Category: Theology

McAtee Contra the Baptist Fairchild On Baptism

This is from some Baptist Minister in Houston Texas serving at a Mega Church. Like most mega Churches the ministers are long on feel goods and short on doctrine. His name is Rev. L. David Fairchild.

Fairchild writes;

“The fatal flaw in paedobaptism is that it treats the New Covenant like the Old. A mixed bag. Some believe, some do not. But that is not how the Bible describes it. Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 8 are clear. The New Covenant is made with those who know God. Who have been forgiven. Who have the Spirit. That is not a crowd you get into by birth. That is a regenerate people.

BLMc responds,

This would be true if it were not the case that the Old Covenant is like the New Covenant. The only difference is that the Old Covenant is the New Covenant not yet come to full flower. The Old Covenant is the not yet mature New Covenant.

That the New Covenant is like the Old Covenant in that both covenant are a mixed bad is seen in the fact that in the Old Covenant not all of Israel was of Israel as the Holy Spirit says in Romans 9. Some of Israel belonged to the outward administration of the covenant without having the essence of the covenant. In the same way the New Covenant is a mixed bag. We see this for example in Jesus warnings in Revelation to the seven churches that He would take their lampstands away if they were not faithful. We see this in the book of Hebrews with the warnings against falling away. We see this when John says of unregenerate people of the Church;

“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.”  I John 2:19

Then there is the Wheat and Tares parable that many a theologian has seen being about the Church having in it both wheat and tares.

So Fairchild’s idea that the New Covenant is comprised only of regenerate people is just a Baptist assumption with no foundation. Now, it is true that the essence of the New Covenant, who is Jesus the Christ, is only occupied by the regenerate but there are many people who are in the administrative outskirts of the New Covenant who do not have the essence of the New Covenant who will say on that day …

22  Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? 23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Matthew 7

So, clearly it is a Baptist interpretive mistake to say that only regenerate people are in the boundaries of the New Covenant. It has always been the case, both in the Old Covenant and the New Covenant that not all of Israel is of Israel.

In terms of Fairchild’s appeal to the language of Jeremiah and Hebrews Calvin easily dismisses Fairchild’s mis-interpretative ravings on this score;

“It may be asked, whether there was under the Law (Old Covenant) a sure and certain promise of salvation, whether the fathers had the gift of the Spirit, whether they enjoyed God’s paternal favor through the remission of sins? Yes, it is evident that they worshipped God with a sincere heart and a pure conscience, and that they walked in his commandments, and this could not have been the case except they had been inwardly taught by the Spirit; and it is also evident, that whenever they thought of their sins, they were raised up by the assurance of a gratuitous pardon. And yet the Apostle, by referring the prophecy of Jeremiah to the coming of Christ, seems to rob them of these blessings. To this I reply, that he does not expressly deny that God formerly wrote his Law on their hearts and pardoned their sins, but he makes a comparison between the less and the greater. As then the Father has put forth more fully the power of his Spirit under the kingdom of Christ, and has poured forth more abundantly his mercy on mankind, this exuberance renders insignificant the small portion of grace which he had been pleased to bestow on the fathers. We also see that the promises were then obscure and intricate, so that they shone only like the moon and stars in comparison with the clear light of the Gospel which shines brightly on us.”

Calvin’s Commentary
Hebrews 8

L. David Fairchild writes,

“So baptizing someone with no faith, no regeneration, and no profession, like an infant, just does not fit. It breaks the meaning of baptism from the inside out.”

BLMc responds,

In point of fact since regeneration & justification are all God’s work with man contributing nothing baptizing infants is a perfect picture of God doing all the doing in saving helpless man. What Fairchild has done here is what all Baptists do. Fairchild has turned man’s faith into a work that he has to exchange as a work to trade in for salvation. This is justification by faith as a work alone. It is not a particularly Christian doctrine but really does lead back to some kind of pelagian arrangement. Of course it is the Baptist who breaks the meaning of Baptism from the inside out and turns the grace of God into something that is only gracious upon man’s trading up faith for grace.

L. David Fairchild;

I know the argument. Circumcision was the sign of the Old, baptism is the sign of the New. But that logic only works if the covenant structure stays the same. And it doesn’t. The Old Covenant was temporary. Shadows and types. The New Covenant is the real thing. It is better. It doesn’t just get a new sign. It has new membership. Baptism isn’t a repackaged circumcision. It’s the sign of a new creation.

BLMc responds,

1.) This reveals the Baptist propensity to assume discontinuity between the covenants. The Reformed, on the other hand, are disposed to seeing continuity between Old and New Covenant unless explicitly told of discontinuity such as the end of the sacrificial system and the ceremonial law.

2.) To deny that there is sameness between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant suggests that

a.) God isn’t immutable but changes between Old Covenant and New Covenant. This is a serious theological problem. If there is as much change between Old Covenant and New Covenant such as Baptists like Fairchild is positing then we really have a different God in the OT then we have in the NT. This is a problem.

b.) the Old Testament believers were not saved by grace alone just as the New Testament believers are saved. This Baptist thinking posits that the OT saints if saved were saved by a different kind of salvation then the salvation by which the saints are saved by with the coming of the magnificent Jesus Christ.

c.) The reason there is a new sign for the new and better covenant is because the Lord Christ fulfills all the blood shedding required in the old covenant and so the water of Baptism is given as a sign of forgiveness. However, Baptism signifies just what circumcision signified in the Old Covenant. This explains why it is St. Paul seems to mix his circumcision and baptism metaphors in Colossians 2;

11 In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body [h]of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, 12 buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.

The New Covenant has come with Christ and so circumcision is no longer the sign of the covenant as was the case when the Messiah was only anticipated. The reality is that the Old Covenant promised is now realized with the coming of Christ and so the covenant sign that was both anticipatory and yet at the same time proleptic is set aside for the sign (Baptism) that the reality has come. However, inasmuch as the old covenant was a unfolding and growing reality serving as a proleptic harbinger of the new covenant the new covenant remains related to what the old covenant anticipated.

Fairchild writes,

The pattern in the New Testament is painfully obvious. Hear the gospel. Believe. Repent. Then be baptized. That’s it. Over and over. There isn’t one clear example of an infant being baptized. Not one command to do it. Every baptism you can point to involves someone responding to Christ in faith.

 BLM responds,

1.) The problem here is what St. Peter himself says in that Pentecost sermon;

“38 Then Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the [k]remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.’”

Now, there is no way in Hades that a 1st century Jew would’ve heard these words and thought … “I can’t bring my children to be baptized.” It is just ridiculous to contend otherwise.

2.) We know from the NT record that the Jews howled and howled about the Gentiles coming in to the covenant and yet we are to believe that the Jews did not raise a peep about their children being excluded from the “new and better covenant.”

3.) There is an abundance of household baptisms in the NT. This gives us conclusive evidence that children should be given the sign of the covenant because household baptisms as practiced in the NT scream at us that if children had been present they would have been baptized since that was the very nature of NT Household baptisms.

4.) There also isn’t one clear command or example of women taking the Eucharist. Does that therefore mean that women today shouldn’t receive the Eucharist?

Baptist logic is so jejune.

Fairchild writes,

When you baptize someone who hasn’t believed, you confuse everything. You blur the line between the visible and invisible church. You give false assurance. You end up with churches full of people who think they’re Christian because water touched their forehead decades ago. That is not the gospel.

BLMc responds,

1.) Whenever Fairchild baptizes anybody he does not know they believe. I bet more Baptists have been baptized who never believed than Reformed Babies have been baptized who never believed.

2.) Who says that a baby can’t believe? John is recorded as leaping his mother’s womb for joy thus signifying his recognition of Jesus. The Psalmist (22) writes even;

9 Yet you brought me out of the womb;
    you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.
10 From birth I was cast on you;
    from my mother’s womb you have been my God.

3.) How can Fairchild even talk about a distinction between the visible and invisible church when he has said that he holds that all in the church are regenerate. The whole distinction between visible and invisible church rests upon the reality that not all members who say they are regenerate are indeed regenerate.

4.) The whole idea that paedo-baptist churches give false assurance is just Baptist bloviating. As paedo-baptist churches routinely preach to their people the 1st use of the law there is no false assurance going on.

5.) If Baptists want to talk about false assurance being given they should worry about the false assurance that comes with telling their membership that they are all regenerate.

Fairchild writes,

If you baptize someone who cannot believe, then you either have to say baptism doesn’t mean what Scripture says it does, or that it does something magical without faith. That’s precisely how you slide into baptismal regeneration, whether you admit it or not.

BLMC responds

1.) Scripture does not teach that infants can’t believe. See above.

2.) No paedo-Baptist teaches the Roman Catholic/Lutheran doctrine of Baptismal regeneration. Fairchild writing this just demonstrates the man’s ignorance on the subject once again.

Instant Forgiveness In the Face of Violent Crime & The Color of Crime; The Texas Case

Recently, with the murder of a 17 year old white male in Texas by a black teenage assailant the issue of forgiveness has become a subject of conversations among folks. The Father of the boy murdered, shortly after the murder, went public with his announcement that he had forgiven the black murderer of his son.

In a later interview with Laura Ingram the father in question somewhat clarified his earlier blanket forgiveness, thus making more clear what he had said earlier.

This is not the first time that we have seen this kind of  blanket “forgiveness” by folks in the face of heinous crimes against their loved ones. In the past few years I remember another case in Indiana where a white man forgave the black murderers of his white wife.

Now, the way this “forgiveness” can come across, especially when offered in the context of this kind of horrid sin, is that the person forgiving is willing to let “bygones be bygones,” as if we are going to ignore the necessity to hate unrighteousness. However, the God who instructs us to forgive is the same God who commands us to “hate that which is evil,” and it it is no hatred of evil to come across as if one treats grievous sin lightly.

I think somewhere along the way the Christian church has done a disservice to its members by teaching them to respond to glaring evil with a seeming nonchalant “I forgive you for raping and murdering my wife,” or, “I forgive you for driving a knife into my son’s chest because he told you to go sit somewhere else.”

Allow me to suggest that our forgiving someone doesn’t mean that the consequences that sin brings are no longer in force. Horizontal forgiveness does not mean the offender gets repeated opportunities to do us harm. “I forgive you” is to release us from vindictiveness and bitterness but it does not mean we put ourselves again in the position to be offended against by the perp. In a realistic world the husband of the murdered wife in Indiana could have said in one breath; “Personally, I forgive you thus releasing my personal vengeance against you but I will do all that I can to see that you get the death penalty.” There is no inconsistency in this statement. Neither would it be inconsistent at that point to plead with the criminal by visiting them in jail repeatedly that they repent and trust Christ, all the while insisting that they be visited with capital punishment.

I may forgive a babysitter for doing something harmful to my children, but that person will never babysit my children again no matter how much they repent. Further, I will make it known to others that the abusive babysitter should not be brought into their homes to babysit. However, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t forgiven the abusive babysitter.

Forgiveness, in these kinds of cases, has to have not only in mind our relationship to the person who has violated us but it must also have in mind other people who will in the future have interaction with the perp. Do we really want to argue that my personal forgiveness of someone means that the perp should not be met with the full weight of the law? This kind of forgiveness would put others in the cross-hairs of future similar behavior. This kind of forgiveness – a forgiveness that would diminish the just penalty against public crime – would be a violation of the 6th commandment. Similarly, a kind of forgiveness that would divert from the awfulness of the crime could also be seen as not giving the 6th commandment its full weight.

Wilhelmus à Brakel’s in his systematic theology, “The Christian’s Reasonable Service” writes;

  “To say, “I forgive you” when such is not warranted is a triumphant boasting of your kindness and will harden the offender in his sin.”   

Vol. 3 —  p. 565-566

I am not confident that the kind of forgiveness that we see in these kind of tragedies is really a biblical forgiveness.

Rev. Zach Garris pointed me to a quote here from the great Southern Presbyterian Benjamin Morgan Palmer which sustain what I have been teaching/preaching for some years. While insisting that Christians must forgive the perp, Palmer noted here;

 “Forgiveness does not necessarily include restoration to full confidence, as before the offence,” as “the offence may disclose attributes of character.” So while we must forgive others, “it may be sometimes our duty to protest against a wrong which we heartily forgive, by the withdrawal of intercourse—not as an act of resentment, but as a judicial testimony against sin.”

Secondly, we must continue to plead with people to be realistic concerning the issue of race. It is no surprise that the perp who killed the white lad was black. This is not to say that all black people are murderers but it is to say that statistics overwhelmingly bear out that when it comes to violent crimes people of color are more likely to be the perps.  Only in a brain dead world is it considered bad form to notice significant and repeatable patterns in various people groups.

Click to access Color-Of-Crime-2016.pdf

Even Rev. Jesse Jackson confirmed my point when years ago he wrote;

“There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps… then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”

Jesse Jackson

If Jesse Jackson can recognize the reality that people of color are more likely to be perps in violent crimes than there should be no shame in agreeing with him by saying that when around non-white people in large numbers white people’s heads should be on a swivel looking out for danger.

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.

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.