Gustaf Aulén’s Christus Victor, with Premial Highlighting

When God Himself ransoms us from “our foes,” “the oppressor,” “the enemy,” “the house of slavery,” “the hand of Sheol,” etc., He does so by expending/spending His own boundless capital from on high to invest in the cause. Accordingly, and ultimately, He sent His Son as our ransom. By his lifelong faithful obedience to the Father, especially to the bitter extremity of a wrongful and tortured public execution, HE PROMPTED GOD’S MIGHTY ACT OF JUSTICE THAT BROUGHT HIM BACK TO LIFE WITH A VAST SURPLUS OF GLORY, HONOR, AUTHORITY, RICHES, etc., in order to purchase us, too! All without cost to us (though not without obligation…). [9/14/11; 12/25/24]

The real test of candor for those who tout their advocacy and respect, even ardor, for the magnitude and magnanimity of God’s “grace“ is whether they warm up to God’s justice, with reference to salvation (in contrast to condemnation) as premial and characterized by graciousness (in contrast to indignation/wrath). Naturally, such a justice could not be construed as “substitutionary” in that case, because its whole rationale is one of rightful award/reward directly to Christ as the supreme endorsement of his own worthiness and just deserts. Similarly, such a justice could certainly not be framed as “punishment” for the sins of others vicariously, either. Thus Anselm and Calvin are both turned on their heads and emptied of the loose change that their arguably rogue theories have pocketed through the grim centuries since their opinions gained imposing strength and began exacting a terrible cost from “Christendom.”

Will, indeed, can, Calvinists even repent of their severely crabbed notions of God’s grace and come to recognize the genuine article when it stares them in the face? Can they ever come to apprehend a graciousness not abstemiously doled out only to “just so many” “paid-for” “elect,” procured in a wooden economic exchange of “so much gain for so much pain” endured by Christ, and instead grasp a graciousness showered on him in a nuclear display of trans-economizing generosity and goodwill? “Penal substitution,” in contrast, seems “terrestrial, soulish, demoniacal” (James 3:15), itself a carnal substitute for the Real McCoy. Any talk of “sovereign” grace that does not rise above the clumsy tutelage of mere mercenary exchange has seriously telescoped, not to say radically compromised, the sheer volume of God’s graciousness and must therefore reflexively limit the Atonement and continue to spawn all the irresolvable conundrums for which Calvinistic soteriology is correctly known and rightly abjured. [9/14/11; 12/24-25/24]

DEIFICATION, OR AFFILIATION?

We should speak not of “deification,” as Athanasius did, but rather of “affiliation” to/with Deity, i.e., of “adoption,” “sonship,” or “sonhood,” because the gracious Gift (including the derivative “gifts” or “presents”) of the Holy Spirit transforms/metamorphizes us into the image and likeness of the Son of God, who, unlike us, was begotten before the ages, the One in whom those ages, verily, were deftly crafted—Eph. 3:11). [9/15/11; 12/18, 24/24]

Up to (and through!) the very end of his life on earth, Jesus not only did not sin, but additionally he did not even exercise his proper Messianic rights to protect himself from injury or, at the last, from the fate of a cursed death itself. For the total desire of God included more than mere sinlessness (understood as non-violation of God’s prohibitions against specific wrongdoing—to be sure, itself a reduction of the latter’s full scope), it additionally encompasses faithful obedience to the full meaning and scope of love, against all odds and surmounting all obstacles. Christ rose to every challenge and proved utterly equal, indeed, far more than equal, to them. [9/15/11; 12/18/24]

There can be little doubt that the Lord Jesus Christ felt what it was like to be punished by God inasmuch as the hordes of Satan are not seldom God’s instruments to carry out divine judgments upon an incorrigibly wicked population (see, e.g., Gustaf Aulen, Christus Victor). Thus he can sympathize with those he came to save, having experienced a taste of the sort of punishment the unrepentant well deserve. Yet he emphatically did not deserve any divine punishment. NOR (and this is the point) DID GOD SERVE HIM WITH ANY! Therefore, there could not have been any “penal substitution” or “vicarious satisfaction” in the event of his crucifixion, for this was wholly and exclusively a CRIMINAL PERPETRATION! Yet precisely because the Son submitted to this outrage voluntarily and left the result to his Father’s just judgment, the Father quickly intervened and judged him to be just via resurrection from the dead. Thus Jesus was rewarded by God’s justice directly, not punished by God’s justice indirectly, i.e., “substitionally,” “vicariously,” “in our stead/place,” although, to be sure, it was emphatically FOR OUR SAKES!

To be perfectly clear, the Lord’s “solidarity” with sinners DID NOT ENTAIL HIS HAVING TO SUFFER GOD’S WRATH IN THE LEAST, BUT EXCLUSIVELY THE CUP OF SATANIC AFFLICTION AND HUMAN ABUSE. Now, granted, to an undiscerning observer these alternatives might have looked virtually identical, but according to divine revelation there is a vast difference, not in how it objectively felt to Jesus (for this experience was custom-designed by his loving Father to draw out his sympathy with the exact feelings of his mortal siblings, who were fellow human beings in absolute need of a salvation otherwise inaccessible), but rather in relation to God’s inner disposition toward him—one of inalienable GRACIOUSNESS.

Moreover, after God’s premial justice was executed on Christ’s behalf to repay him for this absolute surrender, that same divine graciousness unaccountably proceeds to gush willy-nilly towards us (!), baptizing all who accept it—a vivifying tsunami, wave after wave in happy succession till the end of the age! [9/15/11; 12/24-25/24]

What made the forthcoming abuse-taking of the Cross so anguishing to Christ that “his sweat became as if clots of blood descending on the earth” (Luke 22:44)? Might the reason be that the last and greatest temptation of Jesus entailed the ever-actual option of using his rightful Messianic authority to deploy “more than twelve legions of angels” (Matt. 26:53) “to destroy the world and set him free,” as the famous anthem expresses it? Such a temptation would have been horribly “enhanced” by the ready availability of this rightful, though gruesome, alternative. No other human being had ever been confronted with such a momentous choice, fraught with such cosmic repercussions. This was his only escape route, ever ready at hand. The option which he did historically choose brings home the irrepressible extravagance of his love for us. [9/15/11; 12/25/24]

Only on the basis of the premial idea of the Atonement can its fundamental character be defined as both “an uninterrupted action of God” and “an uninterrupted order of justice“ (à la Gustaf Aulén, in Christus Victor [1930] and The Faith of the Christian Church [Phila.: Fortress, 1960] pp. 210-11). For in this instance love (“the divine action”) and justice fit hand in glove. God’s rewarding, reparative, or restorative justice is extended to Christ because of God’s unintermittent love toward His dearly beloved and now treacherously, unjustly, yet officially and fatally, assaulted Son, who therefore eminently deserves that quality and magnitude of justice rendered to him by way of repayment.

Accordingly, premial atonement surpasses both the “classical” and “scholastic” ideas without difficulty or distortion, but further, it more than fulfils the “idealistic” idea, as well.

The premial idea of the Atonement transcends effortlessly the problematics of “what Christ does ‘as God’ and what he does ‘as man'” (pp. 211-12), since he renders nothing (nor “needs” to “pay”) to God anything but obedience to His will and love unblemished, uncompromised, and integral, from the heart of his unique soul as Mediator between God and “man.” This integral achievement of the Lord’s, in light of the restored apostolic teaching about God’s premial justice, greatly simplifies christology. Christ’s nature is not subdivided, much less in tension within him. Nor are God’s “righteousness and mercy” in mortal struggle to “kiss” appropriately. None of that. “Man’s” sin against God does not get “paid off” in Christ’s “human nature” or by any other celestial bookkeeping or mundane mechanics. Yet neither is God’s opposition to sin compromised as in the liberal or “idealistic” idea of the Atonement, for God’s love is not perpetuated at the cost of compromising His penal justice against sin, SINCE SIN IS NOT (AND CANNOT INTRINSICALLY BE) TAKEN AWAY BY PENAL JUSTICE IN ANY CASE (the liberals saw this!), BUT ONLY BY PREMIAL JUSTICE (the apostles saw this!). And since premial justice is perfectly in line with God’s love for the wrongfully injured and abused, MORALITY IS UPHELD RIGHT ALONG WITH LEGALITY (oh that Evangelicals saw this!). Thus, and thus alone, is a “pure” and “unified” concept of God maintained that potentially could “satisfy” Evangelicals, Liberals, and Aulén alike! After all, it seemed perfectly satisfactory to Christ’s masterfully instructed apostles! [9/15/11; 12/24-25/24]

If the Devil Inspired Jesus’ Murder, Then Theologians Have Been Tricked by Believing Jesus Suffered God’s Wrath

It has often been debated in the long history of atonement theology whether the Devil was “TRICKED” or “DECEIVED” by God into murdering Jesus.  But surely a more pressing question for us today is whether Christian theologians have been “TRICKED” or “DECEIVED” into believing and teaching that Jesus was suffering the WRATH of God on the cross.  But now look at these two positions carefully.  They are mutually exclusive in very spirit!  If the Devil murdered Jesus under any pretext or from whatever motive, there Jesus was certainly not suffering God’s WRATH, but the Devil’s!  Why don’t we get this?  If the patristic teachers were right, then John Calvin and penal satisfaction teachers are wrong.  Conversely, if the penal theory is correct, then “Christus Victor” (so called) is wrong.  But they cannot both be right, though both may still be wrong (however unlikely).  [9/9/09]

The use of the term “sovereignty” (arche) in the New Testament is never in association with God, pet se, but with the exalted (crucified/resurrected) Lord Jesus Messiah.  And this is proper.  For this was a massive judicial reward and restoration to the “Second Adam”–the victorious Lamb of God–of what the first Adam had compromised by his sin, as Hebrews 2 explains.  We don’t see all things subjected and subordinate to mankind’s shrunken sovereignty, but “we do see Jesus,” to whom has been bequeathed “all authority in heaven and on earth.”

To speak blandly of “the sovereignty of God” is therefore to introduce a tendentious hidden agenda of divine despotism along the lines of John Calvin and the Reformed tradition.  [9/16/09]

“The Righteousness of God” would have to include healing, too, if its high point was Christ’s resurrection.  [9/18/09]

It’s one thing to be healed of diseases and disabilities, and even of a death by illness; Jesus performed all these and taught his disciples the same.  But it’s another thing to be healed from death by torture…by crucifixion!  Yet God did this for Jesus!  [9/18/09]

The New Testament Gospel is Essentially Premial

The manifestation of the righteousness of God “apart from [works of] the Law [of Moses]” (Romans 3:21) is an allusion to the resurrection of Christ apart from the retributive judgments against his killers that the Law demanded.  In other words, this was the grandest possible demonstration of God’s life-giving blessing apart from the curse!  It is in this sense that God expressed His righteousness at the Messianic climax “apart from the Law.”  In the words of Romans 4, “the Law produces wrath,” yet the resurrectionary verdict of God gushed forth graciousness, superabundant (according to the demands of divine justice, for Heaven’s sake!!!) and absolutely free to every believer!  [2/18/09]

It is quite true that, as J. Denny Weaver observes, God’s invitation “to join the struggle of those seeking liberation from the forces that bind and oppress” “envisions both those who are oppressed and their oppressors.”  (“Narrative Christus Victor:  The answer to Anselmian Atonement Violence,” in Atonement and Violence:  A Theological Conversation, edited by John Sanders [Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 2006], p. 23.)  However, we only know it’s true because of the historic fact that neither the Cross nor the Resurrection entailed any wrath or avenging from God Himself against any human party whatever, much less against His own dear Son…not even “for our sake” as some offbeat “substitute.”  [2/20/09]

If to know a created thing is to know what to expect of it, and if to know a person is to know what to expect of them in varied circumstances, and if to know God is to know what to expect of Him in diverse situations, then the “penal substitutionary”  doctrine about the Atonement that leads us to know God as someone who demands that debts be paid before He can forgive them has hereby radically twisted the true knowledge of the astoundingly gracious God of the Bible into a miserable, miserly caricature (objections that this representation is itself a facile caricature of its teaching, to the contrary, notwithstanding–see my “‘Penal Satisfaction/Substitution’ in English Hymns”: https://premialatonement.wordpress.com/penal-satisfaction-substitution-in-english-hymns/).  [2/22/09; 11/06/16]

On his mother’s side of the family, Jesus of Nazareth was merely human, though Davidic royalty (and likewise, de jure, on Joseph’s side…his “step father”).  So when he—David’s Seed—was falsely condemned to a viciously unjust death, the royal house of David might have been justified in avenging it in the usual manner.

But on his Father’s side of the family, on the other hand.…  [2/22/09]

With the announcement of this clarification of the age old Gospel as essentially premial, God is saying, “All is forgiven, come and dine.”  Without rancor, let us all make the necessary adjustments with no finger-pointing, and let’s get on with the urgent task of wholehearted, conscientious proclamation to the whole world, the entire creation, every family, tongue, land, and nation, until Christ returns to judge.  Let us join arms and on with the task!  [2/24/09]

At the Cross, God allowed evil.  This is a revealing cross-section of the entirety of human history.  The hill of Calvary is the “apex” (read:  nadir!) and culmination of human wickedness precisely because Jesus, by diametric contrast, was the crown of human righteousness.  Yet in its very being this, those crosshairs on Golgotha targeted the precise locus of God’s own longsuffering, patience, kindness, and mercy, which had ever been in operation at every moment of sin’s seeming ascendancy.

However, the story didn’t end there.  In virtually immediate response to this summum malum of evil came the RESURRECTION that supremely culminated the manifestation of God’s unexpected resources of righteousness and, accordingly, graciousness!  So, yes, here is the “theodicy” the world needs and has been waiting desperately for.  Yet there it was all the time!  There God proved that He can turn evil to a good use…in a worst case scenario.  That’s the essence of the premial Gospel.

Are there any questions?  [2/25/09]