Over at The Crux blog of Midwest Christian Outreach Ron Henzel, Christian apologist and Senior Researcher at MCO, continues his look at the cardinal Christian doctrine of the vicarious penal substitutionary atonement of Christ on the Cross.

Henzel opened the series with Behold The Lamb and has continued with The Lamb That Was Slain and Losing Sight Of The Lamb. As he begins this very well-researched article Henzel reminds us why it is that something so clear as the vicarious atonement would eventually become lost in the shadows:

there is a darkness that no one alive today remembers. There was a time in European history when the light of ancient learning and culture from the glory days of Greece and Rome seemed all but extinguished. It seemed to be, as William Manchester (1922-2004) put it in the title of his bestselling book, A World Lit Only By Fire.

At least, that’s the way it has seemed to many who have looked back on it. Depending on which historian you read, however, actually identifying that period can be like trying to nail Jello to a wall. For a while virtually the entire medieval period—the Middle Ages, which may be roughly defined as the years ad 500 to 1500—was referred to as “the Dark Ages.”…

The beginning of the Middle Ages was not only a bad time for Roman culture, it was a bad time for the church… The atonement is the subject I have actually been dealing with up to this point, as you can see from my previous articles, and we have followed the history of this doctrine up to the beginning of the Middle Ages. But once we come to that point, it is as though we come to the edge of a cliff… (Online source)

You can read Henzel’s article in its entirely by clicking here.

See also:

D.A. CARSON: PENAL SUBSTITUTION AND “MODELS” OF THE ATONEMENT

EDWARD J. YOUNG: VICARIOUS PENAL SUBSTITUTION OF CHRIST IN ISAIAH 53:5

MAN-CENTERED GOSPEL VS. GOD-CENTERED GOSPEL