A RESPONSE TO MICHAEL SHANBOUR’S “A GOSPEL ACCOUNT OF OUR FATHER AND THE BLOOD ATONEMENT OF JESUS”

(Part X)

MY CONCLUSION

I will now leave the reader with my own conclusions as to whether Mr. Shanbour has presented a convincing argument in support of his hypothesis and its two corollaries, again listed below:

Hypothesis: The doctrine of atonement arose out of the old Jewish tradition of sacrifice and was attached to the death of Christ through the letters of Paul and to a lesser extent other New Testament authors.

Mr. Shanbour had no intention of addressing this hypothesis at all. This “hypothesis” of his was merely a smokescreen in order to justify his wanton excising of both the Old Testament and everything that follows the four canonical Gospels from the body of acceptable evidence. His circular reasoning went something like this: Because the reader should accept without question the well-known fact that the Old Testament is irrelevant to the life of Jesus, then it stands to reason that the New Testament epistles, which force an “atonist” interpretation of the Old Testament on Jesus without due cause, are also rendered useless. If Shanbour were able to demonstrate through Scripture that Paul and others misinterpreted the Old Testament in such a way, then he would have had a case. However, it is obvious that he did not even try, nor had he intended to do so. He merely swept the remains of the day under the rug, hoping that nobody would notice the botched job.

Mr. Shanbour contradicted himself when he said that the Old Testament was invalid, while relying solely on the words of Jesus in the canonical Gospels to put forth his hypothesis. Indeed, Jesus himself attested to the reliability of Scripture as God’s true, infallible word.

Corollary 1: The doctrine of atonement was not a pre-ordained plan of God.

Mr. Shanbour was able to give the impression that such was the case, but only because he was highly selective in his “exhaustive” list of pertinent Gospel verses. He typically took these verses out of context so as to re-interpret their meaning in a manner more befitting his desired outcome.

Because he disqualified the Old Testament as admissible evidence, this corollary of Mr. Shanbour’s was not even tenable to begin with. If all historic evidence is to be deemed inadmissible, how then does one go about proving or disproving that something requiring a historic premise did indeed take place? Once the historic evidence is rescued from Shanbour’s unwarranted demise, the case in favor of God’s pre-ordained plan for salvation becomes overwhelming (indeed, it goes well beyond the scope of this response to perform a discourse worthy of the subject). This glaring strategic error further suggests that Mr. Shanbour’s motives are less than an honest, objective pursuit of the truth and more of a pre-conceived agenda.

Corollary 2: The doctrine of atonement was not supported by the biblical words of Jesus as reflected in the canonical Gospels.

Again, Mr. Shanbour came to his conclusion by way of exercising his selective memory. As was the case for the former corollary, he neglected (whether this neglect was intentional is up to the reader to decide) to review those passages that clearly contradict the corollary’s statement.

AFTERWORD

In Mr. Shanbour’s introduction, he implies that he is writing his treatise (on the one hand) from the perspective of those who “find it hard to reconcile an all-loving and merciful God with one that would pre-ordain such [a] barbaric plan and thus alienate them from the ‘Biblical Jesus.’” I presume that Shanbour falls into this category, which explains the degree to which his tome slants the evidence to fit his point of view. Allow me to provide some food for thought on what seems to be the real issue behind the cause.

Mr. Shanbour has extolled the virtues of Christ’s death as an example of service to mankind while at the same time loathing the idea of a substitutionary punishment for man’s sins, viewing this idea as irrational and repugnant. To be sure, human nature is replete with examples of sacrificial love in which one voluntarily dies so that the innocent may live: soldiers dying for their country; a parent dying to save their child. The word “irrational” is not such a bad way of describing such cases at all, if being rational means wanting to live. On the other hand, if such cases fill a person with “disgust,” then surely something is amiss with that person’s value system when it comes to making sacrifices.

However, we must up the ante in Mr. Shanbour’s case, who is really asking an age-old question posed by many who refuse to accept the biblical view: How can an innocent person be punished to pay a debt for the guilty? And to this question I again must respond with suspicious curiosity. If a person willingly volunteers to pay (or cancel) another person’s debts, then the volunteer would again be considered by most to be a hero. It is only when somebody involuntarily serves to pay the debt owed by another that words such as “despicable,” “deplorable,” and yes, even “barbaric” (depending upon the nature of the debt being paid) could be considered valid expressions. However, as the evidence clearly points out, such was not the case for Jesus. Therefore, as I said from the beginning, Mr. Shanbour’s emotive expletories provide no validation for his position whatsoever. When the curtain of false accusation is lifted, Shanbour is discovered to be acting out baseless remonstrations.

At this point, Mr. Shanbour can (and ultimately must) make one or both of two choices. He can either accept or reject the undeniable conclusion to which the body of biblical evidence leads. And/or he can either accept or reject the same body of evidence altogether. The biblical evidence, when taken at face value, clearly leads to the conclusion that God’s pre-ordained plan for salvation is rooted and fulfilled in the vicarious atonement provided by His Son Jesus Christ on the cross, and that Jesus Christ himself (without the help of Paul or any other New Testament epistle writer) clearly asserted that such was God’s pre-ordained plan from the beginning. If Shanbour or anybody else prefers to reject the evidence outright, such is their prerogative. However, do not attempt to insult the intelligence of us “atonists” by suggesting that the evidence simply isn’t there to begin with. It simply doesn’t wash.

Regarding Mr. Shanbour’s flagrant gleaning of ideologies from The UB, it should be clear by now that Shanbour is attempting to re-interpret the Bible to make its message more harmonious with said gleanings. Under what psychological or spiritual motive one would attempt such a feat, we can only guess. However, such activity, if proved successful and valid, would have rendered the alleged revelation as provided by its celestial authors an unnecessary exercise. What need would we have of the alleged higher minds to set the record straight once and for all (in the year of our Lord 1955, no less), if we have the talents of Mr. Shanbour and the like on hand who can figure it out all by themselves? Moreover, why did these alleged celestials go to such great lengths to convince the mortals of Urantia that atonement is the bane of theology, if such doctrine was not plainly spelled out within the pages of what millions consider to be sacred Scripture in the first place?

Perhaps it would be more prudent simply to accept that The UB and the Holy Bible are incompatible with one another. That way, a person would come to the realization that he or she has a clear-cut and unambiguous decision to make as to which version of the truth he or she wants to devote his or her allegiance to.

In light of all that has been said, I hope Mr. Shanbour will seek forgiveness for calling God a conspirator to premeditated murder.