Evangelical Theology

Uche Anizor, Robert B. Price, Hank Voss

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780567677129
• eBook ISBN: 9780567677143
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Theology

This book provides a lively introduction to the exciting discipline of evangelical theology. Aligning with the global Lausanne Movement, the authors identify Scripture and mission as methodological centres of evangelical theology. Evangelical Theology highlights the key evangelical themes of atonement, conversion, justification, and sanctification, as well as recent developments around trinitarian theology and pneumatology.

Themes

3

“Christ Died for Our Sins”: Atonement

Jesus Christ, being himself the only God-Man, who gave himself as the only ransom for sinners, is the only mediator between God and people.

Lausanne Covenant §3

To evangelize is to spread the good news that Jesus Christ died for our sins and was raised from the dead according to the Scriptures.

Lausanne Covenant §4

Evangelical gospel proclamation is dominated by the announcement that “Jesus died for our sins.” Although there are debates among evangelical thinkers about what the content of that statement is (or should be), evangelicals typically understand it as: Jesus paid the penalty for our sins by dying for us. Our songs emotively declare, “Thank you for the cross,” “I’ll never know how much it cost to see my sin upon that cross,” and “And can it be that I should gain an int’rest in the Savior’s blood? Died He for me, who caused His pain—for me, who Him to death pursued?” We are a community of the cross, a missional people consumed with the proclamation of Jesus’s sacrifice. Evangelicalism in its past or present form cannot be understood apart from its crucicentrism. And while it is true that this understanding of the atonement is formed and propagated largely through preaching, music, and popular literature (typical sources of evangelical spiritual and theological formation), it is by no means merely a populist theology. The sacrificial, penal, and substitutionary understanding of the atonement has substantially characterized evangelicalism in both its populist and scholarly thought. We are not merely a community of the atonement, we are a community of the penal substitutionary death of Christ. Surely this is a contentious claim, since much recent reflection has sought to shift the evangelical focus from this view to a wider range of views (and we will explore those emerging perspectives in due course). Nevertheless, it should be clear from our historical survey that the “founders” of the movement and their progeny, while having a robust understanding of Christ’s work, were particularly interested in his substitutionary death. We begin our discussion of evangelicals and the atonement by examining a classic account by J. I. Packer, one of the leading evangelical Anglican theologians of the twentieth century.

Doctrine: What Did the Cross Achieve?

In his 1973 lecture entitled “What Did the Cross Achieve?” Packer sets out to defend the biblical and theological soundness, and not so much the rationality, of the penal substitutionary model of the atonement. This distinction between biblical/theological soundness and rationality is important. According to Packer, the debate over the last few hundred years has been dictated by Socinian objections to penal substitution. Reformed apologists, in response to Socinus, tended to make their arguments for the penal substitution overly rationalistic, instead of treating it as a mystery and confession of faith. The beauty of the doctrine was unintentionally distorted as arguments for the atonement were reduced to logical deductions drawing from then current understandings of kingship and justice. This doctrine is fundamentally a model about a mystery. It is a biblically rooted model that employs certain images as a way to declare, not explain, the truth of what God has done for us in Christ. It is a mystery in that it tries to relate some of the deepest and unfathomable realities of the Christian faith (e.g., Trinity, incarnation, divine love), matters that are not fully explicable.¹ As Packer quips, “One thing that Christians know by faith is that they only know in part.”² Nevertheless, whatever it is that we can know is given to us in Scripture. The Bible is our source of knowledge of all divine mysteries, including the atonement.

After these methodological and historical considerations, Packer attempts to construct a model of penal substitution that is biblical and addresses some of the criticisms. The “model building” takes place in two stages. In the first stage, Packer tries to make sense of what we mean by “substitution.” He begins by citing the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of three terms: substitution, representation, and vicarious. Substitution is defined as “the putting of one person or thing in the place of another”; representation as “the fact of standing for, or in place of, some other thing or person … substitution of one thing or person for another”; vicarious as something or someone “substituted instead of the proper thing or person.” Packer’s point in citing these definitions is to show that the contemporary aversion to “substitution” in place of these other terms is rooted in a “distinction without a difference.” Whatever it means that “Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8), it must involve the notion of substitution. We cannot evade substitution by calling Christ’s death vicarious or representative.

In fact, Packer will go on to argue that subjective models of the atonement (i.e., that Christ died to produce an effect in us—of love, confession, obedience to God, etc.) as well as Christus Victor models (i.e., that Christ’s death was primarily about defeating hostile spiritual powers) all must presuppose a substitutionary model. He writes,

It grounds humanity’s plight as victim of sin and Satan in the fact that, for all God’s daily goodness to us, as sinners we stand under divine judgement, and our bondage to evil is the start of our sentence, and unless God’s rejection of us is turned into acceptance we are lost for ever. On this view, Christ’s death had its effect first on God, who was hereby propitiated (or, better, who hereby propitiated himself), and only because it had this effect did it become an overthrowing of the powers of darkness and a revealing of God’s seeking and saving love … [B]y undergoing the cross Jesus expiated our sins, propitiated our Maker, turned God’s “no” to us into a “yes,” and so saved us.³

Substitution in relation to sin’s sentence cannot be avoided, even by the strongest “representative” models (i.e., models that stress our solidarity or identification with Christ who represents us, but does not suffer in place of us). Paul’s teaching in Rom 3:21–28 cannot be avoided. Christ is there presented as “a propitiation … by his blood.”

This leads to the second stage of model building: making sense of the penal dimension of substitution. The basic affirmation in penal substitution is that Christ, motivated by love, endured and exhausted the divine judgment (penal) we deserved (substitution) and purchased for us all the gifts of salvation, such as the forgiveness of sins, adoption, and more.⁴ Penal substitution is a model that accounts for the meaning of the atonement, not its mechanics, and its primary concern is the remission of sins before a holy God.⁵ It tells us the what of Christ’s atoning work, without trying to explain the how. In presenting a robust account of penal substitution Packer aims to avoid the criticisms of it being crude and immoral, overly rationalistic, and impersonal. His formulation places substitution alongside several different themes: retribution, solidarity, mystery, and divine love.⁶

Retribution

Penal substitution presupposes a penalty due to us from God, the Lawgiver and Judge, for failure to meet his demands. This truth is abundantly clear from Rom 1:18–3:20 and throughout the New Testament.⁷ God judges lawbreakers, and his judgment is retribution for the violation of his holy law and character. Moreover, we intuitively sense that we should suffer for wrongdoing. In this context, we learn four things about our situation before God. First, concerning God, we learn that retribution is approved by God and expresses his character, which is reflected in his law. Physical and spiritual death is an appropriate sentence, and God himself will impose it on us. Second, concerning ourselves, we learn that we are powerless to avoid God’s sentence, since we are unable to undo our sins of the past and the present. Third, we learn that Jesus Christ took our place under God’s judgment and experienced in himself the death that was our sentence. In doing so, he purchased our pardon. Fourth, we learn that by faith, as we look to Christ and away from ourselves, we escape God’s rightful retribution and receive full pardon because of Christ. Penal substitution is meant to proclaim the good news that the Son of God “loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20).⁸

Solidarity

Substitution is immoral, so the Socinian charge goes, for an innocent man should not be punished for someone else’s crime. How might this accusation be addressed? Packer appeals to the Pauline description of Jesus as the last Adam (1 Cor 15:45–49; Rom 5:12–21) who includes believers in his sin-bearing in the way the first Adam involved humanity in his sinning. Penal substitution is rooted in our solidarity (or identification) with Christ. Our solidarity with Christ has four “moments,” according to Packer. First, Christ took our humanity, being “born of a woman” (Gal 4:4...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Dedication Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction—What Is Evangelical Theology?
• Foundations
• Themes
• Developments
• Conclusion—Quo Vadis? The Promise of Evangelical Theology
• Index
• Copyright Page