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]

Christ’s Submission to Death Was Not Cooperation with Satan

The fact that Christ gave his existence/soul as a ransom (lutron) for others to liberate (-lu-) them from bondage (–dei-/douleia), and can therefore correctly be said to have been “paid to the Devil” for that very purpose and objective, by no means should suggest that Satan, for his diabolical part, was doing anything other or less than his same old habitual criminal practices in the event.  Yes, Jesus surrendered himself voluntarily to his enemies without “making a scene” or “trying anything funny,” in accord with his Father’s strategy, but the aim was hardly to “cooperate” with the Adversary, “friendly-like,” but to beat him at his own game and utterly route his schemes in “favor” of his Father’s.  [12/22/09]

Jesus, by allowing himself to look like a fool and a failure, allowed his Father to look out for his interests instead.  [12/22/09]

“…St. Maximus [the Confessor] categorically denied the penal character of Our Lord’s death and sufferings.” — Georges Florovsky, Creation and Redemption, Vol. 3 in the Collected Works (Belmont, MA: Nordland Publishing Co., 1976), p. 281, note 9.  [12/22/09]

Ironically, traditional Christian theories concerning sin provide some of the best evidence of its corrupting influence.  [12/23/09]

THE INCORRIGIBLE ARE, IN THE END, DESTROYED BODY & SOUL ALONG WITH HADES

The so-called “intermediate state,” i.e., the Unseen (haides) is the only time when the soul exists apart from the body.  For after the general resurrection (which itself is a redemptive fruit of Christ’s own victorious Resurrection), all who are conclusively condemned at the divine Judgment of the Great White Throne will be thrown, body and soul, along with the Unseen (“Hades”), that strange intermediate state, into the Lake of Fire (not made intentionally for human beings in the first place, but for the agelong torment of non-mortal beings—the sinning angels) there to be utterly destroyed—exterminated, obliterated, annihilated.  [12/23/09]

THE POWER OF FUSION:  PREMIAL JUSTICE + EVERLASTING LIFE

It appears to me that God’s mighty overruling Wisdom is amazingly evident in allowing even the Great Schism of the universal church into a Greek Eastern and a Latin Western component.  For the key characteristic tendencies of each could hereby actually be reinforced, concentrated, and sequestered (even though thus deficient with respect to the traits that preoccupy the other).  But such a divided condition could only be temporary.  The peculiar stress of the Western church upon law and justice, once chastened and corrected by the emphasis of the Eastern church upon resurrection life, could yield a powerful compound of explosive impact.  Iron has sharpened iron as the Catholic and Protestant West have rubbed each other the “wrong way” for five centuries–the heirs of the two iron legs of the Roman empire in Daniel’s vision.  Yet heretofore, neither has grasped the actual (Hebraic) concept of premial justice.  The Catholic or Augustinian view thought of righteousness as a medicine, infused into sinners at baptism out of the “merits” of Christ.  The Protestant view conceived it as exclusively penal when considered as God’s trait, or as personal moral merit when regarded as Christ’s trait, and then as imputable to the moral account of the unrighteous who believe.

But when understood as God’s trait of justice-in-execution on behalf of those in covenant with Him who have been wronged by enemies, THEN A LINK BECOMES EVIDENT TO THE PREOCCUPATION WITH EVERLASTING LIFE VIA RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD THAT MARKS EASTERN ORTHODOXY.  FOR SUCH A MAGNITUDE AND QUALITY OF LIFE, CONSIDERED AS THE PROPER DUE OF CHRIST ALONE, THOUGH DISPENSABLE OR DISTRIBUTABLE BY HIM TO WHOMEVER HE PLEASES, IS PRECISELY WHAT WE ARE LED TO EXPECT FROM SCRIPTURE AS THE PRODUCT OF GOD’S RESTORATIVE JUSTICE TO HIM IN EXCHANGE FOR THE CROSS!

However, even as the Western Latin-oriented church erred under the undue influence of Roman legal dominance, so the Eastern Greek-oriented church faltered under the mystical stream of pseudo-Dionysian progressive deification apart from the conditioning and governance of juridical rationale and necessity.  Both wings of the universal body of Christ need each other as mutual correctives.  The union of these dual “factions” will bring with it a nuclear explosion of spiritual power for evangelistic effects reaching into the last strongholds of resistance to God’s global reign through His anointed Son.  [12/23/09]

PARTICIPATION IN THE DIVINE NATURE vs. “deification” or “divinization”

God’s stated goal for His adopted children is not “deification” or “divinization” à la the Eastern Orthodox tradition, for even the Old Testament declaration, “You are gods,” is not a goal but a present fact.  Small comfort!  Our race of sinful gods is under condemnation by the Most High, and we, notice, are mortal (Psalm 82:6).

No, no!  Far from mere “divinity,” God’s aim for His daughters, sons, and future heirs is…God-likeness, i.e., “Godliness,” or, in more concrete and tangible terms, “Christ-likeness,” for Jesus is the visual image and verbal explanation of Jehovah, the Lord God in the flesh for our salvation.  We approach this glorious goal of God’s image and likeness by “participation in the deitic/theotic nature” (2 Peter 1:4).  How is that achieved?  By God’s own “deitic/theotic power” (2 Peter 1:3) of the Wholesome Spirit, which is poured out on all who recognize through the Proclamation of the Kingdom that Jesus is Master, is Jehovah, and who avow him to be so with trust in their hearts (Romans 10:9-10), they are thereby immersed into Messiah and attain the status of “members” of his body.  Consequently we are “destined” to “wear the image of the celestial” (Romans 8:29-30, 1 Corinthians 15:49).  God’s Spiritual power of wholesomeness “tends toward life and devoutness” (2 Peter 1:3).

Hence Peter, without losing his stride, proceeds immediately to urge, “Now for this same thing also” (i.e., participation in the deitic/theotic nature by fleeing from the corruption which is in the world in lust, covetousness, or cravings of our as-yet-unliberated mortal flesh), and “employing all diligence, in your faith  supply virtue, yet in virtue knowledge, yet in knowledge self-control, yet in self-control endurance, yet in endurance devoutness,”—the same devoutness toward which “theotic power” tends, in order to realize God’s “theotic nature” within believers—“yet in devoutness brotherly fondness, yet in brotherly fondness, love” (1 Peter 1:5-7).  Bingo!  This is Peter’s version of Paul’s list of fruits of the Spirit.  Such quality products constitute the very “contents of Deity”—the stuffings of God’s own “graciousness and truth” that filled the “only-begotten/born from the Father,” who, being “in[to] the bosom of the Father,” gets His very nature “unfolded” before human eyes in living color, as it were (John 1:14-18).  That’s why Peter goes on yet further to say, “For your possessing these [fruits of graciousness and truth] and increasing is constituting you not idle nor unfruitful in[to] the recognition of our Master, Jesus Messiah.  For he in whom these [traits] are not present is blind, closing-his-eyes, getting oblivious of the penalties-of-his-sins of old” (1 Peter 1:9).  [7/26/07]

ROMANS 3:3-5, 24-26

God’s rectitude was displayed in the former era of the Old Covenant by His Passover of the penalties-of-sins because of His forbearance; His rectitude is displayed in the current era of the New Covenant by His being just to Jesus and His justifying the one who is from the faithfulness of Jesus.  For the faithfulness in his innocent, sinless blood was the very protection or indemnification (hilasterion) that God Himself savingly purposed for our liberation.  And whereas in the earlier period the blood of cattle, sheep, and goats stood in for the real thing, after Jesus truly sinless blood was wrongfully shed, God actually answered from Heaven with the just award of life via resurrection from the dead!  Thus the faithlessness of the Jews did not nullify the faithfulness of God to His covenant (Romans 3:3); in fact, their injustice commended God’s rectitude (Romans 3:5) such that He broke forth in judicial zeal to do justice to Jesus posthaste!  Through the latter’s superabundant reward, we who trust the faithfulness of Jesus also receive graciousness from God beyond measure.  Yet even so, His wrath justly abides on all who remain unyielding and unrepentant (Romans 3:5-6, John 3:36).  [7/28/07]