I like this. (from the deleted scene)

MS. POMEROY And when the other rabbits hear of Fiver's vision, do they believe him?
(cough)
It could be the death of an entire way of
life, the end of an era.

DONNIE
Why should we care?

MS. POMEROY
Because the rabbits are us, Donnie.

DONNIE
Why should I mourn for a rabbit like it
was a human?

MS. POMEROY
Is the death of one species less tragic
than another?

DONNIE
Of course. A rabbit is not like us. It
has no history books... it has no
knowledge of sorrow or regret. I like
bunnies and all. They're cute... and
they're horny. And if you're cute and
horny... then you're probably happy that
you don't know who you are... or why
you're even alive. But the only thing I've
known rabbits to do is have sex as many
times as possible before they die.
There's no point in crying for a dead
rabbit... who never feared death to begin
with.

GRETCHEN
You're wrong.
(beat)
You're wrong about these rabbits. These
rabbits can talk. They are the product of
the authors imagination. And he cares for
them. So we care for them too. We care
that their home has been destroyed... and
that their lives are in danger. Otherwise
...we've missed the point.

I think Gretchen has the better of the argument.

The Lutherans say

we reject and condemn the following manner
of speaking...that no one has ever been saved without good works; or that it is impossible to be saved without good works.

What say the Reformed?

So I wanted to see what was out on the Internet on the topic of a Christus Victor view of atonement as it had relation to a view of restorative, rather than retributive justice. I came across, appropriately enough this article at Christus Victor Ministries. This article is by one Grey Boyd, who I was dismayed to learn, is some kind of open theist. Oh well, lets bracket that off. I think Boyd is a fairly able defender of a "different" model of atonement. But I find some things a bit odd. The article is all pretty much ok (I have some quibbles, or areas where I think he goes off the rails a bit; but I don't disagree that Christus Victor is an important theme in Jesus' work and life and self-sacrificial death.

Then Boyd discusses "Jesus [sic] Substitutionary Death"

The Christus Victor model affirms that Jesus died as our substitute, bore our sin and guilt, was sacrificed for our forgiveness and was punished by the Father in our place (e.g Isa 53:4-5, 10; Rom 3:23-25; 2 Cor 5:21; Heb 2:17; 9:26; I Jn 2:2). But unlike the common substitutionary view espoused by many today, the Christus Victor view can affirm these important truths while avoiding a number of paradoxes that accompany the common substitutionary view — that is, without supposing that our individual sins, guilt and just punishment were somehow literally transferred onto Jesus and without supposing that Jesus had to literally placate the Father’s wrath.

That sounds fine, if it can work. "punished by the father in our place" but somehow not involving the transfer of just punishment from us to Jesus

In the Christus Victor view, Jesus died as our substitute and bore our sin and guilt by voluntarily experiencing the full force of the rebel kingdom we have all allowed to reign on the earth. To save us, he experienced the full consequences of sin that we otherwise would have experienced. In so doing, he broke open the gates of hell, destroyed the power of sin, erased the law that stood against us, and thereby freed us to receive the Holy Spirit and walk in right relatedness with God.

Ok. In an important sense this is true. Jesus doesn't die in fire that came down from heaven. He dies at the hand of lawless men. A "consequence" of our sin is death [ah, but WHY?] and Jesus experienced it on our behalf.

Along the same lines, in the Christus Victor view, Jesus was afflicted by the Father not in the sense that the Father’s rage burned directly toward his Son, but in the sense that God allowed evil agents to have their way with him for a greater good. This is how God’s wrath was usually expressed toward Israel in the Old Testament (e.g. Jud 2:11-19; Isa 10:5-6). It’s just that with Jesus, the greater good was not to teach Jesus obedience, as it usually was with Israel in the Old Testament. Instead, God the Son bore the Father’s wrath, expressed through the powers, for the greater good of demonstrating God’s righteousness against the powers and sin (Rom 3:25) while defeating the powers and setting humans free from their oppression. (17)

This is where the argument becomes a bit interesting, but also confused. Didn't Boyd say earlier that Jesus was punished by the Father in our place?

Here are some questions I want to sort out:

1. Is it anyone's view that the "Father's rage burned directly"?
a. Is the problem "rage"? (a term that seems to express passionate overcoming emotion?
b. Is the problem "directly"? In orthodoxy I think one could argue that God's wrath expressed towards Jesus is a bit "indirect". Its only at Jesus (who was sinless), because God is directing it at the transferred guilt and sin (which Boyd denied) that Jesus is now judicially responsible for (why? In my view, because he is the representative messiah)


2. It seems like Boyd engages in "slight of hand". What he opposes is direct rage towards the son. What he affirms is "the Father's wrath" and "borne" (directly? or not?) but it's for a purpose. ("the greater good"). This seems to come up in Wright/Chalke's caricature of penal substitution. Perhaps extracted from every other part of the Christian narrative, it takes on the nature of cosmic child abuse, but even if not, nobody says the punishing wrath of God was poured out for no good purpose!

3. The biblical citations are odd. Judges 2:11-19.

They provoked the LORD to anger because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. In his anger against Israel the LORD handed them over to raiders who plundered them. He sold them to their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist. Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the LORD was against them to defeat them, just as he had sworn to them. They were in great distress.

Ok, this apparently isn't God's "rage" (lets just say anger, ok?) burning directly against Israel. Because God has a purposes in it of getting the people to cry out (and in his compassion, saving them, even though they were ingrates and never changed). But when God allows evil agents to have their way with you, this IS God's direct wrath for your sin. Yes, he has a great purpose for it. And if you don't want to turn to him for salvation, he leaves you in it, and it leads to death.

Further, this was a stipulated punishment from God ("as he had sworn to them").

4. What strikes me as very odd now about this is that Boyd is some kind of open theist. If there is one thing compelling about open theism, is it takes as literally and seriously all the language in the bible about God changing his mind and repenting and living a "risky" life. But apparently, God's wrath isn't "real" to Boyd. Its not really wrath or anger since there is a good purpose to it. (as if anyone seriously disagreed?)

So so far, though the Penal Substiutionary model may suffer from criticisms, I'm not very impressed with the attempt to find a different model of justice to account for all the biblical data.

Justin Taylor's blog posted comments from Carson and Gilbert to the topic of differing conceptions of "the plight" that Christianity is the answer to. For Carson and Gilbert, Wright and others have been too influential on young evangelicals to get them to talk about the brokenness of the world and the powers of hatred, but not enough about the Wrath of God as that which we need saving from.

For Carson and Gilbert, it seems to me that they take for granted that their understanding of 'justice' is the only valid operable one. Thus when Wright, et al, speak of God dealing with sinful humanity righteously without sufficiently highlighting the penal substitution of Christ for the wrath justly deserved, they are accused of simplifying or undercutting the honor and justice of God, downplaying his just wrath.

But is the "retributive justice" of God the only, or even most important model of justice? If it were, perhaps Carson and others would be right: God cannot show "justice" by forgiving people with nobody paying a penalty, he has to make someone pay for their crimes. But there are other models of justice, such as "restorative justice", where the issue, instead of being "does everyone receive their desserts" is something like, "does everyone get what they need". I want to explore some kind of alternate approach and 1) see if that's at the root of the disagreement 2) see if any alternative approaches to defining "justice" are helpful/more biblical.

I've been struck in a recent Sunday School class of the importance of the doctrine of Divine Simplicity. Too often its seems "simpler" to assume God is made up of parts, where his 'justice' part has certain desires and needs and his 'mercy' part has other desires. Thomas Boston (IIRC) even puts these two attributes of God in dialogue where the one pleads one thing and the other pleads something else. [citation needed] The orthodox doctrine is that there is no real distinction between the mercy and justice of God. They are attributes of the one God. His justice is merciful, and his mercy is just.

Is there an insoluble paradox? Probably. One big one seems to always be, if God is only forgives our sins because someone else pays the penalty, how is that actually merciful or forgiving? I forgive you the $5 you stole, but I don't take $5 from someone else. I'm just out $5. We think of mercy as the opposite of justice: we release the Locherbie bomber even though no full payment has been done for his crime, because if full restitution WAS made, then it wouldn't be "mercy" to release him, it would be justice.

Is God faithful and just to forgive us our sins only because a penalty has been paid by someone else, or is God just to forgive our sins because we are his charges/creatures/children, and we need his saving help?

It would seem there is room for more reflection. I've been intrigued for a while by this article by J I Packer on penal substitution and atonement, because Packer starts off criticizing the tradition

The almost mesmeric effect of Socinus’ critique on Reformed scholastics in particular was on the whole unhappy. It forced them to develop rational strength in stating and connecting up the various parts of their position, which was good, but it also led them to fight back on the challenger’s own ground, using the Socinian technique of arguing a priori about God as if he were a man — to be precise, a sixteenth- or seventeenth-century monarch, head of both the legislature and the judiciary in his own realm but bound nonetheless to respect existing law and judicial practice at every point. So the God of Calvary came to he presented in a whole series of expositions right down to that of Louis Berkhof (1938) as successfully avoiding all the moral and legal lapses which Socinus claimed to find in the Reformation view. But these demonstrations, however skilfully done (and demonstrators like Francis Turretin and Hodge, to name but two, were very skillful indeed), had builtin weaknesses. Their stance was defensive rather than declaratory, analytical and apologetic rather than doxological and kerygmatic. They made the word of the cross sound more like a conundrum than a confession of faith — more like a puzzle, we might say, than a gospel. What was happening? Just this: that in trying to beat Socinian rationalism at its own game, Reformed theologians were conceding the Socinian assumption that every aspect of God’s work of reconciliation will be exhaustively explicable in terms of a natural theology of divine government, drawn from the world of contemporary legal and political thought. Thus, in their zeal to show themselves rational, they became rationalistic

In the next 2(?) posts I'd like to first examine someone defending a purely "christus victor" view of atonement, and then look more at another critic of Wright.

I liked his sermon 2 Sunday's ago, on Hebrews 11:

"Faith attaches us to the infinte resources of the power of God. In each instance [in Hebrews 11:29-31] there is an obstacle; a call of faith; and divine intervention"

"Faith is something you live. Faith is such a deep belief in the presence and power and grace of God that I will do what he commands even when it doesn't make sense to me. That's faith. And its as you follow God's commands that you the experience the resources of his power. You don't experience that power when you're shrinking back and refusing to do what he's called you to do. You don't experience that power when you take life into you own hands and step outside of the boundaries of his commands.

Think about this, if Israel had panicked, if they waved the white flag and headed back toward Egypt they never would have experienced this moment of awesome redemption.

You attach yourself to that power...are you hearing me? by careful, obedient faith."

Why is a "public option" the only way to "keep insurance companies honest"?

Explain how this works, somebody (there's issues with the numbers quoted, but lets just assume that this is right

Right now, if we paid a family — if a family care physician works with his or her patient to help them lose weight, modify diet, monitors whether they are taking their medications in a timely fashion, they might get reimbursed a pittance.

But if that same diabetic ends up getting their foot amputated, that's $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, immediately, the surgeon is reimbursed. So why not make sure that we are also reimbursing the care that prevents the amputation? Right? That will save us money.

Is Obama saying the problem is we reimburse the surgery a great deal of money, but we don't reimburse the regular care enough, so we end up with people who miss the prevention care, and end up with amputations. (What percent of diabetes patients need amputations, I wonder).

So what's Obama's solution? Pay the prevention care people more? How much more? 20K per patient? Per year? how will that SAVE money exactly?

And what about this "monitors whether they are taking their medications in a timely fashion"

So previously on ER, the doctor would send you home and say "hey, you need to take insulin in a timely manner" and be paid a small amount. So Obama wants the doctor to monitor the insulin shots? And he'll be paid more? So now the patient comes in once a week and gets paid $1000 for his time and he says "did you take your insulin at the right time? You should do that". Again how does that save money?

I think Obama should stop talking about this issue. Get Orszag up there, and I'd probably be more convinced.

Calvin (Institutes 3.20.45) wants us to know that we should not ask God for forgiveness unless we ourselves forgive.

"Wherefore, we are not to ask the forgiveness of our sins from God, unless we forgive the offenses of all who are or have been injurious to us. If we retain any hatred in our minds, if we meditate revenge, and devise the means of hurting; nay, if we do not return to a good understanding with our enemies, perform every kind of friendly office, and endeavour to effect a reconciliation with them, we by this petition beseech God not to grant us forgiveness. For we ask him to do to us as we do to others. This is the same as asking him not to do unless we do also. What, then, do such persons obtain by this petition but a heavier judgment?"

He also says that of course, our forgiving others is not a condition of the forgiveness, but that when we are conscious of having forgiven, the prayer becomes a SIGN to us that ASSURES us that we ourselves are forgiven.

"but by the use of this expression the Lord has been pleased partly to solace the weakness of our faith, using it as a sign to assure us that our sins are as certainly forgiven as we are certainly conscious of having forgiven others, when our mind is completely purged from all envy, hatred, and malice; and partly using as a badge by which he excludes from the number of his children all who, prone to revenge and reluctant to forgive, obstinately keep up their enmity, cherishing against others that indignation which they deprecate from themselves; so that they should not venture to invoke him as a Father. "

Interesting use of "badge" language there from Calvin.

http://www.bible-researcher.com/mccartney1.html

Good stuff

Paul Helm writes

I think we need to pause for a moment or two on this claimed identity between righteousness and covenant faithfulness. It means, for one thing, that there is no other way that God could express his righteousness than by way of covenant faithfulness. Why? Because the one is the other. So in order to be righteous God must establish a covenant and be faithful to it. God cannot do other than he has in fact done. This would be seem to be, shall we say, rather restrictive? Where is God’s freedom in grace? In his wisdom, could he have seen fit not to establish a covenant? If so, would he nonetheless be righteous?

In making a covenant (with Abraham, say) is God acting righteously? Strictly, not according to Bishop Wright. He is only acting righteously in keeping his covenant, in being faithful to it. Weird. For Wright seems to be implying that God’s making a covenant could be an act of whimsy, caprice, sheer arbitrariness, coin-tossing, or whatever, but that everything changes when it comes to keeping the covenant. Can that be right?

I know everybody says this, but I'm not sure Helm is hearing Wright rightly.

God is "not guilty" too, but it would be very odd for us to go around proclaiming the "not guilty" status of God. Because the term "not guilty", while it has a meaning, also has a context as something you say at the end of a trial.

So it seems to be missing the point to argue that Wright can't be right because "couldn't God have been righteous without making a covenant"

Yes and no. He's morally perfect, but what Wright is claiming, as a broad scriptural hermeneutical matter, is whenever the Jews said "God, you sure are righteous" they were saying God kept covenant. And they weren't trying to say more.

That may be wrong, but it needs to be addressed in a different way.

If the Bible kept telling us God was "not guilty" we'd rightly ask what such a peculiar construct meant, and decide that God must be on trial or something.

We too easily say that "righteousness" is nothing other than moral perfection, without noting its contextual character as having to do with delivering justice.

Reed DePace at greenbaggins suggests, after talking to Guy Waters, that the problems of Theonomy and paedocommunion stem from the mistake of interpreting the NT in the light of the OT, instead of the proper way, the other way around.

I'd think we could add to that list:

Sabbatarianism

Lawful NT vows and oaths (note the prooftexts)

Psalm-singing?

Any more?

And getting up here, I say

A while back someone posted a sentence diagram of a complicated Obama sentence.

I'd like to see one for this

And all we’re suggesting — and we’re not going to solve every difficult problem in terms of end-of-life care.

A lot of that is going to have to be, we as a culture and as a society starting to make better decisions within our own families and for ourselves.

But what we can do is make sure that at least some of the waste that exists in the system that’s not making anybody’s mom better, that is loading up on additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care, that at least we can let doctors know and your mom know that, you know what? Maybe this isn’t going to help. Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.

What's interesting to me in the bold sentence is that he was going to do something about the "waste". He was going to have something "sure" about the waste in the system. What happens in the sentence is that "we let doctors (and mom) know" that the surgery isn't right.

But actually, he says the surgery "maybe" not helpful. Does anyone dispute that futile care should not be offered (and are we going to cover still unproven treatments like armoatherapy or homeopathy)? But if evidence-based coverage is only going to handle "maybe" cases, does that put us anywhere better?

I would also think that we're going to need more tests in the short run before the doctors will know what the evidence is going to show.

When can we have "evidence-based" costs controls in education?

Writing against the Free Offer of the Gospel, REFORMED VERITAS writes

The sympathy of the Saviour in Matthew 23:37 is the expression of his humanity which he assumed in order that he might become a High Priest that could be touched with a feeling of our infirmities. To draw inferences as to what his divine nature might be in back of this distinctive feature of his sacred humanity is surely unwarrantable speculation into what has not been revealed.

That might work. It has interesting dimensions for the extent of the atonement. Could Jesus in his human sympathies intend his work on the cross for everyone ("Father, forgive them") while at the same time his divine will does not intend the cross for everyone?

But I wonder why Jesus in only his human sympathies decides to bring all the blood from Abel to Zachariah on Jerusalem. That exceeds his personal affront from Jerursalem's rejection. Since the reference is to all the past prophets YHWH has sent and been rejected, isn't Jesus speaking on behalf of the YHWH who sent the prophets? 'How often' is unlikely to refer to the 3 years of Jesus ministry, rather to the entire history of Jerusalem.

I was amused to hear Sotomayor claim that the "Constitution is a timeless document" since thats 1) unlikely to be her actual view 2) incoherent (was it carved on the scepter of the Emperor-Over-The-Sea?)

But this exchange between Orin Hatch and her was also interesting

HATCH: What's your understanding of the test or standard the Supreme Court has used to determine whether a right should be considered fundamental? I'm not asking a hypothetical here. I'm only asking about what the Supreme Court has said in the past on this question. I recall (inaudible) emphasizing that a right must be deeply rooted in our nation's history and tradition, that it is necessary to an Anglo- American regime of ordered liberty, or that it is an enduring American tradition.

I think I've cited that pretty accurately on what the court has held with regard to what is a fundamental right. Now, those are different formulations from the Supreme Court's decisions, but I think the common thread there is obvious. Now, is that your understanding of how the Supreme Court has evaluated whether a right should be deemed fundamental?

SOTOMAYOR: The Supreme Court's decision with respect to the Second Circuit incorporation -- Second Amendment incorporation doctrine is reliant on old precedent of the court, and I don't mean to use that as precedent that doesn't bind when I call it old. I'm talking about precedent that was passed in the 19th century.

Since that time, there is no question that different cases addressing different amendments of the Constitution have applied a different framework. And whether that framework and the language you quoted are precise or not, I haven't examined that framework in a while to know if that language is precise or not. I'm not suggesting it's not, Senator. I just can't affirm that description.

SOTOMAYOR; My point is, however, that once there's Supreme Court precedent directly on point, and Second Circuit precedent directly on point on a question, which there is on this incorporation doctrine and how it uses the word "fundamental," then my panel, which was unanimous on this point -- there were two other judges -- and at least one other -- or one other panel on the Seventh Circuit by Justice -- by Justice -- by Judge Easterbrook has agreed that, once you have settled precedent in an area, then, on a precise question, then the Supreme Court has to look at that.

And under the deference one gives to stare decisis and the factors one considers in deciding whether that older precedent should be changed or not, that's what the Supreme Court will do.

HATCH: OK. As I noted, the Supreme Court puts the Second Amendment in the same category as the First and the Fourth Amendments as pre-existing rights that the Constitution merely codified. Now, do you believe that the First Amendment rights, such as the right to freely exercise religion, the freedom of speech, or the freedom of the press, are fundamental rights?

SOTOMAYOR: Those rights have been incorporated against the states. The states must comply with them. So in -- to the extent that the court has held that...

HATCH: Right.

SOTOMAYOR: ... then they are -- they have been deemed fundamental, as that term is understood legally.

HATCH: What about the Fourth Amendment, about unreasonable -- unreasonable searches and seizures?

SOTOMAYOR: As well.

HATCH: Same...

SOTOMAYOR: But with respect to the holding as it relates to that particular amendment.

What interests me is Hatch's citation of what constitutes a "fundamental" right.

Its TRADITION! [Cue Fiddler on the Roof music]

and it's ANGLO tradition!

Heh.

R Scott Clark takes time to carefully argue that baptist churches are not churches according to the historic reformed understanding of the "marks" of the true church, as Mark 2 involves right administration of the sacraments.

Reformed theology is usually ok with the idea that people can by and large keep parts of the law and this is common grace to them, and that the benefits of that lawkeeping are also common grace to them.

So if a person doesn't commit adultery, that's great, and will be good for their relationships, and have positive benefits for them (either directly from God, or indirectly because God sets up the universe to work that way; wait, is there a difference?)

I wonder if we can have a form of "common grace" benefits that stream from something that is less law-like.

For instance, when Jesus says, in John 12:24-26

I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.

Jesus speaks in generalities at least at first.

He is going to lay down his life. But the principle by which he says benefits will accrue is one of general application. Lots of seeds die. Jesus then uses the benefits of his death to encourage OTHERS to a life of self-sacrifice and cross-bearing.

Surely the main import, as Jesus say at the last, is for the one who, in cross-bearing, serves Jesus himself. But is it out of line entirely to say that, say, if Gandhi dies in the service of others, and we note the benefits to the cause of Gandhi in so doing, that we are witnessing an application of John 12, in a "common grace" kind of way?

Hmm.

When you get down to summary statements is Piper

This final judgment accords with our works. That is, the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives will be brought forward as the evidence and confirmation of true faith and union with Christ. Without that validating transformation, there will be no future salvation.

different from Wright:

...the Holy Spirit gives the power through which that future verdict, when given, will be seen to be in accordance with the life that the believer has then lived.

Some things about the Christianity Today article don't quite sound like Wright though.

But look at the agreement

"Accords" = "in accordance with"

"brought forward as evidence" = "will be seen to be"

"our works" = "life lived"

Why doesn't the Marrow Controversy teach us this:

That the system of doctrine contained in the Westminster Confession is insufficient to defend against legalism, and to do so, you need additional doctrines.

The comments on the last post were actually apropos of my attempted discussion of a sensitive matter here.

Just FYI