In Defense Of Penal Substitutionary Atonement

Lately the doctrine of the Penal Substitutionary Atonement of the death of Christ has been being assaulted online by various Arminians, Provisionists, Amyraldians, Lutherans, and Roman Catholics. All of them have in common the idea that Christ’s death was hypothetically universal. That is to say they all believe that Christ died for all men everywhere without distinction. Thus, there are numerous people, according to this thought system, for whom Christ died but without efficacy so as to accomplish what was intended inasmuch as not all men are saved.

All of the above mentioned must reject the Penal Substitutionary theory of the Atonement since the Penal Substitutionary Atonement explicitly teaches that Jesus Christ most certainly did not die for all men without distinction, but rather only died to the end of substituting for and so saving a distinct people (called the elect).

A few notations on this matter;

1.) A complaint is often issued that Calvinism teaches “Limited Atonement,” but in point of fact this teaching is not unique to the Biblically Reformed. Indeed, all who believe in hypothetical Universalism (the doctrine that the intent of the Atonement was potentially for all men though it is recognized that all men are not saved), teach a limited atonement. However, there is a difference inasmuch as while the Calvinist doctrine of limited atonement teaches that God, in election, limits the atonement, those who advocate for a hypothetical atonement teach that it is man who limits God’s desire for all men, without distinction, to be saved.

2.) This teaching that Christ died for all but some frustrate God’s design and intent is contradictory. If Christ died for all then the death of Christ paid for all the sins of all men. If all sins of all men are died for by Christ’s death on the Cross then not even the sin of unbelief in Christ’s death can be excluded as a sin for which Christ died and if Christ’s death includes the payment for sin, it includes the payment of sin that refuses to believe in Jesus Christ. The options here for the hypothetical universalist is to either drop the “hypothetical” part and so become full blown universalist or drop the universalist part and leave Christ’s death a hypothetical that applies to everyone in general but to no one specifically.

3.) We should also note that the denial of the Penal Substitutionary Atonement with the embrace of hypothetical universalism means that not only does the death of Christ apply to all men potentially, it is also the case potentially that the death of Christ would not apply to anybody. The doctrine of hypothetical makes it possible that all men can potentially be saved but guarantees that no men will be saved.

4.) Clearly, this denial of the Penal Substitutionary Atonement also is a denial of justification by grace alone. With the doctrine of hypothetical universalism the Cross doesn’t justify but only provides the opportunity to be justified. This opportunity to be justified can only be cashed in on if fallen man adds his faith consent. In such an arrangement faith becomes a work that man contributes so as to put the machinery of justification into motion. With hypothetical universalism faith becomes a working organ that contributes the energizing that makes the cross effective to the end of justification instead of an organ that does it’s proper work when it doesn’t work but instead rests in Christ for all.

5.) With the doctrine of hypothetical universalism Christ propitiates (turns away the just wrath of God against the sinner) against the sinner while at the same time saying that propitiation is provisional upon the basis of fallen man’s acquiescence to being propitiated for. In other words, in hypothetical universalism the turning away of God’s wrath is conditional upon fallen man’s consent to Christ propitiating the Father’s just and reasonable wrath against sin. It begins to be clear who is really the agent of justification here. Christ dies for all. All are not saved. The difference lies in those who are justified as opposed to the one who does the justifying. Is justification really to God’s glory alone in this arrangement?

6.) The same is true of the doctrine of reconciliation. The doctrine of reconciliation teaches not only that man is alienated from God but also that God is alienated from man. In Penal Substitutionary Atonement Christ is the alone mediator who alone reconciles man to God and God to man with and in His atoning and reconciling death on the Cross. However, in hypothetical universalism Christ does not Himself reconcile but only makes provision for reconciliation. The real provision for reconciliation comes when fallen man makes the machinery of reconciliation operative by buying in. Again, here it is not really Jesus Christ and His cross work that reconciles, rather, the reason why some men are reconciled to God and others are not lies in the fact that some fallen men via their faith work made the wheels of the cross efficient.

7.) The same can be said of expiation, redemption, ransom, sacrifice, substitution, and all the other doctrinal streams that flow into the river we call Atonement. The denial of the Penal Substitutionary Atonement is the denial of Biblical Christianity with the corresponding embrace of a horizontal man-centered auto-soteriology. The denial of Penal Substitutionary Atonement is also the denial that man is totally depraved in favor of partially depraved. It is the denial of unconditional election opting for  man-centered conditional election. It is the denial of sovereign irresistible grace in favor of a common / prevenient grace that sometimes is successful and sometimes isn’t depending on the cooperation of fallen man to improve on grace. It is the denial of the perseverance of the saints favoring instead the falling away of the saints depending upon their will power.

But wait … there is more.

If the doctrine of Penal Substitutionary Atonement is not true then neither can be the doctrine of an Imputation that finds God reckoning the sins of the elect to Christ and Christ’s righteous to the elect. Remember, there is no elect in Hypothetical Universalism, when consistently held. There is only potentially elect and as such the potentially elect can only have an imputation that is likewise potential and not actual.

Further, if the doctrine of the Penal Substitutionary Atonement is not true and it is not the case that Christ pays the penalty as the substitution providing the atonement for a particular people then there is no reason to believe that Christ continues to pray as our Great High Priest, efficient to the end all that He secured in His sacrifice. If Hypothetical Universalism is true then it applies not only to Christ’s work as Priest, sacrifice, and altar as being only potential but it also applies to Christ’s continued work as our Great High Priest in praying for His people. If Christ did not have a particular people He sacrificed Himself for as their Great High Priest, then Christ can in no way pray for a particular people while at the right hand of the Father.

The denial of Penal Substitutionary Atonement ends in auto-soterism and if consistently held means the end of Biblical Christianity. Fortunately, there are countless numbers of people who are indeed among the elect who deny the necessary doctrine of Penal Substitutionary Atonement.  All kinds of Christians are involved in felicitous inconsistency.

Roger Scruton & McAtee On Oikophobia and The Death of The West

“This disposition, in any conflict, to side with ‘them’ against ‘us,’ and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture, and institutions that are identifiably ‘ours,’ being the opposite of xenophobia I propose to call oikophobia, by which I mean the repudiation of inheritance and home.”

Roger Scruton
1944-2000
British Conservative

The West is racked from head to toe with oikophobia. Whites may well die as a people because they have lost the ability to love their own and in losing that ability, at the same time, they have lost the ability to desire to protect their own. The only cure for this is a Biblical Kinism but because we are so far down the oikophobia wormhole Kinism is abominated by both the cultural and church gatekeepers in the West.

You want to know why the West has surrendered to mass illegal and legal migration from third world countries? The answer is oikophobia. You want to know the explanation for diving birth rates in the West? The answer is oikophobia. You want to know the reason for the increase in our divorce rates? The answer is oikophobia. You want to know why interracial marriage is increasingly acceptable when as recent as 70 years ago 31 states had laws on their books making illegal miscegenation? The answer is oikophobia. You want to know the reason for Griswold vs. Connecticut and Roe vs. Wade? The answer is oikophobia. You want to know the reason for White folks being resolved to not commit the sin of noticing? The answer is oikophobia. You want to know the reason why putatively conservative Christian denominations keep asserting egalitarian like statements? The answer is oikophobia.  It all boils down to the fact that the West and the Church in the West has embraced a intense desire to repudiate inheritance and home… they have embraced Oikophobia.

Unless Biblical Kinism is embraced once again the West will die, because the Christian faith has refused to be the Christian faith.

Two Marxist Techniques Employed In Our Ongoing Culture War

While reading Warren H. Caroll’s “The Rise and Fall of Communist Revolutions,” it dawned on me that the Biden administration was trying to re-create societally what Stalin had created in the Soviet Union in terms of a terrorized and so controlled society. Now, Biden didn’t have the means that Stalin had his disposal in order to cow people into silence but nonetheless what means Biden had Biden used to try and create a Gulag society that found people afraid to whisper opposition.

Biden’s DOJ went after parents who protested school boards. Biden’s DOJ went after those peacefully protesting Abortion clinics. Biden’s KGB (FBI) went after, arrested, and imprisoned the mildest of J6 protesters, including Grandmothers. Biden officials leaked names to the SPLC to be blackened by being put on their sacred lists of “haters.” The Biden administration began to de-bank political enemies. The Biden administration passed legislation to vastly increase the number of secret police (IRS agents). The Biden administration weaponized the FBI against the American people. The Biden administration imprisoned a chap (Douglas Mackie) for a political prank against would be Hillary voters that their own troops had also used to prank would be Trump voters.

All of it was really an attempt to Sovietize the American citizenry. It was communist like work to criminalize resistance to the Biden-Obama Marxist regime. It was a soft to not so soft form of government inspired terrorism intended to intimidate and control the citizenry so as to silence them. Forms of this touched me (SPLC list), touched my family (experiencing de-banking), and touched friends (imprisoned for peacefully protesting abortion clinics).

It failed the first time, but there will be further attempts in the near future to do the same.

The Marxists, recently, have pulled a new page from their playbook in order to try and slow the reversal of their previous gains. David Axelrod (Bagel) is now out there talking to the media accusing the non-Marxists opposition of being Stalinists;

 Axelrod: “Yeah. Let’s also remember what the Civil War was about. I mean, the statues he (Trump) wants to restore are people who are fighting to retain slavery. And that is just a historical fact. You know, this has just kind of a Soviet feel to it, a Stalinist feel to it that you just, you know, you take over cultural institutions and historical institutions and you try and rewrite history. But as you pointed out before, Anderson, this is a president who is rewriting history every day. And he believes that you can do that. You know, when crime is up, no crime is down. Things cost less, no things cost more.”

Briefly, we note that the War of Northern Aggression was not about retaining slavery. This is a Bagel lie that has predominated since that war in order to make the war virtuous. Next, we note how clever Axelrod is here. After the Cultural Marxist have succeeded in rewriting history over the last two to three generations they now complain of the Stalinist feel of Trump returning to the written history before they rewrote the history. The Stalinist left took over the institutions in the 1960s and rewrote history and now that the original history is being restored they shriek “STALINIST.”

The Bagel Axelord is a liar and he knows the game he’s playing. It is the same game over and over… rinse and repeat. That game is to accuse your opponents of what you yourself are guilty of doing.  Axelrod is a committed Stalinist and so obviously he accuses Trump of being a Stalinist.

S0, whether it is the Marxist technique of terrorizing your opponents to the end of controlling and silencing them or whether it is the Marxist technique in accusing your opponents of what you yourself are guilty of, the Marxist in the political realm continue to exercise their propaganda with incredible effectiveness.

Folks, Marxists cannot be reasoned with. They cannot be voted out of office. The only cure for dealing with Marxists is to utterly crush them and drive them out of your country. Franco knew how to deal with them. Pinochet knew how to deal with them.  

Hitler & Stalin … Who Was More Non-Christian Than The Other?

There are more than a few people currently who are invested in the project to rehabilitate Hitler and the Nazis. I find this ridiculous, though I do still salute their effort to destroy Communism.

It will be hard to rehabilitate Hitler who said things like this;

“The Slavs are to work for us. Insofar as we don’t need them, they may die. Therefore compulsory vaccination and German health services are superfluous. The fertility of the Slavs is undesirable. They may use contraceptive and practice abortion, the more the better. Education is dangerous. It is sufficient if they can count up to a hundred. At best an education is admissible which produces useful servants for us. Every educated person is a future enemy. Religion we leave to them as a matter of diversion. As to food, they are not to get more than necessary. We are the masters.”

Gerald Reitlinger
The House Built on Sand; The Conflicts of German Policy in Russia, 1939-1945 – p. 200

Note that all that Hitler recommended for his slave class Slavs in order to keep their population down and to keep them in “their place,” are the same methods being used by the Bagels to tamp down the White population. We have had contraceptives and abortion pushed on us. We no longer educate our children instead providing large dosages of propaganda. Our food, as RFK Jr. has only begun to reveal is horrid. Religion, likewise, is left to us as a diversion as very few take their professed religion seriously.
Neither Hitler nor Stalin were Christians, though there are more than a few today who are, as I said, trying to rehabilitate Hitler into being a Christian Prince. The quote above demonstrates how silly the rehabilitation effort is. Christian princes don’t speak like this.

However, Stalin was clearly, hands down – not even close – the greater danger and menace of the two as seen in the fact that the monster tortured, murdered, and slaughtered many millions more than Hitler. Also, it should be noted that the millions slaughtered by Stalin were, in overwhelming percentages, Christian. Stalin was seeking to wipe out the Christian faith. This remains the goal of the neo-Communists (Cultural Marxists). I certainly can understand how German Christian young men would sign up to fight against the anti-Christ Soviet Bolsheviks, who were trying to wipe Christianity off the face of the map.

So, Hitler was no Christian Prince but given that the option for Germans at the time was to become Communists in league with the Comintern it is understandable why Christian Germany would rally to Hitler in his stand against Jewish Communism.

Doug Wilson Insisting He Is A “Conservative” – His Audience Tries Not To Laugh

“It really is possible to be a hard line conservative of the old school without getting sucked down a reactionary wormhole. It is possible to hold to the historic Reformed view of Romans 11 on the Jews without being in any way beholden to the liberal post-war consensus. It is possible to be an unfazed and unapologetic Burkean conservative—when some are maintaining you are not conservative at all unless you are clamoring for a Protestant Robespierre.

Not only is it possible, it is far and away the straighter path. I commend it to you, and invite folks to join us.”

Pope Dougie — He of Moscow fame
Blog Mablog – 11 August, 2025

Doug likes to think of himself as a hardline conservative. Remember, this is the man who himself testified he was not interested in being Rushdoony 2.0 but was trying to achieve being Rushdoony 0.5. Only in a world of effeminate smurfs can Dougie be considered “hardline conservative.” This is the problem with the nomenclature. As a culture we have swung so hard to the Revolutionary Left that a soft revolutionary like Wilson can think of himself as “a Hardline conservative.” I imagine that is the way the Girondins thought of themselves during the French Revolution. I supposed compared to Robespierre, the montagnard Jacques Pierre Brissot was a hard line conservative.

Dougie thinks his view of Romans 11 is standard Reformed orthodoxy but when you add his statements about the glories of his family’s relation to the Bagel bloodline combined with his “Covenant with Hagar” nonsense his is a tenuous claim. Pope Doug claiming he is in line with standard Romans 11 interpretation is like saying that lab created meat is in line with a standard 16 oz. porterhouse steak. It demands the response … “Where’s the beef?”

Pope Dougie’s next claim is that he is not beholden in any way to the liberal post-war consensus. Yet, the man has written in support of liberal post-war consensus projects like interracial marriage, the good of processed food – labeling those who resist processed food as having “food scruples’ – and coming out in favor of vaccines. The push for each and all of these are part of the post war liberal consensus that Dougie insists that he has successfully avoided. Me thinketh the lady doth protest too much.

As to Pope Doug’s claim to be a follower of Edmund Burke, Burke wrote;

“The blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The rest is vanity; the rest is crime.”

Yet, Doug has repeatedly abominated this kind of overt Burkean Kinist language. Indeed, Doug hates Kinists. You cannot say you hate kinists while insisting at the same time you love Burke.

Doug Wilson has NOTHING to offer in the way of providing an answer to our descending Constitutional Republic. All Doug offers up is warmed over post war liberal consensus dressed up in Doug’s clever wordsmithing evening clothes.

It is past time to realize that there is no strength to remedy our current malady in the cures that Pope Doug offers. Doug calls his opponents “reactionary.” It’s the same thing Revolutionaries have always called their opponents. What the opponents of Revolutionary movements have always called their supporters is “Liberals.” Doug is a Liberal.

Or if you prefer … soft progressive.