Recovering the Scandal of Liberalism: Disdaining the Cross

A critique of the book, “Recovering
the Scandal of the Cross,” which was required reading for pastors attending Fuller Seminary’s
“2004 President’s Theological
Conference for Pastors.”

Recovering the
Scandal of Liberalism:


Disdaining the Cross

 By Richard Nathan, M.A.*

“Since we have now been
justified by his blood,

how much more shall we be
saved from God’s wrath through him!” Romans 5:9[1]

 


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“We believe that the popular
fascination with and commitment to penal substitutionary atonement has had
ill effect in the life of the church in the United States and has little to
offer the global church and mission by way of understanding or embodying the
message of Jesus Christ.”


     Recovering the Scandal of
the Cross: Atonement in New Testament & Contemporary Contexts

[2]

“Evidently some people are
throwing you into confusion

and are trying to pervert
the gospel of Christ.

But even if we or an angel
from heaven should preach

a gospel other than the one
we preached to you,

let him be eternally
condemned!”

(Galatians 1:7-8)

 

The
application of secular scholarship to try and debunk the Gospel isn’t new,
but the fact that once highly respected Evangelical publishing houses and
seminaries are now doing the same thing is a disturbing resurgence of a
tragic pattern. And one Christians need to pay close attention to.

Recovering the Scandal of the Cross: Atonement in New Testament &
Contemporary Contexts, a book that was published by InterVarsity Press
and passed out at a recent pastors’ conference at Fuller Seminary, launches
a full-scale attack on the Gospel by Evangelical scholars. It appears that
both InterVarsity and Fuller have decided that the historic Biblical concept
of the substitutionary atonement is not sufficient for post-modern
Christianity and culture.
 

But the
book goes much farther than that: It is another attack in the long war on
the authority of the Bible.

 

Author
Joel B. Green is dean of the school of theology and professor of New
Testament interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky.
Co-author Mark D. Baker is assistant professor of mission and theology at
Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary in Fresno, California.

 

It is
not an easy book to read for a number of reasons:

 

(1)  
It is a sustained attempt to make sociology the
touchstone of truth instead of the Word of God.

(2)  
It is written in “academese,” with a lot of
assumptions of “Higher Critical Scholarship” underlying its arguments.
(“Higher Critical Scholarship” approaches Scripture as if it is just
historical writing full of errors and prejudice and not divinely inspired
(God-breathed) writing. It arose mainly in Germany starting in the 1700s and
was a process of cynicism that developed where atheistic scholars started
studying the Bible. Most mainline seminaries today have adopted its
methods.) 

(3)  
It is written in accordance with liberal
political correctness, including the viewpoint of “Christian” feminism.

 

There
are many bad books on the Bible and theology out there. Why read this one?
Because Evangelical pastors are reading it and may be persuaded by its
arguments. Also, the subject of the book, which is basically why the blood
atonement is wrong, is another step in the ongoing assault upon the Word of
God and the Gospel—an assault now under the wrapper of an Evangelical
seminary and published by an Evangelical publishing house.

 

The
authors claim that their work is just analyzing the “images” of the
atonement to help spread the “Gospel.” But, instead, they are rejecting the
Biblical teaching of the blood atonement by distorting Biblical exegesis and
church history. (Exegesis is clarifying the meaning of the original intent
of the Biblical author, e.g. what did Paul or Jeremiah mean when they
wrote.)

 

Let’s
take a look at their deceptive methods.

 

 

The Authors’ Methods of Argument

1.   Elevate secular scholarship
over Scripture. The authors analyze the Bible through sociological and
economic (perhaps Marxist) eyes (p. 39). They see the Bible as historical
literature without a common voice of the Holy Spirit behind the individual
authors. On p. 99, they quote as positive Herman-Emiel Mertens’ comments on
the Bible:

“’Images of Christ and
conceptions of salvation bear the marks of the prevailing cultural
consciousness and are only temporarily relevant. They do not remain
always and everywhere equally useful. Some “age” quicker than others.’”[3]
[bold added] 

2.    Divide Scripture.
They
divide Scripture in order to dismiss what does not agree with their thesis.
For example, they play Luke’s writing against Paul’s because Luke does not
have major portions that deal with the atonement. This is an old trick of
liberal scholars. (The same argument is used by pro-homosexual “Bible
scholars” to justify accepting homosexual acts as good e.g. “Jesus never
mentions homosexuality. It’s just Paul, the uptight Pharisee who condemns
it.”) 

3.    Dismiss New Testament authors.
Though they don’t say it
obviously, the authors assume that some of the books of the New Testament
were not written by the apostolic author claimed in each book but by a later
imitator (on John, p. 77; on Paul, p. 101).


 

4.    Dismiss parts of the New Testament.
When parts of the New
Testament disagree with their thesis, they say that these are later
additions.

 

5.   Attack the value of the blood atonement.
Under the guise of
objectivity, they claim that several views of the atonement have value.
However, in contradiction, they especially attack the blood atonement,
claiming that it is not biblical and is harmful and useless for the “modern
world.”

 

6.   Claim objectivity.
They imply that their own method of sociological analysis is
not culture bound and that it enables them to judge both the Bible and
church history in some objective fashion. This ties in with the
post-modernist ideology that is current within our ever-expanding New Age
culture.

7.   They
greatly downplay or dismiss the role of law in the Old and New Testaments.
They claim
that the “Biblical image” of God as judge is passé and irrelevant to modern
culture or to the spread of the Gospel, and that the concept of God as judge
only works in “guilt-based” cultures.[4](p. 32).

A
bizarre example of the authors’ criticism of Evangelical theology is evident
in the following quote:

 

“Many of us have been to
a carnival—either in reality or through the virtuality of television—and
have experienced that clever act where a dressed-up wooden dummy is enabled
to ‘speak’ by means of a ventriloquist’s talent. In recent decades among
evangelicals, Christian reflection on the atonement has had a touch of the
carnivalesque, with Luke or Peter or some other New Testament writer made up
to speak in someone else’s voice. In this vaudevillian act Luke is the
mannequin, and the levers of his mouth are controlled by the Pauline
interpreter. Dressed up to resemble another New Testament writer like Paul
or attached by puppet strings to a historical Christian figure like Anselm
or Martin Luther, many New Testament writers lose their distinctive
presence. They are not allowed to speak with their own voices.”[5]

 

This
picture is so strange that it is both a wonder that they should use it and a
revelation of the contempt they have for the truth of Scripture as a whole
and for historical Evangelical theology.

 

Thus,
they try to split Scripture from Scripture (the classic phrase for
Evangelical Biblical interpretation is comparing Scripture with
Scripture). Saying that the writings of Luke are manipulated by “the Pauline
interpreter” is saying that if one believes Paul’s teaching and uses Paul’s
doctrines to look at Luke, then this is a dishonest treatment of Luke
because the doctrines of Paul are alien in Luke. Therefore, they say that it
is worse than useless to compare Scripture with Scripture—it is
manipulation.

 

The
authors then deprecate theologians like Anselm and Luther, accusing them of
manipulating the Scriptures, in order to dismiss their conclusions. To say
such a thing about Luther is tantamount to attacking the foundations of
Protestant-Evangelical theology and Biblical interpretation and accusing it
as false. Of course, this implies that their interpretation is not a
manipulation—something they can only argue for on the basis of their
assumptions: that secular sociological methods uncover the real meaning of
Scripture and make their interpretation “objective” and “non-manipulative.”

 

The
accusation is that Evangelical teaching does this to Scripture: “They
[Scriptures] are not allowed to speak with their own voices.” Their
assumption is that their own method (splitting Scripture from Scripture) is
superior to seeing a unified voice of the Holy Spirit working through
different (but inspired) authors.

 

 

Paul and the Significance of Jesus’ Death

 

“Here, then, lies the crux
of Paul’s interest in the cross: at the intersection of the objective
reality of the cross as saving event and the subjective means by which he
comprehends and communicates that reality. By ‘subjective’ we do not mean
‘impressionistic’ or ‘individualistic’; rather, we want to draw attention to
the context-specific ways in which Paul has chosen to articulate the nature
of his atonement theology. Taking seriously this subjective dimension of
Paul’s message, we should not be tempted to confuse the various metaphors
he uses for describing the death of Jesus and its effects—sacrifice, for
example, or justification—with the actuality of the atonement.”[6] [Italics added]

 

“God presented him as a
sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood.”

(Romans 3:25)

 To
write as they do, especially in the last sentence, is to make key Biblical
words, such as justification(!), into metaphors that are not descriptive of
the atonement. This is an attempt to deconstruct the theology (the truth) of
the Bible. They are denying again the role of the Holy Spirit in the writing
of Scripture through Paul. They insist the form of the words is a product of
Paul’s intention (and thus is driven by Paul’s desires).

“He wants through his
preaching, whether oral or written, to decimate those ideals, norms, values
and behaviors that stand in conflict with the community of God’s people
oriented around the cross of Christ. . . . To put it differently, the battle
in which Paul is engaged is in an important sense one of rhetoric.”[7]

 

The
authors seek by their arguments to demean the Word of God by calling it
occasional, not eternal. Their argument is that this is Paul’s strategy for
evangelism and discipleship in a specific context—definitely not universal
for all time—so that we can create our own metaphors for church growth
through new change agents. Their bottom line is clear:

 

“We believe that the popular
fascination with and commitment to penal substitutionary atonement has had
ill effect in the life of the church in the United States and has little to
offer the global church and mission by way of understanding or embodying the
message of Jesus Christ.”[8]

 

Interestingly, the authors never deal with the concepts of heaven or hell,
the devil, or the physical resurrection of Christ in relation to the
atonement or the cross. It is an argument from silence, as if these aspects
are of no importance to the preaching of the Gospel.

 

 

Sociological Scripture Twisting

 

In the
development of modern Bible study, sociological or cultural analysis has had
a place. In some instances, it provides positive results that clarify the
Word. For example, studying the role of shepherds and their practices has
made clearer such phrases as “I am the gate to the sheep pen” (John 10:7-10)
because it was found that Near Eastern shepherds laid across the opening of
the sheep pen and literally became the gate!

 

On the
other hand, some of these sociological Bible scholars have used such studies
to try to prove that the Word of God is culture bound; that is, rather than
being a revelation of God for all times and cultures, the Scripture is
limited by what they claim are Near Eastern culture and ways of
communicating.

 

In
addition, the authors of this particular book use a distorted picture of
Biblical times to make their comparisons. For example, they start their
analyses of the teachings of Jesus by putting them in the context of Roman
culture and rule, which was a recent phenomenon in Palestine at the time
Jesus lived. The authors assume that Roman influence was so strong in the
life and thought of the Jewish people that Jesus shaped His teaching as a
kind of social critic of what they called the “Roman patronal system.” This
way of viewing the Scripture arises from a Marxist historical view of class
struggle and rebellion against the propertied (in this case, the Roman
ruling class). With such a basic presupposition, they go on to reduce the
scope of Jesus’ teaching to merely that of a social and economic critic (pp.
39-40).

 

Their
analyses leave out the long history of Jewish society and culture, the
effect of the long rule of the Greeks, and the influence of Hellenistic
culture and the cultures of the other Near Eastern nations that surrounded
Judah.

 

So the authors not only misuse sociology, they use inaccurate sociology at
that.

 

Armed
with the above analytical methods, and the practice of using Scripture
against Scripture, the authors proceed to read out the obvious New Testament
teaching of the blood atonement. Although the teaching is crystal clear in
the Bible, they say the images used (e.g. sacrifice, redemption, curse,
debt, and so forth) just reflect local ways of looking at things by first
century Jews and the early church. Their view is definitely not that the
Word of God endures forever (Isaiah 40:8) or is a hammer that breaks the
rock (Jeremiah 23:29).

 

But in
regard to the place of guilt and punishment, Paul writes in Romans 2:5-6:

“But because of your
stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against
yourself for the day of God’s wrath when his righteous judgment is revealed.
God will give to each person according to what he has done.”

In
addition, although almost the whole of the Old Testament deals with guilt
and judgment, they ignore those many examples. (See Isaiah, Jeremiah, and
the rest of the Old Testament!)

 

In
summation, their two chapters on Scripture, the cross, and the New
Testament, which they have subtitled “A Mélange of Voices,” violently
distort the Biblical teaching of the blood atonement. (A mélange is defined
as a mixture of often incongruous elements according to Miriam Webster’s
College Dictionary, 10th Ed., 1994.)  

 

They
judge the theories of the atonement using a wide variety of Scripture
twisting to disestablish the Bible as God’s revelation as given through the
apostles and the prophets (see 2 Peter 1:20-21). In some places, they say
with some validity that the blood atonement is one of many images, but, as
we shall see, their real motive is to overturn the concept of the
substitutionary atonement, which is one of the pillars of Evangelicalism.

 

The Feminist Critique


 


“The shadow of the punitive
father must always lurk behind the atonement.


He haunts images of
forgiving grace.”[9]


 

This
statement, which is quoted by the authors as insightful, applauds feminist
theologians who reject the concept of the substitutionary atonement as an
aspect of “patriarchal” Christianity that is distorted and propagated by
“patriarchal” Christians.

 

The
authors sum up popular atonement theory as a simplistic distortion of Anselm
of Canterbury’s concept, but they deny that Scripture directly teaches it.
Anselm’s theory states:

 

“According to this theory,
humanity has, in its sin, turned away from God and so merits divine
punishment. Jesus in his death on the cross, died in the place of (as a
substitution for) sinful humanity at God’s behest, and in doing so he took
upon himself the punishment humanity ought to have suffered.”[10]

 

What do
the authors offer in its place? Besides the Freudian analysis offered above
about the “punitive father” lurking behind the atonement, another of their
quotes goes so far as to equate the substitutionary atonement with
sadomasochism:

 

“Pushing further, Beverly W.
Harrison and Carter Heyward have insisted, ‘As the classical portrait of the
punitive character of this divine-human transaction, Anselm of Canterbury’s
doctrine of atonement . . . probably represents the sadomasochism of
Christian teaching at its most transparent.’”[11]

 

Their
final summary of the substitutionary atonement leaves us with emptiness:

 

“As such, when criticisms of
this view are raised, we can do nothing less than admit straightforwardly
that, on biblical and traditional grounds, this contemporary manifestation
of atonement theology is both deficient and disturbing.”[12]

 

 

A Recurring Tragedy

 

How did
today’s church come to such a sad state of affairs? Is what Green and
Baker’s book doing new? How are we to respond? Being armed with Scripture
and history can help us stand in the battle.

 

History reveals three major
waves in the past two hundred years, all with basically the same shape:
Evangelicals under the onslaught of worldly ideas became intimidated, and
rather than holding to the historic faith compromised by downplaying the
inerrancy and authority of the Bible.

 

When
the foundation of Scriptural authority is lost, it becomes an inevitable
process that basic doctrines become questionable. And when basic doctrines
become questionable, the Church founders, and truth is up for grabs.

 

The Three Waves of Liberalism

 

I.     The
Early 1800s: Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) and The Romantic
Movement         

II.    The Early 1900s:
Liberalism’s Triumph in America Among Evangelicals

III.   The
Neo-Liberal (New Age) Revival Among Evangelicals in Our Time


I.   Friedrich Schleiermacher
and the Romantic Movement.

 

The
importance for our own times of
Friedrich Schleiermacher
and the Romantic Movement cannot be overstated, for the same themes are
being replayed today, and Recovering the Scandal of the Cross echoes
them.

 

The
Romantic Movement was a turning away from reason and the focus on the Word
to an emphasis on imagination, emotion, and a focus on symbols. And as its
primary promoter who led much of European Evangelism into the unfaithfulness
of liberalism, Schleiermacher is considered “the Father of Liberalism.”

 


Friedrich Schleiermacher
was a graduate of Halle University in Germany, which at that time (the early
1800s) represented a sophisticated Pietism. Pietism was a renewal movement
in the Lutheran Church that was not Word centered; rather, it tended to look
down on theology and emphasize and elevate spiritual experience and
warmhearted faith. However, as time went by, this school, founded to produce
missionaries, embraced a cynical approach to Scripture.

 

In the
face of the contempt of Biblical critics who were trying to demean the
historicity of the Scripture, and in order to preserve the Church in the
face of the cultural divisions of that time, Schleiermacher taught that such
mystical experience was the centerpiece of Christian faith. He said
essentially: “What does it matter if some historical events weren’t true? My
faith is based in a mystical experience of the transcendent—the holy.” This
removed Christianity and Scripture from the sharp scalpel of the critics,
but, sadly, it so reduced Biblical theology that it ended up moving away
from the centrality of the Bible and the importance of sanctified reason.

 

II.   The Early 1900s: Liberalism’s Triumph in America
Among Evangelicals

 

In the
early 1900s, a double tidal wave assailed believers. Both Darwinian
evolutionary philosophy and German skeptical Biblical criticism (also known
as “Higher Criticism”) inundated many mainline Evangelical churches in the
United States (Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopal, and so forth). They
became intimidated about the authority and infallibility of Scripture and
the classic Evangelical doctrines that were derived from Scripture. This
spawned a movement, especially among clergy and seminary professors, called
Modernism (or Liberalism).

 

These
people sought to rescue Evangelicalism from its attachment to what they
viewed as “archaic” doctrines (such as the concept of a literal Adam and Eve
and a literal resurrection). In the process, they changed fundamental
doctrines to conform to liberal assumptions. The conservative sections of
these denominations resisted with a series of books called The
Fundamentals. Written by Evangelical scholars, these pillars of
Evangelical Christianity represented the basic Protestant doctrines since
the Reformation (from 1517 on): the Trinity, the incarnation, the two
natures of Christ (man and God), the virgin birth, the physical
resurrection, the blood atonement, the infallibility of the Bible, and so
forth.

 

III.   The New Liberal Revival
Among Evangelicals in Our Time

 

The
publication of The Fundamentals and the ensuring battles in the
seminaries did not stem the tide of Modernism. On the contrary, the
Evangelical movement fractured. Many mainline denominations had liberal
leadership (even though the lay people did not necessarily share their
views). New denominations were formed out of the conservative minority who
were driven out or chose to leave.

 

Comparing recent events and trends in Evangelicalism with these movements of
an earlier time shows some revealing commonalities.

 

1.      Evangelical
seminaries are getting better-educated professors, many of whom are now
trained at secular schools or liberal seminaries and adopting the methods of
“Higher Criticism.”

 

2.      The
popularity of psychotherapies based on Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and those
who come after them have been more or less embraced by many mainstream
Evangelical churches and seminaries. Such psychotherapies are permeated with
pagan and occult concepts.

 

3.      There
has been an acceptance of the tools of secular sociology in seminaries.

 

4.      With
the advent of the Church Growth Movement, many churches have adopted modern
business practices, with their accompanying pragmatic approach to doctrines.

 

As
shown above, since the 1800s there has been a cyclical movement in which
parts of the Evangelical churches have been yielding and conforming to the
culture and compromising the faith in an attempt to appeal to the unsaved
and becoming, in the process, a new branch of apostate religion.

 

The
occult influx.
And at the same time, another factor can be discerned. In the
spiritual vacuum caused by compromised Christianity is the influx of occult
(and in our time called New Age) teachings and practices. This flood is
pouring not only into the culture but into the churches as well.

 

In the
1800s, the Romantic Movement emphasized mythology, dreams, visions, and
witchcraft. In the early 1900s, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung provided the
deceptive emphasis on the supposedly hidden motivations of human life.
(Occult means hidden.) This helped open the door in our times to the New Age
Movement, neo-paganism, and the fascination with myth and magic, which the
popularity of such blockbusters as the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter,
and many others shows. However, this fascination is not reserved to the
unsaved; many Christians are embracing mythology as well and celebrating it
as a new way of wholeness and healing.

 

Thus,
the undiscerning acceptance of and enthusiasm for this modern ungodly
idolatry and mythology are a resurgence of those same seductive snares that
led God’s people away from the Word and obedience to Him in times past. This
is evident both in the Old and New Testaments and throughout the long
history of the church.

 

Conclusion

 

In
conclusion, throughout the book the authors try to sound fair while
ultimately rejecting the commonly held Gospel that Christ died for sinners.
Their logic can be summed up as follows:

 

1.     The Bible does not teach the substitutionary
atonement; rather, Anselm came up with the theory.

2.     The theory has been distorted by modern
conservative Evangelicals and is defunct and harmful.

3.     We need new images based on perceived needs to
“spread the Gospel” [What Gospel?] to the modern multicultural world.

“How can we be sure that
the results of our integrative and contextual work will be authentically
Christian? . . . [T]he fundamentally historical character of our
faith demands that a theology that is authentically Christian be shaped in
particular historical exigencies. . . . In the short term there are no
guarantees that the end result will be authentically Christian.”[13]

All
they have to offer are uncertainty after uncertainty:

 

1.    Uncertainty about knowing God.

 

“First we see in
Scripture and come to believe that God and his ways cannot be fully
understood nor in any way circumscribed by the models, images and words we
have chosen.”[14] [Italics
in original]

 

2.   Uncertainty about the consistency of Scripture:

 

“Though behind the various
books of the Bible we believe there stands the one voice and purpose of God,
as we hear these individual books, we also hear a diversity of voices . . .
In fact, in many cases, the words of Scripture stand in dynamic tension.”[15]

 

3.  
Uncertainty about good and bad doctrines:

 

“[I]t would be unthinkable
for Christians today or in any age to declare that those who do not hold to
such-and-such a view of the atonement reside outside the boundaries of
authentic Christian faith.”[16]

 

Contrary to their uncertainties, the truth is that God has given us
certainty and clarity about salvation and sanctification.

 

“To him who loves us and has
freed us

from our sins by his blood…”

(Rev. 1:5)

 

*
Richard Nathan holds a Master of Arts in Religion in Church History and has
been a Bible teacher for over twenty years. He wrote his thesis on the
debate over the inerrancy of Scripture in a historical analysis. To contact
Richard, email:
Richard@logosword.com. View other articles at
www.logosword.com.

 

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