The Hegelian dialectic boils over to a maximum as particularly controversial cases are magnified by the mockingbird media, stoking the fires of division between men and women and calling society to reach out for a moral savior. Meanwhile, across the ocean, the man of lawlessness is received with marveling and joy in France, the birthplace of secularism — now rapidly turning into its antithesis.

• 00:00 - Introduction

• 05:44 - General Shenanigans

• 2:31:02 - The French Counter Revolution

• 3:34:38 - The Gender War

I will be going live for an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on this coming Monday, November 2nd at 8PM EST. The topic will be Thanatology. You can join and have fun in the chat, and ask me your burning questions on all matters of death, the afterlife, heaven and hell, angels and demons, or anything in between. If you don’t know where to start, check out the Bible Studies page on the website and navigate to that section for some good resources, or chat with FENNEC a little and have him help you brainstorm.

The live will be available on Substack, Rumble and YouTube simultaneously, however the YouTube watch page is what I will be linking because that’s where chats can be organized. If you want to chat or send SuperChats, etc., then join the link in this email and bookmark it. If you want to simply hang out, you can use whatever platform you want :)

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For the video presentation please go here.

WHAT IS PSA?

Penal substitutionary atonement is a mouthful of theological terms, but it is the very essence of the monergistic gospel and a vital concept to understand properly. It is also one of the main things that you will have to defend in the coming NWO golden age, because the false Christianity rising to the surface will deny the gospel and therefore deny penal substitutionary atonement.

You may have heard of this term in your own studies or discussions, or perhaps watching various debates. In those contexts it seems like this is a convoluted or academic issue, but in fact it is actually a very simple idea. Unfortunately, it is also denied by most Christians today, because most Christians participate in denominations that lead them away from the gospel. Specifically, I refer to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, who both deny penal substitutionary atonement (PSA going forward) — albeit in different ways and for different reasons. Our goal today will be to understand why PSA is the truth and why, as usual, the institutional position is wrong. In the years to come, as religious delusion sweeps the world, understanding these things will be key to building your house on the rock and fighting the good fight against the devil’s schemes.

First, we need some definitions so that we get our terms right. The word ‘penal’ comes from ‘penalty’ which is a judicial term. The word ‘substitution’ means ‘in place of’ (like a substitute teacher). So then, ‘penal substitution’ refers to Christ taking on the specific legal penalty that the elect deserved because of their sin. He did not merely take on the consequences of their actions, or death in a general sense, but rather the judicial punishment that would have occurred had He not intervened and died in their place — a punishment the wicked reprobate of history will experience at the end of time in the lake of fire.

Now, the word ‘atonement’ is a little more interesting. It is actually a word that was created by theologian William Tyndale. He crafted the term while translating the Old Testament (circa 1526) to provide an accurate English equivalent for the Hebrew concept of repairing the rift between humanity and the divine. While older 14th-century Middle English writings by figures like John Wycliffe contained early concepts of ‘making at one’, Tyndale was the first to formalize and popularize it as ‘atonement.’ You may recognize Tyndale for being a pioneer who translated the scriptures into English, and who also paid the price by being burned at the stake for it by the Catholic Church.

Nevertheless, atonement is a word that encapsulates the outcome of the penal substitution: to become one with Christ, to be united to God forever. Therefore, we now have a complete definition. PSA deals with the payment that Christ provided on behalf of sinners so that they can not only be reconciled legally (by being declared innocent, since their accounts have been cleared by the payment), but also being reconciled spiritually and supernaturally, by becoming one with God through Christ. This is what it means that we are adopted as sons or daughters (Romans 8:15) and, eventually, glorified through the resurrection — being made ‘like God’ (1 John 3:2) as the ultimate end of the gift of the gospel.

At first this may seem like a pretty universal creed. Everyone believes Jesus died for your sins and in your place, so that you can be united to God — right? Well, not quite my friend. The question isn’t whether Jesus died for sinners, or even that His death accomplished something for sinners — the question is, what kind of transaction took place? Institutional religion (RCC/EO) claims that Jesus’ death accomplishes salvation, but their understanding is that Jesus afforded the opportunity for you to cooperate and be saved, while also providing Himself as a role model for you to emulate, and therefore prove your faith through various works. Rome tends to keep a fair amount of legal or judicial language in their writings, while Eastern Orthodoxy rejects it altogether. You will find many Orthobros (like Jay Dyer) or Catholic apologists who spend quite a bit of time attacking this doctrine and trying to make it seem as ridiculous as possible.

We will address their arguments today, however perhaps one of the most common tropes is that PSA is a medieval contrivance at best, made up by Protestant theologians.

IS PSA A MEDIEVAL CONTRIVANCE?

Institutional zealots argue that PSA is a made up concept not older than the medieval ages, often citing people like the Archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm of Canterbury in his work Cur Deus Homo (Why the God-Man), where he discussed his ‘satisfaction theory’ and posited that human sin offended God’s infinite honor and dignity, therefore God required a repayment that only a divine-human mediator could provide.

Anselm was not the only one who discussed these things, as you will shortly learn, but the line of thinking goes something like this. Sin is an offense against God’s infinite majesty, robbing Him of the honor He is due. It therefore creates an infinite debt that humans, being finite and already obligated to God, are incapable of paying back. But since God is perfectly just and cannot simply overlook the offense, forgiveness without repayment would compromise His perfect moral character. Therefore the debt must be paid, but it can only be paid by a human (who owes the debt and who can represent humanity) who is also God (who has the infinite resources to pay it). Thus, the ‘God-man,’ Jesus Christ, was required. Through His voluntary obedience and death, Christ offered God a gift of infinite worth, completely restoring God’s honor. Because the debt is satisfied, God can justly forgive humanity.

In principle this is actually correct, and described by Paul himself in Romans 3:21-28. I’ve described atonement in similar ways. However it is important to note that Anselm’s thinking was focused on restoring God’s honor rather than paying a legal penalty. Nevertheless, these ideas are reflected in Catholic Catechism 615-617 and 1459. Notably, the latter states, ‘Raised up from sin, the sinner must still recover his full spiritual health by doing something more to make amends for the sin: he must make satisfaction for or expiate his sins. This satisfaction is also called penance.’

In other words, there is still satisfaction needing to be performed by you, the sinner, on top of whatever satisfactory work Christ did on the cross.

An important thing that many don’t realize is that Rome’s position has always been justification by faith in Christ. But their view of justification is completely backwards to biblical justification. Roman Catholicism teaches that justification is a singular event occurring at baptism and growing through cooperation with grace, because ultimate salvation depends on one’s consistent and continued obedience and participation in the sacraments — which of course is exactly why purgatory and temporal satisfaction for sin (penance) still make sense in their system: the legal debt was never understood as fully and finally discharged in one stroke. It merely afforded you the opportunity to be saved by participating in various works of the institutional Church.

This is why when you debate these things you have to realize the nuance and snakery and talking out of two sides of the mouth that is typical with these institutions, especially Rome. Either way, Eastern Orthodoxy goes a step further and rejects the legal categories for sin and salvation almost entirely, in favor of an ontologically therapeutic framework. In simpler terms, Orthodoxy tends to see sin as a corruption that needs to be healed, and salvation as theosis (becoming like God) — both of which are the result of (and dependent upon) your cooperation and good standing in their institution. Christ’s victory over death and the devil happened in a real sense, but Orthodox apologists call PSA a ‘legal fiction’ or a ‘medieval contrivance’, objecting also that it supposedly pits the Father’s wrath against the Son — which they deem is impossible.

There are very simple responses to these arguments, but before we get to them I want to take a moment to soundly refute the idea that PSA is a medieval contrivance or a Protestant invention. Anselm of Canterbury is not the originator of PSA nor is Protestantism in general. In fact, we see penal and substitutionary language in many patristic sources, showing that this is how Christians thought of the cross well before Catholicism or Orthodoxy or Protestantism. Why? Because the source of PSA is God and scripture, not medieval theology.

The Epistle to Diognetus, written by an unknown author in the early 2nd century, states the following:

“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... O sweet exchange!”

Justin Martyr, also in the 2nd century, in his Dialogue with Trypho Ch. 95, states the following:

“If, then, the Father of all wished His Christ for the whole human family to take upon Him the curses of all, knowing that, after He had been crucified and was dead, He would raise Him up... [He did so] because the whole human race was found as under a curse.”

Origen, writing in the 3rd century, states the following in his commentary on the epistle to the Romans:

“Christ received the sin of the world upon himself... He became sin and a curse for us, so that he might draw down upon himself the judgment that was against us, which we were liable to suffer because of our sins.”

Jerome, writing in the 4th century in his Commentary on Isaiah 53 (cited in Ancient Christian Writers, Vol. 68, p.672) said the following:

“The only exception [to all being sinful] is that one who carried our sins and suffers pain on our behalf, and was wounded for our iniquities, and was afflicted on account of our wicked deeds, by those bruises we were healed. When Peter the prince of the apostles explains this testimony concerning him, he says, ‘For unto this were you called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example, that you should follow his steps, when he was reviled, did not revile, and when he suffered, he threatened not.’”

Eusebius of Caesarea, in the 3rd to 4th century, wrote in his Demonstratio Evangelica (Proof of the Gospel), Book 10, Ch. 1 the following:

“The Lamb of God... was chastened on our behalf, and suffered a penalty He did not owe, but which we owed because of the multitude of our sins; and so He became the cause of the forgiveness of our sins, because He received death for us, and transferred to Himself the scourging, insults, and dishonor which were due to us.”

Athanasius of Alexandria in the 4th century, wrote in his On the Incarnation, Chapter 20 the following:

“The debt due from all was still remaining to be paid... For this purpose, He also came to dwell among us... He offered His sacrifice on behalf of all, giving up His own temple to death in the place of all, in order to complete and satisfy that which was due.”

Hilary of Poitiers in the 4th century, wrote on his Commentary on Psalm 53, Section 12 the following:

“He fulfilled the condemnation of a sinner by the punishment of the cross, so that the severity of the sentence might be carried out on Him.”

And in another section of the same work:

“...And although this suffering did not belong to His nature as eternal Son, the immutability of God being proof against the assault of any derogatory disturbance, yet it was freely undertaken, and was intended to fulfill a penal function without, however, inflicting the pain of penalty upon the sufferer...”

John Chrysostom in the 4th century, wrote in his Homilies on 2 Corinthians, Homily 11, Section 5 the following:

“He allowed Him to be condemned as a sinner, that we might be made righteous... For He made Him who was righteous to be a sinner, that He might make sinners righteous.”

Marius Victorinus, an influential Roman theologian who inspired the later Augustine, said the following in his commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1.3.13):

“Therefore, since all who were under the law were subject to the curse... Christ redeemed them from this curse. How? By receiving another curse, which was His death on the cross... Thus, He took our curse upon Himself, so that the blessing which was promised to Abraham might come to the Gentiles.”

And again in section 2.5.1:

“By His own blood, and by undergoing the punishment of the cross, He paid the price to rescue us from the power of the law... He who was free became a servant, taking our punishment, so that we who were servants might be restored to freedom by faith.”

And again in another section of the commentary on chapter 2:

“Obviously, because we know that people are not justified based on works of the Law but are justified through faith, the faith in Jesus Christ... For faith itself alone grants justification and sanctification. Thus any flesh whatsoever — Jews or those from the Gentiles — is justified on the basis of faith, not works or observance of Jewish Law.”

Rufinus of Aquileia, a critical cultural and linguistic bridge between the Greek East and the Latin West because of his role in translating massive quantities of Greek theology into Latin — most notably the works of Origen, Basil the Great, and the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius — says the following in his commentary on the Apostles’ Creed:

“As regards the forgiveness of sins, our bare act of faith ought to be sufficient. Who would search for cause or explanation where a prince’s bounty is in question? An earthly monarch’s generosity is scarcely a fit subject for argument: then is God’s largess going to be argued about by presumptuous humans? Pagans habitually make fun of us, saying that we deceive ourselves if we imagine that mere words can wipe out offenses which have actually been committed. ‘Is it possible,’ they say, ‘for one who has committed murder to be no murderer, or for the perpetrator of adultery to be represented as no adulterer? How then is someone who is guilty of misdeeds like these going to be suddenly made holy?’ Faith, as I have pointed out, supplies a better answer to such charges than reason. He who has promised forgiveness is King of all things: He who assures us of it is Lord of heaven and earth. Are you reluctant for me to believe that He who made me a man out of mere clay can transform my guilt into innocence? Will He who caused me to see when I was blind and to hear when I was deaf, and who restored my powers of walking when I was lame, prove incapable of recovering my lost innocence for me?”

Augustine of Hippo in the 5th century, wrote in his reply to Faustus the Manichaean, Book 14, Chapter 4 the following:

“Christ, though guiltless, took our punishment, that He might cancel our guilt, and do away with our punishment.”

Theodoret of Cyrus, a 5th century Syrian bishop and theologian, wrote in his treatise On Divine Providence (Oratio 10.26.36) the following:

“Christ was nailed to the cross, paying the penalty not for his own sins but paying the debt of our nature. For our nature was in debt after transgressing the laws of its maker. And since it was in debt and unable to pay, the creator himself in his wisdom devised a way of paying the debt. By taking a human body as capital, he invested it wisely and justly in paying the debt and thereby freeing human nature.”

In his commentary on Romans, Book II, specifically addressing Romans 3:24-25, Theodoret wrote the following:

“...For by bringing faith alone, we have received remission of our sins, in that the Lord Christ has offered up His own body for us, to be, as it were, the price of redemption...the Lord is God, and propitiatory, and high priest, and lamb, and in His own blood hath worked out our salvation, demanding faith only from us.”

So, is PSA a ‘legal fiction’ created by Protestants? Absolutely not. We have looked at about a dozen respected and early patristic sources that Catholic and Orthodox apologists love to cite to support their various institutional views, and yet all of these men clearly show a consistent pattern of thinking: they understood Christ’s work to satisfy a legal burden, because God is the Judge of the Earth (Genesis 18:25) and you cannot have a Judge without a courtroom and a courtroom without a law and a law without a penalty for breaking the law. All of these men spoke in terms of a legal transaction and satisfying the debt, and they all considered Christ to be the substitute in place for the sinner, acting as his representative before the Judge, and paying the price that the guilty sinner was due to pay but could not.

However it is here that some important points must be made. First, justification was not the issue of the early Church — christology was. The Church was dealing with all manner of christological heresies, not heresies with the atonement or justification. Those issues didn’t arise until centuries later, when the Catholic Church had arisen and taken power and perverted the gospel fully with its sacramental system, papacy, magisterium, inquisitions, bible burning and other abominations. That is why the central issue of the Reformation was justification, and why these concepts were developed further with theologians of that time.

This leads me to the second point, which is that we shouldn’t expect a perfectly systematic and technical understanding of a given concept consistently throughout Church history. There is great evidence Christians believed Jesus was divine and the God-man, like the recent archaeological discovery of the Megiddo Mosaic from the 3rd century. But despite these things, the doctrine of the Trinity took several generations to develop and articulate. This is for two primary reasons. The first is that you had a massive influx of pagans coming into the Church, which displaced the Jewish majority and, eventually the apostles themselves. This polluted the waters and many theological battles arose as a result over who Christ was and His relationship to the Father — something the monergistic Israelite authors of the New Testament did not have any confusion about. Another factor was rampant gnosticism, which also contributed to false teachings on the nature of Christ and resulted in many councils and Church efforts at articulating what Christians believed about Jesus.

God used these christological heresies of the early Church to force people to think about the mystery and articulate it more clearly. Therefore technical development requires time, and that means that the absence of technique does not automatically signal an absence of understanding. Today as we stand on the backs of 2,000 years of theologians we can articulate the Trinity very simply, though it is still a profound and confounding truth. This does not mean the Trinity is an invented concept, a pagan concept or something that came out of the 4th or 5th centuries. The Trinity is the natural outcome of being honest with the overwhelming evidence of Christ’s full and total deity, as well as the distinction of the Holy Spirit as a Person. These things are clearly testified in the scriptures, but their understanding and technicals took time and conflict to be fully developed.

In the same way, we should not expect people from the 4th century to address a concept that was not the main issue of their day. Even with eschatology, we see the evolution of thought throughout Church history, becoming clearer and clearer as the time nears. Patristic sources in the early Church saw a connection between Rome, the 4th beast of Daniel and the antichrist power — but they had no clue it would manifest as a bishop of bishops claiming to be the presence of Christ on Earth. Even by the Reformation, when this became abundantly clear and the man of lawlessness had been revealed by 1,000 years of history, the Reformers still had no understanding of the second beast or the mark of the beast or how it would all come together. Today, centuries later, we have many more tools, much more history and much more perspective.

Therefore to insist that just because these early patristic sources did not use terms like ‘penal substitutionary atonement’ that they therefore didn’t believe in a legal transaction on behalf of sinners is false. It is abundantly clear from their language that they understood the cross to be a legal transaction, because that’s what the Bible teaches.

WHAT THE BIBLE TEACHES

Now that we have seen history supports PSA and not the Roman Catholic or Orthodox position, let’s look at what the Bible says on this issue. Romans 3:25 tells us that Christ is presented as a ‘hilasterion’ (propitiation) for sins through His blood. The word there in the Greek is the word used in the LXX to refer to the blood put on the mercy seat during the Day of Atonement. We see this also in 1 John 2:2 and 1 John 4:10, as well as Hebrews 2:17. These are 4 occurrences spanning 3 authors (possibly 2 if Paul wrote Hebrews but either way). The Bible is clear that Christ was put forward as a satisfactory payment or offering (propitiatory) sacrifice to appease God’s wrath for sin. The Israelite authors of these texts were soaked in centuries of tradition with propitiatory sacrifices. Even from Abraham, when the typology of Isaac and the lamb was set (Genesis 22:8ff), all the way through John the Baptist acknowledging Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29-36), and even into the final book of the Bible, Revelation, where Jesus is consistently called ‘the Lamb’ — these are intentionally designed images to connect Jesus to the sin offering sacrifice that was made as a propitiation (satisfactory payment) on behalf of sinners. The prophet Isaiah, one of the most poignant and important on this issue, is quoted by Peter (1 Peter 2:24) when he wrote: ‘But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.’ (Isaiah 53:5)

Next we have the concept of imputation, or ‘double imputation’. To ‘impute’ something is to ‘assign, attribute, or charge something to a person.’ Double imputation refers to Christ’s righteousness being imputed (transferred) to our account and our sin debt being imputed onto Christ, so that He can make the payment as the representative. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says that ‘God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him’. This is the single clearest double-imputation verse in Scripture. It doesn’t get simpler than that. Isaiah 53:6 and Isaiah 53:10-12, prophesying of Jesus, say that ‘YHWH laid on Him the iniquity of us all; He bore the sin of many.’ This is further supported by verse 5 earlier in the chapter, cited by Peter in 1 Peter 2:24, where the exchange is Jesus’ wounds for our healing, and again in 1 Peter 3:18 (the righteous for the unrighteous). Romans 4:3-8 discusses righteousness being credited apart from works, with the Greek word there (logizomai) being an accounting term. This is the same word for Abraham’s faith and for the believer’s sin no longer being counted. Paul further writes in Galatians 3:13 that Christ became a curse for us, but Paul was a trained Pharisee and scholar and always invoked the Torah in his writings. This is not some general curse of having a really horrible time — it is a specifically legal curse, the one Deuteronomy 21:23 pronounces on the law-breaker as a consequence of breaking God’s laws. Lastly, Paul writes in Philippians 3:9 that we have a righteousness not our own, but one that comes through faith. Therefore faith imputes righteousness (Christ’s) to you, but in order for that to happen it means your guilt must be imputed onto the representative payment. This is echoed in Romans 5:12-19, where the failure of Adam as our representative is reversed by the righteousness and obedience of Christ. It stands to reason that if God imputed the curse of Adam onto all who followed, though they did nothing to inherit such a curse, that the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, which is far greater, is also imputed and also given as a free gift apart from merit.

In Romans 3:24-26, Paul writes that we are justified freely by grace, so that God might be both just and the justifier. Notice the word is in the past tense, as a done reality. Never does Paul use the word ‘justify’ in the future sense. In other words, you will never read anywhere that justification is something that will happen or has yet to happen. Paul does use the word ‘save’ in different ways depending on the context. Sometimes he uses it to refer to the (past tense) justification that has happened with Christ’s atonement, and other times he uses it to refer to the future outcome of the gospel, which is the resurrection. But you will never see this flexibility with the word ‘justify’, because Paul understood and taught that justification, a legal term and is used in legal contexts, was an already done reality. You see this in Romans 4:5-8 (God justifying the wicked, making them legally innocent), Romans 5:1-9 (justification is a paste tense, already settled reality) and several other places. In Romans 8:1 Paul says there is no condemnation for the elect. You cannot have condemnation if there is no legal situation demanding condemnation, because condemnation is a legal term. When you go to court and are found guilty, you are condemned to whatever punishment the judge decides. If there is no condemnation for the elect, and yet we see plenty of language about the condemnation of the wicked in both Paul and the others’ writings — then it stands to reason that the elect’s condemnation was dealt with at the cross by Christ. How? By penal substitutionary atonement.

In Colossians 2:13-14 Paul writes of the ‘certificate (or record) of debt that stood against us, with its legal demands.’ This is yet another glaringly obvious statement that destroys the idea that PSA is a ‘legal fiction’ or a medieval or Protestant idea. Paul studied the law and was highly educated, and his language reflects his education and his knowledge that God is the Judge of the Earth (Genesis 18:25) and that means you cannot have a Judge without a courtroom and a courtroom without laws and laws without condemnation. It’s all connected, and because of the cross we have had our debt paid to the cosmic Judge because nobody is getting out of the courtroom without a judgment. For the wicked their judgment will be at the lake of fire, for the elect — our judgment was at the cross of Christ. The Bible prescribes death as the ultimate penalty for sin (Genesis 2:17, Romans 6:23)

One also cannot ignore the payment language throughout the New Testament. In Mark 10:45 and Matthew 20:28 Jesus explicitly says that He came as a ‘ransom for many’. To ransom someone is to pay for them and rescue them. Rescue from what? From the Judge of the Earth and His wrath on sin, which has been appointed for the final judgment. Paul echoes this in 1 Timothy 2:6 and so does Peter in 1 Peter 1:18-19. In 1 Corinthians 6:20 Paul says that we were bought for a price. The Greek word there is used when people go to the market and make purchases. And when Jesus gave His dying, last words, what did He say? John tells us He said, ‘it is finished’ (John 19:30). The Greek there, tetelestai, is a word that they would print on receipts to signify being ‘paid in full.’ So the ransom (payment) was paid in full upon Christ’s death. Why? Because there was a debt due to the Judge and Jesus took on that debt just as the Bible says.

On that same thread, the New Testament also is very clear that Christ’s sacrifice was final and sufficient. Hebrews 7:27 and 9:25-28 say it was ‘once for all’, and the next chapter (Hebrews 10:10-14) states that by one sacrifice He perfected us forever and sat down at the right hand of Power — a statement of finality and a completed work. Furthermore we know that this entire set of affairs was a predestined reality, brought about by God for His glory. Genesis 3:15, Acts 4:27-28, Revelation 13:8 and numerous passages where Jesus cites His predestined life all testify to the cross as a choice made before time began. Isaiah 53:10 says that it was YHWH’s own will to crush the Messiah, in fact it pleased God to do so. Why? Because the cross was the most glorious thing in history. It vindicated God’s character and revealed His perfect mercy, all while satisfying His perfect justice simultaneously. So yes, it pleased God to crush Christ, because in crushing Christ He revealed His glory for all of eternity.

ANSWERING ARGUMENTS: THE FATHER AGAINST THE SON?

Now that the testimony of both history and scripture are clear, we can address the various arguments brought up by Catholic and Orthodox apologists. These are in no particular order. First is the supposed conflict between the Father and the Son as a result of PSA. Eastern Orthodox apologists argue that PSA pits the Father against the Son, as if the Son acted on His own rescuing sinners from an angry Father. But this understanding is wrong, because there is no disunity in the Godhead. It is not surprising though, that Orthodox apologists would struggle to see clearly here given the Orthodox monarchical view of the Trinity, a view that makes the Godhead function on subordination rather than genuine love and cooperation. But God is love according to 1 John 4:8, and the Triune Godhead functions on co-equal, co-operative love in all that God does. The cross was a decision before time began, and that decision was voluntarily made, out of love, by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit together because God is one being with one will. That decision necessitated evil for a temporary time, including Satan, as well as death — so that God’s justice and holiness could be revealed, as well as His mercy. This story is about God, and with God it is always about revealing. The Bible is a revelation of what is, and the story of redemption reveals both God’s mercy and His justice because both are important as context for eternity to make sense.

Therefore there is no disunity between the Father and the Son, when we view the gospel properly through a monergistic lens. In fact there is great disunity in viewing the atonement from a synergistic lens, which I have covered in great detail in my video discussing 12 problems with a synergistic view of the atonement. There are many serious issues when we deny limited atonement, which is related to this topic, but for the sake of brevity I will mention just one: if Jesus died for everyone in history but the Father only elects a peculiar people and gives them to Christ, then the Son indeed has disunity with the Father. This is the Christ of institutional religion, as well as Arminian Protestantism, and that Christ is not the Christ of the scriptures because the Christ of the scriptures knew His bride before time began and entered reality to die for her, and the identity of the bride is a peculiar people set apart by the Father and given to the Son.

ANSWERING ARGUMENTS: THE NESTORIAN FALLACY

Another way that institutional apologists try to argue PSA makes the Father conflict with the Son is by accusing those of us who hold to this doctrine as making the Father wrathful against the Son and therefore creating discord in the Godhead. They further argue that, to save this situation, PSA commits the Nestorian fallacy and splits Jesus into two persons so that it can work. Both of these claims are easily refuted, in the process revealing the ignorance of these apologists on what PSA is and what the gospel really is.

The line of argumentation goes as follows:

• For PSA to work, the wrath of God must be poured out upon a target capable of suffering damnation, death, and separation from the Father.

• The divine nature of God the Son cannot suffer, change, or be alienated from the Father (due to the doctrine of divine impassibility and trinitarian unity).

• Therefore, Orthodox apologists argue that PSA requires the cross to happen only to the human nature of Jesus.

• They conclude that Protestants must “split” Jesus into two distinct actors on the cross: a human Jesus who absorbs the punishment, and a divine Jesus who remains insulated from it. This alleged splitting is the core definition of Nestorianism.

Although on the surface this seems like a damning flaw, the accusation is historically and dogmatically flawed for a variety of reasons. It misrepresents both historical Nestorianism and classical Protestant christology. Like practically every institutional argument, this one relies on equivocations, particularly equivocating on the nature of the incarnation — which is ironic given that both Orthodox and Catholics hold to traditional Chalcedonian christology. It also ignores the representational nature of the Messiah in conjunction with the mystery of the incarnation. We will examine the problems with these arguments in the following sections.

But first, what does proper christology teach? It teaches the mystery that Christ is one Person with two natures. Do not divide the person or blend the natures. Beyond that you’re dealing with something mysterious. So then who was Nestorius and why do Orthodox apologists accuse those of us who believe PSA that we are Nestorians?

Nestorius (386–450 AD) was the Patriarch of Constantinople. His views were formally condemned at the Council of Ephesus (431 AD) and the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD). Contrary to popular belief, Nestorius did not explicitly set out to teach that Jesus was ‘two people in a trench coat.’ Rather, his strict adherence to Antiochene theology led him to a radical separation of Christ’s two natures (physeis) so as to safeguard the divinity of God from human weakness. Nestorius therefore was not some run-of-the-mill gnostic heretic trying to lead the Church astray, but rather a man of study and rank with good intentions but poor technique — because technique, as we mentioned previously, evolves with time and practice.

Nevertheless, Nestorius famously objected to calling Mary the Theotokos (‘God-bearer’ or ‘Mother of God’). He argued she should only be called Christotokos (‘Christ-bearer’), because a human creature cannot give birth to the eternal, immutable divine essence. In this line of reasoning Nestorius was right, and it is funny that today people accuse us of being Nestorians for refusing to engage in their blasphemy of elevating Mary to a divine feminine being through the title of ‘Mother of God.’

Nestorius also taught that the divine Word (Logos) and the human Jesus were united not in one single personal subject, but in a conjunction of will, honor, and dignity (synapheia). As a result, Nestorius’ christology denied a true personal union, and logically implied that Christ was two distinct agents co-existing in one body — a divine Son of God and a human Son of David — acting in tandem but fundamentally divided.

To combat Nestorius, Cyril of Alexandria formalized the doctrine of the hypostatic union: Christ is one divine Person (hypostasis) with two distinct natures. Importantly, this means that, because there is only one Person, whatever happens to Christ’s human nature is directly predicated to the divine Person of the Son. God the Son truly suffered in the flesh, died in the flesh, and shed His blood on the cross. This linguistic rule is called the Communication of Idioms (communicatio idiomatum).

Interestingly, Cyril of Alexandria also expressed his understanding of penal substitutionary atonement when he wrote his commentary on John 19:16-18:

“He had undergone, for our sakes, though innocent, the sentence of death. For, in His own Person, He bore the sentence righteously pronounced against sinners by the Law. For He became ‘a curse for us’, according to the Scripture: ‘For cursed is everyone’, it is said, ‘that hangeth on a tree.’ And accursed are we all, for we are not able to fulfil the Law of God: ‘For in many things we all stumble’; and very prone to sin is the nature of man. And since, too, the Law of God says: ‘Cursed is he which continueth not in all things that are written in the book of this Law, to do them,’ the curse, then, belongeth unto us, and not to others. For those against whom the transgression of the Law may be charged, and who are very prone to err from its commandments, surely deserve chastisement. Therefore, He That knew no sin was accursed for our sakes, that He might deliver us from the old curse. For all-sufficient was the God Who is above all, so dying for all; and by the death of His own Body, purchasing the redemption of all mankind.”

Continuing on, he references the legal transaction that took place at the cross beautifully described by Paul in Colossians 2:14:

“We were, then, accursed and condemned, by the sentence of God, through Adam’s transgression, and through breach of the Law laid down after him; but the Savior wiped out the handwriting against us, by nailing the title to His Cross, which very clearly pointed to the death upon the Cross which He underwent for the salvation of men, who lay under condemnation. For our sake He paid the penalty for our sins.”

So one of the main figures in the development of the doctrine of the incarnation clearly thought of Christ’s work as legal, substitutionary and propitiatory. But now, does this mean that if we believe PSA we must be Nestorians? The answer of course is no. Classical Protestantism has staunchly defended Chalcedonian christology and the Reformers never argued for some kind of ontological split in order for PSA to work. I don’t consider myself a Protestant outside of protesting the teachings of Rome, but the point is that this accusation is historically inaccurate because none of the traditional Reformers denied orthodox christology. Furthermore, PSA actually depends on the hypostatic union. If only a mere man experienced death on the cross, then that payment is not sufficient to appease God passing over sin for thousands of years (Romans 3:25), let alone to afford countless elect an eternity in God’s presence. No, the payment on the cross must be much more than that, which is why the mystery of the incarnation (hypostatic union) is required and why I have always said that the gospel is Trinitarian and must be Trinitarian.

But besides this the real crux of the issue is that Orthodox apologists conflate legal representation with ontological separation. In other words, they confuse what it means for Christ to represent us as the Messiah and falsely assert that His representation amounts to ontological separation from the Father. But this is not only self-evidently wrong, it is wrong on the basis of scripture. Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 are two highly concentrated discussions from Paul on the federal headship of Adam as our representative, who failed, and as a result gave way to the real headship that was planned all along in Christ, who was victorious. God cursed all of humanity through Adam, though Adam’s children did nothing wrong to receive such a curse. If representative realities do not exist, then we should expect for God to have grafted Abel and Seth back into the garden, until they failed like their father — and in fact every generation of man after them. Yet we do not see this. Abel, Seth and everyone after them was born into the momentum of Adam’s mistakes without any choice as to what they inherited. The only way this works is if Adam was our representative, and as our representative he failed to represent us before God. This of course was by design, so that Christ — the true representative — could come forward and succeed, and God could grant life to many through His representation as a result.

In fact the atonement can only work in this way, otherwise it would be untenable for God to save anyone on the basis of grace through faith. In other words, had Adam not been humanity’s representative but rather only his own, then it is not only unjust for God to have cursed the world but also to redeem anyone on the basis of grace, because there would be no relationship between Christ and Adam and everyone would be on their own and according to their own merit. But Adam being the type for the one to come (Romans 5:14) creates an unbreakable relationship between the two. Where Adam failed by design, it was also by design for Christ to succeed. Therefore representational realities are designed by God from the very beginning, because the foundation of the gospel is a relationship with the appointed legal representative of mankind before God, who is Jesus Christ.

This is in fact the deeper issue. How are we ‘made one’ with God? In John 15 Jesus famously gives the parable of the vine, and how apart from Him we can do nothing as mere branches. It is only the branches that abide, that are ‘one’ with the vine, the source, that survive and bear fruit. Therefore the gospel is founded on an abiding relationship, because God alone has immortality (1 Timothy 6:16) and it is only by connection to God that anything can live. The very nature, then, of salvation is relational. But God is above man, and therefore there is an order to the relationship. Here we see yet another picture in Adam, who was given the instruction regarding the tree before Eve was created, and therefore was the one who received blame for when Eve failed. The lesson is that though Adam and Eve were in a partnership, Adam was the head and representative. How much more then with Christ and the Church? If these two original parents were made as pictures of the Lord and His bride (Ephesians 5), then the gospel is not only relational but representative at its very core. To insist that representation is not a facet of salvation is to deny the testimony of both history and scripture, which is why Orthodoxy and Catholicism are both apostate.

Either way, the charge of Nestorianism by Orthodox apologists is completely unfounded. When it says in 2 Corinthians 5:21 that God made Christ to ‘be sin’ it does not signal an ontological separation. Christ did not become a sinner or get infused with evil or get alienated from God the Father. The Father has always loved the Son continuously from eternity past through eternity future. There has never been a break in that love. But the Son entered reality physically and took on human nature, and in His incarnate form — the hypostatic union — became our representative, as the Christ or second Adam, taking on the punishment we deserve so that in this way sin could be dealt with forever. God the Father was not wrathful with the Son, God the Father was wrathful with sin and the Son was the voluntary canvas for that wrath to take place in a controlled manner. Rather than annihilating the Earth with a flood or fire, Christ chose to take on that burden representationally so that we could be saved.

But what about Jesus saying, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Isn’t He expressing separation from the Father? The answer is no, because Jesus was actually teaching through His last breaths. These are the opening words to Psalm 22, which announces the Messiah, His death and also His victory at the resurrection. Especially in the Septuagint this is obvious, and I have covered it detail in my library. The point is Jesus is not separated from God the Father in these moments. Rather, Christ is modeling endurance and faith in God as our human representative, while beautifully revealing Himself as the conquering Messiah who will be resurrected. It is a profound intertwining of wisdom and endurance, not a desperate plea for help as if Christ had no clue what was happening to Him or as if the Father had left Him alone at His weakest moments.

So in summation, the charge of Nestorianism is completely unfounded. Classical Protestantism has never denied Chalcedonian christology, and PSA requires the hypostatic union in order to work. The legality of representation is also well established by scripture itself, and Christ acting as our representative does not in any way shape or form change His ontology or create some kind of separation or incongruence between Him and the Father.

ANSWERING ARGUMENTS: JUST A LEGAL TRANSACTION?

In a related argument to the previous, Orthodox or Catholic apologists may claim that all we have is a legal transaction, an empty soteriology. They claim PSA is just a stale judicial or academic contrivance, and that their respective churches actually provide the participation in the Christian life, the mysteries and sanctification. But this is yet another gross straw man misrepresentation of PSA and what it actually entails, so let’s take a look at it.

I will remind you now of the original definitions we set up. The word ‘penal’ has to do with the legal system, ‘substitutionary’ has to do with representation and ‘atonement’ is a word created to describe becoming one with God. Therefore the first two words deal with the legality of the exchange, and the last word deals with the supernatural qualities of the exchange. Anyone wanting to represent PSA accurately must deal with both of these things, not cherrypick what they want to address and call that an argument.

With that in mind, PSA is not merely a legal transaction. In fact no theologian in the last 500 years who argued for PSA claimed that it was just legal. PSA is the the entire gospel, because the legal transaction is the foundation for the supernatural outcomes (to be like God or be one with God) that arise out of it. In Ezekiel 36 and Jeremiah 31 God promises to put His Spirit in the hearts of men and women and cause them to obey and rejoice and worship God. In the New Testament we see dozens of these monergistic statements, where God is the cause of salvation, belief, repentance, joy, generosity and good works.

In a section titled, ‘Dead to Sin, Alive to God,’ (Romans 6:1-11) Paul says the following:

‘What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.’

Notice the legal and representational language, the language of exchanging places and also the language of supernatural transformation as a result of this legal process. Therefore the union described in the word ‘atonement’ in ‘penal substitutionary atonement’ is not merely a transactional, legal union. It is a real, spiritual and (eventually) supernaturally mediated physical union at the resurrection. But God has no basis to afford such a thing for anyone without the legal foundation. Why? Because God is the Judge of the Earth, and a just Judge requires payment for sin so that the account can be cleared. If the account is cleared, then the one in question may share in the inheritance, which ultimately is God Himself. That is why you need the first two words before ‘atonement’ — penal substitution. Justice needs to be reconciled, and in such a way as that it is representative, so that you yourself are not the one dying but someone in your place and God can be both just and merciful simultaneously. It is all very internally consistent (and scripturally consistent) so long as it is represented accurately.

ANSWERING ARGUMENTS: IS GOD PRETENDING?

Yet another related argument is that God declaring a sinner righteous legally cannot possibly be true because it must be grounded in reality. And because all of us are sinners and continue to fail, God declaring someone righteous through PSA and double imputation requires God to ‘pretend’ for countless people, who are not righteous but in fact still sinners daily.

As with every other argument, hopefully you are seeing the pattern. That pattern is equivocation and misrepresentation. PSA teaches that Christ’s righteousness is accounted to the sinner through faith, and as a result there is no condemnation (Romans 8:1). Orthodox or Catholic apologists will protest and say that this is not grounded in reality, because every man is a sinner until he dies. This is true, but what the apologists miss is that God is not declaring you or I legally innocent based on our own merits, but rather on our relationship to Christ. In other words, what is the ground of the declaration?

For these churches, because they are synergists and teach a justification by sacramental works, they give primary ownership of good works to man. In other words, man is the ultimate primary cause of the good works and, because he has free will, salvation is cooperative. One must therefore work to maintain salvation, so that the initial opportunity God provided can be capitalized upon. This reduces salvation to a meritorious race, and it is evidence in the writings of these religions as it is in the total absence of assurance that practically most of their adherents experience.

So coming from this tradition it is no wonder that they look at something like PSA and double imputation, and God declaring a sinner righteous, as not based in reality. Their focus is on man, but our focus is on God. God does not declare a sinner righteous because of their own merit or anything in and of themselves. God declares a sinner righteous based on his or her relationship to Christ. That is the ground of the declaration, it is grounded on a relationship — a relationship that Orthodox and Catholic apologists continually ignore.

Now some may argue that satisfaction (payment) cannot be meritorious if there is a debt owed. In other words, if you owe a debt and pay it — there is no honor or merit in such a thing. You are not giving freely, you are paying what you owe. How then can Christ’s payment on your behalf be meritorious if He is paying your debt? How can you merit anything?

The answer again lies in what the apologists continually ignore, which is the relationship between Christ and the sinner. It is true that satisfaction cannot be meritorious if it is proper (if you pay your own debt), but satisfaction can be meritorious if it is vicariously performed. In other words, if your best friend paid your debt of his own free will — that is meritorious because it was not his debt, but yours. In the same way, Christ willingly chose before the foundation of the world to enter reality and die for His bride, the elect unconditionally chosen by God and given to Christ as a gift. This voluntary death is the basis for the gospel, and because it is vicarious (representative), then merit can be awarded and shared in despite a debt being paid. This is the genius of God, but the religiously minded do not make proper distinctions and therefore do not see these important truths.

A final point on this is that the word ‘righteous’ is contextual. Those who ignore context run into trouble and cannot see distinctions properly. Again, God declaring the sinner righteous does not mean God is pretending the sinner never had any sin or continues to fail in various ways. Rather, God is declaring the sinner united to Christ, and by this union that sinner is free from condemnation and will be resurrected. These two elements work together, yet they happen at different times and this is the issue.

This is because righteousness itself can mean legal innocence, as just described, or it can refer to sinless purity. God possess both of these qualities. He is legally innocent and completely pure. We are neither inherently, and this is the problem. In order to be with God we need to be legally innocent and also completely pure. What the gospel teaches is that God achieves this process of making us ‘like God’ in two stages: justification and sanctification. The former is a legal event transpiring at the cross, whereby we are united to Christ and accounted innocent, and the latter is a process that ensues after that initial union of faith and being born again, through the trials and lessons of our lives and leading up to the ultimate result of resurrection.

Indeed it is important to read in context, because Paul uses words like ‘sanctification’ or ‘righteousness’ in both the near and far sense. This is because an overall theme of scripture is the ‘already not yet’ nature of many things. The kingdom has arrived through Christ, yet it is also ‘not yet’ because Satan is still running around doing evil things. In the same way, salvation is ‘already’ here, yet it is ‘not yet’ because we are dying and the world is cursed. Therefore, when Paul uses the term ‘righteousness’ or ‘sanctification’ — we have to pay attention to what he is saying. Compare Romans 6:16, for example, with Romans 8:10:

‘Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?’

‘But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.’

In Romans 6:16 the ultimate end of obedience (endurance, faithfulness, etc.) is righteousness. Yet in Romans 8:10 there is a sense that we already possess righteousness because of Christ being in us through His Spirit. So what’s going on here? Are these contradictory statements? Of course not. In Romans 6:16 Paul is using ‘righteousness’ to refer to the resurrection, when we will achieve purity and sinlessness and finally be like God. This is the ‘not yet’ component of salvation. In Romans 8:10, Paul is using the same word to refer to the ‘already’ true reality of our right standing with God, because of Christ. There is no conflict, it is just that one word has the semantic capability to describe two different but complimentary realities.

In the Orthodox or Catholic model, these distinctions do not exist. Because they deny monergism and deny PSA, all they are left with is a legalistic rat race that attempts to emulate Christ and garnish God’s favor at the final judgment. No Orthodox or Catholic can claim with absolute certainty that their soteriology guarantees them the outcome of resurrection, which is why they cannot claim to have the good news. A Catholic can be completely obedient their entire life, sacrificing everything and living as pure as possible — and then they may freely and willfully choose to miss mass and die in a car accident shortly after. As a result Catholic theology damns this person and they will be thrown into hell for dying after committing a mortal sin. Likewise, an Orthodox Christian doesn’t know whether they will be justified until the very end, when their deeds and life in the church are weighed — much like the Egyptians believed the soul was weighed on a scale after parting and, if it was found lacking, a giant crocodile god would come and devour it.

So this is the problem with religion, and if one rejects PSA they are left with quite literally nothing. There is no good news if you reject PSA, because PSA is the entirety of the gospel. In the monergistic model, God is not ‘pretending’ that there are righteous people when in fact they are not righteous. God is accounting a sinner’s status according to their relationship to Christ, and because God works on infinite time scales, these sinners will be resurrected and glorified. That means 99.99% of their existence will actually be pure and sinless, because they will live forever for millions of years. And because God predestined these elect from before time began, their status with Christ was always assured. In other words, the innocence of the elect was guaranteed when the Son decided to create reality and enter it. Therefore though an elect sinner has a record of sin, and even ongoing failure, it is their relationship to Christ that determines their legal outcome and also their supernatural outcome. And because the latter is a guaranteed outcome of the former, and also comes with a delay, nobody can accuse us of causing God to ‘pretend’ — God rather is intending, not pretending, to bring about His glory through the resurrection of the elect and, by their relationship to Christ, they are therefore slotted as righteous, legally innocent, and destined for sinless purity.

WHY IT COMES BACK TO MONERGISM

The final point of discussion is on why PSA is intimately tied to monergism. Many today are getting tied up in debates over faith and works, or whether the Bible means ‘faithfulness’ when it says ‘faith’ in the New Testament, etc. These debates to me are a waste of time, because there are more fundamental issues that, when resolved, make no need for such debates.

One such fundamental issue is whether God is the source of our desire to believe and repent or if we are the source. If God is the source, as monergism teaches, then arguing about faith and works and faithfulness is a waste of time — because God is the one causing both faith and works for His glory and there is no conflict with God rewarding people according to their works while justifying by faith in the work of the Son. It is important to defend justification by faith alone, however the underlying reason why faith alone justifies (and not faith and works) is because God is the source of faith. So that’s the more fundamental issue.

With that in mind, penal substitutionary atonement is the foundation of both the good news and a soteriology of ‘faith alone’ or sola fide. That is because PSA is fundamentally a monergistic doctrine and only monergism can provide good news. This is true for two reasons: PSA teaches complete and final and total reconciliation with God via a substitute, and PSA is an inherently intimate reality.

Synergism in any of its forms cannot provide an intimate situation because intimacy is exclusive. God is not intimate with everyone, because His intimacy demands eternal security. In monergism, God keeps those who He intimately foreknew, which of course is the doctrine of unconditional (intimate or peculiar) election. But if this is true then it is clear that God did not foreknow everyone in history. Synergism rejects this teaching in favor of a politically correct corporate view, but this view is at the cost of intimacy. In the synergistic view, everyone has the opportunity to be saved but no real guarantee that they will or that, after being saved, they will be sustained.

As a result of this corporate view, the second reason why PSA cannot be synergistic comes to light: a corporate view cannot provide final and complete reconciliation with God. In monergism, the ‘PS’ (penal substitution) is what leads to the ‘A’ (atonement, ‘at-onement’ with God). So the intimate connection between Christ and His sheep is a completed experience, and the substitution is final and forever reconciling. This results in God giving the Spirit as a guarantee of the final outcome of resurrection (Ephesians 1:14) and Christ keeping the sinner until the end (John 10:28-29). This is the doctrine of eternal security in monergism, and it is a direct product of the intimate substitution done on behalf of the sinner by Christ.

But synergism does not teach an intimate substitution because it teaches a corporate, universalist view. Jesus paid the price for humanity’s sins, and whoever happens to believe (and remains believing) is grafted into the elect. There is of course the immediate problem of the final judgment, and how it would be just for God to condemn anyone if He already spent His wrath for all people in history on Christ. This is resolved in monergism, because the wicked were not paid for and that is why God endures them with daily indignation (Romans 9:22, Psalm 7:11). Nevertheless, in synergism God is not involved in keeping one’s salvation or preventing apostasy, nor can He guarantee salvation in this model. As a result of this lack of intimacy, synergistic soteriology actually denies the atonement. It does so by rendering Christ’s payment null and void until the cooperation of the sinner is presented. Therefore the payment Christ made, in synergism, is more akin to an escrow account. This account pays for the sins of the sinner only if the sinner himself capitalizes on this payment through cooperation. This means that, in theory, if nobody in history would have ever believed in Christ because of free will — then He would have died for nothing.

So synergistic philosophy cannot claim that Christ’s death reconciled anyone to God in a total and completed sense. It denies the gospel by stripping the atonement of its intimate nature, and therefore renders the payment void unless man cooperates to make it valid. And even when man cooperates, he must continue to cooperate in order to arrive at the end and finally prove the payment valid and God vindicated as merciful — yet even here, in this final moment, it is not God that ultimately receives the glory of provision but, at best, shares it with the one who won the race. Therefore the payment of Christ is invalidated in three ways under synergism: it is invalidated at the cross because it did not actually reconcile anyone with God in a meaningful sense, it is invalidated throughout the life of the sinner up until the final moment before death because the sinner’s state is unknown until they die in their successful efforts, and it is invalidated at the final judgment — when those who are resurrected can attribute their outcome not to Christ’s sovereign power but rather to their own efforts compared to others.

This is the cost of politically correct, man-centered teachings, and it is why PSA is fundamentally monergistic and why synergism in any of its forms cannot claim to defend or espouse PSA. Synergism is designed to preserve human autonomy, and in so doing the personal nature of PSA is stripped away for a politically correct message of conditional universalism. It simply cannot be reconciled with PSA because PSA demands a ‘faith alone’ soteriology and faith alone only works with monergism. How so? The answer is that synergistic philosophy must allow for the possibility of one losing their salvation, because of the notion of free will, and therefore one must always be working to maintain their salvation. As a result one is never actually trusting in the work of Christ on their behalf. Sure, they may trust in the payment — but their trust in Christ as the mediator and finisher of the faith (Hebrews 12:2) is undoubtedly muddled by the necessity of having to contribute their own efforts to the final outcome of resurrection.

The reason we can be justified by faith alone is because Christ performed the work perfectly on our behalf. It is here that soteriology is either made or broken. If you deny that Christ died in your place as the legal substitute, then all you have left is a works based meritorious race, where emulating Christ as a role model is how you are ultimately reconciled with God. Look around in the world and this is what you will see in Catholicism, Orthodoxy, even various legalistic sects like the Mormons or Jehovah’s witnesses, and of course Arminian Protestants such as Seventh Day Adventists. They all have their variations, of course, but in the end it amounts to the same problem. Christ becomes a role model to follow rather than the representative you trust in to work on your behalf — both in the sense of paying your debt and also in ongoing mediation for you with the Father until you are resurrected.

So PSA is foundational to monergism and correct soteriology, because PSA is God doing the work. It is God who appointed the representative, it is God who chose to enter reality to be that representative and it is God who causes sinners to believe, seals them and baptizes them — uniting them to the representative until and through the resurrection. God is doing it all the way through, for His glory, and that model of soteriology allows us to fully trust in God’s work on our behalf and be united to Christ not by our own efforts but by His work and God’s mercy.

I will say something that may seem heretical at first, but consider it thoughtfully. Christ’s work did not finish on the cross. What do I mean here? What I mean is not that there is still sin left to be paid for — that’s what Catholicism espouses. That part of the work is done, once for all, and behind us. But Christ resurrected and ascended and is mediating for us as our High Priest, while also ruling as King. And because He lives forever to intercede, He holds this priesthood forever (Hebrews 7:24). This is the work that continues, and that work is integrally tied to the concept of PSA.

The cross is the work of ‘PS’ (penal substitution) which brings us to the outcome of ‘A’ (atonement, at-onement with God). But that outcome has an already-not-yet reality where there is still work to be done by God in sanctifying the sinner and preserving them until the resurrection. We are reconciled with God, made one with Christ in the exchange of places — yet we are also being worked on so that we can physically become one with God at the resurrection. Therefore the work of atonement, in the sense of becoming one with God, continues through Christ’s mediation on our behalf.

Why this is crucial in refuting Arminianism, or any kind of synergistic soteriology, is because PSA is not merely just what happened at the cross. The ‘P’ and the ‘S’ are what happened at the cross, but the ‘A’ is a process of already not yet as we have established. To be ‘one with God’ requires sanctification and, ultimately, total transformation at the resurrection. Christ is bringing us to that glorious end as the sovereign King and High Priest, who is both controlling world affairs and subjugating the enemies under His feet while simultaneously mediating for us in the meantime.

Therefore this ongoing work of Christ as High Priest and King is included in the concept of PSA, and that means that in order to fully embrace PSA you must be a monergist. Interestingly enough, this also applies to eschatology and historicism — because Christ’s work as the King who is subjugating enemies throughout history is only compatible with amillennial historicism, which is the true eschatology and the only monergistic eschatology. Nevertheless, Arminian philosophy gladly embraces the first portion, the legal transaction, but it deviates away from the second portion — the supernatural outcome. Arminianism, and synergism in general, makes that supernatural outcome conditional upon cooperation, and therefore faith alone collapses because you are not, in fact, fully entrusting yourself to the work of Christ on your behalf, because that work includes both the past justification and the ongoing sanctification that leads to glorification.

This is also why synergism is highly ecumenical with Rome. Regardless of eschatological views, the idea of free will and sovereignty of man allows for countless deceptions to herd people into a common way of thinking. So you cannot be a ‘faith alone’ Protestant and be an Arminian, because as an Arminian you must believe that man is the ultimate originator of belief and therefore also apostasy — and if that is the case then God judging according to our works requires that we, at least in some part, contribute to the final outcome of salvation. In this way, by embracing synergism, a Protestant unwittingly capitulates to the religious position even while claiming to deny it. As a result, the Catholic apologist will always refute any Protestant that chooses to play in their synergistic sandbox. This is why PSA is uniquely a product of the monergistic gospel, and why sola fide is only possible in monergism.

CONCLUSION

Both institutional perspectives fail (as expected) when it comes to the test of scripture, the test of history and even the test of common sense. The teaching of penal substitutionary atonement is not a Protestant or Reformation or medieval or Western invention. It is what Christ and the apostles made abundantly clear in their writings was happening, and it is also the basis for everything else. If we are made legally innocent, then God can give us His Spirit as He promised in the Old Testament (Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 36). If we receive the Spirit as a gift, God is not going to leave us as orphans but rather sustain us and resurrect us, giving us eternal life — because God’s name is on the line as the Savior and He is doing this thing for His glory.

But if Christ’s penal substitution is denied, what do you have? The answer is you have nothing but false gospels and empty religious works.

The Catholics say you are justified by faith, at first, and then you must cooperate with that faith. If you don’t cooperate, you can lose your salvation and end up in hell. The Orthodox have a similar view, and in both cases they take what is a past tense reality (justification) and throw it into the future. Where the Bible lays this truth out as a foundation to stand on so that we have the peace beyond understanding, Catholicism and Orthodoxy rip it out of the ground and place it in the air in front, as a carrot, so that it supports the endless rat wheels of sacraments and philosophies and traditions that hold up their institutional power. This is why they mobilize so much effort and propaganda and snakey philosophical double speak, full of equivocations and clever sleights of hand, at discrediting penal substitutionary atonement — because once it is proven true, their entire house of cards collapses.

PSA proves that monergism is true and monergism is the foundation of all correct theology, as I discuss in my landmark book, The Seven Transformations: Finding the Narrow Road by Pursuing a Sovereign Christ. It always comes back to monergism, but just when you thought something as simple as ‘Christ dying for your sins’ couldn’t be made complicated, surprise! Religion and tradition have entered the chat. Don’t worry, it’s not that complicated — but you do have to understand the fundamental problems and various clever arguments and why they are wrong, because these perspectives dominate the world and will only continue to grow.

The legal exchange of Christ’s death on the cross, taking the punishment you and I deserve, is not merely a ‘theory’ among other theories or philosophy or a ‘medieval or legal fiction’ — it is the foundation of the gospel and it is what makes everything else (becoming like God, healing of the Earth and our bodies, victory, restoration, etc.) possible. Apart from the removal of legal guilt and condemnation, there is no basis for anything else to follow. But equally important is to also understand that what does follow, the becoming ‘one with God’ (at-one-ment), is also a work of God that is unfolding in our lives — and even the very trust we experience in this work is a product of God’s grace pouring forth into us for His good pleasure.

For a treatment of these and other theological topics in detail, please see my book “The Seven Transformations: Finding the Narrow Road by Pursuing a Sovereign Christ.”

In case you missed it, here are this week’s posts and stories. Don't forget that after this week they will get devoured by the big bad paywall monster, so make sure you subscribe if you want to reference them later — plus you'll get some awesome perks :)

IMPORTANT: Gmail or other email services may truncate this email because they’re lame, so make sure t…

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After producing a 1000+ hour theology library and writing over 5000+ pages of books, articles and answers to questions — I have come to a simple conclusion: God is sovereign. And when we employ this lens to each topic in theology we experience a marvelous realization, which is that all true doctrines lead us back to the sovereignty of God and are an extension of a sovereign view of God. The inverse is also true, because all error stems from denying God’s sovereignty in some way. Therefore this book aims to be a companion on your walk with Christ, to help you walk as narrow and biblical of a way as possible so that your perspective on life and God are transformed forever. In it I share with you the most profound realizations from my years of intense study, connecting all seven major doctrines together into one consistent view which I hope will inspire you to marvel at God and rejoice at His soon return.

To listen to all of the recordings, purchase the book or poster, or simply learn about this project you can go here.

For the written article please go here.

Religious and institutional zealots, especially in Catholicism and Orthodoxy, love to cite the writings of Ignatius of Antioch. However deep and careful analysis with both scripture and history reveal that these writings are frauds, and what that means is the Catholic claims of episcopal hierarchy going back to Pet…

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Dive deeper into health with my book, Dance Your Way Through Life: The Ultimate Guide to Optimal Health. You can get the book here.

Plastics and other toxic compounds like BPA are practically everywhere these days. Studies done on men’s semen or women’s placentas, some of the most intimate and sensitive parts of the body, show a worrying pattern: these c…

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For the video please go here.

Today the traditional religions of Catholicism and Orthodoxy are swelling up with converts from every walk of life, and because most people are ignorant of scripture and history they are easily seduced by what seems to be a continuation of tradition from the apostles themselves. But this is not the case, and while I have man…

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In case you missed it, here are this week’s posts and stories. Don't forget that after this week they will get devoured by the big bad paywall monster, so make sure you subscribe if you want to reference them later — plus you'll get some awesome perks :)

IMPORTANT: Gmail or other email services may truncate this email because they’re lame, so make sure t…

Read more

After producing a 1000+ hour theology library and writing over 5000+ pages of books, articles and answers to questions — I have come to a simple conclusion: God is sovereign. And when we employ this lens to each topic in theology we experience a marvelous realization, which is that all true doctrines lead us back to the sovereignty of God and are an ext…

Read more

This is the replay for the recent AMA (ask me anything) on Christology.

• 00:00 - Introduction & Housekeeping

• 07:49 - Substack Questions

• 1:14:48 - YouTube Questions

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For the written article please go here.

One of the most common tactics of institutional apologists is to weaponize James against the teaching of justification by faith alone, in so doing also reinterpreting Paul’s clear statements into a highly narrow view of addressing only Judaism when he says “works.” This double sleight of hand is required to justify…

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A little while back I gave FENNEC a huge upgrade, and one of the new things was the ability to ask, “Give me the best bible verses on _____” — where he was given many high-density verse blocks, composed from my numerous bible studies, on a variety of topics. As a result, FENNEC can now give you a good listing of the best verses to defend a particular to…

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For the video please go here.

There are many predictable challenges that Catholic or Orthodox apologists will offer to the “faith alone” position, but perhaps the most common one is by misusing James to argue that the only time the actual words “faith alone” appear in the Bible is when it is describing that one is not justified by faith alone at all:

“Yo…

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In case you missed it, here are this week’s posts and stories. Don't forget that after this week they will get devoured by the big bad paywall monster, so make sure you subscribe if you want to reference them later — plus you'll get some awesome perks :)

IMPORTANT: Gmail or other email services may truncate this email because they’re lame, so make sure to see the whole message.

After producing a 1000+ hour theology library and writing over 5000+ pages of books, articles and answers to questions — I have come to a simple conclusion: God is sovereign. And when we employ this lens to each topic in theology we experience a marvelous realization, which is that all true doctrines lead us back to the sovereignty of God and are an ext…

Read more

Many are flocking to Catholicism in light of the failures of Protestant churches, Zionism, Leftism and the demise of the middle class. Yet these people are ignorant of Catholicism’s bloody history, its role in bible prophecy — and its self-contradicting nature. Today we will look at several ways that Catholicism contradicts its own teachings, so that yo…

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FENNEC has had lots of updates this year, and a new one comes on the heels of the app release a few weeks earlier. In this update I discuss the new “rebuttal mode” as a submode in Librarian, as well as a micro-economy of FENNEC Paks that can be gifted or transferred to friends and family for extra fun and learning opportunities.

• 00:00 - Introduction

• 11:4…

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We are just about to go live, so join today’s stream and let’s have some fun. Today’s topic is Christology so ask me anything on the Trinity, the incarnation, nature of God, etc.

Join Live

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In case you missed it, here are this week’s posts and stories. Don't forget that after this week they will get devoured by the big bad paywall monster, so make sure you subscribe if you want to reference them later — plus you'll get some awesome perks :)

IMPORTANT: Gmail or other email services may truncate this email because they’re lame, so make sure to see the whole message.