Peter Kirk has collected a series of his comments into a single post along with links to various blogs that can bring you up to date on the atonement wars. I weighed in with a post over on my Participatory Bible Study blog. I see that Coops hasn’t posted in his atonement series since March 19th.
I know how it can go. One can get really, really tangled discussing the atonement!
To conclude the content part of my series on Biblical criticism, I want to discuss literary criticism. Much of the practice of literary criticism is similar to genre and to a lesser extent canonical criticism. Essentially, literary criticism involves forgetting about the historical and theological aspects and simply reading the Bible as literature. One can…
Some time back I wrote a post titled Witness without Being a Pest. There are a number of things that make Christians pests when they witness, but I think the most important is when we think witnessing is a separate activity that we “do” as opposed to something that happens when we live. If you…
OK, I said the last church sign was theologically incorrect, and I stick with that, because the sign seems to be providing a definition of faith. As a definition, it’s incorrect. Faith may help you not to panic, but it is not the same as not panicking. What’s got me on this is looking for…
I’m reading the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, New Testament, Volume X, Hebrews, and I found this interesting quote from St. John Chrysostom: St. John Chrysostom We ought to receive all things with faith and reverence, and, when our discourse fails through weakness and is not able to set forth accurately the things that are…
In preparing the Christian Carnival CLVIII, which I hosted this week on my Participatory Bible Study Blog, I found a real gem of a post on gifting. Dana, of Dana’s Avenue, wrote about Gifting, and the experience of discovering excitement in the gift of accounting. This really strikes a cord with me, because in my…
Comments are closed.
Yes, we can get really tangled! That’s why I decided not to get involved in your Participatory Bible Study discussion. I don’t think you need to reject the use of legal language (as a model) for justification to have serious doubts about PSA.
But I suppose I might ask whether, in legal terms, someone who has been “justified” is more like someone who has been found guilty but their penalty has been paid or more like someone who has been acquitted. PSA implies the former. I would understand “justified” as meaning the latter – that the sinner is found “not guilty” despite having broken the law, but without any injustice being done.
If I relate this to modern law, I might suggest that a mechanism would be that the sinner is acquitted on a legal technicality. But perhaps in suggesting this I am committing the same error as those who modelled PSA theory on 16th century justice.
Is this a profound observation? I’m not sure.
For what it’s worth, I’m not disappointed not to get into a discussion of that. I’d almost have to simply refer people to Martyn’s Galatians commentary, and he isn’t even discussing PSA, but rather only Paul’s word usage.
It’s pretty complex and I’m enjoying studying my way through Galatians with his commentary, but it would be almost impossible to discuss some of the material without both persons having the commentary to reference.
Ahh! Yes, must continue the series… it has too many open questions now!