Just How Bad Is It?

We often think of our need for a Savior in terms of our own sins. What I mean by this is that we tend to recall the “bad things” we’ve done and see this collection of misdeeds as the reason we need forgiveness. It isn’t that we don’t need to be forgiven of these things (we certainly do!) but there is something deeper, something more wicked than the sum of all of the worst things we’ve done. In fact, it isn’t our “sins” that are our primary problem. Something darker, deeper and deadlier is at work in us.

And Now For Something Completely Different…

I have found the answer to the problem of evil! Click here and be blessed.

Speaking of Evil…

Michael Spencer has linked Keith Schooley’s take on the Olson, Piper, Phillips roundy round. I think he makes some excellent observations for us to consider. After reading Schooley’s profile, I like him. I shall blogroll him. Done.

Green on the Atonement

I just finished The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views, and it finished reasonably well with Joel Green making a pretty good case for his kaleidoscopic view. Central to his thesis is that the atonement cannot be understood by merely one theme, but sees it as a multi-layered, multi-dimensional reality.

Some Thoughts on Atonement

Romans 8:18-21:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of glory of the children of God.

In working through the meaning of the atonement, a couple of things have occurred to me that are worth further consideration.

Reichenbach on Healing

Well, I got through Reichenbach’s contribution in The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views, and I must say that I gleaned more from him than I anticipated. His crankiness emerges from time to time, but maybe only because I’m looking for it. While I am unconvinced that his view should be viewed as the central or fundamental motif if the atonement, there were some brilliant reminders in his piece and he certainly added to the rich texture of it.

Schreiner on Penal Substitution

Second up in the presenters in The Nature of the Atonement is Thomas Schreiner. All in all it puts forward  a good representation of the Penal Substitution View of the atonement. While there weren’t many surprises for me (this is essentially the view I’ve lived with for as long as I knew there was such a thing as an atonement), it was a good read and didn’t say anything concerning the work of Christ on the cross that would raise my hackels (whatever those are).

And then there is…

this and this and this.

[HT: BHT]

The Problem of Evil is Hell

The assumptions: 

1. God exists before everything (including evil).
2. God creates something (heavens and earth?) and somehow, at some point evil is introduced (we can presume that God at least knew it was coming, and perhaps on some level, and for some reason, he intended it).

Sorting Evils

In The Doctrine of God, John Frame says:

Scripture…gives us an explicit answer to the problem of natural evil. Natural evil is a curse brought upon the world because of moral evil. It functions as punishment to the wicked and as a means of discipline for those who are righteous by God’s grace. (p. 161)

Are we to take from this that a hurricane (or a tsunami or an earthquake or a fire) that strikes a village, say, is to the unbeliever judgment and the believer correction?

Is natural evil, as a consequence of moral evil, a means of punishing moral evil? Does the effect of natural evil, as a means of punishing moral evil, depend upon the perspective of the sufferer of it? Are we to understand evil (at least natural evil) in tems of human perspective? A category 5 hurricane is evil if it crashes into a populated city center and kills people and destroys property, but is not evil if the same storm lands on uninhabited real estate or drifts and dies out at sea?