Featured What is Penal Substitution Atonement

I agree they saw no inconsistency. John Wesley was both a godly man and a scholar. Had he viewed his understanding as inconsistent (at least as inconsistent with Scripture) I think that he would have changed his view.

You have misunderstood my comments.

I don't believe anyone who disagrees with me is some sort of half-wit. In fact, they may very well be right and me wrong. My less agreeable feature is that I believe those who can't or won't discern distinctions (regardless as to which side they find correct) are half-wits.

(Wesley, Calvin, Arminius, Luther....all of these men disagreed with one another but they were all godly, intelligent men who were seeking to understand God's Word. Those who can't discern the differences in their teachings have not truly read their writings...or can't read).

 

True. We can look at all of those men and find moral fault.

 

Whitefield didn't seem to think so, and there is a good chance some of those slaves heard of his benefits of slavery were inclined to disagree as well since his view was ungodly.

Calvin took an ungodly stance against Baptist doctrine.

I guess which one stood head and shoulders above the others is a matter of opinion.

 

I try to assume everyone has at least as much wit about them as I (usually more so). Perhaps if I didn't I'd be pleasantly surprised more often and sadly disappointed less frequently.

 

Of course you do. Great minds think alike.

 

I understand the change. To Calvin it was a more literal penal substitution while now PSA typically holds the punishment Christ received to be a satisfaction (not exactly our punishment but close enough). And that may be, I grant, closer to Luther's view than Calvin's.

I guess the question is whether or not one can believe the punishment was Christ's physical death on the cross, bearing our sins as our representative, and through the merit of His blood turning aside God's wrath towards us (instead of God punishing Jesus with our punishment) and still hold to PSA.

If the answer is "yes", then both Luther and I hold to PSA. Maybe Martyr. I don't believe either of us would agree with Athanasius' view of the atonement, or that it is really PSA (I hope not, anyway)...or with Origen's view. But if the answer is "no", that one must believe God punished Jesus with our punishment (the punishment we would have experienced at Judgment) then the people who held/hold that position is much smaller than some imagine.

 

So where did we end up?

Is holding that Jesus suffered a punishment as our representative in his sufferings and bodily death, bearing our sins in his flesh, offered as a guilt offering for us, a propitiation for our transgressions turning aside God’s wrath towards us and satisfying the demands of the Law by virtue of his blood (by virtue of who Christ is) without believing that God punished Jesus with the punishment we would have endured PSA?

 

I absolutely agree. There is much assumed in the leap, and it seems no one but about three of us even see the leap being made. That's been my frustration with this (and a couple more) threads. It always goes back to "see, Christ died for our sins....that's penal substitution".

We spoke of this before (about PSA being a Trojan Horse for Limited Atonement) and I still disagree (depending, I suppose, on how Limited Atonement is defined). The reason I disagree is not that Limited Atonement to the Calvinist depends on PSA (although this is true) but that others have believed in Limited Atonement without holding to PSA. Quite simply, God has chosen to forgive only those who believe (the atonement is limited). But the normal context (the normal argument of Cal vs Arm, of "for whom did Christ die") assumes a Calvinistic trajectory from both sides of the argument.

 

And what happens when a thread is started asking for a concise definition? "It's arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. A difference without distinction."

And across threads they see (or claim to see) no difference between Martyr's view of the atonement, Luther's view of the atonement, and Calvin's view of the atonement. It's all the same, PSA, the difference never being defined except as one without distinction. When you talk specifics they argue from a more concise but undefined definition. When asked for a definition we get a thread with 21 replies and no concise definition.

The non-Calvinistic version of PSA is just a reformed view of the Calvinistic one. Same framework, same context; both provided by Calvin. But that contextual framework itself seems to be what separates PSA from Substitution Atonement (it is what separates many contemporary views from anything that existed for the first 15 centuries of the church). Does that mean it is wrong? No. But it does mean that we should at least be able to see it exists if we have even a little hope of objectively looking at the topic.

I am not sure if this is intentional doublespeak or double-think (to borrow from Orwell). What if they truly don't realize the distinction or the differences between views of the atonement and the impact it has on how one thinks about what Christ did on the Cross?

 

There are two things here. The demands are a judicial equivalency (I agree) and what is provided is infinitely greater than the equivalency demanded (which is where PSA stops being PSA....it not our punishment that is experienced but the blood of Christ which outweighs any punishment a judicial construct could demand that is offered).