If God could not experience and feel genuine suffering from evils occurring in His creation, then how would it be possible for us to become like Him, knowing and emulating His just behavior in response to evils?

Is it just possible that our experience of suffering evils is somehow intended to help us understand how God suffers from evils? Can He experience suffering? Did He experience suffering from evils only in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ? Isn’t it a part of becoming like God in character that we learn to experience and feel about evils the same way God experiences and feels about them? Doesn’t this require God to experience or know evils somehow the way we human beings do? And doesn’t the Lord Jesus simply reflect and reveal his Father’s own feelings and attitudes toward evils? How could we mature into the image and likeness of God Himself if He can’t feel evils and then respond in a normative manner that we could emulate? [3/8/12]

So-called “penal substitution: is impossible no matter how we construe the meaning of “penal” or of “substitution.” If by “penal” we refer to an attitude of God, then it is impossible because no such attitude could be expressed by a just God against a sinless man, nor is any postulated in Scripture by a fair reading. Nor could such a penal expression toward a sinless person serve as a “substitute” for others so as to prevent penalties from falling either on recalcitrant evildoers to avert their ultimate destruction or on erring believers to correct their misbehavior before it becomes habitual and destroys their faith.

On the other hand, “penal” could hardly refer to the attitude of those who inflicted wounds and abuse on the Lord, because that suffering assuredly does not substitute for ours. In fact, he informs us that no servant is greater than his lord, so we should expect similar ill-treatment from the world. [3/8/12]

Jesus’ resurrection from the dead justified him from any sin that had been ascribed to him by his wicked accusers and false witnesses (Rom. 6:7, cf. 2 Cor. 5:16, 1 Tim. 3:16, Rom. 4:23-5:2, 18, 21; 8:1-4, 10-11.) [3/10/12]

The power of Christ’s resurrection rectifies sins by reversing their evil effects, even as it reversed, yes, even more than reversed, Christ’s death—the effect of his cross. This is how Christ’s work deals with and in fact expunges sin, i.e., via the vivifying, death-and-evil-reversing power of the Holy Spirit, poured out of heaven superabundantly on believing sinners as a fruit of Christ’s unjust abuse-taking getting reversed by God’s premial justice to him, then overflowing graciously to us from there! Thanks be to God for His unspeakable Gift! [3/28/12]

Penal Substitution defenders must minimize and downgrade the fierceness of Christ’s contest against Satan at the cross. That is the only way they can “glorify” their pet hobby horse—Christ’s “suffering God’s wrath”! This means that the REAL BATTLE AGAINST SATAN GETS POOH-POOHED, DIS-HONORED, AND MARGINALIZED TO MAKE ROOM FOR A MYTH OF DEFAMING MAGNITUDE! From such slander how does God save His honor? With penal substitutionary theologians for friends, why would God need enemies! For if the Son suffered the Father’s wrath, then the Father suffers the penal substitutionary advocate’s slander, misrepresentations, in a word, DISHONOR. And this, in turn, means that God suffers the repulsion, repudiation, rejection, withdrawal, and recoiling of sinners in need of His redemptive love and authentic, premial justice! God gets wretchedly disgraced! Is that not, then, a “doctrine of demons” that dares to defame God by turning the cross into a demonstration of divine wrath and away from a divining of demonic rage! [3/21/12]

How ironic it is that the ‘evangelical’ Protestant theory of Christ’s “penal substitution should be met by the Islamic conjecture about Jesus’ “penal substitution by a luckless lookalike! The simplest way to subvert such a “poetic” twist of penal justice is to reassert premial justice at Christ’s resurrection, which entails the gracious inclusion of all who believe it! [3/31/12]

Not a theologia crucis but a theologia resurrectionis is what we need, indeed, that is exactly what Paul’s Epistle to the Romans actually teaches, or rather harps on over and over again! [3/31/12]

Satan was clueless that by slaying God’s Son he would automatically invoke God’s restorative justice to reverse that outrage with incomparable cosmic restitution, including his own ultimate deposing.

Satan had no clue that his divine Victim was going to RANSOM the human race from his diabolical clutches by escaping from death and Hades. He had absolutely no clue that by shedding Christ’s innocent blood, he would be evoking God’s justice to rescue him even from the extremity of death. Satan was totally clueless that his murder of the perfectly sinless “Lamb of God” would actually demand that God exert His faithfully covenanted promises declared in Israel’s holy Scriptures and call him back to life to inherit them!

Several patristic Christian authors were therefore quite mistaken to assert that there was some sort of agreement between God and Satan (as there had been some eighteen centuries earlier with Job—see note following Job 42:17, LXX). There was no deal with the Devil. He was caught totally by surprise, fair and square. [2/28/12; 11/12/25]

Old Testament justice required RESTITUTION by the offender to the victim. This was the “penalty” it demanded from the offender, and it is obviously restorative for the victim. Moreover, the restitution expected was not merely an equivalent restoration but entailed the addition of an extra or surplus as a ‘fee’ (‘penalty’ in the narrow sense). This superfluity was not intended as a ‘punitive’ measure for the offender, although it was certainly meant to have a sting! Yet it did actually have a ‘restorative’ effect for them, as well, for clearing their conscience via ‘making satisfaction’ (i.e., legal payment) for their theft, causing loss, injury, etc., to avert ongoing anger, reprisals, vendettas, blood feuds, clan wars, and similar cycles of revenge.

That entire system of criminal justice, therefore, fostered reconciliation and peacemaking. It can only with due qualification be termed “retributive” justice, even though it did stipulate paying back the victim, plus a bonus. This was not characterized in a vengeful or vindictive way, but simply required as an ‘evening up’ of the inequity introduced by the breach of the peace so as to restore the peace or shalom and defuse simmering wrath and brewing retribution. Hence, Darrin Snyder Belousek (Atonement, Justice, and Peace: The Message of the Cross and the Mission of the Church, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012) renders his analysis of divine justice liable to confusion. He would have to label or categorize premial (i.e., rewarding or restorative) justice as “retributive.” This designation poses an inner contradiction. He then proposes to dispose of all “retributive” justice, so interpreted, in favor of so-called “covenant(al) justice.” which is characterized by him as not “distributive” (i.e., “retributive,” so not presumably plagued by the reward/punishment dialectic). But since when was the ancient covenantal code of Moses not stamped with a binary distributive function? Although not after the fashion of much later Roman law, the Mosaic law had to deal with the same perennial realities of inter-human relations (and human-environment relations as well). These aims are not optional, dispensable, or replaceable. All societal law is intended to restore peace agreeably among contending or aggrieved parties…somehow.

Of course, in capital crimes it is not possible to make restitution properly by restoring what has been taken (think of murder, amputation, etc., but also lesser cases where the loss is irreparable or the injury irremediable). This presents difficulties that various civilizations and cultures have handled very differently. Yet they all alike are faced with the identical reality of death, which cannot be surmounted satisfactorily by nominal restoration in this age.

Accordingly, this is precisely the territory of human experience where a truly restorative solution was bound to gain universal attention and acclaim, if not acceptance. The contents of God’s proclamation about His Son is ideally suited to appeal to the ultimate need for a more powerful and more completely restorative and satisfying justice among human beings. Not only does God’s raising the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead provide “the final solution” to the problem of death, but its very circumstances and long prophetic anticipation frames it in such a manner that it necessarily alters the way all justice is viewed and administered…or at least should be. But personal habits are hard to change, and culture-wide habits harder still. Thus Western law has never adequately incorporated the premial premise and precepts of the Gospel into its criminal justice proceedings or institutions with anything like full consciousness, much less, consistency and rigor. However, the Restorative Justice (RJ) movement, launched in 1989 by Howard Zehr’s landmark book, Changing Lenses: Restorative Justice for Our Times, Third ed. (Harrisonburg, VA; Kitchener, Ontario: Herald Press, 2015), has launched a splendid revolution with that noble goal.

The elephant in the room is Roman law with its categories and procedures. Islamic law also entered Western Europe, notably during the Moorish era in Spain. These have came to domineer native legal traditions, but also to weigh in against uniquely Gospel-enlightened influences. [2/28/12; 11/12/25]

Roman distributive justice was intended to give each person his/her “due.” Isn’t this also what ancient Israelite justice was mandated with? Although not framed in these terms, God’s covenant was about returning to the injured what they were owed by their perpetrator, where possible. So “getting one’s deserts” was a central issue, although not construed in narrowly punitive terms and sanctions, and not bearing necessarily retributive overtones. Its purpose and practical function was to repair a breach of justice and so make peace by reconciling the conflicted parties.

So, when we come to the New Testament, we are not faced with an overturning of such traditional institutions of justice, for there was nothing inherently objectionable about them, per se. Instead, we behold in the Gospel the INTERVENTION of a JUSTICE powerful enough to repair and restore even from the injury of death itself. It could, moreover, give God’s sinless Son his due—his just deserts even after the ravages of torture and death had seemingly already decisively and irreversibly ‘conquered’! [2/28/12]

“ALL MY GOODNESS” Exodus 33:19

Jehovah’s words to Moses on Mt. Sinai amounted to an elaboration or elucidation of God’s righteousness/justice. This means that all of the characteristics mentioned there, including their nuancing and mutual conditioning, are elements of His Covenant justice toward His chosen people. The founding words at Sinai reveal the bedrock of all God’s royal actions toward Israel. God’s words are “cupelled seven times,” so are purified, worthy of our closest scrutiny. Compare especially Exodus 34:5-10; Numbers 14:17-24; Deuteronomy 7:9-11; Psalm 99:8.

Notice that there is a built-in ‘if-then’ subtext in these passages, showing that God’s justice is contingent on the responses of those creatures made in His own image and after His likeness. Therefore, when Israel’s God has a dispute (רִ֗יב) with them, He argues, cajoles, pleads, accuses, beseeches, hints, implores, queries, weeps, promises, warns, reminds, threatens, etc. Here is no rigid, harsh, unbending, vindictive, irritable, short-fused, unreasonable deity of popular misrepresentation. He bends over backwards to be reasonable. “Come, let us reason together, says the Lord.” (Isaiah 1:18)

Moreover, a God this gracious, loving, merciful, tolerant, longsuffering, and full of lovingkindness and benignity has the right to make ‘reasonable’ demands of his Covenant partners, His continual supply of “good things” to His children qualifies Him to warn them sternly against indulging in evil things that would harm others and themselves. [3/1/12; 11/12/25]