I was summarizing a few sentences from those pages...

2008-11-16T20:56:00.000-05:00

I was summarizing a few sentences from those pages, specifically, "I don't doubt that we have more to learn from Christ's death than simply the fact that he died as a substitute for us, bearing our grief and carrying our sorrows.... Rather than pitting these theories against one another, could they be evaluated together...? Still, when we give attention and authority to all parts of the New Testament canon, substitution becomes the center and focus of the Bible's witness to the meaning of Christ's death" (p. 109). At the end of that last paragraph, he quotes Bloesch favorably when he says, "Evangelical theology...does not claim that this theory does justice to all aspects of Christ's atoning work" (p. 110). He doesn't appear to be making the atonement and penal substitution identical here; perhaps what he said on that occasion was an intentional oversimplification for rhetorical effect.

But I agree with him that it is central. Packer says the same too. Penal substitution is the engine that drives the train.

Pitts,What did you think of Dever's claim that Pen...

2008-11-16T09:29:00.000-05:00

Pitts,

What did you think of Dever's claim that Penal Substitution "anchors all others"? I heard him claim last year [either @ TEDS or @ T4G] that he believes the atonement IS penal substitution, and the other themes elucidate other aspects of what happen in Penal Substitution. Does he make that same argument here? Would you agree with him that the atonement is Penal Substitution at root with expansive themes elucidating it or would you go the route of other that no one metaphor IS the atonement, but each is a metaphor unpacking it?

Comments on Pitts' Sp•t: Celebrating the Glory of the Atonement

I was summarizing a few sentences from those pages...

Pitts,What did you think of Dever's claim that Pen...