THIS ARTICLE APPEARED IN THE EVANGELICAL MAGAZINE, PUBLISHED
BY THE EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT OF WALES AND, IN ITS PRESENT FORM, IS TAKEN FROM
THE BANNER OF TRUTH WEBSITE—WITH PERMISSION FROM BOTH ORGANISATIONS.
THE ARTICLE IS NOTHING LESS THAN ASTONISHING FOR THESE REASONS:
i) CHALKE IS KNOWN AS AN EVANGELICAL;
ii) HE DEBATED THIS MATTER ON A PLATFORM SPONSORED BY THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE;
ii) IN THE COURSE OF THIS DEBATE HE RIDICULED THE ATONEMENT OF CHRIST AND OTHER ASPECTS OF THE BIBLICAL REVELATION ON WHICH THE WHOLE CONCEPT OF ATONEMENT AND PROPITIATION RESTS.
A public debate organised by the Evangelical Alliance took place on 7 October
in Emmanuel Centre, London following strong criticism from Christians of Steve
Chalke’s book, “The Lost Message of Jesus” (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 2003). 600 people attended, indicating the strength of feeling that
the book’s message had aroused. Steve Chalke’s supporters laughed
at his amusing remarks and applauded him vigorously when he had made his presentation.
The two who spoke against his beliefs were Simon Gathercole, lecturer in New
Testament at Aberdeen and Anna Robbins, lecturer in Theology and Contemporary
Culture at the London School of Theology. Chalke was supported by Stewart Williams,
chair of the Anabaptist network.
Martin Downes, the UCCF team leader in Wales, explains the error of Chalke’s
ideas in an article in the September/October 2004 Evangelical Magazine writing
as follows.
The doctrine of penal substitution affirms that on the cross Jesus exchanged places with sinners, and voluntarily bore the punishment that their sins deserved, thereby propitiating an angry God. It is a defining belief of evangelical faith, biblically warranted and central to the gospel. Why then is the Evangelical Alliance hosting a debate where penal substitution is being attacked by a well known evangelical?
Steve Chalke asks how we have ‘come to believe that at the cross this
God of love suddenly decides to vent his anger and wrath on his own Son?’
(p. 182). Chalke considers this to be a mockery of Jesus’ teaching about
refusing to repay evil with evil and a contradiction of the statement that God
is love (p.182). He insists that the cross isn’t ‘a form of cosmic
child abuse - a vengeful Father, punishing his Son for an offence he has not
even committed’ (p.182). Instead the cross is a symbol of love, a demonstration
of how far God is willing to go to prove his love (p.182).
He claims that we have fundamentally misunderstood Jesus’ cry of dereliction,
‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Matt. 27:46). Rather
than the sight of Jesus taking the world’s sin on Himself being unbearable
for a holy God, Jesus’ feeling of abandonment ‘mirrors those of
countless millions of people who suffer oppression, enslavement, abuse, disease,
poverty, starvation and violence’ (p.185). Calvary wasn’t unique.
For Jesus the cross became a way of sharing the experience of all who feel abandoned
by God in their suffering. The reality, however, is that God is always right
there with us in our suffering (p. 185-6).
Steve Chalke no longer preaches penal substitution (p. 184), but he still believes
that preaching the cross is central. ‘On the cross Jesus took on the ideology
that violence is the ultimate solution by “turning the other cheek”
and refusing to return evil for evil, willingly absorbing its impact within
his own body’ (p.179). The resurrection is the reversal of this, the triumph
of love over hate, as the God of love takes on the powers of darkness and wins
(p. l87).
In a press release Steve Chalke has said that penal substitution is ‘a
theory rooted in violence and retributive notions of justice’ and is incompatible
‘at least as currently taught and understood, with any authentically Christian
understanding of the character of God.’ He is unrepentant about referring
to the doctrine as a version of ‘cosmic child abuse’ because ‘it
is a stark “unmasking” of the violent, pre-Christian thinking behind
such a theology’.
Chalke considers it a tragedy that Church history has obscured the centrality
of God’s love. He asserts that the Bible ‘never defines God as anger,
power or judgement—in fact it never defines him as anything other than
love’ (p. 63). Moreover, he argues, to think of God’s attributes
without reference to the primary lens of his love ‘is to risk a terrible
misrepresentation of his character, which in turn leads to a distortion of the
gospel’ (p.63).
Even texts that speak of God’s holiness should be understood as portraying
the love that makes God different rather than his sinless purity and ‘otherness’
(p. 58-9). But God is described in the Bible as light (1 John 1:5) and Spirit
(John 4:24). Moreover both Testaments affirm that God is a consuming fire (Deut.
4:24; Heb. 12:29), and dwells in unapproachable light (1 Tim. 6:16). The sight
of God’s holiness filled Isaiah with dread and made him conscious of his
guilt (Isa. 6:1-5). Christians are called to holiness not impurity (1 Thess.
4:7). This confusion of God’s attributes of holiness and love is not just
a basic error; it appears to be an intentional misrepresentation to serve his
own agenda.
How does he reconcile the frequent occurrences of judgment in the Bible with
love as God’s defining characteristic? This is his answer:
“Yahweh’s association with vengeance and violence wasn’t so
much an expression of who he was but the result of his determination to be involved
with his world. His unwillingness to distance himself from the people of Israel
and their actions meant that at times he was implicated in the excessive acts
of war that we see in some of the books of the Old Testament.” (p.49).
According to Steve Chalke the conquest of Canaan was done in God’s name
but not at His command or with His consent. This is directly contrary to Deut.
7:1-2,16, 20, 22-26; 9:1-3; Jos. 6:15-21; 10:40-42.
All this begs the question, is it ever appropriate on this understanding of
God’s love, to speak of his anger and judgment? But the following admission
is telling:
“Although God is love, this doesn’t exclude the possibility of him
eventually acting in judgement... if God is love, then anger is a legitimate,
indeed intrinsic, expression of that love. But because God’s anger is
born of pure love, it is never fickle or malicious” (p.62).
But this entirely undermines his argument. For if there is no final conflict
between love and judgment, one wonders why at the cross God cannot demonstrate
His anger at our sin, and, at the same time, manifest His love? Is God angry
just because we reject His love or is He angry at all deviations from His nature
and will? How can God forgive us and uphold His justice?
Steve Chalke is caught in a contradiction. He wants to affirm God’s anger
in some sense, but is intent on redefining God’s holiness and downplaying
the seriousness of sin (p. 173). Nevertheless he is right to say that anger
is a legitimate expression of God’s love. Because the Lord is righteous
He loves righteousness and hates the wicked (Psalm 5:4-5; 11:5, 7). The Bible
speaks plainly about God’s anger against all sin being expressed in the
present and at the day of judgment (Rom. 1:18ff, 2:5-11; Eph. 5:3-6).
God’s love is not a moral weakness. If sin ought to be punished then there
is nothing in God that impels Him to leave it unpunished. If God loves sinners
then some way must be found for His justice to be satisfied as well.
Is it true that penal substitution contradicts the statement that God is love?
If it is then the New Testament writers were not aware of it. Paul tells us
that the God who justifies those who believe, by his grace, does so by setting
forth His Son as a propitiation (Rom. 3:25). The writer to the Hebrews says
that it was as a merciful High Priest that Jesus made propitiation for the sins
of the people (Heb. 2:17).
The apostle John tells us that God is both light (1 John 1:5) and love (3:16).
‘In this is love’, writes John, ‘not that we have loved God
but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins’
(4:10). On the basis of this wrath-averting death Jesus acts as our advocate
with the Father when we sin (2:1-2). Rather than being incompatible with love,
God’s love saves sinners from His own wrath through the death of Christ
(Rom. 5:8-9).
By pitting Jesus’ teaching about not ‘repaying evil for evil’
against the idea of penal substitution Steve Chalke makes a basic but telling
mistake. Consider Romans 12:17, 19: ‘Repay no one evil for evil... Beloved,
never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written,
“Vengeance Is mine, I will repay, says the Lord”’. Retribution
belongs to the righteous Judge not to private individuals. But the state is
given the limited remit to punish wrongdoers, ‘For he is the servant of
God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer’ (Rom.
13:4).
Let us make no mistake; this debate is due to Steve Chalke’s fame and
not to the worth of his argument. His writing is logically flawed, arbitrary,
reliant on emotional language, and highly selective in its use of Scripture.
To brand penal substitution as ‘cosmic child abuse’ is heretical
and blasphemous. This badly chosen phrase portrays God as committing unspeakable
evil. We are left with no confidence in the sub-Christian Old Testament revelation
or in God’s dealings with Israel. It is an embarrassment that this ill-conceived
theology should be given such public prominence. Steve Chalke has dressed up
old-fashioned liberalism in twenty-first century dress. He has certainly abandoned
the evangelical gospel. J. Gresham Machen’s words are appropriate:
“They (liberal preachers) speak with disgust of those who believe that the blood of our Lord, shed in substitutionary death, placates an alienated deity and makes possible welcome for the returning sinner. Against the doctrine of the cross they use every weapon of caricature and vilification. Thus they pour out their scorn upon a thing so holy and so precious that in the presence of it the Christian heart melts in gratitude too deep for words. It never seems to occur to modern liberals that in deriding the Christian doctrine of the cross, they are trampling on human hearts.” (J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1923, p. 120.)
Martin Downes
Martin Downes is UCCF team leader for Wales
From the September/October 2004 issue of Evangelical Magazine and in its present
form from the Banner of Truth website: http://www.banneroftruth.org/pages/articles/article_detail.php?654
with permission from the Evangelical Movement of Wales and Banner of Truth.