Jesse, God could not possibly have “established the exact and literal penalty of the law as eternal hell-fire, eternal torment, to uphold His government which was designed to secure public justice or His glory and the highest well-being of all” (#7 in “The Atonement of Scripture,” Section Two, emphasis added) because nothing whatever is ever mentioned of such a penalty in the Old Testament. Yet that is precisely where we should expect such a dire warning as a deterrent. Moreover, we should see this dread fate carefully articulated and repeatedly emphasized, over, and over, and over again—much like you and other theologians of this school do. But no! They are exactly nowhere to be found in the Hebrew Scriptures. Yet if you are correct, we should see them on nearly every page! As it is, on your premise God has set a deplorable, inexplicable, inexcusable precedent. You have a lot of explaining to do. In fact you have created a “mystery” where we should surely anticipate transparent clarity and unambiguous wording, at least once in every Old Testament book, wouldn’t you say? Is that too much to ask of such a watershed doctrine (as you frame it)? As you can see, this situation poses a very serious problem of both Bible interpretation and theological systematization. Things just don’t square. What kind of deterrent would survive if it only got publicly decreed and announced maybe once a millennium? Let me commend to you the monumental scholarship of Edward William Fudge on this vital topic:
The Fire That Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of Final Punishment, foreword by F. F. Bruce [Fallbrook, CA: Verdict Publications, 1982] 500p; “The Final End of the Wicked,” in Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 27/3 [September 1984] 325-334; The Fire That Consumes: The Biblical Case for Conditional Immortality, revising editor, Peter Cousins, with additional foreword by John Wenham [Carlisle, UK: Paternoster Press, 1994 (condensed but updated)] 226p; The Fire That Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of the Doctrine of Final Punishment, Third Edition, fully updated, revised, and expanded, with additional foreword by Richard Bauckham [Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2011] 417p.
Now, mind you, Fudge still adheres to penal satisfaction! This adds much greater credibility to his hard won conclusions, contrary as they are to the natural inherent tendency of that theory. You can see the fascinating difficulties this raises when he interacts with his pitched opponent, Robert Peterson of Covenant Seminary (from which Fudge had earlier graduated as an older student before pursuing law). Edward William Fudge & Robert A. Peterson, Two Views of Hell: A Biblical & Theological Dialogue [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000] 228p.
It’s starting to look suspiciously like some other rationale must predominate “to uphold God’s kingdom and secure public justice, His glory, and the highest well-being of all.” It would have to be a rationale applicable to all ages of people and to all ages of time, or at least adaptable, with appropriate adjustments, to all.
How about a Covenant, one that includes not only blessings, but frightful curses as well? Then throw in a few (make that “many”—they’ll keep getting killed off…) prophets to tediously remind the people of their infractions and the dire consequences that have followed earlier unrepented violations of the deal they long before made with God. Ah, yes. Now that might have some deterrent effect.
The alleged “morality” of the vaunted “moral government” you virtually apotheosize must come under more minute scrutiny. Your inherited theory one-sidedly sanctions a substitute penalization of an infinitely-more-than totally “innocent” man (i.e., one merely free of prosecutable infractions of positive statutory law), in historic fact, incomparably, positively, pro-actively, assertively loving and self-giving, without so much as a glancing mention or mumbled whisper that all Scripture other-sidedly sanctions an unmediated PREMIALIZATION of such upright persons.
Somehow, Jesse, this proud “moral government” theory has SWEPT CHRIST’S DUE REWARD RIGHT UNDER THE RECTORAL RUG, IRONICALLY SHROUDING CHRIST’S RESURRECTION, which in reality was even only the threshold of all the just due owed Him! Dare I suggest that such a government—such a “morality”—is, for all ends, objects, and purposes, IMMORAL? Go figure.
I am kindly disposed to surmise that this admittedly rather shocking inference has only been made starkly visible—can only become robustly visible, if multiplied centuries of hyper-punitive theologies and “Christian” attitudes and practices have proved anything—by recognition and acceptance of the premial Atonement.
Having brazenly declared this, I must immediately disavow originality. I had been painstakingly examining the Scriptures for years, with no particular theological or dogmatic trajectory in mind, as a matter of pure research. (The Bible is that fascinating!) Other minds drew my attention to patterns of explanation that, to say the least, I found compelling, probably because they actually do exist in the very vocabulary and syntax of the Bible in clearly phenomenal ways, but seem to have escaped the attention, much less the utilization, of theologians generally, at least for any ruggedly systematic applications. And because the Atonement is so central to the functional categories of “soteriology,” which is to say, the Gospel, especially in the Old Testament, and of course, but with greatly ramified conceptual diversification, in the New Testament also, such authentic (even if non-evangelical, non-fundamentalist, non-Calvinistic, or otherwise non-orthodox) patterns took on major, even seismic significance and personal interest for me.
What has emerged in consequence is a massive reframing and re-proportioning of the lexical and semantic picture that the New Testament writers graphically represent as the Gospel Story. Perhaps needless to say by now, this enormous adjustment of my presuppositions has often put me at cross-purposes with seemingly every other position known to the standard historical treatments of Atonement theories. But that’s fine with me, for long ago I threw in my lot with the Bible’s writers and Author. Seems to me they have gotten short shrift by partisan schools of theology. But I must resist caricature.
The point of the above digression into my personal history is to emphasize that I am not propounding yet another wearisome theory of the Atonement; this has been a steady rediscovery. The pervasive patterns of Biblical Explanation defy the usual, common, and mostly unrevealing canons of so-called “proof-texting.” The reason is obvious enough on a little reflection: proof texts (and even worse, mere citations) are totally bereft of the necessary exposition of either context or concept. And without these, as the saying goes, you can prove anything. That’s why in most of my popular and many of my technical pieces, I have rather advanced and urged the inner logic of the Gospel (including, of course, the Atonement, narrowly considered) rather than piling up hills and mountains of proof texts as “personal cover” for a pet theory (no offense—I like pets, but in their place, and theology is no place for pets). I’ve noticed on closer inspection that your use of Scripture in the 2012 online version of your new book, The Vicarious Atonement of Christ, is—how can I say?—fragmentary, atomistic. It’s “cherry picking,” then repetitive in successive citations. This is not full-bodied, integral, concordant. I’m guessing (hoping) you did this mainly for your own benefit until you find time to screen the raw material more carefully and extract the most relevant parts for your purpose. Therefore I’ll await your more refined results before commenting further on this point as I approach your online text in upcoming blogs.
The apostle Paul did not quote Scripture to Gentiles during his evangelistic missions. He reserves such riffs for Jews. But he never skimped on unfolding the resurrectionary—that is to say, restorative, rewarding, or premial—“MORALITY” of God’s coming Kingdom. Oops! Did I say “morality”? Absolutely. What the Father and the Son plotted before the ages of time in order to “take over the world” by love and its truly moral influence, is the proper paradigm for all truly Christian morality, ethics, and even politics. For EVEN GOVERNMENTS, since the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, cannot practice their old-fashioned imperial “morality” of world-domination with IMPUNITY and official IMMUNITY. There is a Judge who sits on high, sifting and weighing the nations with kindness, patience, and forbearance, repeatedly brandishing his Sword (the Spirit’s Word of Scripture) to draw all mankind to the Father by the PREMIALLY MORAL INFLUENCE OF THE “CROSSURRECTION” DYNAMIC.
A DISCOVERY trumps a THEORY.
~to be continued~
The Premial Atonement 