Many thanks go to Rev. Phil Ryken for pointing us to a British Evangelical symposium defending the penal view of the atonement. Of special interest I thought, was I. Howard Marshall’s “The Theology of the Atonement” which makes good use of N. T. Wright’s excellent commentary on Romans. But even more interesting was Sue Grooms’s “Why Did Christ Die,”:
Exile itself was seen as a punishment for sins, so forgiveness of sins was another way of saying ‘end of exile’. Lam. 4:22 reads, ‘The punishment of your iniquity, O daughter Zion, is accomplished, he will keep you in exile no longer’ (NRSV). The arm of the Lord, which will redeem Israel from exile and to put evil to flight, is revealed, according to Is. 53, through the work of the servant of the Lord. N.T. Wright suggests that Second Isaiah as a whole was thematic for Jesus’ ministry and kingdom announcement, which is to be understood as the historical and concrete acting-out of the return of the Lord to Zion to defeat evil and to rescue his people from exile, that is, to forgive their sins at last.
(Naturally, I object to the term Second Isaiah as incompatible with a serious commitment to the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture. However, I certainly don’t object to finding much good in Groom’s defense of orthodoxy and would hate to see it neglected for the sake of some sort of purity test on a different matter. The same goes for N. T. Wright how also sometimes uses the term.)
I find this last interesting because I know that Wright has felt his work on the suffering servant in Isaiah has been neglected in order to spin out a false perspective on his teaching about the atonement. I’m glad to see it is being appreciated now.
ADDITIONAL COMMENT
But perhaps I am jumping ahead here. I’m not at all sure Sue Groom is actually defending Wright’s own position or going in a different direction. I’ll have to take time to read it more carefully.
For Further Reading:
N. T. Wright on the Atonement: A Brief Statement
A Review of N. T. Wright’s For All the Saints?
Rich Lusk’s “A Short Note on N. T. Wright & His Reformed Critics”
It is interesting that people on both sides of current debates on the subject of penal substitution appeal to Wright. I think that it is very clear that Wright holds to a form of penal substitution. However, I also believe that he might provide us with a way to move beyond some of the seemingly intractable sticking points in these debates, by giving us a different angle of approach on the doctrine. What are your thoughts on this issue?
Alastair, I’m not sure what I think. It seems to me that this is something you could write about productively better than I could. When I read Wright he sounds quite traditional. But apparrently he thinks he’s doing something to put certain objections to rest. The problem is that I’ve never understood the objections. I simply don’t see the issues. So I don’t even understand the “intractable sticking points” enough to address them. I simply have a story that was handed to me and I see no reason to do much else besides stick to it. At once a gift and liability I suppose.