The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Logical Contradiction

Theology Soteriology
#21

Allan,

That sounds all pretty everything, but I need to be convinced through the text of scriptures. I’m hoping someone can offer responses to some of the texts that tend toward penal substitution.

Romans 5:18-21 says that by the obedience of Christ we are made righteous. According to Romans 4:22-24, the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us by faith in the One who raised Christ from the dead, as he was “delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justification.” His righteous act of obedience unto death is herein given as the basis for our justification through faith. 1 Peter 2:24 says that he bore our sins in his own body on the tree. 2 Cor 5:20,21 says that God made Christ to be sin so that we might become the righteousness of God.

How is this not penal substitution? How do these texts fit in with what you described above.

Thank you for your time and help.

#22

Dan, you said:

Absolutely! I’m sorry if it sounded like I was calling you silly for not just dumping PSA by the side of the road. It was my (apparently mistaken) impression that you weren’t willing to even think about PSA yet – yet it seems to be dogging you. It was that, I was talking about. I agree with you that you should think through this carefully and with the help of the Spirit and the Word and the word and the brethren (and the “sistren” too, of course.) :wink: As I’ve said elsewhere, PSA has merit imo; but it cannot stand alone.

I guess I don’t follow a lot of your assessment of “Protestant thought” because I was raised in the Methodist church. Methodist churches differ quite a lot from one another, but I never heard anything OTHER than that the work of Christ and His work alone saves us. I left that church for “adventure” in the halls of charismatic gatherings :laughing: when I was in my later teens, but I never ventured into Calvinism. I didn’t even know the word until a couple of years ago and I’m old enough I should have done!

Because of this, I suppose it’s important for you and I to realize that we may be speaking different languages using the same words. It can be so confusing when you say this and I hear that, and vice versa. I’m not all that familiar with the nuances of Calvinistic doctrine, so I can’t even guess at where you might hear me differently than I intend. I suppose part of the difference may be that we did believe that we could “walk away” from salvation, and of course we believed that anyone might choose (on being drawn by the Spirit) to be saved. Practically speaking, I think on reflection that the Calvinists are right in the belief that the elect are the elect and cannot be otherwise. I just disagree with them as to what “the elect” means, and on the extent of Father’s family and His love for those I used to suppose were NOT His children (shame on me!).

Blessings, Cindy

#23

Dick,

Thank you for your time and the graciousness of your response.

It is my understanding that Lutherans teach justification by imputed righteousness as well as Calvinists. I am ignorant as to what what Luther himself believed on the subject, but the Lutheran Augsburg Confession says:

I’m not sure what the Wesleyans believe concerning imputation, but justification on the basis of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ seems to be common among Protestants.

I appreciate your time and courtesy in discussing this matter. Y’all have been gracious. Thank you.

Wow, he should publish it as a book. He has no shortage for words. :slight_smile:

I’ll take some time and digest it all.

There are sincere, godly people on all sides of these discussions. All I am saying is that I need to consider the gravity of doctrines involved. There is a reason the reformers developed the doctrine of penal substitution, and I need to sincerely consider before I make a judgement on it.

Thanks for the info about Moltmann. I googled him and he sounds interesting. I’ll have to do some reading.

Prior to the introduction of “common grace” the Reformed have considered God making the Son to shine on the just and the unjust as a matter of Providence. WCF 5:7 says “As the providence of God doth, in general, reach to all creatures; so, after a most special manner, it taketh care of his church, and disposeth all things to the good thereof.”

The Clarkian type Presbyterians along with the Protestant Reformed denomination (who split from the Christian Reformed Church over the matter) tend to believe that the broader reformed adopted the language of “common grace” to make Calvinism more palatable to unbelievers. I can understand why they would want to hold a belief in “common grace” as deep down, they have to cringe at the logical conclusions of their theology. *God has to love everyone in some measure *- thus, common grace.

Thank you for your help and encouragement.

#24

Thanks Dan :slight_smile: - yes I am a bit prone to verbal incontinence :laughing:

Anyway here’s some quick thoughts from me on the texts that you’ve given and a blog article I found which I think is cool :slight_smile:

Romans 5:18-21 says that by the obedience of Christ we are made righteous.
Christ was obedient to God in his life and in his death

According to Romans 4:22-24, the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us by faith in the One who raised Christ from the dead, as he was “delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justification.”
Our offenses – hatred, rage, exclusivism, injustice, false pride killed Christ. God raise him and gives us the promise of being raised from our sins into loving community.

His righteous act of obedience unto death is herein given as the basis for our justification through faith.
1 Peter 2:24 says that he bore our sins in his own body on the tree.
His burden was our sins not God’s infinite wrath against us.

2 Cor 5:20,21 says that God made Christ to be sin so that we might become the righteousness of God.
Christ stood with us in the place of abandonment and alienation – not in the place of Gods’ infinite wrath

Four Cringe-worthy Claims of Popular Penal Substitution Theology

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Morgan Guyton

I’ve often wondered if the same thing that makes violent video games appealing is why young evangelical guys are so infatuated with penal substitution theology. I figure a scary bad- !@#$%^&* God is cool for the same reason that the loud wet smack of a linebacker knocking the wind out of a quarterback is cool (I was that linebacker once).

I recognize that some guys need to have a God who likes to say “RAWR!!!” but in their zeal over penal substitution, some cringe-worthy and not entirely Biblical assertions are being made. There is a theologically responsible account of penal substitution; it’s part of the mystery of the cross. But I wanted to examine four of the more obnoxious assertions that I’ve heard in what I would call popular penal substitution theology (in places like a recent Steven Furtick sermon I listened to).

  1. God is allergic to sin

A pillar of popular penal substitution theology is that God cannot tolerate the presence of sin. I think it’s more accurate to say that sin cannot tolerate the presence of God. The consequence of understanding things the first way is that the cross becomes God’s inoculation for His sin allergy. Ironically, one of the main points of Jesus’ incarnation was to prove that God is not distant and untouchably pure, but rather someone who “eats and drinks with sinners.” Now this doesn’t mean that sin is not allergic to God. People reacted to Jesus’ perfect love and holiness either by repenting of their sin like Zacchaeus did or by lashing out defensively and crucifying Him like the Pharisees did.

It was not that Jesus couldn’t tolerate imperfection but rather that His perfection was intolerable. In John 3:19, Jesus summarizes the relationship between sin and God’s presence: “Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” God is light; He doesn’t need the cross to protect Him from our darkness; we need the cross so we can survive entering into God’s light.

  1. God sees Jesus instead of us when He looks at us

In the Steven Furtick sermon that motivated this blog post, he said that the reason God gives us His “approval” is because He doesn’t see us when He looks at us but sees Jesus instead. That’s not approval; that’s deception. I can’t understand how anyone could possibly be encouraged by that. God doesn’t need our true selves to be hidden from His view to love us infinitely. His rage against the sin that oppresses us is part of that love. It’s true that Paul tells us to “put on Christ” and says that “in Christ we become the righteousness of God,” but Jesus isn’t a mask that we wear to cover ourselves up; He’s a body in which we become ourselves.

Popular penal substitution theology perverts Paul’s theology because it cannot recognize the sacramental character of the body of Christ from its modern individualist ontology. Jesus is not just our brother who stands in for us before God; He is also the one in whom “all things hold together.” So the substitution Christ provides is really one-to-many rather than one-to-one.

The phrase “in Christ” cannot be understood correctly without recognizing that Christ was already the source of our being as the one “in whom all things were created.” We are not truly ourselves outside of Christ; we are accidental constructions of our social context. It is only when we are “swallowed up” (2 Cor 5:4) by the life that Christ has provided for us that we gain the freedom to be what God has always seen in us. God doesn’t need to see a Jesus mask over our faces to approve us; His unconditional prior approval of us is the reason He sent His Word made flesh to empower us for holy living through our incorporation into His body.

  1. Since God is infinite, He is infinitely offended by the slightest of our sins

The legacy of penal substitution theology can be traced to a book called Cur Deus Homo that was written by 11th century theologian Anselm to explain why Jesus needed to be both divine and human. Being from a medieval honor-based society, Anselm thought the primary problem resolved by the cross is the offense that sin inflicts on God’s honor as a king. This became the satisfaction theory of atonement which evolved into penal substitution. Anselm reasoned that because God is infinite, someone who is also infinite (Jesus) had to become fully human to pay the debt owed to God’s honor by humans. Hence the God-man.

When I read Cur Deus Homo, I noticed an interesting phrase that Anselm used to explain why it had to be this way. He says in several places, “It is fitting.” He doesn’t say for whom it is “fitting” that Jesus pays our debt to God. Does God need it to happen or do we? I think popular penal substitution theology conflates satisfying God’s honor with appeasing God’s anger. They are absolutely not the same thing. We need for God’s honor to be satisfied through Jesus’ blood because otherwise we would not be able to bear the shame of looking into His face.

It is not that God is infinitely unable to understand the moral complexity that is behind our sin. He sees all the mitigating circumstances; He sees the good that we tried to do even in situations where we were ultimately in the wrong. The problem is not that God is an infinitely sanctimonious doosh bag who needed His Son’s blood to get over His pickiness; then it would be a lot easier to make peace with the dishonor we have shown Him. The problem is that we will be convicted and sorrowed to the point of eternal torture to stand in the presence of perfect love and truth without the assurance of Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf. The peasants need the king’s honor to be satisfied; otherwise they live in terror; so the king Himself pays the price for their sin against Him.

  1. God poured out His wrath on Jesus on the cross

The word wrath in Greek is οργή, the root for our word “orgy” in English. When you look at how this word is actually used in the Bible, it’s more mysterious than you might think. It’s not just a synonym for “anger.” Paul tells the Ephesians that they were “formerly by [their] nature children of wrath” (which the NIV theologically edits to say children deserving of wrath). To be a child of wrath according to Paul is to be owned by “the desires of our flesh and senses” (Eph 2:3). It has nothing to do with God being angry.

In Romans 1:18, Paul writes that the “wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness.” If wrath were simply “anger,” we could expect Paul to elaborate on this statement by cataloguing a series of natural disasters with which God responded to punish humanity’s sin. Instead what we find is an account of the degeneration of humanity through the innate consequences of their sinful behavior. God “hands them over” to their lust, idolatry, etc, but He is not actively punitive independent of these innate consequences in His response to sin. This seems to suggest that God’s οργή is the proliferation of sin itself.

When I read these texts, I wonder if we ought to think of wrath as describing the poison that fills the air and curses the ground when God is dishonored rather than an emotion experienced by a God whom we probably shouldn’t presume to have the same kinds of emotions that we do. In any case, what happened on the cross is that God the Father did not prevent God the Son from being killed by the Jewish religious authorities. He let Him drink the cup of (His/our?) wrath which He came to Earth to drink. But this in no way means that the Father was the executioner of the Son for the sake of His own anger management. When we talk about the Father “pouring out His wrath” on His son, we make Him look like a drunken child abuser.

I cannot find anywhere in scripture that makes the Father the primary agent behind the crucifixion of His Son. The closest is the Suffering Servant passage in Isaiah 52-53 in which we read that “it was the Lord’s will to crush him with pain” (53:10). First, I would contend that the Suffering Servant passage is primarily about Israel’s exile and only secondarily about Christ in His role as the recapitulation of His people’s destiny. The description of the Suffering Servant cannot be mapped completely onto Christ without compromising Christ’s divinity and the full unity of the divine will.

Secondly, in no place does Isaiah 52-53 describe the fulfillment of God’s wrath as the purpose of the Servant’s suffering. Isaiah 53:5 says, “Upon him was the punishment that made us whole; by his bruises we are healed.” In other words, the purpose of the Servant’s punishment is our wholeness and healing. It neither serves to fulfill God’s ego needs nor some primordial cosmic free market principle of retribution that God is obligated to follow.

We are children of wrath; we are born into a world that sweeps us into degenerative cycles of pain and guilt. “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which He loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (Eph 2:4-5). I just don’t see the cross having anything to do with God’s anger though it absolutely does rescue us from the οργη that describes the innate consequences of rebelling against God’s plan for us as creatures.

I really think that these problems in popular penal substitution theology might be a reflection of what Christianity Today has called the “juvenilization” of American evangelical Christianity. When church becomes youth group for adults, explanations that speak on a teenage level become the norm for everybody. When I was a teenager, the purpose of being a Christian was to avoid punishment. I expected the rules to be arbitrary and incomprehensible. So it made sense to me to accept a savior who would rescue me from the clutches of the infinitely picky and thoroughly uncompromising High School Principal of the universe. That was the salvation I received when I asked Jesus back into my heart as a 16 year old (after I had already done believer’s baptism at age 8).

But I experienced the metanoia that is true repentance when God spoke to me in 1998 through a little girl selling dolls in the square of San Cristobal de las Casas in Mexico. He told me I could never be a tourist again. That was when I gave my life to His kingdom. That was when my heart was filled with wrath against all the ways that the world dishonors a God whose image was reflected to me through a barefoot indigenous girl. I need God’s honor to be satisfied. I need the cross not only for the sake of my personal relationship with God but because I cannot live in a world where the crucified are not resurrected. Penal substitution is an important part of the rich mystery of the cross — just not in the oversimplified, canned version that has come to predominate our juvenilized evangelical church.

#25

Greetings Paidion,

So the point is that the Hebrew Text from which the Septuagint was originally translated was older than the texts utilized by the current English translations of the Old Testament, correct?

Also, just for clarification: When I said…

…I meant that these two theories separate Protestantism (Penal Substitution) from Eastern Orthodoxy (classical view). I see where I put the “CV and PS” in the reverse order which may have been confusing. Penal Substitution appears to be a development of the Protestant view of distinguishing justification (by imputation of alien righteousness) from sanctification (the imparting of holiness).

#26

We need an advocate against the Accuser of Sin – this is Satan who takes his stand as council for the prosecution in the heavenly court against the Paraclete. Christ bears our sins by being handed over in willing obedience to God’s will to the Accuser and standing in our place as our Advocate. This is the ransom understanding of atonement as I understand it. God in Christ takes the initiative to stand in our place on the Cross and defeats the Satan, depriving him of his rights as our Accuser.

Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death through dying. Alleluia.

#27

You take your time Dan - and do read Moltmann’s book on Christ’s Cross if you get the chance :slight_smile:

#28

Hi Dan,

Yes. Not only older, but, in my opinion, much closer to the original.

Yes, I think I understood you. I was trying to point out that the classical view, and thus the Orthodox view is NOT that of penal substitution, and that the latter originated in Roman Catholicism, especially as in the works of Thomas Aquinas.

I agree with you concerning the artificial dichotomy of “justification” and “sanctification”. Actually “dikaiosune” is but the nounal form of “dikaios” (righteous), and thus “dikaiosune” means much more than “counted righteous” as per PSA, but more often means “made righteous”, not by a sovereign act of God but by the synergy of both the “justifier” and the “justified.”

#29

“Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.”

I take Adam to be Everyman. All of us die in Adam. ie. We all eat forbidden fruit, are ejected from Eden, and are condemned to struggle against thorns and thistles.

The prodigal son sinned against his father and found himself languishing in the pigsty. He tasted forbidden fruit, left his father’s house, and began to learn (by bitter experience) the true nature of his idolatrous desires. He was condemned by (and for) his rebellion. The merciful justice of God drove him ever deeper into the hell of his own making until he finally came to his senses.

On his return, his father’s forgiveness was the one act of righteousness that was needful to restore the relationship. On seeing his father’s suffering, understanding at last the depth and nature of his love, the son was transformed. Seeing the old man run to welcome him home broke the son’s heart, restored their relationship and, in a very real sense, raised him from the dead.

Or if you prefer, the son’s faith in his father was rekindled by his father’s great act of righteousness. The father therefore imputed his own righteousness onto the son, and declared him henceforth to be free from the guilt and penalty of his sins. ie. The son was justified by faith.

Again, because harm had been done, someone had to pay a price. Either the son somehow repaid the father for his loss, or the father bore the loss himself. ie. There could be no forgiveness without “the shedding of blood”. Fortunately for the son, the father chose to shed his own blood in love. The father took the loss. It became part of who he was. What’s more, it became his everlasting glory. We still praise the memory of this extraordinary man.

In the same way, God has taken the loss for our sakes. He took the loss into himself. It became part of who he is. ie. Christ “became” sin for us. In this great act we see the glory of God, and our hearts are moved to worship.

God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. Christ is the revelation of God’s love and forgiveness. He reveals the one and only act of righteousness that is needful, one that has the power to break our hearts and set us free from the web and tangle of sin. This grace is irresistible. It will raise us from the dead, and restore us all to God.

#30

When you look for passages which tell why Christ died, you don’t find that He died to appease the wrath of an angry God. You don’t find that He died to take our punishment so that we wouldn’t have to go to hell. You don’t find that He died to cover our sins so that when God looks at us, he is blinded to our sin and sees only Christ’s righteous.

What you do find is that He died in order to empower us to overcome wrongdoing and to be enabled to live righteously.

*I Peter 2:24 He himself endured our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.

II Corinthians 5:15 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.

Romans 14:9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.

Titus 2:14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity and to purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.

Heb 9:26 …he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.*

#31

What follows are excerpts from George MacDonald, The Hope of the Gospel, Salvation from Sin, chapter one.

The wrong, the evil that is in a man; he must be set free from it. I do not mean set free from the sins he has done: that will follow; I mean the sins he is doing, or is capable of doing; the sins in his being which spoil his nature, the wrongness in him, the evil he consents to; the sin he is, which makes him do the sin he does.

He will want only to be rid of his suffering; but that he cannot have, unless he is delivered from its essential root, a thing infinitely worse than any suffering it can produce. If he will not have that deliverance, he must keep his suffering. Through chastisement he will take at last the only way that leads to liberty. There can be no deliverance but to come out of his evil dream into the glory of God.

The Lord never came to deliver men from the consequences of their sins while those sins remained. That would be to throw the medicine out the window while the man still lies sick! That would be to come directly against the very laws of existence! Yet men, loving their sins, and feeling nothing of their dread hatefulness, have (consistently with their low condition) constantly taken this word concerning the Lord to mean that he came to save them from the punishment of their sins. This idea (this miserable fancy rather) has terribly corrupted the preaching of the gospel. The message of the good news has not been truly delivered.

He came to work along with out punishment. He came to side with it, and set us free from our sins. No man is safe from hell until he is free from his sins.

Not for any or all of his sins that are past shall a man be condemned; not for the worst of them does he need to fear remaining unforgiven. The sin in which he dwells, the sin of which he will not come out. That sin is the sole ruin of a man. His present live sins, those sins pervading his thoughts and ruling his conduct; the sins he keeps doing, and will not give up; the sins he is called to abandon, but to which he clings instead, the same sins which are the cause of his misery, though he may not know it — these are the sins for which he is even now condemned.

It is the indwelling badness, ready to produce bad actions, from which we need to be delivered. If a man will not strive against this badness, he is left to commit evil and reap the consequences. To be saved from these consequences, would be no deliverance; it would be an immediate, ever deepening damnation. It is the evil in our being (no essential part of it, thank God!) —this is that from which He came to deliver us — not the things we have done, but the possibility of doing such things anymore. As this possibility departs, and we confess to those we have wronged, the power over us of our evil deeds will depart also, and so shall we be saved from them. The bad that lives in us, our evil judgments, our unjust desires, our hate and pride and envy and greed and self-satisfaction ---- these are the souls of our sins, our live sins, more terrible than the bodies of our sins, that is, the deeds we do, because they not only produce these loathsome characteristics, but they make us just as loathsome. Our wrong deeds are our dead works; our evil thoughts are our live sins. These sins, the essential opposites of faith and love, these sins that dwell in us and work in us, are the sins from which Jesus came to deliver us. When we turn against them and refuse to obey them, they rise in fierce insistence, but at the same time begin to die. We are then on the Lord’s side, and He begins to deliver us from them.

#32

Yes, if the point is only for Christ to bear the punishment instead of the transgressor.

If Christ is reckoned with the transgressors, though, bearing the punishment with the transgressors, then there is no problem – except that then Christ ought to be hopelessly punished with the transgressors by an eternal conscious torment or by permanent annihilation, when obviously neither happened. :wink: But that would be a problem for the ‘instead-of’ version of penal sub, too.

A much more nuanced and actually substitutionary model (not exclusive to other models of atonement, including the penal solidarity model), would involve the Father making covenant with the Son to save the descendants of Abraham (which by virtue of the two natures of the Incarnation would include all rational creatures since the Creator becomes also the descendant of Abraham) despite the covenant being broken by Abraham and his descendants (by the same token including all rational beings who have sinned): the visible YHWH standing in for Abraham as Abraham’s (eventual) descendant pledges His life to the fulfillment of the covenant and so dies instead of Abraham (or his descendants) when any rational creature sins.

The point here would not be that the two Persons are acting at schismatic odds to their intentions, but that the voluntary death of the Son is an action of pledge and surety toward keeping the covenant in place of the sinners whose place He takes in the covenant promise.

But (as St. Paul stresses) this is a personal covenant promise not a merely legal contract; so it isn’t as though God is going through some legal formality that once satisfied is of no further importance, much less that the Father’s wrath is now expended upon the Son and so He has no more wrath against sin to give (as though the Son and the Spirit never have wrath against sin!) If the person doesn’t accept the Son’s sacrifice, and more importantly if the person refuses to cooperate with the Son in the self-sacrificial death of the Son, no more sacrifice remains for sin and the person must be zorched instead. But the Father (no more than the Son or the Spirit) must not have a hopeless result in mind (and doesn’t in the scriptures cited by the Hebraist when talking about this), or He would be violating the covenant between the Father and the Son to bring all Abraham’s descendants to righteousness!

I fully agree with Paidion’s last couple of posts, btw. I don’t know that MacD ever had in mind the connection of Christ’s sacrifice to the Abrahamic covenant, but he’s entirely correct about Paul’s usage of the term we translate “impute”: it doesn’t mean anything remotely substitutionary, it means correct and accurate accounting. Abraham was righteous, and God rightly accounted it as righteousness. That doesn’t mean Abraham earned his salvation (or didn’t need salvation) by being righteous. Abraham was rightly counted righteous when he trusted the promises of God (despite the evidence of his own deadened body) about his descendants becoming as numerous as the stars in the sky; if we believe in Him Who raises Jesus out from the dead (in order to keep that promise to Abraham no less!), Who was given up because of our offenses, and Who was raised because of our justifying, then we’re behaving righteously to trust God about that and God rightly accounts it as righteousness. When we trust God and cooperate with Him, we become just instead of unjust, and not of our own power but by the empowerment and leading of God within us to do so – nevertheless it’s also a question of our cooperation or not: are we going to follow the calling of God, and properly use instead of abuse the empowerment He gives us?

But we if abuse the empowerment He gives us, and we act unfaithfully instead, does that nullify the faithfulness of God?! MAY IT NEVER BE! :slight_smile:

That is because where sin increases, the grace of God hyper-increases, for not as the sin is the grace. (As Paul has some things to say about nearby.) But if the Son simply substituted for us and the Father simply pretended we were becoming righteous, Paul would never have gone on to say (in Rom 6:3) that whoever is baptized into Christ Jesus, is baptized into His death, and are entombed with Christ (not Christ instead of us) through baptism into the death, so that even as Christ was raised out from among the dead through the glory of the Father, we should also thus be walking in the newness of life. We become planted together with Christ in the likeness of His death, for our old humanity is crucified together with Him, that the body of sin may be nullified, for the one who dies has been justified from sin.

We must die together with Christ, not Christ dying instead of us. But Christ dies together with us even if we haven’t yet agreed to die with Him. (That seems to me to be the point of the two rebels on the cross, both originally impenitent, one eventually penitent: the Son dies together with both of them.)

As for 1 Peter 2:24, Peter’s explicit point is that just as Christ suffered death thanks to those who sinned against Him for the sake of those who sinned against Him (which must include all sinners), so we who follow Christ ought to willingly put up with sins against us, even to the death, for the sake of those who sin against us: Christ has done as much and more for all of us, both us and them. But if we do not come away from sin, we cannot be living for righteousness; Peter certainly does not say that we do not have to come away from sin! (Peter goes on throughout the following chapter 3 to develop this theme further that we are expected to self-sacrifice for the sake of those who sin against us, including believing spouses for unbelieving spouses, leading into the ultimate example of Christ’s sacrifice for sinners, His descent into hades to preach the gospel to those who were once imprisoned there for their stubbornness! My extensive notes on this and some apparently contravening evidence from 1 Peter 4 can be found here.)

Certainly the most typical version of penal substitution would work if Christ was simply made sin: we would be putting on Christ the sinner and the Father would be seeing Christ the sinner instead of us!! No advantage there at all, far from it! But I expect Paul is thinking of the covenant promises made between the Father and the Son during the Abrahamic covenant there (where the Son, as Abraham’s descendant, pledges surety for Abraham and his descendants: the covenant being that God will bring all Abraham’s descendants to righteousness, his descendants coming to number an uncountable vastness.)

I have problems with typical understandings of PSA long before that: as a trinitarian theist I must reject the notion that the Persons of God have a fundamental schism in their attitudes and actions toward sinners (much moreso that the Father has to be convinced not to wrath against sinners by the Son!) And any notion of PSA that results in a hopeless punishment coming to sinners must be broken at the root since the Son was not hopelessly punished, so did not in fact “bear the punishment for sin” on behalf of any sinner. So even if a non-trinitarian could imagine the Son and the Father working at cross-purposes (so to speak) in regard to sinners (with the Son effectively winning!), though I don’t think that notion would do them any favors either in the long run either, the purported explanation of the action does not match the known result of the action.

But as noted above I don’t think all versions of PSA are broken. I just don’t recommend accepting an idea that contravenes ortho-trin if you’re going to hold to ortho-trin. I rejected (typical) PSA on trinitarian grounds long before becoming a Christian universalist, and would not accept it now for the same reasons even if I went to (back to) Arm or Calv instead.

Somewhere around here I have a paper analyzing the distinction between “justification” and “sanctification” in the NT, and my conclusion is that functionally there isn’t any: the terms are synonyms.

But since I can’t figure out where that paper is on the forum, I’ll just attach it here. :slight_smile: Justification == sanctifiction in scripture update.doc (40.5 KB)

It means two or three things in the NT (conceptually related to one another), but not that. Another extensive word study: JRP on propitiate wage and reconcile.doc (125 KB)

#33

That’s excellent :smiley:

#34

Thank you Jason for your reply and the documents.

I will be out of town without a computer for the next few days (vacation!!!), so I printed out your post and the two documents to read through. Of course, I had to cut down a tree for enough paper, and change my ink cartridge a couple times… :laughing: :laughing:

I’ll be back in a few days.

#35

In a nutshell “propitiate” means “appease”. But is this an incorrect rendering of the Greek words?

The Greek Words ἱλασμος (hilasmos) and ἱλαστηριον (hilastārion)

The words used in the Greek New Testament and rendered as “atonement” or “atoning sacrifice in some modern translations are ἱλασμος (1 John 2:2, 1 John 4:10) and ἱλαστηριον (Rom 3:25, Heb 9:5). Both are derived from the verbal form ἱλασκομαι The Hebrew word translated as “atonement” is “kippur” and is usually rendered as ἐξιλαστηριον in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, translated about 250 B.C. in the reign of Ptolemy. Note that it differs from the New Testament word only by the addition of the prefix ἐξ (out of ). The verbal form of the Hebrew word “kippur” is “kaphar”.
In the King James Version, ἱλασμος is translated as “propitiation”, that is, an appeasement or conciliation of an offended power. It is so rendered also by Darby, by the Douay translators, and by the translators of the King James Version and of Young’s Literal Translation.

The translators of the Revised Standard Version render ἱλασμος as “expiation”, that is, the act of making amends of reparation for wrongdoing. This is also the meaning of the English word “atonement.” In current English, “atone” is used in precisely the same way as “expiate.” If I accidentally run into the neighbour’s fence post and break it off, the neighbour may tell me, “You’re going to have to atone for that!” In other words, I’m going to have to “make up for it” in some way, perhaps by repairing the fence myself. In the NIV and the NRSV ἱλασμος is translated as “atoning sacrifice.”

The translators of the KJV and the Douay also render ἱλαστηριον as “propitiation” in Rom 3:25, and in the RSV it is translated as “expiation.” However in Heb 9:5, the translators of the KJV render the same word as “mercy seat”! It is so rendered also by Darby, and by the translators of the RSV, the NRSV, and Young’s Literal Translation. Mercy seat! That meaning is quite different from either “propitiation” or “expiation.”

Perhaps a look at the verbal form of the words would be helpful in deciding the true meaning of the words ἱλασμος and ἱλαστηριον

** ἱλασκομαι [Strong’s 2433]**

Lu 18:13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ RSV

In this parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, every translation of which I am aware translates ἱλασκομαι as “be merciful”. ἱλασκομαι is derived from the adjectival form ἱλιως, the meaning of which is “merciful”, and is so translated in Hebrews 8:12:

For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more. RSV

Curiously, the RSV translators render the word differently in Heb 2:17:

Therefore he had to be made like his brethren in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make expiation for the sins of the people. RSV

Does consistency demand that the final phrase be translated as “to be merciful concerning the sins of the people”? If the verbal form means “be merciful” and the adjectival form means “merciful”, could the nominal forms be rendered as “means of mercy”? Let’s see how the verses would read if that were done:

ἱλασμος [Strongs 2434]

1Jo 2:2 and he is the means of mercy concerning our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.
1Jo 4:10 In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the means of mercy concerning our sins.

ἱλαστηριον [Strong’s 2435]

*Ro 3:25 whom God put forward as a means of mercy by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins;
Heb 9:5 above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. Of these things we cannot now speak in detail.
*

We can leave the translation in Heb 9:5 as “mercy seat,” though under Mosaic law it was indeed considered a “means of mercy.”
As I see it, the translations which render ἱλαστηριον and ἱλασμος as “propitiation”, a word which carries the idea of appeasement and averting of wrath are not correct. Our examination of the passages quoted above would cast doubt even upon the translation of these words as “expiation” or “atonement”. I suggest “means of mercy” as an appropriate translation of these words, a translation that is correct etymologically as well as contextually.

What a mercy the grace of Christ, that divine enablement! This enablement is described in Titus 2:11, 12:

For the grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all people, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and to live sensible, upright, and pious lives in this world.

#36

More-or-less agreed with Paidion, btw, although I go the route of “smiling upon” / “leaning toward” (the Latin translation of the Greek term) and the connection of that to authoritative mercy. The goal is still not to get God to smile upon or lean toward us, though, but to get us to lean toward God: God is not Who is being atoned or even propitiated in the New Testament texts.

#37

Jason,

In your document concerning justification and sanctification, you wrote:

The Reformed do not consider justification as a “process” but as an “act” of God.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism says that “Justification is an act of God’s free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in His sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.” (WSC Q. 33)

In contrast, the Shorter Catechism defines sanctification as a “work of God’s free grace.”

An “act” is a one-time event in contrast to a “work” or a process.

The Reformed sometimes refer to what is called the “Ordo Salutis” to demonstrate the “logical” order of the application of salvation. That order being: effectual call (outward call, regeneration), conversion (faith and repentance), justification, adoption, sanctification, perseverance and glorification.

It is important to understand that this is considered the “logical” order, not necessarily “chronological.” By this, it is to be understood that there is not necessarily a time element between the events/processes. Many (or most) would say that regeneration, justification and adoption are simultaneous events, but that they logically follow each other in respective order.

The primary purpose of defining the “Ordo Salutis” is to distinguish Calvinism from Arminianism in saying that “regeneration (logically) precedes faith” rather than the other way around.

Personally, I have found the concept of defining the Ordo Salutis to confuse more than it helps.

Anyway, the placing of sanctification after justification in the Ordo Salutis does not mean that sanctification follows chronologically after justification. Sanctification begins at regeneration and continues until glorification.

According to the Westminster Confession, “They, who are once effectually called, and regenerated, having a new heart, and a new spirit created in them, are further sanctified…” (WCF 13:1). The word “further” implies that sanctification has already begun in the preceding steps.

John Murray explains that “sanctification is a process that begins, we might say, in regeneration, finds its basis in justification, and derives its energizing grace from the union with Christ which is effected in effectual calling… Being a continuous process, rather than a momentary act like calling, regeneration, justification and adoption, it is proper it should be placed after adoption in the order of application.” (Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, page 87).

Secondly, you state that:

As for why the Reformed insist on a clear distinction between justification and sanctification, let me quote from the “Report on Justification” presented to the 73rd General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church:

As evidence of the forensic nature of justification, the report continues:

Regarding the definitive nature of justification, the OPC report states:

This is important in regards to assurance. As the Westminster Confession puts it, we may have “assurance of faith founded upon the divine truth of the promises of salvation, the inward evidence of those graces unto which these promises are made, the testimony of the Spirit of adoption witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God.”

Simply put: Primarily, I have assurance of salvation because I have believed the promises: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.” I have believed; therefore, I have been saved (justification). I can have that assurance and peace with God now by faith in the promise of the gospel. Secondarily, I have assurance of salvation because I can see the evidence of the work of the Spirit of Christ within me (sanctification). Faith in the promises is primary, as the focal point of faith is outside me, not within me.

If, on the other hand, I see justification as a process to be completed in the future, then my faith will find its focus primarily within myself. I would be led to think that I must become holy in order to be saved. If justification is completed in the future and not a past event, then I cannot have any real assurance now, but am always straining to obtain assurance, and am never truly at peace with God.

When the Philippian jailer asked the apostle, “what must I do to be saved?” the apostle didn’t tell him, “become holy.” He said, “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.” Herein is gospel assurance. Salvation can be ours today. By faith in the promise of the gospel, we can know that we have been justified before God on the basis of the finished work of Jesus Christ.

#38

Since this act occurs across multiple moments of time in history in relation to objects of the act which are sometimes justified and sometimes not, that’s why I call it a process. I don’t mean it’s less than an act, I’m only heading off potential objections that sinners don’t start off justified already and that God had/has to go through several historical stages in various ways to accomplish the justification of sinners.

Even you put it that way, that justification “once accomplished” is followed by sanctification. “Once accomplished” is language of some kind of process.

The Westminster Catechism doesn’t say it isn’t a process, and I doubt it makes that distinction in the longer form either although it’s been a year or two since I read it and I was looking for other information at the time. Similarly, the WestCat doesn’t say sanctification is a process either.

I can think of several “mighty works of power” which were one-time events in that sense, not processes – or rather, they did in fact involve processes in history, even though the action of God in itself was not a composite process, but that’s true in sanctification, too (or any other action of God).

Still, if you (and/or Calvinists) insist on denying any kind of historical process of justification is involved, I don’t know that I would regard it as making an important difference for the purposes of that article. I can work with action, fact and verdict of justification just as easily even if the action does not involve a historical process of some sort. That might even aid the conclusion I drew in the paper, since if justification involved a separate identifiable historical process from sanctification then the two terms probably would not refer to the same event or concept in the scriptures. (Certainly I didn’t find them to involve separate distinct historical processes.)

I know; the salient point of the paper is not about whether sanctification follows justification chronologically, but whether there is scriptural evidence that the two events or concepts described by those terms in the scriptures are distinct at all, including logically.

I seem to recall (I’m not at the office where I can read the text right now) that I also allowed that insofar as a theological system goes there could be some kind of useful distinction drawn between something called “justification” and something called “sanctification”. The question I looked into for the paper was whether the scriptures evidenced any such distinction when the two terms translated that way in modern English are used.

Of course I didn’t rest the case on the mere conceptual relationship between the terms (although you may notice I did allow a distinction between process and deed as well as state and judgment). The Report does not seem to recognize a pronouncement aspect of holiness (judging an object holy, including in a forensic sense), which to me seems problematic in trying to argue for a conceptual distinction between the terms.

The relevant question is whether the actual uses of the term in the NT fits the Report. I actually talk about the actual uses of the term in my report. :wink:

Oh? I thought I remembered someone saying that “calling” in Reformed/Calv theology was supposed to be an “act” (like justification and regeneration) not a “work” (like sanctification).

(“Many (or most) would say that regeneration [reckoned with the outward call according to the Ordis], justification and adoption are simultaneous events” – but not the Report on Justification? "According to the Westminster Confession, “They, who are once effectually called, and regenerated, having a new heart, and a new spirit created in them, are further sanctified…” (WCF 13:1). The Report on Justification either denies or misreads the WestConfess?) “Being a continuous process, rather than a momentary act like [effectual] calling, regeneration, justification and adoption, [sanctification] is proper it should be placed after adoption in the order of application.” – John Murray and the Report seem at odds.)

Obviously it is not so easy, at least, to distinguish a “work” from an “act” in the sense required. :wink:

Since I am certainly not denying that justification (and its cognates) has a forensic/judgment aspect, but rather I affirmed that, I’ll skip over the establishment of this.

Quoting scripture as testifying to one part of a now/then, already/not-yet position, does not count as contrary evidence to the position. Various scriptural authors (as I observed) also talk about sanctification as though it has already been completed and so moral improvement is not necessary or even really possible. I expect the authors of the Report would agree with me in opposing that view and the proposed ground for that view.

Certainly, and I don’t recall even slightly indicating (much less arguing) that justification isn’t treated from God’s perspective as already completed in the scriptures, just like sanctification.

Just like sanctification, though, this is not evidence that justification is only “already” and not also “not-yet”. Until I stop sinning, I am not yet actually a just man, and no amount of useful legal fictioning is going to change that, even if the useful legal fiction is claimed to come from God the Truth Himself.

Since I am similarly not (and never have been) claiming only “not-yet” and not also “already”, thus am not even remotely threatening assurance in the promise of salvation, may we now at last turn to the actual content of the analysis I researched? Because the Report, so far as you quoted, addresses none of the salient points so far.

So long as you continue to rebel against God, you are not entirely at peace with God, which ought to be sufficiently evident. I am not saying that in order to undermine assurance that you will be saved from your sins, I am only pointing out that your salvation from sin cannot be complete (and neither can mine be) until we stop sinning and become entirely holy. That promise of sanctification is also occasionally spoken of as though already completed, but I think you will find many if not most Calv (not only Arm) Reformed theologians acknowledging with St. Paul that Christians still sin and still need to stop sinning for which we still have some personal responsibility to act (and indeed are empowered by God to act responsibly about – abuse of that responsibility still being sin.)