No this is not a post about Hitchens, Dawkins, and others - although it could be, given that not much has changed by way of argumentation, and much has been lost of the more refined and philosophically sensitive arguments of Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche in favor of mass-marketing “antitheism” or “anticlericalism” to the illiterati. The only thing really new is that it is “old” atheism mobilized with a budget, a PAC, an ad campaign, a persecutorial agenda, and a publisher … but I digress …

I was reading through a section from Voetius’  5 volume work Selectarum Disputationum , (more…)

Over the past week or so I have had the privilege of reading through Beza’s annotations on Romans (a 1566 Stephanus edition of the Bible with Beze’s annotations & a 1642 Cambridge edition of the Bible). I ran across some of his comments on Romans 5:17 and thought I would translate them and pass them along. (more…)

“Lesson: The suffering of Christ was an expiatory sacrifice for our sins.

This is what is said in the text [1 Peter 3:18] that He suffered for sins [and] for the unjust, that is, He had the strength to snatch away from us the penalty, the guilt and stain of sin, and acquiring for us the the favor of God, righteousness, and eternal life.  The same thing is what is customarily signified [as] accomplished by Christ through the [terms] satisfaction, merit, redemption, and restoration.

Uses of this doctrine:

Use 1: For consolation towards the faithful against all the guilt of sin, and the terrors of conscience that may arise from that source.  For in Christ and His suffering we have the remedy prepared against all those different kinds of death-bringing wounds.

Use 2: For admonition so that we may abhor all sin as from those things which inflicted death to our Savior, and would have brought [death] upon us a thousand times over unless He had turned it away.”

- excerpt from 1635 edition of Catecheseos Christianae Sciagraphia, Dominica XV, Doct. 3.

In Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement, Gustaf Aulén sets forth Irenaeus as an early champion of Christ as victor over sin, the death, and the devil as a construction of the doctrine of the atonement devoid of penal substitution. His interpretation of Irenaeus burst upon the continental scene in 1931 and crossed into English-speaking discussion thereafter. To give a hint at his significance for modern approaches to the doctrine of the atonement, between 1969 and 1979 Macmillan Publishing went through 7 editions in trade paperback form. My interest in Aulen’s approach to the atonement rises primarily in his interpretation of Irenaeus that claims to be the proper historical doctrine of the atonement. So did Aulen get Irenaeus right? (more…)

In quite a bit of modern discussion (for example, the early 20th century piece - Aulen’s thought provoking Christus Victor - a terrible “historical survey” with a theological agenda!) it is common to segregate strands of atonement thought and maintain that the viewpoints are incompatible. Aulen’s contribution to the discussion is that he is the first in the modern period to raise the Christus Victor issue, and is therefore a great foil to get into the material from the patristic period onward. In Aulen’s work, we find that a Christus Victor theory is pitted against penal substitution and also the moral example theory. I could have addressed his version of the East/West tensions, 19th/20th century conservative/liberal issues, but I think since there is a more basic way to treat the work historiographically, his problematic expression of these other points are subsidiary to his main thesis. Basically, Aulen wants to maintain that there is an incompatibility between atonement theories - so a penal substitution cannot coexist simultaneously with Christ as victor over sin, death, and the devil, or as an example of love as well. Is he right? (more…)