We are currently studying atonement theories in my Theology II class and it has been a blessing and challenge to reflect on and interact with historic positions on the doctrine of atonement. While reading current Greek scholar Dan Wallace’s blog, I came across a quote of the late Southern Baptist Greek scholar A.T. Roberston regarding the unplumbable depths of Christ’s atoning work. Continue Reading…
Archives For atonement
An influential founder of the Southern Baptist Convention as well as a founding professor of the first Southern Baptist seminary, John Broadus is one of the great Southern Baptists who we stand on the shoulders of today. Broadus, widely respected for his scholarship, was selected by the American Baptist Publication Society and the Sunday School Board (known today as LifeWay) to compose a Baptist catechism.
In 1892, A Catechism of Bible Teaching was published and widely used in Southern Baptist life and beyond. Today, Broadus’ catechism remains a helpful tool for the Christian and also serves as a great historical insight into the beliefs of the founding Southern Baptists. Continue Reading…
In D.A. Carson’s book Exegetical Fallacies, the fallacy of “inadequate analogies” is addressed. When I think of inadequate analogies, two particular analogies come to mind: 1. Norman Geisler’s “kids in the farmer’s pond” found in Chosen But Free, 2. Paige Patterson’s “Pearl Harbor sailor” in Whosoever Will: A Biblical-Theological Critique of Five-Point Calvinism. In both analogies, the authors fail to properly portray fallen man as totally enslaved to sin and in rebellion against God and his Christ. In Geisler’s analogy, man is portrayed as a person drowning in a pond, aware of his plight, and desiring to be delivered from said plight and imminent death. Similarly, in Patterson’s analogy, man is portrayed as a drowning sailor who was blown off his ship by a kamikaze fighter, aware of his plight, and desiring to be delivered out of the water and his current state. These analogies utterly fail to represent the reality of natural man’s fallen condition and relationship with sin. Though Patterson admits, “if analogies are pressed, they all break down” (Whosoever Will, 43), this is not an excuse for an inadequate analogy. To quote Carson: “for an analogy to be worth anything, the elements of continuity must predominate at the point of explanation” (Exegetical Fallacies, 122).To provide an example of an inadequate analogy, Carson turns to Donald M. Lakes’ He Died For All: The Universal Dimensions of the Atonement. Continue Reading…
It may be added, moreover, that Jesus did not invite the confidence of men by minimizing the load which He offered to bear. He did not say: “Trust me to give you acceptance with God, because acceptance with God is not difficult; God does not regard sin so seriously after all.” On the contrary Jesus presented the wrath of God in a more awful way than it was afterwards presented by His disciples; it was Jesus–Jesus whom modern liberals represent as a mild-mannered exponent of an indiscriminating love–it was Jesus who spoke of the outer darkness and the everlasting fire, of the sin that shall not be forgiven either in this world or in that which is to come. There is nothing in Jesus’ teaching about the character of God which in itself can evoke trust. On the contrary the awful presentation can give rise, in the hearts of us sinners, only to despair. Trust arises only when we attend to God’s way of salvation. And that way is found in Jesus. Jesus did not invite the confidence of men by a minimizing presentation of what was necessary in order that sinners might stand faultless before the awful throne of God. On the contrary, he invited confidence by the presentation of His own wondrous Person. Great was the guilt of sin, but Jesus was greater still. God, according to Jesus, was a loving Father; but He was a loving Father, not of the sinful world, but of those whom He Himself had brought into His Kingdom through the Son.
Machen, J. Gresham. Christianity & Liberalism (Kindle Edition).
I found this tract in a translation of Francis Turretin’s On the Atonement of Christ. Puritan great John Owen (1616-1683) gives an apologetic for Limited Atonement in tract form.
