ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CUENet AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION DOGMATICS 2 LESSON 46 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> Do we distinguish between the atonement and the crucifixion? >> DR. DAVID SCAER: I think in the minds of most people, there's no distinction between the atonement whereby Christ offers himself as a sacrifice to God and the crucifixion. And to a certain extent, maybe that's the right way to do it. But let's look at this question a little bit differently. Let's follow the -- how the evangelists themselves handle the question. There is a hesitancy in the Gospel of Matthew -- not a hesitancy. But we are halfway through the Gospel before there is any reference to the death of Jesus at all specifically. Christians are told -- or the Apostles are told that they are going to suffer. We are told that we are to pick up our cross and follow Jesus. I guess it can be assumed that they already knew that he had died. There's the idea that in the Sermon on the Mount, "Blessed are you whether you are persecuted for righteousness sake. Blessed are those who are persecuted on account of me." Certainly it is -- the picture of the church is of one of persecution. So the suffering of Christ is not a totally new thing. But what exactly is the meaning of it? You're halfway through the Gospel at Chapter 16, 17 and 20 before you have the announcement that Jesus is going to die by crucifixion and then be raised from the dead. And you don't have the meaning of the death of Jesus until you come to the section that we just discussed, that the Son of Man came to give his life as a ransom for many. And here I think we have to be very careful of our audience. I hate to use the word audience. But you speak to different people in different ways. And that at the very preliminary level in preaching about Jesus and the Gospel, we say simply that Jesus died for sins. Later on we explain this death as a way -- we have just explained it as a victory over Satan. Setting down an example for us to follow. And most importantly, as a payment to God for our sins. The crucifixion is a historical moment. It takes place in time. It's very important. That in the early Creeds it says he was crucified under Pontius Pilate. Those words, "Under Pontius Pilate" nailed down the death in history. You know, Jesus could have been put to death in any number of ways. He could have been stoned. That -- stoning for blasphemy probably had gone out of -- was no longer the custom in the days of Jesus. But it could happen. He could have been stoned. Or he could have been strangled privately. I mean, we are told about people being attacked by robbers and being left for dead like the man helped by the good Samaritan. He had to be -- he had to die publicly. And he could have been -- and Paul says that Jesus made the good confession before Pontius Pilate. Remember that the death of Jesus was held under the official auspices of the Roman Empire, the Roman Governor being the representative of Cesar. It was a historical death. And very few scholars -- I'm not saying there aren't any that do it. But there are very few scholars who'll say that Jesus was not put to death by Pontius Pilate. It's a historical thing. The atonement is a supernatural event. It cannot be seen. It takes place within the person of Jesus by which he is both the priest and the sacrifice which he himself offers himself up to God. It's not by the expiring of Jesus that we are saved. The death of Jesus whereby he releases his soul is not the act by which we are saved. We are saved by the suffering of Jesus. He is a living sacrifice. He is a living atonement. It is not the corpse of Jesus by which we are saved and redeemed. And I suppose this distinction has to be made very carefully. Because it does say that Christ died for sin. St. Paul says that. It's a usual statement in the New Testament. He died for us. It's a usual statement in the New Testament and in Christian theology. But it still doesn't get down to the fundamental reason of why he did it. And we have to speak in a very clear way so we don't disturb the people. And maybe on that account, the book of Revelation was in some places of the church not understood. Because the book of Hebrews takes us into that great mystery whereby while he is suffering in his death, Jesus presents himself as a sacrifice to God. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***