Flotsam & Jetsam from the Slow Shipwreck of Calvinistic Soteriology on Account of Neglecting the Premial Atonement in Heaven

Occasionally sprawling, not seldom convoluted, excruciatingly tedious, yet often extraordinally innovative, seclect elaborations of the Atonement such as those of Hugo Grotius, John Owen, William Pynchon, John McLeod Campbell, Robert C. Moberly, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Leon Morris, René Girard, H. D. McDonald, John Stott, I. Howard Marshall, Fleming Rutledge, Eleonore Stump, N. T. Wright, William Lane Craig, Adonis Vidu, Michael Gorman, David Brondos, Greg Boyd, Hans Boersma, Douglas Campbell, Darrin Snyder Belousek, Mako Nagasawa, and W. Ross Hastings, hailing from widely disparate standpoints and Christian traditions, all alike manifest obliviousness to the inextricable roles of Christ’s resurrection, ascension, and enthronement WITHIN THE INTEGRAL PROCESS OF GOD’S PREMIAL JUSTICE CULMINATING IN THE PROTECTIVE COVER (“ATONEMENT”) CHRIST OFFERED EXCLUSIVELY AT GOD’S THRONE IN HEAVEN, followed by the outpouring of the promised award of Holy Spirit and Christ’s continual intercession thereafter. And that’s despite the sterling advances of many of these authors in multiple respects. I find this state of affairs almost heartbreaking, especially in view of the visibly and increasingly deleterious societal consequences of this “little” perennial oversight by “us Christians (all!).” The inevitable side-effect and byproduct of thus shunting around these vitally essential components is the palpable sense of ill-satisfaction that proliferates via compulsive but needless over-qualifying, over-elaboration, and over-defensiveness—in effect, “multiplying words without knowledge.” [3/13/11; 4/10-12/24]

A telling example of the burgeoning excesses that can spawn from just one prominent sectarian tradition of theologizing is the following ample tally of historically scattered and systematically superfluous flotsam & jetsam that has accumulated over five centuries from the slow-motion deterioration and imminent shipwreck of Calvinistic soteriology in particular, including both its own due property as well as outlying spinoffs by way of inevitable counteractions and overreactions. It should be disturbing to “true believers” that none of the following phrases or technical terms is to be found, as such, in Scripture itself, unless by way of unwarranted imposition and even outright mistranslation from the original, a practice regrettably becoming more common among scholars now that such error has become increasingly and calmly assured of widespread acceptance without risk of contradiction. (Accordingly, some or parts of the following might have been placed in quotes, but where to stop? That said, I shall spare you the technicality.)

acceptilation

active righteousness/obedience [vs. passive righteousness/obedience] of Christ

Amyraldianism

antinomianism

common grace [vs. special grace]

divine decrees

divine sovereignty [vs. human freewill]

double/triple imputation

double jeopardy (of the reprobate)

double predestination

effectual calling

equal ultimacy

eternal conscious punishment (of human beings)

eternal security

external call [vs. internal call]

fideism

freewill (hunan) [vs. divine sovereignty]

God’s reconciliation to man

governmental theory of atonement

hypothetical/conditional universalism

impetration vs. application

imputation of Adam’s sin to his descendants (from Augustine)

imputation of Christ’s righteousness to believers/the elect

imputation of sin(s) to Christ

infralapsarianism

internal call [vs. external call]

irresistible grace

justification vs. sanctification

legalism

limited atonement

monergism [vs. synergism]

order of decrees

ordo salutis

original sin (reprising Augustine)

passive righteousness/obedience [vs. active righteousness/obedience] of Christ

payment for (debt of) sin(s)

penal satisfaction

penal substitution

perfectionism

predestination

perseverance of the saints

preterition

prevenient/preventive/preceding grace

rectoral theory of atonement

reprobation (decree of…)

sanctification vs. justification

secret regeneration

sovereign grace

sovereignty of God

special call [vs. universal call]

special grace [vs. common grace]

spiritual death (being dead in sin)

sublapsarianism

suffering of Christ in hell

supralapsarianism

synergism [vs. monergism]

total depravity

unconditional election

universal call [vs. special call]

universalism

The foregoing litany comprises, one and all, artificial byproducts of a toxic (if well-meaning) theology industry: plastic pollution. These irreversibly degrading plastic components cannot be rendered non-toxic and will inevitably spread within the environmental footprint of any church that tolerates their use. We must pursue the difficult task of disemploying them and getting comfortable with the crisp, spare, consistent terminology of apostolic formulation inspired by the Spirit of wholesomeness. Isn’t it about time to take out the trash, provided we can somehow dispose of it where it’s not liable to re-enter the safe places of the church and surrounding environment to recontaminate them, perhaps with yet more inveigling iterations? [3/13/11; 4/9-12/24]

The curious fact that an extremely low percentage of relatives, friends, pastors, scholars, authors, and other Christian leaders to whom I have communicated the premial approach to the Atonement, even on multiple occasions, have ever responded, and that even those who have replied were mostly non-enthusiastic, rather curt, and certainly non-committal (although curiously, somewhat fewer in number being overtly opposed or hostile to the message), and, finally, that after several years I can still count on one hand those who seem to have warmed up to it, and on the other hand those who did not maintain objections to it—all suggest the unusually captivating grip of the penal hypothesis concerning atonement on a worldwide scale (my contacts span the globe).

Clearly. I have not yet communicated…clearly! Or the Holy Spirit, whose message I firmly believe this to be, has not yet deemed it quite ready to endorse. Now, I’m not whining, but what sober, plausible reasons might be advanced to account for this odd circumstance (well, of course, aside from my own delaying to submit it for publication in normal book fashion)? [3/14/11; 4/10-12/24]

New-Testament and early-Christian alternatives to select features of Augustinian and Calvinistic soteriology

There’s no such thing as “the sovereignty of God,” there’s simply GOD, Whose Kingdom transcends the limitations of exclusively deterministic causality, and Whose Son He appointed Sovereign of all creation.

There’s no such thing as divine “predestination,” there’s simply a divine destiny, and it’s conditional on our reception, by faith, of the regenerative power of the Gospel report about Jesus Christ.

There’s no such thing as “original sin,” there’s simply sin, and it’s neither inherited nor imputed to successive generations, although its effects do proliferate diverse evils throughout the world and through time.

There’s no such thing as “total depravity,” there’s simply physical depravity, but it cannot nullify the power of the Gospel record about Jesus to engender faith within the hearts of its sinful hearers.

There’s no such thing as “unconditional election,” there’s simply election, and it’s entirely conditional on human faith, which perfectly comports with divine grace and is caused by hearing the Gospel narrative concerning God’s Elect One, the Lord Jesus, if not sinfully resisted.

There’s no such thing as “limited atonement,” there’s simply atonement, and it equates to indemnification from sin on behalf of the whole human world without exception, accessible by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

There’s no such thing as “irresistible grace,” there’s simply grace, and it’s just as resistible as the Holy Spirit and Word of God are.

There’s no such thing as “sovereign grace,” there’s simply grace, which is endlessly available to all who simply believe, and only so long as they believe, the explanation of the Gospel about the Sovereign Lord Jesus.

There’s no such thing as “common grace” or “special grace,” there’s simply grace, and it’s exclusively experiencable by voluntary faith in the Gospel account about Christ the Savior, if we don’t harden our hearts against it. The creation is sustained by, and hence testifies eloquently to, God’s love and goodness and faithfulness, which we enjoy in common with all our fellow mortal sinners regardless of faith in Christ.

There’s no such thing as “perseverance of the saints,” there’s simply perseverance, which is sustained by the faith-generating power of the Gospel story of Jesus, which brings, in turn, the sanctifying indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

There’s no such thing as “eternal conscious punishment” for disbelieving human beings, there’s simply eternal punishment, which amounts to final extermination of both body and soul in a lake of fire (gehenna). (Satan and his sinning messengers, however, do suffer agelong conscious torment.)

Every qualifier is a minimizer, a limiter, an impoverisher. Let’s be done once and for all with Calvinistic soteriology, along with its varied toxic fragments within other Protestant traditions, and which radically debases so many essential concepts of Holy Scripture. [2/6/11;10/9-10/23]

Potpourri on atonement

As we should have expected, God did have something up his sleeve; it’s called His ARM! By His own arm He brought liberation to His humiliated Son! [04/11/08]

In comparison with this astoundingly Good News, Luther’s gospel was unverified rumors, Calvin’s was cheap gossip—a “gossipel.” Arminius pandered a tabloid piece. Things never get much better from there. All three, and their multitudes of blood-descendents, are simply variations on the Anselmian theme: the payment theory of atonement. Calvin reinforced the penal metaphor. Arminius backed off from it too slightly. [04/11/08]

“Sovereign grace” is not “the true graciousness of God,” but arbitrary favoritism. [04/13/08]

Did Jesus show himself alive to Caiaphas and the whole brood of vipers? Certainly not. He returned without delay to his distraught friends to explain at a more…er, teachable moment why this all had to be. He privileged them, women included, with both the true explanation of things as well as the extraordinary power to verify it to any others who would listen. [04/16/08]

To attribute the activities of Satan (the subordinate) to God (the superior), as, indeed, Scripture sometimes does, is one thing. But to credit the activities of God to Satan is verging on forbidden territory—even the unforgivable sin. [04/17/08]

Evangelical ethics is rotten at the core. The worm of penal substitution has defiled the wholesome kernel of Atoning truth so that “the flesh is without soundness.” One of the most wearisome symptoms of this diseased state is the rationalization “Well, we’re all sinful, so structural evil is a myth.” I put it to you that God must tremble with indignation at such simplemindedly self-serving lukewarmness of attitude. His soul hates such hand-washing absolving of collective responsibility for and reinforcement of social evils. [04/18/08; 05/09/16]

The word “overcompensation” was not coined by economists or theologians but by psychoanalysts. Nonetheless, it is a term rooted within the economic modality whose sui generis nuclear moment of meaning is “exchange of value.” I have simply harked back to this inextricable economic derivation and hoisted it into the realm of faith, where its proper economic sense can again be habilitated—this time in welcome association with all the other rich retrocipatory analogies from economics found so profusely throughout Scripture. [04/19/08]

The crucifying of Jesus proves that his sinless example alone could not produce mimetic righteousness in sinners, for everyone who witnessed it ganged up on him to slay him anyway! Therefore, his “example” only triggered their envy, hatred, and assault! So much for the force of ethical example alone. Something more is needed in order to incorporate such an example into an ascending virtuous cycle; we need his very Spirit to operate in us, too. [04/25/08]

Some of the most salient ingredients of Gustaf Aulén’s justly famous formulation of the Atonement were derived from Paul Peter Waldenström’s pharmacopoeia, but in a much diluted blend. Therefore Hans Urs von Balthasar’s decisive fusion of that dilution with Markus Barth’s resurrectionary formula for justification, powerful and dynamic as it was, still did not have the explosive energy of the apostolic combination. Urs von Balthasar nearly stumbled across the combination of ingredients to unleash the native raw energy of the original Gospel! [04/27/08] Alas! So close, yet so far away. [05/09/16]

77 Questions about the Atonement (Q&A #77)

77.     Isn’t grace ‘sovereign’?

Where does that language appear in Scripture?  In fact, it does not.  The qualifier, ‘sovereign’, seriously diminishes the non-coercive character and whittles down the inclusive dimensions of God’s outrageous graciousness in Christ Jesus.  “Sovereign grace” is an unwarranted narrowing and hardening of God’s calling, through His powerful Proclamation, for everyone who hears and believes its testimony about His restorative justice that catapulted Jesus from death to Resurrection and beyond.  The royal munificence of graciousness ushered in by Christ has no limits of application or efficacy to any of the human race who respond with repentance and faith.  Behold with awe “the wastefulness of grace”!  The graciousness of the sovereign Lord Jesus, the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Living One, testifies, “Let the one thirsting come; let the one desiring take the water of life freely!”  So come!  Amen.