Category: Theology

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.

The Nature of the Atonement … McAtee Contra Libolt (I)

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;

Harsh Justice, Introduction

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.

Augustine, Luther, Musculus & Apostolic Constitutions; An Appeal To Wet Baby Presbyterians

Claiming that  paedocommunion isn’t found in Reformed history, as some of the well intended Reformed harpie police will shriek isn’t true. The Reformed tradition drew from Augustine, who advocated for paedocommunion as quoted below. In point of fact paedocommunion was non-controversial in his day. The great forerunner of the Reformation, Hus, was a paedocommunion advocate. As quoted below, during the Reformation, Wolfgang Musculus also advocated for paedocommunion and Luther, as we see below, was at least open.

Paedocommunion is not some strange modification of Reformed theology. It is consistent with Reformational baptismal theology and covenant theology.

“Those who say that infancy has nothing in it for Jesus to save, are denying that Christ is Jesus for all believing infants. Those, I repeat, who say that infancy has nothing in it for Jesus to save, are saying nothing else than that for believing infants, infants that is who have been baptized in Christ, Christ the Lord is not Jesus. After all, what is Jesus? Jesus means Savior. Jesus is the Savior. Those whom he doesn’t save, having nothing to save in them, well for them he isn’t Jesus. Well now, if you can tolerate the idea that Christ is not Jesus for some persons who have been baptized, then I’m not sure your faith can be recognized as according with the sound rule. Yes, they’re infants, but they are his members. They’re infants, but they receive his sacraments. They are infants, but they share in his table, in order to have life in themselves.”

St. Augustine, Sermon 174, 7

(1) Those who possess the thing signified also have a right to the sign

(2) Children who can receive the grace of regeneration (as is evident from Baptism) can also be nurtured in their spiritual lives without their knowledge.

(3) Christ is the Savior of the whole church, including the children, and feeds and refreshes all of its members.

(4) The demand for self-examination (I Cor. 11:26-29) is not intended by the apostle as a universal requirement.

Wolfgang Musculus — Loci Communes
Second Generation Reformer

Luther considered communing children to be not necessary but also not sin. He offered here;

“[They] pretend that children, not as yet having reason, ought not to receive [the sacrament]. I answer: That reason in no way contributes to faith. Nay, in that children are destitute of reason, they are all the more fit and proper recipients of [the sacrament]. For reason is the greatest enemy that faith has: it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but – more frequently than not – struggles against the Divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.”

Martin Luther

Going behind the Reformation we find the Apostolic Constitutions written not by the Apostles circa 380 AD. The Apostolic Constitutions would have been written during the lifetime of St. Augustine. In this early church liturgy document we read that the children are included among the faithful that remain and take communion after the readings. Others who are not initiated (baptized) are excluded and excused from the communion. A door-wathcher keeps non-initiated out.

“As to the children that stand [the infant children do not stand, but are among the initiated who are prepared for communion], let their fathers and mothers take them to themselves …. After this, let all rise up with one consent, and, looking towards the east, after the catechumens and the penitents are gone out, pray to God eastward, …. Then let the sacrifice follow, all the people standing, and praying silently; and, when the oblation hath been made, let every rank by itself partake of the Lord’s body and precious blood, in order, and approach with reverence and holy fear, as to the body of their King. Let the women approach with their heads covered, as is becoming the order of women. Moreover, let the door be watched, lest there come in any unbeliever, or one not yet initiated. P 65

Let no one eat of them that is not initiated; but those only who have been baptized into the death of the Lord [all that are baptized, to include infants and children] p.145

[nowhere are baptized children excluded from any part of the Lord’s Day communion.]

Of course forbidding the covenant children from the sacrament of communion exists upon the same logic of forbidding the covenant children from the sacrament of Baptism. This forbidding amounts to a halfway covenant. Covenant children are seen as having one foot in the covenant and one foot outside the covenant. They are akin to the actual splitting in half of the legendary Solomonic baby and those Presbyterian and Reformed who refuse to commune their children, themselves have one foot in and one foot outside the circle of being logically consistent.

If I were a Baptist today and if I were debating a Presbyterian on the issue of covenant I would be forever banging the Presbyterians over the head regarding their wet but unfed covenant children.

This is just one reason why we insist that putative Presbyterians today are “wet baby Baptists.”

 

McAtee, Christopher Hitchens And Henry Van Til On The Relationship Between Religion And Culture

“The radical, totalitarian character of religion is such, then, that it determines both man’s cultus and his culture. That is to say, the conscious or unconscious relationship to God in a man’s heart determines all of his activities, whether theoretical or practical. This is true of philosophy, which is based upon non-theoretical, religious presuppositions. Thus man’s morality and economics, his jurisprudence and his aesthetics, are all religiously oriented and determined.”

Henry Van Til
Calvinist Concept of Culture

This quote teases out the meaning of the truth that “Theology is the Queen of the Sciences,” as theology is that discipline which makes religion to be religion. Everything is religion/Theology expressed in alternative ways. It is not only the case that “as a man thinketh in his heart so he is,” it is also a case that as cultures think in their heart so they are. This is why we say that culture is properly defined as religion made manifest, or alternatively, “culture is the outward expression of a people’s inward belief.” When I look at any culture I am looking at its theology. When I look at or converse with any person I am engaging their theology incarnated. Show me a culture and I will tell you which God god they are serving. We should seek to think of cultures as facades or masks from which the explicit theological authority principal hides behind to operate.

That’s why there is no talking about culture without theological analysis.
It also explains why the the Thomists are errant and why the followers of Dooweyweeerd are likewise errant as they both refuse to see that all flows out of singular theology / worldview. They each compartmentalize reality into different academic categories and have no unity born of a singular Biblical theology.

This quote also explains the vapidness in arguing that religion is a poison we should all give up.

“Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason, and to believe things without evidence. It then asks us to respect this, which it calls faith.”

~ Christopher Hitchens

It is nothing but the humanistic religion of the now deceased Hitchens which animated him to write that “religion is poison.” Hitchens’ owned a religion of materialism and yet insisted on believing in “reason.” Is reason materialistic? Can I see or taste “reason?” The quote above merely tells me that Hitchens is denouncing religion so as to hide his deeply religious take on “religion.” Hitchens did not escape Henry Van Til’s observation on religion.

Because all this is true a man must be a theologian in order to understand culture. If a man is not a theologian he does not have the categories by which to properly analyze culture. To be sure he may get some things right as he borrows theological capital from a Christian worldview but taken as a whole his analysis will be sorely wanting at critical points.

All of this, in turn, explains why the insistence, as coming from many quarters such as R2K and Stephen Wolfe’s Natural Law project, that clergy should just shut up about anything but soteriology and private ethics since when they speak on other matters they are “getting out of their lane.” The problem is not that clergy speak on issues putatively not in their lane. The problem is that clergy speak on issues which are putatively not in their lane from a non Christian theological/worldview understanding. The problem is not their speaking on subjects… the problem is that they are not particularly Christian when speaking on said subject. The cure isn’t to get clergy to shut up. The cure is to train clergy to think worldviewishly as Biblical Christians.

 

McAtee Contra Dr. Clay Libolt On The Penal Substitutionary Doctrine Of The Atonement

On his Blog former CRC Pastor Dr. Rev. Clay Libolt begins to explore the idea that all those who hold to the Penal Substitutionary teaching of the Atonement as recorded in Scripture are advancing the idea that God is mean.

I sometimes browse Dr. Libolt’s blog (“The Peripatetic Pastor”) because;

1.) Libolt was my assigned “mentor” when I began to date the CRC. New chaps dating the CRC, according to their book of Church Order have to be assigned mentors, presumably to help the newbee wade into the denomination. This “relationship” between Clay and I was a comedy of theological/ideological explosion. It was the classic example of when an immovable force meets an unstoppable object. Clay was and remains so far left that it is difficult for me to imagine how anyone could get more left. He was in his time the Robespierre of the CRC. Of course I was and am a touch to the right. In our few meetings we would invariably, within seconds, be debating as if the world’s future depended upon convincing one another of their error. To this day, the fact that I was assigned Clay Libolt as a mentor is proof to me that the thrice Holy God has a sense of humor.

2.) I also browse Clay’s blog because it is a handy dandy way to keep up to date on the latest boneheaded theory being advanced by the “Christian” left. Clay reads a good deal of the garbage put out by the “intellectual” left and so it is a way to keep up with the latest WOKE theology. One way to keep one’s mind sharp is by knowing the enemy’s strategy and thinking.

Not that Clay or anyone else cares but I seriously doubt that Clay is a Christian in any historic or Biblical sense of the word, and yet he Pastored one of the CRC flagship churches for decades and by his own accounting had a considerable influence in the denomination, being a voice for the “progressives” as they largely solidified their hold over the denomination during the time he “served.”

Libolt, as noted above, believes that the idea that Jesus Christ, serving as the penalty bearing substitute for the elect makes God mean. Clay writes,

“‘Is God Mean?’ And, in line with the direction of my Bad Theology series, to ask whether a mean God leads to mean politics. (The answer is yes.)”

As you can see in one fell swoop, Libolt has indicted historical biblical theology and contemporary politics as being mean.

Of course a question arises that Libolt does not answer and that question is “Mean to whom?” Certainly, it could not be argued that God is mean to the elect for whom Christ was their substitute, nor I shouldn’t think it could be argued that God was mean to the reprobate who only received what they earnestly desired. I mean is it “mean” to give to people what they want and/or what they deserve?

I would say that in the Penal Substitutionary atonement the only person that God could possibly be seen as being mean to is Himself. Now, I don’t believe that but if we use Libolt’s logic then as it was God Himself in the God-Man Jesus Christ who took on His own punishment for sin then there is no meanness to anyone else since there can be no being mean to those who were substituted for nor for those who weren’t substituted for since they didn’t want to be substituted for and since they received what they deserved.

In the OT we see that what Libolt is advocating just isn’t true. In Genesis 15, God enters into covenant with Abraham and whereas traditionally both parties to a covenant would walk between the slain bodies of the covenantal sacrifices in order to communicate that if the covenant agreement should be violated what had been done to the covenantal sacrifices would be done to the party that broke covenant. However, at this crucial part of the covenant ceremony the God of the Bible who is never described as “mean” chooses to put Abraham to sleep and takes on the full weight of the covenant punishments on himself walking alone between the bodies of the slain animals.  This is a “non-mean” covenant of grace.

Then, 2000 years later, in light of the fact that Abraham and his descendents repeatedly violated covenant, God, in the incarnate Jesus Christ, does take upon Himself the covenant curses for Abraham and the true sons of Abraham. And Libolt wants to call that mean?

To the contrary, of course, it is Libolt’s theology that creates for a mean God. Libolt would have us believe a God who does not punish sin thus showing a meanness to those who have had sin visited upon them by those who are mean. Libolt’s “non-mean” God means the judicially innocent never are avenged. The countless millions abused, tortured, and slain by the Soviet and Chinese communist gulag system are told “sucks to be you.” Libolt’s “non-mean” God means is unrighteous. A sovereign God who is also not righteous is a mean God. Libolt serves a mean God and because of that Libolt advances mean politics.

Honestly, this kind of talk (writing) by Libolt has to be considered blasphemous. I continue to pray that Libolt and his leftist legions repent and so discover for the first time the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. I also pray that God would remove this kind of theology and its adherents.