{"id":1081,"date":"2010-05-20T21:36:06","date_gmt":"2010-05-20T21:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2010\/05\/the-story-of-sin--a-dark-tale-part-eight.html"},"modified":"2010-05-20T21:36:06","modified_gmt":"2010-05-20T21:36:06","slug":"the-story-of-sin-a-dark-tale-part-eight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/05\/the-story-of-sin-a-dark-tale-part-eight.html","title":{"rendered":"The Story of Sin— A Dark Tale Part Eight"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Thumbnail<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In Chapter Seven Anderson does his best to balance the
\nscales of how early Jews including rabbinic ones view their God, by stressing
\nthat there is plenty of evidence of God being viewed as gracious and
\nmerciful,  <\/span>finding ways to not act as
\nsimply an accountant of sin debt.  <\/span>Anderson is of course
\nright about this, whether talking about the Hebrew Scriptures themselves or
\ntalking about other early Jewish literature, including the Mishnah.  <\/span>He then, equally correctly, points out how
\nresources like Strack and Billerbeck led many NT scholars astray because of
\ntheir biased presentation of early Judaism when it came to the Law vs. grace,
\nor faith vs. works, tandems.  <\/span>This of
\ncourse is by now old news,  <\/span>and he
\nacknowledges the groundbreaking work of E.P. Sanders on this point.   <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In Chapter Eight he turns however
\nto Jesus and the early Christian tradition when it comes to sin and atonement
\nand related matters.  <\/span>Besides pointing
\nagain to the ‘forgive us or debts’ petition in the Lord’s  <\/span>prayer, and then turns to Lk. 7.36-50 and
\nespecially the little parable about the creditor and the two debtors.  <\/span>But here we run into a problem. Following the
\nreading of the story by Ephrem of Syria the conclusion is drawn that “the one
\nwho invited Jesus to the great meal was rebuked because of the meagerness of
\nhis love. But that woman wiped away with her tears the great bond that had
\naccrued to her sins” (p. 113).  <\/span>Anderson adds that the
\nwoman ‘showed her moral virtuosity’  <\/span>by
\nher act on behalf of Jesus, washing his feet with her tears and then anointing them.  <\/span>This is problematic because in fact this is
\nnot what this story says or means.  
\n<\/span>Jesus’ point is that the woman loves Jesus more than Simon precisely
\nbecause she has already been forgiven more, and as an act of gratitude is
\nresponding.  <\/span>Yes, Jesus does indeed use a commercial metaphor to compare the debt of
\ntwo sinners (in this case the woman and Simon).  <\/span>No, we certainly do not have here a theology
\nof a good deed canceling someone’s sin debt.  <\/span><\/i> <\/span>Ephrem was wrong. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Turning next to Col. 2.14 Anderson
\n(p. 114) discusses the notion of the ‘canceling of  <\/span>the debt of all our trespasses, and the erasure
\nof the bond of indebtedness’.  <\/span>This is
\ncertainly an important verse for understanding early Christian ideas about the atonement.
\nAnderson argues
\nthat what is being referred to here is a legal document which someone signs
\nrecognizing their debt, and promising to repay a debt.  <\/span>Now the Greek, cheirograph <\/b>simply means a hand written document. In itself it does
\nnot specify what sort of document. But the context here seems pretty clear that
\nAnderson is
\nbasically on the right track.  <\/span>I have
\nsaid in my Eerdmans commentary on Philemon, Colossians, and Ephesians that we
\nare being told that Jesus canceled the IOU ( a record of debts owed, written in
\nthe hand of the debtor cf. Philemon vs. 19 and Test. Job 11.11) which stood
\nagainst believers. The reference is to the heavenly book of deeds in which a
\nrecord of one’s wrong doings is kept 
\n<\/span>(cf. Apoc. of Zephan. 3.6-9; 7.1-8; Apoc. of Paul 17 and Rev. 5.1-5;
\n20.12).  <\/span>God has removed or erased the
\nentry in the ledger of the sin debt.  <\/span>But
\nthe image goes further suggesting that the titulus on the cross under which
\nChrist hung, was this record of debt. Jesus was crucified for our sin debts (cf.
\nPs. 69.28; 1 Enoch 108.3; Rev. 3.5 on erasing an entry in such a ledger).  <\/span>Of course in Revelation we are even told that
\na believer who commits apostasy can have his very name erased from the heavenly
\nbook of everlasting life.  <\/span>In short,
\nJesus paid all the sin debt on the cross, erasing the entries in the heavenly
\nledger.  <\/span>The term cheirograph  <\/span><\/b>does not recur
\nelsewhere in the NT but it is found in Tobit, however there it has a different
\nsense— that of a receipt  <\/span>(1.14; 5.3.
\n9.2).  <\/span>It is quite irrelevant that some
\nlater Jewish editor of Tobit turned a receipt on deposit into a loan document.  <\/span>This has no bearing on NT discussions of sin and
\ndebt, and how much influence it had on early Christian discussions (e.g.
\nJerome) is debatable. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Anderson goes on to compare what is said in
\nColossians with what Paul says in Romans (e.g. Rom. 5.12-21) where Adam is
\nblamed for getting his race into sin debt. Paul depicts our sinful state as a
\nsort of slavery. The term redemption of course means literally the buying of
\nsomeone out of slavery, repaying the debt owed by and even for the slave.  <\/span>Original sin is the means by which the human
\nrace fell into this slavery of sin debt, a debt we never could repay.   <\/span>Anderson
\nthen, with the help of a Syriac Father named Jacob of Serug, then asks the next
\nlogical question namely, namely who holds the bond on us. Jacob’s answer is
\nSatan.  <\/span>Thus Christ’s death is seen as
\npaying Satan to get us out of sin debt.  
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The problem with this whole way of
\nenvisioning things is three fold: 1) God owes nothing to Satan; 2) God’s Son
\nowes nothing to Satan; 3) what Adam and Eve ‘owed’ in the garden was obedience
\nto God, and when they disobeyed thereafter owed God for their transgressions.  <\/span> <\/span>Satan
\ndoes not hold the mortgage on the human race.  
\n<\/span>While I agree with Anderson
\nthat the Syriac Fathers have been neglected, nevertheless he is right to say “although
\nit would be an exaggeration to say that these Syriac writers retained the
\noriginal sense of early Christian ideas, they do provide a check on the common
\ntendency of scholars to assimilate them into Greco-Roman counterparts.” (p.
\n121).    <\/span>Anderson, in the end is interested
\nin the broader Christian tradition and its ways of imaging and conceiving of,
\nand dealing with sin,  <\/span>and he is right
\nindeed that various conceptions about sin, including many modern Christian
\nones, derive from the history of Christian tradition rather than from the Bible
\nprimarily, or in some case rather than from the Bible at all.   <\/span>Anderson
\nis correct that the Creeds do not really outline a theology of atonement.   <\/span>The Bible however does…. and so one must go ‘ad
\nfontes’ to the font, to derive such a theology.   <\/span>More on this in our next post on this
\nstimulating book.  <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For now I leave you with a quote
\nfrom Robert Jenson (Systematic Theo. Vol. One, <\/u>1997), p. 187: “It is one
\nof the more remarkable and remarked on aspects of theological history that no
\ntheory of the atonement has ever been universally accepted. By now this
\nphenomenon is itself among the things that a proposed theory of atonement must
\nexplain.”  <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Chapter Seven Anderson does his best to balance the scales of how early Jews including rabbinic ones view their God, by stressing that there is plenty of evidence of God being viewed as gracious and merciful,  finding ways to not act as simply an accountant of sin debt.  Anderson is of course right about…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Story of Sin- A Dark Tale Part Eight - The Bible and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/05\/the-story-of-sin-a-dark-tale-part-eight.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Story of Sin- A Dark Tale Part Eight - 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A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}