Samuel asked, what do you think of Dean Taylor's recent paper on the Atonement? Do you think his conclusions are accurate? I had to laugh when I saw that question. Dean Taylor and I have been friends for, oh, 30 years, and I thought," What's this person trying to do, get us in an argument with each other?" Dean and I have had many discussions about the Atonement, and I would say we've probably agreed to charitably disagree to a degree, but actually we're not horribly far apart.
What we would absolutely agree upon is that there's not just one set teaching on the Atonement in the early Church. I mean, the early church probably wouldn't know what you even meant if you said," What is your doctrine of the Atonement?" I don't know that they would even if that would register anything with them. They talk about different things that Christ's death did for us, and there would be a lot of things that they would mention.
Now, one of the things they mentioned the most, perhaps the most frequent, other than perhaps that we're cleansed by his blood, that's probably the number one, and that we have forgiveness to that. But number two is his victory over Satan. It's been given the name Christus Victor view of the Atonement. You do see that a lot in the early Christians. Also, that's maybe a little bit different would be the ransom that we've been purchased through his death and by his blood.
But then, like I say, you see a number of different things. So, even though I'm somebody who would hold very much to the Christus Victor view of the Atonement and the ransom theory of the Atonement, I would never say that that's the only way or the only thing that Christ's death did because His death did many things, nor do I would I limit that," Oh, it can't include these other things as well." So, Dean and I are actually probably closer together on the view than we are apart.
He would just be at maybe one end of that centerpiece that we were together on. I'm on this end and he's on the other end, you know, something like that. Now, as far as this paper, if you're talking about what he delivered on the podcast, I don't think he covered the whole paper, if my recollection serves me correct on that. Certainly in our conversations, we've talked a lot beyond what he would have shared on the podcast.
So, yeah, he was very he had just a limited time, like an hour, and he went a little over just trying to squeeze in everything he wanted to share. So, yeah, if you just sat down and talked with Dean, I think you would see that, yeah, his view would be a little bit more flexible than it might have sounded like on there. Now, we've talked about some of the quotes that he quoted there on the podcast that would be in his paper. Some of those, I probably interpret them a little bit differently.
I can see how somebody who's coming from a penal substitution view would read that paragraph or that sentence, and it would sound to them like penal substitution. I'm kind of reading it from the other end, since the early Christians don't talk very much or at all about penal substitution, then when I get to some of those quotes from Chrysostom or Eusebius, I'm seeing them saying something a bit different. But yeah, Dean and I don't argue about it, so I'm not going to argue here.
But I think just the two takeaways I would want you to remember would be, one, Christ's death accomplished many, many things. We can't limit it to just one thing. Number two, yeah, we should be a little flexible, not condemning people because they have a different view of it. Now, the condemnation, I will say, usually comes from the other side. You know If you hold to the early Christian view of the Atonement, the ransom view, or Christus Victor, then, oh boy, I've been called all kinds of names and all that.
You're denying the Atonement, you're denying the Scriptures and all that. It's like, whoa, I mean, you know, you're holding to, at least in its developed form, a much later view that got developed during the, you know, by the Catholic Church and John Calvin and those people, it's like, yeah, be very careful who you're, you know, condemning and pointing fingers at.
But yeah, I do think there's a little flexibility there to have more than one view or to be charitable towards somebody who has a little different view of it. We're not going to be saved because of our view of the Atonement. We're going to be saved because we believe that Christ died for our sins and we believe you know He is the Son of God and that His blood cleanses us from sin. That's what's going to save us, not because we hold to this particular theological view of the Atonement.
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