‘Moral’ Influence–Derogatory Label

The label “moral influence” is actually more than slightly derogatory when used  to cover the effect(s) of the Cross AND Resurrection on those who had known Jesus personally all along, but no less so when applied to other people to whom they authoritatively testified concerning those events, within the whole historic narrative of his life and career of teaching and miraculous deeds.  For the naked events were clothed richly in the full knowledge of who Jesus really was (or at least the stark naked form of the world’s only Savior became vested with such resplendence after he returned and taught them for 40 days that thus the Messiah must suffer abuse and humiliation and then die so that his Father’s premial JUSTICE could kick in to recompense all the pain and injustice with the rightful award of exaltation by resurrection to the CROWN OF THE WHOLE CREATION.  To reduce and minimize ALL THIS (not merely the bare events, but also the inextricable meaning and glory of the events, completely aside from the stunning EFFECTS OF THESE EVENTS + MEANING, namely, the sending of the Holy Spirit back to earth, plus the “effects” of Jesus’ Cross on Satan, much less on his Father and even on the holy angels, not to mention the long-term effects for us:  our inheritance of portions in God’s Kingdom)–I repeat, to reduce and minimize even only the Cross and Resurrection to so-called “moral influence” is to wrongly impoverish their true impact on human beings.

Now, granted, Abelard and later theologians who exalted Jesus’ example were doubtless (?) pointing to his Cross in comparative isolation from his Resurrection so that the full impact of the integral Event was indeed, reduced from the start to a pale caricature of the Messianic climax.  Even so, the Resurrection might have been restored to its original place by later defenders and/or critics so as to correct that theology.  Yet this apparently was not done, probably not even considered, out of blindness to the authentic place of the Resurrection in any known scheme of the Atonement.  [9/7/09]

SUBSTITUTIONARY MECHANISMS AND IMPUTATIONAL BAGGAGE

Unless we see Jesus’ death as wrongful and unjust, we must have recourse to some sort of “substitutionary” mechanism, along with all its complicated “imputational” baggage, in order to explain how God could process it into SALVATION for us.  For if it was wrong, perpetrated by the very forces God was strategizing to powerfully displace by their own clueless tripping of the lever of the Cross, then God, by His raising Jesus from the dead was of course reversing that egregious injury by His premial justice, which inherently contained a rightful super-compensation sufficient to embrace the whole doomed race of humankind!

But if, on the contrary, Messiah’s death was somehow “rightfully” exacted as a means of paying off God for sin by suffering divine wrath meted out in measure in exchange for just so many sins of “the elect” (or even for the sins of the whole world–which Calvinists would allege to be a total waste), then the Resurrection fizzles like a dud.  Any graciousness produced must then be merely “sovereign” favoritism eked out to the elect IN EXCHANGE FOR THE WRATH EXPENDED!  “GRACE for WRATH” is the strange deal secured by penal satisfaction.  To be more specific, God’s grace for God’s wrath, which leaves the entire dynamic of righteousness/justice out of consideration.  Or if God’s wrath is regarded as justice in this one case, it is at the expense of gross INJUSTICE to the innocent (sinlessly so in this one case), perpetrated by God, not by the great enemy of God and humanity, Satan (who is therefore not thereby properly overthrown as he surely ought to have been!), which leaves the Resurrection idling like a “fifth wheel”!  This is not my caricature; it is that of penal satisfaction, only its advocates don’t admit it to be absurd, but defend it as “the only possible solution of the mystery of the Atonement.”  But if such punishment doesn’t truly “satisfy” God, it shouldn’t satisfy us either.  [9/7/09]

“Sin-offering” = a SIN

As every theologian and Bible scholar should know (but no penal substitution advocate seems to give its obvious elementary theological meaning), the Hebrew and Septuagint Greek words for “sin offering” are simply the bare words for sin, unadorned with any formal indicators of an “offering.” In fact, translators differ in how to render the word in contexts where it appears along with the very same word in its original significance (if, in fact, it is so intended).

The singular import of this linguistic observation is that the “sin offering” IS a sin in symbolic, ritual guise. That is, it foreshadows a future event of a sinful nature: the shedding of sinless blood such that the life in that lifeblood proliferates to the cleansing, hallowing, purifying, healing, and pardoning of multitudes of others. (The same process may also apply to the “guilt offering,” both linguistically and theologically, and perhaps even to the so-called “peace offering,” although the Septuagint uses a tantalizing variant here: “salvation”! These possibilities deserve more research. [8/19/16]) [9/16/08]

“If one has died for all, then all have died. And he died for all, that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15). This passage explains why God did not merely reverse the descending plight of death on humanity in some more innocuous manner than by Messiah’s death by crucifixion and justification by resurrection. He had to win back our hearts to Himself and to obedience. This is why He could not “merely forgive” sins and let bygones be bygones. He wanted maturing children, and this requires both the possibility of sinning and the possibility of making a comeback of repentant obedience, without the danger of incurring immediate avenging (and death), but with the grateful acceptance of forgiveness during the learning process.

God’s “problem” was never “how to be able to forgive” but how to be able to motivate humans to want to keep His life-guarding instructions and directions in steady gratitude through all temptations and adversities, without giving up. Only the “Crossurrection” event, in its historic framework, in combination with the outpouring of the Spirit, were up to this challenge of sonhood! [9/16/08]

If I patiently bear someone’s sin against me, am I understood to be performing a “vicarious” act? Of course not. Rather, if I bear their injury, then I am ipso facto forgiving (releasing—aphiemi) them of liability or guilt or penalty for it precisely by bearing the burden of harm myself instead of exacting it from them or demanding compensation. Certainly such a deed is an act of love and self-sacrifice (though we might feel self-conscious if anyone were to point out the virtue), but to weigh it down with the “vicarious” tag would seem onerous and top-heavy.

The “vicarious” label is, however, trotted out more facilely when a plurality of beneficiaries is in view. Yet why should this factor suddenly validate it, especially when the particular injury being borne was not inflicted by the majority in view but only by a few? This is the enigma we face in Isaiah 53 as traditionally interpreted by “penal substitution” theologians. The “Servant” is construed as Messiah Jesus (so far so good), but his bearing the transgressions of “many” (namely, those who got him crucified) is then regarded as referring (without any adequate explanation) to “the whole wide world.” Now such an expanded application beyond the merely “many” who surrounded him during his arrest, trial, and execution would surely constitute a “vicarious” deed, as all would probably agree…BUT NOT IN THE ABSENCE OF A SUFFICIENT REASON FOR SUCH A SUDDEN EXPANSION. (But even with such a reason, a still further leap is necessary to construe such a “vicarious” act as “substitutionary.”) [9/17/08]

RESTORATIVE JUSTICE is not “post-modern”

Kevin Vanhoozer mistakenly interposes an assumption, which he does not defend, in the following words: “Let us call this post-modern view that emphasizes relationality and restorative justice the relational restoration view.” (The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology [Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2005] p. 382; bold emphasis and underlining added.) To the contrary, “restorative justice” first emerged as such only since the 1980’s with the actual practice, within the American and Canadian criminal justice systems, of a kind of mediation and conciliation developed by Mennonites such as Howard Zehr. This native Anabaptist practice, along with its Biblical and theological rationale, are very far indeed from anything remotely post-modern, although given the retributive impulse of modernism (which Anabaptists can hardly be alleged to have participated in or sympathized with), a post-modern climate may well be more amenable or compatible with its successful spread. [12/28/07]

The apostle Paul always “falls short” of perfectly substitutionary language (and that goes equally for every other New Testament author) because he simply will not have it! He is fully aware of the truth concerning the resurrectionary trans-valuation of culminating transformation of all the Mosaic, Levitical, Sinaitic, Old-Covenant SHADOWS. This transformation constitutes nothing less than a HERMENEUTICAL METAMORPHOSIS requiring and simultaneously facilitating the interpretive illumination of God’s fresh, unstinting gift of His own Holy Spirit. [12/28/07]

To participate in Messiah’s salvation (interpreted resurrectionarily) is to not only achieve our own individual safety (i.e., salvation from God’s wrath) but to extend it yet further into the darkness and thereby make it possible for many others to participate in it as well. Therefore,, to “not love one’s existence unto death” is to positively, happily save not only our own existences (via resurrection), but potentially many others’ too! Woo hoo! This participatory grasp of the “Atonement” goes over the top! Hereby we can effectively multiply the yield of Messiah’s “afflictions.” Paul understood this clearly (Colossians 1:24-27). [12/28/07]

UNDRESSED TO REDRESS?

Was God’s “beloved” Son dressed down and undressed in public and pinned to a pole in order to redress his Father’s “violated honor”? How can thus dishonoring God’s precious Son possibly restore the honor of his Father? Such a notion should not strike us as a “mystery” but a monstrosity! [12/28/06]

Thus Anselm has a problem on his hands, and his theory is helpless to solve it with satisfaction. Only on a resurrectionary basis does God’s aggrieved honor in the deliberate humiliation and dishonoring of His royal Son get a truly satisfying solution—fresh innocent blood that deserves resurrectionary justice. [6/21/08]

MESSIAH’S NET WORTH

Jesus was day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year increasing his net worth throughout his entire life by his faithful obedience to God. He was steadily, methodically treasuring up (thesaur-) GRACIOUSNESS with his Father in Heaven until, by the magnifying instrument of the “crossurrection,” his net worth was multiplied to a vastly higher power so that he was deemed “WORTHY TO BE TAKING THE SCROLL AND TO OPEN ITS SEALS” AND “TO GET POWER AND RICHES AND WISDOM AND STRENGTH AND HONOR AND GLORY AND BLESSING” “AND MIGHT, FOR THE AGES OF THE AGES!” “Amen!” (Revelation 5:9,12,13,14)

In medieval theological parlance, we would be thinking of a “treasury of merits” saved up by his “supererogatory deeds of righteousness” to be redistributed to needy sinners through the clerical mediation of a hierarchy and its system of penance and indulgences. But that all comes down to processing graciousness through a carnal meat grinder that reduces the flow to a calculating trickle! That’s hardly congruent with the FULNESS OF JOY that God clearly had in mind when He commissioned His Son to pay the bloody ransom for our pathetic existences and so transfigure them into things of matchless beauty and infinite worth! [12/28/06]

Free from the forensic shortcircuiting of “imputation” theory—in effect, a triple shunt—and of all “substitutionary” stopgaps, wildly arcing and sparking, the real, covenantal, mediatory, participatory, communal, conciliating, unifying at-one-ment stands out in all its glowing, shimmering glory. [12/28/06]

What does “substitution” add to the Atonement?

Jesus’ death as ‘substitutionary’ only makes sense in a context where he is our ‘substitute victim of the wrath of God‘. But what if his suffering abuse is not the ‘punishment under God’s wrath‘ at all? What if it only amounts to victimization by gratuitous violence from human beings and authorities? And what if God meant him to undergo such human injustice primarily to illustrate its actual heinousness and then to reverse it in extraordinary power in an unprecedented show of divine justice and faithful, covenanted lovingkindness and loyalty? In that case what would the notion of ‘substitution‘ actually add to the picture? Doesn’t it rather only muddle the action and needlessly burden the narrative? For Jesus’ historic, once-for-all suffering of abuse from sinners and the lawless did not prove to be a substitute for our suffering abuse from those very same types of evil forces after all, even right down to our own day anno domini! NOTHING OF THE SORT! WHAT IT ACTUALLY PROVIDED WAS THE DEPOSIT OF THE VERY SAME SPIRIT OF POWER, WHOLESOMENESS, AND LIFE THAT ENABLED JESUS TO ENDURE HIS ABUSERS IN THE CONFIDENT EXPECTATION OF GOD’S FAITHFULNESS TO ALL HIS COVENANTAL PROMISES OF RAISING HIM UP IN SPITE OF EVERY OBSTACLE, HUMAN OR DEMONIC. FOR THIS VERY PROCESS OF ENDURANCE THROUGH TRIALS AND TEMPTATIONS TO LASH OUT IN A VICIOUSNESS THAT ONLY TRACIGALLY MIMICS OUR ATTACKERS IS WHAT MOLDS AND FORGES MATURE SONS OF GOD, WORTHY TO INHERIT THE NEW CREATION TO COME. THIS IS ONLY A PAINFUL TRAINING GROUND, NOT A PERMANENT ABODE. FOR THAT WE WILL NEED SPIRITUAL BODIES LIKE THE ONE JESUS SHOWED HIS LEARNERS BEFORE HIS ASCENSION. ONLY SUCH A BODY IS CAPABLE OF RULING AND FEELING AT HOME IN THE NEW EARTH WHICH IS IMPENDING FOR ALL WHO LOVE HIM TO THE END.

THEREFORE, MESSIAH’S ABUSE AND DEATH BY CRUCIFIXION WERE NOT ‘SUBSTITUTIONARY’ BUT, BY CONTRAST, INCORPORATIVE, INCLUSIONARY, PARTICIPATORY, BENEFICIARY—in a word, ‘IMMER’IONARY’.  This realization should further open our eyes to their nature as EXEMPLARY, EMULATORY, and ‘AUTHORITARY’, i.e., applicable to us because we are newly under his instructional, directive, and ethical authority as Lord.  [12/14/06]

Signs & Wonders: Proofs of Our Proclamation concerning God’s Coming Kingdom

Before the disruption of the world by sin, the Father had chosen His Son as the inheritor of the universe.  God’s Explanation of this agelong favor upon His Son and, through him, upon anyone else who simply trusts, is the Divinely chosen means to call people back to Himself.  However, human minds have become so blinded by sin (their own and others’ done against them) and lust and corruption that God appointed the demonstrative power of signs and miracles of His Wholesome Spirit to accompany the Proclamation of His Kingdom inheritance.  The Spirit is, in fact, the very pledge and solid foretaste of that future inheritance.  These signs, miracles, and powers, by causing amazement, astonishment, and awe, draw jaded human attention back to the light and glory (“proof”) of the Truth, triggering repentance.

The historic Resurrection of Jesus, the Christ and Son of God, is the supreme proof of the Proclamation of God’s Kingdom, of which the powerful personal experience of immersion in Wholesome Spirit is intended to be the continuing, tangible, visible seal on earth.  Christ’s Resurrection is the supreme historic unveiling of God’s overcompensating justice.  The agelong life that was thereby bestowed on him was the rightful award of his unjust suffering of abuse.  This justification of Jesus via Resurrection, bestowing upon him transcendent, superabundant favor after favor, ipso facto justified God Himself–theologians call such a justification a “theodicy”–in His judgments toward humanity, and also thereby justifies the sinner who believes the Announcement of Christ’s Resurrection.  In fact, God regards such trust as justice, not because of any medieval dogma about a “transfer of merits” or “imputation of sins,” but because human trust accords with Divine favor and is generated by the inherent persuasive power of the true narrative about God’s miraculous endorsement and certification of Jesus to be Messiah and rightful Covenant heir.  [4/17/97

Consider carefully the ways in which Jesus before his baptism was like Adam before his sinning.  Jesus had to learn obedience from that which he suffered throughout his life.  Where Adam at length failed, Jesus continuously succeeded, being anointed as the Messiah at his baptism by John.  He was tried thereafter and triumphed yet again, proceeding on to his appointed ministry with great power and spirit of wholesomeness.  Yet again he was tested, this time supremely, in the Garden of Gethsemane, even up to the very moment of death…but won the victory of faith that secured even our salvation, much less his own–for, yes, Jesus was himself “saved” from death and the unseen–by God’s raising him to agelong life.  [4/22/97]

Jesus says, in effect, “Let’s make a deal.  I’ll die for your sake; you live for my sake.  I’ll give up my kingship over the nation of Israel now so that all nations can then enter my Father’s universal Kingdom without impediment.  Deal?”  [5/15/97]  This, however, cannot be construed as a so-called “substitutionary” exchange since Jesus did not die under a Divine penalty, or as some sort of even exchange of just so much pain for just so much gain, but entirely in the favor of God, thereby winning an incomparable reward instead.  This fact takes all the wind out of the word “substitute,” so we may then fall back on the sound key terms the Wholesome Spirit has selected in Wholesome Scripture for our authentic sanctification (being ourselves rendered wholesome).  [7/07/07]