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 PrintableVersion Recovering the scandal of the crossAtonement in New Testament and contemporary contextsDistorted crossRECOVERING THE SCANDAL OF THE CROSS Joel Green and Mark Baker's book Recovering the Scandal of the Cross was first published in the US four years ago. It perhaps hasn't yet been so widely read over here, but its influence is beginning to filter through. It is one of the books, for example, cited as 'Further Reading' at the end of Steve Chalke's The Lost Message of Jesus. It would be hard to object to Green and Baker's stated aim, which is to understand the cross in a way that is true to the New Testament witness and applicable to different cultural contexts. However, it becomes apparent from the very first chapter that the main thrust of the book is an attack on penal substitution and the claim that it is 'the one correct approach to explaining the saving significance of the cross'. What they defend instead is a view of atonement theology as a 'living tradition', a creative 'craft' whereby models of the atonement are tailor-made to suit the needs and contexts of contemporary cross-cultural mission. Two flawsThe attack on penal substitution is spirited but unoriginal, and suffers from two major flaws. The first flaw is that for much of the time Green and Baker are attacking a 'straw man': a caricature of penal substitution in which God is forced to punish sin because he is at the mercy of some sort of 'legal bind'. No serious defender of penal substitution would ever imply such a thing, and the authors seem unwilling to acknowledge this. The second flaw is that Green and Baker put very little effort into substantiating their major claim, a warmed-up version of an old and rather tired objection to penal substitution: that it comes from viewing the atonement through modern Western legal categories. There is nothing in the book, for example, to demonstrate anything especially peculiar about the legal and moral categories assumed by Charles Hodge in his 19th-century account of penal substitution. They do not seem to be much different from those assumed by the Reformers in a different continent 300 years earlier, or indeed different from those assumed by many of the Church Fathers (see Garry Williams, EN October 2004). There is also nothing in the book to demonstrate that they are significantly different from views on punishment and morality across different cultures. Wrong-doing deserves punishment: there is such a thing as legitimate punishment. That's readily understandable, whether you live in an 'Eastern' culture where (perhaps) social ostracism plays a stronger role in punishment, or a 'Western' one where the focus may be more on the role of the magistracy. The irony is that it may well be only those viewing things from the narrow vantage point of modern Western liberal academia who have difficulty with the idea. Superficial surveyThe attack on penal substitution is not given much credibility by the rather half-hearted survey of the Scriptural witness on the atonement that occupies most of the first half of the book. This is particularly weak in its treatment of the Old Testament background to atonement, which amounts to no more than referring to a number of dictionary articles (many from the same theological dictionary) with very little engagement with the Scriptures at all. Green and Baker seem content to scratch the surface of what the New Testament authors have to say about the cross. One suspects that this is because it serves their purpose to keep the different New Testament perspectives on the cross looking as varied and disparate as possible. Models or aspects?Which leads us to the view of atonement theology Green and Baker want to defend. There is a breathtaking argument here. The authors begin with a false description of the Scriptural material on the atonement as disparate and varied, with no central core. They then (falsely) argue that this should be taken as a prescription for constructing similarly varied 'models' of the atonement to suit different situations today. (So long as, of course, they have nothing to do with penal substitution!) The second half of the book consists of a number of example 'models' of the atonement which rather predictably focus on Christ's victory, his example, and so on. There are many elements of truth here but, with the central truths of the atonement ripped out, none of the examples are especially compelling. Green and Baker have a point in that the New Testament authors do talk with 'varied voices'. We would indeed do well not to suppress the polyphony of the Scriptures, and do the gospel a disservice when we preach penal substitution clumsily or monotonously. However, that God speaks to us through a 'polyphony' of human voices in Scripture does not mean that he talks at cross-purposes with himself. If we hear the voices as divided and set against each other, then we're simply not listening carefully! There is a readily recognisable 'central core' to the Scriptural witness on the atonement. It's very simple and very culturally transferable. Wrong-doing deserves punishment. The appropriate punishment for turning away from the living God is death. When the New Testament writers say that Christ died for us to give us life, they are therefore saying that he took the punishment we deserve in our place. To put it another way, he died as a penal substitute. It's not rocket science. United to him by faith, our sin is justly punished by his death. United to him, we are raised to new life. And the New Testament writers are equally adamant that it's that gospel of forgiveness of sins, enabled by the death and resurrection of Jesus, that we are to take to the ends of the earth. And nothing else. Ben Cooper,
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