To be Reformed or Not to Be Reformed

Hi there,

Adrian Warnock (www.adrian.warnock.info) who goes to the same denomination as me in London sent me an email saying that I was not reformed in my thelogy. Basicaly cause I did not believe in penal substition as classicaly concieved, (though I do believe Christ took our penalty as our substitute though not so we can avoid it but so we can follow him in penatence). Any how here is the bit from the letter. May be adrian will reply regarding the atonement any one elses comments would be cool to.

Also I did a myers brigs test and Came out ENTP, I hope that is good so if your and ENTP too good for you.

Before some people worry I believe in the

Total inability of Man outside of Christ
unconditional election of Christ (aka Barth doctrine of election)
irrisistability of the Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ
perseverance of Christ


Here is the letter:

Regarding me being reformed. I would like to say that
my major theolgical influances (after Jesus and the
bible of course) are Athenasius, Edward Irving, John
McCleod Campbell and T. F. Torrance. Three out of four
would have to be considered reforemed. Unless of
course you want to use your amazing invent-a-name
machine :-p (tounge in cheek)

So i am not a five pointer(probably 4,ie minus
limited), but I do believe that we cannot make a
decision for God, but rather even that desision is the
gift of God,in Jesus Chrst. Thus only Grace, only
faith, only christ are the sweetest of doctrines to
me. They remind us that we come with nothing and that
God accepts and restores us throught Christ. Arminians
are clearly wrong for trying to put the emphsis on our
desision or our good works. Which ultimely removes the
center of our faith from Christ to Us. Which is to
remove hope of the Gospel.

This is why as R. T. Kendal rightly points out that
limited atonement in it clasical formation does not
offer us hope of salvation. For as the westminister
confession of faith explaining limited atonement
states we cannot know for certain we are elect, we
must look to our good works to see if they bear fruit
in keeping with being elect! Again putting us in the
centre instead of Jesus Chrst.

"I live by the faith OF the son of god" -Praise God!

I could write about that subject for a long time :)
With regard to steve chalke and the "neo-liberals". I
do think that penal substitution can easily as John
Stott points out in "the cross of Christ" be turned
into a caracture of what it should be. The Term
'cosmic child abuse' is over the line I will agree, in
attacking other christian's attempts to explain the
mystery of the Cross. Stott and Paker for instance
are about the best exponents of penal substitution I
have read. But they do still tend to see sin as
something which is a moral problem before God rather
than something ontological. And ultimately, this was
the major weakness of Greg Haslam's artical in
christianty. We do I think have to be careful how we
use the terms of God's anger against sin lest we
denegrade the love of the father. It is christ who is
the expresion of the heart of the father who submits
to and express the will of God showing us as Barth
puts it Gods Against us is contained in his for us.
The Father therefore does not punish the son, rather
the son expresses the mind of God about sin. He is
after all the revelation of the Father Read my T. F.
Torrance post for more.

If you want to know what I think on the atonement, you
can wait for my essay that I am trying to write on it.
But you can also read The nature of the atonement by
John Mcleod Campbell. Though as peter says of paul
"In them there are some things hard to understand that
the ignorant and unstable distort." Basicaly it is
that Gods justice is ultimetly restorative. P. T.
Foryth is on the right track when he says:

Christ confessed not merely human sin - which in a
certain sense, indeed, He could not do - but He
confessed God's holiness in reacting mortally against
human sin, in cursing human sin, in judging it to its
very death. He stood in the midst of human sin full of
love to man, such love as enabled Him to identify
Himself in the most profound, sympathetic way with the
evil race; fuller still of love to the God whose name
He was hallowing; and, as with one mouth, as if the
whole race confessed through Him, as with one soul, as
though the whole race at last did justice to God
through His soul, He lifted up His face unto God and
said, "Thou art holy in all Thy judgments, even in
this judgment which turns not aside even from Me, but
strikes the sinful spot if even I stand on it." The
dereliction upon the Cross, the sense of love's
desertion by love, was Christ's practical confession
of the holy God's repulsion of sin. He accepted the
divine situation - the situation of the race before
God. By God's will He did so. By His own free consent
He did so.

later on he states

This is the bearing of sin - the holy bearing of its
judgment. This is the taking of sin away - the
acknowledgment of judgment as holy, wise, and good,
and its conversion into blessing; the absorption and
conversion of judgment into confession and praise, the
removal of that guilt which stood between God and
man's reconciliation - the robbing sin of its power to
prevent communion with God.
see

http://www.ccel.org/f/forsyth/work_of_christ/work08.htm