I have a further question regarding your picture of a "Protestant notion of a bloodthirsty, Dagonesque monster demanding the personal satisifaction of the death on the Cross of His Son because He is offended by our sins. We have no disagreement that the Scripture teaches that Jesus Christ voluntarily gave himself up as an offering for our sin to ransom us. Yet the same Scripture that speaks of His blood sacrifice also says this:
4 Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned every one to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
...10 Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief;[g] when his soul makes[h] an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
These also say that God did it. The LORD crushed him. The LORD put him to grief. The LORD laid on him the iniquity of us all. What do you think? Why else would God do this to His Only Beloved Son if not that our sins are a most severe offense against His Holiness, righteousness and justice? Why does God's love manifest itself in a blood sacrifice, in this brutal manner, if not that it is 'required' by God's justice? Not that God is subject to some pre-existent, impersonal uncreated force called necessity, but simply that these combined actions of justice and mercy flow from Who He Is. If it's just "love" why the blood and killing?
Cordially,
Amen. And to a certain degree, the Incarnation itself is a God-mandated anthropomorphism. God not only took on the characteristics of humans; He BECAME human for the very reason of experiencing our humanity so as to witness to exactly what He was saving us from -- the immense burden of our sins.
Why else would God do this to His Only Beloved Son if not that our sins are a most severe offense against His Holiness, righteousness and justice? Why does God's love manifest itself in a blood sacrifice, in this brutal manner, if not that it is 'required' by God's justice?
Amen. Our own judicial system didn't just rise up from the foam of happenstance. It's based on the Biblical injunctions of responsibility and redress, acquittal and condemnation, of judgment.
The glory of our salvation is that the responsibility is all ours and the redress is all His. We are acquitted by His standing in our place, taking on the punishment rightly due us, so that we may stand blameless before God.
To misunderstand or ignore the penal substitution of Christ's redemption is to miss the point of the Scriptures entirely. It is the very heart of our salvation and what we give thanks for. It is the way God created His creation to be.
Oh, I agree. I think they do tell us something, though likely not much if in fact God is "Ο ΩΝ".
"These also say that God did it. The LORD crushed him. The LORD put him to grief. The LORD laid on him the iniquity of us all. What do you think? Why else would God do this to His Only Beloved Son if not that our sins are a most severe offense against His Holiness, righteousness and justice?" The ransom was was demanded by and appeared to be paid to The Evil One, or "Death", not to God. It was the only ransom Death would accept and Christ was the only power Who could destroy the bonds with which Death held mankind captive. God did indeed require Christ to die. That's very apparent from scripture. But it wasn't because He was offended. It was because He loves us who were in thrall to Death and the Evil One. In the meantime, of course, Death got snookered.