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MrVersatile48
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Cross Purposes
Biggest Christian conference splits amid growing atonement debate.
Madison Trammel
Three of Great Britain's most prominent Christian groups have ended their 14-year conference partnership, scuttling the annual Word Alive youth event. At issue was disagreement over a speaker, the Rev. Steve Chalke.
But below the surface simmers a theological controversy that threatens to split the country's evangelicals.
Spring Harvest's namesake conference, the largest Christian event in the country, draws about 55,000 people each year to a multi-site, multi-week lineup. The organization recently asked that Keswick Ministries and the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF) be willing to put Chalke, a member of Spring Harvest's council of management, on the student- and family-focused platform they co-host. When the ministries balked, Spring Harvest cancelled the event.
"The Word Alive committee, in good conscience, just didn't feel it would be appropriate, during that week, for Steve Chalke to be given a platform," said UCCF communications director Pod Bhogal. "Steve Chalke has made his dislike of penal substitution really, really clear, and … we didn't feel the nature of the atonement was one of those things you could agree to disagree over."
Chalke's theology first came into question in 2003 with the publication of his book The Lost Message of Jesus...
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/july/7.15.html
See also
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/200 ... ml#related
Nothing But the Blood
More and more evangelicals believe Christ's atoning death is merely a grotesque creation of the medieval imagination. Really?
Mark Dever
"I've just been told that I'm too Atonement-centered."
• Related articles and links
My sister in Christ was serious, humble, and a little confused. I said, "What do you mean 'too Atonement-centered'?" I had never heard the charge.
A Christian friend told her that she talked too much about Christ's death, which dealt with our guilt due to sin. I responded that knowing and accepting this truth was the only way to a relationship with God, and that I didn't think it was possible to be "too Atonement-centered."
Few other doctrines go to the heart of the Christian faith like the Atonement...
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/may/9.29.html
The Good News of God's Wrath
At the heart of the universe, there is a just and gracious God.
By Peter Jensen
March 1, 2004
Some Christians today are nervous about the Atonement. They think that we can know little or nothing about how God has been righteous and yet he "justified the ungodly" (Rom. 4:5) at the same time.
Especially because of the doctrine's associations with "the wrath of God" and "punishment" and other harsh language, they would prefer to leave the question of How? in the sphere of theory and speculation, if it is to be handled at all.
About such people theologian James Denney said, "They profess to believe in the fact of the Atonement, but they despair of finding any theory of it.
There are even some who glory in this situation; it is not with despair, but with triumph, that they find in the very heart of the gospel a mystery which is simply insoluble, in the very focus of revelation a spot of pure impenetrable black."
Mystery is all well and good, but I fear that the hesitation to be clear in this doctrine robs us of something important.
We may not want to go too far, but surely we may go as far as the Bible itself takes us. When we do, we have the joy of learning from the Lord himself something of how the death of his Son has brought forgiveness and redemption.
We cannot understand it all, but what he gives us illumines all the rest, and gives us a proper and an amazing sense of satisfaction that at heart of the universe, there is a just and gracious God...
http://www.ctlibrary.com/ct/2004/march/5.45.html
Ian
Biggest Christian conference splits amid growing atonement debate.
Madison Trammel
Three of Great Britain's most prominent Christian groups have ended their 14-year conference partnership, scuttling the annual Word Alive youth event. At issue was disagreement over a speaker, the Rev. Steve Chalke.
But below the surface simmers a theological controversy that threatens to split the country's evangelicals.
Spring Harvest's namesake conference, the largest Christian event in the country, draws about 55,000 people each year to a multi-site, multi-week lineup. The organization recently asked that Keswick Ministries and the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF) be willing to put Chalke, a member of Spring Harvest's council of management, on the student- and family-focused platform they co-host. When the ministries balked, Spring Harvest cancelled the event.
"The Word Alive committee, in good conscience, just didn't feel it would be appropriate, during that week, for Steve Chalke to be given a platform," said UCCF communications director Pod Bhogal. "Steve Chalke has made his dislike of penal substitution really, really clear, and … we didn't feel the nature of the atonement was one of those things you could agree to disagree over."
Chalke's theology first came into question in 2003 with the publication of his book The Lost Message of Jesus...
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/july/7.15.html
See also
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/200 ... ml#related
Nothing But the Blood
More and more evangelicals believe Christ's atoning death is merely a grotesque creation of the medieval imagination. Really?
Mark Dever
"I've just been told that I'm too Atonement-centered."
• Related articles and links
My sister in Christ was serious, humble, and a little confused. I said, "What do you mean 'too Atonement-centered'?" I had never heard the charge.
A Christian friend told her that she talked too much about Christ's death, which dealt with our guilt due to sin. I responded that knowing and accepting this truth was the only way to a relationship with God, and that I didn't think it was possible to be "too Atonement-centered."
Few other doctrines go to the heart of the Christian faith like the Atonement...
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/may/9.29.html
The Good News of God's Wrath
At the heart of the universe, there is a just and gracious God.
By Peter Jensen
March 1, 2004
Some Christians today are nervous about the Atonement. They think that we can know little or nothing about how God has been righteous and yet he "justified the ungodly" (Rom. 4:5) at the same time.
Especially because of the doctrine's associations with "the wrath of God" and "punishment" and other harsh language, they would prefer to leave the question of How? in the sphere of theory and speculation, if it is to be handled at all.
About such people theologian James Denney said, "They profess to believe in the fact of the Atonement, but they despair of finding any theory of it.
There are even some who glory in this situation; it is not with despair, but with triumph, that they find in the very heart of the gospel a mystery which is simply insoluble, in the very focus of revelation a spot of pure impenetrable black."
Mystery is all well and good, but I fear that the hesitation to be clear in this doctrine robs us of something important.
We may not want to go too far, but surely we may go as far as the Bible itself takes us. When we do, we have the joy of learning from the Lord himself something of how the death of his Son has brought forgiveness and redemption.
We cannot understand it all, but what he gives us illumines all the rest, and gives us a proper and an amazing sense of satisfaction that at heart of the universe, there is a just and gracious God...
http://www.ctlibrary.com/ct/2004/march/5.45.html
Ian
