Here are some items for my Church Write-Up about last Sunday’s
services. I attended the LCMS church and what I call the “Word of
Faith” church.
A. The atonement came up in both services. The pastor of the LCMS
church was upholding the doctrine of penal substitution. He portrayed
Jesus as practically twisting God the Father’s arm to forgive us, since
Jesus paid for our sins, and it would be unjust for God the Father to
punish sins twice. I do not know how seriously the pastor takes this
image: does the image reflect what God the Father is truly like, namely,
an angry God who needs to be appeased, or is the image primarily
designed to assure us that we are forgiven?
The LCMS pastor also commented on the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit
is called the Paraclete in John 14-15. According to the pastor, this
etymologically relates to how the Holy Spirit is one who is beside us
(para), calling to us (kletos). The pastor also revisited the topic of
fellowship. Last week, he said that fellowship is sharing something
with somebody else. What do we share with God, when we have fellowship
with God? The pastor referred to II Peter 1:4, where Christians are
called partakers of the divine nature. We share with God by having the
Holy Spirit. Another passage that the pastor cited was Romans 8:15,
which states that it is by the Spirit of adoption that Christians cry
out “Abba Father.” We are already God’s sons, he said, but the Holy
Spirit affirms to our hearts God’s affection towards us, while enabling
us to have affection towards God.
I bring up these points about the Holy Spirit because they overlap
with what the “Word of Faith” pastor was saying, even though the “Word
of Faith” pastor went in a different direction on the atonement. The
title of his sermon, and perhaps even the series, was “Christus
Victor.” Christus Victor is a model of the atonement. The pastor was
critiquing the penal substitution model of the atonement. He denied
that Jesus died on the cross to appease an angry God. According to the
pastor, God is not angry with us. Rather, God came into the human mess,
alongside humans, at the cross, and he triumphed over what humans did
to him through the resurrection. God lovingly comes alongside us
today. The pastor likened God to a judge who convicts a repeat
offender, then takes off his judicial robes and spends time in jail with
the offender. He also likened God to a parent who discovers that his
or her child is looking at pornography and gently reasons with the child
about why pornography is destructive, rather than lashing out at the
child in anger. The atonement is not about Jesus taking away God’s
anger, but rather concerns God taking away our anger. “Hell,” according
to the pastor, is where people can freely go when they do not want
God’s love.
The “Word of Faith” pastor noted that Isaiah 53:4 states that the
Suffering Servant was believed to be stricken by God, but that does not
mean that the belief was true. God was not afflicting the Servant, but
people were. I wonder, though, how the pastor would address v. 10,
which states that God desired to crush the Servant and made the Servant
sick.
B. The LCMS pastor preached about Jesus as the Logos. Greco-Roman
philosophy, he said, was searching for some grand logos, some logical
order in which everything could fit and have a particular significance
or role. The Epicureans, he stated, held that there was no order and so
people should simply pursue pleasure. The Stoics also thought that
there was no order but maintained that people should live as if there
is, by being virtuous. Christianity affirmed that Jesus was the Logos,
which means that we know our place and role by looking at Jesus. We are
accepted by Jesus, and that enables us, not to seek the world’s
approval, but rather to serve it in love.
I did not entirely agree with these characterizations of Greek
philosophy. My understanding is that the Epicureans included virtue in
their conceptualization of pleasure, and that the Stoics believed that
there was an order in the cosmos: the cosmos was permeated with a
rational fire. Still, the point about the Stoics not believing in order
but acting as if it exists stood out to me, on account of an
Unbelievable podcast that I heard the day before: a discussion
between Jordan Peterson and Susan Blackmore. Blackmore, an atheist,
was saying that life has no meaning, yet humans can respond to this by
going about their day, being active and doing their work. They make
meaning in their lives, she seemed to be saying. Peterson retorted that
she is acting as if there is a God, even though she does not believe in
God.