Chapter 4: The Perfect Penitent

 I. The Purpose of the Incarnation
    A. Teaching
    B. Death and Resurrection
II. The Atonement
    A. The essential belief: Christ's death makes it possible to be right with God.
    B. Theories of the Atonement
        1. The fact more important than the theory
        2. The theory of substitutionary punishment
        3. The theory of paying our debt
III. Repentance
    A. Man is a rebel who must lay down arms.
    B. Humiliation and a kind of death
    C. Only God can help with repentance.
    D. Repentance requires the Incarnation.
    E. An absurd objection
IV. If theories of Atonement are not helpful, abandon them.

Discussion Questions: (pp. 53-59)
    1. What is the essential belief about the Atonement? (pp. 54-55) See John 1:29 and Matthew 20:28.
    2. What is the debt? (pp. 56,58) See Romans 6:20-23 and Colossians 2:13-15.
    3. Why is repentance like a kind of death? Why is it both essential and impossible without God's help? (pp. 57-58) See Titus 2:11-14 and Hebrews 2:14-18.

Note for pp. 54-55: Sir James Jeans (1877-1946) and Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882-1944) were well-regarded British physicists and mathematicians who wrote (the former particularly) on physics and cosmology for the general public.