Replying to a post on Stan's "Winging It" blog today. Stan was talking about the concept of a "different gospel," as Paul spoke of in Galatians. Paul was warning some in the early church of following different traditions rather than Jesus' actual teachings. Speaking of that, Stan says:
So this "different gospel" was not a gospel at all. It was only masquerading as one. It was a distortion...
In all of this, I don't think Stan and the more modern evangelicals (including me, once upon a time) see the problem they have. They have lifted portions of Paul's letters and you humans have created this theory that's come to be known as Penal Substitutionary Theory of Atonement (PSTA) - a literally human tradition - and they have made THAT set of human opinions the "Gold Standard" of understanding the gospel - the literal good news to the literal poor and marginalized, as Jesus put it - THE ONE TRUE WAY.
The problem with the PSTA? It's completely absent from Jesus' sermons/teachings. Yes, there are approximately TWO times where Jesus used a phrase that PSTA theorists point to - once, when Jesus referred to a ransom and a second time where Jesus spoke of breaking his body and shedding his blood. But those were in two sequestered meetings with a few disciples and they are more rightly understood symbolically (because they make no biblical or rational sense to try to take them more literally).
The problem? Jesus story and teachings are recorded throughout the four Gospel books and he is clear that he is out preaching the GOSPEL to the crowds, to the poor and marginalized, throughout the Gospels. But in the recorded sermons of Jesus, we have a very grace-centered set of teachings about the beloved community, the "kingdom of God," of standing in opposition to the deadly legalism of the Pharisees on the one hand and the welcoming, grace-full realm of God on the other hand.
This PSTA is quite literally a completely different "gospel" than what Jesus taught.
Stop and understand that:
This PSTA is quite literally a completely different "gospel" than what Jesus taught.
It's completely absent in Jesus' sermons to the crowds. IF Jesus were actually teaching this more modern, revisionist "gospel," wouldn't it have appeared in his sermons? OF course it would! It's literally a different Gospel than anything Jesus is recorded as having taught in the four Gospel books.
Further, as have long been pointing out and as the PSTA crowd keep ignoring, it's HORRIBLE news, this human theory/tradition of theirs. God HATES most of humanity? God created them to be sent to eternal torture?? THAT is supposed to be good news?
It's a literal different gospel and, hell (literally), it's not even a "gospel" at all. It's a nightmare.
So my question to the PSTA theorists of the world - those who hold to this gospel different than found in Jesus' teachings and, I would say, is a corruption of Paul's teaching is this:
Even if you can't find it in you to agree with this more Jesus-centered notion of the gospel, can you at least see how irrational and, on-the-face-of-it, contrary to any notion of Good News to the Poor and Marginalized that Jesus himself spoke of? Can you see how you have to REALLY go into rational and textual contortions to make your idea of Paul's "gospel" fit with Jesus' actual gospel?
One of the other things I've pointed out is, one MIGHT consider this PSTA theory reasonable IF one begins with the assumption that Paul is THE ONE who most correctly represents God and what God wants. Clearly, Paul does use language that can be (incorrectly, I'd say) cherry-picked to create this PSTA.
BUT, if one begins with the notion that Jesus is the best representation of God and God's ways and then read Jesus' actual teachings and THEN read Paul, but through the lens of Jesus, you won't get PSTA. You'll get grace and find that Paul is agreeing with Jesus on the notion of the beloved realm of God as a realm of grace and love and welcome.
To me, this is where the PSTA theorists go wrong.
16 comments:
Consider it this way:
IF someone knew nothing about the Bible and they picked it up and read the four Gospels, could they in their wildest dreams read Jesus' actual teachings and reach ANYTHING like a PSA theory?
Can you acknowledge that as truly not possible?
Dan
Pedophiles are accepted, too.
Dan
The above anonymous "Dan" troll is, of course, not me. But it's not mistaken. That is, Christians of all (most) types have long argued that God's grace is extended even to the worst of us, those who have made tremendously awful, painful, harmful mistakes.
This is something that Grace believers, such as myself, affirm. And it's theoretically something the PSA theorists affirm, as well. So, there's no great "gotcha" moment by a cowardly anonymous troll (who may or may not even be human) noting something that's commonly accepted by most Christians.
For me, that's the thing about grace: No matter how far we may wander or what mistakes we make or even the harm we may do (even as something as terrible as slavery, pedophilia or murder), we are not beyond the love of an all-loving, perfect God who loves all.
That does not mean that, with those who cause harm and even commit atrocities, that the harm should be ignored or go unpunished. It's just that they are not beyond love, too.
The very Paul who I referenced in this post was a graceless, vile, legalistic murderer before he turned around, by God's grace.
The radical protestant commitment to an angry god is an utterly corrosive compartmentalization of Paul, and, as you point to, Dan, a cancelling of Jesus himself. Stan, because of his 16th century ideology devotes himself to retraining the shame of being human. He denies the witness of scripture, but even more!, blasphemed the Holy Spirit.
He effectively denies the liberating riches of loving Christ (“it is for freedom that Christ has set us free” [thanks, Paul]). He denies the we have a new hope of being righteous (“we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” [thanks, Peter). He denies that being actively faithful to this new hope in Christ elevates our capacity to be righteous (“His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature [thanks again, Peter], and I think his motivation to deny this is his need to feel superior, to reserve for himself a capacity to share only the right to judge that is the one part of divine nature the Jesus commanded us NOT to share in. Like Eve and Adam with the fruit of the tree of knowledge, Stan reaches out and eats and receives only shame.
Which he then defensively, aided by 500 years of protestant thrill to brutality, turns against others, the Other, as anger and hate. Self hatred in men most often becomes violent… in thought or word or deed.
All the Thugs display the first two.
And so this gloriously bestowed freedom with capacities fit for everything needed for life and godliness is used how?
For the umpteenth time, Stan cannot believe in the Jesus of Matthew 25 [thanks, Matthew]:
Then the King will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’
How does Stan continue to refuse the Lord all while devoting himself only to the book? Because the radical protestant reformation put the Holy Spirit fourth in divinity behind the Bible. The Bible which didn’t exist for three centuries after Christ. The Bible which Jesus doesn’t mention. What does Jesus say about the life of the church after him?
“ But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything…”
The Thugs simply do not know the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit, the dynamic person of the triune god, who teaches the church all things as needed throughout time (“you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you know all things” [thank you, writer of 1 John].
So, because of this, because of the shame perpetuated by penal substitutionary atonement , Stan and the Thugs cannot walk In LIFE in the ways of Christ. They cannot love as Christ loved. They cannot love as the church loves: the whole world.
“My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin; but if any one does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the expiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this we may be sure that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He who says “I know him” but disobeys his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps his word, in him truly love for God is perfected. By this we may be sure that we are in him: he who says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
Yes to all that. And Stan doubles down today, writing even more about their perversion of Paul's teaching and their ignoring of Jesus' teachings!
It would be one thing to say, "I don't really think Jesus made the gospel clear, but Paul does and here's why I think that..." But they're not even doing that. They're both ignoring Jesus' Gospel AND ignoring that they're ignoring it!
Dan
They cannot pray the way Jesus daughter us to pray:
“… your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.”
Because they cannot love what Jesus loves so much, he emptied himself to be born among us.
Stan is only interested in denying heaven to the world. Not offering it.
This! is the social gospel: offering the true bread of heaven - love in action.
Feodor will spend eternity in hell because he has no love for God in his heart.
Then how come I am the one who has to ask you read scripture? How come I am the one who has to mop up the brutalizing messes the Thugs sling around?
You’re ass backwards.
Dan, the Thugs talk about our scriptural representation but they cannot deal with it. They are unprepared in every way. But principally because the put their ideology ahead of Jesus’ live and the Holy Spirit’s guidance. They don’t have a relationship to god. Their God is just an object in their needs. Blasphemy and betrayal.
And so he cancels the love commandment. For each Christian. And for the whole church as the body of Christ.
Stan is steeped in the brutalizing radically protestant ideology of the 16th century that lent itself to the justification of slavery and the writing of the myths of White Supremacy.
For some reason, my comment has been repeatedly erased that preceded my last published comment which summarized the erased one. Namely that, Stan has canceled Jesus in Matthew 25 again, when Stan writes:
“Could it be that neither Isaiah nor Jesus had people without funds ("the poor") in view, but the spiritually poor? Is it possible that "the gospel" that Jesus proclaimed was more concerned with the spiritually poor, the spiritual captives, the spiritually blind, the spiritually oppressed?”
Jesus is crystal clear about the judgment of the Son of Man:
“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’”
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