Featured PSA In The Early Church

Excellent! Thank you so much for that.
I had said that I would provide these and similar extracts fro the Church Fathers, but due to pressure of church and family life I have hardly made a start.
I will just add one more to your splendid list:

Irenaeus (c. 130-200 AD)
"The Lord [Jesus] redeemed us by His blood and gave His life for our life, his flesh for our flesh, and poured out the Spirit of the Father to unite us and reconcile God and man."

"...The Lord restored us to friendship through His incarnation, becoming the 'mediator between God and man.' On our behalf He propitiated the Father, against whom we had sinned, and cancelled our disobedience by His obedience, restoring us to fellowship with our Maker and submission to Him" [Adversus Haereses, v]

Thanks again.

 

@SavedByGrace and @Martin Marprelate

Amazingly, do you not know the rest concerning PSA theory, for it contains far more than what you stated it does?

Not one of the above quotes is an example of the PSA theory!

What you posted is a small portion of the theory of which nearly ALL theories do ascribe as to the suffering and curse of the Saviour, if they do not they are heretical..

Because a an expression containing the presentation that the messiah suffered and was cursed does NOT oblige a statement to be PSA!

HOW AND WHY of the suffering messiah distinguishes PSA from others.


But thank you for demonstrating the PSA was not taught by the early church.

Is this the reason you are stumbling and struggling to find something Scriptural about PSA ?

 

No true.

My you are grasping!

Try this out.

Show us plainly what you consider PSA theory to be. List it out in steps. Then show how the Scriptures agree.

I have wondered for some time if you and others really knew the substance of the theory as opposed to what you have agreed to it as being.

Let me give you a start:

"I was ask to present the Penal Substitution Atonement Theory developed by the reformers. Here are the main points with Scripture support.

1. 
   
2. 
   
3. 
   

And so forth. ​

 

This is from Theopedia and what strong supporters think needs to be presented concerning PSA theory:

It is worth noting that a number of the critiques or cautions regarding Penal Substitution come from those who embrace it. Major proponents of Penal Substitution such as J. I. Packer, and James Denney have all critiqued various aspects of Penal Substitution.

• Packer critiques any attempt to found it solely on human models of retributive justice and suggests that it be seen not as a mechanical explanation (how it works) but rather kerygmatically (what it means to us). ^[1]^
  
  
• Denney critiques the idea that it is merely forensic and judicial, saying that these are impersonal cold terms. "Few things have astonished me more than to be charged with teaching a 'forensic' or 'legal' or 'judicial' doctrine of Atonement... There is nothing that I should wish to reprobate more whole-heartedly than the conception which is expressed by these words"^[2]^
  

However, these critiques are not aimed at debunking the theory, but rather to rescue it from its "cruder" forms of expression. (https://www.theopedia.com/penal-substitutionary-atonement)
​

What are the "'cruder' forms of expression?" It does not explain.

What the writing does state is this:

A majority of Evangelical theologians while they would give primacy to the Penal Substitution view acknowledge that Scripture has a number of ways of speaking of the atonement, of which Penal Substitution is one of many theories. One prominent example being John Stott in his classic "The Cross of Christ" ^[4]^

Other Evangelical theologians go a step further, while still affirming Penal Substitution, they have come to view the Christus Victor view of the Atonement as more central because it goes beyond dealing only with man's sin and speaking of God's victory over the whole cosmos. One example of this is Gregory Boyd in his book "God at War"^[5]^. Scot McKnight for example writes,

"What I want to say is not that this theory is wrong... I want to say is that the atonement is so much more than this. And, if it is so much more than this, then it follows that using “penal substitution” as our guiding term is inadequate and misleads others. At the least, it does not provide enough information to explain what one really believes occurs in the Atonement"^ [6]^
(https://www.theopedia.com/penal-substitutionary-atonement)​

It is comically sad when I have read on some posts the position that PSA is the "only" one the Scriptures support.

​

 

For some who want more reading on what is involved with PSA and why I and others oppose it, here is a writing which defines and describes what supporters consider about the PSA:

Retrieving the Reformed Doctrine of Penal Substitution - The Gospel Coalition | Canada

 

Here is an article from the Professor Emeritus in which he discusses the PSA.

HOWEVER, he neglects to recall that ALL basic theories ascribe to the penal suffering of Christ in either a matter of satisfaction and/ or substitution.

He does not seem to present (unless I mis-read) that the PSA attribute of divine justice brutalizing the Son is not found in Scripture.

Read it for your self. I don't mind being wrong, but PSA is wrong.

Historical Reflections on Substitutionary Atonement - Fuller Studio

 

Your problem and @JonC's problem seems to be that you have made up your own 'Penal Substitution Theory' which is a caricature of the true doctrine. You have spoken repeatedly of God the Father 'brutalizing' the Son, as if He was poking Him with a toasting fork as He hung on the cross. I have never read of any advocate of Penal Substitution suggesting such a thing.

I have quoted the following definition of Penal Substitution at least twenty times over the past five or six years, and I have never suggested that it is incorrect in any way. 'The doctrine of Penal Substitution states that God gave Himself in the person of His Son to suffer instead of us the death, punishment and curse due to fallen humanity as the penalty of sin.'

That is not something I wrote myself; It comes, as I have repeatedly made clear, from Pierced for our Transgressions by Ovey, Jeffrey and Sach (IVP, 2007). All the quotations from the ECFs that @SavedByGrace produced in the OP are compliant with this definition, but not necessarily with the caricature being peddled by @JonC and yourself.

 

The problem seems to lay in the fact that humans created labels for nuanced differences regarding the atonement. Therefore one will never find these titles in the early writings. It's like trying to find the word, trinity, in the Bible. You won't find the term, but you do find God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit in the Bible.
We do find that Christ became the curse (or took the curse) for us in his sacrificial atonement. Personally, the exact title is not worth a fight. I had never read of Christus Victor before, but it does a nice job of connecting Christ to the foreshadowed work of Moses and the Passover Lamb as the Lamb which was substituted for the first born in the household of Israel.
These are wonderful thoughts and lift up Christ our Redeemer.

 

I made a post by mistake on this thread. I have re-posted it on the 'Atonement continued' thread.

 

Brian Arnold wrote (in part Penal Substitution in the Early Church)

And here we must navigate between two wrong ideas. The first error, which is the most common among scholars, is to suggest that the early church never spoke of penal substitution, which I hope to dispel. The second error, more common among evangelicals, is to overstate the case and read penal substitution into texts.
​

He is correct in that physical suffering has always been a part of the truth.

Parker wrote (in part http://www.newhopefairfax.org/files/Packer Penal substitution revisited.pdf)

The incarnational principle is that when the Son took to himself all the powers and capacities for experience that belong to human nature, and began to live through his human body, mind and identity, his sense of being the Father’s Son was unaffected, and he knew and did his Father’s will, aided by the Spirit, at all times. It was with his own will and his own love mirroring the Father’s, therefore, that he took the place of human sinners exposed to divine judgment and laid down his life as a sacrifice for them, entering fully into the state and experience of death that was due to them. Then he rose from death to reign by the Father’s appointment in the kingdom of God. From his throne he sent the Spirit to induce faith in himself and in the saving work he had done, to communicate forgiveness and pardon, justification and adoption, to the penitent, and to unite all believers to himself to share his risen life in foretaste of the full life of heaven that is to come. Since all this was planned by the holy Three in their eternal solidarity of mutual love, and since the Father’s central purpose in it all was and is to glorify and exalt the Son as Saviour and Head of a new humanity, smartypants notions like ‘divine child abuse’, as a comment on the cross, are supremely silly, and as irrelevant and wrong as they could possibly be.
​

What Packer relates as “exposed to divine judgement” is the very problem of PSA.


It is not “…smartypants notions like ‘divine child abuse’, as a comment on the cross, are supremely silly, and as irrelevant and wrong as they could possibly be.” But serious dialogue from the advocates of PSA that are not found in Scripture!

God cannot have a divided Trinity. Divine satisfaction not judgement was the crucifixion.

Jesus the Christ is totally the Son of man and the Son of The Father, inseparable.

The Saviour did not go to the place of torment referred to as hell, but to paradise.

So Packer is wrong, not often, but in this matter certainly.

 

IF there was no Psa, Christ cannot be victorious!

 

Well...since I have never heard of the guy...chalk me up as a hard no.

 

Jesus suffered as lost sinners will ion hell, as he took upon Himself the wrath and Judgement due to us by a Holy Father, but He did not go to Hell after death, as that is WoF heresy, but did experience upon that Cross all hell entails for lost sinners!

 

Yes, as he and NT Wright both call Psa view pagan, and makes Jesus to have "Cosmic child abuse"

 

He views parrot NT Wright

 

With respect, this is simply surmising. There is no evidence in scripture for this.