I recently came across a quote from Dallas Willard which I thought might be relevant to my dissertation project about habit formation and spiritual disciplines:
"Your system is perfectly designed to yield the result you are getting."
Although it was credited as coming from his book The Divine Conspiracy, no page number was cited.
So I checked it out on Amazon, read a sample, and thought it might be worth buying - so I did.
The book has me intrigued so far and might prove to be useful to me beyond my project.
In assessing the current weakness (as of 1997) of American Christianity, Willard writes:
"[Jesus] is automatically seen as a more or less magical figure - a pawn, or possibly a knight or a bishop, in some religious game - who fits only within the categories of dogma and of law. Dogma is what you have to believe, whether you believe it or not. And law is what you must do, whether it is good for you or not." (xiii)
Willard sadly nails the contemporary definition of "dogma" here!
I am anxious to keep reading - I am not terribly familiar with his work in general but I have found the first few chapters insightful.
It is Dr. Tim Mackie - who knows his Hebrew - who defines the word "righteousness" as "right relationship". But he points out that the "rightness" for a relationship will differ one to another.
A right relationship with your own child is going to have very different entailments than a right relationship with your boss.
You might be able to rank the importance of your various relationships. Perhaps a spouse would rank at the top and children just below that, followed by parents or siblings and then relatively distantly by a friend, a boss, a co-worker, and all the way down to the stranger who changes your car's oil.
A relationship with the God of the universe - your Creator - should be by definition THE key relationship in your life. And if He is pure and holy and good and wants you to call Him "Father", then a right relationship with Him is going to be very much in line with the sort of things we traditionally associate with the word "righteousness". Especially since He commands you to love everyone, even the stranger changing your oil.
But remember that Mackie combines "right" with "relationship" - and both are essential to biblical righteousness.
You can do what might otherwise be right in God's eyes - feeding the hungry, standing up for the voiceless, giving money to a charity - but do it all for the wrong reasons. Maybe you're simply virtue signaling or trying to impress somebody or trying to earn a place in Heaven.
In any of those cases, the relationship is not actually right. In fact, our good deeds might involve zero relationship with our heavenly Father. And then they are just going to backfire.
"Get your sins forgiven so that you can go to Heaven someday" is the anemic version of the gospel. The full, true gospel is really only available to those who desire to be right with God.
The power went out at the church this morning in the middle of our Breakfast Club Bible study. It was about 9:00.
By 10:00 everyone had left and I had the chance to investigate. It wasn't a single breaker or fuse - the whole church had gone primitive.
It was a perfect summer morning - blue skies, no storms.
No branches had fallen on any wires.
No transformer had exploded.
Since the day was bright and I couldn't just look down the street for darkened windows to judge if neighbors were also without power, I decided the only way to know if the problem was limited to the church would be to knock at a house close to the church.
As an introvert, it's not really like me to go knocking on strangers' doors, but the power outage gave me a good excuse to meet a neighbor and, honestly, I thought God might be disappointed if I passed.
After all, how can we love our neighbors if we've never even met?
So I strode up to the door of the house just on the far edge of our gravel parking lot and knocked as confidently as I could manage. Out came a genial young man named Jacob who works third shift at Toyota and loves to fish.
We must have chatted on his porch for 20 minutes or more. Jacob turned out to be a super pleasant guy. At one point he asked if I was the one who "owned" the church and that made me chuckle.
Anyway, he confirmed that the power was just fine at his house. I returned to the church, happy that I had not shrunk from the opportunity to meet a neighbor.
When I walked through the door and stepped inside the building, the power came back on.
I listened to a podcast today while doing yardwork. It was a panel of 3 Calvinists and they all agreed that what I intend to preach tomorrow morning is heresy:
I think it best to reject the doctrine of original sin as being unbiblical.
If you're not familiar, original sin teaches
These three men would not only declare me heretical, but heretical in the first degree.
The saying goes that "there are heresies and then there are damnable heresies".
They agreed that rejecting original sin is a damnable heresy because it then interferes with other key doctrines at the heart of the gospel.
Their example? Penal substitutionary atonement!
So that's OK by me, because I also reject PSA as it is typically formulated.
(I know there are prooftexts for both original sin and penal substitutionary atonement, but I consider them quite weak. This post may come across as flippant, but I have listened to both sides on these two issues and if you and I sat down over a cup of coffee, I feel like I could defend my positions well on both.)
Although I reject the notion that humans bear Adam's guilt and can do nothing but sin, I do believe that all who live beyond the age of accountability end up sinning. And whether we sin a lot or a little, we all still need a Savior to be reconciled to God.
I guess it's important to remember that heresy is in the eye of the beholder.
If I can't put it into my own words, then I don't really understand it.
When I was teaching high school English, one of the ways I could spot plagiarism in a research paper was when a student started using words outside his normal vocabulary, typically in service of explaining some concept that I knew was beyond his understanding.
The student had found a good source and had somehow recognized the importance of the information on a gut level, but didn't really understand the point being made well enough to "put it into his own words". The only alternative was to lift words and sentences whole.
And pretend like he knew what he was writing about.
As a teacher, I came to realize that until a student could put an idea into her own words, she didn't truly understand it.
These days, as a pastor, I wonder how many professing Christians could put the gospel into their own words.
And one thing is obvious - you can't accurately communicate an idea which you can't articulate.
My boss at Mission Resource left this afternoon for Ghana carrying a very special package.
Earlier this week, Chris Rousseau from our friends at a ministry called Heart of Africa delivered a SmartBox to the Mission Resource office and gave a demonstration of its capabilities. We were amazed at the ingenuity and potential of this idea!
The SmartBox is the brainchild of Innovative Education International in Fort Wayne, Indiana. It is a mobile, self-contained computer lab and school library in one - an “instant wireless classroom” - and it’s perfect for schools in the developing world.
I could picture it being incredibly useful in Haitian schools. It would be life-changing.
The SmartBox is a powerful solution to what is lacking in poor schools around the world (that we tend to take for granted in the US!):
In addition, each SmartBox comes loaded with searchable encyclopedias, books at all levels of reading, typing programs, educational games, Bible resources, and more. And customized curriculum can be added via thumb drive.
Dave will be delivering this particular SmartBox to Precious Kids Academy, a school run by one of our Ghanaian Board members, Samson Dorkunor.
If you should happen to be interested in learning more about the SmartBox program, check out the excellent 3-minute video and other information on their website.
I still need to do more research, but it seems that my departure from a straight up belief in original sin/total depravity puts me at odds with my own theological tradition, Methodism.
As much as John Wesley disliked Calvinism, his unquestioning acceptance of total depravity meant that he would in essence always be one-fifth Calvinist.
As far as I can tell, the only thing keeping Wesley out of the quicksand of the other four points of Calvinism was the invention of "prevenient grace".
Taking the place of Calvinism's "irresistible grace", prevenient grace is the Methodist term for God's way of overcoming the depravity of man in general, allowing otherwise dyed-in-the-wool God haters and spiritual imbeciles the opportunity to see and desire Christ and then to put their faith in Him.
My only question now is this: how heretical is it for a doctoral student at a Wesleyan seminary to question original sin, depravity, and prevenient grace?
(Hopefully not TOO heretical!)
For most of my life the American stereotype overseas seemed to be "the obnoxious American" - the loudmouth foreigner who thought the whole world revolved around him and his needs.
I wonder what the world currently thinks of when they imagine a typical American?
Last week I had a short conversation with a woman from another country. She's been living and working in Columbus for two years.
She described life in her home culture as being hard and dangerous. She sometimes feared for her children's lives.
She said in Indiana she didn't have to worry over her children and for that she was grateful.
But she missed her home country.
And then she said something that caught me off guard and I have been pondering ever since:
"I like the United States. But there's something really wrong here."
And then she asked, "What is it that is driving all the mental illness?"
This morning was a good morning.
A few weeks ago an idea popped into my head - an experiment for our church's summer youth ministry: a weekly Breakfast Club.
After polling the teens a few weeks ago, we had decided that Monday mornings (!) would work best for the greatest number of individuals. The schedule would be simple: Show up at 8:00 am if you want to help cook, 8:30 for breakfast and Bible, and we'd finish by 9:30.
The goal is greater spiritual health through a habit of personal Bible study. The system to reach that goal is two-pronged:
(The best part is that I am killing two birds with one stone here. The curriculum I am creating is going to become the basis for my dissertation.)
At our first meeting two weeks ago, three teens showed up. And it was good.
Last Monday only one teen came. And it was a little awkward.
After last Monday's lack of attendance I almost altered the time and day, but finally decided that the challenge of meeting on a Monday morning might actually serve to illustrate important aspects of habit formation.
This morning seven teens came to cook, eat, and delve into the Bible and we also had two grade school girls and two other adults beside me!
With 12 people around the table enjoying waffles and bacon and Genesis 1, it felt to me like the start of something.
Time will tell.
Anyway, this little taste of success got me motivated to be more intentional about my curriculum. I haven't had any handouts ready to go so far - I confess that Monday mornings tend to sneak up on me. But I spent some time today creating what will become an ongoing weekly review sheet (for those who have to miss now and then) and a single sheet with guided questions for discussion next week.
This feels important - maybe in bigger ways that I can currently guess.
It was a good Father's Day but now it's past midnight because my sleep schedule is out of whack, so I am not writing much tonight.
I woke at 4:00 am and couldn't fall back to sleep. Unfortunately, that's not an uncommon occurrence for me these days. It often happens on a Sunday morning especially.
I suppose that means I still get anxious about preaching. I need to find ways to shut off my brain.
Ways to cast all my worries in God's direction.
After all, what do I have to worry about? I mean, sure, there's paying the bills and keeping the cars running and health concerns. (I am currently awaiting results from an MRI to see if surgery will be in my near future.)
But in the Big Picture? I am blessed and I am secure and all is well.
Holidays like Father's Day have a way of bringing us back to an awareness of the Big Picture, good or bad.
Mine is good, by God's grace.
I had the prettier half of my 4 kids with me this particular Father's Day. After worship, we realized that we were all color-coordinated, so Grandma Trudy took a photo for us:
"Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself." - Rita Mae Brown
As I have been consciously praying the Lord's Prayer daily over this past year, the one phrase that I haven't given as much attention to as all the others is also the one most commentaries struggle to explain: "Lead us not into temptation".
On the face of it, it's a weird thing to pray. The Bible makes it clear that God does not tempt people:
James 1:13 "When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone."
So why would we pray that He not lead us into temptation?
Maybe "temptation" is not even the target. The word Jesus uses in His prayer is also translated as "trial" in some places.
Again in James: "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." (1:2-4)
And God does lead people into trials at times. Most famously, the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness where He had to face off against Satan.
And if it makes you squeamish to think of God putting you to a test, then you're not really aware of your daily situation down here on earth.
Because if you think about it, God can't really say a single word to you without it becoming a test. As soon as He says "Forgive that coworker", for example, it has become a trial of your willingness to obey.
Will you forgive or won't you? God's not going to be tempting you to disobey. He's on your side and wants what's best for you.
In the end, I guess I have always read "lead us not into temptation" as being equivalent to "lead us away from temptation".
Maybe it's a clever way to get us to think about the alternative. If God is not leading us into temptation - and He's not - then where is He leading us?
Into victory, strength, and satisfaction in Him.
There was a time not too long ago when I was impressed by biblical "proof texting" - rattling off verse after verse in order to "prove" some theological point you are teaching.
It took a while for reality to sink in to me. And reality is that as a means of argumentation, proof texting is incredibly persuasive but not necessarily trustworthy.
Proof texting is used to support any number of doctrines. Calvinist teachers are adept at the practice and can cite several verses from all over the Bible to support propositions like total depravity or unconditional election.
But here's the red flag: These "proof" verses are always pulled out of the context of the surrounding paragraph, chapter, book, and the Bible as a whole.
The easiest way to illustrate the inadequacy and the danger of proof texting is to show how it could be used to support an idea that we all (hopefully) agree is wrong.
So here are a few verses I could use to "prove" that we earn eternal life by our own good works and righteousness:
As my central text, I would focus on Matthew 25 and Jesus' parable of the sheep and the goats. It clearly shows that Jesus is watching each of us as we live our lives. Those who visit the sick and feed the hungry are welcomed into "the Kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world" (34). They are called the sheep.
Those who fail to do good works, though, "shall go away into everlasting punishment".
"But the righteous into life eternal" (46)!
How could Scripture be any more clear? This is straight from the mouth of Jesus: the righteous earn eternal life.
(You're not supposed to notice that I just slipped a word in there - "earn" - that isn't in the original text.)
Now that we have established that salvation is earned by good works, and that the righteous are called sheep, we can go look for other references to sheep and see just what Jesus thinks of the righteous.
We notice that if He loses sight of even one of His righteous sheep, He goes looking for him and brings him back to safety. (Matthew 18:12)
The righteous are obviously quite valuable to God.
So valuable, in fact, that Jesus laid His life down for the sheep! (John 10:11)
Next, I would turn to the Old Testament to show that God has always favored the righteous and promised them eternal life.
For instance, Proverbs 10:2 - "Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit, but righteousness delivers from death."
Or Proverbs 11:19 - "Whoever is steadfast in righteousness will live, but he who pursues evil will die."
The psalmist said (in 112:6) - "The righteous will never be moved; he will be remembered forever."
And then just to drive the point home, we turn to the Apostle Paul. Two passages will be enough to demonstrate how Paul taught that the righteous earn eternal life:
Romans 2:6-10 - "(God) will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek."
2 Corinthians 5:10 - "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil."
So there you have it. The Bible clearly teaches that the righteous earn their salvation by their own good works.
God simply keeps score.
Just look at how many verses I quoted! You aren't going to argue with what the Bible clearly teaches, are you?
As Father’s Day approaches, I find myself reflecting on one of my greatest embarrassments in recent memory.
(But it led to a simple new habit which has deepened my prayer life like no other, so I willingly share the story here with you.)
A year ago, I preached the shortest sermon ever!
I stepped up to the pulpit of Sardinia Baptist Church to preach on Luke 11:1-13, a well-known passage about approaching God as our Father. It begins with Jesus teaching His disciples “The Lord’s Prayer”.
Upon reading those words out loud to the congregation, I suddenly found myself unable to continue. I was overwhelmed by my own hypocrisy - my own prayer life was largely weak and ineffective. I apologized tearfully and sat down.
These days, I’m glad to say, my prayer life is on the upswing – in large part because that failed sermon motivated me to make The Lord’s Prayer a daily habit.
Not just a mindless recitation, of course. Rather I pray through slowly, lingering over whichever phrase happens to catch my attention any particular morning. And as I go, I repeat the disciples’ request: “Lord, teach us to pray”.
After a year, it’s a practice I desire to share with as many others as I can - including YOU.
I can now personally testify: The Lord’s Prayer is much deeper than I ever gave it credit for. And I believe I have much more yet to learn.
It seems like every "woke" friend and acquaintance I have spends an unhealthy amount of time online, posting indignant memes on Instagram. Those who consider themselves Christians post LOTS of criticisms aimed at fellow believers who are not woke enough.
Have you noticed the same?
Recently I watched an interview of a young lady from South Africa, Zandile Powell, on the Triggernometry YouTube channel.
She had a lot to say about how her exposure to Critical Race Theory at Cambridge messed up her thinking. The victimhood mindset it promoted eventually left her suicidal. It's worth a listen.
In the middle of the conversation, Powell made an observation which struck me as insightful:
She said that young wokesters, in insisting the world conform to their "identity" and opinions, are bound to be forever frustrated by reality and its daily face to face interactions with regular people.
THIS, she says, fuels a woke retreat to the internet - where they can find plenty of kindred spirits and have their identities and ideas affirmed and reaffirmed.
I think Powell has a point. The internet is much more accommodating of fantasies, victimhood, and virtue signaling than the real world is.
I feel a bit intimidated by my choice of preaching passages for this coming Sunday, Romans 5:12-17.
The first part of that passage goes like this:
12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, so also death was passed on to all men, because all sinned. 13 For sin was in the world before the law was given; but sin is not taken into account when there is no law. 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who did not sin in the way that Adam transgressed. He is a pattern of the One to come.
This gets us into the territory of "inherited guilt" and "sin nature" and "original sin". And it gets complicated because - like other theological terms - these get defined in different ways by different people.
From what I can tell, a lot of theologians today hold beliefs shaped by Augustine of Hippo from way back when. (He lived from 354 to 430.)
And Augustine's beliefs were shaped (or rather, misshaped) by the faulty Latin translation on which he depended for his reading of Romans 5:12. His Bible had verse 12 ending with "in him (meaning "in Adam") all sinned" instead of "because all sinned".
And to this day you will hear preachers say that all of humanity was "in Adam's loins" when he sinned and so we all participated in that sin and so we all deserve God's punishment of sin, i.e. death.
You will hear talk of "inherited guilt" as well, that "we all enter the world guilty before God" as Richard Phillips confidently asserts over on the The Gospel Coalition website.
An opposing commenter says that the phrase "inherited guilt" makes as much sense as a "square circle" - and I am inclined to agree.
Think about it: what sort of mechanism leaves you legitimately guilty for someone else's action? What sort of crazy world did God create ... or allow ... or predetermine (!) if every infant is born as guilty before God?
And thus deserving of the punishment of death?
So what made this idea of "inherited guilt" appealing to Augustine and others through the centuries?
I think it caught on because it provided an answer (albeit a wrong answer) to a very good question raised by Romans 5:14 (see above): Why did humans from Adam to Moses die if there was no Law and thus no law-breaking to deserve the punishment of sin?
Also, to be blunt, why do babies die if they have not sinned and have no guilt before God?
(I plan to wrestle with that subject tomorrow.)
I've learned to be skeptical of "experts", so when I come across an unfamiliar theologian, I do my homework.
I want to listen to what they preach and teach with a discerning ear. A guy with a degree can be pretty convincing, but we are still each called to be good Bereans.
I am most interested in finding experts who can effectively communicate what they have discovered in their studies. I want to learn something new, not just find someone to reinforce what I already believe.
I also check out what sort of company they keep and what their critics are saying.
And in the age of the internet, you can ALWAYS find the critics. It's as easy as Googling the theologian's name along with the word "heresy". 😉
Most recently I have been listening to Tim Mackie. He and a friend put their Bible expertise to use in creating The Bible Project, featuring beautifully animated short videos highlighting various books and themes of Scripture.
Mackie's preaching and teaching strike me as both fresh and interesting. And so, to be on the safe side, I searched for his critics on YouTube.
So far I have found two. And those two have this in common: they are both Calvinists.
As far as I can tell, their beef with Tim Mackie and The Bible Project is that he doesn't buy into Penal Substitutionary Atonement as being part of what's happening at the cross of Christ.
And although this single fact caused both YouTubers to recommend viewers avoid Mackie and his "heresy", it only raised his reputation in my own mind.
Now I want to hear more from Mackie.
For almost a year now I have been praying the Lord's Prayer on a daily basis - pausing over whichever line catches my attention on any particular morning.
I have been amazed at how much is packed into those few lines.
And even today I was introduced to a new thought concerning the opening words - "Our Father who art in heaven".
Many have commented on the collective nature of the prayer, with Jesus teaching us to use the first person plurals, "we", "us", and "our".
But I had never considered how those opening words could be understood as Jesus inviting all of us to pray alongside Him, to His Father - who is also our Father.
In other words, the opening "our" includes you, me, AND Jesus, since He is our Brother.
We all have the same Father.
When we pray the Lord's Prayer, we are praying alongside Jesus.
I'm still wrestling with the nature of death as portrayed in the Bible.
In the Garden of Eden, there was no Law. The Law would not come until the time of Moses, centuries down the line.
In Eden there was only one rule that God laid out: Do not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
And what would happen if they broke the rule was also laid out: "You will surely die."
By the way, there is no indication that Adam and Eve understood "death" to mean "burn in hell for all eternity". Why would they?
And it's not immediately obvious as to whether Adam and Eve were meant to understand death as a punishment for breaking the rule or a consequence for breaking the rule.
This is an important distinction. A punishment is like Mom saying, "If you touch that stovetop, I am going to sit you in time-out for ten minutes."
A consequence would be like her saying, "If you touch that stovetop, you will burn yourself."
Which one is "you will surely die"?
Unclear.
However, it IS worded like a consequence.
Wouldn't a punishment be worded like this: "If you eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, I will surely put you to death"?
It is interesting to consider that no humans had the Law until after Moses brought the Israelites out of Egypt. Not Adam, not Noah, not Abraham.
Romans 5:13-15 tells us something important about God's Law:
13 For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world was not given through the law, but through the righteousness that comes by faith. 14 For if those who live by the law are heirs, faith is useless and the promise is worthless, 15 because the law brings wrath. And where there is no law, there is no transgression.
"Where there is no law, there is no transgression."
I don't see how death can be anything but a consequence of sin. Not the punishment.
Adam and Eve disobeyed God, but they didn't break His Law.
We typically think of wealth and poverty strictly in terms of money. But James Clear outlines 4 types of wealth:
And then gives this warning: "Be wary of jobs that lure you in with 1 and 2, but rob you of 3 and 4."
I would add "Relational Wealth" (friendship) to his list.
And if there are these 5 types of wealth, then there are also 5 types of poverty.
And although most Americans do not suffer true financial poverty, to one extent or another, we do suffer relational poverty, time poverty, and physical poverty.
And the funny thing is, we're not really aware how much these poverties diminish us. And we don't really fight to reverse them.
As Genesis 3 ends, the final image is of cherubim with flaming swords guarding the entry back into Eden so that Adam and Eve cannot get back to the Tree of Life.
Isn't it interesting that the very first human action recorded as happening outside Eden is Adam and Eve having sex?
And it's not shameful or negative in any way. In fact, it's an act in obedience to God's will. They are following through with their original commission from God to "be fruitful and increase in number" (Gen 1:28).
The act is successful toward that end - Eve is immediately pregnant.
And when Cain is born, Eve seems full of wonder and gratitude, declaring "With the help of the LORD I have brought forth a man!"
The Hebrew translated here as "with the help of" is actually a very short preposition typically meaning "with" and indicating close proximity.
Adam and Eve are banished from the Garden of Eden but God has not deserted them. As they start the first family, Eve at least recognizes that the Lord is playing a central role in their lives.
Coming fast on the heels of the creation account, the serpent's temptation, and Adam and Eve's forced exit from the Garden of Eden, Genesis 4 introduces some notable firsts:
Another notable aspect of the story is what is NOT there.
New Testament authors fill in a couple of the gaps:
Interestingly, Jesus implies that Abel was a prophet in some sense, although that word does not appear in Genesis 4. In rebuking the Pharisees, Jesus said,
Luke 11:47 Woe to you! You build tombs for the prophets, but it was your fathers who killed them. 48 So you are witnesses consenting to the deeds of your fathers: They killed the prophets, and you build their tombs. 49 Because of this, the wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles; some of them they will kill and others they will persecute.’
50 As a result, this generation will be charged with the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the foundation of the world, 51 from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, all of it will be charged to this generation.
In the broadest sense, a prophet was one who highlighted God's standards and warned those going astray.
It is not recorded that Abel said a single prophetic word to his brother. It seems Abel's life and example were enough to inspire his brother's hatred.
A few weeks ago I signed up for a "Word of the Day" email newsletter.
It's occasionally enlightening but mostly useless.
Most of the featured words are so obscure that if you used them, you would sound either idiotic (like you had just made up a word or used the wrong one) or pretentious (like you're trying to sound smart by pretending this word is part of your working vocabulary).
Here's a great example from the other day:
One of my more liberal friends posted this on his Instagram account:
During this past Easter I was looking into various theories of the atonement of Christ which theologians have floated over the centuries. And by atonement theory we mean our best guess as to how Christ's life, death, and resurrection accomplished His goal of opening a path to salvation for humanity.
I found that most theologians agree that our best understanding of the atonement lies in a combination of two or more of these theories.
Since I have been looking at Genesis 3, it seems to me that the terrible day which resulted in Adam and Eve's [and Satan's] expulsion from the Garden, also presented Yahweh with three challenges to overcome. [The challenges overlap one another but each needs to be addressed.]
Perhaps "competing" atonement theories are the result of the fact that Christ's life, death, and resurrection functioned together to address all three challenges at once.
Jesus and the Scriptures certainly defined His mission along each of these lines at various times:
The Sin Problem - Romans 5:19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
The Death Problem - John 10:10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
The Satan Problem - 1 John 3:8 The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.
Isn't it interesting that in each of these verses, Jesus juxtaposes His mission against Adam's moral failure or Satan's?
When reading in the New Testament, it's important to keep in mind that its authors were steeped in the Old. Their reference point for all spiritual truth was the Hebrew Bible, the only Scriptures they had.
The Apostle Paul's closing admonitions in his letter to the Romans is a good example. If you read it without recognizing the connections to Genesis 3, you'll miss important aspects of his point:
Romans 16:17 Now I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who create divisions and obstacles that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Turn away from them. 18 For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naïve.
19 Everyone has heard about your obedience, so I rejoice over you. But I want you to be wise about what is good and innocent about what is evil.
20 The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
Paul's references to Genesis 3 go beyond a simple mention of Satan.
First, he compares those who create divisions among believers to the serpent in the garden: deceiving the naïve (like the serpent deceived Eve) with smooth talk and flattery. These people sowing divisions are children of the devil and continuing his work.
Next Paul advises the believers to be "wise about the good and innocent of evil". This harkens back to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil at the center of Eden. Now that humans have this knowledge, if they want to be a productive part of the Kingdom, they will behave differently when confronted with good than with evil.
And finally, as citizens of the Kingdom, doing good and avoiding evil, they get to be a part of the Lord's original curse and prophecy against the serpent, stomping on his head in the interest of true peace.
All of this reinforces the core continuity of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation.
