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]

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 detriment.

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, since the Polish Brethren among whom this penetrating Italian theologian 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 fire 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 concerning “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]

Assorted Wrinkles in the Uneven Development of Atonement Doctrine

Observation concerning comments on Isaiah 52:13-53:12 in the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, OT, Vol. 11. Edited by Mark W. Elliott; General Editor, Thomas C. Oden. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007.

This most revealing assemblage of early (and some quite late) Christian authors is the more amazing in its virtually total lack of penal substitutionary construals of Isaiah’s most famous text, in view of the fact that the general editor is Tom Oden, who has gone on record decisively as a champion of penal substitution being authentic early Christian doctrine. If ever there was a golden opportunity to marshal a definitive swat team of early Christian quotations to settle the score on the embattled issue of the Atonement, this was surely it. Yet the grand opportunity was forever lost as the requisite materiel failed to materialize, and the remainder tended to deviate from this bullseye by an embarrassing margin along a rather broad front of eight centuries. Either this was a culpable neglect of essential sources (hardly likely), an unaccountably inept oversight (not plausible), or a conclusive proof of the authentic unacquaintance of earliest Christianity with anything closely resembling penal satisfaction/penal substitution. Is the question even still open now? [2/14/11; 10/24/23]

John McLeod Campbell (1800-1872) picked up and tried to unfold an incidental throwaway thought of Jonathan Edwards [Sr.] (1703-1758) concerning atonement. Robert C[ampbell]. Moberly (1845-1903), in turn, picked up the same thought and tried to iron out a few more wrinkles. However, neither Campbell’s nor Moberly’s attempts seem supportable by Scripture, nor would Edwards likely have expected anyone to take up his conjecture and explore it seriously. [2/15/11]

It seems curious that in the hitory of opposition to penal substitution there is not more successive building on predecessors, at least not explicitly so. William Pynchon (1590-1662), author of The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption (London, 1650), New England’s first banned (and burned) book, does not explicitly build on Socinus, for instance. John Balguy (1586-1648) does not refer to any of Pynchon’s books, although the emphasis of both authors on Christ’s obedience was unique. John Taylor of Norwich (1694-1761) seems oblivious of Pynchon’s or Balguy’s contributions. And Barton W. Stone (1772-1844) does not show overt dependence on any of them, although he is aware of Taylor’s Hebrew Concordance. And so it goes. Yet authors like this keep thinking through many of the same problematics and keep stumbling across the same or similar solutions. One could wish, however, for a treatment that proceeds systematically with cognizance of all likely predecessors and gives credit to whom it seems due. Even so, vital truths discovered independently, repeatedly, and cogently must reveal something about the weaknesses of the dominant orthodoxy. Scripture resolutely continues to untwist itself from false representations over time, though seldom without controversy and stiff opposition. [2/15/11; 10/24/23]

The theory of penal substitution has introduced counterfeit currency in ‘payment‘ for sins. It postulates a certain amount of suffering to be equivalent to a specific amount of sin. However, no matter how they figure, they can never quite come up with sufficient bona fide suffering to cover the debt of sin(s) even for the ‘elect,’ much less for “the whole world.” [2/15/11]

The apostle Paul’s unique phrase, “the righteousness (or justice) of God” almost always refers to the singular event of God’s raising of Jesus from among the dead, but it never alludes to Christ’s crucifixion. [2/16/11]