Is an Exhibit of Penal Substitution the Best God Can Do to Demonstrate the Pinnacle of His Justice to the Human Race?

The persistence of the penal substitution opinion concerning the Atonement is one of the most resounding evidences of the depravity of theologians that it is possible to contemplate. It salves our fallenness as few other religious beliefs can do, for it is staunchly defended (all too human though it is) as a reflection of God’s own supreme justice! The sullied character of God Almighty, the Heavenly Father Himself, then gets blithely invoked to justify our own carnally vindictive attitudes. Our corrupt vengefulness is projected onto our faulty image and impression of the Supreme Judge while we, in turn, feel justified in inflicting it upon our neighbors and, more widely, upon our fellow citizenry, not to mention our national enemies, “without and within.”

To those theologians whose response to such criticism is to hurl the invidious accusation, “You just think you’re better than those who teach penal substitution!” we reply with a question: “Is a repentant teacher better than an unrepentant teacher?” [8/3/11; 12/11/24]

The stupendous, yea, nuclear overcompensation of graciousness released earthward in divine exchange for the incalculable viciousness of the Cross, was intended by God precisely to blow all unworthy calculations concerning divine reprisals to KINGDOM COME! But we Protestants all, whether Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, Calvinists, Lutherans, et al, have become catechized, trained, accustomed, habituated, acclimated, or otherwise perfectly adapted to and “carefully taught” the low, debased calculations of PENAL SATISFACTION, and like addicts we experience withdrawal symptoms of psychic destabilization when our pathological crutch is kicked out from under that tottering superstructure. [8/4/11; 12/11/24]

“The cup indeed which I am drinking shall you be drinking, and with the baptism with which I am getting baptized shall you be baptized.” Mark 10:39

If this declaration of Jesus is correct, we can scarcely hold that the Lord’s cup was “the cup of God’s wrath” (as penal satisfaction proponents nevertheless insist) lest James and John be alleged to taste likewise of God’s wrath! For what “penal satisfying” end would that serve, if we may inquire? No, far from it! That was the cup of Satanic affliction, fury, and wrath, concerning which the Lord Jesus prewarned and prepared his followers, and for good reason! For as sheep among wolves, we are privileged to partake of the sufferings of our Lord in kind (though not in measure). [8/8/11; 12/10-11/24]

Simply because the ancient Levitical priesthood was authorized by God through Moses’s direction to employ a host of symbols and symbolic procedures—and therefore, in turn, God might later freely overrule them so as to pre-empt their being mistaken as operating automatically or mechanically—does not imply that these implements, substances, and actions were somehow arbitrary, insignificant, or alterable in their heyday. Such an attitude would debase their discernible and consistent meaning, which is so essential for identifying them with their future New Covenant manifestations and ultimate fulfilments. [8/8/11; 12/10-11/24]

SINNING IS A SYMPTOM OF HUMAN MORTALITY. [8/16/11; 12/9/24]

GOD SAVES US BY HIS JUSTICE TO JESUS.

In other words, because God rescued Jesus from death-by-crucifixion at the hands of wicked Jews and Romans, we too can be saved from the finality of death, because God’s reward to him in exchange for his voluntary submission to such wrongful abuse, especially in view of his actual status as God’s unique Son and Israel’s Messiah, was so superabundant, via resurrectionary restitution, that the benefits overflow to us, as well, through that ramifying event! [8/16/11; 12/11/24]

The premial Atonement that we have been documenting from Scripture magnifies the graciousness of God as neither vicarious/honorial satisfaction (Anselm) nor penal satisfaction/substitution (esp. Calvin) can possibly do; they don’t come close, not by a yawning gulf! The practical, pastoral, and societal effects of the premial interpretation have yet to be fully exhibited in the modern era, but they may yet prove revolutionary, in the happiest sense of the word. May God grant it may be so, to the credit of His most welcoming and revitalizing salvation! [8/17/11; 12/10/24]

God’s wrath is not infrequently manifested through the “natural order” (as Enlightenment modernism has come to categorize it) via curses, as deprivation of blessings as well as by unvarnished evils. But these enactments of God’s will (in predictable response to human wills) can hardly be construed as automatic, i.e., mechanically naturalistic, and hence impersonal. Yet we must quickly add that such evils are by no means ipso facto signs of God’s wrath. For the wicked were also created in God’s image, so possess a measure of sovereignty and authority to wield over created things, even for wrong, contrary to God’s disposition to bless, in graciousness. Consequently, things are not always what they seem. The cross of Christ is the most glaring example, which, without the authoritative interpretation supplied by his specially instructed apostles, becomes the most bewildering enigma. It may look like the wrath of God in extremis, yet that superficial assessment could not be farther from the Truth if a congress of devils had assembled to reframe the whole event and turn it on its head to discredit God’s personal character and historic reputation of wisdom, goodness, and love! It appears that John Calvin and his epigones managed quite well enough without their infernal help. Ironically, they succeeded far, far beyond what the Devil could possibly have achieved on his own, for they propagated their doctrines in the very name of Christ and his Gospel, and not as outright blasphemers who might easily be detected as such and discredited (not to add, prosecuted?). [8/19/11; 12/10-11/24]

We can only sit back in wondering admiration at the achievements of such theologians as Edward W. Fudge and Lawrence Vance, among a select vocal minority, who have assayed to demolish so much that is erroneous in Calvinistic doctrines of salvation, with one hand tied behind their back—THE RIGHT HAND OF PREMIAL ATONEMENT! Vance has all but exhaustively upended all five classic errors of Calvinism, yet without a culminating uprooting and renunciation of the deepest and most intransigent tip of its taproot, penal substitution—failing which, all five hoary deviations will simply continue to sprout and grow back in time.

So also with Edward Fudge’s sturdy and persuasive apostolic alternative to the further outgrowth from Calvinistic soteriology, “everlasting conscious punishment.” For Fudge, not without painful irony, remained a staunch devotee of penal substitution, from which “everlasting conscious punishment” naturally stems! His formidable but mistaken debating opponent, Prof. Robert Peterson (of Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, MO, from which Fudge himself had earlier graduated), has not overlooked this embarrassing inconsistency in Fudge’s position, who, for his part, too kindly attempted to parlay his own unexamined concession into a ‘peace offering’ to establish at least some friendly (if shaky) common ground where they might meet. But however kindly, it was wrongly conceded and will prove to be a ‘worm that dieth not‘ in the inconclusive—indeed, irresolvable—negotiations between Fudge’s more consistently Biblical teaching about final punishment (for there is one!) and Peterson’s (et al) Calvinistic caricature.

In brief: Fudge needs a premial atonement that comports more seamlessly with his view of the final state. Otherwise the hideous worm of penal satisfaction remains unsatisfied in its voracious appetite to devour God’s premial justice right along with its root in divine love and its fruit of divine graciousness.

However, Vance and Fudge, although two of the otherwise most thorough cleansers of the temple of historical theology from key Calvinistic errors, are by no means alone in their subversive inconsistencies. Other similarly noble modern pioneers of recent generations include Markus Barth, Clark Pinnock, Tom Smail, Chris Marshall, Colin Gunton, James Kallas, Jurgen Moltmann, Hans Urs von Balthasar, David Brondos, Douglas Campbell, Greg Boyd, Darrin Snyder Belousek, J. R. Daniel Kirk, and Mako Nagasawa. Such a worthy assemblage often stride right to the brink of the crystal clear waters of atoning truth, yet fall short of taking the plunge to get baptized tip to toe. The rest of us remain the poorer for their halting progress. May God yet grant a youthful corps of daring students, willing to follow the Lamb yet further, wherever he may lead. [8/19/11; 12/10-11/24]

An OPEN LETTER to Jesse Morrell and FRIENDLY CRITIQUE of The Vicarious Atonement of Christ (2012), part 17

Jesse, God could not possibly have “established the exact and literal penalty of the law as eternal hell-fire, eternal torment, to uphold His government which was designed to secure public justice or His glory and the highest well-being of all” (#7 in “The Atonement of Scripture,” Section Two, emphasis added) because nothing whatever is ever mentioned of such a penalty in the Old Testament. Yet that is precisely where we should expect such a dire warning as a deterrent. Moreover, we should see this dread fate carefully articulated and repeatedly emphasized, over, and over, and over again—much like you and other theologians of this school do. But no! They are exactly nowhere to be found in the Hebrew Scriptures. Yet if you are correct, we should see them on nearly every page! As it is, on your premise God has set a deplorable, inexplicable, inexcusable precedent. You have a lot of explaining to do. In fact you have created a “mystery” where we should surely anticipate transparent clarity and unambiguous wording, at least once in every Old Testament book, wouldn’t you say? Is that too much to ask of such a watershed doctrine (as you frame it)? As you can see, this situation poses a very serious problem of both Bible interpretation and theological systematization. Things just don’t square. What kind of deterrent would survive if it only got publicly decreed and announced maybe once a millennium? Let me commend to you the monumental scholarship of Edward William Fudge on this vital topic:

The Fire That Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of Final Punishment, foreword by F. F. Bruce [Fallbrook, CA: Verdict Publications, 1982] 500p; “The Final End of the Wicked,” in Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 27/3 [September 1984] 325-334; The Fire That Consumes: The Biblical Case for Conditional Immortality, revising editor, Peter Cousins, with additional foreword by John Wenham [Carlisle, UK: Paternoster Press, 1994 (condensed but updated)] 226p; The Fire That Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of the Doctrine of Final Punishment, Third Edition, fully updated, revised, and expanded, with additional foreword by Richard Bauckham [Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2011] 417p.

Now, mind you, Fudge still adheres to penal satisfaction! This adds much greater credibility to his hard won conclusions, contrary as they are to the natural inherent tendency of that theory. You can see the fascinating difficulties this raises when he interacts with his pitched opponent, Robert Peterson of Covenant Seminary (from which Fudge had earlier graduated as an older student before pursuing law). Edward William Fudge & Robert A. Peterson, Two Views of Hell: A Biblical & Theological Dialogue [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000] 228p.

It’s starting to look suspiciously like some other rationale must predominate “to uphold God’s kingdom and secure public justice, His glory, and the highest well-being of all.” It would have to be a rationale applicable to all ages of people and to all ages of time, or at least adaptable, with appropriate adjustments, to all.

How about a Covenant, one that includes not only blessings, but frightful curses as well? Then throw in a few (make that “many”—they’ll keep getting killed off…) prophets to tediously remind the people of their infractions and the dire consequences that have followed earlier unrepented violations of the deal they long before made with God. Ah, yes. Now that might have some deterrent effect.

The alleged “morality” of the vaunted “moral government” you virtually apotheosize must come under more minute scrutiny. Your inherited theory one-sidedly sanctions a substitute penalization of an infinitely-more-than totally “innocent” man (i.e., one merely free of prosecutable infractions of positive statutory law), in historic fact, incomparably, positively, pro-actively, assertively loving and self-giving, without so much as a glancing mention or mumbled whisper that all Scripture other-sidedly sanctions an unmediated PREMIALIZATION of such upright persons.

Somehow, Jesse, this proud “moral government” theory has SWEPT CHRIST’S DUE REWARD RIGHT UNDER THE RECTORAL RUG, IRONICALLY SHROUDING CHRIST’S RESURRECTION, which in reality was even only the threshold of all the just due owed Him! Dare I suggest that such a government—such a “morality”—is, for all ends, objects, and purposes, IMMORAL? Go figure.

I am kindly disposed to surmise that this admittedly rather shocking inference has only been made starkly visible—can only become robustly visible, if multiplied centuries of hyper-punitive theologies and “Christian” attitudes and practices have proved anything—by recognition and acceptance of the premial Atonement.

Having brazenly declared this, I must immediately disavow originality. I had been painstakingly examining the Scriptures for years, with no particular theological or dogmatic trajectory in mind, as a matter of pure research. (The Bible is that fascinating!) Other minds drew my attention to patterns of explanation that, to say the least, I found compelling, probably because they actually do exist in the very vocabulary and syntax of the Bible in clearly phenomenal ways, but seem to have escaped the attention, much less the utilization, of theologians generally, at least for any ruggedly systematic applications. And because the Atonement is so central to the functional categories of “soteriology,” which is to say, the Gospel, especially in the Old Testament, and of course, but with greatly ramified conceptual diversification, in the New Testament also, such authentic (even if non-evangelical, non-fundamentalist, non-Calvinistic, or otherwise non-orthodox) patterns took on major, even seismic significance and personal interest for me.

What has emerged in consequence is a massive reframing and re-proportioning of the lexical and semantic picture that the New Testament writers graphically represent as the Gospel Story. Perhaps needless to say by now, this enormous adjustment of my presuppositions has often put me at cross-purposes with seemingly every other position known to the standard historical treatments of Atonement theories. But that’s fine with me, for long ago I threw in my lot with the Bible’s writers and Author. Seems to me they have gotten short shrift by partisan schools of theology. But I must resist caricature.

The point of the above digression into my personal history is to emphasize that I am not propounding yet another wearisome theory of the Atonement; this has been a steady rediscovery. The pervasive patterns of Biblical Explanation defy the usual, common, and mostly unrevealing canons of so-called “proof-texting.” The reason is obvious enough on a little reflection: proof texts (and even worse, mere citations) are totally bereft of the necessary exposition of either context or concept. And without these, as the saying goes, you can prove anything. That’s why in most of my popular and many of my technical pieces, I have rather advanced and urged the inner logic of the Gospel (including, of course, the Atonement, narrowly considered) rather than piling up hills and mountains of proof texts as “personal cover” for a pet theory (no offense—I like pets, but in their place, and theology is no place for pets). I’ve noticed on closer inspection that your use of Scripture in the 2012 online version of your new book, The Vicarious Atonement of Christ, is—how can I say?—fragmentary, atomistic. It’s “cherry picking,” then repetitive in successive citations. This is not full-bodied, integral, concordant. I’m guessing (hoping) you did this mainly for your own benefit until you find time to screen the raw material more carefully and extract the most relevant parts for your purpose. Therefore I’ll await your more refined results before commenting further on this point as I approach your online text in upcoming blogs.

The apostle Paul did not quote Scripture to Gentiles during his evangelistic missions. He reserves such riffs for Jews. But he never skimped on unfolding the resurrectionary—that is to say, restorative, rewarding, or premial—“MORALITY” of God’s coming Kingdom. Oops! Did I say “morality”? Absolutely. What the Father and the Son plotted before the ages of time in order to “take over the world” by love and its truly moral influence, is the proper paradigm for all truly Christian morality, ethics, and even politics. For EVEN GOVERNMENTS, since the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, cannot practice their old-fashioned imperial “morality” of world-domination with IMPUNITY and official IMMUNITY. There is a Judge who sits on high, sifting and weighing the nations with kindness, patience, and forbearance, repeatedly brandishing his Sword (the Spirit’s Word of Scripture) to draw all mankind to the Father by the PREMIALLY MORAL INFLUENCE OF THE “CROSSURRECTION” DYNAMIC.

A DISCOVERY trumps a THEORY.

~to be continued~