Oliver O'Donovan does talk good sense about a lot of things, not least on the matter of punishment. He takes from Grotius the cue that punishment is 'ontologically native to God'. He repudiates some of the contemporary theology that denies this (namely that of Gorringe) in the name of dening that punishment of any kind is valid, but fails to do so coherently, or theologically.
He writes:
When we speak of God's own 'punishing' we are speaking of his judgement within the quasi-political context of his own covenant-faithfulness. Divine punishment...is God's disclosure of himself as our good, revealing the truth of our wrong. For this reason Christians have always found it necessary to speak of divine punishment in connection with the Atonement, for the Atonement is the supreme demonstration of God's covenant-faithfulness. Ways of Judgment, p. 107
2 comments:
I recently found an often overlooked verse in the whole penal substitution debate.
Col 2.14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
Here it seems that Divine punishment and atonement are, though not in your face, inextricably linked.
One of the things I've always liked about O'Donovan is that it's clear that he listens to criticisms of conservative theological positions, and takes those criticisms seriously. This isn't especially prominent in this quote, but one can hear the echoes of it.
(The book quoted is a successor to The Desire of the Nations? I should go and get it.)
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