IN Christ was NO SIN, consequently, ON Christ was NO DIVINE WRATH. End of discussion.

We can be grateful for C. H. Dodd’s inexplicable lapses of citations in his famous treatment of כפר and ΊΛΑΣΤΗΡΙΟΝ (“atone“) in the Septuagint (LXX) and some other ancient literature. The odd incompleteness of his scholarship roused his theological opponents to a more thorough examination of Scripture (both Hebrew and LXX) along with especially Hellenistic Jewish authors such as Philo and Josephus. The delightfully ironic upshot of this adversarial exploration and mutual critique would appear to be at least a partial yet strong vindication of Dodd’s controversial conclusions. This is the more persuasive precisely because the complementary investigations were performed by scholars with contrary assumptions. Clearly, there was no sympathetic collusion between these antithetic parties. So, what we learn from both skeins, taken together, is of heightened impartiality and interest even today as we pursue a comparison of both positions with the independent research of, e.g., Adolph E. Knoch, who, though an active contemporary, was not a public participant in the historic controversy. [5/20/11; 5/14/24]

Every time an Israelite lay hands on a sacrificial beast’s head he was confessing he had a hand in its death and likewise, prophetically, in the slaying of the “Lamb of God,” their own Messiah and Savior, God’s own Son. That ritual act was, ipso facto, their confession of sin (in the sin[-offering]) and guilt (in the guilt[-offering]), and similarly at Passover (mid-April), the Day of Sheltering (“Atonement,” mid-Ocrober, 6 months later), and the daily morning and evening sacrifices. [5/23/11; 5/14/24]

In Christ was no sin, therefore, on Christ could come no divine wrath. For this reason he constituted the ideal protective cover, shielding, or shelter (כפרת; ΊΛΑΣΤΗΡΙΟΝ) concerning sins; only divine graciousness could issue toward him from above. Therefore, all who are included in Christ by faith (depicted by baptism) are continuously in God’s graciousness that Christ supremely deserves as the fruit of his faithful obedience to his Father through all, and exceedingly severe, tests. Consequently, all who remain in Christ stay safe from God’s indignation against their sins. To his blood, which represents his soul or sentient existence, is attributed his faithfulness, which deserved not only his Fther’s graciousness, but also a very great just award (ΔΙΚΑΙΩΜΑ) from God’s just judgment. This award, the Holy Spirit, comes, therefore, as a gift to all who likewise exert faith in God’s Explanation of this saving Proclamation, which is God’s power for salvation. Christ’s resurrection was the heavenly seal of God’s favor/graciousness toward him. The superexcessive magnitude of that graciousness is meant for our benefit as otherwise hopeless sinners with no escape from the fate of death that Adam’s sin consigned us to. The grace of Christ’s resurrection is our confident entree into God’s graciousness as well. [5/25/11]

God could not have used the exceedingly slow process of evolution to create life forms for the simple (but true) reason that he sent His Son to earth in the form of Jesus and commissioned him to heal and cure and restore diseased, maimed people instantaneously. Furthermore, Jesus, in turn, commissioned his apostles and other disciples to do likewise in order to validate his Proclamation of salvation from death. Moreover, Jesus was raised from among the dead by God as a powerful sign to confirm our own future destiny if we endure faithful to him and his message. What is the likelihood that a God of such amazing power and care for His creatures would employ such a clumsy, improbable method as evolution to construct beings that He could reconstruct in moments? Not a chance. It’s utterly inconceivable to a normal mind. Salvation is re-creation, not re-evolution. [5/26/11; 5/14/24]

The very narrative of Scripture, in addition to the explicit declarations of God to human beings, reveals the regularities of God’s behavior and the “necessities” entailed by His character traits. These are often a far cry from the orthodox teachings that have been the stock-in-trade of theology. A storyline can reveal, as no amount of abstract theology can, the nuances of God’s behavior over multiple generations, and it can fill otherwise abstruse words with human-scale meanings and relatable contents. The so-called “demands,” “requirements,” and “necessities” of such presumed staples as God’s “[penal!] justice,” look very different from the narrative standpoint of wholesome Scripture than they do from the abstruse angle of scholastic theology. [5/26/11]

Penal substitution short-circuits the full humanity of the Savior, wrongly invoking his undoubted deity to rationalize “infinite suffering” as the modus operandi of the atonement instead of the Father’s premial justice via ebulliant award of damages.

The common and popular doctrinal reflex to account for the Resurrection of Jesus by rationalizing that “Jesus is God,” goes far to explain why his resurrection (plus further exaltation, coronation, etc.) is not understood as a REWARD from God for his faithful obedience through horrific opposition and agony, which profoundly tempted him to sin by distrusting his Father’s goodness and reviling his cruel tormentors. Consequently, we may find it difficult to relate to Christ in our own walk of faith. We don’t see him as the “Inaugurator and Perfecter” (Hebrews 12:2) of the very same kind of faith that gives us the victory, too. We don’t take proper comfort from his ordeal and therefore easily forget that we are called to walk in his same footsteps, as our pioneering human Forerunner, our fellow-human Shepherd through life’s tempests and temptations.

The essence of the problem here is that we have too docetic a view of Jesus, i.e., an insufficient view of his full, robust, flesh-and-blood humanity. This is largely a result of a type of ‘trinitarian’ teaching deleteriously influenced by the penal substitution opinion concerning the atonement. This latter view inherently tends to short-circuit a more complete and nuanced comprehension of Christ’s accomplishment as a human being for our salvation. We need to grasp better the exact reason why he was given a body by God in order to achieve our salvation. For he was not rewarded as a god; that would have done no good for us mere human types. Nor if he had become an angel would we have benefited. For we are sinful human beings, suffering from a mortality and resulting corruption and depravity from which we cannot escape by our own waning powers.

Yet Jesus—God’s unique Son, begotten before the ages of time, then born into a fully human body, descended from Israel’s King David—was anointed with additional power of the Holy Spirit without measure, in order to achieve what no human being or angel or “mere” god could have. For if he had nothing of created property to lose due to injustice, then God would have had no just occasion to unveil His theretofore concealed magnitude of premial (or rewarding) justice to the degree necessary to embrace the whole sinful human family within God’s graciousness in return for their ‘mere’ trust in the Proclamation of Jesus as the promised Anointed One. [5/10/11; 5/11/24]

The Gospel of God’s Kingdom is most fundamentally about the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from among the dead. This is its bedrock. Upon this generic foundation, Paul builds his argument concerning God’s impartial justice toward both Jews and non-Jews, in the book of Romans. His argument establishes why faith is a just means of salvation for both people groups, aside and apart from the Law of Moses (although well attested by that Law, à la its account of Abraham’s faith, long before the events at Mt. Sinai). [5/13/11, suggested by reading Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Justice in Love (Eerdmans, 2011).]

The Law of Moses does not per se require retribution (“payback”) to the offender in return for their injury to the victim, but compensation, or, rather, just compensation, which is to say, super-compensation to the victim by the offender. In other words, the evildoer is required to do good to the one harmed, so as to “make up for” (or “atone for” or “cover“) the injury.

In the case of the murder inflicted upon the sinless Son of God, since no perpetrator, singly or jointly, could possibly accomplish a good sufficient to repay the evil of death, God graciously stepped in to serve justice to Jesus—a justice so gigantic that it includes all mortals who believe this Proclamation!

Most significantly, this means of accessing God’s graciousness excludes boasting in any personal achievement by sinful human beings. And although in Romans and Galatians Paul is especially concerned about the kind of boasting attendant upon diligent Law-keeping, it would obviously take into account any human boasting by which sinners compare their dubious qualifications among one another, with invidious consequences. [5/13/11]

Jehovah & Son, Inc. is our INSURANCE CARRIER

The Lord Jesus Christ, by bearing (phor-/pher-) his people’s (Israel’s) sins and offering (prosphor- /prospher-) himself to God on behalf of the transgressions of others, thereby became the indemnification or “insurance carrier” for them. [5/6/11]

Isaiah’s words (53:4), “We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted,” is a stunning echo—A THUNDERCLAP!—of the Book of Job. For all of Job’s “comforters” FALSELY IMPUTED SIN TO JOB IN THE VERY SAME WAY. And such imputation was exposed by God as SIN! He demanded sacrifices for such wickedly bad accounting! Furthermore, God SUPERCOMPENSATED Job for his unjust suffering of abusive reviling as well as of his physical pains. [5/6/11]

“He said that He would exterminate them, except that Moses, His chosen one, stood in the breach before Him, to turn back His fury from bringing ruin [on them].” Psalm 106:23 (Exodus 32:7-14, 30-35; Deuteronomy 9:14, 25-29; Ezekiel 20)

If even Moses, by his intercession, could turn back God’s wrath or indignation from destroying the poeple for their sins, then it seems plausible that the expenditure of God’s anger is not some absolute necessity, and He may indeed—as Moses pled for—show mercy instead. The rationale that somewhere, “somewhen,” He must “nevertheless” expend that treasured-up wrath “in order to ‘pay for’ those sins” is, to be sure, beyond mere conjecture; it is downright blasphemy! For it imputes a “deeper” motive than “mere” mercy; it alleges some primal, cosmic need to vent wrath against every sin “before” and “so that” he can be gracious! SUCH TEACHING BREEDS SUSPICION AND DREAD TOWARD GOD OF A SORT THAT UNDERMINES OUR WHOLEHEARTED ATTACHMENT TO “OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN.” IN FACT IT CAN CRIMP AND POSSIBLY PARALYZE OUR WORSHIP OF HIM!

The authentic Biblical teaching concerning God’s justice, however, displays perfect harmony with His mercy, longsuffering, kindness, patience, and, ultimately, His love. God’s final goal is human maturity in love, and He bends every effort (and every “rule”) to insure the attainment of that goal. This means that not only are we to forgive one another’s sins (which is right and just) but SO MUST GOD! If He is to be our model for just and upright behavior, and if Jesus was the perfect exhibit of that behavioral model in earthly flesh, then no hidden agenda, no “deeper motive” of “penal payment” hiding in the wings as His special prerogative, is in the least possible in such a universe. So be assured, and behave accordingly…God be with you! [5/7/11; 5/11/24]

Spot-checking Some Distinctives of the Premial View

PISTIS (ΠΙΣΤΙΣ) should usually be rendered “faithfulness” when attributed to Jesus Christ.

HAMARTIA (ΆΜΑΡΤΙΑ) can denote “sin-offering” in key New Testament passages reflecting the ritual sacrificial language of Leviticus (LXX).

HAIMA (ΆΙΜΑ)—blood (of sacrificial rituals) represents the diverse powers of resurrected life.

Romans 5:8-10 equates “blood” with “life,” when the syntactical structure is accurately aligned, not with “death.”

DIKAIOMA (ΔΙΚΑΙΩΜΑ) in Romans 5:16,18 & 8:3 signifies a “just award” (judicially granted Christ by God, namely, the Holy Spirit of life via resurrection), and not either a “righteous act/deed” (done by Christ, i.e., “suffering the cross”) (5:16,18) or “righteousness” (as inner moral virtue) (8:3), as traditionally translated.

“The righteousness of God” in the New Testament is uniformly premial (not penal) and was supremely exemplified by God’s historic act of raising Jesus from the dead.

The cross was a place of diabolical rage and fury plus human condemnation, but decidedly not a locus of divine wrath or condemnation in any sense whatsoever.

The victory of the cross was that Jesus remained sinless even in the face of the most extreme and unjust suffering of abuse, rather than either justifying himself or using his rightful messianic prerogatives to avenge himself. He waited for God’s justice/justification. Therefore, he won the just award of immortal life, and some!

God’s justice toward His Son was exclusively rewarding (premial), not at all penal.

God’s justice toward His Son was ultracompensatory.

Jesus’ ransom was a heroic exchange and not at all a penal substitution (so there was no economic equivalence or parity at play).

Jesus was not “forsaken” in the Unseen (ΆΙΔΗΣ, hades), Acts 2:25-28, Psalm 16:8-11 LXX, and only briefly “forsaken” (Psalm 22:1) on the cross to permit the strategic death of his body and compassionate cessation of his suffering abuse (which, after all, was never intended as any sort of exchange currency whose gross amount must weigh in on the extent of mercy or grace or atonement or salvation or anything else in God’s possession, for that matter, neo-liberal, zero-sum economics to the contrary notwithstanding).

God’s wrath/indignation fell not upon His Messiah at the cross, but upon all Jerusalem before that generation passed away (70 A.D.), on account of what they perpetrated by the cross as well as to earlier prophets.

To “bear” sins is to “absorb” whatever harm and loss they cause, instead of retaliating (i.e., avenging oneself). Therefore, it denotes forgiving or pardoning others of their sins against us, not some phantom notion of “getting imputed with sins” ourselves.

We should leave avenging of ourselves to God, not because avenging is wrong per se for human beings (after all, that’s what “the higher authorities” have been officially appointed by God to do, Rom. 13:1-7), but because only God can do so with truly satisfying justice, sans overreactions or lurking self-interests and hidden agendas.

Adam’s sin was not “imputed” to his descendants (rendering them guilty for them, too).

Our sins are not “imputed” to Christ (rendering him guilty before God and worthy of wrath).

Christ’s righteousness is not “imputed” (ΛΟΓΙΖ-, counted, accounted) to us who believe (allegedly rendering us righteous before God).

The Holy Spirit in superabundance was part of Christ’s just award from God for his enduring obedience to his Father’s precepts even through a treacherous, prolonged public execution.

The Holy Spirit in abundance overflows to believing sinners and actually effects the internal cleansing from our sins.

The Explanation of the Proclamation is the power of salvation and alone possessses the ability to generate faith because it provides the abundant eye-witness testimony required to validate it.

The function of believing is an ineradicable capacity of divinely-crafted human nature, which God fashioned to be dependent on evidence and proof for its proper foundation and direction.

All who are “in Christ” by faith and baptism are “dead TO” sins, offenses, lusts, and foreskin/’uncircumcision’ (Eph. 2:1, 5, Col. 2:13, properly translated, cf. Romans 6:1-14); no scripture speaks of anyone being “dead IN” sin, etc.

When Adam sinned, death “passed through to all mankind, whereupon [ΕΦΩ, literally “on/upon which”] all sinned” (Rom. 5:12), i.e., precisely the inverse causality from the Vulgate’s (Jerome’s) culpable mistranslation, “because” (which in Greek would require ΔΙΑ, with the accusative case) and Augustine’s notorious exploitation of it. “Original sin” is therefore a serious misnomer and can only lead to spurious inferences and doctrinal confusion.

The resurrection of Jesus was the supreme historic event where God was justified and Jesus was justified. On the strength of that event, all who trust God are likewise justified and, accordingly, receive the Spirit of Life.

Jesus was not saved at the cross but, much rather, destroyed there, in sight of throngs of eyewitnesses (or haven’t you read the Bible?). He was saved by his resurrection, and that salvation by God precipitated the salvation of all others who trust him as Savior.

Human sovereignty and authority, also over our own bodily and psychical faculties, have not been revoked; they account for what is commonly, popularly, but erroneously categorized under the rubric of ‘freewill.’

God’s graciousness was not ‘bought‘ by Christ’s sufferings of abuse, therefore it is not limited, metered, or calculated commensurate with them.

Sins have not been “paid for“; they neither need to, ought to, nor can be. Sacrifices were never intended for “payment“; much rather, they prophetically pre-figured the voluntary self-sacrifice of the Son and Heir of God, the King of Israel, in order to win a just repayment from God in return for that incomparaable injustice so as to ransom sinful humanity from death and its sting, alike.

Adam’s posterity ‘pay for’ (if you insist…but see Romans 6:7 and enveloping context) their own sins simply by dying. However, to gain newness of life we need to identify with Christ’s wrongful death and rightful resurrection by way of faith and baptism.

God only warned Adam of death if he should ever eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, yet not of ‘spiritual death,’ much less ‘eternal death‘ (Genesis 2:16-17). Christ’s own death (not some postulated ‘eternal‘ or ‘spiritual‘ vagary) was a quite sufficient injustice inflicted upon this sinlessly innocent man so that God was induced to render him the supercompensating justice of resurrection from the dead plus royal exaltation to David’s promised throne over the earth. Oh, and did I mention the inexpressible boon of the Holy Spirit?

“The righteousness of God” and “the faithfulness of Christ Jesus” are complementary covenantal expressions as employed by Paul’s arguments in Romans, Galatians, and Philippians.

2 Corinthians 5:21 makes reference to Christ being made a “sin [offering],” not a “sin” per se! Such normative usage is marbled throughout Leviticus. The clincher? The very function of that ritual “sin” was precisely to constitute the offerer ritually “righteous” again. Christ Jesus ushered in the prophesied real McCoy once for all on Golgotha; that real “righteousness,” in turn, was dispensed abroad at the following Pentecost, i.e., God’s promised Holy Spirit in colossal outpour (2 Corinthians 3:2-9)—God’s very own personal righteousness to all who dare to believe the News!

Romans 8:3 also makes reference to God sending His own Son an “[offering] concerning sin.” This was God’s quintessential conciliatory, propitiatory, peacemaking gesture vis a vis a long-alienated, still-desperate humanity starving, thirsting, gasping for life.

The Biblical concept of the Levitical blood sacrifices regards them as prophetic figures of the most extreme sin[-offering] of treasonously crucifying their designated Savior. Their aggregate fulfillment and radical supercession by way of the Savior’s resurrection forever nullified and dismantled the Levitical ritual system going forward.

Paul’s epistle to the Romans nowhere develops a “theology of the cross” in the slightest degree; quite the contrary, a “theology of the resurrection” is his obsessive focus. [5/2,4-6/11; 5/1-2/24]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHRIST’S RESURRECTION:

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

Made peace without violence on the part of God and Jesus

Justified God and Christ before the world

Proved the graciousness of God in spite of human viciousness

Proved that God had all along been conciliatory toward mankind

Proved that God rescues the righteous against all odds

Proved that Christ’s crucifixion was unjust in the extreme

Proved that Christ never suffered God’s wrath at all

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To deny the 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]

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

secret regeneration

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]