Unless and until THE PREMIAL COMPONENT OF JUSTICE gets rehabilitated in conformity with the Biblical witness, even our comprehension and expression of LOVE in its public, social application will continue to ring hollow.

But for the grace of God, a great many more of us would be just like Martin Luther, John Calvin, Theodore Beza, John Owen, Francis Turretin, if not worse. [2/26/11] Even allowing for the residual barbaric vindictiveness of those centuries, many of their noble contemporaries rose above the brutal instincts of their human milieu to deserve divine accolades, as did their exemplars in the first centuries after the Light of Christ’s resurrection first broke through. In view of that record, what excuse can we muster to defend the embarrassingly unchristlike tenor of well-known historic words and works of notable founders and promoters of modern reform movements in the church? Surely it is no longer “in our interest” (it never really was) to suppress unseemly examples, any more than the Bible would dare to do so (which episodes, bear in mind, have become causes for slander by many a gleeful accuser of saints, despite their source in holy Writ). Better to err in the interest of exposure than of concealment. We ought, accordingly, to applaud intrepid filmmakers who let the chips fall where they may (think only of “Maestro,” “Oppenheimer,” and “Killers of the Flower Moon” in 2023, among others). [2/19/24]

How seldom we reflect on the probing question exactly why we must insist on a doctrine of atonement with teeth in it, a theory ‘red in tooth and claw.’ What inner impulse overrides the native reticence of Scripture to cooperate with our punitive venture of bullying its vocabulary and semantic integrity into a tortured confession of our carnally cruel orthodoxy?

Witness only the disgracefully irresponsible renderings scattered throughout the New International Version (NIV)—and now also the newer and widely endorsed English Standard Version (ESV)—of the Bible. If, as hoped, these little spins and twists of meaning did somehow manage to pass muster at the moments they cropped up for initial scholarly scrutiny, yet have never been adequately exposed, much less repented of, then how dreadfully might they play out on the projected “international” stage over the long haul after attaining widespread uncritical acceptance? [2/26/11]

We may cry up “love” and shout down “justice” (penal, naturally) all we want, but the resulting contents of love will remain actually denatured unless we reconstitute the premial contents of integral justice. For full and entire justness (human no less than divine!) is simply the conformity to (in the case of personal righteousness) and restoration of (in the case of public justice) a law whose fulfilment IS LOVE! Accordingly, it is LOVE that both punishes the vicious (who violate the norm of love by their stubborn behaviors and harm the innocent by predatory habit) and rewards the virtuous (who actualize the norm of love by their resolute conducts). We can see this strikingly in its fairness and wisdom when God’s “punishment” of offenders amounts pedagogically to coercing them with official force to supercompensate their victims by restoring with a surplus of good. [2/27/11]

The penal substitution theory underestimates the damage done by sin. That’s, at least in part, why it is compelled to augment the actual harm sin causes with the supplemental notions of “guilt” and “punishment.” Accordingly, in common parlance Christ is not said to actually “bear sin(s)” (as Scripture however does teach), but to “bear the guilt and punishment of sin(s) (which Scripture, curiously, does not teach). It all sounds so plausible, especially in combination with the fabricated theory of imputation, so-called, which confers the glory of a solid Biblical concept upon a specious theory that environs it with alien contexts of discourse and, in effect, reconceptualizes it perversely. Sadly, the existential declension that ensued remains all but undetected by its devotees, and evidently even by most challengers. [2/28/11; 2/19/24]

If the premial understanding of the atonement and justification is not restored to the church, certain behavioral reflexes within thought and practice will assuredly continue to build up pressure and burst through toxically to assault the cause of Christ at unpredictable times and places. In particular, the popular tendency to avoid asking God for JUSTICE (in preference to mercy) seriously debases our expectation of observing restorative justice on our behalf within personal experience and current events, much less in the panoramic drama of unfolding history going forward. Not only may we despair of seeing it happen on our own behalf (“I’m just an unworthy sinner, scarcely deserving of mercy!”), but the eager longing for justice expressed by others within our purview tends not to arouse our sympathy or compassion, much less our emulation! This consequence severely debases Christian motivation to do justice in the earth. It threatens to compromise our whole ethic, our very witness to God’s Kingdom before a barely watching, marginally curious, cynically doubtful, but mostly skeptical and increasingly hostile world. We face a huge problem. [3/1/11; 2/19/24]

An OPEN LETTER to Jesse Morrell and FRIENDLY CRITIQUE of The Vicarious Atonement of Christ (2012), part 16

Jesse, as much weight as you place on the Gospel or “Atonement” to accomplish moral influencing, it would behoove you to make sure you have the messaging exactly right. The Cross was the swan song of “Governmental necessity”; the Resurrection cooked its goose. Okay, okay, I don’t mean to get technical. Only to say that the crucifixion of Jesus exposed human government as in league with the Devil, while his resurrection from that death settled the score in a peaceful manner that brought even many of those functionaries to see the light and join the slow revolution of earth by Heaven.

Augustine has been far more profoundly detrimental to the history of theological reflection than even you have been willing to give him the dubious credit for. He caught not only Anselm and Aquinas, not only Luther and Melanchthon, not only Calvin and Arminius, but also Grotius in his entangling web of mutually reinforcing errors. Augustine has devised a systemic poison whose antidote—the apostolic Gospel itself—has long since been decommissioned and shelved in cold storage. But it is still active! It only remains to bring it out of hiding and recommission it. Its potency is undiminished.

The Grotian “gospel” is but a mutation of penal satisfaction/substitution, nothing more, or at least nothing better. They are two peas in a penal pod. It has only re-entrenched Augustine’s categories and biases and blind spots with respect to “original sin”—ironically, as it shakes out, since other errors of his, most notably concerning the will and “pre”destination/election, were rejected by Grotius. But for those we must credit the able Arminius, whose own authentic hand may yet have reformed “original sin” more vigorously, given a longer lifetime. Yet why deprive other, younger, hands of opportunity and credit for wrestling long-standing errors to the mat? There’s enough work for everyone who’s willing to put shoulder to plow. But woe to those able contenders (as Grotius certainly was) who stop short of slaying all the Canaanites in the theological territory. For they will persist to inflict yet more damage upon later generations if not eradicated root and branch.

Thus has the “Acceptilation,” “Rectoral,” or “Governmental” compromise left domineering giants in the land. And by some of your publishing ventures you are subsidizing monsters, retaining them on artificial life support. For Heaven’s sake, for the eternal Gospel’s sake, shouldn’t we take them off the rolls and let them expire? Their “quality of life” and their ability to regenerate are below the threshold of “worth living.” They are, as we might observe from their comparatively meager good fruits, not, in sober fact, deserving of life (in view of their criminal suppression of the premial truth), much less of “eternal” life, having already persisted for nearly 500 grim years (count ‘em!), to gray hairs, full of days, long overdue for retirement.

Jesse, do please consider putting this essentially Grotian approach at arms length for long enough to compare it with the use of biblical categories of thought by their original users. This is absolutely fundamental. This remains the cornerstone of Fundamentalism at its very best. Let us both pursue that shining ideal beckoning for a revival for the glory of God, His Christ, His Gospel, and His Atonement. (II Timothy 1:13-14)

The Governmental theory of the Atonement has God surrendering His Son to public penal justice rather than God executing public premial justice to His Son! This is topsy turvy or, more precisely, preposterous. This theory puts the Cross where the Resurrection belongs. It PUTS GOD ON THE DEFENSIVE INSTEAD OF THE OFFENSIVE! As the sewers back up, God is compelled to paddle or “catch the wave” instead of still the storm. This is ridiculous on the face of it, even without digging deeper. Yet deeper we must go.

God is represented as meekly offering His beloved Son on the altar of a “public justice” that must inflict the death penalty on the totally innocent so that the government of God is preserved “safe” from people who would otherwise get away with murder! I’ve heard of “grace upon grace,” but this is crime upon crime! Am I not to see the taunting irony? What is wrong with this picture? More aptly, what is not wrong with this picture?

That theory of Atonement seems grim and humorless—cheerless in the extreme. One shudders to replay the logic underlying it. It does not read like the Psalms or Isaiah. This fact of human feeling should set off warning bells in our minds. For all its vaunted strength and sternness it is in truth pretentious and even presumptuous. It calls for a “replacement.” Its many assertions and dogmatic claims are counterintuitive to a rather pathological degree in my estimation. They are vacuous appeals to credulity in the absence of sound biblical exegesis or proper concordant analysis of vocabulary. On the whole, that theory is disproportionate and imposes an artificial framing of concepts, injecting foreign assumptions into and projecting alien designs onto the authentic apostolic weave of Scripture. It magnifies passing themes and overlooks solid beams and girders of the rugged “pattern of sound explanations” (II Timothy 1:13).

For you, reading such accusations must feel a bit like hearing someone insult your parents, or perhaps your cherished mentors. I don’t engage in such critique lightly or out of any “personal” vindictiveness. Much rather, there is the “governmental” concern of public rewarding justice that itself needs to be done public justice. And quite frankly, Hugo Grotius did not do it justice, nor did his 18^th century elaborator, Jonathan Edwards, Jr., nor his many 19^th century American modifiers, such as Caleb Burge, Albert Barnes, Charles Finney, and John Miley, from what I have seen so far. Premial justice has advanced no further within this stream in the 20^th century with Gordon Olson, et al. But I don’t speak of the men so much as their agreed-upon systematizing of an inferior exposition of the total, integral system of the New Testament. It is that early 17^th century core re-systematization which is so objectionable. It never seems to get corrected or supplemented or improved along the way. It gets lugged around through the centuries (nearly 4!), boasting a scarcely justifiable superiority over “Penal Satisfaction/Substitution,” while actually carrying along its one worst error, but now under a more “acceptable”—or should I say “acceptilable”—façade and show of “government” credentials. But those credentials have no standing in biblical courts of judgment where God’s personal righteousness/ justice is the final appeal in all cases. Such “personal” divine judgment is possible also in the case of the Atonement for the simple reason that all true justice (no less in human than in divine courts) is composed of a premial as well as a penal element in an indissoluble compound, ready to act upon any case, contingent in outcome upon the deserts and due of each party.

~to be continued~

An OPEN LETTER to Jesse Morrell and FRIENDLY CRITIQUE of The Vicarious Atonement of Christ (2012), part 12

AHASUERUS, DARIUS, CYRUS, and GROTIUS

Hugo Grotius’s governmental or rectoral theory of the Atonement should have been the last gasp of Substitutionary theories of atonement. Yet at least two more of significance followed. John McLeod Campbell (1800-1872), a 19^th century Scottish professor of theology and pastor, building on a passing remark by Jonathan Edwards, Sr. (1703-1758), devised a theory of Christ’s vicarious repentance (but, as Leanne Van Dyk has argued, not technically substitutionary repentance, although that may have been the raw undeveloped idea behind Edwards’ original speculative remark). Opening the 20^th century, Robert C. Moberly (1805-1903) developed a further variation on this, vicarious confession.

All these varieties of atonement doctrine play off the possibilities that are imaginable to derive from vicarious or substitutionary actions of Christ “in the place of” or “instead of” sinners.

The premial alternative to all of the above (to mention no others) plays off the rewarding possibilities inherent in the worthiness of Christ’s obedient faithfulness to God. This results in benefits due directly to Christ, which he, by right, may give to whomever he pleases. Yet he is not arbitrary. In accord with the Old Testament covenantal promises and prophecies, “which cannot be broken,” God is both pleased by faith and pleased to reward faith with the benefits of His Kingdom. Likewise, God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, the perfect image of his Father, acts under identical motives to dispense his bounty from God on the very same grounds as he himself was justly awarded: faith in God according to His covenanted promises.

God awards sinners who believe His Proclamation about His raising Jesus Christ, His Son, from the dead, by giving them, for the sake of Christ’s own personal faithfulness to the death, portions of the rightful award He bestowed on His Son for that perfect and exemplary obedience to His will, as expressed in Scripture. There is nothing remotely comparable among vicarious theories to this logic of direct premial ultra-compensation to the Lord Jesus Christ as God’s judicial execution of justice in repayment for Christ’s criminal crucifixion.

Jesse, you may risk fooling yourself by sidestepping the inevitable judgment against the “government” that would dare penalize the Son of God with a punishment—even a token one—“just to prove” something about government necessity that he by no means deserved. That kind of government itself deserves to fall! My dear brother, all of these substitutionary, vicarious, or penal doctrines that dare to penalize and condemn the Lord Jesus Christ, the absolutely sinless Son of God, may be, if I may be so bold, only so many doctrines of demons afflicting honest, pure, truthful Biblical doctrine.

You make a splendid start in your book, Natural Ability, by showing how very unjust it is to punish anyone at all for anything in the least, under any circumstances, that they do not deserve. (You thereby risk the wrath of Grotius, who appears to be quite doctrinaire about equivocating on his definition of “punishment”! But, after all, what choice does he really have since he knoweth not the category “premial,” and even he cannot tolerate full-on punishment of the Savior without at least a definitional amelioration?) But then you pirouette 180 degrees and march forward heedless of consequences to assert the “righteousness” of a government that insists on its prerogative to indulge in that precise injustice for its own precious reasons! It’s only a charade! Sneak a look behind the curtain, Jesse. This “government” so concerned for its own perpetuity that it would trample the Just One needs to be taken down, humbled, even as the Law of Moses has been demoted. It competes with the Kingdom of God itself! Therefore it must be ground to powder by “The Stone cut out without hands” (Daniel 2:34-35, 44-45). As Jesus Christ is raised up, such Humpty Dumpty governments must all fall down, and there is no help for them. We must not get entangled in putting forth a hand to prop up such decrepit, oppressive establishments. I urge and admonish you to put such a theory out to dry.

The true and premial justice of God exposes it as a counterfeit, just another weary substitute to seduce God’s holy saints away from the Gospel truth and pattern of sound words. Do beware, my wonderfully fearless friend, lest you build on sand and suffer loss in your vital ministry instead of building on the Stone of God’s Rock-solid Foundation. The premial Gospel renders obsolete by its absoluteness all previous means of absolution, all prior human experiments in government over the works of God’s hands.

God had no “interest”—indeed, it was not in “the public interest,” seen in its full divinely royal dimensions—in promoting, advancing, “honoring,” or “upholding” the primitive wooden laws of ancient oppressive empires such as those of Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Ahasuerus, Darius, or Cyrus. God’s didn’t “keep” their laws, He dodged their laws; He found ways around them—miraculous ways! God, as usual, was ever mindful of His own always-coming Kingdom. (He had already set the precedent, of course, by the founding events of ancient Israel whereby He folded up the proud native civilization of ancient Egypt for more than four centuries for presuming to enslave and cruelly oppress His people over a similar span of time.)

So also “when the time was fully come,” God sent His own Son and immediately proceeded to dodge Herod’s decree to slaughter the infants in Bethlehem (although He “surfed,” so to speak, Caesar’s decree that all the inhabitants of his empire get registered). That was only the auspicious kickoff, however. Jesus learned how to dodge mobs out for blood as well as virtual assassins, along the way. In the bargain, he mastered the art of dodging crafty questions meant to make him look stupid, dangerous, heretical, and treasonous. But at the last, having fulfilled his educational, healing, and training mission in sterling fashion, he deliberately, strategically surrendered to an armed mob and submitted to a plot to execute him according to “public justice” and bury him where he could do no more “harm” to “public welfare” or “public interest.”

Alas, he tricked them! Jesus knew full well his Father’s character of strict justice and that, as usual (indeed, Jesus had been all along revealing, manifesting, and displaying his Father’s “tricky” character—like Father like Son…), God would pull a fast one right out of His sleeve to GET AROUND THE GOVERNMENT yet again. Sure enough. After barely a decent two days, and while his murderers were congratulating themselves on their official governmental and public “success” at doing in “public enemy #1” (Barabbas notwithstanding) or catching some much needed sleep after a couple of all-nighters, he, uh…ESCAPED! OH MY GOD! Never truer words were exclaimed. By God, he did it again and managed to GIVE THEM THE SLIP! This is worth a hearty belly laugh! It was the “same old Story” even by that time. Still the Devil and his henchmen were clueless. And the Old, Old Story just goes on and on, winning victory after victory, placing enemies under his feet. ONWARD SHALL HE LEAD!

Jesse, might I suggest that the governmental or rectoral theory is, in effect (good intentions aside) “raised up against the knowledge of Christ”? I appeal to your conscience here. This theory isn’t perhaps the worst one out there. Penal satisfaction is arguably the worst (although we would probably want to soften that judgment by adding that it may stand as a textbook example of good intentions leading to unintended consequences). But, as I quipped earlier, would you be satisfied with ranking “Second Worst”? Not likely.

~to be continued~

 

An OPEN LETTER to Jesse Morrell and FRIENDLY CRITIQUE of The Vicarious Atonement of Christ (2012), part 11

PENAL SUBSTITUTION 1.0—“Commercial” (economic)

PENAL SUBSTITUTION 2.0—“Governmental” (exemplary)

It appears to me after reading, rereading, and re-rereading your explanations about “governmental” necessity that the vast ballooning of the “governmental” and “public” over against the “personal” (and I presume “private”?) stems from a virtual blackout of the premial aspect of justice. Such a blackout (from wearing blinders?) increases the pressure to fetch around for some alternative to exclusive wrath. But “governmental” theory arrives at it by “dividing and conquering” that wrath into a “personal vs. governmental” polarization of it. However, you thereby achieve an alternative at the cost of depersonalizing the very facet of wrath that is said to be the active ingredient in atonement. Reflexively, such a bifurcation tends to back up into your definition of grace, which is the covenantal antonym of wrath. You can see, I hope, how this might play out detrimentally in a presentation of the Gospel of “grace”! We then have a big problem.

Instead, why not consider the distinct possibility that the Governmental Theory has simply been blind (as was Penal Satisfaction theory, its historic matrix) to the entire premial side—the, uh, “lighter” side, shall we say?—of God’s justice. Such a consideration is certainly most plausible in view of the historical circumstances surrounding Grotius’s quite understandable response as a devoted Arminian—already several significant steps removed from Genevan hyper-Calvinism on other key points (ahem)—to Socinus’s devastating pounding of the Calvinist’s “absolute, total satisfaction” necessitism regarding the Atonement.

The beauty—I hope you catch this wave—of the premial solution is, among other things (this is a many-faceted jewel!), that we don’t have to fiddle around with wrath while Gehenna burns, but can leave it intact, just as the Scriptures (and, in my estimation anyway, Waldenström) teach. Rather, we have only to grasp afresh what the apostles were driving at by their native inspired categories. This is the “other side” of justice that has been neglected under the dark reign (theologically speaking, but affecting all of Western civilization right down to its cultural bobby sox) of Augustinian “original sin,” along with its Calvinistic offspring, “total depravity.” (Eastern Orthodoxy, regardless how we may evaluate in other respects, at least does not teach “original sin.” I have noticed that within that theological tradition Augustine is considered rather heterodox.)

Having said all that, I still wonder that no governmental theorist seems to have explored the possibility that there could be or should be a premial component even of governmental administration. And if this is correct (I believe it is, as the whole Restorative Justice movement, now 25 years old, has been marvelously confirming worldwide in select nations), then naturally such inroads into the very category “government” bespeaks a radical misadventure on the part of “Governmental Atonement” doctrine. It has attempted to seal off hermetically its founding category not only from “the personal” (which is problematic enough) but also from the premial (which in the long run can prove disastrous for proper administration). If I’m not mistaken, boycotting premial content from governmental administration leads, ironically, with iron-clad necessity, to rebellion, contempt for law, even revolution. You need to weigh in on this topic, Jesse.

The penal and the premial are indissolubly tandem components of justice, whether divine or human. So they must never be divorced in a sound, fair administration of government. This topic certainly bears more elaboration, but that’s fodder for another book, maybe a whole encyclopedia!

The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ has been reduced to a mere “talking point” of apologetics by Evangelicals of every stripe. They do not honorably enough treat it as a real, bona fide “doctrine.” It, like the ascension, has descended into virtual theological limbo. Isn’t it about time that Christ’s resurrection by God was itself RESURRECTED to first place within the Gospel?

Jesse, the “Governmental” substitute for a rightful, genuine, authentic Atonement based on God’s premial justice must collapse like a house of cards…with the “joker” on top! But you just might, with God’s ever-ready help, be able to change this scenario. This is not flattery. It could literally alter history. I have thrown down the gauntlet. Will you take up the challenge? It seems to me that you are simply lugging around too many artificial, counterfeit, phony categories that have been hung on you like Saul’s armor. You have a penetrating intellect, but it gets overburdened with deadwood. Prune, prune, prune!

We desperately need an atonement of truly BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS. The only event that qualifies is CHRIST’S RESURRECTION (plus, of course, all that follows in its triumphant train).

Having to struggle through the logic of Grotian governmental or rectoral theory has HUGELY confirmed and sharpened my appreciation for the premial alternative as better grounded in Scripture—more deeply imbedded in Biblical conceptuality, usage, and proportionality. But don’t take my word for it.

The first three chapters of the epistle to the Romans explain God’s “governmental wrath” against stubborn sinners. Paul evidently sees no need for making the cross of Christ a yet further “public” demonstration of that wrath, for he says nothing whatever about the Cross in the entire book of Romans! Instead, starting with 3:21, Paul steps out in a radically different direction, in fact, the “public” “manifestation” or “display” of God’s “governmental” premial justice in divine response to the faithfulness of one Man: Jesus Christ His Son.

Speak of “governmental”! This was nothing less than the advent of the royal Kingdom of God in POWER! From here on out, this “Stone hewn out without hands” would only grow and grow until it “fills the whole earth.” Yet isn’t it clear that this “revelation” from Heaven of God’s premial justice is no less “personal” than “governmental”? There need be no division or separation—perhaps not even a significant distinction—between the roles in this Event. God’s graciousness directly to His Son is simultaneously “personal” and “official,” without disjunction. Thereafter, through Christ, that gigantic benefaction gets “governmentally redistributed” to all who put their “personal” faith in Christ as the One whom God raised from the dead and who was thereby “designated Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness” (Romans 1:4).

This Holy Spirit is the very contents, essence, or “stuffings” of that hefty welfare package from God’s “government.” In very fact, the Holy Spirit is termed the One that “officially” guides (hodeg-, “way-lead,” John 16:13) “into all the truth” all those who are God’s sons, who are “led” (-ag-, Luke 4:1-2, Romans 8:13-14, Galatians 5:16-18)—the root of the word for “governor” (hegemon-)—by the Spirit. All “sons of God by faith in Jesus Christ,” that is, all who submit to this “government” by the Spirit, are therefore welfare recipients on the rolls of Heaven’s “public” welfare benefits! Go ahead, let that sink in a moment. All us spiritual orphans have now been “adopted” (huiothe-) as God’s kids and automatically get a down payment or earnest on our rightful inheritance—actually, Christ’s own inheritance, but graciously, gratuitously, generously redistributed to all the poor who are “worthy” by faith. This gift—need I add?—amounts to the dispensing of righteousness (II Corinthians 3:6-9), not to mention peace and joy (Romans 14:17). This is the Kingdom of God, wherever on earth these are truly found, even in part, until Kingdom comes in its fullness and finality on the New Earth.

PUNISHMENT IS NOT TRANSFERABLE, but REWARD IS TRANSFERABLE…or rather, DISTRIBUTABLE. Ponder that.

~to be continued~