ViaCrucis
Confessional Lutheran
- Oct 2, 2011
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You disavow penal substitution theology because it is a new invention and because it is unsound. Yet the very same thing can be said of the trinity. The idea arose centuries late and has little biblical support. Aside from John 10:30 I see nothing that puts Jesus on equal footing with God and countless verses that place him below God.
The trinity is a late invention with little scriptural backing and is an idea that obfuscates theology. It is logically unsound. By your reasoning, shouldn't it be abandoned?
A high Christology is fairly abundant in the writings of the New Testament, and is consistently taught by the fathers. What became chiefly important in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries was what it meant to call Christ God. On the one hand Sabellianism taught that Christ was the Father, this was rejected as heretical. Arianism, on the other hand, in its zeal to avoid Sabellianism taught that Christ was a separate and second God. The doctrine that Christ, as the Son and Logos, is homoousios with the Father and therefore God of God and begotten not made is nearly by necessity to confess the orthodox teaching and avoid the errors of Sabellianism and Arianism.
I believe Penal Substitution is a problem because it damages the message of the Gospel and because it is fundamentally disconnected from the historic teaching of the Church. Neither of these things is true of the doctrine of the Trinity, which arises organically from the faith and confession of the Church as noted above.
-CryptoLutheran
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