Mike Winger claimed that Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) is the heart of Christianity and the Gospel, and he said that critics of PSA are either lying, liberal, progressive, “poop-faces” who have stripped away the true meaning of the cross, or else that they are just too ignorant to know better. Unbelievably, he even claimed that the Early Church Fathers taught PSA.
This video is the second in a series of 15 podcasts, responding to Mike Winger’s mistaken claims. For those who prefer to read, a full transcript of this podcast is provided below.
The theory of Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) is not compatible with the teachings of the Orthodox Church. Though I do not view PSA as a litmus test to determine who is a Christian and who isn't, I do have strong reasons for rejecting the doctrine.
The Orthodox Church teaches the Restored Icon model of our salvation in Christ, in agreement with many venerable Saints and Early Church Fathers. As we saw in an earlier post, Jesus saves us by His Incarnation & Resurrection, not by paying a “ransom” to God the Father.
FULL VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Warren McGrew: Mike Winger is a well respected Christian teacher and host of the Bible Thinker online ministry. Mike has produced several videos which not only seek to defend PSA, but argue that it is historical and central to the Christian gospel. We strongly disagree and believe it is necessary to present a sincere and well-reasoned counterargument for both Mike and his followers to consider. We do not want this disagreement to be a source of division. Both Bible Thinker and Idol Killer are dedicated to Christ and the truth of Scripture. It is our hope that this will serve to mend divisions and bring the Body of Christ into a deeper love and understanding of the goodness of God.
Warren McGrew: Well, hello, and welcome to Idol Killer, a ministry dedicated to destroying sacred cows for the cause of Christ. Joining me back in the studio today, Paul Vendredi. And our continuing response to to Mike Winger's claims regarding penal substitution. Paul, thank you so much for being back on the program, sir.
Paul Vendredi: Great to be back. Thanks for having me again.
Warren McGrew: Absolutely, absolutely. We played some clips in this series that we're responding to, and we're going to continue that. And I believe you had some thoughts on today's program that you wanted to express.
Paul Vendredi: Well, Mr. Winger did six videos on the subject of penal substitutionary atonement (PSA). Mr. Winger spent the bulk of the first video convincing us that the Church Fathers believed in PSA. The claim is laughable on the face of it. Nevertheless, we live in an era of complete historical ignorance, meaning people who view his video may very well believe his claims. So we're going to spend this and probably the next three videos talking about the Church Fathers.
Before we embark on that analysis, we need to define our term. A Church Father is a Christian writer living between A.D. 100 and 787. We use those bookends because A.D. 100 is the death of the last apostle, and 787 is the last of the Ecumenical Councils. There's also a very strong regional component to this definition. If we look at a map of the East Roman or Byzantine Empire, we'll get a very good idea of where most of these Church Fathers lived and wrote. There are exceptions to the rule. Irenaeus was in Gaul and Ambrose was in Italy. For the most part, though, the majority of these Church Fathers are living and writing in the East Roman or Byzantine Empire.
Now let's get down to our analysis of whether they believed in PSA. If we roll clip one, we will find out from the Reverend Mr. Winger that PSA is allegedly the heart of the Christian gospel:
Mike Winger: And we're dealing with the topic of penal substitutionary atonement. What am I talking about? Like, what is this even about? Well, it's about the very meaning of the cross. It's, like, how Jesus saves us. That's the topic. Like, when you get all the fancy words out of the way, we're talking about how Jesus actually saves our souls for all eternity. That's a huge deal. It's at the heart of Christianity.
Paul Vendredi: I think back in the days when you were a Calvinist, you probably would have agreed with that assessment.
Warren McGrew: Yeah. I mean, growing up, all I ever had been taught was penal substitution. I thought that was what everybody believed. I thought that was the work of Christ. And if you didn't believe that, you didn't have the gospel. I mean, obviously, Jesus died for our sins. He rose again. God poured his wrath on Him so that when he looked at us, yeah, He would see the imputed righteousness of Christ. And you know, within that Calvinist paradigm, only the elect were included in that atoning sacrifice. We believed in a limited application of penal substitution. But I thought, hey, that's just Christianity 101. I mean, everybody believes that, right? I mean, Isaiah 53 all the way through today, I mean, there's never been a competing redemptive model or a different understanding. I just had a very stunted view of of the work of Christ. And it wasn't until I started studying the matter that I realized there is a lot of nuance, a lot of development, a lot of disagreement that has occurred since the beginning. You know, people have interpreted it differently. There have been competing redemptive models. But I discovered it wasn't really this formalized understanding that we have today until much, much, much later in Christian history.
Paul Vendredi: I think that Mike Wenger would agree with most of what you said, except for possibly the limited atonement aspect of it, since he's not necessarily a Reformed thinker, but from the Protestant perspective, he's not wrong. PSA is the heart of the gospel from the Protestant perspective, both Calvinist and Arminian. Now, getting back to our analysis, we have clip 2B. And this is where he explains his approach to the Church Fathers and basically what [he thinks] our approach should be as well.
Mike Winger: You know, the Church Fathers are not authorities on what we should believe, but it's interesting to read what they write about their beliefs when they're so far removed from our culture and our time. It's very interesting and educational to do. If they say something weird, it doesn't mean we should believe it. And they do say lots of weird things, by the way. But if in all of their writings you can't even find a central - what you think is central to the gospel - and you can't find it in any of their writings over hundreds of years, well, then you probably made it up. Like, that, you know, that's like a good red flag to go back to your Bible and reevaluate your understanding.
Paul Vendredi: All right. So the principle there is, if you can't find something in the Church Fathers that you consider to be central to the gospel, then you probably made it up. What would you think of that?
Warren McGrew: Yeah, I mean, the gospel was given to us by Christ and his apostles. So I would say we need to have it in the recognized canon of Scripture. It needs to be predominantly and overwhelmingly taught throughout the Early Church. And if it's not there, then we're certainly elucidating or adding to those fundamental essentials.
Paul Vendredi: Yeah. So we are going to try to abide by his principle in this particular interview. Warren, we can go to clip 2C, and in this clip he's quoting William Lane Craig, talking about the prevalence of teaching of PSA in the early Christian writings:
Mike Winger: William Lane Craig puts it this way in his book, "On the Atonement". He says:
"No Ecumenical Council ever pronounced on the subject of the atonement, leaving the church without conciliar guidance. When the Church Fathers did mention the atonement, their comments were brief and for the most part, un-incisive."
William Lane Craig did a survey of the actual, you know, the primary literature, say, actually reading the Church Fathers themselves. And as he was reading these things, he was saying, "Whoa, yeah, you know, they don't have one view of the atonement, and they don't even have this thorough view of the atonement. They don't have a theory of the atonement." This is the big revelation. The Church Fathers don't have a "Theory of the Atonement" that is carefully drawn out, where they say, "Here's everything the cross is about." They don't do it. They just talk about the cross like normal Christians do.
Warren McGrew: "Like normal Christians," they don't talk about the atonement. ::laughs:: We've mentioned in previous episodes what "atonement" means. And I find that, you know, interesting in light of his statement there.
Paul Vendredi: What's even more interesting, Warren, is that if we apply the three principles that he laid out in those three clips, we would end up having to reject PSA. In the first clip, which is the opening line of video number one, he tells us that PSA is the heart of the gospel, i.e. PSA equals gospel. In the next clip, he tells us that if we consider something central to the gospel but can't find it in the Church Fathers, then we should probably reject that principle. Then in the third clip — and all of these are from the same video — he approvingly quotes William Lane Craig, saying that the Ecumenical Councils tell you zero about the atonement, and that the Church Fathers don't address it in anything like clarity. So what logical conclusion would you draw from that, Warren?
Warren McGrew: Well, obviously the Early Church didn't have a full fledged gospel, so it makes me wonder if any of those early apostles and disciples and Church Fathers were even saved, if they didn't have the pure, true, core tenants of the gospel, right? I mean, they obviously couldn't be saved without the gospel. So, if PSA is essential, and it wasn't prevalent back then, it wasn't clearly laid out then, right? I mean, is that not what he was implying there? I don't think that's what he was implying, but I think that's a logical entailment, if we're consistent with his standards.
Paul Vendredi: Yeah, it's a conclusion from his own premises that he failed to draw. In the Protestant world, it is widely and grudgingly admitted that no one prior to A.D. 1100 taught the atonement in anything like clarity, or anything like a systematic manner. Okay, that's not a small issue.
We say that they grudgingly admit this — grudgingly, because if it's not taught prior to the Reformation, then, as you pointed out moments ago, everyone prior to the Reformation is in apostasy. Now, the issue as we brought it up in the last interview — Anselm's work on the atonement, where he systematized all of this, was A.D. 1100. That means prior to A.D. 1100, there's no systematic treatment of the atonement. That means that if you are a hardcore Reformed Christian or just a non-reformed Christian who believes in PSA, that has to be explained. If we want to phrase it less charitably, it has to be spun.
Now, let me give you a really good example of spin. This is from John MacArthur's book, "The Gospel According to Paul". I'm reading from pages 146 to 147:
"The early church, consumed with controversies about the person of Christ and the nature of the Godhead, more or less took for granted the doctrine of the atonement. It was rarely a subject for debate or systematic analysis in the Early Church writings."
Skipping down a few lines on the page...
"Selected Church Fathers' comments about the ransom of Christ should not be taken as studied, conscientious, doctrinal statements, but rather as childlike expressions of an unformed and inadequate doctrine of the atonement."
End of that risible quote. Alright. So you'll notice that he gave not one spin, but two spins. He starts out saying, "Well, the Church Fathers don't say anything about the atonement because they just believed what we modern Protestants believe about the atonement, and they took it for granted that all their listeners believed it." That's an argument from silence. When he goes down a little bit on the page, he changes the spin and he says, "Well, you know, these guys, they're living in the late antique era. They're not quite as bright as the Reformers. So, you know, it was more of a childlike theology that they had." And by doing that, he's committing a cardinal sin in Protestant apologetics called "chronological snobbery". We have a clip here from Gary Habermas where he explains what that is:
Gary Habermas: We wonder, for example, in the book of Mark, why Pilate called the centurion in and said, "Is he dead?" And he said, "Yes." And then he said, "Alright, you can take the body." Why did he call the centurion? A lot of people wonder, "Well, you know, what can the centurion know? He doesn't have a stethoscope. He doesn't have an EEG or an EKG. How do you know that somebody is dead on the cross?" And we like to do what C.S. Lewis calls “chronological snobbery”. We like to say that because the centurion was in the first century, he's got to be an idiot, right? He cannot know what death by crucifixion is. He's got no medical training.
Paul Vendredi: So the phrase "chronological snobbery" is part of the arsenal of Protestant apologetics. When the Protestant apologist is confronted with an unbeliever who says, "How can you possibly believe what the apostles said? These were a bunch of dummies from the primitive world. They were credulous about miracles that blah blah blah." The standard response to that is "Hey, that's chronological snobbery." Yet in that quote that I gave you from "The Gospel According to Paul", John MacArthur is doing chronological snobbery on his own Christian forebears.
Warren McGrew: Yep. Called them, what was the quote, "childlike expressions of an unformed and inadequate doctrine of the atonement."
Paul Vendredi: That's it.
Warren McGrew: Wow. Yeah. The apostles, the early martyrs, those Christians that were closer to the eyewitness testimony and accounts and that were fed to lions and burned at the stake. And they had "unformed and inadequate doctrines of the atonement", and they were just "childlike in their expressions". That's... Yeah, I see why we might call it chronological snobbery. Yeah.
Paul Vendredi: Well, the good news is, not every Protestant who deals with this spins the data or engages in chronological snobbery. For example, there is a man to whom you've dedicated a number of your infamous Idol Killer music videos:
James White: And we have said over and over again that it took to the fourth century before a full length tome treatment of the doctrine of the atonement appeared from Athanasius. And that means it was it was not the central focus of dispute and hence definition.
Warren McGrew: Yeah. The honorable Doctor White there, seemingly agreeing with us, if I'm understanding him correctly, that among the teachings of the apostles and the Early Church, we're not going to find PSA enumerated in the text of Scripture, or like, in early works like the Didache, the Didache Apostolorum. We're not going to find that there, are we? I mean, if Doctor White was correct.
Paul Vendredi: Well, I realize that he is among your nemeses, but gotta hand it to him here. His handling of the data here is way more honest than the handling we saw from John MacArthur or Mike Winger.
Warren McGrew: Oh, absolutely. And I want to thank Doctor White for going on the record. This is one of several clips that we've been able to point to as an honest handling of the data from someone who affirms this view. So, much props and thanks to Doctor White for that.
Paul Vendredi: Yeah, be that as it may, I still have to raise one objection to the clip. The book he's referring to is this one, "On the Incarnation" by Athanasius of Alexandria. The Reverend Mr. White referred to it as a treatment on the atonement. It is not a treatment on the atonement. It is a treatment on the work of Christ. "Atonement" is a label that gets slapped onto the dataset, gets slapped onto the historical event in the Reformation era. And we talked about in the last interview we did, when a person confuses a dataset or a historical event with the label that is slapped onto the dataset or historical event, it's the fallacy of tautological question. So that would be the one objection that I would raise there.
Warren McGrew: Yeah, I think that's fair and reasonable. And we've done tremendous work both in this series and in our previous series, defining what "atonement" means and why we would take issue with applying it to the work of Christ.
Paul Vendredi: Right. And just as a refresher, "atonement", according to the dictionary, means "reparation for a wrong or an injury". So if the work of Christ, his life, death, and resurrection, are "atonement", then perforce it means his crucifixion and so forth is about reparation for a wrong or an injury. But as we pointed out last time, "atonement" is a new word and the concept is new as well. So it's not an appropriate label to put onto the work of Christ.
Warren McGrew: And we're not challenging the work of Christ and what He did, merely this particular, rather recent lens in which it's being filtered and claimed to be a core tenant of Christian truth and the gospel.
Paul Vendredi: That's exactly right. We want to distinguish between the historical event of the crucifixion, and the received historical interpretation of that, which is "atonement". And when we say historical interpretation, I'm talking about from the Reformation forward, because prior to that, that was not the received interpretation.
Warren, I want to go back to something that Mike Winger said. He was quoting approvingly from William Lane Craig. And you and I both admire William Lane Craig in a lot of ways. So I'm going to use a William Lane Craig strategy here to determine whether or not it's true that the Church Fathers taught penal substitutionary atonement. This is a strategy that I call. "What would you expect to see?" It goes like this. William Lane Craig is debating an atheist or some other unbeliever. He says, "Alright, Doctor Umptysquat, if your proposition p is true, then we would expect to see result q. We do not see result q, therefore your proposition p is false. If p, then q. Not q, therefore not p. That's a perfectly valid inference pattern called modus tollens. But I just call it, "What would you expect to see?" Now let's do, "What would you expect to see if PSA is the heart of the gospel?"
And before we do that, let me define one more term. The word is "catechism". A catechism is one of these memorized Q&A sessions, where it's a Q&A script that's memorized, and it's designed to teach the newcomer the Christian faith. Other people use catechisms, too. The Masonic Lodge has a catechism for each of the three degrees. So it's not just Christianity. Basically, it's a teaching tool to convey the truths of the faith or the brotherhood to the newcomer.
Now, what would we expect to see if PSA is the heart of the Christian gospel? One thing we would expect to see, is that PSA would be very prominent in the catechisms. When we look at Protestant catechisms, that is indeed what we find. I have one here. This is called, "The New City Catechism". It's written by Tim Keller. And when we turn to question 24, this is the Q&A:
Question: "Why was it necessary for Christ the Redeemer to die?"
Answer: "Since death is the punishment for sin, Christ died willingly in our place to deliver us from the power and penalty of sin, and bring us back to God. By His substitutionary, atoning death, He alone redeems us from hell and gains for us forgiveness of sin, righteousness, and everlasting life."
That's obviously PSA, and it's featured very prominently in Tim Keller's Catechism.
Alright, let's set the Wayback Machine. We'll go back in time to 1542. We find in our hands something called "The Catechism of the Church of Geneva", written by an evil genius named John Calvin. We would expect to see PSA in this as well. So let's see if we do find PSA. I'll do a spoiler alert. The answer is, yes, we do:
Question 57. Minister: “Explain this more fully.”
Child: “He died that He might bear the punishment due to us and in this manner deliver us from it."
Moving down to question 66:
Minister: “Relate to me the cause and manner of this suffering.”
Child: “As He placed Himself before the tribunal of God, that He might make satisfaction for sinners, it became Him to be tortured with horrible distress of soul, as if He was forsaken of God—nay, as if He was hated of God. He was in these pains when He cried to His Father, 'My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?'"
Moving down to question 71:
Minister: “Are we able to learn from hence what fruit believers derive from the death of Christ?”
Child: “Yes, and first we perceive Him to be a sacrifice, by which He expiated our sins before God, and thus the wrath of God being appeased, He brought us back into favor with Him."
Okay, that sounds like PSA, doesn't it?
Warren McGrew: It does, it does. And you see in question 66 that call back to Anselm, with his reference to satisfaction for sinners. Yeah. You see the foundation that has led us to where we are in this expression.
Paul Vendredi: In that same question, too, I will also bring to your attention the word "tortured". God "tortured" the Son. And this is something that Mike Winger, elsewhere in his video series, denies is a claim of PSA.
All right, Warren, let's continue with our William Lane Craig thought experiment here, saying, "What would we expect to see?" If PSA is the heart of the gospel, we would expect to see it in the catechisms of the Christian Church. We do indeed see that in the Protestant world. Now, we should expect to see this in ancient catechisms as well, given that this is allegedly the heart of the gospel. So let's go back to the fourth century. We find ourselves encountering a gentleman named Cyril of Jerusalem. He wrote a series of catechetical lectures. The second catechetical lecture is called, "On Repentance and Remission of Sins". Remission of sins is what PSA is all about. Therefore, this should be a lecture in which we find a lot of material on PSA. So let's dive into it and see what we actually find. Section 14:
"If the prophet healed Jeroboam, is Christ not able to heal and deliver thee from thy sins? Manasses also was utterly wicked, who sawed Isaiah asunder, and was defiled with all kinds of idolatries, and filled Jerusalem with innocent blood. But having been led captive to Babylon, he used his experience of misfortune for a healing course of repentance."
To me that sounds like the Restored Icon model. It doesn't sound like PSA model.
Warren McGrew: No, absolutely. Those core tenets of PSA are completely absent.
Paul Vendredi: And notice the emphasis on healing, too. The "healing course of repentance". And, you know, we talk about Isaiah healing Jeroboam, and so on and so forth.
Warren McGrew: Well, we talk about Christ as our Great Physician. And even in Protestant circles we still use this term. But in light of PSA, it's kind of divorced from its historical grounding.
Paul Vendredi: Fully agreed. Let's move on to lecture 12 in Cyril of Jerusalem's Catechism. The title of this lecture is, "On the Words 'Incarnate' and 'Made Man'". This should be a fruitful orchard in which we could find PSA as well, because, according to PSA, the incarnation is all about giving God a body that has blood in it, so He could spill the blood. We should be able to find PSA in this section. Let's dive in and see what we actually find:
Section one: "Let us confess the presence of Him who was both king and physician. For Jesus the King, when about to become our physician, girded Himself with the linen of humanity, and healed that which was sick."
Section six: "After Moses, prophets were sent to cure Israel, but in their healing office, they lamented that they were not able to overcome the disease."
Section eight: "The Father disregarded not the perishing of our race. He sent forth His son, the Lord from heaven, as Healer."
So the turn of phrase that's happening there is, we have the concept of disease and healing. We do not have the concept of infraction and penalty. Yep. Same lecture. Let's move on to section 15:
"His body therefore was made a bait to death, that the dragon, hoping to devour it, might disgorge those also who had been already devoured."
That's known as a Bait & Switch model. That is not a PSA model. Alright, Warren, I'm going to move on to the 13th of Cyril's catechetical lectures. This one is called, "On the Words 'Crucified' and 'Buried'". This should be a real good field to find... This should be a real good lecture to find PSA material, because it's about crucifixion.
Warren McGrew: Within PSA, the predominant view is not the incarnation and sinless life of Christ, as much as what happened on the cross. And so that's the emphasis of PSA, is that atoning, wrath being vented, or poured out or appeased. But this is all about the crucifixion. So surely we're going to see those same themes here, because this is about the crucifixion, right?
Paul Vendredi: Right. And if I can riff on something you said, you pointed out that the crucifixion is the end all and be all in PSA. And unfortunately, the sinless life of Christ basically gets ignored. I regret to say it, but even my hero, Walter Martin, in that book right there, which is his systematic theology, states what you articulated. Now let's go to section 18 of lecture number 13. Here's what Cyril writes:
"Adam received the sentence, 'Cursed is the ground in thy labors. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.' For this cause, Jesus assumes the thorns, that He may cancel the sentence. For this cause also He was buried in the earth, that the earth which had been cursed might receive the blessing instead of a curse. At the time of the sin, they clothed themselves with fig leaves. For this cause, Jesus also made the fig tree the last of His signs."
Now what you have there is called a Recapitulation model. Again, not a PSA model. Now let's go down to section 21:
"The woman who was formed from the side led the way to sin. But Jesus, who came to bestow the grace of pardon on men and women alike, was pierced in the side for women that he might undo the sin."
Now that's a combination of Recapitulation and the Restored Icon model. But what we don't find in Cyril's catechetical lecture is anything even remotely resembling PSA. So again, if we say, “If p, then q. Not q, therefore not p”, well, we have to say that we would expect to see, you know, we would expect to see the same kind of things that we saw in Protestant catechisms, in ancient Eastern catechisms.
Warren McGrew: And to stress, again, I mean, a catechism is something that's designed to convey the fundamental truths of the Christian faith to new converts. So if what we're saying is, if PSA is a core tenant of the gospel, if it's an essential component of the gospel, then the heart of the gospel was lacking. And I think we're doing a pretty good job so far of demonstrating that.
Paul Vendredi: So let's continue in this vein of "What would you expect to see?" We talked about people learning the faith from catechisms. They also teach and learn the faith by means of systematic theologies. I'm just going to show here a book that I showed last time. That's the "Systematic Theology" of Wayne Grudem - massive book - it has 57 chapters. One of those chapters is on the atonement. One out of 57 is 1.75%. Sounds like a very small amount, but when you remember that this book is 1600 pages, that ends up being about a 50 page chapter. So 50 pages on the atonement is a pretty substantial treatment. Alright, now we go to another one that I just showed moments ago, "Essential Christianity" by Walter Martin, which is also a systematic theology. This book only has 12 chapters. One of the chapters is dedicated to PSA. So that's a larger percentage. That's 8.33%.
Let's apply the William Lane Craig principle. What would you expect to see? Well, if modern systematic theologies written by Protestants give us anywhere from 1.75% to 8.33% material on PSA. We would expect to see that in catechisms or systematic theologies throughout history.
In fact, we do not. In the ancient world, when we're talking about the late antique period and the early medieval period, the way that systematic theology was done was by committee. These committees convened at Ecumenical Councils, and when the council adjourned, they released creeds, capitula, and anathema. Those creeds, capitula, and anathema, basically were systematic theologies explaining what you had to believe on this or that. When it came to the Ecumenical Councils, that was almost entirely about the Trinity and the hypostatic union. However, there were individual church fathers who wrote systematic theologies. One of them was Gregory of Nyssa. I know you like his writings.
Warren McGrew: Yeah.
Paul Vendredi: A far more famous one is the "Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith" written by John of Damascus. Let's go to that systematic theology, which dates from roughly the eighth century, and see if we can find anything that looks like PSA in it. We'll go to book three, chapter one:
"He becomes obedient to the Father and finds a remedy for our disobedience in what He had assumed from us, and became a pattern of obedience to us, without which it is not possible to obtain salvation."
That's a Moral Exemplar model, not a PSA model.
Warren McGrew: Exactly.
Paul Vendredi: Going down to book three, chapter six:
"For God the Word omitted none of the things which He implanted in our nature when He formed us in the beginning, but took them all upon Himself, body and soul, both intelligent and rational, and all their properties. For the creature that is devoid of one of these is not man, but He in His fullness took upon Himself me in my fullness, and was united whole to whole, that He might in his grace bestow salvation on the whole man. For what has not been taken cannot be healed."
Who is he quoting there, Warren?
Warren McGrew: I believe he's quoting Hebrews chapter two, verses 14 through 18, essentially summarizing it. Or he's also quoting Gregory of Nazianzus.
Paul Vendredi: Yeah, Gregory of Nazianzus. Yeah. That last line is a straight quote from Gregory of Nazianzus. The understanding of the work of Christ that Gregory of Nazianzus promulgated is something that I call the "Restored Icon" model. So this is something that the all of the fathers at the Ecumenical Councils had in their heads, and the Seventh Ecumenical Council used as its guiding light John of Damascus. And John of Damascus is clearly here influenced by Gregory of Nazianzus, so this is the Restored Icon model.
Warren McGrew: Yeah, there's nothing in here about an atonement, a wrath, this appeasing the penalty, pouring this on... those unique claims of of PSA, again, completely absent.
Paul Vendredi: Completely absent. Moving down to book three, chapter 12:
"For the purpose of God the Word becoming man, was that the very same nature which had sinned and fallen and become corrupted should triumph over the deceiving tyrant, and so be freed from corruption."
That's a Christus Victor model, not a PSA model. Alright, moving down to book three, chapter 27:
"Wherefore death approaches and swallowing up the body as a bait is transfixed on the hook of divinity, and after tasting of a sinless and life-giving body, perishes and brings up again all whom of old he swallowed up."
That is a Bait & Switch model. Yeah. Alright, so, Warren, we just ran through four excerpts from John of Damascus' Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. And what we got was a Moral Exemplar model, a Restored Icon model, a Christus Victor model, and a Bait & Switch model. The model we did not get was PSA.
Warren McGrew: Completely, completely absent. These ignorant, these ignorant Christians.
Paul Vendredi: These childlike Christians.
Warren McGrew: They're childlike, you know, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa. And I mean, you know, you have you have to feel sorry for them, these, these childlike, ignorant babes in the in the faith, you know.
Paul Vendredi: Yeah. No further comment on that. So, if we're just going to review what we did with our thought experiment, let's see. The Protestants: Wayne Grudem gave us 1.75% of PSA in his systematic theology. Walter Martin was 8.33%. The Ecumenical Councils were 0%. Gregory of Nyssa: We didn't look at any of his excerpts, but trust me, his catechism is 0%. John of Damascus gives us 0%. And if you want even more evidence that this is absent in Eastern Christian theology, this is a systematic theology written in the 20th century, written by a Greek named Athanasios Frangopoulos. In this systematic theology, again a 20th century work, not a single mention of PSA when it talks about the work of Christ. So PSA is a novelty, and it's also a phenomenon of Western theology. It is not eastern theology, and it is not historic, unless we consider the Reformation to be the beginning of Christian history.
Warren McGrew: Mic drop moment right there.
Paul Vendredi: Alright. Well, speaking of Mic, let's go back to Mike Winger. Let's take a look at clip 2F. This is where he's explaining his methodology of how he arrived at his conclusion that the Church Fathers teach PSA:
Mike Winger: Hopefully you're refreshed and you're ready to dig in because we're just getting started. There's really a lot to cover, and I hope that you will stick with me through this, because this is gonna be a survey of Church Fathers and what they actually taught on the atonement. And since I don't see the atonement theories as these separate theories competing with each other, but rather as different aspects of the atonement which all can be true - all can be true together, except maybe for one view of ransom theory that's really wacky. The other ones can all be true together. So when we study the Church Fathers, we're not looking for them to say, "I don't believe Christus Victor; I believe PSA." We're just looking for them to include elements of PSA. That is, penalty and substitution that achieves our atonement.
Paul Vendredi: Mike Wenger just told us there is that if he finds two elements, penalty or substitution, then PSA is proven. Let me do an analogy just to give a clearer illustration of why this is just not workable. Let's say that Mike Wenger is walking through a manufacturing plant. As he's walking through, he looks down and sees a lock washer. So he picks it up and puts it in his left pocket. He walks a little further and sees a cotter pin down on the floor. As he's picking this up to put it into his right pocket, suddenly the proverbial light bulb goes on over his head. He rushes back to the office, pulls out the engineering drawing, goes to the bill of materials, and even though there's 75 parts in that bill of materials, he sees that one of them is the lock washer and the other is the cotter pin. Same part number, same everything. And you know, with this, he says, "Hey, boom! I've proven that this is the same machine that's being manufactured here at this plant for which I have a blueprint."
Well, no. A lot of machines can make use of the same lock washer and same cotter pin. The parts or the components of the machinery are analogous to words and phrases, and the assemblies or machinery are analogous to models describing the work of Christ. Now, perforce, they're all going to use the same language because we have biblical terminology like "ransom", like "debt", so on and so forth. The bare fact that you find these words and phrases in ancient writings does not mean that you have PSA.
Now, this is what's known as the fallacy of the "lonely fact". PSA is an intricately ramified machinery and assembly, if you will, that consists of 17 subassemblies. Each of those subassemblies, in turn, is built on all kinds of claims and presuppositions. Those are like components in a subassembly. And the claims are like subassemblies within a machine that's going to be used. That'll be the assembly that we use. When you find 1 or 2 components out of 75, and you think that this vindicates that you have the entire machinery, this is the fallacy of the lonely fact. It just does not work. So that's the first failing there.
Warren McGrew: One thing too, I want to point out, Paul, is, anybody who's watching this who maybe isn't familiar, this is our second series of dealing with the topic of penal substitution and the redemptive work of Christ. But in our in our first series, we actually went over those 17 unique claims point by point by point by point. So if you're coming to this and you haven't seen that yet, make sure that that you tune in and watch that as well, because it will give you an overall of the mechanisms that go into comprising penal substitution.
Paul Vendredi: Yeah. Thanks for that clarification. So, the first failing is the fallacy of the lonely fact. The second failing in his methodology is that he engages in what's what looks to me like a type of projection. So he finds the words like, you know, "debt", "ransom", "exchange", and he invests all of those words with the meaning that they have had from the Reformation forward, which is anachronistic.
So, rather than looking at what the resonances of those words would have been in late antiquity and the early medieval period, he sees, for example, the word "exchange" and goes, "Oh, hey, this is proof of substitution. We have the great exchange." That's the phrase they love to use.
Well, I'm sorry, but when eastern writers use the word "exchange" or the phrase "the great exchange", they are not talking about the exchange of innocence for guilt. They are talking about the exchange of divinity for humanity. In other words, "great exchange" means "incarnation". So what we have here is a massive case of projection and anachronism. That's his second failing.
Warren McGrew: Yeah, and we've seen this, and I'm hoping we might be able to get to this. I believe we addressed this briefly in our last series, but we saw that where he was quoting the Epistle of Diognetus and he said, "O sweet exchange", you know, "ransom". And he goes, "PSA right there!" And you could see that. And I think he was doing it innocently enough, not aware that he was bringing this anachronistic reading into that text. But very clearly, we see that throughout his entire handling of PSA in the Early Church Fathers and their writings, he is continually reading PSA into the text rather than deriving it from it. And that's the criticism. And I would not say he's doing this maliciously or with ill intent. I would say I believe he's doing this innocently, unaware of what his own biases are causing him to do. I know people who deny PSA. He's put a question mark over us and our motives. But I'm not going to return that to him. I think he's doing it innocently enough.
Paul Vendredi: Turn the other cheek, I guess.
Warren McGrew: Yeah.
Paul Vendredi: Alright. Well, we talked about the failings in his methodology. The third failing is that he fails to recognize eristic when he sees it. We've got to define another term, "eristic". E-R-I-S-T-I-C - Eristic. Eristic is basically an apologetics tactic that is designed to win a debate rather than to root out the truth. Debate is supposed to be about rooting out the truth. Unfortunately, in some cases it's more about eristic. It's just about winning the debate, so that the person looks good.
Now, unfortunately, this is hard for me to admit. It's going to get me in hot water in Eastern Orthodox circles. Some of the Church Fathers were guilty of eristic. They used terms, they used arguments, that were good in one situation but bad in another, and they just very expediently used whatever tool was going to be most workable in that particular debate.
So we turn to the writings of Basil of Caesarea. This is another one who allegedly believes in PSA, according to Mike Winger's video. We're not going to address that. We're going to look at Epistle 210. Now, what's happening in the time of Basil? Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa live in this era that is right between the first two Ecumenical Councils. It's between First Nicaea and First Constantinople. In this era, a lot of people are denying the divinity of the Holy Ghost, and the Council of First Nicaea barely touched the issue of the Holy Ghost.
And what these heretics - I hate to use the Matt Slick term there - but these people who were denying the Godhead of the Holy Ghost, one of their favorite things was to turn to the writings of a thinker from a previous era named Gregory the Wonderworker. Gregory the Wonderworker used a lot of terms and phrases that fit into the arguments of these people who were denying the divinity of the Holy Ghost.
Now here's how Basil of Caesarea responds to them. This is Epistle 210. Quote (He's talking about Gregory the Wonderworker):
"But in his endeavor to convince the heathen, he deemed it needless to be nice about the words he employed. He judged it wiser sometimes to make concessions to the character of the subject who was being persuaded, so as not to run counter to the opportunity given him."
Notice the opportunistic element there. This is eristic. Continuing the quote:
"This explains how it is that you may find there many expressions which have great support to the heretics, as for instance, creature and thing made and the like."
End quote. So essentially, Basil of Caesarea is admitting that Gregory the Wonderworker, who's a great saint, was engaging in some eristic. I almost said dishonesty, but I don't want to get hate mail. So let's just say Gregory was engaging in eristic.
Warren McGrew: You know, and you find yourself too, like, I mean, even when I'm witnessing to unbelievers, my goal in that conversation is not to fine tune and correct every disagreement or every error that they have, but to present them the gospel, to tell them about Christ, and try and plant that seed and try and cultivate it. It's not, that's not where you're doing the hardcore discipleship and mentoring. That comes later. This is, you're actually dealing with the the compact soil, getting rid of the rocks and the roots, and you're getting in there and you're trying to to reach them where they are, but you're not concerned with every bit of nuance and making sure that every point is responded to. And you see that, you know, the early Christians were no different.
Paul Vendredi: Yeah, that would be the generous approach to the issue. Well, Warren, I have nothing further to add. So unless you have something else to add, I think we can take up more about the Church Fathers when we reconvene.
Warren McGrew: Yeah, I think this has been very enlightening. And again, if anybody's interested, there'll be links to the books that are referenced here in the comment section below. There'll be links to the 17 part series or the... I think it was a 7 part series we did on the... I've lost count. It was on the previous... Penal substitution is 17 unique claims. I think it was like a 7 part series. That's going to be down in the comment section below.
But I want to thank everybody for tuning in and considering the claims and evidence that we're presenting here. And again, this is done in a spirit of brotherly love and disagreement with Mike. And we're hoping to set the record straight, because, again, we believe he has engaged in an anachronistic and sincere-but-mishandling of the the source materials. And so we want to put this out there, so that those who want a opposing view and a well thought out response can have some something to chew on, and just take this before the Lord in their own studies.
Please be sure to watch each episode in this series, as we are responding to the claims Mike Winger put forward addressing the historicity and biblical basis of penal substitutionary atonement. Thanks for watching.
I am conscious that I have not responded to your email. This is because I want to make sure I have sufficient information so as not to waste your time. In answer to your question I am now a Presbyterian (PCA) but my conversion in 1985 was effected by the Church I attended at the time which was an Assemblies of God Pentecostal Church. I then spent ten years attending Congregational Church and then ten years in a Baptist Church. My late Father was a Wesley and Luther Scholar at Cambridge and later Nortrhwestern, he went to glory in 1983 so never saw me converted. I am sure we will meet in Heaven. So I will reply but need more Biblical references to undergird the P in PSA. Thanks for your time and this article as it is important. Peter