Here I pick up critiquing CRC minister Dr. Clay Libolt’s thoughts on the weakness of the Biblical doctrine of Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA). Clay has appealed to a recent book by Andrew Remington Rillera who was trained at that paragon Institution of Orthodox Christianity — Duke Divinity School. Rillera has produced a book that insists that the atonement was not about the effect of the atonement upon God (objective view) but instead the effect of the atonement was upon the believer (subjective view). Rillera’s book insists that the sacrificial imagery in the NT is aimed at grounding the exhortation for the audience to be conformed to the cruciform image of Jesus by sharing in his death. The consistent message throughout the entire NT is not that Jesus died instead of us, rather, Jesus dies ahead of us so that we can unite with him and be conformed to the image of his death.
Again, the impact of the cross work of Christ is on man and so the atonement is measured by the effect it has on man. This is in contrast to the teaching of the PSA which does not deny the effect the cross work of Christ has on man, but insist that the subjective impact can only make sense in light of the reconciling impact of the atonement on God toward man. In other words there is a manward impact upon the recipient but that manward impact only makes a difference because God set forth Christ to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God. In the atonement God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them.
When we understand that differing theories of the atonement historically have fallen under three overarching categories;
1.) Theories which explain the atonement by the moral influence it has on those who will be recipients (Moral influence theories).
2.) Theories which explain the atonement as God’s eternally assigned means by which He would be reconciled to eternally loved but fallen sinners (Propitiation theories).
3.) Theories which proclaim the atonement as a cosmic victory (Christus Victor theories).
Some prefer a twofold classification of atonement theories, limiting the options to subjective theories as those which emphasize the effect on the believer, in distinction from objective theories which put the stress on what the atonement achieves quite outside the individual. Andrew Remington Rillera has given us a scholarly, erudite, but errant book that opts for option #1 with little to no consideration of the effect of the atonement Godward. This is “Christian” humanism and given Dr. Clay Libolt’s track record through the years of his ministry it is not surprising that Clay would be so enchanted by this volume from the Duke scholar and that despite the fact that such teaching goes against the Three Forms of Unity that Clay has sworn to uphold.
From here I will quote Dr. Libolt’s article that can be found here;
Clay Libolt writes (Hereafter CL);
This theory of atonement is also “substitutionary.” Because we cannot pay the penalty, God sends God’s own son to pay it for us. Jesus steps in where we cannot. He pays the penalty on the cross.
I note here without developing the thought that this second claim of PSA (Penal Substitutionary Atonement) is a bit odd for at least two reasons. One is that the idea that someone can step in for the guilt of someone else seems strange. It’s true that occasionally a person will give up their life for someone else. I think about those who stepped in front of Nazi firing squads, allowing others to escape death. To do so was heroic. But what of the commander of the firing squad? To allow an innocent person to be executed or, rather, to require that someone die in those circumstances is on any account wrong. And in the PSA analogy, we would seem to be putting God in the place of the commander of the firing squad: someone must die; it doesn’t matter whom.
BLMc responds;
1.) I can’t explain why Clay would find this at all odd since Scripture explicitly tells us;
Rmns. 5:7 For one will hardly die for a righteous person; though perhaps for the good person someone would even dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
I Peter 3:18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit,
2.) We would note that the Scripture does not teach that the Father “allowed” Jesus Christ to be a propitiatory sacrifice but rather Scripture teaches that God put forth Christ
In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. — I John 4:10
3.) Clay writes that such an arrangement as the PSA would be “wrong.” We would ask, “wrong by what standard?” Clearly the death of the just for the unjust is extolled as pre-eminently right by God’s standard.
Him (Jesus Christ), being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: Acts 2:23
Is Clay saying that God did wrong by sending forth Christ to serve as our substitutionary death.
We begin to see here that Clay is not only disagreeing with the nature of the atonement but we are seeing that Clay has embraced a very different God then the God we find in the Scriptures. This is not just merely a matter of disagreeing about the mechanics of the Cross (as magnificently important as that is). This is about the person, character and attributes of God. In the end this is competition between different understandings of Christianity. Clay wants to start with man. Christians want to start with God.
4.) Note that Clay has God being equal to a Nazi commander executing a poor innocent unjustly. Talk about loading the narrative in your favor. Does Clay really believe that orthodox Protestant Christian theology insists that God doesn’t really care who is the substitute for sinners?
According to the Heidelberg Catechism he swore to uphold the substitute for sinners can’t just any poor schlub;
Question 15: What sort of a mediator and deliverer then must we seek for?
Answer: For one who is very man,7 and perfectly righteous; and yet more powerful than all creatures; that is, one who is also very God.
Secondly on this note, when Clay writes against Penal Substitutionary Atonement he is directly contravening the Heidelberg which explicitly teaches Penal Substitutionary Atonement.
Question 12: Since then, by the righteous judgment of God, we deserve temporal and eternal punishment, is there no way by which we may escape that punishment, and be again received into favor?
Answer: God will have His justice satisfied (Penal), and therefore we must make this full satisfaction, either by ourselves or by another (Substitution).
Also here, Christ was not “some poor victim” of a Nazi Firing Squad Commander (God) who God just randomly chose to be our substitute as Clay would have it;
John 6:38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but to do the will of Him who sent Me.
Ps. 40 “Here I am, I have come—it is written about me in the scroll: / I delight to do Your will, O my God; Your law is within my heart.” (Cmp. Heb. 10)
Jesus was sent by the Father and eternally willingly embraced what the Father eternally tasked Him with. The Son was not a victim of the Father but the Father and the Son with the Spirit entered from eternity into a covenant whereby God would be glorified in the cosmic impact of the Atonement.
Finally, while Christ was innocent in His person, as our sins were imputed to Him while on the Cross, as a public person He was our sin-bearer.
CL writes,
Second, there is a matter of proportionality. This goes in two directions. First, for God to require eternal punishment for temporal sins seems entirely out of proportion. Is it just for God to require hell for the sins of a child who dies young? Or a person who lives an exemplary life apart from the faith? But it is also out of proportion in the other direction. For the sufferings of Christ, terrible as they were, to balance the suffering of the world seems, well, not entirely adequate. Perhaps this is the reason that Christians seem intent on Good Friday of focusing on how much Jesus suffered.
BLMc responds;
This paragraph leaves me nearly speechless. The fact that a minister believes this and writes this is just astonishing. Understand that Clay is arguing here that God is not just. Clay believes that God is being unfair and overbearing by making the punishment fit the crime. Note, what Clay is doing here is that Clay is summoning God to the dock and serving as the jury Foreman Clay is demanding God give an account of Himself to Clay. It is stunning. Clay, according to Clay’s own standards, has determined that God is disproportional when it comes to punishment for sin.
As to Clay’s question;
1.) Yes, it is just for God to require hell for the sins of a child who dies young. Indeed, what is incredible is that any of us, regardless of our age and comparative innocence should be given grace. Clay is surprised by God’s justice. I am surprised by God’s grace. None of us deserve anything but Hell given both our sin nature and our sinful acts. When it comes to these matters we say along with Father Abraham, “Will not the judge of all the earth do right.” Who is Clay Libolt to call God before the bar of His adjudication?
2.) Yes, it is just of God to cast someone into hell who lived an “exemplary life” without faith. We find ourselves asking first, “exemplary by what standard?” Clay is clearly grading on a curve while God grades on a straight scale. All have sinned and fallen short of what God justly requires (living to and for His glory). Also consider, is it really possible for anyone, saved or unsaved, to live an “exemplary life” when the standard is God’s perfection? Are we really to believe that a person who has lived their whole lives with themselves as God is a person who has lived an exemplary life? Can a person who has lived all his life for his own glory be said to have lived an exemplary life?
Can you believe a Christian minister is reasoning this way?
3.) But Clay doesn’t stop there. The man actually suggests that the sufferings of Christ on the Cross do not meet and so satisfy the way the world has suffered in/during world history. In other words, for Clay, the world has suffered more than Christ could have ever suffered during His life and on the Cross. Christ’s sufferings were not enough to pay (“not entirely adequate”) for all the suffering that sin has brought in the world. Honestly, even in my most generous moments I can’t see this as anything but blasphemous.
So, for Clay, Penal Substitutionary Atonement can’t be true because Christ didn’t suffer enough in order for it to be true.
We could go on a rag here but suffice it to say that Clay does not appreciate the suffering of the sinless perfect Man and Holy God and the suffering of sinners but clearly at Clay’s age it is unlike any reasoning is going to pull him up short.
Clay is Reformed. Bret is Reformed. Both Clay and Bret served in the same denomination. Clay and Bret can’t both be Christian.
