back to blog A bad night for the Excluders
Conrad Gempf on the Steve Chalke Debate Evening
Well, last night was the anticipated and dreaded Chalke-gate debate. The fear, of course, was that it would be a excommunication trial. But it was a bad night for those on either side who came with the agenda of Exclusion. Surprisingly, but happily, the only Panel Speakers proposing any kind of Exclusion were Steve and Stuart who were looking to Exclude a theological model rather than people. For they were not so much defending alternative views of the Cross (since their opponents happily embraced alternative views), but were rather arguing that the penal substitution model was "illegitimate," to use a word Steve and Stuart used of it several times. As I've noted previously in this blog, it strikes me as very strange that Steve in particular should be in favour of using fewer models or lenses in our mortal attempts to understand and articulate a doctrine which both sides last night agreed was larger and more mysterious than any model.
But the case for silencing penal substitution didn't win the night. Anna Robbins stepped up as someone with vast experience on several different coalfaces: years working at the coalface of work with the Red Cross and social ethics PLUS years working at the coalface of serious theoretical study in theology. She will not have convinced everyone of her thesis that penal substitution should be the essence of a gospel for the disadvantaged, but she will have amply demonstrated to most that penal substitution had something important and positive to say and cannot be so easily written off.
Extremists of the Exclude Steve variety never really got started. I wonder if they'll feel they weren't really represented. They have a rational point: If the EA were a gang wearing black leather jackets with a constitution dedicating itself to promoting two-wheeled vehicles, Steve would have danced around the documents by coming out against motorcycles and pointing out the constitution doesn't use the word motorcycle. People want Steve excluded not because of what atonement models he's using but because he repudiated and dissed views that they hold dear. Steve went out of his way to make very clear how much a victim he feels in all this, but I know people who felt betrayed by the book -- they look up to and support (sometimes financially) Steve and then he writes that something they cherish is something that he "used to preach" but now rejects and so on. At least some of the backlash that I know of was a lashing out at Steve in the pain of rejection by him.
But Steve also demonstrated ably that although a particular few pages of a short book may be in discontinuity with bog-standard evangelicalism, his passion and commitment for Jesus and the cross and the love of God are not only in continuity but, to put it crudely, head of the class. He made the point well that whether penal substitution preachers mean to or not, the fact is that they frequently do leave people with the picture of a predominantly angry rather than a loving God. Even Stuart, once he got past his very debatable reconstruction of church history, made some excellent points. For Steve and Stuart, they were a series of points about why we must kill off penal substitution, but most of us will have taken them as important cautions about how far to push the model and how careful we must be in expounding it.
Maybe I'm an over-optimistic idealist -- doubtless after I post this and read other people's assessments on their blogs I'll be bummed out -- but I really think it was a great night for Evangelicalism and a bad night for Excluders. I don't think everything's all sorted and we can forget about it now, but I do think that, except for extremeists, both sides will have changed. On the Steve side, I think folks will now start using language that is about encouraging alternate models rather than the language about the illegitimacy of their opponents' models. And on the TradEv side, I'm certain folks will now be a lot more cautious about emphasis and expression of a model that is so easily miscommunicated.
Whatever anyone else says, the image with will stay with me is Anna taking the platform and talking about working with Steve and having a good fight with him -- Anna turning to look at him and Steve looking back at her, giving each other the respect they deserve and laughing together. In this Krazy Kingdom we've been let into, getting it right matters more than anything AND our getting it right matters not at all. Last night we were taking it all seriously without taking it personally, and that's great. The best you can do is look at your opponent with respect and love and laugh together and then argue your case for all you're worth.
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