How does Jesus's death work? In this episode, Randy, Kyle, and Elliot discuss atonement, the theological issue of how Jesus saves humans. It's a deep dive, and a bit nerdy, but we think it's important.
The whiskey featured in this episode is Bulleit Rye.
Content note: this episode contains some mild profanity (in the closing bloopers).
=====
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Cheers!
How does Jesus's death work? In this episode, Randy, Kyle, and Elliot discuss atonement, the theological issue of how Jesus saves humans. It's a deep dive, and a bit nerdy, but we think it's important.
The whiskey featured in this episode is Bulleit Rye.
Content note: this episode contains some mild profanity (in the closing bloopers).
=====
Want to support us?
The best way is to subscribe to our Patreon. Annual memberships are available for a 10% discount.
If you'd rather make a one-time donation, you can contribute through our PayPal.
Other important info:
Cheers!
Welcome to A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar.
Kyle:The podcast where we mix a sometimes weird but always delicious cocktail of theology, philosophy, and spirituality. Welcome, everyone, on this episode of a pastor and a philosopher walk into a bar, we're discussing atonement. That is the question of how it is that Jesus's death and resurrection actually saves humans? How is it that that's the thing that fixes the problem that we have with God. And Randy and I have thought about this, both of us independently for quite a while, and probably have some different views on it. So I look forward to maybe hashing some of that out. And there's a possibility that we might just deflate somebody's faith in this episode. We're not aiming to do that, but it very well may happen. So hang on. And you know, what better to have next to you when you're deflating faith than a good dream of whiskey. So we're kind of a must. It is we're doing things a little bit differently in this episode, our producer...
Elliot:Yeah, it's my night tonight, producer slash bartender.
Randy:I like it.
Kyle:Our producer has selected for us something that we don't know what it is. So Elliot you want to set that up?
Elliot:Yeh this is a blind tasting. So there's no bottle insight. Yeah, all you have is an unmarked glass with some goldish colored liquid in it. And yeah, that'd be fun. If you could tell me if not exactly what you're tasting. Give me some notes that make me think you know what you're talking about at all.
Randy:I love, I love blind taste tests. We've done...
Kyle:They're so fun.
Randy:... blind, blind, cheap beer taste tests, which you'd be interested. It's interesting. What comes out, you know, close to the top. hams. hams is pretty good. By the way. done many whiskey blood tests this this is fun. Here we go.
Kyle:Yeah, and I'm usually, in fact, every time we do it, I'm surprised at what my favorite thing is.
Randy:I really liked the nose. It's not very oaky actually, it's kind of sweet, got honey, but yet not like new makey; it doesn't have that vibe to it. It's very ... vanilla.
Elliot:So my first question is did I get this off the top shelf or the bottom shelf? Like did I go find the $10 bottle...
Randy:From the nose I'm saying definitely middle shelf not bottom.
Kyle:I would say the bottom half of the middle.
Randy:All right. Have you tasted it?
Kyle:Yes. It's very sweet. Tastes a little young to me.
Randy:Okay. Yeah, now that we're...
Elliot:Yep. All the complexity is in the nose, and then none of it on the palate.
Randy:It's a little hot.
Kyle:Yeah, but not so much that I think it's, you know, cask
Randy:Against, again, that, that sweetness doesn't translate strength. to tasting new makey, because that's my least favorite flavor in a whiskey. But it's just not very complex. It tastes young in that it doesn't taste oaked very well to me.
Kyle:Yeah, like not much barrel presence. Have you ever had just uncut, well just moonshine, just uncut, like, corn whiskey?
Randy:Yes, yes.
Kyle:Unaged?
Elliot:Yeah, this has that...
Kyle:It's, yeah, very strong...
Elliot:Yeah.
Kyle:... young, sweet corn flavor that kind of dominates.
Randy:But yet, it's not bad.
Elliot:Any guesses?
Kyle:Whoo...
Randy:How household of a name, like...
Elliot:So I'm actually a little disappointed cuz I really like the bourbon from this brand. This is not that.
Randy:Hmm. Oh, so this isn't bourbon.
Elliot:No.
Kyle:Oh, interesting.
Randy:Interesting. Is it a, it's not a rye? It's a rye.
Elliot:This is a rye.
Randy:Okay, that explains the heat.
Elliot:So you got some of the heat.
Kyle:... the spiciness.
Randy:Okay.
Elliot:Yep.
Randy:I'll go with bullet.
Elliot:Kyle?
Kyle:That's a good, that's a good guess actually.
Elliot:That is a good guess.
Kyle:Yeah.
Elliot:That's the correct guess.
Randy:Yes!
Kyle:Well done Randy, well done.
Elliot:This is Bulleit 95 rye. So, so yeah, I love Bulleit, the bourbon, but I hadn't tried this. I know I like ryes, hadn't tried this before, and...
Randy:This is so funny. So a couple things. One, now that it's a rye, I'm able to like appreciate it a little bit more.
Kyle:Because when you're thinking that it's bourbon, it's not that impressive really.
Randy:Absolutely. And B...
Elliot:This is the crappiest beer I've ever had.
Randy:Right, right. And B, when you guys tasted before me and Kyle, you particular started saying that you didn't like it? It's the bar near the bottom of the, you know, middle shelf. That immediately took my mind to oh, it's not that good. And then I heard it's Bulleit rye, and then I was like, actually like it more than I think I did. You know what I mean? I mean, again, if you would have told me this is rye, I would have, I think I would have approached it differently. But I would say yeah, this is, this is clearly the lower end of what we've had so far.
Kyle:Yeah, for sure, agreed.
Randy:But I still enjoy it. And there's room for it. There's room for all, all whiskeys. Well, not really, not really. I take that back. I retract that statement.
Elliot:Only so, only so much sin can be covered.
Randy:Exactly, exactly.
Elliot:That's your segue.
Randy:Yeah, yeah. Jesus's death did not atone for Old Crow. Well, now that we're fully hydrated, how about we talk about the atonement a little bit huh?
Kyle:Sounds good. So, once you set this up for us, Randy, what? What is it? We're going to be talking about? Why is it important? Why is it an episode on our podcast?
Randy:Yeah. The Atonement is one of many Christian doctrines. And I know it's, you know, trendy to say doctrine is lame. But doctrine is really, really important. If we're Christians, or maybe you're on the outside looking, and maybe you're an atheist. And I would still say doctrine is very important, what we believe about God, what we believe about the world, what we believe about humanity, what we believe about all sorts of things. Matter. It influences the way we see God, it influences the way we see one another, it influences the way we act with one another and act in the world and in, in engage with humanity in the world around us. So I would say doctrine matters an awful lot. And what I've noticed and observed is, people will say they're a certain doctrine or not a certain doctrine. They'll say that, but the way they talk, the way they act is one thing, but the way they talk, that totally doesn't make sense. Actually, I don't know if you've I'm sure you've had this call, because we both are, we're at one time very passionate about being non Calvinistic, and I still am quite passionate about it, right.
Kyle:Yeah. I mean, I used to care more than I do now. But I'm still not, so...
Randy:Exactly, yeah. Love all you Reformed guys and gals out there, but um...
Kyle:Mostly guys, let's be honest. Don't write us.
Randy:Yeah. Many people will say this, for instance, they'll say, No, I'm not a Calvinist at all, I don't believe in predestination. I'm like, Okay, that's great. And then you'll be in conversation with them. And all of a sudden, they'll say, oh, yeah, this happened to us the other day. It was really It really sucked. But you know, God has a purpose in everything. Yeah. And I'll just stop and be like, did you hear yourself? Because you told me a couple weeks ago that you're not a Calvinist, and that you don't believe in predestination. But now you just told me that you did. And you didn't even know it, right? There's millions of times like that. I think the Atonement is one of those. One of those things where if we're not cautious about what we think about it, and what we believe about it, it's actually going to season in spice, the way we think about God and how we look at God and how we look at that. There's all sorts of wrong approaches to God because of our belief in what we think about the atonement, so...
Kyle:Even if we've never thought about the atonement, right, it's such as lenses that you don't realize you're looking through until you look through a different one. and think, oh, wow, my whole view of God and religion was kind of colored by that one position that I've never really even considered.
Randy:Exactly, exactly. So because it's so important, we're excited to talk about it and in, be in conversation with you listeners, and really love to hear from you about what your thoughts about the atonement have been and how that's been constructive or destructive in your faith journey. We'd love to hear from you about how maybe this, maybe this is old news, or maybe this is really the first time you've really considered this. So let's talk. Kyle, can you give us an example of how to think about what the Atonement is? What do we mean when we say the word atonement? Yeah, good in regard not not in British, you know, literature, but in theology?
Kyle:Yeah, well, so the word, this is kind of an interesting word. You might have heard it set up like, you separate out the parts of the word and you have at and then one, and then meant, exactly. The explanation is, it's it's the explanation of how humans and God are at one with each other. And it sounds like something a Sunday school teacher made up when he put it they probably did, probably did. Well, no, that's the interesting thing about it. I mean, it's a translation of an old Latin word. But they chose this English word precisely for that reason that literally, what it means Yeah, it's not like copying, it's just, that's just what it is originally. That's what the word means. Interesting. So this was a very vivid kind of visual word automatically. So maybe a fun way to think about this would be let's imagine the conversation that might happen. If a pastor and a philosopher actually did walk into a bar together, Hey, yo, and start and start thinking about God and theology because this might be one of the very first things that comes up, right. So you're a pastor, right? Let's say we went into a bar. And let's say I was the typical philosopher, which means I'm skeptical of everything. You know, I find out you're a pastor and I say, Well, tell me about that whole Jesus thing. What's that about? What kind of answer might you give?
Randy:Well, I'll be a stereotypical evangelical pastor and say, Well, I mean, you know, Jesus means everything. To me, Jesus is salvation. And you'd probably ask, What if I said, Jesus means salvation?
Kyle:I'd say, what is that? What does that mean?
Randy:Yeah, and I would say, well, humanity has a sin problem, we, in the beginning, sinned and mistrusted God. And when we did that, we broke something we broke relationship with God in therefore we can't be with God anymore. Sin is a barrier from being with God. And that's a that's a problem that humanity is incapable of fixing ourselves. We are powerless against the power, sin and the death and the isolation, in the punishment that is just the coming to us because of our sin. However, Jesus is such a big deal to me, because Jesus saved me, God sent His Son into the world, to die to die on a cross. And when he died on that cross, he actually gave us salvation. There's imagine this, imagine there's, there's two cliffs, you're standing in the Grand Canyon, I'm on one side, God's in the other. The reason that we're on two different sides is because of our sin, we've been separated from God and we can't get across Jesus comes, and he dies on the cross. And it says, if that cross is a bridge over the Grand Canyon, and now we can go and be with God, because Jesus died for us in our place. That's why I believe in Jesus.
Kyle:I bet you got an A in your homiletics class, that was really good. Well done, Pastor.
Randy:Thank you. Thank you.
Kyle:So at this point, the philosopher would say something like the following. Okay, well explain to me in a little more details, so nice story that, you know, the chasm and the cross across Oh, thanks. Thanks, you know, vivid metaphor. But why was that necessary to begin with? Why? Why is it that we need the cross in order to fix this sin problem? Or, for that matter? Why is there a sin problem? If God set up the world intending to love humans and everything? Why did he set it up in such a way that there would be this problem that would then need to be solved by this cross across the chasm thing? And how does that cross work anyhow? So you know, for example, if if I did a wrong thing, and Jesus is stepping in to take the consequences of the wrong thing that I did, and God is, you know, pleased about that? Well, that seems unfair, doesn't it? I mean, that's not how we do things in our normal life. If if I got in trouble for a crime that I committed, and some really kind person came in and said, Hey, Judge, I'm going to take the punishment for that crime. So that person doesn't have to, if the judge said, yeah, that seems fair. We would impeach that judge. That's not fair. That's not how that works. So tell me a story that explains precisely how it is that the cross fixes all these problems in a fair and logical way.
Randy:And instantly, I, as said pastor would get very insecure, very defensive, and offended mostly by the fact that you don't just take it as a given that it makes perfect sense. Yeah. So that whole conversation and just this, this question of how do we get salvation from the cross? Most Christians would say from the cross, I would say from the life death and resurrection of Jesus, how does that work? What happened? what's what? what needed to happen? And what happened in order to affect salvation in life for humanity? Right? Yeah, that's what we're talking about when we talk about the atonement. Yeah, there have been a plethora of theories of atonement throughout church history. And there are several main ones that I think we should mention. So let's just do a quick overview of the main theories of atonement, Kyle.
Kyle:So the moral influence theory basically says that Jesus dies to save humanity, show us how to live and show us what God is like.
Randy:Christus Victor was probably the widest held theory of atonement for the first 1000 years of the church. And that just basically says that Jesus died and rose again, to defeat the powers of sin, death, and Satan.
Kyle:Then there's the ransom theory. This is the idea that God and Satan are in a kind of economic relationship, and that God somehow owes Satan a ransom for the ownership of humans.
Randy:Satisfaction theory then comes along in about the 11th century and says that the problem isn't with Satan. The problem isn't with sin and death. The problem was with our position with God satisfaction theory says that God's justice must be satisfied in order for us to have life. God is just and so therefore, he would be unjust to let us sin and come into His eternal glory. So God's justice must be satisfied Jesus death is the satisfaction of God's justice.
Kyle:And then a later development of the satisfaction theory is a very influential one these days, and in the modern period, and that is penal substitution theory. So it's very similar to satisfaction or sometimes also called substitution theory. But it adds to it, this idea of this metaphor of kind of a courtroom situation, so that God is a judge, and he's a just judge. And we're kind of defendants trying to defend ourselves for our sin. And something about our sin triggers God's wrath, God's wrath must be poured out on sin, and therefore it must be poured out on us. And because we are guilty, and we cannot pay the punishment for our guilt, ourselves, we can't pay that price. God sends Jesus to do it for us. And so God's punishment is poured out His wrath is poured out on Jesus instead of us.
Randy:The scapegoat theory is probably the main nonviolent theory of atonement that just says Jesus is not a sacrifice, but rather a victim of the violence of humanity and of sin. And when he actually willingly participates and becomes that victim, he actually overcomes the whole system. And we get to enjoy life, because Jesus was our scapegoat. It has hints back to the Old Testament, but really is this nonviolent theory of atonement that a lot of philosophers, like you Kyle, tend to prefer.
Kyle:So let's dig into some of these theories, then, the maybe most liberal one, if I can use that word, the one that's probably going to make our conservative listeners the most uncomfortable would be the moral influence theory. Absolutely. Now, sometimes this is also called subjective because the focus is on humans. So there was a guy 20th century theologian who was pretty influential on the atonement question. And he divided up all of the various theories of atonement into three categories. He called them subjective objective, and then classical subjective because they focus on human beings. The whole thing is about how things appear from our perspective. And that's definitely what the moral influence theory focuses on the whole point of Jesus coming and dying. And being resurrected. All of it was to teach us to be good people, to give us an example, maybe or even to influence us in a more material way to become the best kind of human that we can be.
Randy:Yep. And good evangelicals would say, Why did Jesus ever even have to die? If it was just to show us how to live and be good people? That's ridiculous. Why would Jesus have sweat bullets in the Garden of Gethsemane, just to show us a cool way of living. That's not necessary. And that doesn't sound biblical.
Kyle:Yeah. And even worse than that, if you're a kind of traditionalist, conservative Christian, nothing after the death of Jesus is actually necessary for this view. Jesus might not have been resurrected, and he still could have been just as good of a moral influence as if he was or, as a matter of fact, God, God doesn't even need to exist on this view. All we really need is a story about Jesus being a moral example for us.
Randy:A hero story. Yep.
Kyle:It could have just been a nice philosophical tale.
Randy:Yeah and while I don't hold to the moral influence theory, I really think there's beautiful truth in it, were part of the cross the the cross for me and the well, the whole of it, the incarnation, the cross, and the resurrection. It's like a diamond, right? There's, there's an endless amount of facets to it, that you can learn from that you can be inspired by, that you can fall in love with. And that's completely true with the moral influence, a huge part of the cross is showing us what God is like that, that right there in and of itself is bomb dropping material, God actually hangs on a cross is executed by the Empire, God in our world, sits in the electric chair, and lets the man flip the switch. That is cataclysmic earthquake level stuff for me.
Kyle:And one thing we're gonna see as we go through these theories is that there's something beautiful and good and write about all of them. There's definitely something biblical about all of them, but they also have all have a kernel of truth. It's just how they've been received historically, the kinds of metaphors that have been used to promote each one. This particular theory is associated with some people who are excommunicated, who are deemed deemed heretical. And so because of that, it's viewed as pretty liberal.
Randy:So then the Christus Victor theory of atonement, again, is seen as one of those, what Kyle described as classical. It was held through the church for the first 11 centuries really with the ransom theory. But the Christus Victor theory of atonement says that our problem is with sin, death, and Satan, that those three things add up to giving us eternal death and separation from the life that we were created to have. They actually have power over us that we are powerless to address. Only God can do that. And so Jesus in His incarnation comes in lives the perfect life shows Here's what that looks like who God is, but also he lives this perfect life and he, he, in his death, and in his resurrection overcomes the power of the grave overcomes the power of sin. Paul says in Romans six, you are no longer slaves to sin, the Christus Victor theory would say that's because Jesus broke that chain, you're no longer slave to sin. Now you can walk in freedom, and you're no longer enslaved to Satan and death, you no longer have to fear it. This is Colossians two material coming out where it says that Jesus while you were still dead, in your sin came and in died for your sins and conquered the power of hell and the power of death and made a public spectacle of them. That's the Christus Victor theory of atonement, which again, was the, by far the most commonly held theory of atonement for the first millennia of the church.
Kyle:Yeah. And then a kind of twist on that or riff on that that was became popular around the third century with Eastern father named origin is known as the ransom theory. And this would be sort of adding to that whole crisis, Victor's story, this idea that humans are somehow held captive by Satan and the powers. How that happened is open to interpretation and debate. But he's like the ruler of the world. In fact, you see language and Paul and even Jesus himself referring to Satan as the ruler of the world, like he owns us somehow. And then God sends Jesus as a ransom as a payment to Satan, and the powers to redeem humanity. So you have this kind of economic language, in this view.
Randy:And in this view, the ransom theory, it's, there is a reality that that God kind of pulled a fast one on Satan, right? He's like, here, you can have my son here as a ransom. And Satan didn't realize he got fooled because he didn't realize that Jesus actually can't be killed and stay dead. And God got the last laugh when Jesus came back to life. Right? There's that picture in there. When I think of the ransom theory, in the best way possible. It's the Lion, the Witch in the wardrobe. You know, I think what's, which kid in the line the witch in the wardrobe is the one who the White Witch has power over because he said was it. Edmund, Edmund? Edmund, is the witches possession because he did this, that or the other. It's been too long since I've read those books. But Aslan does that slow march. Whenever I read that part, it just gives me the chills out as does that slow march to the stone table. And this in this awful scene, as land is shaved and tortured and shamed, and then finally killed. And then all of a sudden the stone, the stone table splits in half and Aslan is alive. That's the ransom theory.
Kyle:Yeah. And then later, you get this, this interesting explanation that, you know, the White Witch, her knowledge of magic only went back to her beginning. Yep. And she didn't realize there was an older or deeper meter magic yet having to do with sacrifice. So this Yeah, this motif is picked up in a lot of English literature, you see a very similar thing in Harry Potter. Actually, I'm a huge Harry Potter fan. So the idea that the evil contains the seeds of its own destruction, that to be evil is also somehow to be ignorant. So you see, you know, Voldemort, who is this consequently evil character, he doesn't understand what Lewis would call the deep magic about love. And so he thinks it's foolish and silly and weak. And so he just grasped after power, not realizing that the more he grasps after power, he's setting up the tools for his own downfall eventually. So the ransom theory is the idea that God does that to Satan. He sets up a story in which Satan thinks he's winning, only to find out he's destroying himself.
Randy:You know, cheers to C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling. I mean, come on.
Kyle:Fun, funnily enough, Rowling one time in an interview, they were asking her about the Christian themes in Harry Potter and, you know, a lot of people think it's demonic or witchcraft or whatever. Evil. And she's like, yeah, actually, I didn't talk about anything related to Christianity about it for a long time before the seventh book came out, because I didn't want to give away the ending. Like, if you put it in connection with Christianity, you kind of figure out what's gonna happen pretty quickly.
Elliot:If she had just said something, I probably would have been allowed to read them as a kid.
Randy:Absolutely. That still wouldn't make it okay with my parents though. All right. Next, we have the satisfaction theory of atonement. This one is where a big divide a big shift happened in the way we think of the Atonement. Before this, for the first 1000 years of the Church of church history. The problem was with either Satan or Satan, death and sin. That was our problem. And some came along in the 11th or 12th century and came along and said, that's actually not our problem. Our problem was with God. God is The one who we have a problem with and who we have to have that problem fixed, and that is that God is a just God. It says that in the scriptures, that God is a God of justice. God is a God who loves justice. He's just. And God's justice cannot be compromised. God's justice has to be satisfied, and so we can't satisfy God's justice. Therefore, Jesus, God sent Jesus to satisfy God's own justice, and in Jesus death, vicariously, and, and substitutionary, substitutionarily, is that a word? I'm looking at you PhD.
Kyle:Why not?
Randy:All right, substitutionarily, Jesus dies in our place to satisfy the justice of God, and boom, we get in.
Kyle:Yeah, yeah. And sometimes this view is, it's part of a class of theories called up objective. So whereas the moral influence theory was subjective, because it focuses on humans and how things are from our perspective and making us better. This kind of theory is objective, because it's not about humans. It's not about how things look, from our subjective point of view. It's all about God, the need for sin to be fixed, is all about God's justice. And the solution for fixing it is entirely on God, which kind of helps us understand why this point of view is so popular among reformed Christians, Christians who want to place a whole lot of emphasis on God's point of view, and everything happens in order to glorify God. Christians like that tend to also be some version of objective atonement theorists usually correct. Yep. Because what humans do is kind of incidental. It's really, God's gonna do what God's gonna do.
Randy:Yep. And this has its roots in Paul, correct?
Kyle:Yeah. Well, yeah. So you know, to be because we're about to pick on a version of this theory a little bit later. But to be fair to it, I mean, Paul talks this way, sometimes. So he says in Romans, and it's important to point out that it's in Romans, because a lot of people take Romans, a lot of theologians take Romans to be kind of Paul's summary statement of Christianity. I mean, it's probably the most in depth theology that you find in the Bible apps. And in Romans, when when Paul is talking about sin and death, he says, chapter three, God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance, he had left the sins committed before unpunished. He did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith. So a lot of the ideas of this satisfaction view of atonement, are in that passage.
Randy:Yeah, I'll just like turn off my, the thing that screaming in the back of my head to talk about what Paul actually means when he talks about righteousness there, or when he talks about faith, what that wasn't what that wasn't the Greek and what Paul was really trying to get across, as opposed to how we've interpreted it, but I'm going to turn that off. We don't need to go there.
Kyle:Yeah, maybe when we, when we revisit some of the more problematic versions of this theory, we can come back to that if we want. It's worth pointing out here. So because I'm a philosopher, I love Anselm. And this is not my view of the Atonement, I just love in some independently, because he is the creator of the ontological argument for God's existence with one Yeah, which is one of the oldest topics in philosophy, well, at least since the 11th century when he came up with it. And it's fascinating. And I won't go into all the details here. But it's really interesting. So I admire Anselm as a philosopher. And so it's interesting to see how he gets to this view of atonement. It's all logical, he doesn't actually use the Bible, or what he knows about Jesus, to build this theory of atonement. He does it from purely philosophical foundations. So he defines God in a particular way. And then because of the way he defines God, it turns out on his view, that Jesus coming and dying for us was actually necessary. It was logically necessary required, God had to do it this way. And it's really interesting how it gets to that. So he says that, here's his definition of God. He says, God is that then which nothing greater can be conceived? So modern philosophers rephrase that as God is the greatest possible being, okay. Or God is a maximally great being as the greatest possible thing there could be. And if you could think of something greater than that thing would be God. Yeah, just wherever your greatness meter stops, that's what God is. And because of that, because God is the greatest conceivable thing, when I as a human dishonor God, when I sin, and therefore I say, you know, I know better. I'm going to do this thing that you didn't want me to do. I am dishonouring the greatest possible thing. I'm devaluing the source of all value. Literally. And so for an Psalm that means I've done the worst possible thing I can do. I've said to the source of value, I'm going to go my own way. And so I, oh God, now a kind of debt, I need to make this right. I've dishonored the most valuable thing in creation. And yet, I'm a puny little human. And so I can't make it right literally cannot, it's not within my power to repay the kind of wrong that I have done. It's not just a simple little wrong that I've done, it's the worst possible thing I could have done. And so God, God is now in a position where he can go a couple of ways. He can say, I'm gonna leave you in your sin, in your deserve it. And that would be just right, because I've dishonored the most valuable thing that could be. But God also loves me, and is infinitely kind. And so instead of that, he's going to come up with another way for that debt to be repaid. I can't repay it, but a human has to repay it, because a human caused it. But there aren't any other humans that can do it. So what is God left to do? Well, he has to become a human, because only God can repay the debt. And only a human can repay the debt. And so the Incarnation, according to Ensam, is absolutely necessary. It had to happen. So he's got it all worked out. And this really rigorous logical fashion, which, to a philosopher is kind of appealing. At the end of the day I don't buy it, but that's, that's how he went about that.
Randy:I like how you chose to geek out on Anselm's theory of atonement because, philosopher. It's fun. Yeah. So the next one penal, substitutionary, penal substitution theory of atonement. It riffs on Anselm's satisfaction theory. But it's born in the Reformation, right? This is the of the major substance, atonement theories. This is the youngest, it's born in the Reformation with Calvin primarily, but also Luther. And it basically just says, not only do we need a substitute, or not only does God's justice need to be satisfied, but the wrath of God needs to be satisfied. And they would take the wrath of God as being the anger, the, the, the just punishment for sin. This is the one that works in punishment. It's penal. God has to punish somebody, if God is to, if God is good, and sin is sin, God has to punish somebody. So we've got this giant, I'm going to be crass here, we've got this giant whoopin' coming to us because of sin. We've got this eternal, nonstop whoopin' coming to us. And it's this courtroom theory, it's this courtroom picture that we've been given that says, God is the judge, we're on trial, and Jesus is the defense attorney, and Satan is the, is the prosecutor, right? And Satan comes to us, comes to the judge, and he says to God, he's guilty. She's guilty. Look at all that she's done wrong. On this day, she did this, on this day, she did that. You guys have heard this thing, right?
Kyle:Yeah, yeah.
Randy:And the case is closed. It's obviously true. And God the Father just says, well, all right. And as he's about to bring his gavel down, Jesus goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Father, Father, Father, don't do it. How about this? You punish me? You kill me instead of them. Let them go free.
Kyle:Yeah.
Randy:And the Father looks, he thinks, actually, yeah, that'll work. Doosh! Case closed. Jesus dies. We live.
Kyle:We need a gavel sound. Maybe Elliot can put in a, a gavel sound.
Elliot:You askked for reverb last week again, now you want a gavel. I'm gonna give you some coupons for your birthday, and you can use them throughout the year.
Kyle:Sound effects coupons.
Randy:No, you should just, we, now we have a producer, we have a pastor, we have a philosopher, we also need a sound effects guy that could do it like Police Academy style with his mouth, you know what I'm talking about? That's a missing piece, that's a missing piece.
Elliot:Once we've got some Patreon supporters, we'll give you some buttons you can push with sound effects.
Randy:There you go. How about that?
Kyle:Nice, I will abuse that, man. So a kind of a twist, a maybe less angry twist on this kind of substitution view would be the Wesleyan version of it. Sometimes this is called the moral government view, very much the same idea that the whole focus is on God's justice. He is the moral governor of the universe. Yep. He's the source of all goodness, he's he's the he's the metric that by which we determine what's right and wrong. And so he can't just let cent slide. But he's also not mean you know, he's not he maybe he's not necessarily angry. He just has to uphold a really tough standard. So that gives it a slight twist maybe makes it a little bit more palatable for you know, still very evangelical but more on the Wesleyan side of things than the Calvinist side of things.
Randy:Absolutely. When in doubt about the Evangelicals, look to the Wesleyans, look to the Methodists. Their, their theology is usually a little bit better than the run, average run of the mill evangelical.
Kyle:Ooh, he we went there.
Randy:And then finally we have the scapegoat theory of atonement. And this is within this larger umbrella of new theories of atonement, because we haven't liked what we've gotten before. We haven't liked the violence of them. We haven't liked the penal part of them. We haven't liked what it's done to God. We haven't liked all sorts of things about atonement theories, and so recently in the most prominent people who have been advocates, or even kind of where this originated, would be in don't quote me on that, because I'm not positive. But Rene Girard is a is a, you know, flagbearer for the scapegoats theory, a man named James Allison, is big on scapegoat theory. And really, this is the biggest one that falls under the nonviolent theories of atonement, in that being that God would never use violence in order to bring about life. You couldn't do it. That's just that's just incompatible, it doesn't work. And so when we think about this nonviolent theory of theory of atonement, Jesus becomes the victim of our violence. So he, and this is another one of those that's more subjective, there's nothing. It's hard to get the scriptures around it. But Jesus basically is a victim of the Empire, which is us in their violence. And he instead of becoming a sacrifice, he's a victim in in that he opens us up to the, you know, fullness of creation, as if death were not a thing. Yeah, these nonviolent theories of atonement are more and more appealing, I would say, to the younger church, to the more liberal church, to the ones that just say, I can't deal with that idea of God being that angry, being that, you know, cranky, fill in the blank.
Kyle:Yeah, this really appeals to me. So I don't know anything about it. This is, you know, just prepping for this as my first introduction to it. I've not read any of these guys. But you don't know where nature Gerard, I've heard of him, but I've never read in. And I've never read anything about this particular theory of atonement. But already, it seems kind of promising, because I'm a pacifist. And I think I'm a pacifist, because I think Jesus was a pacifist, which means I think God is pacifist. And so in these other views, I mean, they're all very bloody. They're all warfare, like, you know, they're all very much God is battling someone else, maybe even battling us. And somehow, we need to make a blood sacrifice to atone for the sins and whatever. And it just does is hard to square that with the kind of self sacrificial, other focused violence denying teachings and activity of Jesus that you see in the New Testament. So this sounds promising to me.
Randy:Yeah. And I would say nonviolent the scapegoat theory, and then also the just these nonviolent theories of atonement, they would say, scripturally, my guess is they would say, the book of Revelation is, is our scriptural foundation, that the Lamb of God, right, like you look in Revelation for John looks, and he sees, he hears a lion. And then he looks and he sees a lamb. And it's this Lamb of God, who had been slayed before the foundations of the world, who actually is able to open the book of Book of Life and open the seals and read it out loud. And so the idea behind that is that the Empire, the Roman Empire, the most powerful, violent empire in the world, at that moment, it's exactly all of its violence onto God Himself, who takes it as a lamb led to the slaughter. And that's how he wins, the lamb overcomes by the, by his shedding of His own blood by the Empire's violence. And in that act, set takes all that violence and makes it completely useless, which is beautiful. And that is scriptural.
Kyle:It is. It is, yeah, this is making me want to read more about it. There was a, there's an obscure passage of Nietzsche, and I'm gonna butcher it because I don't remember exactly where it is, but he says something like you can, you can measure the power of being by how much violence it can absorb, without having to fight back. And that seems right to me. It seems like God needing to exact vengeance in some way is inconsistent with the character that you see in Jesus, or God requiring that the payment be crucifixion.
Randy:Yep.
Kyle:Something off about that. So I'm liking this framework. The more we talk about it, the more it appeals to me.
Randy:Yeah. And I like how you sound more southern when you you get a little, you know, off the cuff. "There's something off about that. Just something about it." Let's let's hone in a little bit on the one that we really get a little cranky about Kyle, and that's the penal substitution theory of atonement.
Kyle:Yeah. So why is it that we get cranky about this Randy?
Randy:Well, I would agree with you that basically, it's what what this what we said in the beginning about our doctrine matters because what we believe these doctrines that we believe it actually frames up in paints a picture of who our God is is, and with the penal substitutionary theory of atonement. It does a number of things, it creates an angry God whose wrath must be satisfied, right. And I know many of you out there are quoting, quoting scriptures, you're going to email them to us. That's fine. I know them all. But it basically creates this angry God, whose wrath and who's who, whose wrath must be satisfied. And that is inconsistent with the God that Jesus came to show us. Another thing it does is it promotes this dissonance between the Father and the Son. And that's what I grew up in. I don't know about you guys. But when I was growing up, I felt like Jesus was my buddy and I'm scared of the Father. And this theory of atonement really doubles down on that, that the Father has to be satisfied, the father has to punish someone, and he's satisfied but if he's punishes Jesus, he's just got a big weapon in him. And if you can get it out in someone, we're going to be okay, now that's being crass in kind of unfair in some ways to that theory of atonement, but there is that to it, right?
Elliot:Well, to try to, try to represent in a, in the way that I can, knowing this is this is my whole context, this my tradition. And so, you know, to kind of channel that that voice if I were to argue for this, this is it goes back to the holiness of God and it's not that there's this this angry father, but it's a father who can't, can't actually be exposed to sin. And so there's kind of this, this logical maze that has to be navigated as you know, Father, okay, so father can't touch sin. We we are sin only Jesus can take sin. And so therefore, Jesus takes sin and that Okay, so now, Father can be with us, and it all works out. And so it's kind of like this, you know, it's not that that God is inherently violent or anything like that, but in the presence of this, you know, this enemy that kind of twisted twisted things, and then there's this fall that puts us on the side of the enemy. It's like there's this this kind of necessary, like the bloodshed, it's not something that God wanted, but because he's holy, and because there's an enemy there's this this battle that commences or this you know, I got outsmarts the devil and and finally were able to be reunited with a holy God as we're made holy like he is.
Randy:Yep.
Kyle:Yeah.
Randy:Now, let me remind us, thank you for playing devil's advocate of bringing to you know, the, the conversation that prospective Elliot, but we have to remember when we're talking about really any of these atonement theories, particularly penal substitution, we're talking we're drawing from the scriptures were the writers of the scriptures, and primarily the primarily the Apostle Paul is speaking in metaphorical language. We take this as just fact. And real, like, I don't know what the word would be Kyle, but but we take this as just like, this is the truth, when Paul was painting pictures, trying to explain to his audience who are first century Jewish audience primarily in western Gentiles mixed in there, but they've also been given this kind of Jewish upgrade. He's a Jewish man. And he's making he's making he's creating metaphors like a Jewish man would, which is drawing from the Old Testament in the sacrificial system and saying, hey, you know how that lamb would go into the wilderness once a year as a scapegoat. And all the sins would be put on that lamb of of the sins of the community, and then we're okay before God on the day of atonement. That's what happened in Jesus, Paul's painting pictures to try to get his audience to understand. So this is just a metaphor, we need to remember, in particularly a metaphor from 2000 years ago, for people who lived on the other side of the world who had a very different belief system than we do. And we're still using this metaphor today. I understand it's scriptures. But we have to remember, it's Paul painting a picture to try to get this particular people to understand what happened in the cross.
Kyle:Yeah. And what you just described, Elliot is, it's a different take, but it seems to be no less problematic of a take on this view because while we might be getting rid of the violent or abusive kind of problem that's inherent in this theory, we're replacing it with a kind of purity idea that God can't be tainted by sin. And that we are sin, and therefore God must distance himself from us because we're unclean, or something like that. And so we still end up having the same dissonance problem that Randy talked about. It's not a, it's not a problem of God is angry and Jesus isn't, anymore. It's a problem of God is holy and Jesus apparently isn't, or, or is apparently less concerned about that, because he's happy getting down in the muck with us.
Randy:The incarnation kind of does away with that doesn't it?
Kyle:Yeah, I mean, he was rumored to be a drunkard and criminal himself because those are the people that he hung out with. So we still have this problem of why is the Father seemingly so different...
Elliot:Well a lot of us are more liberal than our parents. So it kind of makes sense, right?
Kyle:Well, not, not Jesus. We can't, we can't just say Yeah, well, you know, he just hung out with the wrong crowd for a little while, he's still the second person of the Trinity, I mean, there's, there's literal identity happening here. So you know, the New Testament is fairly clear, what goes for Jesus goes for the Father. So the Father shouldn't have more exacting purity standards than the Son does.
Randy:Yep. So here's another problem that I have with the penal substitution. Theory of atonement. It's that I'm, I'm pretty certain there's no actual forgiveness in the penal substitution theory of atonement. Do you know what I mean? Where...
Kyle:That's a strong, strong claim. Unpack that.
Randy:Okay. God, it seems like, people would say God can't forgive our sins unless he punishes us, which is actually not forgiving. He's, he's punishing, he's actually like, not unable or doesn't want to forgive us our sins. He wants to punish us for them. And he has to actually punish us for them in order to be, for us to be okay.
Kyle:He has to punish somebody right?
Elliot:The lightning bolt has to fly somewhere, like, it's coming. It's just a matter of...
Randy:Right.
Kyle:Who's it gonna hit?
Randy:And so is that actual forgiveness? Forgiveness is you wronged me, but I'm going to choose to not hold that against you. We're okay. We're good, that like, I'm going to forgive you for that offense, and not hold it against you.
Kyle:Now that's, let's be clear, that's not to say there's no consequences...
Randy:Sure.
Kyle:... after forgiveness happens, right? Forgiveness, especially in a Christian context, implies that you expect the good of the other person. So we could talk more about that if you want. But so, it's not as though me forgiving you means you're off the hook and you never have to improve, or anything like that, and we just ignore what happened. That's not the idea of forgiveness. But there is something, I think I see what you're saying, there is something here that seems a little contradictory, like, if I've forgiven you, but then also expect to be able to take vengeance on you in some way, or expect you to pay a price that I set, is that really forgiveness?
Randy:Right. Well, I mean, let's go to the Lord's Prayer. We say forgive us, in the old school way, we say Forgive us our debts. As we you know, it was we forgive others. Is it really forgiveness? If you say, Well, sure, I can forgive you your debt, when you pay the your debt, like when you actually have paid it, then I'll forgive it. That's not forgiveness, actually. And Jesus then comes along, God in the flesh comes along and tells his disciples, hey, I want you to be forgiving people. And they're like, hey, Jesus, what if we forgave seven times? That'd be awesome, wouldn't even be like? How about 77 times seven, which is Jesus way in that culture of saying, an infinite amount of times, I'm asking you to forgive your brother who sins against you. That is strong, that is beautiful. And it seems to me that if we hold to the penal substitution theory of atonement, Jesus is actually expecting us to be more forgiving than God himself. Because Jesus doesn't say, well, here's what forgiveness looks like, make sure they are punished for their sins for what they did against you, and then forgive them an endless amount of times, but every time they have to be punished for their sins, he just says, Forgive them. That's a problem for me.
Kyle:Me too. You've convinced me.
Randy:Here's another problem I have with the penal substitution theory of atonement or with the satisfaction theory of atonement. Is it scriptural to say that the justice of God has to be satisfied? Would you say that?
Kyle:Well, it's scriptural in the sense that Paul says things that seem to imply that. Is it, is it, is it consistent with you know, the whole narrative of Scripture, taken as a whole? That's more complicated. I just want to be careful that, you know, the people that take this view take themselves to be honoring scripture. That's why they take the view.
Randy:Absolutely. But what about were in the Psalms, and Jesus quotes this to the Pharisees? David is saying, David basically has sinned, and God God comes to them and says, I delight in mercy, not sacrifice. What does that saying? Their sacrifice being? The sacrificial system that God gave His people to make them right before God really wasn't doing that? Or was it God, God, give that to them so that they could actually change their hearts? That's what I would say. But David's saying I'm doing all the things in God's saying, Actually, I just desire mercy rather than sacrifice. That's that I think is an example of God's saying. My Justice is secondary to my mercy. Fast forward now to James, the book of James. James says, You desire mercy, or Mercy triumphs over judgment, right. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Mercy triumphs over judgment. Does that not say that the heart of God is Heart of Mercy over judgment, judgment, the heart of God, in the heart of God, the atmosphere of God, grace and mercy triumph over are greater than are held higher than judgment and justice God's is willing to suspend his justice for the sake of having mercy on the ones he loves, I would say that's scriptural.
Kyle:So devil's advocate here.
Randy:Yep.
Kyle:So we could read passages like that as saying that when God has like direct interactions with humans, or, or when humans have direct interactions with each other, we should privilege mercy over judgment. And God gives us an example of doing that in Jesus, because that's what he wants us to do. And you may be add to that, that the reason for that is that humans are not good at judgment, where we're we don't know enough to be good at judgment, we're really frail and weak and limited. And so we end up judging wrongly. But God is perfect. He doesn't have the limitations that we do. And as we already said, He's the moral governor of the universities where the buck stops, he has to ensure that everything turns out to be good. And right. So judgment, is his job. I mean, sure, if you know, if the heaven we all look forward to is going to be a reality, it's going to be the result of God's judgment. So in some sense, His mercy and His exhortations to us to be merciful, has to be consistent with him serving the role as a moral judge. Does that make sense?
Randy:It does, I would just say, a couple caveats. One, again, Far be it from God, to ask us to be something better and more than he is. In other words, just like Jesus saying, forgive an infinite amount of times, when God has to, you know, be the Punisher in order to forgive. There's there's dissonance there. Also, if God is telling us choose mercy over over judgment, but I'm not going to do that for you. That's, that's, that's a problem for me. But also, when we talk about judgment, I think we need to remember we're not when we're talking about judgment, especially in the book of Revelation, but just final judgment. It's not talking purely about punishment, judging things is setting things to right, right, balancing the scales for once and for all, God, setting things to right for all of those who have had injustice and oppression, thrust upon them. That's what we're talking about when we talk about judgment, setting the world to rights. So let's be careful there.
Elliot:So if justice is making everything right, could it not be then that a perfect God? He fulfills His justice by the make the making it right. Even even the the mercy the way he's not asking us to be better than him is by making us perfect in the way that he is perfect. You know, it's so it's through that alignment to Jesus, like all of the shenanigans we just talked about. But but those are the it's, it's the provision of that that, that equals that mercy. And that justice, that justice then is served without us having to perish forever.
Randy:Sure, I can see the mercy in that, but I don't see the justice in it. Because as Kyle said, as the philosopher, the hypothetical philosopher who walked into a bar, the philosopher would listen to that and say, there's no justice in punishing an innocent man for, instead of a guilty person. There's no justice in that. If, if Jesus is gonna say, hey, kill me, and God says, okay, that's fine. You, that works as long as you say that God needs to punish someone, the wrath of God needs to be, you know, satisfied, but that doesn't work if you're saying God is a God of justice and he has to punish, it's not just to punish an innocent person for a guilty person, that's actually injustice.
Kyle:Now, it wouldn't mitigate that problem if we recognize that God and Jesus are the same character in this story. Right? God is taking the punish, it would mitigate it, but not solve it, because God is taking the punishment on himself, but God is still the innocent party in this.
Randy:Correct.
Kyle:Now he's the, you know, governor of the universe, he can do what he wants. And some would go as far as to say that whatever God does is right. I think that's a problematic view. But is it, we still have the question, is it really just, is it really moral, is it really right, for an innocent person to take the punishment of a...
Elliot:I mean isn't this where we get back to the like, this is the greater love has no man than this part, like this is the, no, there's nothing really good about dying for somebody who, who you love for, you know, for your friend, for your family for a good man. Whatever this is, this is that greater love. That it seems like only God can kind of set that standard of love or at least exemplify that standard of love. I wonder if this is related to that.
Randy:I believe all of what you just said. I don't think that, I don't know if that has a whole lot to do with the, the justice of God, though.
Kyle:Well, so it's interesting that if we take that route, yeah, we're no longer focusing on justice. We're focusing on love.
Randy:Right.
Kyle:We're defining the nature of what agape is like, not the nature of justice, which raises a deeper, harder question of, is there a tension between self sacrificial love and doing what's right?
Randy:Correct.
Kyle:Meeting out justice?
Randy:Yeah. And that's where...
Kyle:That's a hard, hard question.
Randy:Yeah. And now, where if we even like to think about what we think about the atonement, I mean, I, I love talking about the atonement. And I love it, because it magnifies the beauty and the love of God to me in incredible ways. I have a lot of problems with any theory of atonement that says that we have to satisfy God's wrath, we have to satisfy God's God's justice. I'm very uncomfortable with that, because I don't see any of that in Christ. And in, if you look at Colossians, two, there's there's many scriptures that contradict that. But what are the theories of atonement that I love, and I would hold more to the Christmas Victor, it's not perfect, I have some moral influence in there. But really, I think the Christmas Victor boils it down for me scripturally, in a much better way that says, We, humanity brought this on ourselves, we have a problem. And it's called sin, death and Satan, were powerless against that enemy, we're powerless against that problem. God isn't though, and God becomes a human being in the Incarnation, to, to live that life that we are powerless to, then gives himself dies, killed, slaughtered by the Empire, and all of the beautiful imagery that comes through with that with the scapegoating theory of the nonviolent theory of atonement, that, that God Himself takes all the violence the Empire could ever throw at him. And he kills it in Romans eight. In Romans eight, it says that God condemned sin in his in Christ, he actually condemned it in himself, all that violence, all that we could throw at God, he took it, and he absorbed it, and he healed it all. And when he rose, again, he gave us that life, that's the theory of atonement that I can buy into that I see in the Scriptures. And that I think makes me fall in love with Jesus and the Father, and the spirit, more and more and more.
Kyle:So I want to make a distinction here between, because we're picking on the penal substitution view, pretty hard, we should distinguish a little bit, I think, between the version of that view that's held by theologians and scholars, and the version of that view that you're likely to encounter at your average evangelical church. So So most of what we've just been discussing, and all the problems we've just laid out, those mostly apply to the version of this theory that you're probably going to encounter in church. Now. Now, sometimes those those problems are endemic to the theory itself, as it's presented by various theologians, but I personally know some, some theologians have some friends, who are reformed theologians who their version of penal substitutionary atonement, would be able to avoid most of these problems so that they could definitely if they wanted to explain, explain the view in such a way that God and Jesus don't end up being different characters, there doesn't need to be that kind of radical break between them. God doesn't actually hate us, he's not out to get us or vengeful or anything like that. But it is important to say that, that kind of view of God, you know, the good theology doesn't always trickle down. So I have lots and lots of friends, and I'm sure you do as well, who grew up in a kind of Reformed faith tradition, and that very much was the view of God that they got maybe because their pastors didn't read the theology carefully enough. Maybe they just read the wrong theologians, who knows. But that is an extremely common for you to encounter in a church itself, whether or not it's it's theologically defensible. So why do you think it is that so many Christians, particularly evangelical Christians, are still so committed to that really problematic version of this theory?
Randy:I mean, I think part of it is that many Christians, particularly evangelical Christians, or their parents, were brought into the camp based on that tract that they were given or that idea they were sold. The whole thing began on this theory of atonement that they didn't even wouldn't even be able to say that. But they were brought into the Christendom based on this picture, and it makes sense to them, and it's everything for them. It's this key that unlocks everything and so if you lose that key and all that goes with it, everything seems to fall apart, right? I mean, that's whether it's evolution or the penal substitutionary theory of atonement. There's a number of things that it seems like this kind of Christian says if one thing if you pull this out, you're a heretic. You don't have the traditional faith.
Kyle:There was a, I wonder if you've heard of this guy, there's a guy named Ray Comfort. Do you know who that is?
Randy:Sure.
Kyle:He, he's a street preacher, evangelist. And he also...
Randy:It's a great name.
Kyle:I know, right--runs an organization that makes tracts to hand out on the street. So if you've ever been involved in doing that, you probably came across some of his tracts. Some of them are really deceptive. Like, they look like $100 bills, and you pick it up and you see a gospel message on the inside. That's, that's Ray Comfort.
Randy:My, one of my kids had that happen, we were walking downtown, and they're like, oh check it out, and I was like oh
Kyle:Oh my gosh, the worst, the worst thing, and I've had, I've I mean, that's what's worth more than the gospel. Right? no! had pastors recommend this to me, is they say you should leave that as a tip. Imagine that. Now the better ones will also say, but also leave real money. But yeah, it's definitely a bait and switch. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For real, they'll say...
Randy:Um, a 20 or 25 percent tip?
Kyle:Tip your waitstaff, please.
Randy:Absolutely.
Kyle:So the reason I bring him up is, if you watch him engage in his kind of street ministry, what he does usually or did, I don't know if he's still doing it, is he'll you'll use the 10 commandments. And he'll ask people, he'll go through the list. And I'll say, Have you ever told a lie? And of course, everybody's told us they'll say yes. And I say, what does that make you? And the right answer is a liar. And I'll say, Have you ever, you know, thought about anybody that you weren't married to sexually? And then, you know, use Jesus to say, well, that's just as bad as doing it. What does that make you? Well, it makes you an adulterer. And I'll go through all this list of things. And then he says, Well, you're clearly a sinner at the end of that, right? And then that sets up the gospel message for him. This is how he does it. He he is judgment. First, you've got to recognize the gravity of your sin first, so that you realize how broken devastated and hopeless you are, so that we can then present the cure. Because if you're not going to care about the cure, in his view, unless you're convinced of the your need for it, and if that's if that's how you come into Christianity, and that is how many, many evangelicals come into Christian Yes. Then the suggestion that maybe the whole sin plus cure equals salvation, that maybe that's not necessarily the best way to read Christianity. Well, that's the whole thing. If you give that up what's left? You know, I've had this conversation with friends before. If I'm not being saved from my sin, then what is it? What is the whole thing? And so there's this, this theological conversation about, well, maybe salvation can make sense as becoming a certain kind of human. Even if we subtract from that, you know, the necessary sin and death component as a way to start the whole thing. Maybe we can still think of salvation as being saved to some kind of higher existence rather than from some kind of sin that automatically damsel. Now, I don't want to necessarily remove sin from the whole story at all. I'm just agreeing with your point here that if if you know if that's how you came into Christianity, then tipping that applecart over is going to be very difficult to recover from.
Randy:Very scary. Very scary. Yeah. And, again, I would just say, the apostle Paul didn't say, the wrath of God compels us, or he didn't. Paul didn't say the anger of God compels us. Paul didn't say the judgment of God compels us. He said, The love of God compels us. He said in Romans five, God demonstrated His love for us, that while we were still sinners are still his enemy. In some translations, Christ died for us. There's dissonance there with the penal substitutionary view of atonement that Jesus, the action of Jesus life, death and resurrection isn't actually to save us from wrath. It's actually to express the love of God towards us.
Kyle: Yeah. John 3:16, right? The thing you're gonna read on one of those tracts, I mean, that's what it's all about. I mean, also says it was for the joy set before Jesus that He endured the cross, not for the satisfaction, not for the appeasement of his anger.
Elliot:Yeah, but there is a, there's some nuance, some tension to be held, because right after Romans five, we're in Romans seven, and it's wretched man that I am who can save me and then and then we move on and there's kind of this you know, it's that judgment and then oh, the answer the salvation that that immediately follows. And, and this is it especially especially in a in a culture where we're where we're all told that we're like, we're okay, we're all doing the right thing. We're all we're worthy of acceptance just as we are. I don't know if this is me speaking or if this is my funny background speaking but there's a there's a comfort level, I need to know that I'm okay. Just how I am. And I think the looking into certain parts of the Scripture we see are actually there's a really deep, fundamental problem with...
Kyle:Well there's a deep problem, the question is, is it really fundamental? The fundamental language is going to be problematic, that, that's what becomes controversial. Is it part of my nature, my essential nature, to be sinful? The view that it is comports really well with the substitutionary atonement view, because on that view, humans are, in that broader theological view, humans are damned by their sin. They are lifeless, dead in sin, literally.
Randy:And I would agree with that, personally, I mean, doesn't sound like you do, Kyle, but I do.
Kyle:I don't think that's the whole story. Because that's difficult to square with Genesis, where humans are essentially good. And have the image of God on them. And they are life.
Elliot:Isn't the fall the entire, like, that's the entire thing, though. It was good, creation fell, everybody, you know that, it's that mark of Adam that's been on all of us until the New Adam comes and you can identify with him instead.
Kyle:So the question then is, how far did we fall? Did we fall to the point of losing the essential goodness, such that it requires another creative act of God to give it? Or did we just kind of mar it, such that we can still be brought back. And this is fundamentally the disagreement between Reformed theology and a more, you could call it Armenian if you want, but a different theological strand that says that didn't, that didn't do away with the human essence, it was a later accretion. It was unfortunate, but it's fixable. And it's, we're not killing a thing, and then creating a brand new thing. We're fixing a thing.
Randy:And I mean, to your Romans seven citation, Elliot, I would just say, Paul isn't talking about his eternal self. There, he's talking about the struggle against his flesh. He's talking about the struggle against his deep innate desire to sin to, you know, when he's going through this, like the stuff, the exact stuff that I don't want to do, I do, wretched man that I am. And when he says that, it's not like, God's wrath is resting upon me. He's frustrated by his own self, by his own sin is not making any pronouncements on him. Like how God sees me. It's just like, this sucks. brokenness, which every human being carries, really sucks. Like, it hurts, it sucks to hurt people, when I don't mean to it, it sucks to, to violate things with my wife, when I don't mean to that sucks. It feels like it's almost inevitable. But then he comes in brings you in, here's the beauty of it. God in Christ condemned sin and sinful man, so that it's over for once and for all. And he did that. And he just said it in Romans five, because he was motivated, it was motivated by his love, not his wrath. I hate myself. When I look at myself, God, that's the miracle actually, God doesn't. God doesn't hate me. Even though I might hate myself in my sin. God sees me in my sin. It's real, it's broken. But he still loves me. And he still made a way for me to be with him. So I would say, yeah, you can have that. But don't, don't put that on God. Don't, don't let, don't put that view of yourself on God, because that is far from God's view of you.
Kyle:Yeah. Part of what we're running into here is the fact that all of these theories have their roots in the same text. They're all represented in the Bible. And our need to make them all consistent is, and this might be a little bit controversial statement here, our, our need to make them consistent might itself be expecting the Bible to be something that it's not. So we need to ask the question, I'm stealing this from Peter Enns, we need to ask the question of what, what right do I have to expect the Bible to live up to what I want it to be? What, what can I really expect from it, given the kind of document that it is? And the fact is, it's written by a lot of different people who sometimes contradict each other, and sometimes contradict themselves. And so we do find these various motifs in there. And some of these motifs seem to be in tension with each other. And part of the reason for that is because the authors of Scripture were sometimes in tension with each other. So I don't want, I think the project of trying to make a consistent atonement theory is a really good and worthwhile project. But what you see a lot of times in these debates between these theologians is they're all trying to show how their theory makes all the texts consistent.
Randy:Yeah.
Kyle:Instead of admitting that the texts aren't consistent. And when, when we pick our favorite theory, that's what we're doing. We're picking the part of the text that seems to best explain how we understand God from an extra-biblical perspective.
Randy:Yeah. And as much as I would like to think that my favorite theory of atonement. Again, shout out Christmas Victor is the best and the only one in the game. The when we talk about the atonement, we're not talking about a portrait, we're talking about a mosaic, we're talking about something that is all encompassing. And the fact again, the diamond has a never ending amount of facets to it. So we can actually enjoy and glean from all of these many really in many ways. And we can actually let the, the rough stuff the in untrue the stuff that paints God in a really ugly way, we can let that fall off and feel really okay with that. And that's, that's good and scriptural. How would you, Kyle, where do you land on this? On these theories of atonement? How do you look at it?
Kyle:Yeah, so I wouldn't, I wouldn't be totally happy with any of these views on their own. I mean, they all have issues that kind of makes me a little bit uncomfortable. The way I've sort of sorted it out in my mind is, we can we can distinguish all of the important aspects of all of these theories. And we can kind of classify them by asking three main questions or these questions help to explain how these theories have been classified. So we can ask these three questions. Who, what? And how? Who would be the question of who are the main characters in this story? And for objective theories? The answer is God. God is the main character, he's who matters. And for Christ as Victor theories, it's also God, but plus Satan, God plus eight, or God plus the powers or something like that. Satan is the main character in the Christ, the classical views. And in the subjective view, the answer is humans, humans are at Center Stage, they're the so you know, asking the who question helps us to sort of understand the classifications of these theories. Similarly, we can ask what meaning what is the problem? What is the main problem for the end, each one gives their own little kind of answer to what the problem is, and most of them have something to do with human sinfulness or human weakness or something like that. And then, most of the meat of the discussion between theologians about atonement is the how question, how do we fix the problem? How is it that the main characters, what do they do to solve the answer to the what question? And that's where most of the conversation that I've encountered about atonement, that's kind of the whole thing? Less common? Is the question, why? And what I mean here is, Why did this have to happen at all? Why did Jesus need to die? Was that necessary? Why did God need to become incarnate? And Sam gives a kind of answer to that, but if you don't accept his first principles, you're not going to accept the rest of it. And most theologians today would not accept his first principles. I'd like personally to see more conversation debate about that question, because it seems to me that, and this pushes me a little bit towards the subjective point of view or the moral influence point of view? It seems to me the answer to that question, if I want to avoid a really problematic view of God's providence, and his control of nature, then the answer to the why question needs to be something like, because humans decided that it for me, and there's some other theological reasons for this? The answer cannot be God planned it that way. God demanded that kind of sacrifice, because I have a hard time worshipping a God who had set things up to play out in that way, intentionally. So the why question for me is really primary. It seems to me that Jesus didn't need to die. The God used this hateful, violent thing that humans did, to save them. And that he did that as a reaction to our violence. And this is why I really liked the scapegoat thing, and really kind of resonates with how I was already thinking about this. So I would maybe gravitate towards the nonviolent points of view, but also kind of the subjective points of view. You know, all the stuff we talked about with substitution. Those are all real problems I have with it. The crisis Victor seems a little too warfare, like for me, seems to give a whole lot of power and authority to Satan. Which I have a hard time with, because I don't really believe in demons anyway. You know, there's all this stuff, all this baggage attached to all those. So at the end of the day, I would kind of gravitate towards the subjective views.
Randy:Got it. I like it. Yep. The fun thing is that we get a lot of conversations in places like this, proverbial bars, to be able to noodle over this stuff for a long, long time. But talking about things like the atonement is good, good fun. And uh...
Kyle:We should say that if we were actually having this conversation in a bar, we'd both probably be a lot more drunk than we are. It's heavy stuff and we've talked about it for quite a while now so, the conversation might have taken a slightly different route.
Randy:I am a pastor still Kyle...
Kyle:Well thanks everyone for following us through what is a pretty geeky topic. We've really taken a deep dive here and we hope that it was valuable to you. We've had a whole lot of fun. So thanks for listening.
Elliot:Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed this conversation. You can find us on social media. Like and share and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. If you're inclined to leave a review, we read through all of those and we love the feedback. Till next time, this has been A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar.
Randy:Well, I hope this prompts some thought and some conversation for you listening community. We'd love to hear from you, love to hear what your, your thoughts are and what, what this is prompting and pricking and, or if this is just old news to you, but we love processing and journeying together with you. So... I didn't say, I was like, I don't want to say like Good night and good luck and Godspeed! I felt like that's, that was like inevitable coming up there. Yep. How do we, should we bring it home like that?
Elliot:Yeah, that was great. Just, just give it one more time, and when, whenever you're done saying what you mean to say, then just stop talking.
Randy:Yeah. Well, I know, I know I love talking about stuff like this with friends. I love talking about stuff like this with friends in bars even, or in kitchens, or in living rooms. But this is fun stuff. Hopefully, we've given you some fodder for some conversation and for some reflection, and if not, there's always the skip button so...
Kyle:Let's maybe not offer that.
Randy:Yeah yeah no...
Elliot:They would have skipped a long time ago.
Randy:I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna land it, it'll be good. Here we go. Well I love conversations like this, particularly about the atonement, but just about things that we can look at the complexity of something and turn it inside out. Hopefully, this prompts some conversation, some thought in you, our listeners. We love thinking with you. We love hearing from you. So let us know what you're thinking, what your what your reflections are, where you land, and where your faith has maybe, your faith journey has changed and, and been dynamic and you're, maybe you're in the course of one of those points now, that's fun stuff, we love hearing about that. ... Shit, man, I don't know, what do I say to land it?
Elliot:You just have to... like, yeah, if you have your last sentence, everything else is gonna be good. What's the last sentence?
Randy:Yeah, what's the last sentence?
Elliot:It might just be thanks for listening.
Randy:All right. Yep. ... Well, thanks for geeking out with us dear listeners. We had a whole lot of fun. I hope you did. We hope you did. And we're excited to geek out with you again. ... Ah [bleep]. ... You do it, you do it.