I have no visuals, so we are going to jump right into this meeting. I am so sorry for the technical difficulties. This is going to take the whole hour. Any comments or questions you have, send them to Jason Willis. We might go over time to answer those questions because we don't want to revisit this. It's been a little bit of an emotional thing. I hope you enjoy and are edified as I think you will be. The only question tonight, this is Calvin Yoder.
Years ago, your message about the Atonement totally rocked my world. I had unwittingly been indoctrinated with penal substitution, and your sermons helped me see the subject differently through the eyes of the early Christians. I found your talks very helpful and they definitely changed my worldview. However, recently Dean Taylor also spoke about the Atonement on Strength to Strength, and I was surprised.
It seemed that he was saying both views penal substitution and Christus Victor are supported in the writings of the early church. What was surprising to me in Dean's talk was his argument that both views are supported by the early Christians and by scripture, and to settle into only one camp causes a kingdom reductionism. What really is the correct view the early Christians held about the Atonement? Was there uniformity around Christus Victor or not?
If penal substitution is right, after all, then is the Protestant view of imputed righteousness also right? Well, when I originally saw this question, I hesitated to answer it, at least on this platform. I mean, Dean and I have been good friends for 30 years. We've worked together in the kingdom on many projects during those 30 years. And as far as I know, the only point where we differ on anything is on this subject of penal substitution.
And I have no desire to, you know, publicly debate Dean on this or anything like that. Nevertheless, since, yeah, his talk on strength to strength, yeah, people have been asking me, " Okay, yeah what's your response, David? Is it really both of them are there in the early church or what? " And actually, it's a bigger thing than just, " Okay, this is Dean Taylor versus me. " The issue for me is more with the various apologists, particularly for reform doctrine. I mean, it's usually they're the ones doing it.
They basically mine the early Christian writings going through finding, you know, quotes here and there, picking them out, and they can say, " Aha, see, this supports whatever it happens to be out of Reformed theology, including, you know, this view of atonement. " So, what I would generally say to these apologists is, I know you're sincerely thinking that you're seeing penal substitution in the early Christian writings.
But I think that what has happened is that you've already started out with that doctrine in your mind, and you're reading it back into innocent statements made by the early Christians who had never heard of penal substitution, had no concept of this later doctrine that would come about. Now, for those listeners who aren't familiar with the term penal substitution, let me explain, just in a nutshell, what we're talking about. It's basically the theory of the Atonement that probably you grew up hearing.
And more than likely, it wasn't presented to you as a theory, but as this is the doctrine of the Atonement. This is it. In a nutshell, it teaches that God the Father couldn't simply forgive mankind for their sins. Rather, His justice had to be satisfied, and His wrath had to be poured out on someone. So Jesus became man, and on the cross, the Father punished Christ instead of punishing us. The Father poured out His wrath on Jesus, and thereby satisfied both His wrath and his sense of justice.
And then in the Reformed tradition, it doesn't end there. Rather, the Father sent Jesus down into the lake of fire to Gehenna, hellfire. And there Jesus was actually tormented until God's wrath and his sense of justice was fully satisfied. Now, I will go on record to say that you will not find that teaching anywhere in the pre-Nicene Christian writers.
And I haven't read all of the post-Nicene fathers because, well, they would go on fairly long, but in the ones I've read, and I've read quite a few of them, none of them teach penal substitution. In fact, from what I have gleaned from reading church history, and I think nearly every church historian would agree with this, that the doctrine of penal substitution, as we know it today, was actually developed by the Reformers. So it's not an ancient doctrine. It's a relatively recent one.
Now, there was an 11th century Roman Catholic archbishop named Anselm who developed a theory of the Atonement known as the satisfaction theory. In it, he argued that by sinning, man had wounded God's honor. And so satisfaction had to be made to satisfy God's honor. But mankind was unable to make such satisfaction, so Jesus had to become man and die in our place to satisfy God.
Well, the Reformers, particularly John Calvin, took this theory of Anselm and modified it from the medieval notion of having to satisfy God's honor to making it a legal theory that God's justice and his wrath had to be satisfied. It was a very similar theory, but they modified it, you know, a notch up, making it more a judicial legal kind of view. Now, naturally, those who hold to Reformed theology don't want to acknowledge that their doctrine of the Atonement only goes back to the Reformation.
So as I said, they're busy trying to find quotes here and there in early Christian writings, and they pull them up and say, " Aha, see, here they taught the penal substitution model. " Well, we're going to examine some of those quotes in a minute. Now, tonight, we'll also be talking about another model that is generally known today as the Christus Victor model. That term was coined by a Lutheran bishop named Gustaf Aulén.
He pointed out that this was the predominant teaching of the Atonement that we find in the early Christians. He gave it the name Christus Victor because it focuses on Christ's victory over Satan. Now, in the early Christian writings themselves, I don't think you ever see the term Christus Victor. So, again, that's something that he coined, but it became a very convenient term to sum up all the things the early Christians were saying, particularly focused on Christ as the victor.
Now, the early Christian writer who talks the most about it, or who writes at length the most, would be Irenaeus. If you're not familiar with him, he was an early Christian bishop who wrote around the year 170 or 180. He actually lived in modern-day France. And this is what he wrote, or at least one of the things that he wrote, and Aulén quotes this in his work, his work, Christus Victor. So it's somewhat of a long quote. I hope I don't lose you in it.
Okay, so Irenaeus said, " Man had been created by God that he might have life. " If now having lost life and having been harmed by the serpent, he was not able to return back to life, but was to be wholly abandoned to death, then God would have been defeated. And the wickedness of the serpent would have overcome God's will. But since God is both invincible and benevolent, he showed his benevolence in correcting man and in testing all man, as we said.
Okay, so to sum up what he's saying is, God created us to have eternal life. Satan brought death on us. And if we were just left in that condition, then Satan would have won, okay? Then Irenaeus continues. But through the second man, talking about Jesus, he bound the strong one, that is Satan, and spoiled his goods, and annihilated death, bringing life to man who had become subject to death.
He says, " For Adam had become the devil's possession, and the devil held him under his power by having wrongfully practiced deceit upon him, and by offering him immortality, because Adam believed it, it made him subject to death. For by promising that they should be such as gods, which didn't lie in Satan's power, he brought death about in them. Therefore, he who had taken man captive was himself taken captive by God. And man, who had been taken captive, was set free from the bondage of condemnation.
Okay, so that, like I say, is maybe the clearest statement in a nutshell from the early church, in their own words, about this view of the Atonement that focuses on the victory of Christ over Satan, binding the strong man, spoiling his goods by releasing all of those who were held in bondage, both here on the earth and those already in Hades. Now, what I just read to you is just one quotation. Irenaeus has a lot to say on the subject, and other early Christians say similar things.
Most of them, as I said, don't write at length like Irenaeus does, but quite a number of them touch on that same theme. So throughout the early Christian writings, you frequently find the theme of Jesus as the victor, binding the strong man who is Satan, and spoiling his goods, that is, freeing mankind from death, from Hades, and from Satan's control.
Now something that is very important to understand is that both under the Christus Victor model and under the penal substitution model, we have a number of things in common. One is Christ dies a substitutionary death. Now under Christus Victor, it is Satan punishing Christ in our place. He is the one bringing punishment on Christ. But under the penal substitution model, it is God punishing Christ in our place. But in both, Christ is punished instead of us. There's a substitutionary atonement.
Okay, secondly, under both theories, Christ died as a sacrificial lamb on our behalf. Under the penal substitution view, Christ's suffering and his dying somehow appeased the Father and placated the Father's wrath. Under the Christus Victor model, Christ died heroically. That is, he surrendered himself to Satan so that we could become free. And yet this sacrifice was God's will. The Father had wanted Christ to come to earth and to make this sacrifice on our behalf.
So the Father was pleased with Christ for going through with this, but Christ's death as a sacrificial lamb didn't bring any particular personal pleasure to God in His own right. Now, a third thing is under both theories, Christ died on our behalf. We are saved through His blood, whether you hold to the penal substitutionary view or to Christus Victor. And finally, under both theories, Christ bore our sins on the cross. By his stripes or by his wounds, we have been healed.
So the two theories have a lot in common, perhaps more in common than they have differing, but there are some significant differences. Well, now as you've noticed, I've been talking about two theories, and it would be so nice if Christians could discuss the topic of the Atonement in the setting that these are simply two theories about the Atonement, about why Christ had to become man and die. And neither theory is necessarily fully correct or fully adequate to explain it all.
But the big elephant in the room is that so many Protestants do not teach penal substitution as a theory. No, they insist on it as a dogma. They typically maintain that penal substitution is the Christian faith. And if you question it or refuse to embrace it, well, you're a heretic, you deserve to be called out and denounced because you're questioning a pillar of Christianity. In fact, some Protestants would say that you aren't even a Christian if you question penal substitution.
As I said, that's the elephant in the room. I mean, if we could all talk about these things as theories, you know, there would be no big issue here. It's this attitude that we stand for the historic faith on the part of those who hold the penal substitution, even though they're not teaching the historic faith. And they claim this high moral ground, as I said, and call everyone else a heretic or at least question their whether they're teaching, you know, soundly or not.
And all of this is incredibly Pharisaic and judgmental. I mean, it is sin to take that kind of attitude when you had no basis for doing it. Now, let me make clear, Dean Taylor is not like that. I mean, he recognizes penal substitution as a theory, and he also recognizes and accepts Christus Victor as a valid theory. His only argument is that he feels that both theories can be found in the early Christian writings. I would say no, unless you're really stretching the point, penal substitution really isn't there.
But he's not... Dean is not arguing for penal substitution as a dogma. Everyone must embrace this. Now, personally, I would like to see Dean publicly address this issue of the dogmatism and the judgmentalness of so many Christians who embrace penal substitution. You normally don't find that same attitude on the part of those who embrace Christus Victor. Now, my personal view is that no one fully understands why Jesus had to become human and to die on our behalf.
I think that there were cosmic things that came into play that we as humans are never going to understand, at least not on this side of the divine. The Scriptures don't present any unified dogma of the Atonement. I'm not sure if the Atonement is even in Scripture. If it is, it's in English translations, not in the original Greek. Instead, all of these theories, what they do is give us glimpses of some of the wonderful things that Jesus ' death accomplished.
And it's important that we believe all of the Scriptures that talk about His death and His dying, but it is not important that we have a good theory about how all of these Scriptures fit together. I mean, it's fine to come up with a theory to harmonize them, but that's not the essence of the Christian faith. Now, I have no problem with theories of the Atonement as long as they remain theories in people's minds. If the penal substitution theory makes sense to you, well, then fine. Believe it.
I mean, I have no argument with you because you hold to that view. My only objection is when you start teaching it as dogma, start insisting that that is the historical faith, or when you start condemning those who hold to a different theory. And to my brothers and sisters who embrace the penal substitution theory, I would say, hey, again, if that view of the Atonement, if it makes sense to you, and if it helps you spiritually fine, don't worry about it.
But please understand that it doesn't make sense to many other Christians. In fact, many Christians feel that it is unbiblical and they believe it presents a wrong view of God. So, be charitable towards those who think differently. I think there's room for us to, you know, have harmony together. I don't think the early Christians, you would have got one simple answer from all of them if you asked each one to explain the Atonement or why Christ died, and yet they live together in a unified body.
Okay, now let's talk about the early Christians and the Atonement. As I mentioned, if you asked the early Christians, well, if you asked them what their view of the Atonement was, they probably wouldn't know what you're talking about. They don't even use that term. They do talk about why Christ died, and there's a general, I would say, consensus among them, although it wasn't dogma that you had to believe it this way.
But generally, if you ask them why Christ died on the cross, you would get an answer that would fall in the realm of what we're calling Christus Victor, about Christ's victory over Satan. And we'll be talking about this more in a minute. There's more to the Atonement than just Christ's victory over Satan, just His releasing mankind from Satan's grasp and freeing us from the dead. I mean, there's a lot of other things. We'll be looking at those.
Also, when we talk about the early Christian view of the Atonement, it's essential to first get our minds in the framework of early Christians. The early Christians had relatively few defined dogmas. Their statement of faith was essentially the apostle's creed. Now, they held a lot of doctrines beyond the apostle's creed, but not as dogmas that you had to embrace or else you would be labeled as a heretic.
So, don't imagine that you could go back in the early Christian writings and find this nicely defined dogma of the Atonement or anyone saying, " This is the view, and if you have a different view, you're a heretic. " You're not going to find anything like that. That's what you find today, but that's very foreign to the whole spirit of early Christianity.
And they would have found it very strange to know that today Christians are arguing and fighting and condemning one another about the question of why did Christ have to die on the cross? I mean, to them, what's essential to believe is that Christ did die for our sins, that He did thereby save us, and that we are cleansed by His blood. If you believe all of those things, then wonderful. You have the Christian faith, or at least a key part of it.
The mechanics of how all of that worked, why he had to become man, why he had to die that way, well, we can speculate about that, but that we would divide ourselves against each other over these speculations. I mean, that would be shocking to the early Christians. Even worse, that we would deny that someone is a Christian because he or she holds to a different theory about those mechanics of why Jesus had to die. That would have been absurd to the early Christians.
In fact, it would have been wicked in their view that we would fight about such things. So let's not imagine that when we talk about their view of the Atonement, that they thought in terms of dogmatic theology, the way that the post-Reformation Church thinks. Okay, so just get that out of your mind. Okay, now I want to share a little bit about my own personal journey on this whole subject. I grew up with the penal substitution view of the Atonement. I mean, not the more extreme Calvinistic view.
I didn't grow up with the idea that Jesus was punished down in hellfire, but rather the general Protestant view that God punished Jesus instead of punishing us, that He couldn't just forgive us, that His justice had to be satisfied, and that was done by Jesus being punished instead of us.
In fact, I didn't know there was any other view of the Atonement, except I guess I heard the liberal view that's often known as the moral influence view of the Atonement today, which denies that there was a substitutionary atonement. And I certainly didn't embrace the liberal view. And like I say, the only other option I knew was this familiar penal substitutionary view. But I wasn't familiar with the term penal substitution. To me, like I said, that was just the doctrine of the Atonement.
I didn't think there was another possible biblical view. So when I began reading the early Christian writings, what I was trying to do was to find answers to a list of theological questions that I had. But the Atonement wasn't one of those theological questions. I mean, like I say, I assumed there was only one view. There were no questions in my mind about it. So I wasn't expecting to find anything different in the early Christian writings when I was reading them.
And I spent an entire year reading the full set of the Ante-Nicene fathers from cover to cover. And I remember going through there I was surprised not to find any clear explanations of the Atonement. I was expecting to see these, not because I had questions about it, but, you know, to me, that was just part of the Christian faith, and I thought I would be, you know, seeing that regularly in different writers, but I never found it.
That they did talk a lot about Christ conquering Satan, but nothing about God punishing Christ in our place, which I thought was the Orthodox view of the Atonement. So for years, after I finished reading the early Christian writings, I would actually tell people. Now, to show you how relatively unimportant most theology is, the early Christians didn't even understand the Atonement. And yet, they willingly died for Christ and endured torture for him day after day. I mean, that's how I looked at it.
I thought the early Christians didn't understand the Atonement. I mean, it never occurred to me in my own ignorance that there could be another biblical view of the Atonement than the one that the Protestants, you know, have put forth, and it's, you know, grown in such popularity since the Reformation. Well, one day I was having lunch with two pastors. This was actually after I wrote the book, " Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up. " One of the pastors was an assembly of God pastor.
The other one pastored what is called an evangelical free church. And we were talking about the early Christians, and I made my usual remark. You know, I told them, " The early Christians didn't even understand the Atonement, yet they were willing to die for Christ without hesitation. " Well, they looked at me and they replied, " David, is it that they didn't understand the Atonement or that they had a different view of it than what you've held?
" And, you know, I told them, " Well, I didn't know there was another view of the Atonement, what would that be? " Well, then they told me about the Christus Victor model, and I listened with rapt attention, and then suddenly, you know, the light bulb went on in my head. And so, when I got home, I immediately pulled out my list of citations by the early Christians about the Atonement.
I had made extensive notes when I had read through them, and I had made extensive underlining in different colors of colored pencils. And so I went back and looked up all those quotes about the atonement that I had kind of sloughed off saying, " Well, they didn't understand the Atonement, " and I reread them. Oh, now I could see it wasn't that they were confused. It wasn't that they didn't understand the Atonement. It's that they had a different concept of the Atonement than what I had heard all my life.
Well, it was sometime after this, probably several months, that I got a copy of the book, " Christus Victor, " and read to it. And to a large degree, it did summarize what I had discovered myself about the early Christians, what they taught. And so then I began sharing the early Christian view of the Atonement with others. Now, okay, it made sense to me. They weren't mixed up. I was the one who was mixed up. They knew what they were talking about.
And I found it very exciting because I had wondered, I mean, I never questioned, but I had wondered, that is odd, that God just couldn't simply forgive us, and somehow it satisfied him to punish an innocent person. I mean, I had thought about it, I guess, for years.
What would we think if one of us did that, that, say, my son, John, you know, breaks one of the rules, does something bad, he deserves a spanking, but instead of spanking him, I punished my other son, Bob, and okay, I feel good now, somebody got punished. I mean, we would think that as bizarre as humans, like what? How does that take care of anything, that you punish an innocent party because of what somebody else did?
So, yeah, I was really excited about the early Christian model because, hey, this made total sense. And it got rid of that, you know, problem I had always wondered about. And I found that, you know, a lot of people found this really exciting and were really encouraged by it. But then I found other people got really upset when they heard a different view of the Atonement presented other than the one that they grew up with.
And I soon realized that if I spoke about the Atonement publicly, about what the early Christians taught, I was probably going to be denounced as a heretic by people in the general world where I was fellowshipping. So I felt like there were bigger issues to tackle that the Atonement wasn't at the top of my list. So I decided not to put out a cassette or a CD on the subject of what the early Christians believed about the Atonement. I didn't feel like it was worth it.
I was going to pick and choose my battles, and I decided that's not going to be one of them. But like I say, I did share privately with people what I had found in the early Christian writings, and I shared it with people in our little house church, and one of those persons was Dean Taylor. So these conversations with Dean would go back, like I say, with him, you know, nearly 30 years.
But now one of these Christian friends who I shared this with on the Christus Victor model, he encouraged me to put out a tape on the subject of the Atonement. Well, I told him, I said, " Look, I'd like to, but I'll get crucified if I put this out, you know, on one of the tapes that Scroll Publishing sends out. " But he came back and he begged me. He said, " David, you owe this to God. " He said, " When you shared this with me about the Atonement, " he said, " This restored my faith in God.
" I mean, that had so stumbled me that the other view, the Protestant view of the Atonement, and yeah, I had lost faith in God because of that, because it made no sense to me. It seemed so cruel. And he said, " It opened up the whole door for me, David, when you explained this on the Atonement. " He said, " There's got to be thousands of people just like me who've been turned off away from God because of the common teaching about the Atonement. " And so he really begged me. He said, " You've got to do this.
" I said, " All right, let me pray about it. Let me talk to my wife. I need to think about this. " So I did. I prayed about it. I anguished about it for weeks. I talked about it with Deborah. And at last, I felt convicted. I really needed to share what I had found. I didn't do it in a dogmatic way, like everyone has to believe this, but hey, here is what I found in the early Christian writings. So I recorded the cassette series. Later, it became a CD series on what the early Christians believed about the Atonement.
And yes, I did receive some criticism, but actually it wasn't as heavy as I was expecting. Probably because I wasn't presenting it dogmatically, trying to force it down anyone's throat. Now, the series of messages that I did, it's part of your subscription to the historic faith. So those of you who are listening tonight, who haven't heard those messages, I really encourage you to listen to them. Like I say, they're part of, you know, what's available to everyone who subscribes to the historic faith.
And they go into a lot more detail than what I'm able to share here tonight. And one of the things that I make clear in those messages is that the early Christian view of the Atonement embraces far more than just Christus Victor. If by Christus Victor, you mean only Christ's victory over Satan and His freeing mankind from death in Hades. Rather, in that series of message, I discussed seven things that Jesus ' incarnation, His life and His death, accomplished. And I'll just summarize them for you real quick.
I go into them in detail in the messages. The first, the early Christians talk about forgiveness for our sins rather than payment to God, that God had to be paid before He could forgive us. Secondly, they talk about a ransom, a ransom not paid to the Father, but paid to Satan, if they discuss at all who it's paid to, it's to Satan to set us free and that he took Jesus as the ransom prize. They talk about his sacrificial death, but as I said, it was a heroic sacrifice, the type that a hero makes in battle.
They talk about Satan binding the strongman, as I've mentioned. They talk about Christ's blood cleansing us from sin, allowing us to be reconciled to the Father. They talk about the fact that Jesus became the second Adam, and by becoming the second Adam, He undid our mortality and our corruption. And finally, they taught that Christ came not just to die, but to teach us the ways of His Father. So His life we're saved by His life, not just by His death.
So you're going to see all of that in the early Christian model. Now, for the rest of tonight's presentation, I'm going to sum all of that up and call it Christus Victor. But maybe in a more exact sense, Christus Victor should be narrowly used in the sense of his victory over Satan and the freedom that he brought for us through that, and maybe in connection with it, the ransoming that he did by letting Satan kill him in our place. But like I say, we will include all of that.
So I hope you can see that the early Christian view of the Atonement wasn't this narrow thing that, " Oh, he defeated Satan, and that's it. " No, there was a lot of things that they believed. Okay, now I want to talk about some of the quotations from the early Christians that are often quoted, and they're quoted in the sense, " Uh-huh. " See, they did teach penal substitution. I've looked up a lot of these quotations.
I mean, I've seen them, you know, excerpted, but I wanted to read the whole passage, and so I've actually spent a day or two on this. And, you know, Dean quoted a lot of these in his podcast message, and, you know, he did not take them out of context or twist them. They're all very valid quotations.
But, you know, I would say to those who use those quotes that, again, as I said at the very beginning, I think you're reading penal substitution back into their quotations when they don't specifically say anything about it. In other words, if you start out with penal substitution in your mind, yeah, you can find quotations in the early Christians that seem to fit within the general framework, but they also fit within the general framework of, in the larger sense, what I'm calling Christus Victor right now.
But what you are not going to find is that you're not going to find any quotes that talk about the Father punishing His Son, or about God's justice needing to be satisfied. That is not in the pre-Nicene Christian writings. You will find a handful of quotes that talk about Jesus being punished in our place or carrying our sins or offering Himself as a sacrifice.
But as we've already said, those teachings fit within the early Christian framework, the Christus Victor framework, if we're going to call it that, they don't just fit in the framework of penal substitution, so we need to understand that. Now, in contrast, if you start with a blank slate, and then you start and read the early Christian writings in chronological order, number one, you will not find any developed doctrine of penal substitution.
Number two, you will not find any statements that God poured out His wrath on His Son, as I've said, you will not find any statements that God's justice had to be satisfied. And so He punished His Son instead of punishing us. You're not going to find that. You will not find any statements that Jesus descended into Gehenna into hellfire, and that He was tormented there.
Okay, so let's look at some of these quotations that I would say are generally just innocent, innocuous statements made by the early Christians that just are based on scriptural teachings, and that easily fit within the Christus Victor framework. Now, one of these, we'll start with a quotation from Eusebius. Dean has quoted this passage and is quoted by other advocates of the penal substitution. And here you see this is talking about, he's saying, " Why did Christ have to die? " And these are his words now.
The reason is not one, but many. First, that the kingdom of the logos, that's Christ, may be established over the living and dead. Secondly, to cleanse our sins by allowing himself to be struck and by becoming a curse for us. Thirdly, to offer Himself in sacrifice to God for the whole world. Fourthly, to destroy the reign of the devil, and fifthly, to ensure to his disciples everlasting life with God.
Now, Dean accurately used this quote to show that Christ's death accomplished many things, which is what I've been saying for over 25 years. But I think the phrase that he particularly wanted to draw attention to was this phrase, that he offered himself in sacrifice to God for the whole world. Now, yeah, at one glance, at first glance, that may sound like, " Oh, well that's the penal substitutionary view. " But is it really?
If you notice, Christ, or rather Eusebius, doesn't use the language of penal substitution here. He doesn't say that God punished His Son, or that by sacrificing Himself, Jesus placated the anger of God. As I've already said, the Christus Victor model in the expanded form acknowledges that Christ died a sacrificial death. Further, it was the Father's will that Christ would die sacrificially for the whole world. So Christ was offering His life, not only to us, but to the Father as well.
I mean, He said, " I didn't come to the earth to do my will, but my Father's will. " So, yeah, he was doing this for the sake of his father to please his father. So he was accomplishing his father's will. But now to put this in perspective, for anyone who thinks, " Oh, that the father got some kind of innate pleasure seeing his son put to death, that this placated him. " I want to draw your attention to the parable of the vineyard that Jesus gave in Matthew 21. And yeah, we'll put it on PowerPoint.
You can read it with me. Jesus says this, " Here another parable. There was a certain landowner who planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it and built a tower. And he leased it to vine dressers and went into a far country. Now, when vintage time drew near, he sent his servants to the vine dressers, that they might receive its fruit. And the vine dressers took his servants, beat one, killed one, and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants, more than the first.
And they did likewise to them. Then last of all, he sent his son to them, saying, " They will respect my son. " But when the vine dressers saw the son, they said among themselves, " This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance. " So they took him and cast him out of the vineyard and killed him. Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vine dressers?
They said to him, " He will destroy those wicked men miserably and lease his vineyard to other vinedressers who will render to him the fruits in their seasons. " Now, if the penal substitutionary model were true, then the parable should end by saying that God was happy. They killed his son, and God was happy that they put his son to death. This satisfied his justice. It placated his wrath. And now he could be reconciled with these vine dressers. No, that isn't how God felt about their murdering His Son.
Jesus shows that instead of receiving any inherent delight and pleasure in the murder of His Son, as it says in the parable, " He will destroy those wicked men miserably. " So, yes, God was pleased that Jesus was willing to make this sacrifice on our behalf, and God wanted him to make it out of God's love for us. But Christ's suffering and death brought no inherent pleasure to God. It didn't satisfy his wrath. It was just the opposite. It stirred up his wrath.
He destroyed those wicked men miserably when he visited destruction on Jerusalem. It was just as Jesus prophesied there. But now going back to Eusebius, I want to read the passage that precedes the quotation that we just looked at, where Eusebius goes through various reasons why Christ died. And all of those are valid, and it's certainly in harmony with what the early church taught. But Eusebius immediately before that statement, this is what he says. And look at this because it's very significant.
Eusebius says, " Now the laws of love summoned him even as far as death and the dead themselves so that he might summon the souls of those who were long time dead. And so because he cared for the salvation of all for ages past, and that he might bring to nought him that has the power of death, as Scripture teaches, here again he underwent the dispensation in his mingled nature, as man he left his body to the usual burial, while as God he departed from it.
He burst the eternal gates, this is still Eusebius, of his dark realms, and made a road of return back again to life for the dead there bound with the bonds of death. Thus, too, his own body was raised up, and many bodies of the sleeping saints arose and came together with them into the holy and real city of heaven, as rightly as said by the holy words, " Death has prevailed and swallowed men up. And again, the Lord God has taken away every tear from every face.
" Eusebius continues, " And the Savior of the universe, our Lord, the Christ of God, called Victor, is represented in the prophetic predictions as reviling death, as releasing the souls that are bound there by whom he raises the hymn of victory, and he says these words: " From the hand of Hades, I will save them. And from death, I will ransom their souls. O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law.
Such was the dispensation that brought him even unto death, of which one that wishes to seek for the cause can find not one reason, but many. " And then he goes at that point into the quote that we read to begin with. So in short, Eusebius begins this whole passage by setting forth a very clear triumphant statement that reflects the Christus Victor view of the Atonement. I mean, he goes into it at length and then he ends it with this simple statement that, yeah, there were a number of reasons why he died.
But obviously, it's all within this framework of Christus Victor because that's what he's been talking about. So, like I say, he's not really teaching penal substitution at all. Eusebius is teaching the Christus Victor model that, like I say, you see all throughout the early Christian writings. But that model does not rule out the sacrificial death of Christ. Okay, now let's move to a quote from Chrysostom. It's another one that reformed apologists use, and it's a rather long quotation.
So I'm not going to read it all. I think Dean read it all in the podcast, and it's something that you can look up. I'm going to give you a reference here. It's in his sermon on 2 Corinthians. I'll give you the passage in a minute. But here are some key parts from it that Dean had read. This is John Chrysostom. He says, " I say nothing of what has gone before that you have outraged him.
Him who had done you no wrong, him that had done you good, that he exacted not justice, that he is first to besiege, though first outraged. Let none of these things be set down at present. Are you not in justice to be reconciled for this one thing only that he has done to you now? And what has he done? He that knew no sin he made to be sin for you. For had he achieved nothing but had done only this, think how great a thing it would be to give his son for those who had outraged him.
But now he has both achieved mighty things and besides has allowed him to do no wrong to be punished for those who had done wrong. He goes on. But he did not say this, but mentioned that, which is far greater than this. And what is that? He that knew no sin, he says, him that was righteousness itself, he made sin. That is, he suffered as a sinner to be condemned as one cursed to die. So that is a verse that proponents of penal substitution quote a lot that Jesus was made sin.
And notice how Chrysostom explains that, that Jesus suffered as a sinner to be condemned, as one cursed to die. He didn't say that God condemned him, that God cursed him, but rather he suffered as a sinner. For cursed is he that hangs on a tree. For to die thus, or in that manner, was far greater than to die. And this he also elsewhere implying says, " Becoming obedient unto death, yes, the death of the cross. For this thing carried with it not only punishment, but also disgrace.
Reflect, therefore, what great things he bestowed on you. For a great thing indeed it would be for even a sinner to die for anyone, whatever. But when he who undergoes this both is righteous and dies for sinners, and not only dies, but even as one cursed, and not as cursed only, but thereby freely bestows upon us those great goods which we never look for. Okay, so that was from Chrysostom's sermon on 2 Corinthians 5 verses 20 and 21.
Now, if you read that passage and you already hold to the penal substitutionary view of the Atonement, I guess you can read that penal substitution in there. But if you're reading forward, you know, beginning with, say, Clement of Rome or the Didache and through Irenaeus and all of the early Christians and you come to this passage, well where does penal substitution come in there? Like I say, there is a substitutionary death under either model that Jesus died, and he died as a sinner.
It doesn't say Chrysostom never says God punished him, or God cursed him, or God's justice had to be satisfied. He just points out that Christ died the death of a sinner. No one was crucified for being a righteous man. When you crucified someone, not only were they a sinner, but the whole world looked on you as a criminal. Now, as I said, this is key because this is one of the key passages of Scriptures that proponents of penal substitution, they proof text. And I've noticed this about the early Christians.
Okay, when they are discussing one of the verses that proponents of penal substitution really like to focus on, they give that verse full faith and credit. They don't try to skirt around it or ignore it. But at the same time, they give full faith and credit to all of the other verses that Protestants want to hide and sweep under the rug. And I'd say that's one of the paramount differences between the early Christians and today's Christians is that they take all of the Scriptures. They don't normally try to hide.
In fact, I don't know of any where they try to hide a verse and go around it. They give them all full faith and credit, as I said. So, when you're going back through their writings, it's not intellectually honest to just pick the quotes that, " Oh, fit the view that we want, " whatever it is, whether it's penal substitution or something else, you've got to look at the totality of everything they're saying on that particular subject.
Because that's the only way you're going to get a full picture of what the early Christians actually believed. Okay, now, like I say, this is a real quote from Chrysostom. The people who quote it are not being dishonest to you or anything like that. But I want to take you back. That's from his discussion of 2 Corinthians 5: 20 and 21.
Now, if you have a set of Chrysostom's writings or if you have them on PDF or something like that, if you go back to his discussion of verse 19, just the previous verse and start there, you're going to find quite an interesting discussion that will help you to see, no, Chrysostom is not a proponent of penal substitution, because this is what he said. And how did he reconcile the world to himself? For this is the marvel, not that the world was made a friend only, but also a friend by this way, or by this means.
This way, what way? By forgiving them, their sins. For in no other way was it possible. Therefore, he also added, not imputing their trespasses to them. For had it been his pleasure to require an account of the things we had transgressed in, we would have all perished, for all died. Nevertheless, though our sins were so great, notice this next part, he not only did not require satisfaction, but he even became reconciled. He not only forgave, but he did not even impute, that is, impute our sins to us.
So, we also should forgive our enemies that we, too, may obtain the same forgiveness. So, when we go back and read everything Chrysostom is saying, you see that not only does he not embrace penal substitution, he actually contradicts it before it ever even became a doctrine. Because he says that God did not require satisfaction. He just freely forgave, and that God requires us to do the same thing, to freely forgive as He did.
But see, under penal substitution, the teaching is that, no, God didn't forgive, that someone else had to suffer our punishment. Or another way people say it is Christ had to pay the debt that we owe to God because God wouldn't just forgive that debt. But see, if that were true, then I would have every right. My brother Daniel here if he sins against me to say, " Hey, I can't forgive you, " you know. Now, if someone else wants to, you know, suffer your penalty, that's fine, but I can't forgive you, you know?
Well, because God didn't forgive us, but Christ paid our penalty. So, yeah, either you, I get retribution from you or from your brother over here, something like that. But see, that's not how it works. God freely forgave us. So, Chrysostom is actually, before it became a doctrine, he is undermining the whole idea of penal satisfaction, penal substitution. Okay, let's move on to the subject of imputed righteousness. That was part of Calvin's question.
And Calvin, if you're listening to this, I can't help but notice the irony that the question was asked by someone named Calvin Yoder since penal substitution, as you know it today, was I say perfected by John Calvin, the model that most people know. Now, in that same passage that I just read to you, Chrysostom also talks about imputed righteousness, of righteousness being imputed to us. I'm not going to read it.
We're running out of time here, but I'll sum it up that, as I said, he says that righteousness is imputed to us, even though we don't have actual righteousness. And he says it not just in this passage, but in many other places, like when he is discussing various verses in the book of Romans. And Origen talks about imputed righteousness as well in his commentary on Romans. So did these men teach the Protestant doctrine of imputed righteousness? No, not at all.
And that's why it's dangerous to proof texts the early Christians to just grab quotes here and there. You've got to look at everything that they have to say. It's just like proof texting the Scriptures. I mean, you can make the Scriptures say just about anything you want, but you need to read the totality of the Scriptures before you come to any decision about what the Scriptures teach on any subject.
So when you see everything that Chrysostom says about imputed righteousness, whether it's in his sermon on 2 Corinthians or his sermons on Romans, you'll find that what they taught, as I said, was different from what Protestants teach today. That's because like all of the other early Christians, they recognize that there are two phases of salvation. There's the initial phase. When we're initially saved, this is at the time of our conversion and our baptism.
In this initial phase, no prior works are required of us, and no prior righteousness. I mean, we can be a filthy sinner. The Philippian jailer, for example, the thief on the cross. And when we get saved, all of our sins are washed away. Like I say, for the early church, this was normally at the time of baptism, but there could be exceptions like the thief on the cross. And right then, we are given a righteous new standing. Is that because we truly are righteous? Of course not. It's something imputed to us.
Imputing meaning it's credited to us by God's grace. We're considered righteous when we really aren't righteous. Okay, so they talk about imputed righteousness in the initial stage of salvation. But none of them teach anything about this heavenly bookkeeping you hear about today that, okay, in the books of heaven, God takes Christ's righteousness and He puts it on our account. None of them say anything about that.
They simply acknowledge that we are considered righteous immediately when we are saved, even though in reality, we are still sinners, that we are given this righteous standing as a gift. It's imputed to us, okay? But they also teach, " Okay, once we are saved, once we are cleansed from our sins, then we must live a godly, obedient, upright life. Not a perfect life, but a holy life, a righteous life.
And if we turn back to a life of sin, or we commit major transgressions of God's laws, then we will lose our salvation. " Chrysostom taught that, Origen taught that. All the early Christians teach that. So, yeah, they're not teaching this modern Protestant view of once saved, always saved, or imputed righteousness that God doesn't look at our actual righteousness. He only looks at Christ's blood.
That statement would be true only at the moment of our salvation, that He does not require prior righteousness or prior works. But once we are saved, yes, He expects us to walk obediently. And the Scriptures teach this clearly. We're not going to go into it tonight, but I would encourage you to listen to the message I have on what the early Christians believed about salvation. It's also available to all the subscribers of the historic faith. I think it's up on YouTube for anyone to listen to.
Okay, so, as I said, if you just take one page from the early Christians, one paragraph, you are going to come to a misunderstanding. Okay, one final thing, because I know we're about out of time. I do want to comment on this, though. Dean had talked a bit about the subject of propitiation, and proponents of penal substitution use that word a lot. And they're using it in the sense that there's this angry god who has to be appeased. They use propitiated to mean appeased, okay?
Kind of like the pagan model of they had these angry gods that they had to go and offer sacrifices to appease their gods or else their gods would stay angry at them. But the word propitiation doesn't even appear in the New Testament, except for two places. That's all. And the Greek word that is translated in many Bibles as propitiation is Hilasterion. As I said, you'll only find it two times in the New Testament. And once it is translated in one of those places, it's translated as mercy seat.
And for good reason, because Hilasterion, the Greek word, is used many times, I think like 70 times in the Old Testament, in the Septuagint. And there it always refers to the mercy seat, to that part of the Ark of the Covenant between the two cherubs. So that is the meaning of Hilasterion. But now, like I say, in many Bibles, in one other place, they translate it as propitiation. When I would say they should be consistent and translate it as mercy seat, because that's the only sense it's ever used in the Bible.
Anyway, in his paper, Dean reads some quotes from Origen's discussion in Origen's commentary on Romans, where he's talking about the mercy seat. And here, Dean and I have a difference of opinion. He and I have talked about this together. This isn't, you know, something new that I'm talking about tonight. And what the issue is over is that Origen, he wrote his commentary in Greek, but we do not have the Greek copy of his commentary. What we have is a translation that was made in Latin by a man named Rufinus.
Now, anyone who has read Origen's entire commentary on Romans, the one that Rufinus did, will notice that there are entire paragraphs in Rufinus ' works that are obviously his insertion. And Rufinus doesn't hide this. He explains in his preface that Origen's writing in Greek, but he's writing in Latin, so there are things he's going to have to explain to his Latin readers. And like I say, when you come across these passages, it's obvious. There's not a lot of them in the length of the whole thing.
It's like two volumes, his commentary on Romans. But there are a number of them, and they stand out like a sore thumb. I mean, because suddenly he launches into a discussion of Latin words and how they differ from the Greek and that sort of thing. Well, obviously that's not Origen saying that because he wasn't writing to Latin-speaking Christians, and he wasn't intending them as part of his reading audience. He was writing to Greek-speaking Christians. So it's Rufinus who is making those explanations.
Now, as I said, the Greek word Hilasterion, it only occurs twice in the New Testament. It refers to the mercy seat. It's in the Old Testament, but again, it's talking about the mercy seat. This is not a common Greek word, in other words. It's something special to the Jewish faith and to the Christian faith. Okay, so because it wasn't an ordinary Greek word, when the early Christians who were translating the New Testament into the Septuagint as well, into Latin, well, they came up against a wall.
How do we translate Hilasterion? It doesn't have an equivalent in Latin because it's a special word. In fact, it may have been a word that the Greek word that the writers or translators of the Septuagint, maybe they coined it. I don't know on that for sure. So rightly or wrongly, they had to come up with some word and they decide to use the word oh I don't know if I can even pronounce it propitiatorious, a Latin word that we would get our word propitiation from.
So that's how that whole thing entered into biblical discussions and into our English language. It's from that Latin translation of the Greek word Hilasterion. Now, I'm giving you that background because this is the passage from Origen, and here's where Dean and I would differ on how this should be rendered into English today. Origen says this: " Throughout his epistle, Paul draws heavily from the storehouse of the law and the prophets. " He's talking about the epistle to the Romans.
Let us inquire then where he found the term Hilasterion from which he acquired this designation? Well, in Exodus, the Lord spoke to Moses and gave him instructions as to what he needed to do. He was instructed to build an ark, this is the Ark of the Covenant, with rings on its sides and with poles. Afterwards, God told him to construct a mercy seat that's Hilasterion. Now the Latin says a propitiatory or something like that, okay?
A mercy seat of pure gold, God said to Moses, " There I will make myself known to you, and I will speak with you from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim, which are on the ark of testimony, about everything I will give you in commandment to the children of Israel. " Origen continues: " It is clear then that the apostle found the term mercy seat, " or " Hilasterion " in this passage, and he has used it in his present letter. And that's where some translations render Hilasterion as propitiation.
But Origen is saying that Paul got this from the Old Testament, from that passage in Exodus. So, obviously, Paul is talking about the mercy seat. He's not talking about propitiating an angry god. Okay. It appears certain that the mercy seat described in Exodus pictures the Lord our Savior. So, to sum it up, yeah, I don't think it's valid to say the early Christians talked about needing to propitiate or appease God, or that Origen talks about that.
Because in that passage, and there are several more paragraphs that follow this where Origen keeps using that same word " Hilasterion " or in Latin propitiatory. And again, he's already explained his context, Origen has, that he's talking about the mercy seat. So, yeah, that's like I said, Dean and I differ on that. You know, I've told Dean, look, it's clear Origen didn't write in Latin. He's talking about the mercy seat.
It's not correct for us then to substitute the word propitiation, as if that's what Origen is talking about, because Origen makes it clear in his explanation that he understands that Paul is talking about the mercy seat, not talking about appeasement or propitiation. So, I appreciate your attention. If you've stayed tuned to all of this, or maybe you'll be listening to this or watching it in segments, it's not an easy topic to just sit back and listen.
You may have to, if you have access to this, to watch it several times to digest what I've shared with you. But I hope it's been of help. I didn't go through all of the quotations that had been quoted to you on the podcast, but I think these are representative because you'll find the same thing in every one of the other quotes, that if you read the whole context, you'll see, no, the writer is not talking specifically about penal substitution, nothing about God punishing Jesus in place of us.
They're talking about either the fact that Jesus suffered punishment in our place, which is under both models, or that He died as a sacrifice on our behalf, which that teaching is under both models of the Atonement. So I'll stop there. Daniel, do we have any questions that came in? We do not have any questions. I think there was a lot to digest. And I was very highly edified, and my dizziness from the strength to strength has subsided, so thank you. Yeah, I'm going to say no questions.
People are trying to think, what did he just get through saying? Let me digest that. Well, if you're still with us, I do appreciate your attention being with us. And Calvin, if you're listening to this, I hope this clears up the question in your mind. Thank you for asking that. Yeah, thank you. God bless all of you. Thank you so much, Calvin. And next month, it may not be the last Tuesday. So if you're going to come watch the live Q&A next month, just pay attention to the website and the emails that you get.
Thanks a lot, and God bless you guys, and enjoy your evening.
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