God’s mercy does not and can not make up for the absence or neglect of His premial, restorative justice. Mercy is only the relaxing of penal justice, not the execution of premial justice. Accordingly, David does not cry out for mercy but for [premial] justice in his extremity of oppression from the assaults of injustice! Why don’t we get this? Simply because the leaders of the Protestant Reformation ironically could not recognize rewarding, restorative, premial justice as of any significance in salvation! [8/22/09]
The Calvinistic doctrine of “the propitiation of divine wrath” rests upon “failure to appreciate what the Atonement IS,” to adapt John Murray’s words in defense of that doctrine in Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Eerdmans/Banner of Truth, 1961 [1955]), p. 32. If Calvinists even merely paid due honor to the usage and contexts of kaphar/-ilas- as never, ever being associated as in their stock phrase, above, they might start to “appreciate” its hallowed usage by the Holy Spirit in association with sin instead of with God’s wrath. But their own theory–the work of their own hands, the device of their own hearts–has become a blind, deaf, and dumb idol that replicates its own handicaps in their own words. [8/22/09]
The highest, the grandest, the most noble and splendid work of God, aside from begetting His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, before the ages of time, is to have created Adam in His own image and according to His own likeness, that is, to have made someone who shares His own qualities of lordship, authority, power, and control–someone who can think, judge, explain…dialogue! This all is the stuff of “free will” (a misnomer), since, in effect, sovereignty = “free will“. [8/22/09]
John Calvin was a fideist, which equates to an absolutism regarding the role of faith. For him, faith just “is” or it “isn’t” in the human heart, and it has to be put there by a “sovereign” decree of God for no discernible (on our part) reason whatever. And the motive? An irresistible “grace“. The means? An adventitious “regeneration: imposed by the Holy Spirit without regard to “anything” within the lucky recipient. Calvin had no faith in the Word of God being able to evoke faith by virtue of its own witness to the Divine power that exalted Christ to glory via cross and resurrection! This gross dishonoring of the Gospel’s inherent power led to a gross underestimation of grace, then a gross depreciation of human faith, which necessitated a gross disrespect for individual human sovereignty and self-authorization. Calvin pursued this slippery slope to the very bottom. For, given all these minimizations, THERE WAS NO NEED FOR AN ATONEMENT WIDE ENOUGH TO COVER ANY MORE THAN THE ARBITRARILY PRIVILEGED FEW WHOM GOD HAD TO SHOEHORN INTO THE KINGDOM BY FORCE IN ORDER FOR THEM TO BELIEVE HIS FECKLESS “GOSPEL”. Once we have finally grasped the sickening magnitude of Calvin’s DIS-GRACING of God’s magnanimous graciousness, of Jehovah Supreme (!), we have the key to unlock all the shackles of his peculiar theology, link by dread link. Then we can stride out of his decretal dungeon into the Light, freed, graced, empowered, rehumanized! And best of all, ready for action, duly commissioned to herald a throbbing, electrifying, emancipating GOSPEL concerning the premial justice that fairly recompensed the appallingly abused Savior of all mankind, the Lord Jesus, Messiah, by raising him from among the dead and giving him ROYAL GLORY AT GOD’S OWN RIGHT SIDE. And that’s how, by believing that Proclamation, we can get on the “right side of God” too!
John Calvin did not believe in such a believable Gospel and so resorted to a paltry, pathetic fideism that did away with “proofs” and “evidences” and strong testimony, much less signs, miracles, and unearthly powers, all of which the “sovereign” God had explicitly appointed and repeatedly endorsed for our perpetual practice in order to corroborate the inherent drawing power of the core Gospel narrative itself!
However, without such gentle, though wondrously, marvelously cogent MEANS OF FAITH, Calvin must use FORCE–not just “irresistible grace” (which is no real grace at all), but the dungeon, the sword, the stake! As if mixing blood, gore, and ashes with the Word of the Cross might give it a more authentic feel. Yes, it would be appropriate to repudiate all such “means of faith” and “persuasion” to keep people in line. But without the true Gospel we lack the Divine example of premial righteousness to guide us in our behavior toward mere unbelievers, much less toward any insolent or even violent opponent.
John Calvin was fixated on PENAL JUSTICE, which in turn deleteriously tainted nearly everything he touched theologically. Even much of his unethical practice may not be attributable to “happy inconsistencies” so much as to in-group favoritism, which “even the Gentiles“ practice (Matthew 5:47). [8/25/09]
The Premial Atonement 