Marginal Christianity

Theological Journal – March 24 (Lent 2020) Torrance Tuesday – Atonement “One day a student called Harold Estes came into my rooms in the Dormitory to discuss an essay he had written on the atonement. He was a very gentle kindly person. It is he had spoke of the death of Christ simply as a demonstration of the love of God. He had been expounding something like what was known as a ‘moral influence theory’ of the atonement favoured by liberal thinkers but theological quite inadequate, as H. R. Mackintosh had shown us in Edinburgh. To help Harold I showed him a reproduction which I had of Grünewald’s famous painting of the Crucifixion , at Colmar, which is incredibly starkly vivid. I also showed him some of the enlargements of the painting, reproduced in a book I had with me, which focused on the fearfully lacerated flesh of Jesus which he suffered from the flagellation with thorns inflicted on him by the soldiers, deep wounds now blackened by the sun. Harold shrank back in horro...

by Josh Valley February 23, 2017 Comments 1 The following is a guest post from Orthodox theologian and author Brad Jersak (PhD) .  Heresy Hunters Are At it Again Paul Young’s bestseller finally hits the big screen on March 3. That’s news—great news—as I’ll explain shortly. What’s not news is how the so-called ‘discernment ministries’ (a euphemism for heresy-hunters) have begun yelping. They’re recycling ‘ye olde’ objections but, typically, barking up the wrong tree. The charge of ‘heresy’ is serious, so it ought to be taken seriously, especially by those wielding it. But as an Orthodox theologian, I confess that its sloppy use as a pejorative, grates on my doctrinal nerves. For example, the outcry against Young’s creative portrayal of God’s ‘Threeness’ or his imaging the invisible God as a black woman betrays a crass literalism that the author obviously never intend...

                                                                Fear of Water Jesus and Mack take off for their picnic at the lake.   Mack is stunned when he learns Jesus intends for them to walk across the lake to their destination. When Mack (understandably) has difficulty taking that first step on to water Jesus asks him what he is afraid of.   Mack gives a variety of answers but finally Jesus asks him a seemingly random question:   “. . . do you think humans were designed to live the present or the past or the future?”   He follows that up by making it personal and inquiring of Mack where he spends most of his time in his imagination.   “I su...

                                                              Triune Servanthood The title of this chapter is another echo of C. S. Lewis:   this time his book of essays God in the Dock .   While Lewis’ essays offer a variety of defenses of God and the things of God that modern culture has questioned and placed “in the dock,” this chapter of the Shack features Mack getting to know Jesus as they watch the stars “on the dock.” The chapter begins with Mack observing Papa, Jesus, and Sarayu winsomely interacting as they prepare a meal. As they eat the three ask Mack about his family and friends, except Missy. When Mack allows that it seemed like they were hearing all ...

                                                         Opening up the Garbage Can In this cleverly titled chapter, Mackenzie begins his journey into the heart of the Great Sadness that afflicts him.   This “shack” is a whole new world for Mack and he struggles to get oriented to it.   In a telling line that echoes a similar comment from C. S. Lewis’ Narnia story The Last Battle , Young writes, “The inside of the cabin was roomier than (Mack) had expected” (90).   Yes, this is a new world full of possibility and hope that does not exist outside it.   For this is the place where the triune God is present to meet Mack. In conversation with Papa, she opens up Mack’s inner “garbage can...

Mack Accepts Papa’s Invitation Mack has decided to accept the invitation to meet whoever it is that sent him the invitation. The character of God has been identified as the central issue.   This chapter begins Mack’s journey into the swirling depths of encountering the true and living God in the midst of his Great Sadness. And that’s the first learning we can take from this chapter.   God always meets us in the depth or center of our pain.   That’s why Mack has to come to the shack. Baxter Kruger says we all have a garbage can at the center of our being in which we stuff all the crap that shames, guilts, embarrasses, mortifies, isolates, and poisons us.   We sit atop that garbage can to keep the lid securely in place.   No one will ever get a look in there!   Yet it is just there that we will find God, ready and able to meet and minister to us in our crap. Graham Greene, in The Heart of the Matter states what has to be the deepest truth of huma...

Mackenzie Allen Phillips (protagonist of The Shack ) seems a pretty ordinary sort of guy, according to his best friend and ghost-writer, Willie. A bit reserved, enough to hide his intelligence from the casual acquaintance, Mack is a good man.   A respectable man.   Yet also a man hurt and haunted by his past.   A violent alcoholic father had driven Mack from home at age thirteen, but not before the young boy had spiked all the liquor in the home with insect poison.   And he carries the guilt of that act with him. Mack, according to Willie, shares our culture’s view of Goddddd to some degree.   “. . . he suspects (God) is brooding, distant, and aloof” (10).   He has a love-hate relationship with him (10).   Mack’s wife, Nan, addresses God as “Papa.”   This is too familiar for Mack who calls God “God” and shies away from interacting with him, preferring just to affirm that God knows what he is doing and doesn’t need our worrying or nagging (2...

The Shack by William P. Young took the Christian world by storm in 2007 and quickly became a worldwide bestseller.   Ostensibly a theodicy – how to understand God’s ways with us in a season of unfathomable and meaningless hurt terror, and grief, it has proven to be far more than that.   Young walks us through a fictional account of his eleven year struggle to deal with a “Great Sadness” that engulfed, stripped him down, and reduced him to mere existence and how he emerged from that maelstrom a new man.   The creativity, energy, depth, and insight of his account bear the marks of one who has met God, the biblical, triune God, been grasped and delivered by him, gripped by his beauty and faithfulness, and drawn close by him in an intimate and life-giving embrace.    None less than Eugene Peterson calls The Shack a Pilgrim’s Progress for our generation.   And he is surely right about that! In this series of posts I want to revisit The Shack nearly eight ...