This is a talk that I have wanted to bring to Gospel Conversations for ages. Ben Myers is the Director of the Graduate Research School at Alpha Crucis - the large Pentecostal college/university in Sydney. He has a deep background in literature (his PhD was on Milton) and also a rich grasp of the Patristic era. About ten years ago he gave a wonderful talk at a major evangelical conference in Los Angeles in which he introduced the Patristic model of the atonement. It shook everyone up at that conference in a good way - they were tasting a whole new way of thinking about the Cross and the atonement model of the early church fathers. And - surprise, surprise - it was NOT a model of penal substitution. It was not so much that they disagreed with that model, but rather that it did not cross their minds. They were, theologically, altogether elsewhere.

This is that talk - but split into two parts (this is part one) and delivered as a dialogue between Ben and me (a format which Ben prefers). It is a fitting climax to our series on ‘Cross and Creation’. Ben has the unusual gift of erudition and conciseness so I think many of you will find this most enlightening.

As a brief postscript, I am starting a second doctorate and Ben will be my supervisor/fellow traveller. In essence I am doing it at my wife’s urging (‘get your ideas down in a disciplined way’) and to take the vision of human creativity that I developed in my first doctorate (on ‘the Two Roads to Truth’) in a business context, and roll them into their theological implications. So Ben and I have a background of some indepth conversations. I will keep you posted on my progress. The broad topic will hover around ‘In an era of Artificial Intelligence, what is unique about humanity and how we think? Towards a theology of ‘rationality’.

In this dialogue, I clumsily mention a verse in Job about how God longs to keep us, his beloved, from death. I could not recall the reference during the discussion. It was Job 14:14 - 15 “If a man dies, shall he live again? All the days of my service I would wait, till my renewal should come. You would call, and I would answer you; you would long for the work of your hands.”

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