Since I got back from Spring Harvest I must have been asked the question: “Do you know anything about Spring Harvest and Word Alive, and what happened?” My answer to that question 4 weeks ago was… “yeah I think it was something to do with Steve Chalke saying something in a book about something that Word Alive didn’t like.” The most unhelpful answer ever! This topic is pretty old since the split happened back in 2007, but I thought since lots of people have asked recently, I would write something quickly on it.
OK, I realise a lot of you how read this blog probably don’t know anything about this, or just couldn’t care less! Fair enough, you might learn something if you keep reading… or just stop reading now :)
For people who are interested, and don’t know much about this topic. Spring Harvest is an inter-denominational Christian conference which happens over Easter over 3 weeks in both Skegness and Butlins (normally, weeks sometimes vary) which attracts about 55,000 people. Word Alive was a large student Christian conference held the week before (normally) the first week of Spring Harvest at Skegness. It was jointly organised by Spring Harvest, UCCF and the Keswick Convention. Word Alive normally attracted about 2000 people. So far no problems! In 2007, it was announced that Word Alive would be relaunched (as New Word Alive), to be held in Pwllheli rather than Skegness, and would no longer be part of Spring harvest. Now this is when people ask why?!
The simple answer (that both sides agree on) is that disagreements over Spring Harvest leadership team member Steve Chalke’s view of the atonement played at least some part in the split. That’s slightly clearer than my waffle of a statement I first came up with. There is no way I can go into this topic in massive amounts of detail, or really explain properly why Chalke disagrees with Penal Substitutiary Atonement, but I will do my best to give you a basis to find out more if you choose.
OK firstly, what is Penal Substitutiary Atonement:
Penal substitution is a theory of the atonement (how God can forgive our sins), especially associated with the Reformed tradition. It argues that Christ, by his own sacrificial choice, was punished (penalised) in the place of sinners (substitution), therefore satisfying the demands of justice so God can justly forgive the sins.
The debate all started when Chalke compared God’s act of punishing Jesus in our place to a “cosmic child abuser”, in his book, The Lost Message of Jesus.
Steve Chalke has since come to confirm his view on penal substitution. In the recent book, The Atonement Debate. He says:
“Though the sheer bluntness of my imagery shocked some, I contend that, in truth, it represents nothing more than a stark unmasking of what I understand to be the violent, pre-Christian thinking behind the popular theory of penal substitutionary atonement. Thus, whilst having great respect for many of those who hold what, I readily concede, is currently regarded as orthodoxy within modern evangelicalism, I will attempt to set out through this essay why I believe it to be biblically, culturally, and pastorally deficient and even dangerous.”
Back to the split between Spring Harvest and Word Alive, UCCF said the following:
“Steve Chalke has made his dislike of penal substitution very clear by likening God’s act of punishing Jesus in our place to a cosmic child abuser. In good conscience, we simply could not allow Steve to teach during the Word Alive week. We’re very sad that after 14 years of fruitful ministry, Spring Harvest has decided to end the Word Alive partnership because we feel unable to shift on this position.”
It is interesting to note here, that it was Spring Harvest that initiated the split, not Word Alive, but it was Word Alive who refused to allow Chalke to speak during their conference.
For a bit more information on Chalke’s view check out Adrian Warnock’s site here where he has multiple posts with Chalke’s view on the topic.
OK, so I’m not going to go into a massive debate about whether Chalke is right or wrong because it would make this post even longer, and I’m by no means informed enough. But my view on Penal Substitution is pretty strong, and I do believe that we all deserve punishment for our sins, and that Jesus did die in substitution for us, and therefore allowing us to have our sins forgiven! (i.e. I disagree with Chalke). I might write a post at some point explaining and backing up why I actually believe this, but I’ll save that for another day. I would also like to say though, that I do still highly rate Chalke as a Bible teacher, but I believe he is doing an amazing job in this country with all the work that he is doing, but for him to disagree on such a core doctrine really surprises me!