Once you FINALLY SEE the original outlines of THE PREMIAL GOSPEL throughout the New Testament, you CAN NEVER UNSEE IT. Oh to be caught in such a Truth!

Creeds and confessions of faith have quite routinely, if unintentionally (“for the best of reasons”), mutilated the body of doctrine in Scripture and thus, reflexively, likewise mutilated the body of Christ in the world, leaving the church dismembered, fractured, and bleeding from multiple gushing wounds. [4/22/11; 4/29/24]

We are commanded by the Lord Jesus not to avenge ourselves. This is not because avenging is inherently wrong, but only because sinners are constitutionally unqualified to avenge their own cause with equanimity, so should recuse themselves from such a destabilizing role. Only God is, of course, ultimately qualified to avenge us with perfect justice and total impartiality, giving us our rightful due as well as giving our offenders their just due. Yet He has also appointed human judges to perform analogous functions on behalf of their fellow citizens to learn the ropes of just rule. God alone will, in the final judgment, right all wrongs. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus from the dead is the ultimate historic proof of that. Therefore, God teaches us to “wait upon the Lord” for ultimately fair judgment rather than taking such matters into our own unequal hands.

Ergo: avenging as such is not wrong but is liable to overreactive misuse by the sinful (that’s us!), especially when exercised on our own behalf. Nevertheless, it is not, per se, a prerogative reserved to God alone. [4/26/11; 4/29/24]

By Jesus getting raised from the dead, he was getting paid back by God for his lifetime of faithful obedience and willingness even to be unjustly executed at the hands of wrongdoers. However, at Pentecost he was paying it forward to those who believed what he claimed and proved about himself, passing along for free the gracious benefits of his hard-won salvation. [4/26/11; 4/29/24]

Until the resurrection of Christ actually occurred, it would have been impossible to surmise that the ancient ritual use of sacrificial animal blood signified the vivifying, healing, restorative, cleansing power of Christ’s resurrection life, superabundantly repaid him by divine justice, and hence available at large for every salvific function. Only the well-attested historic fact of Christ’s resurrection finally provided the missing link that would close the hermeneutical circuit of Biblical Explanation about salvation.

Sadly, the perennial irresolution concerning the Biblical contours of the Atonement can be traced to recurrent neglect of this most prominent of all features of apostolic proclamation. An exclusively penal concept of God’s justice evolved during the Middle Ages to dislodge the premial justice of raising Jesus from the dead from the spotlight into virtually obscurity. The conscience-piercing laser of the original Gospel was thereby tragically dimmed, relegating the church to wandering in a perpetual fog. [4/28/11; 4/29-30/24]

The penal substitution opinion regarding the Atonement actually defiles the motives and intentions of God in relation to salvation. This defilement seriously compromises the integrity of the apostolic gospel and hence the effectiveness of proclamation to draw sinners back to the Light of Life. And even when they do return to Him despite this serious hindrance—the apostolic witness in writing, after all, still manages to surmount the limitations of many a grievous human failure to represent it correctly and fully—the inferior version can plant seeds of suspicion that sully the purity and sweetness of the new relation with God the Father by the steady flow of His wholesome Spirit. Such compromise of truth is a serious snare to the advancement and proliferation of fruitful, integral, winsome Christian faith. May God grant fuller comprehension of the age-old Proclamation once for all delivered authoritatively to the likes of us fallible saints! [4/28/11; 4/29-30/24]

Once the nature of the Atonement is properly comprehended, the nature of Justification is easily resolved into its native contours and follows in due course. Since the Atonement did not entail penal justice or divine wrath of any sort, then the Cross was not a place of divine condemnation in any respect either. This fact necessarily and salutarily deflects the issue of justification away from the Cross and onto the Resurrection. This decisive reassignment, in turn, radically alters the nature of justification forever, as a “doctrine,” and not a moment too soon, historically speaking! [4/28-30/11]

I wager that once a critical mass of saints finally see this riveting truth for the first time, they will never be able to unsee it. Accordingly, they will become uniquely qualified “as one[s] untimely born” (1 Cor. 15:8, KJV), like the apostle Paul, to blaze forth this ineffaceable bedrock of his own Explanation forcefully into the nearly ubiquitous doctrinal twilight that has descended upon Protestant soteriology to herald a bright new day of intelligent zeal for the furtherance of God’s Kingdom throughout the nations of earth. [4/29-30/24]

The traditional dominant orthodox Protestant “doctrines” of the Atonement and Justification are both counterfeits, with just enough verisimilitude on their face to let them squeak by on a Hail Mary. They both, especially in combination, seriously misrepresent the Gospel to a world more than ever in need of an ostensibly fair and believable saving message with tangible power and palpable authority. The unveiling and unleashing of the crystal clear and restored Original is the crying need of the hour. [4/28/11; 4/30/24]

The OATH and PROMISE of the Old Covenant bound God to its fulfillment in spite of every conceivable contingency relative to His faithful and just covenant partner, the Lord Jesus Christ, not even death itself excepted.

If Jesus’ getting “given up” to his enemies was due to the “wrath of God” (à la the Protestant Reformers) then who’s to say our own dreaded occasions of getting delivered into the hands of some enemy or other is not likewise due to the wrath of God for some sinful provocation, known or unknown? This could well catapult us into spiritual limbo, not to add existential terror! How much needless drama and trauma result from spiritual insecurity deriving from this source in unsound doctrine concerning God’s inner character and disposition toward mortally sinful human beings? [4/18/11; 4/23/24]

In view of the deeply embedded prevalence of the penal satisfaction theory of Christ’s Atonement, then for the diametric opposite stance of premial restitution to have plausibility in the current climate of rampant institutional abusiveness by political partisan self-interest, military establishment, criminal justice system, policing, public and private prison systems, stock market, financial services, payday loan industry, pharmaceutical industry, healthcare industry, fossil fuel industry, petro-chemical industry, agribusiness, trucking industry—I’ve barely gotten started!—virtually every passage of Scripture traditionally commandeered and impressed into forced service to the dominant ideology will have to become repurposed to serve a more evidently sound and natural interpretation in support of the premial perspective. What are the prospects if such a revolution should happen to succeed? This perspective should lend a fresh and convincing light to the solution of many perennial difficulties of Bible interpretation and especially incline toward the harmonious reintegration of seemingly intractable, or at least traditionally irreconcilable, positions on textual interpretations resulting from their captivation to systems of doctrine by way of prooftexting. Above all, the new expositions should be more in accord with the Holy Spirit of the Gospel as taught both by Jesus and his apostles (including the most misinterpreted of all: Paul). The end result of such a radical-biblical adjustment in Christian consciousness for the more rapid progress of fundamental societal reforms would be seismic. Dare we settle for less in the shadow of looming political crises and simmering violence? [4/18/11; 4/23-24/24]

In his epistle to the Romans, Paul is intent on emphasizing the “justice of God” that accounts for Christ’s resurrection. The oath and promise of the Old Covenant bound God to its fulfillment in spite of every conceivable contingency relative to His faithful and just covenant partner, the Lord Jesus Christ, not even death excepted. Hereby, his resurrection was secured against all odds whatsoever. [4/19/11]

To be “humbled under the mighty hand of God” is a far cry from experiencing the “wrath of His countenance,” etc. The first is aimed at discipline in justness toward the goal of maturation in love. The second is for punitive reasons of extreme correction or, failing that, of grim destruction. The first is intended for the amenable, the second for the stubborn. The first is fully in accord with God’s favor and its goal is to extend favor yet further. The second is a reflex of God’s righteous indignation at the incorrigible when milder measures prove ineffectual. [4/21/11]

TRADITIONAL PROTESTANT EXPRESSIONS NOT NECESSARY OR APPLICABLE TO THE NEW TESTAMENT’S PREMIAL EXPLANATION CONCERNING ATONEMENT THROUGH CHRIST JESUS:

Adam’s sin accounted to his descendants by God

Christ accounted with human sin(s) on the cross by God

Christ’s righteousness accounted to believers by God

Christ assuming the guilt of sin(s) on the cross

Christ condemned by God on the cross

Christ cursed by God on the cross

Christ drinking the cup of God’s wrath on the cross

Christ experiencing the displeasure of God on the cross

Christ experiencing the justice/vengeance of God on the cross

Christ identifying with sin(s) on the cross

Christ made sin on the cross

Christ paying for sin(s) on the cross

Christ paying the debt of sin(s) on the cross

Christ paying the penalty for sin(s) on the cross

Christ propitiating God on the cross

Christ punished by God on the cross

Christ reconciling God to man on the cross

Christ satisfying God’s justice on the cross

Christ satisfying God’s honor on the cross

Christ suffering as a substitute on the cross

Christ suffering in our place/stead on the cross

Christ suffering the curse for sin(s) on the cross

Christ suffering the pains of hell on the cross

Christ suffering the pangs of hell after the crucifixion

Christ suffering the punishment for sin(s) on the cross

Christ suffering the wrath of God on the cross

Christ suffering what sinners deserved on the cross

[4/21/11; 4/23-24/24]

Ancient sacrificial blood testified to God’s justification, by resurrection to immortality, of Christ’s sinlessly just soul. THUS DID GOD AVENGE HIS MURDER IN PEACE.

Select points summarized from The Blood of Jesus (translated from Swedish, 1888) by Paul Peter Waldenström:

Cleansing from sin effected by the blood of Jesus, not by his death (p. 6)

Not as “a perfect value before God as a payment for man’s indebtedness through sin” (p. 7)

Not by “faith in” the blood, but the blood itself cleanses (p. 7)

Not “the value of the blood in the sight of God” cleanses from sin, but the blood itself (p. 7)

Not a word about “the blood of Christ being a payment to God for our sins” / nor the Old Testament sacrifices as such a payment (p. 7) [4/13/11]

CHRIST’S RESURRECTION:

Pre-empted immediate avenging of Jesus’ unlawful execution upon his killers

Made peace without violence on the part of God and Jesus

Justified God and Christ before the world

Proved the graciousness of God in spite of human viciousness

Proved that God had all along been conciliatory toward mankind

Proved that God rescues the righteous against all odds

Proved that Christ’s crucifixion was unjust in the extreme

Proved that Christ never suffered God’s wrath at all

Proved that God was more intent on repaying His Son with life superabundant than on repaying his slayers with death…pending their hopeful turnabout

Proved that God Himself was bearing the capital sin of His Son’s crucifixion instead of avenging and retaliating, hence making God a full Partner in human salvation

Constituted God’s ransoming of Jesus from death and the Unseen (hades), i.e., from the culmination of human sin against Him

Proved that the wrath so evident at the Cross must have been diabolical rather than divine

Proved that God did not forsake His Son [in the Unseen (hades)] after all

Proved that the cross was not an exhibit of how much God hated sin but of how much humans hated righteousness

Constituted God’s rejoinder to that hatred. They penalized Christ with death, which they alone deserved; God rewarded him, in starkest contrast, with what he truly deserved—immortality, graciously more than compensating him for his abuse-taking! [4/14/11]

The fact (!) that the actual rationale for blood sacrifices is never given in the Old Testament should have given a good many more Protestant theologians pause before improvising and imposing one of their own devising (concerning an alleged penal payment to God for sin). By the time of the New Testament, it finally dawned that this puzzling silence had been strategic, in order to protect the antitype from sabotage by Satan—clever Devil that he is—the very enemy to be irreversibly overturned by the coming sacrifice! That the extremely surprising significance of the sacrifices for sin should happen to have resurrectionary content was at least hinted at by the diverse uses of sacrificial blood in the Old Testament scriptures, for it had unusual powers inexplicable on any other basis. The power to release from, cleanse from, wash away, and atone for, sins should have been strong clues, but its power to heal and cure leprosy was yet more suggestive. These capabilities all point to the power of the holy/wholesome, hence life-making, Spirit of Christ unveiled at his resurrection from the dead (in perfect continuity with his manifest powers to heal sickness, release sins and even revive the dead during his ministry following his baptism by John with the Holy Spirit at the Jordan River), and further distributed at Pentecost to all his loyal brethren. Accordingly, sacrificial blood testifies to God’s justification (through resurrection) of Christ’s innocent—in fact utterly sinless—blood, representing Christ’s just and righteous soul. Thus did God AVENGE HIS MURDER IN PEACE for all who believe it, (but in eventual, mercifully delayed wrathful destruction for the unalterably stubborn). [4/14/11; 4/23/24]

Contemplate how the prodigal love of the Father managed to trick the Devil by delivering a PREMIAL JUSTICE that no one seemed to realize even existed.

“The fatted calf” (see also Luke 15:23, 27, 30), richly interlarded, was a prophetic intimation of the coming Son of God, replete, saturated, with Holy Spirit (“oil”), whose sacrifice would release a further veritable downpour of Holy Spirit as divine reparation to the Lamb of God, then relayed in turn to believers in Christ. See David Smith, The Atonement in the Light of History and the Modern Spirit (London; New York: Hodder and Stoughton, [1919?].) p. 152. [4/7/11; 4/22/24]

Is “the Cross” (some readers have queried) visible in Jesus’ parable of the so-called prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32)? The answer, after some thought, may fairly be affirmative. First of all, the father sacrificed that part of his estate wihich was demanded by his younger son for his (early) inheritance. But further, the father suffered the anxiety and grief of losing the fellowship and love of this wayward son, not knowing whether he was alive or dead. This loss was certainly a more heart-wrenching cross to bear than the lost portion of his estate. We know this from his response to the son after his humiliating return, and to his elder son whose part of the estate remained intact. Here, interestingly and significantly, it’s the father who sacrifices out of love—a “prodigal love“! For indeed, the Father and the Son are one in character, such that Jesus perfectly depicted God’s love at the cross. [4/7/11; 4/23/24]

Satan’s temptations at the outset of Jesus’ publicly anointed ministry were different from those at the culmination. The first were temptations to sin by seeking provision, protection, and kingship by means that violated God’s express directions. The final temptations included badmouthing his assailant and calling down angelic deliverance at the cost of destroying those he came to save. Failing at these points would have spelled doom for the world, whether sooner or later.

The first raft of temptations played off personal advantage, but without evident harm to other people. The final set of temptations were to do harm or violence to others in order to save his own respect, rights, or very skin. [4/7-8/11]

The most famous verse in the Bible, John 3:16, would only have won a well-deserved infamy if it had read, in the spirit of penal substitution, “For God so hated the sin of the world that He gave His only begotten Son….” For, truth be told, it was only Jesus’ love for the sinful world that got Him through the horrifying crime of the cross without immediate payback! For beyond all human expectation and precedent, instead of paying those felons with well-deserved DEATH, God paid His beloved Son with well-deserved LIFE from the fearful finality of death! Thus did They trick the Devil who had no comprehension of a justice of this magnitude and quality. Nor, it would appear, do our theologians—go ahead, pick any favorite. How was this grandest of all evangelical truths so throoughly lost and buried, and for so many centuries? Yet what will be the upshot of its full restoration? We can barely imagine. Will it be at least comparable to the excitement being stirred up by the mounting evidence for age-reversing factors discovered in mitochondrial, stem cell, and telomere research? In any case, duty seems to be calling. What an unalloyed joy to announce the rediscovery of this long-buried yet still shimmering Truth! So simple in design! So stunning in symmetry! So spectacularly mesmerizing! Or am I just naive? [4/8/11; 4/22/24]

It was through the representative priesthood of Israel that her accumulated treasury of sin was ritually focused once for all upon the final SIN[-offering], whose lifeblood was avenged by God Himself reversing the crime with a just repayment of superabundant life for him, and then by him was further distributed freely for the salvation of all who believe this Proclamation.

What does the Scripture mean that Christ “himself carries up [anaphero] our sins in his body on to the pole [xulon, timber]” (1 Peter 2:24)? That is, how did he “carry up“/”bear” more than the sins only of those who surrounded him him to abuse and crucify him? The answer must take account of the priesthood of Israel whose complicity in his slaying constituted a representative act. Thereby, the whole nation of Israel was implicated in the Levitical sin[-offering] of murder—public, official murder, nothing less. Accordingly, Peter poignantly includes himself in the “our sins,” concerning which he must also have reflected with fresh compunction upon his individual sin of personally denying Jesus three times during his trial before the Sanhedrin.

The author of the Hebrews treatise supplies the only other New Testament instance of the expression in 9:28: “Thus Christ also, being offered once for the bearing [anaphero] [of the] sins of many….” This passage, again, may have in view primarily, if not exclusively, the sins of Israel, God’s unfaithful covenant partner, and not the sins of the others who afflicted Christ in his final days (Herod, Pilate, and the Roman soldiers), much less the entire human race. Both Hebrews and 1 Peter may be focused primarily on concerns of largely Jewish-Christian congregations, and the above interpretation would make eminent sense within that milieu. In any case, Isaiah’s echo in these verses was surely not intended as fodder for Calvinistic ‘particular election’ speculation regarding the “many,” as distinct from “the whole world” (which 1 John 2:1-2 and many other passages are correctly concerned to highlight in connection with, e.g., atonement, conciliation, and ransom). [3/19-20/11; 4/19-21/24]

That said, the question will reflexively arise in the minds of Evangelicals, “But didn’t Christ bear the sins of the whole world?” Well, I would poiint out, neither of the New Testament texts that use the expression suggest that he was bearing the sins of the world there, nor do the words in Isaiah 53:11-12 (which Hebrews clearly echoes) suggest, much less demand, such a construction. The purview of Isaiah 52:13-53:12 is exclusively Israel. God chose Jacob/Israel and the nation of his descendants as a paradigm for all other nations whom God wished to instruct and save by the example of that covenantal relationship, which He would one day throw open to all comers when it was renewed to perfection by His Son Jesus.

The only reason why these passages in Isaiah, Hebrews, and 1 Peter have been stretched by force to include a larger pool of guilty humanity is that the penal hypothesis teaches that Christ’s work at the cross was a substitutionary suffering of God’s wrath as “payment” for the sins of others, so to be complete it must have to encompass not only those present and active in that execution, not only the ancient nation of Israel represented by the priesthood, corrupt though it was, but must also have included all the “elect” (Calvin), or even all humanity (Arminius, et al). However, on a premial view of the matter any wider inclusiveness in this specific context of sin-bearing is not only an exegetically unwarranted, but is systematically unnecessary. In point of fact, it is ruled out altogether, and emphatically. for within the premial explanation of salvation the cross was a towering crime that, in view of the worthiness of its flawlessly holy, just, obedient, indeed sinless, Victim, demanded extraordinary reparations. Therefore, the weight of universalizing its saving efficacy beyond any circumscribed limit of this specific historic event of sin-bearing rests on God the Judge, Who, in lieu of the unacceptable prospect of widespread penal devastation, opted for cosmically outsized restitution to the Lord Jesus Christ instead. Accordingly, God justly repaid the injured Party so overwhelmingly that he could graciously invite the whole blamed world into the Party, too! He didn’t miserly “pay” to forgive merely an arbitrarily “predestined” selection so as not to “waste his limited resources” and show Himself improvident and prodigal before the eyes of the watching world. Nay, much rather, He threw caution to the wind and threw fresh capital at the grand Salvation Enterprise like it was going out of style! Sad to say, however, God’s style of munificence did evidently go out of style rather too early in church history and got traded for a miserably perverted and impoverished substitute by way of punitive rhetorical sophistry, and has never recovered its native vigor and comprehensive compass of application to this day. Yet with all the best intentions, it would seem, despite the incongruous, even defamatory, irony. But the time is now long overdue to assess the colossal losses the world has suffered by this sabotage of God’s Proclamation with an insipid substitutionary ideology. An Enemy has done this, but payback time seems imminent. [4/21-22/24]

The Cross in conjunction with the Resurrection proved that God had never been non-conciliatory. Those events were the ultimate revelation of the way God had perpetually felt. at heart. That dimension contributes to their power to conciliate sinful humanity even down to our own age. [3/21/11; 4/19/24]

Penal Satisfaction champions are predisposed to declare that although human beings are expected to forgive others without seeking satisfaction or payment in return, God is represented differently since He declares “Mine is vengeance, I will repay, says the Lord.” Thus, He can be expected to demand repayment before He can forgive debts. Yet when it appears evident from the New Testament, to the contrary, that God must be an exception then, since His invitation through the apostles to “be conciliated [katallasso] to God!” (2 Corinthians 5:21) remains unalterably unilateral, implying no need for conciliation from His side, they hasten to reiterate that He (or His character, His honor, His holiness, or His justice), after all, still does demand to be appeased, pacified, satisfied, and conciliated before He can become conciliatory in return. They seem to want it both ways, regardless of Scriptures flying in the face of their prejudices. How about a show of candor here! A Janus-faced God has no appeal to honest hearts. [3/22/11; 4/22/24]

God has always been and always will be indignant against the stubborn buildup of deliberate sins. The Atonement has not changed that fact one iota. It has not pacified, appeased, placated, propitiated, or reconciled God in any way. It was designed to accomplish one supreme goal: doing away with human sin—the offending factor that causes alienation in the first place. It does so by supplying the renewing power of the Holy Spirit in order to shed abroad God’s own love in the hearts of all who gratefully believe His Proclamation of graciousness in and to and through the Lord Jesus Christ, who then graciously mediates it freely to them. In other words, God, in effect, conciliates human beings to Himself! Christ made the supreme sacrifice to win from his Father a graciousness of global application, including release from sins, effected by the Holy Spirit bestowed upon our faith on account of Christ’s own flawless faithfulness toward God. [3/27/11]

When we say that Jesus died under the fury of Satan and not the wrath of God, we can conceive of a Penal Substitution advocate objecting, “But that would mean Jesus was satisfying the justice of Satan, which is absurd!” Now, given their “satisfaction” premise, we would have to agree! However, their inference is but a reflex of the Penal Satisfaction ideological system itself, not a consequence of the Bible’s own logic concerning the Atonement by any stretch. For although according to the penal ideology Jesus suffers God’s wrath in payment for our debt of sins in order to satisfy God’s stern “justice” (so-called), yet the apostolic logic instead views Christ’s suffering of furious abuse by Satan as precisely a heinous violation of God’s justice (the premial aspect, naturally, of which he was most eminently deserving), that is, a crime demanding an ultimate Atonement—through a suitably vindicating resurrection from among the dead to a triumphantly culminating exaltation upon the throne of the created universe: the quintessential avenging for the shedding of his transcendently innocent blood. [3/28/11]

To deny the overpowering evil of the Cross is to decisively shrink the divine justification for the Resurrection! By the same token, to attribute justification itself to the Cross is to steal outright from God’s credit in raising its Victim from the dead! There can be no middle path, no compromise or blend of these irreconcilable opposites. The very notion eviscerates the potency and dims the glory of justification, hardly less so than its universal Protestant attribution to the dread event of the crucifixion, from which Jesus’ sinlessness cried out for justice “better than [the justness of] Abel” (Hebrews 11:4, 12:24) possibly could!. It is confusion—a double-minded, barely lukewarm hesitancy to boldly embrace its unequivocally resurrectionary, and hence judicially premial, significance wholeheartedly. From all the above bewilderment may God graciously deliver and pardon us so that we may yet bring our well-intended praise to its proper Object for the salutary enlightenment of our befuddled sensibilities. [3/29/11; 4/20-22/24]

The historic record of God’s justice to Jesus is what creates the trust that conciliates hesitant sinners to Them; thereupon God sends them His Holy Spirit with assorted powers to corroborate the truth with gracious tokens of His love.

“And for the lamb he shall pay fourfold [LXX, sevenfold], because he did this thing, and since he had no pity!” 2 Samuel 11:6.

This prophetic exposure of David’s sin with Bathsheba (“sheba” also meaning “seven”) is “[i]n keeping with the law in Exodus 21:37.” *

*Everett Fox, Give Us a King!: Samuel, Saul, and David. A new translation of Samuel I and II with an introduction and notes by Everett Fox. New York: Schocken Books, 1999, p. 203, note 6. [3/16/11]

Everything we get by believing the Gospel is ipso facto accounted to faith. Therefore, because we receive the Holy Spirit when we believe, that is, the dispensing of the righteousness of the New Covenant (2 Corinthians 3:7-9) in Christ’s blood (Hebrews 13:20), then that righteousness is reckoned or imputed to us as we believe (Romans 4). In this marvelous way, God honors our simple faith in His own proclamation about His Son’s suffering abuse on our behalf, since faith is nothing in itself, but is dependent (is dependence!) upon external testimony and proof for its very existence. [3/17/11]

The spirit of Calvinism, insofar as it is distinguished from other streams of Christianity, tends to be uniquely punitive, joyless, smug, and abusive. Those (among other) destabilizing qualities and traits are, I would suggest, inseparable reflexes of the penal satisfaction theory of the Atonement and are well (if only partially) summarized by the Five Points of Calvinism that constitute key points where it hardened up against the gentle corrective attempts of Jacob Arminius, who otherwise, it should be emphasized, had no special bone to pick with Calvinism (as represented in Calvin’s own writings, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Belgic Confession). Insofar as the offending theory is radically false, the spirit of Calvinism is, by reflex, an evil spirit and produces evil fruits that battle against the fruits of the Spirit, good intentions to the contrary notwithstanding. Since Calvinism early became callused against the gentle discipline of Arminius it has repeatedly churned out attitudes contradictory to the authentic graciousness of God for Christ’s sake. Once the penal substitution theory is effectively overthrown by premial restitution, all Five Points must fall like dominoes, and attitudes will morph accordingly. [3/18/11; 4/17/24]

It is difficult to read Hugo Grotius’s refutation of Faustus Socinus’s critique of satisfaction theories of the Atonement without the growing conviction that he is all too often merely quibbling and captious. (See Robert S. Franks, A History of the Doctrine of the Work of Christ. [Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2001]; reprint of A Historical Study of Christian Doctrine [Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1962]), pp. 389-409). He ‘divides and conquers’ by splitting hairs and neglecting the basic thrust of Socinus’s treatment, and before long takes to swallowing camels. [3/18/11]

God does not “demand” faith from us, which we somehow have to “work up.” Much rather, He gives testimony, i.e., proof by way of eyewitness reports by credible observers concerning His own historic interventions on behalf of His beleaguered Son, AND THIS HISTORICAL RECORD ITSELF GENERATES FAITH IN THOSE WHO HEAR, EVEN IN SPITE OF THEMSELVES. ONLY PROOF, TESTIMONY, EVIDENCE, etc. HAVE SUCH POWER TO CREATE FAITH. So, believing, at bottom, is not itself the problem here. God has invested much that is necessary to induce faith within sin-darkened hearts between the covers of the Bible. Furthermore, He has followed up with signs, miracles, healings, and other powerful interventions before the eyes of every generation since then as additional corroboration. So if people do not trust Him upon reading/hearing such a well-attested (not to add Spirit-inspired) Story and observing the powers of God’s impending Kingdom in their midst, it is not for lack of these fiducial requisites (although, to be sure, the latter are too often in meager supply due to the inroads of cessationist theories among our teachers). Rather, it is because they love the darkness rather than the Light for their acts are vicious” (John 3:19), hence they are hating the Light lest their acts get exposed and they get put to shame.

All this means that the necessary condition of faith in order to be saved is no high-handed, arbitrary, harsh “demand,” as it were, to make “bricks without straw,” nor is it (as Calvinistic doctrine is wont to insist) “impossible without the gift of the Holy Spirit to make it effectual in the elect.” For the Gospel itself, the resurrectionary Explanation for the cross, the Proclamation of Christ, is itself the power of our salvation, which, when believed, is THEREUPON further corroborated by an empirical outpouring of the Holy Spirit to immerse and embrace us in a fuller consciousness and enjoyment of salvation’s reality by actual experience. This all amounts to an exhibit of “graciousness [in the outpoured Spirit] in exchange for graciousness [in the Reasoning of the Gospel]”—the fruit of spiritually examining the favors God is making ready for us via the Spiritual words He has matched them with in Scripture (1 Corinthians 2:9-16). [3/18/11; 4/17/24]

Flotsam & Jetsam from the Slow Shipwreck of Calvinistic Soteriology on Account of Neglecting the Premial Atonement in Heaven

Occasionally sprawling, not seldom convoluted, excruciatingly tedious, yet often extraordinally innovative, seclect elaborations of the Atonement such as those of Hugo Grotius, John Owen, William Pynchon, John McLeod Campbell, Robert C. Moberly, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Leon Morris, René Girard, H. D. McDonald, John Stott, I. Howard Marshall, Fleming Rutledge, Eleonore Stump, N. T. Wright, William Lane Craig, Adonis Vidu, Michael Gorman, David Brondos, Greg Boyd, Hans Boersma, Douglas Campbell, Darrin Snyder Belousek, Mako Nagasawa, and W. Ross Hastings, hailing from widely disparate standpoints and Christian traditions, all alike manifest obliviousness to the inextricable roles of Christ’s resurrection, ascension, and enthronement WITHIN THE INTEGRAL PROCESS OF GOD’S PREMIAL JUSTICE CULMINATING IN THE PROTECTIVE COVER (“ATONEMENT”) CHRIST OFFERED EXCLUSIVELY AT GOD’S THRONE IN HEAVEN, followed by the outpouring of the promised award of Holy Spirit and Christ’s continual intercession thereafter. And that’s despite the sterling advances of many of these authors in multiple respects. I find this state of affairs almost heartbreaking, especially in view of the visibly and increasingly deleterious societal consequences of this “little” perennial oversight by “us Christians (all!).” The inevitable side-effect and byproduct of thus shunting around these vitally essential components is the palpable sense of ill-satisfaction that proliferates via compulsive but needless over-qualifying, over-elaboration, and over-defensiveness—in effect, “multiplying words without knowledge.” [3/13/11; 4/10-12/24]

A telling example of the burgeoning excesses that can spawn from just one prominent sectarian tradition of theologizing is the following ample tally of historically scattered and systematically superfluous flotsam & jetsam that has accumulated over five centuries from the slow-motion deterioration and imminent shipwreck of Calvinistic soteriology in particular, including both its own due property as well as outlying spinoffs by way of inevitable counteractions and overreactions. It should be disturbing to “true believers” that none of the following phrases or technical terms is to be found, as such, in Scripture itself, unless by way of unwarranted imposition and even outright mistranslation from the original, a practice regrettably becoming more common among scholars now that such error has become increasingly and calmly assured of widespread acceptance without risk of contradiction. (Accordingly, some or parts of the following might have been placed in quotes, but where to stop? That said, I shall spare you the technicality.)

acceptilation

active righteousness/obedience [vs. passive righteousness/obedience] of Christ

Amyraldianism

antinomianism

common grace [vs. special grace]

divine decrees

divine sovereignty [vs. human freewill]

double/triple imputation

double jeopardy (of the reprobate)

double predestination

effectual calling

equal ultimacy

eternal conscious punishment (of human beings)

eternal security

external call [vs. internal call]

fideism

freewill (hunan) [vs. divine sovereignty]

God’s reconciliation to man

governmental theory of atonement

hypothetical/conditional universalism

impetration vs. application

imputation of Adam’s sin to his descendants (from Augustine)

imputation of Christ’s righteousness to believers/the elect

imputation of sin(s) to Christ

infralapsarianism

internal call [vs. external call]

irresistible grace

justification vs. sanctification

legalism

limited atonement

monergism [vs. synergism]

order of decrees

ordo salutis

original sin (reprising Augustine)

passive righteousness/obedience [vs. active righteousness/obedience] of Christ

payment for (debt of) sin(s)

penal satisfaction

penal substitution

perfectionism

predestination

perseverance of the saints

preterition

prevenient/preventive/preceding grace

rectoral theory of atonement

reprobation (decree of…)

sanctification vs. justification

sovereign grace

sovereignty of God

special call [vs. universal call]

special grace [vs. common grace]

spiritual death (being dead in sin)

sublapsarianism

suffering of Christ in hell

supralapsarianism

synergism [vs. monergism]

total depravity

unconditional election

universal call [vs. special call]

universalism

The foregoing litany comprises, one and all, artificial byproducts of a toxic (if well-meaning) theology industry: plastic pollution. These irreversibly degrading plastic components cannot be rendered non-toxic and will inevitably spread within the environmental footprint of any church that tolerates their use. We must pursue the difficult task of disemploying them and getting comfortable with the crisp, spare, consistent terminology of apostolic formulation inspired by the Spirit of wholesomeness. Isn’t it about time to take out the trash, provided we can somehow dispose of it where it’s not liable to re-enter the safe places of the church and surrounding environment to recontaminate them, perhaps with yet more inveigling iterations? [3/13/11; 4/9-12/24]

The curious fact that an extremely low percentage of relatives, friends, pastors, scholars, authors, and other Christian leaders to whom I have communicated the premial approach to the Atonement, even on multiple occasions, have ever responded, and that even those who have replied were mostly non-enthusiastic, rather curt, and certainly non-committal (although curiously, somewhat fewer in number being overtly opposed or hostile to the message), and, finally, that after several years I can still count on one hand those who seem to have warmed up to it, and on the other hand those who did not maintain objections to it—all suggest the unusually captivating grip of the penal hypothesis concerning atonement on a worldwide scale (my contacts span the globe).

Clearly. I have not yet communicated…clearly! Or the Holy Spirit, whose message I firmly believe this to be, has not yet deemed it quite ready to endorse. Now, I’m not whining, but what sober, plausible reasons might be advanced to account for this odd circumstance (well, of course, aside from my own delaying to submit it for publication in normal book fashion)? [3/14/11; 4/10-12/24]