In this final talk, I summarise five profound ways that the Exodus narrative reframes and stretches the traditional gospel of Penal Substitution. My aim was to leave us with a metaphor that can rival the evocative power of the Penal model not just critique it systematically. In my experience, the Exodus story does this and that is what i want to share in this talk.
One thing that the Exodus story does is to stretch out the redemption story across a complex landscape of the battle with Pharoah and Egypt. So it leaves us with an extended metaphor or analogy, not just a single idea. But that is okay and I think it works in our favour, since one of the insights about redemption that we have developed is that ‘salvation’ is a vast and multi-faceted act of God in his relation with creation.
I organise the analogies using the five dramatic terms of Kenneth Burke, and I think it works well. I created a table to capture the comparisons and I organised the talk using that table. I will post it on the Gospel Conversations website.
One of the texts that I allude to is the important book by Richard Gaffin called ‘Redemption and Resurrection’. Look at it as he critiqued traditional redemption models as having limited space for Resurrection.
I hope this talk and the whole series have blessed you and keep provoking thought as it has for me.
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