Thank you for your kind comments! I’m grateful that you would even read our posts, and I’m thankful God would use any of them to encourage you.

I’m not sure how I happened on to your blog, but it is regularly a refreshing read. It has a spirit of direct scriptural encouragement and not of endless commentary on current Christian hiccups. As a college student (The Master’s College), your posts on the freedom from a sense of guilt that can be found in God’s justification and forgiveness seem to cross paths with my experiences in an especially timely way.

God bless!
Dan

I’m grateful the Lord would use this to bless you.

Amen, what a merciful Savior we have!

I’m glad you read Tony’s blog site directly (since I know Kevin DeYoung first reported on in his blog last week). I just think we need to be very careful on our public blogs before we make charactatures of other Christians and their theology. If you read enough of Tony’s writings, I think you’ll come away without any doubts that he, just like us, is relying 100% on Jesus for salvation.

We all need to remember that a proper theology is certainly very important, but that it’s the real living Jesus himself who saves us, not whether or not we have subtley-nuanced correct/incorrect theological cognitions about such.

I’ll just leave you with a quote of Tony’s from “Do I Deny Penal Substitution?” (the day 2 blog, in which he further explains the quote you referenced in your blog). He certainly doesn’t take Jesus’s death and ressurection lightly, and in fact calls it the “pivot-point in cosmic history” for us. I think he’s simply viewing it from additional paradigms that many of us today in the modern evangelical church haven’t been taught to also consider.

Per Tony:
“However, that does not lead me to reject it outright [i.e., penal subs. atonement]. Why? Because I can still see the merits of PSA. I can still understand the theological arguments behind it. I can still see how it is justified by some Pauline writings.
As I have said and written elsewhere, I consider the crucifixion-resurrection to be the pivot point in cosmic history. It is ultimately more immense and beautiful than any human words can describe or explain.
Every atonement theory proffered by theologians over the past two millennia has shone a spotlight on that event. And I, for one, think the more spotlights shining on the cross and empty tomb, the better.”

Anyway, peace to you brother. Thanks Stephen!

I don’t like to debate theology online because it doesn’t usually seem to be very productive. So I’ll give you my thoughts and leave it at that.

I did read the full post by Tony Jones, as well as his following clarifying post. Tony says that he doesn’t want to deny penal substitution, but then he goes on to deny it anyway. For example, in his following post he says:

“But, in all honesty, PSA never sat quite right with me. For one, it didn’t seem to jibe with the chesed of God in the Hebrew Scriptures. And it really didn’t jibe with Jesus’ message. Honestly, I just took my leaders’ words on faith that Jesus perfect life and subsequent death somehow assuaged my own moral guilt.”

I could be misreading him, but he appears to be saying that penal substitution doesn’t agree with the OT or the message of Jesus. Which seems like a denial of penal substitution.

In a further post called “Do I Deny Penal Substitution?” he seems to be acknowledging that penal substitution has a place in scripture. But it’s hard for me to take his words at face value given the comments he made in his other posts.

Those are my thoughts.