The Monster God Debate: Why Those Under the Authority of Scripture Struggle to Speak

And welcome to The Dividing Line, James White with you on a Tuesday, well it's still morning here, it's afternoon where some of you are and some of you are listening a few days later so the time references are completely irrelevant and it's sort of like when you're on hold with Janet Mefford, they have this real quiet music that makes you go to sleep, then every once in a while Janet comes on and says, when you come on, please do not say good afternoon because we air at different times during the day and you just get this absolutely overwhelming desire to break the rules and to say, good afternoon

Janet, just because you want to. I don't know why it is, it's like don't eat the cookies, all of a sudden you want to eat the cookies, it's just how it works.

Well anyway, my sincere thanks to John Sampson for sitting in,

I want to download and listen to that program, I listened to portions of it, it was weird because I started listening to it and then

I had to refresh something, it went back to the beginning and then refreshed it and it went back to where it was so I probably just need to download it and listen to it beginning and end.

But Confessions of a Former Word of Faith Preacher, what I did here was very, very interesting and I appreciate

John taking the time to come in and do that. I did have somebody on Twitter say they were disappointed that John was doing the program because he's much more of a

Calvinist than I am and they misspelled Calvinist so I guess that sort of explains that.

Walrus in the channel just said, nice t -shirt, bet it breathes nicely. Thank you

Walrus for that. He is our Nova Scotian Canadian comedian,

Canadian comedian, that sounds very similar. But yeah, I got this shirt at the

Echo Lake Lodge, I really, someday, someday, my wife and I are going to get away, yes, okay, yeah, you got everything there, including the

Tribble, the little lonely Tribble. By the way, the folks on Twitter said that the

Borg Cube is waiting for my birthday. So okay,

I guess we can wait until, oh, isn't that next week? They probably know.

No, I got this at Echo Lake Lodge, which is the entrance to Mount Evans, the climb up to Mount Evans and it's a great question because it goes up to 14 ,000, well, the parking lot's like 14 ,160 and then you can walk up this whole thing to 14 ,270 and there's 53 or 56,

I forget which one it is, percent as much oxygen up there as there is at sea level. And I felt it, once you climb past about 12 ,500, you really start feeling it.

So I wanted to climb Mount Evans this last time up to Colorado, I wanted to do a lot of things in Colorado.

It snowed, I mean, really, seriously, it was freezing.

We did a ride on Saturday and I was riding with Eric and Forrest from Flatirons Baptist Church and there's, of course, a thermometer on my garment and here we take off and it's supposed to get up into the mid -70s later on.

So what do you do? You're going to be out for six, seven hours, six hours for me, and the temperature reading at the lowest at the start was 28 .8

degrees, 28 .8 degrees on a bike. And then you have to dress so that by the end in the 70s, you're not dying after 100 miles.

And it was, let's just say, it did this misting thing.

It was like we were in the middle of a cloud constantly for two days. It was, and now it's in the mid -80s and clear, and it's like, thank you very, very much for the last ride of the cycling season.

Knowing Colorado, you probably were in a cloud. Yeah, we were certainly high enough. Were you playing John Denver music in your...

Oh, yeah, yeah, I was, I did post something on Facebook about getting sucker punched by Lee Hill and something, and Left Hand Canyon, but we'll talk about that some other time.

Over, while I was, well, three hour difference, right as I was finishing up, well, right toward the end of the ride

I did Saturday up there called the Good Sam Bike Jam. It was a charity thing for the

Good Samaritan Hospital there. Right as I was finishing up, a debate took place.

Well, actually, this is Kansas City, isn't it? So I guess it wouldn't be three hours. So anyways, it was the same day,

Saturday. Michael Brown versus Brian Zond. I can tell that Brian Zond has heard of some of the criticisms that we have made because twice during the course of the debate he said,

I am not a Martianite. Yes, you are, and you demonstrated it once again.

It's sort of like when Roman Catholics say, oh, we don't believe in solar ecclesia, and then you push them just a little bit and they promote solar ecclesia.

They've got nowhere, no ways around it. They had a debate on penal substitutionary atonement.

Now, most of you, well, I'll take that back. You may not be aware of the fact, let's do just a little bit of church history here.

You see the church's focus or the focus of discussion and dialogue and stuff sort of following a fairly logical progression when you think about it.

As far as Doctrine of the Trinity, rejecting

Sabellianism, rejecting Arianism, then now that you have the affirmation of the deity of Christ in that very clear, uncompromising fashion, well, now you've got questions about what's the relationship of the divine and human in Christ.

We've got Eutychianism and Historianism and all the rest of that kind of stuff. And then after that, the natural progression would be a discussion of what

Christ did. And in my experience, one of the things you have to recognize is that once you have

Origen's allegorical methodology literally infecting large portions of the church, it becomes very difficult to meaningfully address issues such as the atonement for the simple reason that if the

Old Testament has become a closed book to you to where its actual meaning, if a pagan can understand it, it's irrelevant.

That's what the allegorical methodology basically is built upon, is the idea that there's a spiritual meaning, the unregenerate person can't understand it, and therefore if it's the historical grammatical meaning, that's just the surface level meaning, and who cares about that?

Once you've closed off the Old Testament, then obviously books like Hebrews, which has the greatest amount of information concerning the actual nature of the atonement, purpose of atonement, things like that, and of course the backgrounds.

I mean, so much of the language in the New Testament regarding atonement comes straight out of the

Greek Septuagint in regards to the atoning sacrifices and all that kind of stuff.

And so once that infection takes place through Origen and others,

Augustine is impacted by it, many people are impacted by it, there really wasn't a sound basis for a meaningful discussion.

I mean, you have different concepts of the atonement during the medieval period, but they are driven primarily philosophically.

They're not primarily driven by exegesis because you have this problem, and it's not till the

Reformation that you have a real clarifying of the nature of Scripture and the proper means of interpretation of the

Scripture, allowing the Scriptures to speak for themselves. And so it's interesting to look historically, and I may go ahead and pull it up here.

I did a series, some of you mentioned you listened to it. For some reason, a lot of folks really enjoyed it.

It sort of sounds strange that I would put it that way. But I tried to do early church history at Flatirons Baptist Church this week.

And it's not easy to do that in a very short period of time.

We did Dates, Doctrines, and Dead People was the name of the seminar. And so what

I chose to do was to focus upon some major issues and make practical application to the modern situation.

So the first night, I talked a lot about why we study church history and how church history can help us to see ourselves and things like that.

The second night, I really focused upon persecution, the responses to persecution, and application, very, very briefly, way too briefly, application regards to Augustine, the

Donatist situation, the Pelagian situation, why both sides in the Reformation could quote from Augustine properly and contextually because he had this big contradiction in his theology that derived from his, you know, from the controversies he dealt with in his life.

And that we all have that kind of thing. We all have our blind spots and need to be aware of that and so on and so forth.

So then on Sunday, I went through some of the key early, early, early folks.

I read two sections, one from Clement of Rome and one from Matheates to Diognetus that would be really relevant to what we're going to be talking about today.

And that is the concept of the atonement in the early church. It was not the primary focus, but there were clearly those who continue to have a very strong biblical understanding of the doctrine of atonement as found in the scriptures.

And so possibly while we are, if I move this, is it going to mess up?

It shouldn't because I'm sending you, I'm sending you a, well, see if this messes everything up. Okay, did it mess everything up?

Well, I just need to have this open here so I can find something to read later on. So if you can fix that,

I'd appreciate it. A little technical discussion here between me and the staff.

It's fine. We're all fine. We're all here. Everything's okay here. Now, how are you? Okay, I did it again.

You could get an email and somebody is going to go, oh, he watched Star Wars? That's terrible.

It's got the force in it and Buddhism and things. I just find it interesting that these folks know exactly what those things mean.

No kidding. Yeah, yeah. It is funny, isn't it? Yeah, that is true. Anyhow, what was

I talking about? Oh, yeah. So I started, you know,

I started seeing stuff online once I got back from the ride.

Started trying to find the links and stuff and finally tracked the stuff down yesterday to the video of the debate between Michael Brown and Brian Zond at the

IHOP get together. And I sent some...

I can't message Michael on Facebook for some reason. And so I sent him some texts.

We have each other's phone number. And so I sent him some texts I didn't hear back from. I thought that was strange to normally hear back from.

I am dead asleep last night. Well, sort of dead asleep. I don't know whether it was the salsa or the chicken, but I had something last night that was inappropriate, shall we say.

And so I may have slept for seven hours and 20 minutes, but my up band said I didn't get much deep sleep.

When I woke up, I was really wondering if things were going to go south real quick.

Anyway, at 11, 11 p .m., I get a text message from Michael.

He just landed in Japan on his way to Singapore and gets my text message.

And so probably running between gates, he took the time to respond to my text message. And so finally,

I got this all recorded and got it downloaded and stuff like that.

And I was going to hold off on it so that we could finish at least Austin Fisher's presentation.

But as you know, the debate we've been looking at on Calvinism features

Brian Zond. And we haven't gotten to Brian Zond's presentation yet, but it just seems that since this is fresh on people's minds and really is relevant, it would be worthwhile to at least take a look at his opening statement and maybe some of the rest of the of the debate.

Um, Brian Zond represents, how do

I put this? How do I even, how do I even describe this? When you listen carefully, now he rejects penal substitutionary atonement.

And what he likes to do is say, oh, there's, there's all sorts of theories regarding the atonement.

Now, what does that communicate to someone? It communicates to someone that there is not a truth about the atonement.

There are just lots of theories about which people disagree. That's like saying that the

Trinity is one of the theories. And you know, you've also got tritheism or modalism or subordinationism, or they're all just theories because we don't really know.

And if you don't really know, what does that mean? The scriptures are not sufficient. And once you encounter folks who have that perspective, when it comes to central doctrines, now, obviously he doesn't feel this is a central doctrine.

He thinks the cross is in some sense, but when you really start listening carefully, you discover that the primary, the primary reason that we have conflict with the

Brian Zahn's and Roger Olson's of the world. And we'll look at what

Olson said. Did you see, did you see Olson's comment? I didn't, I forgot to bring that up, but well, maybe this'll, maybe this'll bring it up fast enough.

Oh, it did. Look at that. Thank you very, very much Evernote for being, for being up to speed here.

Roger Olson comment. Check this out. Nowhere does the Bible say, nor does

Christian tradition require that God literally quote, breathed out the very words end quote of the

Bible. That's the dictation theory, sometimes called verbal plenary inspiration.

Theanoustos can and should be interpreted as breathed into by God.

That's the comment. Now, what do you need to understand is the reason we cannot partner with these people.

The reason that we must debate these people. The reason we must warn people of these people is they have a fundamentally different view of scripture.

And they think it's just, just incredibly close minded and, and hateful of us to think that this is a relevant issue.

But the reality is this is what determines their theology. Roger Olson's an Arminian because, how many times have

I said it? I, I can't tell you how many times I've said it. If you do not have the highest view of scripture, if you do not believe it is theanoustos, which means breathed out by God, not breathed into by God.

Warfield shredded that a long time ago and no one's ever been able to thoroughly address what

Warfield had to say. Uh, if, if you don't view scripture in that high way, you have no basis for being a true

Calvinist. Now you might be reformed in your, in your thinking and not have that high view, but, but you're, you're floating in midair.

Maybe you embrace it because of tradition, the churches in your area happen to have that kind of belief. And so, but, but that's,

I don't even think that's meaningful Calvinism. I mean, meaningful Calvinism is a Calvinism of conviction, not mere, not of convenience.

And so I've said over and over again, if you have a, an injured sub biblical view of the

Bible and scripture and inspiration, you have no basis for believing.

You don't have a basis for being a Trinitarian to be perfectly honest with you. Because the only way to really deal with the text regarding who

Jesus is, is to harmonize them, to take all that the scripture says into consideration.

And yet Zond is a Trinitarian. At least I think he is. He certainly sounded like one. But why?

Because given his view of scripture, I don't know why you would hold that position. And he certainly ain't no

Calvinist. He, he, he suffers from anti -Calvinist derangement syndrome. There's no question about that.

I mean, just over the top, as we will see. But understanding why

Roger Olson is an Arminian is easy. He doesn't have a high enough view of scripture to be a

Calvinist. It's, you're stuck with it. Now some of you go, I know lots of Arminians, but they have a very high view of scripture.

Well, okay. I, I, I'll, I'll buy that.

But there's two different kinds of Arminians, and I think we've seen that many, many times in this program.

What? Remember last week, the guy on Twitter that grabbed hold of that phrase? Somebody else had tweeted it, and the guy grabbed hold of his phrase and called it arrogant.

And this is why so many people say you're arrogant. And it's like, wait a minute. Logically, let's look at this, just by simple logic.

You can't come to these conclusions without first having a high view of scripture.

On the other hand, I can be an Arminian, not have to have a high view of scripture, and fit in a number of different paradigms.

Yep, yep, no question about it. And not only that, but what we, what we've seen many times in this program is that you have

Arminians like Roger Olson who are primarily philosophically motivated. And then you have

Arminians like you have amongst Georgian Southern Baptists. Some Georgian Southern Baptists.

Calm down, Red. Most Georgian Southern Baptists who are

Arminians of tradition. They're not driven there by philosophy.

They're driven there by traditional interpretations of just a few texts. And when you challenge their understanding of those texts, they collapse.

They just, they just, they just fall apart. And we've seen that over and over again. So you've got, you've got the people with a high view of scripture.

They actually do believe the scripture is consistent with itself. And they're Arminian because of tradition.

And when you press them on the biblical stuff, they run off into the woods, or they don't want to have debates, or they just simply collapse.

And then you've got the Roger Olson perspective. And it's a completely different ball game there. Because debating the meaning of scripture texts with them is fairly irrelevant.

They don't really care. It doesn't really matter to them. It's just sort of like, well, you know, fine if you say so.

But I don't think it's really relevant. That's not how I interpret it. And since there is no final court of authority, because interpretation is all very subjective, there is no one clear message of scripture, then they can go from there.

So anyway, I'm actually going to take the time, because a lot of you have not had the opportunity of seeing this.

I want to listen, I want to watch all of Zahn's presentation.

Because I think a lot of the folks in my audience are prepared, excuse me, to respond to the high view of scripture tradition

Arminians, Arminian, not Arminian, Arminian. We've engaged that subject so many times that most of us sort of know how to do that.

These folks throw us a loop, because they're actually liberals. They're liberal in their view of scripture.

They can't engage in meaningful apologetics outside of Christianity, because they have no foundation for doing so.

They have no foundation for saying, this is right, that's wrong. That's why you never see these guys involved in apologetics, out there really doing it.

Well, they would say, in fact, he tells a story later on in the debate about, what was it, a

Hindu or a Buddhist, or some woman had to come to their church, so why can't I ever be a Christian, because you all believe in child sacrifice.

Oh, we don't believe that. Oh, then I might be able to become a Christian. I think they might call that apologetics, when it's just actually least common denominator salesmanship, rather than apologetics.

Certainly not a defense of the once for all liberty of the saints faith. That's a given. So, I want us to listen to the voice of this movement, and look at the detestation, the detestation that this man has for biblical theology, because that's what it is.

I mean, he thinks that the God of Calvinists is a monster. That's what the whole thing's about.

That's what it's titled, that monster God. And he doesn't back down from saying that.

Now, before we look at it, let me, I do want to play you one thing.

Here's Michael's first response in his opening statement. So, Zond has gone first, and then

Michael replies. Ready? The one that was just described as the monster God is my heavenly

Father, I'm sorry. Doesn't that help to have it at 1 .6? I know, I know, I know. That's what

I listen to it at, but it doesn't help for everybody else. Let's try it again. The one that was just described as the monster

God is my heavenly Father, and my love with all my heart and soul. The one that Jesus revealed, and when he said, if you've seen me, you've seen the

Father. The one that was just described as a monster God and pagan deity, that's who he's referring to, the

God in the Old Testament, the inspired scriptures of the Jewish people at that time. So, at the beginning of the second one, he's going to say, he's just going to basically straightforward say, what you're saying is incredibly offensive to me.

And it does not promote the conversation at all for you to be so offensive in the terminology to use.

So, kudos to Michael, obviously. And you know what? He even mentioned me. I must have been echoing in his ears, because at one point he said, and my dear friend and colleague,

Dr. James White, believes that penal substitutionary atonement, to really believe it consistently, you have to be a

Calvinist, but I respectfully disagree. Yes, well, Michael, we will be discussing that.

He did a great job in just biblically taking Zahn's position apart.

Again, some of you just can't even listen to the man because of where he is or something like that.

I doubt Brian Zahn's going to be coming to any of our conferences anytime soon to debate, that's for sure.

So, anyway, with that said, I want you to hear, and I hope this is going to work, because I'm streaming this straight off the,

I don't have the file, unfortunately. So, as long as the stream works, we'll be able to make this work.

But listen to the language and recognize this guy is not doing this just for the fun of it.

He really believes that what we believe is crude and repulsive.

Now, what the irony is, is that Mike Bickle had come out at the beginning of this and had praised

Zahn up one side and down the other. As a great brother in the Lord. And I'm sort of like, might want to let folks sort of listen to the debate first and decide for themselves, maybe, you know.

But anyways, let's listen. Brian Zahn and why what we believe is a monster god.

At the heart of the Christian faith, there stands a cross and the crucified

God whom we worship. The cross is the defining moment of the

Christian faith. For being disguised under the disfigurement of an ugly crucifixion and death,

Christ upon the cross is paradoxically the clearest revelation of who

God is. When we look at the cross, we do not say, this is what

God does. When we look at the cross, we say, this is who God is.

Now, in our scriptures and in our creeds, we confess that Christ died for our sins.

I want to be very clear about that. I confess that Jesus Christ died for our sins.

But what do we mean by that? This is the seductive lure of atonement theories.

Attempts to explain what we mean when we make the seminal Christian confession that Christ died for our sins.

I am aware of at least eight different atonement theories.

I could talk about Christ as victor, ransom, recapitulation, moral influence, nonviolent identification, anti -sacrificial, satisfaction, and penal substitution.

So there are numerous theories on what we mean when we say that Christ died for our sins.

These tidy little explanations. Some I'm sympathetic toward. Others I have problems with.

I think some are quite crude. And that the ugliest of these theories goes by the somewhat clumsy name of penal substitutionary atonement theory.

Penal substitutionary atonement theory claims that God required the killing of his son in order to satisfy his wrath, appease justice, and gain the necessary capital to forgive our sins.

Penal substitutionary atonement theory was first developed by John Calvin and is an essential aspect of Calvinism.

Now it did first appear in a different form in the 11th century from Anselm as he was working from his medieval concept of the offended honor of God.

And not to turn this into a lecture on church history, although that might not be a bad thing entirely, it should be pointed out that the early church fathers and the early

Christians taught nothing like penal substitutionary atonement theory. What they taught is generally described as Christus victor or Christ the victor, where in the, not just the death, but in the incarnation, life, death, burial, resurrection of Jesus Christ, we see

Christ victorious over sin and death. But if you've grown up with penal substitutionary atonement, which you most likely have if you have grown up in an evangelical world in North America, I understand.

I'm very sympathetic that that can become the sole lens at which you look at understanding the cross and you can confuse it for the gospel itself.

I remember how strange it was when I first began to encounter people who did not subscribe to penal substitutionary atonement theories.

Interestingly enough, the first person I ever heard of that rejected that theory of the cross was none other than Charles Grandison Finney, which ought to make the point that, you know, he was hardly some emergent

Christian hipster that was afraid to, you know, be hard on sin. So if the idea is you have to believe in penal substitutionary atonement theory to really preach against sin, we'll tell that to Charles Finney because he rejected that.

Now, reducing the mystery of the cross to a theory is problematic to begin with because, first of all, it's not the gospel.

The gospel is the story of Jesus culminating in the announcement that Jesus Christ is

Lord. But particularly abhorrent is the penal substitutionary atonement theory that turns the father of Jesus into a pagan deity who can only be placated by the barbarism of child sacrifice, and this will not do.

In other words, the God who is mollified by throwing the virgin in the volcano or the

God who is mollified by his son being nailed to a tree is not the Abba of Jesus.

And neither is the death of Jesus a kind of quid pro quo by which God gains the necessary capital to forgive.

In other words, Calvin's economic model for the cross simply won't do. I mean, how would it work?

The idea is that a payment is being made. So how does this work? Does God say, well, look, I want to forgive sins, but I'm going to get paid.

And I want an innocent life. That's a given. And let's see. I want his death to be painful.

Crucifixion, that'll do. But I want some torture beforehand. I want there to be some lashes. You know, a crown of thorns, that would be nice.

I want a crown of thorns. And we might say, how many thorns will be enough to pay the price? 10. Oh, no, there must be a minimum of 19 thorns in the crown for me to...

And if you say, well, no, it can't quite be like that. Some of that was just, you know, human gratuitous violence.

Then I'll ask the question, well, how does this division of labor work? Some of it is required by God, and some of it's just people being gratuitously wicked and violent.

I don't understand this. So that when we say Christ died for our sins, do we mean that God required the murder of his son in order to forgive?

No. That maligns the character of God. I will suggest it means something more like this.

We violently send our sins into Jesus. Indeed, he bore our sins. We violently send our sins into Jesus Christ.

He absorbs them. In his dying breath, he reveals the heart of the

Father. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And when Jesus prays, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Upon the cross, Jesus is not asking the Father to act contrary to his nature. Instead, Christ is revealing to us the very heart of God in that moment.

Jesus takes our sin that was violently sent into him down into death, shakes it off.

On the third day, he is raised and comes back to us with the first word of the new world, peace be with you.

We must remember that before the crucifixion of Jesus is anything else, it is a catastrophe.

It is the unjust, violent lynching of an innocent man. It is the murder of God.

This is precisely how the apostles spoke of the crucifixion in the book of Acts.

Consider Acts 2 .23. This Jesus you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

Acts 3 .15. You killed the author of life whom God raised from the dead. Acts 5 .30.

God raised up Jesus whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. Acts 7 .52.

The righteous one you have now betrayed and murdered. The death of Jesus upon the cross was a murder.

It was a lynching. It was a mob killing. It was a lynching that God knew would happen because he had sent his son into our sinful system and that's the sense in which it's a sacrifice.

But even Plato knew that such a thing would happen if a righteous man ever came among us because in his republic 400 years before Christ, Plato says what would happen if a perfectly righteous man came into our world?

Plato says he would be scourged, fettered, and crucified. So there is this radical aspect of Christ exposing the sinful nature of our systemic sin that we call civilization that is shamed at the cross.

So the death of Jesus was a sacrifice, but it was a sacrifice to end sacrificing not to appease

God. Because on Good Friday, where do we find God? Where do we locate

God in the drama of Good Friday? Is God in Caiaphas requiring a scapegoat to bring peace?

Is God found in Pilate demanding an execution in order to protect the empire?

Or is God found in Christ absorbing sin and offering forgiveness?

2 Corinthians 5 verse 19 says that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.

Penal substitutionary atonement turns that inside out and teaches that God was outside Jesus reconciling himself to the world.

See this point. In the cross, God is not reconciling himself to the world.

He is reconciling the world unto himself. So really what we're dealing with in this debate in this discussion is what is

God like? What is the father, the Abba of Jesus like?

It's an enormously important question. Is God retributive? Is he vindictive?

Is he vengeful? Is he malicious? Is he malevolent? Dare we say it? Is he monstrous?

I know many people, including many Christians, who deep down really think so.

That God is some kind of malevolent being that is against them.

But fortunately, Jesus saves them from his angry dad.

I mean, are we saying that the cross is how Jesus saves me from God? Or are we saying, no, at the cross we discover what the father has always been like because the one thing the son does faithfully is reveal the father.

The cross is not about the satisfaction of a vengeful monster God. When I say it's the death of the monster

God, I mean it's the one place where we finally realize what God is like. The cross is the full revelation of a supremely merciful

God. Consider, in Christ, we discover a God who would rather die than kill his enemies.

Once we know that God is revealed in Christ, we know what we're looking at when we see the cross.

The cross is where God in Christ absorbs sin and recycles it into forgiveness.

Or I could say it this way. The crucifixion is not what God inflicts upon Christ in order to forgive.

The crucifixion is what God endures as he forgives. If we say that the crucifixion is what

God is doing to Jesus, we do violence to the trinity. We tear the trinity apart.

We pit the father against the son. Once we understand what we're looking at when we see the cross, we are seeing the lengths to which a

God of love will go in forgiving sin. So therefore, the cross is both ugly and beautiful.

It's as ugly as human sin, but as beautiful as divine love. But in the end, love and beauty win.

So Jesus does not save us from God. Jesus reveals God to us. God is like Jesus.

God has always been like Jesus. There's never been a time when God was not like Jesus, but we haven't always known this.

Now we do. Jesus does not save us from the true and living God. In Christ, God was reconciling the world unto himself.

What Jesus does save us from is the emotionally damaging picture of the monster

God. So here's the question. Did Jesus ever preach the gospel?

Of course he did. And never more so than in his greatest parable, the parable of the prodigal son.

But penal substitutionary atonement necessitates the insertion of a fictive and ugly episode into the prodigal son parable so that it would go something like this.

And when the father saw his lost son returning from the far country, he ran to the servant's quarters where he beat the hell out of an innocent whipping boy, thus satisfying his wrath.

And once having satisfied his wrath, then he could go and embrace his son and offer forgiveness.

I say, no, that is not the gospel. That is not the gospel given to us in Jesus Christ. God did not require the crucifixion of Jesus, but we did.

Our sinful systems upon which the world is arranged. And one of the problems, and I'll get to it maybe in the next part, with penal substitutionary atonement theory is it doesn't take sin seriously enough because it doesn't take into account the reality of systemic sin.

But at the cross, we see how evil sin is. It is so evil that our system is capable of murdering

God, the greatest crime ever committed, the crime of deicide. And yet that is where God's love conquers all, even our greatest sin.

So remember that while positing theories about how God saves us, remember that love alone is credible.

Penal substitutionary atonement insists that God cannot just forgive. That's what they'll say.

God can't just forgive. I say, what do you mean he can't? Of course he can. Of course he can. He can just forgive because God is not subordinate to justice.

It's not as if God has to pay off. It's not as though God is saying, look, I'd love to forgive you all, but I got to pay off Lady Justice.

She's a tough goddess and her only concept of justice is retributive justice.

And so I'd like to forgive you all, but I've got to pay off justice first. It begs the question, who's in charge here?

Is God underneath subordinate to some concept of retributive justice?

Not just the justice that sets the world right, but he must pay off justice. This is a central problem with penal substitutionary atonement theory.

It reduces justice to retributive justice instead of what is the actual justice that we find at the cross, and that is at the cross,

Jesus refounds the world. From an axis of power enforced by violence, Jesus refounds the world around an axis of love expressed in forgiveness.

Thank you, Brian. Michael Brown, does penal substitutionary atonement theory reveal a monster

God? The one that was just described as the monster God is my heavenly Father, whom

I love with all my heart and soul. The one that Jesus revealed, and when he said, if you've seen me, you've seen the

Father. The one that was just described as a monster God and pagan deity. That's who he's referring to, the

God in the Old Testament, the inspired scriptures of the Jewish people at that time. Okay, so there's the presentation, and I was watching the channel.

Remember, he's coming from the very same perspective as Olson, and everybody was going, well, wait a minute.

What about this? What about that? And you're all thinking, and this is why we struggle to respond to these folks.

You're all thinking that he wants and believes that he has to harmonize scripture.

He doesn't. When Michael emphasizes in his presentation, as you would expect

Michael would, he especially emphasizes Old Testament concepts, Hebrew terms, things like that,

Isaiah, you know, that kind of thing. He comes back. I don't have it queued up here, but he comes back with the, well, look,

Dr. Brown has really emphasized the concept of sacrifice, but we need to understand that that's, and this is the exact terminology he uses.

I could probably find it pretty quickly. Um, yeah, let's just, let's just see.

Wow, that fast? And let's just see if this works.

I sort of doubt it, but... It is a great emphasis in Dr. Brown's presentation on sacrifice.

We cannot pretend though that the Old Testament speaks in a univocal voice about sacrifice.

Do the Levitical priests say repeatedly that sacrifice is required? Of course they do. Until you get to the psalmist and they say, wait a minute, you have not required sacrifice.

Eventually you get to Hosea speaking in the name of Yahweh saying you have desired mercy and not sacrifice.

And Jesus weighs in on it, siding with the prophets, quoting twice from Hosea, go and learn what this means.

I desire mercy and not sacrifice. So, not only did

I just nail that one, it's like, yes! Um, just video wise, but, um, but there you, there you have the understanding.

They're willing to put the law and the prophets at loggerheads and say the prophets said, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.

All that sacrifice stuff's irrelevant. Now Michael's gonna come back and say, really? Seriously? They're talking about people who are utilizing the sacrifices in an inappropriate way.

They don't have the change of heart. They're thinking it's something that they can buy God off with. And Michael's right about all that.

But it's one of the advantages that I have is that I went to Fuller Theological Seminary.

Now, I could never recommend anybody going to Fuller today. But I went at a time when you could go as a conservative, you would be encountering all sorts of liberalism, but you were still allowed to be there basically without necessarily being punished for your beliefs.

And I know how these people think. At the time, it was a pain. It really was.

And I wondered, Lord, what are you doing? But now it's like, yeah, you know, all this hipster leather jacket thing.

I should have brought my leather jacket. I picked up a leather jacket in Boulder. The family I was staying with, the

Millers, Hal Millers, one of the elders up there, had had a garage sale the weekend before. And he hadn't sold this $20 real nice thinsulate lining.

I mean, nice, nice jacket, got for $20. I was just still sitting in his garage. And I said, hey,

Hal, it's cold out here. Can I? Sure, fits perfect. So I should have brought it. And so I could be a hipster dude like Brian Zond is there in his leather jacket.

Who else? Who else? Let's see if you remember. Who else have I debated that tried to be a hipster dude in a leather jacket who would have said almost the exact same thing as Brian Zond about atonement?

Where is, where is Algo when you need him, huh? The name is literally escaping me.

I can picture it. What's his religion? And he was a Mormon. But no, no, no, he wasn't a Mormon. No, wait, wait, who?

He's a Muslim. Sami Zatari. Oh, OK. I'm picturing the

Mormon he debated in Salt Lake City who was in Notre Dame.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He didn't wear a leather jacket, though. He had an earring and a backpack said no war in Iraq. And he's no longer a

Mormon. Yeah. Yeah. And I can't remember his doctor. He was a philosopher. Yes. Yeah.

Singer. No, no. Anyway, I'll figure it out. It was real memorable, but not for the right reasons.

No, Sami Zatari. And Sami Zatari would say, isn't this amazing? I hope

I hope most of you in the in the audience have taken the time to listen to the debate

Shabir Ali and I did in the mosque in Erasmus last year, because this is what it was about.

Well, part of it was my opening statement on sin and salvation was focused upon the necessity of the atonement and almost everything

I said concerning the justice of God, law of God, being a part of the very character of God, and hence you cannot separate them from one another, um, would be identical to what

I'd have to say to Brian Zahn. He's, he's, he's attacking Christianity this very same way that Muslims do.

Uh, shocking stuff. Or Dennis Potter. Oh, yeah. Dr. Potter. Dr. Potter, who's no longer a

Mormon, from my understanding. So I'm not really sure that he really was then, too. You know, when you think about it.

He was an interesting fellow. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it wasn't quite. It was an interesting debate. Yeah, it was.

It was. Trying to deal with the subject of total depravity, uh, in, uh,

University of Utah. So anyway, so, so you need to understand what frustrates us in trying to respond to these people is we assume because of their language that they have the same compulsion that we do.

And that is, I want to believe all of Scripture, Tota, and I want to believe only

Scripture, Sola. They really don't have either one. Although he'll say he believes all of Scripture.

But remember, we read from his own statement, uh, from his website.

Don't get backed into a corner on the Old Testament. The Old Testament is an accurate recording of what the

Hebrews thought about God. And that's exactly what Olson said. They are just, they're right here as to what they're saying.

It's a fundamentally different view of the nature of Scripture. You and I are looking at the

Old Testament Scripture the way Jesus did. It cannot be broken. It is God speaking. Men are held accountable to it.

Uh, and therefore you cannot just go, you know, it's lost stuff. You know, I'll take the prophets as if, as if the prophets would ever have done that.

Um, can't, can't, we can't do that. They can. And so just watching the, uh, the discussion in the channel, uh, it's just like, okay, here you've got

Bible believers listening to someone who has a defective view of the Bible, uh, talk about the

Bible and going, but, but, but what about, but, but, and they're not even thinking about that.

And when they hear you say that they're interpreting that as you're not listening to what

I'm saying. Now they don't think presuppositionally in this way. Um, and we have to try to explain this to them.

Uh, but that's what you've got going on there. That's what you got going on there. So, but did you catch the language?

Um, just, just the, you know, monster God and, and vindictive and, and, and all the rest of this stuff.

And I don't know why this is, but every time Olson, Zond, there's, there's a long list of people who, uh, are getting into the anti -atonement movement.

And, uh, there's a, there's a good book that was mentioned interestingly enough by the moderator is being in the bookstore at IHOP there.

This is international house of prayer in KC, um, called

Pierce for our transgressions. And it's a defense of penal substitutionary atonement. It's a good book. Um, and he mentioned that it was in there, but had also mentioned that they were getting

Brian Zond's book in too. How many times have I told you? Uh, yeah, just, that's just, so that's, that's what the, the

Christian bookstore is. It's, uh, yeah, you just, just throw it all in there and, and, and, um, stir it up and see what comes out.

It'll, it'll be noxious. I can assure you sort of like that chicken I had last night anyway. Um, so, uh, there is a good book on the subject and you might want to take a look at it.

I did want to read you just one thing that I read this as part of the church history thing. Uh, but I just think it,

I, all of these people who attack the doctrine of atonement, that's what I was saying.

I'm sorry. I got, I got off track there. I frequently do, as you all probably know, and it'll probably get worse as I get older, but, um, they always attack a straw man.

I mean, I, I could hardly even begin to recognize what I actually believe in what this guy was saying.

And the same thing was true when he goes after Calvinism. I mean, again, anti -Calvinist derangement syndrome to the nth degree, fatal case.

And so we're sitting here listening to this representation of supposedly what we believe and going, what are you talking about?

The, I mean, you know, the, the prodigal son, he goes and beats the bleep out of a, out of an innocent servant.

Really? You, you think that has anything to do with penal substitutionary atonement?

You're nuts. You're crazy if you think that. You really are. I mean, come on.

We're talking about the eternal covenant redemption where father, son, Holy spirit voluntarily take the roles that they take.

And you turn it into that, um, tells me you got no meaningful argumentation whatsoever when you have to lie about my position.

And that's what it is. This guy's not stupid. These people aren't stupid. They could read these books and therefore accurately represent it.

They don't have the excuse that the Muslim has. I can understand why over and over repetitively standing in a mosque.

I have to explain these things to Muslims. I understand that. And I'll keep doing that and pray for patients to do that because they've got an excuse.

They've never heard this before. This guy's got that much excuse. None, none at all.

I mean, he even said he was raised believing that. So he's apostatized now. He's moved away from that.

So if you once believed it, why lie about it now? Why do that? That tells me that you know that what you're saying is not true.

That's, that's what it tells me. Anyway, the one thing that Michael said, uh, was

I'm not gonna get into church history stuff. Okay, gotcha. If you want to spend more of the time on the Hebrew and stuff, he certainly didn't have any response to that.

That's for sure. Um, but when these guys pretend to, uh, say, well, all of church history agreed with me.

I wonder why they don't mention stuff like this. It's generally available.

It's available online for free. If you've read, for example, at least the

Apostolic Fathers, then you will have encountered the Epistle of Mathetes, which just simply means a disciple.

We don't know what the guy's name was. To Diognetus. And hence you probably read chapter nine.

I'm going to read the entire chapter. We got just enough time to sneak it in before the end of the program. Uh, it's titled, at least in the

Antonicene set that most people have today. Why the son was sent so late.

Here's what it says. As long then as the former time endured, he permitted us to be born along by unruly impulses, being drawn away by the desire of pleasure and various lusts.

This was not that he had all the light in our sins, but that he simply endured them, nor that he approved the time of working iniquity, which then was, but that he sought to form a mind conscious of righteousness.

So being convinced in that time of our unworthiness of attaining life through our own works, it should now, through the kindness of God, be vouchsafed to us.

And having made it manifest that in ourselves we were unable to enter into the kingdom of God, we might, through the power of God, be made able.

But when our wickedness had reached its height, and it had been clearly shown that its reward, punishment and death was impending over us.

And when the time had come, which God had before appointed for manifesting his own kindness and power, how the one love of God through exceeding regard for men did not regard us with hatred, nor thrust us away, nor remember our iniquity against us, but showed great long suffering and bore with us, 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.

For what other thing was capable of covering our sins than his righteousness? By what other one was it possible that we, the wicked and ungodly, could be justified than by the only

Son of God? O sweet exchange! O unsearchable operation!

O benefit surpassing all expectation that the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous one, and that the righteousness of one should justify many transgressors.

Having therefore convinced us in the former time that our nature was unable to attain to life, and having now revealed the

Savior who is able to save even those things which it was formerly impossible to save, by both these facts he desired to lead us to trust in his kindness, to esteem him our nourisher, father, teacher, counselor, healer, our wisdom, light, honor, glory, power, and life, so that we should not be anxious concerning clothing and food.

I wonder why they don't read that one. Sure did sound like substitutionary atonement to me.

Pretty clear, wasn't it? Yeah, we could also look over at Clement and his epistle on justification to get similar language if we had time to do so.

But I did read that one in the church history thing. If you'd like to pick that up, up at Flatirons Baptist Church website, you could do that.

So yeah, there's that information out there too. And for some reason, Brian Zahn doesn't deal with that either.

It's sort of like what Martianites do, because yes, he is a Martianite on that particular level.

So I want to go through his opening. I want to respond to this stuff. I want to take it to the scriptures. Not that Michael didn't.

He did a fine job. He really did. But there are especially certain claims that I would love to examine in a little deeper sense.

And so that's what we will do probably next time when we get together, where it'll probably be raining kitties and doggies here.

Yeah, it probably will. That's what they're saying. Hey, a couple of things. Did you know that we have now been broadcasting on YouTube for one year?

Really? Yes. September 12th was our first struggle, I mean, attempt at – what were we doing?

We didn't do YouTube Live. We did Hangouts. Yeah, it was last summer that I did the Canter thing.

And then you – Well, it was September 9th, I think, you did the Canter thing. And a week later, we were –

September 7th or 9th, somewhere in there. Yeah. And again, I want to remind folks that we are still needing funds for the

South Africa trip as well as the Ukraine trip coming up, and as well as general transportation.

Yeah, I got to get back east for the debate with Shadid Lewis, too. Yeah, so keep us in mind for those things.

Indeed. Well, thank you very much for that reminder there, Mr. Pierce. I think we are out of time.

Thanks for listening to The Vying Line today. We will be back, Lord willing. And they say,

Lord willing, the creek don't rise. I think the creek's going to be rising. We've got a hurricane heading our direction.

Second time in two weeks in Phoenix. Yeah, Phoenix, Arizona. Like I said, the weeds in my rock lawn are ecstatic.

They are just really, really happy. Anyways, hopefully we'll see you then. God bless.