SBG Part 2

I handed the book to the pastor and watched him turn to the first chapter. It begins with a statement that across every stream of Christian faith, the doctrinal ground is shifting beneath our theology of the atonement and the Cross. Long standing assumptions about sin, judgement, wrath and salvation…even the very nature of God…are said to be triggering the sliding and grinding of tectonic plates of understanding.

The pastor shook his head and said “I don’t like the way this book starts. It’s terribly arrogant. Who says the doctrinal ground is shifting? Since when does the Word of God shift?”

~~~

~the following is the highly unprofessional review, ravings and meanderings from the little brown blog~

Stricken by God?
Chapter One
Nonviolent Identification and the Victory of Christ

So they want to have a discussion. Representatives from Anglican, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anabaptist and Evangelical traditions are offering “alternative readings of the atonement.” A debate about the meaning of the atonement as many of us understand it, that is, Christ being a substitution to pay our penalty of sin.

Chapter One goes over the various points of this debate (i.e. it pits the Father against the Son, it paints God as vindictive, untrustworthy and inconsistent, it incites domestic violence, etc.). Then there’s the idea that Christ being our penal substitution ‘creates atheists’. On this point Steve Chalke is quoted because he thinks Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice for us paints a picture of God as a “cosmic child abuser.” Enter Archbishop Lazar Puhalo quote : “A god who demands the child-sacrifice of his own son to satiate his own wrath? That is not Jehovah; that is Molech. God was not punishing Christ on the Cross; he was IN Christ, reconciling the world to Himself.”

Besides Chalke and Puhalo quotes, when reading this chapter, one must wade through various references to and quotes from Catholic saints and mystics and early church fathers, Rene Girard, and Marcus Borg, to name a few. All these are sad attempts to answer the author’s questions, which I was truly surprised to read. That's because the author of this chapter is Brad Jersak, a PASTOR and teacher, who should already know these answers. Yet he says he lays down his weary head after pouring over the rebuttals and arguments about the atonement and is still left with these ‘unanswered’ questions. Here are just a few of those (from pg. 26)…

Does sin separate us from God?
Does punishment of a sinner truly satisfy God’s wrath?
Was it God’s will that we sacrifice Jesus for him? Were we being forgiven by sacrificing Jesus so that we could be forgiven for killing him? (This is dizzying.)
If my sin crucified Jesus, then didn’t my sin pay for my sin?

HUH? I agree, it certainly is dizzying that a pastor would list these as unanswered questions!?! This is where the thought crossed my mind whether or not to toss the book in the trash. But I promised to trudge on…so let's move on to page 29 where we are told how we are set free through the death of Jesus (I am including two of these answers which Jersak says "according to Jesus? I hear three answers from his mouth"):

-by Jesus’ love in that He forgave us for his ‘murder’ (thought to self: HUH?? The Bible says that no man took His life, He lay it down willingly, and it was planned that He would be the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world)
-He sees his death as glory as he is the first seed in a movement that finds eternal life by giving our lives to God’s ‘kingdom-dream’ (and that was my shortened paraphrased version).

These are the answers Jersak hears from Jesus' mouth? Hmmm. By the way, if you listened to Warren Smith being interviewed by Jan Markell last post week (scroll down to November 10, hour 2 here), you will remember that “God’s Dream” is the buzz word used by Robert Schuller and Brian McLaren. It’s quite commonly used in emerging circles where the gospel is being re-written.

Anyways, later on, on page 47 of chapter one, we read:

“A thorough atonement theology ought also to engage with the Catholic mystical theologians…The Roman Catholic theology of the Cross must be given space if we are to find a truly unifying theory of the atonement.”

So…is this saying that the first and second century church could not understand the atonement? That the apostles could not have unity in understanding the atonement? This was just one example where I continually found myself having to concentrate to follow the logic in this chapter. Besides the insistence that the atonement was ‘non-violent’, other concepts kept popping up that were foreign to the precepts one learns in an depth Bible study…like this…

Page 37:
Regarding whether or not God can look at sin or turned his face from Jesus…
“his so-called “God-forsakenness”…when read as a whole…the very clear message (of Psalm 22) is that God did not forsake Jesus; he never turned his face."

Or this:

Page 39:
Regarding the requirement by God of a substitutionary sacrifice:
"God Sacrificed his Son for us:
This statement is completely true or false depending on one’s definition and picture of sacrifice…Many Christians agree that Christ’s sacrifice was to end all sacrifices, but why? Was it because Jesus was the perfect lamb that would finally satisfy God’s need for the shedding of blood? Or was Christ exposing and annulling that very fallacy? (Rene Girard concept)…perhaps Christ’s sacrifice is the first fruits of a whole movement who would take up the Cross and become living sacrifices of co-suffering love for the world."

Ick. That just takes away from the whole gospel now, doesn’t it? That sin separated us from God, that he required sacrifice, and that His Son paid our debt! Why complicate, question and twist the gospel? ~sigh~ I will try to hurry along here and get through this.

Here are a few more things I noted:

(By the way, on page 40 is a footnote that mentions the Appleseed Lodge, in Westbank, B.C., run by the Helms of some Faith Builders School, which made perfect sense as I remembered a post I made called Danger - Avalanche which connected Brad Jersak to Peter and Anne Helms and the whole Extreme Prophetic movement!! So now we have that element as well. What a stew!)

Now back to the book...Jersak says on page 42 that Jesus fulfilled his calling to the point of death at our hands, which would require the shedding of blood because we are violent, not because God is. He also repeats that Christ did not just die in our place as a substitution, but we are called to his Way of co-suffering - union instead of substitution (p.45). After more quotes from early church fathers and various theology books. The chapter concludes with the suggestion that in this book are gathered the voices, past and present, (Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, Anabaptist, Evangelical and Mainline) that all identify with each other in their theology of this nonviolent atonement…. I am still trying to grasp what is meant by that. I think it’s something to do with God forgiving our violent murder of His Son which apparently wasn’t really so necessary but God used it anyways to destroy “the power of violence by refusing to be drawn into it” (as Jersak says in his conclusion). Here he paves the way for the next authors in the books who now unite in inviting the reader into their perspectives of breadth and depth. Remember that. No warnings, no cautions, about the heretical views yet to be read in the following chapters. Just unity, identification, love and forgiveness, all in one big blob of ecumenical essays.

It’s all a bit over my head, and not much fun to read, so perhaps I’ve chopped up the flow of thought in this chapter, but to tell you the truth, I never really found a flow of thought. It was more like a difficult trudge through another gospel trying to explain and rewrite itself. I hope I can get through this review. I almost decided not to do it. So far I may have gotten it all wrong, but not to worry. Perhaps one of them will be along shortly to quote Matthew 18 or correct me on all my misconceptions, extreme lack of knowledge and nasty judgemental attitude. Hopefully, and more realistically, this book review will be read by only a few and ignored by most as this is nothing more than the unprofessional meanderings and ravings of the little brown blog blogger...and Stricken by God? most likely will not hit the top of the best sellers list.

And that's okay, because when the Lord returns (very soon), I want to be easy for Him to spot...I want to be standing in the Light of the Truth of His Word, not carried away by some dark erroneous rewritten fable of men.

DO I HEAR AN AMEN?