The Ancient Church Preached This (We Should Too!) || SLP665

What happened at the cross? Sometimes the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement is criticised as novel. Here Glen Scrivener shows that the ancient church (both Eastern and Western) proclaimed Christ's death as a penal substitution. But crucially they proclaimed it in the context of three other doctrines which are vital. What are they? Listen to find out.

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

And then you get to a spot where God, who's been demanding that we slaughter animals and burn them because he's likes barbecue, is now decided that he's going to come down and take human form and sacrifice himself to himself for a weekend to fix everything for everybody. That's not That's blood magic. That is sacrificial blood magic thinking and nothing to do about human value.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Who actually believes that? What you what what you just described as a summary of Christianity? I mean, who actually believes that?

SPEAKER_02 0:36

Who could you not? So God sacrifices himself to himself for a weekend to fix everything for everyone. It's sacrificial blood magic, according to Matt Dillahunty. That's what the cross sounds like to Matt Dillahunty. And he actually thinks, how can it not be that? How can it not be? God sacrificing himself to himself for a weekend. How can it not be sacrificial blood magic? Make it make sense. And in this video, I want to say that sometimes we have spoken about the cross in such stupid ways that it is very easy to deride and sneer at the cross that we preach because we have not been preaching the cross the way we should. Or we've got the Reddit cartoon, God When He Sacrifices Himself to Himself to Save Us from Himself. Oh yeah, it's all coming together. How silly, how stupid, what a nonsense. Or sometimes I've heard the cross spoken about as the father is a bus driver, and he's got a bus full of kids, and they are unworthy to be saved, but the only way that he can't drive over a clifftop and all the kids on the bus die is he has to turn the wheel and swerve the bus into the path of his son, and there is his son in a sandpit just playing away happily. And he has to decide, you know, will it be the unworthy who die, the unworthy multitudes, or will he sacrifice his only son? And God so loved the world that he plowed down his toddler son so that anyone who trusts him shall not perish but have eternal life. And then the punchline at that is obviously, all aboard the bus? Do you want to trust this bus driver? And everybody hearing that illustration just thinks, no, please no, this is not an illustration that is going to make people trust in God. It's going to make people think that he is a maniac. Or, and here's a really bad example of the cross. I once heard a sermon, and the preacher just said, you know, sometimes I get uh angry and there's a lot of testosterone in our household, and I just go down into the basement where I've got a punching bag. And after half an hour of working the bag, I've worked out all my aggression and I come back up into the house and I can be at peace with everybody else. And in just this way, said the preacher, the father uses Jesus as a punching bag. And once he has exhausted all his wrath on his son, he takes a deep sigh of relief and he can love everybody else. In the household, who wants to trust this God? Absolutely nobody, and uh I don't begrudge anyone, who, if they're outside of the faith, says, I don't want this God, or if they're inside the faith, who says, I don't think we should preach the cross, and I don't think we should preach this doctrine called penal substitutionary atonement. Because this doctrine called penal substitutionary atonement seems to lead to these grotesque caricatures of the gospel. Have you heard the phrase penal substitutionary atonement before? Penal, there's a penalty. Substitutionary, the Lord Jesus steps in for us, and atonement, this is how we are made at one with God. The Lord Jesus makes us one with God by stepping into our shoes and taking a penalty so that we might be saved, so that we might be brought to God. Now I am a believer in penal substitutionary atonement. I am also somebody who is very aware that that doctrine can be twisted into grotesque caricatures. And let's bring this into conversation with the videos we've been making recently. We've been talking about Protestantism in conversation with Orthodoxy, in conversation with Roman Catholicism, and it tends to be the more traditional denominations that say penal substitutionary atonement sounds very modern to our ears. It sounds like something that's just in the last 500 years of church history. And so the story goes, the first 1500 years of church history, people were preaching the cross, but they weren't preaching the cross like that. And I agree that no one was preaching the cross like those grotesque caricatures, and no one should preach the cross like those grotesque caricatures. Nevertheless, there is a truth to penal substitutionary atonement. So the Protestants who are preaching this doctrine need to be heard. But when we Protestants foreground simply that doctrine, it starts to become a grotesque caricature because it starts to become a mechanism, a mechanism for an impersonal salvation which is divorced from the doctrines that make penal substitutionary atonement make sense. And actually, the kinds of doctrines that for the first five centuries and the first 15 centuries were front and center in church history, those doctrines are exactly what we need in order to preach penal substitutionary atonement. I think all sorts of theologians in the early centuries were preaching what penal substitutionary atonement really is. And I think nowadays everybody should believe that Jesus Christ was sacrificed for our sin, that he died in our place, that he was a penal substitutionary atonement. But we need one another. The Protestants who want to preach that gospel and want to foreground penal substitutionary atonement, they need the doctrines that the first 1500 years of church history had been foregrounding, and that the best of Protestantism has always been foregrounding. So what are those doctrines? There are three of them, and when you get to the end of this video, you'll recognize that Glenn Scrivener is a broken record. The three doctrines we need are the doctrines of the three, the doctrines of the two, and the doctrines of the one. And the preaching of Jesus Christ and him crucified only makes sense when we foreground the three, the two, and the one. What's the three? The three is the doctrine of the Trinity, that God is a Father loving his Son in the joy of the Holy Spirit, and that therefore the one on that cross is the Son of the Father filled with the Spirit, the one in on the creation of the universe, he is Lord. And this is what all of us need if we are to preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We should all preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We should be obsessed with the simple gospel. But the simple gospel includes the truth that the one on that cross is our Maker. For this point, I'll get the help of Athanasius. So Athanasius in the fourth century said the renewal of creation has been wrought by the selfsame word who made it in the beginning. There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation, for the one father has employed the same agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same word who made it in the beginning. Athanasius is telling us the one on that cross is maker. And it's so important that the one on the cross is maker because he is remaking the world by his death and resurrection. He is the word of the Father filled with the Spirit. He is our maker who is taking responsibility for his handiwork. And when you don't preach that, that's where caricatures of the cross start coming in. Like the preacher who saw Jesus as like some punching bag that God was pummeling so he could feel better about us. Caricatures of the cross always depersonalize the one who is hanging there, and they make him into something less than our maker. And Athanasius says, no, on the cross hangs our Maker, and that there is no rupture between Jesus Christ, our Maker, and the Father who Jesus Christ is revealing. It is so important that the Father and the Son are one. Athanasius points out the one on the cross and calls him very Son of the Father, natural and genuine, proper to his essence. That's the Greek word homoousius, which was right at the heart of the Nicene Creed, of one being with the Father. He is wisdom, only begotten and very and only word of God is he, not a creature or work, but an offspring proper to the Father's essence. He is homoousius, of the same nature. He's one with the Father. And the oneness of Father and Son is so important because it's not as though there's God up there and there's guilty us here, and then God zaps this guy over here so that he can save us over here. What we see in Christ crucified is the expression of the Father's will towards us. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. Jesus is not a third party in between God and man, as though he's outside of what it means to be God. You will make a mockery of the cross unless you believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. Which might be news for some people. It might be news for people who say, we just need to get out there and preach a simple gospel. Stop complicating things with your doctrine of the Trinity. No, no, I will not stop complicating things with the doctrine of the Trinity. Because the doctrine of the Trinity doesn't complicate, it clarifies. The doctrine of the Trinity is exactly that which enables us to look at the one on the cross and call him Lord. Without the doctrine of the Trinity, you cannot preach the simple gospel. Only with the doctrine of the three does the simple preaching of the cross make sense. And so, thank you, Athanasius, and uh every Protestant's heart leaps for joy when they read Athanasius, because this is the gospel that we want to proclaim too. But the second truth that we need to be foregrounding if we're going to preach the simple cross is the doctrine of the two. The world is shaped by two representatives, Adam and the second Adam, Jesus Christ. Jesus is the second Adam. He is true humanity, doing Adam's life and death, and rising again to pioneer a new path for humanity. That is who Jesus is. He's not just maker on the cross, he's also man. And for this truth, we're going to turn to Cyril of Alexandria. He said in the early fifth century, the Lamb is to become the second Adam. The Lamb that is Jesus Christ is to become the second Adam, not from earth, but from heaven, and to become the source of all good for human nature, the deliverance from imported corruption, the bestower of eternal life, the basis for transformation into God. For one lamb died for all, rescuing the entire flock on earth for God the Father. Sounds very penal substitutionary atonement to me. The Father gave his Son as a ransom for us once for all, since all are in him, and he is greater than all. One died for all, that all may live in him. Death swallowed up the lamb for all and vomited forth all in him. It's like death is the great fish that swallowed Jonah and then spat him back out. When have you last been likened to vomit? Um, as a positive thing, you've been vomited forth by death in Christ, and with him, since we were all in Christ who died and was raised for us and on our behalf. Jesus is the second Adam. He is true man standing for all humanity. And just as by the flesh we are one with Adam, so by the Spirit we are one with Christ. Just as Adam has a corporate identity and stands for those who are in his family. So Jesus is the federal head of his corporate identity, this new humanity in him. The cross doesn't work if you have an individualistic account of humanity. If you just think everybody stands or falls according to their own performance, then I guess Jesus is falling and standing according to his own performance, and that's nice for him that he seemed to go down and then back up again. But we are left to our own devices. But no, the Bible has a corporate sense of identity, covenant union with Adam, covenant union with Christ. And Jesus is the second Adam who takes our humanity to himself so that we don't stand or fall by ourselves, we stand or fall in our covenant head. In Adam we have fallen. In Adam we are corrupted. In Adam we are sinful. In Adam we are cursed. But in Christ we are raised. In Christ we are blessed, in Christ we are saved. And preaching the simple gospel of the cross doesn't work if your doctrine of humanity is atomistic and individualistic. You need to believe that humanity has fallen in Adam and is raised in Christ, or else penal substitutionary atonement doesn't work. You need these old dead guys. Hey, modern Protestants who want to preach penal substitutionary atonement. I'm one of you. We need old dead guys and their foregrounding of these wonderful doctrines, Trinity and the Two Adams. And you don't get to preach the free gospel of grace without Trinity and the two atoms. And then there's a third doctrine that I want to talk to you about. We've thought about the three, we've thought about the two, that is the two atoms, and now we need to talk about one. You are one with Adam by birth, you are born again to be one with Christ. Union with Jesus makes sense of the whole gospel. And without union with Jesus, it all falls apart as a total nonsense. In preaching the cross, I need Jesus to not only be maker and man, I need him to be mine. This needs not to be an impersonal zapping, as though God zaps Jesus like somebody beating up a punching bag, so that I can get this impersonal ding over here. I need to be in Christ. He needs to hide me in himself, take me through the judgment, and rise up again to offer me his vindication, his resurrection, his justification. Without oneness, it doesn't work. With oneness, there is a sweet exchange. There's a marvelous exchange between me and Jesus. Because we are united like a head is to a body, like a bridegroom is to a bride, therefore what is true of him becomes true of me. When the prince marries the pauper, then all her debts go to him and all his riches come to her, but it's not an abstract swap. The prince and the pauper do not stand at a distance from one another and just venmo each other. The prince and the pauper become one, and in their union, all that is hers becomes his, all that is his becomes hers. And again, this is a truth that is foregrounded beautifully in our forbears in the faith. For instance, in the Epistle to Diagnesus, this is probably late second century, it says He himself took on him the burden of our iniquities. He gave his own son as a ransom for us, the holy one for transgressors, the blameless one for the wicked, the righteous one for the unrighteous, the incorruptible one for the corruptible, the immortal one for them that are mortal, for what other thing was capable of covering our sins than his righteousness? By what other one was it possible that we, the wicked and ungodly, could be justified than by the only Son of God? O sweet exchange, O unsearchable operation, O benefits surpassing all expectation, that the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous one, and that the righteousness of one should justify many transgressors. This sounds to my ears like penal substitutionary atonement, but it's penal substitutionary atonement in the frame of Trinity, the two atoms in union with Christ. And at that point, it really is a sweet exchange, a marvelous exchange. This is beautiful gospel preaching, and I would love to hear more of it from my brothers and sisters in the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy. I'd also like to hear a heck of a lot more of it from my Protestant preachers. And sometimes instead of hearing this, what I hear is a swap, a mechanical swap. It's like Jesus gets the zap so that you can get the ding. Ding! And it's like bridegroom and bride venomoing each other, rather than becoming one through a marriage union. And this is what I need to hear. This is what the world needs to hear. That there is somebody on that cross, he's bleeding for you. He is your maker. He is man, and he is yours, he is mine. And it's in the context of the three, the two, and the one that that beautiful gospel makes sense. And as I was uh researching for this video, I was going back over this wonderful book by uh Donald Fairband, Life in the Trinity, an Introduction to Theology with the Help of the Church Fathers. He is a wonderful Protestant theologian. And because he's a Protestant theologian, he uh wants to go deep into church history. Protestants love church history and we love foregrounding the things that the early church was foregrounding. As I went through um this book, I discovered this quote from Irenaeus, and I was just thrilled to see that Irenaeus says we need these three doctrines as well. He does them in a slightly different order. He does two and then three and then one rather than three, two, and one. But listen to this. Irenaeus, at the end of the second century, he says, for unless man had overcome the enemy of man, the enemy would not have been legitimately vanquished. So the Redeemer has to be man. Okay, that's the two. And again, unless it had been God who had freely given salvation, we could never have possessed it securely. So that's the truth of three, that the one on the cross is the second person of the Trinity. He is our maker. And then Irenaeus does the truth of one. And unless man had been joined to God, he could never have become a partaker of incorruptibility. Isn't that beautiful? I just love Irenaeus. In three sentences, consecutively, does these three truths. He is man, says Irenaeus. He is maker, he is mine. We need these three truths. And when we do, it starts to make sense. Here's how I started to make a response to Matt Dillahunty in the moment.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

Did God come down and become human, sacrifice himself? God the Son became God our brother. He's still God. God the Son. Okay, God our brother.

unknown 18:48

Right.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

But Son, the Son of the Son.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

Are you a non-Trinitarian? Sorry?

SPEAKER_01 18:51

That that's no precisely because I'm Trinitarian. God the Son became God our brother, full of the Holy Spirit, in order to unite us as family back to the same source, back to the Father.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

The Son of the Father, filled with the Spirit, has become one with us to enter into our death so that we can have his life, to enter into our disconnection in order to connect us back to the source. That is the gospel that ought to be preached and can be preached by East and West and Orthodox, Catholic Protestants. We have the same Jesus to proclaim. But here's my challenge. Protestants, you cannot preach the wonders of the cross without these ancient truths of Trinity, the two atoms, union with Christ. You just can't do it. And you can't do it by minimizing or dismissing those truths. We need to foreground again the glorious truths that make sense of the cross of Christ. And to more traditional Christians, let's all go back to the sources. Let's see what the epistle to Diagnetus says. Let's see what Irenaeus says. Let's see what Cyril says. Let's see what Athanasius says. They are preaching a gospel that I want to preach for the rest of my life. I consider myself one with these wonderful gospel preachers who are foregrounding these same wonderful truths. Father, Son, and Spirit, the two atoms, union with Christ, and therefore the one on the cross is maker, he's man, he's mine. Which means I can preach a gospel that sounds like Athanasius sounds, that sounds like Diagnetus sounds, that sounds like Irenaeus sounds, that sounds like Cyril sounds. We should all be preaching like these guys. We all should. And preaching the cross the way the best of Protestants want to preach it is a way of actually affirming what Athanasius says and Irenaeus says. Penal substitutionary atonement is not an invention of the last 500 years. It's an articulation of a key aspect of the cross that has been taught for 2000 years and longer. Just read Isaiah 53 to see the and longer bit. So this is my plea. Can we help each other across the divides? Can we preach Christ crucified for us? Can we center ourselves on that message? And can we do so in the context of Trinity, Adam and Christ, Union with Christ? And can we do so with the help of the church down through the last 2,000 years? If we can do that, then maybe these different denominations, maybe we can help one another as we reach out to the world with Christ. Well, what should be the call to action from all of this? Well, if you haven't done 321, you need to go to 321course.com and check out life according to Jesus. Jesus reveals the threeness of God, the two-ness of the world, the oneness of you. You might have heard me talk about 321 again and again, and you still haven't checked it out. Why don't you check it out? You need to sign up with an email and a password. That's just so that we can remember your progress. But go to 321course.com. It's totally free and uh we pray that it will bless you. Well, that'll do for this video. Please don't forget to like the video, share it around the place, and subscribe to the channel so that we can catch you on the next one. God bless.