Doc Holliday said:
BusyTarpDuster2017 said:
Doc Holliday said:
BusyTarpDuster2017 said:
Doc Holliday said:
Christ tells us to turn the other cheek and forgive freely, with no payment demanded. In the parable of the prodigal son, the father runs to his son and forgives him on the spot. Nobody gets punished first. If the Father needs blood before He can forgive, He's asking less of Himself than He asks of us.
And if justice is a standard above God that He has to satisfy, you've made Him subordinate to it and that's what you actually worship.
Scripture says the opposite. God doesn't answer to justice. He is the source of it.
"Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins." - Hebrews 9:22
Your view clearly contradicts Scripture, and perplexingly seems to forget/ignore the entire Old Testament sacrificial system. Your view is also a complete rejection of the cross. Your belief essentially says that Jesus' spilt blood on the cross was not necessary and did nothing towards our atonement. That isn't Christianity.
God isn't "asking less of Himself" when he asks us to forgive without the shedding of blood. We are commanded to forgive without shedding blood, because WE ourselves have already been forgiven by the shedding of blood. Jesus talked about this - the guy who owes a million dollars, but is forgiven completely of it, does NOT need justice for the mere ten dollars that someone owes him.
And justice isn't a "standard that is above God" that makes God subordinate to it; rather, justice IS God because it's his character. By defaulting on justice, God would be violating his character. it's not different than his Love.
Funny thing, the very chapter you quoted is about cleansing. Hebrews 9:13-14 says the blood purifies. Leviticus says the blood is life, and it gets splashed on the altar to cleanse it. Was the altar guilty? Was the goat on the Day of Atonement a sinner? Nobody is being punished in that system.
And "without blood there is no forgiveness" is a nice slogan until you remember Nineveh repented and was forgiven. David got forgiven in Psalm 51 with no sacrifice, and God says in Hosea 6:6 that He desires mercy, not sacrifice. Odd for a God who supposedly can't forgive without a body count.
I appreciate you bringing up the servant who owed a million. The king cancelled the debt. Nobody got beaten to cover it. Thanks for making my argument for me.
Last thing. Proverbs 17:15 says condemning the innocent is an abomination to the Lord. So I'm curious how your God requires it.
I mean cmon man…the medieval era was insane and that's how you got PSA which came literally out of nowhere from Anselm and batsh it crazy philosophy of that time.
"Without blood there is no forgiveness" isn't a "slogan". It's straight from Scripture. Calling it a "slogan" and treating it in such a dismissive way, even as you KNOW it is straight from Scripture, pretty much sums up your stance.
Nowhere does it say that God "forgave" Ninevah after they repented. It only says God relented from his plan to destroy them. Nowhere in Psalms 51 or Hosea 6 does it say that shedding blood isn't necessary for forgiveness.
The king cancelling the debt meant that he himself had to eat the debt. The debt doesn't just go away. The king paid the penalty in the form of loss, in the stead of the servant. That's penal substitution. It's not talking about blood shedding because it's just an analogy. The king eating the debt himself is analagous to Jesus shedding his blood on the cross.
Proverbs 17:15 doesn't invalidate penal substitution, it's actually making the case for it - the only way for the wicked to be justified and the righteous to be condemned and it NOT be an abomination to God... is for the wicked to be IMPUTED the righteousness of the righteous, and the righteous to be IMPUTED the guilt of the wicked. The guilt and innocence are switched, i.e. substituted for each other. And thus, it becomes fully consistent with divine justice and avoids becoming the "abomination" of Proverbs 17:15.
You've described an angry god who can't forgive until someone bleeds.
Wrath isn't the Father turning His face from the Son. The Son is a divine Person, and a divine Person can't be cut off from the Father. What a divine Person can undergo is death, in His human nature: His soul separated from His body. Scripture ties death to sin all along (Rom. 6:23, Rom. 5:12), so that's the only sense in which "the wages of sin" ever touches Him. And His divinity stays united to both His body in the tomb and His soul in Hades. Nobody is divided, not the Trinity and not Christ.
Reformed theology can't say this. Once you say the Father punishes the Son with abandonment, you either split the Trinity or push the wrath onto His human nature alone, and that's Nestorian. Chalcedonian Christology avoids the problem by asking what a divine Person can actually go through. He goes through death, voluntarily, and destroys it.
Here's the problem with your model. If God must punish every sin to the full, either on Christ or on you, then He never forgives anything. He just collects. A debt that gets paid in full isn't forgiven, it's paid. And a God who can't let anything go without a victim isn't merciful. Mercy in Greek literally means not exacting a penalty, and your system has no room for it.
It also makes justice a rule that tells God what He has to do. Then justice is above Him and that's what you're really answering to.
And you hit a fork. If the Father pours wrath on the Son, you either split the Trinity or you split Christ, saying the wrath fell on His human nature only. That second move is Nestorian.
This didn't come from the apostles. It grew out of a Western habit of looking for a mechanism that explains exactly how the cross works. PSA is literally God saving you from Himself. PSA is akin to the oldest pagan instinct there is. The Greeks and Canaanites had gods who needed appeasing too, and people paid in blood to calm them down. The Church never taught that. The Fathers said Christ came to defeat death, not to soothe the Father.
And you know where PSA came from? Anselm borrowed it from feudal law, where an offended lord's honor demanded satisfaction. The Reformers then added a courtroom. So the God of your system acts like a medieval king with a grudge, when Christ calls us to forgive freely, as the father in the prodigal son story did.
Romans 8:3 doesn't say it. It says sin was condemned in the flesh. Sin is on trial there, not Jesus. You didn't find PSA in the verse. You brought it with you and you've turned the Trinity into a bad cop and a fall guy. The Father and Son share one will and one act. Your version has an angry Father on one side and a victim Son on the other. That's not the God John describes.
You've failed your own test. Proverbs 17:15 says condemning the innocent is an abomination, and your fix is to declare the innocent guilty. A legal fiction is still a fiction. Ezekiel 18:20 says guilt doesn't transfer. Your God needs an accounting trick to avoid breaking His own rule.
Here's the simpler reading. Christ took on our flesh and our death, and sin died with Him (Rom. 6:6). What you're calling justice is vengeance with a Bible verse attached. Justice in Scripture is putting things right. It's healing the broken, freeing the captive, and raising the dead. Vengeance is making someone pay because you were wronged. Paul says "vengeance is Mine" (Rom. 12:19) and then tells us to overcome evil with good. God doesn't need a victim to settle a score. He enters our death and destroys it from the inside. That's justice done, and it's more just than your version, because the guilty are actually healed and the innocent isn't punished.
The tragedy here is that this is what you've ultimately come to: "The word of God is wrong, because it goes against
what I think is true about God and what is more palatable to
MY understanding of him."
If Jesus' purpose was simply to defeat death, then why didn't he just live a long, happy life and die naturally of old age, and
then resurrect and defeat death that way? Why did he have to
suffer and die on the
cross? Why did God have to
forsake Jesus on the cross?
Why did God command the blood sacrifice of animals and for the high priest to sprinkle its blood on the mercy seat in order to atone for the people's sins? Why did the Israelites have to smear sacrificial blood on their doorways so that the Angel of Death would "pass over" their house?
PSA didn't come from Anselm. It comes from God's word, like through the prophet Isaiah. It's the same word of God that clearly states "
without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness", yet you are clearly and directly rejecting it.
You: "
Justice in Scripture is putting things right. It's healing the broken, freeing the captive, and raising the dead." - what about the person, then, who broke the broken, who enslaved the captive, and who murdered the dead? A HOLY GOD can not tolerate evil like this, and it must be dealt with. It doesn't just go away. If you believe that it can, you simply do not understand and fully appreciate God's ultimate and perfect HOLINESS, and the extreme gravity of SIN in the presence of a HOLY GOD. Is there no "Hell" in your theology?
This doesn't make God "subordinate" to justice. This is yet another one of your constant non sequiturs and it's purely argumentative. It's like arguing that since God
must act in love, then it makes him subordinate to love. And that since God
must tell the truth, it makes him subordinate to honesty. And that since God
must be Holy, he is subordinate to holiness. Obviously, this is a ridiculous, nonsensical argument. God must do these things, because it's who he is, it's his character. If he's being "subordinate to anything", he's being subordinate to Himself. To NOT do them, is to violate his own character, at which point he wouldn't be God.
PSA does NOT "split the Trinity". Jesus was
in full agreement with God's plan and voluntarily subject himself to the penalty of sin. God and Jesus were in FULL LOVE together in this arrangement: "
The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my lifeonly to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father."- John 10: 17-18
Sadly, you're aligning Scripture to your own created theology, rather than aligning your theology to Scripture. Is there any doubt about this? You've clearly and directly denied what's in Scripture. You've essentially created your own God to match your own preferences, instead of letting God reveal Himself through his word. You are more loyal to the traditions of your church than to what God has himself revealed in his word. This is very, very dangerous ground to be in.
