Featured Sin and Substitutionary Atonement salvation

God is HOLY, and sin at all is an affront to Him, and ALL of it MUST be judged by Him!

The wrath of God against sin is upon sinners, that is per John, those who have NOT received Christ have already been condemned, and His wrath will abide upon them...

Jesus death was and is the ONLY means to propiate the judgement and wrath of God that is in effect against sinners....

 

I do see Christus Victor in your view. But I reject any kind of Satisfaction view, as per Anselm. In fact, I reject any view put forth after the first millenium.

On the view of the Atonement, the EOC has it completely right.

 

By faith in the whole work of Jesus, to put it succinctly.

 

See my first response in red to your first paragraph, above.

We have gone over this before. These writers did not hold to penal substitution, not even Augustine, although parts of Augustine's view might be said to be a precursor to the penal substitution that Calvin developed.

Also, as I have stated before, there is a difference between substitution and penal substitution. There is a difference between affirming that Jesus took my place in doing that which I could not do and holding that God punished and killed Jesus in my place.

 

I could dig out the references that I have about this, some posted here, but frankly I am just too tired to do that -- been up all night. Voluntary submission to suffering is not the same as being directly punished by God. If penal substitution were true, no one would have to suffer and die.

Besides, as I have shown by what I posted elsewhere, what is hinted at in some of these fathers is not the penal substitutionary view taught by Calvin.

 

Regardless of your insults, penal substitution is not taught in scripture or the early fathers or the church up until Calvin. Christus Victor was the view of the church for the first millenium.

All I have time for now is this:

"The term Christus Victor refers to a Christian understanding of the atonement which views Christ's death as the means by which the powers of evil, which held humankind under their dominion, were defeated.[1] It is a model of the atonement that is dated to the Church Fathers,[2] and it, or the related ransom theory, was the dominant theory of the atonement for a thousand years, until it was removed in the West by the eleventh-century Archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm, and replaced with his "satisfaction" model.

The term comes from the title of Gustaf Aulén's groundbreaking book, first published in 1931, in which he drew attention back to this classic early Church understanding of the atonement. Gustav Aulén writes in description of Christus Victor, "the work of Christ is first and foremost a victory over the powers which hold mankind in bondage: sin, death, and the devil."


In it Aulén identifies three main types of Atonement Theories:

* The earliest was what Aulén called the "classic" view of the Atonement, more commonly known as the Ransom Theory, or since Aulén's work, it is known sometimes as the "Christus Victor" theory: this is the theory that Adam and Eve made humanity subject to the Devil during the Fall, and that God, in order to redeem humanity, sent Christ as a "ransom" or "bait" so that the Devil, not knowing Christ couldn't die permanently, would kill him, and thus lose all right to humanity following the Resurrection.
* A second theory is the "Latin" or "objective" view, more commonly known as Satisfaction Theory, beginning with Anselmian Satisfaction (that Christ suffered as a substitute on behalf of humankind satisfying the demands of God's honor) and later developed by Protestants as penal substitution (that Christ is punished instead of humanity, thus satisfying the demands of justice so that God can justly forgive). Some have argued that the penal substitution theory of the atonement was expressed by the early church fathers, such as Justin Martyr c.100-165, Eusebius of Caesarea c.275-339, and Augustine of Hippo 354-430.
* A third is the "subjective" theory, commonly known as the Moral Influence view, that Christ's passion was an act of exemplary obedience which affects the intentions of those who come to know about it: it is often wrongly claimed that the moral influence view originated with Abelard. In fact, Abelard restated Augustine's view on the subject, who in turn was articulating the Christian doctrine current in his time.

Structure

Aulén's book consists of a historical study, beginning with the early church, tracing Atonement theories up to the Protestant Reformation. Aulén argues that Christus Victor (or as Aulén called it the "classic view") was the predominant view of the early church and for the first thousand years of church history and was supported by nearly every Church Father including Irenaeus, Origen of Alexandria, and Augustine of Hippo to name a few. A major shift occurred, Aulén says, when Anselm of Canterbury published his “Cur Deus Homo” around 1097 AD which marked the point where the predominant understanding of the Atonement shifted from the classic view (Christus Victor) to the Satisfaction view in the Roman Catholic Church, and later within Protestantism. The Orthodox Church still holds to the Christus Victor view, based upon their understanding of the Atonement put forward by Irenaeus, called "recapitulation" Jesus became what we are so that we could become what he is.

Aulén's arguments

Aulén argues that theologians have misunderstood the view of the early Church Fathers in seeing their view of the Atonement in terms of a Ransom Theory, arguing that a proper understanding of their view is not concerned with the payment of ransom to the devil, but with the motif of the liberation of humanity from the bondage of sin, death, and the devil. As the term Christus Victor (Christ the Victor) indicates, the idea of “ransom” should not be seen in terms (as Anselm did) of a business transaction, but more in the terms of a rescue or liberation of humanity from the slavery of sin.

Role of the Trinity

Aulén states that the chief distinction between Christus Victor and the Satisfaction view is the contrary emphasis given to the Trinity and the Law. The Satisfaction view, Aulén claims, contains a 'divine discontinuity' and a 'legal continuity' while Christus Victor emphasizes a 'divine continuity' and a 'legal discontinuity'. He points to the emerging theology of penance in the Latin Church as the root of Anselm's ideas, particularly in the writings of St. Cyprian. In Anselm's logical but revolutionary extension of penance theology, God is unable or unwilling to pardon humanity without having his Kingship honored by a payment of blood (later this would take the form of "penal substitution", the Reformation idea that God's justice, not his honor, is at stake in the Atonement.) Since only a man can fulfill mankind's obligations to the Law and to God, Christ must become a man in order to offer perfect penance to God. He does this by satisfying the demands of the Law for a sinless life and by suffering the wrath of the Father for past sins. Aulen takes exception to this model, arguing that the Incarnation (and also the Resurrection) becomes a legal exercise, a piece of a theological equation based on law theories.

Aulen goes on to argue that Christus Victor reverses this view by uniting Jesus and His Father during the Crucifixion in a subversive condemnation of the unjust powers of darkness. This is followed by the natural emphasis of Christus Victor: the Father's vindication of Jesus in His victorious and bodily Resurrection. It should be noted that advocates of the Satisfaction view do not agree with Aulen's characterization, arguing that the Satisfaction model does not, in fact, create opposition between the Father and the Son (there has been less disagreement on the "legal continuity" or emphasis of Satisfaction Atonement, though J.I. Packer has notably argued for a version of Satisfaction theory with less legal emphasis). In their view, the "divine opposition" is only apparent since the Father desires reconciliation with mankind and Jesus willingly offers himself as a penal substitute. By contrast, Christus Victor depicts Christ's sacrifice, not as a legal offering to God in order to placate his justice, but as the decisive moment in a war against the powers of darkness; ironically, the Law included.

Writings of the Church Fathers

Aulén points to the writings of Paul and the Church Fathers as examples of early Christianity's view of the Law as an enemy which must be defeated in order for mankind's salvation to be secured. He seeks to demonstrate that the penance systems of Satisfaction Theory and Penal Substitution place an undue emphasis on man's obligation to offer payment to God and on God's obligation to Law. Instead by suffering a death that, before the Law, meant an accursed status, Christ, instead of satisfying an obligation, overthrew the power of the Law, since its condemnation of a perfect man was unjust. Furthermore, Death, Sin, and the Devil, (personalized forces in Christus Victor), are overthrown since Jesus' subsequent Resurrection breaks the dominion they once held over human life. Since the Resurrection is a mark of the Father's favor despite the Law's curse on crucified men, the Atonement, far from reinforcing the Law, deprives and subverts the Law of its ability to condemn. Thus God the Father and God the Son are not set at odds by the Cross with the first in the role of Judge and the second in the role of Sinner, but are united in seeking the downfall of the Devil's system of sin, death, and Law that enslaves humanity. This view, Aulén maintains, keeps from the errors of penance systems emphasizing Law and man, and reveals the unity within the Trinity's redemptive plan and the freedom of the forgiveness shown to us by God through Christ.
[edit] The Incarnation

Unlike the Satisfaction Doctrine view of the Atonement (the “Latin” view) which is rooted in the idea of Christ paying the penalty of sin to satisfy the demands of justice, the “classic” view of the Early church (Christus Victor) is rooted in the Incarnation and how Christ entered into human misery and wickedness and thus redeemed it. Aulén argues that the Christus Victor view of the Atonement is not so much a rational systematic theory as it is a drama, a passion story of God triumphing over the Powers and liberating humanity from the bondage of sin. As Gustav Aulén writes,

'The work of Christ is first and foremost a victory over the powers which hold mankind in bondage: sin, death, and the devil'

 

I wish I felt like searching through what I have posted here to find the references which prove you absolutely wrong. Maybe I'll do that after I've gotten some sleep, but I still have a lot of papers to grade.

And what you said at the last is untrue.

 

What part of "there is a difference in substitution and penal substitution" do you not grasp? For example, the governmental theory is a form of substitution but not penal substitution.

Got to try to get some sleep now. Am seeing double.

 

the Bible clearly takes the penal substitionary view, as espoused from Jesus/Paul/ Author of hebrews, all the Apostles...

Rooted firmly in the sacrificial sacrifice ordained by God under Old Covenant...

Are you against God having to need to be appeased by death of Christ, or do you view it as making God a killer and vulgar act?

 

theogeek.blogspot.com/2007/06/church-fathers-on-atonement.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atonement_in_Christianity

http://therebelgod.com/AtonementFathersEQ.pdf Notice the comments about Justin Martyr.