IN Christ was NO SIN, consequently, ON Christ was NO DIVINE WRATH. End of discussion.

We can be grateful for C. H. Dodd’s inexplicable lapses of citations in his famous treatment of כפר and ΊΛΑΣΤΗΡΙΟΝ (“atone“) in the Septuagint (LXX) and some other ancient literature. The odd incompleteness of his scholarship roused his theological opponents to a more thorough examination of Scripture (both Hebrew and LXX) along with especially Hellenistic Jewish authors such as Philo and Josephus. The delightfully ironic upshot of this adversarial exploration and mutual critique would appear to be at least a partial, yet strong, vindication of Dodd’s controversial conclusions. This is the more persuasive precisely because the complementary investigations were performed by scholars with contrary assumptions. Clearly, there was no sympathetic collusion between these antithetic parties. So, what we learn from both skeins, taken together, is of heightened impartiality and interest even today as we pursue a comparison of both positions with the independent research of, e.g., Adolph E. Knoch, who, though an active contemporary, was not a public participant in the historic controversy. [5/20/11; 5/14/24]

Every time an Israelite laid hands on a sacrificial beast’s head he was confessing he had a hand in its death and likewise, prophetically, in the slaying of the “Lamb of God”—their own Messiah and Savior, God’s own Son. That ritual act was, ipso facto, their confession of sin (in the sin[-offering]) and guilt (in the guilt[-offering]), and similarly at Passover (mid-April), the Day of Sheltering (“Atonement,” mid-Ocrober, 6 months later), and the daily morning and evening sacrifices. [5/23/11; 5/14/24]

In Christ was no sin, therefore, on Christ could come no divine wrath. For this reason he constituted the ideal protective cover, shielding, or shelter (כפרת; ΊΛΑΣΤΗΡΙΟΝ) concerning sins; only divine graciousness could issue toward him from above. Therefore, all who are included in Christ by faith (depicted by baptism) are continuously in God’s graciousness that Christ supremely deserves as the fruit of his faithful obedience to his Father through all, and exceedingly severe, tests. Consequently, all who remain in Christ stay safe from God’s indignation against their sins. To his blood, which represents his soul or sentient existence, is attributed his faithfulness, which deserved not only his Father’s graciousness, but additionally a very great just award (ΔΙΚΑΙΩΜΑ) from God’s just judgment. This award, the Holy Spirit, comes, therefore, as a gift to all who likewise exert faith in God’s Explanation of this saving Proclamation, which is God’s power for salvation. Christ’s resurrection was the heavenly seal of God’s favor/graciousness toward him. The superexcessive magnitude of that graciousness is meant for our benefit as otherwise hopeless sinners with no escape from the fate of death that Adam’s sin consigned us to. The grace of Christ’s resurrection is, by the same token, our confident entree into the Father’s graciousness. [5/25/11]

God could not have used the exceedingly slow process of evolution to create life forms for the simple (but true) reason that he sent His Son to earth in the form of Jesus and commissioned him to heal and cure and restore diseased, maimed people instantaneously. Furthermore, Jesus, in turn, commissioned his apostles and other disciples to do likewise in order to validate his Proclamation of salvation from death. Moreover, Jesus was raised from among the dead by God as a powerful sign to confirm our own future destiny if we endure faithful to him and his message. What is the likelihood that a God of such amazing power and care for His creatures would employ such a clumsy, improbable method as evolution to construct beings that He could reconstruct in moments? Not a chance. It’s utterly inconceivable to a normal mind. Salvation is re-creation, not re-evolution. [5/26/11; 5/14/24]

The very narrative of Scripture, in addition to the explicit declarations of God to human beings, reveals the regularities of God’s behavior and the “necessities” entailed by His character traits. These are often a far cry from the orthodox teachings that have been the stock-in-trade of theology. A storyline can reveal, as no amount of abstract theology can, the nuances of God’s behavior over multiple generations, and it can fill otherwise abstruse words with human-scale meanings and relatable contents. The so-called “demands,” “requirements,” and “necessities” of such presumed staples as God’s “[penal!] justice,” look very different from the narrative standpoint of wholesome Scripture than they do from the abstruse angle of scholastic theologizing. [5/26/11]

Calling All Saints! Calling All Saints! — Part 15

A Comedy of Errors, a Tragedy of Mistaken Identities (“concluded”)

INCONCLUSIONS

What if the greatest impediment to achieving the noblest goals of the Protestant Reformation is the “orthodox” doctrine of the Atonement itself:  Penal Satisfaction/Substitution—having evoked immense opposition, spawned wearisome irresolvable theological difficulties that waste the precious time of God’s people, provoked divisive debates that have decimated the ranks, created ethical dilemmas, fostered scandalous behaviors and monstrous practices, brought on needless reproaches from unbelievers, aroused alienating misunderstandings that promote sectarianism, destroyed faith in the Bible, unsettled young believers, fostered arrogance, compromised intellectual integrity, etc.—but otherwise, no harm done?

What if penal substitution is like putting the emphásis on the wrong sylláble, only, uh…worse?

What if hymn writers have all too often been as guilty of obscuring the New Testament message as so many preachers and theologians have (see my compilation:  “‘Penal Satisfaction / Substitution’ in English Hymns,” above)?

What if 500 years is a disgracefully long time for God to be misrepresented by His loved ones, who have defamed his reputation by laboring vigorously to defend the indefensible instead of thinking through opponents’ conscientious objections with fairness—thinking outside the box?

However, what if even the defamation of God’s character and justice that penal substitution has spread far, deep, and wide has been kindly indemnified by God’s authentically apostolic premial Atonement—yet will its mighty men admit confusion, repent of misrepresentations, jettison their toxic substitute, switch loyalties, and humbly avail themselves of the genuine article?

What if the premial atonement turns out to contain no imponderable mystery, no existential dilemma, no dialectical tension, no economic duplicity, no financial cooking of books, no legal double-talk, no moral compromise, no ethical conundrum, no “cosmic child abuse”?

What if the premial explanation, unlike the penal, is not a theory at all but simply a rediscovery of the New Testament doctrine of salvation?

What if, after all, the Bible’s own explanatory system does make more rational sense than all our cherished theological systems put together (all the King’s horses—you can lead ‘em to water but can’t make ‘em think—and all the King’s men couldn’t do it)?

What if the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the paramount theodicy of Biblical Christianity?

What if neglecting to integrate Christ’s resurrection into the atonement disintegrates the Gospel?

What if, as Martin Luther protested, “I am neither so rash as to wish that my sole opinion should be preferred to that of all other men, nor so senseless as to be willing that the Word of God should be made to give place to fables, devised by human reason”?

What if God doesn’t expect us to hold our nose and swallow fables—fur, fins, feathers and all?

What if the wax nose of penal substitution is finally suffering meltdown from over-tweaking—shall we finally pull down our sagging substitute or keep on keeping up appearances?

What if it’s time to jettison the dead weight of penal substitution terms and get back to the Bible?

What if, after reading through these challenges to penal substitution assumptions and implications, you agree we’ve been colossally snookered for roughly 500 years…and the future looks even rougher if we don’t switch courses soon—then who’re you gonna believe?

What if this is the season for judgment to begin from the house of God (1 Pet. 4:17-18; 1 Cor. 5:12-6:7, 11:29-34; Heb. 10:30)?

What if it’s time for a resolute new Protest and a fresh resounding Reform?  What now?

What if you choose to accept this inconvenient truth, this impossible mission?  What then?

Indeed, what if this changes EVERYTHING?

Then again, I may be wrong.

~~ The End ~~

or, just maybe…

A NEW BEGINNING!

And yet the earth does move.  “Neither my thoughts nor the thoughts of all the doctors and priests that live now or ever have lived can the least alter facts.  You have no right, I have no right, to determine what is.  All our determinations must fall before the truth when that is discovered to us.”  — Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

“The truth must dazzle gradually, or every man be blind.”  — Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

“Love The Light Forever”  — Marie Roper

August 24-25, 27-31, September 1-2, 5-30, October 1-21, 24, 26-27, 29-31, November 4-5, 7, 9-10, 12, 14-15, 17, 19-20,23-25,27,28-29, Dec. 2, 2017

 

 

An OPEN LETTER to Jesse Morrell and FRIENDLY CRITIQUE of The Vicarious Atonement of Christ (2012), part 25

Sin destroys life.  This is why a demonstration of bringing life back from the dead was so absolutely decisive as a sign of salvation and an identifier of the true God.  Only the God who created all life forms could obviously know enough and have enough power to restore life forms to being fully operational even after experiencing certifiable death.  Holiness is the quality of whatever is fully alive, with no taint of decay or deterioration.  The supreme sign, therefore, of the genuineness of Deity is the power to give life in the wake of its demise, in addition to giving life in the first place.  In other words, true Deity has the power to make life forms holy or wholesome again, even after they have deteriorated due to sin.  The solution to sin, therefore, is intrinsically linked to the power to atone for sin, in other words, to counteract its evil consequences, not only affecting its perpetrator, but also affecting all else that has become harmed by it.  This is a tall order, to be sure, but is there any short cut?  To overcome the wrong of sin a display of right or justice had to be made that, in effect, proved how life itself could be regained, and under what conditions.  The identity of the true God would simultaneously get affirmed in the process.  This is theodicy in a new key!

 This is precisely what the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ are all about.  A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad execution of a sinless man was rectified by a wonderful, marvelous, no bad, very good resurrection to a life even more full than before, in fact, overflowing to others in wholesomeness.

THE HERDING BEHAVIOR OF PENAL SATISFACTION THEOLOGIANS

If you wonder how Penal Substitution pundits (whether of an economic satisfaction or a governmental exemplification variety) can be so nonchalantly lumped together under a single broadside rubric—“wrong”—my answer would be that they do it to themselves.  They suffer from herding behavior by all falling prey to the identical erroneous assumptions about the Atonement:  “it must be penal.”  They play follow-the-leader like lemmings.  The same suppression of exegetical cues.  The same systematic bulldozing of informed objections.  The same mislabeling of opponents.  The same linking of scriptures that are not properly parallel.  The same tacit agreement to recognize, endorse, and parrot lame arguments.  It’s a stampede to raise a cloud of dust, a choking smoke screen, and a frightfully intimidating din of proof text references.  It’s really all quite impolite—a collective stiff arming of the Christian public, not to mention honest seekers.

For their part, Calvinists traditionally have proudly claimed to deplore their detractors’ appeals to “reason” in critique of Reformed soteriology, yet no one can outdo the Calvinists’ exhibit of rationalizing their earmark penal-satisfaction bullying of sound exegesis, even going so far as to sacrifice it on the altar of “systematic consistency.”  How very carnal, yet all too human!  But it disrespects Scripture—holy Scripture by its unholy manhandling of God’s authentic, Resurrection-endorsed way of justice and peace.  Only in the apostolic version of the Gospel do justice and peace embrace and kiss.  Only premial justice is up to the rigors and tenderness of lovemaking with peace.

Calvinists may argue that penal satisfaction is “necessary” because of “the doctrine of sin,” i.e., their doctrine of “original sin”!  So when premial inclusion is posed as the authentic apostolic teaching instead, they may claim it “has an insufficient doctrine of sin.”  This stock tactic of theirs reveals that Calvinists have slipped off the Gospel long before they lay their hands on the Atoning Sacrifice.  Their Augustinian legacy of logic about sin had set them up for their deception and moves them to further manhandle soteriology in order to make it serve their false doctrine of sin.  Here is the tale wagging the dogma.  But the whole beast needs to be reformed!  Calvinism itself needs a thorough housecleaning—a “reformation.”

Orthodox Calvinists can be some of the most sectarian—which is to say, “heretical”—of all Christian traditions, even going so far as to doubt that others are even Christians unless they dot their “Ts” and cross their eyes like Calvinists do.

“…THOUGH YOU WERE CAST OUT TO THE UTTERMOST PART OF THE HEAVENS”—Nehemiah 1:9

This promise, echoing Deuteronomy 30:2-4, essentially pledges a comeback from a curse!  How hopeful is that?!  The return from Babylonian captivity was nothing less than that.  Curses are not irreversible, given a change of heart, turning of stony hearts back into hearts of flesh.  But what the world had never seen prior to the first advent of Jesus, the Messiah, was a return from the abode of the dead.  The unjust curse of Galatians 3 handily shoehorned Christ’s precipitous descent into Hades where he proclaimed his explosive conquest of death to the “undead” hosts of earlier generations.

So, penal satisfaction defenders like to inquire, “Wasn’t Jesus cursed by God?” and expecting an orthodox “Yes.”  We must query in return, “Was Joseph?  Job?  Jeremiah?  Or how about Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego?  Or all the faithful martyrs?”  And what about our own circumstances that may occasionally seem to line up with those dread lists of Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28—do they allege that we must have been cursed?  Well, if they do, we may still point to Jesus, who bore a “loophole” curse in the favor of God…and lives again to tell about it for our comfort and consolation.

RESTORING THE PREMIAL ATONEMENT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT DOCUMENTS:  STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS

Restoring the apostolic truth of God’s premial justice and the surprising (although it shouldn’t have been!) way it was worked out in the Atonement, has not been the maverick brainchild of a Lone Ranger.  Whole crowds of thoughtful, earnest, circumspect, and courageous Bible scholars have led the way through the overgrowth of prickly, penal vocabulary, concepts, metaphors, and illustrations alien to apostolic patterns of sound explanation.  Creeds, confessions, catechisms, and stout volumes of dogmatics often barred the way through the wilderness of overwrought orthodoxy.  But the outcome—the final destination—was never in doubt, at least not from the vantage point of the concordant integrity and unalterability of the New Testament documents.  Their native vocabulary, conceptuality, proportionality, and narrative structure kept course without wavering.  Our whole duty is simply to get in line with that Pole Star and follow, despite the pushes and pulls of cultural preferences, individual biases, sacred traditions, or, of course, threats to position, livelihood, life, and limb.  No small challenge, to be sure.  But God’s Spirit has no other agenda than to testify nonstop to What-Is-Written and will not be put off by our even centuries-long wayward departures from the straight and narrow, but is divinely determined to shepherd us back Home regardless.

~to be continued~

How do we know that GOD IS NOT EVIL OR ESSENTIALLY WRATHFUL?

How do we know for a certainty that God is not ultimately evil?

Answer:  The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus, the Messiah, God’s own Son.  The very allowing—in fact appointing!—of the Cross, Christ’s participating in suffering abuse, like us, in connection with the complete reversal and superabundant overcompensation of that unequalled evil via resurrection from among the dead, all prove irrefutably that God is ultimately, in the final analysis…in the Last Judgment, just and good.  And He’s on our side!  [3/9/03; 7/27/07]

What’s more, we also know the ultimate love and goodness of God by the Spirit that He has put in our hearts when we believe.  (Romans 5:5)  [3/9/03]

Our Lord Jesus Christ has given us:

1. God’s precepts to keep, directing us to maturity
2. God’s promises that raise hope, motivating us to endure
3. God’s power through His Holy Spirit, helping us obey
4. God’s pardon for our misdeeds, cleansing our conscience

What more do we need to inspire us to advance toward genuine human maturation as worthy citizens of His Kingdom?  [3/18/03; 9/16/25]

There wasn’t enough blood in all the cattle and sheep and doves of ancient Israel to cleanse, in addition to the priests, Levites, and sanctuary with all its furnishings and utensils, also the other eleven tribes plus all their houses, buildings, possessions, storehouses, livestock, orchards, vineyards, etc., etc., much less to do that gigantic task every day.  Such culture-wide wholesomeness is only possible in wake of the New Covenant with the overwhelming outpouring of the Spirit of wholesomeness resulting from Messiah’s sacrifice and outpouring of his own blood for cleansing and life-giving.

The shadowy images of the Old Covenant were but hints of what is now made possible by the indwelling power from on high.  The very inner character and contents of Deity is now on the loose in the earth so that “Wholesome to Jehovah” may be inscribed on every cowbell and ratchet wrench!  [4/6/03]

When Christians confess that “God is one,” we mean the Father and the Son are one in the Holy Spirit.  This construction is discernible even in the Hebrew Scriptures.  Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one Deity—the Son begotten from the Father, after their kind, before the ages were even blueprinted.  So, as we might suspect, They are identical in nature and contents—graciousness and truth.

When the Son subsequently was born as a human being—Jesus of Nazareth—he always submitted to his Father’s desire as that became known to him.  Accordingly, he learned obedience through the discipline and even abuse he suffered on earth.  Remaining yet sinless, he could qualify to die for our sins because he was eligible to be raised from the dead even if slain, with all the overcompensating gift of the Holy Spirit as promised.  This he gives away in abundance to any and every sinner who trusts him, thus providing lasting life and pardon to all who desire to receive him.  [5/16/03; 9/16/25]

Is it possible, when we forgive people of their offenses against us while they remain unrepentant of those offenses, that God will then take up our cause and do the avenging Himself, in His own time and as He sees fit?  His explicit desire is that everyone should come to repentance concerning their sins and start loving innocently, without offense, in purity of motive and response.  People who remain stubborn even after being forgiven by many faithfully obedient forgiving Christians, must necessarily evoke God’s eventual indignation for continuing to cause harm to others and refusing to change their minds and habits.  [7/2/03]

God did not mind in the least that His dear people asked of Him signs and miracles.  It’s only when He gave them a whole history of them and still they would not trust Him that He ran out of patience.  It was only when He finally sent them His own beloved Son, the one begotten from His own bosom, yet, regardless, they continued demanding signs, having already murdered him and wiped their mouths from blood, but clamored for still more proof, that God finally said enough is enough.  Very well then, you may go to hell since you resolutely insist.

Scan forward to 70 A.D. and desolating abominations.  After 40 years of divine mercy following their crucifixion of their own Messiah, whose resurrection constituted the greatest sign and wonder ever bestowed on mankind—and on Jews in particular!—that still calloused, stubborn, hardhearted, stiff-necked generation was wiped out in such a show of internecine murder, torture, and even cannibalism as the nation had never before witnessed, nor ever since.

God is generous and kind to give sufficient extraordinary proof in every generation of history, but He wants to see some fruit from it, not petulant whining for more and more, because that’s simply bald disbelief masquerading as a sincere prayer request. [9/18/03]

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]