Conflict With Penal Substitution
The moral influence view has historically come into conflict with a penal substitutionary view of atonement, as the two systems propose radically different criteria of salvation and judgment. The moral influence paradigm focuses on the moral change of people, leading to a positive final judgment for which the criteria focuses on inner moral character. By contrast, a penal substitutionary paradigm denies the saving value of human moral change. It focuses on faith in Christ and on his death on our behalf, leading to a positive final judgment based on what Christ has done for us and our trust in that - not on any positive moral qualities that we ourselves possess.
As a result of these conflicts, a strong division has remained since the Reformation between liberal Protestants (who typically adopt a moral influence view) and conservative Protestants (who typically adopt a penal substitutionary view). Debate between these positions has a tendency to focus on the following main issues:
Read more about this topic: Moral Influence Theory Of Atonement
Famous quotes containing the words conflict, penal and/or substitution:
“He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty helps us to an intimate acquaintance with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
“Him the Almighty Power
Hurld headlong flaming from th’ Ethereal Skie
With hideous ruine and combustion down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire,
Who durst defie th’ Omnipotent to Arms.
Nine times the Space that measures Day and Night
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquisht, rowling in the fiery Gulfe”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“To play is nothing but the imitative substitution of a pleasurable, superfluous and voluntary action for a serious, necessary, imperative and difficult one. At the cradle of play as well as of artistic activity there stood leisure, tedium entailed by increased spiritual mobility, a horror vacui, the need of letting forms no longer imprisoned move freely, of filling empty time with sequences of notes, empty space with sequences of form.”
—Max J. Friedländer (1867–1958)