Monthly Archives: December 2025

The ‘Father-Son’ Theory of the Atonement V PSA as the Frame

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Penal Substitution Atonement (PSA) theory has been in the news again lately (online/social media). As an Evangelical Calvinist (see V1&V2 of our Evangelical Calvinism books, and my articles-mini-essays on the topic) I have pressed what TF Torrance refers to as the ‘ontological theory of the atonement.’ Many evangelicals and Reformed folks think that PSA in fact is the Gospel simplicter. And so, to deny PSA would be to deny the Gospel itself. But as I have demonstrated over and again at the blog, the background to PSA theory isn’t as prima facie biblical as its proponents make it sound. The ‘theological’ framework that fomented what we think of as PSA today is largely rooted in the Federal (Covenantal) theology of the early Reformed theologians. It has humanity placed into a relationship with God that is necessarily framed by a forensic premise (i.e., the covenant of works). This forensic premise, or covenant of works, according to Federal theology, is ultimately fulfilled for the elect of God, when Jesus comes and meets the conditions of the covenant of works (that Adam and Eve) broke, thus restoring the legal connection to God that heretofore had been lost to humanity since after Eden. And it is this Federal (Covenantal) relationship that is given metaphysical orientation by the scholasticism Reformed commitment to what Richard Muller identifies as a Christian Aristotelianism. Suffice it to say, in nuce, PSA represents a theory of the atonement wherein humanity is genetically related to God based on a metaphysics of a Divine-Law-World relation; indeed, which requires that in order for fallen humanity, and the elect therein (think decretum absolutum ‘absolute decree of election-reprobation’), to be justified by God, that the Son of Man must become man, die on the cross, extinguishing the wrath of God, paying the legal penalty for sin, and allowing the elect humanity to come into a right and legal standing relationship with the triune God; particularly, the Father (whom the PSA proponents emphasize as the ‘Law-giver,’ per their juridical system).

Alternatively to that, one of the Fathers of us Evangelical Calvinists, John McLeod Campbell, a Scottish theologian of the 19th century, kicked back against the premise of the PSA position vis-à-vis the nature of the atonement, and against the Westminster theology that had codified the theological framework that funds the PSA position, particularly as that was being pushed in his context in the Church of Scotland (before he was excommunicated), as he gives us re-framing of atonement theory where the relationship between God and humanity ought to be framed first as thinking of God as Father rather than Law-giver. It was this re-framing that ended up getting Campbell kicked out of his beloved Church of Scotland, and which led him to minister elsewhere, as an independent of sorts. When you see what his view was, in a nutshell, as we will visit that now, as George Tuttle recounts that for us, you might be shocked to think that this would have the type of doctrinal gravitas required to get someone officially banned from their own denominational and local church. Tuttle writes of Campbell’s framing on the atonement:

Herein lies one of Campbell’s major objections to founding a view of atonement on the concept of justice —whether distributive or rectoral. Both systems visualize what he calls purely legal atonements, that is atonements, the whole character of which is determined by our relation to divine law. The real problem of atonement, however, is not merely to discover a way in which we may stand reconciled to God as a law-giver. The question contemplated in scripture and to which the Gospel is an answer is not how we can be pardoned and receive mercy, but how it could come to pass that the estranged can be reconciled. God’s intention is, as St. Paul declared, ‘to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.’ (Gal. 4:5). The relation between a judge or a governor and the accused subjects is vastly different from that of a parent to erring children. To distinguish the former from the latter is to move from an artificial atmosphere of impersonal display of benevolence to a warm and living relationship of love, Campbell therefore could not rest in any conception of the atonement which involved, as he says, ‘the substitution of a legal standing for a filial standing as the gift of God to men in Christ.’ This is not to say that Campbell denies the truth of a legal standing any more than he denies the inexorable demands of divine justice. Just as justice is brought with the concept of God as love, so the validity of a legal standing is brought within that of a loving relationship. Justice has its ultimate source in the love of God. When the loving God is honoured, justice is honoured also.

                The atonement is thus revealed retrospectively as God’s way of putting right the past, and prospectively as introducing us to a life marked by a filial relation to God eternally. Both are celebrated by believers, both must be included in their thought concerning the nature of the atonement.[1]

One might think this ought to be unremarkable. And yet in the face of meddling with the Westminster God of consensus, the Aristotelian-formed God who relates to the world through a metaphysic of a decree of law (e.g., covenant of works etc.); who must remain the ‘unmoved mover’ of monadic adoration; it is this very meddling, even if all the theologian is doing is attempting to shift the mind’s eye to the fact that God is first Father of the Son before He is ever a Law-giver/Creator, that will get you canned like Campbell was.

Some might imagine that the Campbell thesis was a minority report. In his particular environ it was at his time. But outside of his particular ecclesial and geographical environ (and even amongst it, among some other key theologians and pastors like himself), his view became a dominate one. Even overcoming many of the places and people who were initially against his alternative and kerygmatic reading of Holy Scripture. Even so, today, by the retrieval of many in the evangelical and Reformed sphere, we are only getting the Westminsterian Report. This simply wasn’t the case, even historically (which I have demonstrated elsewhere).

In the end what matters, though, isn’t whether this or that doctrinal position was the majority or minority report in the history. What matters for the Protestant Christian, is whether or not a position corresponds more proximate with the witness of Scripture. I would contend, and have done so vociferously over the years, that the Campbellian theory of the ‘Father-Son-Atonement’ framing is indeed the most biblically correlative and theologically resplendent view presented. If you don’t to hold it: repent!

[1] George M. Tuttle, So Rich a Soil: John McLeod Campbell On Christian Atonement (Edinburgh: Handsel Press, 1986), 82-3.

Confessions On Why I Do Theology

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I have been asked over the years why I do what I do; in regard to reading and writing theology. I’ve been asked if this is some sort of hobby for me (one time I was assertively told that that is all this ever could be). I am always taken aback by this question. I look at inhabiting Scripture as my life, not a vain thing. I look at good theology as an extension of, and deep dive into the inner-reality of Scripture; which is, Jesus Christ. I look at my Christian existence, and the doing of theology therein, as my lifelong discipleship project; as my sanctification; and this, wrapped in a doxological frame. But I didn’t arrive at this perspective without years of trial and tribulation. It has been those seasons of despair where the Lord has broken down all of the artificial and cultural structures funding my being, and rebuilding from there; on the foundation that only God alone can lay in Jesus Christ. And of course, these seasons ebb and flow continuously as the Christian’s life. I don’t view reading the Bible, reading theology, doing theology, practicing theology, as anything other than as an act of loving worship of my Father; indeed, of the triune life of my God.

I can sort of understand how that might look like a hobby to some. But at least for me, in the economy of God’s kingdom, I have no other categories through which to be in a constant growing and learning relationship with the living God. Indeed, I’m unsure how it is possible to really live the Christian life otherwise. It is false to reduce theology to a purely intellectual type of masturbation. This would indeed be some type of hobby of idolatry, wherein the person’s navel becomes something of their own holy of holies. God forbid that I would fall prey to ever viewing the engaging of theology as a hobby to massage the intellect with. For me, it is an Affective Theology that is at work, as that is grounded in the vicarious life of Christ whom I have come into the grace of adoption with. I have no categories for thinking the Christian life except through very intentional categories as those; indeed, as those are ever afresh anew apocalyptically inbreaking into my life as a Christian from this moment to the next by the mercy of the triune God.

My life, I always hope, is simply to be a witness to the ground of my life; who is the Christ. And in order for that to be an organically spiritual thing, it must be one that is deeply rooted in doing the work of rightly dividing the Word which is truth. For me, it has to be all or nothing. And even my all, apart from Christ, is never enough. But as Paul says: we aim for perfection. That is, we aim for the eschatological life of God to keep renewing us by both His death and life, as that is given expression through the mortal members of our bodies.

This is not a pietism. It is instead a devotion for Christ propelled by the very passion of His life for me, as my own. In other words, this approach of worship flips what is typically understood as a pietism on its head. It does this by understanding that the condition for living the Christian existence before God entails the concrete life of Christ as the ecstatic ground that it is, as He has come to us for us, and in turn, taken us with Him into the bosom of the Father. So, it isn’t a turn to the subject, and then only following, a reflexive turn to God. It is an immediate turn upward to God through the inner union Christians have come to have with Christ for them and in them by the Holy Spirit.

Church Dogmatics, V1 V2 V3 Done V4 To Go

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Just finished Volume 3. 2/3 of the way through the 6M words. All that remains is Volume 4 (the blue ones not pictured). I think I’m gonna take a bit of a sabbatical from the CD till I start V4. I have a bunch of other readings I need to get caught up on. We are richly blessed in our country to have the freedom and access to such great doctors of the church. Amen. In the meantime you can always stay in touch with Barth through my Barth Reader. And Merry Christmas!

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Psalm for the Dark Night

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Where is God? Why doesn’t he care? Why does he let me go through these dark shadows of existence? There is a deep waning in what appears to be his absence. As if ‘greater are the circumstances of life, than he who is at the right hand of the Father.’ This is what the serpent whispers into the ear-gate as I continue to sputter in what seems to be the darkness of the abyss. Where are you, O Lord? Why have you abandoned me? It seems like your cross, rather than bringing light, only brings darkness in the torment of my soul. Why do the evil seem to flourish, whilst those in Christ are left to wax and wane in the midnight hours. Indeed, the dark soul of the night seems to circumscribe and eclipse even the sunshine of the noon day. Where art thou, O Lord? My body shivers with a crippling anxiety, an angst that pulsates through my very being. And yet am I not a child of the living God? Why have you forsaken me, O Lord? While your Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path, it seems as if a bushel has been placed over your Word, such that all I can do is trip and fall over my own two feet. My soul is in despair, O Lord! How much longer until you roll the heavens of bronze back like a scroll; how much longer till you release me from these black hours of my daily life? My breath is scorched by the pain of my own agony. My fleeting thoughts seem to be what life has become. Please, Lord, never leave me or forsake me. You promised you wouldn’t, but then where are you now? In my greatest hour of need it is as if you are hidden behind a horrible decree that keeps you from understanding that my frame is but dust. Where art thou, O Lord? If this anguish continues to consume me, I am sure my everlasting bed will be with the earth worms of the blighted soil. Why is this happening to me, O Lord?

Take heart, little child, I have overcome this world. Your momentary anguish now, shall be and has been swallowed up by the very ardor of my Holy life. I remember your frame is as dust, as is mine now; even glorified at the Right hand of our Father. I am your hope, in the midst of the darkness; I am your power in the midst of your greatest weakness. I am carrying you now in the bosom of our Father. You feel absence, but in the economy of my life for you, that is what me holding you ever more tightly comes to feel like. Your feelings might betray you this night, this day, this season of time, but I will never leave or forsake you. I see you trembling, even now. I trembled and quaked in the manger, in the garden, on that old rugged cross, even for you; even as I had you with me in those dire moments of the parched life. But just as I had you with me in those moments, just as I was you and for you in those moments of despair, even now I am with you as the risen One. I have not forgotten you; au contraire! I have brought you up with me, in the ascension into the heavenly places. Whilst you continue to inhabit the body of death, I inhabit the body of everlasting life and eternal life for you; I have reversed the curse, and the very body you experience as death now, will finally be raised in consummate exaltation, just as my body of death was for you. And this resurrected life, this recreated life I bring to you even now, even in the midst of your waning moments, by the Holy Spirit. I am closer to you than you are to yourself. Be not afraid, little child.

Heretic or Heterodox?

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Arius the Heresiarch

I’ve been involved in some discussions recently revolving around figuring out what ought to count as heresy versus heterodoxy. Well, I should say, I’ve been attempting to introduce the heterodoxy category as a way to think about aberrant teachings without going to full ramming speed, and labelling everything we disagree with as heresy. The reason this has been coming up more on other social medias is because Kirk Cameron recently just came out as an Annihilationist (or Conditional Immortality proponent). So, predictably, folks have been calling him a heretic. But I protest.

It is better to identify teachings that we might disagree with, and that might be considered aberrant, as heterodox. The distinction I make between heresy and heterodoxy is as follows:

  1. Does it deny the eternally triune life of God (de Deo uno, de Deo trino)?
  2. Does it deny that the singular person of Jesus is both fully God and fully human?
  3. Does it deny that salvation comes by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone?

If the answer to the above questions is yes, then I would identify holding these teachings as damnable heresies; that if someone is committed to them, they cannot be eternally saved. But if someone, like Kirk Cameron, has arrived at what I would consider to be a matter of adiaphora and/or aberrant, non-essential, teaching in regard to a doctrine of hell, then I would consider this heterodoxy. Surely, heterodox teaching can have serious effects on someone’s Christian spirituality and the way they interpret the world, and those around them; and for this reason, if something is heterodox it represents a serious matter worth debating over. But just because Cameron, in this instance, affirms an aberrant or heterodox doctrine of hell (in my view), this will not result in him spending an eternity in hell for affirming it. Cameron, I presume in good faith, doesn’t reject any of the three marks of heresy I have indexed above. As such, he is eternally justified before the living God in Christ, and not a heretic.

If everything we disagree with, in regard to Christian teaching, is just heresy because I disagree with it, then in reality nothing will be heresy in the end. There needs to be some nuance on the continuum of Christian teaching; that is, in regard to its relative intensity vis-à-vis the role it might play in regard to identifying a teaching that is in fact eternally damning. Annihilationism does not represent a damnable teaching, even if, in my view, it represents a heterodox position. Matters of adiaphora, like doctrines of hell, respective viewpoints on biblical eschatological positions, so on and so forth, can indeed, as noted previously, have some serious and deleterious implications with reference to someone’s daily experience as a Christian person. And for this reason, bad teaching ought to be identified and called out. But it ought to be done in such a way, that recognizes distinctions along a continuum of gravity, and discern therefrom.

That said, many consider me a Barthian heretic; so, my post could be self-serving in that sense Haha.

On the Conscious Annihilated Everlasting Existence: Mirifica Commutatio

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Athanasius thought of sin and the fractured life with God, as a dissolution. Annihilationism has been in the news lately (because of Kirk Cameron’s recent disclosure that he now holds to the conditional immortality or annihilationist position in regard to hell). There is a sense that at the last judgment those spiritually outside of Christ will finally be dissolved; we could even say, annihilated. But the fact of the matter remains, according to Scripture’s teaching: the final annihilation of fallen human beings will be an everlasting existence in the midst of a conscious annihilation. Such that, the individual person will exist in the dissolution they currently inhabit now—apart from union with Christ—but like a wandering star for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever, they will be fully “alive” in the midst of their annihilated being. It behooves folks to come to Christ whilst there is still time. Maranatha

And yet, there indeed remains hope eternal in Jesus Christ. Athanasius, as noted, maintained that to be out of union with the triune God entails that the human existence, left to itself, would fully cease to exist—again, not consciously, but in its dissolved status—indeed, this is the status fallen humanity currently inhabits (whilst fully conscious). The difference at the final judgment, is that those who die outside of Christ’s righteousness for them, will become fully aware of the fallen statuses they have been inhabiting their whole respective existences now. At that time, the veil will be removed, and the reality will come full weight; whether that be for those spiritually in Christ or those outside. Again, it behooves people to leave this current world-iteration in full union with Christ; simply by saying Yes to Jesus’ offer of eternal life in Himself for you, for us.

Below, Athanasius details the various notes I have been engaging with in the aforementioned. He makes sure to give the fallen, those being currently destroyed (see I Corinthians 1:18), those living in a dissolving self, the Good News of God in Jesus Christ. He makes sure to end on the elevated reality that God has not in fact left us to our vanishing selves, and instead, in a ‘wonderful exchange,’ given us the very weight and substance of His life that He alone possesses; the only eternal life around.

. . . Yet, true though this is, it is not the whole matter. As we have already noted, it was unthinkable that God, the Father of Truth, should go back upon His word regarding death in order to ensure our continued existence. He could not falsify Himself; what, then, was God to do? Was He to demand repentance from men for their transgression? You might say that that was worthy of God, and argue further that, as through the Transgression they became subject to corruption, so through repentance they might return to incorruption again. But repentance would not guard the Divine consistency, for, if death did not hold dominion over men, God would still remain untrue. Nor does repentance recall men from what is according to their nature; all that it does is to make them cease from sinning. Had it been a case of a trespass only, and not of a subsequent corruption, repentance would have been well enough; but when once transgression had begun men came under the power of the corruption proper to their nature and were bereft of the grace which belonged to them as creatures in the Image of God. No, repentance could not meet the case. What — or rather Who was it that was needed for such grace and such recall as we required? Who, save the Word of God Himself, Who also in the beginning had made all things out of nothing? His part it was, and His alone, both to bring again the corruptible to incorruption and to maintain for the Father His consistency of character with all. For He alone, being Word of the Father and above all, was in consequence both able to recreate all, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be an ambassador for all with the Father.[1]

[1] Athanasius, On the Incarnation, §7, 32-3.

‘The Faith of Christ’ in Contradiction to the gods of the Metaphysicians

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What hath Jerusalem to do with Athens? A question from the days of Tertullian, and now down through the centuries. I would vociferously argue that Jerusalem must condition Athens in such a way that Athens becomes nothing more than a pretext to be used by the textuality of God’s life Self-revealed for the church and world in Jesus Christ. This question of “faith and reason” has been given many iterations and treatments throughout the halls of history, whether that be from someone as boisterous as Martin Luther, or someone as methodologically skeptical as Rene Descartes. Indeed, the reformational scholastics themselves, and their progeny, even into the repristinate of today, ostensibly maintain that the metaphysics of the classical Greek philosophers is in fact univocal towards thinking and speaking the Christian God.

I protest, and so does Eberhard Jüngel:

The faith which interposes such questions is a disturbance. But should not faith be seen as a disturber of the metaphysical thought of God, as even its greatest menace? Was it not necessary that a study of religion within the boundaries of pure reason would have to come to the aid of the metaphysical concept of God in order to reduce the all too human discourse about a God who reveals himself in history to a rational level? Did not faith have to be subordinated to that morality which was established without faith, if it were not to become irrational in and of itself and thus be dead?

But then faith will reply with the question whether it really is such a rational capacity that a theoretical or practical use of reason, separate from the event of faith, can prescribe reason’s function. What becomes of God when an abstract “I think” or an abstract “thou shalt” sets the context from the outset within which one then may and must decide what merits being called God? Although the intention to maintain the strictest possible distinction between God and man cannot be supported too strongly by theology, does not this approach lead to a result which is totally opposed to that intention? And finally, if God has been established as the securing factor for man, has not then the decision been already made that from now on the securing must become the god of man? Is not ultimately the categorical imperative the grand attempt to establish the morally understood security of the human race as its highest good? If “nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good without qualification, except a good will,” then does not the good will which secures the welfare of the human race become the god of man?[1]

Prior to the above passage Juengal has been discussing how certainty and non-certainty might work within a theological and philosophical frame vis-à-vis God. Without getting into the details, for our purposes, the questions Juengal puts to the God constructed from classical and modern metaphysical premises are sufficient. Sufficient, for drawing attention to the fact that faith itself, if indeed it has to do with a genuine knowledge of the genuine and triune God of the Christians, has its starting point insofar as God starts with us first; that is, rather than us starting with God first. Is Christian faith intended to provide a provision of self-security in a seemingly insecure world for its own sake (something like a ‘god-of-the-gaps’)? Or is Christian faith purely focused upon knowledge of God that is focused on God as God, as God is in Himself as the reality who indeed is to be worshipped simply because He is, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Well of course, the Christian should want to say the latter rather than the former. But methodologically so much of Christian theology, one way or the other, no matter how much piety and piousness is on display, has given way to thinking God only after God has first been thought by the profane mind. Indeed, the mind that is ultimately seeking a huge scratch for the itch of uncertainties, for the chaos that this world presents each and everyone of us with upon our respective arrivals on planet earth.

I think the moral here is that God’s Self-revelation is categorically distinct, in a sui generis type of way, from the metaphysics. That is, knowledge of God for the Christian entails a vulnerability. But the vulnerability isn’t about assuaging our own anxieties about the ostensible disorder of the world, and our place in it. The vulnerability is that we don’t have the capacity to disentangle ourselves from the chaos of this world order; no matter what type of metaphysical structures we might build in that very attempt. The genuine vulnerability we have is that without being rightly positioned within the order that God has set about, we indeed will seek to create our own veritable towers of Babel; reaching up to a certainty of reality that ultimately has to do with ensuring a salvation for ourselves rather than being reliant upon the One who can actually provide us with a true and rightly ordered salvation, as that obtains in Godself for us in Jesus Christ. And it is this, this faith of Christ, that confronts the metaphysically construed gods, who seek a faith built upon its own internal premises, rather than the alien premises of faith provided for, truly, by the living God for us in Jesus Christ.

[1] Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, trans. by Darrell L. Guder (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf&Stock [reprint], 1983), 195–96.

God’s Annihilating and Evangelical Word: With Reference to Eberhard Juengal

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Eberhard Juengal is engaging with the address of God, and the role that language plays in that address. He is appealing to Heidegger and others with reference to how certain language games have functioned in the profane world, in regard to anthropologically and socio-linguistically situating people as people; both within their inner-lives, and as that relates to what it means to be a human being in the world at large. After he develops things along these lines for a bit, he gets to the payoff. He receives these types of profane frameworks, particularly within there existentialist hue, and then reifies them from within a Christian theological frame of reference. He shows how God’s address, God’s language towards us, has an eschatological character to it that resituates us in a right and new relationship with Godself. Juengal writes:

The eschatological character of man’s distancing from himself has an eminently critical dimension. For, to the extent that this distancing surpasses everything which is, everything which is for itself is made nothing. Every word which addresses man about God is, in that sense, a negating or destroying word. It brings about an annihilation in that it surpasses not only our being-here, but also our past and our future. But distanced from himself in such a way, the man addressed about God is brought into a new, ultimate nearness to himself. That is, to be sure, a nearness of the ego to itself which includes its being before God. The New Testament understands this as the presence which is eschatologically oriented through the guarantee of the Holy Spirit.

The word of God which addresses man about God, has, then, an annihilating effect, for the sake of something new. Evangelical theology may not remain silent about the fact that it is destructive. But, and this is what evangelical theology must chiefly speak of, it is destructive only on the basis of the positive fact that God addresses us about himself in such a way that he promises himself to us. One should not understand it in such a way that God would permit what exists to be made nothing in order then to be able to begin all over again from the beginning, so to speak. The reverse is true: because God, in addressing us about himself in such a way that he promotes himself to us, always creates something new, that which is old becomes nothing.[1]

Juengal elaborates further, particularly with how it relates to the respective theologies of Karl Barth and Friedrich Gogarten, in footnote 6 with reference to the above second paragraph:

Thus sin passes away only when it is forgiven; but the forgiveness of sins is always more than the passing away of sin. And in exactly the same way the godless person passes away because he is justified, not in order that he can be justified; the justification of the godless is always more than the passing away of the godless. The actual contrast between the theology of Karl Barth and Friedrich Gogarten appears to me to consist of this contrasting definition of the theological relationship between the passing away and becoming, of death and life, of judgment and grace. See on this the analysis of Gogarten’s writings with special attention to the Luther statements which he cites in W. Hüffmeier, Gott egen Gott; Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zum Gottes- und Todesverständnis Friedrich Gogartens unter besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner Luther-interpretation (Tübingen dissertation, 1972). On this relationship between Barth and Gogarten I refer to the insightful investigation presented by P. Lange in Konkrete Theologie? Karl Barth und Friedrich Gogarten “Zwischen den Zeiten” (1992-1993); Eine theologiegeschichtlich-systematische Untersuchung im Blick auf die Praxis theologischen Verhaltens (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1972). Karl Barth’s dogmatic approach, to define the judgment of God on the basis of grace, that is hermeneutically to say that on the basis of the new the old has become old and passed away (II Cor. 5:17), has been taken up chiefly by Ernst Fuchs and independently developed further hermeneutically.[2]

This hearkens me back to what more contemporarily is being identified by folks like Philip Ziegler, Jamie Davies et al., as Apocalyptic Theology. Essentially, the idea is what I take to be the Pauline idea of God’s disruptive grace (to borrow language from George Hunsinger); that is, that when God addresses us by the Word of God, Jesus Christ, He takes us from our present and visible circumstances, and places us into Himself, in the new creation and resurrected life of Jesus Christ. The result being, that the old is ‘annihilated,’ as it were, as the new has come (and continues to come, and will finally come at the second advent of the Christ). Peter refers to this type of theologizing in this way:

10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.

11 Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, 12 looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! 13 But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.[3]

As Juengal has underscored for us already, while there is a ‘taking away’ there is also a ‘bringing anew’ that is greater than not less than what has been annihilated in the death of death in Christ. This might remind us of Paul’s thinking when he writes, “17 things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.”[4] So, accordingly, there is a passing away of the shadows, which in themselves couldn’t handle the weight of what was coming as the antitype of its stead. It isn’t that the original and now fallen creation isn’t real, but that its inner reality had always already stood before it, as it was first created for its second recreation in the incarnation, resurrection, ascension, and advent of Jesus Christ. That is to say, the first creation, we might say, the first Adam, was something of a placeholder for the coming of his intended reality, in the archetypal, second and greatest Man, Jesus Christ; indeed, for the first Adam, and for all of the world therefrom.

These, are heavy teachings; who can hear them?!

[1] Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, trans. by Darrell L. Guder (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf&Stock [reprint], 1983), 175.

[2] Ibid., n. 6.

[3] II Peter 3.10-13, NASB95.

[4] Colossians 2.17, NASB95.

A Special Thanks to My Financial Donors

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I just wanted to drop a quick note of appreciation and thanks to those who support my work financially. That is meaningful to me. In fact, because of the contributions, it might help supplement my funding for a DMin (Doctor of Ministry) degree program (fully accredited by ATS) I have applied to (currently waiting to hear back). I will let you all know how that turns out—should know before Christmas, hopefully.

I use my Substack account as the means by which folks can provide financial support if they so choose. I don’t do what I do for money, but money never hurts LOL. I appreciate all of my readers from over the years, and currently! I just wanted to give a shout out to those, again, who have decided to give some financial support as well. Here is the info on how you can support my work similarly, if interested. Click.