The Five Sticking Points of Calvinism, and Their Common Taproot

The notorious Five Points of Calvinism all conspire to reinforce the penal substitution doctrine of the Atonement. Hence the denial and invalidation of any of them tends to the subversion of this latter doctrine as well. So it is passing strange that opposition to Calvinism as a whole does not more often manifest a similar opposition to penal substitution, as such. To be sure, the “governmental” theory of the Atonement did take up residence in the gap following the death of Arminius himself, but that was merely a compromised or mediating stance—an unsatisfactory half-way house for the Remonstrants seeking a more thorough rehabilitation of Biblical truth about the Atonement. Many American theologians, following the Second Great Awakening in the early 19th century also espoused versions of the governmental theory of Hugo Grotius (e.g., Charles Finney, many Restorationists of the Stone-Campbell movement, some Wesleyans, as well as William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, in England), but this position was still immovably based on penal “justice” entirely, not on premial, in the least. Yet without at least some conception of a just atonement (however construed) this doctrine can wander even farther afield. [7/29/11; 12/2/24]

I have no stake or interest in “exposing” the truths that the renown Calvin or Beza or Owen or Turretin or Hodge or Dabney or Warfield or Murray or Morris or Packer or their successors may have taught, but only their errors concerning salvation. For the whole truth, after all, we have the Bible at our fingertips, and for our guides, Jesus and his select apostles, who have no peers. [7/31/11]

BAD PRAYER HABITS

We Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, Reformed, Lutherans, and so forth, proud heirs of the Protestant Reformation, have not generally been taught to pray for justice for ourselves, much less for others. With variations, we have been drilled that “mercy, not justice” is all we dare expect. Under the aegis of Pietist and Puritan instructors, we have felt we were “miserable sinners,” unworthy of claiming our just due when we are wronged. May we not, then, beseech God for compensation from hurts and injuries? Since, to be sure, we are not to avenge ourselves but to forgive one another and love even our enemies, may we not ask God to restore what at least Satan has wrongfully taken—stolen!—from us? Can we not plead, “How long, O Lord, will you not avenge our souls?” Our traditional Protestant practices greatly diminish us and dim our sense of justice and our outrage at injustice. It palpably eviscerates our social witness to thus numb our self-consciousness, and hence our social conscience. The premial doctrine of the Atonement, by stark contrast, heralds AN INTEGRAL RESTORATION OF CONSCIENCE ACROSS THE BOARD! [7/30-31; 12/2/24]

The obvious, glaring, even embarrassing fact (hard fact!) that the apostles and the entire early church appear to have no problem whatever with the sense and logic of the Atonement, whereas the penal substitution theory has never won universal acclaim among Christians and has always had strenuous opponents in spite of its show of bravado and denunciations of its critics, and in further combination with the peculiar fact (hard fact) that the historic Christian movement worldwide has never established any authoritative universal (“catholic”) creedal statement on the topic of the Atonement, these observations all conspire to argue persuasively for an exceedingly simple and, dare I say, obvious solution to what has become (but most certainly was not originally) a veritable hornet’s nest of buzzing contradictions and stinging conundrums. [8/1/11]

Is it just possible that a major reason the vaunted logic of penal payment simply does not compute to many candid minds, and that there seems to be no way out (either to its proponents or, especially and poignantly, to its critics who were former adherents, some of whom, in overreaction, have thrown out the Bible along with the dirty bathwater produced in failed attempts to “clean” the dogma) is that we have culpably neglected what Scripture communicates about restorative justice, and in particular, that offenders ought to RESTORE with a surplus what they deprived their victims of, to whatever degree possible? In other words, haven’t we taken true justice altogether out of the picture and instead clumsily sketched in “punishment of the offender” in place of restitution, reparation, and restoration by the offender to the victim? For penal payment is predicated on punishing…somebody! And since no recognizable salvation can be derived from punishing sinners outright for their sins (indeed, its full measure might destroy them, ironically enough!), then obviously that “somebody” must be somebody else—a “substitute.” But such a delusive solution only ushers in cartloads of conundrums that have afflicted the theory ever since Calvin gave it its first definitive form in the 16th century, following its proto-demi-articulation in Anselm’s “vicarious satisfaction” theory more than four centuries earlier.

However, whenever we once firmly grasp that divine justice ultimately, fundamentally, requires RESTORATION, plus further over-compensation in case of criminal intent, then “the veil is removed,” and we behold God’s RESURRECTION of Jesus RESTORING to him what he lost by Satan’s chicanery at the cross! Then we can dramatically observe what “the righteousness (actually, justice) of God is all about! Then the Atonement makes perfect sense and all “mystery” evaporates under the passionate heat of God’s abiding love for our ephemeral race! [8/1/11]

God’s JUSTICE was “satisfied” by Christ’s RESURRECTION. End of Story. Start of soteriological housecleaning.

Theological talk about some amorphous, featureless “Christ event” renders indistinguishable the crucial differences between the unique respective roles of God the Father and Christ the Son in our salvation.  The faithfulness of the Son to the cross and the righteousness/justice of the Father in the resurrection must never be run together indistinguishably as parts of a colorless “Christ event (as if there were no gracious and glorious covenantal exchanges being made that should nuance our understanding of their mutual self-sacrificial love), much less as some impressionistic display of “God’s righteousness.”  For such smudging obscures what apostolic Scripture distinguishes rather clearly.  [7/15/10]

“This justice is so essential to God, immutable, and inexorable, that he cannot remit the creatures’ sin, nor free them from punishment, unless his justice be satisfied; God cannot dispense against himself, because sins do hurt against the inward virtue of God, and the rule of righteousness.  The integrity therefore and perfection of God cannot stand, if he satisfy not that; yet through his bounty and goodness he hath found out a way by which due satisfaction may be given thereunto, viz. by Christ, who hath borne a punishment equivalent to our sins, for us.“  Edward Leigh, A Treatise of Divinity (London, 1646), II.xii (p. 72).  Emphasis added (R.L.R.).  Quoted in Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, III, 492.

This utterly shocking travesty of Biblical teaching should hardly need comment since it entirely melts away under the clear, bright sunshine of Biblical usage of terms, narratives, parables, psalms, proverbs, prophecies–indeed, the entire warp and woof of the Word!  Such highhanded overriding of the basic, fundamental categories and contents of Scripture must surely have its own comeuppance…in God’s good time.  [7/15/10]

“His justice…inexorable: no sinners can escape being punished; the sins of the godly are punished in their surety Christ, and they are afflicted in this life.  God is justice itself, justice is essential to him, his will is the rule of justice, a thing is just because he willeth it, and not he willeth it because it is just.  He will right the wrongs of his children, 2 Thess. 1:6, 7, 8.  He cannot be corrupted or bribed.“  Edward Leigh, A Treatise of Divinity (London, 1646), II.xii (P. 93).  Emphasis added (R.L.R.).  Quoted in Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, III, 482.

It is such despotic logic that allows penal satisfaction/substitution theologians to insist on the absolute necessity of punishment for all and every sin.  In terms of the alien economics of “sin payment,” this necessity is understandable, but it is utterly false to the letter and spirit of Scripture–both Testaments alike.  Premial justice is completely out of sight and out of mind in such a theory.  [7/15/10]

“We must not therefore conceive of God as a creditor who remits debt de jure, for even though sins are identified as debts, WE ARE STILL BOUND TO BE PUNISHED.  Rather, [we should conceive of God] as the supreme Ruler and Judge of the universe, who is bound to preserve inviolate the majesty of his own laws….  IF THIS [EXCLUSIVELY PENAL!–R.L.R.] JUSTICE WERE NOT AN ESSENTIAL ATTRIBUTE OF GOD,THERE COULD BE NO LEGITIMATE REASON, WHY HE SHOULD HAVE DELIVERED UP HIS BELOVED SON TO DEATH, for the perfect wisdom of God will not allow us to say that this was done without reason and extreme necessity.”  Benedict Pictet, Theologia christiana ex puris ss. literarum fontibus hausta (Geneva, 1696), II, viii.3.  All emphases added (R.L.R.).  Quoted in Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, III, 493.  [7/15/10]

The thought that the above mortal author had exhausted ALL LEGITIMATE REASONS why “the perfect wisdom of God” might have surrendered His beloved Son to death is simply an audaciously arrogant hubris too far!  He cannot so much as imagine, much less advance and defend, A JUSTICE WITH SUCH AWESOME MAJESTY THAT IT ABSOLUTELY ECLIPSES THE SAVAGELY PENAL AVENGING TO BE FOUND AT EVERY TURN IN CALVINISTIC GENEVA AND PURITAN ENGLAND OF THOSE BLOODY CENTURIES!  Would he harbor, could he entertain for a millisecond, the possibility, the conjecture, the merest speculation that GOD’S RAISING FROM SUCH A WRETCHEDLY IGNOMINIOUS AND HEINOUSLY UNJUSTIFIED DEATH  and EXALTING TO THE INCOMPARABLE HEIGHTS OF HIS OWN CELESTIAL THRONE His own most precious and ardently beloved Son might conceivably qualify as AN “EXTREME NECESSITY“?  Because if so, then there was NO NECESSITY AND NO LEGITIMATE REASON WHATSOEVER for God to have resorted to such a misconceived “final solution” as the poor author proposes with such carnal vigor.  Moreover, he dares to commandeer “the perfect wisdom of God” AS IF HE HIMSELF POSSESSED PRIVILEGED ACCESS THERETO AND COULD HANDILY CLAIM THAT ATTRIBUTE FOR HIS OWN MOST FALLIBLE THEORIZING.  I am dumbfounded at such reckless boldness.  Do we have to answer for such sins before God, or shall the man be given a pass?  We are the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we have been given authority to judge every human theology (including mine) by the touchstone of wholesome Scripture.   [6/17/21]

“[T]he deepest manifestation of ‘the Aversion of God’s wrath’ against sin is the death of Christ as propitiation and that, because of it, God does not exercise his hatred and wrath against the faithful, despite the remnants of the sinful nature in them.”  Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, III, 587, drawing on [William] Bates, The Harmony of the Divine Attributes, p. 255.  [7/16/10]

It would appear that the penal substitution theory concerning Christ’s “payment for sin” via his “suffering God’s wrath” is the cause of the notion that “all sins must be punished to the fullest extent,” and not the other way around.  Historically, this latter hyper-punitive doctrine is but a necessary reflex of the penal substitution position.  [7/16/10]

With the resurrection from the dead, God was TRYING TO PROVE SOMETHING–specifically, His extraordinary POWER and super-compensating JUSTICE, because those are what both the nation of Israel and all other nations of mankind needed to behold in order to TRUST Him credibly as the one and only living and true Creator God.  [7/16/10; 6/17/21]