Author: jetbrane
I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling.
I am postmillennial in my eschatology.
Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity
Reformed in my Soteriology
Presuppositional in my apologetics
Familialist in my family theology
Agrarian in my regional community social order belief
Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief
Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic
Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern
Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview
One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics
Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place
Some of my favorite authors,
Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc.
My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture.
Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.
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I’ve always thought the substitutionary atonement to be the sine qua non of Christianity, but, in reading alternate views of church history of late, it appears to be a doctrine not unanimously or clearly held even by those today we’d probably consider orthodox. It raises questions in my mind as to what early professors of the faith actually believed about the atonement. Is the understanding we have of Isaiah 53:10-12 like ‘men as trees walking’ to early Christians?
“If Christ’s death ransomed man from the devil [as Augustine had taught in ‘On the Trinity, Book IV-Chap. XIII’] it was a ransom paid to the devil, not only from God, but of God as Gregory of Nazianzen pointed out. … Anselm devised a curiously devised doctrine [‘Cur deus homo’] that Adam’s disobedience, being an infinite insult to God, God’s honor could only be restored by an infinite satisfaction, which could only be effected by the death of the God-man. Gone is all trace of Augustine’s ransom in the sinless death paid the devil in lieu of our sinful deaths still due him. Gone too, and equally interestingly, was Augustine’s insistence on the completely gratuitous nature of Christ’s sacrifice in our belief; to Anselm it was a rational necessity flowing from the purpose of creation to glorify God. So long as unforgiveable sin exists, this glorification is not fully possible.” pp. 370-1.
Lawrence R. Brown, ‘The Might of the West’
Comments?
Hello Ron,
As you know throughout Church history there have been competing views of the Atonement.
Christus Victor (Which includes the idea of Ransom to Satan)
Moral Suasion
Governmental
Penal Substitutionary
Commercial Theory
Re-capitulation
Mystical
Vicarious Repentance
Some of these have elements of truth in them that we would salute.
One of the earliest ones was “the Ransom to Satan” theory of the Atonement which taught that the effect of the Atonement is directed toward Satan as opposed to the Father. In this Christus Victor theory Satan is deceived by taking the bait of the death of Christ but Satan is deceived and it is by the Cross that Satan is defeated.
The problem here is that it suggests that Satan has a certain sovereignty over individuals and does not take into account that the real danger of the ransomed was not being under the sway of the evil one but rather the real danger was being under God’s just wrath. What we needed rescue from was not primarily Satan’s capture but God’s just wrath.
So, we do believe in a ransom being paid (Mark 10:45)
45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
But Christians believe that the Ransom was paid to God. The debt of our sin that had to be paid … the ransom price, had to be paid to the Father.
So, I routinely teach that we were saved by the God-Man, from God, for God — to God alone be the glory.
This emphasizes the Godward direction of the Atonement. The Atonement was first about vindicating God’s name from accusation that God’s justice slept since sin wasn’t visited w/ the death it deserved.
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.
With the ransom price being paid in the Atonement God is demonstrated as righteous in justice and righteous in His mercy.
God can be the justifier because the Ransom was paid to Him as was His due. Because the ransom was paid, redemption was accomplished and God’s people are delivered from the Kingdom of Darkness to the Kingdom of God’s dear son whom He loves.