easternstar
Active Member
I posted these two articles again because I implore members to read them thoroughly to the end. They are rather long, but they are excellent. They deal with PSA and the ECF, and justice -- restoration vs. retribution. I found a better source for the first one, without all the ads.
These offer an ample refutation of the idea that the ECF held PSA.
I'll add this: It was impossible for the ECF to have held to PSA, for the following reasons: (1) The doctrine didn't exist at the time; (2) The reason it did not exist is because the theological/cultural worldview of the time and location would have considered PSA a pagan theory; (3) Consequently, if by some means the ECF had believed and taught PSA, they would have been branded heretics because the church to which the ECF belonged -- Eastern and Western branches -- did not hold to PSA.
Those who claim to see PSA in the ECF writings are thus reading their own Western understandings back into those writings. And, scriptutally, instead of support for PSA, Isaiah 53: 4-5 refutes it, as I have demonstrated earlier. And claiming that verse 10 teaches PSA is a misuse of scripture because v. 10 must be interpreted in light of verses 4-5 which contradict the claim that it was God doing the smiting. The word 'but' used there is a 'sea change'.
Bottom line: The view of atonement that was held in the church for the first millennium was the Classic view. Not a trace of PSA until its invention by Calvin and Luther. Those are the scriptural, historical, and theological facts that no amount of contortion, straining, and blustering can change.