Tag Archives: atonement

Christ is the Cause of Salvation; Faith & Good Works are the Conditions

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Christ is the Cause of Salvation; Faith & Good Works are the Conditions

(The efficacy of the death of Christ consistent with the necessity of a good life)[1]

by William Paley (b. July 1743 – d. May 1805)

Our first argument to support the thesis stated above is that although the Bible clearly represents Christ’s atonement as efficacious for the salvation of mankind, it also clearly teaches the necessity of our own efforts toward virtue and good works for salvation’s sake. But the Scriptures go further than that. The Holy Spirit, speaking through the Scriptures, foresaw that as the death & atonement of Christ was revealed to Christians as being instrumental to salvation, that this would lead some Christians to the [mistaken] opinion that mankind’s own works, their own virtue, their personal efforts, were to be set aside or done away with. In other words, the Holy Spirit foresaw that some Christians would [mistakenly] conclude that if the sacrificial death of Christ was effective for salvation, that this would mean that all the moral efforts or good works of mankind were unnecessary for salvation. The Holy Spirit, speaking through the Scriptures, foresaw that some Christians would draw this [mistaken] conclusion from certain teachings that are now located in the New Testament and so He, through the Scriptures, provided a remedy for this erroneous interpretation. Continue reading Christ is the Cause of Salvation; Faith & Good Works are the Conditions →

The Trinity & the Penal Satisfaction Theory of the Atonement

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The Trinity & the Penal Satisfaction Theory of the Atonement

The relation that exists between a particular aspect of the Trinitarian teachings of classical Christianity and a particular theory regarding the atonement of the cross (a theory which is now widely assumed to be the only acceptable version of the atonement) was initially perceived by this writer while doing research on the subject of the popular teaching of Unconditional Eternal Security (a.k.a. Once Saved Always Saved). The connection that exists between the atonement of the cross and intra-Trinitarian relations became evident because of how Unconditional Eternal Security advocates would very often attempt to support their arguments by appealing to the atonement of the cross. They commonly assert that all of our sins have been paid for (past, present, and future) and can never be charged back to our account because God’s wrath has been satisfied—Jesus took the punishment from God that we deserved.

Like Charles Stanley (president of the S.B.C. 1984-1986), advocates of Unconditional Eternal Security often assert that holding to a position of Conditional Security is tantamount to denying the finished atoning work of Christ.[1] However, not only can it be proven that Unconditional Eternal Security advocates depart from the earliest, most universally held consensus of Christian teaching on the subject of salvation security, but in their desperate efforts to defend their doctrine by appealing to and arguing from the Penal Satisfaction theory of the atonement, they only reveal how inconsistent this concept of the atonement is with a well-established key element of Trinitarian doctrine—the inseparability of the three divine persons.[2] Continue reading The Trinity & the Penal Satisfaction Theory of the Atonement →