Expedition 44

PSA advocates claim that this theory was there from the beginning, and this is witnessed by the church fathers. Yet the Church Fathers don’t really have modern atonement theories when they speak about the cross. They use phrases like “Jesus died for us”, “Jesus shed his blood for us”, they connect the cross with forgiveness, Jesus freeing humanity from a curse, Jesus as a ransom, Jesus as the 2nd Adam, etc. Though they use this “biblical language” do they mean what PSA has defined them as.   

Many pin a fully formed view of PSA on John Calvin in the 1500s. Calvin was a lawyer and interpreted the Bible through a legal lens. Though Calvin did have most of the PSA building blocks in place he never systematized it like the modern atonement theory school does. This didn’t happen until Charles Hodge wrote his systematic theology set in 1871. This was the first time PSA was but together in print as a theory.   

The building blocks came into being with Augustine. Paul Vendredi notes this with his 17 historical claims of PSA. 3 were made by Augustine, 9 were Anselm, and 5 are the modern atonement schools built on and expanded upon Calvin. (Check out Idol Killer’s Youtube for more on this).   

The 17 Claims: 

1. Original Sin 

2. Total Depravity / Inability 

3. Infant Depravity 

4. Sin is an Infinite Offense 

5. Sin is a Debt we owe 

6. Infants also owe this Debt 

7. Animal Sacrifices 

8. God could Cancel the sin debt by His will... 

9. But, God cannot Forgive a Sin without punishing the Sinner 

10. Death Must be Painful 

11. "Propitiation" 

12. Substitution 

13. God pours out His Wrath 

14. Jesus Became a Literal Curse 

15. The Father turned His back on Christ 

16. Old Testament Sacrificial System 

17. Ransom Paid TO God  

Conclusions:

• The early church used biblical language to talk about the cross… retribution must be read into them 

• Healing was the focus and not legal metaphors in all of these 

• A major focus is on death, sin, and the devil’s defeat and these 3 concepts are connected.  

• The results of their defeat are a rescue and restoration of the image of God.  

• Until Augustine’s 3 foundational points (original sin, Total depravity, and infant depravity) the early church had nothing to build PSA upon, so it is a fallacy to show that they taught it.  

• PSA has no historical leg to stand on. Most often they read PSA into ransom and then back into other theories like recapitulation taking them out of their context and projecting onto the language of the Church Fathers.

Major issues with the double imputation paradigm:   

 The assumption of perfection as the goal rather than what Genesis says: Imaging God (defined as relationship, vocation, and allegiance). If you are building on the wrong foundation, you’ll always get the wrong answers.  

 Punishment as a prerequisite to forgiveness. The bible states that God forgives and casts sin away. It never states that punishment is pre-requisite for forgiveness. This is payment and not forgiveness.  o The assumption of the sinner needing to have sin punished rather than sin healed. In the Bible as we have shown sin is seen more as “biological” than as a “statutory crime”. In the OT sin stains or taints or infects like a disease. You don’t punish a disease out of someone. You kill the disease to heal the person.  

 Righteousness is assumed to be a substance that can be passed from one person to another in the reformed outlook. This is absent in the text.  

 Our sins being imputed but at the same time washed away is a contradiction.  

 God seeing you as Jesus is problematic. God is essentially participating in a lie. A legal fiction. The Bible says that God sees all things so if he does to know we are a sinner but pretend otherwise would go against the nature of God as described in scripture. 

  We are called slaves to sin, but we need to pay the debt to God… is God the author of sin? 

 The issue of the Torah that says sons should not suffer for the sins of their fathers and each should die for their own sins. God also wouldn’t allow Moses to give up his life on behalf of Israel. Does God break Torah to make this framework work? \

 The phrase “righteousness of Christ” is never mentioned in scripture. This is not to say that he is not righteous. He is called the righteous one (the faithful covenant partner). But if we are looking for Christ’s righteousness becoming ours, we never see this transaction in a single verse in scripture. 

 The trinitarian issues in this model are outside of orthodoxy. The father and son always act in unison and not against each other. This model has the father punishing the son. This is a split in the trinity or at the least disunity in the Godhead.   

    Logically the courtroom analogy makes no scene in this context… o The judge’s righteousness is in doing what is right and making a proper judgement o When either the plaintiff or the defendant is declared ‘righteous’ at the end of the case, there is no sense that in either case the judge’s own righteousness or anyone else’s has been passed on to them, by imputation, impartation, or any other process. What they have is a status of ‘righteous’ which comes from the judge. So having God’s righteousness as an alien righteousness or Christ’s righteousness makes no logical sense in the analogy.  o Even if we do take a courtroom view… God makes the judgement that we are in the right. We aren’t punished though we may deserve to be punished. We are forgiven, there’s no debt owed, its simply gone. We still aren’t receiving anyone else’ righteousness and perfection is not the foundation. The analogy fails on many levels. 

  It is individualistic. The Biblical framework when read in cultural context is always about the group. ANE and 1st century people didn’t identify so much as individuals as we do in the West. They thought of themselves as part of the larger group.

observed on justification.

1.The question of justification is a matter of covenant membership. The underlying question in (for instance) Gal. 3 and 4 is: Who are the true children of Abraham?  Paul’s answer is that membership belongs to all who believe in the gospel of Jesus, whatever their racial or moral background.

2.The basis of this declaration is the representative death and resurrection of Jesus himself. The resurrection is God’s declaration that Sin has been dealt with and Jesus and his people are in the right before God (Rom. 4:24-25).

3.Justification establishes the church, the renewed Israel, Jew and Greek alike, transcending racial and social barriers (Gal. 3:28). Pagan converts to Christianity did not need to become Jews in order fully to belong to God’s people, the attempt to do so was in itself a renunciation of the gospel, implying that Christ’s achievement was insufficient or even unnecessary (Gal. 2:21; 5:4—6).

4.Justification by faith’ is thus a shorthand for ‘justification by grace through faith’, and in Paul’s thought at least has nothing to do with a suspicious attitude towards good behavior. His polemic against ‘works of the law’ is not directed against those who attempted to earn covenant membership through keeping the Jewish law (such people do not seem to have existed in the 1st century) but against those who sought to demonstrate their membership in the covenant through obeying the Jewish law.  Against these people Paul argues that the law cannot in fact be kept perfectly — it merely shows sin. And that this attempt would reduce the covenant to a single race, those who possess the Jewish law, whereas God desires a world-wide family (Rom. 3:27-31; Gal. 3:15-22).

Justification in short is not ‘how someone becomes a Christian’. It is God’s declaration about the person who has just become a Christian. They are a covenant member. It’s about the church more than salvation. Ecclesiology is primary, salvation is secondary (a benefit of justification, not justification itself).

Today we get to the crucial question of what does it mean that "Jesus died for us?”, The Nicaean Creed says that Jesus died “for us and for our salvation” In evangelical and western theology, we make a lot of these phrases, and they are important theologically, but we put a lot of freight into the preposition “FOR” and assume an understanding that might not even be in the text.   

 “For” Does this phrase, “for us” (or “for all”), mean “for our sake” (benefaction), or “on our behalf” (representation), or “in our place” (substitution)? There are 4 Greek words used as the 1 English word “for”. Greek is specific.   

 Anti: this for that (substitution or exchange) • Eye for (anti) an eye, tooth for (anti) a tooth (Matt 5:38) 

• “Do not repay anyone evil [in exchange] for (anti) evil” (Rom 12:17) 

• Ransom for (anti) many (Mark 10:45) 

Dia: Because of or on account of 

• We looked at this in our Isaiah 53 episode (dia and mim) 

• Doesn’t ever mean “in the place of” 

Peri: Concerning, about   

Huper:  

• in some entity’s interest: for, on behalf of, for the sake of, 

• the moving cause or reason: because of, for the sake of, for, and • denoting general content: about, concerning. 

• It is interesting that Paul always uses huper when talking about Christ’s death being “for us” or “for our sin” 

Conclusions:  

• “For us” is about  

• Representation not substitution 

• Rescue and healing not punishment 

• benefit out of love not wrath or appeasing justice 

• Huper and peri are always used in the “for us” and “for our sins” verses. 

• These are about representation or simply concerning the benefit 

• If they meant to communication substitution or PSA, they would have used anti, but that word for exchange or substitution is never used except in Mark 10:45 (ransom for many), which we covered in our gospel episode and showed that it is not about Penal Substitution. 

 • Substitution neglects the two-sidedness of Christ’s work: Christ acts both on behalf of God, representing God to humanity, and on behalf of humanity, representing humanity to God. 

• Penal Substitution flies in the face of the Torah which in multiple places forbids for someone to die in the place of another for their sins.   • Representation, therefore, allows us to express the two-sidedness of the one undivided divine work of salvation. 

 • Substitution carries an individualistic emphasis: we think of substitution as primarily an exchange between individuals—this one in place of that one. Yet, Paul nearly always uses plural, corporate language when speaking concerning Christ’s death “for” others. Only twice does Paul use singular terms with an individual emphasis.  

• In every other instance, some fifteen times, Paul uses plural language with a corporate emphasis. This corporate emphasis is reflected in the plural language used elsewhere in the New Testament concerning Christ’s death “for” others. Jesus is not the universal substitute, taking the place of each human one by one (exclusion), but rather our corporate representative, representing the place of all humanity at once (inclusion)— “once for all” (Rom 6:10).

Doc Ryan and Matt Mouzakis Dive into atonement in the book of Hebrews.  

By offering his own life and blood Jesus made purification (1:3) and atonement for sin (2:17- 18). These are big picture summary statements. But where, how, and by what logic? For this, we need other passages to provide details. 

 • Jesus’ death obviously happened on the cross, but Hebrews is explicit that the atonement happened somewhere else—in 9:11-14, 24—the heavenly tabernacle. Atonement didn’t happen on the cross.  

• Jesus’ atoning work accomplishing many things:  - Removes (purges) sin (9:24-28)  - Forgives sin (10:18)  - Sanctifies and perfects us (10:10, 12-14)  - Gives us confidence to approach God with a clean conscience (Heb 10:19)  - Frees us from the fear of death and destroys the one who has the power of death (Heb 2:14)  - Mediated a new covenant with his sprinkled blood – this alludes to the blood Moses sprinkled on the people when making the old covenant (Exod 24:6-8) and the blood Jesus sprinkled in the heavenly tabernacle to make a new covenant. This points to the function of the blood being what it does for us in the heavenly tabernacle, not how it satisfied God’s wrath on the cross. (Heb 12:22-24)  - Makes us complete in everything so we may do God’s will (Heb 13:20-21) 

• Jesus became flesh, learned obedience, suffered, and tasted death to become a perfect high priest by virtue of being able to relate to us in our suffering and death (Heb 2:9-10, 17-18; 5:8) 

• Jesus became priest through the power of an indestructible life, which means that “death” died on the cross more so than Jesus! (Heb 7:16) 

• Christ endured the cross for the joy set before him – nothing about facing God’s wrath on our behalf (Heb 12:2)    

So, what’s missing here in Hebrew’s view of Jesus’ death?... It does accomplish a lot of things… but there’s nothing about His death as what finally satisfies the wrath of God. There’s nothing related to a payment for sins.  There’s nothing about Jesus taking our place or dying the death we deserved. It’s all missing from the text… to get there you have to import it or read it into the scriptures.

What is Romans about?  Romans is a pastoral letter that does contain theology but the purpose is not to lay out systematic theology. The theology in the letter is to service Paul's purpose in the Roman church dealing with issues between the weak and the strong.

The Gospel Romans 1:2-4 is Paul’s Gospel. Some think the gospel of which Paul is “not ashamed of” comes after Romans 1:16-17 (beginning with wrath on humanity) but it is actually what he begins his letter with, and he explicitly states it. This is shown in Paul’s quotation of Habakkuk 2:4 which states that “the righteous will live by faith (or faithfulness)”. In the Hebrew Bible’s context of Habakkuk, God’s own faithfulness to His covenant is in question by the events happening in that time. What is called for in the situation is faith and that will be the true marking of God’s covenant people in times of trials and persecution. Yet in the LXX the verse refers to God’s own faithfulness as the means of life for his covenant people. Paul’s thesis is that the righteousness of God is His own faithfulness to the covenant and that is revealed in Christ’s faithful life, death, resurrection, and exaltation. Covenant membership is available to those who are faithful, and this is made available through/by Christ’s faithfulness.

The Wrath Romans 1:18-32 talks about the wrath of God that is revealed against all unrighteousness. Coming back to our conversation of sin in the intro episode, Paul agrees here. He connects sin to idolatry, and we see that the sins (immoral behavior) are symptoms of the disease.

Justified by what? Justified by faith Alone. was one of the mantras of the Protestant Reformation and it has led to some issues… First, “alone” is not in the text. The only place where it mentions “faith alone” is in James 2 where it says we are not justified by faith alone but also by our works.  If by “faith alone” you mean we are justified by grace (Rom. 3:24), by Jesus’ blood (Rom. 5:8), by Jesus’ resurrection (Rom. 4:25), by faith apart from works of the law (Rom. 3:28), and by works and not by faith alone (James 2:24), then great, you agree with the Bible. Romans 3:23-26, Romans 4:24-25

Peace with God- Romans 5:1 Ecomen here is translated “we have” in the indicative mood. But our earliest manuscripts have this word as echōmen, meaning “let us have” as a subjunctive. The subjunctive reading is preferred based on manuscript evidence for the earliest dating and based on context.  The following verses go into perseverance in suffering and exhortations to be like Christ (moral influence). This is based on Jesus’ vindication from his sufferings and not based on debt repayment. Romans 5:6-19 Romans 6:3-14

Romans 8:1-4 Jesus bore our sin in that he bore our wrath and violence against Him. As Brian Zahnd says, “At the cross we violently sinned our sins into Jesus, and Jesus absorbed them, died because of them, carried them into death, and rose on the third day to speak the first words of the new world: “Peace be with you.”

Ransom for many Matt 10:28/Mark 10:41-45 

• Ransom: Lutron in Greek. Means the price of release or manumission (release from slavery). In its primary usage, the lutron/kōpher referred to neither a sacrifice for sin nor a punishment for transgression, but a price of release or a price of return. 

o Kopher (Hebrew of Greek Lutron) is used this way: God’s redemption of Israel from exile: “I give Egypt as your ransom (kōpher), Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you” (Isa 43:3) 

• Is Jesus a substitute here?... ransom “FOR” many o Ransom for PSA has the notion of substitution, pointing to the Greek preposition anti (“for”), which carries the meaning of “exchange”—“this for that” (Latin, quid pro quo). That is precisely the meaning of anti in those texts where Paul instructs the church to renounce the world’s practice of retributive justice: “Do not repay anyone evil [in exchange] for (anti) evil” (Rom 12:17; cf. 1 Thess 5:15). Is Jesus the “ransom,” therefore, a substitute?

• If we wonder what “price” God has “paid” to ransom Israel from captivity in Babylon, the prophet tells us—none: “For thus says the LORD: You were sold for nothing, and you shall be redeemed without money” (Isa 52:3). God need not “pay” any “price” to anyone to redeem his people; for the “ransomed of the Lord” are liberated by God, not by an exchange between God and some other power.

Gospels and Acts Summary: 

• Jesus uses the “Son of man” title to talk about his kingship but also about the defeat of the powers as in Daniel 7 and the defeat of the beasts.  

• Jesus’ ministry about healing. God loved the world and sent Jesus to heal it.  Jesus is depicted more as a doctor than a lawyer. In our first episode we talked about the fact that you can’t punish a disease out of someone, and Jesus came to heal our sin and not punish it out of us.  

• Ransom is connected to a new exodus. It means to free slaves. It was costly to God as it meant that Jesus’ life was given up for us. But this wasn’t a payment. As in the Exodus God’s ransom was by his mighty hand and he didn’t pay off himself or the powers… it was a rescue mission.  

• The New Covenant spoken of at the last supper was inaugurated on the cross. The New Covenant in Jeremiah relates to the end of Exile. This is the way out of our exile from Eden, the reversal of Babel, and Israel’s exile.

“The cup” is connected to God handing Israel over to the nations. God allowed Jesus to be handed over to Rome and the temple leaders to fulfill his mission. This is not active wrath but letting the people have their way as we saw in our wrath of God episode. The Barabbas story is connected here.  

• “My God why have you forsaken me?” Was a cry, in Jesus’ humanity, of what he was experiencing but he is quoting Psalm 22 where God didn’t forsake the psalmist and God didn’t forsake Jesus. There is not split in the Godhead. 

• We see in the gospels that the Cross was man’s doing, God knew it would happen, but it was the wrath of the people. But we see the character of God in this that Jesus state “Father forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.”

• There is nowhere in the Gospels and Acts that in anyway talk about God punishing Jesus in our place

• Acts ties forgiveness of sins to the resurrection and baptism (allegiance) and not Jesus' death. 

• There are no atonement theories or mention of hell in the Gospel proclamations in Acts. 

3 views: 

•   PSA view of bearing sin and wrath. Sees this as a direct prophecy about the Messiah 

•  Historical view sees the servant as Israel as it is defined elsewhere in Isaiah. 

• The context is about Israel, Christ is the fulfillment of Israel. We only use this text in the way the NT writers apply it and nothing further.   

LXX (Septuagint)  

•When it comes to Isaiah 53 when it is quoted in the NT it shows that God is not killing the servant, but people are. God heals the servant. 

•Usually, the best practice is to go with the oldest manuscript (LXX here) for interpretation

Context 

•Exile: The historical situation and canonical context of Isaiah—exile—suggests a background, that of a people burdened under the weight of their own iniquity and bearing the wounds of their own transgressions. Isaiah understood Israel’s exile in Babylon as the consequence of the nation’s sins (Deut 4:25–31; 28:15–68; 2 Kgs 23:26–27; 24:3–4, 19–20; Is 1; 40:1–2; 42:24). 

•Now, were the Servant’s death a penal substitution, he would suffer in place of the people and dies to pay the penalty for their sins. We would expect that the people for whom he suffers, and dies would not be suffering the consequences of their own sins (by the logic of substitution, those consequences would be transferred to the Servant instead, sparing the people the suffering they deserve). Therefore, we would expect the Servant to suffer exile in place of the people. To the contrary, the people do suffer exile for their owns sins, which reveals God’s judgment upon his people. And having suffered exile as the consequence of their own sin, the people need redemption by God from the captivity into which their own sin has delivered them (Is 42:18–25; 43:25–28; 49:13, 24–26; 50:1; 51:21–23).

Takeaways from Isaiah 53: 

•“For our transgressions” is “on account of” or “because of”, not “in place of” based on the language (min and dia). Representation and not substitution. •The context is about exile. The servant enters into their exile in order to heal them (this is bearing their sin). 

•The LXX writers also seem to notice this as it has God removed from the actions against the Servant where the MT makes that a little muddier. •There is no mention of propitiating the wrath of God in the context. This must be read into the passage 

•We need to be aware of the before and after perspective in the chapter. The before perspective is deemed incorrect based on the grammar and context. When the people look back on the servant, they see that their POV was incorrect about God punishing the servant. That was their POV and not reality. 

•The guilt offering Is about repairing relationships and has no penal aspect to it in the sacrificial system. This is applied more to the life of the servant than the death in the context. 

•God and the servant are not pitted against each other. There is no wrath against the servant, there is no rupture in the Trinity. 

•The NT writers never apply Isaiah 53 in a context of PSA when quoting it. It’s usually more a Recapitulation, Scapegoat, or Moral Influence Theory with a hint of Exodus motif (Christus Victor- healing of demons [Matt 8]), but never PSA.

Leviticus 16

The “Sin” offering goat

Both goats are called a sin/purification/decontamination offering and the reason is that is that the lots have not been cast yet over these two. So, since we don't know yet which ones going to be the actual sin offering, they’re both referred to that way. We don't know which one’s going to be for the Lord, which one was to be for azazel. A better way to translate “Atonement” here is to make expiation with it, or to make a purging with it. The whole notion of the sin offering is decontamination and purification

Propitiation or Expiation (KPR language)

Both words presuppose that there is a barrier that must be removed to overcome sin. We need to look to see what is acted upon in order to translate KPR correctly. As we noted atonement language means to cover or purge but is the issue with humans, God, or sin?

Propitiation: means that the barrier lies within God himself; thus, it is usually interpreted as an action to satisfy divine wrath against sinners. This was the pagan concept of sacrifice, but Christians who hold to this say that God’s justice must be exercised, and sin must be paid for in order to receive forgiveness and the aversion of God’s wrath.

Expiation: means that the barrier lies outside of God, within humankind and/or a stain they leave on the world (sacred space), it is often interpreted as an action aimed at removing sin. To cover, wipe, or to purge sin.

Mercy Seat Translation-This is a common translation, but this is not a good translation. More literally, if atonement (kapper) means to purge then kapporeth (noun) should be the place of purging. In other words, we would really focus on the location not the result, because calling it the mercy seat is sort of reading the theological result into the word. The place is the cover of the Ark in the Holy of Holies which is the footstool of God’s throne. This is a throne room scene.

The Scapegoat or the goat for azazel. 3 views on what happens in this action:

1. The propitiation view (punishment). The goat bears the sin and wrath.

2. The azazel refers to the location (the desert) which theologically if the place where sin and evil lives or belongs (not in God’s camp)

3. Azazel is a proper name. This was the leader of the fallen angels/demons in 2nd temple Judaism. The goat transports the sin to Azazel.

Conclusions on the Day of Atonement

Doc Ryan and Matt continue a series on Atonement.

We’re probably all familiar with the story of the Exodus where God calls Moses to stand up to Pharoah in order to set the Hebrews free. There were 10 plagues and each of these plagues was a judgement on an Egyptian god. Essentially, it’s a cosmic battle here. Here is what God says about the 10th plague…

Exodus 12:1-13

12 “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. 13 The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.

Sea Crossing (Exodus 15)

It wasn’t called the "Red" Sea

Passover: Deut 16:1-7, 2 Chron 30:13-20

2 Key things: Exodus is rescue from death and deliverance from slavery

Since the Exodus was Jesus’ primary motif for communicating His crucifixion, we need to put this as a primary metaphor when we think about the cross and its effects.