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FEATURES 14

Christ the Victim, Christ the Priest

BY RICK RITCHIE

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From Plato to Glory M I C H A E L S. H O R T O N I N T E RV I E W S N .T. W R I G H T

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Bearing the Cross: John Calvin and the Adversities of Life B Y M A R C U S J. S E RV E N

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A Wrathless God Has Victims B Y JA S O N M I C H E L I

COVER LIMEWOOD FLOWER CARVING BY DAVID ESTERLY, PHOTOGRAPHY BY MLC, PHOTO RETOUCHING BY PATRICK WHITE

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DEPARTMENTS

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BOOK REVIEWS

GEEK SQUAD

Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?

Song of Redemption: One Truth in Many Atonement Theories

R E V I E W E D B Y J O H N J. B O M B A R O

BY ERIC LANDRY

INTERVIEW

The Beautiful Cross Q&A WITH FERNANDO ORTEGA

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C H R I S T & C U LT U R E

Physician-Assisted Suicide: A Christian Response

BY ALLEN H. ROBERTS II

Martin Bucer’s Ground and Reason R E V I E W E D B Y DAV I D W. H A L L

Conversion R E V I E W E D B Y R YA N K R O N

64 B A C K PA G E

“What’s Your Sign?”

BY ERIC LANDRY

ESV Reader’s Bible REVIEWED BY CHARLES K. TELFER

MODERN REFORMATION Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Executive Editor Eric Landry Managing Editor Patricia Anders Associate Editor Brooke Ventura Marketing Director Michele Tedrick

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LETTER from the EDITOR

N. T. Wright discuss the events that happened after the veil was torn in two, focusing on the necessity of juxtaposing the penal substitution and propitiatory aspects of the crucifixion with the resultant in-breaking of the glorious kingdom age. OPC pastor Marcus Serven further develops this by discussing Calvin’s exposition of the cross as vital to our Christian life, and church-planter David Ávila testifies to the profound comfort and strength that can be drawn from the deep-seated assurance that Christ’s life, death, and resurrection bring to toiling ministers and world-weary pilgrims alike. Methodist pastor “Jews demand signs and Greeks seek Jason Micheli (with some help from Fleming wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, Rutledge) brings helpful perspective to the relaa stumbling block to Jews and folly to tionship between forgiveness and justice from the Gentiles.” (1 Cor. 1:22–23) vantage point of a wrongfully convicted prisoner.

As pilgrims in a country that celebrates the joy o one likes a loser. An eccentric reliof Easter apart from the gravity of Good Friday, gious scholar who may or may not be a it’s easy to understand the tendency of reformapolitical revolutionary and has mantional Christians to (possibly) overemphasize aged either to anger or alienate a fair the necessity and reality of Christ’s sacrifice. amount of both the establishment In an age when—despite daily and the proletariat isn’t anyone’s idea reminders to the contrary—belief of a role model, much less a savior. in human goodness and potential How can someone convicted by the knows no limits, it behooves us to “ IN...STORIES... criminal justice system and violently be mindful of our sin. However, WE LEARN... executed by the state save others from it is precisely for that reason the divine judgment of God? Jews that we ought not to sideline the PROFOUND may have been looking for someone wonderful consequences of the THEOLOGICAL who would restore the kingdom, and cross—the absolute victory over TRUTHS.” Greeks may have wanted epistemosin and death; the resurrection logical enlightenment, but neither of all creation into a new heavens of them wanted a god who somehow and new earth; the eternal reign became a man and saved people from of the Christ and his bride in evera threat they knew nothing about, in order to lasting glory. The somber fact of substitution and usher in a kingdom they couldn’t see, by dying propitiation must always be tempered by the a shameful death on a cross. joyous comfort that our forgiveness is secured, The paradox of the cross is one that continour reconciliation is effected, and our hope in the ues today, centering on the mystery of how resurrection of our body and the life everlasting God himself could die for humans and what will not fail. that means. Rick Ritchie, a frequent contributor to the magazine, tackles this in his article on the suffering and death of the God-Man on the cross. Editor-in-Chief Michael Horton and BRO OKE VENTURA assoc iate editor

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L E F T: I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y A R T H U R M O U N T; R I G H T: I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y C H R I S T O P H E R D E L O R E N Z O

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INTERVIEW

The Beautiful Cross Q&A with Fernando Ortega

“ Christians exist in an alternative chronology. The church has its own time.”

— Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary nce upon a time, the Christian community did not orient its life around the seasonal calendar of winter, spring, summer, and fall.

Of course, daily labors were rightly organized around the planting and harvest times, but the goal of those labors was the week’s beginning (the Sabbath), not the weekend.

The first thing you see when you open the Book of Common Prayer (1662) is not (as you might reasonably expect) prayers, but a table telling you how to determine the high holy days (Epiphany,

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Lent, Easter, Advent, and so on). While most contemporary books of prayers are composed according to specific needs (prayers for children, illness, or suffering), the Book of Common Prayer is organized around the liturgical calendar, which emphasizes key events in redemptive history: the revelation of Christ to the Gentiles (Epiphany); the forty-day trial of Christ in the wilderness (Lent); the week leading up to the crucifixion and the day of the crucifixion itself, culminating in the resurrection (Passiontide and Easter Sunday).

The wisdom of that focus—and the need to orient ourselves as the people of God around our place in redemptive history instead of our location as busy twenty-first-century technophiles—is something we discussed with singer

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and songwriter Fernando Ortega, whose recently released album, The Crucifixion of Jesus, examines through Scripture, prayers, and song the magnitude and beauty of Christ’s death.

MR: Having been through Pentecostalism, evan-

gelicalism, and now the Evangelical Free Church, how has your theology developed over the past twenty-five years, and how has that development influenced your music?

FO: Actually, my church experience includes

several more excursions into different denominations, including the Presbyterian Church, RCA, Congregational, and most recently the Anglican Church. It’s almost embarrassing, really, that I’ve been such a church hopper. But all those experiences have shaped me, some in negative ways (I’m all for the way God uses negativity to mold us) and others in a more positive way.

Pentecostalism certainly showed me how to worship with my body—dancing, shouting, raising my hands, weeping, etc. I don’t worship God that way anymore, but I’m not totally closed to it. I spent a good deal of time years ago as a worship leader in a huge seeker-driven church, devoid of any liturgy, and ill-defined in terms of its mission to the world. After a couple of years at that church, I began to long for some kind of connection to the historical church—creeds, prayers, hymns, the sacraments, etc.—so I started searching on my own.

Once I found a church where a creed was recited weekly, scripted prayers were offered up, the lectionary was followed, and historic hymns were sung, I felt myself somehow joined together with generations of believers who’ve gone before. I felt as though there was a focus to my worship that I had longed for. It was very freeing, actually. The seeker church helped me hone my theology by forcing me to figure out what things I didn’t believe about God, if that makes sense. There was a real stripping away of theological falsehoods that were deeply embedded. As I began to ponder the truths of the five solas, my view of God’s immensity and

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transcendence expanded. The very narrowness of those principles allowed me to think of God much more expansively.

MR: What inspired this album particularly?

FO: There are several things that inspired me to write and record The Crucifixion of Jesus. It began with a collection of sacred art images I’ve amassed for my church here in Albuquerque, Hope Evangelical Free Church. The architecture of the sanctuary at Hope is such that the primary feature, visually, is a huge screen used to project song lyrics and Scripture passages.

When not in use, the screen remains blank. I decided to start projecting some of the great classic sacred paintings as a way of bringing visual beauty to our services.

Over the course of the past five years, I found some real art treasures I’d never seen before.

Staring at and editing these images week after week inspired me to make a record that featured those beautiful paintings. When I called my musician friend Bernard Chadwick (who is also a professor of art at Providence Christian College) to see if he might be interested in helping me, he was very enthusiastic.

Another inspiration for the record goes all the way back to my college days in the late ’70s, where the college choir I was enrolled in studied and performed Bach’s St. John Passion with the Orchestra of Santa Fe. The experience was a turning point for me, musically and spiritually.

Living in that narration for all those weeks and then performing it in front of an audience was an experience I’ve never forgotten.

MR: We particularly appreciate the interspersion of readings from the Psalms and Gospels. The album seems to follow the sort of pattern one sees in the liturgies of high holy days, such as the Lessons and Carols at Christmas Eve. What prompted the decision to arrange it that way?

FO: This record is the first installment of something larger that I aim to write based on the

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“We seek to pattern our worship service after the narrative arc of the gospel: God in His Glory, Man in His Need, and Christ in His Mercy.”

church calendar. Though it may not be recorded in order, the final project will comprise the following titles: The Advent of Jesus, the Birth of Jesus, Epiphany, Lent, the Crucifixion of Jesus, the Resurrection of Jesus, Pentecost, and (perhaps) Ordinary Time. One down and seven to go!

My favorite two services of the year at Hope Church are the Christmas Lessons and Carols, and the Tenebrae service we hold on Good Friday. I love the narrative aspect of both, so I hope to present the narrative arc of the church calendar in an eight-volume collection of albums. Bach’s St. John Passion also loosely served as a template. I love both of Bach’s passions, and what I find particularly inspiring is the fact that they focus so intently and for so long on the passion of Christ, the suffering he endured, and his agony on the cross.

This particular subject is rarely emphasized in modern worship music. I would go so far as to say it’s even avoided in favor of so-called positive Christian music.

MR: Was the reading “Holy Living” your own compo-

sition, or was it inspired by Jeremy Taylor’s work?

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FO: The “Holy Living” reading was adapted from

Taylor’s piece by a pastor I work with named Gary Villa, who was the one who suggested the use of this passage. He was a big help in compiling and editing the narrative flow of Crucifixion.

MR: You have said that “every aspect of our lives

should be measured out by the narrative of Christ’s life. Year after year, through the journey of this holy season, Christ’s ministry starts again and again.” Rod Dreher, the author of The Benedict Option, has encouraged the church to return to the practice of following the church calendar, orienting their year around the significant events of Christ’s earthly ministry. As a part-time worship director, is this something you look to implement in the church you serve?

FO: Definitely. It’s actually what I was hired to

do by my pastor, Josh Swanson. We’ve come a long way at Hope Church toward implementing a consistent liturgy in our weekly worship. We seek to pattern our worship service after the narrative arc of the gospel: God in His Glory, Man in His Need, and Christ in His Mercy. In light of

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INTERVIEW

that, we respond with our service to the church and to the community, our giving, our singing, etc. As far as following the church calendar goes, we’ve been less successful. Evangelicals react quite strongly to anything in which they perceive even a hint of Catholicism—confession of sin, absolution, passing of the peace, weekly Eucharist—which can cause hives to break out on the faces of evangelicals. I think there’s even more resistance to the rhythms and tones of each season of the church calendar and the patience required to enter into such a commitment, so progress has been slow. But when it comes to accomplishing that goal, I often quote Nietzsche by way of Eugene Peterson: “A long obedience in the same direction…”

MR: Your work has often been praised for incor-

porating a wide range of musical influences—folk, spiritual, Celtic, and Latin American. It has been argued that the music of the American church has been shaped entirely by Western European tradition, which lends itself to a style of liturgy that can make non-Anglos feel somewhat isolated. What do you, as an American of Mexican heritage (and a Christian who has lived abroad in Latin America and the Caribbean), think of that? Do you feel the church is too monolithic in its liturgical style?

FO: I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this,

though I don’t know if I’ve reached a decent conclusion. First, I’m a highly acculturated Mexican American, so I don’t necessarily have the most insightful point of view. I wouldn’t be able to truly empathize with a first-generation Mexican American who’s walking into a Presbyterian Church in Peoria for the first time. Second, it should be pointed out that within Western European tradition, there is a huge variety of musical styles and a great deal of diversity to draw from. I believe the indictment that the American church is too stylistically exclusive is misleading, because it starts with a broad generalization, although I understand the concern.

When I first came to the Anglican Church, I was blown away by the beauty of the service—the

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rich symbolism in each aspect of the Mass, the deep theology of the hymns, the high view of the sacraments. But then I was curious as to why 99 percent of the congregation was composed of somewhat well-to-do white people, even though that particular church was located in a multiethnic neighborhood near the local college. Granted, Anglicanism may be the wrong example to use, seeing as how the hymnody is overwhelmingly British and not necessarily typical of other mainline and evangelical denominations, but the example is broadly repeated in all kinds of settings. At the same time, I’ve attended other mainline denominational churches where the hymnal is full of multiethnic songs from Africa, Mexico, China, etc. I’ve never seen that music pulled off in a very credible manner—where the congregation starts off singing in English, then winds up in Swahili or Korean on the refrains. It always comes across as contrived and self-conscious to me, and it’s painful to watch the people struggle through it. God bless the church for her centuries-old desire/struggle to maintain her relevance in the world, to be all things to all people. It has sometimes been a jewel in her crown and other times a wart on her complexion!

To answer the question: A church congregation needs to be true to itself and to the people in the community it’s called to serve. The challenge to worship leaders and music directors, as I see it, is to incorporate songs that are artful, poetic, and ennobling with theologically sound lyrics. These criteria will more easily speak across cultural boundaries than a notso-great Latin rhythm section or a choir full of white Texans trying to lead the congregation in a Cantonese folk hymn. I’ve heard Os Guinness say that our worship music should span the centuries. I like the idea that within the worship service, we should sing texts that were written in the apostolic era, along with modern-day worship songs (and everything in between). The only criterion is that it be good writing and sound theology. I think that’s the more important point of emphasis.

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C H R I S T & C U LT U R E

Physician-Assisted Suicide: A Christian Response

by Allen H. Roberts II

ate last year, Washington D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser signed into law the Death with Dignity Act of 2016. It permits D.C. residents who suffer from a terminal disease with a life expectancy of less than six months (and who do not have a psychiatric diagnosis of depression) to request and receive a prescription of lethal medicine from their physician, which will cause death within three hours.

The Death with Dignity Act is a PhysicianAssisted Suicide (PAS) law patterned after a similar measure that became law in Oregon two decades ago. Within the past few years, a number of states—Washington, Vermont, Montana, Colorado, and California—have enacted similar programs. While other states

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have voted against PAS, the assisted suicide agenda continues to have momentum across the country.

It’s helpful to note that physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia are not the same thing.

Physician-assisted suicide refers to the practice whereby a doctor writes a prescription for a lethal drug or combination of drugs, which the patient ingests on his or her own, without the doctor present. Euthanasia refers to a physician directly administering a lethal drug to a patient.

Unlike physician-assisted suicide, this procedure is legal in the U.S. and Europe and is becoming legal in Canada. In both instances, the explicit intent of the physician is to cause death. These practices should be understood to be absolutely distinct from the ethically and legally permissible

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practices of end-of-life care, whereby patients may forego or request discontinuation of hightech, life-sustaining measures when these are deemed to be futile. In these latter situations, palliative care or hospice programs are available and effective; they are designed to improve the quality of life, not end it.

While most Christian traditions condemn the practices of PAS and euthanasia, there are several prominent Christian figures (among them, former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carrey and Archbishop Desmond Tutu), who have endorsed the practice. Christianity Today recently published poll data indicating that a significant minority (possibly as many as 40 percent) of self-described evangelical Christians believe that it is morally acceptable for a terminally ill patient to request—and for a physician to participate in—assisted suicide.

The history of PAS is complex and multifaceted; spatial limitations prevent me from doing it justice here, so a brief sketch must suffice. PAS, along with abortion, was commonly practiced in the ancient world. The philosophy of medicine established by the ancient physician Hippocrates (the Hippocratic Oath) set in place a hitherto unknown high moral code of conduct for physicians, which included accountability to “the gods.” The Hippocratic Oath’s proscription of both abortion and assisted suicide, then, was considerably countercultural. As the oath was incorporated into and refined by Judeo-Christian ethical thought, PAS became increasingly marginalized and condemned by mainstream medicine—no doubt practiced, but practiced surreptitiously and illegally.

Over the course of the next two millennia, the culture of medicine (along with society) shifted dramatically. The concept of patient autonomy was increasingly held as the highest moral imperative in guiding medical decisionmaking. Man was (and is) no longer regarded as an image-bearing creature with innate value; he was (and is) a self-creating producer whose value is directly associated with his conception of himself and the material benefits he provides

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for society. If there is no divine mandate that makes self-destruction morally prohibitive, then why shouldn’t someone choose to end his own life? As a result, physicians (most notably, Dr. Jack Kevorkian) began facilitating suicides for terminally ill patients. Before the arrival of the Internet, the Hemlock Society provided mail-order recipes and instructions to anyone who asked on how to commit suicide. More recently, the patients’ rights advocacy group Compassion & Choices (an outgrowth of the Hemlock Society) has taken up the cause of patients’ “entitlement” to make autonomous choices about the time, method, and location of their own deaths.

In 2014, Brittany Maynard, a young woman with advanced brain cancer, made international headlines when she died as a result of PAS under undisclosed circumstances. People magazine heralded Maynard as a hero. Compassion & Choices, riding the publicity wave generated by her death, has spearheaded the PAS movement across our land, deploying Maynard’s widower via Skype to debates and public hearings as a figurehead of their agenda. Furthermore, Compassion & Choices’ legal advisor has published PAS guidance in medical journals.

Similarly, the practice in some European countries of procuring transplantable organs from patients who have died as a result of euthanasia has made its way into American transplant medical literature. There is a strong sense that the respective agendas of PAS/euthanasia and organ procurement will eventually intersect.

My heart goes out to Brittany Maynard and her young family, and to the myriad patients I have encountered over the years in my medical practices whose travail is great and suffering unknowable. Like Job, some may even long for death and be tempted to end it all (Job 2:9; 3).

There is no sin in wishing for a release from pain and sorrow. That’s precisely why Christians uphold the virtue of compassion—the suffering alongside or with someone—as one of the hallmarks of loving our neighbor. Brittany was not defined by her suffering; her life was not made

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worthless or worthwhile by her health alone.

(I understand that her perception of her life’s worth may be such that she didn’t feel that living in that state would be meaningful, but that is a different discussion.) Instead of making it easier for her to end her own life, society’s efforts (and the efforts of all Christians everywhere) should be focused on making her life (however long or short it may be) better. The transition from life to death should be eased through the love and care of family members, well-trained medical practitioners, and legislation that makes hospice and palliative care financially feasible, not abruptly terminated with a lethal prescription. The embrace of PAS and euthanasia by society and by the profession of medicine indicates that both have lost their way, and that the embrace of these practices by Christians signals a failure of the educational and pastoral care ministries of the church.

In addition to these concerns, it can be argued that PAS is dangerous to the community at large, as it lacks safeguards against abuse. Notification of a patient’s next of kin or power of attorney regarding such a critical decision is optional in the D.C. bill, effectively removing the counsel of trusted family and friends. PAS places the most vulnerable—the elderly and the disabled— at risk of coercion. Most terminally ill patients are too sick and weary to assert their rights, and they are dreadfully worried about becoming an emotional or financial burden on their loved ones. The “right to die” can become the “duty to die.” There are no accepted standards of practice, board certifications, or external oversight that govern this procedure. The physician (and, in some instances, the insurance carrier) can exercise considerable influence over the patient to advise whatever course of action he or she feels is best. This is not to say that the critical, hospice, or palliative care industries are above reproach—abuse and neglect are legitimate concerns.

The remedy, then, is to reform and improve these programs (and to reexamine the value we as a society place on human life), not to

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“Instead of making it easier for her to end her own life, society’s efforts…should be focused on making her life (however long or short it may be) better.”

make physicians complicit in suicide pacts.

Physicians are to be healers and counselors, not mediators of death. Even if these concerns were to be met—if there were greater regulation overseeing PAS procedures, or reforms to healthcare that made hospice or palliative care more financially feasible—they wouldn’t address the false premise that human beings are self-creating creatures with an absolute right to decide when to end their own lives. Physician and ethicist Edmund Pellegrino writes, In ethics generally and medical ethics in particular, autonomy, freedom, and the supremacy of private judgment have become moral absolutes. On this view, human freedom extends to absolute mastery over one’s life, a mastery which extends to being killed or assisted in suicide so long as these are voluntary acts…. For the Christian, this is a distorted sense of freedom that denies life as a gift of God over which we have been given stewardship as with other good things.

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“Jesus Christ, in his loving and sacrificial compassion, came alongside human­kind—all of whom are afflicted with a terminal condition and death sentence—not to affirm or dignify death, but to defeat it and restore true and everlasting life to all who are in him.”

Humanity is created in the image of God as the pinnacle of creation (Gen. 1:27) and declared as such to be good. Life is sacred.

Death from the beginning was an aberrancy, the curse that Adam incurred for his autonomydriven sin of disobedience. All proscription of the taking of innocent human life, beginning in Genesis 9:6 and codified in the sixth commandment, is predicated upon the sacredness of human life. In contrast to the mantra of “My life, my death, my choice!” Paul admonishes, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you are bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 19–20).

To assent to PAS is to reject the clear teaching of Holy Scripture and to reduce to mere sentiment the emotion of compassion, rather than to uphold the love and self-sacrifice required by true compassion. Jesus Christ, in his loving and sacrificial compassion, came alongside humankind—all of whom are afflicted with a terminal condition and death sentence—not to affirm or

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dignify death, but to defeat it and restore true and everlasting life to all who are in him. Death is the last enemy (1 Cor. 15:29). The debate over PAS is deeply emotional on both sides, and is in many cases driven by painful experience and awful fear of the future. Christian physicians are to come alongside those who are in such distress and use their education, expertise, and wisdom to alleviate this suffering. Christian stewardship is a stewardship of life. The way of the cross is to suffer alongside of those who suffer; to mitigate the effects of the curse, not help them deliver themselves up to it. Christ holds the keys to death and Hades in his hands, and we can comfort our brothers and sisters who succumb to the enemy’s assault with the certainty of their resurrection, so that even “as we go down to the dust, yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”

ALLEN H. ROBERTS II (MD, MDiv) is professor of clinical

medicine and chair of the Ethics Committee at Georgetown University Medical Center, where he practices Critical Care Medicine.

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FEATURES

The cross is what Caesar’s kingdom does to show that Caesar is lord. But then as we read the story in John—also in Mark, and certainly in Paul—we discover that the cross is what God does to say that Jesus Christ is Lord.”

— N . T. W R I G H T

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CHRIST THE VICTIM, CHRIST THE PRIEST

FROM PLATO TO GLORY: MICHAEL S. HORTON INTERVIEWS N. T. WRIGHT

BEARING THE CROSS: JOHN CALVIN AND THE ADVERSITIES OF LIFE

A WRATHLESS GOD HAS VICTIMS

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Christ the Victim, Christ the Priest Joseph was told by an angel to name his son Jesus, because he would save his people from their sins (Matt. 1:21).

In times past in Egypt, the Passover lamb had borne people’s sins, but now Jesus came into the world to become the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). In our time, some would have us confess Jesus as Savior, but they suggest that he saved us by doing something other than taking our sin away. Or if they admit that sin needs to be taken away, then they say that Jesus does this by training us not to sin. In either case, we are left with something other than biblical salvation.

No plan of salvation that leaves out Christ’s payment for sin is a biblical plan of salvation.

Yet I find that those who fight for this doctrine (may they always be given the honor that is their due) are often so focused on the truths under contention that they forget to flesh them out with other biblical truths. In the heat of battle, it is forgotten that we must not only contend for that part of the truth that is being attacked, but we must also tell the whole truth,

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RICK RITCHIE

illustration by

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STEVEN WILSON

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even the part that might not be objected to. It might put the controversial statements in a new light. The doctrine of substitutionary atonement needs to be fleshed out with the doctrine of Christ’s deity, his two natures, and the Lord’s Supper if people are to see just how glorious a teaching is at stake.

PURCHASED WITH GOD’S OWN BLOOD The doctrine of substitutionary atonement teaches us that Christ saved us by paying for our sins; that is, he died in our place. As the Scriptures say, “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). Christ, who being sinless did not need to die, laid down his life for the sake of those who were condemned to death. The resurrection shows that God accepted the payment as complete. Christ was raised for our justification. It is what Luther called the great exchange. Our sins are imputed to Christ. His righteousness is imputed to us. We can press these images even further. When we are united to Christ, God looks at us as if we had done our time. Eternal hell is our sentence, and we show up in God’s presence as if we had done the unthinkable and made full payment. Of course, we did not. Christ did it for us, but we receive the benefit.

While the church could certainly profit from hearing more about how Christ as a perfect man paid for the sins of all humanity, this doctrine is taught even outside of Reformation churches.

The doctrine received one of its clearest expressions at the hand of St. Anselm of Canterbury in the thirteenth century. What has been underemphasized is that the one who made the payment was God himself.

Now I want to be clear about this. St. Anselm’s work Why God Became Man (Latin: Cur Deus Homo) proves that Anselm understood the identity of Christ. And most trained theologians, if asked, would admit that the Jesus who died on the cross for our sins was God as well as man, and they teach and defend it. But while this teaching is well known, it is not emphasized enough. There are many ways of speaking of the divine action in relation to the cross that do not

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in themselves convey the fullness of the picture.

The divine action about which many have heard is the Father pouring out his wrath on his Son. If a pastor wishes to emphasize the benevolent side of this, he speaks of the Father sending the Son on our behalf. Sometimes we even see an attempt to link divinity to the suffering, as when we are told that the divine nature lent weight to the suffering of the human nature. True and important as these things are, they are not what is usually lacking, at least in those churches where the cross is still central.

Many pastors have preached the cross in such a way that the most stunning element of the picture is missing, or at least hidden. In the middle of telling about the crucifixion, unless the pastor outright states that the one who suffers is God, many listeners will miss it, even if they know that Jesus is God. It is not that listeners are inattentive, but that their attention is focused so narrowly on what is said that the unspoken logical implications are lost on the periphery.

Added to this is the fact that so much of the teaching on the two natures in Christ is so sloppy. The doctrine of Christ’s two natures teaches us that Christ is both God and man in one person. We say that Christ has two natures, a divine nature and a human nature. But these two natures are not two persons. This distinction is what is in danger of being lost, especially in speaking of the cross. Many laypeople are under the impression that even though Jesus was God, his divine nature was utterly removed from the event somehow. Sometimes they will even use the term “divine nature.” But they miss the point. The picture they convey makes it sound as if Christ’s two natures were two persons.

Some have even suggested that Jesus’s cry “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

(Matt. 27:46) was Jesus’s human nature speaking to the divine. Such sloppy teaching obscures the wonder that God is the one who atoned for us. This is no technicality. It is part of the good news. God does not just provide salvation; he does the saving work himself.

At a specific point in human history, the almighty Second Person of the Trinity, the Lord of Glory, stooped down and took on a human

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When Jesus cried “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” the reality behind this cry staggers the imagination.

God was forsaken by God.

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nature. For our sake, he was condemned to death and suffered the wrath of God. This is a stranger, more glorious picture than we derive from the other ways of stating things that technically tell us of the same event. While it is certainly correct to speak of Christ as a man with a divine nature, we may also—and in this case much more profitably—speak of him as God with a human nature.

When Jesus cried “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” the reality behind this cry staggers the imagination. God was forsaken

by God. What we formerly knew of the Father in infinite holiness turning his back on his Son who had become sin for us remains true. But now we see God’s action in the bearing of his punishment. God, who is too holy to look upon sin, is at the same time God who so identifies with us that he suffers the abandonment of the holy God. If you have ever felt removed from God, you must realize that God knows what that is like.

It is important that this point be emphasized. There are too many people in the world who have heard of the crucified one spoken of as God’s Son, who never knew that he was God. What kind of thoughts about God does the cross kindle in such people? Are they overtaken by the wonder of divine mercy? Not really. While they may be thankful to Jesus that he was willing to take their place, they wonder about the character of God. He sounds like a harsh judge who is just happy that someone paid. It is not that he takes pleasure in setting people free, but that he is not particular about whom he punishes. If we do not know who Jesus is, we do not know to whom we should be grateful. When we learn that God willingly became the victim of his own rejection so that we could belong to him, all is different.

I hold no degrees in philosophical theology, but I have read several defenses of the goodness of God and found many of the insights useful.

Still, I have found that few arguments really “solve” the problem of evil. The difficulty is that there is more than one problem. Depending on circumstances, we have various types of problems with evil—some of which come and go,

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When we question the goodness of existence by asking if it is worth it to go through life in a fallen world, and then wonder if God’s decision to allow these conditions was based on his being removed from it all, the cross reminds us to think better things of God.

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some of which persist. I think that this view of the divine mercy manifested in God’s adoption of a human nature through which he could suffer the penalty of his own justice goes a long way toward making some of my problems with evil less foreboding.

One of the worst fears that lurks in the back of our minds is that God’s punishment is unlimited by empathy. We fear that we are dealing with one whose attributes react like chemical formulas. Who wants to get crushed in the gears of an eternal principle? Who can be moved by an atonement reduced to a mathematical equation?

Add perfect justice to perfect power and you get perfect hell. An infinite man can pay for all the sins of finite people, assuming he is innocent.

Justice will be satisfied equally either way, by way of satisfaction or by way of retribution. It all makes sense on a chalkboard, but our human sensibilities balk, especially when we are speaking of something other than war criminals or child molesters. Sure, some people may deserve to pay for their crimes, but just how much wrath do they deserve?

God’s involvement in redemption changes the nature of the problem. He is not sitting in a laboratory dispassionately concocting a perfect justice to threaten humanity, while resting in the knowledge that his perfect goodness cannot be questioned. To be sure, God could have done this, and we would be in no position of moral superiority to question it. But that would have been a hopeless situation for us.

God’s justice would to us be merely a formal invitation. Lurking doubts as to the justice of God would be silenced by prudence. Our selfprotectiveness would tell us, “Don’t complain about the problem unless you want it to be a problem for you.”

God’s solution is better. It has all of the advantages of satisfying perfect justice as demanded by his attributes, but it goes further; there is divine involvement. God has entered into the mess he allowed and taken the brunt of the pain.

What this says is that one who knew perfect goodness himself was willing to undergo trouble for the sake of the world he created. When we question the goodness of existence by asking if

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it is worth it to go through life in a fallen world, and then wonder if God’s decision to allow these conditions was based on his being removed from it all, the cross reminds us to think better things of God. He decided that it was worth creating and redeeming such a world in spite of what it would cost him in suffering.

We cannot quantify suffering, but it is probably best to assume that Christ’s decision to endure the cross was more than equivalent to a man choosing to suffer all the suffering that has ever taken place in the world. Find someone in history whose miserable circumstances cause you to doubt whether creation was worth it and ponder this: God the Son willingly underwent far worse. Not for the sake of being stoic, but “for the joy set before him.” He knew his love for us to be sufficient to motivate his own acceptance of suffering. For us, we are to suffer less of it, and what we receive at the end is ours not by merit but by gift.

It is in light of this involvement that we cherish the rigorously developed scholastic theology of the atonement; that the divine nature can add weight to human suffering has explanatory value when a skeptic wonders how one man’s death can pay for the sins of the world. The value of the explanation is greater, however, when we understand better what we are defending. We do like to speak of the atonement with mathematical precision, not because we think of God as a math problem but so that we know we have found the true measure of what was done for us, done by an involved God in human flesh.

Setting the record straight on these doctrines may take some painstaking study in some highly technical doctrinal areas. The doctrine of the two natures in Christ is one of the most difficult doctrines to learn well. But the difficulty of setting the record straight does not mean that the main point is hard to grasp. A small child can learn that God is the one who saved us. When I was younger, a Roman Catholic friend and I were paging through my family Bible, a Bible that contained Rembrandt’s biblical paintings (the painting of the blinding of Samson was one we liked to

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W. H . A U D E N O N T H E C R U C I F I X I O N

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ust as we are all, potentially, in Adam when he fell, so we were all, potentially, in Jerusalem on that first Good Friday before there was an Easter, a Pentecost, a Christian, or a Church. It seems to me worthwhile asking ourselves who we should have been and what we should have been doing.

None of us, I’m certain, will imagine himself as one of

the Disciples, cowering in agony of spiritual despair and physical terror. Very few of us are big wheels enough to see ourselves as Pilate, or good churchmen enough to see ourselves as a member of the Sanhedrin. In my most optimistic mood I see myself as a Hellenized Jew from Alexandria visiting an intellectual friend. We are walking along, engaged in philosophical argument.

reenact!). When we reached the painting of the crucifixion, my friend said “That’s God,” pointing to Jesus. Thinking myself to be better taught, I said, “No, that’s his son.” My Roman Catholic friend had been taught the heart of the matter better than I. He knew that God saves.

What little I knew did involve the Father sending his son on our behalf, but I did not grasp that it was God the Son who was sent.

Even when I later became aware that Jesus was God, this point did not sink in quickly. It might have if my pastors and Sunday school teachers had shown us Rembrandt pictures or crucifixes and said, “That is God.” It takes so little. I hope my readers take the time to tell their children and Sunday school students that God is the one on the cross.

AT THE LAMB’S HIGH FEAST Our High Priest knows what it is like to be forsaken by God and does not wish his children to

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Our path takes us past the base of Golgotha. Looking up, we see an all too familiar sight—three crosses surrounded by a jeering crowd. Frowning with prim distaste, I say, “It’s disgusting the way the mob enjoy such things. Why can’t the authorities execute people humanely and in private by giving them hemlock to drink, as they did with Socrates?” Then,

averting my eyes from the disagreeable spectacle, I resume our fascinating discussion about the True, the Good and the Beautiful.

Excerpt taken from A Certain World: A Commonplace Book by W. H. Auden (Viking Press, 1970).

suffer this forsakenness. This sense of separation—of the Son from the Father as he hung on the cross, of Christ from his body as he lay in the tomb—is something Christ suffered so we would not have to. He assures us of this not only through an announcement but through a meal.

When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, Christ’s body and blood are offered for the forgiveness of our sins. We partake of his separation bodily so that we don’t have to experience separation from our bodies for eternity. The wages of sin is death. Christ’s body and blood are sacrificed so that at the resurrection we might be reunited with our bodies.

Christ was betrayed by men and then rejected by the Father so that we might be accepted by the Father and reconciled to our fellow man.

In the ancient church, the Lord’s Supper was known as the “medicine of immortality.” The body and blood of Christ of which we partake are the body and blood that have already borne the wrath of God. We can look at them as a

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vaccine. When we partake of the spent wrath of God, we become immune to the living wrath he bears toward sin.

The children of Israel escaped the plague of the firstborn of Egypt by painting blood on the doorposts of their houses. In one Communion hymn, this is linked to what happens when we receive the body and blood of Christ: Where the paschal blood is poured Death’s dread angel sheaths the sword Israel’s hosts triumphant go Through the waves that drown the foe, Alleluia!

As the church, we are the Israel of God. Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. His blood is poured into our mouths at Communion—the doorway, as it were, to our bodies. When God comes in judgment, he will see the blood on the doorpost and pass over us. Triumphantly, we will enter his eternal kingdom.

I t m ay s o u n d s h o ck i n g t o A m e r i c a n Protestants to hear a son of the Reformation speak thus, but this is the character of the Lutheran Reformation. To be sure, Communion will not avail if we do not receive it in faith.

Eating and drinking at the Lord’s Table are not a way of receiving salvation at odds with hearing the gospel and believing. Luther called the sacraments the visible Word. Unlike the audible word, which is received by the hearing of faith, this word of gospel is received by the eating of faith.

CONTENDING FOR THE WHOLE FAITH A sad truth about American Christianity is what the fight against liberalism has done even to those who have remained faithful in battle.

Early in the twentieth century, the strategy was to define the fundamentals of the faith so that all would know what doctrines would have to be fought for to the death. Differences in nonfundamental doctrines would be occasions for charity.

This sounded like a good strategy, but it has born

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some bitter fruit. The list of fundamental doctrines grows shorter and shorter. This makes things more difficult. A short list of fundamental doctrines, removed from their larger context of biblical truth, is a very gray, bland, utilitarian object, compared to the robust body of biblical doctrine. We spend our time fighting not for doctrines but for doctrinoids. Who can develop a passion for a K-Mart system of doctrine?

When we raise our sights to a fuller body of biblical truth, we find that God weaves his work together richly. Our best expressions of his truth strive to embody such a texture. The Apostles’ Creed is a wonderful expression of doctrines that had to be hammered out in the midst of controversy. It reads not like a list but almost like a story. When more doctrines came to be fought over, the Nicene Creed was written.

Again, the doctrines are orthodox, but they are clothed in a rich garment. The story of redemption is expressed in the Trinitarian structure.

Luther’s Small Catechism teaches doctrine to children in sections devoted to, among other things, the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer. The doctrinal teaching is hung on a structure of writings that are committed to memory. The whole is coherent. It is a beautiful thing I want to believe, not just something I am told I must fight to defend.

That God saves is the theme of the Bible.

Substitutionary atonement is an important doctrine, not just because we need a substitute.

It is important because in it we learn that God is our substitute. The story comes together here. We will be much better able to contend for the story when we know how it hangs together.

We will be much more motivated to contend for the story when we realize what has been done for us and by whom. Jesus is God in the flesh saving his people from their sins. That is the gospel. Anything less is not good news. But our High Priest has not left us with less.

RICK RITCHIE is a long-time contributor to Modern Refor-

mation magazine.

This article was originally published in the July/August 2007 issue of Modern Reformation.

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Michael S. Horton interviews

N. T. WRIGHT

FROM PLATO TO GLORY

illustration by

JOE CAVAZOS

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sk any Sunday school scholar why Jesus died on the cross, and you’re likely to get the same answer: “For our sins!” There’s no question that penal substitution and propitiation get a lot of air time in confessional Protestant circles. If there’s one thing the reformational church is known for, it’s a keen awareness of the depth of humanity’s depravity (and, if we’re honest, a strong distaste for anything that sounds like unwarranted self-love). While it’s certainly true that Christ’s sacrifice at Calvary did pay the price for our sins and satisfy the justice of the Father, it’s also true that we have a tendency to leave out the other half of the story—the bit about how Christ not only defeated sin and death but also ushered in the glorious new age where all who look to him for their salvation will share in his unending reign in the new heavens and new earth.

To give us greater insight into all the multifaceted wonder of the cross, Michael Horton chatted with the learned former bishop of Durham, N. T. Wright, on his most recent work, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion (HarperOne, 2016). Tom Wright is one of the world’s leading Bible scholars, chair of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and the author of many books, including his series Christian Origins and the Question of God and the popular work, Surprised by Hope.

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MSH: Tom, you say that “we have Platonized our

eschatology, substituting souls going to heaven for the promised new creation, and have therefore moralized our anthropology, substituting a qualifying exam of moral performance for the biblical notion of human vocation, with a result that we have paganized our soteriology, our understanding of salvation, substituting the idea of God killing Jesus to satisfy his wrath for the genuinely biblical notions we’re about to explore.” That’s quite a charge. Can you unpack that a little bit?

NTW: Yes, I can. I’m sorry about all the “ologies.”

Two “ologies” is two too many in a sentence, and having three is quite a mouthful! This was a shorthand way of saying something I do think is really important. The Western tradition—through the high Middle Ages and on into Protestantism— has, just as much as Catholicism, seen the idea of a Platonic-type soul as an immortal part of a human being that continues to exist one way or another.

The only question is, what is its destiny? Because it’s a soul, á la Plato, it’s not really interested in a body; it just wants to get to heaven and go into a timeless and spaceless sphere. The Eastern Orthodox, though they sometimes use language like that, have always been much more concerned with the biblical vision of the new heavens and new earth, of a renewal of the whole creation. In other words, they incorporate the idea that God made this wonderful, powerful, extraordinary world of space, time, and matter, and he didn’t intend it to be just a temporary aberration. The present world is full of sorrow and pain and darkness, as well as glory and power and life, but God is going to deal with the sorrow and pain and darkness, and he is going to make a whole new world and will raise us from the dead to share in it. That is the biblical answer to the Platonic view of eschatology, of just dying and going to heaven, or—in some circles—Jesus coming back and scooping us up and taking us to heaven.

That, I think, drives so many other things. It has taken me quite a while to realize that when you understand that biblical vision of new heavens and new earth and the bodily resurrection within it, it isn’t just that you’ve adjusted some nuts and bolts at the end of the story; you’ve clarified your

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THE PRESENT WORLD IS FULL OF SORROW AND PAIN AND DARKNESS, AS WELL AS GLORY AND POWER AND LIFE, BUT GOD IS GOING TO DEAL WITH THE SORROW AND PAIN AND DARKNESS, AND HE IS GOING TO MAKE A WHOLE NEW WORLD AND WILL RAISE US FROM THE DEAD TO SHARE IN IT.

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understanding of the whole story—you see that what’s gone wrong is not just that we humans have failed to obey the rules, and so deserve to be punished severely, but that we have failed to be faithful to God’s vocation to us as humans, which is to be his image bearers in working in the present world for the sake of the new world he wants to make.

So though sin matters, it matters particularly because it’s the outflowing of our idolatry, which is what we’re doing when we say, “I don’t want to reflect God into the world or in worship; I want to do my own thing. I want to worship other gods; I want to worship part of the created order.” I want to be quite clear about this, because this is where some will say, “Tom Wright’s going soft on sin.”

Not a bit of it. It’s contextualizing sin in a biblical way and saying, “Sin certainly matters, and God’s wrath against sin matters; but the problem is not just that I’m going to be punished, but that God intended me to be part of his human project for his transformation and healing of the world and by sin I’ve gone away from that.”

MSH: You talk about handing the keys over to Satan.

It makes the fall all the more mysteriously evil.

NTW: It seems to me that the diabolical bit is that when humans worship forces in the world other than the one true God, we say to those forces (whether it’s money or sex or power or whatever), “I’m going to abdicate my responsibility in this sphere, and I’m going to let you run this bit of the world.” It doesn’t take much observation of the modern Western world to see that we’ve done this in spades with money and sex and power. We’ve said, yes, these things rule us. If somebody offers you a job similar to what you’re doing but at twice the salary, people say, “It’s a no-brainer.” Of course you go for it, because it’s more money. There might be a hundred other factors to consider, such as where it is or what it will do to your family. But this is because we have allowed money to rule us.

Likewise, with sex people say, “Oh, well, this is what I most deeply want, so obviously I have to do it; otherwise I’m being dehumanized,” instead of saying, “No, I am more than this desire and

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have to be responsible and wise, like any grownup human being.” Likewise with power and war and dropping bombs on people and so on. We just assume this is the way to behave.

Only when idolatry is renounced can human vocation be recovered. When Paul admonishes the Thessalonians to turn from idols to serve a living God, this is a way of saying, “You guys are rediscovering what it means to be human.” By Platonizing our eschatology (turning the biblical concept of “heaven” into a timeless, spaceless sphere occupied by our disembodied souls), and by turning human vocation into a moral exam that we’ve all flunked, we diminish both the goal to which our lives tend and our lives themselves, which in turn horribly skews the way we look at the cross. The only thing that has to happen is that somebody has to take the rap, and unfortunately that turns out to be God’s own innocent Son. You and I know that is a horrible caricature and that no wise and true evangelical would ever preach like that. We also know that is what generations before us heard when the gospel was preached. Whenever I’ve had this discussion in public, there are plenty of people who come up and say, “That’s what I was taught in Sunday school,” and, “That’s what all my first-year undergraduates come thinking the gospel is.” People react against it. In going back to the Gospels and Paul, I’ve tried to take a different run of it.

MSH: How do you see Easter Sunday, especially as the beginning of the new creation?

NTW: This is one of my favorite themes. With his repeated refrain of “On the first day of the week,” John shows that this is the beginning of the new creation. This is a motif that runs through his Gospel; he patterns it after the days of creation we see recorded in Genesis: “In the beginning was the Word.” He has the sequence of signs, revealing the “glory,” that point forward. They start with the water into wine, continue with the healing of the centurion’s servant, and go on through the healing of the lame man, the feeding in the wilderness, the healing of the man born blind, to the raising of

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Lazarus (John 2–6, 9, 11). John constantly hints that the coming crucifixion will be the ultimate sign, the seventh, the full revelation of glory and love. But it also works in terms of the days of creation. On Friday, the sixth day of the week, Pilate says of Jesus, “Behold the man,” echoing the sixth day in Genesis when humans are created. On the seventh day Jesus rests in the tomb, having said, “It is finished; it’s accomplished,” just like God says at the end of creation in the beginning of Genesis 2. Now John says, “On the first day of the week” (20:1, 19). Though many translations don’t bring this out, those are the first words in the Greek: “the first day of the week,” when Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and when the disciples met in the Upper Room.

Right from the beginning, you have the light of the new day and the breath of the Spirit on the disciples who are commissioned to serve as missionaries of the new creation. You can almost feel the freshness of the garden; this is the beginning of God’s new world. When I reread John’s Gospel in that context, I can see all the more clearly that this is only possible because the prince of the power of the world has been defeated (John 12). John wants us to think back to the cross as a victory over Satan, and that the inauguration of the new creation has its origins in this event.

MSH: The focus is not redemption from creation but the redemption of all creation, humanity included.

NTW: Absolutely. You can see the early Christians struggling to figure out what that means. Some ask Paul in 1 Thessalonians why, if this were the case, some of their number have died, or in 1 Peter, where the church asks him why they were still suffering. There are still moral commands that are applied. Just because you’re living in the new creation doesn’t mean you can put your feet up and say, “Well, now that I’m sinlessly perfect, it’s all right, isn’t it?” No. You’re a new-creation people, yes, but that means you’ve now got to be an overlap-of-the-ages people. The old age is still rumbling on, and while the new age has broken in—it’s definitely happening!— it’s still painful and demanding.

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MSH: To be placed in that precarious intersection

between those two ages is about the toughest thing imaginable.

NTW: It’s interesting that Paul writes that he

rejoices in his sufferings, because it’s a sign that you are actually standing where the tectonic plates of God’s purposes grind together.

MSH: I’m sure you are familiar with Gustaf Aulén’s

Christus Victor. Back in 1931, he argued that the East understood Christ’s death as the defeat of the powers of evil in a way that the West didn’t, but he even singled out Luther as the greatest exponent of that view. As I’m reading the book, I wonder how unique you think this theme is in the Eastern tradition. It can hardly be denied that it’s a major aspect of the atonement that we often leave out. Are you setting Christus Victor, Christ’s victory over the powers, over against Christ’s death in the place of sinners—that is, substitutionary atonement?

NTW: I can see why people might say that. It’s partly because Gustaf Aulén would want them to say that. When I started working on this book, my wife and I took a quiet sort of holiday for a week, and one of the first books I read during that time was Aulén. I hadn’t read Aulén for thirty-five years, and I was shocked because he sets up this rather rigid either/or and then does this amazing tour de force of saying that, actually, the Christus Victor thing that is so strong in the fathers was the main leitmotif for Luther and Calvin as well. Now obviously, Aulén as a Lutheran bishop needed to say that, because if he hadn’t, they would have told him to quit being a Lutheran bishop, grow a beard, and be Orthodox instead.

He was calling a Lutheran tradition back to the fathers, which was a risky thing to do. I suspect that at the time there were quite a lot of easy, lowgrade versions of penal substitution going around that he was reacting against; for example, “God hates us and that’s why he killed Jesus instead.”

People assume that if one says “Christus Victor,” then one is saying, “Not penal substitution.” I’ve tried to be careful to say, as I think the fathers were saying, “No, penal substitution is there,

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but it nests within the Christus Victor model, not as an either/or.” It nests particularly for me within the Jewish scriptural tradition. One of the straplines of my book is Paul’s statement that the Messiah died for us “in accordance with the Scriptures,” which does not mean that there are three or four proof-texts like Isaiah 53 or Psalm 22, but that the entire scriptural narrative is now fulfilled. It’s not a narrative about a hateful God determined to have somebody’s blood, which ends up being that of his own Son, but of a loving Father willingly giving up his own Son as a ransom for the children he loves.

IT’S NOT A NARRATIVE ABOUT A HATE­FUL GOD DETERMINED TO HAVE SOMEBODY’S BLOOD, WHICH ENDS UP BEING THAT OF HIS OWN SON, BUT OF A LOVING FATHER WILLINGLY GIVING UP HIS OWN SON AS A RANSOM FOR THE CHILDREN HE LOVES.

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MSH: I’ll never forget the lecture of my systematics

professor, Robert Strimple, pleading with tears that we never preach the cross in a way that people get the impression of an angry father beating up his loving son. I imagine that you’ve probably heard some of those sermons he warned us against.

NTW: Most preachers, if they feel themselves sounding like that, will very quickly say, “Of course, this is because God loves us.” But the really nasty, dark side to this is that there is an emerging context in which we’re becoming more and more aware of how child abuse has happened in families and in churches, where often the abuser will say to the child “I love you” even while beating them up or molesting them. Young people in particular—if they have heard of it or experienced it—will be repulsed in a visceral, defensive sense when they hear a story about God being so angry that he was going to kill us all, but was stopped by somebody fortunately stepping in and taking our place, and God permitting that because he loved us. There’s a sickening recognition of the twisted logic used to justify that abuse—even though, as we know, it wasn’t abuse.

I have known people in tears saying, “Yes, that is how I heard the gospel and that’s why I rejected it; because of what my father did, my uncle did, my priest did,” and so on. Somehow, we have to acknowledge that through talking about it in this way we have unwittingly caricatured it, so that that’s what people have heard—divine child abuse, not loving sacrifice.

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MSH: I totally sympathize with your concern and with the experience of a lot of people when they hear those sorts of things. You refer to the line in the song “In Christ Alone” that says, “The wrath of God was satisfied.” You suggest that when we come to that line, we should instead sing, “The love of God was satisfied.” But as I read that, I wonder if that is a false choice. In other words, wasn’t it the love of God that moved God to satisfy his just wrath by bearing it himself? That’s one of the pieces I think I didn’t see in the book where you clearly affirmed that God’s wrath was satisfied at the cross.

NTW: In all sorts of ways, it’s a brilliant song,

well put together. What I used to say when I was bishop of Durham was not that you should never sing that, but that every other time, you should sing, “The love of God was satisfied.” In other words, this week we’ll sing “the love of God” and next week we’ll sing “The wrath of God,” because they are twin halves of the same thing.

I think it was Charles Cranfield in his commentary on Romans who, during his exposition of substitutionary atonement, said very carefully that God, being perfectly loving and perfectly holy, determined to direct against his own self in the person of his Son the wrath that our sins so richly deserved. The trouble is that there are an awful lot of preachers and theologians who, despite their best intentions, often just haven’t quite said it carefully enough.

In preparation for the lectures that I did before the book, I reread Martin Hengel on the crucifixion and on the atonement. Hengel goes through all these ancient pagan authors who said that some god was angry with the Greeks or the Romans or somebody, so an innocent victim was slain so the god was appeased, and the wind blew in the right direction, or the project went ahead or whatever it was. Martin Hengel then says that this was God’s way of preparing the pagan mind for the gospel. Hang on: No, it wasn’t. This is a pagan distortion of the truth, a bit of which the ancient pagans had grasped. But it’s a distortion, because these are capricious, malevolent, wrathful gods. The Jewish scriptures had Isaiah 53, which is the climax of the whole poem we call

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Isaiah 40–55, which is about the powerful love and sovereignty and kingdom of God. That’s where my wrestling with this really came from.

Romans 8:1–4 makes it absolutely crystal clear that there’s no condemnation for those who are in Christ, because on the cross God has condemned sin in the flesh. The condemnation that happened at Calvary means there is no condemnation for me if I am in him—that is penal substitution. It doesn’t work within the normal Platonic moralistic pagan narrative; it only works within the biblical narrative with which Paul is tracking. I hope I’ve made that clear. I am aware that some people have said, “Oh, there we are. N. T. Wright has given up penal substitution.” Absolutely not.

I’ve tried to set the biblical doctrine of penal substitution within its proper biblical context.

MSH: Not only are the pagan gods capricious, but

I’m not aware of any story where the “god” substitutes himself, taking the rap himself. So here you have Jesus not as a helpless victim but as a willing substitute, suffering almost to the point of making him sound like a passive child taking a beating from an angry father, when in fact he is God himself, taking and absorbing God’s wrath.

NTW: Because the Trinity is a mystery, even if we managed to get our heads around it, we wouldn’t understand it. It is difficult to say all that in a way people can fully grasp; because while it is true he’s not an abused child, we have passages such as Isaiah 53 where he’s led like a lamb to the slaughter, where he really does seem to be just a passive, lonely, sad victim. But Isaiah 53 begins by saying, “Who would have believed that this was the arm of the Lord?” In other words, it’s already a mystery in Isaiah. When it says in chapter 52, “The Lord has laid bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations,” the prophet then turns and asks, “What does it look like when God himself rolls up his sleeves to do this job?” It looks like an innocent victim, a lamb led to the slaughter, which is also, of course, a passive motif. Part of the difficulty is that there are so many strands of biblical thought that come rushing together at this point, people have often

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said, “Well, there are four or five different metaphors, and it just depends which one you want to pick.” But I say, they’re not just metaphors. They may look like it to us, but they’re really glittering fragments of the biblical narrative; and when we tell the biblical story in all its full dimensions, we realize that each one of those metaphors also has metonym about it. It’s not just an illustration of something; it’s part of the richness of the whole truth.

MSH: Isn’t that a problem with talking about theo-

ries or models of the atonement?

NTW: I totally agree. You can build a model of a

ship—fine. You may do a good job, it may look nice on the shelf, but don’t get in it and try to sail across the sea. You need the real thing. Models of the atonement can be useful if they help us to understand the whole thing, but it’s necessarily a temporary tool. What we need is the full biblical story.

One thing we haven’t mentioned yet, Mike, which impinges on me more and more the older I get, is that so much of the narrative in the New Testament is drawing on temple imagery, and not just imagery, but the idea of the temple as the micro-cosmos—the small working model of new creation—while describing Jesus himself as the true temple and then, astonishingly, the Holy Spirit enabling the church to be the new temple: the beginning of new creation, which can only happen because heaven and earth have been brought together through Christ’s reconciling work on the cross. What we Western Protestants still think of as “cultic imagery” is more than that: it’s about how heaven and earth are united. Much more is said about this in the letter to the Hebrews.

MSH: You anticipated my next question. When

you talk about the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ according to the Scriptures—Paul’s way of putting it—what is that, according to the Scriptures? What is the grand story within which the cross and the resurrection have their purpose?

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NTW: It’s primarily creation and new creation.

Genesis 1 is about God making a temple called heaven and earth for himself and his human creatures to dwell in, so that his human creatures can be the image in this temple so that the rest of creation can see who God is, and so that the love and power and sovereign stewardship of God can flow out into his world. Human idolatry, rebellion, and sin say, “No, I don’t want to be an image bearer,” so the heaven-earth relationship is fractured. The resulting tabernacle in the wilderness and later Solomon’s Temple are small working models of a heaven-and-earth reality with priests and kings as the image bearers in that heaven-and-earth reality, with Israel called to be a nation of priests. In other words, Israel is called to be the people who dangerously stand at the intersection of heaven and earth, and to make that point, the Passover and Exodus stories are the grand stories of their liberation from slavery so that they are free to be the image-bearing royal priesthood.

They know that this is temporary—that the tabernacle and Solomon’s Temple are advance models—and they wait through the long years of exile, but then the temple was rebuilt and Yahweh had not returned. What were they waiting for? The New Testament writers say that Christ is who they were waiting for—now at last, Yahweh has returned in the person of God’s Son, Jesus. The new temple has happened in him.

The slavery has been dealt with; God’s wrath has “passed over” humanity in Christ’s death on the cross, and heaven and earth have been brought together at last. God’s purpose was always to sum up all things in heaven and on earth in the Messiah, and that has happened. Now we are both the beneficiaries and the agents, against the day when finally heaven and earth become one. And at every stage of that new creation, the cross has to be central to its being, because this is how God has brought about that new creation, despite all the dark forces arrayed against him.

That’s the really important thing—the union of heaven and earth as a result of God on the cross defeating the powers that had tried to force them apart, and defeating it particularly in that human sin through which the powers had

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usurped sovereignty. So penal substitution is the means by which Christus Victor is achieved, so that heaven and earth can be one at last.

MSH: So what you’re saying is that victory over the

powers needs to be more emphasized, because God nailed the list of our sins to the cross, as Colossians 2 says?

NTW: Exactly. The victory over the powers is won by God dealing with sin, because sin is the reason that the powers of mankind as viceregents of creation were ceded to the prince of the power of the air. If our sins have been dealt with, then the prince—Satan—has been robbed of his power, as well as of his prey.

MSH: And the ability to condemn those sins, you’re

saying.

NTW: Exactly. When Paul says in Romans 1 that

God condemned sin in the flesh, the word sin is there almost doing duty for Satan. It’s interesting the way he writes Romans 7 and 8: by the time we get to Romans 7 and 8, sin is itself a dark power; it’s more than the mere accumulation of human wrongdoing. The condemnation of sin means, then, that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in the Messiah, Jesus our Lord.

THE CONDEMNATION OF SIN MEANS, THEN, THAT NOTHING IN ALL CREATION CAN SEPARATE US FROM THE LOVE OF GOD IN THE MESSIAH, JESUS OUR LORD.

MSH: As part of that victory, you write movingly about Christ’s lordship in what looks like the triumph of Satan and his purposes over Jesus in relation to Caesar. Can you talk about that a little and discuss the relevance of that for us?

N T W : This is such an interesting thing for modern Westerners to grapple with, because we tend to tend to swing between extremes.

We’ll say that human power is just wicked and we all ought to be liberal Democrats and nobody has any real power because we all just vote and stuff happens. Then we run to the other end of the spectrum, and the twentieth century has

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been swinging between extreme forms of totalitarianism. We’re not very good at reading the New Testament’s much more nuanced theology of power.

I go back to John’s Gospel again. In chapter 12, Jesus says, “Now is the judgment of this world, now the ruler of this world is cast out.”

Then in the farewell discourse he says, “The ruler of this world is coming. He’s got no power over me, but I’m doing what the Father commanded.” What does it mean that the ruler of the world is coming for him? It clearly means that Satan is, in a sense, coming for him, but it’s actually soldiers that bring him before Pilate, where he stands as the representative of the kingdom of God confronting the representative of the kingdom of Caesar. And then Jesus says to Pilate, “You could have no authority over me unless it was given you from above. So, the one who handed me over to you has the greatest sin.” Now most modern Western thinkers about Christian views of politics haven’t begun to grapple with this: Jesus saying that Pilate has a God-given authority over him, because God wants his world to be wisely governed by humans, even if they don’t acknowledge him, like Cyrus in Isaiah.

But the humans who abuse that will be judged for it. They will be held accountable for it. We need a fresh discussion of the question of how, given the death and resurrection of Jesus, human powers and authorities are summoned to worship, to obedience. There’s a highly paradoxical aspect to this—we see it in Colossians 1 and 2; the powers are defeated and then reconciled to one another. In the middle of all of that, the cross is what Caesar’s kingdom does to show that Caesar is lord. But then as we read the story in John—also in Mark, and certainly in Paul—we discover that the cross is what God does to say that Jesus Christ is Lord. I think Paul relishes that paradox. I think when he writes that amazing poem in Philippians 2, he’s gleefully pointing out that the symbol which says to the world, “Rome runs this place, and if we don’t like you we will rub you out and here’s how,” he actually says, “There is a God who made the world and loves the world

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passionately and has given himself in his own life and death to be the means of salvation.”

MSH: So he has all authority in heaven and on earth.

Of course, Caesar would have granted him or any of the other gods a say not only over heaven, but over heaven and earth, and yet he allows Caesar to have a leash. It’s just astounding.

NTW: It is astounding because, of course, as with

things like slavery, we want to say to Paul as he writes the letter to Philemon, “Come on, Paul, just tell him that slavery is wicked and it ought to be abolished.” But Paul doesn’t, and we wrestle with that. In the same way, we want Jesus to send in the tanks and say, “Okay, Caesar, quite enough of that, we’re setting up God’s kingdom and it’s going to look like this.” Sorry, no. Right from the start of the Sermon on the Mount, we know that this is not what Jesus-shaped power looks like. Jesus-shaped power looks like the meek, the brokenhearted, the mourners, the hungry-for-justice people, the peacemakers, and those weeping and mourning the state of the world—but at the same time, building hospitals and schools and looking after the poor. By the time Caesar notices that something’s going on, this community has gotten going and people love it. It’s taking over the world, but not with force and power of the normal sort.

I think this revolution in power, which you see in Mark 10, the famous passage in which one of the first verses about the atonement I ever learned—the Son of Man came to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45, echoing Isaiah 53 and Daniel 7)—comes as the climax of a whole paragraph about the redefinition of power. The rulers of the Gentiles do it by bullying people; we’re going to do it by becoming the servants of all.

MSH: Tom, it is always a pleasure to talk with you

and to read your work. This is a terrific book to plow through, even if the reader doesn’t agree with everything, just to be challenged to think about the aspects of Christ’s death and its effects that we don’t always consider as carefully as we ought.

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by

BEARING T H E C RO S S

John Calvin and the Adversities of Life

photograph by

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onsider the cross of Jesus Christ— that rough-hewn beam of torture and sacrifice, at once both curse and horror and wonderful instrument of redemption and salvation for sinners (Isa. 53:5–6; Eph. 2:13–16; Col. 1:19–20). John Calvin, the Genevan Reformer, was a man well acquainted with the cross. In his childhood, he was regularly taken by his pious mother, Jeanne LeFranc, to hear Mass at the Roman Catholic cathedral in Noyon, France. It was in that hallowed place that he would see the bloody likeness of Jesus Christ hanging on the cross.

No doubt, this sight made a strong impression on the young boy. It represented not only the suffering and death of Jesus Christ but also, in the medieval Roman Catholic theology he grew up in, an ongoing sacrifice to be experienced over and over again through the Mass.

As a young Latin scholar in Paris, and later as a student of theology and law, it appears that Calvin began to question this particular meaning of the cross. The pamphlets of Martin Luther that were regularly flooding Paris at that time were, more than likely, a catalyst for his questions. He wondered if there was something more to the cross than the ever-present bloody tableau of Jesus Christ hanging between heaven and earth, and he began to doubt that Jesus continued to suffer over and over for the sins of the people, since this was in direct opposition to Scripture (John 19:30; Heb. 9:24–28; 10:11–14). In his letter to the Roman Catholic cardinal of Carpentras, Jacopo Sadoleto (1477– 1547), he wrote:

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But then a very different form of teaching arose; not one that led us away from the Christian profession, but one which brought us back to its fountainhead, and by, as it were, clearing away the dross, restored it to its original purity. Offended by the novelty, I lent an unwilling ear, and at first, I confess, strenuously and passionately resisted it; for—such is the firmness or willfulness with which men naturally persist in the course they have once undertaken—it was with the greatest difficulty

MARCUS J. SERVEN

JOSEF KUBICEK

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that I was brought to confess that I had all my life been in error. One thing in particular made me adverse to those new teachers; and that was reverence for the Church….

At last, my mind being prepared to give the matter serious attention, I saw—just as if light had broken in upon me—in what a pigsty of error I had wallowed, and how polluted and impure I had become. With great fear and trembling at the misery into which I had fallen, and far more at that which treated me in the prospect of eternal death, I could do no other than at once betake myself to Thy way, condemning my past life, not without groans and tears.

Here we read of Calvin’s sober acknowledgement of his own ignorance—into “what a pigsty of error I had wallowed,” and his commitment henceforth to live according “to Thy way,” indicating his spiritual conversion and resolve to live as a disciple of Jesus instead of an adherent of Rome.

Consider as well this brief autobiographical passage from the preface to his Commentary on the Psalms. Calvin candidly wrote these remarks in 1557:

Luther’s way of expressing this truth opened up the gospel in a way that people had not heard for centuries.

When I was yet a very small boy, my father destined me for the study of theology. But afterwards, when he considered that the law commonly raised those who followed it to wealth, this prospect suddenly induced him to change his purpose. Thus it came to pass that I was withdrawn from the study of philosophy and set to the study of law.

To this pursuit I endeavored faithfully to apply myself, in obedience to the will of my father. But God, by the secret guidance of His providence, at length gave a different direction to my course. And first, since I was too obstinately devoted to the superstitions of popery to be easily extricated from so profound an abyss of mire, God by sudden conversion subdued and brought my mind to a teachable frame, though I was more hardened in such matters than might have been expected from one at my

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early period of life. Having thus received some taste and knowledge of true godliness, I was immediately inflamed with so intense a desire to make progress therein, that I did not altogether leave off other studies, I yet pursued them with less ardor.

From this revealing testimony we see that his heart had become “immediately inflamed” with the gospel message. The Lord “gave a different direction to his course,” and Calvin was profoundly changed by a “sudden conversion.”

Although he could not have anticipated all the adversity and sorrow this change would bring into his life, he nonetheless firmly identified himself from this point on as a disciple of Christ. The message of the cross became a much more personal concept, which he could no longer ignore with intellectual indifference.

THEOLOGICAL RECONNAISSANCE ne of the most important contributions to the reformation of the church at this time was Martin Luther’s “theology of the cross.”

This well-known concept has been discussed by a large number of theologians and pastors.

Alister McGrath summarizes:

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For Luther, Christian thinking about God comes to an abrupt halt at the foot of the cross. The Christian is forced, by the very existence of the crucified Christ, to make a momentous decision. Either he will seek God elsewhere, or he will make the cross itself the foundation and criterion of his thought about God. The “crucified God”—to use Luther’s daring phrase—is not merely the foundation of the Christian faith, but is also the key to a proper understanding of the nature of God. The Christian can only speak about the glory, the wisdom, the righteousness and the strength of God as they are revealed in the crucified Christ. For Luther, the cross presents us with a riddle—a riddle

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whose solution defines the distinctively Christian understanding of both man and God. If God is present at the cross, then he is a God whose presence is hidden from us. As Luther observed, citing Isaiah 45:15, “Truly you are a hidden God!” And yet the unfolding to that hidden presence of God in the scene of dereliction upon the cross holds the key to Luther’s protracted search for a gracious God. No one would dream of seeking God in “disgrace, poverty, death and everything else that is shown to us in the suffering of Christ”—nevertheless, God is there, hidden and yet revealed, for those who care to seek him.

McGrath explains the revolutionary change that Martin Luther brought about in the European church, where in late medieval Roman Catholic theology the emphasis was on a “theology of glory.” Rather than seeking the glory of God by philosophical speculation and by the accumulation of personal merit, Luther insisted that God could only be found at Christ’s crucifixion and his atoning work on the cross. Luther’s way of expressing this truth opened up the gospel in a way that people had not heard for centuries. Stephen Nichols helpfully illustrates the distinction between the theology of glory and the theology of the cross: The theology of glory celebrates works and what humanity can do; the theology of the cross celebrates Christ and what he alone can accomplish. The theology of the cross also deals a crushing blow to a life that is consumed by the self…. The theology of glory exalts the self…. The theology of the cross forces one to look outward, away from the self, and upon seeing Christ, to realize its true and desperate need.

Luther’s “theology of the cross” was primarily concerned with a proper theological approach to understanding the redemptivehistorical significance of Christ’s sacrifice, and Calvin built upon this to develop a practical view of “bearing the cross.” As a result,

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Calvin’s “theology of the cross” must be seen as an expansion and progression of Martin Luther’s theology.

CALVIN’S UNDERSTANDING OF THE CRUCIFIXION t is evident from Calvin’s explanation of Christ’s cross in his Institutes of the Christian Religion that he clearly understood the importance of Christ’s crucifixion. He thoughtfully writes,

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The cross was accursed, not only in human opinion but by decree of God’s law [Deut.

21:23]. Hence, when Christ is hanged upon the cross, he makes himself subject to the curse. It had to happen in this way in order that the whole curse—which on account of our sins awaited us, or rather lay upon us—might be lifted from us, while it was transferred to him. This was also foreshadowed by the law….What was figuratively represented in the Mosaic sacrifices is manifested in Christ.

Here Calvin shows his careful understanding of the Old Testament sacrifices and their importance for Christ’s own sacrifice as “shadows of the things to come” (Col. 2:17). He also recognizes how a double imputation takes place in the sacrificial and substitutionary work of the cross, as he explains: Here, then, is the meaning of this saying: Christ was offered to the Father in death as an expiatory sacrifice that when he discharged all satisfaction through his sacrifice, we might cease to be afraid of God’s wrath. Now it is clear what the prophet’s utterance means: “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” [Isa. 53:6]. That is, he who was about to cleanse the filth of those iniquities was covered with them by transferred imputation. The cross, to which he was nailed, was a symbol of this, as the apostle testifies: “Christ redeemed

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us from the curse of the law, when he became a curse for us. For it is written, ‘Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree,’ that in Christ the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles” [Gal. 3:13– 14; Deut. 21:23]. (Inst. 2:16:6) Armed with Luther’s helpful distinction between the glory grasped through human endeavor and the glory received through humble trust in Christ by the knowledge that his sacrifice on the cross both paid for our sin and removed its stain, Calvin drew from it a practical application for Christian life. He called it “bearing the cross” and saw it as a mark of self-denial and Christian discipleship (Matt. 16:24; Luke 6:40; 1 Pet. 2:21–28). Not only is the cross the place where sin is absolved and forgiveness found; it is also a symbol to him of all of the adversities that Christians suffer while here on the earth.

CALVIN’S PRACTICE OF “BEARING THE CROSS”

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alvin comprehensively addresses this concept in his Institutes (3:8:1– 11). In “Bearing the Cross, a Part of Self-Denial,” he writes:

But it behooves the godly mind to climb still higher, to the height to which Christ calls his disciples: that each must bear his own cross [Matt. 16:24]. For whomever the Lord has adopted and deemed worthy of his fellowship ought to prepare themselves for a hard, toilsome, and unquiet life, crammed with very many and various kinds of evil. It is the Heavenly Father’s will thus to exercise them so as to put his own children to a definite test. Beginning with Christ, his first-born, he follows this plan with all his children. (Inst. 3:8:1) Based on Jesus’ words in Matthew 16:24—“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow

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THE POWER OF THE CROSS

BY DAVID ÁVILA

"For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” —1 Corinthians 1:17–18

BANG, BANG, BANG!

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he pounding at the front door reverberated through the house. It was late, but I was still up. As I slowly approached the entryway, I could see a large shadowy figure outlined against the streetlights. I switched on the porch light and yelled at him to identify himself.

The response was muffled, almost intoxicated, “It’s your uncle!” I opened the door slowly. He looked shaken, yet jubilant. “I’ve given my life to Jesus!” he cried.

That’s how it came out.

That’s the only way he knew how to voice his encounter with the living God. Standing in the doorframe, this imposing former Marine was now in tears over the realization that he was a sinner and that God had done something about his sin and guilt through Jesus on the cross. He had

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to tell someone. He was not drunk; he was moved, changed by the power of the cross—the power made effective by the Holy Spirit that grips the heart and transforms the mind with the good news of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection; a power that not only brings the unregenerate into a relationship with a great Savior, but also sustains and invigorates believers throughout their journey. I knew how my uncle felt—I have seen that power in my own life.

I have spent the last two decades as a bi-vocational church planter, sowing and nurturing seeds in hopes that a vibrant local church would emerge: a church filled with people from both ends of my once sleepy, hippy town—a place for rich and poor; white, brown, and black; educated and uneducated; documented and undocumented; united by their love for Christ and neighbor, particularly those

on the margins. The work was hard. Here were many great successes and far too many failures.

The last season of church planting took its toll. I was exhausted, friendless, and dismayed; the pain spread wide, the wounds cut deep.

I died, metaphorically and in a sense, literally. I suffered a back injury that brought me to the emergency room, and the severe pain resulted in what the doctors labeled “a severe fainting episode” where my heart failed. I clinically flatlined for seventeen seconds. What started out as a joyous and exciting mission had left me drained and dour. My faith took a hit, and I was put to the test; what was counterfeit and bogus was being exposed.

A once vibrant part of me was now dead.

In the years that have passed, time has healed many wounds from that season. God’s providence

has afforded much time for reflection and thankfulness for his sovereign hand over that season. But the theme that repeatedly surfaced through the whole matter is found in those words that Paul gives us concerning the power of the cross: “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 18).

The power of the cross continues to penetrate the sometimes thorny soil of my heart to reach its depths with a truth that is more (but not less) than just memorizing doctrines.

The power of the cross is the gospel’s power to transform us. It is good news that saves us. The power of the cross moves us from death to life. It starts us on our journey as a new creation, leading us to maturity and growth CONTINUED ON PAGE 38

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THE POWER OF THE CROSS

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 37

in Christ all along the way.

A message so simple but so paradoxical; a message that contrasts man’s wisdom against God’s folly; a message we are entrusted to proclaim to the nations.

What is this message that seems weak and foolish to the world but is indeed the power of God for those who are being saved?

In Through the Valley of the Kwai (Harper, 1962), World War II veteran and former prisoner of war Ernest Gordon writes about the time he and his fellow prisoners were forced by the Japanese to build the Burma Railway: The day’s work had ended; the tools were being counted, as usual. As the party was about to be dismissed, the guard shouted that a shovel was missing.

The guard insisted that someone had stolen it. Of course, it was very serious, because if a shovel was

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stolen, it could be used for escape. Everybody could have escaped. Striding up and down before the men, the guard ranted and raved, working himself into a fury. Screaming in broken English, he demanded that the guilty one step forward to take his punishment.

No one moved; the guard’s rage reached new heights of violence. “Then, all die!

All die!” he shrieked. To show that he meant what he said, he cocked his rifle, put it on his shoulder aimed at the first man in the rank, prepared to shoot and work his way down the line. At that moment, a soldier from the Argyll regiment stepped forward, stood stiffly to attention, and said calmly, “I did it.”

The guard unleashed all his whipped-up hate, kicking the helpless prisoner and beating him with his fists. Still, the Argyll stood rigidly to attention, chin up, though now his blood was streaming all down his face. His calm silence seemed to goad the guard

into a greater rage. Seizing his rifle by the barrel, the guard lifted it high over his head and brought it down on the skull of the Argyll, who sank limply to the ground and never moved again. Though it was clear he was dead, the guard continued to beat him and stopped only when he was exhausted. The men of the work detail picked up their comrade’s body, marched back to camp, and when the tools were counted again at the guard-house, it turned out that no shovel was missing.

Gordon and his fellow prisoners were saved by the Argyll’s blood. How can we not be moved by such valor in sacrifice? How can we not feel the power of stories that point us to God’s ultimate story of sacrifice on the cross, which is the historical truth of God at work in the world? It is a power that saves sinners in the dark of night by exposing their darkened hearts to the folly of their addictions,

compelling them to immediately tell someone the great news, no matter the hour.

It is the power of the cross that sustains sinners saved by grace through the dark valleys and badlands on the road to Emmaus.

This is Christ in our place: Jesus Christ the Creator, the very image and embodiment of the glory of God, offering up his blood for our sin and shame, to save us from hell, sustain us on our earthly journey, and glorify the Father by drawing to himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

DAVID ÁVILA is a media producer, filmmaker, and designer living in Austin, Texas. He has spent the last twenty years as an urban bivocational church planter.

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me”—Calvin applies the agonizing travail of the cross to a “hard, toilsome, and unquiet life, crammed with very many and various kinds of evil,” while assuring the reader that these afflictions are not a random part of life, but the “Heavenly Father’s will.” While Christians should not think that we are exempt from trials and difficulties in this world, we can be comforted by the knowledge that they are permitted

by God to purify and perfect us.

Calvin certainly had personal experience in “bearing the cross.” During his ministry in Geneva, he was compelled to endure accusations, false charges, illnesses, insults, sorrows, the loss of reputation, physical intimidation, and an overt threat on his life. Calvin biographer Emanuel Stickelberger paints a bleak picture of his time there: For many years, until 1555, the Reformer had to swallow so many humiliations that a healthier one than he would have had to become sick of them. His propositions were rejected, his warnings scorned. He could not walk across the street without being mocked, “There he goes, neighbor.

I prefer to hear three dogs barking than to listen to him preach.” “Did you know, hell has only two devils, and there goes one of them!” Children called after him, twisting his name, “Cain, Cain!” More than one dog answered to the name “Calvin.”

One memorable week before Easter Sunday in 1538, the three ministers of Geneva—William Farel, Elie Coraud, and John Calvin—refused to serve the Lord’s Supper to the people due to the widespread turmoil and unrest within the city.

The Small Council of Geneva voted to remove the pastors and gave them three days to leave.

James McKinnon, a scholar of the Genevan Reformation, tells how the Small Council was unilaterally supported by the citizens: The people threatened to throw him into the Rhone. At night they sang derisive songs and fired shots before his dwelling, and the memory of these demonstrations

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haunted him to his dying day. “You may imagine,” said he to his colleagues on his deathbed, “how these things astonished a poor, timid scholar such as I am and always have been.”

Many years later, Calvin was faced with another life-threatening controversy. T. H. L. Parker, an eminent Calvin scholar, describes the chaotic scene that took place in 1547 in the chambers of the Council of the Two Hundred, which almost cost Calvin his life. The conflict came about when two prominent men in Geneva, Ami Perrin and Laurent Maigret, were suspected of treason. Both were arrested and imprisoned, and the town divided when Perrin (who represented the anti-Calvinists) was released and Maigret (who was a close friend of Calvin) remained in jail. Parker cites a letter that Calvin sent to his colleague Pierre Viret: Fighting broke out, and Calvin, in another street, heard the uproar. “Numerous confused shouts were heard from that quarter,” he wrote to Viret. “These meanwhile increased to such a pitch as to afford a sure sign of insurrection. I immediately ran to the place. Things looked frightful.

I cast myself into the thickest of crowds, to the amazement of almost everyone. But the whole mob made a rush towards me.

They seized me and dragged me hither and thither lest I should suffer some injury! I called God and men to witness that I had come for the purpose of presenting my body to their swords. I exhorted them, if they intended to shed blood, to begin with me.

Even the worthless, but especially the more respectable part of the crowd, at once grew considerably cooler. At last I was dragged through the midst to the Senate. There fresh fights arose, into the midst of which I threw myself. Everyone is of the opinion that a great and disgraceful carnage was prevented from taking place by my interference. My colleagues, meanwhile, were mixed up with the crowd. I succeeded in

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getting everyone to sit down quietly. They say that all were exceedingly moved by a long and vehement speech, suitable to the occasion, that I delivered.”

It has been said that you don’t know the character of a man until you see how he acts in the midst of trouble. Here, then, is a window into the character of John Calvin—an earnest Christian and faithful pastor, ready to lay down his own life for the sake of his flock.

THE NECESSITY OF BEARING THE CROSS he essential point of Calvin’s “bearing the cross” is that ear thly suffering is a necessary part of life.

He states that we “pass our lives under a continual cross,” saying that the Lord uses the many differing afflictions of life—such as “disgrace or poverty, or bereavement, or disease, or other calamities”—to beat back our tendency to repose ultimate confidence in our own flesh. Far from being a negligent God who carelessly allows his children to continue in immature ignorance, Calvin reminds us that God is a wise Father who uses the many adversities of life to expose our pride and to bring us to a place of humility before him.

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But as for us, there are many reasons why we must pass our lives under a continual cross. First, as we are by nature too inclined to attribute everything to our flesh—unless our feebleness be shown, as it were, to our eyes—we readily esteem our virtue above its due measure. . . . He can best restrain this arrogance when he proves to us by experience not only the great incapacity but also the frailty under which we labor. Therefore, he afflicts us either with disgrace or poverty, or bereavement, or disease, or other calamities. Utterly unequal to bearing these, in so far as they touch us, we soon succumb to them. Thus humbled, we learn to call upon his power, which alone makes

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us stand fast under the weight of afflictions. (Inst. 3:8:2) He goes on to point out that “many good things, interwoven, spring from the cross.” In particular, we learn to trust in the sovereign God who declares, “I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord, who does all of these things” (Isa. 45:7). Calvin reminds us: Now we see how many go od things, interwoven, spring from the cross. For, overturning that good opinion which we falsely entertain concerning our own strength, and unmasking our hypocrisy, which affords us delight, the cross strikes at our perilous confidence in the flesh. It teaches us, thus humbled, to rest upon God alone, with the result that we do not faint or yield. Hope, moreover, follows history in so far as the Lord, by performing what he has promised, establishes his truth for the time to come. Even if these were the only reasons, it plainly appears how much we need the practice of bearing the cross. (Inst. 3:8:3) Several additional benefits arise when God uses “cross-bearing” to bring about changes in the Christian’s life and character. Calvin mentions: “to test their patience and to instruct them to obedience” (Inst. 3:8:4), and when we “go wild…puffed up with honors, we become proud…the Lord himself, according as he sees it expedient, confronts us and subjects and restrains our unrestrained flesh with the remedy of the cross” (Inst. 3:8:5).

This does not mean that all Christians are equally afflicted. We don’t know why some people struggle with anger or others must labor against poverty or discrimination, but we know that no affliction is visited on anyone apart from God’s holy and wise counsel, and that all these “crosses” are ultimately for our benefit. Moreover, past offenses and failures are brought to the surface of our minds when we struggle under current difficulties, which

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FAR FROM BEING A NEGLIGENT GOD WHO CARELESSLY ALLOWS HIS CHILDREN TO CONTINUE IN IMMATURE IGNORANCE, CALVIN REMINDS US THAT GOD IS A WISE FATHER WHO USES THE MANY ADVERSITIES OF LIFE TO EXPOSE OUR PRIDE AND TO BRING US TO A PLACE OF HUMILITY BEFORE HIM.

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impress upon us the depth and gravity of sin and our need to mortify it in our own lives (Inst.

3:8:6). These may be “consequences of sin” that can be directly traced to our wrongs, or the reality of the common curse making itself felt in our lives. Calvin notes that discipline and chastisement are also legitimate components of “bearing the cross”: When we recognize the Father’s rod, is it not our duty to show ourselves obedient and teachable children rather than, in arrogance, to imitate desperate men who have become hardened in their evil deeds? When we have fallen away from him, God destroys us unless by reproof he recalls us. Thus he rightly says that if we are without discipline we are illegitimate children, not sons [Heb. 12:8].

(Inst. 3:8:6) What should our response be when we suffer various afflictions? Calvin contends that when loved ones die, we should “weep the tears that are owed to our nature” and not feel compelled to suppress them stoically.

Thus it will come to pass that, by whatever kind of cross we may be troubled, even in the greatest tribulations of mind, we shall firmly keep our patience. For the adversities themselves will have their own bitterness to gnaw at us; thus afflicted by disease, we shall both groan and be uneasy and pant after health; thus pressed by poverty we shall be pricked by the arrows of care and sorrow; thus we shall be smitten by the pain of disgrace, contempt, injustice; thus at the funerals of our dear ones we shall weep the tears that are owed to our nature. But the conclusion will always be: the Lord so willed, therefore let us follow his will.

Indeed, amid the very pricks of pain, amid groaning and tears, this thought must intervene: to incline our heart to bear cheerfully those things which have so moved it. (Inst. 3:8:10)

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Calvin himself experienced the untimely death of his wife, Idelette de Bure, after only nine years of marriage, as well as the death of his infant son shortly after birth. Calvin’s “bearing the cross” was not confined to intellectual exercise; he fully understood grief, loss, and sorrow.

Lastly, Calvin points out that true “spiritual joy” can actually be experienced in the midst of suffering. Bitterness over our difficult circumstances can and should be replaced with a firm reliance upon the sovereignty of God, a deep abiding contentment that he doesn’t willfully afflict or grieve the children of men, and joy in the knowledge that he will surely wipe every tear from every eye (Eph. 4:31; Heb. 12:15; Rev. 21:4).

Therefore, in patiently suffering these tribulations, we do not yield to necessity but we consent for our own good. These thoughts, I say, bring it to pass that, however much in bearing the cross our minds are constrained by the natural feeling of bitterness, they are as much diffused with spiritual joy. From this, thanksgiving also follows, which cannot exist without joy; but if the praise of the Lord and thanksgiving can forth fly from a cheerful and happy heart—and there is nothing that ought to interrupt this in us—it thus is clear how necessary it is that the bitterness of the cross be tempered with spiritual joy. (Inst. 3:8:11) Many different crosses may have to be endured throughout one’s life, but in all these cases, Calvin argues that the Christian should “count it all joy” (James 1:2–4; 1 Pet. 6–7).

Invaluable lessons can be learned in the midst of suffering, such as increased faith when persecuted for righteousness’ sake, humility as we remember the depth of our need for God, mercy when deprived of a loved one by death, patience in the midst of illness, repentance when dealing with the consequences of sin, and the resolute and steadfast character that comes from withstanding false accusation.

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CONCLUDING REMARKS alvin was mindful that the sufferings of Jesus Christ—who identified with sinners and became sin for us—were infinitely more severe that any human suffering we could ever experience.

However arduous and terrible our own sufferings may be, they have never been nor ever will be as great as the awful suffering that Christ endured on the cross, and it is out of gratitude for that salvation that we ought to patiently endure the trials in our own lives.

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Many different crosses may have to be endured throughout one’s life, but in all these cases, Calvin argues that the Christian should “count it all joy.”

For truly, Christians ought to be a kind of men born to bear slanders and injuries, open to the malice, deceits, and mockeries of wicked men. And not that only, but they ought to bear patiently all these evils.

That is, they should have such complete spiritual composure that, having received one offense, they make ready for another, promising themselves throughout life nothing but the bearing of a perpetual cross. Meanwhile, let them also do good to those who do them harm, and bless those who curse them [Luke 6:28; cf. Matt.

5:44], and (this is their only victory) strive to conquer evil with good [Rom. 12:21].

(Inst. 4:20:20) Here we have an example of a mature and godly Christian man who, having been tempered in the hot fires of adversity, emerges as a stronger and more resolute disciple of Jesus Christ. Let us learn from his example, and with our eyes fixed upon Jesus Christ, let us seek to imitate our Savior and Lord.

REV. MARCUS J. SERVEN (ThM, DMin, Covenant Theo-

logical Seminary) retired from full-time pastoral ministry in 2016 after serving for nearly thirty-seven years in congregations within several Presbyterian denominations.

He is currently a member of the Presbytery of the Midwest (OPC) and resides with his family in Austin, Texas, where he is engaged in further research, teaching, and writing on the leaders and theology of the Protestant Reformation.

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JASON MICHELI

MLC

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Like many white upper-middle-class mainline Protestants, I’ve long taken issue with the concept of divine wrath, believing it to conflict with the God whose most determinative attribute is goodness itself. Whenever I’ve pondered the possibility of God’s anger, I’ve invariably thought about it directed at me—I’m no saint, sure, but I’m no great sinner either. The notion that God’s wrath could be fixed upon me made God seem loathsome—more demiurge than God.

I’ve changed my mind about God’s wrath.

Actually, my friend Brian Stolarz changed my mind. When reflecting upon the category of divine wrath, I no longer think of myself, but rather Alfred Dewayne Brown, Brian’s client.

Brian spent ten years working to free an innocent man, Alfred Dewayne Brown, from death row in Texas. Despite a lack of any forensic evidence, Dewayne had been convicted of killing a policeman in Houston and was sentenced to be executed by the state. Brown’s IQ of 67 (the value designated for mental handi­ cap) was “ginned” up to 70 by the state doctor in order to qualify him for execution. The evidence that could have proved his alibi was

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hidden by prosecutors and only discovered fortuitously years later by Brian. Dewayne was released by the state in the summer of 2017 and now has a civil rights case pending to seek restitution for the injustice done to him.

I’ve worked in a prison as a chaplain and interacted with prisoners in solitary and on death row, so I’ve developed a good BS radar.

Dewayne is unlike the prisoners I’ve met. My immediate reaction from my short time with him was how difficult it was to understand how anyone could believe that he committed the crime of which he was accused. I was also overwhelmed by Dewayne’s expressions of forgiveness for those who had wronged him— crooked cops and lawyers, a prejudiced system, and an indifferent society. “I’ve forgiven all that,” he said.

Here’s the crux of the matter (and I use that word deliberately): Dewayne is allowed to express forgiveness about the crimes done to him. But, as a Christian, I am not so permitted. Neither are you. If we told Dewayne, for example, that he should forgive and forget, then he would be justified in kicking in our sanctimonious teeth.

In The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), Fleming Rutledge points out that we commonly suppose that Christianity is primarily about forgiveness. Jesus, after all, told his disciples they were to forgive seventy times seven (Matt. 18:21, KJV). As he hung dying on the cross, he petitioned for the Father’s forgiveness toward those who crucified him.

Forgiveness is cemented into the prayer he taught his disciples. However, to reduce the message of Christianity to forgiveness is to ignore what Scripture tells us transpired on the cross. The cross is more properly about God working justice.

The most fulsome meaning of righteousness, Rutledge reminds her readers, is justice understood not only as a noun but as an active, reality-making verb. Righteousness often sounds like a vague spiritual attribute, but the original meaning couldn’t be more thisworldly. Justice, don’t forget, is the subject of

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Isaiah’s foreshadowing of the coming Messiah (Isa. 9:6–7; 61). Justice is what Jesus chooses to preach for his first sermon in Nazareth (Luke 4:16–19).

To mute the message of the cross into a platitude about forgiveness is to sever Jesus’ sacrifice from the Old Testament prophets who anticipated and longed for an apocalyptic invasion by Yahweh, and to suggest that his work on the cross was done to accomplish something other than the biblical record indicates. It’s not forgiveness qua forgiveness we see, says Rutledge, but God’s wrath poured out against sin and upon the systems (Paul would say “the powers”) created by sin. On the correspondence between sin as injustice and God’s wrath, Rutledge cites Isaiah’s initial chapter: What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt-offerings…bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me.

I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. …Therefore says the Sovereign, the Lord of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel: Ah, I will pour out my wrath on my enemies, and avenge myself on my foes! I will turn my hand against you.

Christianly speaking, forgiveness is a vapid, meaningless concept apart from justice. The sacrifice of the God-Man on the cross is a sign that something in the world is terribly wrong and must be put right. The sin-bred injustice of the world requires rectification (Rutledge’s preferred translation for righteousness). Only God can right what’s wrong, and the cross is how he has done it. God pours out himself into Jesus, and then on the cross, God pours out his wrath against Jesus and on the sin that nailed him there.

Summarizing the prophets’ words of divine wrath in light of the cross, Rutledge writes:

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C H R I S T I A N I T Y

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BY FLEMING

THE CRUCIFIXION

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e can begin with the oddity of the universally recognized signifier, “the crucifixion.” It will help us to understand the uniqueness of Jesus’ death if we can grasp the idiosyncrasy of this manner of speaking.

There have been many famous deaths in world history; we might think of John F. Kennedy, or Marie Antoinette, or Cleopatra, but we do not refer to “the

assassination,” “the guillotining,” or “the poisoning.”

Such references would be incomprehensible.

The use of the term “the crucifixion” for the execution of Jesus shows that it still retains a privileged status. When we speak of “the crucifixion,” even in this secular age, many people will know what is meant. There is something in the strange death of the man identified as Son of

“Because justice is such a central part of God’s nature, he has declared enmity against every form of injustice. His wrath will come upon those who have exploited the poor and weak; he will not permit his purpose to be subverted” (110).

Despite the queasiness God’s wrath elicits among mainline and liberal Protestants, how could one think of Alfred Dewayne Brown and not hear the above lines as good news? Brown’s story emphasizes the problem with the popular disavowal of divine anger, which is that what we (in power) find repugnant is a source of hope and empowerment to the oppressed peoples of the world. The wrath of God is not an antiquated belief to be explained away; it is the alwaystimely good news that the outrage we rightly feel over the world’s injustice is “first of all outrage in the heart of God.” Wrath is not a contradiction of God’s goodness but an integral part of it.

Rutledge shows us that the biblical picture of God’s anger is different from the caricature of a petulant, capricious god that is frequently

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RUTLEDGE

God that continues to command special attention.

This death, this execution, above and beyond all others, continues to have universal reverberations.

Of no other death in human history can this be said.

The cross of Jesus stands alone in this regard; it is sui generis. There were many thousands of crucifixions in Roman times, but only the crucifixion of Jesus is remembered as having

any significance at all, let alone world-transforming significance.

EXCERPT TAKEN FROM FLEMING RUTLEDGE, THE CRUCIFIXION: UNDERSTANDING THE DEATH OF JESUS CHRIST (GRAND RAPIDS: EERDMANS, 2015), 3–4.

conjured when divine wrath is considered.

“The wrath of God,” she writes, “is not an emotion that flares up from time to time, as though God had temper tantrums; it is a way of describing his absolute enmity against all wrong and his coming to set matters right.”

Understood rightly, it’s actually the non-angry god who appears morally distasteful, for “a non-indignant God would be an accomplice in injustice, deception, and violence.”

I can’t help but wonder if we prefer that god— the passive accomplice to injustice—because, on some subconscious level, that is what we know ourselves to be: accomplices to injustice. I did no direct wrong to Dewayne Brown, but on most days I’m indifferent to others like him on death row. The inky facts of injustice are all over my newspaper, but I don’t do anything about it. I try not to see color, even as I neglect to see it through the prism of the cross.

I’m not an oppressor, but I am most definitely an accomplice. Odds are, so are you.

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WE’RE IMPLICATED IN THE WORLD’S INJUSTICE, EVEN IF WE LIKE TO THINK OURSELVES GUILTLESS. MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

Perhaps we find the concept of a wrathful God so threatening because we know that the Bible’s ire is pointed at the indifference of the masses every bit as much as it is toward hands-on oppressors. As Rutledge points out: “In the Bible, the idolatry and negligence of groups en masse receive most of the attention, from Amos’ withering depiction of rich suburban housewives (Amos 4.1) to Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem (Luke 13.34) to James’ rebuke of an insensitive local congregation (James 2.2–8)” (122).

As Brett Dennen puts it in his song “Ain’t No Reason,” slavery is stitched into every fiber of our clothes. We’re implicated in the world’s injustice, even if we like to think ourselves guiltless. Rutledge believes this explains why so much of American popular Christianity projects a distorted view of reality (by “distorted,” she means sentimental). Our escapist mentality protects us not just from the unendurable aspects of life, but also from the burden of any responsibility for them.

Such sentimentality, however nostalgic and sweet, has its victims—they have names such as Alfred Dewayne Brown.

Having a friend like Brian and having met someone like Dewayne, I’m convinced we risk something precious when we jettison God’s wrath from our Christianity. We risk losing our own outrage. Actually, it may have been Fleming Rutledge who changed my mind: If, when we see an injustice, our blood does not boil at some point, we have not yet understood the depths of God. It depends on what outrages us. To be outraged on behalf of oneself or one’s own group alone is to be human, but it is not to participate in Christ. To be outraged and to take action on behalf of the voiceless and oppressed, however, is to do the work of God. (132)

JASON MICHELI is executive pastor at Aldersgate United

Methodist Church in Alexandria, Virginia. He blogs at www .tamedcynic.org, hosts the podcast Crackers and Grape Juice, and is the author of Cancer Is Funny: Keeping Faith in Stage-Serious Chemo (Fortress Press, 2016).

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TELL US YOUR STORY. What have White Horse Inn and Modern Reformation meant to you, your family, or your church? Your stories encourage us in our work, and we’d love to hear them.

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BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviews 52

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Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?

Martin Bucer’s Ground and Reason

Conversion

by Michael Lawrence

ESV Reader’s Bible

by Michael R. Licona

by Ottomar Cypris

REVIEWED BY

REVIEWED BY

REVIEWED BY

REVIEWED BY

John J. Bombaro

David W. Hall

Ryan Kron

Charles K. Telfer

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BOOK REVIEWS

Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? What We Can Learn from Ancient Biography

by Michael R. Licona Oxford University Press, 2017 336 pages (hardcover), $35.00 ard on the heels of Larry Hurtado’s outstanding Destroyer of the Gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World comes acclaimed apologist Michael Licona’s most significant publication to date, Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? This singularly important book offers a powerful apologetic to New Testament skeptics, as well as a needed corrective to biblicist paradigms.

The early twentieth centur y saw New Testament scholars repeat the claim that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were their own literary genre—Gospels. What was prevailing scholarly opinion became an entrenched idea, and reading the Gospels in light of the methodologies and conventions of ancient biography became neglected.

Consequently, when numerous discrepancies between the Gospels (particularly the Synoptics, but also John) were scrutinized in the minutia and deemed to be “errors,” the Gospels were alleged to be unreliable in terms of historical content and biographical material—so much so that even the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth became questioned as the Gospels were judged to be little more than confected religious mythology. The impact on Protestantism was especially dramatic and frequently catastrophic as Scripture was downgraded to merely an anthropological artifact.

To counter progressives’ lists of so-called

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Gospel discrepancies, defenders of Holy Scripture have attempted to harmonize what have been, in numerous instances, “unharmonizable” narratives—sometimes by way of implausible proposals, sometimes by way of hermeneutical gymnastics, but always out of an appropriate desire to defend an infallible, inerrant, and inspired divine text.

But such efforts did not keep pace with critical scholarship or, indeed, the dissection of the Gospels by learned detractors such as Bart Ehrman and Gerd Lüdemann. Skeptics pounced on conflicts in the crucifixion and resurrection accounts, while believers strove to navigate these compositional minefields to present an unblemished text. Skeptics remained unconvinced: there were far too many discrepancies between the Gospels to consider them reliable witnesses of history or biography, to say nothing of theological truth, much less the word of God. So while the documentary evidence of the New Testament per se became more certain, reconciling the differences between the Gospels became less so.

Michael Licona takes the conversation in an entirely different direction, not for the first time but certainly to a much broader audience (including nonspecialists) with clarity that even my junior high children appreciated. He opens with two often ignored but obvious facts: first, that moderns have different expectations of what constitutes historiography than when the Evangelists wrote; and second, there was an existing methodology for ancient biographical and historical writing in which the Gospels categorically belong. This means that the Gospels are not a distinct genre, and that should be adjudicated and respected in terms of both the compositional approach to their biographical and historical content

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about Jesus and the events of his life in a way consonant with the existing corpus of ancient biography proximate in time and location to the Gospels.

There are nearly one hundred extant biographies from approximately one hundred fifty years on each side of the time of Jesus. The preliminary exercises in rhetoric (progymnasmata), preserved in seven compositional textbooks from antiquity, specify compositional devices that may be employed for an acceptably reliable account of history or biography. Plutarch’s Lives exemplify these devices, which include transferal of words or deeds from one person to another, displacement of an event to a new location, conflation of two or more events or people into one, the compression of events and time, spotlighting individuals, adaptation by simplification, expansion of narrative details, and paraphrasing. Plutarch utilizes these standard conventions of Greco-Roman biography yielding pericopes that are sometimes impossible to harmonize—not to deceive or pervert the truth, but out of an obligation to the law of biographical relevance; that is, so he may tell the story in a manner most relevant to the main character.

Following the brief introduction, Licona familiarizes his readers with Plutarch and then, in chapter 3, unveils not discrepancies within dozens of parallel pericopes in Plutarch’s Lives, but rather his faithful adherence to the literary conventions of his day. The repetition within this chapter of reading/analyzing/summarizing Plutarch’s parallel pericopes enable the reader to intuitively recognize the aforementioned devices along with Plutarch’s purposes in their employment—to report actual events and spotlight the relevant person at center and their significance.

Chapter 4 signals a transition from Plutarch to nineteen parallel pericopes in the Gospels.

The findings are nothing short of remarkable—all four Evangelists employ the same techniques observed in the compositional

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“The Evangelists, not unlike Plutarch, may therefore be appraised as fine… biographers composing texts according to the legitimate and compelling standards of their day.”

textbooks, very much in the same way as Plutarch, evidencing that they bear unmistakable affinity to Greco-Roman biography with few provisos.

This study asserts that the Gospels can no longer be viewed as a genre unto themselves, but rather that they should be assigned to a genre that legitimately permitted a degree of elasticity in how stories were reported. The Evangelists, not unlike Plutarch, may therefore be appraised as fine—not sloppy or contradictory—biographers composing texts according to the legitimate and compelling standards

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BOOK REVIEWS

of their day. Adapting details on occasion was entirely permissible to communicate the truth more effectively: thus John’s grand assertion that “these things were written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ” (20:31).

With this understanding of Greco-Roman biography, the questions about the Gospels may shift from asking, for example, “Why is Luke’s particular pericope not a copy of Mark’s pericope?” to “Why did Luke bother to change this or that?” It turns out that there may be far more information, more history, and more theology to be unpacked from the parallel accounts than anticipated.

“Greco-Roman biography was a broad and flexible genre” (5). These devices stand in stark contrast to the methodologies of modern historiography and biography developed in the nineteenth century and following. Simply put, ancient biographical conventions provided authors “a license to depart from the degree of precision in reporting that many of us moderns” (5) expect and prefer and so account for the great variations within the Gospels as they report the truth about Jesus Christ to their world. To superimpose exacting modern standards on texts written in an ancient culture and context according to their legitimate conventions brutishly forces a square peg into a round hole.

The impact of Licona’s findings upon the notion of divine inspiration is negligible.

There are no contradictions in the Gospels and no errors in these biblical texts. Rather, under divine inspiration and through the revelation of God in Christ Jesus, the biblical authors did not write with the degree of accuracy and “almost forensic precision we desire and expect today” (201). Instead, the Evangelists employed the legitimate literary conventions that were in existence. Biblical scholars have long recognized this with respect to New Testament epistolary studies, and Licona’s work prompts us to do the same with the Gospels.

With Plutarch writing approximately half of extant ancient biographies, that leaves nearly

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fifty from other authors to be analyzed and compared. Licona therefore opens the door to a host of possible master’s and doctoral dissertations, further exploring and substantiating the comparative conformity of the Evangelists to their counterparts as ancient biographers.

Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? is a worthy consideration for the Christian Book of the Year. As such, this volume is essential, necessary reading for all seminarians, all pastors, and anyone engaged in apologetic endeavors.

JOHN J. BOMBARO is senior pastor at Grace Lutheran Church, San Diego, and coeditor with Dr. Adam Francisco of The Resurrection Fact: Responding to Modern Critics (New Reformation Publications, 2016).

Martin Bucer’s Ground and Reason: A Commentary and Translation

by Ottomar Cypris Good Samaritan Books, 2017 204 pages (paperback), $19.99 or at least a decade, some of us have been chanting like Christopher Walken in the infamous Saturday Night Live skit, “More cowbell!

More cowbell!” Except we have been begging for “More Bucer! More Bucer!”

Particularly, the reading audience needed access to his 1524 Grund und Ursach, one of the more important early treatises in Protestant liturgical reform. Such work continues in its importance, since every Christian should be concerned about pleasing God in weekly worship. At long last, that work is now translated and available.

Although Martin Bucer (1491–1551) left behind few sermons, he was nonetheless a towering force of liturgical reform and ecumenical endeavors (although largely unsuccessful). Building on the shoulders of Wolfgang

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Capito, Huldrych Zwingli, and Johannes Oecolampadius, Bucer turned Strasbourg into a refuge for the inchoate Reformed faith for fifteen years. His seminal reforms in worship are worthy of close attention in the modern age.

In 1971 (as his doctoral disser tation), Ottomar F. Cypris translated, introduced, and commented on Bucer’s classicus locus.

This excellent work was available only from a dissertation databank until late 2016 when Brian Nicholson tracked down the Cypris heirs and received their permission to publish Cypris’s dissertation, which is now available from Good Samaritan Books for the price of a nice lunch.

In late 1524, Bucer’s Grund und Ursach was one of the earliest works calling for liturgical reform. He began by critiquing the innovations of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper and providing a thorough examination of the errors of Romanist sacramentology, including a discussion of baptism, holy days, images, and proper prayers and songs.

Mindful that the entire service needed to have more Scripture and less superstition, Bucer criticized the Mass as being little more than “mummery” (120) or “a damnable heresy” (121).

For all Bucer’s reforms, Cypris notes that it was the “supreme importance” (20) of the word of God that led to alterations in the worship service. By this word, “all innovations are justified and all abuses condemned” (20). “The Word of God,” Bucer writes, “should be the sole guide of all teaching and preaching; and everyone who proffers to prove that his preaching and teaching are from the Word of God should be heard” (80). In one particularly salient section, he advises, “The Holy Scriptures are as clear as day, so that it is not difficult to realize

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when the so-called spiritual crowd teach and do anything contrary to the Scriptures” (81).

Freedom to proclaim the word of God was to be honored in the true church, and the engine for liturgical change would be “diligent and extensive preaching of the Holy Gospel” (120). The centrality of the word led to reevaluations of the place of vestments, the Mass itself, the role of the clergy, the use of hymns, and the relative priority of the Lord’s Supper over Scripture. If the received liturgy’s elements are viewed as a zero-sum game, then it should not surprise us that the diminution of one aspect (the Mass) leads to the elevation of another aspect (the exposition of Scripture). In Privilege the Text (Moody Press, 2013), Abraham Kuruvilla refers to this as, well, “privileging” the text.

While Grund itself does not explicitly call for lectio continua preaching, Bard Thompson and others make it clear that this was the later practice. By 1525 and in the Strasbourg Liturgy t h e r e af t e r, B u ce r c a l l e d for a reversion to what he saw as apostolic preaching, employing lectio continua.

In the process of returning to word-centered worship, some heard the Bible in their native German for the first time (20).

One esp e cially help f ul insight that we can draw from Bucer and his fellow reformers is that the form of the service cannot but affect the content of preaching—a key that should be recovered in our contemporary churches. Bucer realized that the shape of the liturgy shapes the style of exposition, and that as long as the Mass and its related lectionary governed the worship service, there was little room for indepth sequential exposition. However, as soon as the obstacle of the Mass was removed, the place for exposition grew. While evangelicals

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may not be tempted to prioritize the Mass, it is common knowledge that the many other entertaining aspects of worship may squeeze out preaching if it is not privileged. Homiletics and liturgics are thus inextricably related.

The Protestant Reformers sought to prioritize the preaching of the word; hopefully, as the Reformation continues into another five hundred years of always reforming to the word of God, it will filter down to ordinary worship services. Bucer’s work should prove an invaluable aid toward that end.

DAVID W. HALL serves as the pastor of Midway Presbyterian Church in Powder Springs, Georgia.

Conversion: How God Creates a People

by Michael Lawrence Crossway, 2017 144 pages (hardcover), $14.99 s a pastor of a church plant in the Minneapolis metro area, I have found the books in the 9 Marks: Building Healthy Churches series to be helpful in teaching congregations why it is important to “grow in loving the church.” The books in this series are faithful to Scripture, solid in doctrine, readable and applicable, and the authors are sound and winsome. Michael Lawrence’s new book, Conversion: How God Creates a People, is an excellent addition.

Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman define conversion as “someone being brought from spiritual death to spiritual life. From enmity with God to loving the Lord our God. A spiritual resurrection that will eventually

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show itself in a physical resurrection. Wrath to forgiveness. Death to life. Blindness to sight.

Deaf to hearing. Poverty to riches.” Conversion, or regeneration, is the work of God’s Spirit through the gospel to make us “alive together with Christ” (Eph. 2:5). This is entirely the work of God, which he accomplishes because he loves sinners (Eph. 2:4). As Lawrence says, “God doesn’t love us because we love and obey him. In fact, we don’t! God loves us because he loves us (Deut. 7:7–8). He loves us because he’s chosen us and we are his” (38).

The work of God in conversion brings us into a community called the church. The one who is converted is now a part of Christ’s body, which is why we are called to be members of a local church with elders, pastors, and deacons.

Our lives are no longer our own, because we are united with Christ and united with his body.

We belong to each other, not to ourselves. Our distinction from secular society is marked by holy lives and self-sacrificing love as disciples growing in the grace of Christ, sharing the joys, sorrows, and day-to-day realities of life together (62, 83). This is one of the strengths of this book, as Lawrence emphasizes “the difference doctrine makes in the life of the church. From the way we do evangelism, membership, and discipleship. [This is] a book about doctrine and practice. About conversion and the church. Our theology of conversion matters in our churches’ discipleship, gospel counsel, and even church discipline, because the presence of sin remains, and we are the walking wounded.”

The biblical doctrine of conversion means lives are changed now and forever by the Spirit through the gosp el. “Our t he olog y of conversion and the practice that flows from it matter for the world” (128). This is what the biblical doctrine of

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“Our lives are no longer our own, because we are united with Christ and united with his body. We belong to each other, not to ourselves.”

conversion looks like in a church. Near the end of the book, Lawrence writes about an older gentleman who began visiting the church: It was a church full of young people, and so quite naturally he stayed on the edge of the community. But he didn’t go away.

He observed. He listened. He got to know many of us. And the day came when he put his faith in Christ….[I]t turns out he was a psychiatrist and university professor. All of his training had taught him that what he was seeing in that church wasn’t possible: genuine community that crossed natural barriers; real change that wasn’t just therapeutic adjustment; self-sacrificing love for others that was not transactional.

He realized that the only thing that could explain what he was seeing was that God was real and the gospel of Jesus Christ was true. (127) As a Reformed pastor, I disagree with Lawrence’s view of baptism and how this impacts his view of the local church. This is understandable, however, since Lawrence is himself a Baptist minister. Nonetheless, I

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heartily recommend this book to church office bearers, members, and visitors. I believe it to be a great encouragement and blessing to Christ’s flock.

RYAN KRON serves as the pastor of Emmaus Road Reformed

Church (RCUS). He lives in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

ESV Reader’s Bible Crossway, 2014 1,856 pages (hardcover), $29.99 he Bible is a text of unparalleled power—its narrative line is breathtaking, its scope vast. Much of it is drama, and even those sections that are not (e.g., the lengthy poems and letters) were originally intended to be read at a single sitting. So why do many of us stop after a page or two? We don’t read letters that way, let alone short stories or novels.

Crossway suggests that part of our problem is the layout of our modern Bibles—the text is presented in multiple columns like a dictionary and

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dotted with numbers (which designate verses), more numbers (or letters) identifying the existence of cross references, and translation notes or footnotes. Then come the analytical tools: side columns that point us to related passages, alternative translations tucked away in a corner, and scholarly commentary. Our constipated pace may stem partly from the encyclopedia we confront on every page.

Crossway is to be commended for the careful attention invested into their ESV Reader’s Bible. “It looks just like a book,” was my twentysomething son’s first comment when he opened it. No footnotes, no section headings, no numbers—just the beautifully presented text itself.

This edition gives you access to an experience closer to that of the original readers.

Most of us affirm media theorist Marshall McLuhan’s insight that the medium is the message, but have we considered the format in which the Bible comes to us? The history of the book is an increasingly popular academic topic with many ramifications, but you don’t need to be a scholar or an aesthetically minded hipster to realize that presentation matters. What does the formatting and even the craftsmanship of the book say about the contents?

While Crossway is not the only publisher seeking to produce a more attractive, more readable edition, they have achieved their singular goal of developing a book for “extended Bible reading that focuses on the overarching narrative.” The ESV Reader’s Bible is available in various formats for various budgets: you can purchase a singlevolume edition in hardcover for under $20 at ChristianBook.com. Their video presentation for the six-volume set (due out in September 2018, with special paper from Sweden) is an

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invitation to covet, especially the top-grain Italian leather edition with its gorgeous Amish handcrafted walnut case—though its sticker price of $499.99 (or in slipcase through ChristianBook.com for around $120 hardcover or $50 for softcover, both of which are available now) may mean you may need to wait for your tax refund check.

The verses on each page are noted at the top, and there are chapter numbers in the margin, but you will probably not want to carry the ESV Reader’s Bible with you to church. Pastors and teachers will find it difficult to cite verses. The only back materials are four nicely done maps, and readers lack the tools for the close analysis of words and of references. This edition is not meant to compete with BibleWorks software.

It has the visual appeal of a nicely bound novel and is intended for a more fluid reading experience. Due in part to the quality of the ESV, and certainly because of the power of the apostle, Paul’s letters came alive to me in a fresh way with this edition. It is always stimulating to read Scripture in a new translation or a different language (especially in Hebrew or Greek, if you can swing it), but to read Scripture in another format can also add to the impact.

The ESV Reader’s Bible will sweep you up into the romance of God’s redemption. As you take up these words that have the potential to become your heart’s joyful delight (Jer. 15:16), you will read with less distraction, with more leisure, and in larger portions. You will find yourself listening to a story, losing yourself in a letter, and in short, reading a book.

CHARLES K. TELFER is professor of biblical languages at

Westminster Seminary California in Escondido.

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Song of Redemption: One Truth in Many Atonement Theories

by Eric Landry

t the heart of the Christian story are the life, death, and resurrection of the Son of God. The significance of Christ’s atonement for sins (the very basis of his name and his mission) is what makes Christianity truly Christian: a religion with Christ at its redemptive center. The way that evangelical Christians have spoken of the atonement has usually centered on Christ’s sacrifice for us, a substitution to satisfy the demands of divine justice, thus making his death a penal substitution. The overwhelming testimony of Scripture—from the promise of a redeemer for Adam and Eve, through the Jewish sacrifices, the prophetic hopes of a Messiah, the birth narratives of Jesus, and the Epistles to the earliest churches—has affirmed that through the death

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of Christ, God’s people are put into right relationship with God, sin is forgiven, and new spiritual life is born.

It is becoming increasingly popular, however, for evangelical Christians to wonder if more should be said about the atonement than the traditional formulation of “penal substitution.” Are there other biblical motifs of the atonement that can be considered together to fill out the song of redemption? Are there notes missing from the language evangelicals have used in the past for articulating and understanding the atonement?

Generally, Reformation-oriented churches are known for their emphasis on the penal substitutionary character of Christ’s death. This means that God’s justice requires eternal suffering for sin, but because of God’s love and compassion,

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the Son took humankind’s place, suffered in their stead, and secured eternal redemption of their sins. According to this view, both the life and death of Christ have redemptive significance, since the Son stands as humanity’s federal representative and must provide positive righteousness as well as atone for unrighteousness. The end result, then, of Christ’s life and death is not merely a right judicial standing before God but also a relationship with God as adopted sons and joint heirs with Christ. In light of his work of redemption, we are called to emulate Christ by taking up our own crosses, choosing to suffer for what is good, and participating in the work of reconciliation that God is accomplishing through Christ.

The Reformation leaned upon Anselm’s explanation of the death of Christ in his famous work Cur Deus Homo, “Why the God Man?” (late eleventh century). Using Anselm’s insights, the theologians of both the Lutheran and Reformed branches of the Reformation developed the ideas that led to the way we speak about vicarious atonement today. But their appeal to Anselm has led some to equate the Reformation’s doctrine of the atonement with Anselm’s satisfaction theory.

This idea states that sin robbed God of the honor that was due to him as Creator and King. This insult to God’s honor introduced disorder in the universe, affecting even the nonhuman creation, causing it to “groan” while eagerly awaiting the day of redemption (Rom. 8:19). Jesus’ death satisfies God’s honor and restores the created order.

Certainly, there are ideas here worth preserving: sin is an insult, humanity’s rebellion did introduce chaos into the world order, and Jesus’ death and resurrection is the hinge upon which the “world to come” breaks in on the world that now is. But to agree with these aspects of the theory does not mean that we embrace the underlying idea that sin is chiefly a debt to God’s honor or that Jesus’ sacrifice merely placates God’s honor without reference to the guilt and pollution of sin or the wrath of God. At roughly the same time that Anselm was formulating his theory, his contemporary Abelard

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“We are called to emulate Christ by taking up our own crosses, choosing to suffer for what is good, and participate in the work of reconciliation that God is accomplishing through Christ. ”

(early twelfth century) was thinking in a different direction. Abelard’s theory became known as the moral influence theory of the atonement.

This theory has come to mean that the death of Christ on the cross is a demonstration of God’s great love for us and his hatred of sin. Sacrificing Jesus for our sin does not actually accomplish redemption but is used by God to move humans to repentance.

Closely related to the moral influence theory is the example theory put forth by Socinus (late sixteenth century), which maintains that Jesus’ death did not atone for sin but rather was an example of true obedience to God (which is the way of salvation) and now inspires his followers to lead a similar life.

In an attempt to provide a “third way” between the Reformation’s view of the atonement and Socinus’s example theory, a Dutch theologian named Grotius (early seventeenth century) advocated the governmental theory of the atonement. This theory states that through the death of Christ, God revealed to his creatures the nature of his law and his wrath toward sin; Jesus served as an example of sin’s consequences. Advocates of this theory maintain that Jesus did not suffer the exact penalty for sin but that God adjusted the law’s requirements and accepted Jesus’ sacrifice

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“Each biblical atonement theory conveys part of Christ’s complex mission on earth.”

as a token payment, thus ensuring that he maintained his moral rule over the universe.

Recently, some evangelicals have been looking east to find alternative theories of the atonement. Many of the theories that are influenced

by Eastern Orthodox theology can be summed up under the general heading of an incarnational theory. The chief element these theories seek to uphold is the idea that Jesus’ death is the culmination of a life lived in identity with the creature and that the cross was his experience of alienation from God that sin introduced in human life. By faith, humans are united to Christ and participate in the full life of God (the Greek Orthodox idea of theosis). Again, there is much to commend this idea: Jesus did, indeed, live our life for us; he was the last Adam, our federal head. And, as we are united to Christ, we do share in the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). But more than just an existential identification with us (sharing our pain and trouble), Jesus as the God-Man enters into our lives to redeem us from our sin and rebellion. We must not lose the idea of guilt incurred by our sin; for we are not only victims, we are also victimizers.

So, where do we go from here? Are the Christians who support an incarnational theory to be driven out of the camp? How do we weave all of these various motifs together? Better yet, should we? Mark Dever, frequent MR contributor and pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in

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Washington, D.C., reflects on this question in an essay for Christianity Today: While a victor may have moral influence on those for whom he conquered, may he not also be a substitute? While Christ’s example of self-giving love may also defeat our enemies, may he not, by the same act, propitiate God’s wrath? Each of the theories conveys biblical truth about the atoning work of Christ. I don’t doubt that we have more to learn from Christ’s death than simply the fact that he died as a substitute for us, bearing our grief and carrying our sorrows (Isa. 53:4). Peter, for instance, teaches that we should follow Christ’s example of suffering for that which is good (1 Pet. 3). Any biblical understanding of the Atonement must take into account our having been united to Christ by faith, adopted and regenerated in him. As those who belong to him, as his temple and his body, we expect the fruit of his Spirit to be evident in us. Because of the Atonement, we expect a new quality to our lives (Rom. 6; 2 Cor. 5; Gal. 5; 2 Pet. 1). The Atonement is not merely moral influence, but it surely results in moral improvement.

Rather than pitting these theories against one another, couldn’t they be evaluated together? A Christ who wins victory over the powers of evil, whose death changes us, and whose death propitiates God is not only conceivable, he seems to be the Bible’s composite presentation.

Of course, Dever is right—each biblical atonement theory conveys part of Christ’s complex mission on earth. A complete understanding of Christ’s redeeming work is represented more accurately by viewing the different theories as harmonizing parts of the same song, rather than as solo melodies.

ERIC LANDRY is executive editor of Modern Reformation

and serves as senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas.

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“What’s Your Sign?”

by Eric Landry

or the last several months, members of my church have invited our neighbors to a monthly community meal we host. It has been a great opportunity to get to know people in our neighborhood, but recently a few people were met with a question that seemed right out of a 1970s romantic comedy: “What’s your sign?” Even though this sounds like a clichéd pick-up line, it is actually an important question our virtue-signaling age is asking. Drive around the streets of our neighborhood (probably yours, too), and you will see yard signs that advocate for immigrants, gay rights, resistance against the president, and a host of other social issues. One of the most prevalent nearest to the church is the “We Believe” sign: “In this house, we believe: black lives matter, women’s rights are human rights, no human is illegal, science is real, love is love, kindness is everything.”

As Christians, we have a sign: the cross. Why do we use this sign to symbolize our faith? We had many images from which to choose: a dove, a manger, an empty tomb, fish, or loaves. In The Cross of Christ, John Stott explains that Christians wanted to “commemorate as central to their understanding of Jesus neither his birth nor his youth, neither his teaching nor his service, neither his resurrection nor his reign, nor his gift of the Spirit, but his death, his crucifixion.”

As our neighbors and friends declare their beliefs, they in turn want to know what we

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believe. Sadly, much of American Christianity is known for something other than the cross.

Too often, we are known for our flirtations with worldly power, prestige, and wealth. The cross, on the other hand, represents death, sacrifice, weakness, and humility. Again, John Stott: God could quite justly have abandoned us to our fate. He could have left us alone to reap the fruit of our wrongdoing and to perish in our sins. It is what we deserved. But he did not. Because he loved us, he came after us in Christ. He pursued us even to the desolate anguish of the cross, where he bore our sins, guilt, judgement and death. It takes a hard and stony heart to remain unmoved by love like that.

Our neighbors’ yard signs tell a story of inclusion and community, but they stop short of the sacrifice that is necessary for true inclusion and community to take root. It is only as cosmic rebels and exiles from Eden are brought close to God through the death of Jesus that true peace, love, hope, justice, and life can be found.

What’s your sign? May we meet this cultural moment with the oldest sign we possess and placard the cross of Christ before our watching world, assuring them of God’s work on their behalf.

ERIC LANDRY is executive editor of Modern Reformation

and serves as senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas.

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