First Opponent TOPIC: THE GOSPEL SKUNK: When God tore top to bottom the veil of the Holy of holies as Christ finished His substitutionary atonement for His people, He announced the end of the Aaronic earthly priesthood system -- with all its furnitures, the human actors (i.e. priests), and animal sacrifices -- a system that served as a shadowy type of the true High Priest to come who alone holds the office of the eternal priesthood. Now the true Priest has come and offered Himself without blemish to God as the one and only Sacrifice for sin, once for all, never to be repeated, and He has accomplished eternal salvation and cleansing of conscience for His people. And His people have this confident hope of heaven always, since their eternal Priest always lives to make intercession for them. So what is making you, my Roman Catholic friends, cling to a version of a priesthood system and its superstitions (which certainly will not cleanse away your sins), and not cling to the only true High Priest who will cleanse you from your sins? BRANDON: Why can’t people at least half ass try to represent our beliefs? Why make up lies and completely false claims about what we believe? I want you to show me a single Catholic doctrine that shows that the priest is the one who cleanse away our sins. I want to just baby you for such a stupid lie right out the gate. Seriously substantiate your claim. SKUNK: I don't know why you're now upset that Rome’s entire religious system is held up by rank obstinance rather than by fidelity to Scripture. This baseless religious system has had the stability of a house of cards for centuries that was easily knocked down by even the most basic and foundational understanding of the gospel message (which explains why their power-hungry leaders feared so much the translating of Scripture to the common tongue). You think I’m misrepresenting Rome. You answer me this then: According to the Catechism: "1367 The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice... the same now offers through the ministry of priests, who then offered himself on the cross... In this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and is OFFERED in an UNBLOODY manner." Again, in John O'Brien's The Faith of Millions: "When the priest announces the tremendous words of consecration, he reaches up into the heavens, brings Christ down from His throne, and places Him upon our altar to be OFFERED UP AGAIN as the Victim for the sins of man." Again, in Ludwig Ott's Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma: "The Holy Mass is a true and proper Sacrifice... The Sacrifice of the Mass is not merely a sacrifice of praise and thanks-giving, but also a SACRIFICE OF EXPIATION and impetration." And in the 22nd session of the Council of Trent: "If anyone says that the sacrifice of the mass is one only of praise and thanksgiving; or that it is a mere commemoration of the sacrifice consummated on the cross but not a PROPITIATORY one; or that it profits him only who receives, and ought not to be offered for the living and the dead, for sins, punishments, satisfactions, and other necessities, let him be anathema." According to these things, WHO gets re-sacrificed at Mass? Is the work of propitiation that Christ accomplished on the cross complete, or still lacking? But Hebrews 9:26 says Christ offered Himself as the sacrifice for sin ONCE FOR ALL. “1473 The forgiveness of sin and restoration of communion with God entail the remission of the eternal punishment of sin, but temporal punishment of sin remains. While patiently bearing sufferings and trials of all kinds and, when the day comes, serenely facing death, the Christian must strive to accept this temporal punishment of sin as a grace.“ Is there any remaining punishment for sins that you yourself have to undergo upon your death (in the fictional place called “Purgatory”), that Christ Himself did not fully bear on the cross in order to secure eternal salvation from the penalty of sins? But Hebrews 9:28 says Christ completed the work of propitiation for the sins of His people, and that His people have nothing but SALVATION to anticipate when they meet Him. “An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints.” Again, “1461… Indeed bishops and priests, by virtue of the sacrament of Holy Orders, have the power to forgive all sins "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” 1462 Forgiveness of sins brings reconciliation with God... Since ancient times the bishop, visible head of a particular Church, has thus rightfully been considered to be the one who principally has the power and ministry of reconciliation: he is the moderator of the penitential discipline.” Again, in John O'Brien's The Faith of Millions: "When the priest announces the tremendous words of consecration, he reaches up into the heavens, brings Christ down from His throne... It is a power greater than that of saints and angels, greater than that of Seraphim and Cherubim. The priest brings Christ down from heaven, and renders Him present on our altar as the eternal Victim for the sins of man — not once but a thousand times! The priest speaks and lo! Christ, the eternal and omnipotent God, bows his head in humble obedience to the priest’s command... No wonder that the name which spiritual writers are especially fond of applying to the priest is that of ALTER CHRISTUS. For the priest is and should be ANOTHER CHRIST." Who do you go to in order to be forgiven of your sins? According to this, it’s arrogant men who fancy themselves with self-vested superstitious powers who usurps the place of Christ. But Christ alone is the Mediator between God and men, and He alone intercedes for those who draw near to God through Him (1Ti 2:5; Heb 7:25). So tell me how a Roman Catholic can say with any integrity that they BELIEVE: 1. Christ's work of propitiation on the cross for the sins of all His people was complete, sufficient, efficacious, once for all, never to be repeated (cf. Ro 6:10; Heb 7:27; 9:11-12,14,24; 10:12,14,18; 1Pe 3:18). His triumphant cry on the cross, "It is finished!" wasn't a sham. 2. Christ is TRULY SEATED at the right hand of God, an act which a priest was forbidden to do since they are to ALWAYS STAND because their work of sacrificing animals was never done (Heb 10:11,12). 3. Jesus, as a true Man, possesses an actual physical HUMAN body (not a mystical body; Lk 24:39), and the entire PERSON of Christ (in all His divinity and humanity) resides at the right hand of God in the heavens (Ac 7:56; Ro 8:34; Heb 10:12). 4. It is idolatrous to worship inanimate objects (e.g. a rock, bread, wine, etc.) as the presence of God (Is 44:9-19), no matter what you call it (e.g. "the host"). 5. The animal sacrifices of the Mosaic covenant THEMSELVES are not efficacious in atoning for people's sins, since they are BOTH rituals, are BOTH referred to as if they are more than MERE animal sacrifices or MERE bread and wine (Lv 16:34; Lk 22:19,20), and are BOTH remembrances (1Co 11:26; Heb 10:3). Second Opponent TOPIC: TRANSUBSTANTIATION SKUNK: Paul's View of the Lord's Supper from 1Co 10 In 1Co 10:14, Paul is rebuking the Corinthians for participating in the pagan idolatrous rituals: "You cannot participate in idolatry and think that you can be a Christian who worships Christ," is his whole point here. The fact that Paul thinks of the Lord's Supper as no more and no less than a symbol of fellowship with the Lord is highlighted by the fact that he categorizes the Lord's Supper in the same category as the "thing sacrificed to idols" and the nation Israel's sacrifices and Paul says these things are NOTHING IN AND OF THEMSELVES (1Co 10:19-21): "What do I mean then? that a thing sacrifice to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, but I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God ... You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons." It is the spiritual act of worship what Paul is wanting to emphasize and direct Christians to think about when they carelessly participate in rituals -- whether of the table of the Lord or the table of demons. By the way, all battles of the truth must be fought within the inspired word of God. Anyone can stack up theologians' names who even remotely sound like they agree with them. If you are going to prove that the Lord's Supper is the mystical body and blood of the Lord, then prove it from the Bible. TOM: Here's the context of 1 Cor 11 which shows that Paul is specifically saying that the ritual of the Mass is from Jesus and it is good: For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes. Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord.* A person should examine himself,* and so eat the bread and drink the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment* on himself. 1 Cor 11:23-29 I don't see how you've reconciled the idea that if the bread is just bread we can be guilty of an offense against the Body of Christ if we receive it unworthily. Nor given that Paul says that what he's saying is from Jesus do I see how your claim that Paul was warning about participating in pagan practices is relevant. SKUNK: Paul continues his teaching on the need for proper reverential attitude toward the ritual of the Lord's Supper in 1Co 11. Paul has already established that participating either in pagan sacrifices or the Lord's Supper is a form of spiritual worship -- either of demons or of Christ (1Co 10:20). Despite the fact that "all things are lawful" (1Co 10:23) -- that is, Christians' worship is not bound to any external ceremonial regulations, including those of Mosaic laws (Ro 14:14,17; 1Co 8:8); and Christians are freed from any superstitious belief that a physical thing is given some mystical power through a ritual (1Co 10:19) -- Paul does emphatically teach that their worship is bound to their spiritual service of evangelism and of their selfless upholding of the honour of Christ (Ro 14:15; 1Co 8:11-13; 10:27-33). That's why Corinthians are to keep the local custom of masculinity and femininity (1Co 11:4,5), and certainly why they are NOT to demean the Lord's Supper and think it is only a meaningless ritual devoid of any significance. No, the Lord's Supper is MORE THAN just having some bread and wine. It is the "proclamation of the Lord's death" -- a solemn remembrance of the ONCE-FOR-ALL sacrifice of the Lord on the cross for the sins of His people (1Co 5:8; 11:25; Heb 7:27), a sign of the believers' spiritual unity and their eternal fellowship with one another in Christ (1Co 10:17). It is no wonder then that the Lord disciplines the Corinthians with sickness and death (1Co 11:30, because they have completely denied the significance of the Lord's Supper and have even used it as an opportunity to foster disunity and arrogance (1Co 11:17-22). In 1Co 11:27-32, Paul is telling Corinthians to "evaluate" and "investigate" themselves in light of what the Lord's Supper signifies: Christ's work on the cross to save them from their sins, and their unity in Christ. Only after they stop their sinful behaviour of spreading disunity within their fellowship, can they TRULY celebrate the Lord's work of redemption on the cross in a worthy manner. "You cannot harbour sins in your life, and celebrate the Lord's work to save your from your sins at the same time, lest you be disciplined by the Lord" is Paul's point here. God is disciplining them, NOT because they think the bread and the wine is neither "the unbloody re-sacrificing of Christ" nor "the actual presence of Christ in body and soul, which they must then worship," but because of their irreverence toward Christ and their lack of love for one another (1Co 11:29,33). To make 1Co 10, 11 to say that the bread and the wine of the Lord's supper is transformed into the actual presence of Christ is to completely DISOBEY Paul's command to "flee from idolatry" in 1Co 10:14, and to neglect the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ (Heb 7:27). TOM: I note that you don't actually show how Paul's explicit words saying that we are guilty of an offense against the Body of Jesus if we receive the Eucharist unworthily don't mean that the bread isn't just bread. Jesus told us explicitly to "do this in remembrance of me" so how is that not Him calling on us to perform a specific act of worship? If the Lord's supper is just eating bread why would God punish them for eating too much? How is pointing out that Paul is agreeing with Jesus, "this is my body" not "this is a symbol of my body", idolatrous? SKUNK: The bread and the wine of the New covenant (which are used to remember the Lord's work of atonement on the cross; 1Co 11:24,25) is more than just bread and wine, AS MUCH AS the animal sacrifices of the Mosaic covenant (which are used to remind Israel of their need for the true Lamb of God who will make the actual atonement for their sins; Heb 10:3) are more than just animals. Both are clearly rituals/symbols/signs instituted by God in order to point to the actual reality, and the languages used to install the rituals are obviously symbolic (Lv 16:34; Lk 22:19,20). But if you deny the symbolic nature of one ritual, then you will have to also deny the symbolic nature of all rituals; if you say that the bread and the wine is the actual body and blood of the Lord, then also the animal sacrifices have indeed atoned for the sins of Israel. But the Scripture says that animal sacrifices were symbolic in nature, and that they did not actually atone for anyone's sins (Heb 9:8-9,13,23; 10:1,4,11); but their purpose is to point to the actual reality of Christ the true Sacrifice who has completed the work of atonement on the cross for all His people for all time (Ro 6:10; Heb 7:27; 9:11-12,14,24; 10:12,14,18; 1Pe 3:18). Therefore, the bread and the wine CANNOT be the actual body and blood of the Lord -- NOT ONLY because Jesus, as a true Man, possesses a physical human body (not a mystical body; Lk 24:39), OR because the Scripture repeatedly testifies that the entire person of Christ (in all His divinity and humanity) resides at the right hand of God in the heavens (Ac 7:56; Ro 8:34; Heb 10:12), OR because Christ's sacrifice on the cross was a "once for all," never-to-be-repeated sacrifice (Ro 6:10; Heb 7:27; 1Pe 3:18) -- because the Scripture consistently says that rituals serve as symbols/signs. I never said that the Lord's Supper isn't worship; I said the exact opposite. Paul says that it is a serious act of worship that could get you killed if you approach it carelessly (1Co 11:30). And when Paul rebukes the Corinthians in 1Co 11 for partaking of the Lord's Supper "unworthily," for being "guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord," for "not discerning the body rightly," Paul does NOT say that the Corinthian's guilt is their refusal to believe that they are digesting the body and blood of the Lord (in an actual sense or otherwise), BUT that their guilt is their irreverent attitude toward Christ though their tolerance of idolatry and church disunity. (1Co 5:7,8; 10:14,21; 11:33). "You cannot come to the Lord's Supper to celebrate His atonement for your sins when you yourself are tolerating sin," is Paul's rebuke. Paul does not rebuke the Corinthians for their hypocritical worship in any different way than God rebuked Israel for their hypocritical worship (1Sa 15:22,23; Ps 50:7-23; Am 5:21-27). It is simply idolatrous to worship inanimate objects (e.g. a rock, bread, wine, etc.) as the presence of God (Is 44:9-19). And the bread and the wine are clearly meant to be symbolic of Christ's work on the cross to inaugurate the New covenant blessings. JOSH: Sure. “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.” 1 Corinthians 11:27 “and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.” 1 Corinthians 10:3-4, 17, 20-21 ESV “I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” John 6:48-56 “And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” Luke 22:19-20 SKUNK: In 1Co 11, Paul is making clear why God is disciplining them in regards to their behaviour toward the Lord's Supper. It is not because they do not see the bread and wine as the "real presence of Christ which they must worship" (The Bible is clear that Christ, as an entire Person, is present at the right hand of God (Heb 1:3), but because they are engaging in sinful behaviour while hypocritically presuming to celebrate the Lord's work of saving them from their sins. I don't know what you're arguing for from 1Co 10:1-4. Paul calls the rock which followed Israel in the wilderness "Christ," a use of metaphor. Paul is using the experience of Israel in the wilderness as a TYPE of the Christian experience, in order to warn Corinthians to live righteously before God, lest God disciplines them (1Co 10:6). Israel was "baptized into Moses," just as Christians are "baptized into Christ" (Ro 6:3); Israel ate and drunk "spiritual food" and "spiritual drink" -- an obvious allusion about the miraculous provision of God in the form of manna and quails, and water from a rock -- just as Christians ate and drunk of the Bread of life and Water of life THROUGH FAITH (Jn 6:35; 7:38). Jesus indeed says that He is the "Bread of life" in Jn 6. He also says that He is the source of "Living Water" (Jn 7), is the "Light of the world" (Jn 8), "the Door" to His sheep's pasture (Jn 10), "the good Shepherd" (Jn 10), "the Resurrection and the Life" (Jn 11), "the Way, the Truth, and the Life" (Jn 14), and "the true Vine" (Jn 15). Jesus refers to Himself in these figurative languages to declare to Israel that He is their God and Messiah who will fulfill the Abrahamic, the Davidic, and the New covenant blessings. In Lk 22, Jesus is establishing the new ritual of the Lord's Supper, which is to done as a "remembrance" of Christ. The fact that Jesus means to speak symbolically of His body and His blood is obvious: His literal human body is intact, right before the eyes of all His disciples, and His blood is in His body as well. Again, Jesus is establishing a new ritual of the New covenant, as a way to celebrate the fulfillment of what all the Passover lambs only signified: the true Lamb of God who came and took away the sins of His people. Third Opponent TOPIC: JOHN 6 TODD: Bread of Life Discourse: Figurative or Literal?? Thesis: It is my argument that the the Bread of Life discourse be taken in a literal sense. I believe their are 3 main areas of evidence that clearly point to a literal understanding of Jesus as the Bread of life. 1. Jesus leads the crowd to literalism. 2. Jesus doesn't correct them. 3. Jesus clarifies his meaning Evidence #1: Jesus leads the crowd to a literal understanding. There are four other instances in the Book of John in which Jesus uses some form of imagery to speak to people:
You don’t just have some simpleton overly-literal crowd assuming that Jesus must mean everything literally. You have Jesus hammering this point over and over until the people finally take Him at His word. Evidence #2: Jesus doesn't correct the literal understanding. In the four other instances of imagery being used, Jesus corrects the crowd or person so that they get a correct meaning or our narrator John does the correcting for the reader.
The crowd is so shocked and confused in John 6:52, that they ask “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” And here, if it was like John 2, John 3, John 4, and John 8, we should see Jesus immediately clarifying His meaning, to show that He doesn’t mean it literally. Evidence #3: Jesus clarifies by doubling down So Jesus does clarify what he meant in the discourse, unfortunately for Protestants who want a figurative meaning, he does so by doubling down on the literalism (John 6:53-58):
In the four other passages of John (John 2, 3, 4, & 8) we have people taking Jesus literally, and Him immediately saying basically, “You misunderstand, I mean this figuratively.” In John 6, we have people taking Jesus literally, and Him saying as I paraphrase “Yes. Now what are you going to do about it?” After Jesus emphasizes (for the fourth time) that He means this literally, His disciples say, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” (John 6:60). Jesus confronts them, and John 6:66 says that “After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him.” Then, Jesus confronts the Twelve, and confronts them when he says (John 6:67): “Will you also go away?” I'm not sure how much clearer Christ can be in understanding him literally, AND that it’s an essential part of Christianity, and when you reject this understanding of the Bread of Life you reject Christ. CONCLUSION: Now there are several other reasons that could be added:
SKUNK: Is Jesus calling people to eat His literal flesh and His literal blood in John 6? I believe it is more scripturally consistent to view Jesus’ reference to His flesh and blood in Jn 6 as figurative rather than literal. In fact, I believe it is inconsistent with the testimony of the entire gospel of John to view it otherwise, for three reasons: 1. JESUS CONSISTENTLY SPEAKS OF HIMSELF FIGURATIVELY IN THE MATTER OF HIS ROLE IN SALVATION, IN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN. - Indeed, Jesus was figuratively referring to His physical body in Jn 2:20. However, it is incorrect to think that the Jewish leaders honestly thought Jesus was referring to the literal temple in Jn 2:20. Their mischaracterization of His words was an intentional one, and they again twist His words in their phony trial in Mt 26:61. They clearly understood His figurative reference to Himself, as evidenced by their paranoia in Mt 27:63, “We remember that, when He was still alive, that deceiver said, ‘After three days I am to rise again.’ ” - Jesus’ discussion with Nicodemus in Jn 3 assumes that Nicodemus is a Pharisee, and one of their best at that (Jn 3:10), the proud sect who was responsible for planting synagogues in every place, and who pride themselves in being the teachers of the Bible (Mt 23:2). So Jesus speaks in the figurative language that Nicodemus as a Bible teacher would be too familiar. Again, it is incorrect to assume that Nicodemus missed Jesus’ figurative language. The whole reason Nicodemus is searching after Jesus in the first place is His fear of judgment (Jesus knows His thoughts and answers his unasked question; Jn 2:25; Jn 3:3). What Nicodemus is utterly surprised by is NOT the impossibility of second physical birth, but the impossibility of salvation by any human effort/choice/will. Both Jesus and Nicodemus are not thinking: literal birth, literal water, or literal wind. They are thinking Eze 36:25,26, and the impossibility of being saved UNLESS God Himself chooses to birth you into His family (just as a literal baby doesn’t choose to be born). - Jn 4 indeed shows that Jesus is speaking figuratively about the water that “will become a well of water springing up to eternal life” to refer to Himself as the source of salvation (Jn 4:14). Yes, the woman initially treats Jesus with sarcasm in Jn 4:15, and intentionally takes Him literally. It is incorrect to assume that the woman did not instantly understand Jesus’ claim to divine power; it is more reasonable to think that the woman is deliberately mocking Jesus’ words in Jn 4:15. - In Jn 7:37, Jesus draws on the imageries used in the Feast of Booths, and proclaims that “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’ “ Again, in Jn 8:12, “I am the light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life.” He is not talking about literal water, or literal light, but about Himself as the source of salvation. - In Jn 8, Jesus indeed speaks of the spiritual kind of slavery (slavery to sin), and the spiritual children of Abraham (the Jews who truly share the faith of Abraham). It is indeed correct to think that the Jews are not all thinking about their spiritual slavery to sin, because they are very proud of their heritage and did not think of themselves as sinners who need to repent (Lk 3:7-8; 5:30-32). - In Jn 10, Jesus says, “I am the door of the sheep. If anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.” Jesus is not saying that He is a literal door, or that people are literal sheep. Jesus is figuratively using the imagery of the door of a sheep’s pen to say that He is the only way to the kingdom of God. It is incorrect to think people did not understand His figurative language. - In Jn 10, Jesus again says, “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.” Jesus is not again calling people literal sheep. He is the shepherd as much as Yahweh is the shepherd in Ps 23. Jesus speaks figuratively about Himself as the One who leads His people to His kingdom. - In Jn 11:25, Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.” Again, Jesus speaks figuratively about His being the source of life and His power to give life. Martha understood it to be figurative in Jn 11:27, and simply responds, “Yes, Lord. I have believed that You are the Messiah, the Son of God, even He who comes into the world.” - In Jn 14:6, Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” He speaks figuratively about Himself as the only way to God. The disciples understood His words to be figurative. - In Jn 15, Jesus is “the true vine, and My Father is the vine-dresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it…” Jesus speaks figuratively of the true believers who demonstrate their God-given faith and of the false believers who seemingly are attached to His name and yet possess no true faith that bears evidence of their allegiance. Jesus is not a literal vine, nor are people literal branches. - And now in Jn 6, all of a sudden, you think that Jesus is now literally speaking of Himself as a literal bread, and that the people are shocked for the reason that Jesus speaks about eating His literal flesh and literal blood. This is an inconsistent view: 1) in light of the language of Jesus in the rest of the gospel of John (as shown already); 2) as well as in light of how the Bible presents cannibalism (i.e. a sign of judgment of the Mosaic covenant; Dt 28:53-57); and 3) as well as in light of the context of John 6. The context of Jn 6 is this: Jesus just fed the 5000 miraculously. They immediately recognize Him as their Messiah, and want to make Him King by force. But they have a different understanding of the Messiah as taught by their leaders, as will be shown later in the story. The next day after they were miraculously fed, they seek Him out for free food once again (“You seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled”; Jn 6:26). Jesus points the people away from their earthly preoccupation with their growling bellies and earthly fulfillment, toward what matters for them eternally (i.e. eternal salvation); “Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life…” (Jn 6:27). Still thinking about their belly, they ask Him how they themselves can perform the miracle of creating their own food if Jesus won’t do it for them: “What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?” However, Jesus’ response does not acknowledge their carnal interest one bit, but sarcastically points out that a miracle would be that “you believe in Him whom He has sent” (Jn 6:29); this sentiment of sadness and grief is repeated in Jn 6:36-40,44-45,65, and simply affirms the necessity of spiritual birth originating from God that Jesus discussed with Nicodemus. Thinking they can manipulate Jesus, they demand Him to perform an even greater miracle, like raining down bread from heaven this time. Jesus simply responds, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst” (Jn 6:35). The people are thoroughly denied their earthly desires, the only reason for their seeking after Jesus; and they are not at all interested in having faith in Him and obtaining some future spiritual salvation which could be earned by their self-righteous works instead (Ro 10:3); so they start taking offense at Him, starting with His claim to deity: "Is not this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, 'I have come down out of heaven?'" Jesus doubles down on His claim to deity in Jn 6:46, then He continues His reference to Himself as "the bread of life" in Jn 6:48; and unlike the earthly manna which their fathers ate and died, "the living bread" from heaven will give eternal life to the one who eats it (Jn 6:51). And the people take great offense at these words in Jn 6:51, "And the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh" for one obvious reason for the Jewish people; and it's NOT because they took Jesus' words to mean superficially and literally. Their response in Jn 6:52, "How can this man give us His flesh to eat?" is a clear demonstration of their utter shock at the inconceivable idea that their Messiah would suffer death, and that they would have to have faith in His death in order to receive eternal life. In fact, this idea is more inconceivable than the idea that Jesus is calling for the heinous act of cannibalism, that they deliberately choose to take His words literally. Paul says "we preach Messiah crucified, to Jews a stumbling block..." (1Co 1:23). This prevailing belief about their Messiah is why Peter thought he had to stop Jesus from His mission to die on the cross, and was rebuked for it (Mt 16:22). All their lives, the Jews have grown up with their religious traditions, being taught that their Messiah would come to rescue their people from political dangers (which wasn't meant to happen in His first coming; Lk 24:26). And Jesus doubles down on His claim that He will die "for the life of the world" (Jn 6:51) by saying, "He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life... My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him." The people understand His obvious figurative reference to the death of their Messiah, and they say "This is a difficult statement. Who can listen to it?" (Jn 6:60). Jesus then challenges their lack of belief in His claim that their Messiah is God incarnate who must give up His life for their eternal salvation: "Does this cause you to stumble? What then if you see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?" (Jn 6:61,62) Jesus asks them if His resurrection and ascension would be enough proof for them to believe in His claim. And to be clear, Jesus clears up ANY misunderstanding that He might be speaking of His literal flesh and blood: "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh helps nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life. But there are some of you who do not believe" (Jn 6:63,64). It is the Holy Spirit who uses the word of Christ to regenerate a soul and gives him life. Again, Paul affirms the gospel of John in regards to the work of the Spirit through the gospel message in many passages: "If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved... Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ... He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit" (Ro 10:9,17; Titus 3:5). "Eating" His flesh and His blood in Jn 6 means then: putting your faith in His death for your eternal life. 2. THE FIGURATIVE VIEW OF EATING JESUS' FLESH AND BLOOD IN JOHN 6 IS IN HARMONY WITH THE MANY FIGURATIVE LANGUAGES DESCRIBING SALVATION, IN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN. - Jesus tells Nicodemus that one must be "born of water and the spirit" in order to enter the kingdom (Jn 3:3). - Jesus tells the woman at the well that "the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life" (Jn 4:14). So it is the act of drinking of the water from Jesus that gives eternal life. - Jesus tells the crowd, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink... From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water" (Jn 7:37,38). Again, it is the act of drinking from Jesus that produces living water. - Jesus tells the crowd to follow Him and "not walk in the darkness" (Jn 8:12). Following Him is what keeps us in the light. - Jesus tells the crowd to be freed from the slavery to sin by believing His word, which is truth (Jn 8:32,34). - Jesus tells the crowd to "enter through Me," in order to be saved (Jn 10:9). - Jesus tells the crowd that those who are truly His sheep "hear My voice" (Jn 10:16). - Jesus tells His disciples that they must "abide in the vine" and bear fruit as those who are already "pruned" by His word (Jn 15:3,4). 3. THE GOSPEL OF JOHN IDENTIFIES THAT THE ACTUAL LITERAL WAY OF SALVATION IS PERSONAL FAITH IN CHRIST. - Jn 1:12 As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name. - Jn 3:15 Whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. - Jn 4:36,39 Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal [fruit being the Samaritans]... From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him. -Jn 5:38,40 You do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent. You are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life. - Jn 6:29 This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent. - Jn 6:35 He who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst. - Jn 6:40 Everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life. - Jn 6:63,64 The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life. But there are some of you who do not believe. - Jn 6:68,69 Simon Peter answered Him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God." -Jn 7:38 He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, "From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water." -Jn 8:24 Unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins. -Jn 8:31,32 If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine. And you will know the truth and the truth will make you free. -Jn 10:27,28 My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. - Jn 11:25 he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this? -Jn 17:3 This is eternal life, that they may know You the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. -Jn 17:20,21 I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one, even as You, Father, are in Me and I in you. -Jn 20:31 These have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name. Fourth Opponent TOPIC: YOM KIPPUR SKUNK: The day of atonement is a ritual performed once a year by the high priest as the chief keeper of God’s earthly abode (Lv 16:1-34). It is to purify the tabernacle where God resides and to remind Israel of the holiness of God who dwells among their sinful presence. The only way for the holy God to have a peaceful relationship with sinful people is through a priesthood which offers in their place a sacrifice to pay for their sins. A bull is offered up as an atonement for the priests themselves who are sinful men; its blood shall be sprinkled on the mercy seat that sits on the broken commandments of God in the ark of the covenant as a way to “cover” over their sins. Then a goat shall be offered up on behalf of Israel as a whole nation, and its blood shall be sprinkled also on the mercy seat. A second goat is transferred all the sins of Israel, and then sent away forever from their camp with all their sins. Thus the atonement is made on behalf of the nation Israel. The reason why there is much emphasis in the blood of the animal is because: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.” (Lv 17:11). Blood is the symbol for life, and the pouring of the blood symbolizes death of the sacrifice. It is the same reason why "shedding someone's blood" is a reference to taking their life (Ge 9:6). What does the day of atonement mean then? You find no better commentary of the day of atonement (and all things pertaining to the priesthood under the Mosaic covenant) than in the book of Hebrews. According to the book of Hebrews: The animal sacrifices had no salvific, no propitiatory benefits whatsoever. Their purpose is to point to Jesus as the true Sacrifice. “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Heb 10:4). In fact, the entire priesthood system served as a shadow and an object lesson of the true Priest to come who actually fulfilled the atonement of which the entire system was a mere symbolic picture (Heb 8:5; 10:1). He is called “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (Jn 1:29). SEAN: Hebrews makes it clear that the animal sacrifices had no salvific value. As you quoted: “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Heb 10:4). However, it does not logically follow that, then, the only purpose of the animal sacrifices was to point to Jesus as the true Sacrifice. They did have that purpose, but the notion that that is all they did is to take the symbols of the reality and act like they are effectively nothing in and of themselves. It is like gutting the literal sense of Scripture in favor of the spiritual senses of Scripture, such that one only focuses on the antitype and does not consider the type as anything OTHER than just a type. Did the Jews really have no clue what Hosea 6:6 meant until Jesus, did it have no real meaning at all until Jesus? So I wish to push back on that notion. In fact, Leviticus 17:11 does not really fit with the notion that the sole purpose was to prefigure Jesus' sacrifice, because we are told that they did atone. So we need to harmonize the different terminology into something coherent. Rather than it being the case that the sacrifices "did nothing," the act of doing them in accordance with obedience to God's commands was, in fact, pleasing to God, even if they did not make those offering them fully pleasing to God. In this sense, even though the actions were not salvific, they were propitiatory. How so? God's temporal wrath against sin can be propitiated, even if God's spiritual wrath against sin is not. Think of it as a sort of consequence damage control without actually addressing the root cause of the consequences (sin). In Numbers 14, we see the people rise up to rebel, and God indicates that he is going to destroy them. Moses intercedes on their behalf. Numbers 14:19-20: Pardon, then, the iniquity of this people in keeping with your great kindness, even as you have forgiven them from Egypt until now.” The LORD answered: I pardon them as you have asked. So God does not punish the people immediately, and temporarily relents from unleashing punishment upon them. This isn't God forgiving their sins per se, because God even emphasizes that they will not make it into the Promised Land. Typologically, that's the equivalent of saying that they still get hell. But their punishment is "commuted" as a result of Moses' intercession. They are not killed on the spot. So in the case of Yom Kippur, such wasn't solely about prefiguring Jesus, such that the Israelites were spending all of their time symbolically playacting. While the sins could not be truly covered by the Yom Kippur rituals, the people could be saved from temporal misfortune. Israel failing to keep the covenant resulted in temporal misfortune and temporal wrath. Consider also, Leviticus 16:13: there before the LORD he shall put incense on the fire, so that a cloud of incense may shield the cover that is over the covenant, else he will die. Failure to perform a particular ritual a certain way will result in physical death. Such means that the performance of said ritual in the right way has a "causal role" in preventing the physical death. Consider also Numbers 16:46-48: Then Moses said to Aaron, “Take your censer, put fire from the altar in it, lay incense on it, and bring it quickly to the community to make atonement for them; for wrath has come forth from the LORD and the plague has begun.” Aaron took his censer just as Moses directed and ran in among the assembly, where the plague had already begun among the people. Then he offered the incense and made atonement for the people, while standing there between the living and the dead. And so the scourge was checked. Is it the case that God occasionalistically, monergistically stopped the plague while Aaron was doing this? No. Rather, God was working through what Aaron was doing. So the ritual Aaron did, which Moses told him to do, stopped the plague. It saved the Israelites from physical death, and was the means by which God saved them from the physical death that would have otherwise come upon them for their sin. It didn't save them from spiritual death, to be sure. But we can't act like the entire Mosaic system was merely symbolic and non-causal of anything other than human mental recollection, if even that is granted. SKUNK: First of all, I must state that I define the “temporal” wrath of God, which is indeed a biblical reality, as that which is limited to the earthly, physical realm — hence, temporal as opposed to eternal. For instance, I believe that this kind of wrath came upon the antediluvian world in the form of the global flood for their demon worship and all that entails (Ge 6:7). It came upon Sodom for their sexual deviancy in the form of fire from heaven (Ge 19:24). It came upon the land of Egypt through a series of diverse plagues for their challenging Yahweh (Ex 7-12). Also, this temporal wrath came upon the nation Israel in many ways for their irreverence toward Yahweh. Therefore, I reject as entirely unbiblical the mystical definition of “temporal” which the Catechism defines as some sort of a period, irrespective of whether the person is physically alive or dead, in which they have their lesser sins paid for (if not before death, then in a place called Purgatory): 1472 To understand this doctrine and practice of the Church, it is necessary to understand that sin has a double consequence. Grave sin deprives us of communion with God and therefore makes us incapable of eternal life, the privation of which is called the "eternal punishment" of sin. On the other hand every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures, which must be purified either here on earth, or after death in the state called “Purgatory.” This purification frees one from what is called the "temporal punishment" of sin. Secondly, this temporal wrath of God is not isolated to an era. It is a reality that has existed since the fall, and will continue to exist until the final day of the Lord (2Pe 3:10). For instance, this wrath of God is shown in the striking down of Herod for his self-idolatry (Ac 12:23), the venereal diseases spread through sexual immorality (Ro 1:27), the striking down of Ananias and Sapphira for their hypocritical pretense (Ac 5:1-10), or the striking down of some Corinthians for their mindlessly participating in the Lord’s Supper while hypocritically entertaining sin (1Co 11:30). Thirdly, the temporal wrath of God is not necessarily a sign that the person are also subject to the eternal wrath of God (i.e. a sign that the person has not put their faith in Christ alone, thus are unsaved). And this is because I believe that the Bible is clear in this (and I am aware that Roman Catholics don’t believe this): The moment someone repents and puts their faith in Christ alone for the propitiation (atonement) for their sins, they are immediately forgiven of all their sins (past, present, and future), ransomed, justified, and are given the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. (Ro 3:25; 8:1, 15-17; 1Co 6:11; 1Jn 2:2). So we do not know whether or not Ananias and Sapphira were true believers. And we do know that the Corinthians who irreverently approached the Lord’s Supper were disciplined with instant death, but are nevertheless “asleep” (1Co 11:30), an euphemism for the death of true believers (cf. Ac 7:60; 1Co 15:51; 1Th 4:13). Fourthly, while God often uses His temporal wrath as a teaching device to illustrate the spiritual consequence of sin and how to be saved from it (as I shall argue), it must be stated that His temporal wrath is always executed at His own discretion, and does not necessarily pour out on sinners every time they sin (Ps 73:3-12; Lk 6:35; 16:19,23; Ro 2:4; Jas 5:5). Now, to actually discuss the topic of how God chooses to execute or mitigate His temporal wrath based on rituals: I agree with your argument that God upholds and honours His prescribed rituals or acts of faithful men as the means to mitigate His temporal wrath. But I disagree that these means must therefore be more than symbolic and that they must have some intrinsic, propitiatory (i.e. atoning), spiritual property (bestowed by God or otherwise). ** My argument is: the REASON why God honours these means is NOT because these means are intrinsically special in and of themselves, BUT because God’s purpose is to make an EXAMPLE of the means and use them as OBJECT LESSONS. ** In support of this argument, I want to make three points: 1. Rituals/acts of faith performed, while they are actual events that effect actual temporal benefits, are nevertheless altogether symbolic/object lessons, as Paul says “These things happened as types for us” (1Co 10:6): - (Ge 8:21) God is pleased with Noah’s burnt offerings. It does NOT state that it is because God loves the smell of barbecue or because they were extraordinary animals. God is being pleased with the act of Noah’s faith (Heb 11:6,7) — the act of offering up blood sacrifices. When God makes the covenant with Noah (Ge 9:15), God makes the covenant with a representative of the entire mankind who will come after him, and God promises that they will forever be spared from the flood judgment. I believe Noah serves as a TYPE of all true believers, who are all rescued from eternal judgment by their taking refuge in Christ the “Ark” of salvation through their faith (Mt 24:37; 1Pe 3:20-22). - (Ex 12,13) If they wanted their firstborn sons to be spared from God’s judgment upon all the land of Egypt, the Israelites had to obey all of God’s instructions in regard to the Passover sacrifice (Ex 12:1-22). God then institutes the ritual of the Passover sacrifice as a remembrance of how God freed Israel from their slavery to Egypt (Ex 12:14), and as a “sign” (Ex 13:9,16) or object lessons to be taught to their future generations (Ex 12:24-27; 13:8). God does NOT say that there is any intrinsic power within the animal that can be harvested in order to ward off God's divine judgment. I believe the REASON why God honours the obedient performance of the ritual of the Passover through which He allowed their firstborn sons to be redeemed (Ex 13:13) is because God means to teach Israel of the idea of redemption (i.e. purchasing back someone from judgment through a substitutionary sacrifice) which is fulfilled by Christ the true Passover Lamb (1Co 5:7). The celebration of the Unleavened Bread upon the hasty departure from Egypt (Ex 12:39) represents a life of sincere obedience characteristic of someone who was freed by Christ from slavery to sin (1Co 5:7,8). - (Ex 32:11; Nu 14:19) Moses intercedes for Israel when God threatens to wipe them out, and God relents. But God’s decrees are irrevocable, and God does NOT and CANNOT change His mind (Nu 23:19; 1Sa 15:29). So it must be understood that God never intended to annihilate His people of His covenants, but that God had a greater purpose in mind when He seemingly changes HIs mind through Moses’ intercession. Again, I believe the REASON why God honours the intercessory role of Moses is because Moses serves as a TYPE of Christ (Dt 18:15) and God means to teach Israel of their need for the greater Intercessor (Heb 7:25). Sidenote: I disagree that the death of the 3,000 in Ex 32:28 or the extinction of all faithless adults in Nu 14:33 typifies eternal punishment. Having determined that interceding Moses is a type of Christ, I believe it is rather more consistent to view the interceded-for Israel as a type of true believers and this temporal punishment from God as a type of divine consequence that the true believers suffer as a result of their sin — either in the form of physical chastening (1Co 5:5; 11:30,32) or of lesser eternal rewards (1Co 3:15; 2Co 5:10). - (Nu 16:41-50) Through the atoning work of Aaron the high priest, God’s plague upon Israel is checked. Again, I believe the REASON why God depicts the dramatic picture of Aaron’s standing between the dead and the living is because Aaron is a TYPE of Christ the true High Priest who will be the Determiner of life or death for all mankind (Mt 12:30; Lk 2:34; Heb 10:29,39). - (Nu 21:8,9) Moses makes a bronze serpent, which, if people bitten by the serpents behold, will neutralize the serpents’ poison for them. However, God does NOT state that the bronze serpent has some special power, or that He is instituting a worship/veneration of the bronze serpent (which people actually started to do in 2Ki 18:4) any more than God ever instituted the worship of the golden calf (Ex 32:8). Again, I believe the REASON why God heals people through the people’s act of beholding the bronze serpent is because the bronze serpent serves as a TYPE of Christ, who will “heal” sinners who “behold” Him through faith (Jn 3:14,15). - (Nu 25:6-13) Phinehas the son of the high priest takes vengeance on behalf of God, and kills the flagrantly disobedient Israelite who dishonours Israel’s covenant with God. Thus the temporal wrath of God that killed 24,000 was checked. Phinehas is commended for his “zeal” and his “making atonement for Israel,” and given “a covenant of a perpetual priesthood.” Again, I believe the REASON why God so honours Phinehas with these honorifics is because he is a TYPE of Christ, the One whose zeal for God’s honour will turn people back to God (Jn 2:17), who will forever turn away God’s eternal wrath (Heb 9:11,12). 2. To say that the rituals are propitiatory (i.e. atoning) in and of themselves is to gut the ritual of its true purpose and significance and to establish an empty ritualism in place of the true spiritual reality to which it should point. In other words, it is impossible to offer to God a genuine act of faith (i.e. worship) unless the worship offered to God serves only as a sign of the salvation that God has already accomplished for you; a genuine worship always first ascribes to God alone His divine power to propitiate; a genuine worship is always in response to what great things God has done for you: - (Hos 6:6; Mt 9:13) If the external rituals have intrinsic power to appease God, He would delight in them. But He does not. What God delights in is a person’s internal loyalty toward Him. Jesus quotes this passage in His rebuke of the unbelieving Pharisees who wrongly thought that their many external works would propitiate God (ref. Mt 23:25-28). - (Amos 5:21-23) God rejects rituals offered up by idolaters, because the purpose of rituals is NOT to propitiate, BUT to offer worship. - (Ps 50:8-14) God rebukes the nation Israel who has fallen into hypocritical, mindless ritualism (Ps 50:16-22). God sarcastically reminds Israel that He as the Creator actually owns all the animals that are being offered up and that He does not need Israel to give Him the things which are already His. He does NOT bestow or acknowledge any intrinsic propitiatory power in the sacrifices. But He does seek after sacrifices of “thanksgiving” as a way to “honour” God for His “rescuing” them which He has done time and time again (Ps 50:14,15). - (Ps 51:16,17) David is guilt-ridden due to his sin of adultery, and prays for God to cleanse his conscience. Then David disregards the animal sacrifices as completely useless to propitiate God; otherwise, he certainly would have offered them up. But David rightly chooses to offer up a “broken and contrite heart.” And only then, the animal sacrifices will be properly offered up as a worship of thanksgiving (Ps 51:19). - (Lk 18:9-14 as an illustration of Ps 51) Jesus compares a Pharisee who puts his confidence in his many works and rituals to make him righteous, with a tax collector who believes it’s impossible for him to receive God’s favour except through sheer mercy. Jesus accepts the tax collector rather than the Pharisee; rituals clearly do not provide propitiation, because propitiation is provided by the Messiah alone and is received by those who know that they need it (and no one receives it through rituals, because God instituted them to serve as symbols/pictures/object lessons). - (1Sa 15:22,23) King Saul tries to excuse his disobedience to God’s command by saying that he spared the animals only to offer them up to God. Samuel completely disregards all significance of the idea of rituals, and says that what God desires is obedience, which is a sign of the person’s genuine faith. 3. The Aaronic priesthood (with all its animal sacrifices, the human actors called priests, and the furnitures) serve entirely as symbols/object lessons to point Israel to their Messiah as its fulfillment: - It is indeed true that there were deadly consequences to the priests’ failure to perform their duties in the way they are instructed. The robe of the high priest had to have golden bells to sound either his arrival or departure as he traverse the threshold of God’s abode (i.e. tabernacle), lest he die (Ex 28:35). All the priests must be in their priestly garments when they serve in the tabernacle, lest they die (Ex 28:43). Two sons of Aaron offered up “strange fire which He had not commanded,” and was incinerated as a result of their failure to honour God’s holiness (Lv 10:1-3). The remaining priests were forbidden to have pity on the two dead priests and mourn for them, lest they also die for sympathizing with the dishonouring of God’s holiness (Lv 10:6,7). However, I believe the REASON why there were deadly consequences is because of the same reason why some Corinthians are killed for partaking in the Lord’s Supper (1Co 11:30): failure to perform the ritual according to the instructions, hence irreverence toward God whose holiness to which the ritual was designed to point. In the case of the Corinthians, they were engaging in idolatry and loveless attitude toward one another when coming to the Lord’s Supper (1Co 10:21; 11:18), hence demeaning what great sacrifice Christ had made on the cross in order to propitiate God’s wrath against their sins and to make them all one united body. - Also, it is indeed true that in the Day of Atonement, the scapegoat “bore all the iniquities of the sons of Israel to a solitary land” (Lv 16:22), and the blood of the bull and the goat sprinkled on the mercy seat on behalf of the priests and the sons of Israel “made atonement” for them (Lv 16:34), and “cleansed them from all their sins” (Lv 16:30). However, I believe these languages of propitiation only intend to say that this ritual is a TYPE/PICTURE of Christ. Again, the rituals themselves are not propitiatory, for “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Heb 10:4). The tabernacle design itself is “a copy and shadow of the heavenly things” (Heb 8:5; 9:23,24). The outer tabernacle is a “parable” for the entire Aaronic priesthood which has proven useless to cleanse anyone from their sins and gain them entrance into God’s presence (Heb 9:8,9). Then Christ comes as the true High Priest who actually makes the way into God’s presence, of which the inner tabernacle (i.e. the Holy of Holies) is a parable/picture (Heb 9:11,24); thus, the Day of Atonement itself, when the high priest enters the inner tabernacle, was a TYPE of Christ’s sacrifice (Heb 9:7). For Christ the High Priest “through His own blood entered the holy place once for all” (Heb 9:12), “offered Himself without blemish to God” (Heb 9:14), “bore the sins of many” (Heb 9:28), “cleansed your conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Heb 9:14), accomplished “eternal redemption” for all believers throughout history (Heb 9:12,15), accomplished complete propitiation for all time for all His people by His “one sacrifice” (Heb 10:12,14). SEAN: In the interests of brevity and efficiency, I won't spend too much time rehashing those points you make on which I have complete agreement. Regarding the temporal wrath of God, it seems that we agree entirely that it is a biblical reality; I just don't agree that it is limited in its entirety to the earthly, physical realm. I will say that you seem to misunderstand CCC 1372 as providing some sort of mystical definition. It is simply maintaining that temporal punishment, in this case *discipline* rather than, specifically, wrath, is a thing that we can experience after death, and not solely in this life. Going further into our disagreements on Purgatory in this context seems to be a red herring and contextually unhelpful, so let's remain focused. Secondly, I agree that the temporal wrath of God is not isolated to an era. I agree that it extends from the Fall until the Second Coming. I accept all of your chosen examples. Thirdly, I agree that one might suffer the temporal wrath of God against sin without being subject to the eternal wrath, but I will nuance this. That is, there is a sense in which those who are experiencing negative consequences of sins, even while being justified, are experiencing wrath in a temporal sense. But we tend to qualify this negative experience as discipline, it being qualitatively different, due to its effect on the recipient and due to the spiritual status of the recipient. God's sons are sanctified by discipline, as Hebrews 12 indicates, even if that discipline is them suffering to the point of shedding blood. Those who are not God's sons are not experiencing discipline when they suffer, for they are, as the text puts it, bastards. As for future sins being forgiven at the moment of justification, I do not agree, for a number of reasons. Such obviously has no analog with the way the Mosaic sacrificial system worked, and I think you would grant that; the Israelites did not believe that their sins were pre-covered. In the case of the New Covenant, the notion that one's future sins are pre-forgiven at the moment of (initial) justification creates a serious problem with such things as the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6:12. You don't ask a dentist to remove a tooth that has already been removed; such indicates doubt that he removed it in the first place, it being a request to do something that is currently not done. When we pray the Lord's Prayer, we ask God to forgive our trespasses. If God already forgave your trespasses at the supposed one-time moment of justification, then you should *never* ask God to forgive your trespasses ever again unless you become convinced, of course, that you were supposedly "never saved in the first place." If Jesus was teaching us how to pray, then prayers said by Christians on the regular should include petitions to God for the forgiveness of sins, which necessarily implies that the sins in question for which one is asking forgiveness have not already been "pre-forgiven." Did Jesus offer himself up as a sacrifice for your future sins? Absolutely. As for the notion that justification is reducible to a one-time event, I submit the examples of both Abraham and David as clear indications that such is not defensible as a generalization about all those who have been justified and about the nature of the action of justification. We are not told whether or not Ananias and Sapphira were true believers at the point in time at which they were temporally punished. Such is not made clear to us for the Corinthians either. I agree with you that God's temporal wrath is executed at his own discretion. It is worth noting that God often kills a person in the Old Testament in an archetypal way even if death will not be the penalty for later offenders. Part 2 of 4 The only way that those Old Testament rituals could have any causal ability to propitiate God's temporal wrath or bring about temporal blessings is if such ability was bestowed by God, so we can rule out the "otherwise." When you say that they can be merely symbolic, what you appear to be suggesting is a sort of parallelism, whereby man acts, and God acts, but there is no real connection between the two, similar to the parallelism view of the mind-body problem whereby certain things happen with the mind and with the body at the same time, but without any true, causal connection. In this sense, we are talking about a limited form of occasionalism, occasionalism of course being the denial of secondary causes. As soon as you call certain rituals "the means to mitigate His temporal wrath," we aren't talking about monergism anymore. God using "instrumental means" is God using "secondary causes." To use Al Ghazali's example of fire and cloth, if you want to say that only God burns the cloth, and just happens to do so when it is in close proximity to the fire, then so be it. That's occasionalism. But as soon as you grant that the fire is being used by God as a means, then you don't have occasionalism, and you don't have monergism. The man using a hammer as a means to drive a nail is not the sole cause of the driving of the nail. I understand your argument, and it really does come across as textbook occasionalism and reminds me of the Baptist occasionalist type arguments I have heard regarding Moses and the parting of the Red Sea, as if God alone did it and Moses played no causal role whatsoever, even though Exodus 14 explicitly attributes to Moses causal efficacy in this regard. 1) Yes, I agree that rituals/acts of faith are lessons. You seem to agree that they effect actual temporal benefits. They could not do so unless God "did something to them" in order for them to be able to do so. God must empower them in some way, otherwise they could not have particular effects, and would be mere symbolic stand-ins. So you have to choose. If they actually effect actual temporal benefits, something about them, about their nature, is why that is the case, even if God does not *always* change them in this way. - I agree that God is pleased with the act that stems from Noah's faith. I agree with your typological assessment of Noah representing all true believers. As a minor point, I do *not* believe that the ark is viewed as salvific in 1 Peter 3:20-22; the water is, because in that metaphorical illustration, the water "saves" Noah and his family from the corrupt generation among which they are living. So in one sense, Noah and his family are saved "from" the water, but in another sense, they are saved "by" the water. - I agree that God means to teach Israel the idea of redemption. But again, if the action is not reducible to a mere symbolic placeholder while God independently and voluntaristically acts separately, then God has "changed" something about the action in question to render it as a suitable secondary cause and instrumental means of the effect which God wishes to bring to fruition. - I agree that God cannot change his mind, so we must take any biblical indication to the contrary in an analogical way that is ultimately communicating a different truth. I agree that Moses serves as a type of Christ. But it is not just that Moses has a merely symbolic role. God has gifted Moses with the capacity to perform a work that has the causal ability to propitiate God's temporal wrath. This may seem minor, but this really brings out the fundamental question of whether acts have natures and whether these natures actually matter. I'm glad, by the way, that you grant that Hebrews 7:25 indicates Jesus' role as intercessor in a manner typologically prefigured by Moses propitiating God's temporal wrath. I think that's a pretty big concession when most Protestants reduce that verse to Jesus merely praying to the Father. As for the Israelites killed according to Exodus 32:27 and Numbers 14:33, in the case of the former, I definitely think the death of the 3,000 idolaters at the hands of the Levites prefigures, in part, the death of those who do not become part of the kingdom of priests which is the Church. I would additionally argue, however, and somewhat consistent with what you are saying, I think the 3,000 also specifically typologically prefigures the 3,000 baptized at Pentecost. In a sense, they have their old, former selves, crucified with Christ (Romans 6:3-4), and they save themselves from the corrupt generation among which they are living, like Noah and his family did (hence Peter's argument in Acts 2:40: "Save yourselves from this corrupt generation."). Those 3,000 then become like the Levites who slayed the 3,000 idolaters, much in the same way that we die to sin and then proceed to put to death that which is earthly, as Romans 5 and Colossians 3:5 indicate. The destruction of the faithless adults in Numbers 14 doesn't prefigure the temporal punishment of true believers because of that word, believers: believers have faith, whereas those who died in the desert prefigured those who won't make it into heaven due to lack of faith. See Hebrews 4:11, speaking about the heavenly rest prefigured by the rest of Canaan: "Therefore, let us strive to enter into that rest, so that no one may fall after the same example of disobedience." Parallel this with 1 Corinthians 10, and you really cannot make a coherent argument that we are talking about mere discipline for justified believers, rather than temporal wrath for unbelievers that prefigures eternal wrath for unbelievers. I believe it is thus quite consistent to maintain that the Israelites who died on the way to the Promised Land are being used by Hebrews, and by 1 Corinthians 10, to show what can happen to Christians who fall into disobedience and sin in failing to persevere. If you hold to perseverance of the saints, I understand that you cannot accept that. But that fits the typology better than thinking that we are talking about types of true believers. Joshua, Caleb, and the children of those who fell serve as a remnant that is allowed to enter, akin to the remnant of Noah's ark and the remnant of Israel who return to Zion. The only sense in which one might argue that some of the Israelites who don't get into Canaan can prefigure justified believers at the point at which they don't get in is that Moses did not get in but he DID have faith. I would argue that this is much more a problem for you than it is for me, since faith is supposed to be sufficient. If it isn't sufficient for entering a piece of physical land, is it really sufficient for entering heaven? If Moses can ultimately enter heaven on the basis of faith even when we know he *didn't* at the time at which he died, that raises questions for the efficacy of sola fide. Maybe, just maybe, Moses needed to be disciplined and sanctified, reaching a higher level. As for 1 Corinthians 11:32, I don't particularly see how you at all view that as compatible with your view of justification and perseverance of the saints. It presents God's discipline as causal in preventing future condemnation of justified believers. That means that the supposed one-time act of justification is, itself, insufficient, even while being necessary. - I agree that Aaron is a type of Christ. I just don't believe that God voluntaristically chose to act at this moment solely due to that association without an actual "connection" with Aaron and what he was doing. Part 3 of 4 - I agree that God doesn't say the bronze serpent has magical powers. Sure, later on, the people worshipped it and it had to be destroyed by King Hezekiah. They attributed power and honor to it *irrespective* of God and what God had done *through* it, and that's idolatry. That's why I thought it important to clarify in my last response that things cannot have power to have efficacious results, like propitiating temporal wrath, apart from God's agency. Yes, the serpent was a type of Christ. This is not an area of disagreement between us. I just don't accept any suggestion that the serpent was, in nature and accidents, just a statue, just something sitting there, serving as the ***occasion*** whereby God would voluntaristically act. - The fact that Phinehas is commended and even rewarded isn't because he was a symbolic placeholder, but because God was truly acting through him in such a way that he produced efficacious results. Is he a type of Christ, yes, the difference being that we have spiritual results in view. 2) The rituals actually having causal power does not gut the ritual of its true purpose because it can still point to Christ. There is no necessary empty ritualism, particularly when the true purpose is taken into consideration and when the details as to what makes the ritual efficacious are taken into consideration. I disagree with the notion that the ritual must be reduced to a sign of what God has already done; the ritual can be the means by which God is doing something. You've even spoken about it as a means. This is where the rubber meets the road; means = causes, and it is disingenuous, in my opinion, for Protestants to treat things as instrumental means yet deny that they are true, secondary causes. The two things are interchangeable. The hammer used to drive the nail is a secondary cause of the driving of the nail. This is basic causation. It could not drive the nail unless its nature in some way allowed for such and empowered it to do such. *I never argued that external rituals ***alone*** had intrinsic power. Remember, we believe that the person withholding in confession is not absolved, that the people having a wedding can have an invalid marriage, etc. When internal loyalty towards God was lacking, God did not delight in given external rituals. You are right that Jesus attacks the empty ritualism of external works alone. Good thing neither of us would defend that. - Yes, God rejects rituals offered up by idolaters, but that's not because they cannot propitiate in a temporal sense. Where we are disagreeing is on the notion that (temporal) propitiation is an act of worship and that it is causal by humans. - I agree that honoring God is part of the point, but so is the people indicating the heartfelt willingness to offer to God that which has value to them, and in that respect, their "actions" do have an intrinsically valuable quality. - In the case of Psalm 51, we aren't talking about propitiation of God in the sense of David escaping temporal misfortune. Did you see what Nathan said would befall him, or what Psalm 32 says he suffered? Psalm 51 is primarily concerned with David being forgiven of his sins, spiritually. Yes, animal sacrifice should be offered with a broken and contrite heart. We don't disagree on that. I'm not arguing that the animal sacrifices of the haughty please God. - How is the tax collector praying to God and asking to receive mercy not a ritual? That isn't me saying that the ritual causes the forgiveness of sins apart from the power of God. - King Saul was clearly lying through his teeth, or doing something like the Corban abuse we see in the Gospels. Samuel isn't disregarding the value of rituals, but is utilizing a Semitism in his dichotomy. Similar to God desiring mercy not sacrifice, God desires obedience more than sacrifices. More than doesn't allow for a radical dichotomy perceived through a dialectical approach. Here's a question for you. When Jesus forgave the paralytic's sins in Matthew 9:2, did he do so through divine energy alone, human energy alone, or both? Part 4 of 4 3) The Aaronic priesthood was not serving in a "solely" symbolic capacity, even if primarily so. I'm glad you grant that there were deadly consequences for them failing to follow the rituals properly. That either means that something about the nature of the acts was a certain way or was changed, or that God merely occasionalistically, voluntaristically chose to become involved at different points. I don't disagree that irreverence and forgetting the point of the rituals played a key role. As for unworthy Eucharistic reception, I maintain that the Corinthians were experiencing an eschatological foretaste of judgment. - Aarons sons were *also* to "bear the iniquity" of the congregation, according to Leviticus 10:16-17. Yet they had no sins imputed to them, were not punished as penal substitutes, etc., suggesting that "bear the sin" means something else apart from what Protestants typically think. Even when we look at where Jesus is said to bear the diseases of the people, in fulfillment of Scripture, specifically Psalm 51, Jesus does not contract the diseases, and he does not legally by imputation become a leper or blind man or anything along those lines. Again, certainly the ritual prefigures Christ. We agree on that. I am obviously not trying to argue that the Levitical priests could actually take away sins (Heb. 10:4). They could, at best, alleviate temporal consequences of sins. To be honest, I think you have missed a major argument from my initial response to you prior to this thread, and that is that, even if we focus on the typological side of this, as we should, it becomes manifestly clear that the Yom Kippur ritual did not work in such a way that it truly prefigures Christ dying on the cross such that Christ dying on the cross is a legitimate fulfillment if is propitiatory work is to be reduced to that particular act. I'm specifically arguing that Hebrews gives us indications that, just as the Israelite sacrifices did not temporally do anything solely on the basis of death of the animals alone, Christ's own sacrifice is not reducible to him dying alone. There is no sense in which we can say that Christ had sin imputed to himself, suffered the full wrath of the Father for such, such that there is "no wrath left for us." That zero-sum understanding is not communicated by Hebrews. Even Christ entering the heavenly sanctuary, and doing so in his role of priest, and offering himself in that context, is Christ doing POST-DEATH ACTIONS akin to the post-death actions done by the High Priest on Yom Kippur. Such does not fit with Protestant appeals to John 19:30, Protestant arguments against the sacrifice of the Mass, and Penal Substitutionary Atonement on the whole. Hebrews should be focusing on the death, the death, the death, not post-death actions by Christ and how they parallel Levitical ones, if the Protestant understanding of the atonement is correct. But that's not what we see, now is it? You mentioned Hebrews 7:25 earlier and granted that it was in some sense priestly. Well, the actions the High Priest did in the sanctuary were propitiatory, and Jesus' actions seem to parallel that. If Christ entering heaven itself has a propitiatory aspect to it, then you can't reduce his propitiation to the cross. SKUNK: This is my response. Let me know if you agree or disagree. Part 1 “As for future sins being forgiven at the moment of justification, I do not agree… Such obviously has no analog with the way the Mosaic sacrificial system worked” However, as Hebrews 7:27 makes the point of contrasting the old priesthood of Aaron with the new priesthood of Christ, the whole purpose of the daily reminders of sins was to teach Israel by repetition that those animals could never take away sin but that they should look toward the true Lamb of God who “once for all” offered Himself. The only analogy that Moses’ sacrificial system was meant to serve is that blood of a perfect sinless sacrifice had to be spilt for them. “When we pray the Lord's Prayer, we ask God to forgive our trespasses…” In that prayer, we call God “Our Father” which speaks to the intimacy of the believers’s spiritual relationship to God. And God is a faithful God who —we agree— is a faithful Father who disciplines His children. So this “forgiveness” we ask in this prayer cannot be the forgiveness of sins that God declares as removed from us by the once-for-all sacrifice of His Son, in the same sense. But when we view “forgiveness” in the sphere of the familial relationship, we see it relates to the same cleansing of the feet by Jesus, the same lack of peace of unrepentant David in Ps 32:3, and the same disciplinary act of the Father in Mt 18:35. “Did Jesus offer himself up as a sacrifice for your future sins? Absolutely.” So He did offer Himself on the cross for all your sins. Does it follow then that your justification is NOT a final act of God based on the merit of Christ’s work on the cross, which CAN be rescinded by your sins? Part 2 “what you appear to be suggesting is a sort of parallelism…occasionalism of course being the denial of secondary causes.” The examples I gave show that God commands people to perform a physical ritual, then He supernaturally acts. And the purpose of such commands is to teach an object lesson that points to a deeper truth. This is not a coincidence, or happenstance. This affair of rituals is wholly orchestrated by God Himself. But nowhere in the passages does it suggest that God infused some divine power into the physical things themselves; in fact, we have a clear example of disapproval from God when people have thought that way (the worship of the bronze serpent). “The man using a hammer as a means to drive a nail is not the sole cause of the driving of the nail.” While I understand the analogy, I don’t see how that argues against the completely ordinary nature of the physical things involved in rituals. The Scripture testifies to their natural state, and that they are used as types, meaning as object lessons to point people to a deeper truth. When I say “means to mitigate wrath,” I mean there is an obvious causal connection between the wrath being mitigated and the physical act that mitigated it. But there is an essential difference between saying that the reason for the connection is that those physical acts are infused with intrinsic divine power (which would make them just as powerful as God), and saying that those physical acts are infused with meaning that God means to teach people by effecting a miracle as a result of the act. And I’m saying the latter. “the parting of the Red Sea, as if God alone did it and Moses played no causal role whatsoever…” On the contrary, that’s a perfect example of how God uses Moses as a means in order to accomplish a goal of meaning: that is, that Moses is His appointed man who is authorized to represent Him. It clearly shows that Moses’ stick, while connected to the miracle, is not responsible for producing the east wind that parts the Red Sea. This is an event that argues in my favour. “…otherwise they could not have particular effects, and would be mere symbolic stand-ins.” They ARE symbolic, which is why the writer of Hebrews says that the blood animals could not take away sin. They were only meant to serve as object lessons. But the implication that these physical acts must be empowered by God and directly responsible for the miracles is to rob God of the glory of being the One who performs the miracles. I believe this is a simple and reasonable thing to understand: Moses stretched out his hand, but it is God who sweeps back the Red Sea with the east wind. It is the disciples who cast out demons, but it’s really God who does it. “…whereas those who died in the desert prefigured those who won't make it into heaven due to lack of faith…” Granted, it is true that the Israelites who died in the wilderness is a type of those who do not make it to heaven. But I was also making another analogy that Israel as a nation chosen and predestined by God DID make it to Canaan, albeit through painful disciplines it received along the way. And Paul speaks of Israel as an example to learn from, and he’s talking to believing Corinthians in 1Co 10. Sidenote: The eternal security of believers has been nailed down and sealed by the words of Jesus who called Himself as the Good Shepherd who loses not one of His sheep, and by Paul who says there is no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And I don’t know where to even end, because the Bible is so clear about this issue. The apostasy you’re talking about refers to those who never believed in the first place (1Jn 2:19). But I digress. This is not the topic I’m focusing on here. Part 3 “The rituals actually having causal power does not gut the ritual of its true purpose because it can still point to Christ.” Thus far, you have not demonstrated beyond doubt that the actual rituals themselves have causal power. The Bible is clear that it is God every single time who is the One who performs the miracles. But IF the rituals did have causal power, then do you believe the animal sacrifices TRULY propitiated for people’s sins? Remember, Hebrews 10:4 says they do not. But IF the rituals did have causal power to effect physical relief from divine wrath (not spiritual relief), again Hebrews 10:4 refutes that. “…it is disingenuous, in my opinion, for Protestants to treat things as instrumental means yet deny that they are true, secondary causes… The hammer…” Again, I understand the analogy of the hammer. It makes perfect sense that God uses secondary causes to accomplish His goal. He does it through angels and demons, as well as men. However, when we talk about men performing miracles, I’m making the distinction that men have no such power within himself; therefore it is God who performs it, not men. The whole reason why God commissions certain men to perform miracles is not so that men can have superpowers, but so that God can authenticate them as His true representatives before the world. Therefore, when it comes to miracles and the mitigating of temporal punishment (temporal as in physical, according to my definition, not yours), I am not thinking of the “means” like a hammer is a means, but I am thinking of the “means” like God has made this particular ritual a condition by which He will perform a miracle or not send pestilence because He wants to illustrate some meaningful truth about the coming Saviour of the world. “I never argued that external rituals ***alone*** had intrinsic power.” Fine. But I am arguing that the external rituals have no intrinsic power no matter who performs it, PERIOD. Their sole purpose is to serve as a sign that points to a lesson that God wants to teach. And the Scriptures testifies to this fact. Even godly David saw sacrifices as completely irrelevant to getting right with God. This speaks to the fine distinction between salvation by internal faith and repentance which produces works and sacrifices VS. salvation by works and sacrifices without the internal faith. “Where we are disagreeing is on the notion that (temporal) propitiation is an act of worship and that it is causal by humans.” It is indisputable that the acts of worship (i.e. the rituals) DOES propitiate temporal wrath, and the propitiation is based on whether the humans have done the rituals or not. But again, the rituals are able to move God as such, ONLY because God Himself either prescribed it or wanted to make an example out of it for the purpose of teaching about a deeper truth. “In the case of Psalm 51, we aren't talking about propitiation of God in the sense of David escaping temporal misfortune… Psalm 32…” Ps 32 shows the effect of a guilty conscience and bottling up one’s sin without confessing them to God. And David did feel such guilt that started affecting his physical health. I think we agree on this. Ps 51 does talk about propitiation of God both in the temporal (earthly) as well as spiritual sense, because He not only talks about the future of his kingdom, but also his own sins. I believe it is the reasonable interpretation to say that David is hypothetically posing that if animal sacrifices had actual propitiatory effect, he would certainly offer them for his sins. But just like the TAX COLLECTOR who says “Have mercy on me a sinner,” David knows that the only way to be justified is to completely fall on God’s mercy. Again, David affirms that animal sacrifices have no propitiatory effect whatsoever. “How is the tax collector praying to God and asking to receive mercy not a ritual?” Because a ritual is an external act that is prescribed by God, not only for worship, but also for the purpose of teaching a greater truth. The repentance of the tax collector is an internal act. And Jesus makes is indisputable that we are comparing external rituals with a completely internal thing devoid of any external performance; there is absolutely no biblical evidence that you must beat your chest 50 times or more for example. Jesus makes a clear distinction between the Pharisee and the tax collector; and the distinction is that the Pharisee seeks justification before God on the basis of his works and his many rituals. The tax collector seeks justification on the basis of sheer mercy of God. And that is the point of the story. To say that the broken spirit of the tax collector itself has intrinsic propitiatory effect is to completely miss the point of the story. “Samuel isn't disregarding the value of rituals, but is utilizing a Semitism in his dichotomy.” There is a need to be extremely precise here. The whole point of Samuel’s monologue is to completely shoot down any lingering thought that what Saul has done is even a little bit commendable. And the issue is offering worship to God. “To obey is better than sacrifice” despite the fact that God Himself prescribed the animal sacrifices, because God does not accept an empty ritual used as an excuse to justify disobedience. That is hypocritical worship. And it certainly brings no earthly propitiatory effect from God. “When Jesus forgave the paralytic's sins in Matthew 9:2, did he do so through divine energy alone, human energy alone, or both?” To say that the completely helpless and miserable paralytic who does not even have the energy to pick up his mat contributed in any way to his forgiveness of sins is to completely miss the reason why Jesus decides to make an example out of him by declaring to everyone that his sins are forgiven. The point is that forgiveness is completely based on God’s choice and God’s mercy, and that no human can ever earn it or contribute to it. This is why it is a complete twisting of the meaning of “the contrite and broken spirit” of the tax collector if you think that that is a work or a ritual. Part 4 “Yet they had no sins imputed to them, were not punished as penal substitutes, etc., suggesting that "bear the sin" means something else apart from what Protestants typically think…specifically Psalm 51, Jesus does not contract the diseases, and he does not legally by imputation become a leper or blind man or anything along those lines.” Do you mean Isaiah 53 rather than Ps 51? Even so, I really don’t know what kind of argument this is. Maybe you can clarify. But the prescribed rituals of the priesthood are all symbolic in nature. And while God does not require human sacrifice, the priest symbolically “bears the sins” of Israel and stones for them. The picture of propitiatory death is made by the animal sacrifices. This indeed prefigures Christ, who is the reality that the priesthood points to. And while Jesus did not physically become a leper, a paralytic, etc., it is Christianity 101 that He became the sin-bearer and the substitute who stood in the place of all His people and bore the infinite wrath of God on the cross, the experience which is infinitely worse than any earthly effect of sin (Is 53:10). “just as the Israelite sacrifices did not temporally do anything solely on the basis of death of the animals alone, Christ's own sacrifice is not reducible to him dying alone.” The point of Hebrews is that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is actually propitiatory, while the animal sacrifices were a mere picture of Christ. The Hebrews is not making any point that there was anything lacking in the animal sacrifices that made them unable to fulfill their purpose. No, it DID fulfill their purpose as a mere picture of Christ. And there is also no point in Hebrews made about Christ’s sacrifice being insufficient in propitiating the spiritual wrath of God. “There is no sense in which we can say that Christ had sin imputed to himself, suffered the full wrath of the Father for such, such that there is "no wrath left for us.”” I cannot reject your position here strongly enough. Again, I maintain that this is the most basic, FOUNDATIONAL understanding of the gospel of Christ. Paul affirms that there is no condemnation left for those who are in Christ, which is the whole basis for singing praises to God and so much joy present everywhere in the NT even in persecution. And Hebrews says that Christ has been imputed the sins of His people once for all on the cross, which is the reason why the new covenant is a better covenant than the Mosaic covenant, and why He is coming back for His believing people without further reference to the need for propitiate for their sins. “Even Christ entering the heavenly sanctuary, and doing so in his role of priest, and offering himself in that context, is Christ doing POST-DEATH ACTIONS akin to the post-death actions done by the High Priest on Yom Kippur.” This is a glaringly obvious unwillingness to come to terms with the point Hebrews is making. The symbolic imagery is of the high priest entering the Holy of Holies with the animal blood, which pictures Christ entering heaven after His once for all “It is finished” sacrifice, NOT LIKE the high priest who “enters the holy place year by year with blood not his own, otherwise He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world” (Heb 9:25,26). The point is that Christ’s post-death actions of His resurrection and ascension do not add to His propitiatory work on the cross; it only affirms that God accepts His once for all sacrifice. As Paul says, “He who was delivered over because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification” (Ro 4:25). “Well, the actions the High Priest did in the sanctuary were propitiatory, and Jesus' actions seem to parallel that.” That is absolutely the wrong conclusion. The intercessory work of Christ on behalf of His people in Hebrews 7:25 is solely based on His completed work of having drunk the cup of God’s infinite wrath and not leaving one drop of it left for any of His people. This is why John calls Jesus the “Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous,” because “He Himself is the propitiation for our sins” (1Jn 2:1,2). Fifth Opponent TOPIC: IMPUTATION
SKUNK: In the Bible, every true believer in God and Christ is called a Saint. SEAN: People often bring this up as if it is some sort of "gotcha" against the Catholic position. It's not. I teach my 6th, 7th, and 8th graders that all the members of the body of Christ, in heaven, in purgatory, and on earth, are "saints" or "holy ones." The Catechism of the Catholic Church backs me up on this SKUNK: Not at all. I'm not trying to do a "gotcha" thing, and run away. I am establishing what I think is a good proposition to start a debate with. So every true believer is a Saint. So what is this "canonizing someone as a Saint" business? SEAN: Thank you for the clarification. It is greatly appreciated. Canonization has to do with discerning whether or not a person is a *heavenly* saint (we often use a capital s for Saint in those cases as a quick reference differentiation). It is a multi-step process. SKUNK: Is there a believer in heaven who is not considered a saint? SEAN: No, there is not. There are, however, those who are heavenly Saints who have not been formally canonized. Formal canonization only applies to "some" of those who are in heaven. The random, unnamed soldier dying in relative obscurity in some battle back in the Middle Ages could very well be a heavenly Saint as well. I would say we don't know who the vast majority of the heavenly Saints are. SKUNK: so you seem to be saying there are at least two different categorizations for giving someone the status of a "saint," using the word in a different sense. I do not see that in Scripture. Every believer, chosen, purchased and owned by the Lord Jesus, sealed to their glorious destiny by the Holy Spirit, will be made sinless and conformed to the image of Christ, is called a saint. The only distinction I see in eternal heaven is: Every believer's eternal rewards will be different, depending on their works on earth, but they are all equally "holy ones" of God, covered with Christ's righteousness. SEAN: Insofar as your own theology grants that those who are in heaven are 100% sinless and sanctified and you, I'd imagine by your own admission, are not, don't we by a matter of logical necessity have two different categorizations? Heavenly Saints = 100% sanctified. You, me, etc., < 100% sanctified. Even if you want to say that all believers are equally holy, "holiness" in a Protestant paradigm seems to encompass the two separate realms of justification and sanctification, such that there is effectively legal holiness and interior/moral/ontological holiness...such that you're really only saying that all believers are equally legally holy, and you're NOT saying that all believers are equally morally holy or ontologically holy. I see some big issues with the legal category, not the least of which are these: - if you are all *equally* legally holy, then why don't you all get equal rewards? Unequal rewards seems to involve Jesus peeking under the veil of imputed righteousness such that he sees and then takes into account the disparate levels of personal moral holiness on the basis of works and that this then determines the disparate levels of rewards. - if you are all equally legally holy, are you equally legally holy along with Jesus? I find this terribly problematic. We may share in his holiness, but there's no reason to construe sharing in solely binary terms. So does imputation logically make us equal with Christ in holiness or not? If it does, I think that there's a risk of blaphemously treading on Christ's unique prerogatives (ironic, given this topic), as well as making the disparate levels of rewards not make much sense. SKUNK: If we define "saint" as being completely glorified, having shed the fleshly "body of death" as Paul calls it, and perfectly conformed to the image of Christ, then I say that no believer on earth can be called a saint, because none have arrived yet. And YET, we have ample examples of writers of NT calling the believers as "saints," which we have no choice but to come to terms with. And I personally choose to stick with the way the Bible defines "saint" and how the Bible uses the word. Clearly, there is a great significance here of being called a saint while yet in the flesh, which you have recognized and brought up the important consequence of such understanding of "saint." I am arguing that since (Not if) the Bible calls believers saints, the word cannot be referring to their moral perfection because no believer on earth has it yet; Paul in 1Th 4 calls believers to pursue "sanctification" or "holiness." Paul himself cries out in Ro 7 for the remaining sin in his body that prevents him from perfectly serving God. I am arguing that it is referring to their legal standing before God AS WELL AS their complete inner transformation from "slave of sin" to "slave of righteousness." - "...Jesus peeking under the veil of imputed righteousness such that he sees and then takes into account the disparate levels of personal moral holiness on the basis of works and that this then determines the disparate levels of rewards." Yes, Jesus teaches the disparate levels of final rewards awaiting His people, depending on their sacrifices and efforts, for example, as He teaches in Mt 25 in the Parable of the Talents. I see no issue with this. Maybe you can elaborate on the issue. - "if you are all equally legally holy, are you equally legally holy along with Jesus? I find this terribly problematic..." I don't see how this is problematic. Paul says Christ has become our righteousness in 1Co 1. Paul also says believers have died with Christ and risen with Him in Ro 6. What prerogatives of Jesus are we encroaching upon? Maybe you can elaborate. SEAN: Again, I think we entirely agree on the term "saint" being applicable to those who are glorified and perfectly sanctified as well as to those who are here on earth still being sanctified, and that we entirely agree that those who are in heaven are different in that they have been glorified and perfectly sanctified. Our area of difference centers around how far this difference goes beyond just that and what justification means for all of this. I agree that the term "saint" is not referring to moral perfection when it comes to the earthly saints. I might argue that, given your paradigm where there is a distinction between justification and sanctification, there is potentially some obscurity and room for diversity as to the question of what "holy one" is talking about - is it talking solely of justification and imputed righteousness? Is it talking solely of sanctification and interior holiness? Is it talking about both in some way? You appear to be saying that it is talking about both. For my part, I don't believe, at all, in what I would term legal/forensic/extrinsic righteousness, period. So there is *only* ontological/moral/intrinsic righteousness, given as a gift by God and into which we grow as he continues to sanctify us. There is some nuance here, because while I don't accept a "legal realm of reality" I do acknowledge a distinction between the initial transferral from being out of the state of grace to being in the state of grace...and subsequent growth in that grace. I just don't think that there is an notional distinction between what is happening in both cases, an essential distinction, as opposed to an accidental one. That is to say, God making a person righteous in the first place when the person is not is, for me, God ontologically changing the person, and God subsequently doing more within the person to change the person is the same essential divine act happening but with the accidents being different. There is a difference, to use an analogy, between pouring water into an empty container and pouring MORE water into a partially filled container, but the essential action - pouring water - remains the same. In contrast, your paradigm has God doing two separate divine acts. Since Scripture so adamantly and blatantly teaches disparate levels of rewards in the passages you mention, and elsewhere, it is something that both of our paradigms have to address. What I am alluding to with this being a problem for your position and not for my position is that if each believer has the righteousness of Christ imputed to him, that is akin to a teacher taking the student who got a 100% on the Math test and attributing that score in the grade book to the rest of the class, entirely irrespective of what those other students got on their own math tests. If "getting less than 100% on the test" is akin to failing to fulfill the supposed covenant of works, then God taking incorrect answers on said tests, i.e. imperfect fulfillment of said covenant, into consideration when doling out temporal heavenly rewards, poses a serious problem. The whole idea of the imputed veil is for God to not LOOK at our "tests" and to look at Christ's instead because if he looked at ours he would fail us (damn us). It's a way of bypassing a cause of wrath against us, a cause that is redirected onto Christ (which poses its own problems). God looking at those causes of wrath in order to decide "you get less temporal rewards than someone else" is thus akin to peeking under the veil of imputed righteousness. It gives us reason for pause regarding the classical Protestant paradigm, since disparate rewards much more naturally fits with the Catholic paradigm where God is very much aware of our remaining imperfections and they are more-so attributed to an essential-accidental distinction. Becoming "just" in that sense is not like a profaned temple being legally declared fit for worship of God, distinct from it being made so fit. Instead, becoming just in that sense is like a profaned temple having God himself enter into its holy of holies to make it acceptable and signify approval yet still subsequently purifying the other parts of the temple. When the Holy Spirit himself indwells us, it is pretty hard to hold to total depravity such that we need an imputational veil because God would otherwise call us condemned and unfit for worship. If we are all accredited with Jesus' "perfect score" then we should all get equal rewards. If a teacher credited every student in the class with the A+ one child got, then the teacher couldn't very well consistently give that child 10 pieces of candy for an A+ on the exam, and the other children 8 pieces. Nor could the teacher look at the individual tests of all those other students and dole out different amounts of candy. I get that your theologians try to differentiate between the eternal reward and temporal rewards, but nothing in the biblical text allows for Christ's supposed imputed righteousness "only" addressing the eternal reward and not addressing the temporal rewards. I really think this whole thing is just a negative consequence of Protestantism uncritically and to some extent unwittingly adopting nominalist metaphysics and epistemology, without which the very notion of non-reflective forensic imputation is just unthinkable. Paul certainly talks about Christ becoming our righteousness; you will get no argument from me. What I am getting at is the notion that EVERY BELIEVER is JUST AS HOLY, and JUST AS RIGHTEOUS, as Jesus, even if only in a legal sense. To illustrate why I think this is a problem, let's consider two things: what Scripture says about us reigning with Christ and being seated with him, and what Scripture says about the one who tries to sit in Christ's place as if he has *equal* claim to sit there when he does not. You agree that there is a difference, but why is there a difference? Well, we can be seated with Christ and share in his righteousness in a non-equal and non-infinite sense, whereas the antichrist is literally "imputing to himself" Christ's position and prerogatives. SKUNK: Yes, I think you’re right. The difference in our paradigms is in the “why” we would call believers on earth “saints.” As you pointed out, the essential difference lies in our understanding of the doctrine of imputation/justification (which incidentally affects our view of the security of salvation for believers). “…Is it talking about both in some way? You appear to be saying that it is talking about both.” Yes, I am saying that believers on earth are called “saints” because of the imputation of righteousness as well as the inner transformation (change in profession, from slave of sin to slave of righteousness) that occurs simultaneously with the event of justification/imputation. Again, all the moral imperatives to do good works in the Lord are only the recognitions that believers have new duties according to their new profession as slaves of God; they can sometimes get distracted and fail to do their duties, hence suffer the Lord’s discipline; but their moral failures do not change the fact that they are now “saints” in the Lord. “There is some nuance here, because while I don't accept a ‘legal realm of reality’….” I had to think more carefully about how I respond to this paragraph, because like you say, there is a subtlety here that is very much an essential difference between our paradigms. Your assessment of my paradigm is accurate. I want to restate my position quickly. I also believe there is an “initial transferral,” but I believe it is a decisive, ultimate act of God who transfers sinners from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His beloved Son, i.e. legal justification and imputation of righteousness on the basis of the person’s faith. In other words, God no longer holds any account of sins against the man, and legally declares him righteous, to perpetuity. Simultaneously (being a correlation without causation), I believe God ontologically and essentially changes the man’s inner nature, so that he no longer is a sinner who can only sin but a saint who can only obey (who must now war against his sinfulness left in his humanity). So yes, I believe there are two separate but simultaneous divine acts: the imputation of righteousness upon the believer, and the regeneration of the person’s inner essence. If God will legally declare someone righteous, He cannot do so because He made them righteous; in other words, the imputation/justification is not caused by the regeneration. So I take issue with your analogy, because while it does consider that being sanctified (in the sense of conforming to the moral image of Christ) is one fluid act of God that lasts the duration of someone’s life, it does not consider the act that took place before filling up the empty vessel with water. I say that the vessel was a non-viable vessel to begin with; it first needed to be remodelled, washed, and made fit for use before it can hold any water. “Since Scripture so adamantly and blatantly teaches disparate levels of rewards in the passages you mention, and elsewhere…” Yes, I agree with your analogy. But to make your analogy weirder: After attributing the 100% mark to the rest of class and 0% mark to the one kid who got 100%, the teacher gives out candies as rewards to the entire class, which was meant for the kid. Then the teacher punishes the 100% kid by hitting him with a ruler for every 0% mark he received, a punishment that was meant for every 0% kid in the class (which is the entire class). Even weirder, the 100% kid agreed to this unfair exchange, and both the teacher and the kid are in on it. The disparate levels of reward system that I am referring to is not talking about this equal 100% mark attribution and the consequent reward of imputed righteousness. That’s why I believe the Parable of the Labourers in Mt 20 is talking about a different kind of reward than the Parable of the Talents in Mt 25. In the first parable, all you had to do was show up; in the second, you had to deploy every ingenuity and skill and was rewarded accordingly. I still see no issue therefore. “God looking at those causes of wrath in order to decide ‘you get less temporal rewards than someone else’ is thus akin…” I disagree. I believe God is not taking away rewards, but giving rewards as appropriate to righteous works done on earth. The punishment for sin has been done away with. All that remains is rewards. However, even in your analogy, God must first purify the temple which was otherwise profane and unfit for use. The Holy of Holies was non-existent until God invaded the soul. Not at all; I am not saying that man stays utterly depraved slave of sin even after being imputed the righteousness of Christ. He is simultaneously transformed by the Holy Spirit’s indwelling, as I say, in his very essential core. This is an important question: do we need the imputation of righteousness at all when God starts to indwell us as His temple? Yes. God’s justice must be satisfied through imputation of guilt unto Christ and righteousness unto believing sinners. “I get that your theologians try to differentiate between the eternal reward and temporal rewards…” I have two questions for you then. You can maybe show me how to understand these properly:
“To illustrate why I think this is a problem, let's consider two things: what Scripture says about us reigning with Christ and being seated with him…” This is a strawman. Imputation does not mean deification. Believers are called slaves of God even in heaven, so being seated with and reigning with Christ does not mean usurpation of authority; it means servitude and fellowship. SEAN: I do think that if we don't have agreement on the existence of a legal realm of reality we somewhat hit a wall; to me, your paradigm ultimately involves an untenable nominalism-realism hybrid position. I agree that the initial transferral is a "decisive, ultimate act of God who transfers sinners from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved Son," yet I just see no reason to think that this transferral is effectively a nominal reality. An ontological change involves something actually changing, whereas a forensic/extrinsic change ends up being just a nominal change. I'm glad that you added "being a correlation without causation" because it does come across as actually being a sort of "two parallel tracks" thing going on. I don't have any problem with you saying that the vessel needs to be changed to be made able to hold water. Sure. Preparation is necessary. I just don't think the assigning of a new legal status is what that preparation is, or even in any way part of that preparation. With respect to the teacher punishing the kid 100% by hitting him with a ruler, this is where PSA really starts to show its weak points both logically and exegetically. Jesus *didn't* get our full punishment; he didn't spiritually die, he didn't go to hell, he didn't get "handed over to" sinful behavior (Romans 1), and he didn't have concupiscence. Thing after thing that is part of humanity's punishment for sin is something he escapes from in a completely unscathed manner. So I argue that Penal Substitutionary Atonement has a serious problem in that it falls onto the horns of a dilemma: predicate all of those things of the Son, and ultimately undermine orthodox Christology such that Jesus cannot save us from our sins because he is not God, and is not even sinless, or otherwise commit the fallacy of equivocation by saying he "suffered the full wrath of the Father" when you mean a thing ENTIRELY different from what is meant by "we deserved the full wrath of the Father for our sins." If he needed to suffer our full penalty, and quite obviously didn't, then he didn't save us from our sins. I'm aware of all of the supposed PSA prooftexts. I have counter-exegesis for every single one of them. Moreover, I have counter-texts, ones that I just don't think can be harmonized with it. Truth be told, I think PSA is pagan, and involves a misunderstanding of the NT. I think that it much better applies to the "god of this world" and "his" perspective on Jesus, Barabbas, etc., especially in the Gospel of John. Moreover, my take on Hebrews is that Jesus is disciplined *along with* us, rather than that he suffered wrath in our place in a zero-sum manner, and I have yet to encounter a pro-PSA explanation of the texts I have in mind that does a better job of explaining what they mean in context. As for the Parables, I'd be happy to look at each one of them and discuss them. I don't agree that the punishment for sin has been done away with; the negative consequences that justified believers experience is, intuitively, constantly commensurate with the offenses done that end up causing them, and I do not believe that we can create an artificial distinction between "legal punishment" and "natural consequences" that some try to make. The very fact that you still suffer body-soul separation as a result of your sins even after you are justified is God punishing you, and if Jesus entirely took your punishment in your place, you'd be physically immortal, invulnerable, and there would be a greater chance of you being raptured/assumed into heaven than of you physically dying. You say that God is not taking away rewards, which is interesting given how many Protestants say that 1 Cor. 3:12-15 is about the *loss of rewards* rather than punishment. For my part, I think that's a distinction without a difference. When my sister and I were little, we were fighting in the backseat of the car, and consequently missed out on a happy meal when McDonalds was giving out Mario toys. We thus couldn't get the Luigi one. Was that just a "loss of reward" (for good behavior), or was it ***also*** a punishment? I say both-and, not either/or, especially when zemiothesatai (suffer loss) is often used to refer to suffering punishment in the LXX. Paul could have chosen different wording if he wanted to exclude that avenue. I didn't mean to argue that you thought that man stayed "utterly" depraved as a slave of sin even after being imputed the righteousness of Christ. That would be one of the parallel tracks happening and its simultaneous, accidentally-related counterpart not happening. So it would be entirely unfair to say that you think the "temple" of our bodies and our souls is not being purified. The question is, is it actually being spiritually, ontologically purified, or is it instead just being "labelled" with the nominal designation of "clean." That's the issue here. It's effectively a nominalist band-aid because of a nominalist understanding of sin; man is viewed as ultimately consigned to hell because he isn't 100% perfect yet in all respects UNLESS God covers him over with a nominal predication of "perfect," such that God assigns to us the legal status of having fulfilled the covenant of works because Jesus did. Not only do I see no reason to maintain this is the case based on Romans 5 and other texts, but it is in some respects deferring to a more "Pelagian" prelapsarian anthropology, contra Augustine's. Augustine was a monocovenantalist, not a bicovenantalist. I greatly appreciate your two questions, actually, because I bring those same texts up when discussing this. This is good, in that we are on the same page. I'll answer your two questions, and ask two of my own.
Okay, my questions: 3) In Hebrews 13:13, we are told to bear the reproach that Christ bore. Since we do not suffer wrath, this seems to be saying that we suffer discipline as Christ did. How is this text compatible with PSA? 4) In Romans 4:4, logizomai does not appear to mean a nominal predication. Wages are counted as something due, rather than as a gift. That seems to be talking about a reflective recognition, because wages are something due by definition, by their very nature. They are thus assessed as being that, since logizomai in its 41 uses in the NT quite predominantly refers to a mental recognition of an object based on what it is. Isn't it more likely that 4:4 and 4:5 are both talking about reflective recognition, rather than the former talking about that and the latter about nominal predication, or both talking about nominal predication? I know imputation isn't "meant" to mean a deification. But the criticism is not about what Scripture says but about what is logically entailed by believers having the ENTIRE righteousness of Christ imputed to them. I'm not talking about what you propositionally/confessionally believe; I'm talking about what is logically necessitated by it if things are taken consistently. SKUNK: "I agree that the initial transferral is a 'decisive, ultimate act of God'..." As I say, the complete transformation of the person occurs simultaneously as the forensic justification; salvation comes initially in one package that unfolds and grows over time through training in righteousness and resulting in glorification. The transferral encapsulates not only the imputation, but also the regeneration of the soul. But I disagree with your characterization of even the forensic justification by itself as a nominal change, which suggests that there is no true basis for this legal declaration in the court of God's justice. I argue that the name changes from "condemned" to "justified" because there is a true deep change in their legal status, on the legitimate basis of the death and resurrection of Christ the Advocate. “I just don't think the assigning of a new legal status is what that preparation is, or even in any way part of that preparation.” I disagree. The vessels of wrath must first be made into vessels of mercy before God can use them. The vessel of mercy is not a vessel of mercy while wrath remains over its head. “Jesus *didn't* get our full punishment….” This dialogue really is the crux of the matter, pun intended. I could not disagree with you more. This is regarding the truth of the good news of Jesus Christ who is called the only Mediator between God and man precisely because of this doctrine of legal imputation. Jesus was tempted in every point as we are, and MORE SO tempted as the Son of God in ways than we ever could be (tempted, in the sense of being tested). Here’s a simple analogy: Every skinny boy can maybe hold a 5 lb dumbbell and give up after 10 seconds; a bodybuilder holds a 2000 lb barbell and never lets go for the rest of his life. Jesus was said to have been so brutally tested for 40 days that He even wasn’t distracted by hunger during that time. Jesus all his life was a “Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” Jesus “died spiritually” on the cross because He was separated from the Father, He drank the cup of God’s infinite wrath to the full on the cross. He was “handed over,” as I say, or abandoned by God the Father on the cross. If Jesus did not fully experience temptation and suffer thoroughly in place of sinners, then He could not fulfill the role of a merciful and faithful High Priest who can represent sinners, and stand as the one Mediator between God and man. Your analogy of the teacher punishing the 100% kid by imputation is still valid. “So I argue that Penal Substitutionary Atonement has a serious problem in that it falls onto the horns of a dilemma:…” I'm not sure I understand your reasoning here, but this seems like a false dilemma. I find no conflict in believing PSA as well as the deity and humanity of Christ. In fact, I argue that you cannot believe PSA unless you believe the hypostatic union. Jesus must both truly represent humanity and truly possess the divine capacity to drink down the cup of God's infinite wrath, in order to fulfill the role of the High Priest. “I’m aware of all of the supposed PSA prooftexts….” I would like to hear your counter-texts; let us examine them together. Also, you can’t claim you’re aware of all PSA proof texts, and not provide any counter-exegesis so your opponent can examine your hermeneutic. “I don't agree that the punishment for sin has been done away with;…” “If God remitted all punishment for sin, then you would be immediately given resurrection bodies, be immortal and refractory to all suffering” is a non-sequitur, and stems from the misunderstanding that being legally justified and transformed in your nature to be a slave of Christ means that you are immune from physical sufferings or even consequences. God saves us from the ultimate penalty of sin (i.e. the eternal wrath) as well as the power of sin through the Holy Spirit. But He has left the believers in their unredeemed physical fleshly body; as a result, believers still can marry and have babies, walk the earth as no different-looking from unregenerate people for all intents and purposes, have battles with temptations, can get sick with any kinds of illnesses (just as Timothy was). The apostles authoritatively characterize the death of believers as mere “sleep,” meaning that the sting of death has been taken away. There is no more condemnation; God is the one who justifies; the curse of the law has been removed through Christ’s substitutionary death and resurrection. But if you say that the physical sufferings including death are the evidence of God’s continuing wrath against sin, then I say: Christ died and rose from the dead in vain, and He did not accomplish the kind of salvation that the apostles claim; and all those who died believing have died in their sins and have perished for eternity; you have no guarantee of anyone having been accepted into Heaven. “You say that God is not taking away rewards, which is interesting given…” I mean, the eternal reward system is based proportionally on the believer’s efforts and sacrifices. Again, this is the Parable of the Talents. Yes, I do believe that God "peeks through the veil of imputed righteousness" and rewards each believer according to his works. But could it be construed also as God not giving rewards and simply burning away all the worthless accomplishments that the believer thought was worth something, and essentially suffering loss for his efforts? Clearly yes. But still, this reward system is in the context of those who have already been accepted into Heaven; “He will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.” You and your sister fought and were hence punished in the sense of a fatherly discipline. But I have a question for you: Did you or your sister cease being part of the family as a result? So with this illustration, you would have to recognize that there is a difference between legal punitive punishment and family-based remedial discipline. "I didn't mean to argue that you thought that man stayed "utterly" depraved as a slave of sin..." You say that PSA belittles the gravity and seriousness of sin, and that it apparently leads to anti-Augustine Pelagianism. This is a non-sequitur; in fact, PSA does the very opposite. First of all, we are all consigned to hell, not because we get some marks less than 100%, but because we get 0%. In God's eyes, we are worthless, utterly sinful, and UTTERLY INCAPABLE of any good works, and therefore worthy of being thrown into the trash heap of eternity (to use the imagery of Gehenna). This is due to the Original Sin (the genetic passing of the sin nature to all mankind, as discussed in Romans 5), rendering every natural child born in Adam UTTERLY UNABLE to love or obey God. The only reason why any natural man is able to instinctively do anything resembling the commandments of God is not because they are naturally righteous, but because of their even more heinous act of decoupling these laws hard-coded into the Imago Dei from God Himself (i.e. essentially attributing to themselves the glory of the moral law in order to establish their own righteousness, instead of giving God the credit; ref. Lk 18:9; Ro 10:3). Second, the only way anyone receives the ability to believe, love and obey God is if God predestines and chooses to regenerate and make alive the dead soul. The Scripture is clear about God's unilateral sovereignty in saving souls from eternal judgment. Third, to think that the mercy of God and the righteous wrath of God could be reconciled in any other way than the Penal Substitutionary Atonement through the death and resurrection of the Son of God is to belittle the gravity and seriousness of sin. Sin is so infinitely heinous and the cup of God's anger so bottomlessly deep, that there can be no forgiveness for sinners apart from the incarnate God Himself being imputed the sins of His people and drinking God's cup down to its dregs. Also, sinners are thoroughly sinful and worthless, that they cannot stand justified before God apart from Christ's righteousness imputed to them. This is far from the idea that God is in heaven flippantly throwing down paper-thin labels; the fact that justification is a free gift of God received through the sinner's faith does not mean that it was not earned at immense cost to God. 1. You are right. I agree with your interpretation of 2Co 5:21, that Jesus who knew no sin (i.e. was sinless, without any moral blemish) was made sin (i.e. was made a sin offering, as pictured by all the animal sacrifices, especially the goat of "sin" and Azazel the scapegoat upon whose head was pronounced all the sins of Israel on Yom Kippur). But you say you do not see imputation in this OT imagery that Paul alludes to; Why not? 2. Yes, you are right. Proverbs 17:15 also says the same. And yes, we must harmonize Scripture with Scripture. God says in these texts that He upholds absolute justice. Here is the dilemma: These texts would mean that all would perish in eternity, because all sinned. So whether justification is nominal predication or reflective recognition, this text would contradict Romans 4:5, and we know the Scripture cannot contradict itself. Romans 4 says that some are given mercy because they believe; they are thus justified; their sins are not counted against them, their lawless deeds are forgiven, and their faith is credited as righteousness. So how can God who is a just Judge - who must punish all sin - justify the ungodly? 3. Thank you for the question. Hebrews 13:13 follows the immediate preceding text - also the preceding chapters - that says Christ "made holy" His people through His substitutionary death outside the camp (i.e. rejected by Israel) in the same way the goat of "sin" on Yom Kippur figuratively cleansed Israel. The following verse - verse 14 - gives a proper context as to how we should go out to Christ outside the camp and bear Christ's reproach. The writer of Hebrews is calling for the cowardly Jews who are still sitting on the fence about Christ despite their full knowledge of His identity as the Messiah and "Archaegos" and "Aitios" of salvation, to make decisive commitment to publicly confess Jesus is Lord and identify with Him, and be willing to face ostracization and persecution from the world. He is simply calling for true, unashamed faith in Christ who ONCE FOR ALL offered up Himself as a sacrifice for sin. 4. The word "logizomai," just like any other word, must be interpreted according to its context. But the word basically means "perspective," or "categorical conclusion," either a true or a false one. Christ was "reckoned" with transgressors. The pagans were afraid that Artemis would be "reckoned" as nothing. Romans 4:4 is saying that a worker's wages is "reckoned" or rightly viewed as what is due, not as a free handout. Paul goes on to say that faith is "reckoned" as righteousness, though the person is "ungodly." This language demands the existence of the legal sphere wherein justification is applied to the person despite the person's not having earned it. Again, this is not a nominal predication, but a true recognition of Christ's real righteousness (which He Himself earned) that covers the person. "I know imputation isn't "meant" to mean a deification..." I hope my above responses afford a clarity as to how I see that imputation of complete righteousness of Christ does not logically lead to deification, but actually leads to complete legal justification, the only kind of justification that is approved by a holy and just God. SEAN: //As I say, the complete transformation of the person occurs simultaneously as the forensic justification; salvation comes initially in one package that unfolds and grows over time through training in righteousness and resulting in glorification. The transferral encapsulates not only the imputation, but also the regeneration of the soul.// Well, to make things simple, the main issue here is that you believe in a legal-only realm of reality whereas I do not. While it seems to me that Protestants *have* to accept some form of realism given basic Christian theology (e.g. the Trinity requires a person-nature distinction, and so does the Incarnation), Catholics *don't* have to similarly accept some form of nominalism. //But I disagree with your characterization of even the forensic justification by itself as a nominal change, which suggests that there is no true basis for this legal declaration in the court of God's justice. I argue that the name changes from "condemned" to "justified" because there is a true deep change in their legal status, on the legitimate basis of the death and resurrection of Christ the Advocate.// I think you're missing my point. It's not as if there is legal status and the terminology we use to refer to it; your paradigm has the names used AS the reality itself. That is to say, God saying, "Just!" or "Guilty"! is it, and consequently, yes, it is merely nominal. The legal/nominal attribution is given by God to a person, entirely irrespective of the nature and accidents of that person. It's no different, substantively, from God pointing at a chair and saying, "Zebra!" such that it is "legally" a zebra and consequently only so in a nominal way alone. It doesn't matter if "in the court of God's justice," God hypothetically pronounces, "Mr. Hutton's chair is a zebra! Everyone call it a zebra! It is legally a zebra!" It's not a zebra, and God, being omniscient and omnibenevolent, cannot commit errors of ignorance or of malice. So God's "can't" do the very thing that you think he is doing in justification. It won't do to argue that it is okay for God to declare such because God "simultaneously" makes the change in terms of nature and accidents, because your theology says that the legal declaration ***isn't reflective of that.*** That would be, as we are so often told, "works righteousness." //I disagree. The vessels of wrath must first be made into vessels of mercy before God can use them. The vessel of mercy is not a vessel of mercy while wrath remains over its head. “Jesus *didn't* get our full punishment….”// I don't for a second think that a vessel of mercy or a vessel of wrath is what it is because of a nominal designation from without. When we read the biblical descriptions of both they have something to do with what those things "actually are." There's nothing intuitive about being a vessel of X somehow entailing that it has a particular status nominally assigned to it by God. See 2 Timothy 2:21: "If anyone cleanses himself of these things, he will be a vessel for lofty use, dedicated, beneficial to the master of the house, ready for every good work." This *directly* connects being a vessel for lofty use with one's interior holiness, and not with an extrinsic legal status. Romans 9 more-so has election, in mind, but your theology doesn't equate election with a merely nominal status, nor are we talking about election at the moment. //This dialogue really is the crux of the matter, pun intended. I could not disagree with you more. This is regarding the truth of the good news of Jesus Christ who is called the only Mediator between God and man precisely because of this doctrine of legal imputation.// It seems that you think a number of things Jesus does have primarily to do with forensic imputation. How is Jesus' role of mediator based PRECISELY because of the doctrine of imputation? Jesus didn't have human nature imputed to him; it was assumed by him in the Incarnation. Actual ontological participation trumps nominal predication. 1 Timothy 2:5 talks about Jesus being the one mediator between God and man, and this is primarily due to his Incarnation and to him giving himself "in ransom for all" (1 Timothy 2:6). God becomes man, representing both God and man, and reconciling the two sides through his sacrifice. He partakes in our humanity, and we become partakers in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). We don't need nominal predication to explain any of this. //Jesus was tempted in every point as we are, and MORE SO tempted as the Son of God in ways than we ever could be (tempted, in the sense of being tested).// Insofar as he is God, sin wasn't ultimately really on the table. He didn't even have concupiscence (disordered desire to sin). It's not like the Arian or Pelagian view where the Son of God truly could have sinned. It was off the table due to the conformity of his human free will to his divine will within the hypostatic union. He lacked what the Fathers regarded as a gnomic or fallen will. //Here’s a simple analogy: Every skinny boy can maybe hold a 5 lb dumbbell and give up after 10 seconds; a bodybuilder holds a 2000 lb barbell and never lets go for the rest of his life. Jesus was said to have been so brutally tested for 40 days that He even wasn’t distracted by hunger during that time. Jesus all his life was a “Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” Jesus “died spiritually” on the cross because He was separated from the Father, He drank the cup of God’s infinite wrath to the full on the cross. He was “handed over,” as I say, or abandoned by God the Father on the cross. If Jesus did not fully experience temptation and suffer thoroughly in place of sinners, then He could not fulfill the role of a merciful and faithful High Priest who can represent sinners, and stand as the one Mediator between God and man.// This isn't the first time I've seen, effectively, an argument that sin was imputed to Jesus not just on the cross, but throughout his life, even though there is no theological or exegetical justification for it. Angels ministered to him in the desert and in the garden, which doesn't really fit with such being a "hellish" experience. Your argument that Jesus died spiritually on the cross is an extremist, outlier position that most mainstream Protestants won't touch with a 39 and 1/2 foot pole. Sure, it logically fits with the notion that sin was imputed to Christ and that he received our full punishment, so I applaud you for your logical consistency. Such is what Penal Substitution "should" include. Most other Protestants engage in a fallacy of equivocation where they say that Jesus suffered full wrath yet let him off with a commuted sentence. The problem is, your view that Jesus spiritually died isn't compatible with what Scripture tells us, and it isn't compatible with orthodox Christology, and it isn't compatible with what God's wrath IS. For one thing, Jesus indicates that his disciples will drink the cup that he will drink (Mark 10:38-40). This supports the notion that Jesus suffers and dies like a justified, disciplined Christian, not that he was suffering some sort of wrath instead of us suffering it. Combine that with texts like Hebrews 13:13 and all the "suffer with Christ" references, and your position is extremely untenable and biblically inconsistent. //Your analogy of the teacher punishing the 100% kid by imputation is still valid.// Since you don't view Jesus as suffering for an infinite period of time, which is our punishment of hell, you have a serious problem here. It's not as bad as those who say he didn't even spiritually die, to be sure, but it's still a problem. //I'm not sure I understand your reasoning here, but this seems like a false dilemma. I find no conflict in believing PSA as well as the deity and humanity of Christ. In fact, I argue that you cannot believe PSA unless you believe the hypostatic union. Jesus must both truly represent humanity and truly possess the divine capacity to drink down the cup of God's infinite wrath, in order to fulfill the role of the High Priest.// PSA doesn't require the hypostatic union; it requires that Christ suffered the full wrath of the Father in our place due to forensic imputation. Any Arian could believe in that. This notion that he had to be "infinite" to suffer "infinitely" is trying to resolve a serious problem with theological jargon, akin to Star Trek technical language (e.g. "bounce the graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish"). //I would like to hear your counter-texts; let us examine them together. Also, you can’t claim you’re aware of all PSA proof texts, and not provide any counter-exegesis so your opponent can examine your hermeneutic.// We can go through the texts one after another. I'm happy to do so. One major counter-text is Hebrews 13:13, which I brought up above. It refers to Christ's suffering on the cross as a reproach that he we are to bear as well. Moses suffered the "reproach of the anointed" back in Hebrews 11. Even Hebrews 12 compares Christ enduring suffering to justified sons enduring suffering and not losing heart, because in some way we follow in Christ's footsteps. This strikes right at the heart of the PSA view that Christ suffered X so that we won't. //“If God remitted all punishment for sin, then you would be immediately given resurrection bodies, be immortal and refractory to all suffering” is a non-sequitur, and stems from the misunderstanding that being legally justified and transformed in your nature to be a slave of Christ means that you are immune from physical sufferings or even consequences.// It's not a non sequitur. If the suffering that people undergo as a result of the Fall is ultimately punishment, all of that suffering, and the sin that caused such is "imputed" to Christ such that he pays the full penalty for it, then sure, unjustified people should still get sick, suffer, die, etc., but justified people should immediately assume a Superman-like invulnerability to harm, because without their own sin or the sin of Adam imputed to them, all the negative consequences, aka punishments, of the Fall should no longer befall them. You appear to be saying, "That does not logically follow," solely on the basis that you refuse to label the negative experiences of the justified as "punishment." By doing that, you are doing a sort of verbal sleight of hand, utilizing, again, nominal predication in order to get out of a jam. So the justified suffer, die, they still have concupiscence, etc., but you say it isn't a punishment, it isn't retributive justice, anymore, being "solely" rehabilitative justice. Such doesn't track. If it quacks like a duck, it's a duck (it can't merely be called a duck). //God saves us from the ultimate penalty of sin (i.e. the eternal wrath) as well as the power of sin through the Holy Spirit. But He has left the believers in their unredeemed physical fleshly body; as a result, believers still can marry and have babies, walk the earth as no different-looking from unregenerate people for all intents and purposes, have battles with temptations, can get sick with any kinds of illnesses (just as Timothy was). The apostles authoritatively characterize the death of believers as mere “sleep,” meaning that the sting of death has been taken away. There is no more condemnation; God is the one who justifies; the curse of the law has been removed through Christ’s substitutionary death and resurrection.// The fact that believers are still vexed by temporal consequences as a result of the Fall means that Jesus didn't truly take the entire punishment due for sin in their place. This can be seen quite clearly in cases where negative consequences befall a justified believer for sinful actions he has done. Rather than merely say, "The sin is imputed to Christ," God providentially still punishes the person, often with a blatantly commensurate penalty. It's a testament to God's sovereignty and provide that nothing that happens to a human is in some sort of "just a natural consequence" category. It's not like all punishment from God is supernatural lightning bolts from the sky, after all. Scripture portrays the natural consequences of our actions as punishment, and God supernaturally intervening in the moment is an exception, not the rule. //But if you say that the physical sufferings including death are the evidence of God’s continuing wrath against sin, then I say: Christ died and rose from the dead in vain, and He did not accomplish the kind of salvation that the apostles claim; and all those who die believing have died in their sins and have perished for eternity; you have no guarantee of anyone having been accepted into Heaven.// I'm not saying that physical sufferings including death for justified believers are equivalent to wrath, strictly speaking. I'm saying that the justified, rather than merely experiencing rehabilitative justice from the Father, are STILL experiencing retributive justice. But the rehabilitative element is included such that they are sanctified by their sufferings. So I'm arguing that the discipline of justified believers that you grant in your paradigm "shouldn't happen" insofar as it involves clearly punitive and commensurate elements. It is mere words to say that it isn't retributive justice when the justified believer who does a sin experiences negative consequences for that sin. //I mean, the eternal reward system is based proportionally on the believer’s efforts and sacrifices. Again, this is the Parable of the Talents. Yes, I do believe that God "peeks through the veil of imputed righteousness" and rewards each believer according to his works. But could it be construed also as God not giving rewards and simply burning away all the worthless accomplishments that the believer thought was worth something, and essentially suffering loss for his efforts? Clearly yes. But still, this reward system is in the context of those who have already been accepted into Heaven; “He will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.”// Having things you have done, or parts of you, burned away, particularly if you were attached to them, or if your attachment to past misdeeds or desires *is* what is burned away (and the various biblical metaphors about discipline and purification really support all of this in terms of connections) makes sense if there is no veil of imputed righteousness in the first place. It fits fine with an essence-accidents distinction where God, who has made you essentially just and holy, proceeds to make you "accidentally" just and holy. No issues; initial justification is based on what you are in essence based on whether or not you have grace and the Holy Spirit in your soul or not. Residual parts of you being "earthly" and needing to also be "put to death" makes sense as God addressing your remaining imperfections not as essential issues but as accidental ones, ones related to your essence but not perfectly so. The parallel with Eucharistic theology is actually rather key: God makes present the "substance" of Christ's body and blood, and the bread and wine are gone in substance even if they are accidentally still present. Similarly, we are changed substantially from unjust men to just men, and God proceeds to change our accidents as well, just as how the accidents of bread and wine, while still present here on earth, will be gone in heaven. 1 Corinthians 3:15 is using imagery found throughout the rest of Scripture indicating trial, testing, discipline, punishment, sanctification, purification, etc. So when Paul says that, on the day of the Lord, those who are saved will be saved "so as through fire," he means by what the fire does, namely, burn things away which one suffers as loss (zemiothesatai means "suffer punishment" for example in the LXX). //You and your sister fought and were hence punished in the sense of a fatherly discipline. But I have a question for you: Did you or your sister cease being part of the family as a result? So with this illustration, you would have to recognize that there is a difference between legal punitive punishment and family-based remedial discipline.// I agree that it was disciplinary punishment. What I am saying is that there shouldn't be *any* punishment if Jesus "took all the punishment." You seem to be getting around that solely by virtue of insisting that there is no retributive element - why not? I certainly recognize that there is a difference between wrath and discipline: Wrath - retributive-only punishment for the unjustified Discipline - retributive AND rehabilitative punishment for the justified Your paradigm looks more like this: Wrath - retributive-only punishment for the unjustified (looks the same as my view) Discipline - SOLELY rehabilitative punishment for the justified This might seem like a slight distinction, but it is important. "I didn't mean to argue that you thought that man stayed "utterly" depraved as a slave of sin..." //You say that PSA belittles the gravity and seriousness of sin, and that it apparently leads to anti-Augustine Pelagianism. This is a non-sequitur; in fact, PSA does the very opposite. First of all, we are all consigned to hell, not because we get some marks less than 100%, but because we get 0%. In God's eyes, we are worthless, utterly sinful, and UTTERLY INCAPABLE of any good works, and therefore worthy of being thrown into the trash heap of eternity (to use the imagery of Gehenna). This is due to the Original Sin (the genetic passing of the sin nature to all mankind, as discussed in Romans 5), rendering every natural child born in Adam UTTERLY UNABLE to love or obey God. The only reason why any natural man is able to instinctively do anything resembling the commandments of God is not because they are naturally righteous, but because of their even more heinous act of decoupling these laws hard-coded into the Imago Dei from God Himself (i.e. essentially attributing to themselves the glory of the moral law in order to establish their own righteousness, instead of giving God the credit; ref. Lk 18:9; Ro 10:3).// The problem is that your anthropology seems to start of Pelagian in terms of pre-lapsarian man, and then nosedives into being Manichean when it comes to post-lapsarian man. Since man is no longer "naturally good" after the Fall, he is seemingly composed of evil substance. That's what happens when you replace Augustine's donum superadditum with a donum concreatum, because once you take that donum concreatum away, what is left is utter garbage even on the level of essence, assuming that "natures" are even believed in at that point. The notion that, in God's eyes, we aren't even "good" anymore, is to hold to a Gnostic/Manichean Demiurge type of view where what is created and sustained in existence (we aren't Deists) by God is somehow "evil substance," and that is not allowable under a classic Christian conceptualization of evil as a privation of good. Relatively speaking, humans are ultimately meant to have the donum superadditum and have the supernatural goodness that is necessary to actually be just; there is no being "naturally" just. It's a solely supernatural category. This creates the confusion. So, to use Augustine's grace and light analogy, grace is like light that enables the eye (human nature) to see, and Original Sin means a deprivation of light that also has a residual effect of the weakening of the eye...whereas Total Depravity goes further than this, by acting like the eye was sufficient to see without light (the Pelagian position) such that Adam "could have" completed the covenant of works and "merited" salvation for himself and us, ***naturally***, and the eye then gets stabbed in order to rob it of most if not all of its natural function. Certainly humans born in Original Sin lack grace and thus lack the ability to love God and do "meritorious" actions. That still isn't Total Depravity. Until such time as man is perfectly holy, your theology holds that the slightest negative aspect of man merits hell, even if it is just concupiscence and isn't an "actual sin" (act of the will to miss the mark). Even once man gets in heaven, it would seem that your theology needs to account for the importance of Christ at that point, such that imputation must last forever because, say, man's past track record, even if he is 100% perfect at that point, needs to be "covered." //Second, the only way anyone receives the ability to believe, love and obey God is if God predestines and chooses to regenerate and make alive the dead soul. The Scripture is clear about God's unilateral sovereignty in saving souls from eternal judgment.// I partially agree, but this is not monergistic. Monergism is just a subspecies of Occasionalism. God works through secondary causes. Even God parting the Red Sea through Moses is an instance of synergism, because divine energy alone is not the sole thing that is operative. //Third, to think that the mercy of God and the righteous wrath of God could be reconciled in any other way than the Penal Substitutionary Atonement through the death and resurrection of the Son of God is to belittle the gravity and seriousness of sin. Sin is so infinitely heinous and the cup of God's anger so bottomlessly deep, that there can be no forgiveness for sinners apart from the incarnate God Himself being imputed the sins of His people and drinking God's cup down to its dregs. Also, sinners are thoroughly sinful and worthless, that they cannot stand justified before God apart from Christ's righteousness imputed to them. This is far from the idea that God is in heaven flippantly throwing down paper-thin labels; the fact that justification is a free gift of God received through the sinner's faith does not mean that it was not earned at immense cost to God.// Do you accept divine impassibility? If that is accepted, some of the rhetoric about God's anger needs to be nuanced and explained. There is an infinite divide between God and sin, to be sure, and God is infinitely holy, and this is what biblical anthropomorphisms like "God's anger" are meant to convey. If your conceptualization of sin is just as nominalist as your conceptualization of righteousness, then we have a problem when it comes to paper-thin labels. It certainly may be the case that you, unlike others, don't reduce sin to just a legal reality, and hold to a double-reality of sin. Reformed theology talks about "actual legal" which means legal guilt or legal liability to punishment, and "potential guilt" which means the actual interior corruption of the individual. The idea of righteousness or holiness also gets turned into a double-reality where you have legal righteousness and then an actual intrinsic righteousness. The reason the paper-thin labeling still fits as a characterization is that justification and sanctification might happen in PARALLEL in your paradigm, but they aren't truly LINKED. Look no further than the example of the perfectly intrinsically holy Christ whom you think actually had sin imputed to himself. That basically exposes the paradigm as operating through an Occasionalist framework, namely, sure, God justifies and sanctifies believers, but the two things have no intrinsic or causal connection with one another; it's just God's habit to do both at the same time, and God doesn't justify the sanctified person in the case of Jesus, showcasing that God is free to deviate from his habit. Similarly, the Muslim believer in Occasionalism can say that it is God's habit to burn the cloth in close proximity to fire WHEN it is in close proximity to fire, but God is free to burn the cloth when there is zero fire as well. //1. You are right. I agree with your interpretation of 2Co 5:21, that Jesus who knew no sin (i.e. was sinless, without any moral blemish) was made sin (i.e. was made a sin offering, as pictured by all the animal sacrifices, especially the goat of "sin" and Azazel the scapegoat upon whose head was pronounced all the sins of Israel on Yom Kippur). But you say you do not see imputation in this OT imagery that Paul alludes to; Why not?// As I think I indicated, my explanation of 2 Cor. 5:21 kicks the can down the road (or back up the road?) to the question of how OT sacrifices worked. I think that the OT sacrifices were *not* operating on a PSA framework, but that pagan sacrifices DID, and God "baptized" the pagan sacrificial framework in the case of Jewish sacrifices rather than do a complete and total overhaul. Heresy survives by the truths it retains. Pagan gods would be mad at their people and need to be appeased by directing their wrath at substitutes. God's "anger" at sin is an anthropomorphism, and is not univocal or literal. It is analogical, describing the opposition between God and sin, the incompatibility, etc. Do things need to be offered up to God in thanksgiving, yes. Was it necessary also for God's "wrath to be propitiated," that is, appeased, yes. Yet appeasement can happen by offering that which is owed, not just by wrath-redirection as in the case of paganism. The reason we talk about Britain and France's "policy of appeasement" in the run-up to World War II has to do with them "if you give a mouse a cookie" giving Hitler what he wanted in order to keep him from attacking countries. They weren't, say, bombing parts of Europe in a symbolic manner, thinking Hitler's "wrath" would be appeased by redirecting it. They gave him things Germany wanted in order to pacify him. Similarly, Jacob sent animals to Esau before he met with him hoping that such would "propitiate" his brother's wrath against him...the idea was he was trying to give to Esau what he thought Esau believed he was owed. Jacob didn't slaughter animals, imputing his sins to them and then saying to Esau that his wrath was now redirected. It's interesting that the scapegoat was sent off into the wilderness. Maybe, just maybe, the goat "bore the sins" of the people in a manner other than imputation. Bearing sin in Leviticus 10:16-17 has nothing to do with imputation, so why would it in the case of the scapegoat? //2. Yes, you are right. Proverbs 17:15 also says the same. And yes, we must harmonize Scripture with Scripture. God says in these texts that He upholds absolute justice. Here is the dilemma: These texts would mean that all would perish in eternity, because all sinned. So whether justification is nominal predication or reflective recognition, this text would contradict Romans 4:5, and we know the Scripture cannot contradict itself. Romans 4 says that some are given mercy because they believe; they are thus justified; their sins are not counted against them, their lawless deeds are forgiven, and their faith is credited as righteousness. So how can God who is a just Judge - who must punish all sin - justify the ungodly?// So, I think the issue is that you don't ultimately believe that a person who was a sinner can become a non-sinner, because you are focusing on "legal track record" in the manner I indicated in a previous comment. That is, you're not caring so much that a person might be 100% sanctified right now, because if he *did* sins in the past, he *has* to be eternally punished for them even if he has repented, no longer wants to do those sins, and hates those sins now. On some level, I would argue you are denying that the sinner is a new creation. 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 states: "Do you not know that the unjust will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor boy prostitutes nor sodomites nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God. That is what some of you used to be; but now you have had yourselves washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God." You appear to be saying that the idolater is still an idolater, and always will be, because he "broke God's list" regarding that violation. It doesn't matter if he doesn't commit it anymore or want to do it anymore. What needs to happen is him being damned for it. So even if God zapped him into sinlessness, God still "has to" give him eternal punishment because he "was" an idolater and thus in some sense still "is" and always "will be" an idolater. Yet Paul says that this is what the Corinthians used to be, and are no longer, due to being washed, sanctified, and justified - a triple metaphor for the same reality (it's extremely ad hoc for you to separate this into two or three separate realities). //3. Thank you for the question. Hebrews 13:13 follows the immediate preceding text - also the preceding chapters - that says Christ "made holy" His people through His substitutionary death outside the camp (i.e. rejected by Israel) in the same way the goat of "sin" on Yom Kippur figuratively cleansed Israel. The following verse - verse 14 - gives a proper context as to how we should go out to Christ outside the camp and bear Christ's reproach. The writer of Hebrews is calling for the cowardly Jews who are still sitting on the fence about Christ despite their full knowledge of His identity as the Messiah and "Archaegos" and "Aitios" of salvation, to make decisive commitment to publicly confess Jesus is Lord and identify with Him, and be willing to face ostracization and persecution from the world. He is simply calling for true, unashamed faith in Christ who ONCE FOR ALL offered up Himself as a sacrifice for sin.// This doesn't appear to address my concern (which I got to in previous comment, since I didn't read all of your responses before responding myself). Believers facing ostracization and persecution from the world is them being "burned" like Jesus was, and them suffering his reproach. Since they will not all suffer the exact same way Jesus did, there is a distinction on the level of accidents (e.g. James the Greater died by the sword, not by crucifixion, in Acts 12), but there is NO distinction on the level of essence. We share in what is essentially the same experience of suffering reproach, and since we are suffering discipline when that is happening, that means that Christ suffered discipline. The author of Hebrews is NOT drawing a connection which would say that Jesus got burned the way OT animals did because those OT animals symbolized sinful people who deserved the Father's full wrath. Jesus doesn't suffer his reproach in solidarity with the damned, such that he is unjustified on the cross and suffers accordingly. Rather, the OT animals got burned symbolizing, not only the suffering of Jesus, but ALSO the suffering of JUSTIFIED BELIEVERS WHO RECEIVE DISCIPLINE. That's what is going on in 1 Peter 2 where Peter connects Christ with us as the sheep, the idea that Christ handed himself over to the one who judges justly (2:23). The idea is that Christ suffered while not being guilty just as Christians suffer while not being guilty. Peter's example makes no sense if he thought Christ had sin imputed to him. So when we get to verse 24, it's not talking about imputation and wrath-redirection. //4. The word "logizomai," just like any other word, must be interpreted according to its context. But the word basically means "perspective," or "categorical conclusion," either a true or a false one. Christ was "reckoned" with transgressors. The pagans were afraid that Artemis would be "reckoned" as nothing. Romans 4:4 is saying that a worker's wages is "reckoned" or rightly viewed as what is due, not as a free handout. Paul goes on to say that faith is "reckoned" as righteousness, though the person is "ungodly." This language demands the existence of the legal sphere wherein justification is applied to the person despite the person's not having earned it. Again, this is not a nominal predication, but a true recognition of Christ's real righteousness (which He Himself earned) that covers the person.// I agree that the term refers to a perspective, and either a true or a false one. Christ was "reckoned" with the transgressors, in Isaiah 53:12, but I would attribute that much more to the mistaken impression of those with the carnal, wrong perspective that Isaiah 53 has in mind. It includes its "yet" and "but" statements to clarify that Christ is NOT suffering as one who is guilty in *any* sense, even though he experiences (some of, certainly not all) the negative things that the transgressors end up experiencing. Jesus himself references Isaiah 53:12 in Luke 22:37, and I would argue that he doesn't apply it to himself in the sense that the Father is numbering him with the transgressors, but that the "god of this world" mentioned in John's Gospel is doing so. Satan, and the corrupt leaders (Pilate, Herod, the high priests and scribes, the crowd) all number Jesus with the transgressors in a non-reflective, merely nominal way, regarding Jesus as guilty in some merely semantic way even knowing full well that Jesus wasn't guilty of anything in the ontological or moral sense, which is the only one that actually matters. Someone "reckoning" refers to the truth when it is reflective, and when it isn't, it's a lie. Romans 4:4 is talking about the nature of a wage: it is what is due, for work, not a gift. It's talking about strict merit, and strict merit based on what a wage is by nature. My position is that Paul uses the term logizomai the same way one verse later, and thus there is no non-reflective legal imputation of righteousness to faith, or righteousness to the man with faith, going on there. The language in no way demands moving out of the "genus of being" to the "genus of ethics" if by the "genus of ethics" you mean a legal-only sphere. That's what former Calvinist, former Christian Drake Shelton tried to do to avoid the nominalism critique. We can entirely understand faith being reckoned as righteousness in ontological terms, and we can entirely understand that when the ungodly are justified, that is because God gives them the spiritual gift of faith within them, God RECKONS that gift as "righteousness," and that the giving of that gift of righteousness makes a person...just. Ontologically, even if not completely accidentally yet. It all fits seamlessly. Justification is thus not God in some heavenly courtroom saying, "I declare this person to be just," the way Zeus would, but is an analogical reference to God ontologically making the person just, and he does this via giving the person faith (which is why Romans 5:1 can say we are justified by faith). Thus, no nominal predication necessary, whereas your paradigm certainly involves such. Christ's righteousness doesn't literally cover the person, but it figuratively and analogically does, because the person now ontologically participates in that righteousness, and THAT is what God "recognizes" and what we should recognize. Saying Christ's righteousness is "imputed" to the person is just saying that the water in Glass 1 is being "nominally predicated" to Glass 2 even if none of that water is actually in Glass 2. It's a nominal predication, and a factually inaccurate one. It's a lie, and part of why we know it is a lie is because it has NOTHING to do with the essence and accidents of the object. It's the same thing as my example of God "legally declaring" a chair to be a zebra without changing the nature of the chair and without changing the appearance, for example, of the chair. No, it's not a chair, but we do have a legal fiction on our hands, and the "god of this world" specializes in those, not the God of the Bible. //I hope my above responses afford a clarity as to how I see that imputation of complete righteousness of Christ does not logically lead to deification, but actually leads to complete legal justification, the only kind of justification that is approved by a holy and just God.// Well, I hope I've sufficiently clarified that I just don't accept your definition of "legal." It's textbook nominalism to toss out natures as the basis for your verbal statements. I don't get to impute purple to my desk when it isn't purple. Saying that God gets to do that just means an enshrinement of at least a partial nominalism, and a voluntarism, that Scripture nowhere supports. SKUNK: “Well, to make things simple, the main issue here is that you believe in a legal-only realm of reality whereas I do not.” After all we’ve discussed, this is a weird criticism to hear. No, I don’t believe in legal-only realm of reality wherein sinners are justified despite of their unworthiness. I also believe in the realm of ontological transformation that transforms the sinner into a saint. BUT: I must acknowledge the precise order in which the Bible presents legal justification: God makes alive (“rebirths”) the dead sinner’s soul, and transforms the sinner into the "inner man" who only wants to do right and wages war against the sinful flesh >> the regenerated person (now a slave of righteousness) for the first time is able to respond to God in love and obedience >> the regenerate believes >> his faith grants him the legal imputation of Christ’s righteousness, and thus justification before God. I’ll be honest. There is a mystery here that I cannot approximate enough to understand the precise nature of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. That's why I am RETRACTING from the exclusivity of my perspective that, “legal justification is not caused by regeneration of the soul and it is distinct from it. One occurs with one another simultaneously as a correlation without causation.” The legal reality of double-imputation that results in justification is Christ’s bearing our sins -- who remained perfectly sinless, and our bearing His righteousness -- who, on the other hand, do not remain sinners in rebellion. In other words, God legally removes the record of the list of our sins and placing it on sinless Jesus on the cross, and writes to our account all of Christ’s merits. While I believe it is possible to construe the imputation of Christ's righteousness as strictly relating to a legal status before God and that which occurs IN ADDITION TO regeneration, I think it is also possible to construe it as distinct from the legal act of justification and as that which is SYNONYMOUS WITH regeneration. In other words, the birth of the "inner man" in Romans 7:22, the soul which is made perfectly morally righteous -- with the outcome that if the person sins, "it is no longer the person who does it, but the sin which dwells in him" -- IS ITSELF Christ’s merits and His moral righteousness being completely infused or "imputed" at the moment of its rebirth; as a result, God is able to legally declare them "Justified" because He reflectively recognizes Christ's moral righteousness in them. In other words, justification is caused by the imputation of the righteous nature of Christ (i.e. regeneration). You might argue: "Well, should that 100% infusing of Christ's righteousness in the rebirth be considered as imputation?" The answer is yes, because the soul is unilaterally receiving the righteous nature of Christ from God without earning it or even seeking for it. At any rate, for the sake of our debate however, my position remains the same: the Bible says that there is a legal decree that pardons all transgressions and a rebirth of the righteous, justified soul that occur in the same event, because Jesus was punished in the place of sinners and because we are declared righteous with His righteousness. “It won't do to argue that it is okay for God to declare such because God "simultaneously" makes the change in terms of nature and accidents, because your theology says that the legal declaration ***isn't reflective of that.***” God is justified in declaring sinners righteous, because He imputes to them Christ’s righteousness. If you call this “nominalism,” then you would also be denying that God imputed to Jesus sinners’ guilt and punished Him in their place, and the Bible makes this clear. But then, you do seem to be denying both, so you are at least consistent. “I don't for a second think that a vessel of mercy or a vessel of wrath is what it is because of a nominal designation from without.” I never said it was a nominal designation. It is a real wrath and a real mercy, and the cross of Jesus Christ is the evidence of their reality. Jesus had to really suffer, so that His people could really experience mercy. “See 2 Timothy 2:21…” The text is referring to the believer’s personal effort for practical holiness, and is consistent with their new ontologically transformed nature in Christ. This is no argument against the validity of imputation. “How is Jesus' role of mediator based PRECISELY because of the doctrine of imputation?…We don't need nominal predication to explain any of this.” Because in order to be a Mediator, Jesus has to fully represent humanity as well as divinity. So then, as God-Man, Jesus could reconcile God and man by being the Lamb to whom is imputed the sins of the world, and who in turn gives His own unblemished righteousness. Also, I never said that His humanity is something that was imputed; the guilt of sin was. Again, if you criticize sinners being justified as “nominal predication,” then you would also criticize Jesus bearing the sins of many, and dying for sinners, the just for the unjust, and the Bible is clear that Jesus was imputed the sins of His people and drank the cup of God’s wrath. But then, you do seem to be criticizing both, so you are at least consistent. “It was off the table due to the conformity of his human free will to his divine will within the hypostatic union.” You are right. But I was not arguing that Jesus could have sinned. I also believe that Jesus could not have sinned or had even the desire to do so (which would have been evidence of sinful nature). I am saying that Jesus experienced the full limit of testing, yet without ever yielding to it. This is a mystery that I cannot fully understand; it is a matter of biblical authority; this is what the Bible says, and I accept it. This full experience of temptation is why Jesus is called a merciful and faithful High Priest. “This isn't the first time I've seen, effectively, an argument that sin was imputed to Jesus not just on the cross.” You misunderstand. I believe sins were imputed to Jesus on the cross alone, where the wrath of God was spent. I am saying that Jesus was being tested and tempted all His life, yet remained sinless. “Your argument that Jesus died spiritually on the cross is an extremist, outlier position that most mainstream Protestants won't touch with a 39 and 1/2 foot pole.” How about with a 39 foot pole? But you are wrong; the Bible does say Jesus died, not only physically, but also spiritually. As I said already, the spiritual death Jesus experienced on the cross is defined by the separation from God. Jesus Himself testified to this separation on the cross. This is the eternal wrath that every unredeemed soul will experience in the lake of fire, which is called the second death. “Most other Protestants engage in a fallacy of equivocation where they say that Jesus suffered full wrath yet let him off with a commuted sentence.” Not so. Jesus accomplished what He set out to do: to drink the cup of God’s infinite wrath against ALL the sins of ALL His predestined people. If even one drop is left, then no sinner would be saved and Jesus would have died in vain, and He would not have risen from the dead, and He would not have said “Tetelestai!” “Jesus indicates that his disciples will drink the cup that he will drink (Mark 10:38-40).” Yes, He does. The context is important to understand the kind of cup we are talking about. In this text, Jesus is talking about external mistreatment from evil men that will come upon all His disciples because of their identification with Him,, as He often have done to prepare His disciples for His departure. If you think this is the only kind of cup, then you have to ignore the Bible’s exposition of the meaning of His death on the cross and what Jesus accomplished for sinners. He is called the Lamb of God, full stop. “Since you don't view Jesus as suffering for an infinite period of time, which is our punishment of hell, you have a serious problem here.” I see no problem. I believe the Bible when it says there is no more condemnation for those who are in Christ, that God justifies sinners who believe. The only way that there is such full legal justification is because the infinite God incarnate satisfied in that three hours of darkness the infinite wrath of God, and paid in full the infinite penalty of sin. The only reason why hell is eternal is because sinners cannot ever pay in full for their sins. “PSA doesn't require the hypostatic union; it requires that Christ suffered the full wrath of the Father in our place due to forensic imputation. Any Arian could believe in that.” This is a strawman. The fact that Christ suffered the full wrath of God on behalf of His people due to forensic imputation necessitates that He is both God and Man. No Arian could believe that, because only God-Man could accomplish this. This is Romans 5 again. “but justified people should immediately assume a Superman-like invulnerability to harm…” I maintain that this is a non-sequitur. Your objection seems to stem from speculations based on your own personal perspective rather than any inconsistency in my own paradigm. Let us not miss my main point: the wrath we are talking about is the eternal wrath of God in the form of the lake of fire. The Bible says there is no more condemnation left for those who are in Christ. Death has lost its sting. Death is no longer death for Christians; it’s called sleep. At the same time, we also see Christians getting sick. This proves that their temporal suffering (temporal in the sense of belong to this life only) is not associated with any deficiency in the legal double-imputation accomplished through Christ which secures salvation for their souls. But if you insist that all suffering is a form of God’s punitive wrath in no different sense from God’s lake of fire, then you would also insist that the Son of God could not suffer in any way because He is sinless. By doing so, you, sir, deny what is written. Inconsistency is a sign of a failed argument. “The fact that believers are still vexed by temporal consequences as a result of the Fall means that Jesus didn't truly take the entire punishment due for sin in their place.” No. It just means that they are being disciplined, in the same way you and your sister were disciplined yet were not disowned. Jesus suffered the infinite lake of fire in their place, which they will never experience. HEAR! God never disowns any of His children; He disciplines them for their own good, which He does not for unbelievers. It could be argued that children of God suffer at the hands of God more than unbelievers do, because God is obligated to discipline them as their Father. Unbelievers may also suffer for their sins, but as long as they don’t die, all sufferings on earth due to sins are double-edged swords; on one hand, it is a form of God’s wrath, but it also works as a mercy, to remind sinners to turn to God for their salvation. Any temporal suffering on earth is not the same as the final, eternal wrath of God in the lake of fire. “Having things you have done, or parts of you, burned away, particularly if you were attached to them, or if your attachment to past misdeeds or desires *is* what is burned away (and the various biblical metaphors about discipline and purification really support all of this in terms of connections) makes sense if there is no veil of imputed righteousness in the first place.” Again, this is your speculation peeking from your own paradigm. My paradigm is able to account for the disparate dispensing of rewards based on personal efforts. “The parallel with Eucharistic theology is actually rather key: God makes present the "substance" of Christ's body and blood, and the bread and wine are gone in substance even if they are accidentally still present.” The topic of the debate is imputation. “So when Paul says that, on the day of the Lord, those who are saved will be saved "so as through fire," he means by what the fire does, namely, burn things away which one suffers as loss (zemiothesatai means "suffer punishment" for example in the LXX).” Sure, you could read it that way, as long as you will interpret that “zemio” in light of the context. The punishment is not the loss of the soul to eternal perdition. “What I am saying is that there shouldn't be *any* punishment if Jesus "took all the punishment." You seem to be getting around that solely by virtue of insisting that there is no retributive element - why not?” The punishment that Jesus removed is the final form of punitive punishment, in the form of eternal wrath of God in the lake of fire. Believers will not ever experience this form of punishment. They can still suffer any form of temporal punishment which I like to rather call discipline. But this temporal suffering is no longer retributive in the sense that God is still holding them to their sins. Again, discipline is driven by the Father’s love. You could argue that even unbelievers’ suffering is not retributive as long as they don’t die. “The problem is that your anthropology seems to start of Pelagian in terms of pre-lapsarian man, and then nosedives into being Manichean when it comes to post-lapsarian man…That's what happens when you replace Augustine's donum superadditum with a donum concreatum…The notion that, in God's eyes, we aren't even "good" anymore, is to hold to a Gnostic/Manichean Demiurge type of view…Original Sin means a deprivation of light that also has a residual effect of the weakening of the eye...whereas Total Depravity goes further than this, by acting like the eye was sufficient to see without light (the Pelagian position)…” You have lost me in the barrage of your categorizations. I will say that there is no logical way that you could respond by charging my position of anything remotely resembling Pelagianism. “Certainly humans born in Original Sin lack grace and thus lack the ability to love God and do "meritorious" actions. That still isn't Total Depravity.” Evil is not just privation of goodness, as if there exists some neutral grounds between good and evil. If you are not for God, you are against Him. The one who does not choose good chooses evil; there is no alternative. Satan does not only not love God, but hates Him. “Even once man gets in heaven, it would seem that your theology needs to account for the importance of Christ at that point, such that imputation must last forever because, say, man's past track record, even if he is 100% perfect at that point, needs to be 'covered.' " In heaven, people will forever give praise to the Lord Jesus, because His righteousness imputed to them is why they are able to stand confident in the hostile heaven. No one in heaven is 100% perfect apart from the perfection of God covering them forever. The fact that the believers are 100% perfect even on earth will be made evident when they simply rid themselves of their sinful body of flesh to be with God forever (i.e. die physically, or as Paul puts it, “fall asleep.”) “God works through secondary causes.” Yes, you are right. God justifies, but not apart from faith. God sanctifies, but not apart from obedience. God illumines, but not apart from diligent study. But I still say salvation is monergistic. God alone gives faith, motivates obedience, motivates diligent study. “Do you accept divine impassibility?” I do not. I believe God took pleasure in creation. I also believe God is angry with sinners every day. This is not inconsistent with imputation. “If your conceptualization of sin is just as nominalist as your conceptualization of righteousness, then we have a problem when it comes to paper-thin labels…” I resent that “nominalism” charge. I think I have shown you clearly from my paradigm how PSA is the only way to appreciate the seriousness of sin. On the contrary: If you think that if even just one of your sins, that were not imputed on Jesus so that He pays for it, will not damn you for eternity, then you have belittled your sin, and belittled God’s holiness. Obviously, we mean that sin, just like righteousness, is a reality, and that it has legal ramifications as well. This is why the PSA the Bible talks about is possible; Jesus can bear the sins of sinners without ever compromising His perfect righteousness. 1. Your analogy from WWII or your allusion to pagan deities are not valid answers, but speculations. The blood sacrifices sprinkled on the “ransom” mercy seat were common practice under Aaronic Priesthood system. The wrath of Yahweh was and is a reality. In the NT, Jesus is tied to the animal sacrifices as the One whom they typified, the “just for the unjust” dying to save sinners from the wrath of God. Do you object? 2. You have not given me an answer as to how you reconcile the fact that God, based on one set of passages, must punish sinners, at same time, from another set of passages, can justify sinners? 3. If you think my answers don’t address your questions, you are welcome to ask follow-up questions. Sean, I must address your handling of Peter and Hebrews 13, which I find egregiously sloppy and (too obviously) intentional: Hebrews 13:12 shows the meaning of the sin offering burned outside the camp, “Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate.” There is no man who can claim the same accomplishment as Jesus. As I said, also the previous passages make clear that Jesus bore the sins of many as the High Priest who through His own blood paved the way into God’s presence, of which the Holy of Holies is a type. This language is consistent with imputation. And yes, 1 Peter 2:21 says that Christians should follow the example of Christ and remain faithful to God in the midst of their own trials. But just because Peter is properly using Christ’s faithfulness as the Model for Christian living, Peter does not mean to deny the aspect of Christ’s suffering as redemptive. Peter says in 1 Peter 2:22: “Jesus Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds we were healed. For you were continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.” He also says in the following chapter that Jesus “suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous.” Again, this is the definition of imputation. 4. There is no way you read the whole Isaiah 53, and concluded that Jesus was not imputed the sins of the people talked about in that chapter. Full stop. If you have follow-up questions, you are welcome to ask.
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CategoriesAll Discourse Doctrines Gospel Humour NT Commentaries OT Commentaries Tactical Life Date
August 2023
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