McAtee Contra Clay Libolt on Penal Substitutionary Atonement — II

Over here;

HARSH JUSTICE 2: THE MEANING OF OLD TESTAMENT SACRIFICE

We see Dr. Clay Libolt continue to attack Penal Substitutionary Atonement, doing so by appealing to academic sources that embrace anti-Supernatural presuppositions and by appealing to subjective and emotive feelings.

At the outset I will congratulate Clay for understanding that he can not get to the kind of (im)morality he desires unless he is able to change out the Doctrine of God. Clay understands, at some level, that the reason his Christian Reformed Denomination took the wrong turn (in his opinion) on the sexuality issue (perverts cannot be members) is because their doctrine of God is, in Clay’s opinion, all bollixed up. As such, Clay is attacking the foundational problem (the Doctrine of God) that downstream resulted in the CRC forbidding sexual license and perversion from being accepted as the norm in the denomination.

We know this is true because of what Clay writes here;

If you believe the Bible, you believe PSA (Penal Substitutionary Atonement). In 2022 the synod of the Christian Reformed Church—the synod that began the Abide takeover of the CRC—said just that. Before turning disastrously to sexuality, they took up PSA. The sequence was not accidental. The harsh justice that the synod has since meted out to those who differ with majority on sexuality is rooted in the theology that lies behind PSA. While the synod acknowledged that there were other ways to view atonement, they claimed that “The Scriptures and confessional standards make clear the substitutionary nature of Jesus Christ’s work,” and they added, “To deny penal substitutionary atonement is to take away from the glory of our Savior” (Acts of Synod 2022:897).

Note here the connection Clay is making. In Clay’s mind because the PSA gives us a harsh God who metes out harsh justice (the title of Clay’s series is “Harsh Justice”) the syondical action on the issue of pervert sexuality is seen as “harsh justice,” coming from the hands of harsh people who serve a harsh God. Clay understands that in order to get sexual perverts to be accepted in the CRC (or in Christendom in general) one must first attack the doctrine of God that lays behind the Penal Substitutionary Atonement. Clay Libolt will go so far to mainstream sexual perversion in the Church that he is willing to attack and change the doctrine of God in order to accomplish his ends. The implication of all this is that if you don’t believe in Clay’s “Kinder and Gentler” god you yourself become a harsh person because you have a harsh God.

Another reality that we have to point out is Clay’s belief that Penal Substitutionary Atonement makes God a harsh God and is an example of harsh justice. We need to ask Clay, “by what standard is this just God’s justice harsh?” Keep in mind the “harsh justice” that Clay is repudiating here is a justice that finds the 2nd person of the Trinity, out of compassion for the triune God’s glory, eternally and lovingly agreeing to come and pay the penalty for His people’s sin and rebellion against Himself. God in Christ willing took upon Himself and bore the just penalty required by sin so that man the sinner might know favor with God?

This reminds me of something Arnulf of Leuven wrote in the 13th century;

What Thou, my Lord, hast suffered, was all for sinners’ gain;
Mine, mine was the transgression, but Thine the deadly pain.
Lo, here I fall, my Savior! ’Tis I deserve Thy place;
Look on me with Thy favor, vouchsafe to me Thy grace.

The question that begs being asked of Clay at this point is; “Sir, how is the Penal Substitutionary Atonement harsh in any sense?” Indeed, one might observe that it is harsh for any mortal to refer to God’s condescension as “harsh.” If Clay would give us a frank answer as to where he finds the harshness in the PSA I believe that would be most revealing.

In the course of his attack on PSA Clay refers to it as appear(ing) strange and dubious—fairytale-like.  This statement reveals the power of Worldviews. I have no doubt that to Clay, given his neo-orthodox Barthian worldview that the PSA does indeed seem fairy-tale like. However, to those who are not Barthians and who do not share Clay’s worldview the PSA would never seem fairytale like, unless of course, one believes that fairy-tales are based on realities. (Something I definitely believe.) By calling the PSA “fairy-tale like” Clay desire to diminish the truthfulness and reality of the PSA by placing it in the same genre as Cinderella or Snow-White. Clay is suggesting that it is childlike. However, even here we see how much Clay is disconnected from reality because fairy-tales, unlike his spin, are not for children. The best of fairy-tales have deep wells of truth in them.

Once upon a time there were a couple with a great Liege-Lord who had provided for them in every way possible. He had given them companionship. He had provided for them a expansive and generous lifestyle. He had made them the stewards of His vast realm. One thing only had He forbidden from them and yet it was that one forbidding that they pursued in defiance of this generous Liege-Lord. He had told the couple that should they pursue His forbidding they would on that day surely die. However, when that day came when His forbidding was defied for the embrace of the false promise that they could be equal with the great King, the great King would not fulfill his oath of death upon his creation but instead visited them with lesser consequences against their disobedience that included that all their descendants save one would bear the wound that resulted from their disobedience. However, the great King knew that He could not allow His original promise of death communicated to those who bore His image to become null since the voiding of that original promise of death would mean that His Word and His justice un-fulfilled would be seen as a blemish upon Himself and His person. So, in order to demonstrate His righteousness in the face of the defiance that was previously committed the Great King resolved to pay the originally required penalty against rebellion by writing Himself into His story so as to Himself take upon His own penalty originally promised as against defiance and rebellion as pursued by His garden kept couple. In just such a manner He would remain just and at the same time the justifier of those who would have faith in His penalty fulfillment.

So, if by fairy-tale Clay means “childish and not true” we obviously object. However, if by fairy-tale we mean the repository of deep truths then who could disagree?

Along the way in Clay’s article against PSA Clay writes;

At the heart of it (PSA) is an idea about justice. In PSA, justice is a law of the universe, and not just the universe we can observe and study, but everything that exists, including, notably, God. God cannot escape God’s own justice. Thus, God cannot just forgive Adam and Eve for what appears to be a minor infraction, eating from a tree that they were forbidden to eat from, the sort of infraction every parent must forgive a thousand times before their child reaches puberty. And God must punish not only Adam and Eve but their children all the way down to us. This ghastly justice must be served, and thus Jesus must suffer and die, and those who fail to believe in Jesus for whatever reason (like, for example, never having heard of it) must suffer eternally in hell.

A few observations here;

1.) If Justice is not a law of the universe that must be fulfilled then it seems that all that is left is that “injustice” is the law of the universe.

2.) What kind of justice would it be if God could escape God’s own justice?

3.) Clay clearly has God in the dock with Clay in the Judge’s seat as Clay (in one of the funny little British whigs) tells God that Adam and Eve’s defiance was, after all, only a minor infraction.  We also see “his honor” Clay judge God for His “ghastly justice.” I think Clay lives by this bit of doggerel;

Clay speaks of a cruel and unfair God
As if Clay were the true Transcendent;
As if Clay were judge of all the earth,
And God the poor defendant.
As if God were arraigned with a very black case,
And on the skill of His lawyer dependent,
And “I wouldn’t like to be God,” Clay says,
“For His record is not resplendent.”

4.) Notice the implication that in Clay’s world disobedient children are not visited with consequences even though the parents still forgive them. Someone should tell Rev. Libolt that forgiveness and consequences  are not mutually exclusive.

5.) Clay, in complaining about God’s “lack of fairness” against everybody but especially as against God that people who have never heard the Good News must still be punished presupposes that God owes anybody anything. When God gives to people what they deserve that is hardly “unfair.” Someone tell Clay that what is surprising is not that those who have never heard the Gospel should justly received the penalty they earnestly desire — tell Clay that what is surprising is that not everybody receives the just penalty they deserve. All because God rescues some who were infinitely undeserving doesn’t mean that when He doesn’t rescue somebody else who is also infinitely undeserving that therefore He is harsh and metes out “ghastly justice.” The surprise in the Gospel and the PSA is not that some are rescued and others are not. The surprise in the Gospel and the PSA is that anybody is rescued.

To underscore his complaint against God, Clay appeals to Douglas A. Campbell who wrote the forward in the book that Clay is intimate with;

It follows [from PSA] that the heart of the gospel is a political and retributive God and arrangement—and hence that all politics should be fundamentally retributive as well. God, we might say, is a God who is wholly committed to law and order, to the appropriate coercive order, and ultimately to the correctness of the death penalty, and this says the most important thing about who he is. Righteous violence defines him, as that is deployed in support of laws. This model of the gospel then, underwrites political authoritarianism and God is essentially a dictator. He is a fair dictator, but a dictator nonetheless, who wields the sword appropriately. (19)


1.) Note the language used here to poison the well. “Retributive,” “Violent,” “Dictator,” “Coercive,” “Death penalty,” “Authoritarianism.” This is all spin, spun in order to make God look ogre like. This is written by a man who clearly hates the God of the Bible, and Clay quoting him approvingly reveals (again) that Clay likewise hates the God of the Bible.

2.) Note that the word “violence” has been inserted as a replacement for the proper word “justice.” If Clay and company can make God’s justice look “violent” then it advances their spin. “Violent” by its very definition conveys the idea of harshness. Something that Clay is laboring hard to sustain.

3.) Here the complaint is against the definition of God as being “righteous justice.” Before we condemn that though let us consider the other options;

a.) Unrighteous justice
b.) Righteous non-justice
c.) Unrighteous non-justice

I presume that nobody would advocate for (a.) above. Neither would anyone desire a God who by His non-justice would be seen as unrighteous (c.). As for (b.) I am not even sure what “righteous non-justice” would look like. So, yes, God is defined as “righteous justice” but only as that righteous-justice serves His glory and our good.

4.) If God is indeed a fair Dictator who could possibly complain except for the criminal class?

Having examined just this much it is clear that those who want to follow Clay in this cannot at one and the same time be considered Christians with those who take the strongest exceptions to this dismantling of Penal Substitutionary Atonement.

Stubborn Courts

“When the Court leans Right we are told it is “runaway”, illegitimate, and criminal. When the Court leans Left, it is sacrosanct, absolute, and inviolable. This despite the fact that the Left’s theory of law is Positivism, and therefore, arbitrary by definition.”

Dan Brannan

There is no way to fix our political order or our social order if we cannot find a way to fix our law order. This demonstrates that Reformation is organic. One cannot have partial Reformation. It is either all or nothing. One cannot serve two masters.

Liberal/Marxist judges overturning Trump’s proper actions as the Chief Executive are in danger, by their decisions, of working in the populace a complete disregard for all law. Should the Left keep up with their judge shopping this will lead to social order anarchy. If the majority cannot move the entrenched minority by their ballots as cast in 2024 the only option left to them in order to move the entrenched minority is bullets.  This is something that the left understands as seen in their “Swatting” campaign and their actions of terrorizing Tesla outlets.

We are learning that the left owned courts are committed to stopping election 2024, just as state by state cheating stopped election 202o. We are learning that the leftist courts that are weighing in against Trump are the courts that created the current problem to begin with. These courts are demonstrating that they are criminal courts and very soon people are not going to bother listening to these criminal courts.

And when that begins to happen, Katy bar the door.

Top Three Defining Beliefs Of A Kinist … Of Kinism

What would you say are the top 3 defining beliefs of a “Kinist?” Could you briefly expand on each of those points for me? How specifically, or how actionably?

Scott Tungay

Hello Scott,

I think that Kinists would agree with me in saying that our top three defining beliefs are;

1.) Love for God

Specifically and actionably this means that Kinists believe that they have the privilege and responsibility to be part of Biblical churches where the God of the Bible is worshiped by means of Word and Sacrament.  Further, it means that they have their shoulders to the wheel in advancing the Kingdom of God and His Christ. The Kinist love for God means that there is no cordoning off a common realm from a grace realm wherein God is less interested in the common realm or wherein God rules the common realm in a less explicit manner. The Kinist love for God means an understanding that all of Christ is for all of life. The Kinist love for God means all that the Kinist does is sub species aeternitatis (“from the perspective of the eternal”) and as such is done for God’s pleasure.

The love for God actionably means doing what we can to make sure a Biblical Church is present so that the family can worship together and together grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The love for God actionably means helping those in the community of faith who are in need as we can. The love for God means visiting the widow and orphan in their distress.

2.) Love for their Kith and Kin

Specifically and actionably this means that Kinists seek to honor God’s command to “Honor their Father’s and Mothers,” understanding that this commandment extends to generations past and anticipates generations yet to come. In loving our Kith and Kin we thereby also demonstrate our love to God (see #1 above). Love for Kith and Kin extends outwardly in concentric circles to those most intimately connected to us in our families. This is commonly called the ordo amoris. We prioritize our immediate family first, and then from their our love extends to the extended (Trustee) family and from there to those who belong to our ethnicity/race. This prioritizing of love for Kith and Kin is explicitly required of God’s people as seen in I Timothy 5:8. Those who object to this and who insist that we must love all people equally (the same) are living in defiance of God’s explicit instructions. This special love for Kith and Kin is seen most clearly in the actions of our Savior, who, while on the cross, makes provision for his own mother.

Actionably, this means storing up an inheritance for our children and grandchildren (Proverbs 13:22 — A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children …). Actionably it means taking care of our aged relatives as we can when they are in their dotage. Actionably it means that we do what we can to make sure that our adult children don’t have to launch into their beginning years with untold debt. Actionably it means that we do what we can to train our children to be adults so when they become adults they are not starting out without skills that translate into providing for and maintaining a home. Actionably, it means that we do what we can that our children choose wisely in marriage partners and if possible don’t move hundreds or thousands of miles away. Actionably, it means training our children to think like a Christian. We train them in worldview thinking so that they understand the difference between the way the heathen think and the way a Christian thinks. We train them in their undoubted catholic Christian faith teaching them the Bible, the catechism, and the Confessions. Be trained they can think through a brick wall and will not be fooled by the zeitgeist and are equipped themselves to train their children in the same way.

3.) Love of place

Specifically and actionably this means putting down roots. In our mobile and cosmopolitan times this is perhaps the most difficult to accomplish but it still should be our goal. We should see ourselves as belonging to a place as it belongs to us. This implies doing what we can to build community. The idea of community and place cannot be divorced from one another. This means knowing other families generationally as those families share our same place. This means, as possible, buying locally and supporting local businesses. 

DEI And WOKE In the PCA’s MNA II

The fact that the PCA is now a creature of the Left is seen by statements made by one of its trophy Blacks.  This man is Irwyn Ince who serves as the coordinator of the MNA to the tune of 300K a year. A denomination can go a long way proving it’s not racist by paying a black man 300K a year to head one of its central organizations. This is one way how organization secure their “get out of accusations of racist jail free cards.”

The PCA has been tripping all over itself praising this chap. The problem is Mr. Irwyn Ince seems to be infected likewise with the WOKE bug as seen by both some statements made and in statements made by his son in defending Dad.

In September 2022, the popular Christian X account “Woke Preacher Clips” unearthed a talk Ince gave in 2019, during which he claimed black people can become “black and tired” and experience “minority fatigue” around white people.

“So you’ve got to experience some spaces and times where you just don’t have to work so hard,” he said. “There is a grounding and a positive sense of belonging that can come from an ethnic affinity in a world of dizzying diversity.”

Now again, personally I get this and have no problem with this as long as sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. A white person ought to be able to say something like this quite without raising the hackles of the WOKE police.

Claiming black people are potentially subject to “trauma” being in a majority-white situation, Ince argued for the necessity of “some places of affinity space.”

“The likelihood is if you’re an all-white staff, you ain’t gonna be enough. Your church ain’t gonna be enough. They gonna wear out.”

It is exactly for this reason I would argue that the MNA should be working on planting Reformed churches for black folks with the goal of eventually spinning successful black Reformed congregations into their own denominations. Why should black folk have to put up with us boring white people?

Honestly, I think that could be a successful policy for church planting. After all as Dr. John Frame informed us;

“Scripture, as I read it, does not require societies, or even churches, to be integrated racially. Jews and Gentiles were brought together by God’s grace into one body. They were expected to love one another and to accept one another as brothers in the faith. But the Jewish Christians continued to maintain a distinct culture, and house churches were not required to include members of both groups.”

John Frame,
“Racism, Sexism, Marxism”

But the fat was not yet fully in the fire as the saying goes. In the midst of this brouhaha Irwyn Ince’s son stepped up to the plate to provide some excitement for the PCA mudville nine.

After journalist Meg Basham stirred the pot a wee bit noticing what she believed to be inconsistencies, Irwyn’s son Jelani dropped some WOKE bombs, making at least this blogger wonder if the acorn had dropped very far from the tree.

Dr. Jelani vented on TwitteX excoriating “white evangelical culture” as “unequivocally toxic and irredeemable.” Jeepers, you’d think that Jelani would have some nice things to say about white evangelical culture given that white evangelical culture is paying his father 300K a year to inject subtle WOKEism into white evangelical culture. I mean what does “white evangelical culture” have to do to get some street cred with Dr. Jelani? The chap even complained about the noticing going on around his Father as; “absolutely [sic] buffoonery.”

Dr. Jelani is a sociologist who apparently has not yet reinterpreted his sociology through a Christian grid. However he has provided his pronouns in his University bio which is something that I, as a Christian, always look for. Dr. Jelani went on to write on TwitteX;

“The worst of its (white evangelical culture) defenders work from the same playbook as segregationists and xenophobes. You think your culture is under attack, but to be honest: it lacks the imagination that would warrant copying.”

“For more years than I would like to admit, I have sat in your pews, read your books, listened to your sermons, [and] forced myself to enjoy those mid post-service potlucks and small group meetings.”

Besides that how did you like the play Mrs. Lincoln?

Honestly, I’d love to meet Dr. Jelani’s often met segregationists and xenophobes. I just find it hard to believe that they really exist in the PCA. Most of what I see in the PCA is Marxist dupes and egalitarians. I am sure though that a sociologist professor at the University of Washington would likely thinks he sees segregationists and xenophobes when the ELCA and the Congregationalists meet in their annual meetings.

There was a good deal more of the same type of Cultural Marxist tripe that fell from Dr. Jelani’s pen on TwitteX. One wonders what dear old Dad thinks of Dr. Jelani’s defense? I suppose Dr. Jelani’s heart was in the right place, bless his heart.

Maybe this is all a negotiating ploy in hopes that Dr. Irwyn Ince will be able make a decent wage?

All the best to him on that score. Goodness knows that the WOKE workman is worth is wages.

DEI And WOKE In the PCA’s MNA — I

Recently the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) has been letting its true WOKE colors be seen. As often happens this WOKEism comes from the apparatchik, bureaucratic, and administrative bowels of the denomination.

First a bureaucratic arm of the denomination (Mission To The World [MNA] – A denominational agency that allegedly helps the denomination with Church plants and philanthropy) decided it was appropriate to put up a website instructing illegal aliens on how to evade being bagged, flagged, and tagged by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for return to country of origin. In other words a PCA bureaucratic agency served as an ally in order to aid and abet criminals. Now, the website was met with a storm of protest and was eventually taken down but it is clear that within the bowels of the PCA bureaucracy a criminal loving anti-Christian element exists and saying “I’m sorry,” and pulling down the website (repenting) doesn’t change the fact that there is a mindset that exists within the PCA that is not only errant but is criminal. How can one note conclude that the PCA is, in its bureaucratic entrails, a creature of the Left?

Following that imbroglio the PCA drew attention again for the action of a church (Resurrection Oakland Church — Oakland Ca.) that was prejudiced against white people. Let’s be clear here. I don’t really view it as being prejudiced in any kind of negative way but certainly we would have to say that in light of the current bogus standards of what constitutes “racism” a PCA Church with the black head of the MNA as a speaker had a luncheon wherein only black folk were invited has to be considered by WOKE standards as “racist.” Now, once again, I want to be clear here. I have not a scintilla of problem with this gathering except that it is the case that if white people were to legitimately want to have a fellowship meal and session exclusively with a prominent white speaker the black community in the Reformed church would go grape ape crazy. So, my problem is not with Dr. Ince having a fellowship meal with black people only. My problem is that sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander. Further, my problem is all the ridiculous justifications that I have read for why it is acceptable for black folk to occasionally cordone (segregate?) themselves off from white folks but it is not ok for white folks to occasionally cordone themselves off from black folks.

The MNA, trying to thread the needle of repenting of its DEI visage by giving criminal aid to illegal immigrants while explaining why DEI is acceptable when applied to the acceptable practice of segregation for minorities said;

    “fellowship gatherings or events that center on the shared cultural experiences of ethnic minority brothers and sisters (are acceptable).”

The MNA went out of its way to also say that the organizers of ResOak’s Black Fellowship Dinner, which requested attendees to register, “did not prohibit or turn away anyone from attending.” Now if this doesn’t give you a good belly laugh nothing will. Of course they did not prohibit or turn away anyone from attending since after the announcement that “no white people were wanted” doubtless no white person wanted to attend. I mean why would any White person want to attend a “blacks only” gathering after they had been told explicitly, “Whitey stay home?”

Next the PCA tries to go all “marketing” in their messaging;

“Affinity ministries equip and encourage minority members who worship in so many of our churches. These ministries support shared cultural experiences for the edification of the whole body,” the committee said, going on to list some of the minority ethnic groups that make up “the dynamic diversity of the PCA.”

“We affirm affinity gatherings as a part of rejoicing in our unity and diversity,” the committee said, citing I Cor. 12 and Rev. 7.

Again, I don’t have any problems with a ecclesia within the ecclesia. What I have a problem with is daring to suggest that if White people desire to have an affinity ministry together in order to equip and encourage non-minority members who worship in many of our churches would somehow be an example of evil segregation and/or “racism.”

 In a separate statement, PCA Stated Clerk Bryan Chapell suggested that media covering the dissension within the denomination over such issues have shown an “‘inability or unwillingness to understand PCA leaders’ explanations’ of the difference between groups segregated by prejudice on the one hand, and affinity groups gathered to advance gospel witness on the other hand.”

This statement from Dr. Chapell is also rich with belly laugh material. If white people segregate than it is evil prejudice but if minority folk self-segregate then it is “affinity groups gathered to advance the gospel witness.” It is amazing that these people can’t see how transparently ridiculous these “distinctions” are.

All of this demonstrates the Church’s subtle and not so subtle contribution to the replacement agenda.

Next we are told;

“MNA offers specific ministries for several ethnic minorities, including one for Hispanics that claims the recent demographic change in the U.S. amid “loosened” immigration policies was “orchestrated by God Himself” to provide “an unprecedented opportunity” to fulfill the Great Commission.”

On this point I would love to know how the PCA knows that God has orchestrated the loosened immigration policies in order to provide an unprecedented opportunity to fulfill the great commission?

Did somebody in the PCA bureaucracy get a “word from the Lord?” I mean couldn’t it also be the case that God has orchestrated the loosened immigration policies in order to fulfill His promise to curse people who abandon Him per Deut. 28 where He promises those who disobey Him will become the tail and not the head?

Next, if the MNA were honest, they would see that it is the pagan immigrants who are converting American Christians to their third world ways and not American Christians who are seeing vast numbers of third worlders converted. Even this language italicized most immediately above is evidence of a leftist brain worm in the apparatchiks of the PCA. Loosened immigration policies certainly are the result of God will of decree but they are exactly contrary to God’s will of precept. Has God ever revealed, by way of precept, that a people as a people should break the 6th commandment and annihilate themselves by welcoming in the stranger and the alien so has to eat out the native born’s substance and steal the native born’s children’s inheritance?