation from all absolute mon­ churches about the nature of archs, modern men and women salvation?" 1 This is a good in particular have only made question! enough room in their world for a University of Virginia god who would serve as a public mascot for civil functions and be sociologist James D. Hunter has allowed to "rule" only by the con­ marked this "megashift" among sent ofthe governed. Before, God even conservative Bible colleges and seminaries, where .-existed for his own happiness, respondents said things like, /' -but the new god exists for ours.

"Maybe God saves them a Before, the chief end of man was different way, maybe he gives "to glorify God and enjoy him them a chance after they die forever," but the new god prom­ depending on how they've lived ises to help glorify ourselves and their lives ." Another, who to help us enjoy ourselves forever.

Instead of sinners having to be iden tified herself as an Independent Fundamentalist, justified before a good and holy replied, "What is important in God, we are now ourselves the their case is that they have good guys who demand that God conformed to the law of God as justify himself before us. Why they know it in their hearts." should we believe in him? How One evangelical Bible student will believing in him make me

How

ide

Is God's Mercy?

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">

happier and more fulfilled than believing in Karma or the latest ideological band­ wagon?

Interestingly, it is Ann Douglas, a feminist writer, who chronicles what she calls The Feminization ofAmerican Cul­ ture. Douglas gives a great deal ofspace to the discussion of how the abandonment of New England, Calvinism was respon­ sible for the descent ofAmerican religion into sentimentalism. She characterizes the view popularized by many of the revivalists as well as urban preachers: "God would never punish men eternally because endless torment by definition cannot heal or reclaim them; and their spiritual growth is his preoccupation."3 By contrast, the Reformation faith fo­ cused on a strong God who listened to the cry of the suffering, but instead of merely coddling and nurturing them, he destroyed their persecutors and redeemed them from captivity. Here is a God at work, active in history redeeming sinners in spite of their resistance and moral corruption.

The new god is affably tolerant and more than willing to be worshiped and honored through sentiment instead of orthodoxy. Content to be the healer of damaged emotions and inspirer ofmoral devotion, the new god does not inspire worship so much as pity, since his will is so often thwarted by those he so desper­ ately wants and tries to love. What is important to this god is not whether people understand him as the triune God of history who revealed himself savingly in the person and work of the incarnate Word, but whether they possess suffi­ cient sentiment. The act, not the object of faith, is central. British writer Harry Blamires called this new creed" "The 20th Century Sentimental Theology."

That's why our neighbor says, ,"Well, I like some things about Buddhism and other things about Christianity," and gives a list -of experiences and ethical ideals instead of truth claims. It's also why we sing, "He Touched Me," and

"You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart." And yet, parallels can easily be made between the popular medieval piety of the pre-Reformation period and our own. Anders Nygren ob­ serves, "The line from emotion to senti­ mentality was easy to cross, and so was the line from love as the agape of Christ to love as eros for Christ." "The acme of egocentric piety," Nygren writes, this sentimentalism is seen "in the Middle Ages and even more in Pietist Protestant­ ism." 4 As Pietistic theologians such as

One-third of the

evangelicals

surveyed said they

believed that "all

good people will go

to heaven, whether

they have embraced

-Jesus Christ

or not. "

Friederich Schleiermacher (18 th century), father of modern liberalism, replaced or­ thodoxy with "the feeling of absolute dependence," itwould only be a matter of time before the human-centered, indi­ vidualistic, anti-ecclesiastical and anti­ intellectual tributaries would lead to a sea of subjective egoism and shallow senti­ mentalism.

And no one represents the inroads of this religion ofsentiment more poignantly than Dr. Clark Pinnock, respected apologist and evangelical theologian. His book, A Wideness in God's Mercy, is a worthy homage to the new deity.5 Pinnock's strength is his passion to get evangelicals to begin thinking globally, although it has been the faces of

1110dernREFORMATION

"exclusivistic" Protestant and Catholic missionaries, not "positive" liberals whom undiscovered natives saw first.

Nevertheless, Pinnock's appeal to evan­ gelicals to broaden their interaction be­ yond the traditional theological boundaries ofWestern debates makes a good point: If we can interact with and even borrow from pagan Greek philoso­ phers, as Christian theologians have for centuries, is there nothing we can gain from interaction with Eastern philoso­ phers and contemporaryworld religions?

Pinnock also has some powerful cri­ tiques of relativism, offering some well­ constructed objections and insisting that Christianity ought to argue for the final­ ity of Christ in the midst of pluralism.

But Pinnock sees himself as the naviga­ tor between the Scylla and Charybdis of both "hardline restrictivists" (classical Christians) and universalists and plural­ ists such as John Hick. "Hardline restrictivists" are those who say that "the only possibility for encountering God and receiving salvation .. .is to exercise explicit faith in Jesus Christ in this earthly life." "A middle path has been develop­ ing between the two extremes," Pinnock points out, "a megashift in Christian thinking moving us in the direction of greater theological globalism. It can be seen in the Catholic church, in the Prot­ estant mainline, and among a growing number of evangelicals" (p. 12).

In this article, I want to briefly trace the "megashift" Pinnock outlines and champions. This is not simply a debate for the "professionals" to discuss in the back rooms; it calls into question the most basic question of classical Chris­ tian faith: Is it really true that no one can be redeemed apart from confessing Christ as Lord and Savior? It is a matter for the whole people of God to address.

The Evangelical Megashift The so-called "megashift" Pinnock champions is a radically different way of understanding 1) God, influenced by JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1993

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process theology, it embraces the idea of a finite god who changes and does not know the future acts of free creatures; 2) Christ, implicitly denying the uniquenes and finality of God's self-disclosure in the incarnation; 3) humans, denying to­ tal depravity and original sin; 4) salva­ tion, denying the penal substitutionary atonement, justification by grace alone, through faith alone, on account ofChrist alone, and the necessity of the new birth and faith in Christ for salvation; 5) the church, denying that the church is God's unique redeemed community; and 6) eschatology and the eternal state, deny­ ing eternal punishment.6 First, there is Pinnock's central thesis, the "wideness ofGod's mercy," a biblical phrase that has been gladly proclaimed by classical Christians as well, as we will argue in the conclusion of this article.

Traditionally, biblical scholars have in­ terpreted the covenant with Noah as a promise God made to the whole creation not to ever destroy it again by flood (Gn. 9). However, Pinnock sees in this cov­ enant a basis for redemption beyond the 10

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JANUARYIFEBRUARY 1993

borders of God's community: "Because ofthe obedience ofthe one (Noah), God extends his mercy to many (all human­ ity)" (p. 21). Of course, this is the lan­ guage Paul uses in Romans 5 to explain the covenant of works, by which the Second Adam (Christ) fulfills the con­ ditions of salvation by his personal obe­ dience as the representative head of the redeemed. "For just as through the dis­ obedience ofthe one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedi­ ence of the one many the many will be made righteous" (Rom. 5: 19). Ironically, Pinnock denies original sin and justifica­ tion (i.e., the covenant of grace outlined explicitly here), and yet somehow finds in Noah a representative mediator Qr redeemer who serves a similar function, but in this case, for the entire cosmic order.

Because of this covenant, therefore, it is possible for everyone to be saved even apart from explicit faith in the biblical God (or any god, for that matter, as we shall see below). The Ninevites to whom Jonah was sent are examples of "holy

pagans: "" . . .G0 d'IS prepare d to accept their acts of repentance. He does not even require them to visit the temple in Jerusalem, or to become Israelites, but is willing to accept them just as penitent Ninevites," and Jonah is presumably scolded for his "Augustinian" reticence to accept the wideness of God's mercy (p. 28). And yet, Pinnockhimselfquotes Malachi 1: 11, where God declares, "... and in every place incense is offered to my name. "B ut sureIy " to my name " refers to a particular person who has a name. Neither the Ninevites nor any other community were accepted by God on the basis of their acts of penitence; it has always been on the basis of Christ's righteousness and always received through faith alone in the name of Yahweh, the biblical God-the same God who, "in the fullriess of time," became flesh. To trust in Yahweh was to trust in Christ, and vice versa.

Who denies that God elected Israel to be a "light to the Gentiles?" (Is. 49:6).

The mainstream "exclusivist" scholar­ ship of which I am aware regards Israel

lnodern REFORMATION as a missionary outpost to bring the un­ folding gospel message to non-Jews. To be sure, Israel failed in this mission, but Christ, who is Israel fulfills this mission himself in his person and work and by founding a new Israel to bring the gospel to the nations. The Reformers, who get the brunt of Pinnock's criticism, had no problem with the notion that God saved non-Jews in the Old Testament. What is denied by historic Christianity is that the gospel has room for any object other than Yahweh, Yireh- Tsadikenu ("The Lord Our Righteousness"); any scheme (ground) other than redemption by sacri­ fice and substitution, or any instrument other than justifying faith .

Moving to a more recent basis for his "megashift," Pinnock appeals to the "Logos Christology" of the early Greek Fathers, with some support. Justin Mar­ tyr, Origen, and certain other church fathers were often, it must be said, greatly influenced by Greek mysticism austin himself had been a pagan philosopher and tried to wed Greek philosophy and Christianity, and among his list of eso­ teric teachings Origen argued for reincar­ nation). This does not, of course, mean that we ought to disregard them, for there is much wisdom in their literature. What it does mean is that we ought not to view this as the golden age of Christian reflec­ tion simply because it was nearer to the early church in time and geography.

Pinnock outlines their approach: "They all spoke of the seminal word or reason, in which all humankind partakes, and they considered that persons who live by this word of God were in effect Chris­ tians, even though they had never heard of Jesus or were able to confess him."

Further, Pinnock approvingly . cites Justin's remark, aWe are taught that Christ is the first-born of God, and we have explained above that he is the Word 0f whom all mankind have a share, and those who lived according to reason are Christians, even though they were classed as atheists. For example, among the

Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus (Apol­ ogy, 46)" (p. 36). Is it possible that Justin was motivated, like Pinnock, by senti­ ment rather than by Scripture? Having enormous respect for the light of nature reflected in the Greek philosophers made it difficult to accept that they were not somehowsharers ofsome eternal "Word" or "Mind" of which Christ was simply the physical manifestation?

This sort of argument has enormous appeal today with New Age mysticism proclaiming the "Christ-consciousness"

Jesus said, "If you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in . " your sins

(In. 8:24). in everyone, but it is surely out of step with any natural reading of Scripture. In his Gospel, John does refer to Christ as the Eternal Word who became flesh, but does not take that as an opportunity to extend the Word's activity beyond cre­ ation, providence, and incarnation. His activity in creation and providence may indeed uphold all things, but only his redemptive activity in time and space propitiates the wrath of God, since the Old Testament sacrifices were only pro­ visional, anticipating the only sacrifice truly capable of taking away sin. This same John declares, "He who believes is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God" Gn. 3:18). After declaring that his mission was to save, not to de­ stroy, OUt Lord declares in John's Gos­

pel, "There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept mywords; that very word which I spoke will con­ demn him at the last day" an. 12:48).

Furthermore, Jesus added, "I told you that you would die in your sins; ifyou do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins" an.

8:24).

Clearly, John had no intention of simply plugging Jesus Christ into the Greek notion of" Eternal Mind" perme­ ating every individual and redeeming even atheists by Gnosis ("spiritual knowledge"), even though he borrowed the image and reshaped it in order to reach unbelievers. Pinnock, however, merges the categories of creation and redemption, nature and grace, and gen­ eral and special revelation. The differ­ ence between Christianity and Bud­ dhism becomes one merely of degree, not kind: The former provides us with "full-strength salvation" (p. 105), which is presumably better than a weaker­ strength salvation.

Pinnock does not hide his agenda: "Like Karl Barth, conservatives usually judge Christianity true and other reli­ gions false. Though reflecting a com­ mendably high estimate of the finality of Jesus Christ) this is an odd position in that it is so positive about the religiosity of Christians, while so negative about the religiosity of everybody else" (p. 83).

Neither Barth nor any conservatives I know argue the truth of Christianity and the exclusive claims of Christ be­ cause they believe Christians are supe­ rior in their religiosity, but because of the high Christology ofthe biblical texts themselves. Again and again, Pinnock creates caricatures and straw men in the absence ofclear and convincing arguments.

Pinnock even implies that the Holy Spirit saves many who are beyond Christ's grasp (p. 79), while in the early church it was the Gnostics who tried to emphasize the Spirit over the so-called "Christ-event." In the middle ages, the JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1993

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lnodern REFORMATION Christianity, like all other re­ ligions, bases its teachings on revelations which have been affected and influenced by cultural factors (p. 147).

At long last, Pinnock reaches his destination: "The '. f"A whopping 78%:ofAmericanssurveyed feltthey'had an;exGellent or goodghapce.ofgoing toheaveri' Bible does not teach that one . . w,henthey d~ed;: only 4%tl10ught tht}irdestiny wotfIdbe.the:fiery ,pit. Even those who ¢laimnor~ligious., . must confess the name of] esus ,' beliefexpeetlife tQgoonafte(de~th (46%beUe~einheaven;34%jnhen)~'; . ,', to be saved ....The issue God cares about is the direction of " 'Accordingto,Univ~rsityo{ Virginiasociologist,JamesD. Hunter, "67% offlie evangelical Bible , the heart, not the content of ~pllege an4semin~studentssurveyCd said that the first reaSOR' th¢y ",auld'giyea nOI.1Peliever [for theology" (p. 158). For those becoming Christian)'w0uld be eith~rthe' sense'of meaning andpufpose oHife';.;()ra.personal ·' who have some sense of the testimonyth,at'Gad pasmade~difference in my life)" Conversely; telliIlg people about God's,wrath direction of their heart Oer. , i5,'[or,almosthalf(46 %) 'of evangelical Bible stuqentsand seminarians; "in.pobr.tast~."

17:9), that may not be as com­ ~One-third ofaU e~angelicalssurveyed byGeorgeBamab~lieve "God wiUsav(fall good'people , forting as Pinnock supposes.

Furthermore, is it really strict, wh~ri~hey:die,regardless of whetherthey'~~ trusterl 'inC~rist/' ' , harsh Augustinianism that " 84%:01 ~van~elicais polled believe'that in the fuatter ~fsatV(ifion, "Godhelpsthosew~ohylp ..

would say that unless one be­ ther.riselv~s,"also ' a~,ording to Bama. ~'. ' , .,

lieves Jesus Christ is who he said he was, that person can­ First fop:r sia:tiSti~~ taken frbm The ather. Side (}j thi. (iJoda N~,ws, by Larrypixon (Whe<lIOm Vicu;r, 1992),pp, i O~ 12,;¢iEit)g Galiup; (J"S;News,imd 'Jarnes:6avison~~~tir. The, last twoat:e fron.i·Ge~fge Barn:1, ' Th~,Barilfi'RePFrf,0VenlJJra: Regal, 'l9(2), ' . ' ,. , not be saved? Orwas itnotour Lord himself who declared, "I Cathari and Albigensians carried the tra­ rior life as a fixed quantity known by an told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am the one I dition forward and the Protestant Re­ external label and not as something dy­ ofchange" (p.

85).

In namic and capable claim to be, you will indeed die in your formers faced the "Fanatics" who tore the sins"? On. 8:24).

Spirit from the Word, emphasizing reli­ other words, traditional approaches fo­ So if we cannot determine whether a gious experience over the objective focus cus on the object rather than the experi­ on Christ, and him crucified. Calvin ence of religion. Instead of arguing with person is a brother or a sister in the complained, "When they boast extrava­ Muslims about Christ and salvation, we family ofGod by his or her confession of gantly of the Spirit, the tendency cer­ ought to share our common experiences Christ, what are the criteria? According tainly is to bury the Word of God, that about "God, prayer, healing and the like. to Pinnock, the determinative factors they may make room for their own false­ What God really cares about is faith and are: "a good heart" (p. 160) and good hoods."7 "The Spirit will be found no­ not theology, trust and not orthodoxy" works. "The second criterion teUs us to where but in Christ," he declared, in his (p, 112). In other words, it is "at the level ask, Do people pursue righteousness in commentary on Ephesians, and "we are of heart religion"-consistent with the their behavior? .. Spirituality is disclosed not otherwise made partakers ofthe Spirit sentimentalism ofthe modern relativistic in morality. God is pleased when people's age, where we find all roads leading into lives reflect his will for behavior. Verbal than through Christ."8 The bottom line in all of this for one. I am reminded ofthe bumper sticker, profession is not enough.... One can Pinnock, as for others throughout his­ "You've 'gotta believe in something; I make a faith response in the form of tory who have argued this very line, is believe I'll have another beer." "Faith in actions of love and justice." Pinnock clear: "Religion in the subjective sense is faith is a characteristically American her­ even approvingly cites Irenaeus' remark the Bible's main concern. Jesus, for ex­ esy," Os Guinness says. that it is "the natural precepts of the law Therefore, Christians ought to be­ ample, does not relate to religions as by which a man is justified," and is fairly abstractions. He relates to persons in come « •.• more spiritually Buddha-like" safe to conclude, "This is not easy for their uniqueness at the level of their heart (p. 140). "For in the kingdom of God Protestants to accept," (p. 97), although needs....Thinking about religions as ob­ there will be no Islam or Buddhism or one might wonder these days. Perhaps jective risks losing sight of the unique­ Christianity, but only the triune God and this low doctrine of spirit and grace is ness of persons and ofjudging their inte­ the redeemed community." After all, why Pinnock can see such a logical place

· lnterestingFttC~

a

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Inode rnREFORMATION So we must ask how Pinnock can side with the heretic Pelagius against Augustine in the debate over nature and I cannot deny that most believers end their grace, knowing that both Catholics and earthlylives imperfectly sanctified and far from Protestants have been united in their complete. I cannot deny the wisdom in possibly condemnation? Of course, the church giving them an opportunity to close the gap can be in error, but it will take more than and grow to maturity after death .... Obviously, assertions to convince us that 1,500 years evangelicals have not thought this question ofconsensus ought to be rejected. In fact, out. It seems to me that we already have the Pinnock even accepts the Vatican II possibility of a doctrine of purgatory....Ask notion that " ... God will save even the yourself, are you not going to need some atheist who, though rejecting God (as he finishing touches in the area ofholiness when · understands God), responds positively to you die? .... I would defend a doctrine of him implicitly by acts of love shown to purgatory in this way. It is obvious that the neighbor." Thus, he concludes, "A Christian character is not perfecclytransformed person may know God without it coming at death. Therefore, it is reasonable to hope to verbal expression," without even that there might be a perfecting process after attempting to reconcile this with such death....Our Wesleyan andArminian thinking obvious passages as Romans 10:1-13 may need to be extended in this direction. Is a (especially verse 13).

in his brand of Arminiansim for the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory:

doctrine of purgatory not required by our doctrine of holiness? (Four Views of Hell, pp.

129-31).

In fact, Clark Pinnock recommends the doctrine of purgatory as something that "appeals to the Arminian streak in me." First ofall, evangelicals have thought out the doctrine of purgatory as it had been defined by the Middle Ages. It was called "the Protestant Reformation," and in it the evangelicals, returning to their actual biblical texts, realized the doctrine could not be defended from a single reference. Furthermore, it required a denial of the doctrine of imputed righteousness, arguing instead that somehow the justified believer lacks some degree of holiness for which he must make up, or that there are some sins for which Christ's atonement are simply not sufficient. But, as Pinnock says, purgatory fits with his version of Wesleyan­ Arminianism quite nicely. As Rod Rosenbladt has often told his students, the choice is between Luther and Calvin on one side and Rome and Wesley on the other. Evangelical Arminianism makes about as much sense as Roman Catholic Protestantism.

have recognized the normative author­ ity of Scripture, however readers might disagree over the interpretation ofa par­ ticular passage. Scripture interprets Scripture; the difficult passages are to be understood in the light of the clearer texts.

Without intending to sound pejora­ tive, we must understand the impor­ tance of Pinnock's shift from seeing Scripture as God's exclusive means of normative, written revelation and self­ disclosure to placing experience and sen­ timent in that interpretive role. Pinnock's bottom line appears to be, not, "What does the text say?", but, "Is he the kind of God who would be capable of sitting by while large numbers perish . .. ?" (p.

18). How could we believe in a God who could "be content to rescue a pathetic remnant?" Furthermore, Pinnock's To mention examples of our own, how can one "optimistic" view, contrasted with the fail to appreciate the noble aspects of the "pessimism" of classical Western Chris­ Buddha, whose ethical direction, compassion, tianity, "resonates with a hope within and concern for others is so moving that it the human breast" (p. 35). "It would appears God is at work in his life? Gautama seem that the moderation of Erasmus is resembles the sort of 'righteous man' whom winning out over the harshness ofLuther and Calvin" (p. 42).

Jesus told his disciples to receive (Mt. Eschewing attention to detail or ac­ 10:41).... But how does one come away after encountering Buddhism and deny it is in touch curacy, Pinnock paints his canvas with with God in its way? (p. 100, emphasis mine). the thick, stark colors of an Expression­ ist. The first straw man in the author's This reminds me of an interview with argument is none other than the fourth Norman Vincent Peale on the "Phil century church father, St. Augustine.

Donahue Show," when he said that he "For centuries, thanks largely to the Au­ found eternal peace one day in a Shinto gustinian tradition that has so influ­ temple in Japan. It is experience, senti­ enced evangelicals, we have been taught ment, feeling, subjective and intuitive that God chooses a few who will be saved impressions, and ethical qualities which and has decided not to save the vast appear to take the determinative role for majority of humanity. God is planning moderns and a growing number ofevan­ (in his sovereign freedom) to send most gelicals are simply, once again, of those outside the church to hell, and unfashionably late in picking it up from he is perfectly within his rights to do so."

Those who follow Augustine's radical the culture. course have "a pessimistic control belief The Pinnock Principle and find it hard to relate humanly to Before abandoning the doctrine of other people" (p. 19). This is an interest­ inerrancy, Dr. Pinnock wrote a masterful ing comment concerning a man whom defense of the doctrine titled The Scrip­ Turn to How Wide on page 30 ture Principle. Historically, Protestants JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1993

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/node rn REFORMATION

Haven' t We Seen This Megashift Before?

Is It a New Model or an Old Error?

By Dr. ROBERT GODFREY One of the leading news reports on NBC's "Today" show described how evangelical Christians had gathered in San Francisco on Halloween to drive evil spirits out of the city. The homosexual community interpreted that as an accusation that they were the evil spirits in question, and this led to some confrontation on the streets of San Francisco. As I watched a news clip ofthe modern Charismatic service being conducted to drive out the evil spirits, complete with slick worship leaders and soft rock music, I personally felt very little sense of identification with these evangelical Christians. And the report raised in my mind again the question that I have pondered in various forms for some years: "What is an evangelical Christian?"

The shift from the courtroom to the family room (a very unfortunate way of summarizing complex issues) is not just a change of language, 1'm convinced, or a change ofperspective, on a common body of truth. It is not a model in the sense of one among many equally valid experiments at expressing ineffable truth.

The shift that we are examining in this issue is a shift to a distinct system of theology. We are seeking to examine systems of theology that have particular approaches to the Bible, to God, to man, and to salvation. What we need to do is to explore the character of the proposed system to ask how it relates to the old evangelicalism; hence the subtitle, "New Model or Old Error?"

Evangelicalism has always had several 14

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systems under its banner: Lutheran, Reformed, Wesleyan, Holiness, some forms of Pentecostalism, to name the major ones. Yet it has always insisted that there were limits to the meaning of the word "evangelical." Certain doctrines concerning the Bible, sin, the Savior and

We need to try to evaluate the current "megashift" to see if it represents a system that is

indeed evangelical, or is perhaps beyond the range of evangelicalism salvation, were beyond the range of evangelical opinion. We need to try to evaluate the current "megashift" to see if it represents a system that is indeed evangelical, or is perhaps beyond the range of evangelicalism. Now, we certainly cannot do that exhaustively in this article (or in this issue!), but I write this as a church historian, and would like to suggest that there is something we can learn from church history.

David Wells spoke perceptively to this point in his response to the Christianity Today "Megashift" article, when he said he had quite painful

forebodings that the evangelical wheel may have come full circle from a century ago. What was happening a century ago in American evangelicalism? On the surface, American evangelicalism seemed to be enjoying great success. The 19th century was significantly the time ofthe evangelical empire, or what Sidney Ahlstrom has called "the golden day of democratic evangelicalism." Mter the Civil War there seemed to be a new commitment to the unity of the Christian movement. In 1846, just before the war, the Evangelical Alliance had been formed, an international alliance to promote the unity of the evangelical cause around the world.

There was also a new commitment to ministry. This was a recurring call and theme: We must be on with the ministry ofJesus Christ; we must be on with the mlsslOnary and evangelistic responsibility ofthe church. In American evangelicalism there was a continuing commitment to revival, to conversion, to vital personal religion, and to the great moral reforming crusades of 19th century American evangelicalism. There was also what George Marsden has called an aversion to theological debate and a confident expectation of progress for the evangelical cause.

Unity and confidence were undergirded by the strong post­ millennialism of most American evangelicals, who anticipated that the millennial age might not be far off. As early as the 1830s, evangelicals were voicing their expectation that if only they would work a little bit harder, the millennium, the golden age, would arrive in their generation. However, below the surface of this evangelical success, there were strains in the evangelical empire.

There were, ofcourse, the continuing, if somewhat muted, theological divisions between the Calvinists, Arminians and Holiness movements, and the rising ne~ element in American evangelicalism­ namely, dispensational pre­

1nodern REFORMATION millennialism, which many in the 1870s, '80s, and '90s regarded as a wild and woolly notion, but was beginning to gather adherence.

Even more disruptive to the evangelical empire were doctrinal questions being raised by the theory of evolution, as well as by biblical criticism and theological liberalism crossing the Atlantic from Germany. To try to particularize the development and movement of the American evangelical group in the later 19th century, let us focus on one particular .institution and some of its prominent members. The institution is Union Theological Seminary in New York.

A Case Study Union Theological Seminary was founded in 1836 by evangelical Presbyterians. Throughout the 19th century, its faculty included both staunchly conservative and progressive theologians. In 1890, two important and rather symbolic events took place at Union Theological Seminary. W.G.T. Shedd, a solid, orthodox, "Old School" Presbyterian systematic theologian, retired from his teaching post, marking the end of traditional, confessional Presbyterianism at Union. In that same year, Charles Augustus Briggs was given the chair in biblical theology. And on Jan. 20, 1891, Briggs gave his inaugural lecture entitled "The Authority of Holy Scripture. " The spee ch caused a tremendous uproar in the Presbyterian Church, of which Briggs was a minister.

In his speech, he showed that he had come clearly to accept and use the biblical criticism being developed in Germany and equally clearly rejected the doctrine ofbiblical ine rrancy~ His speech probably should not have brought forth as much reaction as it did, since he had clearly stated his ideas on the authority of Scripture in earlier publications, which had not caused a furor. What he was expressing now, though, with particular force and clarity, was a viewpoint that

Mark Massa has summarized in these jurisdiction of the Presbyterian General words: "Briggs was saying that if Assembly. Union Seminary went Christians could unite and utilize the independent in the name of defending scientific advances of the day in the service evangelical theology. In 1893, Briggs was of the gospel, the realization of Christ's suspended from the ministry of the kingdom on earth might be accomplished Presbyterian Church until such time as in their generation." Briggs saw himself he would repent of his errors on the as an evangelical Presbyterian; he saw Scriptures, and in 1899 he left the ministry himself as a good post-millennialist, and of the Pres byterian Church and was he said the advances of the day should received into the ministry ofthe Protestant lead us to use the scientific standards of Episcopal Church.

The strain s in the evangelical the day to advance the gospel.

Actually, Briggs' use of these historical, community had come to the surface and higher-critical methods usually led him divisions were beginning to appear. In to rather conservative results, but his the same year that Briggs was suspended me thod ology was radical. In his from the Presbyterian ministry, Arthur influential book, Whither? (1889) he Cushman McGifford was appointed to stressed how greatly the truth of God the chair of church history at Union, to transcends human knowledge, and how replace the retiring Phillip Shaw. In orthodoxy was variable, progressive, McGifford's inaugural address he spoke partial, and incomplete, so that Massa on the theme, "Primitive and Catholic can describe his approach as wedding Christianity." In a way particularly "the relativism and evolutionary values relevant to our subject, McGifford argued ofthe historicists' world view to the cause that only one important transformation of Reformed orthodoxy." That is a very . (had he the word megashift at hand, he strange wedding, indeed-Historicism would have used it) had occurred in the and Reformed orthodoxy. In time, the Presbyterian church began to grow greatly nervous about that. Very shortly after his inaugural address, Briggs was brought up on charges in the Presbyterian Church, and for several years the Briggs case made headline news, not only in Presbyterian papers, but in the secular papers of America.

Clearly, the case ofCharles Augustus Briggs was a turning point, or at least a focal point, in the developing evangelical tradition in America. The responses to this case were interesting. In 1892, Union Seminary decided it needed to rally around its professor and that one way ofprotecting Briggs was to withdraw the semIn ary from the JANUA~,Y/FEBRUARY

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history of Christianity, and that summary of Christianity: transformation, which he considered Christianity is the monotheistic, completely unfortunate, was from "Primitive" to spiritual and ethical religion, which on the "Catholic" Christianity. The essence of "Primitive" Christianity was the spirit of ground of the redeeming and kingdom­ founding life of its originator, consists in the religious individualism based on the felt freedom of childship to God, includes in itself presence of the Holy Ghost. One key the motive to conduct out oflove, aims at the element of transition to "Catholic" moral organization of humanity, and grounds Christiani ty that transformed "P rimi tive" blessedness in childship to God as well as the faith was this: the recognition of the kingdom of God. teaching of the apostles as the exclusive standard and norm ofChristian truth. In At first glance, that isn't so bad: A lot other words, what McGifford was arguing was that real Christianity was a of talk about the kingdom, freedom, Christianity offreedom led by the Spirit, about being children of God, about the and that real Christianity had been moral organization of humanity. But significantly lost by the notion of a this is all grounded in a completely non­ standard and norm of Christian truth supernatural system in which Christ is established once for all time. example, since what humanity needs is McGifford noted that Protestantism an example to encourage men and women had moved back toward Primitive to moral endeavor. Warfield summarized Christianity, but that it would not fully the system of Ritschl at some greater recapture Primitive Christianity until it length: accepted that the Spirit ofGod is the sole This great discovery ofRitschl is comprehended and ultimate standard for Christian truth. in the one declaration that "God is love" and The Spirit of God spoke through the nothing but love, and therefore, man has apostles and still speaks to his people. nothing to fear from him. We do not rest B.B. Warfield, the vanguard of "Old Princeton" orthodoxy, properly observed under the Divine condemnation; the Divine wrath does not hang over us; God intends us of McGifford's position that it showed "the characteristic feature of Harnack's nothing but good. God will do us nothing but reconstruction ofthe history ofChristian good. That is what Jesus would have us dogma in the interest of Ritschl­ understand and act upon. And this it is, by rationalism to represent all Christian which, if we understand and act upon, we become Christians with all that involves. Of doctrine as the product ofGreek thought on Christian ground." McGifford had course, what we are assured of here is that sin has no significance in the sight ofGod, and we studied with Harnack in Europe, and he are exhorted to treat it as without significance. had brought back this HarnacklRitschl Bringing us to this attitude to sin and God is approach to Christian truth and history.

What we see then, in the case of the reconciling work ofJesus. Our assumption of this attitude is our justification. For when McGifford, is the presence at an we assume this attitude, our distrust of God­ evangelical Presbyterian seminary ofone the product of our feeling of guilt-passes who has been very significantly influenced away. We take our place happily by God's by the power ofGerman liberalism, built on the anti-supernaturalism ofAlbrecht side, and, assured that he means us only good, we make his end our end, and work with him Ritschl. Bear in mind how genuinely and thoroughly liberal and anti-supernatural for its attainment.

Ritschl's view of Christianity was, and how it was utterly at odds with evangelical W arfield says that the essence of Christianity. N otice Ritschl's own Ritschl's system is the building up of our 16

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self-esteem. It is amazing how modern and contemporary these things can be.

But this system, which at first glance seems so attractive-the love of God, the overcoming of any alienation from God, the betterment of humanity­ when we look at it, it is in fact divorced from any genuinely biblical system, and divorced from any operative notion of grace, and supernatural savior. And so, we have intruding in one instance of A.C. McGifford some of the most determinately liberal notions into what was still regarded in the 1890s as an evangelical Protestant theological semlllary.

The tensions within evangelicalism continued to grow, and to deepen, and by the 1920s the division between liberals and conservatives had become deep and obvious. On the conservative side, J. Gresham Machen brilliantly presented his case in a book entitled,

Christianity and Liberalism (1923), arguing that liberalism had so departed from Christian orthodoxy that it had ought to be recognized as a different religion, not Christian at all. The context of that argument on Machen's part has to be the continuing insistence on the part ofliberals that theywere evangelical Christians. Machen was making an effort to define the limits of evangelicalism (indeed, Christianity) in Christianity and Liberalism. He expressed his profound frustration with liberals whom he believed were being dishonest with their use of traditional theological language. He said, "Language is truthful, not when the meaning is attached to the words by the speaker, but when the meaning intended to be produced in the mind of the particular person addressed is in accordance with the facts." He went on to say, Yet, honesty is being relinquished in wholesale fashion by the liberal party in many ecclesiastical bodies today. By the equivocal

'node rn REFORMATION use of traditional phrases, by their repetition of differences of opinion as though they were only differences of interpretation of the Bible, entrance into the church was secured by those who are hostile to the very foundations of the faith.

This was Machen's conviction and passion, that the church¡ was suffering from a fundamental problem of honesty in theological language and expression.

Having himself studied under some of the greatest liberal scholars in Germany, he could admire a straightforward liberal who had shifted away from evangelical foundations, but he had very little toleration for liberals who continued to insist that they were, in fact, evangelical.

There was a liberal response to Machen, written by Schaler Matthews, who argued his case in 1924 in a book entitled The Faith ofModernism. He insisted that the only real choice in the modern world was not between liberalism and orthodoxy, but, in a kind ofironic reversal ofMachen, the real choice was between liberalism and no Christianity at all. This was a characteristic liberal argument: that only liberals could successfully minister in their day, and that they were contextualizing theology as it must be contextualized to meet the demands of modern thinking. W .R. Hutchinson has summarized Matthews in these words: The basic Christian convictions were humanity's need for salvation from sin and death; the love, fatherliness, and forgiving nature of God the Creator; Christ as the revelation in human experience of God effecting salvation; good-will as essential to the nature of God and as the foundation for human betterment', the persistence of individual lives after death, and the centrality of the Bible as the record of God's revelation and as a guide for religious life.

Here again were themes that sounded good on the surface, and yet again were divorced from a thoroughgoing system

of evangelical theology'. Yet, Matthews wrote in his book, "Modernists are a class of evangelical Christians. That is, they accept Jesus as the revelation of a Savior -God." So, Matthews is insisting that Modernism is a form of evangelical Christianity. It would be interesting to visit Union Theological Seminary today and ask how many of the faculty and student body identify themselves as evangelical Christians. We have to conclude that a "megashift" had occurred

Machen could admire a straightforward liberal who had shifted away from evangelical foundations, but he had very little toleration for liberals who continued to insist that they were, in fact, evangelical in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; that the evangelical empire had broken into two; that the liberals had opted for a theology divorced from the absolute authority ofScripture, and for a theology that rejoiced in concepts such as freedom, love, and J esus-as-example rather than the traditional theology of sin, grace, and J esus-as-sacrifice.

Now I am not suggesting that the megashift we are seeing today is liberal, or identical to that older megashift. But I was intrigued that Dr. Pinnock, at the C URE Co nference in wh ich I participated, said, "The new model looks like the firs t steps to liberalism." I think it does. It looks a lot like the first steps toward liberalism. Dr. Pinnock went on to say, "But it's nod" And I hope D r.

Pinnock is correct in saying that it is not,

but everybody in the liberal camp in the 1890s and the early 20th century said that they were not walking toward liberalism in their time either. They too insisted that they were only contextualizing evangelical Christiani ty to meet the needs of contemporary, modern man . And therefore, this serves as a crucial cautionary tale for us. Evangelicalism does have theological limits, and one does not remain evangelical just by saying so. One remains evangelical by holding to certain basic tenets of evangelical theology. The authority ofscripture is the only standard by which we judge theology. Sin is a disability that is visited upon mankind that mankind cannot escape on its own. A savior has come to rescue us by his saving work on the cross, an atoning and propitiating work that is by his grace.

That megashift that we see in the disruption in the evangelical empire at the end of the 19th century is, of course, not the only megashift in the history of the church. We could see other very important shifts, and I feel I should mention them, because each of these megashifts, or "megadrifts," from the received orthodoxy has a certain coherence, which I think also should serve as a cautionary tale for us.

In the earlier 19th century we also see a megadrift in the theologies ofNathaniel William Taylor and Charles Grandison Finney. There too, we have an effort to present a more evangelistic, a more successfully communitative theology, to contextualize the gospel for the Jeffersonian Age. And what is interesting is that in Taylor and in Finneywe find the denial of original sin, an emphasis on the freedom ofman as a rational, moral being, and an emphasis on the work of Christ as governmental and exemplary in character.

If we go back a few cen turies earlier, to the time of Socinus, reacting against the Protestant orthodoxies of his day, we find something very similar: a stress upon Christ as example. T he only thing that the cross accomplishes, the only thing JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1993

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lnode rnREFORMATION that the blood of Christ ministers, is an awareness that we have been cleansed by the free love of God. The cross of Jesus Christ does not earn us anything, otherwise the mercy of God would not be mercy and forgiveness would not be forgiveness.

In this sense, it is important to draw a sharp distinction between Socinus and Arminius, the latter seeing himself as an Augustinian theologian. He believed in total depravity, the absolute necessity of grace, original sin, and ~ that Christ's atoning work on the cross was an expiation offered to God to cover the sins of man. Atminius, for all of his many theological failings, was trying to operate within the orbit ofAugustinian theology and would certainly have insisted to all critics that he was an Augustinian.

Ifwe go back to other mega-challenges to the developing theology ofthe church, we see in the medieval thinker, Peter Abelard, a similar kind of development in which original sin is rejected and the atonement is seen in terms ofinspiration.

Abelard wrote, for example, "We believe that nonetheless, we are justified in the blood of Christ and reconciled to God by the singular grace shown unto us, whereby his Son took upon him our nature and in it taught us by work and by example, and so endured unto death, and thus drew us closer to himself by love, so that fired by so great a benefit of divine grace, true love should not be afraid to endure anything for his sake." Abelard, clearly, has an exemplary, or moral-influence theory of the atonement whereby we are drawn to love by the example oflove that our savior offered for us on the cross.

Another notable megashift in church history is the 4th- and 5th-century confrontation between Pelagius and Augustine. Again, Pelagius emphasized that there was no original sin and that the primary work of Christ had been the teaching and example that Christ's life offered for the encouragement and inspiration of his followers. If we went 18

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back yet one more step, we could come to the confrontation between Arius and Athanasius, and that confrontation has been reinterpreted in a fascinating book

by Greg and Grow entitled, Early Arianism:A View o/Salvation. Athanasius was not only defending the eternal deity ofChrist, but along with it defended the doctrine of grace in comparison to the exemplary Christology of Arius, who insisted that Christ was just like us and we are to follow his example in order to

The question is

whether the church

of Christ will stand

with the faithful

throughout church

history and defend

the sacred gospel

in this age.

be saved.

As I reflect on this notIOn of a megashift, I am drawn back to the words of the Apostle Paul and to evidence that there was a megashift of some sort in his own day. Writing to the Galatians in chapter 3, Paul says, "You foo lish Galatians, who has bewitched you?" He is picking up there the theme that he had introduced earlier in the Epistle, where he expresses his dismay at the changes­ the shift-taking place in their theology: "I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for another gospel" (Gal. 1:6).

Megashifts ofthe most serious sort are a danger before the Christian church and Christian people. The New Testament is full ofserious warnings, lest the members ofthe church should depart from the true gospel. Again, in Galatians 3: "You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched

you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? This is the only thing I want to find out form you, did you receive the Spirit from the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?" Here is Paul's great concern about a megashift from the Spirit to the flesh; or, from the grace of God and the crucified and risen Christ to another gospel, which is no gospel.

It is undeniable that every such "megashift" in church history has been a variation on the same theme. The doctrines that have to go are: Any attribute ofGod that one might think to be at odds with the single attribute of love; original sin and total depravity; the penal, substitutionary atoneme nt; justification by grace alone through faith alone on the basis of the righteousness of Christ legally imputed alone; eternal punishment. And yet, God has been faithful: The names of Augustine, Athanasius, Anselm, Luther, Calvin, and Edwards have been regarded down through history, even by their liberal Protestant critics, as the orthodox.

Meanwhile, there are no comparable appeals on the part of the architects of modern megashifts to Pelagius, Arius, or Abelard, even though this is the line with which modern liberalism has most in common. But that would be to side with the li ne both Catholics and Protestants acknowledge as heretical.

The question is whether the church of Christ will stand with the faithful throughout church history and defend the sacred gospel in this age.

Dr. Robert Godfrey is professor of church history at Westminster Theological Seminary in Escondido, California. He has contributed to book projects such as The Agony ofDeceit, Theol1omy: A Reformed Critique, and Christ The Lord.

l110dern REFORMATION

A Discussion With

but instead have heard more talk about God as a loving father without referring to justification and guilt and those types of concepts, it's probably because this shift has taken place. And so the teaching and preaching on a very practical level is informed and shaped by this sort ofshift.

Moderator: So a hundred years ago or so, the emphasis might have been more on hell, fire, and brimstone such as, "Sinners in the hands ofan Angry God," whereas today the emphasis is on the relational aspect of God's love, God's role as a provider, that he cares for all his children and has provided a way for us to know him. So are you saying that by shifting from the first model to the second we are losing something in the process that is vital to orthodox Christian understanding?

Horton: Right. R.C. Sproul said it best when he said it used to be "Sinners in the hands of an Angry God" and now it's God in the hands ofangry sinners. We've seen a shift from a God-centered focus to a man-centered focus probably in part because of the tremendous influence of psychology replacing theology in many pulpits across the country.

Moderator: Dr. Pinnock, do you feel that there is a shift taking place away from the older model that Mike described, and if so, do you think it is an appropriate one?

P innock: Yes, but I think of the shift as being more broad than just focusing on the cross. It mainly has to do with how God relates to us. In the old model, God is a monarch whose will is always carried out. It is a harsh and negative model, you know, "Sinners in the hand's ofan angry God." The newer model stresses more the love of God and his dynamic relationship with people which puts more significance on human action than the older view, which tends to be kind of fatalistic.

Moderator: Now Dr. Pinnock, is this shift just an attempt to contextualize the gospel to make itmore palatable to people

Clark Pinnock

With Michael Horton; Greg Koukl Moderating Moderator: Mike, could you describe the theological shift that has taken place so that we all can have a clear idea ofwhat we're talking about?

H orton: Sure. What we are basically talking about here is an answer to the questions, "What did Christ come to earth to do?", and that ancient question ofAnselm, "Why did God become man?"

We at CURE have noticed quite a number differing answers among evangelicals. There used to be a consensus, more so than there is today, on what the atonement actually accomplished and what it was intended to accomplish. There are basically four views that have historically marked Protestants. The moral influence theory teaches that the cross of Christ's main . purpose is to educate us in the love of God and to move us toward self sacrifice for others. The governmental theory ~f the atonement teaches that Christ serves primarily as a governor and sin has violated his government and so the cross is a demonstration, or a symbolic act, of how seriously God takes sin. There is also the Christus Victor view, which teaches that the purpose of the cross of Christwas to achieve victory over powers, over demons, over ,sickness and death.

And finally, the sacrificial theory of the atonement has been at the heart ofhistoric Protest~mtism, and that is the theory that more than anything Christ really came to earth in order to deal with the sin issue in terms offorgiveness. It's not primarily healing, it's not primarily a

demonstration of love, it's not primarily a demonstration of justice, although all those things are accomplished by the cross, but only because the cross is effective primarily and first of all as a sacrifice for our sins.

Moderator: So this particular model really emphasizes the fact that every man has broken God's law and first and foremost we are liable to God to keep his law, and since we have broken his law we have incurred his wrath and therefore something must be done to deal with this judicial problem?

Horton: Yes, it's a courtroom model.

M oderator: So are you saying that the other theories of the atonement don't playa part at all, or that they don't adequately tell the whole story by themselves?

H orton: The latter. I would say that they are very important parts ofany theory ofthe atonement, but unless the sacrificial, legal nature of the atonement is maintained, there is no ultimate triumph, there is no ultimate demonstration of ~love and justice in the universe.

Moderator: So what are we really talking about here. What, in laymen's terms, is really at stake here?

Horton: Well, what we're really talking about here, again, is what the atonement achieved. If you've wondered why you have heard less about sin, hell, judgment or condemnation from your local pulpit,

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1110dernREFORMATION

who cannot relate to the legal, judicial framework, but who might relate better to the proclamation of God's love? In other words, are we communicating the same message in different ways orwould you say there are some fundamental differences in the way you perceive the message and the nature of the work of the cross than what Mike

~~~:::~~ j~st ~;~~be:i

it as

presentation. I think, though, both with the prostitute and with the Pharisee, Jesus appealed to the courtroom model.

Think, for example of John chapter 3 where Jesus not only says that "God so

Nodhe hlbors of ~ IIalldâ&#x20AC;˘Can fulfitthy

particular situation. Do you think that is a fair analysis, Dr. Pinnock?

Pinnock: 'Yes, I suppose so. I guess the prodigal son parable would be the image the new model people would tend to think of, where God is not described as angry or judgmental, but a father who has been really hurt who wants his child to return.

~:t~':tt~::ri~e:~~:~di:' ~~

contextualization, that is, what do law'sde:nranqs; ;Coul&myze,alnorespite parable ofthe prodigal son, a model we want to say first, how do we knovv, Could my tears foreverflow, ,All for that you would feel comfortable

using? Is this the one that you

want to organize what we say, what ' sincouldIfotatone; Tnoumusf save;and do we want to say is the most thou alone. , Nbt~iligin' ha~dI bring, gravitate to?

important thing out of a number ' Sitnplyrothy crossJ ding; Naked,comeJo Pinnock: Yes, and that I think is

of things that the Bible says about ' , theef ordress) HelpJ.ess, lookto thee for whatthe megashift is all about, the

the cross. I do want to say that the grac~; ,Foul, I to the,Fountain,Jly;.',Wa.sh family imagery rather than the

, . court room imagery.

courtroom is part of the pattern of the cross in the New Testament, me, Savior"orldie. ,Letthe water and the, Moderator: The distinctio ns

and this is no t to be dropped, but <hlood,:Fromthy tivensidewhichHowed,Be between the two positions are not

it's just that today it might be wiser " of sin the double cure, Cleanse me,fromits as clear as I would like them to be.

to start with another point of the , guiltandpo~er; Rockof Ages) deftfor me., I suspect that is not the case, but

te't ' ?1ehidemy~elfinthee. . that there are significant

cross than this and not make it so all-consuming. theological differences just under

Moderator: In what way, then, is ' the surface and I would like to get

the good news meaningful without c:::::;::~=======:::::::===:::::::::::::::::::::======::::;=::::::J at those. Michael can you clear

the context of the bad news? loved the world that he gave his only things up for me?

Pinnock: That's an interesting question. begotten Son ... )) but in the very next Horton : Well I think, first of all, that

I think, however, that often people today verse he says "he who does not believe in ultimately the theory of the cross is

come to the bad news later. First they are him is condemned already.)) And ifthat's informed by other convictions. This

attracted to the gospel because God not enough courtroom language he gives really is an age-old debate. It's a debate

showed his love for them in Jesus and us the term verdict, "This is the verdict." that Augustine had with Pelagius, it's a

then they find out more of what that What we are saying is the only way for debate Anselm had with Abelard, it's a

involves. And of course Jesus himself the cross to be a sign ofGod's love, which debate that the Reformers had with the

came with good news, not bad news. He indeed it is, or a sign of God's justice, Roman church, and the sort of debate

preached the good news of the kingdom which it is, or Christ's victory over the that George Whitefield had with John

and then urged people to repent and powers of evil; in order for it to be that, Wesley. The emphasis is very important

believe, so I have no trouble with starting the substitutionary, legal theory must because we have to ask ourselves does

with the good news. predominate. In other words, it is not as God exist for our benefit or do we exist

Moderator: What do you think about though the substitutionary theory is equal for his? In other words, does God have to

this Mike, did Jesus start with the good to the other models and we can just pick meet our standards, and thus be primarily

news in your view? and choose according to the mood ofthe an education in love for us to accept

Horton : Well, it depended upon the day, but that the substitutionary/ him, or is the problem really that God

audience. For instance, ifhe was talking sacrificial model is the cause of which cannot accept us? Do we have a problem

to people who already knew that they these other models are the effects. with God, or does God has a problem

were sinners, such as the prostitute, there Moderator: So when Dr. Pinnock says with us?

wasn't a lot of bad news that needed to Jesus brought the good news first, you Moderator: Why is this distinction so

be told. But if he was talking to the would say that doesn't tell the whole critical? Mter all, in both cases an appeal

Pharisees it was a quite different kind of story, rather, it depended upon the for faith is made.

mY

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lnode rl1 REFORMATION Horton: I think the problem is that we important to you IS the distinction either ofthem. Paul argues that this is the disagree on the meaning of the cross whether God sends us to hell or whether case "so that it will be not of him who because what is emphasized really makes we send ourselves? works but ofhim who calls." It is precisely a difference. For instance, we would say Pinnock: ,Very important, because the because God loved the world so much nature and character of God are at stake that he chose a great number of fallen that the legal model has its origins in the Old Testament, not in Roman law, and here. I just don't see how a person with men and women to be with him for all legal justice is what God requires. The Mike's view can honestly say God loves eternity. So some people get justice, and problem is reconciliation with God; God the world. His God hates the world and some people get mercy. simply cannot tolerate sin, and he cannot Christ has to persuade him to love it.

Moderator: How do you reconcile this tolerate sinners (Ps. 11:5), therefore they Moderator: But isn't there somewhat concept, Mike, ofGod hating individuals will either accept the means which he has ofa judicial picture in Rev. 20 where God with the concept of God's love. provided for them, to be right with hIm is judging men according to their works? H orton: Well, this is the point. This is legally, in a courtroom sense, or they will Pinnock: Yes, that's why the debate why we need the cross. We don't need the isn't clear cut. I'm not denying the judicial cross to show everybody how much God perish eternally.

M oderator: Dr. Pinnock, is it consistent aspect, I'm just saying there's no reason loves him or her because ultimately it is with your understanding of this God of that should be preferred over other things something that God needs to do in order love and his graciousness, that he would or mentioned first. The way M ike wants to love people. God, in order to be both to make it prominent seems to drive a just and the justifier ofthe ungodly (Rom. send somebody to hell for all eternity~ Pinnock: Well, the new model thinking wedge between God and Jesus; God 3:26), he has to go the route of the cross. on that issue is that anyone who does go doesn't want to forgive us, but Jesus He has to sacrifice someone who equals to hell goes there because they chose it, appeases him so he can. I argue that's not the injustice that has been done, not because God chose it, whereas something that can be done only by in Mike's view probably, God God himself. No one should do it predestines people to go there and but man, so God sends a God-man. we think that's unacceptable.

It must be said however, for any of H orton: Yes, I would agree with this to makes sense, that God hates, Hold,fme Lorcl;in,Your arm$. Hold ' not only sin, but sinners. But it is that. Ultimately this whole debate me Lord, inYouf arms. Fill me Loid, his love for those he has chosen to depends upon our view of God. Is with Your Spirit< ,FiUme- Lord, with God finite, does he depend upon save, and chosen to redeem which YO~lf Spirit. TOllchmy heart, with the will ofthe creature, 0 r does he in ini tiated the whole plan ofsalvation.

We read in Eph. 1, "In love he fact determine every element in the 'Your love.TQuchmy h~:art" with Yo~r , universe. If there is anything left to predestined us to the adoption of "love. chance or free will, then this world sons," so salvation is not based on isn't run by God, it is run by chance Lord I,lbveYou, You alone did hear ' God's hatred, although damnation or fate. But there is order in the is, but salvation is based on God's <:ry~ 'Only,Youcartmend this ' universe because God has love. This really has a lot ofpractical btokenh,eart of rhine. Xes, ,I love You" predestined everything that comes implications for our evangelistic and therei s'nodOllbt,' L9rd, You've ' presentations, because what's really to pass. Paul said that God "works out everything in conformity with important is to get the person to touchedmefrom', t:he inside Ollt~ , realize that he or she is at odds with his own will'" and that must God. Just after the statement in Jn. comprehend the salvation ofpeople 3: 16, Jesus said, "He who does not because the context ofthat statement in Eph. 1 is the context ofsalvation. believe is judged already for the So yes, we believe that those who do go to what Jesus said about God. wrath of God remains on him." Now it hell are sent there by God on account of Horton: I would want to respond, first of doesn't say the wrath of God will come their sins, not just because they decided all, that we would never want to say that upon him but that it remains on him. We to go to hell, but because God decided God hates the world. Nevertheless we are born into this world with the wrath of that hell is the price one must pay for have to wrestle with texts such as Romans God hanging over us, and unless Christ's rebelling against h im.

9 where God loves Jacob but hates Esau, nghteousness covers us by faith alone) we Moderator: Dr. Pinnock, how and this apart from any works foreseen in will be condemned to suffer that wrath

Two M()dernHyrnns "

my

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lnodern REFORMATION on that dreadful day. father being an alcoholic certainly from the moment of conception on. A Moderator: Dr. Pinnock at what point question I would like to ask Dr. Pinnock affected me in my home and my life, but to think that I'm guilty as an alcoholic would you use the concept ofthe wrath of if he has a problem with this doctrine is like he was is nonsense.

God in your evangelism? Would you ever how can Christ be guilty for our sins on Moderator: Mike can you shed some use that as a main thrust in your the cross and we be considered innocent light here. It almost sounds like we are ifthis principle is unjust? In other words, evangelism? getting punished for something we did Pinnock: Yes, people are in sin and if original sin is denied as the imputation not do, but that we are getting punished under condemnation and God wants to of guilt, is it possible to hold that forgive them, he wants them to receive justification is the imputation of another for something somebody else did.

Horton: Yes, that's exactly what we are his gifts; that would be another difference man's righteousness? between Mike and I because Mike doesn't Moderator: Dr. Pinnock, do you hold saying. Just as we say that Christ was proclaimed guilty, and suffered the really think that receiving the gift of the that there is no imputation ofguilt to the cross is all that crucial because the punishment, for sins he did not commit, and just as we are cross makes that happen anyway, proclaimed righteous for his whereas I think the way the cross If you be not found in Christ as actions, we are saying that we are becomes effective is precisely by Jehovah our Righteousness, you guilty for something that Adam receiving it. Unfortunately for Mike, owe to the holy law as a covenant did. It's not as if we just pulled certain people can't receive it even if these doctrines out ofa hat. This is they wanted to because God doesn't of works a debt of perfect in fact what the Bible teaches. Paul want them to. obedience for life, and of infinite Horton: No, I wouldn't agree with in Rom. 5 clearly states that, "Sin entered the world through one that. The problem is not God satisfaction for sin. Confess then picking and choosing who he will man ... " He says furthermore that the infinite sum. give the gift to, the problem is that "the judgment followed one sin nobody wants to receive the gift at and brought condemnation, but all. And so God makes the decision the gift followed many sins and Sinners either must be broken­ brought justification ... " He that we would not be able to make. hearted for their sins, and be continues, "j ust as the result ofone Everyone of us would say no, mourners in Zion, or God will everyone ofus would reject the gift, trespass was condemnation for all that's why Jesus said, "No man can men, so also the result ofone act of break them with the rod of His come to me unless he is enabled by righteousness was justification that fiercest indignation. the Father." And so it is the brings life for all men. For just as prerogative of God to draw people through the disobedience of the who are alienated and dead in their one man the many were made - John Colquhoun, 1826 trespasses and sins.

sinners, so also through the Moderator: It sounds as if this is

obedience ofthe one man the many becoming a classical Calvinist/Arminian human race for Adam's sin? will be made righteous." There is a one discussion. Mike are you suggesting that Pinnock: Yes, I would certainly deny to one correspondence here between the imputation of another man's sin, no man autonomously seeks after God? that. What he's saying is that people are Horton: Yes, that is in fact what Paul damned for what someone else did, and and the imputation of another man's teaches us in Romans 3 for it is recorded not what they did. The Bible clearly righteousness. that, "There is no one righteous, no not teaches, "The soul that sinneth shall surely Moderator: OK, Dr. Pinnock, then even one; ... there is no one who seeks die." We are guilty because of our sins, what about the imputation of Christ's God." I would argue that Dr. Pinnock not because ofthe sins ofothers. The only righteousness. Is Christ's righteousness denies original sin in the way that term thing that Adam put into our condition imputed to us in some kind of legal has been understood historically. This is that we are corrupt on account ofwhat fashion to make us acceptable before doctrine maintains that the guilt of he did. And what we do in that ~ontext is God in your view?

Adam's sin is imputed to the human race become sexual, guilt producing sinners.

Pinnock: I think that's part of the total so that we are not only born sinners, but The idea ofAdam's sin being imputed to I picture, though as I say, to make that as David wrote in Ps. 51, we are sinners us is very difficult to accept. I mean, my the central idea turns God into a 22

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1110dernREFORMATION

reluctant judge and Christ as some kind

ofattorney, whereas Jesus' own picture is

that God seeks sinners and loves them

and wants to reconcile them and the

cross enters into this. I'm just suggesting

that we shouldn't lead with the foot that

Mike is leading with.

Moderator: Dr. Pinnock, what from

your perspective did Jesus accomplish on

the cross, and "what is my existential

problem that requires this action of

Christ?

Pinnock: I think on the cross Christ did

several things in relation to different

problems we all have. We are ignorant

and need to have a disclosure about how

God regards us, and in the cross, Jesus

demonstrates God's love for us, correcting

our ignorance and apathy. We also have

a problem of guilt and sin, so Christ

suffered in our place and restored a

relationship with God that was broken.

There is also a problem of sin's power,

you don't just need to be delivered from

sin's guilt but also its power. And on the

cross Christ triumphed over the powers

of evil and delivered us.

Moderator: Dr. Pinnock, would you

say that any of those problems that were

dealt with on the cross are predominant?

Are any of the problems particularly

damning in nature to me as an individual

that would make it the most critical issue

of the cross?

Pinnock: What I am resisting is picking

and choosing. They are all clearly separate

dimensions of the cross that the New

Testament presents. It doesn't say that

one should be central, whereas Mike

wants to make one ofthem more central

than the others. I'm just saying that I

don't want to do that, I want to accept

them all and why don't we just leave it

like that?

Moderator: OK, Mike, let me g~t your

definition ofwhat the cross is designed to save us from. That is, what is the human problem which necessitates some kind of action by God and in what way did God use Jesus to solve this problem?

Horton: I would say that the whole biblical record from the Old Testament to the New Testament is that God has a legal problem with us which affects a relational problem. God cannot relate to us as a father because ofhis justice, he can only relate to us as a judge until we are justified, until we are acceptable as children before him; and we . are acceptable before him only by the righteousness ofChrist. I'd want to turn to Col. 2: 13-15 where I think we see all of the different models presented, but the substitutionary, sacrificial, legal model is at the heart and core of it all.

Paul says, ((When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ." Now what is predominate here is the statement, ((He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross." That's the chief thing that Paul wants to herald, and then he says, because ofthis God has ((disarmed the powers and authorities," '" Victormodel, and ((he made the Christus a public spectacle of them," the governmental and moral theories, (( triumphing over them by the cross."

Let me give some examples. The moral influence theory says that the cross is the supreme manifestation of the love of God. But how could the cross be the supreme manifestation of the love of God if it does not actually take away the enmity God has with me. Leon Morris gives an illustration here. He says, suppose that J fall into a swift river and am floating dow~stream and someone sees my situation and jumps in the river to save me but dies in the process. Well that's a tremendously courageous and loving act, put what if! wasn't drowning and the same person just jumped in the river just to show me how much he loved me and then drowns in the process? The second situation is not a demonstration of love, but of stupidity. The Christus

Victor model has a similar problem.

That is, how can Christ really be the conqueror over sin by his death on the cross if he doesn't get rid of the guilt of our sins in the courtroom of heaven?

Satan's chief title is the- adversary, or prosecuting attorney.

Moderator: Dr. Pinnock could you give us some concluding remarks.

Pinnock: You can see that there is a pattern of issues, sort of a systematic overview that comes into focus. Mike has a beautifully systematic way of putting things together, and I don't think I have as good a one, but I have a systematic too. All these issues seem to bump into one another, so it isn't just the cross but it's related to who God is and how he works with us.

Moderator: Mike?

Horton: One final comment I want to make is that though many today, including Dr. Pinnock, want to view the substitutionary theory as being one model among many, we want to say it is the primary model, the lens ifyou will, through which we view the other achievements of the cross. Certainly ignorance is a great problem; not knowing that God loves us is a great problem, but it is not the chiefproblem.

The chief problem is that God must see us as just before he can love us as a father.

This discussion took place on KBRT, a Los Angeles radio station, in September, 1990.

For Further Reading: • William Crocket, ed., Four Views on Hell (Zondervan, 1992). Representatives of the Literal (Walvoord), Metaphorical (Crocket), Purgatorial (Hayes), and Conditional (Pinnock) views.

• Larry Dixon, The Other Side of the Good News (Victor, 1992). A very good popular survey of the biblical arguments for the classical Christian view.

• Leon Morris, The Cross ofJesus (Eerdmans, 1988). This is the classic every layperson should read with the greatest care and urgency.

It's only 117 pages, and to the point!

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lnodern REFORMATION

The Cross of Christ:

Legal or Relational?

By MICHAEL S. HORTON

There is some reason for worrying about evangelism destroying the evangel these days. Putting the cart before the horse, methodology is taking over and telling theology what it is allowed to say.

Writing about the Enlightenment, philosopher Ernst Cassier declared, "It is philosophy which first succeeds in awakening those forces of Protestantism which were finally invoked in order to extricate Protestantism from the narrowness of Pauline and Augustinian dogma." Those who preferred sentiment to orthodoxy and moral inspiration to objective content have been forever --seeking to undermine the Protestant confidence in the Pauline corpus. In the Netherlands, he says, it is Hugo Grotius; in Germany, Schleiermacher; and in England the Cambridge Platonists. The Enlightenment had enormous effects in creating an environmen t in which classical Christian understandings ofGod, human beings, sin, and salvation would be rendered untenable-not because the Enlightenment won any intellectual arguments in that arena, but because it created a sentiment, a mood, a feeling called "modernity," which made those notions repulsive. We should not be surprised, since this was precisely why Paul called the message of the cross a "stumbling block to Greeks." The problem is, in every generation since the Enlightenment, one "megashift" after another keeps peeling away layers of professing orthodox believers. However, it appears that, in academic circles, this modern worldview has worn out lts 24

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welcome, with "postmodernism" taking its place. Just as the world gets tired ofthe successive waves of Enlightenment modernity, Clark Pinnock cheerfully concludes, "We are finally making peace with the culture of modernity" (Grace

Unlimited, p. 26) I t will be the purpose of this presentation to outline briefly the nature of this narrowness of Pauline and Augustinian dogma that the new models

The degree to which we take the ·law and the legal model seriously, to that degree we'll take the cross seriously. are challenging. "There has been," says Godfrey Ashbey, "much anti-sacrificial theology in the Western world." Though not an evangelical, Ashbey got it right when he wrote, « For those who see mature religious beliefs and practices as being primarily concerned with ethics and right behavior, sacrifice is irrelevant and as a distraction, abhorrent. Ifthe main aim of religion is to prevent the butler from stealing the silver, then sacrifice can be of little use." We would agree with Dr. Pinnock that Arminianism has always had ethics at its center. Sacrifice can be of

little use to the degree that ethics is the driving force of one's soteriology (view ofsalvation). And what replaces sacrificial religion-that is, a religion that places sacrificial theology up front, at its core?

Moralism, subjectivism, and psychological or physical well-being. The centrality of "Christ the sacrifice" is replaced with "Christ the example," or "Christ the teacher," or "Christ the victor,'~or "Christ the healer," or "Christ the power source," or "Christ the therapist." My purpose here, however, is not to demonstrate the roots of the so­ called "new model," but to uncover the roots ofthe old one. Since the debate has been cast in terms ofa legal (Old Model) versus relational (New Model) emphasis, I want to demonstrate that the classical Augustinian view is (a) based on Scripture and not Roman law and (b) an intricate web oflegal relationships. It is not mere "legalism," but then it is also not mere « relationalism."

Old Testament Roots Right from the outset, it is charged from many New Model thinkers that the Old Model (classical Augustinian theology) grows out of the Roman legal system. And so, Augustine was merely trying to adapt Christian theology to Roman law and to the Roman culture and society ofwhich he was a part. And yet, reflecting on the Old Testament, the writer to the Hebrews said, « ... without the shedding of blood there is no remission ofsins." The writer to the Hebrews underscored the law's demands with regard to ritual atonement. "For the life of a creature," God tells Moses, "is in the blood ... and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar." It is the blood that makes atonement for one's life (Lv. 17: 11).

My intention in appealing to the Old Testament background is to demonstrate that the sacrificial system we adopt in our Christian theology is Hebrew; that Augustine is Hebrew, rather than

1110de rnREFORMATION

Roman, in the origins of his system. I want to appeal to two aspects: First, the divine attributes; and second, the concept '-./ of sacrifice and satisfaction that is so central in Augustine's theology, as well as the Old and New Testaments.

God Is Just First then, the divine attributes-and we shall consider divine justice. God commands his people to "maintain justice in the courts" (Am. 5:15; Zec. 8: 16). There IS a correspondence between the kingdom ofheaven and the kingdom of Israel. In Eden it is Adam's duty to judge righteously-it's part ofhis kingship and his priestly function.

In the Ark, it was Noah who reigned within this miniature theocracy, exercising judgment; and in Israel, God requires the nation to exercise justice in the courts. But justice requires a standard. For instance; a tribal culture where cannibalism is widely practiced might not have a prohibition against murder. Murder in that instance, as part of ritual cannibalism, would not be considered unjust. For the Hebrews the standard ofj ustice was the Torah and the ceremonial and civil laws associated with it. Rigorous application of the Ten Commandments is given for every aspect of public and private life when the people enter into covenant with God. He commands them to be just and they expect him to judge righteously.

God, of course, took the law very seriously. Its mere presence among the armies of Israel guaranteed military victories, and the association between the law and God himself was virtually indistinguishable. In fact, the presence of the Ark of the Covenant was equivalent to the presence of God himself. (1 Sm. 4:21). God was Israel's landlord and imperial judge. Thus, when complaints are issued against her lawbreaking, it is always in the form of this ancient Near-

Eastern legal suit. It is very important that we understand the legal nature ofthe relationship that the people of Israel had with God. It is not legal versus relational, but a "legal relationship."

So seriously does God take his law, and by inference here, his people, that he hands his people over to captivity again and again. This, ofcourse, is just because

of the legal nature of the covenant that has been violated by the Hebrews. In other words, if God is the suzerain, the emperor, the landlord, and this treaty requires the under-lords, the nobles, to maintain loyalty to that treaty, and when they violate' the treaty at any point, the landlord can kick them out of their apartment. The Hebrew legal system is advanced for its time and employs sophisticated penal concepts. According to one]ewish encyclopedia the number of commandments one finds in the Hebrew scriptures numbers an estimated 613. Further, there is a distinction as early as the mid-thirteenth century BC between capital and non-capital offenses (a very advanced penal system for its

time).

It is important to remember, especially as evangelical Christians, that the author ofthis advanced penal system is not ultimately Moses, Joshua, or the ] udges, but Yahweh himself, the Lawgiver, who institutes and ordains this treaty with its attendant obligations and rigorous legal codes. There is something inherent in God himself that demands this type of relationship. It is not merely the reflection of the Hebrews concerning their concept of God. Nor is it an accommodation to a surrounding legal culture in the interestofcontextualizing. Rather, it is Yahweh who holds his people to this standard and demands an accounting for every transgression of the law. Sin, therefore, is not viewed by the Hebrews in some sort ofvague, ambiguous, abstract way, but precisely and concretely in terms of specific transgressions of 'written legislation. In other words, it is what the New Model or "megashift" proponents might call "legalistic."

This aspect does not rule out a relational aspect as well. All too often we set up a false dilemma between legal and relational, as if the Old Model were legal and the New Model relational. That is really a false dilemma. The overarching declaration for the children of Abraham assures, "I will put my dwelling place among you and I will not abhor you . I will walk among you and be your God and you will be my people."

God Is Holy This refers to both God's ontological as well as his ethical uniqueness. He is pure divinity without a shadow of creaturely dependence or change. He is the necessary cause of existence and activity in the cosmos. Therefore, to say that God is holy is to say that God is the JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1993

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lnodern REFORMATION infinite, omnipotent, transcendent Creator and that we are finite, dependent creatures. But is also an ethical distinction. God is wholly "other" in his ethical dimension. He is entirely good, entirely righteous, all-powerful, all­ merciful, without a shadow of change.

He cannot be any less perfect tomorrow than he is today.

Creating humanity to mirror his ethical perfection, God is not capable of accommodating corruption of that original state, regardless of the fall. He cannot be any less holy. So, ifin response to Adam's transgression God accommodated his holiness to what was now human falleness, he would fall from righteousness himself, at once losing his right to be the judge ofthe universe. God cannot violate his righteousness, justice, or holiness for the sake his love and mercy. Then there is that concept frequently recurring throughout redemptive history and forgotten by contemporary society in general, and evangelicals in particular: the idea of wrath and vengeance. In Psalm 11 we read the following: The Lord is in His holy temple. The Lord is on His heavenly throne, He observes the sons of men. His eyes examine them. The Lord examines the righteous, but the wicked and those who love violence His soul hates. On the wicked He will rain fiery coals of burning sulfur. A scorching wind will be their lot. For the Lord is righteous, He loves justice and upright men will see his face.

Also, in Psalm 2, God is recorded as declaring, "I have installed my king on Zion, my holy hill. The enthroned in heaven laughs at the ungodly." The Lord scoffs at them. So much for "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life!" The Lord scoffs at them and then he rebukes them in his wrath. Therefore, God tells the king he has installed, "You will rule them with an iron scepter, you will dash them to pieces like pottery." A 26

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fi'n al warning is given by Yahweh concerning this king: "Kiss the son," God orders, "lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way. For his wrath can flare up in a moment."

This Messianic king will be anything but meek and mild when dealing with his enemies. The holy wars God's typological kings waged served merely as minor skirmishes compared to the surpassing vengeance of divine wrath on the Last Day. The picture ofthe Last Day is not of a father gathering people he wished were his children, but ofa fierce judge bringing to an eschatological breaking point all of the fury he has been storing up fo r all of time since Cain murdered Abel.

"You are alone to be feared," the Psalmist acknowledged. "Who can stand before you when you are angry? In heaven you pronounced judgment and all the land feared and was quite when you, 0 God, rose up to judge and to save all the afflicted of the land. Surely your wrath against men brings you praise." One sure does not hear that emphasis very much today: "Surely your wrath against men brings you praise. I will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty, I will punish the world for its evil, the wicked for their sins. I will make man scarcer than pure gold in that day. Therefore, I will make the heavens tremble and the earth will shake from its place at the wrath of the Lord Almighty in the day of his burning anger."

Nahum declares, "The Lord is ajealous and avenging God. The Lord takes vengeance and is filled with wrath. He main tains his wrath against his enemies."

He "does not leave the guilty unpunished," and on we could go with these themes. "Who can withstand his indignation? Who can stand his fierce anger?" There is a tremendous danger here in underestimating God's willingness to explode in righteous anger; a great mistake to take advantage of his almost infinite patience. "God," says Zephaniah, "will punish those who are complacent,

who are like wine left on its dregs who think, 'the Lord will do nothing.'" Little do they realize that in the fire of his jealousy the whole world will be consumed. For he will make a sudden end of all who live in the earth.

Nevertheless, God is also in the Old Testament kind and loving, merciful and gentle. That is as much a part of the Old Testament revelation. Though the psalmist recognizes, "You have laid down precepts that are to be fully obeyed," he realizes he comes short: "0 that my ways were steadfast in obeying your decrees.

Then I would not be put to shame when I consider all your commands." And then he adds, "to all perfection I see a limit. But your co mmands ' are boundless." The problem is not with the law, but with me. That is true in the Old as well as the New Testament. The law is righteous and perfect, but I am not.

This is the dilemma, this is the rub, that God is merciful as well as just. Here we have to be terri bly careful. I t is very often assumed that the solution to the quandary between his mercy and love on the one hand and his justice and wrath on the other is that, in the end, his mercy and his love win out. It is a parental attitude with which we can all identify. When all is said and done, "Boys will be boys," and God cannot stay mad at his children forever. He accommodates his justice to human shortcomings for the sake of his love.

But we see that this cannot be. God cannot be less than what he is in any aspect of his being. He cannot act unjustly, even for very good reasons. If God is to love and be merciful, he must exercise these attributes, not at the expense of, but through the fulfillment of the legal requirements of justice.

Sacrifice and Substitution in the Old Testament Finally, we come to the final aspect of our consideration of the Old Testament roots for the Oid Model: the sacrificial

1nodern REFORMATION system ofthe Old Testament. We've just through d1is legal sacrifice ofJ esus Christ, seen that God's justice and holiness the Lamb of God who takes away the sin require satisfaction. It's a legal problem, of the world. For instance, the phrase so what kind of solution do we have to from which we get the verb "to propitiate" have? A legal one. Law-breaking requires means, literally, "to soften the face," as some sort of restitution that will satisfy used of sacrifice in I Samuel 13: 12. And justice precisely at the points where that in Malachi 1:9, which the LXX also law has been transgressed. I t seems translates along those same lines, there obvious that when we ,read the Old was an unsettling sense God's people felt Testament, the Jews are very clear on this when confronted with the law's demands point. There is no vague idea of what God expects of us, and hence no vague application of justice­ eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, lex taliones. The punishment offellow Israelites by the court must fit the crime. Minor transgressions require minor punishments. Major transgressions may even require the sentence ofdeath, which we noted was already a penal statute by mid­ thirteenth century.

The sentence is passed on each ofus, members ofAdam's race and partakers ofhis condition when we come into the world. We are born on death row. Because the Jews knew how seriously God took each and every individual sin, their whole culture and their religious life revolved around the idea of sacrifice. There are a number of expressions surrounding sacrifice that point out its propitiatory and and with this an accompanying concern expiatory nature. This is such an that God's intense, angry, hot face be important aspect because one gets the softened and cooled. Asacrifice, instituted impression that the New Model really by God himself, was the method for softens the very need for an atonement doing this. because there is no need to propitiate There is tremendous imagery there. something that doesn't exist. God isn't When it is all technical and up in the really mad at people. That is not the _ clouds it is difficult to identify with this basic problem; the basic problem is that concept, but there is one ofthe many rich people don't know how much he loves Jewish images in this propitiatory them-they have an educational situation. Here is a problem that is problem. But if we are reading these simultaneously legal and relational. God texts properly, it not an educational relates to law-breakers as any judge must, problem, really, at the bottom of it all, and yet God has seen to the matter of but a legal problem. providing his own sacrifice so that this God cannot pour out the love he so relationship may move from judg~ to earnestly desires to dispense except father. The problem is God's face is

tense. He is visibly angry, visibly outraged. And that face, that tense, drawn face, must be cooled and softened~ R.J. Thomson, in his studies during the 1960s of early]ewish sacrifice, was one of the first of what has become a growing number ofancient N ear-Eastern scholars who recognize the antiquity of this view among the Jews. While historical-critical scholarship earlier this century emphasized and perhaps continues to emphasize the syncretistic nature of]ewish ritual, supposed ly adopted from surrounding Canaanite and Babylonian cultures, -Thompson demonstrated that the notion of sacrifices appears much earlier than imagined in the last century and a half.

It has been the case throughout this century that, while theologians lead the way to liberalism, a critical approach to the biblical text, and an abandonment of traditional orthodoxy, archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, and linguists continue to make discoveries that undermine the latest trends and reinforce the traditional readings.

As one example, Dr. Pinnock, following T. F. Torrance and others who regard Protestant orthodoxy (i.e. , Augustinianism) as "the Latin heresy" (Torrance), sees the intensely legal nature of federal theology (the imputation ofAdam's sin and the Second Adam's righteousness, an emphasis on the idea of covenant, etc.) as an aberration, a departure from the more "relational," moral approach and "love" emphasis ofthe Greek Fathers. And yet, who can read the Old Testament without concluding, with Leon Morris, that the notion of covenant is utterly basic to Israel's relationship to God? That is the whole nature ofthe Old T estamen t. It is a covenant, a treaty. Whoever heard ofa covenant or treaty that was anything other than legal? The terms of the JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1993

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covenant, the history of the covenant, the history ofIsrael' s failings and need for sacrifice and substitution: Really, that is what the Old Testament is-one long legal document.

The Messianic sacrifice to end all sacrifices would be offered not as a mere representative of humanity, or as a testimony to a divine attribute, nor to inspire moral sentiment, but as the solution to the divine-human dilemma.

"He was pierced for our transgressions," prophesied Isaiah. "He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was laid upon him and by his wounds, we are healed." Further, " ... the Lord laid on him the iniquity ofus all"-the vision there again of the transferring of the sinner's sins to the victim. God, himself, laid on Christ the iniquity of us all.

Those are the Old Testament roots that we believe are the source of the so­ called "Old Model." How about the New T estamen t? Do we find a difference there?

It is sometimes argued that the Old T estamen t and the New Testament differ in these matters. I don' t know how many ofyou have this in your backgrounds: In the Old Testament, there is the Mean God; in the New Testament it is the Good God. You've got the God of grace in the New T estamen t, the God oflaw in the 0 ld Testament. In the fourth century, a sect known as Manichianism threatened the stability of the Church, pulling from Greek mystery religions and a little bit of Christianity. Mani, a self-proclaimed prophet proclaimed that the God of the Old Testament was different from the God of the New. The Old Testament was angry and vengeful, taking account of people for their sins . The New Testament God, however, was good, gracious, and kind. He overlooked shortcomings. The Old Testament God was a God of law, the New Testament God a God of grace.

Because Christianity became so heavily influenced by Greek thought after the 28

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first few centuries, the division between the two testaments could be drawn more broadly than our Lord or his apostles ever intended or implied in their own writings. First, the God of the Old Testament is not predominantly angry.

He is patient, long-suffering, eager to show mercy. But neither is the God of the New Testament always loving and kind: "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy," he says in the New as well as the Old Testament (Rom. 9:16). We often forget that the justly celebrated verse John 3:16 is followed immediately by the warning, "Whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son." Notice the unmistakable, intentionally legal language: "Stands condemned". In the court you stood, just like you do today when the sentence is being passed, and Jesus, using courtroom language here, warns that the one who does not believe has stood to hear his sentence already.

His sentence has already been passed. If that is not enough courtroom language, our Lord adds in the very next verse, "This is the verdict" (very legal language).

"Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil." Thus, whoever "rejects the Son will not see life for God's wrath remains on him" an. 3:36); not, "God's wrath comes to .rest on him" at the end of time when he has finally rejected Christ for that last time, but it· already exists from birth.

In other words, the Old Testament God agrees with the New Testament God, that we are born into this world facing an angry God either way apart from Christ. Paul declares, "you are storing up wrath against yourselves, for the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed" (Rom. 2:5). On and on, you get it in the New T estamen t as well as the Old. Jesus makes no breaks with the Old Testament sacrificial system (Mt. 5:24,32) . He did

not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, he assured the Jews , but to fulfill both. There is no break. He does not come to abolish the law, the temple, the covenant, the sacrifices, but to be the final fulfillment of all these shadows.

What changes in the New Testament is not God's eternal character, which cannot change; nor his attitude toward sin, which cannot change; nor his method ofdealing with sinners, which cannot change. What changes is that the God who becomes the God-Man begins assuming for himself these sacred roles. He is the temple­ God with us; the high priest and the sacrificial victim of Yom Kippur.

No, there is no change from an angry God to a loving God, a sacrifice­ demanding God to tolerant God; a strict law-giving God to a lenient, indulgent parent, as the New Testament conception ofGod, sin, and sacrifice is just as serious and literal as the Old. We still require a sacrifice ofa living victim for the guilt of each and every one of our sins before God's justice and wrath may be satisfied and quenched and before we can be accepted as sons and daughters, since for us today, just as for the Old Testament saints, "Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins" (Heb. 9:22).

Thus, Christ is the suffering servant ofIsaiah 53. The problem is the same in the New, as well as the Old: humans are still being born into this world in original sin, bearing the guilt ofAdam, as well as the condition. God's law cannot be lowered to accommodate human failure and even ifit could be, how low would it have to come in order to accommodate our "filthy rags" we have for righteousness? God cannot lower his standard. And yet, the law can only bring us to despair of ever being able to please God. No wonder sacrifice held such importance! And those who are reminded in the New Testament of the power of that law to condemn and convict, have at their center, a sacrificial consciousness.

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Those ofus who know how unholy we are and have some conviction of God's holiness and justice do not have much use for warm, uplifting platitudes and we are not terribly convinced by mere appeals to God's love. We know God is love, but we also know he is wrath and we must have some assurance of his love toward us. There must be no , question; the accounts must be closed. To the degree that we take the law seriously and the legal model seriously, to that degree we tak:e the cross seriously.~God cannot save us without his law, and yet he cannot save us by it. Therefore, says Paul, "What the law was powerless to do, in that it was rendered weak by our sinful nature, God did by sending his Son in the likeness of sinful man" (Rom. 8:3). Why? To teach us how much God loves us and how much we ought to love each other­ perhaps even ourselves? To show the world how serious is our sin? To move us to repentance? Toheal our bodies or give us power over demons? What is the most obvious conclusion, based on the clearest texts? Paul finishes that verse with the answer: (( ...God did by sending his Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemnedsin in sinful man, in order that the righteous

requirements ofthe law might be fully met in us.... " God saved us, not'byoverlooking his justice, nor by downplaying the seriousness of the legal dilemma, but by sending his own Son as the one who would satisfy the conditions of the law in our place and bear oUr transgressions of that law in his own body. Thus, enemies become friends (Rom. 5: 10). But if we were not really enemies in the first place, what is the joy in reconciliation? If we were not guilty of God's eternal wrath, why glory in the cross?

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus," we are assured (Rom. 8: 1), but not everyone is in Christ and those who are outside ofChrist have no ark ofsafety when the flood of fire falls from heaven.

What a rousing proclamation people today need to hear again! Sin, sin offering, substitute, propitiation, reconciliation, atonement, law, verdict, condemnation, declared righteous, fulfilled requirements, justification, adoption, co-heirs, covenant: Remove the legal material from the New Testament and, like the Old, it becomes unintelligible. Nothing is left but the ethics, with no spiritual power to perform them. And this is precisely where every "megashift" or departure from classical Christianity has led.

Typically, the New Model supporters say, echoing traditional liberalism, "Well, if it is in the Bible, it's strictly Pauline."

Robert Schuller, who certainly fits in with the New Model agenda, even asks, "Is it not possible that the Reformers were inspired more by the spirit of St. Paul than by the Spirit ofJesus Christ?"

And what I have attempted to show is that the Old Model is not only notRoman, it isn't even strictly Pauline. Jesus himself clarifies these notions and gives them great force. And his statements about salvation cannot be understood apart from that legal relationship.

But since we mentioned Paul, let's turn to Romans chapter 5. There we read that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the two "Adams": The later being, of course, Jesus Christ. The first Adam, though created perfect and offered eternal life by persisting in that perfect obedience, chose instead to rebel. The second Adam was also perfect, and, as the second person ofthe Trinity, hepossessed eternal life already. He chose to obey his Father every second of every minute of every day. Just as the disobedience ~f the first Adam brought ,condemnation to all of us even apart from our own acts of disobedience, so the obedience of the second Adam brought justification to us even apartfrom our own acts ofobedience.

Just as God imputed Adam's guilt to the human race, even apart from theIr own character or actions, so he imputes to all believers the righteousness through Faith "

in his atoning sacrifice. Do you see the one-to-one correspondence? This is why I am concerned that if we deny original sin as the imputation ofAdam's guilt to us, there is no justification for saying that another man's righteousness can be imputed to us.

For if it is unjust, actually unjust, for us to be held guilty because of what someone else did then it is also unjust for God to hold Christ guilty for what we have done. This is precisely why many Arminians deny original sin, penal substitution, and justification.

Notice that in the New Testament, God still has enemies, he still stores up wrath, he is still as much a consuming fire in Hebrews 12:29 as he was in Deuteronomy 4:24. Even now, "it is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Heb.l1:31). Faith in Christ justifies the believer, clearing him or her ofall charges in the heavenly court. But until one trusts Christ, every charge is tallied for the last judgment.

The unbeliever has a relationship with God just as surely as the believer does but it is a different sort ofrelationship.

They relate to each other as enemies.

St. Johnsawa vision ofthe unbelieving world facing divine judgment. To the rocks and mountains, "They called out (fallon us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the lamb'" (Rev. 6: 16). "Wrath ofthe lamb"-acurious phrase, isn't it? That self-sacrificing Lamb who voluntarily gave up his life and went through all that scourging, mocking, and scorn. Now he is not quite so lenient in the way people are treating him. Now, instead ofthe kind and gen tie Lamb who was silen t before his accusers, there is the day of the wrath of the Lamb and his Father.

"For," John writes, "The great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?" -End

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Inode rn REFORMATION Continued from How Wide on page 13

With pejoratives and misrepresenta­ tions of Augustinianism abounding throughout . the book, one hopes that Pinnock is more charitable and accurate in his dialogues with other religions.

"What makes this especially sad for Protestants is that even if one could rescue Augustine's reputation on this point it would not be possible to rescue the reputation ofothers in our tradition, such as Luther and Calvin and others who voiced opinions every bit as severe and harsh as Augustine's" (p. 40). What these representative comments point out is the fact that Pinnock's principle, or hermeneutic, in approaching the texts is reactionary. The entire tradition of Western Christianity can be dismissed on the basis that it has a "pessimistic control belief." But since when does pessimism or optimism form a proper method ofinterpreting Scripture? There are things in the Bible that make the reader shrink in horror, like God order­ ing the destruction of even the children of unbelieving nations. Surely Augus­ tine was not the first person to mention our being born in sin, eternal punish­ ment, the narrow way that leads to eter­ With Augustine a new and severe paradigm in nal life, and the utter helplessness of theology was born, a package ofdismal beliefs human beings to save themselves-even which would eat its way into the conscious­ with God's help. But none of these texts ness of the Western churches and erode the is really exegeted by Pinnock. positive biblical spirit in their thinking. The Augustinians may have misread the approach is well-known to practically every Scriptures, but it is simply absurd to Christian and non-Christian alike. It views , suggest that these interpretations began every person as totally depraved, guilty for the with the Bishop of Hippo. Nor does sin of Adam as well as their own sins, com­ Pinnock seem to have picked up on the pletely unable to do anything other than sin, remarkably positive "good news" of sal­ and deserving of everlasting conscious pun­ vation described by the so-called Augus­ ishment in hell. But Christ, as a kind of third tinian tradition. It is as though Augus­ party, bore the punishment for those sinners tinianism, for Pinnock, had only a doc­ fortunate enough to have been predestined to trine ofsin, when in actual fact, the stark be saved. Meanwhile, the Spirit exercises God's backdrop of the fall merely emphasizes power to compel them to accept the message the graciousness of God's loving pur­ by irresitible grace. Those unlucky enough to poses in creation, election, redemption, leave this life without having exercised explicit calling, justification, sanctification and faith in Jesus Christ are almost certain to suffer perseverance. Ifclassical theology teaches in hell forever (p. 39). us to hold outsiders "at arms length," or

secular philosophers continue to admire for his warm-hearted and revealing hu­ manness ·evidenced in The Confessions.

Because Augustinians also have a doc­ trine of creation, they can appreciate the blessings ofshared humanity, in culture, in the arts, in forming a common civil society, and so on. But creation is not redemption; wisdom is not revelation; noble ethical qualities are not saving.

That Augustine may have gotten the biblical message wrong is not in doubt; only the text is inerrant, not its interpret­ ers. But to make a blanket statement about Augustinians (i.e., classical Chris­ tians) as hard-hearted pessimists who find it hard to relate humanly to other people; who want to "keep the standards of salvation high" and make the way to eternal life narrow (p. 37), and "view outsider suspiciously, holding them at arms length, or for being fearful lest the unclean be saved" (p. 41), reveals more about Pinnock's own belief than Augustine's and his followers. Notice Pinnock's description of Augustinian­ Ism:

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to be "fearful lest the unclean be saved," how does Pinnock account for the unparalleled missionary outreach of the very evangelicals who were so os­ tensibly corrupted by pessimism? It is interesting that, by contrast, Pinnock holds out the highly debatable example of the Greek Fathers who "do not seem obsessed about the fate of the majority ofpagans among whom they lived ... " (p. 37).

Furthermore, to suggest that these beliefs are wrong simply because they appear "harsh" or "severe" to sensitive modern ears no more proves their erroneousness than the objections of first-century Jews and Greeks. The Pinnock principle could be called the Horton principle or the Smith prin­ ciple: let the reader insert his own name, because this hermeneutic is pure sentimental individualism. He cannot believe it-it's simply too severe; therefore, he will not believe it. In fact, believing his own caricatures of Au­ gustinianism, Pinnock concludes, "If the choice is between hell as everlast­ ing torture and universal salvation, who cannot resist the latter? Sensitive persons would be practically forced to accept it, since they cannotaccept that God would subject anyone, even most corrupt sinners, to unending torture in both body and soul as Augustine and Edwards taught" (p. 157, italics mine). And who wants to be accused of insensitivity, the only heresy left at the end of the 20th century? Regard­ less of what the text says, "sensitive persons" must follow their heart.

Obviously, therefore, anyone who is forced by his or her normative principle (Scripture) to accept the text, even if it is deeply offensive to the reader's sensitivities, must be a cold, hard-hearted person who does not mix well in public. And yet, it is precisely this biblical teaching that has driven men and women throughout history to give up their hopes, dreams, family

1110dernREFORMATION

and fortunes, board merchant ships, live in unfamiliar places, endure harsh con­ ditions, and, in some cases, suffer mar­ tyrdom. It is the self-sacrificing love of Christ for sinners which has not only saved us, but moved us to love our neighbor, regardless of race, color, or creed, and seek his or her ultimate good: salvation through faith in Christ.

Pinnock and others whose modern sensibilities are offended by God's jus­ tice and realism in assessing the human condition may, hypothetically, be cor­ rect (we must always be open to having our interpretations challenged by Scrip­ ture), but his case is hardly served by such blatant caricatures, the product of reactionary sentiment rather than either Scripture or rational argumentation.

While Protestants have historically insisted on sola Scriptura (Scripture alone) , Pinnock follows Wesley's four sources for determining truth: Scrip­ ture, Tradition, Reason, and Experi­ ence. In fact, Pinnock goes so far as to assert that of these four, experience and culture may be "the most important factor" (Four Views on Hell p. 163). He unashamedly concedes, "Obviously, I am rejecting the traditional view of hell in part out of a sense of moral and theological revulsion to it" (ibid., p.

164), comparing Jonathan Edwards to a person sadistically taking pleasure in "watching a cat trapped in a microwave squirm in agony, while taking delight in it" (ibid., p. 140) . If the traditional view of eternal punishment is true, Pinnock wonders, "How can one love a God like that?" (ibid., p. 149), and yet, one might respond by asking that if God is not just and does not punish sin, why is it so important that "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that whosoever believes shall never per­ ish, but have everlasting life"? In other words, who can but love a God who is both "j ust and justifier of those who belie e?'

Of course, the people who cannot

love that God are those who are "dead in trespasses and sins" (Eph. 2: 1), inca­ pable of even understanding God's amazing love in Christ (1 Cor. 2:14).

They demand that God's justice con­ form to their sense of moral judgment.

Imagine the audacity: Fallen, rebellious sinners who hate God at their deepest level and would annihilate him if they could, holding the fist of their moral outrage in God's face, even as they spurn that gracious invitation of full pardon!

"Our moral intuition," as Pinnock calls it, is corrupted by our own sinfulness.

Whose "moral intuition" will judge in these affairs? Hider's moral intuition?

Or perhaps Gandhi's? Is there someone other than C hrist in human history who has ever had a "moral intuition" that was uncorrupted by one's own prejudices?

The traditional doctrine of God and salvation, according to Pinnock, "of­ fends our moral sense" (ibid., p. 149).

And so it does. That is why our "moral sense" needs saving, "for the sinful mind is hostile toward God" (Rom. 8:7).

C o nclusion Suffice it to say, the attempt to paint the classical Christian understanding as bleak ignores the major features of its very doctrine of salvation, with God's graciousness in a crucified self-sacrifice of the Son ofGod at the very heart. After all, Pinnock at least admits that not everyone will be saved. Orthodox evan­ gelicals range from Augustine's notion of only a few being saved to B.B. Warfield's belief that most will be saved, as the missionary enterprise expands.

Although Pinnock does not believe the reason most will be saved is due to their embracing the gospel, the fact remains that his defense of his position as singu­ larly representing the wideness of God's mercy, as opposed to the Augustinian "narrowness," cannot stand.

Furthermore, classical theology has always insisted on God's compassion for the lost and broken in all places through­

out all oftime. To be sure, we have not always been the best representatives of the message. Sometimes preachers have given the appearance of taking some strange delight in telling people they are going to hell unless they repent, in sharp contrast to Paul's heart­ wrenching confession that he would be willing to suffer God's judgment in the place ofhis Jewish brothers (Rom. 9: 3). And yet, who can deny that it was compassion and love for those who have never heard the gospel behind the Christian missionary impulse? Are the great missionary heroes to be written off as "harsh" folk who could not feel pain?

Also, Pinnock is either dishonest or unaware of the abundant body of evi­ dence demonstrating the fact that Paul, and his uninspired interpreters, Au­ gustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and Edwards had a very large place in their system for God's revela­ tion outside of Scripture, the church, and even the incarnation. In fact, Cal­ vin wrote, "We must not regard the instrinsic merit ofmen, but must con­ sider the image of God in them, to which we owe all possible honor and love." 9 The Reformers quote pagan philosophers and poets extensively, just as Paul did. Calvin speaks ofthe natural world as "God's visible language" 10 and praises God's gifts distributed to even the pagan world. Nevertheless, this is all in the category of"natural" or "general" revelation. When it comes to doctrine and certainty in "things heavenly," "No doctrine is to be al­ lowed, except what he has himself revealed," 11 for "They who seek for the least spark of light or drop of purity out of Christ, plunge them­ selves into a labyrinth, where they wander in mortal darkness, and inhale the deadly fumes of false virtues unto their own destruction."12 When Pinnock asks, "How can one fail to appreciate the noble aspects of JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1993

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1110dern REFORMATION the Buddha, whose ethical direction, compassion, and concern for others is so moving that it appears God is at work in his life?", we reply by saying that we do not fail to appreciate such noble aspects.

These are simply the effects of the image of God in all people, "the fall notwith­ standing" (Calvin), but they are not the fruit of the Spirit, since the; Buddha was not part of the fruit-bearing Vine. The only righteousness God accepts is his own~a perfect, unspotted righteousness, which the believer wears like a robe over his or her own nakedness. If Paul la­ mented the destiny of his own Jewish countrymen who sought to be justified by their works rather than accept the righteousness of Christ (Rom. 10:1-3), which had ·been promised to them even under the Old Testament (Rom. 4: 1-5), will Buddhists fare any better in their works-righteousness? Pinnock insists that ld Testament believers were not saved by trusting in Christ, so why should modern adherents ofother religions? But this is really a hyper-dispensationalist perspective, and Pinnock even cites Ryrie and dispensationalism for support, al­ though the dispensationalists I know (in­ cluding Ryrie) would have trouble with his definition: "Dispensationalists have rightly opposed the notion that believers in other epochs needed to believe in the coming Savior in order to be saved" (p.

162). Regardless, the Bible clearly teaches . that the Old Testament believers had the same gospel preached to them as we have (Heb. 4:2). Paulinsists that there are two covenants running throughout both tes­ taments: Law and Promise (Gal. 3:15 ft).

Those who trusted in their own works were, and are, condemned. Those who trusted in God's gracious promise to save helpless sinners through his own sacri­ fice, apart from trusting in their heart, inner life, and works, were, and are, justified. Because Christ is Yahweh, Yireh­ Tsadikenu, "The Lord Our Righteous­ ness," there is no difference between Abraham's faith and our own. Neverthe­

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less, as redemptive history has unfolded, to place faith in God apart from Christ is to place faith in someone other than the biblical God. Hence, Paul tells the Athenians, "In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people every­ where to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead" (Acts 17:30-31). By ref\lsing to recognize that God's promise ofa coming Messiah was the object ofthe true Israel's hope, Pinnock fails to see the point of our Lord's rebuke of the Phari­ sees: "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scrip­ tures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life" Gn. 5:39).

Not even the Jews of Christ's day were saved apart from believing in Christ.

Our Lord told the unbelieving Jews that they were not Abraham's children, but children of Satan an. 8:31-47); that they do not believe because they are not of his sheep an. 10); that they do not know the Father because they do not know the Son Gn. 8: 19). They are so unlike Abraham, who "rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad" an. 8:56).

God has spoken through creation, but as the apostle Paul argues, human beings by nature reject any light that reaches them from this "natural revela­ tion" (Romans 1 and 2). " ... There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.... Noone who does good, not even one" (Rom. 3: 11, 12). The Reformers were very concerned to hold their tongue where God is silent on this matter of whether anyone can be saved outside the church, and we would do well to emulate their caution. Nevertheless, there can be no question in our estimation that the Bible teaches that G09 is just in con­ demning every person who has ever been born without giving him or her an op­

portunity to hear the gospel. We all stand guilty and Christ is the only way, and, by his own confession, the only truth and life as well.

Classical Christianity does have good news, not just good feelings. Instead of nice sentiment, it offers a real, objective solution (the cross) to a real, objective problem (condemnation). Instead of healing people's wounds "lightly, as though it were not serious," saying, "'p eace., Peace.,"h w en t h ere·IS no peace, " the gospel is the only cure for the guilt, alienation, and anxiety people feel be­ cause they are objectively under God's wrath apart from Christ. It can offer that to outsiders, not on the basis of a shared ethical or emotional inner life, but on the basis ofthe perfect righteous­ ness of the Lamb of God who was slain outside the gates of Jerusalem nearly two thousand years ago, to purchase for God with his blood "people out ofevery tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation" (Rev.

5:9).

End Notes I.George Barna, The Barna Report 1992-93 (Ventura: Regal, 1992), pp. 51-52.

2. James D. Hunter, Evangelicalism: The Coming Gen­

eration (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press), pp. 37-39.

3. Ann Douglas, The Feminization ofAmerican Culture (NY: Doubleday, 1977), p.125.

4. Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros (Philadelphia: Westmin­ ster, 1953), pp.131, 650.

5. Clark Pinnock, A Wideness in God's Mercy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992).

6. For further study of the extensiveness of this "megashift," see Pinnock, ed., The Grace ofGodand the

Will ofMan (Zondervan); and Grace Unlimited (Bethany); Also, Richard Rice, God's Foreknowledge and

Man's Free Will (Bethany).

7. Calvin, Tracts, Vol. I, p. 36.

8. _. Gen. Epp., p. 194.

9. _. Institutes 3.7.6.

10. _. Psalms, Vol. 1, p. 313.

II. _. Zech.-Mal., p. 532.

12. _. The Four Last Books ofMoses, Vol. 2, p. 198.

1110dern REFORMATION

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.Miehaellorton - - - - - - ­ editor-­

W hen individuals ' accept Jesus as Savior, must they also accept Jesus as Lord?

Does salvation necessarily demand discipleship?

The

Reformation and Lordship Salvation

.

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. .

Michael Horton, well-l<nown author and editor of Made in America and Power Religion, provides a comprehensive treatment of the Lordship / Salvation controversy, written from the Reformed perspective for the widest possible audience.