Its been a while and thoughts on the atonement

Finally got my essay on Matthew in after pulling an all nighter

Adrian is banging on still about the supposed 'simple' Gospel and how retrebutive punishment is essential if not the essence of atonement. Though, I thought that people not freely forgiving was the essence of the worlds problems!!!!!

I did a reply which I thought was quite good so here it is.


Thoughts on the Atonement


As Johnathan Edwards says

Therefore, by what was before granted, it is requisite that God should punish it[sin], unless there be something in some measure to balance this desert; either some answerable repentance and sorrow for it, or other compensation.


dismissing repentance because


For all the repentance men are capable of, is no repentance at all, or is as little as none, in comparison with the greatness of the injury; for it bears no proportion to it. And it would be as dishonourable and unfit for God to pardon the injury without any repentance at all, as to do it merely on the account of a repentance that bears no more proportion to the injury, than none at all.


But surely that is exactly what Christ can do in our nature. He feels the deapths of ours sin and so feels the wrath of the father against sin, being one being with him, that he offers to God that perfect repentance. He feels the sin deeply enough and knows it for what it is. In becoming sin for us he feels what God feels about sin and because he is man offers to God the satisfaction of his honour.

As John McLeod Campbell says

That oneness of mind with the Father, which toward man took the form of condemnation of sin, would in the Sons dealing with the Father in relation to our sins, take the form of a perfect confession of our sins. This confession as to its own nature must have been a perfect Amen in humanity to the judgment of God on the sin of man. . . . That response has all the elements of a perfect repentance in humanity for all the sin of man, --- a perfect sorrow --- a perfect contrition --- all the elements of such a repentance, and that in absolute perfection, all except the personal consciousness of sin; and in that perfect response in Amen to the mind of God in relation to sin is the wrath of God rightly met, and that is accorded to divine justice which is its due, and could alone satisfy it (117-1.


That surely is atonement the bringing of humanities will in line with God's perfect and holy will.