I found a book online that is very good in explaining the origins of Penal Substitution . It lays out the Patristic understanding of the atonement before Anselm and then deals with Anselm's Theory and then show how the Reformers modified Penal Substitution from Anselm. Every Protestant should read this book if they want to understand their ideas of the atonement. You can read this book for free here: archive.org/stream/anselmstheory00foleuoft#page/n5/mode/2up

Had to watch this one a few times. Do you have any others that go in more depth on these different epistemologies?

@RyanReevesM

7 жыл бұрын

Hey there. If you go to my playlists and check out the course on Early and Medieval Church History there are quite a few on medieval scholasticism and it's epistemologies. Happy viewing! :))

@Mikeanddrea

7 жыл бұрын

Great thanks! Been going through the Luther & Calvin playlist. I'll do that next I guess.

Scholasticism came from Roman Catholicism. The Reformers adopted all kinds of doctrines that were the fruit of scholasticism in the Latin Church. The Reformers for example took Anselm's theory of Satisfaction and added another aspect to Anselm. Anselm believed that humans could not render to God more than what was due to him. The satisfaction due to God was greater than what all created beings are capable of doing, since they can only do what is already required of them. Anselmian formulation of the Satisfaction View needs to be distinguished from Penal Substitution. Penal Substitution states that Christ bore the penalty for sin, in place of those sinners united to him by faith. Anselm, by contrast, regarded human sin as defrauding God of the honor He is due. Christ's death, the ultimate act of obedience, gives God great honor. As it was beyond the call of duty for Christ, it is more honor than he was obliged to give. Christ's surplus can therefore repay our deficit. Hence Christ's death is substitutionary in this sense: he pays the honor instead of us. But that substitution is not penal; his death pays our honor not our penalty. The Protestant reformers shifted the focus of this satisfaction theory to concentrate not merely on divine offense but on divine justice. God's righteousness demands punishment for human sin. God in his grace both exacts punishment and supplies the one to bear it. This is an important difference. For Anselm, Christ obeyed where we should have obeyed; for John Calvin, he was punished where we should have been punished. So the Reformers took scholasticism to a new level and actually invented a whole new flavor of Christianity. Prior to Anselm no one believed any of these ideas. That means that for over a thousand years Christians had no concept of satisfaction due to God or the later Reformed idea of divine justice. The Eastern Orthodox Church has never adopted these Latin forms of Scholasticism. Western Scholasticism is to much of a reliance on human rationalism. Penal Satisfaction is more of a Pagan idea since most all the ancient gods around Israel demanded satisfaction for offenses committed by individuals or society. The Eastern Church has always believed that God is free and is not bound by necessity. In the Reformed matrix God is just and cannot do anything but punish all sin. There must be blood or a punishment. God cannot do anything but punish you if you are guilty of sin. This means that there is something greater than God -necessity-which determines what God can and cannot do. To lay it out logically, If I do “A” then God must do “B”. If I sin God must punish. Thus God’s actions are bound and controlled by something outside Himself, ie my actions. This becomes even more complex when you throw in the idea that God foreordains my sinful actions thus forcing Him to respond to them. Reformed Christians often say that God does not have to save anyone if He chooses not to. On the other hand He does have to punish sin. So God has to punish sin but He does not have to save anyone. It is interesting that the Reformed idea of justice becomes the defining characteristic of God rather than love. Justice forces God to respond to my actions but love does not. The view held by the church prior to these scholastic inventions is quite different. The Latin Model of Anselm and John Calvin says the reason the Messiah came was to pay a penalty. The early church believed the reason Christ came was to liberate, rescue, and restore. In the Latin punitive model the reason the Messiah needed to be sinless is to present a perfect offering. A legal satisfaction. In the restorative model of the early church the reason the Messiah needed to be sinless is to present a model of God’s heart (Christ’s nature) and the values of Christ’s Kingdom. In the Latin punitive model the reason the Messiah had to suffer is to appease authority and satisfy God’s wrath. In writings of the early church the restorative model says the reason the Messiah had to suffer is to free us from the grip of false authority-to liberate us from sin, death, and the devil. Not satisfy God's justice or restore His honor. In my opinion Scholasticism has done a lot of damage to the Western forms of Christianity. I don't accept the presupposition that the Reformers reformed anything. They actually deformed the church and took scholasticism to a whole new level. Just attend a Reformed Church and listen to the preaching. It is dead dry and wooden. It is what you get when you adopt human rationalism in all it's scholastic forms. I don't accept the presupposition that all of church history must be judged by the standards of the 16th century. There is 1500 years to draw from before these men created their man made religion. If you read the early church fathers you cannot line them up with the Reformers at all. This is because the early church did not believe that human reason could unravel every mystery revealed in the Bible. They did not believe as the Reformers did simply because it is not the faith that was delivered to them by the Apostles. While the Reformers were brilliant men at some levels they ultimately are a demonstration of Scholasticism gone amuck.