Last year, June or July 07, when Adrian Warnock’s blog had comments, it was a centre for debate on the Atonement, which had begun in reaction to Steve Chalke’s Lost Message of Jesus.

Then things went quiet and the blog debates moved onto other things. Now Adrian has again started posting on the atonement and attacking Steve Chalke’s views as expressed in this book. Although this time, his blog can’t be a centre for debate as there’s no opportunity for comments but it is as you would expect gaining a response elsewhere.

At the time I posted more comments on Adrian’s blog than I did on my own, but I did manage a couple of posts.

• Here I reviewed Pierced for our Transgressions which has become a key book defending Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA), the view Adrian holds and Steve Chalke doesn’t. I mention some of my reservations, which I admit I need to do some more work on.
• I did do some more thinking on the ‘Cup of Wrath’
• Oh and I reviewed this great book on forgiveness by Miroslav Volf which I think shows the nature of forgiveness really well.

And that was about it until I was called out by Dave Warnock although, this was about the outworkings of our theology, can we disagree on the aspects of the atonement and still work together? I think we can. For others not holding to PSA is not the Gospel and if its not the Gospel its heresy, dangerous and should be avoided. Beware false teachers.

I’ve been meaning to post on some of my discussions about the atonement for some time, so as I do some more reading I’ll probably put some posts up. If you’d be interested in some of that debate happening here on this blog, let me know.