Protestant Reformation-era sectarian animosities and credal absolutism have so polarized the church and paralyzed doctrinal progress that many salutary breakthroughs continue to be sidetracked and forgotten, to our grievous loss.

The Lord’s Supper, our nourishing communion in his death via crucifixion (his body, given for us—the bread of his flesh) until he comes back again alive via resurrection (his lifeblood, shed for us—the wine of his Spirit) [2/10/11], finds its complement in our cleansing baptism, wherein we are “buried“as mortally decaying fleshly bodies, but then “raised” as vitalizingly wholesome spiritual bodies. [11/30/23]

During the 17th century, the smoky accusation “Socinian!” was not seldom blown in the face of those who dared challenge the systematic purity of mainline Protestant doctrine and its affiliated orthodox traditions at any point. Any who dared profess an urge to go beyond the Reformers in faithfulness to Scripture might fall under suspicion, reproach, and danger of life and limb. This undeniable and now properly embarrasing fact should give us pause before accepting all the pretensions of the dominant and now verifiably compromised dogmatists of the Protestant Reformation and subsequent eras.

Satan’s strategy was evidently to stall Biblical progress on every front, not merely on those topics where Socinians (so-called because the Polish Brethren among whom the penetrating Italian theologian Faustus Socinus took up permanent residence had long held similar unitarian opinions before he came along to help render their convictions more thoroughly and systematically defensible according to Scripture) happened to differ from the mainline traditions. For centuries thereafter, in fact right down to the present, the charge of “Socinian” has blackened many an attempt to “get it right” on various doctrinal matters and has sounded the death knell to potential advances. Corrupt, half-baked human traditions have trumped the very Word of God Himself, to the substantial loss of God’s kingdom. Many a worthy insight hereby became prematurely discredited on the slightest pretext lest the challenge distract busy theologians from their professional routines. [2/10/11]

Under the deleterious punitive sway of John Calvin’s novel dogma of “penal substitution” the English Puritan movement became bitterly denunciatory and vigorously persecutorial as pet doctrines became set in stone via the Westminster Confession and Catechisms. Yet in spite of the sufferings they inflicted, dissenters veritably frothed forth fresh insights and biblical clarifications at the risk of reputation, livelihood, life, and limb. Their writings were hunted down and delivered up to flames with devilish determination and pious glee. They were routinely and deceptively labeled and assailed with stock anathemas to deter curious truth-seekers from daring to affirm them or trying to procure the allegedly deviant publications and further spread their leaven. [2/17/11]

William Pynchon (1590-1662) may have been the first person in modern times (1655) to articulate the apostolic teaching about “the righteousness of God” being identical to God’s own personal uprightness instead of Christ’s, and, moreover, in a positively rewarding sense rather than a negatively retributive one. Yet it was not until some nine decades later (1741, An Essay on Redemption, Being the Second Part of a Tract, intitled, Divine Rectitude) that John Balguy first coined an appropriate term for that idea: ”premial,” albeit he employed it only twice in that graceful treatise and indicates no awareness of his predecessor William Pynchon’s kindred advances. [2/17/11]

The Polish Brethren demonstrated that their repudiation of penal substitution was generative of a most rigorous and conscientious obedience to Christ’s commandments and his Father’s will.

The Polish Brethren (Socinians) definitely denied that Christ’s cross was intended to ‘satisfy the justice‘ of a punitive God so as to enable His forgiveness. Quite plausibly, this firm denial of any divinely penal motive in the suffering of the Savior may well have prevented their exceptionally conscientious obedience to the Lord’s commands from degenerating into moralism or legalism. Their ethic was arguably among the very highest of their contemporaries, indeed, within the whole history of Christianity, with the exception of the first few generations, who, no surprise, were their avowed models. They understood God’s Gift of the Holy Spirit as given to enable them to endure in obedience to Christ’s teaching so that they could win everlasting life. Without the spectre of a wrathful punitive Deity looming over them—God’s precious children by faith—they could follow their Lord’s lead without compulsiveness or dread, and hence could run the devout way of God’s commandments with alacrity and fearlessness.

It may not be too much to say that the ‘penal satisfaction‘ theory of the Atonement is inherently subversive of an authentic Christian ethic since it imputes ‘legalism’ or ‘moralism’ to earnest and eager endeavors to keep Christ’s commands carefully. Such a doctrine squelches enthusiastic scrupulousness to obey the Lord Jesus and leads to a lackadaisical attitude where ‘anything goes’ so long as a confrssional is within convenient reach or forgiveness is ladled out wholesale with no strings attached. The resulting ‘Christianity’ is a reproach and a disgrace to the reputation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, and, much later, Dispensationalism, have all contributed to the debasement of Christian behavior and the reputation of Christ by their adherence to post-apostolic, non-biblical doctrines of the Atonement, and this not in their own right exclusively, but because penal theories of the Atonement make allowances for miscellaneous deviations that crop up within the larger realm of doctrine as well as the realm of ethics, both personal and social. [12/9/10; 8/11/23]

Their robust (some would say lopsided) emphasis on the humanity of the Lord Jesus somehow seems to have admirably encouraged and even inspired the assiduous obedience to Christ’s comandments that nobly typified the Polish Brethren above their contemporaries for several generations (with the possible exception of the early church, whom they were consciously emulating). They took heart in observing how God awarded His Son despite all the grim opposition and cruel manhandling he suffered. Christ was their model. Since God rewarded Jesus with immortal life for walking the way of His directives, they knew that this was the well-pleasing way for them to walk as well.

They also took courage from the knowledge that God had bestowed the Gift of His Holy Spirit on them to facilitate this earnest obedience to His will. Their power to endure so nobly and tranquilly the terrible forces at length unleashed against them, most severely by the Roman Catholics (especially Jesuits) and Calvinists of Poland, but including the animus of Lutheran Europe, testifies eloquently to the ruggedness of their doctrine. For they saw clearly and believed heartily that THE FATHER MOST GENEROUSLY REWARDED HIS SON FOR OBEDIENT BEHAVIOR EXERTED AGAINST ALL ODDS. This knowledge braced them in their contest with their foes. So, in addition to the fact that these Socinians did not affirm penal satisfaction/substitution in any sense whatever, they did boldly assert God’s premial award to the Lord Jesus Christ, even if they somewhat inadequately comprehended all that meant with respect to a premially forensic atonement. (They evidently did not quite grasp either that or how such a favorable response from God could, further, be actually cleansing or atoning. Further study of what remains of their widely-suppressed but soberly creative and brilliantly nuanced theological and ethical literary output, although very little is in English translation, is certain to prove fruitful and beneficial to the larger body of Christ in our era.)

However, regardless of the fact that they vigorously and successfully disputed any Biblical grounds for a ‘substitutionary’ atonement, and in particular, ‘penal satisfaction,’ they highly revered the Lord’s Supper—the channel of atoning cleansing via Christ’s innocent blood. Moreover, the Polish Brethren practiced adult, believers’ baptism, whose washing entails the atoning function also of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, regardless of their weak grasp of the connection between God’s reward to Christ and these two practices, they nevertheless benefited from their fiducial practice of the rites in their mediating of atoning power. The happy results were evident in their sterling lifestyle and rigorous attention to all the commands of their Lord Jesus Christ. They have left an unequalled legacy of faithful study of Scripture, obedience to the Gospel ethic, and endurance through affliction and persecution, that compares favorably with their early Anabaptist contemporaries across Europe. [12/9/10; 8/11/23]

Christ was s “protective cover” (hilasterion) around (peri) our sins precisely because his faithfulness (pistis), which was “in” (en) his blood (haima), rendered him essentially impervious, ‘immune,’ to any threat of God’s wrath. Hence, by “drinking” his “blood,” by which our hearts (“core” of our souls or bodily existences) get “sprinkled from a vicious conscience,” our sins are cleansed away, and thereby God’s wrath, in turn, is ‘averted’ from us or, better, “not aroused” toward us on account of our having perpetrated the offensive behaviors. [12/9/10; 8/12/23]

Because John Calvin never repented of his errors (neither his significant part in the wrongful death of Servetus, much less in matters of doctrine), they, along with his embitttered spirit of vendetta, were passed along to his theological heirs undiminished, turning many of them into “double the sons of gehenna” that he, too, was hazardously morphing into. Servetus credibly testified that Calvin ‘started it,’ and we can well believe it. We have Calvin’s own language preserved in all its shocking hubris, quite the equal of what he accused Servetus of venting. Have we lost a hallowed sense of irony at such historic displays? Let us shudder to repeat such blameworthy history, provoking blasphemy to God’s reputation. [12/10/10; 8/12/23]

What Did the Resurrection Achieve?

The resurrection of Jesus Christ achieved a definitive demonstration of the righteousness of God. There is no mystery to this; it is the luminous end of “the secret hidden from the ages” (Ephesians 3:4-5, 9) concerning the salvation of mankind. To call anything concerning the Gospel a “mystery” is to misuse the word and to re-mystify the open secret of God’s graciousness now revealed in the career of the Lord Jesus Christ. Such a reversion would amount to a culpable cover-up.

Furthermore, and most emphatically, this demonstration of divine justice in Christ’s resurrection is perfectly (!) rational. This can hardly be overemphasized, especially as a counterweight to orthodox rationalizations in the face of Abelardian, Socinian, and many other less notorious objections to the irrationality of penal substitution (and vicarious satisfaction). [2/17/09]

Once the erroneous notion of “identification with sin” (based on a mistranslation of hamartia as “sin” instead of “sin offering” in 2 Corinthians 5:21 and of a similar misunderstanding of Romans 8:3) is subtracted from the concept of Christ’a “identification” with sinners, there is not much solid content left to recommend it, unless we only mean that he became one of us and entered the world that had been subjected to the evils consequent on sin. But we can only get so much mileage out of this meaning of “identification.” Other words better depict this reality, and none must bear the weight of any penal substitutionary bric-a-brac. [2/17/09]

“THE MYSTERY”

The mystery “of the Atonement” is why theologians have not seen the resurrection of Christ as the righteousness of God in action. The mystery is why evangelical theologians ridiculed the suggestion that the sacrificial blood was a symbol of resurrection life made available for all through death of an innocent victim. The mystery is why theologians continue to translate hamartia as “sin” instead of “sin offering” in 2 Corinthians 5:21 even though it is translated “sin offering” literally scores of times in the Septuagint version of Leviticus and beyond, in similar sacrificial contexts, right alongside its translation as “sin” proper (as if it were intended to force us to struggle with its deeper meaning).

The mystery of the Atonement is that the Psalms actually associate God’s righteousness with “raising” scores of times, yet theologians don’t notice! The mystery is that even Moses’ Law required overcompensation by offenders to their victims, but this kind of divine justice “just” is not noticed by atonement theologians. The mystery is that the actual “faith of Christ” counts for nothing with penal substitution champions.

The mystery is that although sins are never declared to be “imputed (logiz-) to Christ” in Scripture, penal substitution theologians insist they are! Add to that the mystery that the Bible nowhere teaches that Adam’s sin was “imputed” to his descendants, yet theologians remain stubborn that they were. Those two mysteries are compounded yet more by the mystery of “Christ’s righteousness” (in itself, not a biblical expression at all!) being “imputed” to believing sinners, about which God’s Word is mysteriously (!) silent.

The culminating mystery of the Atonement is why the original words translated “atonement,” “propitiation,” “expiation,” etc., were ever rendered that way when the original words literally meant a protective cover or covering (“coverage”). [2/18/09]

Jesus did not “shed his blood.”

JESUS DID NOT “SHED HIS BLOOD,” IT WAS SHED FOR HIM! Yes, he obediently submitted himself to this official, public, cruel, prolonged, and incredibly unjust execution, but HE DIDN’T SHED IT, NOR DO THE SCRIPTURES TEACH THAT HE DID. This notion is a grotesque impulse and reflex of a penal substitutionary misrepresentation of the Gospel. [8/17/08] Getting the details of the Story straight is half the battle.

There’s a leering irony in the fact that, for all their vociferous denials that the Gospel is “rational” (out of overreaction to Socinianism), yet Evangelicals indulge in elaborate, if tortured, rationalizations to establish and justify it! If you happen to believe for any reason that the Gospel is truly and appealingly “rational,” you are liable to be labeled a “Socinian,” “Unitarian,” “anti-trinitarian,” “rationalist,” “Liberal,” or worse—a “non-Evangelical”! Okay, maybe that’s not so bad after all, considering the company you start keeping when you’re jealous over the “Evangelical” tag. [8/19/08]

If it is possible to conceive of a penal justice entirely bereft of reparative qualities, as evidently it is (on the prevalent view), then why would a purely reparative justice be so inconceivable—a justice entirely lacking in punitive qualities, focused on restoring to victims of crime what they lost? This is the challenge before us at our moment in history. The apostolic Proclamation of salvation through the work of God in the “Crossurrection” has been distorted and contorted beyond a Wholesome-Spirited rationality and hence beyond credibility. It sinks under a thousand qualifications. Certainly someone will come along and propose a mediating “combination” of the two, but I would hold out for a clear and unconfused, unmixed distinction between the two, plus an emphatic claim of exclusive evangelical authenticity for the reparative, in connection to the Atonement. [8/30/08]

The denunciatory attitude of “penal substitutionary” advocates is too consistent and widespread not to be a natural reflex of the erroneous doctrine itself. The theory breeds arrogance, smugness, judgmentalism, animosity, and self-righteousness (oddly ironic!). These evil qualities can be seen throughout the history it traverses (too short to be apostolic, too long to be merely adventitious). The punitive and peremptory manner of its devotees is plowed into every new generation, making them sometimes twice as fit for gehenna as their mentors.  Brethren, this ought not to be!

May resurrectionary graciousness overtake this aberration and swallow up its disciples for the cause of reparative justice instead. [9/02/08] Then may they teach their teachers a lesson!

“And to you, O Yahweh, belongs kindness, For You Yourself shall pay each man according to his deeds.” —Psalm 62:12

This, THIS, for Heaven’s sake, is what was happening at the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ! THAT SUNDAY WAS PAYDAY for Jesus! On that glorious day he started to get paid back for his lifelong faithfulness to the Covenant with his Father. THE CROSS WAS ONLY THE LAST STRAW—THE ONE THAT BROKE THE DRAGON’S BACK! Even so, the Resurrection was a mere “advance” on Christ’s full paycheck, which came after his exaltation to Heaven.

We must understand our own individual salvations as comprehended within his PAY PACKAGE! He suffered greater abuse in order to swell his PAY…ON OUR BEHALF, ALL THE GREATER! We’ve gotta get this! [9/02/08]

God Imputed Christ Righteous by Resurrection

God never “imputed sin” to Christ. He did the diametric opposite. He imputed him righteous as over against all the weight of depraved human opinion and official judgment, although, to be sure, one of the crucified robbers finally came around, declaring to the mocker, “Yet you are not fearing God, seeing that you are in the same judgment! And we, indeed, justly, for we are getting back the deserts of what we commit [pra-], yet this One commits nothing amiss [atop-]” (Luke 23:41). Indeed, so did the centurion who saw him expire, who “glorified God, saying that, ‘really [ontos], this human was just!’” (Luke 23:47) and “truly [alethos], this human was a son of a god!” (Mark 15:39)—perhaps the best that could be expected from a Roman polytheist, but a worthy tribute nonetheless. Yet even the very man who betrayed the Master glorified God, at the last, admitting, “I sinned in surrendering innocent [atho–] blood” (Matthew 27:4). And that’s not all. Pilate himself, who convicted him under duress, glorified God by declaring, “Innocent am I of the blood of this just One” (Matthew 27:34). Thus far the insignificant minority. But the mob and all their leaders imputed sin to the flawless, blameless Lamb of God, whose sinlessness made him worthy to buy us for God. YET GOD JUSTIFIED HIM BY RESURRECTION, THUS IMPUTING HIM RIGHTEOUS!  [8/21/07]

Modern evangelical theologians have much to learn about glorifying God from thieves, traitors, executioners, and oppressive pagan rulers. [8/24/08]

Did Jesus “pay the Devil” the ransom of his just soul in order to free and liberate mankind? No, he paid Death, but since death was in Satan’s control (his “ultimate weapon,” the “last enemy”) when Messiah Jesus, the Lord, conquered death by winning life and rising from the dead, the Adversary—that “Great Dragon,” the “Old Serpent”—was defanged, declawed, disarmed, and defeated…all but dismembered! Jesus, in effect, did an end run around the opposing horde of bruisers when he ran for the goal yet allowed Death to tackle him en route. However, this particular “block and tackle” maneuver worked in reverse to hoist the Old Monster on his own gibbet, having been lured by his own greed to use his ultimate weapon to swallow the innocent bait—the divine Offspring of the Creator Himself. Thereby Satan tricked and tripped and trapped himself! [8/21/07]

The classic case against “penal substitution” was enunciated by Faustus Socinus (1539-1604), the Italian émigré who became a de facto leader of the evangelical unitarian Polish Brethren during the century of the Reformation. He was, in the main, quite correct in his objections and remains among the most eloquent opponents of the Reformers’ severe innovations upon Anselm (1033-1109). So whenever we hear the cry, “Socinian!” we can usually be sure we are hearing the squeal of a defender of penal substitution. The same squeal was heard endlessly during the decades of the English civil wars, 1640s and 1650s. The squeal went up later against Barton W. Stone (1772-1844), co-founder of the Stone-Campbell or Restorationist movement in America in the early 19th century (from which stems the Church of Christ / Churches of Christ / Christian Church / Disciples of Christ family of churches). It may have been heard in the ears of Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-72), and probably by George MacDonald (1824-1905), the beloved novelist and children’s author. It was certainly heard by Paul Peter Waldenström (1838-1917). The frightful shriek goes up again and again from those who imagine that a denial of error must always be followed, as cause by effect, with the further acceptance of the errors of the deniers. Not so. The tandem fear that a confession of our own errors must be followed by a denial of our hard-won truths is similarly unwarranted. But the only way to pass through the horns of the dilemma gracefully is via resurrection, that is, by way of restorative justice! Penal justice can only evoke squeals and shrieks. [89/23/07]