"Is atonement even possible?" Man! What an amazing scene! I can't believe this was on a TV show. It really demonstrates the emptiness of the rhetoric of liberal theology when you need to know if you can ever find forgiveness for your sins. What can a chaplin, who believes in a Christ who was never resurrected, really say about forgiveness and atonement?
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Update: You can watch the rest of the episode here. It turns out that the guy is a prison doctor who gave prisoners lethal injections and is now feeling guilty about it. He is looking for atonement so he goes to the families of those he has put to death and makes atonement to them. He saved the life of son of one of the prisoners but the mom refuses to forgive him. Too bad both of them didn't understand that she can't grant forgiveness and he can't atone for his sins. There is only One who can make atonement:
1 John 2:1 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.It's also too bad that the hospital employs a chaplain who doesn't believe that certainty exists. How can she counsel those who need help? Who are looking for salvation before they face the judgment seat of God? An ER is not the place where you put someone who can't offer hope to those who are facing death.
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Here's something nice on atonement, that I've carried around with me for some time:
In 1870 the First Vatican Council had been ready to define satisfaction as a dogma of the Church when political events in Italy caused the council to be suspended indefinitely. In thesis sixteen [Bernard] Lonergan clarifies the meaning of this traditional doctrine. Negatively it does not mean that Jesus' death saves us as payment of the penalty for sin in our place. Neither Anselm nor Thomas, nor the Catholic tradition in general understands satisfaction in terms of penal substitution. Nor does the doctrine of satisfaction mean that Jesus' death was a sacrifice that appeased God's wrath. God does not take pleasure in innocent suffering. Rather, a correct understanding of the theory of satisfaction finds its key in an analogy with the sacrament of reconciliation. Through this analogy Jesus' death comes into focus as an expression of his revulsion at sin and love for God - not as an instance of divine child abuse! Loewe's intro Christology, 166.
Any chaplain worth her weight in humility would have gotten the patient someone who could help him immediately, without hesitation. It's a baloney scene.
all you're doing is looking up words like it's a dictionary and getting a definition
Yes, defining your terms is a necessary pre-condition in any debate.
I'm trying to explain concepts.
You're pretty terrible at it.
I watched the larger clip, spotted the rosary, a gratuitous prop for network TV, an amulet. It's pretty ineffective in his hands. Maybe his character is really too upset to use it properly.
The bait-n-switch of the scene is that he presents as a "good Samaritan." A doctor, no less. Who worked in prisons, no less. Oh, but he executed people, something a doctor isn't supposed to do. Like abortion doctors and euthanasia doctors.
But he's forgotten the cardinal rule about executioners: they are immune to any culpability. That's the civil heresy in this clip, to suggest he bears guilt for his job. ('Though we expect more from doctors, morally, don't we?)
Regardless, this man still needs to be lead in a prayer of confession and be assured of God's forgiveness. 1 John 1:9. This female chaplain is trying to justify the man in himself, soothe his conscience in human terms, without bringing in the supernatural. For his sake, the man knows enough to know that he needs more than that. He knows he needs God's forgiveness ... that's a very good start, isn't it, michele?
It is Moonshadow, I was quite impressed with that. Not too many people realize that they do.
Him God had proposed as a propitiator, through faith in His blood (Romans 3:25), for our sins, and not for our sins only, but also for those of the whole world
It's interesting, but not surprising, that the Rheims renders ἱλαστήριον as "propitiator". "Expiation" was preferred to "propitiation" in the NAB, as this footnote explains.
I know James White has a problem with the NAB's translation of Rom. 3:25... anyone else?
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