It’s not completely wrong, of course (there’s very little that’s every 100 percent wrong), and probably the truth, as SBG suggested, is in the middle: justice involves both “courtroom” justice and a reconciliation.

What bothered me most of all perhaps, was that the author, troubled by people’s hostility to God, tries to make God more “palatable” if you will in his definitions, easier for us to accept. (God is not supposed to be “easy” for us to accept, for narrow is the way that leads to salvation).

I think in his quest–well-intentioned, certainly, although misguided–he ignores basic biblical evidence pointing towards the justice of God. I’ve listed here the errors I found, along with a correcting Bible verse.

All Roman Catholics and most Protestants consider death as a punishment from God. Death is a punishment for sin. Most of Romans 1 confirms this, but especially verse 32: “who [sinners], knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.” Certainly death is the natural (non-punishment) outpouring of sin, but it is also a punishment as this chapter indicates.

God — for them — is the real cause of death . Whichever way you read this, this is false, even according to Protestanism (which seems to be anathema to you). Romans 5:12: “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.” I believe in this verse, and in the courtroom justice of God, and there is no contradiction between these two ideas. Protestanism accepts sin as the direct predecessor of death. Check James out as well.

And do they not consider the devil as a minister of God for the eternal punishment of men in hell . Here is a basic misunderstanding: most Protestants realize that God is LORD over all creation and that the devil is tormented in hell. (See Revelation, especially chapter 19).

Is it not salvation from the wrath of God? . God is wrathful. This again is a Biblical idea, and one that cannot be dismissed without dismissing Scripture. There are those in the Old Testament who sinned and “God’s anger burned against them; in Romans 1, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” God is a holy God who cannot tolerate sin. Remember Isaiah’s reaction when brought into God’s presence. It wasn’t “Oh, good, I get to be reconciled to God!” it was “Woe is me! I am a sinner [and thus in danger of impending judgment].”

Atheism is the consequence of Western theology. Uh, no. This is a factual error; athiesm existed looong before Christianity came into being; many of the Greek philosophers were athiests (especially as his author defines them.)

He decided that the guilt of Adam’s disobedience descended equally to all His children, and that all were to be sentenced to death for Adam’s sin, which they did not commit. But everybody has committed a sin, all deserving of death. Yes, Adam’s sin passes on to his descendents, but there’s more to condemntation than that. Here’s Romans 5:14: “Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.”

Even Christ’s love and sacrifice loses its significance and logic in this schizoid notion of a God who kills God in order to satisfy the so-called justice of God. Here the writer forgets what we mean by the word “Trinity.” God did not kill God, as though it is a bad cop/good cop or as though He is a murderer: He sacrificed Himself , for God and Jesus (although not one, that would be heresy) are intertwined into one nature so it is more like a self-sacrifice than anything else.

So in the language of the Holy Scriptures, “just” means good and loving. Not always. Sometimes (”Noah was a just man and walked with God.) But sometimes words referring to justice (Judge) mean just what we think (”Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?)

If we consider hell as a punishment from God, we must admit that it is a senseless punishment, unless we admit that God is an infinitely wicked being. Not true. God does punish people there–those who, as the article correctly noted, refused His love. See the Great White Throne judgment.

Two concluding thoughts (I know, it’s about time!)
1) Ideas are dangerous when they claim that the church has been going wrong for almsot all of it’s history (such as the idea that both Protestants and Catholics are wrong).
2) Certainly we should not lose sight of God’s love in sight of his justice, but also we cannot lose sight of his justice in view of his love. Both appear in the Bible.

I truly hope this helps.

Romans 5:8-11
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

2 Cor 5:18-21
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

The very first articulation of the juridical view of Christ’s work was not done until the 11th century by Anselm in a treatise entitled “Cur Deus Homo?” You can access it on CCEL here: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/anselm/basic_works.viii.html?highlight=anselm#highlight or you can Google it up if you don’t like CCEL’s format.

For those who are really interested in the development of this doctrine, check out Jaroslav Pelikan’s massive work “The Development of Christian Doctrine.” The first volume is particularly instructive. The late Pelikan was a Luthern when he wrote this at Yale, He was this century’s and last’s leading historian of Christian doctrine– unparalleled in his depth and breadth. Interestingly, in his later years, he became Eastern Orthodox.

I assume most of you can navigate CCEL or a similar source to find the Reformers’ points of view on the matter.

Also, you’ll find a clear Roman Catholic explication of the matter if you Google up a copy of Harnack’s History of Dogma.

Permit me to replicate here the same passage from the New King James Version:
21 But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets,
22 Even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference;
23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
24 Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
25 Whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed,
26 To demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Note that this translation does not bear the term “atonement” nor does it bear the term “justice.” Propitiation does not mean some sort of “tit for tat” or pagan concept of divine appeasement but simply means conciliation. This is a particularly stunning concept when you put it together with the Hebrew concept of putting right of relationships which has unfortunately been translated as “justice” in our common English translations and their forebearers. I’m not a real fan of proof-texting, and this difference between your version and the NKJV demonstrates the danger of doing so. I think you’ll find nothing in the NKJV text that is inconsistent with anything I’ve previously stated.

Your use of the term “atonement” belies a Western prejudice and understanding of the nature of sin and death in juridical terms. As I have pointed out in early posts, this has its genesis in a line of reasoning starting with Tertullian and moving through Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas. The juridical understanding of divine and human conciliation is foreign to the Fathers of the Church other than Tertullian (who later fell into the heresy of the Ultramontanes) and Augustine, whose Manichean background never quite escapes him. Both of these wrote in Latin and were really the only Fathers whom the West could read, as the West eventually lost contact with the rest of the Church.

The Fathers themselves were much more concerned in the early centuries of the Church with fighting heresies such as Pelagianism, Arianism, Nestorianism, monophysitism, and the like (all rehashed today in the pseudo-Christian sects that rise up) that with mapping out all of the mechanics of soteriology. Thus, only from time to time do you see the Fathers directly address this topic. As a whole, you discover that the Fathers reject any idea that death is a punishment from God (try re-reading Genesis very carefully without this standard presupposition and you just may find it shocking– I know that I did when I first saw it) or that God delivered man into Satan’s hands. They rejected these concepts on the grounds that God is not the author of death and that Satan is owed nothing at all by anyone, least of all by God. Rather than trying to use this forum to propound the entire scheme of salvation, allow me to recommend three excellent books if you wish to explore this further: (1) Gustav Aulen’s “Christus Victor” written by a Lutheran attempting to claim this viewpoint for Martin Luther (I don’t think he succeeds in his argument on Luther but his explication of the historic view of salvation is really quite good; (2) H.E.W. Turner’s “Patristic Doctrine of Redemption” (provides good sources; (3) John Romanides’ “The Ancestral Sin” (this is an excellent source, but his tone can be offputting to some who might be offended by his view that certain Western ideas in this area are not only erroneous but heretical); and (4) an article entitled “River of Fire” which can be found at http://www.orthodoxpress.org/parish/river_of_fire.htm (again, this one can carry a bit of a polemical edge, so approach it with that in mind).

This concept was really pretty mind-blowing/numbing when I first encountered it, as it flew in the face of everything I had ever known. However, as I really thought about Western atonement theology, I found it to be tremendously self-contradictory and unreconcilable to what we really know about God. I hope this helps. Please forgive me if I’ve caused any offense or have said anything misleading or erroneous.

Jonny

Please explain the point of the atonement if it’s not the righteous for the unrighteous, and please explain how what you say fits with the following verses in Romans 3.

21But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement,[i] through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

I do not argue that justice does not fit within God’s character or that He does not have a sense of sin. Indeed, His very existence itself defines sin, and the Scriptures speak of the just Judge. However, there are different concepts of “justice” floating around out there. There is the courtroom notion of justice. Unfortunately, our Western civilization has made this notion THE definition of justice. Yet (and Alistair McGrath has done a phenomenal amount of work on this topic in his monumental tome “Iustitia Dei”), the actual Hebrew term employed in the Bible that has been unfortunately translated as “justice” does not carry the meaning of this notion. It was a poor choice of words and has spawned unknown millions of misunderstandings. Tertullian, Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas all based their understanding of God on this courtroom notion of God and His just Essence and bequeathed their understandings of it to Western Christianity. The Hebrew term, as McGrath demonstrates, means nothing of the sort at all. Rather, the Hebrew term carries with it a sense of God setting relationships aright and of God respecting His promises.

So, because of this error, most Christians in the West today, regardless of stripe or color, have bought wholesale into and perpetuated the idea that “justice” is Roman court style and that God, as just Judge, has this “justice” within His Essence. It is from this perspective that I hold to my proposition that we in the West are imposing our standard on God– no, more that we have anthropomorphized God and set up a false god– created an idol in our image– to worship instead of the true God who is Just in the sense that the Scriptures describe.

Undoubtedly, Justice and Mercy cohabit and work together. However, this is often the refuge of those who want to claim that courtroom justice and God’s mercy go hand-in-hand– which is nonsensical. For this reason, I couldn’t agree with you more that we as humans need to know what real “justice” is and that we can certainly begin our search in Scripture– so long as we understand Scripture’s meaning before drawing any conclusions.

I’d like to respond to your most serious argument, the one that takes us furthest away from traditional Christianity–the notion that somehow justice does not fit within God’s character or it negates his capacity for mercy (especially your little analogy with the Judge and the victim).

You write, “our very own limited human understanding of love and mercy would rebel at calling merciful any Judge who pronounces sentence on the condemned but then takes out that sentence on an innocent person who volunteers to take the place of a condemned person who is repentant” as if somehow this negates God’s justice and supports his mercy. They work together, Jonny, justice and mercy, and it is not merely God the Father who is just. Christ Himself called out the Pharisees on their sins and drove the money-changers from the temple: certainly He is just and has an equal sense of sin.

I’ve referenced Milton here before: in Mercy and Justice both, Through Heav’n and Earth, so shall my glorie excel.

Incidentally, the search for what you call a “human concept of justice” does not actually impose our standards on Him. Go back and read my posts again; I’m strongly against imposing definitions and standards on God, as I make clear to Rowe. But we as humans need to know what justice is, and since justice “flows forth” from God, then we ought rightly to begin our search in Scripture.

Many, though not all, of the verses quoted by Joel Mark, refer to God’s Energies– they describe knowledge that we have (or think that we have) ABOUT God. The statement, however, that God IS love, refers to His very Essence– His Being. This is impenetrable to most of us (including me) who end up knowing (or thinking that we know) a lot ABOUT God but have very little in the way of actual knowledge OF God, that is, direct experience of God in a relational way. Much in the same way that, if I spent enough time here on the board, I might know a lot about one or more of you, but I would rarely, if ever, truly know any of you.

Granted, a few of the verses quoted by Joel Mark do go beyond describing God’s Energies and actually go to His Essence. However, none of the verses quoted get us to finding a human judicial notion of justice as part of God’s Essence, or even descriptive of His Energies. Although Kimberly is correct that none of this forecloses finding a human concept of justice within God, the absence of a negative does not prove the positive. A description of God as Judge does not by any means impose human judicial standards upon Him.

One of the points in my disjointed rant and ramble last night is that the whole preceding discussion does just this– it proceeds on the ground that the very Essence of God Himself includes a human concept of “justice” or fair play. Look at all of the discussion between Jon Rowe and his detractors. The discussion is over the degree of punishment that God requires and not whether He requires any punishment at all.

The foregoing discussion is incredibly difficult to square with the Parable of the Prodigal Son in which the Father sought nothing from His son but a heart of repentance and humility. Further, our very own limited human understanding of love and mercy would rebel at calling merciful any Judge who pronounces sentence on the condemned but then takes out that sentence on an innocent person who volunteers to take the place of a condemned person who is repentant. That is not mercy but simply the substitution of one victim for another (even if the condemned is unrepentant, for that matter). “Merciful” might certainly describe the substitute victim, but it will never describe a judge who is constrained by some law which is greater than he. The Persons of the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, according to traditional Christian understanding are “one in Essence and Undivided.” God is either merciful or not. Unfortunately, most of the previous discussion appears based on a desire by those involved to have their academic, vicarious atonement cake and eat their personal salvation, too.

Although one might properly say that limiting God to Being Love leaves Him as one-dimensional and that such a definition of God is certainly insufficient, I think it would be equally valid to observe that all of the things we know about God easily proceed from Love and are consistent therewith. Conversely, because we know that, at the very least, God IS Love, we should run fast and far away from any idea that is NOT consistent with this, for such an idea would truly be blasphemy.

You a Calvinist, buddy? Calvin actually didn’t invent the Five Points; they were created by his followers and thus are not a complete representation of what he believes.

Generally, I consider myself Calvinist because I am not Arminian in that man has no ability and no desire to come to God alone, without divine grace. The salvific work belongs to the Lord alone.

“Free will” is a touchy subject for anyone; there are verses on both sides of the subject. You have the “elect” and “predestination” aspect, and then you have “God does not want any to perish but all to come to repentance.” (Rather anti-election, that!) So I prefer to hold judgment on a sticky issue … at least for a while.

But I’d rather this thread not be derailed into this eternal arena … maybe we will have another thread later for this. (I see there’s one on rapture theory and eschatology today).