The Warring Christian

The state of affairs in which we find ourselves as Christians is one of perpetual opposition. I have found that it is always healthier if one honestly and accurately sets expectations up front. This way, at least we know what we are getting ourselves into. I don’t know about you, but I am tired. I am tired of the moral degradation of the culture in which I live. I am tired of the irrational arguments opposing Christian belief. I am tired of the sheer volume of people flirting with evangelical Christianity who have no interest in a genuine covenant relationship with Christ. I am tired of the liberal scholars who, at every turn, are coming up with theories aimed at weakening the integrity of the Christian story. And I am tired of the conservative scholars who tolerate them in the name of Christian scholarship. I am tired of the unbiblical virtual campus model and the veiled arrogance behind it and the pastors who are too political to speak out against it. I am tired of the empty emotive rock concert atmosphere called Christian worship in many evangelical churches today. I am tired of Christian leaders who are giving every appearance of accepting outright false teachers all in the name of unity. I am tired of generic Christianity. I am tired of timid pastors who are more interested in building empires, kingdoms, and reputations than they are in applying the truth of God’s Word to the lives of their respective communities with love and grace in holiness and the fear of God. In summary, I am tired.

I have to ask myself, “why am I tired?” A little reflection indicates that I am tired for all the wrong reasons. I am tired because my aim is misguided. I am tired because my motivations and my targets are misdirected. I am tired because what brings me pleasure is not what is supposed to bring me pleasure. I am tired because what is bringing me frustration and pain is the thing that ought to bring me great pleasure. I am tired because my expectations are faulty. They are out of touch with reality. In short, I am tired because my expectations are out of touch with the reality that is clearly presented in divine revelation and I need to do better. There is nothing new about this state of affairs in which I find myself except, that is, for me. I am the variable. The only thing different about this sinful world in which I find myself is me. I wasn’t here and now I am. It’s time for an adjustment to my thinking.  

The Bible Depicts the Christian life as a War

For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. (2 Cor. 10:4) Paul describes the Christian life as one that is a warfare, complete with weapons and all. And in this case, he clearly thinks of these weapons as being designed to destroy an enemy. This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare. (1 Tim. 1:18) In this case, Paul charges Timothy to he must wage a good warfare! In fact, Paul charges Timothy to wage a good warfare by the prophecies previous made about him. Again, Paul writes to Timothy, Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. (2 Tim. 2:3-4) Paul repeatedly uses military language to describe the Christian life. To the Ephesians, Paul writes, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” (Eph. 6:12) Notice the language again; struggle, powers, world forces, spiritual forces. The Christian way is not for those who want a life of comfort, of luxury, and of ease. The minute the Holy Spirit regenerates your person, you are placed in the most intense battle you will ever know. The New Testament writings could not be clearer. In light of this, the Christian must prepare himself or herself for what is to come. And this “what is to come” will come until you draw your last breath. The Christian life is by definition a life of struggle. When you are born again, both the spiritual forces of darkness and your own spiritual nature immediately respond: THIS MEANS WAR!

Old Testament History as a Depiction of War

Our first parents could not even get to the third generation without violence of the worse kind; murder. Cain murdered his own brother under the most ridiculous circumstances. Sin produces violence, animosity, war! The good that is, exists eternally. It is only to be expected that if evil comes to be in a reality that has eternally existed as good, immediate tension would arise. And so it does. It is for this very reason that tension will not cease until good finally puts an end to evil: perfect good cannot rest until even the slightest evil is destroyed once and for all. We trace this violence to the generation of Noah where it is described in this way: Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Gen. 6:5) As one traces the accounts recorded in the Old Testament narratives, it is impossible to miss to continuous struggle between good and evil and the constant warring faction between the two! The violence and war are everywhere we read. Consider the prophets and the number of them who lost their lives because they took up the sword of truth against the tyranny of wicked behavior and false teaching! From the fall all the way through the pages of the Old Testament we read of murder and war and violence and exile. It is impossible to miss. What is God telling us? What are we to learn from this? Can we say that both the Old and the New Testaments are setting expectations for us? I think we can. The servant of God is a warrior, continually at war, never at rest. Peace comes in the morning, but so long as we breath, and so long as Christ tarries, it is day. And as long as it is day, there will be war.

Church History and the on-going spiritual battle

To begin with, the evil system of the world took the most perfectly good human who was also divine and subjected him to the most violent death available at the time. God came into the world and the world killed Him. Jesus told us as Christians to expect to be false accused and slandered for His name’s sake: “Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matt. 5:11-12) Paul told Timothy, Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. (2 Tim. 3:12-13) One might be tempted to say that this is pretty morbid. And by natural standards, it is. But Christians do not operate by natural standards. Our standards are higher. We remain engaged in this battle, in this war, in the discomfort not for our own morbid interest in fighting and discomfort, but because it is to this that we are called! Good opposes evil. Truth opposes error. Righteousness opposes unrighteousness. It could not be any other way!

Jarsolav Pelikan wrote, “for when the church confessed what it believed and taught, it did so in answer to attacks from within and from without the Christian movement.”[1] From the beginning of the Church, there was opposition from without and from within. This opposition is the result of what happened in the Garden some 6,000+ years ago. The introduction of evil into the reality of good created a tension that has manifested itself ever since. Human beings are either loyal to God or they are loyal to something else. Only God is good said Jesus. If you are loyal to something other than God, and only God is good, and everything that is not good is evil, then you must be loyal to evil. For this reason, early Christians were destroyed by the Romans on several occasions. To refuse to burn incense before the emperor’s image was a sign of treason or at the very least of disloyalty.[2]

The war between the Church of God and the sons of unrighteousness continued throughout church history. Even though he was not excommunicated while living, after his death, John Wycliffe was condemned by the Council of Constance, his remains were removed from the sacred burial place, burned, and his ashes were thrown into the river Swift.[3] William Tyndale, on the other hand, never made it to a natural death. He was arrested for heresy in the Low Countries, he was tried, condemned, degraded from the priesthood, and strangled, and his body was burned (1536).[4]

If you are reading this post and you are in this war, and like all of us from time to time, you feel like quitting, don’t! Don’t ever quit. We need another to be sources of encourage to stay in the fight, to hold up God’s truth, to point the culture to God’s righteous standards, to glorify God in all things. Your church needs you to hold the battlefield line, no retreat, no surrender, not even an inch of ground. The battle is here to stay; are you? It is easy to walk away. It is easy to park it in front of the television and disengage. It is easy to adopt modern methods of consumerism, to go along and to get along. Jesus never called us to “easy.” Jesus called us to division, to tension, to war! In closing, I remind myself and you, of the words of Paul to young Timothy: No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. (2 Tim. 2:4)

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[1] Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971-1989), 11.

[2] Justo L. González, The Story of Christianity, 2nd ed. (New York: HarperOne, ©2010), 22.

[3] Ibid., 411.

[4] Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christianity, rev. ed. (Peabody, Mass.: Prince Press, 1999, ©1975), 799.

Penal-Substitutionary Atonement in Church History

In my last blog post entitled “God’s View of Sin,” a commenter took exception with my view endorsing a penal-substitutionary model of the atonement. His claim is very clear and very basic: “that no component of PST exists in any form, kerygmatic or written, until the reformation is a good indication that no one even conceived of it until then.” Now, it seems to me that this statement is filled with numerous problems. First, since the term kerygmatic applies to “preaching” it seems that no one can know if PST was preached for the first thousand years of the church because we do not have a record of everything that was preached during that period. The statement on its face is an extreme exaggeration and the commenter turned critic should have avoided it. Second, that we have no written record of anyone ever espousing any component of PST is, on the face of it, simply mistaken. The basic objective of this blog post is to demonstrate that there were components and more, of the penal-substitutionary model of the atonement embraced by those in the ancient church and that this can be traced throughout the history of the church until it comes into its own in the works of Anselm is not a difficult task.

Now, my critic has set his own bar and that bar is indeed a high one. Because my critic has set a high bar for himself, all that I must do in order to show that he is wrong is demonstrate that just one component of PST was indeed present in the history of the church prior to 1,000. I do not have to show that PST was fully framed out in some confessional form prior to 1,000. Additionally, there is a logical problem with my critic’s argument. Whether or not there is a written argument for PST is not a good enough reason to conclude that no one had ever conceived of it until Anselm. For there are many things that could be argued that would require principles deduced from the belief that PST is biblical doctrine. Finding principles that would require the soundness of PST would be good evidence that, even though there were no direct writings about the doctrine, PST was received by certain theologians making such arguments upon said principles. Even though my critic has issued a proposition that is filled with numerous logical fallacies, it is the lack of historical facts that is the most glaring. And so, it is the historical fact that I shall address for the remainder of this post. My goal is to provide historical proof that the PST was not new to Anselm, but that it has its roots in early Christianity, in fact, in Scripture itself.

It would be remiss for me not to provide a definition of what I mean when I say penal-substitutionary atonement. Wayne Grudem is helpful when he says that Christ’s death was penal in that he bore a penalty when he died. And, Christ’s death was a substitute in that he was a substitute for us when he died. [Grudem, Systematic Theology, 579] One of the issues with which we must grapple where the atonement is concerned is the its multifaceted nature. Gregg Allison identifies several facts: expiation, propitiation, redemption, reconciliation, Christ the Victor, example, and exchange or imputation. Because of this fact alone, the opportunity to focus on these various aspects of the atonement could create the false idea that other facets were not as important. This is a nuance of the doctrine that must be kept in view as one studies its history.

Clement of Rome wrote, “In love has the Lord taken us to Himself. On account of the love He bore us, Jesus Christ our Lord gave His blood for us by the will of God; His flesh for our flesh, and His soul for our souls.” (1 Clement 49) Clearly the idea of substitution is present in the phrases, “his flesh for our flesh, and his soul for our souls.”

The Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus also expresses a substitutionary view, “He Himself took on Him the burden of our iniquities, He gave His own Son as a ransom for us, the holy One for transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the righteous One for the unrighteous, the incorruptible One for the corruptible, the immortal One for them that are mortal…By what other one was it possible that we, the wicked and ungodly, could be justified, than by the only Son of God?” This work was written in the late 2^nd century.

Justin clearly thought in a penal-substitutionary way in his dialogue with Trypho, “The Father of all wished His Christ for the whole human family to take upon Him the curses of all, knowing that, after He had been crucified and was dead, He would raise Him up…His Father wished Him to suffer this, in order that by His stripes the human race might be healed.” This letter was also written in the second century.

Irenaeus, having been the first to formulate the recapitulation theory, expressed a substitutionary view of the atonement; “For as by the disobedience of the one man who was originally moulded from virgin soil, the many were made sinners, and forfeited life; so was it necessary that, by the obedience of one man, who was originally born from a virgin, many should be justified and receive salvation.”

Athanasius, living in the 4^th century expressed a substitutionary view: For when ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’ and came to minister and to grant salvation to all, then He became to us salvation, and became life, and became propitiation; then His economy in our behalf became much better than the Angels, and He became the Way and became the Resurrection.” And then again, he wrote, “He next offered up His sacrifice also on behalf of all, yielding His Temple to death in the stead of all, in order firstly to make men quit and free of their old trespass, and further to shew Himself more powerful even than death, displaying His own body incorruptible, as first-fruits of the resurrection of all.”

Ignatius clearly believed that Jesus died on behalf of sinners, “Now, He suffered all these things for our sakes, that we might be saved.”

The Epistle of Barnabas contains similar language, “For to this end the Lord endured to deliver up His flesh to corruption, that we might be sanctified through the remission of sins, which is effected by His blood of sprinkling…He also Himself was to offer in sacrifice for our sins the vessel of the Spirit, in order that the type established in Isaac when he was offered upon the altar might be fully accomplished.”

It is challenging to gain more clarity on this question than is added by reading the early church historian Eusebius, “Thus the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world, became a curse on our behalf.” And again, “And the Lamb of God not only did this, but was chastised on our behalf, and suffered a penalty He did not owe, but which we owed because of the multitude of our sins; and so He became the cause of the forgiveness of our sins, because He received death for us, and transferred to Himself the scourging, the insults, and the dishonour, which were due to us, and drew down upon Himself the appointed curse, being made a curse for us.” And finally, “But since being in the likeness of sinful flesh He condemned sin in the flesh, the words quoted are rightly used. And in that He made our sins His own from His love and benevolence towards us.” It seems this statement alone would provide the hammer, the nail, and the coffin by which we could reject and dispense with the view that there was no hint of PST in the first 1,000 years of the church. Surely, the evidence is overwhelmingly stacked against such claims.

I rest my case.

What is even more devastating for the anti-PST view than the historical evidence in church history is a careful exegesis of the text of Scripture. Nothing more is needed than Scripture itself to offer a sound and thorough refutation of any view opposing a Penal-Substitutionary Atonement.