For Jesse who needs to mature in Christ
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Answer the question he puts to you, Jesse: did God, the eternal God, go to a plan B for salvation because
- God didn't know, or
- did God go to plan B after wasting time since with the expulsion from Paradise and Noah, and Abraham, and Moses, and David, and exile, and the whole Israel thing, or
- wasn't plan A - the Incarnation - simply the eternal plan of God's faithfulness with His Creation all along?
God did not move to a “Plan B” for salvation, nor was the Incarnation a reaction to human failure. From the beginning, God’s eternal purpose was to unite Himself with His creation through Christ. The unfolding of history—Paradise, the covenant with Noah, the calling of Abraham, the giving of the Law through Moses, the kingship of David, the exile, and the story of Israel—was not wasted time but preparation, revelation, and promise. Each stage revealed humanity’s need for redemption and pointed forward to the coming of the Savior. Scripture affirms that Christ was “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” and that God chose us in Him before creation itself. To see this requires a willingness to look beyond surface impressions and recognize the wisdom of God’s timing. The Incarnation was always the faithful plan of God, demonstrating His love and sovereignty, and bringing to fulfillment what had been foreshadowed throughout the ages.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised but delighted, then, that you affirm Christ's atonement as the perfection and guarantee of our promised communion with the Trinity and disavow the horrid corruption of the notion of penal substitionary atonement.
DeleteMaybe you can persuade Glenn and Marshal to trash the 18th century American fear of an angry God.
DeleteI wasn’t making a statement against penal substitutionary atonement. My point was that the Incarnation was always God’s plan, not a reaction to human failure. The focus was on God’s eternal purpose, not on contrasting atonement theories. A healthy view of penal substitutionary atonement sees Christ’s bearing of sin’s penalty not as divine wrath overshadowing love, but as the very means by which God’s eternal plan of justice and mercy opens the way to our communion with Him.
ReplyDeleteFor PSA believers, those covenantal stages reveal humanity’s need for redemption and foreshadow the ultimate substitutionary sacrifice. They would say the Incarnation was necessary so that Christ could truly represent us, bear the curse of the Law, and reconcile us to God. In that sense, PSA is not inconsistent with the eternal plan I described, but rather one way of explaining how God’s justice and mercy converge in Christ to bring us into communion with Him.
Justice is a category necessarily succedent to the act of wrong doing. A Plan A of bill paying is thereby a determinative structuring of sin before choice.
DeleteIn terms of God’s eternal foreknowledge, as Aquinas notes, seeing a person sitting does not oblige the person to sit.
It makes the sense of faith and to logic of God’s eternal love to plan for the return of creation which God desired to create as a partner: i.e. to emit from his nature. Plan A of atonement, then, is the operations of return. In this way, the Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world is an analogy of purification rites. There was no concept in which the Lamb served as a substitution for each sinful person or just the number of the sinful. A Lamb cannot serve as a substitution for an unjust human person. The murderer or the adulterer must each face their own particular justice. The blood of the Lamb serves to purify the whole community without regard to moral status of persons.
The incarnate Lord of course, can. Again, as Aquinas says, one drop of blood from the Lord is enough to purify and justify the whole race. The degree of Christ’s sacrifice, then, must have a range of glorious benefits for us. Litigation does not reconcile us to our own divine end. Litigation satisfies only Justice for acts of wrongdoing.
Our return, though, the return of everything that has been made - made through the Word of God - everything emitted from God has been won by the One who proceeds from the Father before anything was made.
The kenosis of the Word, the descent into human life, and his death, resurrection, and ascension, prefigures our own createdness, our being emitted from God through the Word, and our return back through the work of the Son, the Christ.
Atonement makes one as Plan A because of the eternal love of God for all of creation.
Justice is a part of such great love, but it does not set the terms of Atonement. It is a term among others. And it depends, follows, wrongdoing.
Otherwise, there is no free will. God, from the foundations of the world, makes the sitter choose to sit. And that of course is nonsense.
Justice is not simply a category that arises only after wrongdoing; it is an eternal attribute of God’s holiness. From the beginning, God’s justice ordered creation, covenant, and worship, even before sin entered the world. To say justice only follows wrongdoing risks reducing it to a human construct rather than acknowledging it as part of God’s eternal nature.
ReplyDeleteThe sacrificial system itself points beyond purification to substitution. Hebrews makes clear that the blood of animals could never truly take away sins, but those rites foreshadowed the one sacrifice that could—Christ, who became man precisely so He could represent humanity and bear its penalty. Far from being “litigation,” this substitution is the deepest act of love: God Himself satisfying His own justice so that reconciliation might be real and lasting.
Reconciliation and justice are not opposed. Scripture insists that God is both “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26). If God overlooked sin without satisfying justice, He would cease to be just. Instead, His love fulfills justice by bearing its demands on our behalf.
And foreknowledge does not necessitate causation. God’s eternal plan included provision for sin without compelling it. Just as seeing someone sit does not cause them to sit, God’s eternal justice does not force sin—it simply ensures that when sin occurs, His plan of redemption is already in place.
The Incarnation, then, is indeed God’s “Plan A”—but that plan of love always included justice. Love without justice trivializes sin; justice without love crushes sinners. At the cross, both meet perfectly, and that is why Christ’s sacrifice is not only sufficient but necessary for our communion with God.
As Ronald Reagan said, there you go again. You’re still trapping the eternal God in time and history. Do some in heaven throw snowballs at St. Nicholas? Is heaven unruly? Will paradise, when we get there, still break out in fights? This a persistent protestant problem of ours because we do not have a tradition of believing that the supernatural is present with us all the time.
ReplyDeleteThe theological attribute of God’s Justice - except for 16th century rationalistic lawyers started doing theology in Geneva - has always been characterized as God is perfectly fair: i.e., “everything is in its order” or “perfectly ordered.” Taken, in human terms to mean distributive justice. Everything is given what is appropriate to it. There is no lack, no unevenness, no imbalance.
But why you have done, as loyal son of radical protestantism is to move the legal cry for retributive justice from it’s necessary identity in time and space into the eternal realm, thus making perfect peace impossible to expect.
The case, rather, is that:
1) The Just God created all things with the perfect goods needed to grow into the ends intended for them. Including us. These perfect goods reflect, image, the perfect Good that is God. Their properties share in a likeness of all God’s “attributes” or, simply said, God’s being.
2) Free Will, being one of those perfect goods of creation necessary to intelligent beings for our development into our intended end - communion with the Trinity, has it’s capacity used by us to do wrong. Sometimes horrific wrong. On Earth. In Time. At a place. Where there are victims in whatever sense: others/self. As a corruption of Divine Justice which is perfectly ordered, distributed goods.The creature’s act of wrongdoing itself creates an injustice that cries out to be made right.
3) Despite what radical protestantism claims, this state of things, the Will can choose right or wrong, has not been absolutized by an erasure of the capacity of our free Will to end in perfection.
4) Our desire to do good, to draw near to God is innate. Because, it is, in fact, distributed to us in our creation as the first given grace, unmerited.
5) I agree with Orthodoxy that the narrative of salvation history in Holy Scripture attests to God’s faithfulness in teaching humankind to love God ever more and more such that the Fall is a pedagogical event of God’s act in time and history; so, too, Noah; so, too, Abraham; Isaac; Jacob; Benjamin; Moses; the Judges; David; Jesus the Christ; the church filled with the Holy Spirit.
6) Throughout the same long history of humankind, juridical injustice as been wrought by humans on humans which cries out to God and each other for righting and healing. A retributive justice is in order for creatures, which God will perfectly fulfill at the close of history and our assumption into heaven.
7) Perfectly fulfilled at the close of history because, in Heaven, no one throws snowballs at St. Nicholas of the kind that brought the City of Philadelphia to install a courtroom in the Eagles’ Veteran stadium. That God’s perfect Justice would be imprisoned into an eternal requirement of litigious judgement and punishment is simply an *unseen* and corrupt outcome of a radically protestant vision of an angry God.
8) Concluding with the perfection of heaven where Justice is the perfectly fair distribution of perfect goods for the perfection of all creation. Distributive justice, not retributive justice.
Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes.There will be no more death’[b] or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
Justice isn’t something that only comes into play after wrongdoing; it’s an eternal attribute of God’s holiness. From the beginning, justice ordered creation, covenant, and worship. To reduce it to mere distributive fairness misses the way Scripture presents justice as both eternal and retributive. Genesis 18:25 asks, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” — showing that God’s justice is active, not passive.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that retributive justice is just “litigation” is a caricature. Hebrews 9:22 makes it clear: “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” That isn’t symbolic purification, it’s divine necessity. And Revelation 20 depicts final judgment as retributive, not merely distributive. The new heaven and new earth are possible precisely because retributive justice has been satisfied.
Love without justice trivializes sin; justice without love crushes sinners. At the cross, both meet perfectly, which is why Christ’s sacrifice is not only sufficient but necessary.
You’ve been checkmated, bro.
The Judge of Earth shall do right by the historical life of humankind. The shedding of blood is indeed for wrongdoing. But for more, too. In fact his Passion - which cannot be pulled apart as the structure of the gospels and creeds testify - suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension - accomplishes and provides a whole range of of things.
Delete“Now, because man had been saved by Christ's passion, this passion, beyond freedom from sin, secured for him many advantages for his salvation. By means of it, humans know how much God loves them and by this they are moved to love Him, and it is in this love that the perfection of the salvation of humans consists. Thus, Saint Paul says (Romans 5:8): "The proof that God loves us is that Christ, while we were still sinners, died for us." By means of the passion, Christ gave us an example of obedience, humility, constancy, justice, and the other virtues necessary for human salvation. As Saint Peter says (1 Peter 2:21): "Christ suffered for us leaving us an example that we should follow in his steps."
Christ, by his passion, not only delivered us from sin; in addition, he also merited for us the grace of justification and the glory of beatitude.
Because of his passion, humans understand that they have a duty to keep themselves pure from all sin when they think that they have been redeemed from sin by the blood of Christ, according to Saint Paul (1 Corinthians 6:20):
"You have been bought at a great price! Glorify God in your bodies."
The passion conferred on humans a higher dignity: conquered and deceived by the devil, humans would conquer him in turn; having deserved death, they would also, in dying, triumph over death itself, and Saint Paul tells us (1 Corinthians 15:57): "Give thanks to God for having given us the victory through Jesus Christ."
Revelation is simply saying what wrote that you didn’t absorb: “A retributive justice is in order for creatures, which God will perfectly fulfill at the close of history and our assumption into heaven.”
If you read in good faith what I write, then you’re not playing chess, dude. You’re just lying because of fragility. Which cause you to want to find cover to escape and get out if this dialogue which isn’t going your way.
You’re still blind to the eternal.
How does eternity as eternity benefit from the Justice of God? By eternal distribution of perfect goods.
His attribute as Justice and his attribute as Merciful have the same end. All his attributes have the same end because all his attributes are headed up in his being Love.
Only radical protestants need eternal strife and blood.
DeleteGod is love and intends for us live in eternal communion with the Trinity.
I’m sure, as a radical protestant, God’s intention sounds weak to you.
DeleteJustice isn’t just “distributive fairness.” Scripture shows it as eternal and retributive: “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22). Christ’s Passion does reveal God’s love and give us an example, but its core is substitution—“He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24).
ReplyDeleteCalling penal substitution “eternal strife” misses the point. The cross was a once‑for‑all resolution: “When Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God” (Hebrews 10:12). Love and justice meet perfectly there. Without retributive justice satisfied in Christ’s death, sin would remain unpunished and communion with God impossible. The blood of the Lamb is not endless conflict—it is the eternal foundation of peace.
And far from being “radical,” this is the mainstream witness of Scripture and the historic church. To dismiss penal substitution as mere Protestant extremism is to ignore that Catholics, Orthodox, and Reformers alike have affirmed that Christ’s death was necessary to satisfy divine justice. What you call “radical” is simply biblical orthodoxy.
Meanwhile, your own political views are anything but moderate. You consistently frame theology through polemics against “radical Protestants” and caricature orthodoxy as extremism, which reveals a deeply partisan lens. If anyone is radical here, it’s not those who affirm the cross as the satisfaction of divine justice, but those who deny it and recast orthodoxy as extremism.
Again, Jesse, glad that you’re here, glad that you’re engaged, but I don’t know why this is so hard for you.
DeleteIt doesn’t seem as if, from what you’ve just written, that you believe that sin is eternal. But let me ask it outright.
Do you believe sin is eternal?
“Meanwhile, your own political views are anything but moderate. You consistently frame theology through polemics against “radical Protestants” and caricature orthodoxy as extremism, which reveals a deeply partisan lens.“
DeleteI am only speaking to radical protestants. Therefore my points apply to you directly and the other of whom we both are aware. So it would make sense, right, that you feel so am speaking directly to you.
And among my points, so many are how all you are interpreting faith in our time by 16th and 17th century polemics that bled waaaaaaaay past indulgences and attack Western Christian orthodoxy in the Eucharist and ministry, the 4-fold interpretation of scripture, and sustain a chasm between the supernatural and natural which erases the active life of love of the Holy Spirit in our personal lives and the Spirit’s direction to practice “charity” (in orthodox language), toward all things not excluded the Earth as our created home. Your legacy is the heresy of a lawyer.
And an exceeding punitive lawyer, too, who, in his governance of Geneva, murdered people who resisted him in thought only. Kinda au courant, no?
DeleteI don’t know, Jesse, if you were enjoying you’re weekend or if youve suddenly lost your fortitude or even, perhaps, your conviction. So, whether you return or not, let me make plain the implications of my last question to you as to whether sin will be eternal:
Delete1. God is eternal.
2. God is eternally active such that His being is always manifesting Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.
3. There is no change or quit in God, and therefore no change or quit in His attributes.
Therefore, if you maintain that God’s Justice is retributive - reactive to wrongdoing - then you’re logically claiming that wrongdoing is eternal.
But that violates the scriptural and orthodox representation that through Christ’s sacrifice, eternal redemption or eternal redemption & eternal damnation will be accomplished once for all eternity.
So what happens to an eternal God’s eternal attribute of Justice if wrongdoing has been stopped by perfection of retributive justice? And for that matter, was this attribute just dormant before creation? Only to be wakened up by the eating of an apple? Or prior to that the rebellion of angel?
This notion violates the necessity that any attribute of God is eternally expressed.
Therefore the Church Fathers and orthodox theology have always and ever understood the eternal Justice of God to be expressed as perfect orderliness according to Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. And as Truth is perfect with God, always and everywhere perfectly accomplished and accomplishing always and everywhere… there cannot be wrongdoing. Eternity as characterized by the eternal God’s attribute of eternal Justice can only mean a perfect distribution of the appropriate perfect goods to everything. This an ancient and long standing Christian conception.
Everything is in such perfect and Just harmony, even into Creation, until creatures, with Free Will, chose wrongdoing. In created space and time. In history. Of which there will be an end.
The choosing of wrongdoing upsets and corrupts the perfect order, the Truth and Goodness and Beauty of everything God creates. The attributes creatures are given in being made in the image and likeness of God are marred, and so correction is necessary to bring everything back into perfection.
Christian faith professes that this correction has been fully accomplished (among a host of other accomplishments) by Christ’s sacrifice and will be fully realized at the end of history, the Judgment.
Thereupon, the eternal God’s eternal attribute of Justice - the perfect and appropriate distribution of perfect goods to everything - will be now eternally and perfectly cooperated with by Free and perfected creatures
This is the only logical and faithful sense making of the eternal God’s eternal attribute of Justice: perfect order in the blessings of perfect goods appropriate to all.
I don’t know if Jesse is just off enjoying his weekend or if he has suddenly lost his fortitude or even, perhaps, his conviction, but there are clearly half a hundred other readers not as brave as Jesse as to actually engage. So I will make plain the motivations to my last question to Jesse as to whether sin will be eternal:
ReplyDelete1. God is eternal.
2. God is eternally active such that His being is always manifesting Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.
3. There is no change or quit in God, and therefore no change or quit in His attributes.
Therefore, if Jesse maintains that God’s Justice is retributive - reactive to wrongdoing - then he logically assumes that wrongdoing is eternal.
But that violates the scriptural and orthodox representation that through Christ’s sacrifice, eternal redemption or eternal redemption & eternal damnation will be accomplished once for all eternity.
So what happens to an eternal God’s eternal attribute of Justice if wrongdoing has been stopped by perfection of retributive justice? And for that matter, was this attribute just dormant before creation? Only to be wakened up by the eating of an apple? Or prior to that the rebellion of angel?
This notion violates the necessity that any attribute of God is eternally expressed.
Therefore the Church Fathers and orthodox theology has ever understood the eternal Justice of God to be expressed as perfect orderliness according to Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. And as Truth is perfect with God, always and everywhere perfectly accomplished and accomplishing always and everywhere… there cannot be wrongdoing. Eternity as characterized by the eternal God’s attribute of eternal Justice can only mean a perfect distribution of the appropriate perfect goods to everything. This an ancient and long standing Christian conception.
Everything is in such perfect and Just harmony, even into Creation, until creatures in Free Will chose wrongdoing. In created space and time. In history. Of which there will be an end.
The choosing of wrongdoing upsets and corrupts the perfect order, the Truth and Goodness and Beauty of everything God creates. The attributes creatures are given in being made in the image and likeness of God are marred, and so correction is necessary to bring everything back into perfection.
Christian faith professes that this correction has been fully accomplished (among a host of other accomplishments) by Christ’s sacrifice and will be fully realized at the end of history, the Judgment.
Thereupon, the eternal God’s eternal attribute of Justice - the perfect and appropriate distribution of perfect goods to everything - will be eternally and perfectly cooperated with by Free and perfected creatures.
This is the only logical and faithful sense making of the eternal God’s eternal attribute of Justice.