Category: Theology

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.

Back To Covenant Theology & Infant Baptism … Conversing With Rev. Tim Bushong (Baptist)

Rev. Tim Bushong wrote,

ALL – covenant members ‘know the Lord,’ they are regenerate, have all their sins forgiven, and have God’s Law written on their hearts and minds, and all these blessings are a present reality for all of them, since “He always lives to make intercession for them.”

BLMc responds,

If all covenant members ‘know the Lord’ and are regenerate then why the warning

26 For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. 28 Anyone who has rejected Moses’ law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace?

Clearly, the warning implies that there are those who are in the outward administration of the covenant of grace but who may indeed not have the substance of the covenant (Christ.). All covenant members who have the essence of the covenant do indeed know the Lord but not all who are in the circumference of the covenant necessarily have the substance of the covenant and so need this warning in order that they may take seriously their covenant membership and so not abandon the faith. Those who have the substance of the covenant will take heed of this warning and not trample the Son of God underfoot. It still remains the case even in the Church that not all of Israel is of Israel; that is not all of the Church is of the Church.

TB wrote,

I believe that the particular structure of this version of covenant theology does something unnecessary (at best) to the nature of the New Covenant, and returns to prioritizing OC typology.

BLMc replies,

I believe that the insistence that church membership is universally regenerate is a particular structure of the version of the new and better covenant that finds us insisting that there were two different ways of covenantal belonging, and so two different ways of salvation. The implication here is that in the Old Covenant covenantal belonging was not by grace alone while in the NC covenantal belonging is by grace alone. This is to severely misunderstand the continuity between the OC and the new and better covenant.

TB wrote,

The discontinuity, or maybe just one of the differences, between the Covenants is evinced in the exchange between local and physical (Israel) with the universal and spiritual (the whole world).

BLMc responds,

Of course this is the common Baptist assertion of radical discontinuity between OC and NW. The OC was not merely local as seen in, for example, Jonah’s work with the Assyrians (Nineveh). Also there are other examples such as Naaman’s cleansing and Nebuchadnezzar’s confession in Daniel. As such we see a hint of the Universal and the spiritual in the OC. With the new and better covenant this is expanded but it remains present in the OC. In the same way there is continuity in the OC to the NC with the administration of the covenant sign to the children of the covenant and the expansion of this covenant sign is seen in the fact that not only males are given the sign of the covenant. Still, just as children in the OC were members of the covenant so children in the NC are members of the covenant and so should be given the ratification sign of the covenant. This is a serious error wherein Baptists fail.

TB wrote,

IOW, the price of ‘all the nations’ being included in the New Covenant meant that mere human progeny was no longer the ticket of admission—axiomatically ‘automatically in’ the Covenant by genealogy—as was the case in the Old Covenant.

BLMc responds

This is just not accurate. The price of all nations being included in the NC is clearly articulated in the OC in speaking of Christ;

“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”

The price of all nations being included in the NC was not the exclusion of the children of God’s children. The price of all nations being included in the NC was the precious blood of Jesus Christ which spoke of a better covenant than one that was only typified by the blood of bulls and goats.

Baptist thinking on this subject does not treat the Scriptures organically and because of that posits an unfortunate individualistic take on covenant theology.