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Why Is the Notion of Penal Substitution So Controversial?
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- Опубліковано 22 кві 2021
- For more information visit: www.reasonablefaith.org
Dr. Craig talks about why the theory of penal substitutionary atonement tends to be controversial.
You can watch the entire interview here: • A Discussion on the At...
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hands up if you had to google what penal substitution even meant...
Lol you must not have been following Craig for a while. It's one of his passion topics.
🙌🏻
Paul has been teaching this in his epistles. Brother, please let us read the bible.
Yep, the man denies Psalm 49:7 which says that the ransom is not given TO GOD, Deuteronomy 10 17 says GOD does not take bribes (SACRIFICES) like pagan gods. Proverbs 17:26 says it is unjust to strike princes for their uprightness.
@@leonardu6094 If I pay myself for another's debt, have I been paid? The fact is Jesus pays blood to rescue us "FOR GOD" with blood (Rev 5:9) not FROM GOD with blood.
Because men don't want to believe that their sin has real consequences and a real payment that must be made for it.
Amen
" a real payment must be made"
So because God does exact punishment for sin in the bible numerous time, and justly so, then it must follow that God can never set aside wrath? That God needs to punish every sin and cant just forget them when He sees fit?
Thats an error
@@fredarroyo7429
Jesus is the GOAT! Pun intended!
He is the Ultimate Sacrifice and no other sacrifices need to be made. God/Jesus himself made himself into a human form to take all his wrath upon himself so that the veil could be ripped and we can have access to the Most High without having to get a High Priest.
Our interceder and High Priest is Jesus and thats why no one goes to the Father, if not through Jesus. Him and the Father are one.
@@theredshadow360 why must God's wrath be satiated for the veil to be ripped, my friend?
@@fredarroyo7429yep. Last I checked, “Love covers a multitude of sin”
“Yet he himself bore our sicknesses, and he carried our pains; but we in turn regarded him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities; punishment for our peace was on him, and we are healed by his wounds. We all went astray like sheep; we all have turned to our own way; and the Lord has punished him for the iniquity of us all.”
Isaiah 53:4-6 CSB
I think it's controversial because it's based on violent retribution, something Christ (who is the perfect revelation of the Father) flat out rejected. And, there doesn't seem to be any forgiveness. For example, if the court demands a $1 million dollar fine to be paid but the guilty party can't pay it, and then a third party steps in & pays the fine on behalf of the guilty, the court did not forgive the debt, it received the money.
Think of it this way: God could just overlook your sin, but justice was never done. The wrong was not righted in any way. But God can declare that Jesus can bear the sins of the world in the death sinful men send Him to, and He has thar right. And when you're tempted to believe that God is mean or petty because He doesn't just 'forgive', think about the fact that it was His idea to give us this legally binding forgiveness in the first place. Far from the nasty unforgiving person he is portrayed as, He turns out to be more like the attorney (or "advocate") who has been working tirelessly for years trying to secure you a real pardon, not some shallow thing that doesn't mean more than a reflection of the character of someone who just wants to be seen as a good guy, but it's all about his reputation, not uou desperate need at all. Someone like that will forget you or turn against you when it fits their purposes. God is nothing like that. God's love is so profound; whining about how supposedly "mean" penal substitution is is way unworthy of Him.
This must be over my head because it still doesn't make sense to me.
Is English your first language?
Brilliant as always! Thanks for the explanation, Dr. Craig. God bless!
'brilliant'?
no
Id call it incoherent nonsense
I think the issue comes when people say it all comes down to PSA, while it could be argued the life, death and ressurection are more than that.
For He descended into Hades to take captivity captive.
Because men feel that they have it in them to make it on their own. Essentially building the proverbial spiritual Tower of Babel...
That has nothing to do with it.
So pretty much you want a passive Christianity where you dont have to pick up your cross. You want it picked up for you
What an overly simplistic view. There is a multiplicity of reasons why people reject PSA. This is about the nature of God's character and the ontological reality of justice. I've never met a detractor of PSA who has eluded to the notion they can make it in their own.
Last time I was this early it was still "only 2 weeks to flatten muh curve"
There's 2 things normal people hate to hear the most: 1) that they are sinners and 2) that a sinner can be saved without any good work.
A Pharisee at heart doesn't accept the idea that they are imperfect. They think they're perfect, so they don't accept the imperfect to be saved.
More rubbish.
@@Magnulus76 are you a sinner sir?
@@huynhngocnamgiang No.
@@Magnulus76 cool. you just proved my point.
@@huynhngocnamgiang When they also hear a 3rd thing in the same sentence that God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life those two things are eclipsed and quickly forgotten about 🙏🙏.
One way to wrap our heads around the wrath of God, is to remember that his anger is never just being in a snit. It's anger over a righteous claim against us. And realize that all the time he is wrathful, He is simultaneously, lovingly sending Jesus to bear our sin, so that justice may be perfectly satisfied, so that we, with whom He is angry, won't have to bear his righteous anger forever. He is also giving us a share of joys of this life, and bearing with us patiently, striving with us, and drawing us to His Son.
I just know it helps me to counterbalance the wrath of God against sin with all the things that He does for us in love. This is no capricious anger, that he might fly off the handle and do just anything. The more we reflect on how good He is, the more justifiable His anger at us will seem to us, and we won't be as easily victimized by accusations against Him.
So He punished Jesus on your behalf out of love so you can be with Him even though you still do the things He still hates?? He has to come to you instead of you turning from sin and coming to Him? He has to pretend you are Holy and pretend you have no offenses even as you co tinue daily in them?
Are 'penal substitution' and 'substitutionary atonement' two phrases for the same thing? Or do they refer to two separate things.
Same thing.
Yup. Same.
They are not the same thing.
Penal Substitution as well as Ransom theory and Christus Victor are all "Substitutionary" atonements.
Just type Substitutionary Atonement in wikipedia.
PSA developed over centuries building off of substitutionary atonement. it was not what the early Christians believed
The main objection of Penal Substitution is that God poured his wrath and anger and hatred on to Jesus instead of us. Which, if you are an historical, Trinitarian Christian, is metaphysically impossible. The other theories of atonement (Ransom, Christus Victor and others) do not present this problem.
Penal substitution ? It sounds like some sort of sex change !! But joking aside, anyone on the receiving end of a court sentence, I am sure would be very willing to accept any merciful release that the judge can legally make possible.
A judge can just not demand that the just penalty of sin be demanded. As an 18 year old i hurt an old man and stole something, my punishment could of been time in jail but the judge gave me mercy. Didnt need punishment to be paid in any way. That doesnt mean she was a bad judge. They have that perogative. Said she thought i made serious mistakes and hoped i learned from them.
That’s not penal substitution. If it was penal substitution, the judge would have had to “impute” your guilt to someone else and make them suffer in your place BEFORE they could have mercy on you.
The judges innocent Son
Criminals don't normally want to take responsibility for their actions.
I think the atonement is about total surrender to the will of God which is love. God doesn't need violence to show his love. Jesus exemplified the demonstration of perfect love against the worst possible evil. The gospel is about the kingdom of God and how love surpasses everything even the worst evil. The idea of human blood sacrifice cannot stand on its own without context. Without context it is violent and meaningless. Some people are only capable of understanding love. Love is the universal language that reaches everybody no matter what culture they were raised in or what their intellectual level is.
Q: Why is the notion of penal substitution so controversial?
A: Because it's not forgiveness.
Is saying Christ suffered the curse/penalty of the law and saying Christ suffered the Wrath of God the same thing?
No, from the Orthodox perspective, this would be anti-trinitarian and divide the Godhead against itself. Jesus did not suffer the wrath of God. Orthodoxy is distinct in that we have a very developed view of this subject, see "the harrowing of hades".
@@George-ur8ow I will check it out. Can you explain what it means that Christ suffered the curse of the law then?
where is the rest of the interview? I need this!
I’ll take knowledge of good and evil but hold the original sin please.
It’s interesting that those who deny original sin accept the fact that we got the knowledge of good and evil from Adam and Eve.
What’s your definition of original sin?
“Augustine’s Doctrine of Original Sin
Augustine’s understanding of salvation also shows the growing differences between Orthodoxy and the Western Churches, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. Augustine developed his views of salvation in the heat of intense controversy with Pelagius, a British ascetic who taught that one could live a righteous life and earn salvation through one’s own ability. According to Pelagius, one can be saved without God’s grace. As St. John Cassian pointed out, its reliance on human ability showed a close relationship between Pelagianism and another heresy, Nestorianism. The Church condemned Pelagianism at the Third Ecumenical Council, the Council of Ephesus in 431 at the same time that it also condemned Nestorianism. The basic approach to salvation as something that can be earned by virtue of Pelagianism is radically different from the Eastern understanding of salvation as deification through communion with God. However, just as Monophysitism was an extreme reaction to Nestorianism, Augustine’s teachings on salvation was an extreme reaction to Pelagianism.
Augustine’s response to Pelagianism led to the development of the Western doctrine original sin. There is no doubt that the Fathers had taught that all inherited mortality as a consequence of the Fall of Adam and Eve. 384 Augustine, however, added a new dimension to the teaching of the Church by arguing that those born of the descendants of Adam not only inherit mortality, but also personal guilt from the sin of Adam. Augustine developed his view of inherited guilt from a text in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, 5: 12. The Latin translation used by Augustine read, “By one man sin entered into the world and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned.” 385. However, the Revised Standard Version, a much more accurate translation from the original Greek text, reads, “Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned.” Some translate the controversial phrase in Romans 5: 12, “because all have sinned,” as “because of which [death] all have sinned..” 386 In that case the message of the text is that the frantic effort to avoid the limitations of death leads to sin. 387 In any case, the original Greek text of Romans 5: 12 does not teach that all inherit guilt from Adam. Instead, it states that there is a relationship between death, which all inherit from Adam, and sin. For this reason, the Eastern Fathers taught the doctrine of ancestral sin, the idea that all inherit the consequences of the sin of Adam, which are corruption and death. They did not teach that all inherit guilt from the sin of Adam. St. Irenaeus of Lyon wrote, “… by means of our first parents, we were all brought into bondage, by being subject to death..” St. Basil wrote, that death is “transmitted to us through Adam..” 388 St. Cyril of Alexandria described ancestral sin as an illness and writes that humans are born subject “to corruptibility.” Significantly, he also stated that humans are not “co-transgressors with Adam.” 389 The Eastern Fathers taught that the struggle with the curse of death causes the individual to fall into sin and thereby incur personal guilt upon themselves. 390 However, Augustine, who based his views on the incorrect Latin translation instead of the original Greek text of Romans 5: 12, concluded that all humans share in Adam’s guilt. 391 Augustine described humanity as a “ mass of perdition” because all are born already tainted with guilt inherited from Adam. 392.
Augustine’s influence is so great that the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches continue to teach the concept of original sin as inherited sin and guilt. During the Middle Ages, Western theologians like Anselm of Canterbury expressed original sin in slightly different terms. Anselm taught that those born in original sin are deprived of God’s grace. 393 In 1546, the Council of Trent, which met to give an official Roman Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation, defined the inheritance from Adam as “the death of the soul.” 394 More traditional Roman Catholic theologians reconcile Anselm with Trent by teaching that the death of the soul implies that one is deprived of God’s grace. 395 In modern times, following the major reforms introduced by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, Roman Catholic theologians have adopted a less extreme view of original sin. The official Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that although “All men are implicated in Adam’s sin… human nature has not been totally corrupted.” 396
The consequences of the Western doctrine of original sin are enormous. Augustine’s belief in inherited guilt continued the legalization of the Western concept of salvation begun by Tertullian. As a result, the Western understanding of salvation stresses the forgiveness of sin and the removal of guilt. On the other hand, Eastern theologians view salvation as healing that restores communion and fellowship with God. This healing transforms the believer into the likeness of God. Consequently, Orthodox theologians describe salvation as deification. Orthodox Christians do not consider salvation in judicial or legalistic terms as do Catholics and Protestants. Orthodox theologians stress the role of the Incarnation in salvation. By becoming man, Christ assumed and healed human nature. Union with Christ, deifies the believer just as its union with the divine nature deified the human nature of Christ.”-Historian & Archpriest John W. Morris
@@saenzperspectives Yup amen the Augustinian invention of original sin and total depravity which forces them to also adopt pre-faith regeneration is unbiblical and found nowhere in scripture.
You’re absolutely right it was an over reaction to Pelagius.
Luther, I think, nailed it:
2Co 5:21- “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
“Luther puts it like this:
The Father tells the Christ,
“You become Peter who denies,
Saul who persecutes,
Judas who betrays
Magdalene who sins.”
Then the law sees Jesus full of all of these offenses and sentences Him to death. Jesus has become the greatest murderer, thief, liar, adulterer whom the world has ever known, not in the sense that He committed these crimes, but that He appropriated them to himself. He becomes my sinning self. In exchange He gives me His righteous identity.” -Richard Wurmbrand
Totally not biblical..you will be judged by your deeds not by Christs deeds.
@@fredarroyo7429 I agree. But this sounds like the one “deed” that makes all the difference: John 6:28,29 - “Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”
Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
@@live2encourage if when you say ,"makes all the difference" you really mean " the only deed required" then no where in the passage you quoted says or implies this?
@@fredarroyo7429 Good question. Thanks for giving me a chance to clarify my thoughts. What I mean by, “makes all the difference” is that - as I see it - believing in Jesus is the one “work” that God requires for a lost soul to be restored to friendship with God. (That one “deed” doesn’t merit anything anymore than extending my hands to receive a gift from someone would be considered a meritorious act.). However, from then on my every thought, word, and deed - the extent of my obedience to God/Jesus - is going to be judged at the judgement seat of Christ. What will be determined is my capacity to receive and pass on the love of God. Little obedience = little capacity, big obedience = big capacity.
@@live2encourage" believing in Jesus is the one work that God requires for a lost soul to be restored to friendship with God."
Yeah i dont see anywhere in John 6 that limits the work of " believing in the one He has sent" to be the only one required. The passage surely says God requires that work but no where does it limit it to " the one work required " as you say. Youre definetely not getting this from that verse thats for sure.
And you change the meaning of judge in that verse ," which means to render, give one retribution, awards for good, punishment for bad"
To making judge mean evaluation of good things not bad. Interesting tactic.
The main controversial point is that there was no idea of 'penal substitution' as articulated by modern Protestants before it was invented in the 16th century. It has nothing to do with liberal or conservative. It is a narrow reading of Isaiah and misapplication and cherry picking of the NT.
It's weird that it's so controversial. Convicted, repentant sinners are so grateful for it.
Sinners are grateful God forgives sin. Penal substitution is just one theory on how He does it, so rejecting PS does not mean that you aren’t grateful that God forgives sin.
@alpinefool8814
Hebrews 9:28 KJV - So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.
Nowhere does it say that the Father was cruel, an abusive parent, or bloodthirsty in offering Jesus, requiring that the wages of sin is death, or asking Jesus, the Son, to pay the price. The accusations that He is those things are what we should resist since they come from gnostic-minded rebellion against God, and we ought to know better than to conform to their thinking. Instead of thinking of Jesus as this toddler being abused, think about Him as the grown Son of the most noble family, noble in heart, not just high-"born" nobility. The most caring Father you could ever imagine (actually more caring than we can imagine) asks His grown Son to bear a terrible danger or undergo extreme suffering, all for the good of the people they rule, to accomplish something that could be accomplishedin no other way. And while He could have said no (apparently He could have, according to the Bible), He was willing to do it, which is why His name is above all names. In other words, God says that it is this character thing about the Son's willingness to humble Himself unto death that makes Him worthy, not just that He's God and it's Their universe. But in all this, absolutely resist the temptation of agreeing with the gnostic types that this God is sadistic and cruel. They think there's no reason God couldn't make His creation the same old Candyland they feel like they have a right to expect, but God isn't coming from there. He is not only not going to make His creation into the no-fault sin-all-you-want-to Candyland they imagine they deserve, but He also is not the sadistic jerk they like to say He is. If they give Him a chance to be heard, He will show them, but if they consistently refuse, He's not running after them. They need to ask themselves what's in their human, created-for-God hearts, that they believe the whispers that come from very foolish people against Him? And instead of denying, along with them, what He says about Himself, stand tough with every word He says, confident that the Father is every bit as caring and righteous as His Son. After all, Jesus said he who has seen Him has seen the Father.
Think of Jesus being "driven" by the Holy Spirit to be tempted by the devil. Does that mean the Holy Spirit is tempting Jesus? Does it mean that He, the Spirit, wants the devil to overcome Jesus and win? Does He have evil motives? Or is it something He chose to do in His wisdom, taking the long view, looking at the big picture, and are His motives something else than the gnostic-minded claim, something consistent with His holiness and His love? Can't we trust Him to be that way? It is what He says about Himself.
@alpinefool8814 Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.
@@lindajohnson4204 Cool. So where in that verse does it say that this righteousness was obtained by Christ being reckoned by the Father as a sinner on the Cross (despite not being one), thereby allowing the Father to treat us as righteous (despite not being righteous)? The idea that Christ's righteousness gives us the free gift unto justification of life is a part of non-Penal Substitution atonement theories as well so this verse doesn't prove your's specifically.
@alpinefool8814 That's not what it says, and it says, and means, what it actually says, not words you want to put in someone's mouth. I have to look up the verse where a prophet is speaking for God, saying that it was because Jesus was willing to give His life to bear our sins, that's why His name is above all names. Just because that doesn't fit in the grid of your thinking, rendering Jesus not righteous until He did it, does not make it so, or does it make God beholden to the grid masters about what He may choose to say. The Bible is full of statements that tell us Jesus bore our sins on the cross. When anyone despises that and treats it like it is evil, I don't see how they can really be believing Christians. And I don't care that there are theologians who have developed a category of theological thinking that says yes, you can make that assertion. There are theologians who can say just about any evil thing, and they trade on what used to be called "liberal chic", competing to say the most "outre" thing toward the so-called "development" of the faith, and still hold on to their fine raiment and positions in academia. I don't believe them, and I don't have much respect for them, and none for what they're doing. For anyone who has been caught by any form of gnostic calling God evil, I care about them in that predicament, and they need to remember that Jesus came into the world to save sinners. But the rejection of biblical doctrine is harmful, and I won't call it bona fide Christian doctrine. It is against Christ, because how could they so despise the words of Jesus and the Bible, that they "reimagine" Him in their own own image, or what they want to turn Him into, for the sake of the "Noble Lie", yet they love him and believe in him? They couldn't. That would require trusting in Him because what He did on the cross made a difference in your life like nothing else.
I do think that clearly everyone with one guy to be angry and sad at injustice. Nobody wants a God who is emotionally indifferent.
Where the struggle is, at least for me, is to except the idea that God hates the unbeliever, is wrathful against teenagers going through puberty and struggling with the lust and is full of unforgivness and anger toward everyone who is not a Christian.
That is hard to accept because even we as human beings have more compassion and less wrath toward people the more we understand why they do what they do.
If you have ever been through a counselling session, you know this. So then you have God who is omnipotent and knows what free creatures will do in any given situation based upon their own nature and experiences.
How could he be angry? He already knew what they would do and if their circumstances were different, would do otherwise.
Great questions, and some that I think some people are all too afraid to ask and consider. I believe Christ shows us God most definitely, so PSA is just a bit too far of a stretch for me too... At least, in the way of painting God as "wrathful" in the literal definition of "violently angry." How God could be violently angry at His Son "with whom He is well pleased" makes no logical sense to me. I think Christ was our substitute, no doubt, but Christ showed a God who freely forgave people their sins _without_ requiring anything of them - the paralytic man, the many lepers he healed, the woman caught in adultery. There was no shedding of blood, he simply just forgave them. I think that your point about being human and having compassion is precisely what makes Christ such a beautiful portrait of God - God literally experienced humanness and had such compassion on us... He knew our condition so intimately, and He was willing to die at _our_ hands (WE killed Him, after all). I think that is far more transformational good news for teens and people who haven't heard the gospel. Blessings to you as you wrestle through these questions.
I would say that it is precisely because God loves us sinners so completely, so perfectly, that he maintains a unalterable and complete opposition (i.e., wrath/hate) to all sin which, in fact, is destroying what he so loves. If he did not aggressively and radically oppose absolutely everything and anything I do that stands to harm me I wouldn’t consider him worthy of my worship. Hence I love God’s wrath/hatred towards my sin and everyone else’s. I cannot love him enough on account of it. It is the final hope of the world that he should care that much about us.
@@live2encourage Wow!!!
@@live2encourage2 years later...but that's a great comment, I pray the Lord bless you even this day, because your comment I think is Biblically grounded in grasping all God did on behalf of all sinners.
@@TheCableStrain Thanks for the words of encouragement, my friend.
It appears Dr. Craig denies God's Impassibility which is a corollary of His Immutability, that He is unchangeable. He is right that when reconciliation is used in the new testament it is the plea that "human beings need to be reconciled to God" and not God to us. The old testament testifies to this claim also: "Look to the heavens and see; And behold the clouds- They are higher than you. If you sin, what do you accomplish against Him? Or, if your transgressions are multiplied, what do you do to Him? If you are righteous, what do you give Him? Or what does He receive from your hand? Your wickedness affects a man such as you, And your righteousness a son of man" - Job 35: 5-8.
"Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent- the Lord detests them both!"
Proverbs 17:15
"When Jesus SAW their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, "Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?"
Mark 2:5-7
No Penal Substitution here! Jesus freely forgave this man's sin and he was made righteous.
In the same way,
"What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him.
The blind man said,
“Rabbi, I want to see.”
"Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.” Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road!"
Mark 10:51-52
No Penal Substitution here!
There was real removal of sins and real removal of blindness!
Jesus did not impute sight to this man and impute blindness to himself!
When we repent we are made righteous not just declared or imputed to be righteous legally!
Jesus, who was innocent, was not made a guilty sinner by His Father God!
"Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent- the Lord detests them both!"
Proverbs 17:15
Jesus went on to die and raise again in order to defeat death, sin, and the devil!
"Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death-that is, the devil- and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death!"
Hebrews 2:14-15
"Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem!"
Luke 24:45-47
The Apostle Paul says,
"First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and then to the Gentiles, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and demonstrate their repentance by their deeds!"
Acts 26:20
Christ is risen!
Jesus Christ conquers!
IC XC NIKA
Colossians 2:13-14 (LEB) "And although you ( you=Gentiles)were dead in the trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive together with him, having forgiven us (us= Israel) all our trespasses, having destroyed the certificate of indebtedness in ordinances against us, which was *hostile to us*, and removed it out of the way by nailing it to the cross."
hostile to us = Deut.@ Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a CURSE;
Deut.@ Take this book of the law, and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, that it may be there for a witness against thee.
As you can see, something is missing in the teaching of the churches.
And that "something" changes the whole message.
When Jesus died on the cross, he erased what was written in the law of Moses against the Jews.
He at the same time caused that the act by which he died was done against a person, (Not against God Himself).
Because Jesus is the head of the New Covenant, he is subjected to transgressions instead of God.
In the New Covenant, according to the teaching of Jesus, all deeds that are now against Him are subject to His forgiveness.
Matt. @ And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
Mark 3:28 @ Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of
men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: .......>>>>>
17:11 These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they
received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the
scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
2:12 I hate to say Dr. Craig is wrong, but this time he is. Two Craigs disagreeing. God having wrath against a person does not necessitate his need to account for his actions in order to be reconciled to that person. God has done nothing to warrant fault from that person. There is nothing to literally "reconcile" for from God's actions. And if you are taking "reconcile" to be a form of negotiations, then that begs the question even stronger. If God can negotiate in order to facilitate reconciliation, then there is no need for penal substitution. Indeed, the reconciliation is due to our own actions and not God's. We are the ones who must make the move to be reconciled to God, for God has made the first move in sending out his ambassadors to announce that reconciliation is a possibility and that it will only be accepted through the empathy in the Crucifixion and that empathy evoked in you as you gaze on Christ who was crucified. However, taking Ezekiel 33 into account, the reconciliation happens through stopping your wickedness and making recompense for the damage done. The death of Christ was at its core the Empathy of God and meant to evoke empathy in us that we might feel obligated to reconcile with God in light of the results of sin in its horrific state. What am I talking about? That the truly terrorizing nature of sin was demonstrated in the betrayal, arrest, beatings, and crucifixion of Jesus, because exactly that he was the only innocent one to walk the Earth in all of history. This made sin the most vile it has ever been, yet Christ voluntarily suffered those things, fully aware. And it is this empathy evoked in us who are forgiven purely on the choice of the Father to forgive (see the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant for a parallel to the reconciliation God offers to us). If we do not live in the gratefulness of the Father's unwarranted act of mercy to forgive, then he may call in our debt. But notice there was no penal substitution in place of the servant whose debt was forgiven. This would have been the ideal place for Jesus to teach on penal substitution had it been true. He teaches something very different though, which is more in line with Ezekiel 33.
because it’s a doctrine adopted from Islam
Craig seems to have a pretty serious mis-understanding of Gods wrath and of Gods impassibility. To believe God is angered as we are at injustice is to stand in opposition to the mind of the ancient church and all we know about God’s essence. This new understanding of God’s character leads to terrifying new ideas of the atonement 😔
Perhaps because there are better, more comprehensive views of the atonement such as Cristus Victor or Ransom Theory; or perhaps because the modern articulation of Penal Substitution didn't exist until the 16th century and is clearly an evolution of Satisfaction Theory, which itself was an evolution of Ransom Theory. The early church fathers certainly agreed that sin brings on God's wrath and the Jesus bore our sins and died for us, but they didn't frame it the way we do today and it certainly wasn't the "go-to" way of understanding the atonement. Not only that, PS in isolation seems to imply a merit-based salvation. That is IF men could follow God's law, they would be entitled to eternal life on their own merit and wouldn't need Jesus' sacrifice. This isn't what the Bible teaches. Rather, humanity as a whole was in bondage to death, hell and the grave and was in need of rescue, redemption, or ransom (3 metaphors for what Jesus did on the cross). The focus of the early church was on Christ's defeat of the powers of this age, not on the vicarious punishment of the innocent to allow the guilty to go unpunished. Where is the "justice" in that? I'm not saying PS is unbiblical, only that limiting or hyper-focusing our view of the atonement to only PS is myopic and loses sight of the much more nuanced and multifaceted view of the cross held by the early church.
Because the doctrine makes God the Father pour out His wrath on Jesus. God is love, not wrath.
Aquinas came way before liberalism... so did Augustine, who also rejects Dr. Craig's view of reconciliation in Joannem, Tract. cx, §6.
The key point is this: Gods merciful love is the cause, not the result of that satisfaction fulfilled on the cross; this is where the reformed view of penal substitution fails.
Pax vobis
"But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed."
@@gwilson314I take your "limited atonement" and raise you; "He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world" (in the original Greek John writes "olókliros o kósmos"; literally the "whole world").
Also, care to explain Col 1:24 in the context of double imputation? How does one receive Christ's perfect righteousness while He receives your sinfulness through a "faith-based" transaction?
"Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church"
@@Greg-n Limited atonement is a calvinist doctrine and different from penal substitutionary atonement. Many protestants reject limited atonement as defined by reformed theologians.
PSA, the actual topic, refers to the overwhelming number of biblical texts which point to Jesus being the fulfillment of the Old Testament sacrifices, which were where an animal received the penalty due as the substitute for the individual who was actually guilty.
@@gwilson314 yeah that was an unfair assumption on my behalf. The sheer amount of tulip bros on here pushing PSA is overwhelming. My second point still stands.
I also see Christ's death as a fulfillment of old testament sacrifice which is modeled on levitical ritual. PSA is a departure from this, not a fulfillment.
@@Greg-n Appreciate the correction. I see much theological debate as being overly-systematized, and the arguments for limited atonement to be far less biblical than arguments for PSA.
Atonement has other features other than it being penal and substitutionary. Book of Hebrews certainly pulls into the priestly and ritual aspects of the atonement.
How about God just find a way to influence sinners to repent and stop sinning so that He doesnt have to reconcile Himself to people who are unrighteous but people that turn from their sin just reconcile to God by them becoming actually righteous?? Oh wait thats what the cross accomplished. But Christians hate the idea of being holy. Holiness is the dirtiest thing to them. How dare you say to a Christian you can and must become holy. They want to stay in their filth and fellowship with God at the same time.
It seems that penal substitution and eternal conscious torment go hand in hand in the evangelical thinking. But, they are in direct conflict with each other. If the consequence of sin was eternal punishment, then it has not been satisfied because Jesus is in heaven, not eternally in hell. If in fact the consequence of sin has been fully met, then eternal torment is not at all defensible. Both cannot be true.
It's usually paired with OSAS though (the sacrifice was only for the believers and any belief no matter how surface level was enough to cover all sins past, present, and future). I don't see a lot of evidence for this doctrine but it could explain how some are covered and some aren't.
@@storba3860 I am not sure how your comment relates to mine. I was simply pointing out that the "penalty" for sin cannot be eternal hell. Death yes, eternal hell no.
Plus, if whatever the consequence of sin was, was paid by the death of Jesus, how could anyone else be required to pay what has already been paid. You see the conflict with this reasoning?
Scripture is clear that Jesus died for all. All that died in Adam are made alive in Christ. If one died for all, then all died, says the scripture.
THE EARLIEST CHRISTIANS DID *NOT* BELIEVE JESUS DIED FOR THEIR SINS
Substitutionary Atonement is a belief that arose late in the First Century CE after the Jews lost the First Jewish-Roman War (66-73/74 CE), and Gentiles took over the leadership of the Church. Before that, the Jews who believed Jesus was the Expected Messiah, concluded Jesus' death and resurrection was just God's way of convincing all the Jews HE was the Messiah (read Acts 2:32-36) who would get rid of the Romans and set up a new, independent, theocratic, Jewish nation.
However, when that didn't happen, and the leadership of the Church switched to non-Jews, many of them Roman citizens, the whole thing about Jesus dying and getting raised from the dead so the Jews would get behind his rebellion against Rome and, eventually, replacing it...didn't sound so appealing! The next thing ya know, they began re-thinking the purpose of Jesus' death and, with the help of some of the Apostle Paul's metaphors, began to think Jesus' death was a sacrifice to pay God for our sins!
Trouble is, this idea completely contradicts what Jesus taught! He made it very clear that God just forgives sins, period! He taught that God has no need to get even (which is all "getting justice" means) or to make people suffer in any way as punishment. On the contrary, Jesus said God only returns good for evil, love for hate and forgiveness for sins (Matthew 5:38-45)!
How crazy it is to think God is incapable of just forgiving sins because He chooses to! And how nutty it is to think a "payment" for sins can result in "forgiveness"! By definition, forgiveness means a payment is no longer required!
Rick Lannoye, author of www.amazon.com/Real-Life-Jesus-Nazareth-Really-Stood-ebook/dp/B09V4BJ62D
Are you or someone you care about a victim of Bible Abuse? Get help at ricklannoye.com/contact
Dr Craig needs a haircut
I reject penal substitution because it claims that Christ died to change God. But God is immutable. Divine wrath is not a “defect” in God: it is the appropriate response of Divine Love to human sinfulness. The remedy is not to “appease” God’s wrath, but to change Man from a child of wrath to a son of God.
"but to change Man from a child of wrath to a son of God." The change comes as a RESULT of the atonement-- it's not the atonement itself.
BESIDES, the very notion that one is a "child of wrath" means that God is angry at sin and we must be reconciled to Him via blood atonement.
One becomes a son of God by faith in what Jesus did on the cross and in His resurrection. There is inherent PSA in all of that.
That's not what PSA says. It doesn't change God at all.
God is personal, and He can be reasoned with, appeased, angered, etc.. That doesn't mean he ontologically changes.
PSA merely provides for a solution to God's justice (and even wrath!) via the substitutionary death of Jesus.
@@sketchbook1 God may be personal, but He is not a man. The idea that God can be reasoned with, appeased, become angry, etc., are anthropomorphisms that do not accurately express Him as He is, but accommodates Him to our limited understanding. It makes it easier for us to conceptualize God because God as He is, is always infinitely beyond our comprehension.
For example: Let’s look at your idea that God can be reasoned with. To reason with means “to talk with (someone) in a sensible way in order to try to change that person's thoughts or behavior.” But God is perfect and absolutely righteous; any change in His thoughts and behavior would necessarily decrease His perfection, make God imperfect. Clearly, this is impossible. The last thing I need or want is to change God’s thoughts or behavior. Indeed, it’s me who needs to change my thoughts and behaviors to align them to God’s.
According to GotQuestions.org, the “doctrine of penal substitution holds that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross takes the place of the punishment we ought to suffer for our sins. As a result, God’s justice is satisfied, and those who accept Christ can be forgiven and reconciled to God.” It goes on to explain that “God’s perfect justice demands some form of atonement for sin” and that “Jesus is exchanged for us as the recipient of sin’s penalty.”
Several problems arise from this view.
First: if the punishment for sin is death and Christ is exchanged for us, dying as our substitute, why do Christians die?
Second: to forgive requires the person offering forgiveness to surrender their right to strict justice. If you steal a $100.00 from me, and I “forgive” you because someone else pays me the $100 you owe, I haven’t really forgiven you. True forgiveness requires the person offering forgiveness to accept the loss of $100.
Third: this notion actually diminishes God. Our sin does not harm or diminish God one iota. It only harms us and our relationship with God.
Fourth: Christ died to save us from sin, not from wrath. We are saved from wrath by being made holy, pleasing and acceptable to God.
The essential error of PSA is the S. Christ was not our substitute experiencing God’s wrath on the cross. Christ is God made man dying in solidarity with sinful men. He was Adam’s substitute, not mine. Through faith and Baptism I was united with Christ on the cross, dying with Him to sin & rising with Him to new life (Romans 6:2-11). The Penalty for sin is Death. The Atonement (“at-one-ment”) between God and Man is Christ Himself: He is God and Man united in one Person, who out of love participated in our death so we could participate in His resurrected Life.
What then is God’s justice? It is not His need or desire to punish sin. It’s first of all His covenant faithfulness to keep the promises He made. This He has done in the Person and saving work of Jesus Christ. Christ has atoned for sin in that everything that sin made wrong, Christ has set right through the Cross, nullifying sin with the ever greater divine forgiveness.
If god loves human absolutely and unconditionally then why he will send most humans to hell?
Isn't absolute & unconditional love of God for humans is totally contradicting sending people to hell.
You choose to separate yourself from the benefits of God's goodness with your sin. Would a perfect God coerce you into obedience? Because that is the alternative.
The answer is found at the Cross of Jesus Christ as all answers are. There, Jesus said, "Father forgive them for they don't know what they do (killing the Messiah)". Romans 5v8 - "God demonstrates His Love for us in that whilst we were still sinners, Christ died for us". God's Love for us is absolutely unconditional. Why?? He willingly lay down His Life and suffered the wrath we should've bore *whilst we were His enemies*. That is Absolute Unconditional Love! One can't say God the Father didn't throw us a life line (His Name is Jesus). Those without Christ just choose hell rather than God because they hate Him so. God bless you.
Where does scripture say most will go to hell? What is hell? Hell is the grave. Hell is death. The wage of sin is death. Ro. 6:23
Absolutely not. God loves those in hell very much.
@@fredarroyo7429
Whats the point of God loving his creation when hell dwellers are not getting even a slightest benefits of that love.
God who love unconditionally should remove hell dwellers out of hell without any condition. If you put a condition to fulfill on hell peoples then God doesn't love hell dwellers unconditionally because conditional and unconditional criteria are in contradiction. Anyways, once a person dies then his ticket to hell is inevitable because he didn't fulfill condition of accepting Christ and he will be aware that yet in hell God loves him unconditionally which is of no positive use for dwellers of hell.
So god loving unconditionally and god's absolute unconditional justice are total in contradiction.
2:45 The wrath of God is in light of not being fully agreeable with God to do his will. God does not desire that anyone should perish. He desires that all might be obedient into Eternal Life in fellowship with him. Romans 12.1-2 Accordingly, I call alongside you, brothers, through the pity of God, to stand your bodies beside, a living sacrifice, terrifyingly clean, agreeable to God, your reasonable ministry to God. And not to fashion yourself like in figure similar to that age, but becoming amidst the shape into the freshening up of your mind, into your proving what the determination of God is, the good and fully agreeable and complete determination. Christ was manifest to destroy the works of the Devil , which are sins, since the Devil has been sinning since the beginning. The purpose of God is that we might not die in this desert through disobedience and not enter into the Eternal Promised Land to dwell together with God and with the Lamb. The reconciliation is through the awakening of our empathy with Christ that Christ might become our lutron to loosen us off from our sins and our antilutron to preserve us from being loosened off from conduct of propriety befitting a Christian in the Body of Christ.
I notice how he twist things.
Penal substitution implies that Jesus paid our sin debt. Bible actually says he canceled our legal debt (Col 2:14). Case closed. What's your next theory?
Like the energy. Agree with you on PSA not being biblical but i think col 2:14 is talking about our need for keeing Torah is cancelled
@@fredarroyo7429 and @austin3789 To understand this verse you need to see how the LXX use the Greek word here - requirements. In short this would be akin to our understanding of "constitution" or a framework of laws. So Paul is saying the system of punishment found within the Torah has been nailed to the cross.
This seems to demonstrate a misunderstanding of the personhood of Christ.
I agree. In the Gospels, Jesus always forgave and healed freely (ex. Luke 5 : 20), and this already long before the cross. The cross, therefore, was not meant to open God's gate of grace to humans. By the doctrine of Penal Substitution, the reader needs to avoid such biblical testimonies in order not to be questionned.
Jesus forgave them knowing in advance that He’d pay the penalty for them on the cross.
@@Nameless-pt6oj your view is deduced from the doctrine of Penal Substitution. In other words, you read the texts through the doctrine's lenses. Nevertheless, the Gospels never say : Jesus paid the penalty for them on the cross and forgave people in advance.
@@Nameless-pt6oj Read my original comment and then look at neo-Appolinarianism, a view which WLC espouses. PSA is problematic and is almost always related to unorthodox Christology as demonstrated by WLC.
It's controversial because we've outgrown sacrifice in our modern justice systems and people intuit that a perfectly wise god wouldn't be so primitive in a divine plan.
So basically you think you're smarter and wiser than God. Let's see how your "intuition" stacks up against perfect holiness on the day of judgment.
@@toomanymarys7355 Maybe penal substitution simply is blinding you regarding the reality Cory is talking about. No need to say "you think you're smarter and wiser than God" because Penal Substitution can also be the wrong foundation you rely on to think you understood who God is better that those who disagree with your understanding. The simple fact of saying what you say proves that this doctrine can seriously (and rightly) be questionned, so you protect yourself behind such weak words.
I'm having trouble finding anyone addressing my particular problem with PSA: substitution itself. To continue comparing to modern justice systems, say I've committed a crime but I'm rich so I could pay some poor guy to go to jail instead of me. We don't allow that because there's no justice in it! If I screwed up, *I* need to pay for it (and in a more satisfactory way than money).
Old testament animal sacrifice especially, but also Jesus being sacrificed to 'pay' for our sins both have this problem in my mind: it's the moral equivalent of me getting out of jail time without any real punishment. I suppose you could say I think I'm 'smarter than God' but I feel like I should be able to intuit this as you say Cory.
I am currently exploring the idea that there is a massive misunderstanding here, that we're not appeasing an angry god (as a pagan might), but that something else is going on. Orthodox Christians have a totally different concept of why Jesus died on the cross and Justification in general, but unfortunately I am not quick in my understanding.
I love WLC but his defense of PSA was extremely anachronistic, downplaying the uniqie distinctives of PSA and trying to co-opt the historic models for the work of Christ in order to make it more palatable.
He ignored the Biblical standard of God's forgiveness as expressed in Ezekiel 18, Isaiah 55:7 and elsewhere.
Penal substitution goes back to the Old Testament, in which a substitute (such as a goat or a lamb) was sacrificed (the penalty) as a sin offering to appease God's wrath. The Bible describes this as well. Christ, as our sacrificial lamb (1 Peter 1, John 1:29), takes our place (Isaiah 53:5, 2 Corinthians 5:21) to appease the wrath of God (Isaiah 53:10, Exodus 12:12, Hebrews 9:14, Mark 15:33-34).We are atoned or reconciled to God in other ways, certainly. Penal substitution is but one description of this atonement.
Read Leviticus if you want to understand what a sacrifice of atonement was. The offering needed to be something of value on behalf of the worshipper. It was not something God expunged his anger onto. Isaiah's prophecy highlights the nature of God's antecedent and consequent will; that Christ was crushed was a consequent of fallen man who was beholden to sin; that evil occurs in the world is not God's antecedent or desired will, but rather an egress of his consequent will.
You neither preach the right Trinity, nor the right Jesus, nor the right Gospel
Dr Craig, who made him the authority of scriptures. Don’t be fooled with big swelling words of emptiness
Someone as smart as craig should be a Muslim
Muslims worship a cave demon. So no, he is far too intelligent to trade knowledge of the truth to the most obvious false prophet's blasphemy ever.