We have all been waiting for Ben to continue our journey into the amazing Patristic model of the atonement. Here it is. The single phrase that struck me most in this discussion was the ‘friendly God’ - or the ‘philanthropic God’ as the church fathers named their view of God. This is such a contrast to the dark dead end that penal substitution takes us into. I recently heard a sermon where the preacher declared with stentorian severity that we are all born ‘enemies of God’ and that is our state prior to our salvation. Frankly I found that jarring - it just sounded so wrong. But I know that the view is a common one. I don’t think people adopt it deliberately but they are pushed there by the logic of the judicial model of atonement and the harsh, despotic view of God that this entails.
That is why this talk is so important. Ben takes us into another world that the early church fathers inhabited. They were not ‘soft’ on sin, or on ‘evil’ - but they fundamentally believed that evil was not a substance but a deprivation. Evil was the absence of God and his life, not a toxic rival to God, with some kind of substantial reality to it. If deprivation is the problem, then the solution has to be the presence of God, and of his life. If only God can put on the cloak of humanity, then he can bring life right up close to death - and once he does that, once the life of God confronts death - it will extinguish death just like turning on a light extinguishes darkness and fills a space with light.
This is the thought world that Ben takes us into with masterful eloquence - and a passionate love for the friendly God who has engineered this beyond-our-wildest-dreams reconciliation or ‘at-one-ment’.
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