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A “Forged” Gospel and Substitutionary Atonement

I had the privilege on May 6, 2016 of moderating a panel discussion at the Lanier Theological Library.  Mark Lanier, owner and namesake of the library, was out in California and made a surprise appearance at the end.  I guess the winds were in his favor.

The topics were diverse: The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife and the notion of substitutionary atonement in Paul.  Those two topics were related only in that our special guest, Simon Gathercole, had written on them recently.  We rounded up some usual and unusual suspects for the afternoon’s discussion. Here are the key contributors:

David Capes (Moderator – Dean, Professor of New Testament, Houston Graduate School of Theology, Houston, TX)
Graham Cole (Dean, Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, IL)
Craig Evans (Dean, School of Christian Thought, John Bisagno Distinguished Professor of Christian Origins, Houston Baptist University, Houston, TX)
Simon Gathercole (New Testament Scholar/Teacher, University of Cambridge, England)
David Moessner (Professor, A. A. Bradford Chair of Religion, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX)

The video lasts for 90 minutes but contains a lot of great information on topics related to the New Testament.  I’m grateful to Charles Mickey and Brent Johnson for their help that day.  Mark Lanier took a big chance getting a non-lawyer to moderate, but I hope he wasn’t too disappointed.  I thought it was a good discussion.

 

Here is a link to the discussion:

http://www.laniertheologicallibrary.org/seminar-videos-2/

 

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Hell and Edward Fudge

 

I’m glad to learn that Edward Fudge is now following this blog.  I heard of Edward Fudge many years ago from my Doctor Father, Dr. Earle Ellis.  Ellis was impressed and persuaded by a book Fudge had written entitled The Fire That Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of the Doctrine of Final Punishment now its third edition.  My friend, Richard Bauckham, has written the forward.  Fudge makes the case that, according to the Christian Scriptures, the fate of the wicked is not conscious, eternal suffering but annihilation.  He moves carefully through the biblical texts and, like the good lawyer that he is, makes his case.  Fudge has convinced a lot of scholars and evangelicals that his reading is the best reading of a lot of controversial texts. Fire that consumes

Over the last few years I am pleased to say that Edward and I have become friends.  He lives in Houston and is a frequent participant in lectures and symposia at the Lanier Theological Library.  He has written other books which I’ve had the privilege to read and even endorse.  We talked the other day and he was busy researching another question: rabbinic stories which appear to parallel Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31).

Edward has lived a remarkable life. The story of how he came to write such an influential book is the subject of a movie produced by Jeff Wood, Hell and Mr. Fudge (2012; DVD released in 2012).  The movie shows how Fudge, played by Mackenzie Astin, comes under attack from members of his denomination because he dedicated a year of his life to prove whether or not hell really exists.  People who take the Bible seriously have a hard time ignoring Fudge’s work.

Recently, a group of scholars have gotten together and produced a Festschrift honoring Edward for his work.  It is entitled A Consuming Passion: Essays on Hell and Immortality in Honor of Edward Fudge (Wipf & Stock, 2015).  Christopher M. Date and Ron Highfield were the editors.  Stephen Travis wrote the forward.A-Consuming-Passion

If you are curious or puzzled by the biblical teaching on hell, you can do no better than pick up Edward’s book and spend some time with it.  Like I said, he’s convinced some heavyweight scholars. Maybe he will convince you too.

 

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Rethinking Substitution

I had the great privilege of moderating a discussion at the Lanier Theological Library last week with a number of scholars from across the world.  The keynote speaker for the weekend was Simon Gathercole  of Cambridge, but also on the panel were Craig Evans (HBU, formerly of Acadia Divinity School), Graham Cole (TEDS), and David Moessner (TCU).  There were two topics for the day determined in the main because Simon Gathercole had written recently on them.  First, we spent time discussing  claims about the badly named fragment published in 2012, the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.  Second, we took up the thesis of Simon’s 2015 publication: Defending Substitution: An Essay on Atonement  in Paul (Baker Academic).  Defending Subsitution

Let me take up for now the latter topic.

Christians in general–Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox–agree on a variety of things but one key thing is this: through the incarnation, life, death, resurrection of Jesus God had acted to reconcile the world to himself.  Nearly all Christians agree with that.

What we don’t agree on and what the Bible does not clearly address is how: how does the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus bring about this reconciliation, redemption, justification, adoption, etc., choose whatever metaphor or image you prefer.  So, for centuries, theologians have developed various theories of atonement.  There is the ransom theory, the recapitulation theory, the satisfaction theory, the moral influence theory, the Christus-Victor theology, and substitution theory.

Most evangelicals have cut their teeth on the substitution theory, and yet recently many scholars have begun to distance themselves from it.  They argue that it is not biblical or not fair or else they say there are better ways to frame how the death and resurrection of Jesus come to play in our reality.

Professor Gathercole has written the book DEFENDING JUSTIFICATION to say that we cannot, indeed, should not, dismiss substitution from discussions of Pauline theology.  Many scholars are talking about participation in Christ and Christ being our representative as better ways of understanding how the benefits of Christ come to people through the finished word of the Messiah.  I don’t see Simon denying those ways of framing the discussion, but I do see him trying to rehabilitate the notion of substitutionary atonement.

Gathercole takes up a variety of Pauline texts including 1 Cor 15:3-8, Rom 3:21-26, among others.  He argues convincingly that substitution is part and parcel of Paul’s thought on what scholars call the atonement.  It is not the only word on it, however.  As Mark Lanier himself pointed out, we cannot dismiss Paul’s notion that the death and resurrection of Jesus disarmed the principalities and powers that cause the masses to live nasty, short, and brutish lives.

This book began as the Hayward Lectures at Acadia Divinity School in Nova Scotia and is part of a series  by Baker Academic edited by Dr. Craig Evans.  It is well worth taking up and reading.

The video of the panel discussion will be available soon at http://www.laniertheologicallibrary.org

Many thanks to Charles Mickey, director of the library, and Mark Lanier, founder, for the opportunity.

 

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Gathercole at Lanier Theological Library

University of Cambridge professor, Simon Gathercole, is soon to give his second lecture at Lanier Theological Library.  On May 7, 2016 from 7.00 to 9.00 pm Simon will offer a lecture entitled:

“The Journeys of Jesus and Jewish Geography”

The Gospels in the New Testament contain a remarkable amount of geographical information, especially in the quantity of references to areas, towns and villages that Jesus (and John the Baptist) visited. Are these genuine or fictitious?  Some Jesus skeptics have doubted the existence of places like Nazareth and Capernaum.  Even many New Testament scholars are unaware of the evidence for Gospel sites. Strikingly, however, a huge proportion of the place-names in the Gospels are paralleled in Jewish literature outside the New Testament, even down to some of the small villages.  This illustrated lecture will examine the historical evidence, some already known, some presented for the first time, for the places in the Gospel.  It will show how this evidence has clear implications for the reliability of the Gospel narratives.Simon Gathercole

The lecture is free and open to the public.  Click here for more information and to register.

If you have never been to the Lanier Theological Library or the Stone Chapel, you are in for a treat.  Mike Bird calls it “DisneyLand” for scholars.  Mark and Becky Lanier have done a wonderful job building these classic structures , collecting some of the world’s best books and artifacts, staffing the library, presenting lectures, and hosting events.  Scholars, teachers, and leaders come from all around the world to see this place. Charles Mickey is director of the library and coordinates all these events. He has a cracker-jack staff who do everything you can imagine to make these events successful.

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C. S. Lewis on Bible Translation

I recently attended a lecture by the Revd Professor Alistair McGrath of Kings College London and Oxford.  The lecture was hosted by the Lanier Theological Library, a private collection of nearly 80,000 theological books.  It was founded and opened to the public just 3 years ago by an amazing fellow named Mark Lanier.  Lanier is one of the top trial lawyers in the nation, and one of the most gifted Bible teachers you will ever hear.  For those of us who love books and all things English, the Lanier Library is a bit of heaven.  You can tell from the picture that it looks like the kind of library you’d find at Cambridge. Lanier Theological Library

Professor McGrath was invited by Lanier to give a lecture on the contributions of C. S. Lewis.  2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of C. S. Lewis.  He died the same day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, November 22, 1963.  I’m sure Lewis’ death was overshadowed by the death of the 35th president.

McGrath has written a definitive biography of Lewis to mark the occasion of his passing and reassess his contribution.  He titled it C. S. Lewis—a Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet.  If you are interested in Lewis’ life, I recommend you buy it and read it.  McGrath is a worthy interpreter of Lewis.

While I have read 7-8 of Lewis’ books in the past, I haven’t read everything Lewis wrote.  I discovered from listening to McGrath that Lewis had a great deal to say about Bible translation in a variety of essays and the preface to J. B. Phillips’ translation of the New Testament Letters (published 1947). 

 Here are a few things Lewis said about translation:

 . . . the Authorised Version has ceased to be a good (that is, a clear) translation.  It is no longer modern English: the meanings of words have changed. . . . The truth is that if we are to have translation at all we must have periodical re-translation.  There is no such thing as translating a book into another language once and for all, for a language is a changing thing. If your son is to have clothes it is no good buying him a suit once and for all: he will grow out of it and have to be re-clothed.

 We ought therefore to welcome all new translations (when they are made by sound scholars) and most certainly those who are approaching the Bible for the first time will be wise not to begin with the Authorised Version—except perhaps for the historical books of the Old Testament where its archaisms suit the saga-like material well enough. 

 Lewis went on to commend the translations of James Moffatt (1870-1944) and Ronald A. Knox (1888-1957).  They had translated the full Bible, beginning with the New Testaments. C S Lewis

 After having read some of what Lewis has said about translation, I wonder what he would think of The Voice.  Lewis loved stories; he was himself a master story-teller.  Would Lewis have appreciated the emphasis on story in The Voice?  Would he like the screen play format we used in dialogue that makes it clear who is speaking to whom?  Lewis praised human imagination and encouraged Christians to be imaginative when sharing the good news; more than any 20th century Christian leader he unleashed his imagination in expressing his faith.  What would Lewis think of the imaginative ways the poets and scholars worked together in order to discover the beauty of the poetry, the acrostics and the various literary techniques employed by each writer?  Well, we will never know what Lewis might think, this side of eternity.  What I do know is that the more I read Lewis, the more I think he would celebrate any serious attempt made to capture the hearts and minds of those who read the Bible.