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Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Religion or Science - How do they compare? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Today there is a "See Inside" feature attached to the book at Amazon, which I didn't see yesterday, and another review I didn't see which is a little clearer than the others, a reader who gives it two stars and titles her comments "culturally sensitive theology." She writes:
Rutledge reveals her discomfort with the orthodox position of penal substitution as a necessary work of Christ on the cross. Painfully conscious of the "bloody" punishment that the cross represents, historically & theologically, she tries to uncouple its punitive implication from Jesus' suffering. That God's mercy cannot be shown to us without His justice does not seem to matter to her as a matter of logic, even after spending many pages explaining the seriousness of sin & its implication in God's eyes. To be uncomfortable with penal substitution is to be uncomfortable with Christianity itself because that is what the cross is all about. I wonder what she makes of the term "salvation" since that would have to be one of those words a liberal fills with different content than an orthodox traditional Christian does. Is Jesus God Incarnate, the Second Person of the Trinity? Are those even words she uses? And if she does in what sense, some kind of intellectualized sophistical liberal sense or the traditional sense? Does she believe in a literal Hell? Does Jesus' death on the cross save us from it? Well, I can't afford the book right now but maybe my curiosity to see her answers to these questions, which I'm sure at this point will turn out to be serious heresy, will lead me to buy it sometime in the future.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Still fascinated by this book I read another review, one I'd already read but now I have a framework for it knowing that Rutledge can't embrace penal substitution, which is the same thing as being unable to embrace Christ and Christianity.
So I read in the No. 1 Positive Review:
As we see the magnitude of the death of Christ, we are drawn into the heart of God. Rutledge insists: Christians do not simply look to the cross of Christ with prayerful reverence. We are set in motion by its power, energized by it, upheld by it, guaranteed by it, secured by it. This is a lot of typical "liberal Christian" totally empty verbiage, which is what I'm now gathering characterizes Rutledge's book. It must take a lot of concentration to avoid embracing the true meaning of the cross, which is penal substitution, in favor of a lot of other supposed values which amount to a lot of empty verbiage. Each of the sentences I quoted from that review is sheer contentless gobbledygook. Drawn into the heart of God? By the "magnitude" of Christ's death? Do Christians look at the cross with "prayerful reverence?" No, we look to the Cross primarily with GRATITUDE for God's love and mercy to us that He sacrificed His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on Him shall have everlasting life. REAL everlasting life, not some kind of empty emotionalistic gutted bunch of words. What on earth does any of this mean? We are "set in motion" by it? You mean something like spinning like a top perhaps? By it's "power?" What sort of power would that be? Verbal power? Emotional power? Certainly not REAL power, the sort Paul talked about in Romans:
For I am not ashamed of the Gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation for the Jew first but also the Greek. Even those words can sound empty in the context of Rutledge's book and she's probably quoted them with as much verbose meaningless emptiness as she can manage to stuff into them too. You have to be a traditional believer to know Paul is talking about a REAL power of a REAL salvation from a REAL Hell by a REAL death of a REAL God-Man. Well, I don't think I need to read the book now, GDR. I'm sorry anyone takes this stuff seriously. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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jar Member (Idle past 424 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Faith writes: Still fascinated by this book I read another review, one I'd already read but now I have a framework for it knowing that Rutledge can't embrace penal substitution, which is the same thing as being unable to embrace Christ and Christianity. Writing more checks that simply cannot be cashed again Faith. Only in the Christian Cult of Ignorance and Dishonesty might "... knowing that Rutledge can't embrace penal substitution, which is the same thing as being unable to embrace Christ and Christianity." The rest of us know that position is nothing more than a cheap marketing gimmick designed to con the gullible and that totally diminishes any worth or value of Jesus life and ministry.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9516 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
Faith writes: I'm sorry anyone takes this stuff seriously. Yes Faith me too. But at least you now know we we don’t take the stuff you say seriously either.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
Sure Faith. You don’t want to read anything that’s actually Christian.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
You've never actually defined what you consider to be Christian that I recall. Apparently this book seems to you to be Christian, does that mean you particularly favor Liberal Christianity? Can you say exactly what it is you regard as Christian? Perhaps name someone you think of as a prime representative of Christianity, or a school or theology or doctrine or church or whatever you would identify. I know what GDR thinks, but do you share his definitions or something else?
Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5
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quote: Christianity is pretty broad, but nominal Christians like yourself don’t appreciate that. You are obsessed with dogma which really isn’t what Christianity is about at all. Whether liberal or conservative you really should understand that a lot of doctrine isn’t solidly nailed down, and condemning people for disagreeing with your favoured views isn’t Christian at all.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
All right, so you don't really have a worked-out positive definition, what you have is a strong sense of what it isn't?
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
I’m saying that Christianity is hard to define because it includes so much. But that doesn’t mean that there are no limits.
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Phat Member Posts: 18350 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
In defense of Faiths position:
jar writes: There is no such thing as a "Christian Cult of Ignorance and Dishonesty". This is a creation of your own bias and the views you market. Whoever "the rest of us" is it is not a group with any sort of consensus. Looking at the evidence, what Faith is "marketing" is in line with traditional beliefs.
Only in the Christian Cult of Ignorance and Dishonesty might "... knowing that Rutledge can't embrace penal substitution, which is the same thing as being unable to embrace Christ and Christianity." The rest of us know that position is nothing more than a cheap marketing gimmick designed to con the gullible and that totally diminishes any worth or value of Jesus life and ministry.Wiki article on penal substitution. In your defense, the article does state that "in scholarly literature, it has been generally recognized for some time that the penal substitution theory was not taught in the Early Church. The ransom theory of atonement in conjunction with the moral influence view was nearly universally accepted in this early period." St.Augustine is hardly regarded by scholars as a member of a cult of ignorance and dishonesty, and you should be called out for attempting to paint Faith into such a corner without examining the evidence. To assert that early Christianity was a cheap marketing gimmick only holds water as a baldfaced assertion without evidence. There is no evidence that anyone was selling anything. Edited by Phat, : No reason given.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5
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Consider this Phat. If you have to accept a doctrine formed during the Reformation it be a Christian, there were no Christians before the Reformation.
Remember that you are defending Faith when she says that refusing to accept the Penal Substitution view of atonement is is the same thing as being unable to embrace Christ and Christianity. Are you going to defend Faith on that point or admit that she is wrong ? Are you really going to say that the early Christians were unable to embrace Christ and Christianity ?
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GDR Member Posts: 6202 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
OK. This is from the interview in Christianity Today.
quote: He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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jar Member (Idle past 424 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
This is no longer 450AD Phat in case you had not noticed.
Early Christianity's ignorance is reasonable but cannot excuse today's Christian Willful Ignorance and Dishonesty. AbE:
StAugustine writes: Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens and the other elements of this world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and relative positions Now it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of the Holy Scriptures, talking nonsense on these topics, and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. Edited by jar, : See AbE:
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Thanks Phat.
Penal substitution has biblical support: Here's a quote from the Gospel Coalition:
PSA is explicit in the Servant Song of Isaiah 53, which delivers a penal substitutionary perspective on both the atonement and the work of God’s servant. The four Gospels either explicitly quote or implicitly reference the Servant Song more often than any other OT passage. As R.T France observes, the entire trajectory of Jesus’ earthly ministry as recorded in Scripture is an embodiment of the suffering servant who’s life culminated in a cross and death, before climaxing in a resurrection: But he was pierced for our transgressions,he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:5-6) PSA feature prominently in Paul’s letter to the Romans where the apostle depicts it as God's answer to the guilt and wrath brought on by our rebellion God. The great turning point in Romans is the exegesis of the gospel in 3:21-26, where Paul explains how God’s gift of righteousness, comes through faith in Jesus Christ and by his propitiatory death on the cross. As J.I. Packer notes: With the other New Testament writers, Paul always points to the death of Jesus as the atoning event, and explains the atonement in terms of representative substitution — the innocent taking the place of the guilty, in the name and for the sake of the guilty, under the axe of God’s judicial retribution(J.I Packer, Knowing God) The concept of penal substitution is implicit in the Old Testament image of the sacrificial lamb and the scapegoat that was released into the desert bearing the sins of the people. Jesus is presented as the true Lamb of God in many places in the New Testament. His being sacrificed for us mneans He was sacrificed in our place to pay for our sins, which was the function of the animal sascrifices in the OT.
Ligonier Ministries gives a pretty thorough account of the various views of the atonement over the centuries, arguing that penal substitution is the only completely satisfactory interpretation. The whole discussion is too lengthy to copy out here but here is the conclusion in a nutshell:
it is vital that we contend for an account of the atonement which views it as penal (that Christ satisfied the penalty of the law, as the righteousness of the Father demanded) substitution (that he underwent this penalty in our place). Any other model of the atonement will both fail the test of biblical witness, and leave us without an adequate plea for forgiveness and acceptance with God. There are other references both pro and con on the Google page for "Is penal substitution biblical?"
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
thanks. What she says doesn't completely do away with penal substitution and at least she acknowledges the importance of the atonement as substitutionary, which is better than I expected. I suspect there is some implicit waffling on the meaning of terms involved but for now I'll just take it at face value.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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