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Vinny213
Guest
Where you being sarcastic here?
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Catholic_Dude
Guest
The Reformers rejected the Mass precisely because they saw it as incompatible with their view of the Atonement and Trent reaffirmed the Mass is a propitiatory Sacrifice.
Trent doesn’t go into the level of detail your demanding, as far as I recall. What Trent does do is speak of tangential issues (see my last post) that show PSub is not what they had in mind (and we know Aquinas didn’t believe in Psub).
The Catechism also makes it clear the Atonement was not a Psub situation.
Okay. Who said otherwise?
This is fine. A satisfactory punishment is not the same as a retributive punishment. Consider the words of John Calvin himself:
For the sake of distinction, we may call the one kind of judgment punishment, the other chastisement. In judicial punishment, God is to be understood as taking vengeance on his enemies, by displaying his anger against them, confounding, scattering, and annihilating them. By divine punishment, properly so called, let us then understand punishment accompanied with indignation. In judicial chastisement, he is offended, but not in wrath; he does not punish by destroying or striking down as with a thunderbolt. Hence it is not properly punishment or vengeance, but correction and admonition. The one is the act of a judge, the other of a father.
…To have a short and clear view of the whole matter, we must make two distinctions. First, whenever the infliction is designed to avenge, then the curse and wrath of God displays itself. This is never the case with believers. On the contrary, the chastening of God carries his blessing with it, and is an evidence of love, as Scripture teaches [footnote 370: http://biblia.com/bible/esv/Job%205.17”]Job 5:17; Prov. 3:11; Heb. 12:5]. (Institutes Bk3:Ch4:Sec31,32)
So, rather than Christ receiving divine punishment while Christians receive chastening - which is what Penal Substitution requires - Scripture actually applies the concept of chastisement to both. This is precisely how Isaiah 53:5 is to be understood when it says: “The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.”
Christ atoned for all sin, not just original sin. We can only do satisfaction in so far as we are united to Christ, where as you seem to be trying to push the idea we don’t need Christ to be able to make satisfaction.
I think the problem here is that you’re not understanding what is being said in Catholic sources.
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brb3
Guest
Not at all … I loved CD’s answer !!! There are earth moving implications revealed in that answer. Re-read it several times, and ask questions about it that may come to mind.
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brb3
Guest
Vinny123…
Christians are children of God, by faith, rebirth into the New Adam, and obedience. Any child can reject their parents, and sever ties. The prodigal son did so…for a season, and paid a great price for it. Luckily he was recovered of his senses and returned to his father FULLY CONTRITE AND REMORSEFUL…DESIRING TO WORK FOR FATHER. His father could of insisted upon severe penance, but chose not too …showing mercy rather than justice.
Depending on our contrition, remorse and repentance shown/expressed ---- we may receive light or severe penance from a priest. If a father fails to discipline a child …that child will come to ruin. We NEED PENANCE for our Post-Baptismal sins… committed while in God’s family.
Christians are children of God, by faith, rebirth into the New Adam, and obedience. Any child can reject their parents, and sever ties. The prodigal son did so…for a season, and paid a great price for it. Luckily he was recovered of his senses and returned to his father FULLY CONTRITE AND REMORSEFUL…DESIRING TO WORK FOR FATHER. His father could of insisted upon severe penance, but chose not too …showing mercy rather than justice.
Depending on our contrition, remorse and repentance shown/expressed ---- we may receive light or severe penance from a priest. If a father fails to discipline a child …that child will come to ruin. We NEED PENANCE for our Post-Baptismal sins… committed while in God’s family.
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Vinny213
Guest
Is this following view a legitamte expresson of the Roman Catholci view of atonement? It comes from Bryan Cross:
"This means that Christ carried in His body the sufferings that sin has brought into the world, and that Christ suffered in His soul over all the sins of the world, and their offense against God. He bore our iniquities not in the sense that God punished Him for what we did, but in the sense that He grieved over them all, in solidarity with us. That is what it means that the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all. "
"This means that Christ carried in His body the sufferings that sin has brought into the world, and that Christ suffered in His soul over all the sins of the world, and their offense against God. He bore our iniquities not in the sense that God punished Him for what we did, but in the sense that He grieved over them all, in solidarity with us. That is what it means that the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all. "
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guanophore
Guest
Yes!
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Vinny213
Guest
It is? What church document supports this view?
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guanophore
Guest
The Holy Scriptures are the BEST Church document!
1 Peter 2:24
24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
But the Catechism is also good.
vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c3a2.htm
Vinny if you would use the quote button at the bottom of the post, then everyone could see what post you are responding to.
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JEJL
Guest
Hello,
I am a recently converted/re-converted Catholic. I have believed Penal Substitution for a long time, ever since I learned it when with Protestants and even up to now since I came back to the Roman Catholic Church almost three years ago. Can anyone please show me an official Church document condemning this doctrine? Forgive me if it has been shown already in the thread, I didn’t seem to find any. If there is none, that’s okay, but I still don’t understand the difference between satisfaction and this Catholic view, and the Penal Substitution. Seems to me that the accusation against Penal Substitution as being heretical because it would imply the Son of God is eternally in hell is a straw man; proponents of Penal Substitution have never argued this. A split second in hell would be enough to satisfy the punishment for all sins ever committed, since He is God… but the doctrine just made so much sense to me. Rather than diminish God’s love, I thought it augmented it. The Son was willing to break that eternal union of love even for but a brief moment for the sake of love; He gained it right back of course, so lost nothing in the end… this is what the doctrine teaches.
A preacher made a good point; why is it that Jesus was so afraid, humanly speaking, going as far as sweating blood before going to the Cross, while His followers later were pitched with tar and crucified under Nero while singing hymns full of joy? Well, one was to bear the sins of mankind; the others were mere imitators.
I am willing to change. I just don’t understand. This apparent difference between bearing punishment, versus simply redeeming or satisfying in part some of the guilt, all seems like semantics to me. Are we pelagians? Did Christ satisfy part of the debt, and we have to do the rest ourselves? That seems like a worse heresy than Penal Substitution, given how horribly weak humans are. St Louis de Montfort certainly taught how bad we are. I don’t believe in total depravity, but we are pretty bad all the same…
Those Catholics who changed “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me…” to “…that saved and strengthened me” because it sounded like total depravity sounds to me like a detestable lukewarm downplaying of what John Newton went through. Any Catholic who severely struggles with sin knows how wretched one can feel sometimes because of sin. It’s not a mere matter of “being strengthened”; one needs to be saved.
Seems to me like I still think like a Protestant in many ways. I believe the Catholic Church is true. I want to submit and believe what she believes. But this is the greatest issue for me now.
I am a recently converted/re-converted Catholic. I have believed Penal Substitution for a long time, ever since I learned it when with Protestants and even up to now since I came back to the Roman Catholic Church almost three years ago. Can anyone please show me an official Church document condemning this doctrine? Forgive me if it has been shown already in the thread, I didn’t seem to find any. If there is none, that’s okay, but I still don’t understand the difference between satisfaction and this Catholic view, and the Penal Substitution. Seems to me that the accusation against Penal Substitution as being heretical because it would imply the Son of God is eternally in hell is a straw man; proponents of Penal Substitution have never argued this. A split second in hell would be enough to satisfy the punishment for all sins ever committed, since He is God… but the doctrine just made so much sense to me. Rather than diminish God’s love, I thought it augmented it. The Son was willing to break that eternal union of love even for but a brief moment for the sake of love; He gained it right back of course, so lost nothing in the end… this is what the doctrine teaches.
A preacher made a good point; why is it that Jesus was so afraid, humanly speaking, going as far as sweating blood before going to the Cross, while His followers later were pitched with tar and crucified under Nero while singing hymns full of joy? Well, one was to bear the sins of mankind; the others were mere imitators.
I am willing to change. I just don’t understand. This apparent difference between bearing punishment, versus simply redeeming or satisfying in part some of the guilt, all seems like semantics to me. Are we pelagians? Did Christ satisfy part of the debt, and we have to do the rest ourselves? That seems like a worse heresy than Penal Substitution, given how horribly weak humans are. St Louis de Montfort certainly taught how bad we are. I don’t believe in total depravity, but we are pretty bad all the same…
Those Catholics who changed “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me…” to “…that saved and strengthened me” because it sounded like total depravity sounds to me like a detestable lukewarm downplaying of what John Newton went through. Any Catholic who severely struggles with sin knows how wretched one can feel sometimes because of sin. It’s not a mere matter of “being strengthened”; one needs to be saved.
Seems to me like I still think like a Protestant in many ways. I believe the Catholic Church is true. I want to submit and believe what she believes. But this is the greatest issue for me now.
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Huiou_Theou
Guest
It’s a point of piety, I suppose; I’ll agree, and it is a strong emotive point.
But – I’ve never seen accounts of normal people sweating blood – other than hemophiliacs, and in their case – any strong stress will cause the bleeding; it doesn’t take the sins of all men to cause that.
OTOH:
Place two men before a trial of death, and one will show fear in one way – another will show it in a different way; one will act out – and another, to defy his captors, will suppress any outward sign of suffering to prevent the torturer’s satisfaction.
I think the suffering in the Garden is so acute because of Judas; and a few others whom are perhaps un-named, but of his ilk and of Jesus’ followers.
An intimate friend, loved as one might love a wife – betrayed Jesus. His words at the last supper, just before this bleeding began were quite strong;“Judas, what you are going to do – do quickly.”
I suspect you don’t identify with those words as much as I do; I understand them from an experience:
Betrayal becomes all the deeper the longer it drags on; My wife, betraying me, has done it over a several year period; I, now, bleed after encounters with her – my bleeding is intestinal; And it’s very abnormal medically; but it was started by one woman.
I became so ill over a period of years that I am now on disability, and healing slowly. Mental anguish drags the body with it. (Even the bible lists that in the OT as a principle…)
Every time Judas spurned Jesus, or acted envious; Jesus knew it; He loved him in spite of this, giving Judas every benefit (of the doubt, but with no doubt.) In the end, there is strong scriptural evidence (not proof beyond hope) that Judas was damned.
It’s one thing for a man to see someone die that he never met – it’s another when you knew them well.
I suppose you might be able to empathize, by looking at marriages where one spouse is committing adultery, and the other KNOWS it, but is trying to forgive them and actively love them; With a situation like that, you might grasp how painful such a relationship is;
Nothing destroys a loving man as much as something that comes from within his own family and support. SLOW Betrayal causes the deepest sufferings.
The point is subtle; that’s why I commented about lawyers and technicalities before. Even St. Paul , the brightest of lawyers, was on the wrong side at first – murdering Stephen on account of misguided understanding of the Law.
I have never liked the exaggerated nature of St. Louis DeMonfort’s expressions – he started several riots because of his dramatic phrasing of words. Piety does not equal clearly stated truth. Feeling bad (remorese) about one’s self also doesn’t always equate to the true gravity of the crime.
Emotional trauma is known to become worse to the bearer over time; and memories are known to become inaccurate because of such events. It’s a temptation to be blunt… to over estimate the crime.
I wouldn’t make that change in wording; but I still don’t hold penal substitution in the sense of wrath of God. Saving me, no matter what my sin, does not equate to God pouring out wrath on an innocent SON – that’s inconceivable.
A judge who hands down a sentence, doesn’t have to want to punish the person who receives the judgment. He doesn’t need to want to be punitive in order to fulfill his office.
Now, I’m curious – do you know of any legal precedent – in any court here on earth – where one person can take the place of another for the purposes of punishment ?
If a plaintiff had a family member murdered, and they wanted to see the defendant punished; The plaintiff is going to see the substitution as injustice should the person who takes the punishment not be the one who committed the crime.
BUT: It is POSSIBLE in court, that one may bear the financial burden of reparation for another person – by a gift;
How do you reconcile that what we as human beings innately know about justice and courts here on earth, is replaced by a vengeful, wrathful, God-Judge, who will not rest until an innocent man is punished?
B
brb3
Guest
I understand & have shared your situation as described above, having come to Christ as adult, under Penal Substitution understandings. Now, whether it is exactly right or slightly wrong, … I do know that understanding of how Christ suffered for me and all, brought about remorse & contrition on my part like nothing ever had before.Hello,
I am a recently converted/re-converted Catholic. I have believed Penal Substitution for a long time, ever since I learned it when with Protestants and even up to now since I came back to the Roman Catholic Church almost three years ago. Can anyone please show me an official Church document condemning this doctrine? Forgive me if it has been shown already in the thread, I didn’t seem to find any. If there is none, that’s okay, but I still don’t understand the difference between satisfaction and this Catholic view, and the Penal Substitution. Seems to me that the accusation against Penal Substitution as being heretical because it would imply the Son of God is eternally in hell is a straw man; proponents of Penal Substitution have never argued this. A split second in hell would be enough to satisfy the punishment for all sins ever committed, since He is God… but the doctrine just made so much sense to me. Rather than diminish God’s love, I thought it augmented it. The Son was willing to break that eternal union of love even for but a brief moment for the sake of love; He gained it right back of course, so lost nothing in the end… this is what the doctrine teaches.
A preacher made a good point; why is it that Jesus was so afraid, humanly speaking, going as far as sweating blood before going to the Cross, while His followers later were pitched with tar and crucified under Nero while singing hymns full of joy? Well, one was to bear the sins of mankind; the others were mere imitators.
I am willing to change. I just don’t understand. This apparent difference between bearing punishment, versus simply redeeming or satisfying in part some of the guilt, all seems like semantics to me. Are we pelagians? Did Christ satisfy part of the debt, and we have to do the rest ourselves? That seems like a worse heresy than Penal Substitution, given how horribly weak humans are. St Louis de Montfort certainly taught how bad we are. I don’t believe in total depravity, but we are pretty bad all the same…
Those Catholics who changed “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me…” to “…that saved and strengthened me” because it sounded like total depravity sounds to me like a detestable lukewarm downplaying of what John Newton went through. Any Catholic who severely struggles with sin knows how wretched one can feel sometimes because of sin. It’s not a mere matter of “being strengthened”; one needs to be saved.
Seems to me like I still think like a Protestant in many ways. I believe the Catholic Church is true. I want to submit and believe what she believes. But this is the greatest issue for me now.
Perhaps another explanation might not of convicted me to such a degree, but alls well that ends well, and that occasion got me to accept Christ as Lord, and to make a lifetime commitment to obedience.
So, I will never discredit it as an errant understanding that can’t convey justification graces to a lost sinner.
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Vinny213
Guest
Catholics believed Jesus only satisfied the debt due to our eternal punishment for sin, the temporal punishemnt has to be expiated by us. So yes Catholics are peligans since their view of the atonement denies that Christ died for our sins and bore our iniquities, which is what all the church fathers taught including Thomas Aquinas who also held to a statisfaction theory of atonement.
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tskrobacz
Guest
The Dominicans based their argument on many fine biblical metaphors and concluded yes, Jesus was necessary. Jesus had to offer this sacrifice, pay this atonement bill, and we didn’t realize what a terrible thing this was saying about God. You have to ask, “If God needed to be bought off to love us, what kind of God is this?” It breaks down any kind of organic connection between God and God’s creation. If God has to be talked into loving us, if God has to be convinced.
The Franciscans never agreed with that. John Donscotis, a teacher, (he was never canonized like Thomas Aquinas, he was beatified, but that wasn’t the top) said no, Jesus was not necessary, and he was solving no problems. There was no problem to be solved; he was simply for Christians, the phrase from Colossians being he was the image of the invisible God. He was the icon who brought us into the lovability and generosity of God. Quite possibly that is why the Cross became that deepest icon because humanity needed an image that God was on our side, that God was given to us, that God was for us and not against, and benevolently involved with the universe: that’s of course supposed to be the transformative meaning of this image of the crucified Jesus.
Unfortunately, the fixing mode engineers him into solving a problem, paying a price. This terrible atonement theology that we’re stuck with today claims that there was something to be atoned for. I think that is simply a rather horrible theological example, it’s been called the most unfortunately, unsuccessful theological debate that ever happened in the church, but pretty much it’s been accepted for the last 700-800 years. Jesus came to identify with the pain of the world and enter into it with that cosmic sympathy and to invite us into that identification with sadness. We are invited, like Francis, to proactively move right into it and say this is where life is at; this is where you understand, not at the top of things but at the bottom of things.
The Franciscans never agreed with that. John Donscotis, a teacher, (he was never canonized like Thomas Aquinas, he was beatified, but that wasn’t the top) said no, Jesus was not necessary, and he was solving no problems. There was no problem to be solved; he was simply for Christians, the phrase from Colossians being he was the image of the invisible God. He was the icon who brought us into the lovability and generosity of God. Quite possibly that is why the Cross became that deepest icon because humanity needed an image that God was on our side, that God was given to us, that God was for us and not against, and benevolently involved with the universe: that’s of course supposed to be the transformative meaning of this image of the crucified Jesus.
Unfortunately, the fixing mode engineers him into solving a problem, paying a price. This terrible atonement theology that we’re stuck with today claims that there was something to be atoned for. I think that is simply a rather horrible theological example, it’s been called the most unfortunately, unsuccessful theological debate that ever happened in the church, but pretty much it’s been accepted for the last 700-800 years. Jesus came to identify with the pain of the world and enter into it with that cosmic sympathy and to invite us into that identification with sadness. We are invited, like Francis, to proactively move right into it and say this is where life is at; this is where you understand, not at the top of things but at the bottom of things.
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Vinny213
Guest
This is what Aquinas believed. This comes from the wikipedia article on atonement:
"What he means by “satisfactory punishment,” as opposed to punishment that is “penal,” is essentially the Catholic idea of penance. Aquinas refers to the practice saying, “A satisfactory punishment is imposed upon penitents”[15] and defines this idea of “Satisfactory Punishment” (penance) as a compensation of self-inflicted pain in equal measure to the pleasure derived from the sin. “Punishment may equal the pleasure contained in a sin committed.” [16]
Aquinas sees penance as having two functions. First to pay a debt, and second “to serve as a remedy for the avoidance of sin”. In this later case he says that “as a remedy against future sin, the satisfaction of one does not profit another, for the flesh of one man is not tamed by another’s fast” and again “one man is not freed from guilt by another’s contrition.”[17] According to Aquinas “Christ bore a satisfactory punishment, not for His, but for our sins.”[18] The penance Christ did has its effect in paying the “debt of punishment” incurred by our sin."
Can any good Catholic agree with the above?
This is a concept similar to Anselm’s that we owe a debt of honor to God, with a critical difference: While Anselm said we could never pay this because any good we could do was owed to God anyway, Aquinas says that in addition to our due of obedience we can make up for our debt through acts of penance “man owes God all that he is able to give him…over and above which he can offer something by way of satisfaction”. Unlike Anselm, Aquinas claims that we can make satisfaction for our own sin, and that our problem is not our personal sin, but original sin “original sin… is an infection of human nature itself, so that, unlike actual sin, it could not be expiated by the satisfaction of a mere man.”[16] Thus Christ, as the “second Adam,” does penance in our place – paying the debt of our original sin"
"What he means by “satisfactory punishment,” as opposed to punishment that is “penal,” is essentially the Catholic idea of penance. Aquinas refers to the practice saying, “A satisfactory punishment is imposed upon penitents”[15] and defines this idea of “Satisfactory Punishment” (penance) as a compensation of self-inflicted pain in equal measure to the pleasure derived from the sin. “Punishment may equal the pleasure contained in a sin committed.” [16]
Aquinas sees penance as having two functions. First to pay a debt, and second “to serve as a remedy for the avoidance of sin”. In this later case he says that “as a remedy against future sin, the satisfaction of one does not profit another, for the flesh of one man is not tamed by another’s fast” and again “one man is not freed from guilt by another’s contrition.”[17] According to Aquinas “Christ bore a satisfactory punishment, not for His, but for our sins.”[18] The penance Christ did has its effect in paying the “debt of punishment” incurred by our sin."
Can any good Catholic agree with the above?
This is a concept similar to Anselm’s that we owe a debt of honor to God, with a critical difference: While Anselm said we could never pay this because any good we could do was owed to God anyway, Aquinas says that in addition to our due of obedience we can make up for our debt through acts of penance “man owes God all that he is able to give him…over and above which he can offer something by way of satisfaction”. Unlike Anselm, Aquinas claims that we can make satisfaction for our own sin, and that our problem is not our personal sin, but original sin “original sin… is an infection of human nature itself, so that, unlike actual sin, it could not be expiated by the satisfaction of a mere man.”[16] Thus Christ, as the “second Adam,” does penance in our place – paying the debt of our original sin"
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Huiou_Theou
Guest
What?!
How do you get from PENAL substitution – to the idea of “denies that Christ died for our sins?” Catholics explicitly say that Jesus died for our sins; The question is over how he bore our iniquities, any in what way our sins opened up a requirement for his death, and what his death accomplished.
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brb3
Guest
Nope,…
Catholics believe at our Baptism/ Confirmation, All our sins and all punishment is covered at our rebirths …washed 100 % clean by Blood of Christ, who Fully Atoned for them, and we are FULLY GRACED at that moment.
Now, if we promptly died ---- straight to heaven, no stops in purgatory. But, as we generally live on, and fall back into sins …those later sins MUST be confessed, and penance issued and served by us. But, we are still being forgiven of our Post-Baptismal sins, by shed blood of Christ at Calvary …provided we confess them in THIS WORLD, before death.
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brb3
Guest
U are making no sense here. I cant follow your logic. Give me a second go of your arguments.
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brb3
Guest
Regarding Thomas …yes, I do buy his argument…in regards to Post -Baptismal sin !!
Now, regarding OS & personal sins committed prior to our Baptism/Confirmation/First Confession …no, I believe Christ’s shed blood covered those 100%…debt paid in full !!! We are Fully Graced & Fully exonerated!!! …based on Thief at Cross & Christ’s forgiveness & Paradise statement.
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brb3
Guest
Millions of Protestants have been reborn on basis of faith, confession & Penal Substitution understandings, provided they received Trinitarian water baptism. BUT, sadly some can errantly think their first enlightenment/ justification lasts a lifetime…covering all future sins, w/o need to further confess.
Been there, done that heresy !
Been there, done that heresy !
J
JEJL
Guest
I agree. It is inconceivable. Never was the Father’s love closer to Jesus than when He suffered on the Cross.
I’m sorry about your wife. Yes, I guess I can see that betrayal of a loved one is much more painful than hurt from a stranger, and Jesus loved Judas deeply, being one of the twelve chosen ones.
Thank you for your thorough reply. I have come up with something, I hope I am getting closer to the truth, I will put it in a next post since it is somewhat long but I believe I am maybe understanding things better.
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