Christus Victor or Penal Substitutionary Atonement?

[Latin]

I believe that Abelard confused these two things making our works in imitating Christ a salvific act, rather than a response to Christ’s salvific work on the cross.

In fact Hodos seems to me you are misjudged Abelard, because you are not familiar with the Catholic teachings on Justification.

Abelard was a Catholic theologian and he was never confused on Justification and our works.
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In Catholic Soteriology our work is NOT SALVIFIC, we do not do good works in order to be justified, but we are justified in order to do good works.

Our Justification is God’s gift and we can add nothing to it.

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RIGHTEOUSNESS AND MERIT by James Akin

“Protestants who say … Catholics believe we must do good works in order to become justified — a position which was explicitly condemned at Trent, which taught “nothing that precedes justification, whether faith or works, merits the grace of justification” (Decree on Justification 8).

Catholic theology teaches we do not do good works in order to be justified, but that we are justified in order to do good works, as Paul says: “[W]e are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10 ).

Justification is the cause, not the consequence, of good works.

However, these Protestants are still confused about the fact that Catholics do not teach we are made only partially righteous in justification.

The Church teaches that we are made totally righteous — we receive 100% pure righteousness — in justification.
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Thus Trent declares:
“n those who are born again God hates nothing, because there is no condemnation to those who are truly buried together with Christ by baptism unto death . . . but, putting off the old man and putting on the new one who is created according to God, are made innocent, immaculate, pure, guiltless and beloved of God, heirs indeed of God, joint heirs with Christ; so that there is nothing whatever to hinder their entrance into heaven” (Decree on Original Sin 5).

You don’t have to do a diddly-do-da thing after being justified by God in baptism in order to go to heaven.

There is no magic level of works one needs to achieve in order to go to heaven.

One is saved the moment one is initially justified.”

http://jimmyakin.com/righteousness-and-merit
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If someone doesn’t know.
James Akin is the director of apologetics and evangelization for Catholic Answers.
Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on “Catholic Answers Live.”
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God bless

 

[John_Martin]

the passages above describe Christ as having born the curse that is due us on the cross.

Actually, he is not substituting himself for us, but “going before us”, going first, - we are required to go the same. Dying, his and ours, is not penal.
“We were buried with him, by our baptism we died with him (not ‘him in our place’), were buried as he was; I have been (really, not figuratively) been crucified WITH Christ; it really is no longer I who lives, but it is Christ you see and hear when you read these words from me.”
We Catholics are dead, you do not know where we are from, just as none knew where our Christ was from, presuming Nazareth.
He did not substitute himself for us, but died to give us his body and blood to consume so his bodily resurrection would include his body found in us since we ate and drank what is raised.

Justice is LOVE to God - the virtue, not the emotional passion. In his love God poured his whole being into my being (yours, too) and justice to God requires love of the lover by the beloved in reciprocation. That alone is God’s justice.

When a human pours his whole being in gift for the lover to have him, the human dies. Jesus became human to ‘hit the mark’ of justice for humans. He died, but being the Son, he participates in eternal reciprocation of justice, eternal reciprocation of Love, eternal reciprocation of pouring himself into his Father, and being human he is eternally raised, as are we who participate in his body and blood.
Jesus died to feed us and join us in His love and justice, eternal reciprocation of life given for the lover to have and receive ourselves.

 

[Hodos]

There are places that would agree with your take on the scriptures with your reference to Christ being the firstborn. Certainly this is the case in Colossians. That however doesn’t mean this is the only understanding of the work of the cross. My texts above demonstrate that Christ did indeed bear the penalty of sin in your stead and has credited to you his righteousness by faith. In other words, it’s not necessarily an either/or issue. It is interesting that Paul presents both of these views in his writings. However, our dying is not our work. Romans demonstrated that our dying to sin is Christ’s work. Romans 4,5,6 demonstrate this. Your suffering is not salvific on its own. It is the result of the world’s reaction against Christ and your subsequent faith in him.

 

[Hodos]

In Catholic Soteriology our work is NOT SALVIFIC, we do not do good works in order to be justified, but we are justified in order to do good works.

I would agree with you. This is the catholic teaching, and what we preach teach and confess in the Lutheran confessions. Unfortunately I have had numerous long dialogues with your colleagues who would vehemently disagree with you on this point. I have drawn this very distinction in causality ad nauseum in numerous forum threads discussing justification.

 

[John_Martin]

My texts above demonstrate that Christ did indeed bear the penalty of sin in your stead and has credited to you his righteousness by faith.

First, they are not your texts but are owned by tbe Catholic Church, unauthorized for taking by the protesters of the 16th century, and their proper interpretations limited to those sent by Christ (the magisterium).
Second, righteousness is not a juridical finding but is a "state of being, and fully operating, in reciprocal pouring out of whole life into God and receiving God’s full being (life) poured into me.
He has all of me and I all of him. God “reckons” he has received my whole being, my life, my love, as the acceptable reciprocation of his love, his Life given me, when I believe, accepting baptism at the hand of his Son’s right hand (from the one occupying the position at his right hand of power and authorization, and accept the teaching of the same person, following to the Land to which he will lead me; I eat and drink when he says “take, eat, drink.” )

God “reckons” you love him with your whole self (justice requires your love) when you take him at his word delivered to you by the one he Sent (his magisterial apostolic messengers. Reckoning this he participates with you in this eternal justice of reciprocation of Love, of full being into each other, so you have him in you and he has you in him. Death is not a penalty, it is what has to happen when a human creature gives his being to God to have. It is death to become Catholic - letting go of all the Lutheran Confessions (for me) and letting go of the self definition of what Christianity must be - throwing my life away just to be taken in with Catholics. Who are these strange Catholics? I will go with them if they want me. I left my aspirations of life to be dead with the Catholics.

The framers of the confessions you list, these men deliver to you what they want the bible to mean but not what the king sent his right hand to deliver.

 

[Hodos]

Lol you lost me at they aren’t your texts my friend. Will read your comment when I stop laughing.

 

[Hodos]

Ok. Done laughing. So I am always astounded by the level of polemics that ignores the fact that the Reformers WERE ROMAN CATHOLIC. Luther was an Augustinian monk, ordained priest, doctor of theology, professor of theology, pastor over three parishes, and vicar general over 11 monasteries. Second, he made a doctrinal beef based on scripture and was refuted not by scripture but by claims to authority. You don’t get to claim ownership over scripture when your position abandons them as the basis of your refutation. I am a baptized Christian, and will appeal to scripture in my response. If you don’t like it, tough.

Next, you keep making the claim that two things can’t be true at once. The problem is, scripture proves otherwise. Paul uses the judicial language of his day explicitly in multiple places. The terms δικαιοσύνη and δικαίοω are legal terms, particularly in Romans 8 where Christ is described as our advocate in a courtroom setting (31-34). I agree the term righteousness can refer to a state of being. The problem you have is that scripture specifically says you aren’t righteous (Christ died for the unrighteous). Righteousness is reckoned or credited to you by faith. In other words, it’s not yours. It is Christ. If I buy a car on credit, I don’t have the money to buy it, a bank floats me the cash to purchase it. Paul makes the same application when speaking of Abraham as our example in Romans 4. That doesn’t mean the commands of God to be righteous go away. Two things can be true at once. God can command you to be righteous, and because of sin, you fail at doing so, and need Christ’s work on the cross to pay the penalty for your sin that you might be credited with his righteousness by faith. Romans 8 demonstrates this and even shows how this will continue until the eschaton where all things will be brought to completion at Christ’s return. This is the life of the believer. St. John demonstrates this in his first epistle. He calls us to obedience on the one hand and simultaneously in the next sentence says Christ died for your sins that you may be forgiven. He holds both these things together.

 

[Vico]

…

… the Catholic theology of the Atonement. That great doctrine has been faintly set forth in figures taken from man’s laws and customs. It is represented as the payment of a price, or a ransom, or as the offering of satisfaction for a debt. But we can never rest in these material figures as though they were literal and adequate. As both Abelard and Bernard remind us, the Atonement is the work of love. It is essentially a sacrifice, the one supreme sacrifice of which the rest were but types and figures. And, as St. Augustine teaches us, the outward rite of Sacrifice is the sacrament, or sacred sign, of the invisible sacrifice of the heart. It was by this inward sacrifice of obedience unto death, by this perfect love with which He laid down his life for His friends, that Christ paid the debt to justice, and taught us by His example, and drew all things to Himself; it was by this that He wrought our Atonement and Reconciliation with God, “making peace through the blood of His Cross”.

Kent, W. (1907). Doctrine of the Atonement. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02055a.htm

 

[John_Martin]

Luther was an Augustinian monk, ordained priest, doctor of theology, professor of theology, pastor over three parishes, and vicar general over 11 monasteries.

In your list of “qualifications” you show Luther’s “authority”, a man who gives orders and definitions but do not show his renunciation of his being Catholic because he is defiantly refusing obedience to the authority over him, the most important thing any Christian vows: to walk behind Jesus letting Jesus define reality rather than directing Jesus to a “better way” than the cross, as Peter did for a moment, but Luther did defiantly his whole life.
You list Luther’s qualifications the same way Paul shows Jews claiming they have Abraham and the Law and Prophets and Circumcision in Romans.
You cling to Lutheran qualifications while we Catholics simply believe the official word delivered to us (it is not a trivial matter that Paul took great pains to declare his apostolic authority in the first lines of Romans in order to fully expect the obedience of faith to his words rather than defiant protest by people wanting to define scripture for themselves).

All Luther’s works, no matter how good they seem to sound, are disobedient protest and tantrum. Not a bit of humble submission and returning to walk behind Jesus rather than trying to teach Jesus what to do, unlike Peter at Caesarea Phillipi who returned to follow behind Jesus.

By the way, in legal systems justification and righteousness do not refer to “pardon”, nor to redemption nor to forgiveness.
Justification and righteousness are reserved, even in Christian understanding, for a fully upright, right behaving, really virtuous person. Justification is not an appearance that is not true on the inside as well as the outside. Justification is a different thing than blood covering a multitude of sins, which is forgiveness, but not righteousness nor justification.

 

[Hodos]

In your list of “qualifications” you show Luther’s “authority”, a man who gives orders and definitions but do not show his renunciation of his being Catholic because he is defiantly refusing obedience to the authority over him

Luther did not renounce being Catholic. He pointed out that when one is appointed as an authority, they themselves have someone governing them. The idea of appointed authority means that there are limits to what that authority is appointed to do. Luther’s objection is that by allowing doctrine and practice that violated God’s word as transmitted to us in the scriptures, that authority had been overstepped. Luther always accepted the authority of the Church to baptize and preach what Christ had taught as per the Great Commission. He rejected the idea that the Church had the authority to create practices that contradicted Christ’s teaching.

You list Luther’s qualifications the same way Paul shows Jews claiming they have Abraham and the Law and Prophets and Circumcision in Romans.

No, I didn’t. I responded to your false assertion that Luther wasn’t Catholic and didn’t have any right to address issues by appealing to scripture. Your suggestion here turns the reality on its head.

You cling to Lutheran qualifications while we Catholics simply believe the official word delivered to us

This too is refutable by looking at our statements above. While you made an assertion that one theory of atonement is invalid based on an appeal to authority devoid of what the word actually says, I provided direct quotes from scripture that demonstrates explicitly that this theory is handed down in God’s word. Of the two of us, I am the one who has objectively demonstrated in my response faith in the word delivered to us.

By the way, in legal systems justification and righteousness do not refer to “pardon”, nor to redemption nor to forgiveness.
Justification and righteousness are reserved, even in Christian understanding, for a fully upright, right behaving, really virtuous person. Justification is not an appearance that is not true on the inside as well as the outside. Justification is a different thing than blood covering a multitude of sins, which is forgiveness, but not righteousness nor justification.

I will refer back to the scriptures I quoted above as explicitly contradicting this assertion. Again, the terms righteousness are used in multiple ways throughout scripture as I discussed above. You appear to discount the legal use for another contextual usage. My argument above is not to reject your usage, but to say that the terms for righteousness and justification are used in both ways depending on specific context. It isn’t an either/or argument. One has to look contextually to figure out what way it is being used in a given instance. And again, like I said, the scriptures say explicitly, you aren’t righteous. Your righteousness is credited to you on account of Christ, and it says this in a legal context.

 

[Gorgias]

Latin:

In Catholic Soteriology our work is NOT SALVIFIC, we do not do good works in order to be justified, but we are justified in order to do good works.

I would agree with you. This is the catholic teaching, and what we preach teach and confess in the Lutheran confessions. Unfortunately I have had numerous long dialogues with your colleagues who would vehemently disagree with you on this point.

Then they misunderstand the Catholic teaching on baptism. Baptism justifies. We can do good works all day long, and that wouldn’t cause us to receive the graces of baptism.

I have drawn this very distinction in causality ad nauseum in numerous forum threads discussing justification.

Justification? Or sanctification and salvation…?

 

[Hodos]

Justification? Or sanctification and salvation …?

Generally when speaking about the role of works in the Christian life I do so drawing a distinction between justification and sanctification, as Paul does. Salvation can be a very broad and imprecise term because there are a lot of things that can be included there. The noun/verb forms of salvation are used very broadly in scripture whereas justification and sanctification tend to be more precise.

 

[Gorgias]

Generally when speaking about the role of works in the Christian life I do so drawing a distinction between justification and sanctification, as Paul does.

OK.

The way you said that some Catholics think good works bring justification, I immediately thought that someone had confused “justification” with “sanctification”. After all, the latter is where “acts of supernatural merit” come into play…

 

[Hodos]

The way you said that some Catholics think good works bring justification,

No, Lutheran doctrine makes the distinction between justification and sanctification. Sanctification being the result of justification. Unfortunately as you said, many people do confuse the two and it ends up causing a serious problem doctrinally.

 

[fhansen]

I would say that Jesus did come to fulfill all righteousness, and to set an example. However, I would not relate this function to justification. I would say that Jesus’ example is a function of sanctification. I believe that Abelard confused these two things making our works in imitating Christ a salvific act, rather than a response to Christ’s salvific work on the cross. Abelard confused categories and actually introduced some significant obfuscation.

The obfuscation was a Reformed accomplishment IMO . The New Covenant enables us to live by the Spirit, having entered communion with God, established by faith in response to grace. The law is no longer a curse because we now, finally, learn that the law is unable to accomplish righteousness in man, the “righteousness of God” which is the only authentic righteousness for us even if the Law correctly reflects that righteousness. But the righteousness of God can only be obtained by life in the Spirit, not obedience of the letter which is based on my own efforts.

IOW, under the New Covenant man is still obligated to be righteous and obedient; faith does not remove or replace that obligation but actually provides the only true means to fulfill it . Faith is all about direct relationship with God, who, alone, can accomplish righteousness in man. Adam had thought otherwise and effectively dismissed God as God, becoming his own “god” for all practical purposes. Man primarily needs to learn the vast distinction between Creator and created, and of the overwhelming goodness and trustworthiness and wisdom of God and of our need for Him, of our state of deprivation, including moral deprivation, without Him.

God placed Himself on a cross and suffered an excruciatingly humiliating and painful death in human flesh to prove that goodness, trustworthiness, and love-to fully reveal the light, capping and confirming it all with the resurrection. That’s why Jesus came, when the time was ripe -to reveal the true face of God by everything He said and did, so that we may know Him, and so believe in Him and so be reconciled with Him, fully completed to the extent that we love Him with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. John 17:3

To know God is to love Him. And to love is to fulfill the law. Adam didn’t really bother; his act of disobedience was essentially an act of unbelief. His exile into this world is ultimately for the purpose of gaining knowledge, about himself and his limitations and of His need for his Creator, with the experience of being apart from his Creator and His control, together with the help of revelation and grace.

 

[fhansen]

There are places that would agree with your take on the scriptures with your reference to Christ being the firstborn. Certainly this is the case in Colossians. That however doesn’t mean this is the only understanding of the work of the cross. My texts above demonstrate that Christ did indeed bear the penalty of sin in your stead and has credited to you his righteousness by faith. In other words, it’s not necessarily an either/or issue. It is interesting that Paul presents both of these views in his writings. However, our dying is not our work. Romans demonstrated that our dying to sin is Christ’s work. Romans 4,5,6 demonstrate this. Your suffering is not salvific on its own. It is the result of the world’s reaction against Christ and your subsequent faith in him.

It’s just not such a cut and dry legal sort of transaction that takes place. We’re saved by faith, via faith, through faith, and not simply as some direct consequence of solely possessing faith, as if faith, by itself, makes us just or replaces the need for us to be just. Justice- righteousness- makes us just-and man was never created to be unjust. But righteousness is already compromised and lost to the extent that man is out of communion with God such that the chief aspect of the state known as “original sin” is actually separation from God, also sometimes referred to as the “death of the soul”.

Faith is the reconnecting point between man and God, as man’s response to grace. Within that relationship man is made actually righteous, God placing His law in our minds and writing it in our hearts as we come to know Him and He becomes our God again (Jer 31:32-34). That righteousness is given in a sort of seedling form as we become new creations upon entering communion with Him. From there we exercise this new life given; we “invest” our talents and live a life with God as opposed to Adam’s life apart from Him. Or not ; our wills are no more overridden than Adam’s was.

IOW it’s a package deal, a conversion and a process of converting depending on the time and grace, etc, we have; justification and sanctification cannot be separated; we’re sanctified to begin with, now we must walk in it, and increase and confirm it, working out our salvation together with He who works in us.

 

[John_Martin]

You are correct:
Adam did not think to dare to address the LORD looking for him apart from having a fig leaf loin cloth to cover this unrighteousness, his defect of being (nakedness), just as the Jews of Romans dared to call themselves the People of God because they were wearing the loin cloths of Circumcision and the Law to cover over their defect of being.
But God was not looking for a “non-naked” Adam nor would he accept a covered over Adam, there was no defect in his thinking about Adam; “Who told you your were naked?”
Faith is not a loin cloth to cover over our sinfulness, our wretchedness, nor is the blood of Christ and his death a loin cloth to hide some defect.
Faith is a man daring to approach God because God called out, “Adam”, “Abraham”, “Samuel”, etc. and (faith is) saying “Here I Am. I am here to do your will.” No attempt to look good or “clothed”. It is believing God wants to talk to me as I am or he would not have called my name. And that is the confidence Jesus (via his Apostles calling us) gives by being in front of us face to face in person. And when He does, and we reply, “Here I Am.” He baptizes us and teaches us and gives us Virtue (the Holy Spirit) so that we are indeed righteous in all our doings (which equals justification).

 

[fhansen]

Thanks John

He baptizes us and teaches us and gives us Virtue (the Holy Spirit) so that we are indeed righteous in all our doings (which equals justification).

And yet we wouldn’t want our virtual antinomian friends to accuse of us of asserting that we’ll necessarily be sinless after conversion and Baptism. We’ll continue to struggle with sin, and be tested and refined by that struggle, and to get back on board through repentance/ reconciliation if we fall back into serious sin, recognizing that we can lose our state of justice by living in the flesh, by acting opposed to love of God and neighbor. We can dismiss or reject and lose faith, hope, and love. And yet, by persevering in the overall sense, by orienting ourselves towards goodness and righteousness and growing in it, we can work out our salvation with God who gives us the grace to achieve this. I appreciate these teachings from the catechism on this:

1731 Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility. By free will one shapes one’s own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.

1732 As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil , and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. This freedom characterizes properly human acts. It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach.

And this perfection is summed up best, perhaps, in the virtue of love, which is why the Church can wisely agree, also in the catechism, with St John of the Cross on the criteria for our judgement:
"At the evening of life we shall be judged on our love."

 

[Hodos]

The obfuscation was a Reformed accomplishment IMO

I would disagree. I think that Reformed theology does make a pretty clear distinction between justification and sanctification, and they also tend to teach the three uses of the law (curb, mirror, guide) which also help to maintain that distinction. That’s my opinion though. Perhaps one of our Reformed brethren could speak to this better.

 

[fhansen]

Yep, and that distinction creates the obfuscation. Protestants are often quite unsure, or in disagreement over, whether not one is obligated to be righteous, apart from possessing the virtue of faith. The doctrine of Sola Fide, alone , has introduced much confusion.