Category Archives: atonement

My Life Project and Why I Chose It

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As regular readers know, my book The New Adam: What the Early Church Can Teach Evangelicals (and Liberals) About the Atonement was just published. In the next few posts I plan to introduce the message of this book by quoting and commenting on sections of the introduction and conclusion. These are sections not available in the Amazon.com preview. I hope these posts will motivate you to read the book and tell others about it. I don’t get invited to appear on Fox News, CNN or MSNBC. There are many thousands of books published every day. So, my book and most others find their way into the hands of readers by word of mouth recommendations. Many early readers have already done this, and I am grateful. Books like mine don’t make money…but in certain cases they change lives. I wrote this book for that individual who at this moment in their life needs this message. I pray that they find it.

Let me tell you a bit about the book. As a young adult I realized that churches within my circle had focused nearly all their thinking and teaching on small doctrinal differences at issue among Christians and taken for granted the central truths of the faith and the Christian way of life. I sensed that someday these central truths would no longer be generally accepted by the majority of a fast-evolving post-Christian culture. I came to believe that within my lifetime, believers would be forced to explain and defend the basic affirmations of their faith to a hostile audience. They were not prepared to do this then and they not prepared now. Many have and will fall away for this reason. As I was writing these lines the solemn words of Jesus recorded in Matthew 24 came to mind:

9 “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. 10 At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, 11 and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. 12 Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, 13 but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.

Though the immediate occasion for these words was the impending divine judgment on Jerusalem and the Temple, they express the perennial situation of those who seriously embrace the way of discipleship to Jesus.

So, I made it my life project to think through, defend, and explain the basic teachings of Christianity to my contemporaries and the next generations. For the past twenty years I have been writing about the major topics of Christian doctrine: God, Trinity, creation, providence, and church. I aimed to read the best, highest level thinkers on each topic and write at the highest level I could while keeping the book readable by students, ministers, and interested others. For years I’ve wanted to write on the atonement. Only after I wrote the other books and attained the age of 64 years did I think I was ready to begin this profound topic so central to Christian faith. That was six years ago. I am now 70 years old. The New Adam contains the fruit of that labor. Here is the first section of my Introduction along with a teaser from the next section:

Friends sometimes ask how long it takes to write a book. “A lifetime!” I reply without hesitation. We bring everything we have learned to each project we take up. In writing this book I have been acutely conscious of this truth. I have been listening to the Christian message of sin, salvation, and atonement my whole life. I heard it in church services and college classes. I read about it in the Bible and in books of theology. All along I thought I understood what my teachers were saying. A few years ago, however, after having taught theology for over a decade, I realized I did not understand at all. Whenever I taught about the atonement, I found myself repeating phrases taken from Scripture and describing textbook theories of atonement apart from a lively sense of their truth.

Nor was I able to help my students understand. I began to pay closer attention to the ways contemporary preachers, teachers, and popular authors explained the message of salvation. I concluded that they understood it no better than I. At that point, I determined that I had to write this book. It has been a long journey, and there were times when I thought I would never achieve the breakthrough I was seeking. But the moment came when I saw a little light, a glow that grew brighter as I moved toward it. Now when I contemplate the salvation that has come into the world through Jesus Christ I rejoice with my mind as well as my heart.

I hope this book can help others understand the Christian message of salvation in a way that resonates with their experience and strikes them as good news. I offer it as a guide for professors, students, pastors, teachers, and church leaders in their ministries. The book aims to help readers gain a sense of rapport and continuity with the community created by the original gospel events and discover new ways of presenting this good news to those outside. In working toward these ends, I desire to be faithful to Scripture, respectful of tradition, and consistent with reason. Of course, many other writers care about these matters and hold dear these values. I engage with their ideas to affirm or criticize, accept or reject. However, two theological viewpoints on salvation require extensive examination because of their outsized influence and largely negative impact on contemporary Christianity. I consider them soteriological dead ends, and we must move past them if the light is to grow brighter.

Soteriological Dead Ends

Two options dominate the field for making sense of sin and salvation in contemporary Protestant Christianity, the evangelical penal substitution and the liberal moral influence theories of atonement…[to be continued].

The Author’s Dilemma—An Autobiographical Reflection on the Maxim, “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished”

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As readers of this blog know I recently published two books, Rethinking Church and The New Adam: What the Early Church Can Teach Evangelicals (and Liberals) About the Atonement (Cascade, 2021). Although I felt compelled to write and publish those books and I believe they are worth reading, I have a hard time feeling good about promoting them. Part of my hesitancy arises from imagining that other people might view me as promoting myself, seeking honor, or placing myself above others.

This fear was reinforced about a week ago. I posted a link to the Amazon.com page for The New Adam to a FB group to which I belong. (It is important that you know that this is a church group.) One person commented on the link something like this:

“I wish people would stop trying to sell their Bulls…ty books to this group.” [BTW to protect this person’s identity, I’ve deleted the original post and all subsequent comments.]

What do you say to a comment like this? I said something like this:

“I did not know bulls…ty was a biblical term. Perhaps, even if you read my book you would still think that it is bulls…ty, but surely you cannot know this before you read it.  I wonder what you want from authors and teachers. Should they cease writing and speaking and hide their thoughts from the world for fear that someone will think they are merely seeking attention or placing themselves above others? I think about all the great books I’ve read and how much I appreciate the labor that went into them and the insights I received from them. Indeed, no human being is without sin. Everyone loves honor and enjoys attention, and no author’s heart is entirely pure. But isn’t too cynical to judge the work of every author, speaker, and teacher—even when you have not studied their works—as exclusively self-aggrandizement?”

I agree that there are too many books. Libraries are full of them, and millions more are printed every year. Many of them repeat what has been said hundreds of times already. Most do not grab my attention. With rare exceptions, I read only the best books I can find on whatever issue I am thinking about at the time.

Why then do I write more books and essays? Is it because I need attention and confirmation? Perhaps this is a factor; I won’t deny it. But there are other reasons as well. When I was a young person I had many troubling questions. I needed answers. I asked my teachers, and I searched in books. Within my circle at that time I found no one who could help. And there were so many books in the library I did not where to start. Soon realized that to make progress I had to think through problems for myself, and I discovered that the best way for me to do that was to write. I also discovered through experience that other people could benefit from my work of thinking and writing.

What drives me to write and publish, besides the need for attention and affirmation? I want to understand my Christian faith insofar as I can and I believe that helping others to understand is one of the best things I can do for them.

Do I believe that by thinking about the issues surrounding the atonement I have achieved greater insight into my faith in Jesus Christ and the salvation he offers? Yes. I do. Do I want you to read The New Adam? Yes. I do. Do I want you to tell others about it? Yes…because I want them see what I have seen and experience what I have experienced. I pray the Lord will forgive me for my less noble motives. And if there is any bulls…t in my books I pray that my readers will forgive that as well.

Note on the definition of B.S.: In his famous essay “On Bs…t,” Harry Frankfurt defines this mode of speech as focused not primarily on truth, as the liar and the truth teller are, but on conveying a favorable impression about the speaker to the audience. One who speaks this way carelessly blabs confidently about things he does not really understand (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).  

Was Jesus Punished for Our Sins?

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From the Publisher:

Have you ever found yourself repeating expressions such as “”Jesus saves”” or “”Jesus died for our sins”” without really understanding them? When popular speakers “”explain”” how Jesus’s death satisfied God’s wrath so you could be forgiven, do you ever think to yourself, “”I don’t get it””? If so, you’re not alone, you’re not dumb, and the problem is not with you. Ron Highfield reframes Christian teaching about the atonement so that it comes alive with fresh meaning. Drawing on biblical and traditional sources, Highfield explains why our frustration in trying to understand how Jesus’s death satisfies God’s judicial wrath is inevitable . . . because the idea doesn’t make sense and the Bible doesn’t teach it! Instead of viewing the atonement as the solution to God’s problem of how to forgive sins while remaining perfectly just, Highfield argues that the atonement is God’s solution to our problem. In Jesus, God rewrites the human story, forgiving our sins, correcting our mistakes, and realizing our destiny. As one of us, Jesus lives a perfect life, passes through death, and enters into eternal life. As the new Adam, he invites us to join his family, share his life, and enjoy his victory

How Does Jesus Save?

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After six years of work my book on the atonement The New Adam is finally in print. I hope you will check it out and recommend it to others. We often repeat such statements as “Jesus saves” or “Jesus died for our sins” without understanding what they mean. Perhaps we think we don’t need to understand. However I believe that the first Christian believers understood, and I believe we can also understand. This book will, I believe, deepen your understanding of how Jesus saves and what salvation means. I will be blogging for the next few weeks on some ideas from this book.

At the time of this post the preview link is not working. Go directly to Amazon.com and search for Ron Highfield, The New Adam.

Forgiven? How Do We Know?

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My academic teaching and writing require me to consider all aspects of Christian teaching and theology. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the atonement, that is, the meaning of Christian confession that “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3). In the past year I’ve read thousands of pages looking for insight into this great theme. In the semester just completed my students and I spent five weeks reading and discussing N.T. Wright’s book The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion. What events led the first believers to view Jesus’s death as a saving event? What do Paul and other New Testament writers mean when they say that Jesus died for us? How does his death deal with our sin? These questions and many more have been on my mind for months.

In a chapter for a book I am currently writing I briefly discuss seven theories of the atonement: (1) The Ransom Theory, which says that Jesus offered his soul to the devil in exchange for all human souls; (2) The Christus Victor Theory which says that by dying Jesus defeating the evil forces that hold us in the miserable condition of slavery, weakness, deception, corruption and death; (3) The Recapitulation Theory, which says that by living through all stages of human life, including death and resurrection, and getting it right Jesus undoes Adam’s wretched history and gives humanity a new start; (4) The Deification Theory, which argues that the Son of God by living a full human life, dying and rising, makes his divine life available to all who become united to him; (5) Satisfaction Theory in which Jesus’s death in our place pays the debt we incurred by offending God’s dignity and honor in our disobedience; (6) The Penal Substitution Theory in which Jesus voluntarily endures the just punishment merited by human violation of God’s eternal law; and (7) The Moral Influence Theory in which God’s love demonstrated on the cross provokes our repentance and evokes our love in return.

While meditating on this subject day and night for a year, something dawned on me. I asked myself this question: why do I believe I am forgiven? Why do I believe God loves me and extends me grace? Why do I believe I am free from the power of sin, death and the devil? Why do I believe God gives me a new beginning every day…that I do not need to carry a burden of guilt? What is the bottom line my assurance?

It’s not because I deserve it! If we could deserve it, we wouldn’t need forgiveness in the first place. Also—and here is the main point—it’s not because one or more of these seven theories of the atonement makes everything clear to me. In my view, each of them points toward a truth, but each is also troublingly obscure in some way. So, here is my bottom line: I believe that God’s loves me, that I am forgiven, and that God is my Father because Jesus said so. And I believe Jesus told the truth in all sincerity because he sealed his word with his blood. And I believe Jesus knew the truth of the matter because God raised him from the dead and placed his own seal on the new covenant.

Perhaps there are more reasons, more profound explanations of the atonement, more nuanced treatments of the justice and mercy of God…but this is my bottom line. When my best reasoning fails to bring peace to my heart, I cling to Jesus’s words: “Do not be afraid; you (Ron…and Susan and James) are worth more than many sparrows!” (Luke 12:7).

 

What is Divine Forgiveness?

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In the previous post I asked you to consider the question, “What is so bad about sin that we should want to be saved from it?” And the answer that forced itself upon us was that the nature of sin is “absurdity, death, emptiness, wretchedness, isolation, despair, and destruction.” Only when we understand sin’s destructive effects on us does the gospel of Jesus Christ become good news to us. The gospel tells us that Jesus Christ came to rescue us from these ills, restore our health, and lead us to a destiny glorious beyond our imagining. What must Jesus do in order to save us?

Forgiveness

For most believers, the first idea that comes to mind in answer to this question is forgiveness. We need forgiveness for our sins, and Jesus secures divine forgiveness for us. So let’s think about forgiveness. Forgiveness makes sense only in a personal context. Sin causes damage to us and to others. (Let’s leave aside for the moment the interesting question of whether we need forgiveness from ourselves for the damage we cause to ourselves and focus on the damage we cause to other people.) Some damage we cause to other people is reparable and some is not. If you steal my cash, you could correct that harm by repaying the money. However, if you take my life or cause permanent bodily harm, you cannot repair the damage and restore the body to its original condition. But whether the physical damage is reparable or irreparable, great or small, there is another kind of damage that accompanies all sins against other people: insult or offense. Sin against others treats them as having less than human dignity. You put the disturbing thought into their minds that they are unworthy–unworthy of life, possessions, or respect. Of all the possessions a person has, a sense of their own worth is the most precious. If I do not feel that I am worthy of love and respect, I will be afraid of everyone in every situation. I will trust no one. Life becomes a burden.

The instinctive reaction to insult is anger, hatred, and desire for revenge. In revenge, people assert their dignity by attempting to balance harm with harm and insult with insult. Revenge releases anger and provides a momentary sense of relief. It is an effort to restore our damaged sense of worth, to assert and reestablish our dignity. Of course, revenge doesn’t really work to restore confidence in our dignity, because our desire for revenge shows that we never had confidence in our worth! If we had such confidence, the original insult would not have caused us to hate and desire revenge so intensely in the first place.

Now we are prepared to understand the concept of forgiveness. Forgiveness is refusal to take revenge for insults against us. Where do we find the power to forgive, and why should we forgive those who insult us? Forgiveness is withholding revenge, but this forbearance arises from a deeper source. The forgiving person has the spiritual power to neutralize, absorb, or be immune to insult. The insult does not shake their confidence in their own worth. Hence it does not cause fear, evoke hatred, and provoke violence. But the forgiving person is not only unshakably confident of their own value, they are also unclouded in their perception of their enemy’s dignity. Even while being insulted, they are compassionately aware of their enemy’s lack of clarity about her or his own worth. When you forgive your enemy, unlike when you take revenge on your enemy, you are witnessing to your enemy’s worth as well as your own in a dramatic way. If your enemies can receive your forgiveness, they may also come to perceive their true dignity. Only forgiveness can “balance” the books on the worth of individuals. Only forgiveness can convert an enemy.

Divine Forgiveness

Divine forgiveness follows the same logic as outlined above. When God forgives, God refrains from taking revenge. Divine forgiveness deals with the personal offense and insult sin directs at God. We cannot damage God physically as we can God’s creatures. But when we damage, insult, and withhold love from human beings, we also disbelieve, disobey, and mistrust God. We refuse his love and reject his guidance. We insult God’s dignity indirectly. (Blasphemy is direct insult of God.) God deserves our faith, obedience, and love, but when we sin against his beloved creatures, we display our ingratitude and disrespect. But God does not take revenge. God absorbs and neutralizes the insult, not returning violence for violence. God does not allow our refusal to love him to cause him to stop loving us. Our insults cannot place in God doubt of his divine dignity or lessen his love. Instead, God demonstrates his unchallenged dignity and eternal love by forgiving us. God affirms our worth by maintaining his eternal love for us unchanged

Jesus Christ is the incarnation of the loving and forgiving God. Jesus’ action of forgiving his enemies is the expression in time of God’s eternal love and forgiveness. Let’s get clear on this: the work of Jesus Christ was not designed to change an offended and revenging God into a loving and forgiving God. Jesus’ suffering is not the cause of divine forgiveness. No. Jesus Christ is the visible, temporal enactment of divine forgiveness, of God’s eternal selfless love for us. Jesus is “the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world” (Rev 13:8).

In Jesus Christ, God absorbs and negates human offense and insult. Jesus is the embodiment of God’s sheer, gracious, unexpected, and incomprehensible forgiveness of insult to his divine dignity! In the humanity of Jesus Christ, God became able to suffer and die for us. Jesus’ human love for his Father in time corresponds to his divine love for the Father in eternity and his human suffering and death for us in time corresponds to God’s love and forgiveness for us in eternity. In the suffering and dying of Jesus Christ, divine forgiveness becomes effective for the conversion and salvation of humanity. In Jesus, God’s refusal to take revenge (forgiveness) becomes the negative side of a positive act of rescue from the power of sin and death.

Next Time: Forgiveness is not enough. We need healing, purification, transformation and glorification.