I said a few days ago that I was going to say something about why I accept N.T. Wright’s assertion that he holds to penal substitution. This will be brief, and may not be adequate for those with questions, but here it is. It is a methodological issue.
I am uncomfortable with assertions of what someone affirms or denials based upon what you see them emphasizing or deemphasizing, or, to use Carson’s vocabulary, foregrounding or backgrounding. In my mind there is a great gulf fixed between denying something and deemphasizing something. Now, sometimes, I grant, sneaky liberals get a run up to their denial of orthodoxy by means of preliminary deemphasis. But this trick works so well because there may be all sorts of reasonable grounds for deemphasizing something.
Now when someone deemphasizes a doctrine, and their reasons for doing so include statements that by good and necessary consequence have the effect of denying the doctrine, I have no problem saying that they deny the doctrine. I would put Chalke in this category. But if there is someone else who is deemphasizing the doctrine in question (for various other reasons), he might not be the most reliable guide to Chalke, but I would still take any assertions of belief in the doctrine itself at face value. I would (obviously) put Wright in this category.
Let me illustrate this. Liberals have a deep antipathy to the doctrine of God’s wrath and judgment, and consequently one of the first doctrines to be challenged by them is the doctrine of Hell. They want to deny it, and their work-up to the denial will include all kinds of squishy, sob-sister problems with it. This attitude is exhibited by Chalke throughout his book. But someone else (like me, say) might find himself deemphasizing the doctrine of Hell — not because I don’t believe in it, but because I don’t believe the majority of the human race is going there. Christ came into the world to save it, not condemn it (John 3:17, and I am only one verse away from being a true evangelical!). I believe that Hell is a terrifying, everlasting reality, and I believe that the vast majority of the human race (when all is said and done) will not experience it. This is a deemphasis that has nothing to do any desire to deny it.
So it could be accurately said that I “foreground” my optimistic eschatology, but it could not be accurately said that I deny any orthodox doctrine of the final judgment. Our instruments are not sufficiently calibrated to make a big deal out of emphasis/deemphasis. If we see something going in a troublesome direction, we can and should take note of it. When it clearly goes around the bend, we should deal with it. And this means that we can say (plainly) that Chalke is not where he ought to be on the doctrine of penal substitution. Wright is not where he ought to be in his doctrine of Chalke — but I don’t have grounds yet for saying that he is not where he ought to be on the doctrine of penal satisfaction (and there are a good many things from his pen that indicate that he does affirm it).
Having said all this, I can also say that the political situation in the U.K. (ecclesiastically speaking) is weird enough that we should watch the situation closel to see how it unfolds.