Morris Old Testament Propitiation
Well, I’m up to chapter 6 in Morris’ book, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross. There is so much I’d like to quote as I go along or just comment on, but time has been short this week. So I will give some quotes on one of the two largest chapters in the book. Both chapters deal with Propitiation and the Wrath of God and both chapters are approximately 35 pages of small print in length. Clearly Propitiation of God’s wrath is a central thought in the work of the atonement. Chapter five is about propitiation in the Old Testament.
Christians are often accused of having a bloodthirsty God, who is just an evolved form of the pagan deities. After much argumentation the author has demonstrated:
“These are important conclusions and they are being increasingly accepted, for it is a relief to know that we have solid grounds for our conviction that the God of the Bible is not a Being who can be propitiated after the fashion of a pagan deity. That this point has been conclusively demonstrated is certain.”[i]
“There is a consistency about the Wrath of God in the Old Testament. It is no capricious passion, but the stern reaction of the divine nature towards evil.”[ii]
Much of the argumentation examines scholarship that seeks to make propitiation merely expiation. For instance, Dodd says, “’the Wrath of God’ is taken out of the sphere of the purely mysterious, and brought into the sphere of cause and effect.”[iii] In other words, as I understand the argumentation, God’s wrath isn’t being satisfied, but our sins are being expiated or done away with.
It is true, as Morris argues, that our sins are expiated, but he believes that both senses are true. After several pages of argumentation he states:
“Thus the propitiatory idea which we have seen to be involved in [ilaskomai] is to be discerned also in [ilasmos]. Wherever it means ‘forgiveness’, the circumstances indicate the turning away of the divine wrath.”[iv]
Morris also goes to the Hebrew Kopher in the Old Testament:
“The particular Kopher which is to be offered is not mentioned in Ezekiel 16:63, but the explicit mention of the wrath of God (verses 38, 42) makes it clear that we are still moving in the same circle of ideas. In Psalm 78:38 the parallelism makes ‘forgave (atoned) their iniquity’ almost equivalent to ‘turned he his anger away’, and similarly in Psalm 79:9, the removal of the wrath as the way of purging sins is clear from the references to the divine anger in the situation (verses 5,6,8).”[v]
Morris also explains the idea that a Ransom must be paid.
“From the foregoing examination of the evidence it appears that, when Kipper is used in the Old Testament to denote the making of an atonement by means other than the use of the cultus, it usually bears the meaning ‘to avert punishment, especially the divine anger, by the payment of a kopher, a ransom’, which may be of money or which may be of life.”[vi]
In Morris’ conclusion, there is an excellent paragraph summarizing the meaning of propitiation.
“It is against such a background that the Old Testament idea of propitiation is to be studied. Where there is sin, the Old Testament teaches, there is wrath. But this does not mean that all men are to be consumed, for that wrath is the wrath of a loving father who yearns for His children to come to Him. There is forgiveness with God, and this forgiveness necessarily involves the laying aside of wrath. But it is important to note that the removal of this wrath is due not to man’s securing such an offering that God is impressed and relents, but to God Himself. This alone is sufficient to show that we are not dealing with the pagan idea when we speak of propitiation.”[vii]
Praise God that He has sought to satisfy His own wrath against our sin. God truly reconciled the world to Himself through the vicarious substitutionary atoning work of Jesus Christ.
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