Word Alive and Spring Harvest, two Christian conferences that for many years have held a joint event, are parting company over the issue of Penal Substitutionary Atonement (whether Jesus died to take the punishment for our sins on the Cross, PSA for short). Adrian Warnock has given a good summary of what’s happened on his blog. (If you don’t know anything about the atonement, perhaps you just check the blog for Doctor Who stuff, you’ll probably want to skip this one. Some tv reviews and stuff are on their way, honest!)

I think the whole current controversy over PSA raises lots of questions about how we Christians handle disagreement. Over in the comments on Adrian’s post, the phrase “uniting those who love the Gospel” is being bandied about. But I think that first of all we are to love God and love one another – that’s what Jesus says is the greatest command, after all!

Loving the Gospel is implicit in that, of course. But I think if we make a set of abstract beliefs, no matter how correct, the prime object of our love, then we’re in danger of diminishing that Christian love is firstly personal and relational. So we need to be passionate about correct doctrine, but not as an end in itself, but out of a deep concern for people as individuals, and for the glory of God.

I found it very sad that apparently much of the correspondence received by Jeffery John about his Good Friday talk, which also criticised PSA, was “abusive and obscene”. I believe PSA to be clearly taught in the Bible, and disagree with what Canon John had to say. But unless we communicate with love and grace, we’re not going to convince anyone of anything. The medium should match the message; our lives should be grace-dependent and grace-soaked to match a Gospel of grace.

I’ve not read Steve Chalke’s controversial The Lost Message of Christ, but from his article “Redeeming the Cross” (pdf file), it’s clear that what he rejects is a distorted caricature of PSA, of it being: “child abuse ­ a vengeful Father punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed.” Chalke sees it as presenting God as angry as something apart from God’s love, rather than an expression of it.

Now this distorted charicature is one that is also rejected by people who hold to PSA. Evangelical theologican John Stott, for example, says of the atonement in defence of PSA:

We must not, then, speak of God punishing Jesus or of Jesus persuading God, for to do so is to set them over against each other as if they acted independently of each other or were even in conflict with each other. We must never make Christ the object of God’s punishment or God the object of Christ’s persuasion, for both God and Christ were subjects not objects, taking the initiative together to save sinners. (The Cross of Christ, p. 151)

Unfortunately, Chalke dismisses PSA as if that charicature was the thing itself. But reading what he says, he is motivated by a desire to be faithful to scripture and to the loving character of God. If he is wrong (and I believe he is), then he is sincerely misguided.

We have a responsibility, then, to clearly explain to people how God’s wrath is an expression of his love; to demonstrate from Scripture what the Bible says on this matter; and to make sure that we aren’t presenting a distorted version of the atonement. I have heard Gospel talks that are more like the caricature Chalke dismisses than they are what the Bible teaches, and there is responsibility on the side of those of us who would uphold PSA.

What we definitely shouldn’t do is to jump on people like Chalke like the Spanish Inquisition, denounce them as heretics and try and cut ourselves off from them. Difference should not be the end of love, but the occasion for it. That doesn’t mean pretending all is fine. But when someone falls into error, the chances are that they are nonetheless a brother or sister in Christ, and so still part of the same community of the Church, with whom we are bound together in eternity by our shared relationship with God.

Our unity is more than just shared theology; theological disagreement modifies the way our unity is expressed, but should not destroy it. Unity in community does not necessarily mean agreeing with others; it is agreeing to disagree, and to work on resolving your disagreement as an ongoing project. It means approaching people as people, working through their honest questions and misunderstandings, coming together with a mutual desire to seek the truth in love.

We can be very good at assenting to this in practice, but in practice, I’ve often seen people’s love for doctrine cloud their love for people. I don’t know enough to comment on how things have played out between Spring Harvest on the one hand and UCCF and Keswick Ministries on the other: perhaps it was the best course under the circumstances, I don’t know. But all the tub-thumping for PSA sometimes comes across as just a passion for an agenda rather than people, and I agree with the importance of PSA.

To sum up, this is a plea for love, firstly for God and for other people, with theology following on from that rather than taking first place. It’s a call for care in explaining Penal Substitutionary Atonement; a recognition that some responsibility for its distortion lies with its supporters as well as detractor; and a recognition of the responsibility of those who stand for it to argue for it persuasively, which means both theological rigour, and love.