More on the Ungraciousness of Calvinism

God’s mercy does not and can not make up for the absence or neglect of His premial, restorative justice.  Mercy is only the relaxing of penal justice, not the execution of premial justice.  Accordingly, David does not cry out for mercy but for [premial] justice in his extremity of oppression from the assaults of injustice!  Why don’t we get this?  Simply because the leaders of the Protestant Reformation ironically could not recognize rewarding, restorative, premial justice as of any significance in salvation! [8/22/09]

The Calvinistic doctrine of “the propitiation of divine wrath” rests upon “failure to appreciate what the Atonement IS,” to adapt John Murray’s words in defense of that doctrine in Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Eerdmans/Banner of Truth, 1961 [1955]), p. 32.  If Calvinists even merely paid due honor to the usage and contexts of kaphar/-ilas- as never, ever being associated as in their stock phrase, above, they might start to “appreciate” its hallowed usage by the Holy Spirit in association with sin instead of with God’s wrath.  But their own theory–the work of their own hands, the device of their own hearts–has become a blind, deaf, and dumb idol that replicates its own handicaps in their own words. [8/22/09]

The highest, the grandest, the most noble and splendid work of God, aside from begetting His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, before the ages of time, is to have created Adam in His own image and according to His own likeness, that is, to have made someone who shares His own qualities of lordship, authority, power, and control–someone who can think, judge, explain…dialogue!  This all is the stuff of “free will” (a misnomer), since, in effect, sovereignty = “free will“. [8/22/09]

John Calvin was a fideist, which equates to an absolutism regarding the role of faith.  For him, faith just “is” or it “isn’t” in the human heart, and it has to be put there by a “sovereign” decree of God for no discernible (on our part) reason whatever.  And the motive?  An irresistible “grace“.  The means?  An adventitious “regeneration: imposed by the Holy Spirit without regard to “anything” within the lucky recipient.  Calvin had no faith in the Word of God being able to evoke faith by virtue of its own witness to the Divine power that exalted Christ to glory via cross and resurrection!  This gross dishonoring of the Gospel’s inherent power led to a gross underestimation of grace, then a gross depreciation of human faith, which necessitated a gross disrespect for individual human sovereignty and self-authorization.  Calvin pursued this slippery slope to the very bottom.  For, given all these minimizations, THERE WAS NO NEED FOR AN ATONEMENT WIDE ENOUGH TO COVER ANY MORE THAN THE ARBITRARILY PRIVILEGED FEW WHOM GOD HAD TO SHOEHORN INTO THE KINGDOM BY FORCE IN ORDER FOR THEM TO BELIEVE HIS FECKLESS “GOSPEL”.  Once we have finally grasped the sickening magnitude of Calvin’s DIS-GRACING of God’s magnanimous graciousness, of Jehovah Supreme (!), we have the key to unlock all the shackles of his peculiar theology, link by dread link.  Then we can stride out of his decretal dungeon into the Light, freed, graced, empowered, rehumanized!  And best of all, ready for action, duly commissioned to herald a throbbing, electrifying, emancipating GOSPEL concerning the premial justice that fairly recompensed the appallingly abused Savior of all mankind, the Lord Jesus, Messiah, by raising him from among the dead and giving him ROYAL GLORY AT GOD’S OWN RIGHT SIDE.  And that’s how, by believing that Proclamation, we can get on the “right side of God” too!

John Calvin did not believe in such a believable Gospel and so resorted to a paltry, pathetic fideism that did away with “proofs” and “evidences” and strong testimony, much less signs, miracles, and unearthly powers, all of which the “sovereign” God had explicitly appointed and repeatedly endorsed for our perpetual practice in order to corroborate the inherent drawing power of the core Gospel narrative itself!

However, without such gentle, though wondrously, marvelously cogent MEANS OF FAITH, Calvin must use FORCE–not just “irresistible grace” (which is no real grace at all), but the dungeon, the sword, the stake!  As if mixing blood, gore, and ashes with the Word of the Cross might give it a more authentic feel.  Yes, it would be appropriate to repudiate all such “means of faith” and “persuasion” to keep people in line.  But without the true Gospel we lack the Divine example of premial righteousness to guide us in our behavior toward mere unbelievers, much less toward any insolent or even violent opponent.

John Calvin was fixated on PENAL JUSTICE, which in turn deleteriously tainted nearly everything he touched theologically.  Even much of his unethical practice may not be attributable to “happy inconsistencies” so much as to in-group favoritism, which “even the Gentiles“ practice (Matthew 5:47). [8/25/09]

The Kingdom of God, Baptism, Communion, the Holy Spirit, Gifts of the Spirit, Healing, Miracles, Prophecy, Evangelization, Mission, Revival, Eschatology

ALLEN, David (-)

**__________.  “Regent Square Revisited:  Edward Irving, Precursor of the Pentecostal Movement,” Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 17, No 1 (1997): 49-58.  {10p.}

ALLEN, Roland (1869-1947)

__________.  The Ministry of the Spirit; Selected Writings of Roland Allen.  With a memoir by Alexander McLeish.  Edited by David M. Paton.  Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962 (c1960).  {208p.}

BAXTER, William (-)

***__________.  Chapters VI, VII, and XVI in Life of Elder Walter Scott: With Sketches of His Fellow-Laborers…, pp. 95-108, 109-26, 260-80.  Nashville, TN: Gospel Advocate Company, n.d.  {14p., 18p., 21p.}

BEALE, G[regory]. K. (1949-)

***__________.  “The Descent of the Eschatological Temple in the Form of the Spirit at Pentecost.  Part 1: The Clearest Evidence,” Tyndale Bulletin 56, No. 1 (2005): 73-99.  {27p.}

BERCOT, David W. (1950-)

***__________.  Be Ashamed to Die – Until You Have Won Some Victory for the Kingdom.  Amberson, PA: Scroll Publishing Co.  60 min. CD.

***__________.  The Five Laws of the Kingdom Life.  Ibid.  60 min. CD.

***__________.  The Kingdom of God.  Ibid.  60 min. CD.

***__________.  The Kingdom That Turned the World Upside Down.  Tyler, TX: Scroll Publishing, 2003.  {[iv], 281p.}

***__________.  Secrets of the Kingdom Life.  Amberson, PA: Scroll Publishing Co.  9 CD set.

***__________.  What Is a Kingdom Christian?  Amberson, PA: Scroll Publishing.  60 min. CD.

***__________.  “What Is the Gospel of the Kingdom?”, “A Hybrid Is Born”; parts III-IV in The Kingdom That Turned the World Upside Down, pp. 131-212.  Tyler, TX: Scroll Publishing, 2003.  {82p.}

***__________.  What the Early Christians Believed about The Kingdom Parables of Jesus.  Amberson, PA: Scroll Publishing.  65 min. CD.

***__________.  What the Early Christians Believed about The Two Kingdoms.  Ibid.  70 min. CD.

***__________.  When Kingdoms Collide.  Ibid.  65 min. CD.

BERKHOF, Hendrikus (1914-95)

***__________.  The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit.  Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1964.  {128p.}

BOER, Jan H[arm]. (1938-)

**__________.  Wholistic Health Care of, for and by the People.  Wholistic Health Care Project.  Jos, Nigeria: Christian Health Association of Nigeria, 1989.  {[iii], 37p.}

BOER, Jan H[arm]. (1938-) and Dennis A. ITYAVYAR (-), eds.

**__________.  Wholistic Health Care: Medical and Religious Dimensions.  Volume 1.  Jos, Nigeria: CHAN Wholistic Health Care Project, 1994.  {xv, 225p.}

**__________.  Wholistic Health Care: Social and Political Dimensions.  Volume 2.  Jos, Nigeria: CHAN Wholistic Health Care Project, 1994.  {xiii, 168p.}

BOSWORTH, F[red]. F[rancis]. (1877-1958)

****__________.  “Did Jesus Redeem Us From Our Diseases When He Atoned for Our Sins?” in Christ the Healer: Messages on Divine Healing, pp. 22-47.  Seventh Edition, Revised and Enlarged.  Miami Beach, FL: F. F. Bosworth, 1948 [1924].

BOYS, Thomas (1792-1880)

****__________.  The Christian Dispensation Miraculous.  London: L. B. Seeley & Sons, 1831.  {26p.}

CARRIER, Marc (-)

***__________.  Christianity Unleashed: Slaves to Soldiers.  CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017.  {148p.}  www.ChristianityUnleashed.net

***__________.  The Gospel According to Jesus: Unwrapping Centuries of Confusion.  Foreword by David Bercot.  CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform / Values-Driven, 2014 (2010).  {48p.}  www.valuesdrivenpublishing.com

DeARTEAGA, William L. (1943-)

****__________.  Forgotten Power: The Significance of the Lord’s Supper in Revival.  Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002.  {287p.}

****__________.  Quenching the Spirit: Discover the REAL Spirit Behind the Charismatic Controversy.  Second edition.  Orlando, FL: Creation House, 1996 [1992].  {358p.}

DEERE, Jack (-)

****__________.  Surprised by the Power of the Spirit: A Former Dallas Seminary Professor Discovers That God Speaks and Heals Today.  Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House / A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers, 1993.  {299p.}

****__________.  Surprised by the Voice of God: How God Speaks Today Through Prophecies, Dreams, and Visions.  Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House / A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers, 1996.  {384p.}

DIEMER, J[ohann]. H[einrich]. (1905-45)

****__________.  “Miracles Happen: Toward a Biblical View of Nature.”  Translated from the Dutch by Wilma Bouma.  Toronto: The Association for the Advancement of Christian Scholarship, n.d.  {Mimeographed, 27p.}

****__________.  Nature and Miracle.  Foreword by Hendrik Hart.  Commemorative note by Herman Dooyeweerd.  Toronto: Wedge Publishing Foundation, 1977.  {xii, 37p.}

(Both of the above constitute parts of the Dutch original, Natuur en Wonder.  Christelijk Perspectief, Deel VI, redactie: Dr. J. Stellingwerff.  Amsterdam: Buijten & Schipperheijn, 1963. {173p.})

DURRWELL, F[rançois]. X[avier]. (1912-2005)

__________.  Holy Spirit of God: An Essay in Biblical Theology.  Translated by Sister Benedict Davies.  Foreword by Scott Hahn.  Cincinnati, OH: Servant Books/St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2006.  [esp. pp. 51, 242, n. 18]  (Originally published as l’Esprit Saint de Dieu.  Les Editions du Cerf, 1983.)

EDWARDS, Gene (1932-)

***__________.  The Americanization of Christianity.  N.p., 1994.  {[ix], 119p.}

GOUSMETT, Chris (-)

****__________.  “The Miracle of Nature and the Nature of Miracle: A Study of the Thought of J. H. Diemer Concerning Creation and Miracle.”  A Thesis Submitted in Candidacy for the Degree of Master of Philosophical Foundations.  Toronto: Institute for Christian Studies, April, 1985.  {[v], 203p.}

HAMER, Ryke Geerd (1935-2017)

__________.  [Demonstrated findings of symmetrical “super-compensation” even in natural anatomical physical disease and healing progression.]

HOOYKAAS, R[eijer]. (1906-94)

****__________.  Natural Law and Divine Miracle: The Principle of Uniformity in Geology, Biology and Theology.  Second impression.  Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1963.  {xvii, 237p.}

KAGAWA, Toyohiko (1888-1960)

**__________.  Meditations on the Holy Spirit.  Translated by Charles A. Logan.  Nashville: Cokesbury Press, 1939.  {167p.}

KALLAS, James G[us]. (1928-)

****__________.  The Significance of the Synoptic Miracles.  First delivered as lectures to the Chaplains of the U. S. Armed Forces Europe, Berchtesgaden, Germany, February, 1958.  Greenwich, CT: The Seabury Press/Essex, UK: The Talbot Press (S.P.C.K.), 1961.  {viii, 118p.}

****__________.  The Significance of the Synoptic Miracles: Taking the Worldview of Jesus Seriously.  Second Edition.  Woodinville, WA: Sunrise Reprints/An Imprint of Harmon Press, 2010.  {}

KEENER, Craig S. (1960-)

****__________.  Miracles:  The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts.  Two volumes.  Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011.  {xxxviii, 599p.; xxx, pp. 601-1172 (572p.)}

KING, Max R. (1930-)

__________.  The Cross and the Parousia of Christ: The Two Dimensions of One Age-Changing Eschaton.  {}  (?)

KLINE, Meredith G. (1922-2007)

***__________.  By Oath Consigned: A Reinterpretation of the Covenant Signs of Circumcision and Baptism.  Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1968.  {110p.}

***__________.  Images of the Spirit.  Baker Biblical Monograph.  Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1980.  {142p.}

KUYPER, Abraham (1837-1920)

***__________.  You Can Do Greater Things Than Christ: Demons, Miracles, Healing and Science.  Translated, with an Introduction, by Jan H. Boer.  Jos, Nigeria: Institute of Church and Society/Northern Area Office, 1991/1993.  {[v], 77p./[v], 83p.}  (Original Dutch: Pro Rege of het Koningschap van Christus.  Vol. I, pp. 143-246.  Kampen, The Netherlands: J. H. Kok, 1911.  {})

MacDONALD, George (1824-1905)

***__________.  The Miracles of Our Lord.  Edited by Rolland Hein.  Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1980 [original unabridged, 1871].  {167p.}

MAURICE, [John] F[rederick]. D[enison]. (1805-72)

****__________.  The Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven: A Course of Lectures on the Gospel of St. Luke.  Reprint edition.  Greenwood, SC: The Attic Press, 1977.  {xlvii, 368p.}  (Original, [London: Macmillan, n.d.]}

MAURO, Philip (1859-1952)

****__________.  “After This”: Or the Church, the Kingdom, and the Glory.  New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1918.  {190p.}

****__________.  Bringing Back the King.  New York: Revell, 1920.  {144p.}

****__________.  The Church, the Churches and the Kingdom.  Sterling, VA: Grace Abounding, 1936.  {283p.}

****__________.  Dispensationalism Justifies the Crucifixion.  Sterling, VA: Grace Abounding, n.d.  {24p.}

****__________.  God’s Present Kingdom.  New York: Revell, 1919.  {270p.}

****__________.  The Gospel of the Kingdom: With an Examination of Modern Dispensationalism.  Sterling, VA:  Grace Abounding, n.d. [1928].  {258p.}

****__________.  The Hope of Israel: What Is It? [The present gospel?  A future Millennium?  Or Both?]  Sterling, VA:  Grace Abounding, n.d. [1929].  {261p.}

__________.  The Kingdom Heresies of S. D. Gordon.  Sterling, VA: Grace Abounding, n.d. [?].  {24p.}

****__________.  The Kingdom of Heaven: What Is It?  And When?  And Where?  Second edition.  With a correction as to the “Seventy Weeks” since the first edition of 1918.  Boston: Hamilton Brothers/Scripture Truth Depot, 1920.  {146p.}

****__________.  A Kingdom Which Cannot Be Shaken.  Boston: Hamilton Bros./Scripture Truth Depot, 1920.  {183p.}

****__________.  More Than a Prophet.  An examination of the ministry of John the Baptist in relation to the Kingdom of Heaven.  Sterling, VA: Grace Abounding, n.d. [1919].  {48p.}

****__________.  The Seventy Weeks and the Great Tribulation.  A Study of the Last Two Visions of Daniel, and of the Olivet Discourse of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Revised edition.  Sterling, VA: Grace Abounding, 1988 [Second edition, 1944; first edition, 1923].  {268p.}

****__________.  A Short Exposition of the Seventy Weeks Prophecy.  Washington, D.C.: The Petty Studio, 1933.  {40p.}

MOLTMANN, Jürgen (1926-)

***__________.  The Source of Life: The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life.  Translated by Margaret Kohl.  Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997.  {x, 148p.}  (Original German: Die Quelle des Lebens: Der Heilige Geist und die Theologie des Lebens.  Chr. Kaiser / Götersloher Verlagshaus, 1997.)

MONTGOMERY, M. W. (-)

***__________.  A Wind from the Holy Spirit in Sweden and Norway.  Bible House, NY: American Home Missionary Society, 1884; reprinted, BiblioLife, 2009.  {112p.}

MORPHEW, Derek J. (-)

****__________.  Breakthrough: Discovering the Kingdom.  Cape Town, 1991.  {179p.}

MORTIMER, A[lfred]. G[arnett]. (1848-1924)

*__________.  The Eucharistic Sacrifice.  London, 1901.  {}  [Extensively discusses Valentin Thalhofer, who influenced Gayford and Hicks.]

PAUL, Robert S[ydney]. (1918-92)

**__________.  The Atonement and the Sacraments: The relation of the Atonement to the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.  New York/Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1960.  {396p.}

PITRE, Brant James (1975-)

**__________.  Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of the Exile: Restoration Eschatology and the Origin of the Atonement.  Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck / Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005.  {xiii, 586p.}

RICHARDSON, Alan (1905-75)

***__________.  The Miracle Stories of the Gospels.  London: SCM Press Ltd., 1941.  {viii, 149p.}

RIDDERBOS, Herman Nicolaas (1909-2007)

***__________.  The Coming of the Kingdom.  Philadelphia, PA: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1969.  {xxxiv, 556p.}

ROGERS, Jr., Eugene F. (-)

***__________.  After the Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology from Resources outside the Modern West.  Grand Rapids, MI / Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2005.  {xi, 251p.}  [Importantly explores the ideas of “surplus,” “superfluity,” “excess,” “gift,” etc., and hence tacitly of “supercompensation.”  Spirit as “principle of excess” in the “Godhead.”]

RUSSELL, J[ames]. S[tuart].  (1816-95)

__________.  The Parousia: A Critical Inquiry into the New Testament Doctrine of Our Lord’s Second Coming.  1878.  {581p.}

SMAIL, Thomas A[llan]. “Tom” (1928-2012)

***__________.  The Giving Gift: The Holy Spirit In Person.  Lima, OH: Academic Renewal Press, 2002.  {217p.}

***__________.  Reflected Glory: The Spirit in Christ and Christians.  Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976 [1975].  {158p.}.

STAFFORD, T. P. (-)

***__________.  A Study of the Kingdom.  Nashville, TN: Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1925.  {246p.}

STRACHAN, C[harles]. Gordon (1934-2010)

***__________.  The Pentecostal Theology of Edward Irving.  London: Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd., 1973; reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1988.  {240p.}

TAYLOR, John V[ernon]. (1914-2001)

*__________.  The Go-Between God: The Holy Spirit and Mission.  {}

WESLEY, Charles (1707-88) and John WESLEY (1703-91)

__________.  Hymns on the Lord’s Supper.  (1745).  {}  [Highlight the reviving power of the Lord’s Supper.]

WILLIAMS, Charles (1886-1945)

__________.  The Descent of the Dove: A Short History of the Holy Spirit in the Church.  Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1939.  {viii, 245p.}  (?)  [See Leanne Payne’s critique of his view of “substitution” by good people concerning evils around us—a misplaced undertaking that only Christ can properly do salutarily.]

WILLIAMS, George Huntston (1914-2000)

__________.  Anselm: Communion and Atonement.  St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1960.  Slightly enlarged and further documented with assistance from Robert Darwin Crouse and William Arthur Olsen from Church History XXVI (1957): 245-74.  {30p.}

WILLIAMS, Stuart Murray (1956-)

WIMBER, John [Richard] (1934-97)

****__________.  Signs and Wonders and Church Growth.  Placentia, CA: Vineyard Ministries International, 1984.  {ii, 173p.}

ZINZENDORF, Nikolaus Ludwig, Count von (1700-60)

The extent of OUR SALVATION is the flip side of the magnitude of INJUSTICE DONE TO CHRIST.

Jesus carried our sins in his own body onto the cross at Calvary (Heb 9:28, 1 Peter 2:24), having accepted or ‘taken responsibility for’ them all—the whole world’s!—and in this way cleansed us of them, “taking them away,” leading them off to death and the grave for the ages!

But the Lord did yet more, as the apostle Paul explains.  Since the power of sin, which reigns in death, was the Law of Moses itself (1 Corinthians 15:56-57), at least for Jews, who were covenantally bound to its letter (2 Cor. 3), then by Christ’s victory over death at his Resurrection (being innocent of any sin whatsoever, and therefore of any cause that might have justified his crucifixion) he virtually nullified Moses’s Law of precepts in decrees that were arrayed against weak creatures of mortal flesh.  He virtually erased their handwriting, taking it, too, along with the sins—which it both made known and revived, both exposed and aggravated—out of the midst, nailing it to the Cross!  (Col. 2:11,14)

But even that is not all.  Jesus, the Messiah, in obedience to his Father, by surrendering himself to the sovereigns and authorities who by misappropriating that Law for unjust purposes had stripped him of his righteous and sinless flesh via crucifixion, in turn stripped off their very sovereignty and authority by his subsequent Resurrection out of the death to which they had wickedly consigned him!  So although Caiaphas thought to make an example of him (John 11:46-53), he turned the tables triumphantly and made an example of them instead!  Hallelujah!  (Eph. 2:13-16  Col. 2:15)  [9/24/01]

If we insist, with our medieval soteriologies, on teaching and instilling the notion that God was pouring out His fury and wrath on Jesus at the crucifixion, then we cut the nerve of our consciousness that Christ was suffering abuse unjustly, that he was bearing an outrage, a hideous miscarriage of justice.  Yes, he did it voluntarily, he did it for our sakes, he did it all for our benefit.  But it was wrong!  What happened there on the Cross was a towering enormity, an intolerable crime…a SIN in the very highest degree!  Not a misdemeanor.  Not even a felony.  It was far worse than we have even forged a legal category for!  It was so bad, in fact, that God did not respond in the usual way.  This vicious display of raw Satanic fury and human complicity was avenged by repaying the Victim with life superabundant and overflowing!  God’s justice further promoted him to the paramount authority in the created universe.

In order for our sensibilities—our ’emotions’—to be properly educated in accord with the New Covenant and desire of God, so that we respond appropriately to the Message of Jesus and his apostles in matters not quite so central, we must get this central Explanation straight.  For to cut the nerve of our consciousness is to cause our indignation at the outrage, our joy at the outcome, and our boldness at the outset, alike, to fade and wither.  [9/29/01]

Jesus did not die on the Cross ‘so that’ God could forgive sin.  He did not submit himself to crucifixion to force the Father to show mercy to sinners.  Christ’s horrific execution did nothing whatever to pacify the wrath of a righteous God against sin.  The gratuitous slaughter of the sinless Son of God justified his Father in overwhelmingly reversing the dread sentence of death and exalting Jesus with resplendent honor and majesty above all his (and therefore our) enemies and giving him superabundant gifts of miraculous power to bestow as he wished on sinful human beings who might change their minds and trust his mercy and favor for pardon, even of the enormity of sin entailed in impaling a certified Messiah!

Thus Jesus did not change God’s mind (i.e., cause Him to ‘repent’) in the least.  Much rather, he revealed God’s mind at the very core!  This was something impossible to achieve without God sending His Son to earth.  Apart from Jesus and his unique career, in all its recorded details in the New Testament, God had no other, no sufficient, no worthy recourse to display or demonstrate His deepest heart’s desire for humankind.  God is trans-material; Jesus materialized Him for us.  His flesh is something we can ‘sink our teeth into’….  [10/2/01]

The popular postmodern and deconstructionist epithet ‘totalitarian,’ attributed to all modern, Enlightenment ‘metanarratives,’ is a charge we may readily concede as Christian scholars even to the Biblical Scriptures, which—to set the record straight—were never actually intended by Jean-François Lyotard to be classified as a ‘metanarrative’ at all, for it lacked the necessary qualifying indicators he had specified.  The pejorative overtones aside for the moment, ‘totalitarian’ is well suited to characterize the unconditional and universal claims of Biblical explanation and narrative (allowing, of course, for the parenthetical function of the Israelite sub-history to furnish an authoritative sampling of universal human realities).  This insight should be more than grudgingly admitted, it should be readily owned and even built upon.

The claims of Jesus to be the Son of God uniquely, to be Lord (i.e., Jehovah-in-the flesh-for-our-salvation), and to be Messiah, the Anointed Sovereign of God’s Kingdom over the universe, is as close to a legitimate claim to ‘totalitarian’ as humanity will ever see.

But this ‘totalitarianism’ has none of the marks of oppressiveness, savagery, arbitrariness, barbarity, and self-serving partiality that we naturally associate with worldly embodiments of total and universal claims to sovereignty.  Christ’s reign, as historically demonstrated and dramatized in his voluntarily undergoing unjust crucifixion to allow God to overmatch Satan’s cruel usurpation by raising him from among the dead and showing inconceivable mercy to his vicious human executioners, wins our confidence as nothing else conceivably can!  It, in a word, conciliates.

Such a total claim, making room for human cultural freedom and variation as it does, pulls the sting out of ‘totalitarian’ as an accusation.  Yet the post-modern awareness of the total claims of vaunted ‘objectivity’ in attempts at ‘neutral,’ ‘scientific’ historiography, including the pejorative connotation it lends that attribution, is to be heartily affirmed.  Here we are co-belligerants.  We must cheer them on in their whistleblowing.

Yet is there not some means of arbitrating the totalizing alternatives (including, we must insist, to be entirely consistent, all attempts by postmodern historians themselves, special pleadings to the contrary)?  The postmodern mood inclines against such a possibility as simply more of the same Enlightenment foundationalism, which is to say, partisanship.

On the contrary, we should argue, there are and always have been—in bold, bald fact, long before ‘rational,’ ‘scientific’ fact usurped exclusive rights to persuasive legitimacy—historic demonstrations of the identity of the one true Creator-Deity.  God has not left Himself without witness, indeed, a wealth of miraculous testimonies.  Alas, what an embarrassment of riches!  [10/11/01]

77 Questions about the Atonement (Q&A #12)

12.     Wasn’t God’s love balanced by His holiness at the Cross?

God’s love and holiness are neither at odds nor in tension.  His self-sacrificial love is made possible by His unflagging holiness.  His vigorous holiness gets expressed by acts of love, self-sacrificial giving, and miraculous outbursts of creational healing.  The holiness of God’s Son was powerfully and indisputably apparent in his conciliatory behavior throughout his trial and crucifixion.  His self-restraint and undiminished kindness and respectfulness in the face of incomparable sin against his person, honor, and authority awesomely displayed how genuine divine holiness behaves toward vicious sinners when push comes to shove.  Thus even a battle-hardened Roman centurion was compelled to exclaim that day, “Truly this person was a son of a god!”  High tribute, from a pagan!  The Father’s own holiness, however, became supremely visible at the Resurrection of Jesus where He erupted into this deteriorating created order with uncreated, agelong life.  They later sent Their Spirit of holiness, now augmented many fold (in accord with the surplus entailed by just restitution), into our desperate corruption in order to renew the face of the earth.

Jesus’ Miracles: NON-COERCIVE Proofs of His Kingdom of PEACE

The way some theologians downgrade miraculous proofs gives the impression that unless everyone is persuaded by them, their probative power is negligible, as if God’s intention were brute coercion!  But coercion is contrary to God’s character and His purpose to bring willing believers to full maturity of sonship.  Miraculous demonstration, strong as it is, does not override determined resistance to the truth, nor could such bulldozing fulfill God’s intention to honor human trust, which must be amenable to taking risks into the future (blindfolded for a season, granted, but not “blind” in principle) on the grounds of a strong presumption raised by a mounting record of past fulfillments, i.e., by the testimonies preserved in the covenantal documents known as biblical Scripture, and not on the “grounds” of irresistible suasion (whether conceived as logical, moral, psychological, or even “spiritual”).  Therefore, although miracles are not irresistible proof–a good thing, since false and deceptive miracles do exist!–and despite the fact that they are not even sufficient proof, considered on their own merits, yet they are absolutely necessary proof when understood as corroborating the identity of a God Who claims the power of a Creator almighty and the intention of a Savior benign.  Against this backdrop and foil, false miracles can be more easily and accurately discerned.  They are often trivial, magical, occult tricks.  They are demonic child’s play, with no redeeming value, some even achieved by the dark power of Faustian contracts with vicious spirits.  Beware, all who dare walk this dread path!  [2/04/98]

The vast cloud of witnesses to Jesus’ teaching, to his miraculous powers, and to his Resurrection from a horrible death of public execution on a cross, has forever altered the baseline of empirical expectation concerning what is possible in ‘the natural order’.  For this testimonial evidence is inductive near the highest level of human corroboration.  Jesus’ super-exceptional career could not be denied, even by his fiercest foes.  At most it could only be radically reinterpreted (as, e.g., sorcery).  Wherever God pours out His own Wholesome Wind of refreshment to renew and revive the earth, Satan manages to follow up with a diabolical twister to ravage, revile, and reverse progress.  This is so predictable that Jesus’ apostles virtually all warned their readers and future generations to steel themselves for the backlash.  However, this warning has been so generally disregarded that many believers themselves have been transmuted into mere pawns and parrots of the Serpent, slandering veritable works of God’s own Spirit rather than building them up by gentle correction, pastoral advice, and selective endorsement that could thereby fan the new flame into a steady blaze of white light.  The names of Charles Chauncey, James Monroe Buckley, Benjamin B. Warfield, John MacArthur, and Hank Hanegraaff may be sadly remembered as grievously counter-revivalistic, incorrigibly undiscerning, and even adversarially co-opted figures of modern Christian history.  [2/16/98]

It seems to have escaped most commentators on the Kingdom of God (from the one side) and most writers on the subject of so-called supernaturalism (from the other side) that a categorical substitution has transpired within popular and scholarly thought alike, whereby “the Kingdom of God” has been largely replaced by “the supernatural” when the discourse concerns miracles, healing, demon-expulsion, prophecy, etc.  But these verbal “isotopes” do not have identical properties semantically, and the substitution has proved corrosive to the Biblical teaching about God’s Kingdom.  The “atomic” structure of apostolic teaching has, as it were, undergone a reverse transmutation from gold to lead!  In the New Testament, The Kingdom of God is always associated with and accompanied by extraordinary power for creational restoration and rescue.  When this power is alienated from its true and authentic associations in Scripture, it becomes a vagrant, a maverick, a wildcard.  “Proofs” for and against its properties and existence (past or present) become strained and strange, all but estranging it from its real identity, function, and meaning.  For to equate the Kingdom of God only with the “supernatural” is to marginalize God’s reign over “nature.”  But to affirm primarily its relation to “the natural” order of the universe (as many Christians tend to do) virtually alienates “supernature” from its proper Owner, alas!

This categorical confusion, misappropriation, and misallocation plays into the hands of God’s detractors, and we are well advised to beware its entrapment.  Scripture never distinguishes a “natural realm” from a “supernatural realm.”  All of God’s activities in creation and salvation (these two are distinguished, but clearly not as “realms”!), properly understood, are orderly and in accord with His character.  Moreover, both creation, which ironically is usually thought of as His “ordinary” work–a reflex of the prevalence of naturalistic dogma–and salvation, which is generally deemed “extraordinary”–although it encompasses a diversity of operations, some clearly recreative in a way that can only evoke amazement, awe, and astonishment, such as miracles of instantaneous or very rapid healing; while other operations entail control over familiar created phenomena, meteorological, geological, chemical, or biological, etc., yet in such timely ways (whether ruinous or salvific) that the unbeliever nervously wishes to write off the conjunctions as pointless “coincidences”–are phases or facets of God’s universal reign and should equally call forth praise, thanksgiving, worship, and celebration, as indeed a host of amenable Psalms duly supply!

Skeptics concerning the biblical Scriptures lean toward isolating under the label “natural” whatever they presumptuously regard as under “human” (read: “their own”) control and predictive power.  And because they refuse to subordinate themselves to God on His terms, they have no orderly comprehension of His (actually even somewhat predictable) control over all other phenomena as well.  In short “they know not God.”  Thus even their knowledge of “nature” (as they like to say) is partial and systematically flawed by their blindness to unsettling data and their own perversity of disposition against Deity.  [2/23/98]

Jesus surrendered not only his earthly existence to his Father when he sacrificed himself in death, but also his very words.  The only record we have about his writing anything is in the critically contested account of the woman caught in adultery in John 8:1-11…and there he wrote in the sand!  That we have any recorded words of Jesus at all we owe to the power of the Resurrection and the promised Spirit of Pentecost.  For all of Jesus’ words would have fallen to the ground and perished if he had not been raised back up by God.  There likely would have been zero “sayings of Jesus” preserved and taught beyond the parochial circle of firsthand auditors if he had not actually been the bona fide Messiah and Son of God he admitted to being.  For his declarations about “morality” or “ethics” were verified by his Resurrection no less than were his prophetic predictions about his own public torture, execution, Resurrection, and enthronement.  It is a single neat and indivisible package.  It seems inconceivable that his learners would have bothered to preserve a word from his lips, in view of his transcendent claims about himself, for without a reversal of his unjust sentence of death, he would have been, all the more, a colossal embarrassment and a ridiculed byword, even his numerous miracles notwithstanding.  He wagered his all at one toss…and won the universe!  [2/26/98]

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]