Sunday of the Passion

From "The Atonement" by Arthur Lyttleton, in Lux Mundi:

Even we," says St. Paul, "which have the first fruits of the Spirit", even we are waiting for the further process, for "the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." And the process consists in so following "the Captain of our salvation" that, like Him, we accept every one of those sufferings which are the consequences of sin, but accept them not as punishment imposed from without upon unwilling offenders, but as the material of our freewill sacrifice. From no one pang or trial of our nature has He delivered us, indeed, He has rather laid them upon us more unsparingly, more inevitably. But the sufferings from which He would not deliver us He has transformed for us. They are no longer penal, but remedial and penitcntial. Pain has become the chastisement of a Father who loves us, and death the passage into His very presence.

(pp. 254-255).

In the current Anglican Theological Review, there is a series of essays on the atonement, focusing on the penal substitutionary and honor of God theories, with which I have been grappling since almost the inception of this blog. The last step of my 2013 Lenten practice: This week I will read these essays, and Lyttleton's essay, as charitably and as receptively as I can.

Good Friday is coming; some serious thought and prayer on its meaning is warranted, and not just from those with whom I know I agree in advance.