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]

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 “Power of the CROSS” vs. the Power of the RESURRECTION!

The Wholesome Spirit of promise that the Father has given because of the Son’s obedience unto death, to immerse us welcomingly and fill us repeatedly during our earthly sojourn, is the earnest (arrabon), surety, pledge, guarantee, or down payment, that is, firstfruits (aparche) of our full inheritance (kleronomia) of salvation and the Kingdom of God.  For this reason alone, if for no other, we may and ought to expect signs and miracles and powers to hold a significant place in current Christian experience.  These elements are themselves pledges-in-kind of the future reality of God’s Kingdom whose power was most fully manifested historically in Christ’s Resurrection from the dead.  Talk about “healing in the Atonement” misses the mark by comparison, especially when the Lord’s Resurrection is left out of the picture (as it is in the orthodox Anselmian, Lutheran, and Calvinistic variations on atonement).

It is because our great salvation is what it is that signs, miracles, and powers are what they are.  They are cut from the very same cloth.  The Proclamation (“gospel”) that informs us of that salvation is an empty letter without all the power manifestations that illustrate it in kind!  Signs and miracles are not some sort of extrinsic proof of the Proclamation; they are the intrinsic proofs that such a salvation has in fact historically arrived, in part, to confirm and corroborate its full and absolutely certain future advent in kind.

People who do not understand that the Resurrection, not the Crucifixion, is the central saving moment of the Proclamation of God, also find it hard to compute the Biblical language about Jesus’ own salvation.  Their soteriology (doctrine of salvation) is literally CROSS-wired!  For it is when we ask the decisive question, “When was Jesus saved?” that we discover the “grave” (pun intended) weakness of the medieval doctrines of the Atonement.  However, Jesus was not saved by the Cross; he was destroyed by it!  He was only saved come his Resurrection!  And that is likewise our salvation…in kind!

It follows that healing—a lesser sign and miracle—must likewise, then, be a part of such a salvation.  To substitute the words, “such an atonement,” here reveals the traditional misapprehension of the larger truth that only a sound, Biblical pattern of explanations can clarify and restore.  Salvation, signs, miracles, healing, prophecy, etc., constitute one seamless garment of wholesomeness being restored to this disrupted creation.

The New Testament never talks about “the power of the Cross.”  It speaks about “the Explanation which is of the Cross” (1 Cor. 1:18) as being the power of God, but that is a very different matter!  The power of the Cross is only a power of death for it was an instrument of torture and public execution.  But the Proclamation of God never glorifies that; in fact it pronounces the triumph of Resurrection power over the weakness exhibited in Christ’s Crucifixion, in the wisdom of God’s overruling plan (2 Cor. 13:4).  The Cross of Christ is thereby transformed into a symbol of human viciousness neutralized and overwhelmingly reversed; of a treasonous act playing gullibly into God’s hands; of a Divine jujitsu deftly countervailing the clumsy lunges and ill-aimed momentum of the Great Dragon.  It is forever the symbol of the stupidity of a blustering usurper and his failed coup.  By contrast, the New Testament veritably bristles with the power of the Savior’s  Resurrection that overcomes Death and its fright—the only “power” the Cross can ever claim.  We should cease using misleading, deceiving metaphors and instead discipline ourselves to stick with sound explanations, even those of the apostles and the Scriptures.

Think only of the book of Romans, where the theme of resurrection recurs like a steady cadence, but where no term for “cross” is ever used by Paul anywhere.  Or how about the book of Acts, where words for “cross” are occasionally used (when any such word is used at all!), but where “raise” or “resurrection” occur without fail in every public address!

To speak of “the power of Christ’s death” is very misleading because it distracts the understanding from the saving power of his Resurrection.  This strange language (from a Biblical standpoint!) is a reflex of the death-centered view of the Atonement inherited from the medieval theory of Anselm, cinched up by Luther’s ill-conceived theologia crucis, and severely reinforced by the penal theory of Calvin.  In such a view, indeed, one can never discover “healing in the Atonement” for in such an atonement there is no healing!  Healing is most certainly a facet of our salvation, even on an orthodox reading (although attended with an acute sense of inner contradiction plus endless jangling and wrangling), yet human theories have separated what God has joined together, for salvation and atonement belong together.  So when an “atoning death” is explained apart from the saving Resurrection (and exactly to that extent, since there are variations on this theme), resort is being taken to a lame rationalization whereby even salvation may sometimes (by the figure of metonymy) be predicated of the instrument of destruction, though ironically (but oxymoronically if taken literally!), rather than in spite of or “through” that instrument, as the apostles express the matter.  [10/10/96]