A Split in UK Evangelicalism
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Adrian Warnock reports:
Read the whole thing.
UCCF responds:
This Easter a clear line was drawn in the sand in British Evangelicalism. For years, whenever the word “evangelical” was mentioned, people in the UK would think almost immediately of Spring Harvest — easily the UK's largest Christian conference. Part of that package has been Word Alive, a distinct all-age event run by UCCF (who owns the UK-based Intervarsity Press) and the Keswick Convention in partnership with Spring Harvest. At the heart of Word Alive has been a separate student track with up to 2,000 students. Beginning in 2008, there will be no more Word Alive at Spring Harvest.
Read the whole thing.
UCCF responds:
Steve Chalke has made his dislike of penal substitution very clear by likening God's act of punishing Jesus in our place to a cosmic child abuser. In good conscience, we simply could not allow Steve to teach during the Word Alive week. We're very sad that after 14 years of fruitful ministry, Spring Harvest has decided to end the Word Alive partnership because we feel unable to shift on this position.
posted by JT at Thursday, April 19, 2007
13 Comments:
It is very sad that a respected Christian organisation like UCCF has caused this split by denying a platform to one of the UK's most respected evangelical leaders, Steve Chalke, on the basis of a misunderstanding of his position on the atonement, which is in fact more or less the same as that of John Stott and Jim Packer. See my comment on Adrian's post.
Peter
That is rather disingenous. Steve Chalke has categorically said that he feels that Penal Substitutionary Atonement makes God into a Cosmic Child Abuser. This is not merely about different understandings. This is so serious that Piper calls it blasphemy and Grudem feels it is very close to blasphemy.
As I read both Stott and Packer I see a clearly different line than that Chalke is taking. Packwer speaks this clearly on Page 186 of the 20th Anniversary edition of Knowing God.
Peter - You can't possible believe that Steve Chalke takes the same line as Stott and packer on the atonement!? If you do than you have seriously misunderstood Chalkes position. He has had plenty of time and opportunity to clarify any misunderstandings as to his position like the EA symposiam.
I'm rather encouraged to hear that a UK group with long links with Steve Chalke has decided to part company with him!
It is sad that such an influencial man has strayed from the doctrine of penal substitution!
The teaching which Chalke has rejected, in somewhat immoderate language, is not the general idea of substitutionary atonement but the specific teaching that God punished and killed Jesus. See this summary of his teaching, where he explains Hodge's view, which he rejects, as that God was "bringing about the violent death of his Son".
I note that Stott, as quoted by Adrian Warnock, has also rejected this idea: "We must never make Christ the object of God’s punishment", i.e. God did not punish Jesus.
And in a careful and detailed study of the atonement (see my analysis of it) Packer also avoided saying that God punished or killed Jesus.
So it is quite clear to me that the concept of the atonement about which Chalke was so negative is not the one which is held by Packer or Stott.
Peter - I'm going to post something that someone else posted on Adrian's blog. I think it dealswith your misunderstanding fairly clearly:
I don't think UCCF and John Stott are saying different things at all.
UCCF and Stott have a long, long history of association- as can be read in the foreword to 'TCOC'.
Stott is clearly warning against looking at penal subsitution in non-Trinitarian terms, and causing misunderstandings by imagining Christ helplessly subject to the Father's uncontrollable rage. UCCF has always been very sensitive in its articulation of penal subsitution as a Trinitarian doctrine where (as Peter Dray has said) the Godhead is united in satisfying divine justice and mercy in a single glorious moment.
The misrepresentation is something Steve Chalke holds-up in his book to be condemned- but he holds it up as if it were the exact things that evangelicals are teaching. He suggests that people like UCCF want to teach that the Son is the innocent victim of the Father- then rightly condemns this.
But he's created a straw man to burn. This is not how penal subsitution is biblically, nor is it how I've ever heard it taught in my experience. Could it be that he simply finds the traditional formulation of penal subsitution too hard to swallow, and therefore uses slightly dirty tactics to bring it down; making it out to be unbiblical and cruel?
In short, Steve Chalke is reacting against a false formulation of a doctrine in order to rule-out the real thing. It's sad.
So, Petr Kirk, Chalke's similarity to Denney/Packer/Stott isn't genuine- it's only that they commonly condemn a distorted doctrine. I'm sure the similarity ends there, as all three go on to teach penal subsitution: something Chalke is unwilling to accept. It's underhand tactics.
I have just read through the redeemingspthepCross.pdf on Steve Chalke's website. It seems that on the whole, Steve Chalke is against, first of all, the idea that God seeks retribution for the sins committed against him.
for example, "All of us who know the joy of having children also know the pain of their
rebelliousness – and yet a good parent does not seek retribution." So the argument goes ahead and say that God cannot be worse than a good parent. Elsewhere, mentioning the parable of pordigal Son, he says, " The father in the story is wronged, but chooses to forgive in
order to restore a broken relationship – there is no theme of retribution." and so on and so forth.
Thanks for pointing the pdf to me, Peter, for the article shows very clearly that Steve Chalke doesn't believe in Penal Substitution the way Packer and Stott did.
Back to the article, there are plenty of data in Scripture (both OT and NT) for the love of God and holiness of God. In fact, the astonishing fact of 1 John is that he said God is love when for so many years, it is oft-repeated, "God is holy.". The two themes are present as well when God revealed his glory to Moses in Exodus 34.
I would like to hear and understand how the Christus Victor Model explains passages such as the agony at Gethsamane and our Lord's haunting cry on the cross, "My God, My God why hast thou forsaken me?"
My previous point is that when John says "God is love." He is not necessarily making a point that tantamounts to something like," We've got it wrong in the past. God is love after all and we don't have to worry about meeting him in judgement." Such a reading is clearly outside the context of 1 John itself.
Rather, "God is love" appears in 1 John 4:8. Just a few verses down, in John 4:10," In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be a propitiation for our sins."
How propitiation could be understood without the doctrine of God's wrath escapes me.
Thanks Joon - helpful post
i tried reading tat packer article and dun get it how he's agreeing with Chalke...except this part
"The penal substitution model has been criticised for depicting a kind Son placating a fierce Father in order to make him love man, which he did not do before. The criticism is, however, inept, for penal substitution is a Trinitarian model, for which the motivational unity of Father and Son is axiomatic."
Response from Spring Harvest to the UCCF Statement by Pete Broadbent, Chair of Spring Harvest Leadership Team:
Spring Harvest, Keswick and UCCF (the three partners in Word Alive) agreed to go their separate ways. The statement we produced at the time reads as follows:
“2007 will be the last year of Spring Harvest Word Alive. The constituent organisations – Keswick Ministries, UCCF and Spring Harvest – will be ending a partnership that has lasted 14 years, and have agreed to go their separate ways.
Word Alive was originally conceived as a distinctive event within Spring Harvest, drawing Christians from a more theologically conservative church background to Butlins for a week with a strong emphasis on expository bible teaching and a major input for students. The partnership has been a fruitful one and we thank God for the way he has worked through this event over the years.
Of late, it has been difficult to accommodate Word Alive as a separate week within the total mix, and after much discussion, the Spring Harvest Council of Management gave notice that Spring Harvest Word Alive could not continue beyond this year.
Spring Harvest wish the Word Alive partners well and we separate thanking God for the part the other plays in the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ in the UK today.”
Various people have since attempted to "spin" the reasons why we decided to go our separate ways for their own purposes. That's their decision. It's not where Spring Harvest are. Wallace Benn and Pete Broadbent stood on a public platform at Spring Harvest Word Alive, wished our respective events well, prayed for each other, and departed on the best of terms. The statement made jointly by the two of us on behalf of Spring Harvest Word Alive criticising Jeffrey John's inflammatory broadcast indicates that there is no way that anyone can represent Spring Harvest as being anywhere other than the orthodox biblical stance on the atonement.
It’s terribly sad that UCCF have now come out with an official statement that simply isn’t true to what actually took place. I don’t want to get into a public row with UCCF, whose ministry among students I support. But I dispute most of what is contained in the statement as being either misunderstanding (wilful or otherwise) or total fabrication. I could hope that they would withdraw their statement and hold their peace. They seem to want to define themselves over against Spring Harvest, which I regret. We stand for the same faith and the same gospel.
I'm saddened by the split but in some ways delighted SH & WA are splitting - should have happened ages ago I think. SH incapsulates & propogates all the worst features of contemporary evangelicalism.
Perhaps the new word alive will put the bible rather than entertainment (SH call it worship) at the centre of their program
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