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]

Socinus vs. Calvin on JUSTICE

Faustus Socinus (1539-1604) clearly knew what God’s justice isn’t, and he denounced its misrepresentation, especially by John Calvin (1509-1564), unsparingly.  But did he as clearly grasp what God’s justice is, and how it was manifested supremely at the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ?  We may presume not.  However, his distinctive writings on the subject have never been translated into English in full.  What else might they actually reveal, apart from their Antitrinitarianism, of course, that could be so threatening to Satan’s kingdom that it would lead to the vicious persecution of Socinians and the suppression of their writings even to the present day?  [6/16/08]

THE GREAT REVIVALS ACCOMPANIED SERVICES OF THE LORD’S SUPPER!

The historic fact that God brought stupendous, unprecedented revivals of his people during services of the Lord’s Supper (annual events of the Scottish Presbyterians and Cambuslang, Scotland; the First Great Awakening, and especially the Second Great Awakening, in America) should have caused a rethinking of the theological dogma concerning the reception of the Holy Spirit at infant baptism or merely upon faith or profession of faith, etc.  For God Himself had acted from on high in undeniably extraordinary manifestations of healing, prophecy, conversion, etc., only in association with these historic events of Communion.  Perhaps it’s time we awakened from spiritual slumber, too.  [6/16/08]

GETTING OUR “BEARINGS” STRAIGHT

Penal Substitution champions talk much of “guilt,” much of “penalty,” much of “eternal punishment” (i.e., punishing), much of God’s wrath, much of “original sin,” much of “God’s hatred of sin,” but suspiciously and revealingly little about the bearing of SIN-AS-SUCH.  Yet this is what Isaiah 53 dwells on (along with echoes throughout the New Testament).  From its very extensive usage throughout the Old Testament, the Hebrew verb “bear” (nasah), along with its other grammatical forms, with perfect consistency makes clear that it means to “carry” the weight of a load imposed, taken up, or inflicted, not the “guilt,” not the “penalty,” not “wrath,” but sin—the sins that were being inflicted against Jesus between the garden tryst and the garden tomb (reminding us of the garden transgression at the garden tree…) and especially at the bare “cranial” (kranion—“skull”) site of the tree (xulon—“tree” in the Septuagint; “timber,” “wood,” “log” by New Testament times) on which he was hung by nails—Jesus was emphatically not bearing any human “guilt,” nor any divine “penalty,” nor any “infinite punishment,” much less the “wrath of God,” or “divine hatred of sin,” and nor was he “paying for sin.”  HE WAS DOING PRECISELY WHAT SCRIPTURE ALLEGES (with some considerable justification) HE WAS DOING:  BEARING (ENDURING) SIN!

If God’s “holiness” hates sin, what’s the solution?  TRANSFER HOLINESS to the sinner, somehow, AND THUS OUT OF JEOPARDY BY BEING MADE HOLY!  Duh.  Isn’t that what salvation is all about?  [6/16/08]

SATISFACTION vs. RESURRECTION

Only the Proclamation of a Resurrectionary Justification, i.e., of God’s Restorative Justice, and an understanding of the Atonement that accords with it, can provide sufficient discernment to judge among the composite options that have come down to us in the whole history of theology and credology.

The Socinians, it turns out, in spite of their serious errors, nonetheless displayed astonishing insight into the work of Christ that it behooves every serious Berean of a Bible student to analyze with care and due appreciation. Likewise Abelard, the Anabaptists, the Amyraldians and many other minority positions must be mined for their nuggets of wisdom and gems of truth. But God’s rewarding (not penal) justice is the indispensable criterion. [03/02/08]

Utterly foundational to the Protestant (i.e., Lutheran and Calvinistic) doctrine of “forensic justification,” by which they always mean “the imputation of Christ’s own righteousness to the believing sinner” is a shearing of this ostensibly “objective” justification, forgiveness, and reconciliation from whatever the Holy Spirit does, allegedly, “subjectively” within the believer, which is commonly termed “sanctification,” and which, they assert, always comes “afterward.” This shearing of “objective” from “subjective” (their distinction and terminology), paralleled or at least echoed in their distinction between Christ’s “active” and “passive” “righteousness” or obedience, constitutes a pernicious dualism that sabotages an integral apostolic ethic again and again. The Holy Spirit is said to do a “subjective” work in us—not including justification, forgiveness, or reconciliation!—only after and subsequent to the “objective” accomplishment of those three aspects of salvation “on the cross.”

This was an overreaction to the Roman Catholic error of making justification, forgiveness, and reconciliation subsequent to the lifelong operation of the Holy Spirit. Thus Protestantism is an overreaction to Roman Catholicism; neither is truly apostolic at this pivotal point. The truth is that all of those three (and much more) are continuously operative or true so long as faith exists and even reinforce faith, but do not guarantee continued faith since our increated (although restricted and mortal) sovereignty and authority resulting from our being made in the image and after the likeness of God always exists and remains inalienable until death. God’s forceful and heavily corroborated Proclamation of His Kingdom must be given the credit for keeping and preserving us in safety by its power to induce faith.

Moreover, this characteristic Protestant disconnect between “Christ’s work on the cross” (not a pattern of sound explanation found anywhere in Scripture) and “the Spirit’s work in the heart,” in effect, virtually snips the vital conduit that empowers ethical fruit or productivity. They may teach otherwise, indeed, the Holy Spirit may get a great deal of work done in spite of the erroneous doctrine, especially in those who are tutored in it less than they are in Scripture alone (which has power to override errors for those who stay in it faithfully and regularly). Nevertheless the Protestant doctrine is subversive of sound teaching by its very nature and needs to be exposed, confronted, and rejected in favor of the apostolic literature in the New Testament. [03/02/08]

SATISFACTION vs. RESURRECTION

The notion of “satisfaction” at the Cross cannot be dispensed with unless and until the Resurrection is grasped in its full justifying significance. This is why all attempts to deny and nullify the Anselmian notion of “satisfaction” have tended to be unsuccessful. For unless God’s justice can be clearly read out of Messiah’s resurrection, it will invariably be read into his crucifixion, where, to be sure, none whatever is to be found. Yet the opponents of the notion that the Cross is in any way “just” have routinely failed, one and all, to perceive God’s saving, rewarding, restorative justice in his resurrection and hence have denied the centrality of the “juridical metaphor” and, consequently of divine justice. But this loss only weakens the meaning of the Atonement as a whole and thus actually guts the full glory of God’s graciousness, which is, amazingly and wonderfully, the just outcome of Messiah’s unjust crucifixion via resurrectionary reversal!

Medieval cataracts concerning justice as seemingly purely penal (by the time of the Reformation of the 16^th century) all but blinded theologians concerning the ancient Hebrew assumptions about justice as avenging evil to restore good, i.e., eviscerating the vicious in order to enrich the righteous. [03/02/08]