Transcription
Could you discuss the Protestant presuppositions about the atonement which caused them to diverge from the Orthodox understanding?
Do you have a sneak peek of your future atonement book?
Ooh. Exclusive.
>> That's the book I'm writing now. So, uh I did my my the PhD dissertation was on 1 John 2:2d. So, I wrote I wrote a couple of hundred words on uh five Greek words, two of which were uh and and the. Nice.
Um
>> [laughter] >> Nice. Um but uh so, I did a lot with atonement in that. And so, I'm I'm doing a that's that's the book I'm writing right now, and it's going to go through history and sort of show the development. Um and really um what happens in the West, it's not just Protestantism. Like when you get to PSA in the reformed writers of the 17th century, right? Uh the Protestant scholastics, that's sort of the full-blown thing, but there's a trail that leads there. Uh and so, major major stepping stones on the way, uh the first it really is in the West them wrestling with universalism. Um because they want to say, well, obviously Christ his sacrifice is sufficient for every human being who has ever lived. But it only gets applied to a subset of human beings who have ever lived, if you're not a universalist. Um and so, how how does that work? And that last part I just said is what's important, because at every step along the way, how does that work is the problem. There's an assumption that there's a kind of mechanistic way that it works. Right? Not just analogies or something that might shed light on some element of it, but an actual way it works that we can understand as humans. And so you get you get Peter Lombard, he makes the the distinction between sufficiency and efficiency. Right? So Christ's sacrifice is sufficient to save everyone. It is only efficient for those to whom it is applied. And then for him it's applied primarily through the sacraments. You get into grace, you get into the early theology of merit that starts developing in the West. Um and then uh when you get to Anselm's Cur Deus Homo, that's where uh the idea of justice, sort of cosmic justice, enters the picture. But his conception, and what becomes known as satisfaction theory, is not really criminal justice the way we think about it. It's more like honor in an honor culture. Right? Like honor in an honor culture that that our sin has dishonored the God who created us. And so something must be done to correct that dishonor, to restore God's honor and glory. That's where Anselm's satisfaction theory emerges. And then eventually by the time you get to uh the Reformation, um and this was going to entail things like double imputation and all these other sort of doctrines, uh reformed doctrines, but that's where you get to the idea of penal substitution, that there is punishment for sin. It is an infinite punishment. Right? Uh Uh, and this idea of substitution that that uh, Christ takes it instead of us. Right? Sort of absorbs that punishment. Which has an endless array of I mean, it it destroys Trinitarian doctrine if you understand the Trinity. It wrecks Christology. It uh, imposes necessity on God. Um, because it says that essentially, when you're at the point of penal substitution, you have a God who is not merciful. Cuz he can't be. He has to punish every sin to the fullest extent. Right? He either has to punish Christ or punish you. Right. He can't forgive anything. He can't show mercy on any The Greek word used for mercy in most of the New Testament literally means not punishing something to the full extent.
>> [laughter] >> And so that's why I say you end up with a God who's merciless. Functionally. Um, and justice then is this thing that's telling God what he has to do. And it's like, well, why aren't we worshipping that then? Cuz clearly that's above him or preexists him in some way or is prior to him. Um, so yeah, there's no end of I mean, penal substitutionary atonement just does not work with Christian theology. At all.
>> Interesting. What What do you think about the I've heard this type of argument used that if someone was going to articulate PSA as like the Father damned the Son, wouldn't that be kind of Nestorian? Do you think it's a valid
>> Well, you're you're good at That's That's where So, that's where Calvinism goes. Mhm. You read like Peter Vermigli, right? He's just a Nestorian. Right? The wrath is poured out on Christ's human nature. On the human Christ and not his divine nature. Because if you don't do that, then you have the Trinitarian problem. Right. Right. Right. Of dividing the Trinity. So, if you don't divide the Trinity, you're going to have to divide Christ. I'd be an historian. Now, if you're William Lane Craig, who is a heretic on literally every point of doctrine, and not a Christian. I've said this publicly before. He is not a Christian. He does not believe in the Trinity. He does not believe in the dual nature of Christ. He holds to heresies condemned by every ecumenical council. He rejects every single one of them, and he rejects the Nicene Creed.
Does he really reject the Nicene Creed?
>> Yes. Wow. Okay. So,
>> he's as Christian as a Mormon is. We'll put it that way, okay? [laughter] Wow. He He Yeah, I don't know if you know how far this goes. Recently, he laid out his his old doctrine of the Trinity used to be comparing the Trinity to Cerberus, the three-headed dog.
Did he really?
>> I saw I saw he issued like he wrote a book and then had to issue a retraction on what he said because it was it was Christological heresy or something.
>> [laughter] >> He
>> Yeah. His new doctrine of the Trinity is he compared Christ to a cat skeleton. Because a cat skeleton has the feline nature, but is not a cat all by itself. That's tough. Yes. So, this is what I'm talking about. But anyway, so if you're William Lane Craig, he has what he calls a neo-Apollinarian Apollinarianism being a condemned heresy, right, of the 4th century. Right. Right. A neo-Apollinarian Christology, where he says that basically the divine logos is the soul in Christ. So, it's a human body animated by the divine logos. That's his view of Christ. And so, he literally, when I challenged him on this, said, "Well, his Christology lets him out of that problem with penal substitution." Mhm. Because he says that on the cross, the the the second person of the Trinity, right? The divine logos departed from Jesus, separated from and then the human parts that were left received
What a mess. God damn You're making it You're making You're turning my brain into a fried egg right now just thinking about
>> sorry [laughter] about that. How how much uh I I didn't realize he was that rough. I saw I saw him on Gavin's show a little while ago talking about real presence and how he disagrees with that particular topic and but I started getting really big into it. Uh uh what he what he actually believed and I saw a couple of things about a book he had wrote and he had gotten some things about uh uh uh Christology wrong, but I didn't know he was that rough. That's that's wild to me.
Yeah, it's Well, so part of the way he covers it up is he won't debate other Christians. Oh, he's too He'll only debate atheists. Nice. So, if you're going to have an debate with an atheist about the existence of God, well, he believes in the existence of a God, right? So, he can A cat skeleton. But, I my response to him has always been I don't consider you a fellow Christian, so debate me, right? Like
>> [laughter] >> There you go, the gauntlet has been slapped down.