nobdysfool said:
Calvinists do not say that the Atonement compels the Elect to believe. Show me a Calvinist who said that. Your information is faulty.
Yes, I perfectly realize that Calvinists do not "say" this. However, it is the logical conclusion of the Calvinistic conception of election, predesitination, and God's sovereignty. After all, if all those for whom Christ is supposed to have died (which is not all, but only the elect) are necessarily saved (for it would catastrophic to presume that Christ has failed in any way), then there must be something that guarantees that all those for whom Christ has died are saved. As Calvinists foam at the mouth of any conception of personal responsibility in the area of salvation for the human, the conclusion must be that God compels or effects--whatever word or phrase one wishes to use--the salvation of those for whom Christ is supposed to have exclusively provided atonement. Therefore, my contention that Calvinism believes that God compels the salvation of those whom God is supposed to have predestined to salvation is entirely accurate, regardless of what terminology you would have preferred me to use.
The Atonment was and is that satisfaction of the Wrath of God against sin and the practice of it. As such biblically it is a penal, substitutionary atonement, the perfect for the imperfect, in order that the imperfect may be made perfect. I know you reject the idea, but you do so to your own peril.
To my own peril in what way? I have been reconciled to God through Christ and the Spirit testifies with mine that I am child of God. What peril is there in viewing atonement and salvation as what it actually is--the restoration of relationship between humanity and God? The peril is fabricated.
Oh, man, are you off base! Christ IS God. What you're saying is that Christ has to change the mind of the Father, as though there were a division and discord in the Trinity! What utter foolishness!
Yes, and this is exactly why penal substitutionary atonement should be rejected, precisely because it does create a division and discord in the Trinitarian relationship. I am not the one who believes that Christ and God are at odds. However, as penal substitutionary atonement theology necessarily concludes that what Christ does on the cross changes God's mind and attitude towards humanity (something that God was not willing to do until Christ did something which was not naturally within the will of God--at least as psa assumes), it creates a break between the will of God and that of Christ. I agree that it is foolishness, but then again, it is not the atonement model through which I attempt to comprehend what occurred on the cross. It is, however, the one that you use, so who is the foolish one?
And where in the bible do you find this definition for forgiveness? I agree that we do not earn or merit God's forgiveness, but that doesn't mean that forgiveness is without condition. The condition is the Atonement.
But the Atonement, again, is the act of God in the history of salvation. Therefore, it does not create the condition for God's forgiveness of humanity. Rather, Christ's death at the hands of sinful humanity and his subsequent vindication by God in his resurrection creates the propriety of God's forgiving humanity, as God--through the work of Christ that God makes God's own--becomes the ultimate "victim" of sin. As the ultimate victim of sin, God is able to expend forgiveness to all who are in need of forgiveness.
Once again, however, your position becomes more clear. As you feel the Atonement is the "condition" for forgiveness, you are showing that Christ's will and that of the Father are actually in discord, as Christ's death on the cross becomes the condition upon which God is willing to forgive humanity. However, if this is so, Christ's act of forgiveness on the cross cannot accurately be proper to the work of the Godhead, as God was not willing to forgive without Christ's death. Therefore, you continue to prove the point that PSA creates a discord in the Trinitarian relationship.
God cannot just forgive sin without reason, without violating His own Holiness.
Why not? We are called to forgive others, and it with reason. However, the reason is not that "justice" has been done, or that some "debt" has been satisfied. Rather, we are called to forgive simply because we have been forgiven. However, this forgiveness occured not because God's wrath was satisfied by abusing the Son on the cross, but rather because in Christ the violence and injustice of sin has been exhausted in Christ through Christ's refusal to participate in the structures of violence and sin which is endemic to sinful humanity.
If forgiveness is conditioned upon a debt being satisfied, or punishment being meted out, such is no longer forgiveness. It is simply a penal transaction and a change in standing. However, such misses the
telos of forgiveness, which is reconciliation of relationship between humanity and God.
To do so would mean that he no longer cares about sin, that sin would no longer prevent man from approaching God, which is preposterous, because God does not change.
Not at all. The atonement is principally about a reorientation and recreation of humanity so that they may dwell once again in relationship with God. However, such cannot be accomplished simply by punishing one in the place of another. Rather, Christ came to earth to show what humanity was created to be and what faithful relationship to the Father actually looks like. In refusing to be party to the cycles of violence and sin which is endemic to sinful humanity, Christ--through his resurrection and vindication by the Father--has created a new life in which those who trust in him might participate. This newness of life creates, literally, and ontologically--not penal--change in which humanity is truly brought from death to life, from separation and alienation into reconciliation and relationship with the Father.
Once again, arguing that man has a part to to play in his salvation, something to contribute, because of faulty definition of love, and the belief that relationship is what God is after.
Are you kididng me? What else is God after? Glory? The salvation or damnation of all of mankind would not detract one iota from the glory of God. Yes, relationship with humanity is entirely what God is after, and is precisely the reason for which God created humanity in God's image, so that humanity might exist in relationship with the Godhead. You can rage and foam against the idea that there could possibly be a reciprocity on the part of humanity with God, but the fact is that there is. Relationship cannot occur without reciprocity. This does not mean that humans are able to "save themselves"--it simply means that they are able to exist in relationship with God because of Christ has done on the cross for humanity, a relationship for which humanity was originally created.
Whether or not you admit to it, your theology is at its core Arminian, which is a form of semi-Pelagianism.
Oh, give me a break. This is such a tired and worn out accusation that simply shows that you have no real answers to the issues that I raise. Why don't you show me how my theology is "at its core Arminian and semi-Pelagian?" Not that I care--I would rather be either of these than Calvinist.
You overlay it with philosophy and physchology, but it's root is to deny the scriptures regarding man's true condition, God's purpose, and to set man up as the ultimate determiner of his own salvation.
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No, I have never once said that man is the "ultimate determiner of salvation." Moreover, philosophy and psychology are entirely necessary for comprehending these issues, as they are the lenses through which one interprets the Scriptures.
Justice is a recognition of transgression, and the reality that it must be redressed. The books must balance, so to speak.
What books? And why must they "balance?" I do not understand why this is a philosophically, theologically, or even Scripturally necessary conclusion...
You're just playing word games. Christ satisfied the Justice of God against sin, by paying the penalty due, i.e. that of death. Those who are in Christ are counted as having died, and therefore having paid the penalty, with the important difference that they, in Christ, survive their death, as did Christ, by virtue of His diety and perfection. Every man outside of Christ will pay for his own sins, but he will not survive the payment.
Rubbish. Christ was killed by sinful humanity and the forces of evil in the world, not by God. Christ's agony on the cross was because the forces of sin and evil assailed him and completely exhausted themselves in his person, not because the "wrath" of God was punishing Christ in someone else's place. If God punished Christ on the cross, then God has answered the problem of sin on its own terms--with violence. If this is true, then God has ultimately shown that the tactics of sin and evil are actually correct, only that God is more powerful and violent than sin and evil. Therefore, PSA ultimately shows that humans--in the cross of Christ--have actually come under the dominion of a being more powerful, yet more violent and destructive, than sin and evil themselves. Yes, that is certainly good news...
There again, you postulate a division in the Trinity, a disagreement between the Father and the Son. That is not possible. The Father and Son covenanted together before Creation to redeem those chosen by the Father and given to the Son, whom the Son would redeem to be God's own people and possession, and the Bride of Christ. There was no disagreement. Christ is not "changing God's Attitude" toward humanity, such an idea is preposterous.
So the Father and Son covenented together that God would punish the Son? Before Creation, Father and Son agreed that the Father would kill the Son for a humanity that had not yet fallen? On one level this is child abuse of the most universal scope, and on the other it is the supreme form of masochism.
Therefore, PSA leaves you with two options: 1.) A break in the Trinitarian relationship, which you say is impossible. 2.) An eternally sadistic, self-abnegating Creator. This too is equally impossible.
Thus, one should have quite good reasons to utterly reject any countenance of penal substitutionary atonement theology.
You show that you have no understanding of Reformed Theology, or of the constituent doctrines basic to orthodox, biblical Christianity.
No, I understand Reformed theology better than I actually want to, which is why I speak so strongly against it. Moreover, there is nothing which I have said that is contrary to "orthodox, biblical Christianity." After all, PSA--the upstart atonement theology that it is--has not been officially codified as "THE" atonement theology of the Church. Moreover, most of Christian history has no conception of this theology.
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