What Did the Cross Wiring Achieve? The Penalty of Penal Substitution

Examining J. I. Packer’s “What Did the Cross Achieve?  The Logic of Penal Substitution”

(Originally delivered as the Tyndale Biblical Theology Lecture, Tyndale House, Cambridge, UK, on July 17, 1973.  Published in the Tyndale Bulletin, 25 (1974), pp. 1-43.  Reprinted in Celebrating the Saving Work of God: The Collected Shorter Writings of J. I. Packer, Volume 1.  Carlisle, UK: Paternoster Press, 1998, pp. 85-123.)

R. L. Roper

James Innell Packer recently died on July 17, 2020, exactly 47 years from the very date he publicly presented this most famous treatment of the Atonement, July 17, 1973, and five days short of his 94^th birthday.  This article is a tribute to his knack for simply and forcefully reiterating the dominant Evangelical-Reformed position concerning the Atonement, but takes issue with that position’s claim to be Biblical and hence with its validity.  This critique, therefore, is not so much personal (although because he steadfastly identified with the position, he must bear responsibility for holding it, even if it should turn out to be contrary to the Biblical evidence) as it is principial.  It does no credit to his legacy to brush over mischaracterizations and faulty logic, no matter his motive.  I cannot read Dr. Packer’s mind, but I can read his words.  It is to these that I must object most heartily.  The residual errors need to be exposed and rooted out in order to eliminate snares for subsequent generations, lest we follow him to the brink.

My title refers to Packer’s cross wiring the New Testament explanation of the Atonement by intruding extraneous categories and alien conceptualizing.  Once these are identified, at least in a preliminary way, we are better positioned to trace out plausible deleterious results in human personality and culture.  To the extent that the penal substitution doctrine is wrong, we shall have to consider the penalty assessed by reality upon its infractions and how to articulate the integral truth in a pattern of sound words.

Dr. Packer has indisputably done much good throughout his long ministry on both sides of the Water, in addition to his many books and articles, both technical and popular.  Here I only call attention to this one glaring misformulation (although there doubtless are more).  Neither he, nor anyone else, is justified of their errors even by an otherwise unimpeachable résumé (which he would surely be the first to disclaim).  Therefore, at a moment when we tend to cast a blind eye at faults because memorializing a worthy record of renown, we risk giving a free pass to insidious seeds of our descendant’s defection and demise.

Packer made a fateful but most revealing misstep by leading off this most famous article on the Atonement with a section entitled, “Mystery and Model.”  He padded himself with no less than 8 ½ pages (out of 39, in the 1998 reprint I’ll be citing) of protective mystifications so as to fend off the reader’s legitimate desire for a rationally satisfactory approach to the Atonement.  Naturally, he accuses of “rationalism” any who dare wish for such a “satisfaction.”  But any lesser atonement simply won’t wash.  His opening salvo is, in truth, but a tempest in a teapot.  This whole exhibit is the swan song of penal substitution, and a bitter refrain it turns out to be, all under the delusive guise of orthodoxy—a vain protection in time of doctrinal need.

J. I. Packer at least faintly characterized Calvinistic theologians as having caved in to rationalism after Faustus Socinus rubbed their noses in the rational absurdity of a penal divine impulse at Calvary.  Since then, Calvinists have continued faithfully to rationalize every absurdity that flowed from the mother doctrine of penal substitution—the “Five Points” come to mind—and to those may be added several more that many Calvinists and non-Calvinists alike agree belong in the pile.  Rationalized, not exegeted rationally as the Holy Spirit requires and endorses.

It is true that Faustus Socinus’ basically correct critique of penal substitution put Calvinists especially into a tizzy, since they were its basic defenders, but this embarrassing fact need not have spun them into rationalism such as Calvinists did indeed become grossly guilty of.  (In fact, via bitter irony, it was a lifelong pious Huguenot, Pierre Bayle, whom we have to thank for creating the Enlightenment’s classic Rationalism in his landmark Dictionnaire historique et critique [2 vols., 1695; 1697], by his intransigent fideism, a necessary reflex of Calvin’s soteriology.)  It might have precipitated a turnabout and return to the rational, i.e., premial, approach of the New Testament documents.  But it sadly did not.

Yes, it must have been exhilarating fun to make up brand new words and to juggle the old Biblical vocabulary in new ways, but that scholastic exercise, in which they had, after all, been habituated for centuries by then, led, if not actually to rationalism, yet at least to more tedious scholasticism.

To lay the guilt for this ramifying corruption of the Gospel message at the feet of Socinus is much too high a compliment.  He simply doesn’t deserve the accolade for Calvinists drinking the Kool-Aid.  They should have humbled themselves—perhaps they were overreacting against the vaunted “humilitas” so highly exalted during the Middle Ages as the way of preparation for salvation—and instead done the Berean routine of examining the Scriptures afresh to see whether these things were so.  Or so it seems to me.  For although I find it very difficult to warm up to what Socinus affirmed, especially in his unitarian doctrine of God, yet I have become enthusiastic, even zealous over his marvelous denials!  He made absolute hash of Calvinistic rationalizations concerning divine punishment of the Innocent (a line of unreasoning launched by Augustine, which exploded in mid-air by Calvin’s time, and has been raining toxic Fallout over especially Western civilization ever since).

Socinus’ succeeding generations did him one better by continuously reconsidering and debating and correcting his contribution to advancing soteriology, until they eventually (I had almost mistakenly said “finally,” but no) distilled their best winnowed thoughts into the Racovian Catechism by 1680 (English translation, 1818).  This is not to say it was perfect, for these Polish Brethren never considered any human document sufficiently polished to rank with Scripture (their ardently confessed ultimate guide).  But for not confessing Reformation (much less Catholic) formulations as infallible enough to convict conscientious protesters (who were the true Protestants here, after all?) of death, they were routinely expatriated and slaughtered like Anabaptists, their often exceedingly excellent books—they were the premier printers of Europe—burned to ashes, from which the phoenix of an authentically reformed/reformulated doctrine of the Atonement would arise in Resurrection power after many a cleansing ordeal.

Any truly valid approach to the Atonement will commend itself as more rational than Socinus, not less.  Yet Packer cannot bring himself to appeal to the authentic Biblical meaning of “mystery,” i.e., a secret now revealed.  For there is truly no mystery to the Atonement since the New Testament explained it perfectly.  This section is a colossal embarrassment to evangelical scholarship on the subject.  Packer even had the cheek to blame Socinus for causing defenders of penal substitution, through the centuries, to slip off their own native ground and start trying to make it look rational!  I blush to think of it.  (I have been nurtured by the worldview perspective of the Amsterdam school of Christian philosophy, so I could hardly be accused of being a “rationalist” in any sense, unless, of course, you mean being opposed equally to irrationalism!)

When I first uncrossed my eyes many years ago and noticed right under my nose in plain Scripture the solution to the innumerable problems with penal substitution, I had literally no idea it would solve all those problems (many of which I was ignorant of at the time).  However, it was very clear that it solved a few of the nettling difficulties I had been encountering all my life.  The fact that what I had only—let’s be fair—re-discovered was truly “PROBLEM-FREE” (in Packer’s cheerful expression) was a discovery of further decades and many an unexpectedly victorious joust.  I certainly did not aim to jettison one set of irresolvable (if historical theology demonstrates anything!) problems only to have to spuriously, tendentiously defend others in their wake.

I had no intention of inventing a problem-free doctrine of the Atonement, believe you me, after first reading Packer’s address back in 2007!  Who would conceivably claim a problem-free doctrine when it was so fraught with hubris?  But the solution just kept cleaning up on the messes liberally churned out by penal substitution.  So this isn’t my fault!

This problem-free Atonement, I came to appreciate more and more, was God’s own invention.  I confess, I was delightfully surprised that the solution was so plainly visible in human language, because I had long heard that God had a problem saying things clearly about Himself, since all He had to work with were our clumsy human metaphors.  But I took pity on God and gave Him the benefit of the doubt (and there were many).  Once I saw the solution, of course, I immediately blamed Him for it, because Dr. Packer had warned us how dangerous it was to imagine we had come up with any such unlikely phenomenon.  I thank him belatedly for the warning.  That was certainly a close shave.

Packer’s second section, “Bible and Model” (3 pages), is seriously dated.  In any case, it appears to be largely beside the point relative to his divergence from the premial doctrine taught in the New Testament.  Talk of “thought models” can be just so much smoke.  I do heartily agree that whatever Scripture has to say is true and wholesome and ought to be trusted and obeyed.  On to the main battlefront, then.

Packer’s third section, “Substitution” (7+ pages), is largely a surreptitious attempt to win concessions to the existence of “substitution” in the Bible as a prelude, of course, to his filling it with “penal” content.  He declares, “Logically, the model is put together in two stages: first, the death of Christ is declared to have been substitutionary, then the substitution is characterized and given a specific frame of reference by adding the word penal” (pp. 97-98).  This is disingenuous.  No one would ever have discovered between the covers of a Bible the kind of substitution Packer dares to defend.  Only the fervid defensiveness of penal substitution advocates made it incumbent to eisegete it into Scripture at every turn.  By leading off with “Substitution” he makes it seem like he’s simply taking a baby step into the penal variety.  This is a type of duplicity.  If someone does something nice for another, is that a “substitutionary” deed?  Such a notion makes a wax nose of Scripture, not to mention dictionaries.

Dr. Packer’s appeal to a dictionary rather than Scripture is revealing.  Dictionaries don’t usually have axes to grind, theologians do.  Conveniently, all he needs to do is find entries where at least one meaning of, e.g., huper or anti or “representative” or “vicarious” includes “substitution” as a legitimate option (no matter how attenuated) in order to claim that every usage of them must imply it.  This could serve as a textbook example from “Elementary Logical Fallacies 101.”  An obvious counter instance is 2 Cor. 5:15—”And He died for the sake of all that those who are living should by no means still be living to themselves, but to the One dying and being raised for [huper] their sakes.”  Was Jesus’ resurrection “substitutionary”?  Then it must mean we don’t have to be raised because he did it for us.  Do I hear an “Amen!”?  And if it positively does not mean such a thing here, then it does not “have to” mean substitution anywhere else either.  I appeal to the authority of Scripture and a sane evangelical logic.  Yet Calvinists have, in effect, “rationalized” that passage to the contrary, and to their shame.

On the other hand, is there substitution in Scripture at all?  Of course there is, but never penal substitution!  Obvious instances are the “ransom” (antilutron) passages.  The preposition comprised in this compound stem is “anti,” which generally means “in exchange for” (so even here the idea of “substitute” would veer off the mark in many cases).  A study of ransom (only three passages) and other words in that Greek root family (redeem, deliver, liberate) makes clear that Jesus was offered up in exchange for us and thereby bought us for God out of/from our “distresses,” “offenses,” “transgressions,” “sins,” “vain behavior,” “dead works,” “our enemies and all those who are hating us.”  He bought us by His precious blood out of every family, tongue, land, and nation—from mankind, from the earth.  He paid the ultimate price, made the supreme sacrifice, and surrendered his soul to Death.  He “paid” the Grim Reaper, for Heaven’s sake, and won earth in the bargain.

Is there any more “substitution” in the Bible.  You bet!  The Son was the substitute on earth for His Father in Heaven.  The Holy Spirit is now the substitute on earth for the Son in Heaven.  And we are substitutes for both the Father and the Son in the power of the Spirit before the watching world.  Or don’t you like the term “substitute” in these contexts?  Neither do I.  “Representative” would be preferable.  And now we’re back where we started and never should have departed.  But why don’t we ever hear about this very valid sort of substitution?  You know the answer as well as I do: because it’s not penal, so it doesn’t make the grade.  Virtually every bit of valid theological-type “substitution” we find in Scripture is of a non-penal sort, thus, except in the case of ransoming (in which instance the preposition always present is “anti” = “instead of,” “in place of,” “in exchange for”; but not “huper” = “for,” “for the sake of,” “for the benefit of,” “on behalf of”), it is more normally, naturally, and better rendered “representation.”  Therefore, if any reader is seduced into acquiescing in Packer’s section on “Substitution,” they have virtually swallowed his whole can of worms, hook, line, and sinker, and are easy prey to be swallowed, in turn, by his fourth section.

“Penal Substitution” gives ample scope for Packer to pontificate; the fact that so many have found his “logic” persuasive is a backhanded argument for Rome!  He would like to fend off any of the perennial charges of holding to a “crude” theory.  But he has no choice.  Calvin couldn’t do it, much less his epigones.  (Most recently, N. T. Wright’s “The Cross and the Caricatures: a response to Robert Jenson, Jeffrey John, and a new volume entitled Pierced for Our Transgressions,” from Eastertide, 2007, sallies forth to undertake it.  But even the Bishop of Durham was hard pressed to avoid that onus in his obvious pinch: trying to back off from the dubious misrepresentations in that strident new volume, while at the same time defending Steve Chalke, author of The Lost Message of Jesus (Zondervan 2003).  A most instructive attempt, available at Fulcrum Forum:  https://virtueonline.org/cross-and-caricatures-tom-wright.)

Here, again, Packer reverts to mystification for a couple of pages.  He even highlights James Denney’s similar recoiling from the aspersions of opponents of penal substitution.  The basal problem is that penal justice is not salvific.  There’s no way, shape, or form it can be twisted to make it redemptive.  Because it’s not.  Everyone sees that except its defenders, and they’re so full of wounds from the historic battles against those using more rational weaponry that they resort to “padding” to keep insulated from getting hurt further.  Not a pretty sight.  They need healing.  We need a big dose of healing all around.

Then come five subsections in which Packer forges his links between substitution and “Retribution,” “Solidarity,” “Mystery,” “Salvation,” and “Divine Love.”  As regards the first of these:  retribution and restoration are both sides of God’s justice, but only the second saves!  Yet neither was present at the cross!  That event was purely an instance of infernally-inspired human hatred and rage.  God’s own hand of justice was not played until the resurrection.  Then followed 40 years of graciousness on the repentant and mercy, patience, kindness, and longsuffering on the unrepentant, who were treasuring up divine wrath for themselves until 70 A.D., the destruction of Jerusalem, its temple, and all who had not by then bowed the knee to their divinely vindicated Savior.

Once we see this, the gossamer of Packer’s whole argument collapses.  At one point he tries to commandeer what he asserts and alleges the conscience to require, namely, an exhibit of the law of retribution.  His foisting off onto universal conscience his own pet theory rankles.  How would he know, since Scripture does not teach it?  Where is he picking up his ideas, from the street?  This is street logic, not the logic of God’s Kingdom.  Is that why it plays so well among nominal evangelicals?  It’s time for a prophetic challenge here.

In the second subsection, on “Solidarity,” Packer struts Luther.  Big boo boo.  Luther’s “wonderful exchange” is an ersatz, a phony, a “substitute,” without a doubt.  Such an “imputational” exchange is common coin among conservative Protestants.  But it has no grounding in the proper use of “imputation” (logizo) in Scripture.  The lengthy footnotes in this section (#32 & 34) are egregious, galumphing samples of Luther’s outrageous rhetorical flair.  These famous passages also well illustrate how rhetoric can take over when logic is in short supply.  The authentic, precious, and truly marvelous exchange transpired when The Savior gave his sinless self, soul and body, to wrongful death on our behalf (yes, and, in this technical instance of ransoming, also “instead of” us) so that we sinners might go free from death’s imperious control over us.  Simple.  Sound.  Sane.  So misunderstood!

God cured from sin by healing from death.  This was the totally unexpected Divine “end run” that caught the opposite team completely off guard.  And this play didn’t require a substitute player!  To be sure, the Quarterback got absolutely slaughtered by his Opponent.  But because “his cause was right and his heart was pure,” he made a miraculous comeback that filled his team with superabundant team spirit and high morale sufficient to win the game side by side with their Champion.  Everyone took their lumps, but by following his directions and obeying his calls, they all won glory!

Subsection three is more mystery-mongering.  Packer throws the veil over divine love, over the Cross’s necessity, over Christ’s solidarity with us, over our union with Him, over the Trinity, over predestination, and over the incarnation.  That’s for starters.  These will not strike us as “mysterious” (indeed, they do not strike the apostles as such, for they never use this or any other similar word to label them) once we understand God’s justice as restorative and therefore utterly rational.  Packer doesn’t get it, so he’s aswarm with buzzing mysteries.  He escapes his evident irrationality via an “upper storey leap,” à la Francis Schaeffer, into “supernature.”  Observe closely:

“The way to stand against naturalistic theology is to keep in view its reductionist method which makes humanity the standard for God; to stress that according to Scripture the Creator and his work are of necessity mysterious to us, even as revealed (to make this point is the proper logical task of the word supernatural in theology); and to remember that what is above reason is not necessarily against  it” (pp. 114-115, bold emphasis added).

Packer cannot make forward progress on this doctrine because he is too invested in defending against its detractors, so does not have the time or candor to reconfigure the whole mess, and is hardly poised to repent in the presence of those he has peremptorily labeled.  He’s painted himself into a corner.

By his fourth subsection, concerning salvation, his stock assertions are getting wearisome.  Yet stating his assertions over and over and over again does not make them more persuasive, only more tedious.  This is improper imprinting.  Even so, one of the more interesting things happens in this section, since he is forced to out with his Calvinism and it’s worthy Siamese twin, Arminianism.  In fact, it helped me see something I had not noticed before: a resurrectionary re-centering of the Atonement, i.e., Divine restorative justice, will radically alter the outcome of the Arminian controversy.  It follows as day does night.  Packer offers this posing of the famous double-bind:

“So it seems that if we are going to affirm penal substitution  for all without exception we must either infer universal salvation or else, to evade this inference, deny the saving efficacy of the substitution for anyone; and if we are going to affirm penal substitution as an effective saving act of God we must either infer universal salvation or else, to evade this inference, restrict the scope of the substitution, making it a substitution for some, not all”  (p. 116, all emphases added).

The footnote gives John Murray’s double-bind: “a limited efficacy or a limited extent; there is no such thing as an unlimited atonement” (The Atonement  [Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1962] p. 27).

But what happens if we, instead of affirming penal substitution, substitute for it restorative or premial justice at Messiah’s justifying resurrection?  What then?  There’s a whole new world out there!  For starters, a premial/restorative atonement, as distinguished from a penal atonement (need I reiterate?), is not substitutionary but overcompensatory.  This means that whatever the Lord accomplished was achieved not instead of us, i.e., due to God’s penal payback for our sinfulness, but for us, i.e., due to God’s gracious premial repayment for Messiah’s sinlessness.  There’s all the difference in the world between these two.  It’s all about Jesus!

ERGO:  THERE IS SUCH A THING AS AN UNLIMITED ATONEMENT AFTER ALL!

This is hot off the griddle, right out of the box, fresh as a newborn baby (probably needs a little cleaning up…).  “Come one, come all!  Buy and eat without money and without price!”  This is BIG!  Since Christ atoningly indemnified the whole human family without exception, but since Packer (also Murray, et al) thinks of God’s justice exclusively from its penal side, he thinks of Christ as paying for sins “in some crude sense” (Note: this is an inescapable reproach against its falsity!) as “substitute” for particular individual sins.  This error compels him to calculate like a Shylock.  The Resurrectionary Atonement shatters all that, once and for all, cataclysmically!  The old calculus of limited atonement is passé, obsolesced, defunct, and all but bankrupt.  The economics of divine compensation can only be compared to Einstein’s discovery of the almost unbelievable ratio between matter and energy represented in his famous formula.  Little tiny bomb; great big boom.  Why?  Supercompensation.  It’s etched in the bedrock of the universe.

So, for God’s sake, for Christ’s sake, let’s get over our penal fixation once and for all.  There’s a whole world to win!

Now, I wish I could stop right there.  But Packer goes on to probably the most problematic link of all in his fifth subpoint—the quintessence—concerning “Divine Love.”  This is where penal substitution always goes limp.  (I find it hard to believe its defenders really believe their own words, but certainly they cannot feel them without a measure of inauthenticity.  This must seriously twist emotions, and the reflex of that can well be surmised by a glance at “Christian” history.)  Here, of course, is where Packer quotes John 3:16…cuz he’s s’pozed to, as if quoting it makes everything all right.  It doesn’t.  Once you mess with the Biblical Proclamation in such a fundamental way, a few Bible Band-Aids only aggravate the wound and prevent deep healing.  It’s insulting to have been assaulted so remorselessly by Packer’s illogic and then to get tossed a Bible verse to make the owie go away.

But Packer learned from the “best”—Leon Morris, James Denney, James Buchanan, Jonathan Edwards, Francis Turretin, John Owen, John Calvin, Philipp Melanchthon, Martin Luther.  Who can fault them?  Only Scripture.  Only God’s Explanation is up to that task.  But it shall most certainly be done.  Regardless how much unctuous sentimentality suffuses these fundamental errors, errors they remain, and they remain to be exposed and rooted out.  They sully the holiness of God.  They impugn the justice of God.  They belie the love of God.  They make a mockery of the most pivotal truth of God’s entire Explanation in Scripture.

In Packer’s conclusion, “The Cross in the Bible,” He gives a summary brush over, reiterating his allegations, minimizing his critics, rehabilitating demonstrable errors, venerating unsound traditions, genuflecting before great icons of penal substitution.  The whole exhibit is disgraceful.

I wish I could have been more kind.  But I see the evil fruits of such false doctrine on all sides.  We still see these spurious arguments echoed and reechoed in book after article after manifesto after tract after hymn after radio program after television program after film after video after website after blog, ad nauseam….

By fostering penal substitution rather than calling a timely halt to its advance, the Doctor has done great harm to the body of Christ on earth whom he practiced on.  By blindly accepting this alien dogma instead of practicing due diligence as was his professional duty, Packer has been instrumental in further impairing generations of Evangelicals from apprehending the truth of the New Testament.  The almost unbearable truth of this grievous statement will only dawn slowly in the minds of the few who make a habit, like the noble Bereans of old, of “examining the Scriptures day by day to see whether these have it thus” (Acts 17:11), endeavoring to present themselves to God “qualified, an unashamed worker, correctly cutting the Explanation of the truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).  Jesus made increasing insight conditional: “If ever you should be remaining in my Explanation, you are truly my learners, and you will know the truth, and the truth will be liberating you” (John 8:31).  We must not lazily take for granted what must laboriously be sought.

Packer’s sad delinquency, when it finally becomes evident to these few who qualify, will prove a cautionary tale of perpetual warning to future generations of the church of God on earth, lest we harden up like our Jewish forbears, who, although “salvation is of the Jews,” somehow still managed to demonstrate themselves unworthy of the holy truths and turned treasonous against the God of their ancestors, until we behold a modern Israel—a host of Holocaust survivors—treating their fellow Semites in Palestine the way Nazis treated them.  They, in effect, have again become “Not-sees,” as Isaiah prophesied—likewise blinded by their stiff-necked enmity against the Son of Yahweh, and so refusing to kiss Him and live in peace with brethren.  Shall we follow them to the brink as well?

This has been a tedious and only obliquely pleasurable undertaking.  I find it painful partly because I am embarrassed by Packer’s claim to be an Evangelical.  If his famous article is “Evangelical,” my Biblical studies and sensitivities have rendered me emphatically not.  Yet Packer’s is the pack I grew up hanging around.  Still, I must add that having come to realize, by the graciousness of God, what the truth about the Atonement really is, I find it hard to hold a grudge against Packer or any other penal substitution adherent.  I’m confident that whenever even his most loyal students and readers and admirers determine to know the truth of Christ as it is in Scripture, they too will rejoice and leave their customary mistakes behind.  That’s what I ache for.  That’s what I yearn to see.  That’s what I’m praying for.

Dr. Packer is not responsible for creating the penal substitution dogma he defends in this famous piece.  He is responsible for perpetuating it.  He was serving as its defense attorney.  He assumed the same role that Jay Sekulow did from January 16th through February 5th: defending the indefensible.  We beheld Adam Schiff setting the record straight again, and again, and again.  But Jay Sekulow had long before been prepared for his adversarial role in that courtroom drama, for in his youth he had been converted from his Jewish heritage to a penal-substitution-believing Evangelical through the instrumentality of Jews for Jesus, which accepted that dominant view of the Atonement, so had already been well instructed in a gigantic falsehood.

Herein I have hoped to make a beginning at unlacing the pervasive lie he teethed on and, in turn, to put some teeth back into the truth he never knew.  He represents every Evangelical whose conscience has been darkened by the penal substitution doctrine of the Atonement.  Only by liberating the American Evangelical and conservative Protestant populations from that religious delusion can this nation hope to remove the veil that is keeping it blind to its affiliated social-economic-political-moral lies that are even now tightening their chokehold on the United States of America.  However, these lies are deeply embedded in the theological lie about the Atonement.

I have some personal interest in this matter since I knew Marty “Moishe” Rosen, founder of Jews for Jesus, and, more interestingly, Arnie Bernstein, his early closest associate, who is actually responsible for giving the name “Jews for Jesus” to the movement.  Now Rev. A. James Bernstein, a minister within Eastern Orthodoxy, he was eventually persuaded to an understanding of both sin and the Atonement that is much more compatible with the premial teaching of the New Testament, indeed, of the whole Bible properly interpreted.  He well summarizes these in an interesting autobiographical presentation he gave on June 19, 2009:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrK27w-gQvY.  He expands on these doctrinal matters in his published autobiography, Surprised by Christ: My Journey from Judaism to Orthodox Christianity (2008), https://www.amazon.com/Surprised-Christ-Bernstein-James-Paperback/dp/B00NPNWW9Q/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=bernstein%2C+surprised+by+christ&qid=1598577084&s=books&sr=1-2.  On other matters, we may agree to disagree.  But concerning sin and the Atonement, I commend these articulations as superior to those of J. I. Packer.  Come, let us reason together.

Christ’s Atonement Mediates Premial (Not Penal) Justice from God to Believers

It should not be surprising to us that the blood of Christ, his resurrection from the dead, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (all being of one piece in relation to salvation-in-general) have a variety of relations to the many variegated facets of salvation (forgiveness, justification, [re]conciliation, protective cover, peacemaking, ransoming, redemption, liberation, freedom, erasure of sins, everlasting life, regeneration, cleansing, hallowing, sonhood, inheritance, nourishment, etc.).  But we need to beware of artificial, syncretistic, and alien incursions (such as false “imputation” doctrines).  [9/3/09]

The premial justice of God takes the wind out of a penal atonement.  It, indeed, takes our breath away…only TO FILL OUR SAILS WITH THE BREATH OF GOD!  A fair exchange?  [9/3/09]

The Canons of Dort need to be dismounted, melted down, and turned into plowshares and other implements of peace and productivity…such as telescopes and sextants to search out how the heavens really go, and to reinforce a hunch that God’s premial righteousness really does make the world go ’round in a redemptive direction!  And whereas the meteors of God’s penal judgments will occasionally collide with the earth to cause deluges of destruction against hardened sinners, and comets may beleaguer our smug self-assurance, yet only love and its reflex of rewarding justice make the world go ’round.  [9/3/09]

The “righteousness of God on [epi] faith” (Phil. 3:9) is indeed precisely His resurrectionary recompense to Jesus now coming through to us believing sinners!  It is the “premial” (restoring, rewarding) justice of God (rather than His penal justice CHANNELED through the Mediator and landing on us!  On our own behalf, we could never expect anything but penal, punitive measures to come our way in the long run, since we did not know God or His desire, or His forgiveness, and were only living according to our corrupt, selfish flesh.  But Christ’s life deserved much better, and his unjust death demanded far more overcompensation beyond that.  God was quick to oblige at his resurrection, which was the most explicit and exquisite rectification on historic record!  But in relation to us, it comes not as our “personal moral rectitude” but as Christ’s just award for his “personal moral rectitude“ (which, as we know from his ministry, encompassed miraculous deeds of healing, exorcism, and restoration for multitudes of others, so was not a mere squeaky clean morality) now falling on us via the heavenly gift of the promised Holy Spirit!  THIS IS “JEHOVAH OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS“!  [9/4/09]

We need to use biblical words BIBLICALLY

Without the immense counterweight of premial justice, the grim weight of penal justice creates a darkening OVERCAST, a permanent “LAKE EFFECT” that depresses the human personality and casts a pall over all human action.  It can induce abusiveness, restlessness, ill-ease, and existential cheerlessness.  [8/26/09]

If John Calvin and his theological heirs had been intent on uncovering the concordant and proportionate system of explanation underlying the apostolic testimonies, he could never have come up with:

–“faith is a gift”

–“God foreknows because He predestines all events”

–“God predestines the elect to salvation”

–“God predestines the reprobate to destruction”

–“the sovereignty of God” [an expression not actually found in Scripture]

–“election is without regard to anything within a person”

–“God desires that the blood of Christ is only efficacious for those whom He has elected”

–“God’s grace cannot be resisted by the elect”

–“the elect are regenerated in order to believe the Gospel”

“those God has elected will necessarily persevere to the end”

–“original sin has placed the human will in bondage”

–etc.

How long must we continue to allow such erroneous clichés to burden the Christian mind?  Therefore, if not Arminius, then the Lord would have had to raise up another whistleblower to blow the whistle on these theological crimes…in the name of Scripture and the continuing reformation of the church and theology.  Or the very stones themselves would whistle out…!

Having said that, however, I will have to admit that it does look as if the wills of Calvinists are bound to follow their strong delusion regardless of gracious overtures such as those by Jacob Arminius, which they RESISTED vigorously, even to the point of persecuting Remonstrants to death. [8/29/09]

Even as Christ’s faithfulness and obedience to his Father according to the Spirit of the Covenant constituted his own personal, individual RIGHTEOUSNESS before God, and as God’s resurrection of Christ from the dead constituted and mightily displayed God’s own personal, individual RIGHTEOUSNESS according to the promises He made in that Covenant, and to which He was faithful, so our own personal, individual RIGHTEOUSNESS in seed form is our FAITH, and therefore God faithfully and justly reckons it as the righteousness it really is. [8/31/09]

SURPRIZE! SURPRIZE!

September 19, 2018:  The Day of Atonement

Welcome to Art Prize #10, Grand Rapids, Michigan!  Coincidentally and significantly, it commenced on September 19th, which is The Day of Atonement on the Jewish calendar.  I hope you find the SURPRIZES that follow to be happy ones, even life changing!

(This piece is dedicated to a local professor of theology for challenging me to summarize in two pages the Atonement achieved for all by God’s awarding justice to the Lord Jesus Christ.)

What if it was not the suffering of Christ on the Cross per se, but his obedience of sinless endurance that was of such great worth in God’s sight that he won the PRIZE of God’s extraordinary graciousness, overflowing for free to others in the Gift of the Holy Spirit?

What if the New Testament records that Jesus and his emissaries heralded and proclaimed: “God,” “the Kingdom of God,” “the graciousness of God,” “the acceptable year of the Lord,” “His Son,” “Christ,” “Christ crucified,” “Jesus Christ,” “the name of Jesus Christ,” “the Word,” “the Gospel,” “your salvation,” “repentance,” “faith,” “the declaration of faith,” “peace,” and “good,” but never the Cross, per se?   Hmmm

What if the original words translated ‘atone/atonement’ in the Bible are not used for appeasing, pacifying, placating, or propitiating God, but rather for protectively covering/sheltering/shielding humans from His indignation on account of their accumulated sins?

What if the Cross of Christ was a transcendent injustice perpetrated by officials of Israel and Rome alike, under Satanic inspiration, calling for God’s own just avenging of his sinless blood to make an atoning cover around the appalling crime lest the people perish?

What if the Gospel announces the revelation, manifestation, setting forth, and display of God’s SURPRIZING justice that raised Jesus from the dead after this suicide mission?

What if God’s love didn’t actually need to accomplish our salvation by resorting to His Son’s crucifixion, so long as He could find some other means of public, official, priestly, conspiratorial, treasonous, terrorizing, degrading, agonizing, inescapably fatal execution?

“Wait!” you respond with SURPRIZE, “Why did Jesus have to be killed at all?”  Okay.  So how would you stage a rescue operation better designed to prove God’s benign saving prowess than to face Him, let’s say, with His own dear Son’s treacherous criminalization and brutally violent death to exercise it on?  What am I missing?

Is it really SO SURPRIZING that God should strategically surrender His beloved Son (with his full agreement) to diabolical forces of envy, jealousy, and hatred with a centuries-long criminal record of murdering prophets, so that He might have a golden opportunity of showing His love and power to avenge such vicious atrocities by more than reversing the already executed fatal sentence, thus justifying immortal life and compensating royal exaltation to the divine throne for the Victim, without so much as a slap for the guilty offenders, but instead a full pardon and generous terms of peace, plus adoption into a vast inheritance, all in return for repentance and faith?

Ponder the following “resuppositions” that reinforce this premial Atonement in the Bible:

1. Sacrificial blood represented not death but life-from-the-dead, that is, resurrection.

2. “The righteousness of God” (as commonly translated) refers to God’s justness—in particular, His restorative or rewarding justice to Jesus Christ, the sinless Victim, instead of His immediate penal justice to the now reprieved offenders who assailed him.

3. In Paul’s epistles, “the faith of Christ” refers to Christ’s own faith/faithfulness to God’s will, outlined in His covenanted directives and promises in the Law and Prophets, even through the shuddering enormity of undeserved torments and cruel death by crucifixion.

4. God’s “surrendering” and “forsaking” His precious Son to his malicious but clueless foes, who hung him on timber in order to render him a curse according to the Law of Moses, worked to facilitate the spectacle of God’s supervening rescuing justice directly to Christ himself, and thereupon offer all nations the more ancient precedent of blessings sworn to Abraham and his Seed by oath and covenant, in view of his faith.

5. On account of Christ’s own faith, God deems human faith as justness apart from works of Moses’ Law, since faith is not a work, so accords with God’s pure graciousness.

6. God awarded His Son directly with the justice of resurrection from the dead, in other words, with what he personally deserved for bearing sins themselves (not their guilt, nor penalty, but their injury) from those he came to save, instead of taking revenge on them.

7. Therefore, God did not need to unleash His rightful wrathfulness upon His Son’s slayers, since He had already conveyed overcompensating graciousness to Jesus by raising him out of the death they caused and exalting him over them to His throne above.

8. Furthermore, God did not need to satisfy His penal justice toward sinners indirectly on Christ, because He already satisfied the demands of restorative justice directly to him via resurrection and great glory, thence effecting atonement, conciliation, and real peace.

9. The superabundance of God’s just award to Christ on account of his deserts, Christ further graciously dispenses to all who exert faith in him, freely redistributing his promised Holy Spirit, which in turn cleanses sin from believers and empowers them to proclaim that God raised the Lord from the dead and extends forgiveness to all who trust.

10. The point of Christ’s humiliation, suffering, and execution was not to ‘pay for’ sin in any sense but to get rid of the damned stuff. For by worthily winning a cosmic outpour of Holy Spirit from on high in return for surrendering and submitting to outrageously wrongful damnation himself, Christ turned the tables and damned sin instead, justifying an inheritance of everlasting life for all those enslaved to sin and Satan by fear of death, endowing them with God’s Spirit of wholesomeness to pour His love into their hearts and develop disciples zealous for justice and good works to herald His kingdom worldwide.

By Ronald Lee Roper for Art Prize #10, Grand Rapids, MI, Sept. 19 (Day of Atonement)-Oct. 7, 2018.

Calling All Saints! Calling All Saints! — Part 3

A Comedy of Errors, a Tragedy of Mistaken Identities (cont’d.)

What if God’s justice was only “satisfied” by the resurrection, not by the cross, per se, at all, and therefore Christ’s resurrection is actually a paramount judicial act of God?

What if Paul never used such phrases as “Christ’s righteousness” or “the righteousness of Jesus/Christ,” etc., for the simple reason that he intends by “the righteousness of God” to denote the Father’s restorative justice toward the Son (and through him dispensed to others of faith) in distinction from the Son’s obedience of faithfulness (Rom. 1:5, 16:26) toward the Father?

What if Paul’s famous reiteration of “the just shall live by faith” (Hab. 2:2-4; Rom. 1:17; Gal. 3:11; Heb. 10:38), which so resonated with Martin Luther, refers in the first place to the Lord Jesus himself—the Just One (Acts 3:14, 7:52, 22:14; 1 John 2:1,29, 3:7; Matt. 27:19,24; Luke 23:47; 1 Pet. 3:18; Rev. 15:3), who, due to his own faithfulness to God (Rom. 3:22,25,26; Gal. 2:16,16,20, 3:22; Eph. 3:12; Phil. 3:9; Rev. 1:5, 3:14, 19:11), was raised to superabundant life (John 5:21-29, 10:10; 1 Cor. 15:45)?

What if Paul’s strategically repeated phrase, “the faith[fulness] of Christ” (pistis christou—subjective genitive case) refers to Jesus’ own covenantal response to God’s will and promises (Rom. 3:22,26; Gal. 2:16,16,20, 3:22; Eph. 3:12; Phil. 3:9), to which we should add  “through (dia) [the] faithfulness” where it plausibly refers to Christ’s own (Gal. 2:16, 3:14,26; Rom. 3:22,30,31; Phil. 3:9; Eph. 2:8, 3:12,17; Col. 2:12; 2 Tim. 3:15), plus instances where the “faithfulness within (en) Christ” himself seems to be in view (Gal. 3:26; 1 Tim. 3:13; 2 Tim. 3:15; Rom. 3:25, where it may be figured in his blood—as it were, the vital active ingredient), sometimes coupled with love (Eph. 1:15; Col. 1:4; 2 Tim. 1:13), but does not include our faith in Christ (objective genitive case), which is usually denoted by a different preposition (eis, literally ‘into’) and occurs abundantly throughout the New Testament for a complementary purpose?

What if even the Latin Vulgate has retained each of the eight “faith of Christ” renderings intact, and the Aramaic Peshitta retains all but the two in Gal. 2:16?

What if, in fact, Paul is framing “God’s justice” and “Christ’s faithfulness” as covenantal correlates in order to highlight and epitomize their respective, discrete mutual obligations in the full process of our salvation?

What if, in view of the fact that a truly Just Man had finally shown up in Israel, Yahweh could finally break with long grim tradition and, instead of the routine curses, unleash wholesale the blessings He had vowed to give any perfect Covenant-keeper (Lev. 26; Deut. 28)?

What if Jesus, by his Covenant faithfulness, won all the promised blessings of the Old Covenant (so inaccessible to any mortal sinner) so that he could prudently give them away for free to repentant Covenant-breakers on the gracious condition of mere faith alone, by having negotiated via covenant renewal a New Covenant no longer liable to default by human failure?

Furthermore, what if Paul’s expressions, “the faithfulness of God”—Rom. 3:3-5, where “our injustice” of crucifying the Lord is actually said to be “commending God’s justness” of raising him from the dead!—and “the faithfulness of the operation of God” (Col. 2:12) are connected to and exhibited by Christ’s resurrection?

What if this curiously profound truth of the Cross commending the Resurrection only really makes sense on the assumption of premial justice and elegantly accounts for those two puzzling passages (inexplicable on a penal assumption) where Paul denounces judgment against slanderers who alleged he taught “We should be doing evil that good may be coming” (Rom. 3:8), similarly echoed in, “We may be persisting in sin that grace should be increasing” (Rom. 5:20-6:1), and whose germ of truth Paul himself reprised so memorably in Romans 8:28, “God is working all together for the good of those who are loving God…,” itself a reflection of Joseph’s declaration to his brothers, “You devised evil against me, yet God, He devised it for good in order to accomplish, as at this day, to preserve many people alive” (Gen. 50:19), as we would expect of the living God?

What if the cargo to be conveyed in salvation is Christ’s own personal just-award of damages from God, transferred through him as Sponsor (Heb. 7:22) and Mediator (Heb. 8:6-13, 9:15, 12:24) of this fresh, new, better, everlasting Covenant (Matt. 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20; Rom. 11:27; 1 Cor. 11:25; 2 Cor. 3:6; Gal. 4:21-5:1; Heb. 13:20), to us as the stipulated beneficiaries, instead of our deserved punishment transferred to him (as postulated by not-quite-ancient-enough Protestant tradition)?

What if the uniquely Protestant expression, “the imputation of Christ’s righteousness” (in overreaction to the medieval Roman Catholic doctrine that the interior operation of the Holy Spirit makes us righteous pending justification at the Final Judgment), has served to obscure Paul’s teaching that the Gift of Holy Spirit constitutes the subjective contents of God’s justness (via Christ’s just-award redistribution) within believers/saints (2 Cor. 3; Gal. 2:20-3:29; Rom. 5:5-21, 8:11-30, 14:17; 2 Cor. 9:8-15; 2 Pet. 3:13; John 16:7-11)?

What if such “imputation” theology all comes down to artful accounting—“cooking the books”?

What if one person’s sin, guilt, and punishment cannot legally or morally be transferred, accounted, or imputed to another person (Deut. 24:16; Jer. 31:29-30; Ez. 18:1-32, 14:14-20), yet one person’s reward, by contrast, can be further distributed at its recipient’s discretion?

What if true justice often requires redistributing wealth to restore peace (or hadn’t you noticed)?

What if the alternatives reduce down to:  either Christ’s sufferings were undeserved by him but borne as a substitute in the place of sinners who did deserve them, and then diverticularly rationalized to benefit sinners somehow, OR Christ’s sufferings were undeserved by him and hence deserved compensating justice from God to repay him with an extraordinary award of damages, which could be transferred to whosoever will receive them by faith?

What if the “merits” of Christ were not transferred by imputation, but justly super-compensated with the Holy Spirit of life, which is then given away graciously for free to whoever believes?

What if the Protestant doctrine perpetuates a vestige of medieval Roman Catholic penitential speculation about the separability, commodifiability, accumulation (“treasury”), and transferability of supererogatory “merits” of the innocent suffering of a “Saint” to another person, and accordingly, the transfer of Christ’s personal righteousness to a believing sinner?

What if exactly that kind of “commercialization” led to the invention of indulgences, the abuses of Tetzel, the rationalizations of Eck, and the explosive protest of Martin Luther that kicked off the Protestant Reformation with his “Ninety-Five Theses” on indulgences, in the first place?

~~ To be continued ~~

Calling All Saints! Calling All Saints! — Part 2

Today, November 1, 2017, is the 500th Anniversary of the All Saints Day (commemorating all the martyrs who had died for the Christian faith over the centuries) for which Martin Luther intended his 95 Theses on indulgences, on which it was first made public.  It has been said that the Theses spread throughout Germany within fourteen days, and throughout Europe in thirty days.  It swept Western civilization in moments, historically speaking.  Imagine if Luther had been able to post his Theses on a blog site.  Following is part two of my “umpteen conjectures” that challenge many of the assumptions that dictated especially the doctrines of Atonement and Justification at that time, but which still reign, lo!, these five centuries later.  Were those presuppositions in accord with the “pattern of sound words” laid out in the Biblical Scriptures?  You be the judge.

A Comedy of Errors, a Tragedy of Mistaken Identities (cont’d.)

What if the Old Covenant required victims to be overcompensated in order to satisfy justice (Ex. 21:34-22:15; Lev. 5:16, 6:5; Num. 5:7; 2 Sam. 12:6; Prov. 6:30-31; Is. 61:7; Zech. 9:12)?

What if the vengefulness exhibited by Lamech:  “Since avenging is seven times for Cain, for Lamech it shall be seventy-seven times [hebdomekontakis hepta]” (Gen. 4:23-24, LXX), was flipped by Jesus, who was evidently alluding to him in his reply:  “I am not saying [to forgive] ‘Till seven times,’ but ‘Till seventy-seven times [hebdomekontakis hepta]’” (Matt. 18:22)?

What if Christ’s “blood of sprinkling…is speaking better than [the righteous (dikaion)] Abel” (Heb. 11:4, 12:24; Matt. 23:35, cf. Luke 11:51) because it was perfectly righteous, hence his shed blood cried out for a more perfect avenging (ekdikesis) than Abel’s—an immediate and total reversal of death, plus life superabundant enough for all takers?

And what if God’s avenging of that innocent blood on Christ’s own behalf (i.e., premially) is, more than coincidentally, what inaugurated the New Covenant in that blood (Matt. 26:27-28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25-32), by glorifying him and awarding him the restitution of abundant life in the Holy Spirit to pass along, out of love, to our mortal race (John 5:21-29, 6:47-63, 7:37-39; Gal. 2:29-6:18; Rom. 8; 2 Cor. 3:1-18, 13:4; 2 Tim. 1:1; 1 John 4:1-5:13)?

That is, what if the New Covenant was inaugurated by the power of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, not at his cross, and that’s why his blood may be said to “avail”?

And what if that blood, the cup of New Covenant blessings (1 Cor. 10:16-22) along with its varied powers, is appropriated by us when we simply drink it worthily, by faith, in the risen Lord’s Supper, for a recollection of him, announcing his wrongful (not penal) death until he comes (1 Cor. 11:26) by his blood getting shed criminally (not penally)  (Matt. 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20-22), for the sake of many, for the pardon of sins?

What if minimizing the seriousness of the crime of the Jews in crucifying their Messiah at Roman hands trivializes the magnitude of the premial justice of God in resurrecting him from the dead?

What if by “the righteousness of God,” as commonly but one-sidedly translated, the apostle Paul was not referring so much to the character quality as to an historic event—the event of Christ’s resurrection, which singularly, publicly exhibited God’s restorative premial justice?

What if, somewhat ironically, only the Roman Catholic Douay-Rheims Version of the Bible (1582/1609) translated from Jerome’s Latin Vulgate (as compared with the Hebrew and Greek), consistently renders dikaiosune/justitia as “justice,” which, although likewise one-sided (but the opposite side, reflecting Roman legal predilections), yet just so happens to make far better sense in many of Paul’s key passages as well as elsewhere in the New Testament?

What if the “righteousness of God” fell on the Third Day as rightful justice for Jesus and has no reference to the Cross at all?

That is, what if Paul’s famous phrase “the righteousness of God” refers to God’s justice in action (dikaiosune includes both personal and social—I suggest the composite rendering ‘justness’) revealed (Rom. 1:17), manifested (Rom. 3:21), and displayed (Rom. 3:25, 26) by His raising Jesus from the dead, executed on the Third Day as restorative justice for His Son?

In brief, what if “the justness of God” refers first of all to the Event that made it most famous:  His raising Christ from the dead?

What if Martin Luther would have been an order of magnitude more overjoyed to discover that “the righteousness of God” was full-on premial to Christ and not in the least penal?

What if the following instances of dikaiosune probably refer to God’s justice as epitomized by Christ’s resurrection, encompassing the just due He awarded to Christ:  Rom. 1:17, 3:5,21,22,25,26, 5:17,21, 8:10, 10:3a,3c; 2 Cor. 3:9, 5:21, 9:9; Phil. 1:11, 3:9b?

Thereupon, what if such phrases as “justness of/for faith” (Rom. 1:17, 4:11,13, 9:30,32, 10:4,5,10; Gal. 5:5), “faith accounted for justness [apart from works/acts]” (Rom. [2:26,] 4:3,5,6,8,9,10,11,22,23,24, 9:8; [2 Cor. 5:19;] Gal. 3:6; Phil. 3:9; [Heb. 11:17-19]), the justness which accords with faith (Heb. 11:7), justifying faith (Rom. 3:24,), etc., all refer to Christ’s just-award, the Gift of the vital power of God’s resurrectionary public justice—the Holy Spirit—now graciously poured out upon us, encompassing every spiritual gift and blessing of the New Covenant, as promised by God “to [eis]” and “on [epi]” our faith (Rom. 1:17, 3:22, 30; Phil. 3:9)?

What if the Gospel (euaggelion) of “the righteousness/justice of God,” from another perspective, is simply the proclamation of His righteous fulfillment of His ancient covenanted promises (epaggelia), first to Abraham regarding descendants and a Promised Land (Acts 7:5,17; Gal. 3:8, 14-29; Rom. 4:13-21, 9:4-9; Heb. 7:6, 11:9-19), then to David regarding Seed Royal who would save Israel (Acts 13:23,32-39, 26:6-8), and ultimately to everyone who has the faith of Abraham, concerning the Gift of the Holy Spirit of adoption, the down payment of an inheritance of everlasting life in the Messiah (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4-5, 2:33,38-39; Gal. 4:23,28; Rom. 15:8-12; 2 Cor. 1:18-20, 6:14-7:1; Eph. 1:13-14, 2:11-13, 3:1-12; 2 Tim. 1:1; Tit. 1:2-3; Heb. 4:1-2, 6:11-20, 8:6-7, 9:15, 10:23,35-39, 11:39-40; 12:25-28; James 1:12, 2:5; 2 Pet. 3:4,9,13; 1 John 2:25), which all nations could now access by faith and immersion into Christ’s faithfulness and divine favor (Rom. 5:1-2), divine power, indeed, even participation in divine nature (2 Pet. 1:1-4)?

What if when we beg God for justice, like the Psalmists, we aren’t asking for punishment but for restoration of plundered wealth, health, safety, and peace of mind (or is that asking too much)?

What if Jesus never asked God for mercy, but his sinless blood did cry out for just avenging?

What if the only thing that could really satisfy God’s justice was to welcome His Son alive and well back Home, restore his fortunes, exalt him over his enemies, and then kindly show them mercy so they could repent and be saved…and even share his good fortune?

So what if God’s justice fell on the Third Day, not on a hill far away?

~~ To be continued ~~

CALLING ALL SAINTS! CALLING ALL SAINTS!

October 31, 2017

Midnight, Wittenberg, Germany

6:00 p.m. (EST) Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA

As I write, it is the afternoon of the 500^th Anniversary of Reformation Day—the day Martin Luther is alleged to have posted his 95 Theses concerning indulgences, which kicked off the Protestant Reformation. Although Luther does not mention personally posting his theses on the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg, in anticipation of All Saints Day, November 1^st, this was the usual place to post such announcements in that academic town. In any case, we do know he started to send them out to academic, ecclesiastic, and civil authorities around that time. And although the literal formal debate it announced did not actually take place, these words made a profound impact on Germany and far beyond. These theses were assuredly to be celebrated by all saints, with retrospective gratitude for all the martyrs (“saints”) who had suffered for the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

However, Martin Luther was not yet the great Reformer at this time. These academic debate points were targeted at abuses of indulgences—a reputed means of pardon for sins and reduction of penal time in Purgatory. The 21^st century mind will boggle at the tedious attention to “penance,” “penalties,” “guilt” (“Huh?”), “remission,” “absolution,” “purgatory,” “merit,” “indulgences,” “punishment,” “letters of pardon,” “paying money to buy pardons,” “grace” (not your Great Aunt), etc. It may look bewildering and overwrought (95 of ‘em!), and all in Latin, for starters! But almost immediately some took in hand to translate them into German. But why the hornet’s nest it kicked open?

It all had to do with getting sins dealt with in order to get right with God and not have to suffer eternal torment. Makes sense when you think about it. But in order to build a palacial new church edifice in Rome? Forgiveness had to be commercialized. Ah, capitalism, right? In a sense, yes. The venal profit motive had entered the calculations of the hierarchy, for sure. And it corrupted doctrine big time. But did the Protestant Reformation get the formula right by way of response?

Well now, that’s what the following conjectural “theses” are all about. They attempt to unravel bit by bit the “unreformed” assumptions or presuppositions underlying what became the dominant, “orthodox” doctrine of the Atonement.  I have decided to dub them “resuppositions.”  You are invited to judge for yourself whether this attempt at mid-course correction is simply bluff and bluster, or whether it really meets the issue and brings a solution to the still-heating controversy over salvation in its various aspects. But it would be a great pity to let another half millennium slip by without at least suggesting a few mid-course corrections, right?

Right up front I confess it seems to me Satan has an iron grip on Atonement theology. I believe we are suffering a “systematizing of the deception” (Ephesians 4:14) and have locked it into various Protestant confessions of faith to ensure it does not suffer…reformation! We need to put the armor of God back on and “stand up to the stratagems of the Adversary” and wrestle against them like our life depended on it, for it may (Ephesians 6:10-17).

That said, Luther undoubtedly made a crucial discovery quite early on in his career as a professor at the new University of Wittenberg: “the righteousness of God” in Romans 1:17 and elsewhere was a “saving” righteousness. Absolutely correct. And that discovery rendered him joyous and light hearted, in an exultant mood to dance and sing!

But then something sad happened. That righteousness was pulled every which way from Sunday to harmonize with traditional theological, philosophical and legal assumptions. The upshot is that it got interpreted as penal, then administered by way of substitution rather than direct application to sinners who deserved it (which, of course, would have been fatal rather than “saving”). It was never grasped as premial (rewarding) and aimed directly at the Lord Jesus Christ, who deserved that, and who would then redistribute his divine reward graciously to any sinner who simply believed this Good News. In other words, Luther (and Melanchthon and Calvin, right down to present day Protestant theologians of every stripe) incorrectly interpreted “the righteousness of God” as punitive wrath exerted toward Christ as a substitute for getting poured out on the ones who actually deserved it; thereafter “the righteousness of Christ” was alleged to get transferred via imputation to sinners to make them righteous before God. And all that as a replacement for the simple New Testament approach of “the righteousness (justice!) of God” exerted to reward directly via resurrection and exaltation The One Who Deserved it. Get it?

Now that I’ve let the cat out of the bag, I dare anyone to stuff it back into hiding. You’ve seen those “Magic Eye” children’s books? Once you know how to let your eyes refocus just right, it all snaps into place and you’re in a 3-D world instantly, and you never forget how to get there from here. Who of us has ever simply “forgotten” how to ride a bicycle? Impossible. Be preprayered!

So this stuff is “dangerous.” If you’re anything like me, you will be “caught in a truth” you can’t shake. For some 35 years, I’ve been suffering a chronic mental breakthrough. There’s no drug for this. You have to ride it out. See you at the end of the ride…in the Kingdom of God!

Note: The following series of questions is far too long to post all at once. It may take a couple of weeks to post them day by day in their entirety. If you have comments, feel free to post them. I’ll try to keep up with replies. May God pour out His Spirit on us all in a fresh, radical way and thus equip us for communicating whatever clarifications turn out to be truly valid. This will take sifting. If I’m right, this changes everything. Thanks for your contributions to the dialogue.

A COMEDY OF ERRORS, A TRAGEDY OF MISTAKEN IDENTITIES:  THE MASQUERADE OF PENAL SUBSTITUTION ASSUMPTIONS UNMASKED

or

DISSOLVING THE CHAINS OF PENAL SATISFACTION BY AN ALTERNATIVE CONCATENATION OF DIALECTICAL QUERIES—

A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT

or

oh alright—just some mind-altering brain-teasers for thinking outside the box for Heaven’s sake

Ronald Roper

Now I may be wrong, but…

What if sacrificial blood is directly associated with virtually every soteriological category in the New Testament?:

Forgiveness of sins (Matt. 26:28; Eph. 1:7; Heb. 9:22)

Rescue from wrath (1 Thess. 1:10, cf. Rom. 5:9)

Life everlasting (John 6:53-58; 1 John 5:5-13,20)

Freedom from the law of slavery to sin and the fear of death (Rom. 8:2,21-23, cf. John 6:53-58,

5:21-26; 1 John 5:6-12,20; Heb. 2:10-3:6; Gal. 4:22-5:1; 1 Cor. 7:22-23, 6:20; Rev. 5:9, cf. 1 Pet. 1:18-19)

Procuring the church of God (Acts 20:28)

Atoning/protective shelter around sins (Rom. 3:25; Heb. 2:14-18; 1 John 1:7-2:2)

Justification (Rom. 5:9)

Salvation (Rom. 5:9)

Blessing (1 Cor. 10:16)

Deliverance/liberation (Eph. 1:7; [Col. 1:14;] Rom. 3:24-25; Heb. 9:15)

Nearness to God (Eph. 2:13)

Peacemaking with God and between Jew and Gentile (Col. 1:20; Eph. 2:13-14)

Reconciling the universe to Christ—earth and heaven, Jew and Gentile (Col. 1:20-22, cf. Eph. 2:16; Rom. 5:8-11)

Uniting Jew and Gentile into one new humanity, one body in Christ (Eph. 2:11-4:5; Col. 3:15)

Ministry in the Holy Places (Heb. 9:7-8,11-12,25-26, 10:19, 13:11)

Redemption everlasting (Heb. 9:12)

Hallowing/sanctifying us (Heb. 9:13, 10:29, 13:12)

Cleansing everything from sin (Heb. 9:13-14,19-23, 10:2; 1 John 1:7)

Obtaining the promised everlasting inheritance (Heb. 9:13-18, cf. Tit. 3:5-7; 1 Pet. 1:1-4)

Dedicating covenants (Heb. 9:15-18, 10:19-20)

Rejecting sin (Heb. 9:25-26)

Eliminating sin (Heb. 10:4, cf. 10:11)

Perfecting to finality those who have gotten sanctified (Heb. 10:12-22)

Making Passover to protect from the exterminator of the firstborn (Heb. 11:28)

Crying out for divine avenging for being murdered (Heb. 12:24, 11:4; Rev. 6:10, 19:2)

Leading up from the dead the Great Shepherd himself, the Lord Jesus (Heb. 13:20)

Ransoming from vain behavior (1 Pet. 1:19)

Conquering Satan (Rev. 12:9-11), the Wicked One (1 John 2:13-14) the world (1 John 5:4-8),

and deceiving spirits of Counter-Messiah not confessing Messiah Jesus (1 John 4:1-6)

Loosing from sins (Rev. 1:5)

Buying for God (Rev. 5:9)

Whitening robes for a right to the Tree of Life and holy city, New Jerusalem (Rev. 7:14, 22:14)

Accordingly, what if sacrificial blood is the authentic root metaphor for atonement—in fact, for salvation as a whole—in the Bible?

Hence, what if we need to develop a theological Hematology?

Yet what if sacrificial blood represents “[living] soul” (Lev. 17:11,14) or, by metonymy, simply “life,” particularly life-from-the-dead, vivification, or resurrection, including its power for atoning, sanctifying consecrating, cleansing, forgiving, healing, etc., yet never death, as such?

Thus, what if the resurrectionary power of divine life touches whatever the blood “sprinkles”?

Then what if the diversity of salvation associated with sacrificial blood (virtually every category) should be understood as rooted in and ramifying from the power of Christ’s resurrected life?

What if the sacrificial blood from the slain Lion of Judah (Gen. 49:8-12; Rev. 5:5; Heb. 7:11-19) signifies life from the dead, as does the honey that Samson drew from the carcass of the lion he slew (Judg. 14), and as honey revitalized the exhausted Jonathan, (1 Sam. 14:23-30)?:

“Out of the eater came something to eat,

And out of the strong came something sweet.” (v.14)

“What is sweeter than honey?

And what is stronger than a lion?” (v.18)

What if even Aslan (C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, chap. 14) never suffered a moment of penal wrath from “the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea”—does this mean the beloved noble feline couldn’t possibly have saved Edmund and Narnia after all?  (Unimaginable.)

What if sacrificial blood is the Old Covenant ritual symbol of life-out-of-death, foreshadowing the Resurrection of Christ?

What if under the Old Covenant administration there could be no remission of sins without shed blood (Heb. 9:18-22) for the simple reason that such blood was the temporary ritual token of Christ’s life-from-the-dead, i.e., his resurrected living soul…now a life-making Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45), toward which the whole Levitical economy looked for fulfillment as the true power source for removing sins wholesale under the unconditional New Covenant yet to come?

What if the parallelism in Romans 5:8-10, rightly divided, expresses how the sinless blood of Christ bridged death and life—the transistor in the judicial circuit that amplified (by the power of God’s overcompensating justice) the output of the life criminally taken, thereupon super-abundantly returned to Christ—“Whom God raises, loosing the pangs of death, forasmuch as it was not possible for him to get held by it” (Acts 2:24)—sufficient to justify life for all mankind?

What if the Levitical blood sacrifices were prophetic ritual rehearsals of Israel’s prime atrocity, culminating all its depravity in a single outrageous staging of human sacrifice as a once-and-for-all showdown that would unveil how God ventured to solve the agelong sin problem peaceably?

What if the reason God commanded some sacrificial blood to be splashed around the base of the altar is that, as a place of ritual wrongful death, the altar itself needed to be ritually atoned for, and only the blood (not the death itself) could do the job?

What if the cross “really works” to condemn sin, conquer Satan, and abolish death, not because it was right in any sense (not even substitutionally), but precisely because it was dead wrong?

What if Christ, in his sacrifice on the cross, was not bearing punishment for sins others committed, but bearing sins committed against him, which themselves cried out for punishment?

What if the ancient ritual murders depicted by animal sacrifices only ceased with the Ultimate Murder in c. 30 A.D., when the shedding of Christ’s blood—not merely “innocent” but perfectly sinless—would have defiled the whole land in extremis if God Himself had not intervened?

In other words, what if Jesus was bearing crime, not punishment:  Israel’s unjust lethal assault by the hand of priestly representatives (at Satan’s bidding), which itself called upon God’s justice to avenge his innocent blood at their hands (Matt. 23:20-36, 27:4,24-25; Luke 11:50-51, 18:1-8, 21:20-23, 23:27-31; Acts 5:28, 18:6, 20:26; Rom. 12:19; 1 Thess. 2:14-16; 2 Thess. 1:4-10; Heb. 10:26-31; Rev. 6:10, 16:6, 17:6, 19:2), consequently his sacrifice was not in the least penal on God’s part—in His eyes, intention, or reckoning?

What if, after all, God did not shed His beloved Son’s blood, nor did Jesus “shed his own blood,” as we sometimes say (but Scripture never does)—rather, others (no exception) shed his blood (Matt. 21:45-46, 22:15, 26:4; Mark 12:12-13, 14:1; Luke 11:53-54, 20:19-20; John 5:15-18, 7:1,19-25, 8:12-59, 11:53, 18:31; 1 Thess. 2:15), even as he himself prophesied they would (Matt. 16:21, 17:23; Mark 8:31, 9:31, 10:34; Luke 9:22, 18:31-32), as they did to the prophets before him (Matt. 14:5, 21:33-44, 22:6, 23:33-39; Mark 6:19, 12:1-11; Luke 11:45-52, 13:31-34, 20:9-18; 1 Thess. 2:15), as he warned his disciples that they would do to them (Matt. 10:28, 24:9; Luke 12:4-12; John 12:10-11, 16:2), and as subsequently happened (Acts 12:1-4, 21:27-32, 23:12-15, 20-21, 26-27)?:

1. “…this One, given up in the specific counsel and foreknowledge of God [although not culpable of what was to follow], you, gibbeting by the hand of the lawless, assassinate” (Acts 2:23).

2. “…this Jesus whom you crucify!” (Acts 2:36).

3. “…Jesus, whom you, indeed, surrender and disown before the face of Pilate, when he decides to release him. Now you disown the holy and just One and request a man, a murderer, to be surrendered to you as a favor. Yet the Inaugurator of life you kill…” (Acts 3:13-15).

4. “Jesus Christ, the Nazarene, whom you crucify…this is the Stone that is being scorned by you builders…” (Acts 4:10, 11).

5. “…Jesus, on whom you lay hands, hanging him on a pole.” (Acts 5:30).

6. “…the Just One, of whom now you became the traitors and murderers…” (Acts 7:52).

7. “…whom they [the Jews] assassinate also, hanging him on a pole” (Acts 10:39).

8. “…those dwelling in Jerusalem and their chiefs, being ignorant of him and of the voices of the prophets which are read on every Sabbath, fulfill them [according to the Spirit of God’s foreknowledge, not with His complicity] in judging him. And, finding not one cause of death, they request Pilate to have him despatched. Now as they accomplish all that which is written concerning him [by foreknowledge, not “predestination”], taking him down from the pole…” (Acts 13:27-29).

~~ To be continued ~~