PENAL SUBSTITUTION: Systematizing the Deception

It is not by accident that penal substitution has gained such prominence in Protestant Christianity. It has succeeded in systematizing the deception (Eph. 4:14) that God’s penal justice could actually somehow bring salvation, while it completely suppressed the voice of God’s premial justice that constitutes the authentic golden thread of divine salvation throughout wholesome Scripture. How the boa constrictor of Calvin’s rigorously novel theory of penal substitution could have strangled the Pauline proclamation of God’s resurrectionary justice toward the Lord Jesus can perhaps only be accounted for by the power of the sinful fleshly impulse toward personal avenging in combination with steady steps of systematic rationalizations that undermined sound exegetical treatments of key passages, all while cross-wiring them in new patterns that were both more amenable to fleshly dispositions of mind, less challenging to faith in a God of miracles, less demanding of obedience to the directives of the Lord Jesus, and less inclined to the example of his obedience to the death of a cross. Jesus became a weak substitute rather than a mighty Lord and a commanding Leader. [6/8/11;5/17/24]

God’s surrender of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, was not as a payment of our human debt of sin; if anything, IT ENORMOUSLY AGGRAVATED THE DEBT! IT SWELLED THE SIN OF ISRAEL TO THE BURSTING POINT! If there was any possible hope for Israel to make payment for her many sins (especially of slaying the prophets), by her own righteous deeds, it was utterly BANKRUPTED and totally demolished by the summum malum of CRUCIFYING JESUS! This was not a “deposit” into their “heavenly account” but a massive OVERDRAFT!

The direct implication of this stark fact is that God’s plan for the salvation of Israel, indeed, of all humankind, entailed and demanded THE MOST PATENTLY OBVIOUS DEBT FORGIVENESS EVER UNDERTAKEN IN HISTORY! (And we, in turn, are to forgive as our heavenly Father has thus forgiven us!) The Cross was the last straw; so little did this crime “pay off” God’s penal justice for any human sins (whether of “the elect” or the whole world) that, to the contrary, it greatly compounded human sin, yet happily evoked God’s own personal REPAYMENT to Jesus for his colossal loss. This is the astonishing way the Gospel actually works, contrary to the longstanding but novel traditions of the ‘magisterial’ Protestant Reformation. [6/8/11; 5/17/24]

Penal substitution THROWS STUMBLING BLOCKS AND SNARES BEFORE PEOPLE, thus injuring faith and the credibility of the Message about Jesus Christ. In particular, it is subversive of the character of God the Father. It perversely rationalizes the Atonement according to a strictly penal model that is inherently and irremediably offensive. With excruciating irony, the penal satisfaction accounting of the assassination of God the Son amounts to a character assassination of God the Father, unintentional though it always appears to be. [6/10/11; 5/17/24]

“GOD IS IMPOSSIBLE TO SATISFY, BUT EASY TO PLEASE.” — George MacDonald, quoted in Jan Karon, In the Company of Others (New York: J. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2010).

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 spilled blood 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 diabolical evil of the Cross is to dessicate 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 Their love. SWEET!!!

“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]

New-Testament and early-Christian alternatives to select features of Augustinian and Calvinistic soteriology

There’s no such thing as “the sovereignty of God,” there’s simply GOD, Whose Kingdom transcends the limitations of exclusively deterministic causality, and Whose Son He appointed Sovereign of all creation.

There’s no such thing as divine “predestination,” there’s simply a divine destiny, and it’s conditional on our reception, by faith, of the regenerative power of the Gospel report about Jesus Christ.

There’s no such thing as “original sin,” there’s simply sin, and it’s neither inherited nor imputed to successive generations, although its effects do proliferate diverse evils throughout the world and through time.

There’s no such thing as “total depravity,” there’s simply physical depravity, but it cannot nullify the power of the Gospel record about Jesus to engender faith within the hearts of its sinful hearers.

There’s no such thing as “unconditional election,” there’s simply election, and it’s entirely conditional on human faith, which perfectly comports with divine grace and is caused by hearing the Gospel narrative concerning God’s Elect One, the Lord Jesus, if not sinfully resisted.

There’s no such thing as “limited atonement,” there’s simply atonement, and it equates to indemnification from sin on behalf of the whole human world without exception, accessible by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

There’s no such thing as “irresistible grace,” there’s simply grace, and it’s just as resistible as the Holy Spirit and Word of God are.

There’s no such thing as “sovereign grace,” there’s simply grace, which is endlessly available to all who simply believe, and only so long as they believe, the explanation of the Gospel about the Sovereign Lord Jesus.

There’s no such thing as “common grace” or “special grace,” there’s simply grace, and it’s exclusively experiencable by voluntary faith in the Gospel account about Christ the Savior, if we don’t harden our hearts against it. The creation is sustained by, and hence testifies eloquently to, God’s love and goodness and faithfulness, which we enjoy in common with all our fellow mortal sinners regardless of faith in Christ.

There’s no such thing as “perseverance of the saints,” there’s simply perseverance, which is sustained by the faith-generating power of the Gospel story of Jesus, which brings, in turn, the sanctifying indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

There’s no such thing as “eternal conscious punishment” for disbelieving human beings, there’s simply eternal punishment, which amounts to final extermination of both body and soul in a lake of fire (gehenna). (Satan and his sinning messengers, however, do suffer agelong conscious torment.)

Every qualifier is a minimizer, a limiter, an impoverisher. Let’s be done once and for all with Calvinistic soteriology, along with its varied toxic fragments within other Protestant traditions, and which radically debases so many essential concepts of Holy Scripture. [2/6/11;10/9-10/23]

The ‘Penal Substitution’ OPINION

The radically destabilizing inner contradiction of Calvinism, ethically speaking, is that its penal substitutionary doctrine of the Atonement teaches a ‘substitutionary’ ethic (especially those of their number affirming the ‘imputation’ of the ‘active obedience’ of the Lord Jesus Christ), yet requires that they manifest their status as ‘the eternally elect’ by good works. Accordingly, their doctrine both undercuts the motivation to do good works and yet demands good works in order to ‘prove’ they are of the elect—”BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW”! [1/17/11]

The ‘penal substitution’ OPINION. [1/17/11]

That the scurrilous and vitriolic language of John Calvin and his most ardent successors against any and all who dared protest (like all good Protestants should) against their shaky soteriological opinions happens to be radically at odds with the very measured and underplayed style of denunciation found in the recorded words of Jesus, Peter, James, John,and Paul should hardly need to be pointed out. But Calvinists, obviously, are not ones to admit the embarrassing contrast. What strikes the near observer about these historic strict Calvinists is not so much “how they love one another” (yea, even the Gentiles do that!) but ‘how they hate every other’. [1/17/11]

The Polish Brethren of the 16th and 17th centuries—Socinians, i.e., unitarians!—were arguably the most zealous missionary movement of the Protestant world, publishing a disproportionate volume of the highest quality printed productions in Europe. Moreover, they vigorously translated their books and tracts into other languages and daringly ‘invaded’ countries traditionally opposed to their doctrines, even at great personal cost, risking literally life and limb by sending off their native sons as students to the major universities of Europe, well supplied with appealing propaganda in high demand by respectful scholars, theologians, and political thinkers and jurists of many nations and persuasions.

Who ever alleged that Unitarianism was not evangelistic? [1/17/11] But, granted, the incursion of universalism in the late-18th century called a halt to its early happy zeal and persuasive successes. [8/26/23]

The striking thing about John Calvin’s opinions concerning ‘penal substitution’ (PS) is that they are so clearly incorrect. John Owen’s and Francis Turretin’s writings in defense of the PS opinions are not nearly so lean and transparently wrong, although no less equally so for all that. The same goes for Hugo Grotius, who indulges in complicated jurisprudential diversions in his ‘critique’ of Faustus Socinus. Moreover, Grotius eventually concedes a great deal to the Socinian devastation of PS, for which, naturally, he is severely reprimanded by Owen and Turretin. Yet none of these jousters hit the mark on the positive side of premial justice…not even Socinus himself, who settled for far less than his peerless deconstruction of PS allowed, implied, and even demanded logically. However, if not quite so clearly right in his positive alternative to Calvin, yet thorough in criticism he most certainly was! That virtue still shines till the present day and must not be denied him. [1/23/11; 8/26/23]

If in fact we Protestants got the Atonement wrong, indisputably central as it is, and for so long a span of centuries, then what other doctrines and practices of ours stand in need of tearful repentance? If our center cannot hold, then what of the periphery? This doctrinally existential faceoff can be quite a shocking reality check, but we should take heart from the Lord’s lovingkindness and bravely soldier onward to the frontlines under increasingly authentic reformational impulses. This is no call to mope around in self-reproach. [1/26/11; 8/26/23]

Jesus both provoked and adapted to the legal circumstances that allowed God to magnify the glory of His premial justice to best advantage against unfair and seemingly insurmountable judgments.

Jesus, the perfectly sinless and upright One was instructed, in effect, to set up the circumstances that would allow God to demonstrate the quality of justice that would rescue, save, and preserve those who are upright The ultimate demonstration, of course, would demand both a victim so righteous that God could pull out all the stops, as well as circumstances so unjustly adverse that God could supercompensate him accordingly with a judicial award so substantial that all his friends and family could share the benefits, too. This is exactly what the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ made possible for the sinful human race and achieved more particularly for all who believe this Message of his. [1/5/11]

Once the Western theological tradition in its career of soteriological declension finally neared a full-blown ‘payment‘ or ‘satisfaction” theory of the Atonement, its artificial life-support was installed, especially in its eventual most punitive form—that of John Calvin. The reason is not hard to locate. This doctrine was simultaneously self-protective and self-perpetuating in a way no previous explanation had been. For frightful built-in sanctions could handily be levelled against any departures from it, drawn from its own inner penal logic. In fact, God’s ‘grace‘ itself was contingent upon His execution of terrible wrath upon His own innocent and allegedly ‘beloved’ Son. The tacit violence inextricably embedded in this doctrine supplied a fearful disincentive against any ‘presumptuous’ tampering with its prickly ‘essentials’ themselves. Catch 22. [1/7/11; 8/20/23]

“Is it not written in your Law [i.e., of Moses], ‘I say you are gods‘? [Psalm 82:6] If He said those were gods TO [pros] whom the Explanation of God came [to be/to pass] (and the Scripture can not be annulled), are you saying to Him whom the Father hallows and commissions into the world [AS the very Explanation of God!—John 1:1-3] that, ‘You are blaspheming,’ seeing that I [merely] said, ‘Son of God am I’?” (John 10:34-36) [1/9/11]

In partial answer to the question, “Did Jesus Christ have both a ‘divine nature‘ and a ‘human nature‘? we might retort, “Do we believing sinners have both a ‘divine nature‘ and a ‘human nature‘” since we are “partakers of the Divine nature,” according to the apostle Peter (2 Peter 1:4)? [1/11/11]

When Jesus, humiliated by crucifixion and exalted by resurrection, returned to his Father in heaven, the glory he received (and will receive) was far, far more than what he had “alongside” [para] God while in his celestial Divine form. For now he shall possess the glory of a vast following of sons/daughters because, according to Biblical thought, children are the “glory” of their parents. Had God’s Son not humbled himself from formal equality with his Father to become a real human being, he could never have had the glory of us—his sisters and brothers adopted by God in and through him. After all, Jesus was glorified by God into a vivifying Spirit so that he could give away gratuitously his Spirit to sinful mortals so that in turn, they, by faith, could likewise live forever! [1/12/11; 8/21/23]

The extreme stance of Calvinism concerning faith has led to insuluble difficulties for nurturing faith, including insecurity, arrogance (flip sides of the same coin), and perhaps even worse: numbed disinterest, depending on individual proclivities and inherent or acquired dispositions. Moreover, because God’s own Explanation in Scripture, even though accompanied by many persuasive testimonies of eyewitnesses, not to mention miraculous attestation by the Holy Spirit of God Himself, are not deemed sufficient by Calvinism to actually generate faith peacefully and cogently, consequently Calvinists have historically insisted on using the coercive arm of civil authorities to enforce their errant credal opinions. (Of course Calvinists are not alone in this, but they have turned the aberration into something of a science. It hardly seems farfetched to detect strict parallels between the reflex to invoke coercive policing of orthodox opinions, on the one hand, and the impulse to worship a ‘sovereign’ Deity who arbitrarily drafts involuntary inductees despite their lack of faith, but then overrides their own will by force to “give them the gift of faith” on no basis whatever, on the other hand. Accordingly, the Calvinist’s God models the behaviors they emulate to the further harm of others. 8/21/23) Any ‘deviation’ back toward the Truth and away from their wayward confessions has all too often been met with suppression and persecution. But even worse, because God’s star witnesses is His own Holy Spirit in miraculous manifestations, since they put little stock in this kind of corroboration—indeed, have not seldom slandered it as “from the Devil”—they even cavalierly risk blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. [1/12/11]

“THE VICTORY OF THE CROSS”?

“The victory of the cross is not assured without the enlightening revelation of the Spirit of God” (Hans Boersma, Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross: Reappropriating the Atonement Tradition [Baker Academic, 2004] p. 150).  That dogmatic assertion, I submit to you, is passing strange indeed!  It shows how very far the mind of the Protestant Reformation (and Western atonement theology more generally) stands apart from the mind of Christ and his Spirit—the spirit of the New Covenant.  The victory of “the Cross” did not happen, properly speaking, at the Cross itself at all, but at the Resurrection!  Touché.

The Cross was a manifest failure since it did not save the Savior from death and the Unseen in the least.  Jesus’ ‘Saviorhood’ was deliberately unmanifest during his enigmatic crucifixion.  By no stretch of a hallowed imagination can that tragic violence be construed as ‘saving’, barring theological legerdemain. Yet because it is ineluctably linked to previous and subsequent events by a molecular logic of cosmic chemistry, therefore the product was predetermined:  VICTORIOUS RESURRECTION FROM AMONG THE DEAD!  Messiah’s getting crucified was an act of submissive obedience by the divine Son to his divine Father; it could only have a divine outcome—the vindication of that obedience by Resurrection, enthronement, and the outpouring of Wholesome Spirit to seal the adoption of future heirs.  But then we should speak of “the victory of The Obedience”!  Yet where, in theology, in sermon, in devotion, or in prayer, have you ever beheld that ‘odd’ conjunction of words or meditated that profoundly Biblical concept?  When and how did we start wandering off into the tangled underbrush of dessicated doctrines?

Therefore, properly speaking, Messiah’s cross manifested no victory that could be “assured,” as Boersma supposes, by so-called “enlightening revelation of the Spirit of God” or by any other means whatsoever.  We may better speak of the justification of the Cross becoming apparent in Messiah’s resurrectionary victory over death, Satan, sin, and every petty enemy.  But that victory has been attested and proclaimed by his well-instructed apostles long since.  This is our assurance and this has already long ago been corroborated and certified by “the enlightening revelation of the Spirit of God” that two millennia past inspired wholesome men to write it all down in detail in the wholesome Scriptures of the New Covenant for all the wholesome ones (“saints”) who come to believe the Message throughout remaining history until the Return.  What am I missing?  Didn’t Boersma get the memo?

The impulse that moved Hans Boersma to frame that opening sentence was, to be sure, the impossibility of seeing any victory in the Cross by any normal, rational means.  But that fact should have told him something and counseled his reticence before invoking a ‘supernatural’ crowbar to bust the lock on this ‘mystery’.  In point of fact, there is no longer any fundamental mystery about the proclamation of God’s Kingdom!  It was intended for secrecy only until Satan showed his vicious, violent hand against the Son of Mankind, which he would by no means have done if he had known God would reverse his murder by irreversible resurrection to communicable immortality!

God’s righteous anger against incorrigible sin cannot be averted from it.  Sins, rather, must be broken off us so that we do not die in their chokehold.  For unless this release from sins takes place, our wrongdoings will suck us down a black hole to God only knows where.

There is no ‘redeeming power’ in the Cross.  There is only liberating power in the heart of a strictly righteous God whose resurrectionary “avenging” the cross of Messiah evoked!  The power all belongs to, and issues from, the God of unremitting justice who did not let the sentence of crucifixion stand without virtually immediate reversal and colossal super-compensation!  HOORAY!!!

If the intolerable injustice of the Cross evoked the Resurrection of the Son by the Father, shouldn’t this fundamental evangelical pattern also get reflected in the case of diseases no less than sins?  The application of the innocent blood of God’s Lamb to our sinful hearts effects the ‘avenging’ of his wrongful death by the outpouring of new life into our hearts, thus giving us expectancy of agelong life in the impending age.  Why wouldn’t the application of his blood (figured in anointing the sick with oil, which likewise symbolizes the Wholesome Spirit poured out on or “paid out” to us in compensation for Satan’s pouring out the blood of God’s own Son) also effect restoration of health as well?  It follows so naturally.

VIOLENCE OR ASSERTIVENESS?

I’d like to reflect for a moment on Boersma’s category of ‘violence’.  When Jesus spoke of the so-called “violence” of those whom he commended for wanting to enter God’s Kingdom, he hardly meant violence in the Old Testament sense, and which God abhors in no uncertain terms and decisively condemns.  Rather, a comparison with the usage of this Greek family of words in the Septuagint Old Testament strongly (forcefully!) suggests that Jesus meant assertiveness, i.e., forcefulness.  This translation makes profound sense in light of the string of assertive people whose stories are narrated in the preceding chapters, following the ‘Sermon on the Mount’.

Today we even hear about assertiveness training to help the timid become more bold, outgoing, outspoken, and courageous in public and forceful in interpersonal relations.  ‘Violence’?  I don’t think so.  [4/4/06]

God’s ‘hospitality’ is reserved especially for those within the Covenants He made throughout history—that is, if we understand hospitality as God’s graciousness. But Boersma’s Calvinism, as expressed in his noteworthy book, has tied up this graciousness in endless litigation, speculating unjustifiably about its ‘supralapsarian’ reservation for only a few ‘sovereignly’, ‘irresistibly’, and ‘irreversibly’ elect individuals, as if this is graciousness at all!  Much rather, God’s true graciousness (‘sovereign’ is not even a biblical adjective!) allows all people onto the train of His Covenant so long as they trust Him (as manifested by their enduring repentance and obedience).  Otherwise they get thrown out of the train somewhere on route to the Kingdom, into outer darkness where there is no graciousness, but only anger—divine indignation.  This is well illustrated by God’s “drowning Pharaoh and his army because His lovingkindness [to Pharaoh’s would-be victims!] endures for the age” Psalm 136:15.  God exercises patience, toleration, longsuffering, kindness, and mercy even to Pharaoh and others outside His Covenant, including the sad case of defectors.  But His lovingkindness, covenantal troth, and graciousness are ours, alone, who keep trusting.

WHERE’S THE BLOOD?

Curiously, Boersma’s book does not have an index entry for “blood”!  This is some measure of how far from the metaphors of Scripture one can stray even in painstaking scholarly elaborations.  “Blood” is simply the most pivotal and pervasive word associated with every category of salvation in the New Testament.  Ponder that!  Better yet, prove me wrong, if you dare.  [4/4/06]