Atonement debate heats up

I was interested to read Peter Kirk's comment about Steve Chalke's marathon running:

Rev Steve Chalke has reclaimed the world record for the most money raised by running in a marathon, nearly £2 million (or US $4 million)...
Yes, this is the same Steve Chalke who is still being vilified by many Christians for calling a distorted view of the atonement “cosmic child abuse”. The money he raised shows how many people still support him and his ministries. Chalke completed the London marathon in less than four hours, but his atonement marathon has been running for nearly four years, and still looks set to run and run.

Those who love our Lord Jesus Christ and love the bible's message about him dying in our place are understandable upset when this teaching is misrepresented and even ridiculed. Sometimes our own efforts to articulate this teaching have been the cause of its being maligned, because at times evangelicals have used silly illustrations in support of it (as the authors of Pierced for our Transgressions have pointed out at the conclusion of their book).

It is terrific to see Mr Chalke's enthusiasm and success in raising money for his work with the poor and disadvantaged. He is not being called to account for this.

But from what Steve himself has said, he is not arguing against a caricature of the atonement, but against penal substitutionary atonement itself. It seems to me that the bible has more than one image of the atonement, but that the model of Christ dying and taking the punishment for our sins is definitely a key one.


Talk of God as a divine psychopath (Jeffrey John) or a cosmic child-abuser (Steve Chalke) reveals uneasiness over the bible's teaching about the holiness and wrath of God, and a misunderstanding of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit in perfect harmony and agreement (which later theologians felt constrained to develop into the doctrine of the trinity). I also think that many problems people have with biblical teachings (which penal substitutionary atonement clearly is) can be traced to an unwillingness to accept God's right to be God and to order things in the ways he sees fit.

Pierced for our transgressions

is a well-written book and a skilfully designed website. You can get a good feel for the book from the site, where you can read relevant articles and extracts from the book, download music and talks, and also read news about reactions to the book.

Pierced for our transgressions is a restatement of the bible's message about Jesus' death for our sins. Some people in our world are revolted by the idea of Jesus taking the punishment due to us and are calling it cosmic child abuse. The book's authors deal with objections to this key Christian teaching, and show that it is not a Johnny-come-lately, but has been believed and taught throughout the history of the Christian church.

This may be one of the most important books of the decade. It is comprehensive without being complicated; profound but not pretentious. The authors honestly deal with the issue of Christ's death for us and all that it means.


This is a book for everyone who loves Jesus Christ, and loves the message of his death for us to read and re-read. It is also an excellent starting-point for getting an overview of the main ideas of the Christian message.

Highly recommended.

Genuinely funny and challenging

I enjoy reading the stuff at Tom in the Box news network. Lark news is also very amusing, but sometimes I find it is funny, but not necessarily helpful. [I am still reading it, though with caution.]

The Tom in the Box article about the man who feels called to minister to the extremely wealthy will tickle your funny bone, and I hope make you ponder your own capacity to indulge yourself. It certainly had that effect on me.

And the big bloke who feels called to give up exercise in the light of Paul's words about "bodily exercise profiting little" is also a great story.

Memorising passages

A few of my Christian friends have memorised verses of Scripture, but very few of those I have talked with have worked on passages of Scripture, rather than isolated verses.

It seems to me that the isolated verses do not often mean exactly what we have been told they mean: sometimes they may properly be used to support something more than their original intent, but it could be useful to firstly let them say what they originally said!

For example, as a child I was told that Revelation 3:20, which I learnt in the King James Version as

Behold I stand at the door and knock:
if anyone hears my voice and opens the door,
I will come in to him, and sup with him and he with me.

means that we must ask Jesus into our hearts. In fact that is the way a person becomes a Christian. Because of this, this was the method I used when my mother shared the gospel with me on Christmas Day, 1957.

We were also told that Acts 16:30-31

What must I do to be saved?
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.

tells us that to become a Christian all that is required is a simple belief in Christ.

But the Revelation passage is of course speaking about the Laodicean Christians being urged to invite Christ back into their midst, because at the moment, he's on the outside. And Paul seems to require more than a simple belief from the Philippian gaoler, because he then baptises him and his whole family, who had all come to believe in God.

Maybe some of our misapplications might be avoided if we were to learn passages, rather than a verse here and there. During my attempt to memorise Hebrews, I'm discovering that some verses have quite a different flavour in their original surroundings.

One example of this is Hebrews 4:12, which is part of a discussion about Christians entering into the rest promised to Israel in Joshua and other places in the Old Testament:

There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; 10 for those who enter God's rest also rest from their own work, just as God did from his. 11 Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.

12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. 13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. 16 Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.[TNIV]

It is both fearsome and encouraging, when we read the rest of the passage.

What are you currently memorising? Hebrews may seem overwhelming, but a short psalm such as Psalm 23 or Psalm 1, or a passage such as Romans 8:28-39 is quite approachable to begin with, I think.

Reading quickly and slowly

I'm continuing to enjoy reading the bible through as rapidly as I can, and also at a much slower pace. Since September, 2005, I have read through the whole bible 3 times, using the TNIV, the ESV Reformation Study Bible, and most recently, the Zondervan NIV Archaeological Study Bible.

The study notes do slow you down, but they are also very helpful in both of the books I've mentioned.

My read-through of the 2 study bibles took about 5 months each time, but this time I'm reading the New Living Translation, 2nd edition and am whooshing through and it is really enjoyable so far. I've been musing about why it is going so quickly, and I think it is a combination of:
1. Having the time to read for an hour or so a day, as it is a school holiday period, in which I don't have to go to work.
2. Not using Michael Coley's excellent genre bible reading plan this time, but reading through whole sections, such as reading the first 11 chapters of Genesis, which is like a single unit, reading through Job and not stopping till the end of Job's answers to the first of his friends' comments! Having become somewhat familiar with Hebrews, I read chapters 1 through 6 yesterday, and the rest this morning.
3. It is definitely quicker when you don't use a study bible, valuable as they can be.
4. The NLT invites you to keep going, as it is written in such conversational, contemporary English.

My read-through of the TNIV, NIV and ESV revealed that they are in the same ball-park: the ESV is a little more formal, uses more awkward language at times, but is still within striking distance of the NIV/TNIV, I think. All of these versions use some "functional equivalence" [which used to be called "dynamic equivalence"], thoguh there is a little more in the NIV/TNIV bibles.

But the NLT is really another world. It is quite a bit freer, and is often more interpretive. It is a great bible for helping you to understand the meaning of the bible, but often choices have been taken away from you, due to the translators letting you know not only what the bible says, but also what they think it means. This is a great aid for the reader, but if you are serious about understanding the bible, you will want to use other versions as well, so that you can see there are choices to make in the interptretation of many passages in the bible.

The NLT is so easy to read that my current project may end a month earlier, I think. In the first 4 days, I've been able to knock over 5% of the 1189 chapters.

Reading the bible slowly is also important, and I'm doing this by trying to memorise Hebrews, having been inspired by Ryan Ferguson, who has memorised Ecclesiastes and Hebrews. This project began on 6th December, 2006 and so far I have learnt up to Hebrews 6:11 in the TNIV translation. It is very enjoyable going through what I've been working on currently, and then attempting the whole shebang on my walks to work or around the area where I live. I rarely encounter anybody on my walks, but wonder what people who do pass me by make of this muttering man! It is much easier to rehearse verbally, than silently, I find.

In July I will be preaching at our church for 2 weeks, while our minister takes a break. I'm hoping to use some of what I'm learning in Hebrews in those sermons.

We are greatly blessed to have so many terrific bible versions in English which enable us to get different facets of the eternal truths of God's Word. I'm sorry to see Christians polarised as KJV Only, or ESV Only or contemporary only. Each one of these versions is valauble, though the ones written in the past 50 years are certainly more beneficial than the historic ones for us today.

This weekend I visited my mother and read some of Hebrews to her. Mum has gone to church all of her life until going into an aged care place 3 or 4 years ago. She has read the bible for herself, until no longer able to do so. She always read the KJV, so I read from it to her when I visit. I often read a psalm or part of a gospel. It was a shock reading Hebrews: it is very awkward in the KJV. You would need a week's rehearsal to read it effectively in church to the congregation, I would think.

Reading the Apostolic Fathers

We have begun a group for folk who would like to join in reading through The Apostolic Fathers. I'm very much a beginner, but maybe some other beginners out there would like to join us.

We are commencing with The Didache, and then group members might like to suggest what we read next.

I'm excited by this new venture and hope some folk reading this might like to join us. We will be reading in Greek, but you are very welcome to read in English, if you don't read Greek [yet!]

But I can only read one book!

You would think someone was pretty strange if he claimed to be able to read English, but had only ever read one book. If this sounds silly, is it any sillier than a person who claims to be able to read Greek, but has only ever read bits of the New Testament? And some of these folk, according to J I Packer, are translating the bible for us!

F F Bruce also commented that you can't say you are proficient in Greek if you only read the New Testament [and, I might add, with an analytical lexicon, or program such as BibleWorks, guiding your every step].

So I'm having a crack at reading the Didache, as a way into the Apostolic Fathers. This is a fascinating little book, that may have been written about the time of the last New Testament books, or maybe a little later. You can read the Apostolic Fathers in English from The Christian Classics Ethereal Library, but I'm using Michael Holmes' The Apostolic Fathers: greek texts and english translations.

So far, I can make some sense of it, but occasionally, I wander over to the right-hand page for a translation.

Progress report

This morning I have completed reading through the Old Testament in the Zondervan Archaeological Study Bible. I began this project on 17th October, 2006 which was the day after my birthday, but more importantly, my Aunty Trixie's birthday. Trixie was the first Australian to be sent out as a Leprosy Mission nurse, and served in South India for over 40 years, returning to do more work in her 70s. She died in January, 2006 at the age of 92.

My last chapters were Psalmsc 149 and 150 and the puzzling last 9 chapters of Ezekiel. I find reading through the bible rapidly is very helpful, as it gives an overview of the whole bible. But, passages like Ezekiel 40-48 scream out for a closer look, which I hope to do later.

I now have to read Revelation to be finished the 1189 chapters of the Old and New Testaments.

The Archaeological Study Bible is deservedly the best-selling study bible, I think. Over 250,000 copies were sold in its first year of release, according to The Association for Christian Retail, whose acronym is CBA!

It is a great resource for helping us to understand the background to the bible, and is complemented well by the ESV Reformation Study Bible, which gives important theological information.

I'm also continuing to read the bible slowly, which is enforced by attempting to memorise portions of it. This project, which I began on 6th December, 2006, is slow and I am now half way through Hebrews 6. Every time I go for a walk I attempt to rehearse what I have thought I've memorised so far!

Memorising enables me to meditate on God's Word.At the moment I'm thinking through Hebrews 6:4-6, asking myself why the writer makes such strong threats to those he believes are going to persevere: could it be that the warnings and threats are part of God's means for keeping them on the path?