Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Heretic by omission

A Sydney rag had a “brief” piece recently, on studies of Jesus that don’t include Penal Substitutionary Atonement. Their main target was those putting forward a Christus Victor model, in which Jesus is victorious over the powers of evil. Which, as a theme, sounds reasonably biblical. Not to our mag
“This is not heresy by denial. It is heresy by omission.”
Apparently those who say anything about Jesus without PSA are heretics. The question has to be asked though, are those who omit Christus Victor heretics by omission too? It certainly seems to be a biblical theme.
Don Carson mentions in this very article “Christians are not at liberty to pick and choose which of the Bible’s teachings are to be treasured”.
Yet unless we are able to entirely plumb the depths of the bible’s teachings, to perfectly encapsulate everything in the entire word of God, every time we speak or write, then surely we will be labelled heretics by omission.
Perhaps this is the claim of those who push an exclusively PSA model, that they have everything wrapped up, and can express the entire truth, completely and fully, all the time.
Ironically a few articles later, the same writer is wondering why he is often called arrogant.

5 comments:

Matthew Moffitt said...

Would this make the creeds heresy by omission as the don't push PSA hard enough?

Djlpap said...

If Penal Substitutionary Atonement is emitted, then the power of the cross is diminished.

Matthew makes a good point however, what about our creeds. The only reference that can suggest PSA but not directly are:

apostles creed: was crucified, died, and was buried....
Nicene crred: and was crucified also for us...
Athanasian Creed: ???

It can almost seem like a long shot to make references to PSA out of thoes statements.
Therefore if PSA is not pushed hard enough in the creeds, does that make them heritcal? should we be saying them still in our church meetings?

Matthew Moffitt said...

Is PSA the be all and end all of our theology?

If we start talking about ommitting the creeds because they don't conform to OUR theology, then it probably says more about the validity of our doctrine than that of the creeds.

Djlpap said...

Exsactly! lol

Steve Hayes said...

I agree with djlpap -- we need to cut down on penal substitution emissions as well as CO2 emissions.