Call to defend doctrine

This article appeared in the Conference edition of the Church of England Newspaper on 21 September 2003 and is reproduced here with their permission.

A rallying call to evangelicals to stand up for the doctrine of atonement was made at NEAC4 yesterday by the Archbishop of Sydney, the Most Rev Peter Jensen.

The Australian church leader said that the doctrine, which has divided liberal theologians, is so central to evangelical theology that to doubt it calls into question the whole nature of Christian faith.

"The evangelical theology to which we adhere, and adhere as members of the Church of England in accordance with the Articles and the Book of Common Prayer, is of a piece: it is a coherent whole. When we give up, modify or distort one section, it has unforeseen consequences on the whole," he said in his afternoon speech.

While theologians have debated the issue of the atonement, some have expressed an uneasiness with the concept of Christ's substitution, asking how one person could be punished in place of another. The Archbishop argued that because of God's way of ordering the universe the actions of one can be made for another. Pointing to the example of Adam, he quoted 2 Corinthians 5:21 which says that "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us."

But the Archbishop went on and said that the real issue here was the attitude of Christians towards sin. Because of what he described as a "failure to perceive the seriousness of sin", this led to a weakening of doctrinal standards, and that weaknesses became obvious firstly in the doctrine of the atonement and in the doctrine of justification by faith.

The atonement, he said, was achieved by Christ's sacrifice, but he argued that it wasn't achieved by "paying Satan", but rather, by forgiveness. "The way in which Satan has been defeated and we have been freed, is by God forgiving us."

Dr Jensen pointed out that many people today look for freedom, but maintained that the Bible "knows nothing of utterly free human beings". Instead it portrayed people as always being in bondage to their lords, and the freedom Christians enjoyed was "the freedom of having a good Lord."