Reallocating the Locus and Role of God’s Wrath in History and Soteriology

When did we start psychoanalyzing God? In trying to rationalize why God “needed” to exert His wrath against a perfectly innocent victim in order to be able to express His graciousness to sinners, theologians have wandered far astray from their honest calling and the beaten path of apostolic explanation. For their part, the apostles taught that for his sinless, faithful obedience, Jesus was worthy only of God’s stupendous graciousness (instead of wrath) when he voluntarily surrendered (as per the divine Plan) to the envious hatred and fury of his foes, and was deserving only of God’s exaltation for that outrageous humiliation. We’re talkin’ justice here–premial justice, nothin’ penal about it! God’s wrath did show up, however, after a lapse of one generation, upon the city of Jerusalem, who had consigned God’s Anointed to a miserable cross. [4/18/12; 2/7/26]

The modern nation of Israel, which we should recognize as the prophesied Counter-Messiah, was a creation of Zionism and Dispensationalism. The latter Christian movement, under the influence of conventional secular chronology that displaces and “replaces” Biblical chronology at key points, miscalculated a host of important events in Old Testament and New Testament prophecy. Having been misled from the authentic apostolic view concerning many decisive prophecies long ago fulfilled in Christ’s career and the the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem, they have spun out volumes of vain speculations that obscure the true Gospel message of the apostles, which fundamentally universalized the application of the blessings of Abraham and required Jews to get reconciled with Gentiles by seeing incorporation into one body as the consummate goal of the Savior–a joint body!

Ironically, these modern fabricators of a counter-Messiah (antichristos) dare to label the apostolic message of trans-racial unification in Jesus Christ as “replacement theology,” AS IF THEY THEMSELVES WERE NOT GUILTY OF REPLACING BIBLICAL CHRONOLOGY WITH THE SELF-AGGRANDIZING ARTIFICE CALCULATED BY A NATIONALISTIC PAGAN PTOLEMAIC-ERA (305 B.C.-30 B.C.) EGYPTIAN PRIESTHOOD! But more on that another time. [4/19/12; 2/6-7/26]

The point of Christ’s abuse-taking and curse-taking is not that he “bore what we should have borne,”* but much rather that he bore what he should not have borne. Yet happily, that very injustice supplied the grounds for God to turn around his condemnation to death into a justification of life via resurrection from the dead, whereby much, much more was returned to Christ than he lost to Satan’s savage assault.

*Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, 3rd ed. (Eerdmans 1965) p. 61. [4/20/12]

Faustus Socinus SHOT PENAL SUBSTITUTION ALL TO HELL, WHENCE IT HAD COME. [4/30/12]

It is LOVE that sacrifices whatever is necessary to conciliate enemies so as to make peace and re-unify those who had become estranged. [5/2/12; 2/7/26]

SCRIPTURE + GOOD SENSE

Faustus Socinus (along with several generations of his Polish successors) approached theological, ethical, and ecclesiastical issues with an explicit and honest combination of Scripture plus good sense (mostly). Wielding this double-barreled weapon with strategic skill, he levelled devastating fire against Calvin’s theory of penal substitution. That he did not happen to rediscover the correct alternative is hardly a fault peculiar to him. It was scarcely possible to get this right until Christ’s resurrection came back into prominence (since apostolic days!) as a theological locus of decisive significance, i.e., until the late 20th century. Yet, however that may be, it should be clear that holy Scripture + good sense trumps Scripture + traditional dogmatic prejudice, in principle, every time. The Holy Spirit has weighed in decisively on this controverted matter. It is not hard to guess which of these couplets is an unholy alliance. [5/7/12]

Calvinism is like a dandelion. Although you may pull up all visible flowers, leaves, and stems (the “five points,” “original sin,” “predestination,” “sovereign decrees,” “imputation of Christ’s righteousness,” “eternal conscious punishment,” etc.), unless you manage to pull up the toxic root—”penal substitution“—this ‘lion will come roaring back, in due time, with all its well-known visible appendages bristling. Penal substitution harbors, at root, every distinctive of Reformed soteriology (especially in its more complete and thorough post-Reformation guise). No superficial pruning will eradicate these outgrowths that reside implicit in a rigid adherence to and elaboration of the penal/economic logic of this artificial core doctrine. One of the most striking and instructive examples of inner contradiction on this topic is the greatly enlarged second edition of the monumental study by Laurence M. Vance intended to refute the Five Points of Calvinism, The Other Side of Calvinism, revised edition (Orlando, FL: Vance Publications, 1999) 800pp: the author remained an undaunted, if foolhardy, champion of penal substitution (esp. pp.414-32)! [5/24/12; 2/5/26]

“T U L I P” Some playful toying with the Five Points of Calvinism (which so many painstaking students of Scripture have found hard to take seriously, as well.) Obviously these whimsical takes are not intended to represent their adherents’ own too-sober exposition of the points at issue!

1. “Total Depravity“—Theology in general has become depraved in many respects, but Calvinism is a textbook example of total depravity at work—every one of the Five Points is a corruption of Gospel truth, accordingly attended by psychological malaise and behavioral deviance, as candid observers have repeatedly noted.

2. “Unconditional Election“—God chooses everyone who believes the Gospel without any conditions attached! However, He rejects those who distrust the News about His Son.

3. “Limited Atonement“—Christ’s atonement is strictly limited to Adam’s descendants—human beings. Angels are not included in its benefits.

4. “Irresistible Grace“—God’s graciousness is almost irresistible. Sadly, many people do manage to resist the Holy Spirit of grace and hence eventually suffer the wrath of God and get destroyed forever. Moral: Don’t resist the drawing power of the gospel story!

5. “Perseverance of the Saints“—People must persist in faith in order to remain holy (wholesome), i.e., “saints.” [5/24/12; 2/5/26]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“ALL MY GOODNESS” Exodus 33:19

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

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

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

The Calvinistic Doctrine of Sin Comports with Its Dubious Doctrine of Salvation, Therefore Both Need to Be Corrected Simultaneously

“The just one by faith shall be living” (ho dikaios ek pisteos zesetai), Rom. 1:17, Gal. 3:11, Heb. 10:38 (adapted from Hab. 2:4). In the briefest possible compass, this pivotal declaration encapsulates the very essence of Covenantal justice/righteousness. It asserts that the righteousness/justice of the human partner to the Covenant, which is characterized by faithfulness to God, i.e., resolute obedience to His Covenantal directives/ commandments/ precepts (in other words, God’s will/desire), is met and matched (actually overmatched) by the justice/righteousness of the divine Partner to the Covenant (an ancient form of Divine-human treaty spelled out in Deuteronomy), stipulating life or living, plus its protection, as just due for the loyal/faithful human partner). The ethical requirements to which the Covenant bound its respective parties were different for each. The divine Suzerain unilaterally stipulated the faithful keeping of His directives as the kind of righteousness (dikaiosune) He desired from His human partners; in turn He promised to faithfully foster and protect life for all who obeyed Him accordingly as the kind of justice (dikaiosune) He would pay them in return. Accordingly, Jesus linked these two sides of the Covenant’s obligations together in his terse epigram: “His [God’s] directive is life agelong” (he entole autou zoe aionios estin), John 12:50.

Furthermore, it was this kind of human faithfulness to the agelong covenant/treaty (Heb. 13:20) that Jesus came to earth to render to his Father through the agelong Spirit (Heb. 9:14) in order to secure agelong redemption (Heb. 9:12) for the rest of us, namely, the divinely promised agelong inheritance (Heb. 9:15), currently enjoyed in part by our foretaste of His earnest, pledge, or down payment—the Covenant blessing of the Holy Spirit that renders even us non-Jews sons of God through Abraham’s Seed (Christ) by sonship or sonhood (traditionally translated “adoption,” but unique in details). [2/13/12; 7/29/25]

One reason why Calvinistic doctrine has led to so much punitive and penal rigor is that its penal payment theory has severely twisted it’s doctrine of sin (on top of everything else!). It characterizes any and every sin as arousing God’s reflexive prickly wrath, THUS DENYING FORCEFULLY THAT GOD IS SLOW TO GET ANGRY. This doctrinaire Reformed misrepresentation of God’s character as ‘trigger-happy’ is a slur on God’s patient disposition of mercy, kindness, and forbearance or tolerance. This is a very serious mischaracterization, but Calvinistic casting agents have managed to perpetuate this role-constricted typecasting for God despite massive Scripture to the contrary. And worse, they take great pride in their imagined “high view of sin,” which comes only at the high cost of a low view of God’s mercy, tolerance, patience, and kindness. The price is much too stiff, fostering smug callousness, self-righteous disdain, punitive overreaction, mock horror, and more—for if even God cannot actually sustain such an attitude of non-stop ire and stern disfavor in the face of the generality of human peccadillos and constitutional selfishness, how can sinful theologians pull it off with any degree of verisimilitude or aplomb—without an off-putting overcast of irritability (not a pretty picture of the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!)? The atrocities committed in the name of the Calvinistic God-caricature compare ‘favorably’ with the medieval mindset of the Roman Catholic (emphasis on Roman) church with its purgatorial and inquisitorial legacy of forced penance at sword point or ordeal by iron lady! (Body-piercing is nothing new; thumbscrews are out; waterboarding is in.)

In conclusion, the traditional Protestant doctrine of sin cries out in anguish for REFORMATION without delay or self-justifying excuses!

That a distorted doctrine of the Atonement can reflexively lead to distortions of the doctrine of Sin, or at least perpetuation of them, is only to be expected. It would be highly surprising in fact if, having reformed the doctrine of Atonement to conform with the restorative justice of God, we were not to run across incompatible holdovers, incongruous atavisms from medieval notions of sin, including redemptive penal suffering as its divine cure. [2/22/12; 8/1, 3/25]

If righteousness is “not through law,” i.e., not through attempts by sinners to keep it flawlessly (since that’s flatly impossible for them), but through the flawless faithfulness of Jesus Christ (since that was happily possible for him!), then the latter assuredly need not have demanded wrath, which the Law of Moses threatened for aggravated lawlessness. Instead, Christ’s faithful obedience to his Father blessed him non-stop with His favor or graciousness. It was in this graciousness that Jesus “tasted death for the sake of every person” (Heb. 2:9) by dying on the cross under the fury and indignation of Satan and his human pawns. By a delightful irony of poetic (far from prosaic!) justice, this injurious and ultimately lethal assault and bloodshed cried out for immediate and visibly public justice, handily forthcoming on the Third Day in Christ’s resurrection from the dead and the glory following. [2/23/12]

If you happened to arrive at the realization that the Lord Jesus Christ might not or could not or should not (for whatever conjectured reasons) have suffered God’s wrath and condemnation at the Cross, what evidence in Scripture would you start looking for to confirm or disconfirm such a thesis? How would you sustain your assumption? What sort of exegetical mistakes would you start suspecting traditional theology of perpetrating? What reasons would you start guessing lay behind these misrepresentations? What kind of reactions and rationalizations would you expect from the defenders of the traditional position? How would you approach the task of correcting their misconceptions? Would you ever expect the kind of reactions Jesus got from the chiefs, lawyers, scribes and Pharisees of his day? How did he handle their arguments and ensuing criminal behavior? Would you emulate him? What might follow? [2/23/12; 8/825]

The process of “imputing faith for [eis, “into” or “as,” reflecting an accounting sitz im leben) justness/ righteousness” was never intended as the summum bonum of a believer’s saving benefits, but only as the qualifying condition for receiving “the Gift of [i.e., issuing from (God’s)] justice [to the Lord Jesus for his obedient submission to wrongly exacted bloodshed—Rom. 5:19, the precursor to 6:16, 15:18, & 16:19, all alike sandwiched between Rom. 1:5 and 16:26]” (Rom. 5:17), in other words, the Holy Spirit dispensed via Christ’s ushering in the New Covenant in his sinlessly innocent blood. This is the actual, substantive “dispensing of righteousness/justice” (2 Cor. 3:9) that constitutes the reality of that New Covenant. It enters this age and space when we trust Jesus as Christ, the Lord, and it culminates in the coming age when we actually inherit our portion in the Kingdom of God. So “imputed righteousness” (as orthodox Protestant tradition spins it) is in reality but the threshold of “imparted righteousness” (i.e., the Holy Spirit), which is none other than “the unspeakable Gift” of 2 Cor. 9:15. [2/23/12; 7/31/25; 8/1/25]

I find it interesting and gratifying to observe that after I arrived at and settled upon the premises concerning the nature of the Lord’s (wrongful) sufferings at the Cross and God’s (rightful) justice at his Resurrection, all the corollary exegetical adjustments started to cascade steadily, if not exactly smoothly, into place. Many of these moves seemed to have defenders somewhere or other along the extended sojourn of subsequent historical theology. However, not all these diverse exegetical thrusts succeeded in entering the mainstream. A few seemed to be stalled and parked on theological sidetracks gathering dust and rust, abandoned and derelict, never or rarely showing up in modern studies, or merely as quaint relics of idiosyncratic minds at best. Some, however, were towed repeatedly into notoriety only to get maligned and ridiculed, even despite prima facie plausibility. Or this very obloquy might render them worthy of a footnote and a cautionary tale about the ease of seduction or peril of superficial or hasty conclusions (and here an ironic touché!).

However, the real reason for their shameful abandonment has now been plausibly advanced as being the common lack of a systematic intuition regarding the authentic contours of the original Gospel message. Without such a generalized pervasive insight, discrete passages, even when satisfactorily expounded grammatically or syntactically, and particular words, even if accurately appraised semantically or lexically, still do not automatically divulge their original connections with the genuine ancient apostolic explanation-as-a-whole, and so eventually drop out of sight under the disfavor of domineering ideological mainstays. It may be time to resurrect these poorly embalmed historic remains, dust them off, and give them their due. If so, then the resurrectionary justice of the Father must certainly get credited in the revised annals of theological revolutions with such a culpably neglected but epochal upset play against the diabolical forces of fury and wrath that nailed His Son to the Cross on Golgotha. Yet what meters have meanwhile registered the seismic shift, and where is the elaborated paradigm that reflects it and heralds its cosmic benefits around the globe to our own frenetically wayward generation? Where are the documentarians when we need them most? Why must we still slog wearily through the misty obscurity of toxic Protestant jargon and sectarian posturing? Where, after all, is the “always reforming” (Semper Reformanda) church of celebrated…legend? [2/24/12; 7/31/25; 8/3/25]

Here I can’t resist drawing attention to the subtly yet deeply ironic title of a Festschrift in honor of the sixty-fifth birthday of a renowned Reformed scholar, then President and Professor of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary in Escondido, CA—Always Reformed: Essays in Honor of W. Robert Godfrey, Westminster Seminary California (2010/2012). To trumpet the ascription “always ReformED” is a disgraceful declension from the progressive task of anyone who claims to be a faithful adherent to the sole ever-abiding Word of God in holy Scripture. When we recall that the Reformed tradition ceased reformING way back in 1619 with the premature closure of the Canons of Dordrecht, the irony becomes deeply disturbing, yet evidently was not…at least as matters stood in 2010, and hence now becomes a matter of profound sorrow. Weep here. For settling on “always reformed” amounts to taking pride in being always wrong, or at best, perpetually teenaged. But whereas I heartily sympathize with the vigor of youth, I hesitate to glorify the stubborn know-it-all attitude of that callow golden age, much less to cast its opinions in concrete. [8/8/25]

PONDER THIS…

Was Jesus unrecognizable to the Emmaus road disciples (Luke 24:13-35) and, indeed, to the rest of his gathered disciples (Luke 24:36-53) because he was healed (although not yet glorified) beyond his “deformity” alluded to in the great Messianic passage of Isaiah 52:13-53:4? [4/19/06]

We could save ourselves a lot of trouble and grief by not trying to save ourselves from trouble and grief. [4/19/06]

If “God sacrificed His Son in order that the divine law should be upheld…despite mankind’s infinite offence,” as some theologians venture to allege (e.g., Sydney E. Ahlstrom, in the Introduction to the 1975 reprint edition of Horace Bushnell’s The Vicarious Sacrifice, Grounded in Principles of Universal Obligation, 1865), then how can Paul be so cavalier about the Law in 1 Timothy 1, Galatians 2-3, Romans 3-8, as well as Jesus’ one-upmanship in the “Sermon on the Mount” and his controversies with the Jews? One would have to distinguish Jesus’ honoring another “divine Law” than the one Moses had given and which the Jewish teachers were custodians of. Yet if this distinction is conceded, then Jesus must himself have been the revealer of that more “divine” Law. But why would he have to sacrifice himself to “uphold” it or honor it (unless to “uphold” it against the lesser authority of Moses…and his hypocritical custodians)? [4/19/06; 12/25/25]

Shalom is the state of affairs where all accounts have been squared—all outstanding debts paid up, all rightful obligations fulfilled, and ALL INJUSTICES OVERCOMPENSATED according to divine law and equity.

War is the diametric opposite of this, where wrongs are tragically overcompensated, instead, by devastation and desolation. War is hence an overreaction in the opposite direction from fruitfulness and joy. It is the incursion of wrath and correlative loss and destruction. [4/20/06]

XTREME JUSTIFICATION

In the Old Covenant, the priests ate from most of the sacrifices, with the exception of the sin[-offering] and trespass[-offering]. This prefigures our living from Messiah’s sacrifice, deriving life from his sin[-offering] for our sakes. This is now also figured by the Lord’s Supper. But the deeper reality is that his self-sacrifice justified God in reversing the objective injustice of what was done to him precisely because of his perfect obedience in subjecting his just soul to such an outrage of indignity, dishonor, abuse, and mortification. His right broke through their wrong by the act of God’s Solomonic judgment simultaneously conquering evil and vindicating good…in one Wholesome Breath!

Therefore we very well can speak (pace Jürgen Moltmann) of “the resurrection of an expiatory offering” (The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology [Harper & Row, 1974] p. 183), provided that expiation is not regarded as including “propitiation,” i.e., a “paying off the Judge” (a bribe!). But the Old Testament does not reckon them as “propitiatory” either, so there is no contradiction or tension between the covenants.

The sacrifices of the Old Covenant also had, therefore, a resurrectionary outcome in the figurative shadow of their bestowing life on those who consumed them. And even the inedible sacrifices pictured a life-giving function within the nation of Israel that would have suffered death and destruction by disease, pestilence, and enemies had they not been faithfully performed…although the exact mechanism involved has often been mistakenly interpreted as “propitiating” God’s righteous indignation against their sins. No, no! These rites called down God’s graciousness, to be sure, but not because they staved off His wrath against sin. And when Israel thought otherwise, God even shattered their ritual practices—think of the Exile!—rather than allow them this illusion of “sacrificial, propitiatory protection” available for the mere mechanical performance. For they all prefigured the accomplishment of Messiah’s personal protective sacrifice, the exact mechanism of which was a subjection under the undeviating favor and well-pleased heart of his Father—a graciousness now shown us, in turn, for Messiah’s sake! [4/18/06; 11/22/25]

What we behold on an intimate viewing of Jesus’ crucifixion-and-resurrection are the two epicenters of salvation. In their juxtaposition is justification—for the Father’s actions, for the Son’s actions, and for human salvation from God’s threatened wrath against stubborn unrepentance. It’s all right there. What’s more, there’s eminent justification for the evil in the world, temporary and ultimately reversible as it is.

This is the secret hidden since the disruption of the world by sin. The exact circuitry of this decisive turning-point in the history of mankind was never before made known in such a concentrated manner until now. Here was an amplifying circuit achieved by a feedback loop secured in a firm covenant containing mutual promises between the Father and the Son from time immemorial. Here the sub-critical mass of human injustice was explosively thrust into xtreme proximity with the sub-critical mass of divine justice, yet safely within the protective shield and shelter of a single Mediator who, as both divine and human (besides being perfectly sinless while in principle mortal), could both suffer xtreme injustice (all the way through death and beyond, to the Unseen), but then enjoy xtreme vindication within moments, historically speaking. THE BLAST WAS COSMIC! THE BLINDING LIGHT HEALS OUR BLINDNESS! THE DEAFENING SOUND CURES OUR DEAFNESS! XTREME LIFE SPRANG FORTH AND DEATH WAS ANNIHILATED! [4/18/06; 11/22/25]

By raising Lazarus, Jesus overwhelmingly reversed Mary and Martha’s brief sorrow. Yet even Jesus wept only moments before this jubilant resurrection, effected by the Father, by the Hand of the Spirit, at His Son’s request. There is a time to weep and a time to joyfully dry our tears. [4/18/06; 11/22/25]

One would have thought that Paul Peter Waldenström’s superb (if gently devastating) treatments of the “wrath-of-God-against-Jesus” theme would have put it to rest in its well-deserved grave once and for all. Yet it came back to life again and buried him in obscurity instead. Why is that?

If the strange misrepresentations of Waldenström’s position in theological encyclopedias and dictionaries are indicative, it may be largely because he did not quite achieve resurrectionary closure to bring his basically correct understanding to the triumphant climax of a satisfying victory. But with the elapse of a century that milestone has been reached…and overreached! [4/18/06] So when’s the victory celebration? Where’s the party?

“THE GRACE OF GOD”

All my life, I have never quite understood “the grace of God” as it is formulaically known. It never really computed. It did not make sense. It always seemed like the highly processed byproduct or residue of lofty, arbitrarily selective calculations pertaining to a rather complicated manufacturing process using precise conversion units and high-heat, high-pressure molecular-exchange mechanisms. Once the theologianeers finished laboring over the arcane procedures, the product resembled something cranked from an assembly line, churned out of a factory. And after all that rigamarole, the thing still didn’t compute!

Not until every last joule of divine wrath was banished from the cross did the calculations really start to click in the core of my understanding. Ever so slowly, the ultimately simple and universal formula—the E=mc² of theology—started to take shape in my mind. The inner mind of Messiah was unfolding in magnificent, wondrous, marvelous perfection at long last! The Father’s heart was peering through the evaporating mists of well-meaning but² obscure “words without knowledge” that long usage and speciously hallowed tradition had passed down as “Gospel truth.” The new computations, to the contrary, actually yield an answer that comports with real life. All the math works! [4/18/06; 11/22/25]

“Var står det skrivet?” (Waldenström)

Where is Calvary, Golgotha, the Cross ever declared in Scripture to be an exhibit of God’s judgment?  “Var står det skrivet?“—in the words of the famous slogan of Paul Peter Waldenström (1838-1917), leader of the Swedish free church movement and theologian of the Atonement (somewhat more accurately understood, Acts 18:24-26)—”Where stands that Written?” in covenantal Scripture.  Answer: nowhere at all.  [4/17/06; 11/14/25]

What’s the purpose, for Heaven’s sake, of letting sin (and its consequent evils) linger interminably on planet earth?  Why has God allowed it…allowed for it…designed it into the very nature of interpersonal relations as a possibility…even a virtual certainty?  Is it not so that we have room to learn to hate it and avoid it and seek a solution to it?  God’s ultimate intention for human beings is our maturation, and that necessitates voluntary keeping of His directions to maturity.  Sin has its own built-in evil consequences within the created order.  Why need God superadd more ‘penalties’ onto the shoulders of Jesus at the Cross in order to “pay for sin“—something never even attributed to Christ’s crucifixion?  Sins need to be forgiven, pardoned, released, washed away, cleaned off, erased, etc.  But “paid for”?  “Where stands that Written?”  Wasn’t the deadly-‘successful’ crucifixion in itself a demonstration of pardon, whereby God relinquished his divine right to avenge His beloved Son’s unjustified execution?  How much more so was it a sign of Heaven’s forgiveness back to back with the decree of resurrection that magnanimously paid back His viciously victimized Son with super-compensating life in tandem with absolute sovereignty over the created universe!  Such an incomparably exalted destiny far more than reverses—indeed, thereby truly and satisfactorily avenges with ultra-compensation—the crime of the cross.  [4/17/06; 11/14/25]

Furthermore, if sin got “paid for at the Cross,” then what do words like pardon and forgiveness even mean?  REPAYMENT AND PARDON COUNTERMAND ONE ANOTHER!  So if God forgives because He got ‘repaid’ by the death of His Son, we have a problem!  As God is our model for righteousness, we too would be justified in forgiving a debt ONLY AFTER REPAYMENT!  [4/18/06; 11/14/25]

Why has the so-called Second Coming (παρουσια—“Presence”) of the Lord been delayed?  In light of the “CROSSURRECTION” dyad that spelled the arrival of the Kingdom at Pentecost, A.D. 30, the answer becomes clear.  The Messiah had a right to fellow-heirs in his Kingdom-come on the new earth.  But it takes time to raise quality sons.  They have to be tested for faithful obedience to the royal directives so that they become mature and qualified to manage a whole planet.  This process is not the work of a day or a year or a century or even a millennium.  This day of salvation and graciousness has been prolonged…yet not interminably.  We individually must endure to the end…and will all together graduate to inherit our joint allotments with Christ when he appears in his Presence.  (Heb. 11:39-40)  [4/18/06]

According to the apostolic understanding of Jesus’ resurrection, that pivotal event was not the outcome of his ‘being divine’ but rather the award for his being obedient and subordinate to his Father’s desire for him at every point, every stage, through every trial of his human life and career, in light of the radically unjust deprivation of its mounting, natural, rightful outcome:  the crown and throne of Israel.  This wrongful reversal cried out to Heaven for a SUPERVENING REVERSAL BY WAY OF RIGHTFUL OVERCOMPENSATION, in line with the logic of Israel’s Old Covenant with the Lord.  God had made irreversible, inalienable pledges and promises and oaths to Abraham and Jacob and David.  These must be fulfilled at all costs, for the reputation of Jehovah Himself was at stake…as well as the credibility of Scripture.

Thus Jesus was recalled from the Unseen in a stupendous climactic coup that left everyone gasping with astonishment and wonder!  Jesus was alive again!  He was back!  And he was…mad?!  HEAVENS NO!  He was brimming with the vibrancy of celestial power, demurely veiled, but not without evident tokens of the supernal realm of which he was the very first citizen and forerunner.  He was HAPPY! He was back to make the joy of others complete!  He commissioned the Proclamation of human emancipation from demonic thralldom!  We were to start exerting the rights of our newly unveiled image of sonship—the character of nobility, the regal bearing of heirs apparent to the universe!

And we were to herald—shout!—this Proclamation of God’s Kingdom having descended in the tangible power of God’s super-abundantly granted Spirit of graciousness to every nation.  For Messiah had won GRAND PRIZE:  THE NATIONS, FOR HIS INHERITANCE! (This special offer not good where forbidden or otherwise restricted…Not!…subject to all applicable local laws…Not!)

None of the above makes good sense merely as ‘proof’ of Messiah’s ‘divinity.’  To be sure, he could not have achieved these without having been, in truth, the only-born God, Jehovah in-the-flesh for our salvation.  [4/18/06; 11/14/25]