Why not.  Part of "Page 27" of "Partakers of the Divine Nature"  All bolded italics Christensen.  Everything else is me.

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Ummmmm...

Post Edited ("I am-in-I Am") : 3/26/2008 7:01:49 AM (GMT-5)

D, didn’t mean for you to leave the thread. I just wanted to get you to unpack “what’s not assumed is not healed,” in terms of why that is; what has to happen before reconciliation can occur? That’s what I was interested in. If you’ve got something on the atonement, I’d like to hear it.

Jeff: Don't have much time, Tom. But my main concern about your thesis is that when I read the gospel proclamations in Acts, I don't get the idea that Christ's suffering was the most important thing a person conceived of when coming to faith. It seems, from those accounts, that Christ's resurrection and implied lordship were the predominant intellectual objects of their attention and belief.

Tom: Do you see anyone in the NT believing as a result of apprehending the resurrection while being ignorant of the cross? Right. We do NOT see this, and to suppose it ever occurs is a bit ridiculous. I took a quick read through Acts, and noticed only one time where the resurrection is mentioned and nothing is said about the cross of violent manner of Jesus’ death (Paul’s sermon on Mars Hill; and we can conclude that Luke is summarizing Paul and only happens to leave out mention of the cross so as to focus on what set them off—mention of the resurrection), after which time we know Paul makes his way to Corinth, intend “to know (and proclaim) nothing but ‘Christ crucified’.” But throughout the rest of the sermons in Acts, we have a few quick summaries of the content of what’s proclamed by Luke as “…Philip preached Christ” or “they proclaimed the Word of the Lord,” which mentioned neither cross nor resurrection, but the majority mention BOTH events. The idea that anybody proclaimed the resurrection but not crucified Christ is mistaken. And remember, the content of the ‘kerygma’ established on a reading of the preaching of the gospel in Acts includes both cross and empty tomb. Gotta have both.

There’s no making one more prominent than the other in NT faith either. Christ must die and must be raised from the grave. Both comprise a single event. It’s like winning the Indy 500, where suffering the fatigue of running the race is like the cross and crossing the winning line is the resurrection. People talk about the crossing the line at the checkered flag because that’s the moment when the race ends and one is victorious. But no one supposes that somebody who actually wins might have won without running the race itself. And winning the race entails having run it. Though running does not entail winning it.

Paul says in Romans 1 Christ was “declared to be the Son of God” by his resurrection from the dead. This figures importantly into my understanding. When I say the suffering God freely embraces for us on the Cross has to be perceived by us as inflicted by us as the demonstration of God’s forgiveness for us, I didn’t think I had to go on to speak of the resurrection. I was intentionally leaving it off because I thought the connection was obvious. On the cross we see a man suffering. But we must perceive God suffering in that man. That’s what the resurrection is about. It’s God stamp of approval on Jesus, God’s way of declaring that the sufferings of Christ on the cross ARE God’s, that what happened there on the cross has God’s approval. NOW we can see God on the cross. Without the resurrection, the identity of the one on the cross isn’t established and we fail to perceive that suffering as God acting on our behalf (what we must perceived in order to fully take responsibility for our crimes). With the resurrection, we now perceive the cross as God acting on our behalf.

Thanks,

Tom

Jeff: I hear you, Tom. So we would say that your message of the cross is more about sanctification than justification/repentance, which can be initiated without such an understanding of the cross.

Tom: Eh, no. It’s about the latter. Forgiveness on God’s part is a given of unconditional love. But reconciliation (the healing of the relationship and restoration of personal intimacy) requires more than JUST God’s willingness to forgive. It requires our repentance, viz., our taking responsibility for our offense. That’s it. There’s no further sacrifice or price or metaphysical account of justice that’s got to be paid (in addition to God’s forgiving attitude and our repentance) for us to be restored to God.

The question is, how does God get fallen, sinful beings like us to a place of repentance? That's all. How’s God convince us to take responsibility for our offense? Well, we have to know what it is we're taking responsibility for. There's no taking responsibility apart from THAT. We have to (a) know what the will of God is, i.e., know what we should be, what telos or goal we have come short of, and then (b) realize what the consequences of our falling short mean for God in terms of the suffering he has chosen to bear in forgiving us for falling short. Getting us to perceive this and take responsibility is what the incarnation and cross are about.

Jeff: In any case, the only thing I'm even remotely confident of, for now, is that Christ's death is probably propitiatory in the sense that it DECLARES or SHOWS something about God…

Tom: That doesn’t seem to follow. If something is propitiatory it appeases the wrath of someone; an offering designed to slate the wrath of an angry God. But that’s quite different than suffering which is designed to declare TO US something to be the case about God've loving forgiveness of us.

Jeff: Thus far, I just can't see that your view is clear enough to think that it could be THE meaning of the cross.

Tom: God shows up and declares that he loves us enough to suffer our offense rather than pursue retributive justice, and in so doing makes clear to us in Christ the sort of life we were called to, the heights from which we have fallen, and the suffering God bears in forgiving us. What’s not clear? We can now perceive all that we need to take responsibility for in God’s presence and so be reconciled to God.

Jeff: …it really is the Divine-Self-revealing nature of that event that renders it propitiatory to God. IOW, God could not be satisfied with revealing less than He is capable of.

Tom: That’s not propitiation though. You sure you mean ‘propitiation’? Propitiation is the appeasing of the offended party’s anger through a satisfactory sacrifice. God wants his pound of flesh before he’ll forgive. That’s what I understand ‘propitiate’ to mean, which leaves me wondering what is it that's forgiven if God exacts the just price of the offense? Debts are either 'paid' or 'forgiven'. Not both.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 3/27/2008 4:32:27 AM (GMT-5)

Jeff: Thus far, I just can't see that your view is clear enough to think that it could be THE meaning of the cross.

Tom: God shows up and declares that he loves us enough to suffer our offense rather than pursue retributive justice, and in so doing makes clear to us in Christ the sort of life we were called to, the heights from which we have fallen, and the suffering God bears in forgiving us. What’s not clear? We can now perceive all that we need to take responsibility for in God’s presence and so be reconciled to God.

Jeff: It's not clear to me that scripture, in any context I can recall, is trying to communicate what you're communicating. And yet it does seem to be saying quite a bit about the cross. Give me a specific passage that you think pretty much is communicating what you're saying.

I'll look up the greek word for propitiate later and see if it can only have to do with wrath. I have no doubt it was probably predominantly used that way. But maybe the root meaning doesn't entail that notion. Maybe the root meaning is just an appeasement or satisfying relief from some unsatisfying, uncomfortable, or frustrating SOFA. If so, maybe that timing issue I talked about is part of the source of that frustration. Back at you later.

And THIS is why Apollinarianism is deadly to the True Faith of the Church.

D: If Jesus didn't have a human spirit/nous/heart...the "organ of faith" and "natural congeniality with God" in the human being...He could NEVER have saved us where we...SPIRITUALLY FALLEN HUMANS...needed it the most!

Tom: Why? I’m not disputing this, mind ya, I just want to know just what role the assumption of human nature by God has to do with reconciling us to God. Why is it necessary? Does it free God to forgive ‘cause he gets his pound of flesh? Does it satisfy some objective requirement of retributive justice? Does it appease his anger? Is there some metaphysical recapitulation of corporate humanity in Christ’s victory that mysteriously credits our debt of justice to Christ who suffers while crediting us with his righteousness? And this mysteriously gets imputed to us? What?

Tom

Post Edited ("I am-in-I Am") : 3/27/2008 12:20:41 PM (GMT-5)