Answering some objections to a true atonement

Dizerner

Well-known member
It is the natural mind that rejects God's Law, and it is the fallen desires that reject God's values. So the natural mind and fallen desires throw up all kinds of shallow objections if God himself actually pays the full price of sin's punishment for us. But if you gut the Cross of its true meaning, you are left with something less than real Christianity, and something different than the real Jesus, and something less than the real Gospel.

We see in the atonement, the dividing line between all other religions, because God himself makes up the difference in righteousness as an act of grace, instead of either man working his way to heaven, or a promiscuous and compromising God with no regard to holiness. In the true atonement, we have God reconciling the world unto himself, by God himself taking the punishment for the sins against God's holiness—the Lamb being slain was purchasing men for God with blood, with Christ suffering for sins, with the life-force of Christ's agony, Jesus suffering the spiritual death we all deserved from sin.

This is not something I desire and rejoice in, any more than passionately defending eternal conscious torment, even though I would personally prefer there be no hell, as it is so terrifying and heavy a thought to consider, and against my natural inclinations of humanistic centered priorities. I defend these things because I fear God, and recognize I must fight in me every sinful inclination that opposes the throne and authority of God.


Answer to main OBJECTIONS:

1. This means Jesus is not the "sinless lamb" anymore.

Answer: That is like saying once the priest stabs the lamb to kill it, then it's not "unblemished" anymore. The sacrifice was to be sinless UPON PRESENTATION, not remain unchanged.

2. This means disharmony in the Trinity.

It is not disharmony if all wills are in agreement upon the action.

3. This means a disruption of the Trinity.

It is not a disruption if the ontological unity is maintained, as such, they were not separated from each other existentially, only relationally.

4. This means God can't run the universe anymore.

Death is not "ceasing to exist," but a change in ontos (mode of being), and spiritual death is relationally experiencing the negative aspects of God. God experiencing a negative relation to himself does not entail the loss of his attributes.

5. Physical death is the only price of sin.

This is just not Biblical. Else everyone pays their debt upon death. There is a second death.

6. But Jesus was a sinless person so he could physically die for us.

God did not tell Adam, "in the day you eat of it, you will die if you are sinless." The wages of sin is death, so sinlessness prohibits dying.

7. This method of atonement is unfair.

God does not have a standard external to him he obeys—his own worth is the standard, so he has the right to set what rules value him. God does not violate justice, so Jesus has to experience exactly what a sinner would—the wrath of God.

8. But sinners are in hell forever and Jesus was temporary.

An infinite being can experience in finite time, what a finite being can experience in infinite time. There is no possible logic against this.

9. This view is blasphemous because it makes God evil and a sinner.

This is a wrong definition of blasphemy—God is self-defining, meaning he tells us who he is and what he can do. "Is anything too hard for the Lord?" If God so desires he has the ability to absorb sin into himself, he stills maintain his authority and power, because it is voluntary. And because Christ does not STAY sin, but only temporarily BEARS sin, there is no tarnish to his worthiness. "Sin offering" is a lame attempt to water down the word in Corinthians, when even in the OT the offering was simply called "sin" (same word) for the very purpose of reflecting how closely sin was transferred, symbolized by laying hands on the animal, which was burned after to symbolize wrath.

10. If Jesus ontologically bears our sin, then we should be sinlessly perfect with his life.

No, it does not require sinless perfection or performance to be justified, because the manifestation of Christ does not have to be INSTANTANEOUS. "It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that we shall be LIKE HIM." So that potential is not required to be instantaneous in this fallen world.

11. This makes God unloving, and God is not anger, he is love.

God was both merciful and wrath in nature from eternity, but had no means to express them. God has always had the attribute of being wrathful towards sin, even when no sin existed. To uphold the holiness of God and fulfil his Law, sin must be punished, or justice is violated.

12. God is immutable and has aseity, he cannot ontologically change.

This is a mistaken definition that limits God's ability. Because God is self-defining, only God can tell us what he is capable of. God can ontologically change without sacrificing his self-sufficiency or his self-defined character. His Word tells us he does. We should not sacrifice the more plain meaning of the Word to fit human reasoning and philosophy.
 
And another thing in the OP thats an unbiblical presupposition nowhere taught in scripture is that Christ suffered " spiritual death " . That is flat out heresy. That is straight out of the false teaching of the word of faith movement with Copeland.

Upon Jesus physical death He proclaimed to His Father" into your hands I commit My Spirit ".

1 Peter 3:18- For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.
 
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PSA misuses Scripture, reflects the values of a bygone medieval Western culture obsessed with guilt and justice, and poorly commends Christianity to a postmodern world more interested in relationships and healing. The strongest objections are these four, the answers to which are included:

1. PSA harmfully presents God as being angry. The strongest opponents assert that the atonement was non-penal and was, in fact, God’s repudiation of anger and wrath in dealing with sin. To the contrary, however, the Bible is filled with hundreds of expressions of God’s holy anger against sin (see, for instance, Isa. 51:22; Hos. 8:5; Matt. 18:34; Rom. 1:18; and Rev. 19:13–15). According to the Bible, God’s wrath is the right response of holiness to sin (1 Kings 8:46; Hab. 1:13). John Stott has written, “The wrath of God … is his steady, unrelenting, unremitting, uncompromising antagonism to evil in all its forms and manifestations.”

2. PSA wrongly assumes retributive justice on God’s part, whereas God rejects the idea of responding to evil with evil. In reply, the Bible repeatedly depicts retributive justice on God’s part, in both Old and New Testaments. Examples include Noah’s flood, God’s judgment on Achan (Josh. 7:25–26), the slaying of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:9), the fall of Jerusalem to the siege engines of Nebuchadnezzar, and the final judgment that follows the return of Jesus Christ (2 Thess. 1:7–9). Of this, the writer of Hebrews asks, “How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?” (Heb. 2:3), and further declares, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31).

3. PSA teaches that God punishes his innocent Son for sins he did not even commit. This imagines a breakdown in the inner-Trinitarian fellowship of God and presents God as a monster who promotes violence as the answer to problems. The chief answer to this criticism is the doctrine of the Trinity itself, for the atonement is not presented as a violent act afflicted by the Father against the Son, but rather a saving work planned and achieved by the Father and Son working together for the salvation of the elect (John 6:38; 10:18; Gal. 2:20). Likewise, in the co-inhering unity of the Trinity, God the Father suffered the cross together with his Son. The cross was, in fact, the farthest thing from “cosmic child-abuse,” since no abused child rejoices to suffer his father’s wrath, as Jesus did because of his delight in delivering his people from the just penalty of their sins (Matt. 1:21; Heb. 12:3).

4. PSA involves a violation of the very ethics of peace and love that Jesus taught. Chalke writes, “It makes a mockery of Jesus’ own teaching to love your enemies and to refuse to repay evil with evil.” “Such a criticism is profoundly perverse,” J. I. Packer answers, “for it shrinks God the Creator into the image of man the creature.”12 Moreover, the basis of the Christian ethic of love is God’s perfect justice in judging sinners. Thus Paul told Christians “never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Rom. 12:19). We are to do as God says and not to do as God does, since he alone is God and thus is equipped to judge truly and rightly.

From What is Atonement by Richard Phillips
 
From What is Atonement by Richard Phillips

You realize this book is written by a Calvinist and is pro PSA right?

“The difference is that God does not require man to make the sacrifice to propitiate his wrath against sin, nor could we do so. God’s love is shown in that he provided the sacrifice to propitiate his own wrath. In the very situation wherein we had no sacrifice worthy enough to avert his holy revulsion toward us as sinners, God gave his own Son to die for us.” (Page 13)

“This means that God set forward Jesus, his Son, to pacify his own wrath toward our sin.” (Page 11)


5. How do you explain God’s love for us if He is so angry at our sin? (10-13)
He did not create man to destroy him. He created us to love us and have a close and personal relationship
with us. When we sinned, there was no way we could ever pay for what we had done. So God, in His great
love, provided the only way – Someone else to pay what we could not.

6. Read Leviticus 14:1-4. The Bible uses leprosy as a picture of how sin deteriorates us spiritually. What does
each of these birds represent? (14-16)

“The first bird died to show that a substitute would pay the penalty for our sins – Propitiation. Then the live
bird…depicted our complete forgiveness from sin as it flew away out of sight.” (15)

10. If God is so loving and truly just, why couldn’t He just forgive us without Jesus’ sacrificial death? (21-30)
It is precisely because God is just He must punish sin. All sin is personal. It is not like breaking a human
law, where we simply pay a fine and move on. Breaking God’s law personally attacks His character. His
holy nature requires punishment.
His tremendous love is therefore shown in Jesus’ willingness to suffer for
our offenses.

 
Yes I should have copied and pasted the whole book. You can say whatever you like and it's too bad you're unhappy with my post but I gave the reference where it came from and quoted what was in it. I'm fine with it.
 
Penal substitution does not come from the Bible. It comes from human cultural that has imposed it on Scripture, distorting its teaching and leading to an unbiblical doctrine of the atonement. It was developed during the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, by Martin Luther and John Calvin. It was more concretely formulated by the Reformed theologian Charles Hodge.

Let me repeat the Bible doesn't make a case for PSA; instead, cultural influence try to convince people of it. It's man-made not God inspired.
Penal substitution atonement teaches that God's wrath must be appeased and His honor restored for God to forgive. The odd thing is the fact that it was never mentioned before the Reformation. Not one of the Apostles talked about it.
PSA removes unconditional love from God and God doesn't actually forgive. God can't love us unless He has an outlet for his wrath. Thats reason I'll never be an adherent to PSA. I know God is love. John 3:16 says he gave his one and only son, so our salvation is made possible by His "self-satisfying" justice.
Here's what Christ's death did.
Hebrews 2:14-15 tells us "that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the Devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage. "
 
The author of the above quote follows immediately with this:

Biblical Arguments for Penal Substitutionary Atonement

Penal substitution not only answers these criticisms, but also fits the central biblical teaching of salvation. This case can be made through three biblically grounded propositions: (1) Man is sinful; (2) God is holy; and (3) the sacrifice of Christ reconciled (1) and (2) by paying the penalty owed to God for sins.

First, when we say that man is sinful, we mean that sin consists of transgressions of God’s law (James 2:10). For this reason, sin is personal and commits a personal affront to God. Just as adultery in marriage is a sin committed against one’s spouse, so all sin is committed against God, and his judgment reflects God’s personal response to sin against him (cf. Ps. 51:4). Since sin is universal to the human race (Rom. 3:23), all mankind needs a substitute.

Second, when we say that God is holy, this includes his perfect, personal hatred for all evil. For reason of God’s whole-being rejection of sin, obedience to God must be perfect (Gal. 3:10–14; James 2:10–11). Since the fall, no human being can or does achieve this perfection and our sins subject us to God’s condemnation and wrath. Moreover, being holy, God’s justice requires retribution for sin (as evidenced in all the Bible’s judgments, both corporate and individual). It is because of God’s just wrath that sinners need a penal substitute, that is, one who personally pays the penalty of our sin before the holy God. The ideas of both substitution and the paying of the penalty are highlighted in the language of Isaiah’s prophecy, which is echoed throughout the New Testament: “he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed” (Isa. 53:5).

Third, penal substitution explains how sinners can be forgiven by a holy God. This is seen in the whole of the Israelite sacrificial system, which is the primary biblical background for understanding the cross. The Old Testament sacrifices relied on both the transfer or imputation of sins to a substitute, and the substitute then suffering the penalty of death in the sinner’s place. PSA was the chief idea of the Passover, so that the display of sacrificial blood caused the angel of death to pass over the Israelite houses, seeing that a substitute had paid the penalty. According to the Bible, the controlling issue in salvation is the problem of sin. God overcame our sin not by a cosmic contest with evil powers, not by a positive moral example, but by sending his Son to bear our sins on the cross.

The Controlling Theory

It is rightly asserted that penal substitution is not the only valid theory of the atonement and that PSA is not able to absorb all the biblical data on this crucial theme. But it must be appreciated that penal substitution serves as the basis for any other valid theory. Consider Christus Victor, which emphasizes Christ’s victory over Satan and all evil powers. The question must be asked, “How did Jesus achieve this victory?” The answer is that he did it by suffering the wrath of God to pay the penalty for our sins, so that Satan no longer possesses a valid ground for accusing sinners. Paul writes that God “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in [Christ]” (Col. 2:15). How did God do this? The answer is by penal substitutionary atonement: “by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross” (Col. 2:14).

If the atonement is considered as a ministry of divine healing, this healing relies on the removal of sin’s penal curse; as Isaiah said, “with his stripes we are healed” (Isa. 53:5). If we are to consider the cross as upholding God’s just government, then this required not merely examples but the effective dealing with sin’s affront to God’s rule. Paul states that the cross upheld God’s moral rule despite the fact that “in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins” (Rom. 3:25). How so? The first part of that verse answers: because “God put forward [Christ] as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith” (Rom. 3:25).

Lastly, if the cross is to win mankind’s heart to the love of God there displayed, it must first break the bondage by which sin holds us in enmity with God. This cleansing of the conscience is made possible only through the Spirit’s application to our hearts of the true cleansing of sin’s guilt on the cross (Heb. 9:13–14).

Therefore, while we admit that the atonement exerts its redeeming effects in a Satanward direction (as argued by the ransom theory and Christus Victor) and in a manward direction (as argued by the moral exemplar and governmental views), the controlling dynamic is the atonement’s primary Godward orientation, as Christ shed his atoning blood to pay the penalty for our sins. Penal substitution is the heart of the atonement, apart from which all other aspects of the cross would fall to the ground powerless and void.

Richard D. Phillips, What Is the Atonement?, Basics of the Faith (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2010), 27–30.

Emphasis mine.
 
Penal substitution does not come from the Bible. It comes from human cultural that has imposed it on Scripture, distorting its teaching and leading to an unbiblical doctrine of the atonement. It was developed during the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, by Martin Luther and John Calvin. It was more concretely formulated by the Reformed theologian Charles Hodge.

Let me repeat the Bible doesn't make a case for PSA; instead, cultural influence try to convince people of it. It's man-made not God inspired.
Penal substitution atonement teaches that God's wrath must be appeased and His honor restored for God to forgive. The odd thing is the fact that it was never mentioned before the Reformation. Not one of the Apostles talked about it.
PSA removes unconditional love from God and God doesn't actually forgive. God can't love us unless He has an outlet for his wrath. Thats reason I'll never be an adherent to PSA. I know God is love. John 3:16 says he gave his one and only son, so our salvation is made possible by His "self-satisfying" justice.
Here's what Christ's death did.
Hebrews 2:14-15 tells us "that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the Devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage. "
Yes is comes from paganism.
 
If some people want to believe it, that's fine with me. But I won't be going to any Pagan and rituals with them. That's where I draw the line.
It's kind of funny when I was a teenager before I got saved I was in a street gang called The Saints and we used to fight with another gang and they were called the Pagans. I'm so glad God pulled me out of all that.
 
If some people want to believe it, that's fine with me.

The reason we feel passionately about it is because Scripture completely supports it.

There is no point in the "blood" of Jesus "covering" sin if there is no actual Law of God being expiated through punishment.
 
Gods wrath only falls on the reprobates, god haters , rebellious , Christ rejecters , ungodly who oppose Him.

It never once in scripture falls upon the righteous, holy, godly, sinless, lovers of God.

So you are holy and righteous without paying for your sins?

Aren't you a sinner fundamentally, else why do you even need Jesus' atonement at all?

Why can't you stand strong in your own righteousness before God?
 
So you are holy and righteous without paying for your sins?

Aren't you a sinner fundamentally, else why do you even need Jesus' atonement at all?

Why can't you stand strong in your own righteousness before God?
Christ covers my sins, expiates them. Passed over them, forgave them
 
The reason we feel passionately about it is because Scripture completely supports it.

There is no point in the "blood" of Jesus "covering" sin if there is no actual Law of God being expiated through punishment.
It reminds me of a quote from the church lady on TV. You have a sense of humor right? Yes or No

 
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