Dr. Herman Bavinck, The Kinist

Thanks to the girlish hyperventilating of people like Joe Boot, James White, Andrew Sandlin, and Doug Wilson the idea of Kinism has become a “set your hair on fire” controversial position. However, it is simply the case that prior to 1945 or so Kinism was merely one doctrinal petal in the whole Reformed flower. Kinism was part and parcel of “Reformed Christian” just as “total depravity” was.

There are now two different anthologies out that demonstrate that in spades. If you haven’t read them you should.

Who Is My Neighbor — Achdow & Ord
A Survey of Racialism in Christian Sacred Tradition — Alexander Soren

Given that Kinism was merely one doctrine that comprised the Christian faith for pretty much all Christians with the exception of Anabaptists we should not be surprised to find that the great Dutch Reformed Theologian
Herman Bavinck was Kinist.

Bavinck is clear that grace does not eliminate creational differences among men:

“God does that by establishing the structures of family, society, and state among human beings. He awakens in the human heart a natural love between men and women, parents and children. He nurtures a variety of social virtues among people: a pull toward social relationships and longing for affection and friendship. He also scatters humanity into different people groups and languages to protect them from total decline. Among those nations, he creates the national virtues of affection for and love of fatherland. He permits these different people groups to organize themselves into states to whom is given the calling to regulate the relationships among the many diverse spheres of society and maintain justice.”

Herman Bavinck

“Reformed Social Ethics”
(GBP, 440-41)

1964 Rushdoony Nails The Purpose Of The Hart-Cellar Act — McAtee Expands

“The purpose of the Hart-Cellar immigration law of 1965 was threefold.

First, it was described by NY Republican Senator Javitz as ‘the civil rights legislation for the world.’ Now, had we so described the bill, we would have been accused of misrepresentation, but we have the authority of Senator Javits that this bill is ‘the civil rights legislation of the world.’ In other words, it will establish, as a civil right of any person, anywhere in the world that they have a right to come to the United States, that immigration is no longer a privilege, a right which we hold and which we extend as a privilege to whomever we choose, but a civil right of anyone in the world. This then is the first function of the Hart-Cellar 1964 Immigration Act.

Its second function is to transfer immigration control from the legislative branch to the executive, so that the control of immigration, which has historically been in the hands of congress will be transferred to the administration.

Third, the law would be basically secondary to the president’s wishes, so that the basic law would be the will of the president, and it really would be a blank check. There would be no effective prohibition of anyone, whether subversive, mentally defective, a prostitute, a pervert, anyone would have the right to come into the country. There would be no effective bar.

This then, is the nature of the Kennedy-Johnson bill (Hart-Cellar Act). The likelihood of passage is very, very great unless a storm of protest overwhelms congress and compels them to surrender their present inclination to accept the bill. The purpose of this immigration policy then is to unify man, to bring about the unity of the godhead. Its purpose, and its premise, is not economic but religious. It is theologically rooted in this religious dream, the United Nations.

R. J. Rushdoony
Pocket College Lecture — 1964 Lecture

If ever the title of “Prophet” should be laid on someone that someone should be Rushdoony.

If we fill in the blanks just a wee bit more we would say now;

1.) The unification of man, as desired by the Globalists in these uS – a unification that RJR insists was inspired by the desire to have a unified manhood (world population) serving as god — was to be achieved by massive emigration patterns from the third world to the first world.

2.) Think of the purposeful change in immigration patterns as the pursuit of the lowest common denominator in order to level the nations. This is immigrational socialism.

3.) This vision of the Globalists that RJR exposed in 1964 could only be brought about by both the re-configuration of global populations via emigration AND massive propaganda agenda to push miscegenation once those populations have been re-arranged. As such, miscegenation, serves alongside the purposeful emigration agenda. Man will be melded, via marriage and breeding, into a singular non-distinguishable interchangeable cog. Once achieved it is a small step to Global citizenship in a New World Order.

4.) Because all of this is, as RJR writes above, was a part of the dream of the Globalists this means, by necessity, the homogenization process cannot be restricted to racial homogenization via miscegenation, and cultural homogenization via the same process, but also what also must be pursued in religious homogenization. A globalist New World Order requires not only a homogenization of race and culture but also requires a homogenization of all religions into one. Of course, this means the overthrow of distinctive Christianity which is being accomplished via the “Christian” churches refusal to speak out against Globalism (Babelism). As sure as night follows day you can count on the fact that Christianity will increasingly be less and less distinctive (than it already is) from other religions.

5.) If immigration is a civil right of anyone in the world then by necessity America cannot be anything but a propositional nation. If immigration to America is a civil right of anyone in the world then America cannot be a place defined by a people sharing a common ancestry and heritage, a common history, a common Anglo culture or even a common language.

6.) The ultimate purpose for all this was to destroy Christianity and this remains the ultimate purpose for all this. Those in the Church who cannot see this are co-conspirators in the silly attempt of rolling Christ off His throne.

Nationalism Then & Now

I took every course offered by Dr. Glenn R. Martin in undergrad. He remains to this day a instrumental and formative presence in my life. He was the one who set me on the trajectory of presuppositionalism and Weltanschauung thinking. After, I left Martin’s tutelage I still had miles to go in understanding those categories of thought but I was set on the trail.

One of the courses I took from Martin was “American Intellectual & Social History.” It was basically a “History of Ideas in America” course. The kind of course that looked behind the events of American History to ask the question; “What was the thought world that drove the disputes and ideas in American history.”

Naturally enough a good amount of time was spent on the epochal event of US History — what we were taught to refer to as “The War of Northern Aggression.” We examined the theological thought world of both North and South and through that prism we were taught how to understand that conflict.

We were taught, rightly enough I still believe 45 years later, that the conflict was between those who theologically were committed to a social order system where authority and power was purposefully diffused and decentralized against those who were theologically committed to concentrated and centralized power. One one side one found the Nationalistic impulse of the Hamiltonians that resulted in a Unitarian Nationalism and on the other side one found the Anti-Federalist impulse of the Jeffersonians that resulted in a old style Republicanism. Over the decades I’ve continued pursuing this explosion in American history in my study and with my books and nothing I learned in 1980 in my “American Intellectual & History” course has overturned that essence of the conflict.

What has changed, oddly enough, is that I am now pursuing my Republicanism via a stodgy and unstinting defense of Nationalism. My convictions have not changed. However, the historical circumstances that we are now living in have changed. The contest we are now in against the Globalist is not significantly different than the contest our American forebears in the South fought against the Yankees. The difference is that in 1861 they wanted National Unitarianism. Today they desire Global Unitarianism.

I was and remain opposed to Lincolnian Nationalism because it was a centralizing and top down Nationalism pursued with a vision of destroying the various nations that comprised these united States of America. I now strongly champion Christian Nationalism because it is, at least in my vision, a movement that is committed to pursuing a of maintaining the distinctiveness of White Anglo Saxon America as against the earlier Lincolnian tendency to support Unitarian elimination of distinctives as found among states, regions, and even peoples.

In other words whereas the Unitarian Nationalism of 1861 was basically a nationwide globalist-like movement against regionalism and sectionalism, today Christian Nationalism, in my vision, is basically nationwide anti-globalist-like movement in favor of a regional identity (Americans as a distinct people and place) vis-a-vis a opposition that would do to all the world what Lincoln and the Black Republicans did to all of America, to wit, put us all in a blender in order to make all mankind into interchangeable cogs in a New World Order.

So, my remaining anti-Unitarian Nationalism in relation to the War Against the Constitution pursued by the Blue Devils in 1861 is consistent with my pro-Christian nationalism anti-Globalist convictions today. Indeed, my anti-Unitarian Nationalism formed between 1865-1877 is of a piece with my pro Christian Nationalism of 2025. If you genuinely understand the dynamics of the contest today against the globalists you will find yourself embracing increasingly the position of the Anti-federalists in 1787 and the Southerners in 1861.

It is interesting that historically speaking, Karl Marx, in a letter to Lincoln spoke of how he saw Lincoln’s war as having continuity with the European Revolutions of the 18th century. Indeed Marx writes to Lincoln clearly connecting the dots between the work of Lincoln and the Declaration of the Rights of Man scribbled in the French Revolution. This is consistent with the observations by some that the War Against the Constitution was America’s “French Revolution.” What more reason does one need to conclude that not only did the bad guys win out during the French Revolution against a faulty but a still clear Christendom but also the Enlightenment strength carried the day in the last Protestant Christian social order in the West.

There are some other similarities between the Unitarian Nationalism recreation of the US social order and the attempt today to snuff out Christian Nationalism’s resistance to globalism.  One of those similarities between now and then is the “conservative” church. As the Yankee Church gave “Christian” cover for Unitarian Nationalist project of 1861 so even the “conservative” “Reformed” churches give cover today for the Anti-Christ Globalist project. Just as Yankee Churches in 1861 needed to be plowed under & salted so the Globalist churches today need to be treated as the enemy.

Like Confederates of old we are now fighting not to be absorbed in a heathen top down system that would erase our identity in favor of bland sameness. Johnny Reb fought against a Unitarian Nationalism. We are fighting against a technocratic Globalism. If we lose, we lose who we are just as Johnny Reb lost his civilization between 1861-1877 and just as all Americans lost all remnants of that same civilization with the burgeoning impact of Wilsonian Democracy, FDR’s New Deal, and LBJ’s great society as well as the hits that have just kept coming since then.

I must say though that just as Johnny Reb lost in his contest with collectivization and centralized authority so I am not optimistic, in the short term, that we will succeed any better. Johnny Reb knew what it was to be a free man living in a free social order that was regulated by Christian law. We however, who desperately want to resist just as Johnny Reb did do not live among a people who have much knowledge of what it means to be a free man living in a free social order regulated by Christian law. Modern Americans have become accustomed to living off the teat of the centralized state. It is hard for me to believe that when push comes to shove the average American is going to be willing to be (switching metaphors) unhooked and detached from the Matrix. We as a people have become so attached to the centralized, managerial, and technocratic state that I don’t think that, in the short term, we have the will to tell the Globalists to “go bugger yourself.”

Americans may have to, for a time, live under the lash of Globalism with its creation of mass, uniform, global culture. However, I remain hopeful for the long term. Globalism is a culture of death because at its foundation is a hatred of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords; Jesus the Christ. Scripture teaches us that, “All those who hate Christ, love death.” As such since Globalism hates of Christ (which is the chief characteristic of Globalism)  therefore I am assured that it will die and everyone knows that death can’t win. So, while Globalism may continue to be victorious in the short term, in the long term, like its attempt in Genesis 11, it will be totally and utterly defeated. With its defeat will be the return of Christian nations embracing variant expressions of Christian nationalism.

In the short term we epistemologically self-conscious and stubborn few must continue to run up the flag of Christian Nationalism and the banner of Christendom. We must be able to explain the connection between men bowing to Christ individually and the subsequent result of all the nations being discipled and bowing in allegiance to Christ. We must earnestly pray that the Lord Christ would leverage us to advance His Kingdom. We must pray that we might get the opportunity that Samson got in his last hour — the ability to deal a devastating blow to the enemy of Christ and His people.

 

 

McAtee Contra Clay Libolt on Penal Substitutionary Atonement — IV

“The atonement is the crucial doctrine of the faith.  Unless we are right here it matters little, or so it seems to me, what we are like elsewhere.”

Dr. Leon Morris
The Atonement; Its Meaning & Significance

As we continue to dismantle Dr. Clay Libolt’s heretical view of the atonement we pause to inquire about why there is so much disagreement about the meaning of the Hebrew word “ כִּפֻּר”(Kippur) as amongst those counted as “scholars.” Answering this query will reveal much.

When I was in Seminary we were taught the glorious importance of the original languages of the Hebrew and the Greek. We were all required to take years of each. There is no doubt that the languages are important but along the way I learned that there is something even more important than knowing the languages — something underneath the languages upon which the languages rest and that something is the idea of Weltanschauung (Worldview).

I realized this in the course of doing all my study on the Hebrew and Greek. I realized this simply because when one referred to the aids (as one has to do when learning the languages) one began to discover that very smart people had very different opinions on the meaning of different Greek and Hebrew terms/words. Over time it became apparent that these scholars were disagreeing not because of the meaning of the Hebrew or Greek word or passage but rather they were disagreeing because of their own Weltanschauung that they were bringing to the text. In other words, when a word/term/phrase from the original language was in dispute the differences between the different scholars was due to the fact that they were bringing their worldview to the text and it was because of that worldview that they were coming to the conclusions that there were variously arriving at when considering the meaning of different Hebrew and Greek words.

Think about this for just a moment and it will become clear. If it were the case that the languages alone cleared up all disputes then we would no longer have various and competing theological schools of thought. If one could come to the obvious meaning of the text only by taking into account the linguistic / grammatical meaning of the Hebrew and Greek words then we would not have Arminian, or Reformed, or Lutheran, or Roman Catholic, etc. scholars disagreeing about this or that theological point because they could all just retreat to the original languages and the original languages and the understanding thereof would settle the dispute between them. This, most assuredly does not happen and as a result we must conclude that the reason that the disagreements exist is that the World and Life view of any particular scholar in question is moving him or her to read the text in a particular way.

Nowhere is this observation more true when it comes to the debate of the Hebrew word group Kipper (covering) and the Greek word group Hilasmos (propitiation). When these words are examined the meaning of those words are going to be heavily debated because of their theological import. It is not to much to say that Reformed guys like Leon Morris and Louis Berkhof etc. who are Reformed read Kipper and Hilasmos the way they did because of their panoramic understanding of God and Christianity. In the same way Clay Libolt, as well as the chaps he cites, reads Kipper and Hilasmos the way they do because of their raging man-centered theology. For these chaps Kipper and Hilasmos decidedly do not mean what Morris and Berkhof understand those words to mean and that is, in the end, because Libolt, N. T. Wright, John Walton, etc. don’t like the kind of God that Morris, Berkhof, and the authors of the Reformation Confessions affirmed.

Now, none of this is to say that Kipper and Hilasmos don’t have stable meanings. It means instead that the arrival of the meaning of those words and the disputing of the meaning of those words are dependent upon a whole of Scripture contextual reading and understanding. I agree with scholars like Leon Morris on the meaning of Kipper and Hilasmos (covering/propitiation) because we each read the Scriptures as a whole in the same way and in reading the whole of Scripture in the same way we find the word grouping Kipper and Hilasmos to mean the same. If I were to read the Bible as a whole the same way Libolt does, I would do all I could to tear apart the stable meanings of the words Kipper and Hilasmos so as to make them mean anything but that which associates those meanings with God’s just wrath against sin, with the necessity of blood sacrifice to turn away God’s just wrath, with the necessity for covering by means of substitution. If I thought like Libolt thinks (and I daily thank God I don’t) then in order to sustain my theology that holds;

“A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.”

H. Richard Niebuhr
The Kingdom of God in America

I would do all within my power, given my station and rank, to obliterate those stable meanings.

What Libolt does in his eviscerating of the words Kipper (covering) and Hilasmos (propitiation) is the same thing that C. S. Lewis wrote about in his book, “Pilgrim’s Regress.” In that book Lewis has the following exchange between two characters;

C.S. Lewis wrote about a man who ordered milk and eggs from a waiter in a restaurant. After tasting the milk he commented to the waiter that it was delicious. The waiter replied, “Milk is only the secretion of a cow, just like urine and feces.” After eating the eggs he commented on the tastiness of the eggs. Again the waiter responded that eggs are only a by-product of a chicken. After thinking about the waiter’s comment for a moment the man responded, “You lie. You don’t know the difference between what nature has meant for nourishment, and what it meant for garbage.

In this same way Libolt, N. T. Wright, John Walton and countless other “Christians” have taken the milk and eggs that are Kipper and Hilasmos and like the waiter in Lewis’s “Pilgrim’s Regress,” have redefined those words so that they amount to urine and feces — and that so as to fit their demented Weltanschaung.

Clay Libolt himself admitted this in his piece. He admitted in his piece that the reason that the allowing for sexual perversion did not pass in the Christian Reformed Denomination (CRC) was due to the fact that they had misinterpreted Kipper/Hilasmos and as such they had a God that would never be friendly to sexual perversion. His goal is to correct his readers thinking about God consistent with his version of Kipper/Hilasmos so that he can jam through acceptance of sexual perversion in the CRC. A change in one’s theology means, by necessity, a change in one’s anthropology, and a change in one’s hamartiology (doctrine of sin).

You see the God of Penal Substitutionary Atonement is a God who fits Clay Libolt’s egalitarian Christianity. PSA explicitly teaches that God is opposed to the kind of egalitarianism that allows for all sinners to come into the church without repenting of their sin. The reality of this is seen in the fact that the PSA is discriminating. Christ does not die as the substitute for each and every individual who has ever lived. Christ dies for those given to Him by the Father.  The cross is thus discriminating and not egalitarian in the least. What follows from this is that the Church likewise is a discriminating institution that is not egalitarian in the least as seen in fact that it screens who can be part of the body of Christ. Only those whom Christ has died for, whom the Spirit applies that redemption to as evidenced by faith and repentance by the supplicant seeking entry. The anti-egalitarianism then, of the PSA is what Clay is railing at as seen by the fact that Clay desires the sexually perverted to come into the Church quite without the evidence of faith and repentance.

Now all of the above I offer in refutation of Clay’s “examination” of the word Kipper in his articles. If someone desires to read a detailed expose on the meaning of the atonement and all the words surrounding it I would recommend the following books;

The Atonement; Its Meaning & Significance
Dr. Leon Morris

The Apostle’s Doctrine of the Atonement
George Smeaton

Pierced for Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution
Jeffrey, Ovey, Sach

If the reader desires more than that write me and ask. I’ve tried to read one book a year since being in the ministry (1989) on the atonement. After continuing to do this reading over the years I can say, without hesitation, that nearly everything that Clay Libolt says about atonement (sourced from the Liberal authors as they are) is errant. I am sure what Clay writes about in terms of atonement is indeed by affirmed by many people but the many people that believe in the kind of atonement that Clay writes about are not Christian.

Libolt, following his sources, insists that atonement is not about the cleansing of the person offering the sacrifice but it is rather about the cleansing of the sanctuary. The sacrifice is offered up so that God can inhabit the environs where the sacrifice is made and not so the person bringing the sacrifice might be cleansed.

However, such a understanding stands against the stream of the Scripture already established before we get to Leviticus. The stream of Scripture already finds us with Adam and Eve being clothed by God with animal skins. Though “Kipper” is not used in this passage the idea of covering is clearly present and the death of animals is more than implied in order that Adam and Eve might be clothed. When we get to the deliverance from Egypt and the first Passover we find the death of the lambs and the spreading of the lamb blood on the lintels of the door that the death angel may pass over so that the first born of the home would not suffer death. In both the Genesis example and the Exodus deliverance animals are substitutes in the place of where death was to visit. Already, at this point, a type is being established in Scripture and Kipper in later revelation will arrive in order to augment and build on this already established narrative. Finally, in the Gospels Christ arrives as the great anti-type and His cousin says of Jesus the Christ;

“Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world.”

I submit to you that every Jew listening to that proclamation knew that by that statement, penalty, substitution, and atonement were what John the Baptist was proclaiming.

In the next installment we will look more at the idea of propitiation, expiation, and we will continue to disassemble Libolt’s reasoning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

McAtee Contra Clay Libolt on Penal Substitutionary Atonement — III

With this post I continue to dismantle the neo-orthodoxy of Dr. Clay Libolt in a series that he is doing wherein he seeks to dismantle the doctrine of Penal Substitutionary Atonement. Clay is extremely displeased that his denomination (Christian Reformed Church) voted to agree with what Scripture says about sexual perversion. Clay, properly understands that only once the theology of the denomination is changed can the anthropology of the denomination change so that perversion can be embraced as normative. Clay’s articles attacking Penal Substitutionary Atonement is to the end of normalizing sexual perversion.

Clay writes;

I was a reporter at Synod 2022 and reported on the PSA debate. What is not quite clear from the official record is how the delegates seemed to view PSA. Theologians from as long as there has been theology have viewed statements about God as analogical. What we have are our human languages and our perception of the world in which we live. We use these to speak by analogy of what we cannot otherwise know. No one can see directly into the divine world. We speak of it guardedly as a mystery. But not these synod delegates. They seemed to regard PSA simply as the way things are, not only on earth but in heaven. There was a distressing lack of humility in the debate.

Bret responds,

1.) Inasmuch as the delegates to Synod 2022 affirmed Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) it is clear that the delegates viewed as taught in Scripture.

2.) What Clay does above is he changes the meaning of the word analogical to mean equivocal. For something to be equivocal means that it is open to a multitude of interpretations. That is not the meaning of analogical. To speak analogically is to see a parallel of truth in two similar but not exact things. For example, a canoe paddle is analogical of a screw on a Battleship propulsion. Both serve the purpose of propelling the ship forward, and yet they differ in size. When Clay, above, complains that the delegates to 2022 didn’t understand analogical reasoning what he is really complaining about is that the delegates didn’t understand that the atonements’ meaning was equivocal — which is to say that the atonement has no stable meaning.

Clay desires equivocal in language because only by equivocation can room be made for his heretical understanding of the atonement. If the atonement doesn’t have stable meaning then it can mean whatever Clay wants it to mean. So again, Clay complains about the delegates not understanding that there is analogical language used in the atonement, but what he really wants is to define “analogical” to mean “equivocal,” so that atonement can be made to be a wax nose that allows for nearly any interpretation.

3.) Clay continues to seek to try and muddy the atonement scene by insisting that “No one can see directly into the divine world. We speak of it guardedly as a mystery.”

a.) We can see directly into the divine world because we have the Revelation of God and nowhere in the Scriptures is the atonement spoken of as a mystery.

b.) Of course this statement undercuts Clay’s own nouveau revised version of the atonement as well as the long received biblical doctrine of the PSA. If Clay cannot see directly into the divine world, he should speak guardedly of any doctrine of the atonement he prefers only as mystery.  By Clay’s own reasoning no doctrine of the atonement (including his) should be championed because “no one can see directly into the divine world.” You see, Clay champions uncertainty about PSA so that he can tell you in the next breath that he is certain about his heretical doctrine of the atonement — and that even though he can’t see directly into the divine world.

4.) Clay continues with the irony by complaining about the lack of humility of the 2022 synodical delegates while seemingly completely missing his own lack of humility as demonstrated by being so certain that they were wrong and he is right. Physician heal thyself when it comes to this lack of humility.

Clay goes on;

But however you understand PSA, whether as a metaphor for God’s grace or as the way things actually happen, the question remains: is it in fact biblical? Do “the Scriptures and confessional standards make clear. . ..” what PSA and the synod claim about God?

Bret responds;

It really is quite astounding and dumbfounding at the same time that Clay would suggest that the Confessions as well as the Scripture does not support PSA. Below we consider just a few statements of the Belgic Confession of Faith which with stark clarity, citing Scripture reference, gives a full throated affirmation of the PSA.

1.) Confessions on PSA;

a.) Article 19 of “The Belgic Confession of Faith” teaches;

Wherefore we confess that He (Jesus the Christ) is very God and very man: very God by His power to conquer death, and very man that He might die for us according to the infirmity of His flesh.

b.) Article 2o of the The Belgic Confession of Faith teaches;

We believe that God, who is perfectly merciful and just, sent His Son to assume that nature in which the disobedience was committed, to make satisfaction in the same and to bear the punishment of sin by His most bitter passion and death.1 God therefore manifested His justice against His Son when He laid our iniquities2 upon Him and poured forth His mercy and goodness on us, who were guilty and worthy of damnation, out of mere and perfect love, giving His Son unto death for us and raising Him for our justification,3 that through Him we might obtain immortality and life eternal.

1 Heb. 2:14; Rom. 8:3, 32–33 2 Isa. 53:6; John 1:29; 1 John 4:9
3 Rom. 4:25

c.) Belgic Confession of Faith Article 21

Article 21

The Satisfaction of Christ, Our Only High Priest, For Us 

We believe that Jesus Christ is ordained with an oath to be an everlasting High Priest after the order of Melchizedek,1and that He hath presented Himself in our behalf before the Father to appease His wrath by His full satisfaction,2 by
offering Himself on the tree of the cross, and pouring out His precious blood to purge away our sins, as the prophets had foretold. For it is written, He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed. He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and numbered with the transgressors;
3 and condemned by Pontius Pilate as a malefactor, though he had first declared Him innocent.4 Therefore, He restored that which He took not away,5 and suffered the just for the unjust,6 as well in His body as in His soul, feeling the terrible punishment which our sins had merited; insomuch that His sweat became like unto drops of blood falling on the ground.7 He called out, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? 8 and hath suffered all this for the remission of our sins.

Wherefore we justly say with the apostle Paul, that we know nothing but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified;9 we count all things but loss and dung for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord, 10 in whose wounds we find all manner of consolation. Neither is it necessary to seek or invent any other means of being reconciled to God than this only sacrifice, once offered, by which believers are made perfect forever.11 This is also the reason why He was called by the angel of God, Jesus, that is to say, Savior, because He should save His people from their sins.12


1 Ps. 110:4; Heb. 5:10 2 Col. 1:14; Rom. 5:8–9; Col. 2:14; Heb. 2:17; 9:14; Rom. 3:24; 8:2; John 15:3; Acts 2:24; 13:28; John 3:16; 1 Tim.
2:6
3 Isa. 53:5, 7, 12
4 Luke 23:22, 24; Acts 13:28; Ps. 22:16; John 18:38; Ps. 69:5; 1 Peter 3:18
5 Ps. 69:5
6 1 Peter 3:18
7 Luke 22:44
8 Ps. 22:2; Matt. 27:46
9 1 Cor. 2:2
10 Phil. 3:8 11 Heb. 9:25–26; 10:14 12 Matt. 1:21; Acts 4:12

Clay may not like PSA but in order to avoid it the Christian Reformed Church would either have to change their confessions or failing that,  ignore them in order to arrive where Clay arrives.

Part IV to follow.