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]

Closed-system, zero-sum mundane economics and commercial finance cannot comprehend either the ex nihilo wealth-creation that exclusively accounts for the vast super-compensation rendered to the Lord Jesus Christ by the Creator for bearing outrageous injustices, nor can it fathom the gratuitous giveaway program of welfare to unworthy sinners that came in its wake. PENAL SATISFACTION is thus perpetually at cross-purposes with PREMIAL RESTITUTION.

Perhaps the central ‘gratifying’ or ‘satisfying’ feature of penal substitution is the sense that a certain ‘number’ or ‘quantity’ of sins can be ‘completely paid for,’ thus supplying a kind of ‘closure’ to the system, also psychologically. Everything seems ‘symmetrical’ and ‘clinched.’ But this is illusory. In fact, it creates a false security that, in practice, actually compromises a dynamic, vital, covenantal relationship with the living God. The ethical results of such an impersonal—even mechanical or automatic—schema are often appallingly dis–grace-ful. False security can breed conceit and arrogance, clannishness and sectarianism.

The inner certainty and spiritual assurance we crave as fragile mortals are founded on the solid proof of God’s graciousness in spite of any ‘amount’ of sin. That proof has been granted in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from a crucifixion by vicious sinners who were thereby spared immediate, well-deserved termination.

However, when the authentic original interpretation of the ‘Crossurrection‘ composite of integrally linked events comes to be denatured into a penal event followed by a mere resurrection rubber-stamp, then the full impact of those tandem Messianic events is debased and disempowered from delivering its intended full redemptive payload and veers off its divine trajectory. But properly understood and proclaimed, the ‘Crossurrection‘ trumps any other conceivable method or means of providing confident assurance of God’s gracious acceptance, and all without breeding unbefitting presumptuousness. This is because God deliberately made sure there were plenty of qualified, diverse, and independent eyewitnesses to both of its key historic components as well as to Jesus’ career of powerful miraculous deeds, peerless ethical instruction, and prophetic fulfillments in startling sync with literally scores of ancient prophecies recorded in Israel’s ancient Scriptures.

For the same reason, any talk of ‘merits‘ here is unbiblical—a vain attempt to ‘compute’ a conjectured economic exchange rate between sins and pardons. All such recourses are carnal calculations with deceptive utility and positive harm. Such fundamental departures from native biblical vocabulary and conceptuality are shoals easily avoidable by prioritizing concordant analysis of recurrent biblical patterns of usage, whether of words, numbers, names, metaphors, themes, or even whole narrative episodes. [2/6/11; 10/11/23]

In addition to the eyewitness testimony of the disciples of Jesus to his career, crucifixion, and resurrected existence, the miracle-working testimony of the Holy Spirit ever since Pentecost may be added to those weighty considerations that establish God’s extraordinary graciousness and forgiveness, and which far surpass the deceptive grounds of ‘penal substitution,’ i.e., a conjectured ‘penal satisfaction of God’s penal justice‘ by Christ, which is but quicksand.

Lutheranism, Calvinism, Arminianism (at least in the form of its influential but idiosyncratic articulation by Hugo Grotius), and Amyraldianism, each in varying degree, suffer under the imaginary burden of establishing a surer ‘economic’ basis for God’s amazing grace than the unalterable written witness of the New Testament conjoined with the continuous experiential witness of the Holy Spirit. [2/8/11; 10/12/23]

By the Cross, Satan imagined that he had successfully stamped out his rival for rule of planet earth along with his miraculous restorative powers. But it so happens that these creation-restoring powers of the Holy Spirit bequeathed to Jesus as Messiah were his right, due to his lifelong maturing obedience to God his Father. Therefore, when Jesus was deprived of his life, including those powers that were his property and rightful possession, Satan committed a criminal act deserving, by the rules of divine justice, DUE COMPENSATION, which, in this unexpectedly exceptional case, just so happened to be ABSOLUTELY OVERWHELMING! And it is this unparalleled supercompensation that Christ personally bequeaths to us as a pure gift—immersion in the Holy Spirit of unquenchable life. Without Christ’s brutal experience of abuse unto death, this compensation would never even have existed for us, because never called into existence by the exigencies of reparative justice to him. Praise God from Whom such Blessings flow!

This peculiar feature of divine justice—supercompensation—may also account for the necessity (in view of God’s intended outcome of salvation for ALL who trust Him) of His Son’s even suffering a curse of the Law of Moses (which God Himself had stipulated, of course) as well as temporary abandonment at the cross. For THESE EVILS (although by no means to be construed as ‘divine punishments’ administered substitutionarily on behalf of sin/sinners who all ‘deserved’ them), WOULD LIKEWISE NEED TO BE JUSTLY SUPERCOMPENSATED BY GOD. And such compensation would constitute proof that those particular abuses were not ‘signs of God’s wrath’ but definitive precursors, even beneficent enhancements, of His impending justly due GRACIOUSNESS, indeed, His very SPIRIT OF GRACIOUSNESS! [2/8/11; 10/12/23]

Generally speaking, an “atoning” deed is whatever may be deemed necessary to bring peace in a particular circumstance of hostility or grievance. It ‘makes everything alright,’ relatively speaking. It induces conciliation and friendly relations between contending parties by joint agreement. However, the Atonement that God pre-planned far surpassed the limitations and relativity of the countless cultural conventions for achieving nominal interpersonal amity post-conflict. For God’s own method, at last, satisfactorily tackled “the Last Enemy,” Death itself, which hovers menacingly behind every terrestrial animosity and injury. (See, for example, Don Richardson’s noteworthy account in his famous book, Peace Child.) [2/8/11; 10/12/23]

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]

God “CONDEMNED SIN IN THE FLESH” by RAISING CHRIST’S FLESH IMMORTAL, not ‘by punishing him for our sins’.

How did God “condemn sin in the flesh” when “sending His own Son in the likeness of sin’s flesh and concerning sin [i.e., “as a sin-offering,” cf. Leviticus, LXX]” (Rom. 8:1-4)?  What was the precise mechanism or process or procedure?  The common popular evangelical answer is that God ‘vented His wrath on His own Son at the cross’, thereby condemning sin.  But it’s not that way at all.  Much rather, the sin of condemning the sinless Son of God—this overwhelmingly wrongful deed of the Jews (leaders, populace, and disciples alike!), this fury of Satan in cahoots with all his witting and unwitting henchmen and hangmen (Judas, Caiaphas, Pilate, Herod, Peter, the chief priests, the Roman soldiers, et al)—was itself openly, overwhelmingly, publicly demonstrated to be wrongful and unjust—outright SIN— by the display of God’s righteousness in raising Jesus the Messiah from among the dead (Rom. 3:21-26)! For in this exacting manner all his opposition were swept away decisively and irrevokably and unanswerably. The Resurrection shut every accusing mouth and opened every unhardened heart. It was calculated to melt all the opposition who were not adamantly confirmed in viciousness. Yet every age has its Pharaohs who progressively reject every merciful moment God extends them, “bartering the graciousness of our God for wantonness, and disowning our only Owner [who, in that assigned role, bought us back!] and Master, Jesus Messiah” (Jude 4), and harden their hearts, stiffen their necks, the “unbelieving…who are stumbling also at the Explanation [about God’s undeserved, completely unexpected, and even unimaginable graciousness and mercifulness], being stubborn, to which [stumbling] they were appointed also [by their own self-determined, rigid distrust]” (1 Peter 2:7-8).

In sum: God condemned sin by justifying Jesus in the Resurrection to agelong life so that we who simply trust this stunning message might inherit this same just recompense deserved by Christ’s sinless career, willing surrender, and obedient submission to the vicious, murderous sovereignties and authorities of this age—namely, the same agelong life that his obedience won triumphantly on our behalf!  Thus did he triumph by his cross (Col. 2:14-15), condemn sin, and bestow gratuitous life for us who are undeserving sinners!  And all we have to do to enjoy this boundless boon is to be “in Messiah Jesus” (Rom. 8:1, 2), which transpires at immersion, by faith, which in turn accomplishes implantation (Rom. 6:5, 6) into his body.  [4/10/06]

So where does “divine punishment” fit into the picture of “atonement” within Scripture? It most emphatically fits exactly nowhere within holy Scripture! Our salvation was not achieved by resorting to punishment of our sins. “Agelong punishment,” far otherwise, is the fate of all who reject a salvation so great that it did not need any divine punishment factor! It circumvented divine punishment altogether. The abuse suffered by Messiah was not divinely punitive in any sense, any more than Job’s was. The assault of Satan at the Cross was, to be sure, divinely appointed, but it had nothing whatsoever to do with divine wrath or the disfavor of Heaven. Jesus “tasted death”—“even a death of the cross” (Phil. 2:8)—“in the favor of God” (Heb. 2:9, Phil. 2:9).

In the meantime, whoever get destined for adoption experience divine discipline, yet such measures are corrective and for our good (Psalm 94:10, 12, Isaiah 53:5, Heb. 12), and thus are inescapable for any of us sons of Adam who are now children of a heavenly Father whose goal is our maturity.   This often painful procedure equips us to rule with Messiah in the age to come.  (Corrective discipline can be “atoning” only in a derivative and secondary sense.  See David Bercot’s “What the Early Christians Believed about the Atonement.”)  [4/10/06]

It was not while “in the form of God” (Phil. 2:6) that God’s Son won our salvation, but only after becoming a human being—a “son of mankind.”  It was in this form and after this fashion that he achieved full maturity of sinlessness, by learning obedience under the Law of Moses, an escorting disciplinarian (Gal 3:24-25), submitting to sinful authority (it could not be otherwise—whether parents, Jewish leaders, Roman occupiers), getting immersed in Wholesome Spirit, performing astounding acts of miraculous power to free his fellow human beings from the enslaving tyranny of the Adversary and, at the last, by being betrayed by one of his inner-circle friends and getting surrendered to his enemies, bearing their injustices patiently, not deserving their abuse, but giving it all over to Him Who judges justly.

In this flesh he got vindicated, the Highest Judge reversing the lower court’s decision.  As a human being he received overcompensating damages for his trouble, and that is precisely why he had the right to “give gifts to mankind” (Eph. 4:8, Ps. 68:18)—gracious presents of splendid varieties, salvation, and agelong life in his Father’s Kingdom, receiving these boons from his divine Father as the Son of God, and bequeathing them all to his human brethren as the son of mankind—the true Mediator between Deity and humanity.  [4/10/06]

“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]

The BLOOD of the New Covenant simultaneously brings RIGHTEOUSNESS and HOLINESS–both instantaneously and progressively, by FAITH.

“For thus says Jehovah, ‘There shall not be cut off a man of David’s line from sitting on the throne of the house of Israel.  As for the Levitical priests there shall not be cut off a man from before Me who offers up the ascent approach and fumes the approach present and offers sacrifices for all the days.”  (Jer. 33:17-18)

Now that Messiah has arrived in the person of Jesus, many Old Testament prophecies are changed in meaning, actually transformed before our eyes to reveal their true substance and new-covenant import!

Jer. 33:18, for instance, now reveals God’s intention (although it was implicit in the provisions and promises of the first covenant, “which covenant [Israel] broke” Deut. 31:20, Jer. 11:9-10, 31:31-33, Heb. 8:8-10) for all His people, in light of Jer. 33:17, the immediately preceding verse, when the Wholesome Spirit opens our eyes to see Jesus in it!

Thus occurs a ‘transvaluation’ of prophecies that an unbelieving, stubborn people—“Israel according to the flesh”—could never apprehend.

O Father, continue to open our heavy eyes to see Jesus so that then we might also behold our true destiny before Your face!  Hallelujah!  [11/26/04]

The notion of ‘progressive sanctification’ is a residue of the penal substitution theory of the atonement that does not understand the blood of Jesus as actually, truly cleansing our hearts/consciences from misdeeds.  To be sure, it is not the literal blood that is applied to our hearts/consciences to effect this result but the agelong life of the innocent and perfectly just soul of Jesus (which is “in the blood”), the Lamb of God—it is this life, poured out from heaven into our believing hearts via the Wholesome Spirit, the promise of the Father in the New Covenant in Messiah’s justly innocent blood, which is the active ingredient which cleanses from misdeeds and dead works; see Acts 10:15-16, 44-47; 11:9-10, 15-17; 15:8-9; Heb. 9:13-14, 22-26; 10:2-4, 19-22.   (See also the works of P. P. Waldenström concerning Reconciliation/Atonement—a single word in the Swedish language.)

In the penal substitution theory, the blood was presented to God to pacify or appease or placate or satisfy His wrath against sin so that He could ‘forensically’ justify the sinner who believes.  Yet the sinner is then understood to be a sinner still, except that, having been justified ‘in the blood‘ instantly upon faith in Christ because of what he accomplished ‘at/on the cross’ (i.e., his death on our behalf), the sinner is understood to be ‘sanctified‘ by a process throughout life thereafter.  Thus passages like Heb. 10:14 are thought to be teaching a lifelong ‘being sanctified’ rather than our “getting wholesome” instantaneously by our Chief Priest’s “one approach–present” by which he “has perfected to the finality” (Heb. 10:1-2, 12-14) those who are, one by one (an historical procession!) getting and remaining wholesome by this priestly ministration.

The penal substitution model of the Atonement as taught by the Protestant Reformers, made justification personally instantaneous but sanctification personally progressive.  However, Scripture, to the contrary, teaches that both justification (in the epistle of Romans) and sanctification (in Hebrews) are personally instantaneous upon faith, as witnessed by the receipt (‘signed and paid for’ by Christ himself in his own blood!) of the Holy Spirit “with signs and miracles following.”  This was the empirical proof to Peter (cf. Acts 10-11 and 15:8-9) of the nations having received both of these boons in one fell swoop, all at once.  We don’t get more and more wholesome before God any more than we get more and more upright.  We simply walk enduringly in the faith that keeps us in that state of rectitude and wholesomeness and forgiveness.  To be sure, our faith should ever grow and get more firmly rooted and established against all opposition.  But it is rooted exactly in the instantaneously and gratuitously given realities of righteousness and holiness/wholesomeness.

Both of these realities are founded alike in the blood of Jesus (i.e., his sinless soul given up to a public, violent, unjust death and raised from the dead by the justice of God to agelong life thus justifying God in giving us His promised Spirit for free).  This is why both the New Testament and the early church teach that we are repeatedly to “eat the flesh” and “drink the blood” of the Lamb of God (the Passover) in the Lord’s Dinner.  For in this way we enjoy its agelong benefits continuously in this life, i.e., righteousness and wholesomeness.  [11/30/04]

The penal substitution theory of the Protestant Reformers, ironically, retained the substance of the Roman Catholic (Augustinian) notion of progressive justification (which is equally false) under the rubric of ‘progressive sanctification.’  However, it is not a necessary ingredient to a full and entire comprehension of justification (a judicial metaphor) and sanctification (a priestly metaphor).

Having said that, it is still necessary to affirm that throughout our current earthly sojourn through this present vicious age of the world ‘with devils filled’, as we are remaining in Messiah’s explanations and declarations, keeping his directions, walking in the light of truth, we are participating or communing with the Father and the Son by Their Spirit, according to the distinctive promise of the Father in the New Covenant in the blood of His only-born Son, and thus partake of the divine nature, including righteousness and wholesomeness, in an increasing way as we stay in trust.  We are to become full of Spirit, letting Messiah’s Explanation dwell in us richly, completing wholesomeness in the fear of God (2 Cor. 7:1) until love casts out fear when it has become perfect, so that our joy becomes full (1 John 4:18; John 15:9-11), etc., etc.

These are all progressive, to be sure,  But they are the fruit of a rectitude in the eyes of God that is imputed to us instantaneously and continuously as we keep trusting Jesus, and only so long as we endure in that faith, steady, rooted, grounded, founded, stable, steadfast.

However, no less is this true of wholesomeness.  For all the fruit of God’s Spirit of wholesomeness grows naturally (“if the firstfruit is wholesome, the kneading is also; and if the root is wholesome, the boughs are also” Rom. 11:16) in those who are called “wholesome [ones]/saints“ by a faith that causes the blood of the Wholesome One to get applied to their hearts, thus cleansing away their misdoings.

In both of these procedures, God wants to glorify our simple trust or faith in Him as manifested in doing what the Messiah, His Son, directed us.  And the reason is eminently plain:  keeping his directions (εντολ-) leads us, in the power of his Spirit of wholesomeness, along the path to maturity (-τελει-) of wholesomeness for agelong life.  The root, if we stay put, produces the fruit of uprightness and wholesomeness—the whole spectrum of virtues listed by Paul (Gal. 5:22-23), James (James 3:13, 17-18), and Peter (2 Peter 1:5-8).  Not surprisingly, each list explains them in terms of “fruit.”  Do we get this?  [12/1/04]