“The atonement is the crucial doctrine of the faith. Unless we are right here it matters little, or so it seems to me, what we are like elsewhere.”
Dr. Leon Morris
The Atonement; Its Meaning & Significance
As we continue to dismantle Dr. Clay Libolt’s heretical view of the atonement we pause to inquire about why there is so much disagreement about the meaning of the Hebrew word “ כִּפֻּר”(Kippur) as amongst those counted as “scholars.” Answering this query will reveal much.
When I was in Seminary we were taught the glorious importance of the original languages of the Hebrew and the Greek. We were all required to take years of each. There is no doubt that the languages are important but along the way I learned that there is something even more important than knowing the languages — something underneath the languages upon which the languages rest and that something is the idea of Weltanschauung (Worldview).
I realized this in the course of doing all my study on the Hebrew and Greek. I realized this simply because when one referred to the aids (as one has to do when learning the languages) one began to discover that very smart people had very different opinions on the meaning of different Greek and Hebrew terms/words. Over time it became apparent that these scholars were disagreeing not because of the meaning of the Hebrew or Greek word or passage but rather they were disagreeing because of their own Weltanschauung that they were bringing to the text. In other words, when a word/term/phrase from the original language was in dispute the differences between the different scholars was due to the fact that they were bringing their worldview to the text and it was because of that worldview that they were coming to the conclusions that there were variously arriving at when considering the meaning of different Hebrew and Greek words.
Think about this for just a moment and it will become clear. If it were the case that the languages alone cleared up all disputes then we would no longer have various and competing theological schools of thought. If one could come to the obvious meaning of the text only by taking into account the linguistic / grammatical meaning of the Hebrew and Greek words then we would not have Arminian, or Reformed, or Lutheran, or Roman Catholic, etc. scholars disagreeing about this or that theological point because they could all just retreat to the original languages and the original languages and the understanding thereof would settle the dispute between them. This, most assuredly does not happen and as a result we must conclude that the reason that the disagreements exist is that the World and Life view of any particular scholar in question is moving him or her to read the text in a particular way.
Nowhere is this observation more true when it comes to the debate of the Hebrew word group Kipper (covering) and the Greek word group Hilasmos (propitiation). When these words are examined the meaning of those words are going to be heavily debated because of their theological import. It is not to much to say that Reformed guys like Leon Morris and Louis Berkhof etc. who are Reformed read Kipper and Hilasmos the way they did because of their panoramic understanding of God and Christianity. In the same way Clay Libolt, as well as the chaps he cites, reads Kipper and Hilasmos the way they do because of their raging man-centered theology. For these chaps Kipper and Hilasmos decidedly do not mean what Morris and Berkhof understand those words to mean and that is, in the end, because Libolt, N. T. Wright, John Walton, etc. don’t like the kind of God that Morris, Berkhof, and the authors of the Reformation Confessions affirmed.
Now, none of this is to say that Kipper and Hilasmos don’t have stable meanings. It means instead that the arrival of the meaning of those words and the disputing of the meaning of those words are dependent upon a whole of Scripture contextual reading and understanding. I agree with scholars like Leon Morris on the meaning of Kipper and Hilasmos (covering/propitiation) because we each read the Scriptures as a whole in the same way and in reading the whole of Scripture in the same way we find the word grouping Kipper and Hilasmos to mean the same. If I were to read the Bible as a whole the same way Libolt does, I would do all I could to tear apart the stable meanings of the words Kipper and Hilasmos so as to make them mean anything but that which associates those meanings with God’s just wrath against sin, with the necessity of blood sacrifice to turn away God’s just wrath, with the necessity for covering by means of substitution. If I thought like Libolt thinks (and I daily thank God I don’t) then in order to sustain my theology that holds;
“A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.”
H. Richard Niebuhr
The Kingdom of God in America
I would do all within my power, given my station and rank, to obliterate those stable meanings.
What Libolt does in his eviscerating of the words Kipper (covering) and Hilasmos (propitiation) is the same thing that C. S. Lewis wrote about in his book, “Pilgrim’s Regress.” In that book Lewis has the following exchange between two characters;
C.S. Lewis wrote about a man who ordered milk and eggs from a waiter in a restaurant. After tasting the milk he commented to the waiter that it was delicious. The waiter replied, “Milk is only the secretion of a cow, just like urine and feces.” After eating the eggs he commented on the tastiness of the eggs. Again the waiter responded that eggs are only a by-product of a chicken. After thinking about the waiter’s comment for a moment the man responded, “You lie. You don’t know the difference between what nature has meant for nourishment, and what it meant for garbage.
In this same way Libolt, N. T. Wright, John Walton and countless other “Christians” have taken the milk and eggs that are Kipper and Hilasmos and like the waiter in Lewis’s “Pilgrim’s Regress,” have redefined those words so that they amount to urine and feces — and that so as to fit their demented Weltanschaung.
Clay Libolt himself admitted this in his piece. He admitted in his piece that the reason that the allowing for sexual perversion did not pass in the Christian Reformed Denomination (CRC) was due to the fact that they had misinterpreted Kipper/Hilasmos and as such they had a God that would never be friendly to sexual perversion. His goal is to correct his readers thinking about God consistent with his version of Kipper/Hilasmos so that he can jam through acceptance of sexual perversion in the CRC. A change in one’s theology means, by necessity, a change in one’s anthropology, and a change in one’s hamartiology (doctrine of sin).
You see the God of Penal Substitutionary Atonement is a God who fits Clay Libolt’s egalitarian Christianity. PSA explicitly teaches that God is opposed to the kind of egalitarianism that allows for all sinners to come into the church without repenting of their sin. The reality of this is seen in the fact that the PSA is discriminating. Christ does not die as the substitute for each and every individual who has ever lived. Christ dies for those given to Him by the Father. The cross is thus discriminating and not egalitarian in the least. What follows from this is that the Church likewise is a discriminating institution that is not egalitarian in the least as seen in fact that it screens who can be part of the body of Christ. Only those whom Christ has died for, whom the Spirit applies that redemption to as evidenced by faith and repentance by the supplicant seeking entry. The anti-egalitarianism then, of the PSA is what Clay is railing at as seen by the fact that Clay desires the sexually perverted to come into the Church quite without the evidence of faith and repentance.
Now all of the above I offer in refutation of Clay’s “examination” of the word Kipper in his articles. If someone desires to read a detailed expose on the meaning of the atonement and all the words surrounding it I would recommend the following books;
The Atonement; Its Meaning & Significance
Dr. Leon Morris
The Apostle’s Doctrine of the Atonement
George Smeaton
Pierced for Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution
Jeffrey, Ovey, Sach
If the reader desires more than that write me and ask. I’ve tried to read one book a year since being in the ministry (1989) on the atonement. After continuing to do this reading over the years I can say, without hesitation, that nearly everything that Clay Libolt says about atonement (sourced from the Liberal authors as they are) is errant. I am sure what Clay writes about in terms of atonement is indeed by affirmed by many people but the many people that believe in the kind of atonement that Clay writes about are not Christian.
Libolt, following his sources, insists that atonement is not about the cleansing of the person offering the sacrifice but it is rather about the cleansing of the sanctuary. The sacrifice is offered up so that God can inhabit the environs where the sacrifice is made and not so the person bringing the sacrifice might be cleansed.
However, such a understanding stands against the stream of the Scripture already established before we get to Leviticus. The stream of Scripture already finds us with Adam and Eve being clothed by God with animal skins. Though “Kipper” is not used in this passage the idea of covering is clearly present and the death of animals is more than implied in order that Adam and Eve might be clothed. When we get to the deliverance from Egypt and the first Passover we find the death of the lambs and the spreading of the lamb blood on the lintels of the door that the death angel may pass over so that the first born of the home would not suffer death. In both the Genesis example and the Exodus deliverance animals are substitutes in the place of where death was to visit. Already, at this point, a type is being established in Scripture and Kipper in later revelation will arrive in order to augment and build on this already established narrative. Finally, in the Gospels Christ arrives as the great anti-type and His cousin says of Jesus the Christ;
“Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world.”
I submit to you that every Jew listening to that proclamation knew that by that statement, penalty, substitution, and atonement were what John the Baptist was proclaiming.
In the next installment we will look more at the idea of propitiation, expiation, and we will continue to disassemble Libolt’s reasoning.