The Polish Brethren demonstrated that their repudiation of penal substitution was generative of a most rigorous and conscientious obedience to Christ’s commandments and his Father’s will.

The Polish Brethren (Socinians) definitely denied that Christ’s cross was intended to ‘satisfy the justice‘ of a punitive God so as to enable His forgiveness. Quite plausibly, this firm denial of any divinely penal motive in the suffering of the Savior may well have prevented their exceptionally conscientious obedience to the Lord’s commands from degenerating into moralism or legalism. Their ethic was arguably among the very highest of their contemporaries, indeed, within the whole history of Christianity, with the exception of the first few generations, who, no surprise, were their avowed models. They understood God’s Gift of the Holy Spirit as given to enable them to endure in obedience to Christ’s teaching so that they could win everlasting life. Without the spectre of a wrathful punitive Deity looming over them—God’s precious children by faith—they could follow their Lord’s lead without compulsiveness or dread, and hence could run the devout way of God’s commandments with alacrity and fearlessness.

It may not be too much to say that the ‘penal satisfaction‘ theory of the Atonement is inherently subversive of an authentic Christian ethic since it imputes ‘legalism’ or ‘moralism’ to earnest and eager endeavors to keep Christ’s commands carefully. Such a doctrine squelches enthusiastic scrupulousness to obey the Lord Jesus and leads to a lackadaisical attitude where ‘anything goes’ so long as a confrssional is within convenient reach or forgiveness is ladled out wholesale with no strings attached. The resulting ‘Christianity’ is a reproach and a disgrace to the reputation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, and, much later, Dispensationalism, have all contributed to the debasement of Christian behavior and the reputation of Christ by their adherence to post-apostolic, non-biblical doctrines of the Atonement, and this not in their own right exclusively, but because penal theories of the Atonement make allowances for miscellaneous deviations that crop up within the larger realm of doctrine as well as the realm of ethics, both personal and social. [12/9/10; 8/11/23]

Their robust (some would say lopsided) emphasis on the humanity of the Lord Jesus somehow seems to have admirably encouraged and even inspired the assiduous obedience to Christ’s comandments that nobly typified the Polish Brethren above their contemporaries for several generations (with the possible exception of the early church, whom they were consciously emulating). They took heart in observing how God awarded His Son despite all the grim opposition and cruel manhandling he suffered. Christ was their model. Since God rewarded Jesus with immortal life for walking the way of His directives, they knew that this was the well-pleasing way for them to walk as well.

They also took courage from the knowledge that God had bestowed the Gift of His Holy Spirit on them to facilitate this earnest obedience to His will. Their power to endure so nobly and tranquilly the terrible forces at length unleashed against them, most severely by the Roman Catholics (especially Jesuits) and Calvinists of Poland, but including the animus of Lutheran Europe, testifies eloquently to the ruggedness of their doctrine. For they saw clearly and believed heartily that THE FATHER MOST GENEROUSLY REWARDED HIS SON FOR OBEDIENT BEHAVIOR EXERTED AGAINST ALL ODDS. This knowledge braced them in their contest with their foes. So, in addition to the fact that these Socinians did not affirm penal satisfaction/substitution in any sense whatever, they did boldly assert God’s premial award to the Lord Jesus Christ, even if they somewhat inadequately comprehended all that meant with respect to a premially forensic atonement. (They evidently did not quite grasp either that or how such a favorable response from God could, further, be actually cleansing or atoning. Further study of what remains of their widely-suppressed but soberly creative and brilliantly nuanced theological and ethical literary output, although very little is in English translation, is certain to prove fruitful and beneficial to the larger body of Christ in our era.)

However, regardless of the fact that they vigorously and successfully disputed any Biblical grounds for a ‘substitutionary’ atonement, and in particular, ‘penal satisfaction,’ they highly revered the Lord’s Supper—the channel of atoning cleansing via Christ’s innocent blood. Moreover, the Polish Brethren practiced adult, believers’ baptism, whose washing entails the atoning function also of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, regardless of their weak grasp of the connection between God’s reward to Christ and these two practices, they nevertheless benefited from their fiducial practice of the rites in their mediating of atoning power. The happy results were evident in their sterling lifestyle and rigorous attention to all the commands of their Lord Jesus Christ. They have left an unequalled legacy of faithful study of Scripture, obedience to the Gospel ethic, and endurance through affliction and persecution, that compares favorably with their early Anabaptist contemporaries across Europe. [12/9/10; 8/11/23]

Christ was s “protective cover” (hilasterion) around (peri) our sins precisely because his faithfulness (pistis), which was “in” (en) his blood (haima), rendered him essentially impervious, ‘immune,’ to any threat of God’s wrath. Hence, by “drinking” his “blood,” by which our hearts (“core” of our souls or bodily existences) get “sprinkled from a vicious conscience,” our sins are cleansed away, and thereby God’s wrath, in turn, is ‘averted’ from us or, better, “not aroused” toward us on account of our having perpetrated the offensive behaviors. [12/9/10; 8/12/23]

Because John Calvin never repented of his errors (neither his significant part in the wrongful death of Servetus, much less in matters of doctrine), they, along with his embitttered spirit of vendetta, were passed along to his theological heirs undiminished, turning many of them into “double the sons of gehenna” that he, too, was hazardously morphing into. Servetus credibly testified that Calvin ‘started it,’ and we can well believe it. We have Calvin’s own language preserved in all its shocking hubris, quite the equal of what he accused Servetus of venting. Have we lost a hallowed sense of irony at such historic displays? Let us shudder to repeat such blameworthy history, provoking blasphemy to God’s reputation. [12/10/10; 8/12/23]

The Positive Function of Justice Only Partially Understood by the Reformation

If the death of the ancient Levitical sacrificial victims had been sufficient to depict atonement, all the rituals could have stopped short of the blood. Indeed, if the death of Messiah Jesus on the cross were atoning, then what need was there for his blood? But Scripture never teaches that death alone is atoning. There is always a connection with bloodshed, for blood is the active cleansing ingredient…innocent blood. For that depicts resurrection life being added, restored to all that was dying and consequently corrupting.  [6/12/08]

If we are willing by faith to reckon the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper as Messiah’s body and blood, then God wills to reckon that faith as righteousness!

This eloquently simple process has been sadly overcomplicated through the centuries. Are the elements “symbolic,” merely? Well, is our righteousness merely “symbolic”? You can see where this line of argument might lead. [6/12/08]

Martin Luther’s mighty transformation was triggered by recognizing the positive nature of God’s righteousness, even if only partially and incorrectly articulated with other essentials of the Gospel. We can only imagine what might have happened if he had really cleaned house and brought a reformation of doctrine all the way to Anselm’s doorstep. But he didn’t. And so all we have is a partial Reformation to show for all his labors…and Calvin’s and Zwingli’s and even the Anabaptists’. For none of these challenged Anselm’s dominance and only the Anabaptists challenged Augustine’s. Therefore justice was not done to God’s justice, so injustice continued to be the order of the day.

Obviously no one has attributed the merely partial Reformation (which so many will admit, even with hand wringing) to doctrinal errors concerning the “Atonement,” but in view of subsequent history, and especially the current ferment and turmoil over this doctrine, it can hardly be doubted. We can hope that more and more people will see this and be willing to restudy Scripture to recognize the missteps that were taken along the downward path.

Most decisive, perhaps, was the satisfaction with which the Reformation on the whole was willing to settle for some version of Luther’s only approximate correction of inherited dogma concerning justification. He mistook what the apostle Paul in Romans, Galatians and Philippians 3 calls “the righteousness of God” or “from God” for “Christ’s righteousness” (a phrase entirely foreign to any of Paul’s writings, indeed, to the whole New Testament!). He then devised a way whereby that “alien” righteousness got “imputed” (logiz–) to sinners who “merely believe.” This invention of his (for so it was, casting “imputation” in associations never found in Scripture itself [6/13/16]) seemed wonderful to him and gave him great joy. It seemed to explain so much, and it certainly took away the purely penal and condemning cast of God’s justice in Luther’s estimation. Yet it did not challenge the purely penal definition of God’s justice in relation to the central events of the Gospel story—the cross and resurrection. It only muted the twisted way this Messianic climax (falsely understood) had been applied by the Roman Catholic tradition of his day. Giving it a new twist was but a more novel distortion.

For the covenantal root of God’s saving, restorative, recompensing righteousness was never fully perceived. Therefore a circuitous alternative route starting from God’s punitive, avenging, “(penal) payback” righteousness (with all its associated concepts of wrath—likewise falsely understood!) was cleared and eventually paved and put indelibly on the Protestant map, while the true, straight, but narrow way became even further overgrown with weeds and all but forgotten—lost to history.  [6/14/08]

Whose ‘violence’ at the Cross?

Of my dear Anabaptist brethren I must ask, if the Atonement—if the Cross, for Heaven’s sake!—wasn’t violent, then how on earth is a loving compassionate, pitying, non-retaliating God ever going to find another such golden opportunity to roll up His sleeves and demonstrate how in the world He can rectify EVILS and save us from such abysmal, heartless violence? Huh? Huh? Huh? Answer me that, if you can. We too must “embrace the darkness,” as Jesus did, and watch what God will do! [6/07/08]

The above statement from eight years ago deserves further nuancing and tweaking in retrospect. The Girardian thesis has affected traditional positions of some Anabaptists. There also are significant differences among pacifist, non-violent, and non-retaliatory positions, both inside and outside the stream of the “Radical Reformation.” But in this blog site I wish to highlight their varied bearing on Atonement teaching in particular. I presume no one can view the Cross of Christ without seeing violence. The big question is God’s complicity, if any, in that act. Alleged answers remain scattered all over the map in varying degrees of mutual contradiction and antagonism. Barring the elaboration of a serviceable cartography of the theological territory, I here simply and urgently press for fair and sober consideration of the premial alternative espoused throughout this site. I surely need not add another iteration of that exposition at this point. The above paragraph only ventures a little dig at those few Anabaptist brothers and sisters who may deny violence per se to the Cross of Christ, not to those who (like myself) deny that God was there showing violence to His Son…at least not by His own hand…at least not wrathful violence…at least not penal violence…. And the dicing goes on. Come, let us reason together. [6/06/16]

Jesus was not being assailed by “holy and righteous divine wrath because of human sin,” but by corrupt and sinful human fury because of Satanic vengeance. This explains why God necessarily manifested the magnificent display of His righteousness, on account of Messiah’s faithfulness (without which it would have been historically impossible) in raising him from the dead and, even more, sending Their Spirit of wholesomeness to make us alive and wholesome too! All this by way of super-compensating justice! [6/07/08]

God was evidently in no hurry to show His hatred of sin in penal justice toward the murderers of His precious Only-born. Instead, He was single-minded to give an unforgettable exhibit of His amending justice toward His dear mangled Offspring. What merely human father wouldn’t have shown the very same PRIORITIES, FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE?! Where’s our head? Indeed, where’s our “heart,” that we get all distracted by some impersonally abstract caricature of paternal concern? Evangelical, orthodox, traditional, conservative theology is emotionally dysfunctional and given to mouthing heartless, emotionless, cold, hard…fictions! Offering venomous scorpions instead of embryonic Gospel truths! Oppressively burdensome rocks instead of mouthwatering loaves of heaven-fresh manna! [6/07/08]

You want something “objective” to make salvation “more solid”? “I’ll give you something ‘objecive’,” God answers:  THE HOLY SPIRIT!  This is the way the apostles Peter and Paul argue. The empirical, extraordinary phenomena that always accompanied the immersion in the Holy Spirit were appealed to as PROOF POSITIVE of God’s OBJECTIVE ACCEPTANCE OF NON-CIRCUMCISED GENTILES, pejoratively labeled with the slur, “the foreskins”! Similar racial slurs—such as “redskins,” “darkies,” etc., in American history—are only overcome, much less extinguished, with enormous difficulty. It’s little surprise, then, that God should provide a similarly external sign to neutralize the prejudicial reflexes that such marks trigger by long usage and mental imprinting from infancy.

The idea that something more “objective” was inflicted by the cross of Christ beyond its indelible, historic, eye-witnessed snuffing out the life of God’s veritable Son, our Savior, is a groundless, non-verifiable assertion of theologians with penal obsessions/ compulsions.  We need to get over this.  Theologians need therapy (therapeuo, “to heal”) too.  [6/07/08; 9/11/08]

SATISFACTION vs. RESURRECTION

Only the Proclamation of a Resurrectionary Justification, i.e., of God’s Restorative Justice, and an understanding of the Atonement that accords with it, can provide sufficient discernment to judge among the composite options that have come down to us in the whole history of theology and credology.

The Socinians, it turns out, in spite of their serious errors, nonetheless displayed astonishing insight into the work of Christ that it behooves every serious Berean of a Bible student to analyze with care and due appreciation. Likewise Abelard, the Anabaptists, the Amyraldians and many other minority positions must be mined for their nuggets of wisdom and gems of truth. But God’s rewarding (not penal) justice is the indispensable criterion. [03/02/08]

Utterly foundational to the Protestant (i.e., Lutheran and Calvinistic) doctrine of “forensic justification,” by which they always mean “the imputation of Christ’s own righteousness to the believing sinner” is a shearing of this ostensibly “objective” justification, forgiveness, and reconciliation from whatever the Holy Spirit does, allegedly, “subjectively” within the believer, which is commonly termed “sanctification,” and which, they assert, always comes “afterward.” This shearing of “objective” from “subjective” (their distinction and terminology), paralleled or at least echoed in their distinction between Christ’s “active” and “passive” “righteousness” or obedience, constitutes a pernicious dualism that sabotages an integral apostolic ethic again and again. The Holy Spirit is said to do a “subjective” work in us—not including justification, forgiveness, or reconciliation!—only after and subsequent to the “objective” accomplishment of those three aspects of salvation “on the cross.”

This was an overreaction to the Roman Catholic error of making justification, forgiveness, and reconciliation subsequent to the lifelong operation of the Holy Spirit. Thus Protestantism is an overreaction to Roman Catholicism; neither is truly apostolic at this pivotal point. The truth is that all of those three (and much more) are continuously operative or true so long as faith exists and even reinforce faith, but do not guarantee continued faith since our increated (although restricted and mortal) sovereignty and authority resulting from our being made in the image and after the likeness of God always exists and remains inalienable until death. God’s forceful and heavily corroborated Proclamation of His Kingdom must be given the credit for keeping and preserving us in safety by its power to induce faith.

Moreover, this characteristic Protestant disconnect between “Christ’s work on the cross” (not a pattern of sound explanation found anywhere in Scripture) and “the Spirit’s work in the heart,” in effect, virtually snips the vital conduit that empowers ethical fruit or productivity. They may teach otherwise, indeed, the Holy Spirit may get a great deal of work done in spite of the erroneous doctrine, especially in those who are tutored in it less than they are in Scripture alone (which has power to override errors for those who stay in it faithfully and regularly). Nevertheless the Protestant doctrine is subversive of sound teaching by its very nature and needs to be exposed, confronted, and rejected in favor of the apostolic literature in the New Testament. [03/02/08]

SATISFACTION vs. RESURRECTION

The notion of “satisfaction” at the Cross cannot be dispensed with unless and until the Resurrection is grasped in its full justifying significance. This is why all attempts to deny and nullify the Anselmian notion of “satisfaction” have tended to be unsuccessful. For unless God’s justice can be clearly read out of Messiah’s resurrection, it will invariably be read into his crucifixion, where, to be sure, none whatever is to be found. Yet the opponents of the notion that the Cross is in any way “just” have routinely failed, one and all, to perceive God’s saving, rewarding, restorative justice in his resurrection and hence have denied the centrality of the “juridical metaphor” and, consequently of divine justice. But this loss only weakens the meaning of the Atonement as a whole and thus actually guts the full glory of God’s graciousness, which is, amazingly and wonderfully, the just outcome of Messiah’s unjust crucifixion via resurrectionary reversal!

Medieval cataracts concerning justice as seemingly purely penal (by the time of the Reformation of the 16^th century) all but blinded theologians concerning the ancient Hebrew assumptions about justice as avenging evil to restore good, i.e., eviscerating the vicious in order to enrich the righteous. [03/02/08]

The inner disconnect of divine character in Evangelical atonement theory is reconnected by premial justice

Orthodox Evangelical atonement theory teaches perforce that the ultimate logic of the Atonement is the necessity of penal retribution—the logic of God the Father. Subordinate to that is the logic of the Son of God—forgiveness. The Son manifests God as love; the Father, as “holiness.” This inner disconnect in Deity is what necessitated the Cross, putting together again what all the king’s horsepower and all the king’s manpower were powerless to achieve, for they too “had a great Fall” (though winter came early…). To give us a choice of logics to emulate (being the sinners we are) is almost to guarantee a landslide victory for avenging, i.e., unforgiveness. For if this representation of ultimate realities is anywhere near accurate, God made a big boo-boo by revealing it to sinners.  [12/19/06]   Only the premial justice of God, showing up at the Resurrection to reverse the fait accompli, can set the record straight and make the Story come out right.

“IMPUTATION”: A SHORT CIRCUIT

The doctrines (there are three) of so-called “imputation” amount to short circuits—wayward alternative paths of access to the meaning and power of Messiah’s saving work. Following the rewirings by Augustine, Calvin, Ames, and Piscator, the pivotal significance of Pentecost was often shunted past so that the Holy Spirit’s role in the Atonement got bypassed. Historic attempts of the Holy Spirit to gently retake full and proper governance were bitterly accused of “irregularities” and viciously downgraded: Montanists, mystics, Anabaptists, Huguenot prophets, Quakers, Moravians, Cambuslang, Great Awakening, Second Great Awakening, frontier Camp Meetings, Edward Irving, Charles Finney, Revivals, Faith Cure Movement, Scandinavian Free Church Revivals, Pentecostalism, Charismatic Movement, Third Wave, Toronto Blessing, Brownsville Revivals, etc. [12/20/06]  As if we should not expect Satan to be wily enough to insinuate occasional counterfeits especially in the midst of fresh manifestations of his Enemy’s Kingdom of authentic healing and restoration!  Now who’s being naïve?