arotau

The early church writer Irenaeus is often seen as something of a poster boy for one view of the atonement. That view is known as “Christus Victor”, after Aulen’s 1931 book of the same name. Aulen is so influential that his reading of Irenaeus is often assumed. All too frequently Irenaeus himself is ignored, and Aulen is allowed to speak for him.

This matters, of course, because Aulen argues that the early church universally supported Christus Victor, and any kind of propitiatory language was a much later innovation. If this were true, then a degree of suspicion would rightly fall on the idea that the church only perceived the correct interpretation of Scripture some hundreds of years after it was written—an idea that is of course not impossible, but is also not a position to assume lightly.

Jeffery, Ovey & Sach (2007) give an excellent survey of early church writers, arguing that all of those surveyed, “without exception, believed the doctrine of penal substitution” (p. 163—penal substitution involves propitiation). They ably demonstrate this point. Aulen claimed that penal substitution arose as one result of a process of theological development whose trajectory was more dominated by Latin thinking than reference to the Scriptures. This claim is clearly inaccurate, and arguably more the product of Aulen’s time and a general desire to identify a “primitive” Christianity, than careful study of the texts available.

Irenaeus, though, seems to be generally regarded as speaking only of Christus Victor.

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Of course, it’s a bit silly to try and reduce German theology to a sentence, but this quote from an Enlightenment-era German scholar seems a brilliantly predictive statement about the direction of theology. It combines an unnecessary false dichotomy with a heartfelt desire for error:

If God had in his Right hand all truth, and in his Left only the drive toward truth, although with the inevitable result that I would err: should he keep his silence and say to me, “Choose!”, I would humbly choose his Left, and would say, “Father, give me this! The pure truth is for Thee alone.”

G. E. Lessing, Werke Bd. 6, Zürich, 1965, p. 269f. Quoted by Paul N. Anderson, 1996, The Christology of the Fourth Gospel, WUNT 2.78, Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, p. 265.

Yesterday the Home Office released street-level mapping of crime reports (the system was immediately so popular that the site was inaccessible for most of the day). A quick comparison of our old post code in East London and our new one in Oxford gives a vivid picture of the difference in crime rates:

East London

East Oxford

Even more interesting than the order of magnitude difference in total reported crimes (which is of course partly due to the increased population density) is the classification of types of crime. Near us in Oxford, nearly half of the reported crimes were “other crimes”, such as shoplifting, criminal damage and drug offenses. Near our old address in London, more than three quarters of the reported crimes were ones that directly affect residents, such as burglary, anti-social behaviour, robbery (muggings), vehicle crime and violent crime.

I’ve started putting some of the flashcard decks and practice sheets I’ve been creating for my own use while learning NT Greek up.

The Auckland Museum is rubbish these days, despite an expensive extension and refit.

The first problem is their refusal to allow baby bottles into the museum. This is apparently on health and safety grounds, in case someone spills water and someone else slips over on it. That rather unlikely chain of events doesn’t trouble much larger and more popular museums and art galleries in Europe, so it’s hard to see what is so special about Auckland. Everyone from Auckland seems to know about this and just brings stuff for their kids in a bag. (One woman, though, while we were arguing the point over a bottle for our baby, was compelled to leave her nappy bag behind! No idea what the health and safety risks of nappies are.)

More pernicious though is the way that they try to charge people for entry when the museum is legally free of charge. Aucklanders with certain types of proof of address are permitted to get in without an obnoxious donation request, but when one couple near me showed proof of address that apparently wasn’t the correct type, the cashier said that the Museum “charges a donation”, without pointing out that it was entirely voluntary. The couple duly paid up.

That strikes me as completely dishonest. Given that the collection isn’t much to write home about, lifts are few and far between, and there are no highchairs in the cafe (!) we won’t be going back.