Dr. Soneson and Me - Part 1

This series of posts may interest those of you out there who like to do some thinking along the lines of theology and apologetics.

When I was in undergrad I majored in religion. As a result I had the privilege of taking a number of classes from Dr. Jerome Soneson (Jerry, as we called him). He was (and is) a brilliant thinker and educator. In fact, he was probably the best teacher I have ever had. He would consistently bend over backwards to help his students succeed, but also held us to a very high standard. I probably took 5 or 6 classes from him over the course of my 4 years in college. What was interesting about my relationship with him was that he is an agnostic and would often challenge my presuppositions as a Christian.

A few weeks ago I came across this article on Justin's blog. It's a great piece by D.A. Carson dealing with the topic of substitutionary atonement. Particularly noteworthy to me was his second point where he discusses The Trinity as being essential to making sense of the cross. This brought to mind a conversation or two I had with Dr. Soneson where he would appeal to me that my idea of God's wrath being removed from me and placed on his Son was just bad ethics. Classic misplaced aggression in his view. What sense would it make for me to be "pissed off" (as he would say) at my wife and then go kick the dog? This is how he conceived of my view, or the view of substitutionary atonement. In light of this I forwarded him D.A. Carson's piece to get his reaction.

Here is what he wrote:

Thanks for the note and reference. I read the short and interesting piece by Carson. My one question, and it is a very serious question, is why Carson thinks that somehow he has ferreted out the "correct" or "true" model for atonement in Scripture. The substitutionary doctrine of atonement, incidentally, as currently pronounced by the church (or various stands within the Church), goes back only to Anselm. Anselm, no doubt, believed the found that doctrine in scripture itself, but actually, it is only a development out of some images within scripture. There have been other developments using those and other images in scripture, as Carson himself points out. But the point is quite simple, the images themselves do not carry all the freight that he and others want to attribute to them -- that freight is found first of all in the work of Anselm and then secondly in Calvin.

On a related matter, why does Carson think that the images of the atonement can be reconciled. No doubt he claims the unity of scripture, but golly, there are profound tensions among various images and claims in scripture that would suggest logical inconsistencies in incoherencies that can be denied only by assuming, in advance, that they are not there. In short, he comes to scripture with assumptions that are not in scripture itself. So maybe, theology, even Carson's theology, is not grounded in scripture! Whoa!

Take care. I'm glad to see you thinking.

Jerry

I responded with this:

Dr. Soneson,

Thanks for your response. A number of questions come to mind based on what
you wrote, but I'll start with this one:

Do you think it is even possible to come to a true Biblical understanding of the atonement?

Thanks.

zach

More of our conversation tomorrow...