Comic Relief: Mr. Deity (The Atonement and The Trinity)

I just discovered the series of skits created by Brian Dalton called Mr. Deity. Sometimes I think sarcasm and humor are more effective in getting your message across than serious lectures or debates. I probably come across as being a stuffed shirt but in reality I have a great sense of humor. I hope you enjoy these videos.

The Atonement




The Trinity

PST and the Doctrine of Imputation

Norman McIlwain is a a British Christian who has authored a book, which is available online, entitled: The Biblical Revelation of the Cross .

Its a very interesting book in which McIlwain argues against the Penal Substitutionary Theory (PST) of the atonement. In an online article he reviews Pierced for Our Transgressions, the most definitive defense of PST in recent times. In the article, he states: Justice is not upheld by punishing the innocent in the place of the guilty. You don't need a law degree to see that. It is common sense.

He begins his review by rejecting the authors of Pierced claim that the death of an innocent in place of the guilty is justified due to the doctrine of imputation. The doctrine of imputation is based on the Greek word λογίζομαι (logidzomai)which occurs 49 times in the Greek NT. The KJV translates it: to reckon, to count, to impute. It is a term that was used in accounting to refer to placing something on one's account. While the word is not used, the idea is found in Philemon 1:18, where Paul tells Philemon in regard to Onesimus (a runaway slave): If he hath wronged thee, or oweth [thee] ought, put that on mine account. There are 3 elements to the doctrine of imputation. 1)God put Adam's sin on his posterity's account; 2)God put man's sins on Jesus' account, (and Jesus paid the debit on the cross with the result that), 3) God puts Christ's righteousness (as a credit) on the believer's account.

While McIlwain agrees with the idea of #1 and #3, he rejects #2. He writes:

For Jesus to have become legally guilty for the sins of believers, He would need to have consented to their crimes. Mere relationship to those who sin does not impart guilt: ‘The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son’ (Ezek.18:20, NKJ). The ‘union’ that is required of one to be imputed criminal guilt is that of complicity in the unlawful acts. Legally and biblically it was not possible for Jesus to have been made guilty for sin. The punishment He suffered was an act of injustice, as the Bible states: ‘His justice was taken away’ (Acts 8:33, NKJ). ‘He submitted Himself to Him who judges righteously,’ Peter wrote (1 Pet.2:23, NKJ). The resurrection was God’s act of justice - overturning the verdict of an illegal court, whilst proclaiming the righteousness of the One who died.

He continues: It is all about consent. Sin cannot be imputed to Jesus because He never yielded to evil. He yielded His will to the Father. To be attributed sin, one must consent to sin. Those who give their consent to evil without repentance will be condemned with the devil.

I think he makes a good point. The imputation of Adam's sin to his posterity makes sense to McIlwain in that man validates and confirms Adam's decision to disobey every time man disobeys God again(of course there is another whole issue here which we will have to deal with later, i.e., is it fair to condemn mankind if they are born with a nature that makes it impossible for them to avoid sin?). The imputation of man's sin to Christ does not follow because Christ never consented, never validated, the sins by committing them himself. He cannot be tied in any real sense to man's sin.

He uses an illustration that I think is helpful:

The owners of a company are responsible for actions that happen within the company rules and consent of management. Corporate manslaughter is a good example. However, the company would need to be involved in the action. One employee murdering another in a fit of temper, for example, would not make the owners of the company guilty for the crime. It would have happened without their consent and certainly against company rules. However, drugs manufactured that later are found to cause death would make the company and its owners liable. Guilt would rightly be imputed - because of the company's consent to the manufacture. Consent makes all the difference.

In my opinion, he has delivered the death blow to PST with this argument. If the sin of mankind is imputed to Christ, then he would have needed to be culpable in some way for man's sin. Otherwise, the imputation is unjust. So you either have a sinful Savior or an unjust Father. Either one destroys evangelical Christianity.

He also deals with the argument put forward by R. L. Dabney in Christ Our Penal Substitute that even though PST is counterintuitive to man's sense of justice, we must accept it on the authority of God's word (J. I. Packer argues the same way in The Logic of Penal Substitution ). McIlwain responds:

According to Dabney, regardless of what we know by moral intuition, the authority of Scripture is paramount and must override all objections of conscience. Nevertheless, the obvious danger of this position is in the misinterpretation and misapplication of Scripture to defend positions or actions that are either completely wrong or, at best, far from the ideal.

Clear examples include Dabney’s own defence of North American slavery; the German reformer Martin Luther’s use of Scripture to support anti-Semitism; and the doctrinal support given by Thomas Aquinas for the Inquisition and the use of the secular arm for the execution (normally preceded by torture) of those supposed guilty of schism or heresy (Summa Theologica, 2-2: 11, 3 & 4). Luther not only preached that the age-long sufferings of the Jews proved God's hatred of them, but went on to advise the Germans to burn down the homes of Jews, to close their synagogues and schools, to confiscate their wealth, to conscript their men and women into forced labour; and wrote, ‘All Jews should be given the choice between either accepting Christ, or having their tongues torn out’ (Concerning the Jews and their lies, 1542). One could also mention the drowning of Baptists in Calvin’s Geneva besides giving many more instances where a God-given conscience and moral intuition within man should have claimed precedent over man’s logic and his interpretation of God’s written word.

I think McIlwain's point is well made. PST defies man's innate sense of justice which according to the Bible is derived from God (see Rom. 2:14). Therefore, evangelicals who adhere to PST have a contradiction in God's revelation to man that they must resolve. I personally don't think it can be resolved. Thus, I reject evangelical theology.

My Discussion with the Priest and the Rabbi

On this past Monday, I was on 97.1 FM Talk Radio in St. Louis. On the Dave Glover show, he has a regular segment called The Priest and The Rabbi. On Monday I was invited to give the skeptic's viewpoint on the existence of God. As is the case with talk radio, you really don't have much time to make an argument. It is more limited to soundbites. You can listen to the podcast here. The date is Oct. 26th and the discussion begins on the middle segment of the three hour show and continues over to the last segment.

The priest really had little to say during the show. His major point was that he believed the death of Christ was not a payment for sins but rather a demonstration of the love of God. This is the theory proposed by Peter Abelard in the 12th century in reaction to Anselm's satisfaction theory. It is usually called the Moral Influence Theory.

While I could not go into detail on the program, I think this view is even more problematic than PST. First, because it still has to explain away all of the many passages in the NT which clearly teach that Christ died in our place as a substitute for the penalty we deserved as sinners. Those who hold this theory have to excise much of the NT on this subject. Second, how does Jesus being executed as a criminal show us that God loves us? I don't get it. God loves us so much that he allowed the wicked Romans to nail his Son to a cross and die in a most excruciating manner. If that shows love, then its not the kind of love I am interested in emulating. In addition, it certainly doesn't show much love for his only begotten Son. The priest said that God did not bring this about, the Romans did. But once again, you will have to explain away many passages of Scripture which say clearly that this death was planned "before the foundation of the world" by God himself.

If you say, well, it shows us how much Jesus loves us, I still don't get it. By placing himself in a position (he knew that going into Jerusalem at the time of the Passover was going to be very dangerous for him) whereby he would be executed shows love? I think it shows stupidity. How does Jesus placing himself in a situation where he gets tortured and killed show us God's love? That is a strange kind of love.

The rabbi, who was more conservative than I expected, takes the Torah as the divine revelation of God. I asked him, if it is a revelation from God, why does God order the killing of whole groups of people including women, children and even infants. You can listen to his response and my answers on the podcast but I think his position is extremely weak. Basically he said that if God did it, it must be right. But then he contradicts himself by saying that man only know morality because the Torah teaches it to him. Yet some of the things that the OT God does are clearly unjust and even immoral by the standards of western morality which is supposed to be based on Judeo-Christian principles. So, I guess its a case of do what I say not what I do?

In addition, the rabbi argued that he believes in the God of the Jews because of unbroken, person to person tradition dating from the time of the giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai. I responed to him that if that is his reasoning, then he ought to believe in the resurrection of Jesus, because there were reports of eyewitnesses who saw a resurrected Jesus and who passed along those stories all the way down to us today.

He argued that the difference between what happened at Mt. Sinai and what happened on Easter morning is simply the number of people who were eye-witnesses. He maintained that 600,000 Jews (the whole nation)saw what happened at Mt. Sinai, whereas only a few supposedly saw a resurrected Jesus. My response was that if the Jews really did see what happened at Mt. Sinai as recorded in the Torah, its passing strange, that they immediately began to worship a golden calf as they waited for Moses to come back down from the mountain. I think if I had just seen indisuputable proof that God exists, the last thing I would do is make an idol and start worshipping it. I think this made him a little angry (he later sent me an email apologizing for calling me ignorant).

So all in all, it was an enjoyable discussion for me and if you are interested in hearing it, you can go to the website mentioned above.

My Answers to a Defender of PST

On an internet forum called TheologyWeb, I sometimes discuss theological issues to see how Christians will respond. Many of the "apologists" on that site are young, immature and really know little about theology. They resort to name calling and personal insults as their rebuttal. However, today I responded to an excellent post from a PST defender named Terry. Below is his defense and my response. My responses are in bold.

Terry,

Thanks for one of the most intelligent posts on this subject. You stand in sharp distinction to most of the TWEB "apologists." I appreciate the kind and thoughtful dialogue.

FormerFundy,

As I am more sympathetic to Penal Theory than any other model that will be the view I defend here.

It seems to me, FF, that you hold a somewhat slanted view of the atonement in that it fails to take both the voluntary nature of Christ’s death and the oneness of the Godhead into account, or, at least, it deemphasizes these aspects. These comparatively ignored components I believe give penal theory a greater degree of coherence which the model may lack otherwise.

I recognize fully that the NT teaches that Jesus gave his life willingly. I have never disputed that. I also recognize the classical Trinitarian view as described by Nicaea.

If I understand you correctly, your chief objection to penal theory is that it is “a miscarriage of justice to punish the innocent in place of the guilty.” Admittedly, it is the ethical concern that makes penal theory more difficult to swallow than other models such as the Satisfaction Theory. Nevertheless, I cannot help but wonder if the difficulty has been misplaced. While I can certainly see coercing a person, innocent or otherwise, to die vicariously unjust, what about doing so voluntarily?

Whether the victim volunteers or not is not germane to my objection


Why think a vicarious death done voluntarily unjust? What if the vicarious death were to achieve some great good that can best or only be accomplished by doing so? In the minds of many, allowing oneself to be killed is often seen justifiable when it involves saving the life of another. Consider the soldier who jumps on a grenade in order to save one or more of his comrades. We neither judge such acts irrational nor suicidal, but, rather, virtuous, honorable, moral, and praiseworthy. I think what is at issue is more one of purpose, not fairness.

I agree that it is noble to lay down your life for others. But once again that is not germane to my argument. My problem is with an innocent one suffering the penalty of the guilty and being accepted as just by the judge (or in this case--God).

The analogy of a judge allowing someone, other than the perpetrator, to suffer a vicarious death is to a certain extent skewed also because it fails to reflect the oneness of the Godhead. You note, “You still have to explain how it’s a righteous thing for the judge of the universe to allow the innocent to pay the penalty for the guilty.” But on penal substitution, FF, the central claim is that God took on voluntarily the penalty due sinful human beings Himself. In your judge-of-the-universe analogy then, it is the judge himself who volunteers to take on the penalty, as oppose to an innocent, third-party bystander. There is nothing logically inconsistent with this chief assertion.

I agree that it is the judge who pays the price himself in the PST scenario. Or at least one member of the Godhead pays it to another member. That still doesn't explain how that is just. Its like there is some penalty out there that MUST be paid by someone and so the judge just decides to pay it himself. How does the judge paying the penalty that the sinner deserves resolve the issue? So long as someone pays, its okay? This runs cross grain to our innate sense of justice, which according to the Bible is derived from God himself.

Now let’s presume penal substitution is built upon a moral framework that argues that it is appropriate and good in some cases for punishment to be carried out. With that in mind, the question becomes can the goodness of the punishment still be achieved by God taking it on Himself? It seems to me it can. God is the victim of the wrongdoer. Left unpunished, misdeeds both diminish the value of the victim, in our case, the Godhead, and potentially trivialize the wrongdoings of the offender. Christ’s voluntary death on the cross makes it plain that sin against God is not to be trivialized. In that sense it was akin to the OT sacrifices which reminded the people of their sin (Heb 10:3). Furthermore, it reinstates the value of the God head. Thus, the goodness of the punishment, which, again, God took on Himself, is at least twofold. It stresses and affirms the value of the Godhead and shows that sin is to be taken with utmost seriousness.

Okay but what you are now advocating is much closer to the governmental theory of the atonement than to PST. And it still doesn't make sense according to our innate sense of justice. For example, if you break my arm and I press charges. Would it make sense for me to say: Well, you are remorseful and so I will forgive you and drop the charges but in order to show my value as a human being and how serious your crime was--I will ask the judge to send me to jail in your place.

Now, of course, one could argue that humans are the wrongdoers in this case, not God. It is not good for God to extend the privilege of physical and spiritual life to humans on earth because they have sinned repeatedly against Him and, therefore, do not deserve it. Humans have rightly earned the punishment due them. But we must not forget there is a difference between justice and vengeance. Here it could be argued that God’s wise and just plan of redemption is keeping maximally with His love, grace and mercy. Throughout human history, there are numerous examples in Scripture where God either delays punishment, or exacts it in some restricted way, or abstains from it altogether. In fact, this is not all that different from the way humans interact at times.

True but God does ultimately, according to the Bible, unleash his wrath against mankind. Of course he already did it once in Noah's flood. So the fact he delays it is inconsequential.
And God is said to be vengeful in Romans 12 for example.

Secondly, you find it difficult to imagine exactly how the atonement plays out in the oneness of the Godhead. You write, “Why is it just the Father, presumably, who has to be ´propitiated´ and not the Son nor the Spirit?” While the doctrine of the Trinity and Incarnation cannot be reduced to mere formulas or a concise set of statements, it simply does not follow therefore that these essential Christian doctrines are incoherent. God leaves us with a sense of wonder and mystery. However hard we try, we will never be able to put God in a box. But why should that be required before placing our trust and faith in Him? While at the human level we cannot fully comprehend these truths, we can apprehend them nonetheless.

I think the doctrine of the Trinity does not make sense and the atonement is just one example of it. When pressed on this, Christians resort to saying, well god is beyond our comprehension and its a mystery, etc. To me that is a cop out.

Your view of the Trinity seems to stray somewhat from Christian orthodoxy. By overemphasizing the threeness it borders on tritheism, a form of polytheism. In other words, one cannot separate the Godhead as suggested.

The Bible clearly presents three persons. The Father sends the Son, the Son propitiates the Father, the Father raises the Son from the dead, etc. I am just following the Biblical language. the problem is that the Trinity doctrine is a human attempt to explain why the bible talks about three persons but yet insists there is only one God.

The orthodox doctrine of the Trinity stresses conversely the oneness of God who exists in three distinct persons coeternally—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Fundamental also to the orthodox view is the understanding that the three persons of the Godhead share one divine nature and substance coequally and can therefore be called “God.” None of the three persons of the Trinity is more subordinate to the other.

Correct, but as you say--the three persons share the divine nature coequally. If the atonement is required by something inherent in the nature of God, namely his holiness, then why does the Father alone have to be propitiated. The implication is that somehow the Son and the Spirit are not quite equal, which is a big problem for you and your belief system.

In order to accomplish the mission of restoring humanity to Himself, God takes on human nature without divesting Himself of his divine nature. Although the persons of the Godhead can be distinguished, they cannot be separated. There are not three discrete beings, but, rather, one. None of the three persons of the Trinity can exist without the other any more than, say, a triangle can exist without one of its three sides.

Okay but now you are teetering towards Modalism. In addition, you have the problem that the Son was separated from the Father on the cross while suffering the spiritual death that man deserves.

In the incarnation, Christ’s human nature is not essential to his existence as his divine nature. On the cross, Christ suffers, therefore, in his human nature both physically and consciously. The crucifixion does not diminish the oneness or the divine nature of the Godhead in any way. For example, as you point out, God cannot die. God cannot not exist any more than, say, a round square can exist. His human nature was crucified, not his divine nature. However, the conjoined life of the Trinity, as suggested above, means that Christ did not suffer alone. Each divine person of the Godhead experienced mutually the pain of the crucifixion as God, in Christ, reconciled the world to Himself (2 Cor 5:19).

One of the most clever explanations that I have heard, but not without problems. First, you just said that the divine nature in Christ cannot die or suffer and then you say each member of the Godhead experienced the pain of the crucifixion. Isn't that contradictory? Second, if you say the Father suffered, how do you avoid the charge of Patripassianism?

Scholars often posit penal substitution as the best explanation for Christ’s voluntary death on the cross. Those who object penal substitution theory need to show why the model fails. I remain skeptical that that has been achieved here.


I think I have shown it. See my blog for a more thorough examination of PST. But not only me, I think Greek Orthodox theologians, Socinus, Gustav Aulen, Hugo Grotius and others have shown that it fails.

Moreover, even if one were to demonstrate that Penal Theory is incoherent or somehow fails to square with Scripture, all that would follow is that the model is not the best explanation for Christ’s voluntary death on the cross.

Okay but here is my point. I think the NT clearly teaches PST. So, in my opinion, if PST is wrong, then the Scripture is wrong.

But note that that conclusion is entirely compatible with the belief that God reconciled human beings to Himself through the voluntary death of Christ on our behalf as Scripture declares. Perhaps the Satisfaction Theory makes more sense or some other, yet-to-be-developed model best explains the innerworkings of the atonement. The lack of a coherent, human derived model that details the ins and outs of the atonement does nothing to make our belief in the atonement unwarranted.

I think it does because it shows that the teachings of Scripture are really contradictory. Theologians have had 2000 years to come up with a unified, coherent, doctrine of the atonement and they haven't done so. What does that tell me? Its impossible to do so because the Scriptures are contradictory.

We can believe we have salvation through Christ while remaining agnostic as to how the atonement plays out precisely in God’s economy. Maybe God wants us to believe that Christ atoned for our sins simply by faith. The point is the failure of one or more models does not negate the truth that Christ died in our place so that we can, once again, have fellowship with God.

So in other words, just shut off your brain and have faith? I am sorry, I am not willing to do that.

Preview of Upcoming Attractions

The purpose of my blog is to explain Why I De-Converted from Evangelical Christianity. I am not sure how long it will take me to systematically discuss all the issues that led to my loss of faith. I am willing to take as long as necessary.

So far, I have focused on the atonement. I chose this one first because it was, in some ways, the one that shook my faith the most. I distinctly remember a time in the early 1990's when I was on top of my roof in Arizona fixing the evaporative cooler when the thought struck me: How could someone dying 2000 years ago have any effect on me today? It was a startling thought. As any good Christian evangelical, I attributed the thought to Satan or one of his demons. I remembered the passage in 2 Cor. 10:5: Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. I thought that I need to cast down this imagination and bring my thoughts into the captivity of Christ.

The question kept resurfacing in my mind and I embarked on a thorough study of the atonement to assuage my doubts. Instead of resloving my doubts, though, they just became stronger. More doubts and problems with regard to other doctrines that I was teaching came into my mind. I tried to study those as well. Eventually, I had to be honest with myself and admit that I no longer believed the Evangelical Theology that I was teaching and preaching. This whole shift took several years.

While I am not finished discussing the problems with the Atonement, I want to preview for you some of the other issues that eventually led to my apostasy. These problems, and others (the list below is not exhaustive), will be discussed going forward on my blog, although not necessarily in this order.


1. The Problem of Evil

Here I will focus primarily on Natural Evil, i.e. hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, childhood cancer, birth defects, etc. I will focus on these because I don't think the free-will argument can come close to answering the problem of natural evil. (I am not sure it answers the question of moral evil, either, but it certainly doesn't answer natural evil.)

2. The Problem of the Bible as Divine Revelation

Here I will deal with many questions including: If the Bible is a divine revelation, why is it so ambiguous (i.e., subject to multiple interpretations)? If the Bible is a divine revelation, why does it include so much "worthless material"? If the Bible is a divine revelation, why does it contradict itself? If the Bible is a divine revelation, why does it contain so many divergent theologies? If the Bible is a divine revelation, why was there so much controversy over the canon and why did it take so long for Christians to agree? If the Bible is a divine revelation, why did God allow not only the original mss. to disappear but also the copies made in the first couple of centuries, thereby leaving us with no certain way of reconstructing the original documents?

3. The Problem of the Resurrection

Here I will deal with the lack of substantial evidence for believing in the resurrection of Jesus. I will interact with William Craig's arguments, N. T. Wright's and others. I will also deal with the fact that Christian theologians cannot agree on the nature of Christ's resurrection "body."

4. The Problem of the Incarnation

Here I will deal with the various Christologies that existed in the first four hundred years of the Church and how "orthodoxy" eventually won out.

5. The Problem of the Trinity

Here I will deal with the various ideas relative to the Godhead during the first three hundred years of the Church and how "orthodoxy" eventually won out.

6. The Problem of Christians

Here I will deal with questions such as: Why is there little or no evidence in the lives of Christians that Christianity is real? Why is conversion and life-change not unique to Christianity? In other words, why can you find people who have converted to Mormonism or Islam or some other religion who made drastic life changes? Is there really a psychological explanation rather than a supernatural one?

So, I think you can see that this blog will be continuing for a long, long time. I look forward to exploring these issues and your comments along the way.

As a side note, I will be travelling by car from Phoenix to Atlanta this week and will probably not be able to do much posting. I will be on the radio on Monday at 6:20pm Eastern time discussing the existence of God with a priest and a rabbi. You can listen on-line here . The podcast will also be posted at the radio's website within a couple of days of its airing.

The Teachings of Jesus Contradict PST

Another inconsistency faced by PST adherents is that their theory contradicts both the actions and the teachings of Jesus. In the life of Jesus one sees forgiveness granted freely, whereas PST argues that God cannot forgive freely but must first be propitiated.

For example, in Luke 5, four men lower a man sick of the palsy down from the roof so that he can get to Jesus through the crowd. The Gospel of Luke reports about Jesus: “And when he saw their faith, he said unto him, Man, thy sins are forgiven thee” (v. 20). Note he didn’t say that his sins would be forgiven after a sacrifice of blood was made to propitiate the Father but that they are forgiven now on the basis of their faith.

A similar story is told in Luke 7. A sinner woman (probably a prostitute) comes to Jesus and washes his feet with her tears and her hair. Luke records Jesus as saying:

“Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, [the same] loveth little. And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven.” (vv. 47-48).

Just prior to these verses, Jesus told a parable:

There was a certain creditor which had two debtors: the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most? (vv. 41-42).

Now in the parable, it is clear that the creditor is forgiving the debtors freely. He is not demanding that they or someone else cough up the money first before he forgives. Immediately upon finishing the parable, Jesus tells the woman, her sins are forgiven. What is the proper conclusion to be drawn here? Jesus forgives the woman freely without requiring any type of payment up front.

Also in Luke, we have the account of the penitent thief on the cross. After the thief asks Jesus to remember him when he enters into his kingdom, Jesus replies: "Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43).

Not only do the actions of Jesus demonstrate free forgiveness but he teaches his disciples to do the same. In the so-called “Lord’s Prayer”, which is really the model prayer for the disciples, Jesus teaches his followers to pray: "And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us" (Luke 11:4; see also Matt. 6:12)). It sounds here like God’s forgiveness of us is the same as our forgiveness of others. If we forgive those who are indebted to us, we must do so freely. It would be pure eisegesis (i.e., reading one's own ideas into the text rather than allowing the text to say what it says)to say that the people his disciples are to forgive must first make some type of restitution or pay retribution. In Matthew’s version of this prayer, he adds the following:

"For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses" (Matt. 6:14-15).

Here Jesus makes it clear that his disciples must forgive freely those who trespass against them, if they expect their Father to freely forgive them. More examples could be produced but this is sufficient to illustrate the teachings of Jesus on this matter. Forgiveness is to be done freely.

Now, PST adherents know these verses as well as I do. How do they respond? Well as is typical of evangelical theologians, they read the actions and words of Jesus through the grid of the later NT writings. (Its interesting that this done on almost every point of doctrine by evangelicals. For example, see longtime Professor of Theology at Dallas Seminary, Charles Ryrie's book, So Great A Salvation). They argue that Jesus could forgive these people seemingly freely but that in reality, he could do so only because he knew that he was the “lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” (Rev. 13:8) In other words, since God is eternal and Jesus is God, whether the death had taken place in time yet was immaterial. It was a certainty in God’s mind.

Well, it was not a certainty in the minds of the disciples and those who heard Jesus speak these words. Why didn’t Jesus clarify? Why did he leave them believing that forgiveness was to come freely? And why didn’t Luke who apparently wrote the gospel that bears his name, insert this little theological caveat? He was a companion of Paul and no doubt understood Pauline theology.

In the “Sermon on the Mount”, Jesus says:

"Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have [thy] cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust" (Matt. 5:38-45).

Here Jesus is plainly teaching his disciples that they are not to seek retribution for wrongs done to them. They are to love their enemies and bless the ones who curse them and do good to the ones who hate them, and etc. Why should they do this? So that they may properly imitate their Heavenly Father who does the same. He sends sunshine and rain equally on the just and the unjust.

Once again, the PST adherents are faced with a problem. How do they answer it? They do what they typically do in interpreting the Gospels, they read Jesus’ words through the grid of Pauline theology. They reply that man is not to take revenge on those who do him wrong but rather he is to leave that up to God. Its God’s prerogative not man’s to seek revenge.(See Pierced for Our Transgressions, pp. 234-235). Paul wrote: "Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but [rather] give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance [is] mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head" (Romans 12:19-20).

Once again, those who heard Jesus give the “Sermon on the Mount,” did not have access to Paul’s teachings. Not only that but Jesus teaches that his followers are not to seek retribution for wrongs done to them but to model themselves after the Father who sends rain on the wicked and the righteous alike. There is no intimation at all in Jesus’ words that one should just leave the “revenge-taking” up to God. To interpret his words this way is nothing but blatant eisegesis.

Why are evangelicals driven to eisegesis? Because, in my opinion, the teachings of the various writers of Scripture are not in harmony. Since evangelicals insist that the Bible is a unified, inspired revelation from God (some even say its inerrant),they believe it must be in agreement with itself. This presupposition drives them to "jump through hoops" and perform “mental gymnastics” in order to try to harmonize the Scripture.

Controversy over PST in the UK Evangelical Alliance

A controversy erupted in 2004 over the book, The Lost Message of Jesus, by Steve Chalke. Chalke, an evangelical and a Baptist, repudiated the penal substitutionary theory in the book and even called it cosmic child abuse. This created a firestorm in Evangelicalism resulting in a symposium on the controversy in July 2005 at the London School of Theology organized by the UK Evangelical Alliance. Speakers at the conference included Steve Chalke, Joel Green, Graham McFarlane, Steve Motyer, and Stuart Murray Williams in opposition to PST and David Hilborn, Garry Williams, Steve Holmes, Howard Marshall, Sue Groom, and Simon Gathercole in favor the theory. Some of the papers from the conference are available on-line.

Later in 2007, three theologians associated with Oak Hill Theological College in London, Steve Jeffery, Mike Ovey, and Andrew Sach, issued perhaps the most complete defense of PST ever written. The book is titled: Piereced for Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution.

In 368 pages the authors defend PST historically (against the charge that it originated in the Reformation), exegetically (against the charge that its unbiblical), and apologetically (against the various criticisms). The first several pages of the book contain endorsements from what reads like a "who's who" of evangelical theologians, including D.A. Carson, Howard Marshall, John Piper, Roger Nicole, and Timothy Dwight among others. Interestingly enough, the Bishop of Durham and well-respected scholar, N.T. Wright would not endorse it, even though he claims to be an adherent of PST. He called the book deeply, profoundly, and disturbingly unbiblical.

At the symposium mentioned above, Stuart Murray Williams laid out six reasons for rejecting PST:

1. Punishing an innocent man – even a willing victim – is fundamentally unjust.
2. Biblical justice is essentially about restoration of relationships rather than retribution.
3. Penal substitution is inherently violent and contravenes central aspects of the message of Jesus.
4. Penal substitution raises serious difficulties for our understanding of the Trinity.
5. Penal substitution fails to engage adequately with structural and systemic evil.
6. If penal substitution is correct, neither the life of Jesus nor his resurrection have much significance.

I fully agree with numbers 1, 3 and 4 of William's criticisms. I disagree with number 2 and I am ambivalent towards numbers 5 and 6.

I have already addressed points number 1 and number 4 on this blog.

I disagree with point number 2 because I believe the Bible does teach retribution for sin. C.S. Lewis, in his famous article, The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment , makes a very strong case for the biblical model to be that of retribution for sin. The restoration of relationships may be the ultimate goal, but it cannot be attained until retribution for sin has taken place.

Point number 3, I have not yet treated. I agree with Williams that PST seems to contradict many of the teachings of Jesus. I will address this point in tomorrow's blog post.
I

PST is repugnant to many Christian Theologian's sense of Justice

While there can be no doubt that the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement is held by the vast majority of evangelical theologians, not every evangelical theologian holds it. Some find it repugnant to their sense of justice. Most non-evangelical Christian theologians also find it obnoxious. Here are some statements on the subject:

Evangelical Theologians

David Dilling, The Atonement and Human Sacrifice, Grace Theological Journal 12.2 (Spring, 1971,pp. 3-22) writes:

Vicarious punishment on our level would, of course, be a serious miscarriage of justice and indeed immoral. The death of Christ, however, is not strictly analogous to the case of a human judge punishing an innocent third party in the stead of a condemned criminal. At least the analogy dare not be pressed. In the case of Christ's sacrifice there is only one party beside the condemned. He is, "Judge, Wronged Party, King (or Law), and Substitute". The case is wholly unique and the same Bible which declares it so to be also declares the impossibility of any other substitutionary atonement apart from this.

So even though Dilling accepts PST because he thinks it biblical, he still admits that the punishment of the innocent in place of the guilty is a serious miscarriage of justice in the human mind. He argues that the death of Christ is really not analogous to an innocent person suffering in place of a guilty one in the human sphere; however, he says this is because in the divine sphere, He is Judge, Wronged Party, King (or Law) and Substitute."

I still maintain that PST violates man's innate sense of what is right and wrong. Allow me to give an analogy.

Imagine you live in on a desert island where one man is the absolute monarch. This king owns the island and he is the lawgiver, the judge, the jury and the executioner.

Lets say someone commits a murder on this island. The murder victim is actually the King's adopted child. The alleged is brought before the judge (king) and the judge hears the evidence including the confession of the murderer. The defendant is remorseful and sincerly apologizes to the King and begs his forgiveness. The King rules the murderer is guilty and says "my sentence will be announced tomorrow. "

At the sentencing, the judge says that "while this man is undoubtedly guilty and deserves to be executed for the crime, I still love him. I would prefer to set him free because he is remorseful. However, out of respect for the rule of Law and in accordance with my righteous nature, he must die." At that moment, the King's only biological son stands up and says: "I love the murderer too and I can see he is remorseful. I would like for him to go free. But since, punishment must be carried out, I volunteer to die in his place." The Father, who is also the King and the Judge smiles. He and his only son talked about it the night before. They agreed that this was a very noble thing to do and if the son was willing, the Father would allow it.

So the Judge strikes his gavel and announces his sentence. "While the convicted deserves to die for his crime, I have agreed to allow my son, my only true son, to die in his place." The King says: "I am by decree transferring the guilt of the murder to my son, and my son will be executed at daybreak in his place. In addition, I am transferring the righteousness of my son to the convicted murderer and from henceforth he will live in my palace and be treated as my son." He continues: "the convicted man will have his record completely expunged because the penalty for his crime will have been sufficiently paid."

The convicted murderer is overjoyed and promises to live the rest of his life in submission and absolute loyalty to the Father. He will never forget this act of mercy and grace and will even set up shrines to praise the acts of the Son.

The next day after the execution, the murderer's chains are removed and he is ushered into the King's palace and given a place of honor.

Many of the people of the island, though, are not happy, they cry out: "This is not fair. This is not right. You cannot allow the murderer to go free. He and he alone must pay for his crime. Its not right to transfer the punishment to someone else. This goes against everything you have taught us, Oh, King."

The King replies: "Well the punishment for the crime has been paid and the murderer is remorseful and repentant, so in my mind its fair." Since I am the Lawgiver and the Judge, I and I alone get to decide what is fair. Do you poor peasants, really think you are smarter than me? I am the absolute ruler of this island and you are my subjects--how dare you question my fairness!

The people reply: "Yes, King you are right. This is your island and you have the right to do as you please, even if it doesn't seem right to us." Some of the people though could never accept this transfer of guilt and punishment to an innocent person because intuitively they knew it was wrong.

While this is not a perfect analogy (none are), I think it illustrates my point. No matter who says it (even the Monarch), no matter who is willing to die (even the Monarch's son), its still strikes man (who is made in the image of God) as innately wrong.

Larry Shelton, in A Covenant Concept of Atonement, Wesleyan Theological Journal, Vol. 19 (Spring 1984), pp. 91-108, while not saying that PST is repugnant, he recognizes that it has serious problems.

He writes: Calvin saw the problem in part, but scarcely improved the situation. His strange doctrine of imputation [i.e., transferring of guilt to the innocent and righteousness to the sinner] led him to say that God's wrath does not really rest on Christ, but God treats Him as if He were angry. Thus, Christ does not bear God's anger, but merely something exactly like it! This negates any practical understanding of sanctification because the believer is not really righteous, but by a moral fiction is treated as if he were.


Steve Chalke in The Lost Message of Jesus, (pp.182-183) writes:

The fact is that the cross is not a form of cosmic child abuse, a vengeful father punishing his son for an offense he has not even committed. Understandably, both people inside and outside of the church have found this twisted version of events morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith. Deeper than that, however, is that such a concept stands in total contradiction to the statement that God is love. If the cross is a personal act of violence perpetrated by God toward human kind but borne by His Son, then that makes a mockery of Jesus’ own teaching to love your enemies and to refuse to repay evil with evil.

Non-Evangelical Theologians

Peter Abelard writes: Indeed, how cruel and wicked it seems that anyone should demand the blood of an innocent person as the price for anything, or that it should in anyway please him that an innocent man should be slain--still less that God should consider the death of his Son so agreeable that by it he should be reconciled to the whole world! (cited by William C. Placher in Why the cross? Christian Century, Dec. 12, 2006.

P. T. Forsyth: Does God's judgment mean exacting the utmost farthing or suffering? Does it mean that in the hour of his death Christ suffered, compressed into one brief moment, all the pains of hell that the human race deserved? We cannot think about things in that way. God does not work by such equivalents. Let us get rid of that materialistic idea of equivalents. What Christ gave to God was not an equivalent penalty, but an adequate confession of God's holiness, rising from amid extreme conditions of sin.(cited by Robert S. Paul in The Atonement and the Sacraments, p.236, in Dilling, p. 35.


Horace Bushnell, in The Vicarious Sacrifice, Grounded in Principles or Universal Obligation (1886 )argues:

On the whole this matter of contrived compensation to justice which so many take for a gospel, appears to contain about the worst reflexion upon God's justice that could be stated. . . The justice satisfied is satisfied with an injustice The penalties threatened, as against wrongdoers are not to be executed on them, because they have been executed on a right-doer! viz., Christ.

So PST although the dominant view among evangelicals is still seen by many Christian theologians(both evangelical and non-evangelical alike) as repulsive to man's innate sense of justice.

Succinct Article Showing Problems with PST

I read an article yesterday entitled: The Participatory Model of the Atonement. It was written by two philosophers of religion: Dr. Timothy Bayne, Lecturer at the University of Oxford and Dr. Greg Restall, Lecturer at the University of Melbourne. They have given one of the best summaries of the problems with the various models of the atonement that I have ever read. While, I don't intend to deal with their alternative model--The Participatory Model at this time, I will deal with it in a future blog.

They begin their investigation of the current models of the Atonement by citing Peter Abelard's famous constraint. Abelard maintained that any true model of the Atonement must be neither unintelligible, arbitrary, illogical nor immoral. Abelard (1079-1142) was perhaps the preeminent philosopher and theologian of the 12th century. He is most famous for his Moral Influence Theory of the Atonement which he formulated in response to Anselm's Satisfaction Theory of the 11th century.

Abelard was one of the first to develop a subjective view of the atonement, the theories proposed prior to him, the Ransom Theory, the Satisfaction Theory, etc were objective views of the Atonement. Objective views deal with how the atonement affected God, whereas, subjective views deal with how it affected man. Abelard maintained that the atonement provided the ultimate example of self-sacrificing love and obedience which believers should emulate. His view is widely held today by liberal Christian theologians.

Bayne and Restall (p. 13) have a serious issue with Abelard's view. They write:

One problem concerns what exactly it is that we are meant to emulate. For the emulation to have any purpose, we need to be able to characterize Christ’s death as having an objective, intrinsic point. D. Campbell captures the problem here well: "A meaningless or trivial death cannot reveal love: it reveals nothing – except perhaps foolishness. If I drive my car at high speed into a brick wall, loudly proclaiming my love for all humanity, my surviving family would probably wonder how I had left my senses,not how extraordinarily loving my gesture was" (Natural Theology in Paul? Reading Romans I.19-20, International Journal of Systematic Theology, 1/3:239).

Bayne and Restall next examine how the various atonement theories understand the concept of sin, as this is foundational to any atonement model. How one views sin will influence what one thinks was accomplished relative to sin on the cross. They delineate three views of sin, the ontological, the deontic, and the relational.

An ontological conception of sin conceives of it as a feature or element of human nature; it is something from which we suffer. One might also call it “pathological” conception of sin, for it conceives of sin as a sickness.(p. 2).

A deontic conception of sin conceives of sin in terms of a failure to fulfil our moral obligations. Sin, on this view, is immoral behaviour, and it results in a moral debt; it involves a debit in our moral ledger. (p. 2)

A relational conception of sin conceives of it in terms
of broken or alienated relationships; sin, on this view, consists in the fact that our relationship with God and each other is not what it ought to be (p. 2).

The position held by all adherents of PST and most evangelical theologians is the deontic view of sin. Bayne and Restall write: By far the dominant approach to the atonement in philosophical theology is deontic. Penal, satisfaction, merit and sacrificial models of the atonement are all deontic models in that they conceive of the atonement as dealing with a problem of moral debt. (p. 3)

Anselm was the first to systematize such a view. According to Anselm’s satisfaction model in "Cur Deus Homo", the debt is paid when Christ gives God the honour that the human race owes him. The debt is dealt with by payment: the death of Christ qualifies as payment for the sin of humanity. (p. 4).

Craig and Restall find this position to be immoral, they argue:

There seems something morally problematic about this claim. To conceive of this as the centre of our obligations is morally dangerous. If the obligation to honour God is the ground of our obligations, then God's relation to us is morally no different to a petty bureaucrat, whose relations with his inferiors are controlled by whether or not those inferiors show respect. This is not to deny that respect may be appropriate in a right relationship, but to analyse the rightness of the relationship in terms of respect is to conceive of God’s desires for his creatures in terms of their compliance and deference. This does grave injustice to the Gospel imperatives for the believer to love God and love neigbour. (p. 4).

The Reformers, especially Calvin and his followers, modified Anselm's satisfaction view into the Penal Substitutionary View. To them, it was not primarliy God's honor that had been offended but his holiness. Man had broken God's law and punishment was the only proper response. Bayne and Restall agree with with Richard Swinburne's criticism of PST: talk of law courts and punishment makes the whole process too "mechanical" for a means of reconciliation that ought to be intimate and personal” (Responsibility and Atonement, 1989, p. 152).

The authors of our article find PST to be inadequate. They write: What does God’s forgiveness cost God? Does God have to struggle to overcome feelings of anger and resentment towards us? That doesn’t sound like the God of the New Testament – a God whose very essence is love and whose nature it is to always show mercy. Why can’t God simply decide to forgive us? What exactly is the price that God must pay, and to whom must it be paid? (p. 10).

Bayne and Restall have a basic problem with the deontological view of sin held by both Anselm and the PST proponents. They write:

The deontological model of sin is also in tension with an ontological understanding of sin. If sin is something under which we (together with the rest of creation) labour, then it is not clear that we are morally responsible for it. An inability to do something is normally thought of as excusatory. As the slogan has it, ‘ought implies can’. The sick need a doctor not a judge or jailor. Even if deontic models of the atonement are able to deal with sin as a deontological problem, they fail to deal with it as a problem of human nature. (p. 8).

Here is yet another problem that PST adherents (most evangelicals) must address in order to defend their theory of the atonement. Why does God hold man accountable for that which he cannot help doing?

Next, Bayne and Restall point out the intra-Trinitarian problems associated with the satisfaction theory and the penal theory of the atonement. They argue:

Consider, for instance, the penal model. The idea that God might punish God for a debt owed to God is a strange one. Is God punishing Godself? That seems pathological. Is God the Father punishing God the Son? That seems sadistic. It also seems to posit a kind of disunity in the being of God that is foreign to Christian thought. (pp. 11-12).

Finally, consider the Anselmian line, according to which Christ pays God the honour that we owe him. There are two ways to understand this position. On one view, Christ honours God the Father and not God as such. If this is Anselm’s view it is a strange one, for surely God as such ought to be honoured, and not solely God the Father. So perhaps Christ honours God. This view too is strange, for Christ as a member of the Trinity is God. Is Christ honouring himself? (p. 12)

So, Bayne and Restall find at least four problems with the Penal Substiutionary Theory of the Atonement.

1. It makes God out to be a petty tyrant. He is so offended by man's sin that he demands someone die in order to assuage his anger.

2. It is too mechanical. It is almost like a mathematical equation, so much punishment is deserved due to sin and Jesus bears that amount in order to "even the scales."

3. It fails to deal with why man is held accountable for that which he cannot help doing. It posits man as being guilty even though he could not avoid committing sin.

4. It creates disunity and inequalities within the Trinity. For example, if the Son is being punished by the Father, it implies that the Father is angry with the Son (the objection that this anger is a result of man's sin being imputed to the Son does not lessen the fact of the anger) or at a minimum there is some division within the Trinity. If the Father only has to be propitated by atonement, that implies that there is something in the Father's nature that is not present in the Son's (and the Spirit's too), thus making them less than full equals.

In addition, they do not even mention my major objection to substitutionary theories, namely, the fact that it is unjust to punish an innocent person in the place of a guilty one.

Human Sacrifices and the Death of Jesus

I believe that the idea of Jesus Christ dying for man’s sin has its origin in the ancient concept of offering human sacrifices to a deity. We know human sacrifice was common in ancient times.

Human sacrifice is the act of killing human beings as part of a religious ritual (ritual killing). Its typology closely parallels the various practices of ritual slaughter of animals (animal sacrifice) and of religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice has been practiced in various cultures throughout history. Victims were typically ritually killed in a manner that was supposed to please or appease gods, spirits or the deceased, for example as a propitiatory offering, or as a retainer sacrifice when the King's servants are killed in order for them to continue to serve their master in the next life.

Human sacrifice has been practiced on a number of different occasions and in many different cultures. The various rationales behind human sacrifice are the same that motivate religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice is intended to bring good fortune and to pacify the gods, for example in the context of the dedication of a completed building like a temple or bridge. There is a Chinese legend that there are thousands of people entombed in the Great Wall of China. In ancient Japan, legends talk about Hitobashira ("human pillar"), in which maidens were buried alive at the base or near some constructions as a prayer to ensure the buildings against disasters or enemy attacks. For the re-consecration of Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs reported that they killed about 80,400 prisoners over the course of four days. According to Ross Hassig, author of Aztec Warfare, "between 10,000 and 80,400 persons" were sacrificed in the ceremony. (“Human Sacrifice,” in Wikipedia)

Even conservative Bible scholars acknowledge the prominence of human sacrifices in the ancient world. For example the article “Sacrifice, Human”, in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia(ed. James Orr) states:

As an expression of religious devotion, human sacrifice has been widespread at certain stages of the race's development. The tribes of Western Asia were deeply affected by the practice, probably prior to the settlement of the Hebrews in Palestine, and it continued at least down to the 5th century BC. At times of great calamity, anxiety and danger, parents sacrificed their children as the greatest and most costly offering which they could make to propitiate the anger of the gods and thus secure their favor and help. There is no intimation in the Bible that enemies or captives were sacrificed; only the offering of children by their parents is mentioned. The belief that this offering possessed supreme value is seen in Micah 6:6 ff., where the sacrifice of the firstborn is the climax of a series of offerings which, in a rising scale of values, are suggested as a means of propitiating the angry Yahweh. A striking example of the rite as actually practiced is seen in 2 Ki 3:27, where Mesha the king of Moab (made famous by the Moabite Stone), under the stress of a terrible siege, offered his eldest son, the heir-apparent to the throne, as a burnt offering upon the wall of Kir-hareseth. As a matter of fact this horrid act seems to have had the effect of driving off the allies.

Human sacrifice was ordinarily resorted to, no doubt, only in times of great distress, but it seems to have been practiced among the old Canaanitish tribes with some frequency (Dt 12:31). The Israelites are said to have borrowed it from their Canaanite neighbors (2 Ki 16:3; 2 Ch 28:3), and as a matter of fact human sacrifices were never offered to Yahweh, but only to various gods of the land. The god who was most frequently worshipped in this way was Moloch or Molech, the god of the Ammonites (2 Ki 23:10; Lev 18:21; 20:2), but from Jeremiah we learn that the Phoenician god Baal was, at least in the later period of the history, also associated with Molech in receiving this worship (Jer 19:5; 31:35).

Dr. David R. Dilling, a graduate of Wheaton College and Grace Theological Seminary, writes: In Mesopotamia, for example, we have the positive evidence of a published Babylonian cylinder seal which unmistakably portrays the actual execution of a human sacrifice. A.H. Sayce, British Assyriologist of a generation ago, has called attention to an Akkadian poem of pre-Semitic times with its later Assyrian translation concerning the sacrifice of a firstborn son. It says distinctly, "His offspring for his life he gave." Biblical evidence that human sacrifice was known in Mesopotamia in later times is found in II Ki. 17:31, ". . .And the Sepharvites burnt their children in the fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim."(The Atonement and Human Sacrifice, Grace Theological Journal 12.2 [Spring, 1971]).

We know that some Jews also practiced human sacrifice, albeit to a foreign deity, Molech. King Ahaz is said to have “made his son pass through the fire”, a clear reference to human sacrifice (2 Kin. 17:17; ). King Manasseh, likewise, is said to have made his son “pass through the fire” (2 Kin. 21:6). “Pass through the fire” in the King James Version is rendered “sacrifice in the fire” in the New International Version and “give to be burned as a sacrifice” in the New Living Translation.

The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia in the article on “Molech,“ says regarding the phrase “pass through the fire”:

When we come to consider the nature of this worship it is remarkable how few details are given regarding it in Scripture. The place where it was practiced from the days of Ahaz and Manasseh was the Valley of Hinnom where Topheth stood, a huge altar-pyre for the burning of the sacrificial victims. There is no evidence connecting the worship with the temple in Jerusalem. Ezekiel's vision of sun-worshippers in the temple is purely ideal (Ezek 8). A priesthood is spoken of as attached to the services (Jer 49:3; compare Zeph 1:4,5). The victims offered to the divinity were not burnt alive, but were killed as sacrifices, and then presented as burnt offerings. "To pass through the fire" has been taken to mean a lustration or purification of the child by fire, not involving death. But the prophets clearly speak of slaughter and sacrifice, and of high places built to burn the children in the fire as burnt offerings (Jer 19:5; Ezek 16:20,21).

So it is clear that some Jews in the Old Testament period practiced human sacrifice (Jer. 32:35; Eze. 16:21, 20:26, 20:31, 23:37).

While Yahweh was displeased with these human sacrifices and forbade them (Lev. 18:21; Dt. 18:10), it seems that his main problem was that they were offered up to a foreign god. As the evangelical theologian, David Dilling says:

1) The legal prohibitions, as well as the prophetic polemics, are uniformly related to heathen deities. In the passages cited, human sacrifice occurs almost incidentally amid lists of abominations rendered in connection with idolatrous worship. (2) The greater offense is not the sacrifice, but the idolatry involved in offering such a sacrifice to a god other than Yahweh. The first commandment is not, "Thou shalt not offer human sacrifices, "but, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." (3) The Bible contains no prohibitions of human sacrifice to Yahweh. The only possible exception to this principle is the legislation regarding the redemption of the first-born sons in Ex. 13:1-16. This passage, however, does not condemn human sacrifice. On the contrary, it proves that Yahweh had a very definite claim on all the first-born of Israel, whether man or beast.( p. 25).

One can also argue that Yahweh’s command to Abraham to offer up Isaac is evidence that human sacrifice, in principle at least, was an acceptable idea in OT times. God’s command to Abraham in Genesis 22 has been unsettling to many a Christian commentator or theologian. Many conservatives have argued that it was never Yahweh’s intention for Abraham to go through with the sacrifice but that he was simply testing Abraham’s faith. Dilling, however, takes great issue with this notion. He writes: The most frequent objection raised against the Biblical presentation of Yahweh and His relationship to sacrifice is that sacrifice, whether of human beings or of beasts, is an element of primitive religion, and that Yahweh really desires not sacrifice at all but obedience. . . . This view, carried to its logical conclusion, would eliminate the necessity of the sacrificial death of Christ. This in turn eliminates the atonement and thereby abnegates the whole Christian gospel.(pp. 26-27).

I think Dilling is right. If one argues that human sacrifice, per se, is unacceptable to God, then one must also maintain that the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, was unacceptable to God. Thus, the consistent evangelical theologian must maintain that human sacrifice, in and of itself, was not against the will of God, otherwise, he/she has just eliminated the possibility that the death of Christ was acceptable to God.

Dilling continues: The crucial question related to the proposed sacrifice of Isaac is this: In the death of Christ, did God actually demand the sacrifice of an innocent human being as a substitutionary sacrifice for others, thereby atoning for their sins and propitiating the wrath of a holy God against them? The dilemma which this question poses for the interpreter is: If answered affirmatively, then there is no a priori ground for denying that God could have demanded the actual slaying of Isaac as a sacrifice. Indeed, if God could demand the death of his own Son as a substitutionary sacrifice, then there is more ground for expecting Him to demand the sacrifice of other human beings than for denying the same. On the other hand, if one answers negatively, then the whole basis for Christian salvation is destroyed.( p. 28)

Dilling (pp. 27-28) believes that the sacrifices found in other religions actually derive from the revelation of the OT God to his people. He argues:

The institution of sacrifice is a primitive, savage rite that was merely tolerated for a season until more advanced revelation could be received. The latter position we reject on the grounds of our presupposition that the Holy Scriptures are an inspired and inerrant revelation, and the corollary that the religion of Israel is therefore essentially revealed rather than evolved. However, even apart from this premise, it is quite possible to establish with a relatively high degree of certitude that the origin of sacrifice must be accounted for on the basis of divine revelation. Hobart Freeman has pointed out that:” The universal prevalence of the practice of vicarious and piacular sacrifice. . .cannot be reasonably explained apart from the idea that it was derived from a common and authoritative source.” [Hobart E. Freeman, "The Doctrine of Substitution in the Old Testament" (unpublished Th.D. dissertation, Grace Theological Seminary, Winona Lake, Ind., 1961), p. 103.])

While I disagree with Dilling and Freeman on the origin of the idea of human sacrifice, I think it’s a powerful admission on their part, when they say that it was really Yahweh's idea. I believe the case is actually reversed. The concept of offering a human sacrifice to propitiate a deity originated among the Gentiles and that the Jews, while generally repulsed by the idea, understood it as the ultimate offering to a deity. That explains why the death of Jesus was later interpreted by the early followers of Jesus (who were largely Jews) as the ultimate and final sacrifice for the sins of mankind. It was, in their understanding, the climax and fulfillment of all the animal sacrifices in Judaism (see the Book of Hebrews).

News Flash!!

I have two important news items to share with my blog readers today:

1) Hector Avalos (Ph.D., Harvard), John Loftus (Th.M., Trinity Evangelical Divinity School), James Linville (Ph.D, University of Edinburgh) and I today announce that we intend to start a new society which will meet annually in the same city and at the same time as the annual meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), The Evangelical Theological Society (ETS), and The Evangelical Philosophical Society (EPS). We three men, along with some other interested parties, will have an exploratory meeting on November 20th this year in New Orleans (6:30pm at the Marriott Hotel) to organize the Society. While the name for the new society has not yet been decided, the three main goals will be:

a. Promote scholarship of the Bible from a non-religious viewpoint.

b. Produce scholarly critiques of religionist biblical scholarship, and how it functions to maintain the authority and value of the Bible in the modern world.

c. Form a counterweight to the Evangelical Theological Society, and perhaps engage in cordial dialogue and debate with its members through written formats and through joint sessions.

2) I will be will be on 97.1 FM Talk Radio in St. Louis on Monday October 26th at 6:20pm Eastern time. I will be part of a program discussing the existence of God. The other two participants will be, Father Jeff Vomund and Rabbi Shmuel Greenwald. The discussion will last until 7pm Eastern. You can listen live at their website. They will also have the mp3 recording of the discussion on their website the next day.

I am excited about both of these news items. The Society proposed above will attract some top notch scholars and will prove to be a valuable anti-dote to the dogmas of evangelical theology. The talk program will be my first venture into this format. I will have to contain myself to short sound bites as the format will not allow for any kind of in-depth discussion. Hopefully, though, it will prove thought provoking for the listeners.

Another Former Evangelical Tells His Story

From time to time, I will post on my blog the stories (testimonies) of former evangelicals. Today, I present the story of Howard Pepper. I have known Howard for several years and highly respect him. Here is his story:


I'm new to this website and was fascinated by your story, Former Fundy, largely because it has so many similarities to mine. I can appreciate virtually everything you related. In the extent of our formal education and involvement in ministry/teaching, most of the other participants might not be able to grasp our experience, but I know many have come a similar path, and experienced the same basic things.

From that talk of "experience" I'll shift to the rational/analytical side of issues of faith. I was always fairly intellectual and very curious. Raised in a conservative Christian family and church, I was "saved" around six, and became a serious Bible student by 15 or so, began witnessing, etc. I went to Biola University here on the "left coast." Then on to Talbot School of Theology for an M.Div., and back to Biola for a MA in Marriage, Family, and Child Counseling, which I practiced for 10 years. I was also heavily involved with apologetics, especially under Dr. Walter Martin for 4 years, leading his research and writing department for a year, after seminary. During that period, and after, I encountered nearly every kind of major challenge to Christianity. I thought they all had good answers at the time, and I doled them out.

We (Martin's Christian Research Inst.) were right down the street from Dr. John W. Montgomery, and Josh McDowell, a Talbot grad, came around on occasion. I conversed with Norm Geisler and a few other such notables during those years or prior, and so on. I say this to give you a flavor of my immersion and affiliations--my exposure to top level apologetics.

In retrospect, it's fair to say I became smug. And it would be many more years before I questioned anything at the core of Evangelical theology. You put your finger on what I consider the main reason very few with extensive education and involvement in the Evangelical/Fundamentalist world leave, despite doubts that often crop up--it's too hard to even let oneself question deeply, and too threatening to important relationships, one's own ego, etc., let alone having to deal with possible spiritual fears, which you mentioned--Satan's deception, being damned, etc.

Well, during years of practicing Christian-based counseling, I also went further into apologetics, teaching Francis Schaeffer and the Christian worldview as well as psychology from a Christian perspective. I was also still into biblical and theological studies, and decided I wanted to get a Ph.D., but from a school with a broader perspective. I got into Claremont School of Theology (progressive/Process Theology bastion of Methodism and liberal Protestantism). The program was "Theology and Personality [psychology] with Emphasis in Religious Education." It actually had a good number of conservative students in the Ph.D., as well as other programs, some even more conservative than I. I was there part-time for 4 years, finishing the coursework, but I got derailed and never finished the dissertation and exams.

It wasn't primarily the liberal exposure at Claremont that convinced me Evangelicalism had gotten critical things seriously wrong, but I know the experience helped open me. (It wan't till about a year after leaving that I became convinced, on rational, theological bases, that I needed a new brand of faith. For one, I realized that I had created caricatures (with a lot of help from things Evangelicals wrote and my profs and friends said) of liberals and "liberalism." They hardly resembled, at least at Claremont, what I'd come to expect. Rather, they tended to be consistent in applying "tolerance" (better put as inclusiveness, though with limits), being respectful of me and my views, as well as other conservatives. They were seemingly as devout and spiritually minded as Evangelicals. They liked to pray, worship, etc.

But their theology was clearly very different and they were comfortable in it, and excited. (None of which makes it right, of course--for the still-Evangelicals looking in.)


I'll cut the story short, but share a couple of the key points that finally convinced me I'd been perceiving and interpreting things poorly all those years.

First, it was largely theological. With enough exposure and reading, one does tend to realize the "differing interpretations" point you made is a critical tip-off. It indicates just what you emphasized, that there is little true clarity or "simplicity" in "The Gospel." The "faith once for all delivered..." is wishful thinking--a backwards extrapolation, and not identifiable in the NT. Objectively read, the NT authors are seen to differ significantly, many of them particularly out to defend their brand of orthodoxy, which is actually impossible to fully ascertain without creating a patchwork theology of many authors by "cutting and pasting" (and Jefferson is often ridiculed for an only slightly crasser form of the same).

As you imply, the only viable conclusion is Scripture (the OT as well) is a fascinating, profound, often inspirational human creation, but only that. I also systematically re-examined the supposed evidences for inspiration, Messianic prophecy (and others) being fulfilled, an historical basis for the resurrection, etc., etc., and realized how there was no real substance there, but rather, a strong base of tradition that is tough to see around, partly because it started being built up during and right after the writing of the NT. I came to see that "apostolic authority" in relation to NT books was merely an invention of the proto-orthodox not long after the completion of works that would be eventually canonized.

So a realization of there being no evidence for a Holy Spirit-guided process of recognition of authoritative books--NT or OT--was another key point. There was no reason to take a given book or set of books (e.g., the four Gospels), as uniquely revealed or inspired above other writings of the same periods. There were plenty of other writings, as well, though we have few early-enough copies to clearly establish
dating, just as for most of the NT books. I can't go into specifics here, but I continue to study Christian origins and NT scholarship, and the more I do, the stronger and stronger is the confirmation of the clear insights I began to get about the nature of scripture and the earliest Church, around 11 years ago. (Like you, I have more detail written up, & more yet to come, at www.naturalspirituality.wordpress.com.)

There are a lot more aspects of insights, historical and literary data (e.g., literary analysis and comparison of the NT w/ intertestamental Jewish works, Greek hero stories, Cynic philosophy, Philo, etc.), scientific and archeological data, etc. that went into my changing conclusions. It surely helped that knowledge of psychology, sociology, and anthropology, and even some theoretical physics and astronomy, made it easier for me than the typical Bible student to see that there were very good (not just get-by type) alternate explanations for all key elements of Christian dogma and related experience. That includes conversion experiences, Christian growth dynamics (not taking out, in my view, all spirit/Spirit elements), Christian origins, etc. I think I made sure every important category was covered before I was willing to conclude there was neither good evidence for nor any real need to hold to an Evangelical or "historic Christian faith" kind of theology.

Anyway, thanks, Former Fundy, for your courage and intellectual honesty in what you did years ago, and in sharing it with us. I know there are more like you "out there," but I encounter very few who share the kind of background with me that you do, and I hope we can collaborate more in the future.

Can one be "saved" by just reading the Bible?

Another reason for my de-conversion from evangelical Christianity was my realization that the Bible is a very ambiguous book, i.e., subject to many different interpretations.

Kevin Bauder, the President of Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Minneapolis, would certainly disagree with me. He has written an article on the Perspicuity of Scripture available online. Perspicuity, which means “clearness or lucidity, as of a statement” was a major tenent of the Reformation. The Reformers argued that one could read and understand the major teachings of the Bible without any help from the Roman Church. The RCC, on the other hand, maintained, that they, and only they, could properly interpret the Scriptures.

So which is it? Is the Bible unambiguous or is it open to a variety of opposing interpretations?

In the article, Bauder makes the following admission:

In some circles, one finds a naïve belief that a solitary individual, given no prior instruction, can simply sit down with a Bible and discover the entire Christian faith. The problems with this view are manifold. The first and most obvious is that no one has ever actually done this. The second is that God never intended anyone to do so—God’s plan was for those who had been taught to commit what they had learned to faithful people, who would in turn teach others (2 Tim. 2:2). The third is that wherever people have tried to start from nothing and interpret the Bible for themselves, they have (almost?) invariably produced error and even heresy.

I applaud him for this honest admission. However, prior to this statement, he writes:

In other words, the aspect of Scripture that can be understood by anyone is its saving message. Any truth that is essential to salvation is clearly and comprehensibly revealed "in some place of Scripture or other." Anyone can learn the way of Salvation by reading the Bible.

It is no small matter that the way of salvation has been revealed in language that any person can understand. We do not have to rely upon sophisticated intellectual tools. We do not have to rely upon specially-endued ecclesiastical spokesmen. If we can read the Bible in our hands, then we can know how to be saved.

So, while he would not say that the entire message of the Bible is perspicuous, he does believe that the basic message of “how one is to be saved” is crystal clear.

I completely disagree with his contention. If the way of salvation is so clear and obvious in Scripture, then why is there not unanimous or at least nearly unanimous agreement among those who accept the Bible as the Word of God on how one is to be saved?

I think you could make the point that the New Testament says clearly that one needs to believe (have faith) in Jesus in order to be saved (e.g. John 3:16). But there is still a host of questions:

1. What exactly is faith?

a. Is it merely intellectual assent? Members of the Grace Evangelical Society answer in the affirmative. On their website, one reads:

Faith is the conviction that something is true. To believe in Jesus (“he who believes in Me has everlasting life”) is to be convinced that He guarantees everlasting life to all who simply believe in Him for it (John 4:14; 5:24; 6:47; 11:26; 1 Tim 1:16).

No act of obedience, preceding or following faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, such as commitment to obey, sorrow for sin, turning from one’s sin, baptism or submission to the Lordship of Christ, may be added to, or considered part of, faith as a condition for receiving everlasting life (Rom 4:5; Gal 2:16; Titus 3:5). This saving transaction between God and the sinner is simply the giving and receiving of a free gift (Eph 2:8-9; John 4:10 ; Rev 22:17 ).

b. Is it intellectual assent plus submission to the Lordship of Christ? John MacArthur and many strict Calvinists would say, Yes.

MacArthur writes that faith

‘encompasses obedience,’ and that obedience is ‘an integral part of saving faith.’ Indeed, obedience is bound up in the very 'definition of faith,’ being a constitutive element in what it means to believe.’ Thus any ‘concept of faith that excludes obedience’ must be rejected because obedience is ‘indivisibly wrapped up in the idea of believing.’ In fact, ‘the character of true faith’ is nothing less than the ‘higher righteousness’ of the Beatitudes of Matthew 5:3-11.8. MacArthur even suggests that obedience is ‘synonymous with’ faith. (See The Gospel According to Jesus: What Is Authentic Faith?, pp. 173-176)

2. Is faith alone enough for salvation?

MacArthur and the Grace Evangelical Society and most evangelicals would say, “Yes.” However, other Protestant groups, such as those who trace their lineage to Alexander Campbell (including the Churches of Christ, the Independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, Evangelical Christian Church in Canada, and the Christian Church [Disciples of Christ]) would say, “No.” Campbell, a former Baptist, became convinced that the Bible demanded baptism in order to receive forgiveness of sins. So faith alone was not enough. Listen to the churches of Christ website:

You should know that by baptism:
•You are saved from sins (Mark 16:16 1 Peter 3:21)
•You have remission of sins (Acts 2:38)
•Sins are washed away by the blood of Christ (Acts 22:16; Hebrews 9:22; Hebrews 10:22; 1 Peter 3:21)
•You enter into the church (1 Corinthians 12:13; Acts 2:41,47)
•You enter into Christ (Galatians 3:26-27; Romans 6:3-4)
•You put on Christ and become a child of God (Galatians 3:26-27)
•You are born again, a new creature (Romans 6:3-4; 2 Corinthians 5:17)
•You walk in newness of life (Romans 6:3-6)
•You obey Christ (Mark 16:15-16; Acts 10:48; 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9).

These groups believe they are following the clear teaching of Scripture. Campbell’s maxim was: Where the Bible speaks, we speak; where the Bible is silent, we are silent.

In addition to the Campbellite churches, many Lutherans believe that baptism is an integral part of what is required for salvation.

3. How does one acquire faith?

a. Calvinists (monergists, i.e, salvation is solely God’s work) say that it is a gift from God. "Faith is not something man contributes to salvation but is itself a part of God's gift of salvation - it is God's gift to the sinner, not the sinner's gift to God.(See here.)

b. Arminians (synergists, i.e., man cooperates with God in salvation) say that faith originates in man. "The sinner has the power to either cooperate with God's Spirit and be regenerated or resist God's grace and perish. The lost sinner needs the Spirit's assistance, but he does not have to be regenerated by the Spirit before he can believe, for faith is man's act and precedes the new birth. Faith is the sinner's gift to God; it is man's contribution to salvation.”. See here.

c. Lutherans as alluded to above, say that the seed of faith is implanted in the infant at the moment of baptism and that seeds need to be nurtured until it blossoms into saving faith. See here.

4. What is the necessary object of faith?

In other words, must one have faith in God or must that faith be specifically in Jesus Christ in order to be saved? Evangelicals for the most part would answer it must be in Jesus Christ although many of them leave the door open for “those who have never heard the gospel” to have some type of belief in the God of nature and thus be saved. As one author put it:

Most evangelicals believe that conversion involves explicitly recognizing Jesus Christ as God's Son and the mediator of salvation. Thus one's loyalty and trust is properly placed in Christ himself as the one true locus of faith. An alternative model, however, suggests that the key to conversion is not the conscious recognition of who Jesus is and what he does, but rather has to do with the heart's disposition toward the true God, however God is apprehended. And according to this model, since God has revealed Godself in a variety of ways throughout the world, one can hope and even expect that many will enter eternal life without ever hearing of Jesus Christ.

Clark Pinnock has argued for this position in A Wideness in God's Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions.

5. If one has to believe specifically in Jesus Christ in order to be saved, the next question is what must one believe about him?

a. Must one acknowledge that he is co-equal and co-eternal with God the Father or may one believe that he is somehow a notch below God the Father, albeit still divine. Virtually all evangelicals would say the former because this debate was fought in the early church and Athanasius defeated Arius(see here ).

But why was there a dispute in the first place if the Scripture is perspicuous? And was Arius some evil man who denied the Bible? No, he was following what he honestly thought the Scriptures taught.

b. While evangelicals pretty much insist that one accept the full deity of Jesus in order to be saved, there is still disagreement among themselves as to what happened to the deity of Christ during the incarnation. Some say he laid aside some of those attributes, which in effect would make him not deity during his time on earth.

Other evangelicals would insist that he merely laid aside the use of those attributes, albeit, still possessing them. Granted, the more educated evangelicals seem to agree that he did not lay aside any of his attributes, but the popular exposition of the subject by many preachers claim that Jesus did all of his miracles not by his own power but as an ordinary man aided by the power of the Holy Spirit (for example, John R. Rice, Commentary on Luke and many charismatic preachers). Can a person be "really saved" if he/she has that view of Jesus Christ?

So, there you have it. The Bible is crystal clear on how one is to be saved. Anyone can just pick up a Bible start reading and “get saved.” Yeah, right. I have to agree with the Ethiopian eunuch when Philip approached him in Acts 8:30-31:

Philip ran up and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet, and said, "Do you understand what you are reading?" And he said, "Well, how could I, unless someone guides me?"

It seems to me that if the Bible were really the Word of God, it would be clear and unambiguous throughout but at the very least it would be plain on how one is to be saved.

PST Demands either a Limited Atonement or Universalism

Since John Calvin is seen as the one who first systematized a Penal Substitutionary View of the Atonement, its not surprising that its great defenders through the years have been strict Calvinists who also believe in a limited atonement or as they prefer to call it, a particular atonement (i.e., Christ died just for the elect).

John Owen (1616-1683, Puritan and Chancellor of Oxford University), R. L. Dabney (1820-1898, chaplain to General Stonewall Jackson and founder Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary), James Denney (1856-1917, Professor of Systematic Theology Free Church College Glasgow), J. I. Packer (1926-present, Professor of Theology at Regent College, Vancouver) and the authors of the recent book: Pierced for Our Transgressions, Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey, and Andrew Sach (all affiliated with Oak Hill Theological College in London) have all written at length defending and explaining the PST. (See at the bottom for books and links).

Now its true that there are some who, while rejecting a limited view of the atonement, have also defended PST. Men such as I. Howard Marshall (1934- present, Professor of New Testament at the University of Aberdeen)and Robert Lightner, (1933-present, Professor of Theology at Dallas Theological Seminary)to name a couple. Most of the defenders of PST, however, believe that PST demands one hold to either a limited atonement or universalism (i.e., everyone ultimately will be saved). They typically do not believe that one could, with consistency, hold to PST and an unlimited atonement (i.e., all could be saved but all won’t be saved).

Packer writes:

That Christ’s penal substitution for us under divine judgment is the sole meritorious ground on which our relationship with God is restored, and is in this sense decisive for our salvation, is a Reformation point against Rome to which all conservative Protestants hold. But in ordinary everyday contexts substitution is a definite and precise relationship whereby the specific obligations of one or more persons are taken over and discharged by someone else (as on the memorable occasion when I had to cry off a meeting at two days’ notice due to an air strike and found afterwards that Billy Graham had consented to speak as my substitute). Should we not then think of Christ’s substitution for us on the cross as a definite, one-to-one relationship between him and each individual sinner? This seems scriptural, for Paul says, ‘He loved me and gave himself for me’ (Gal. 2:20). But if Christ specifically took and discharged my penal obligation as a sinner, does it not follow that the cross was decisive for my salvation not only as its sole meritorious ground, but also as guaranteeing that I should be brought to faith, and through faith to eternal life?

For is not the faith which receives salvation part of God’s gift of salvation, according to what is affirmed in Philippians 1:29 and John 6:44f. and implied in what Paul says of God calling and John of new birth?38 And if Christ by his death on my behalf secured, reconciliation and righteousness as gifts for me to receive (Rom. 5:11, 17), did not this make it certain that the faith which receives these gifts would also be given me, as a direct consequence of Christ’s dying for me? Once this is granted, however, we are shut up to a choice between universalism and some form of the view that Christ died to save only a part of the human race. But if we reject these options, what have we left? The only coherent alternative is to suppose that though God purposed to save every man through the cross, some thwart his purpose by persistent unbelief; which can only be said if one is ready to maintain that God, after all, does no more than make faith possible, and then in some sense that is decisive for him as well as us leaves it to us to make faith actual. Moreover, any who take this position must redefine substitution in imprecise terms, if indeed they do not drop the term altogether, for they are committing themselves to deny that Christ’s vicarious sacrifice ensures anyone’s salvation. Also, they have to give up Toplady’s position. ‘Payment God cannot twice demand, First from my bleeding surety’s hand, And then again from mine’ — for it is of the essence of their view that some whose sins Christ bore, with saving intent, will ultimately pay the penalty for those same sins in their own persons. So it seems that if we are going to affirm penal substitution for all without exception we must either infer universal salvation or else, to evade this inference, deny the saving efficacy of the substitution for anyone; and if we are going to affirm penal substitution as an effective saving act of God we must either infer universal salvation or else, to evade this inference, restrict the scope of the substitution, making it a substitution for some, not all. (The Logic of Penal Substitution)

Now why does Packer maintain that PST demands either a limited atonement or universalism? Because according to PST, Christ bore precisely the amount of suffering that was due to sinners (either the elect or everyone). If he bore precisely the amount of suffering that was due to everyone, then it stands to reason that everyone should be saved because God has been propitiated through the death of Christ for everyone and everyone’s sin has been expiated. This is precisely what 1 John 2:2 teaches. “He himself is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world.” Packer and other Calvinists take “world” here to mean “the world of the elect” but if it doesn’t mean that, then it must mean the entire human population. If Christ paid the price for sin for everyone and then some do not receive the benefits, the result is that some people will have their sins paid for twice. Once by Christ on the cross and once by themselves in hell. This is a double payment which to all seems unjust.

Why do I include this point in a discussion of why I reject Evangelical Christianity? It is because the vast majority of evangelicals today do NOT accept a limited atonement and yet they hold to PST. This is a logical and theological problem for them. It demonstrates in yet another way, the internal inconsistencies prevalent within evangelical theology. If Evangelical Theology is internally contradictory, then it is my opinion that it cannot be true.

Further Reading:

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book II, chs. 16-17

John Owen, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ.


R. L. Dabney, Christ Our Penal Substitute


James Denney, The Death of Christ

Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey, and Andrew Sach ,Pierced for Our Transgressions,

I. Howard Marshall, The Theology of the Atonement

Robert Lightner, The Death Christ Died: A biblical case for unlimited atonement